Time out
After unexpectedly tripping some major trauma wires, I take a break from my formative sex & relationship episodes to share what delving into my past has looked like behind the scenes.
*Heads Up* I describe a few graphic body things & violent thoughts AND…photos of my recent skin infection below are fairly gross
In the Sex & Relationship series:
Ep 14 :: Seeding disenchantment
Ep 16 :: Petroleum engineering smart
Ep 17 :: Sex and the city
Ep 18 :: Part of the job
Ep 19 :: Hawaiian breeze era
My recent unicorn horn infection 🦄🤢 My body is still dealing with the fall out from this infection 4 weeks later
Audio Transcript
This is Divine Interruption. I'm Sarah Hildreth Rankin. Welcome back.
Thanks for being here. Today, I want to take a little break from sharing a lot of my formative sex and relationship stories. I've done about five episodes so far.
There's plenty more to come, but I actually need a bit more time. I need some more time to process what's been going on behind the scenes as I've done that. I need a timeout.
So that's what this is going to be. I thought I would share what my experience has been like as I've delved into the past and worked through some pretty big things. And I'm working in real time over here, right?
It's not like I've prepared all of these a year in advance, and I've done all this great writing and put together these stories.
It's more like, okay, I'm called to delve into this thing, and all of a sudden, I recorded eight episodes over one weekend for this specific series. And since then, I've been working on more.
So I've got that going on, and then I'm revisiting the old ones, I'm editing them, and then I'm putting them out. And that's been over the course of two months so far. And it's been a lot.
It's actually been really unexpected, which is why I'm here, and I'm like, ah, time out, time out. I actually have to stop and pause because I can't keep going. I need to take a break.
And I don't know if you've ever tripped on a trauma wire before. That's what I'm gonna call it. It feels like, as I've been doing this, I've tripped up on a bunch of old stuff that I was unaware of that's now wreaking havoc in my daily life.
And I wasn't really aware of it as it was happening to the level that it was happening.
I've been really deeply invested in moving through this time period of my life, and I've been so invested in going there and revisiting these things and sharing these stories, you know, in a form of healing for myself and of making sense of things.
But I was so invested in doing it that I didn't really recognize the signs that maybe this was a bit deeper or more intense for me than I initially thought.
It's as if as I delve into these memories, I'm also stirring up all this emotional baggage, all the stored survival stress, all the mental energy that I was using to manage or fix or solve my feelings at that time when I was experiencing all of these
things. And as we know about our nervous system, you know, what we're unable to process at the time, or what our bodies are unable to react to, let's say we push down a reaction when really we want to scream at someone or run away or say like, this
is unsafe, but instead we stop ourselves, or we have so many reasons as to why we do that, or we push these things down, or we don't fully feel the emotions, or we don't react in the way that would help our bodies move through that in a smooth way or
a healthy way. Then all of that stress, all of that unfelt emotion, all of that unprocessed experience, it just gets stored within us. It's like as I've delved into these formative experiences, I'm really reliving these memories viscerally.
And a lot of what I thought were things that I'd already worked through in a way where I'm like, oh, I can laugh about this.
And I've thought about this so many times, especially as a young adult up until now, like over and over and over to the point where it's almost like I no longer felt anything.
Well, I've been experiencing all of these things over again in a very real way, through the lens of my younger self, at a level where I'm actually feeling it as if I was there again.
And that means acknowledging and feeling things that I couldn't at the time. So it's actually unlocking things that I wasn't aware were there. And I really want this to be a linear process.
That's the way my brain works, and that's what I'm trying to do here almost for myself. I'm like, okay, when did this feeling start? Or when do I think this is how I ended up doing this 10 years later?
You know, that's how I make sense of the world for myself, and that's what I'm doing here. I've tried to make this linear. And I am.
I'm starting at the beginning, and then I'm sharing as I go along. But the actual processing of that has not been linear. So even though I'm sharing it in a linear way, behind the scenes, this has just been a huge mess.
It's like when you decide to clean out your closet, you take an afternoon and you're like, I'm gonna tackle this project. I'm gonna get rid of things. I'm gonna make this closet clean and bright and sparkly.
And so you start, and you're quite objective, or you have the energy or inspiration to do it. But then you get into the closet, you start taking everything out. And as you take everything out, you stumble across all sorts of different things.
Like maybe all of these old clothes that you wanted to get rid of, now you're remembering all the memories attached to them.
And then you stumble across old photographs, and maybe you spend way too long looking through all these photographs, and then those are bringing up other feelings.
And then, I don't know, you come across a jewelry box, and that in itself is just a mess, right? And all the old necklaces are tangled together, and you're trying to pull them apart.
And as you're doing that, you realize, oh, no, those are attached to all these earrings over here, and then this other necklace over here. And as you pull on one, it pulls harder on the other.
And it's just, you get so overwhelmed, and you're so exhausted, and you're trying to fix it, and just clean out this stupid closet, because you know you need space. You know you're ready for that space.
But the process in doing that, it's like you realize, oh, no, I can't do this in an afternoon. What was I thinking about?
And then you're sitting there, and it's like eight o'clock at night, and everything's piled up in your bedroom, and you've got like one half pile of things to give away, because you're so overwhelmed, and you're exhausted, and now you're sad, and
you're grouchy, and you're disappointed in yourself, because you thought you could do this thing that now you realize is just so big. So essentially, at the end of this long closet metaphor, what I'm trying to say is, that's how these past two months
have felt for me. I had no idea that I was going to feel this way, or that it was going to bring up so much in me. And I've only shared five of these episodes, and there's many more to come.
And I think when I started compounding them, putting them next to each other, and continued going, I started to be like, oof, okay, I'm feeling this, and then I'm feeling this get compounded and compounded, and I'm seeing the patterns.
And some of these episodes get a bit heavier. So, that's why this is a good time, I think, to take a bit of a break, because I need to kind of gain more energy and strength before I go into more. So much has come out of it.
So, I just want to share what some of those things have been. One has been that I have so many feelings showing up from all angles that just come out of nowhere.
And I've shared this before, like the way that my body, when it's processing stuff, all of a sudden, I'll be hit with huge big emotions. So, that's been happening on a regular basis. I'd say daily, there's a lot going on.
And one of those things is anger. I have been feeling levels of anger that I have never felt in my entire life. And this has been very confronting.
And if you grew up, like I did, and anger wasn't modeled in a healthy way, you know, I was either shown that anger didn't exist. It's not even an emotion. Nobody feels anger.
Nope, everything's fine. Or it looked like this total insane like freak out, and it was really scary. Like anger was dangerous and scary.
Then maybe I don't really know how to deal with anger so well. And for the first, I'd say at least 35 years of my life, I never even knew that I was angry, or that I felt as angry as I did. And I thought it was just an emotion that I didn't feel.
I was like, why does everyone get mad all the time? Like, I'm just not mad. I just don't feel mad.
But oh my God, it is in there. I am so angry about so many things. I am so angry for every moment that my boundaries were crossed, which looking back, now I realize it was like all the time.
And I've only just realized that I've also been angry at myself.
So instead of feeling my boundaries being crossed, and then being angry at the situation or the person or whatever it was that had crossed my boundaries, instead, I stifled my voice, and then I turned the anger in on myself.
And I was telling myself that it was my fault that these things were happening. I was so angry at myself for allowing them to happen. And you know, how could I continue to fail again and again by not acting on these boundaries?
And so I've just been roiling inside from all of these injustices that have, you know, stacked up over time. And for every moment, I didn't speak up or say the thing that I really desperately wanted to.
And I'm angry that my ability to openly feel and express anger was silence and shamed. So I've been, yeah, really angry. And that anger has been showing up at random times throughout the day.
It's been showing up in my dreams. I had two weeks straight where I had nightmares every night where I was confronting people from my past and just screaming at them, just screaming no, you know, and pushing them away physically.
I had flames coming out of my mouth in these dreams.
It's also looked like some pretty intense conversations, also awkward conversations that I've had with my partner Nick, where I'm saying things like, I'm really sorry, I just need to say this right now.
It's not personal, but I just, I really don't know how to trust men. I don't even think I like men. Like things are coming out of my mouth that they don't feel like they're just me.
It feels bigger than me. And I also logically know, and I hope you know that when I say this, I think this is obvious, or I don't need to say this, but it's not all men. I don't not trust or hate all men or whatever it is.
That's not what any of these stories have been about. But there's something in me that needs to express now, where it says, this is what I learned. This is what I was taught.
These are experiences that I had, and I'm so angry about it. And it doesn't mean that I don't respect and love like my current partner. That's not what this is about.
But I've had these moments of huge surging words wanting to come out from my mouth, and just saying them is like a release of some sort. And it's a very generalized statement, but I'm like, I need to say this right now.
Like, I don't know how to trust men. I don't trust them. They're scary.
They're dangerous. And to help me with this, because let me tell you, it's been a lot. I've been using music, which makes sense.
I've done that before. I created this rage playlist. I call it Sacred Rage.
And I put it on. I jump on my little mini trampoline in the morning, and I'll just like thrash my body around like I'm this giant, violent octopus. And I'm just getting these feelings out of me.
Because if I don't, I start to defer to my conditioning. And when I start to feel angry, I instantly, I feel embarrassed. And then I feel ashamed.
I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, this feels gross. This feels inappropriate.
I'm not allowed to actually like feel these feelings. But then, when I don't feel them, guess what? They just stay stuck.
They're in there. So this music is helping me coax it out. And during that time period where I'm like bouncing around being a maniac, the music is helping me just get that rage out.
And it's uncomfortable because it's not natural to how I've been for so long. But man, it is so satisfying and so necessary right now. So yeah, I'm having this anger that's been huge.
And also a lot of other emotions like grief, like I'm finding it just hits me like a big wave. You know, I take my kids to school, I come home and then I just collapse on the bed and I'm just like, just like crying it out.
And I don't really know what I'm crying about. I know that there's a lot of feelings, but there's not necessarily specific things attached to that. It's just a lot of emotions, a lot of fear as well.
And if you've been listening for a while, you'll know that there's a pattern that I've been working with, which is a lot around like my body and the symptoms of my body and how they show up.
So if I'm doing some emotional uprooting, like I am now, that will be followed by a purging of sorts, right? Through my skin or through my chronic illness symptoms.
So it's not surprising that at this time, I've had so many infections that culminated into this huge infection right on my forehead, the middle of my head where everyone can see.
And I had this unicorn horn essentially, and it built up over the span of two weeks. My lymph nodes turned into complete rocks. My face swelled up, and all of it drained.
Like it's almost like there's a lot of fluid, right? And stuff going on in the body, and it went down into my armpits, into the sides of my body. I was in so much pain.
And at some point, usually with these infections, there's a point where if it doesn't break on its own, like the infection doesn't express, then I'm like, okay, I have to get someone to cut me open. You know, do I need to go to the ER?
And this time, the night before, I was like, okay, if I wake up and it's not down, or if it doesn't express, then yeah, I'm going to the hospital. I took antibiotics, which I have on hand, just in case. And luckily, it exploded the next day.
And sorry if that's gross. It is gross. I'm going to put up some gross pictures, just to let you know what it's like, so that, I don't know, it feels important to like mark this occasion to be like, this is happening.
Everything drained then into my face and into my neck. It also drained all the way down my back. So I inflamed all of my vertebrae.
I pulled out the left side of my neck and my body. It even went down into my hips, which now has caused like misalignment with my legs. Like, it's insane.
I'm still dealing with fallout from this infection, and it's been four weeks. So even though it cleared, there's all these other residual things in my body that I'm still dealing with.
Going to a lot of different practitioners to support me with that. Had a lot of shooting body pains. I've got full body rash.
It's as if this new layer exposing, you know, some old trauma and experience, it's now releasing, and that means that my body's going to both, well, I believe, be triggered and have a flare in symptoms, but also a purge.
It's like, can be one and the same.
So not only has my body been having a lot of symptoms, but I'd say probably the most invasive and challenging thing for me that I again, I wasn't expecting that felt new, and like, what's this, was my nervous system.
And it was like, as I tripped the wires from these past experiences, I didn't have a system in place to support me with what came out of that.
And because the majority of my life has been spent trying to push through my feelings to get to the other side. You know, that's what I learned to do when I was little, right?
It's like you have these coping mechanisms to get through things, and it's like, oh, there's no one here to support me with these feelings or this experience.
So I'm alone and I'm now super anxious and everything is scary, but okay, I need to get through this, right? And then my mind is also going to start going because I need to think and plan and find a way out of this pain or this scenario, this danger.
So it's as if I've instinctively but also inadvertently reverted back to this old coping mechanism as I stumbled across these experiences and I was starting to have these really intense emotions, I was like, oh, okay, I just need to keep going.
We need to get these stories out. I need to push through. I'm going to learn something.
Once the story's out, I'm going to feel better and it's going to be solved and healed and done with. But with the nervous system, it's so important to titrate stress, right? To go slowly, to go gently.
If we want to shift to a healthier and more regulated state, then we can't live in the same way or deal with our pain in the same way that we did growing up that contributed to some of the dysregulation in the first place.
Like it requires a different approach. And I've been working on this for over a year now in terms of the nervous system. What can I learn about it?
How do we regulate it? What different types of stress do we carry? Why are we the way we are?
Whatever. I've been doing a lot of work on that. And it's been taken a lot of time.
And I will say that a lot of it has been super boring.
Like I've taken a couple courses, and I've got a lot of tools to work with, but I find that because a lot of it is about slowing down and orienting our bodies and our minds and like trying to feel safe, it just, it is, I don't know, it's a long
process. And so in that, there's been moments where I'm like, but like is anything happening? I think it can be challenging to see or to realize that you're having any real progress.
But I will say that since I've been in this recent hole, I can tell that I've actually made progress because I recognized that this state that I am in now, this utter pain that's in my brain, this is actually how I used to feel all the time.
Like this used to be normal for me, and now it's not. I think just having these familiar sensations slam back into my body has just been, I was like, whoa, like what is this?
And yet it's so familiar, but it's so overwhelming that I just, it's almost like I forgot all the tools I had. And I've had a lot of moments where it's like, I just cannot calm myself down. Yes, I've had a lot of intense physical symptoms, right?
Like that's been a lot. And there can be a lot of fear associated with going through what I'm going through. So it's understandable.
And yes, huge big emotions. That's a lot. But I've had so many moments recently where I find myself in a really activated state, and I don't recognize it until I'm almost too far gone.
It's like when I take my kids to school, as we're walking to the school, I start to get more and more anxious. Like I'm just like, I want to get this over with. I want to get this over with.
I need to drop them off, but I don't want anyone to see me. I don't want to have to interact with anyone because I'm so uncomfortable in my body, and I feel like there's no way that I could even have a conversation.
So I need to avoid this at all costs. There's something very dangerous about the situation to me right now, where I don't know how to deal with it, and so I'm just trying to avoid it as much as possible.
It's almost like my experience on the inside is so divorced from the outside. I don't know if that makes sense. But yeah, I found myself in these almost like panic states, and I'll think about it all day.
I'm like, oh my God, when I have to go pick them up, how am I going to be okay? How am I going to just fit in or look normal or just like, and this is what, six-minute interaction?
But in my mind, I just can't even fathom the idea of having to have a social interaction. It's really scary to me, and that's been really heightened lately, which can be really disruptive in your daily life, right?
Everything starts to feel dangerous and scary, and you don't want to do the things that would be helpful for you.
Even today, I went to a yoga class for the first time, I think in four months, because, yeah, chronic illness stuff has been really difficult to exercise, but just getting myself there, I was just like, oh no, no, no, no, I can't do this for all of
these reasons. And of course, when I get there and I do the thing, I'm like, what on earth? Why were you even worried about this thing? But any unknown, any outlier, I need to think about everything and plan it all out.
So it's just this really heightened level of thought, of fear, of intense overthinking and worrying. And it feels physiological, like it's in my body. I feel like I really have no control over this fear.
But then my brain kind of hijacks my whole system and is trying to figure out a solution to that, which just means I exhaust myself because I'm looping these thoughts and I will just fall asleep or I'm like, I need to go take a nap right now.
And within that, I'm also having these really intense thoughts about really violent things. And this was something that's been really confronting because I realized, again, I used to have this all the time.
There might be terminology to describe this. I'm just trying to relay, in my own words, what this feels like or what I've experienced. It's like, if I am reading a book, it's like part of my brain comes in and gives me a different thought.
And it's like, oh, there's a house on a hill. But then for me, the hill will transform into a cliff and then the house will fall off the cliff and they'll all die in a ravine.
And like, that's not in the book, but then my brain keeps looping on that thing and I'm just trying to read the stupid story. But it had this violent ending that I can't get out of my head.
Or when I'm trying to fall asleep, I'll imagine needles, like sewing needles. Okay, sorry, this is graphic. For me, these are the types of things if people say them out loud, I feel them really viscerally.
So I'm just warning you, you're probably going to be fine. I would not be fine. But I feel needles and I see these needles going through my hands.
And then I imagine what that would feel like. I see them going through my eyes and through my tongue. And I just, it's like, I'm like, no, you need to go away.
So I'll tell the needles like, hey, get out of my space. I don't need to think about this happening right now. But it's like these thoughts that come in that are really painful and feel really real.
And it can be quite violent. Like, oh, if I pick up a pair of scissors, now I'm imagining stabbing the scissors like into my stomach, or I'm like, I don't want that to happen, so I have to be extra careful, or I don't know.
It's like thoughts that I can't control that are really uncomfortable. They've come back in a really strong way.
So even when I'm meditating now, trying again to get to a space where I feel safe and peaceful, it's like the things I'm seeing are now more violent, or those things are showing up again, and they are distracting me, and they feel very real.
I even went to the dentist last week, and the dentist has never been a great place for me.
We could have an entire episode about that, and I know so many people, if not most people, have experiences with the dentist and with teeth that are really invasive and not positive.
But I have found ways over time to cope with going to the dentist, and it doesn't need to be so traumatic, and they freeze me up now completely when they do just a cleaning, because that's where I'm at, that's where my teeth are at, and what I need.
But this time, I was having a full body reaction to getting my teeth cleaned, to the point where I couldn't really control it, and I wanted to. I was like, no, Sarah, you're not the type of person that's gonna freak out at the dentist.
This isn't who you are. And yet my body was telling me, this is really dangerous. You need to shake this off.
I wanted to start shaking. I wanted to push the dentist away. I had to tell the hygienist multiple times.
I'm like, oh, oh, and I would like put my hand up. I'm like, I just need to stop. I need to stop.
And then I would need to breathe. Because I'm like, I need to breathe through this because I need to catch a breath. I don't feel safe.
And it was just a lot because I was like, why am I this stressed out? Like, this is not that bad. Yes, it turns out I have a cavity.
And yes, she poked the cavity. And as I'm saying that, I wish I didn't say it out loud because now I'm feeling it, but it's just gone above and beyond. And I have not felt that level of fear and actual physical danger.
It's as if everything has just become really heightened for me.
It's not just feeling all these emotions that I can really track and that makes sense in terms of the experiences that I was sharing around relationships, around sex, around being disempowered, all of that. That makes sense.
But it almost has tripped this wire where now I'm just dysregulated.
It's like I have this level of fear and this lack of safety in my body that is coming up on a scale that I wasn't prepared for, and I'm not relating this to those experiences anymore. It's just tripped a wire.
So I'm going to the dentist and I'm having a panicked moment, and I'm going to my kid's school, and I'm having a panicked moment, and I've felt myself reach for other coping mechanisms because now I'm like, well, what is this?
Oh my gosh, is this the way I always am? Maybe this is who I am and I just need help. I need these feelings to go away.
This is so overwhelming at the point where I'm like, I need this to stop. Like, I don't know how I'm going to exist in this state. And so I found myself just really reaching for distraction.
I'm like, I need to be so distracted that I don't feel and go to all these places in my brain because it's too much.
I did a weed gummy last weekend, which that's something that I typically wouldn't do because I'm really sensitive, and I've done it before and it doesn't always help me. But I was like, this helps people. All the time, I'm going to do this.
I need this. And you know what? It did narrow my focus.
It was like I could only feel and see what was right in front of me versus being so open to feeling like a whole room. Does that make sense? That's like my own interpretation of what was happening in the moment.
I was like, oh, my aura just shrunk. That's what it felt like. And then I didn't have to think about everything.
And yet, I could feel that the hum of the pain underneath, like it was in the background. So, in the end, I was like, I don't know if that's worth it for me because I still felt it, and I knew I was distracting myself. Like, I wasn't healing it.
I wasn't moving through it. But it helped me for a couple of hours, maybe, just like take the edge off. And yet, the edge was still there.
So, when I've been able to find moments of peace and safety, like where I am regulated, where I'm not blasting out of my brain and I'm so anxious, when I find those moments, which typically happened for me through meditation, like if I can get myself
to sit still, which again, is very challenging, but if I can get myself there and then I can stick with it, I can reach a point where I feel connected. That's the word I'm gonna use.
It's almost like I connect with that other part of myself, that soul part of myself. And I'm like, okay, you're okay. You're not your thoughts.
You're not just your body. Like you are so much bigger than this. And I feel safe.
When I do that, when I found those moments over the past eight weeks, far and few between, but when I have, everything makes sense.
Like I can fully see how, of course, I'd react to bringing up all this old stored pain that I was never feeling, or I've never realized in my life. Like, of course, this would be a big deal.
Or I can see how precarious it can be to relive intense experiences.
And I can understand that if I've been living in a freeze response for the majority of my life, right, with all these frozen experiences, where I was not able to feel, where I just pushed everything down, as I start to thaw out and I allow emotions
and memories and experiences and pains to be felt, and when I allow them to move, like, yeah, that's going to be real intense. And that as I allow for this movement, that I could misinterpret this for being back in that state again, that feeling of,
oh my god, this is my forever, I'm trapped here, I'm failing. Like, I am completely failing. What have I done? I'm actually still stuck.
But no, I'm not stuck. I've just unlocked something really big. Like, I hit a huge nerve, and that means slowing down so that I can still function as this stuff is going to process through.
And really, the whole point is to feel it, right? Because I never felt it before, but now the point is to reassure myself as I'm feeling and reliving these things that I'm actually safe. It's like, no, you're safe.
You can share. You can be safe in your space now as this version of yourself as an adult in your daily life, and it's going to be okay. And then you can let it go.
It will leave as it's meant to, but you got to feel it first. But I haven't been tuning in to that need to slow down, or to create that safety. So when I got plunged right back in there, it was as if I just like forgot everything.
I forgot all my tools. I forgot all my teachings. I forgot everything to do with the nervous system, everything to do with trauma.
I forgot everything because it felt so real because it was real. So all of this to say that it's just been a really intense two months behind the scenes here.
And I think sometimes I imagine what I think making a podcast looks like or what I think other people are doing and what I envision that whole process to be like. I don't know.
I'm sure we all do this at some level, but I envision myself if I was doing this properly or if I was really good at this or whatever that may be, I envision it as if like, I wake up with this beautiful morning routine that's all planned out to set
me up for success, and I have all these proper drinks, I do these stretches, and I bask in the morning light, and I feel so inspired from that routine that I just sit down, and then I have, I don't know, jewel-encrusted phrases spill out of my mouth
right into this microphone, and I'm organized and together, and I've planned out all my episodes, you know, a month out at least, so everything happens with this beautiful consistency. And when I sit down and I record, it's, oh, just for an hour, and
then I edit it quickly, and I upload everything, and this all happens, of course, you know, before lunch. Yeah, well, yeah, that's not my deal. That's not what this has looked like. This has just been, I don't know, more of a reckoning.
It's been an ongoing undoing, and I have to keep reminding myself, like, I started this podcast for a reason, and the whole reason was to share, to express, to put words to these insane parts of being human.
And it's those parts, I think, that can make us feel really alone. And the whole point in doing this was, I'm like, oh, this makes me feel less alone, or perhaps it makes you feel less alone. I don't know.
I think sharing what things actually look like and not pretending that there's something that they're not, it's just really helpful. I think it's really human, and that's all I want from everyone else.
And I think if I knew what everyone else was experiencing right now, or they're like, oh my gosh, I get these thoughts where I imagine needles being stabbed through my eyelids too, I'd be like, oh my god, okay. That's a thing.
It's not just my weird thing. Then, I don't know. I think that could just be really helpful.
Anyway, I've got a bunch more episodes to come in my Sex and Relationship series, and I think once this layer of my pain onion, we'll call it, has shed or it's stabilized or whatever it's doing, I'll be back to share.
And this is just a reminder, I think, that our lives matter. Like what we've experienced matters and how it's made us feel matters.
And what I've shared or what I'm about to share and continue to share, it may not even like make you bat an eye, right?
Because of what you've experienced, what you've gone through, how you've interpreted the world, you'd be like, oh my gosh, who cares? Or like, why is this such a big deal? But really, it's all due to how we grew up, right?
And what we've learned and how we were nurtured and what we experience and how we experience the world, what we carry in our bodies, what we carry in our minds and our hearts, it's like what we bring to our lives from all of these angles, this is
what sets us up to learn some very specific things and have some very specific experiences. And it's not always what that looks like on the outside to others that matters. Right?
Everything I'm sharing from the outside may seem fairly like, hmm, that's not a big deal. Or it may be deemed by society or our peers or whatever, that it's not a big deal. And I was told that.
I was told that repeatedly and shown that repeatedly, like, this isn't a big deal. But for me, obviously, and what I'm going through right now, it is a big deal. And it matters what we do with these things in our lives.
And for one person who experiences like a car crash, they might walk away unscathed and actually be able to heal and move on. For someone else, how they entered that situation can greatly affect how they come out of it, right?
And they may be stuck from that car crash in their bodies, in their minds, in their emotions for years. And they might contend with that over a lifetime.
But that's where we need to honor ourselves, because it's what we do with the pain, it's what we do with the experience that matters. And every step of it matters. And it has not been a neatly ascending staircase for me that I want it to be.
It's not this linear progression of just, I'm getting better every day, and I'm healed, and it's magical, and it's all gone.
But at least I'm showing up for myself, even if that just means bouncing on a trampoline like a maniac to some rage music and then passing out after eating some microwave peas. Because yeah, it's kind of where I'm at right now.
Like it's not glamorous, but it's where I'm at. So yeah, I just want to say that. I just want to say like your experiences matter, and then how you deal with that matters.
Because only you know what it feels like to be inside of your body and your mind and your heart, right? It can look any which way to anyone else, but it matters. It so matters.
So thank you for listening. And you know what?
If I haven't said this yet, if you've been listening or following along, and anything that I say means something to you, I would be so grateful if you took a moment to rate or review this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
All of it matters, and I'm super grateful. So thank you, and I'll see you again. Bye.
