From Adversity to Innovation: Amy Lacey’s Story of Faith, Forgiveness and Entrepreneurship

Can early childhood trauma forge an entrepreneurial spirit? Amy Lacey’s journey from a tumultuous upbringing to creating the world's first cauliflower pizza crust and innovative soursop gummies will leave you inspired. This episode of "The Truth About Addiction" intimately explores how Amy’s mother's struggles as a single parent and her father's addiction issues shaped her resilience and fueled her passion for holistic health. Amy opens up about the pivotal role of therapy in her life, sharing how it helped her navigate past traumas and autoimmune conditions, leading to her groundbreaking ventures.

Amy's entrepreneurial path wasn’t without its hurdles. She candidly discusses the emotional fallout from selling her $20 million company, the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and her deep depression that followed. Venturing into the complexities of trauma, faith, and personal growth, Amy reveals how therapy and an elimination diet led to the creation of her life-changing pizza crust. The episode also highlights the importance of forgiveness and the profound impact of faith, showcasing how Amy found solace in spirituality and community, eventually leading to her success and personal healing.

As we delve into Amy's latest venture with soursop gummies, the conversation takes a turn towards the practical aspects of managing autoimmune conditions and launching a new business. Amy offers invaluable insights into the importance of self-care, resilience, and maintaining mental health amidst entrepreneurial challenges. This episode is a testament to the power of inner well-being, faith, and forgiveness in achieving true success. Don’t miss Amy Lacey’s remarkable story that underscores the transformative power of overcoming adversity and nurturing holistic health.

Click the link below to try Amy’s Soursop gummies for 20% off!!!

https://www.soursopnutrition.com/discount/HARTE20

Chapters

• 0:01 From Cauliflower Pizza to Soursop
• 12:16 Healing Through Pizza and Therapy
• 25:59 Navigating Trauma, Healing, and Forgiveness
• 34:12 Unexpected Faith Encounters and Visions
• 41:16 Rediscovering Faith Through Trials and Trauma
• 55:15 The Healing Power of Forgiveness
• 1:04:24 The Power of Forgiveness and Healing
• 1:09:04 Finding Balance in Personal Growth
• 1:18:08 Embracing Self-Discovery and Healing
• 1:25:37 Journey to Joy and Truth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome back everybody to the Truth About Addiction. Today's guest is somebody that I heard at a big networking event in Atlanta a couple of months ago. She got on the stage and shared her whole heart, not just her wild successes in the business world, but her failures, her personal struggles and how she climbed out of tragedy and into triumph, both spiritually and financially. I'm really excited for you to hear this conversation. Really excited for you to hear this conversation. After pioneering the world's first cauliflower pizza crust, amy Lacey and her award-winning team are at it again, launching the world's first sour sop gummy.

Speaker 1: 0:57

Obsessed with nurturing her own body through holistic and natural methods, amy recognized that her own optimal well-being and defense against illness and disease started with the food she consumed. But that was simply not enough, especially when it was still missing key and core nutrients needed for her body's natural defenses. In her quest for enhanced immunity, amy, through thorough supplement and food as medicine, research unearthed the remarkable healing properties of soursop, a rare and exotic fruit with truly unparalleled superpowers. Incorporating it into her daily routine yielded immediate and incredible results. Incorporating it into her daily routine yielded immediate and incredible results, influencing even those who had previously embraced holistic or traditional medicine, making Soursop, the key to the ultimate wellness that Amy had sought. Fueled by the incredibly positive impact on her own health, amy is now dedicated to making Soursop's benefits accessible to all through the world's first ever Soursop gummy, championing the cause of fortifying our immune systems.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Join us at Soursop Nutrition as we welcome the next era of self-care through optimal immunity and ultimate wellness. Let's dive in. Welcome back everybody to the Truth About Addiction. I cannot express the level of little girl excitement inside of me right now, because the woman that I'm about to interview I saw on stage at Jen Gottlieb's Build your Brand live event in Atlanta and I immediately knew not because of how successful she has been in business, but because of her soul's journey and how deeply it resonated with my own and with the listeners here that I needed her to be on this podcast. Amy Lacey is such an entrepreneurial powerhouse, but I would almost beg to call you a spiritual entrepreneur.

Speaker 3: 3:38

I love that.

Speaker 1: 3:39

Right, and you know, the universe has a funny way of relaying messages it wants you to hear, and I feel like when you spoke, and when I hear great speakers and great stories, the through line is always the same, which is there is no amount of money in the world that can cure your heartbreak, and so you had better have a way to navigate life's hardest things on a soul level, and then the world is your oyster. But you cannot do it the other way. You cannot go from the outside and you must, must, must go from the inside out, and, amy, thank you so much for being here. I literally cannot wait to get into this with you.

Speaker 3: 4:39

I am so honored about being here and congrats on your new book and thank you for sending me a note in it and sending it to me. I'm just honored to be able to read it and I think everybody should get it. Whether you've had any kind of trauma, addiction or not, it's. I think it's something everybody should read. So I'm honored to be here, thank you.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Oh my gosh. So, amy, for for the listener that doesn't know you, can you start where it feels resonant to start, because we're going to get into it all, I have no doubt.

Speaker 3: 5:19

So I will start. I will start with.

Speaker 3: 5:24

I'm best known as the first cauliflower pizza crust to hit the market but, it was a business that I didn't plan and it was a business that came out of tragedy, basically. So let me step back to my childhood, because I think that's really where it started, and I didn't know that until I was 50 years old. When I was a child, my mom accidentally got pregnant with me and she actually wanted to abort me, but abortion wasn't legal and my dad talked her out of going to Mexico, which is probably the best thing my dad had ever done. My dad turned out to be an alcoholic drug addict. My mom left him when I was two years old, but she was raised by parents that were like you made your bed, you lay in it, you deal with it. So she had no support.

Speaker 3: 6:13

So she was a single mom and I can remember as a little girl she would maybe come home from work and she would rage and then she would cry and apologize. I can remember that very vividly. I remember that more than I remember, you know, and ever having a story read to me or anything like that. Now, what I learned in therapy many years later, when I was going through the process of forgiving myself for situation in my childhood which I'll talk about openly, I realized that anger comes from, and rage comes from, being scared and not feeling like you have control.

Speaker 3: 6:56

So, I know my mom was scared about keeping a roof over her head about just. You know, she was a single mom, no college education. I know that she didn't feel like she had any control in her life then. Nor did she have any kind of support, because my dad didn't support, you know, didn't pay child support, didn't do anything like that. So I can look back on those times and have a different perspective of it now, having gone through therapy.

Speaker 3: 7:21

But for many years, especially after I became a parent of three kids, I resented my mom because I was like, well, I read stories to my kids, I, I, um, you know, I do their homework with them, I take them on trips, I do all these things. But I never realized and and I I was upset with her for the raging because I never felt like I I deserved that and I never realized what you know, putting myself in her position, of course I'm married, I've been married 26 years. I have the support of a spouse. It's a very different situation. I knew that, going into it, but so part of my story is about protecting my own family and setting rituals and and little things, traditions that I never grew up with. So I, like I said I'm a mom of three kids, been married 26 years and fast forward from my childhood. I got married and then had these kids and I created this tradition called family fun night, which was pizza and board games or movies.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Wait, Okay. So that's another reason when you shared. By the way, you don't know this about me Every Friday night is pizza movie night in my house. It is.

Speaker 3: 8:39

And.

Speaker 1: 8:39

I got invited just the other week to some you know bougie Hollywood event. I felt super obligated to go and it was on a Friday. I had convinced my children can we just move pizza movie night to Saturday for this one weekend. Mommy's so sorry, I couldn't do it. I canceled all my plans and I picked my kids up from camp because they weren't expecting it and I was like I couldn't do it. You guys, so I. We also have that in common. And those traditions, by the way, are the kinds of things our kids remember.

Speaker 3: 9:08

Yes, they really do. And it's something I cherish because I can remember as a little girl I didn't know what God was. I didn't know what faith was. I didn't have that in my life. I'd never been into a church, but I remember praying. Somehow I learned about praying for a family, a real family. So when I was blessed with this amazing husband that came from a wonderful family and I had my children, it was like, okay, I'm protecting that, I'm creating these traditions and you know, we, we ate dinner together as a family. I mean, there are studies that say that you need to eat together as a family.

Speaker 3: 9:42

So one day after this Friday family fun night, I couldn't get out of bed. I was like my body had been slowly turning against me and then it just literally wiped me out and I was in so much pain. And when I went to the doctor I was diagnosed with lupus and Sjogren's, both autoimmune conditions, both attacking my body. I was also diagnosed with um, non-alcohol liver disease. It had been tacky attacking my liver, and I don't really I have a glass of wine here and there, but I wasn't a drinker because I, you know, I saw that behavior destroy somebody's life and I didn't want to be a part of that, but a kick in the teeth to get a diagnosis like that when you come, and so I went on to be very, very sick and at one point wasn't even walking.

Speaker 3: 10:29

I was on a scooter. I had had multiple injuries to my foot and surgery. I wasn't bouncing back from that and I got really depressed because here I couldn't be what I wanted to be. I wasn't being the mom I wanted to be. I mean, really depressed, like suicidal depressed.

Speaker 3: 10:53

I can remember thinking that maybe everybody was better off without me, and at this point they had me on high doses of steroids which I was injecting into myself. They had me on Plaquenil, which was the drug that everybody talked about during COVID me on Plaquenil, which was the drug that everybody talked about during COVID. They had me on an antidepressant, welbutrin, and I feel like, oh and they, um, they, they had me on. It was kind of like a Lasix type of drug, but it wasn't it. I can't remember the name of it right now. That's kind of crazy, but anyways, it was basically anti-inflammatory drug and all of them have these horrific side effects, and talk about the steroids alone.

Speaker 3: 11:28

You don't sleep when you're on steroids, so I didn't have sleep. I had all this medication. I wasn't my normal self. I couldn't do normal things, so I became extremely depressed and I can remember asking my husband does our insurance policy on me, does it cover if I commit suicide? And he was like, what are you doing? Like, what are you thinking? Like he was at work, it disrupted his whole day and I remember the next day going, okay, this would not, this would not be fair to my family that I've protected for so long, that I love for so long. Like I need to get my shit together and figure this out. Can I ask you something?

Speaker 1: 12:07

Yes, In this time did you have the introduction to therapy yet?

Speaker 3: 12:16

I had done a little bit of therapy when I was in college. I put myself through college and I remember feeling a lot of anxiety in school and going and talking to somebody about anxiety, and I also, for a brief moment, as a teenager, and so that'll put me into my teenage story before I finished the cauliflower story. As a teenager, I ended up running away from home and I went to live with my real dad and I ran away from his home and the school actually put me in a foster home for a short time and I ran away from there and during that time I was, I was, put into therapy. I do remember going into therapy, but I don't remember much about it Like I don't remember it being effective at all and finally I ended up on a farm in Oregon and I spent six months there and that was the best thing I could have ever done, um, that was with my aunt and uncle, who had no kids, who who showed me a lot of love, showed me how to work on the farm.

Speaker 3: 13:20

They were tough love, but it was also like sitting down and teaching me algebra and I just there was a lot of love showed me how to work on the farm. They were tough love, but it was also like sitting down and teaching me algebra and I just there was a lot of special moments. Both of them have since passed Um, but I've had an opportunity to share with them, before they passed away, that without them I'm not sure where I would be today. So I believe that they saved me, and they saved me with showing me love, just a lot of love, and I hadn't really ever felt that, and I love my mom. We have a great relationship now, but again, my mom was just trying to survive and when you're in survival mode, you you can't show yourself love, much less anybody else, and so I spent a lot of time with my aunt and uncle and I lived with them for six months and myself I'm thinking, gosh, all that childhood trauma.

Speaker 1: 14:33

No wonder there's autoimmune crises in your body right, I'm thinking gosh. How long from this suicidal part of your life did it take to even tap into what might be the undertone and the cause?

Speaker 3: 14:54

Yeah. So at the time when I was diagnosed I did not nobody put it together and I didn't. At that time I didn't share what I've been through with anybody because prior to going to my aunt and uncles, when I had run away and I was on the streets, I put myself in a really bad situation where I was sexually assaulted at 12 years old. And because I put myself in that position where I could have gotten abused very easily which is exactly what happened I blamed myself and I buried that shame and then I had all the shame of just being a runaway and just all of that shame also buried, and it was. It was just such a hard time for me and such a confusing time and I think it was just a really hard time and I never correlated the diagnosis with that trauma that I had experienced until I went to therapy, which I went to therapy after I sold cauliflower and the venture capitalist came in and basically flipped my, my business and my life upside down and my family had an intervention with me and said you should go get therapy. And in that therapy session is when I did EMDR, which brought out childhood stuff, and then I I was told by a doctor, you're 99%. We are positive that you're autoimmune, that the conditions that you've experienced your body attacking itself is manifested as coming out from the trauma that you buried, that you never shared with anybody. And so you know, with cauliflower, when I was so depressed and so and thinking about things like that too, thinking about my childhood and feeling very worthless, that's when I met with Rob Wolf, which a lot of people don't know who he is, but he was a big paleo guy and he opened our first CrossFit gym in Northern California. So I went and met with him because my husband and I had been doing CrossFit prior to me getting sick and he said let's do the elimination diet. And his team and I eliminated everything and he had written a book about going from vegan to to eating meat and we eliminated all the food groups and slowly added them back in and I found out that I couldn't handle gluten or grains. So I need to go gluten free, grain free, and the only thing that was out there for pizza, for pizza night, to bring that back and get my family back in order, because we hadn't had this special tradition for like nine months, there was just Udi's. That's all that was out there and Udi's was worse than just eating regular pizza for me. So that's when I went looking for a pizza that I could have that was gluten-free, grain-free, and there was nothing in the grocery store. I mean at the time there was just a head of cauliflower at the grocery store. There was nothing else. There was a veggie pizza crust but they had cottage cheese and various different things in there, but they weren't. They did have cauliflower in it, but they didn't call themselves a cauliflower pizza crust.

Speaker 3: 18:08

But I found this Rachel Ray recipe and I tried it and it was an epic failure in the beginning and we played with it, my daughter and I, and we finally perfected it and I ended up. It ended up being amazing and everybody loved it my family, even my very picky eater, my son that didn't eat vegetables, my oldest. He liked it and so I knew I was onto something good and so I started sharing it with friends and family, and a friend of mine that was a health coach she said you should take this to farmer's market, and so we took it to farmer's market and it ended up being a huge success. And I had to get a cottage license and then move into a co packer and then a couple of local grocery stores picked us up. But really, farmer's market was just to get my kids out and learn how to work and learn how to talk to people and meet people and just get some normalcy back into our life.

Speaker 3: 18:58

By now I've lost a lot of inflammation, I've gotten off the steroids. I'm still on Plaquenil, I'm still on Welbutrin, but I'm off the water pill. I'm off like I'm doing so much better, I'm active again and so, yeah, I shared it with a lot of people and there happened to be, and I was putting money into the business. By the way, the margins were horrible. So, even though we were in a couple of grocery stores and selling out every week at farmer's market, I wasn't making any money.

Speaker 3: 19:27

I was actually going into the hole and I remember telling my husband he was actually asleep and I was praying and I was like God, if this business is going to go, let's go, because I had now gotten a lot of letters from people saying how much they appreciated the cauliflower pizza crust, that they could eat pizza again. There were some diabetics, there were people losing weight and the pizza crust turned out to be low carb. But it was never meant to be low carb. It just happened to be a side effect of the of the crust, of going grain free, gluten free. So I just remember being on my hands and knees and I've never done that before and just like praying that please either make this business thrive or shut it down, because I can't afford to do this anymore. My husband had been kind of on me, just saying hey, you know you depleted our savings account and we're remodeling our house and we can't finish it and you know we're not going to go into our retirement, so you better figure this out.

Speaker 3: 20:22

And in the meantime I had had a friend of mine Well, she was like a friend of a friend who was a single mom and again, single moms are near and dear to my heart and she had reached out and asked if we could send her pizza crust because her daughter, kenzie she's a single mom of four kids and her youngest name, kenzie had nonverbal autism and the doctor had put her on a low carb diet and so she asked if I would send her up pizza crust. She couldn't afford to pay for him. I said no problem, so we just kept sending them up there. And like seven months later and this is, by the way, prior to me, on my hands and knees praying. Seven months later, she said you got to come visit me, I have a surprise for you. And so I went up to visit her. It was like an hour and a half away from where we lived and when she opened the door I about fell over because she had been sitting with her daughter, kenzie, to get Kenzie to eat at every meal with the cauliflower pizza crust. And they were eating it not every meal, like two, two meals, one or two meals a day, and Jesse was the mom and she had lost 90 pounds in seven months, which is not healthy, I know, but it was shocking. When I opened the door and then Kenzie came up and said thank you for the pizza crust. She was talking, which was totally a shock and I was so excited and Kenzie was going to get to go to public school with an aid and it was just such a cool visit and so we took pictures with each other with the pizza crust and everything, and so fast forward.

Speaker 3: 21:52

I'm, you know, on my hands and knees praying. I go to bed that night my husband's next to me, snoring. I remember that very clearly and I remember having a very vivid dream, which I don't usually dream. I don't remember my dreams. I had a very vivid dream Tell Jesse's story online. And so when I got up, I had one employee and I called her and I said I think we're supposed to share Jesse's story on Facebook and this is 2017. So Facebook was where we were, you know, focused more than Instagram for us and not TikTok. So I said I think we're supposed to share Jesse's story on Facebook. And she says to me well, I think a you better ask Jesse and B I'm not sure if Facebook will let us because it's a weight loss story and they were, they were shutting down weight loss stories. So I called Jesse and I asked her if we could share her story and she was ecstatic. She was like, yes, I'll be the Jesse of Cali flower foods, like the Jared of subway, without the perversion back then, if you remember that story on stage. So, jesse, we shared that story and it went viral and we sold more in the month of January of 2017 than we had the entire year before in 2016, online, in grocery or farmer's market. So we were off to the races.

Speaker 3: 23:14

I felt like my prayers had been answered and I was very excited, but I had no idea that this business, which was really to serve myself like Rory Baden says, you're best to serve the person you once were so I mean this pizza crust was to serve myself, so I could have pizza, family fun night with my family again. It was never intended to be this booming business and by the end of 2017, we were selling millions of dollars worth of pizza crust. And by the end of 2017, we were selling millions of dollars worth of pizza crust. And by the end of 2018, we were the number one pizza crust on Amazon for 16 months straight. So we beat out Boboli, mama Mary's pizza crust that weren't cauliflower.

Speaker 3: 23:57

And I got to tell you along the way. A lot of other things happened. You know I've got a lot of no's. People are like are you kidding? Nobody's going to buy anything cauliflower. I got that a lot Because cauliflower is the last veggie standing on a veggie tray and we don't even sell much of that vegetable. So nobody's gonna buy that. And I always think about that movie Pretty Woman. Big mistake, huge. I want to say that to the distributors that told me no in the beginning, but so fast forward I decided to sell the company in 2019.

Speaker 3: 24:32

Over another traumatic experience, there was a massive fire in Northern California called the campfire, and it happened to burn the town of Paradise down. Now, I didn't live in that town I lived 20 minutes away but my mom, who I've rekindled and have a phenomenal relationship with her older sister, who has no kids, and my stepdad, who my mom remarried, who is a wonderful person they all lived in that town. Their houses didn't burn down, but the entire town did, so you couldn't live in the house because there was no running water, electricity, so they were living in my house and it was quite hectic with the five of us plus them, plus their animals, and crazy things were happening. So I had already been offered by a few different people to buy my company or at least invest in it. We had no investors, no outside money, no angel money, no family money, nothing. It was all just scrappy, just grow as we grow. So nobody had been an investor in that business and I thought, well, maybe this is a sign, because if I do sell a portion of it, I can help them, because the insurance wasn't going to cover their homes because it didn't burn down, but yet they couldn't live in them and nobody in my family has money. Nobody has any money on. We didn't come from blue collar workers no, no money there, um below blue collar workers actually.

Speaker 3: 25:59

So I decided that it was the best time for me to sell and move everybody across the country, florida, and help anybody. And so I didn't realize this venture capitalists come in and they want to change the whole tone of the company. Right that, you know it's no longer and we were over a $20 million company by now and I had 12 employees. I kept it really small. I had a co-packer. They wanted to come in and basically they told me they would never let my team go, that I would always be in on the board and that they wouldn't change the recipe. But they did everything that they said they wouldn't do. So they fired my team, they put me on sabbatical and changed my password, so I couldn't see what was going on with the business. And then the good thing that they did was they added selenium husk to the product, which actually made it healthier and better. So that was a positive thing.

Speaker 3: 26:59

Well, when that happened, I just moved to Florida. Covid hits my team. That's like my family, my second family, some of my best friends because I couldn't afford to hire anybody else. They were fired so they stopped talking to me. They were so upset, they were so hurt and they saw me as selling the company and just moving and living happily ever after. They didn't know how painful it was for me and I didn't realize how painful it was for them. So they stopped speaking to me and I no longer could see what was going on with what I call my fourth child, because cauliflower was like something I birthed and it brought a lot of attention. There was a lot of great things that happened during those times where we the 12 of us were running that business. A lot of attention. There was a lot of great things that happened during those times where we the 12 of us were running that business. A lot of fun things, like we were at the ESPYs, emmys, teen Choice Awards, we were with the Cassia Hamilton throwing pizza parties. I mean a lot of fun things happened.

Speaker 3: 27:56

And all of a sudden, here I am and I can't even get into Shopify to see what's going on and I'm asking you know the CMO, what? What are our open rates for emails, things that we built that company on, things that that generated a lot of revenue and he's like we're not looking at emails, we're not looking at open rates. I had more. I had hired more customer, um, customer service people we called them, uh, customer care. Then I had sales reps and they let all those people go and then they hired more sales reps and only one customer service person. So customer experience went way down. So, yeah, it was hard.

Speaker 3: 28:37

I went into a deep depression Again. It was like a full circle moment and what I did was I went into my own addictions again moment. And what I did was I went into my own addictions again because I had no friends. I didn't know anybody in Florida. Covid hit, so I couldn't meet anybody, even though Florida was more open than California and I didn't have my business anymore.

Speaker 3: 28:56

But yet my family, my kids, my husband, were thriving. So they would go off to school or go off to work this is before we were at stay at home and I would send them off with a smile and then I would cry all day because I was so bored and I didn't know what to do and my whole identity was locked into being the CEO of this company. And then they would come home and I put on a pretty face, make dinner and pretend like nothing was wrong. But they could tell something was wrong and they did an intervention and they had me go into therapy and it was the best thing I'd ever done. So because I had been on sabbatical, I had a lot of time. So I went into this uh, intense outpatient 16 month program, um, where it was nine hours a week of therapy, outpatient, and I did EMDR to deal with that sexual trauma. I did EMDR to deal with the rage, that raging that I had remembered I used to have terrible. I said I never remember dreaming as an adult, but as a child I'd have terrible nightmares, terrible, and I'd be so scared. And so I did a lot of work on those nightmares.

Speaker 3: 30:08

And then there were circumstances that happened with my real dad that were, I would say, very traumatic, very, very hard situations that I was put in when he was drunk or, um, you know using. And one little side story I was 10 years old and he had been at a bar that was attached to a restaurant with some woman and they put me in the restaurant and I was in there. I felt like I was in there for hours I've had so many milkshakes and the waitress was like entertaining me. I think he must've paid her. But when we came out to leave he said you're going to drive home. And I was 10 years old, I'd never driven a car in my life. I was terrified and I'm like, please don't make me drive, I don't know how to. And he's like, well, you're going to learn. And he kind of taught me a little bit and I was going on the back roads and then he proceeded to have sex with his girlfriend in the back seat and I was 10 years old and she was slapping and saying no stop, it was horrible.

Speaker 3: 31:07

So there were circumstances like that that I never shared with anybody and I was able to share those in therapy and just really get all of that out and, more importantly, just get the shame that I felt out, um, the shame of just who I was and what I had been through. I never felt like I could really share it either, because I felt like people would look down on me, they would judge me, they would think I wasn't smart, things like that. So it wasn't until I could prove myself with cauliflower that I felt like I could come out and share this, and then it was important to share it. It was that I felt like I could come out and share this, and then it was important to share. It was it's important to share about the healing process, about how trauma can manifest itself into an illness?

Speaker 3: 31:53

but also about forgiveness Because I was eaten up inside and I talked about this on stage when you were there just eaten up inside with anger, and I needed to learn how to forgive. And you know, forgiveness is a choice, but the healing is a total process, as you know. So I had to go through all of that as well. So that's that's kind of the story of some of it.

Speaker 1: 32:15

Okay. So there's so much that I want to ask you, um, if we go back to um earlier in your story and I know now that you're very faith-based it sounds like there was always some level of a connection to God. It's now or never. And then you decide I think we need to post this story Right. I think we need to post this story right.

Speaker 1: 33:14

That is a moment that came from deep inside, not from trauma, from a divine place, and I know deeply what that feels like now, and I also know in my own story what it took to hear that voice inside of me. So the fact that you could hear it and you honored it in that moment, before you had really unpacked stuff in therapy number one I find amazing. And number two, it makes me want to know you know, what kind of relationship to a higher power did you have already to be tapped in on some level to go, yeah, that feels like the next right thing to do. I'm going to do it. And then look what happened to your business as a result of it. And that's only the first question I have for you.

Speaker 3: 34:06

So that's an interesting question. Nobody's ever asked me that, so I love it. So, yeah, I didn't grow up with any kind of faith. I didn't grow up going to church. I've already said that when I my kids, I put them in private school. We were could afford to do that.

Speaker 3: 34:28

I didn't want them to experience some of the stuff that happened to me in public school, because we're in my hometown that I was born and raised in and I had some trouble in public school and it could have been. I was an easy target to pick on. I was like the free hot lunch kid, that kind of thing. The grandma makes your clothes kid? I'm not sure, but I didn't want my kids to experience that. So I put them in private school, and it happened to be a Christian school because we didn't have a lot of choices for private schools. In the town I lived in In Florida we had a much more many, many choices, but in Northern California, in a small little town in Chico California, we didn't. So I put them in a school called Chico Christian and I got really interested in what they were teaching the kids. I wanted to know more about it. So I was like one of the few parents at chapel on Wednesday mornings just to learn what they were teaching. Anytime I could be in that school I was I volunteered in the classroom. I just wanted to know exactly what was going on and in the meantime I kind of fell in love with what they were learning. It was kind of nice to have this person, this faith, this, this ability to lean into something else, something greater than myself, and know that if I have a strong enough faith and I can, I can relieve some of that anxiety and that stress. I can give it up to something higher. And that's what I learned during that time.

Speaker 3: 35:46

And then the crazy thing happened. My kids were enrolled in piano and their teacher was the music teacher at the school and she had an email list and I was on the email list because the kids were in piano and I guess she did a regular I didn't guess, I know now I didn't know at the time. She did a regular Bible study with a core group of friends and one of her friends was named Amy and the last name started with an L. But it accidentally the email went to me and it was about doing this Bible study and I immediately said yes to it Like I thought that would be so cool to be in a Bible study. I'd never done anything like that. And so apparently she went to her friends and said oh dear, I accidentally sent an email to this mom who we don't even know, who just accepted to be in our group, and I mean, this is a group that had been meeting for years. So they said, well, it must be meant to be, we better invite her.

Speaker 3: 36:40

And I can remember like they would be in the kitchen all talking. I can remember feeling a little bit of an outsider. But also I was such a newbie that they all kind of carried me under their wing and they gave me that my first Bible, women's Bible ever. And so that was the book of James. And they were doing a Beth Moore class. And if you've ever done Beth Moore or any of your audience has ever done Beth Moore, she pretty makes it. She makes it pretty simple to understand and her enthusiasm and her excitement and her abuse that she endured as a child. It just came all together Like I could really relate to this woman, like I could be this woman, and so it just it hooked me.

Speaker 3: 37:23

And that was the year before Cali flower started and the year before I started having these what I call visions or dreams because the Jesse one wasn't the only one I would go to sleep and I would have a vision and I would, I would tell Jimmy, who is my right-hand person spelled like Jimi Hendrix, but she's a woman and I'd say, okay, last night I dreamt this and we would try it and literally, like eight times out of 10, it would just be, it would, it would just grow like massive. I remember I listened to a podcast, the power of email, by Jeff Walker, that night and we didn't have an email list. That night I went to sleep and this is after Jesse's story had gone viral and I I dreamt about an email and I the next, I called Jimmy. Actually, in the evening I said I think we're supposed to do an email. Let's write one right now and send it out to our list. This is back in the day when you could, we had MailChimp and you could just blast your emails. Like we had customers that gave us their email in order to get their pizza crust, but we didn't, we didn't warm an email list or anything like that. And the day we launched it at nine 30 at night and by nine 30, nine 30, the next day I we had sold $86,000 worth of pizza crust on that email. So I was hooked.

Speaker 3: 38:44

So these things did happen a lot and I was very, you know, I was in the word a lot, that's. You know that that's what I lean into. I was in the word a lot after that Beth Moore class, trying to understand, trying to read the Bible, trying to figure out what it was about, and so that's where that faith came from. But I think about circumstances that happened to me as a little girl, where I know something was protecting me and it's just crazy. There's this one time where I was, I had run away and it was dark and I was walking in the streets. I mean, I'm 54 years old, so you know I was 12 and in Northern California it was pretty safe then. I'd be it would not be safe today but I was walking. I remember a car pulled up and they were like you should get in. You know you shouldn't be out here walking by yourself. And I was freaked out and took off running.

Speaker 3: 39:43

Well, on some story, I told that story in a little more depth and do you know that on Facebook messenger I got a message saying we think we're the people that stopped. Yeah, and I think that they I think that that was some like I believe they were there for that circumstance, in that position for me to run away to an area that's a little bit safer from where I was, cause they were like this isn't a safe area, you shouldn't be out here. And it was by the park and there were homeless people back then. Um, because, you know, reagan had just shut down all of those facilities and so we had some mental illness facilities and they were, they had gone on the streets, so I think they protected me from something, but how?

Speaker 3: 40:32

I mean, it's just so bizarre to think that 40 years later they find me on Facebook, you know, and it's just crazy, like it had to be some kind of it. Just it's crazy that they would even think that it was me, cause I was a little girl then. But I was telling the whole story, exactly where I was and everything, and, and I'm sure it had to be them, I'm pretty sure it had to be them. I'm not positive, but it seems like it was them after talking to them. So here's here's.

Speaker 1: 41:04

Here's now how we're going to bridge the gap between that question and my next one, because it was a really long answer, by the way, no, but it's so good.

Speaker 1: 41:13

It's so good and it's. It's fascinating to me that you know, unlike you, my trauma growing up made me deeply disconnected to any sense of a higher power, to any intuitive voice that lived inside of me. It had just been put out, shut up and covered with drugs and alcohol, among other things, perfectionism, people-pleasing. So the fact that you, even in all the trauma you were traversing as a young girl, had some sense that something was protecting you, I think is incredible, because I totally did not have that experience.

Speaker 3: 41:58

Well, I won't lie to you, I did put myself in bad situations where I experimented with things, but I think anytime that I did something alcohol or a drug I tried and I didn't really try drugs, but there were a couple that I had tried. I think the feeling of not having control scared me so much. And seeing my real dad and the few times that I did see him, especially when I went to live with him he was so had no control over himself and it was such an ugly scene that if I even remotely got close to that I turned away from it. So my vice was binge eating. I started binge eating and when I got older I been shopped.

Speaker 3: 42:41

When I had money I would been shop and binge eat. So I didn't mean to sway away from your question, but I had a counselor during this therapy time tell me that I was in the top half percent, that I should be still living on the streets, that I shouldn't have a successful 26 year marriage, I should be married multiple times probably, and that I shouldn't be a successful mom. Based on what I went through as a child and you know there's always circumstances that as a child, and you know there's always circumstances that Nowhere we beat the odds and you're one of those.

Speaker 1: 43:19

Yep, yep, yeah, I yes, I am yes we are Amazing.

Speaker 1: 43:25

Thank you. You know it's interesting to think about the. You know it's interesting to think about the faith question. And all the times leading up to that moment, with the Jesse story, that you crust is sort of taken from you in this gross ugly way and you unwind as the business does and all of a sudden realize which I can deeply relate to that your sense of self-worth was so interwoven with the success of that business that even though you had faith, it couldn't stand up in the face of the business collapsing. And so you fell into a depression again. And I guess what I want to know you had intervention from your family. You obviously couldn't keep going on the way. I mean you could have, actually you could have kept going on the way you did, but you you had enough people that loved you around you to say this can't go on. So where was your faith in that dark time?

Speaker 3: 44:47

That is such a good question because I didn't have it. That is such a good question because I didn't have it. I literally lost my faith and what I was hearing at night during the success of Cali Flower. So when, in the peak of the success, when I was the only owner, I was getting pulled onto all kinds of things Home and family, the doctor show, dr Oz I was everywhere. I wrote a book. It was a national bestseller. I was in the limelight and I forgot about God and I forgot about my faith and I forgot about gratitude and I forgot about my family and I just went because probably my ego, I was flattered, I was boosting an ego thing, I'm not sure. I look back on it and I think how did I give up my family? During that time? I was gone more than I was home.

Speaker 3: 45:38

Jim is a physician. He had to go part time in his own personal practice that he worked so hard to build. People call them Dr Mom. I had a great relationship with my two older kids, who are 14 months apart, but there's a five year gap between our third one and my relationship with my two older kids, who are 14 months apart, but there's a five-year gap between our third one and my relationship with him even today isn't as strong as it is with the other two. He is like this with his dad, and I'm so grateful, but I lost those years with him and I think you know, when the venture capitalists came in, they do things that venture capitalists do. It wasn't like what they did to me was out of the norm. It's what they do. That's why this new business I'll never sell to venture capitalists ever, because it's not the way I think I build a business. I think it's very different.

Speaker 3: 46:26

I can look back now, so when that was happening, I was very resentful. I was like angry. When I moved to Florida, I couldn't even tell you where my faith books were. They were in a box, and I went back to some of my old ugly habits of binge eating, and I even was doing things like binge gambling and stuff like that, cause I had the money. I was doing things that I shouldn't have been doing, though, and I remember the realtor that sold us our house, who happened to become one of my friends. I remember talking to her, and she's got pretty strong faith, and she said Amy, if you're so depressed and you're so upset, why aren't you in the word Like, where's your Bible? I, you know, do you have one? And I said, oh my gosh, it's packed. I've never unpacked it. She goes, go, unpack it and start getting in the word again. So I had lost my way for a while and I believe now, looking back after therapy, that what happened to me was just God's.

Speaker 3: 47:26

The rejection I felt from the venture capitalist, by the way, felt very much like the rejection I felt from my own mother and father. I remember being drawn to the founder of the VCs that bought me, as I had gotten a better deal Actually, it was $5 million more and it was more money in my pocket and I went to this team instead. I felt this connection with the founder like almost like a father figure. So when he rejected me, it was like the rejection I felt from my own father again, all over again, and even my attorney said you have daddy issues and I'm like you're damn right, I do. This is before therapy, by the way, and so I now can look at it and say, okay, the rejection I felt from the venture capitalists because they didn't understand e-commerce and we were an e-commerce brand, so they were pushing me away because I was, you know, basically had lack of emotional intelligence, really arguing with them of why they weren't keeping the email list going, why they weren't going with customer service. I still stand by those things today, by the way, but I believe their rejection of me was simply God's protection and redirection.

Speaker 3: 48:36

And I say that a lot because now, if I hadn't been on sabbatical, I would have never discovered soursop nutrition, which is 10 times better than a cauliflower pizza crust and it does so much more to help people. And so that would have never happened had I been on sabbatical, hadn't if I had not been on sabbatical. And I went looking for a new product, basically to help my mom who was diagnosed with cancer, and then my right hand person, jimmy, who was still speaking to me, was also diagnosed with cancer. So I was going and looking for some holistic ways to help them and I found Soursop Nutrition. I would never found it if I had been working actively with cauliflower. It would have never happened.

Speaker 3: 49:20

So, yeah, that's, I went away from it for a while and then I came back to it and it was weird way I had to hit rock bottom again, not in the same way I hit rock bottom before, but in a different way, and that I had my dream house. We bought our dream house on the water. I had money in the bank. I bought my first car that I'd ever bought, brand new. I'd always bought used cars. So I had a nice car, a nice house, beautiful kids, great husband, money in the bank to do other things with.

Speaker 3: 49:58

And yet I was totally lost and totally miserable, didn't have my faith going back to. You know, I would go and get crispy cream donuts for my kids If they had friends over and they wanted the Krispy Kreme donuts. And I can remember this didn't happen a lot because my kids don't eat that much. They don't eat donuts that often. But I can remember going to Krispy Kreme and eating a dozen while I was driving home and feeling like sugar, lightheaded, like oh my gosh, do I need to pull over? I'm so lightheaded.

Speaker 3: 50:28

Things like that were happening a lot where I was binge eating, and so my old ugly habits came back, and so therapy taught me how to deal with those as well. Gave me coping skills. Gave me emotional intelligence, gave me gratitude for the venture capitalist to be honest with you. Gave me a chance to process my childhood and have empathy to that child, that teenager my mom, you know it was. It was so powerful that I think about it now and I think I need to go and get a refresher course If I start to feel like I'm going back into those ugly, dark closets of habits, bad habits. I um, you know, I I don't think there's anything wrong with going back and getting some help.

Speaker 1: 51:22

I. It's funny. You said at one point when you were blowing up, going on all the shows and you know being a sort of celebrity, if you will, in in the world that you're in, that you were in your ego. You know, in terms of the fracture between you and your faith and in recovery that's a big thing that is talked about with addicts. You know that we become deeply self-centered in our ego and to some extent, I think, on the surface of it all. That is very true. When you are super focused on self, your world becomes very small. You are really thinking about, for better and for worse, where you have to go next to get the thing you need to get. But I would also say that, given your history from childhood up until that moment, that even if there was the whisper of God always somewhere, that the roar of the gremlins of the darker side of things was, was quite loud, that some allure of worthiness that came from the outside of you that in that case was so shiny and glittery, would easily swallow you up even for a time before it spit you back out again and you were facedown in a pit of despair and you said God, I'm so sorry I left you. I'm back. I didn't mean to do that that. It's much deeper than you, just in your ego. It's little Amy who has always been longing for that kind of love and belonging that for that time the world really gave to you. Yeah, and I say that because it's also what I've unpacked through all the years of recovery and therapy and step work and everything I've been doing.

Speaker 1: 53:22

You know, up until very recently when I was in this subconscious pattern in friendship, particularly with women, because so much of my trauma is with female figures my mom's been mentally ill my entire life. My sister died of a drug overdose two years ago. I'm just wrecked by this idea that everyone I ever love, who's a woman, is going to leave me and I had no sense of how that was following me into these friendships until one of them that I cared so deeply about, that I thought would last forever, ended in a rather dramatic way and it felt like I got zapped out of this pattern and I could finally see that I was just bleeding out. Trying to get these different women in my life to love me, to change the story of my life somehow. Maybe this time, if I love this person this much, I love this person this much. They won't leave me, like my mom always did, like my sister did, and the trouble with that is that in the process, was I becoming one-dimensional in my thinking that was the friend who was going to do all the things? And was I being self-centered and ego? Yeah, yeah, maybe, but there was so much under it that was precipitating the way I was behaving and so much that I had to douse that. I've continued to have to douse in that inside. Well, to treat that, because what I learned and I want to also bring this up to relate to a few other things that you said I listen to podcasts so much.

Speaker 1: 55:15

I read so much spiritual literature and on two different occasions I heard these things and I think about them in order all the time. One of them was, I think, Esther Perel, and she said you know that whenever we can, you try to repair the rupture, if there's a rupture somewhere, Right, and I think I had been trying so badly. And, by the way, with every loss, every subsequent loss, I've had not just that friendship that blew up, the loss of my sister, the loss of my dad, the betrayal when my husband had an extramarital affair that wrecked me. Every single time there's this sense of okay, if I can repair this rupture, I'm going to try. But what happens if you're trying to repair something that you cannot?

Speaker 1: 56:23

What happened to us in childhood? We cannot go back in time and rewrite it. We cannot, and I was spending all my time in various ways in the face of grief and loss to just try, because that's an insidious form of control. If only I could make it look like this now. It will never happen again. I will never hurt like that, ever again, because I will have figured it out. And the second part of what I heard on this podcast was that which cannot be repaired must be mourned. Yes, and that's the thing. When I fall back into control right, my drug of choice, my number one addiction there are sirens wailing when I'm doing that, because I'm like what do you need to grieve?

Speaker 3: 57:17

right now.

Speaker 1: 57:19

Where is your heart breaking?

Speaker 3: 57:30

I'm just in awe right now. But you're right, I learned that during therapy that I had to mourn the loss and forgive that little girl. And look, what you experienced with women, I experienced with men. I would get men to love me, propose to me a couple times, and I would break their hearts because they weren't going to break me. I was going to break them, I was going to hurt them and I had like the biggest wall up where I could hurt somebody and not feel anything about hurting them, which is so bizarre to me because I never want to hurt anybody. But back then I could hurt somebody because, look, hurt people, hurt people.

Speaker 3: 58:16

And so in therapy I learned to do exactly what you just said, like mourn the loss of not having a normal childhood, mourn the loss of not growing up with a mother and a father mourn the loss of not growing up with a father, basically, and tell my stepdad and then learn to grieve over that and have empathy for that person and forgive that person, because I had a lot of demons inside of me for hurting so many people. Not that I had a lot of men in my life, but there were a handful that I hurt deeply and I sabotaged the relationships on purpose because it was going to be easier for me to hurt them than them hurt me and I had such a wall up so maybe you had done that with your friendships. Um, it's hard when you, when you've gone through what you've gone through what I've gone through, what so many people have gone through, it's hard to trust, it's hard to open up. But when you go through therapy and you learn how to forgive yourself and forgive others and you go through that process and this is one of the things I will say about EMDR when they first told me that I needed EMDR, I laughed. I'm like tapping, is it going to help me? Like this is this is woo, woo. Like I'm not into this now and I resisted it.

Speaker 3: 59:40

And then, when I got into it and I could see that 12 year old girl watching that sexual assault, I could actually get a whole different perspective of it and I could forgive her and be like oh, you're 12. You're, you didn't put yourself in that position, like you think you put yourself in that position, but you were not a fault, and forgive that person. So I love that. You said you have to mourn, because it's true. We went through this whole process and therapy of mourning the loss of my childhood, of my innocence, and that was a way for me to forgive myself and then open up and trust.

Speaker 3: 1:00:20

I have such a different relationship with my husband now. I didn't. I'm 54. I didn't finish therapy until I was 52. And so you know, last two years have been very different for my husband and I, and I'm so grateful that I'm sure there's been times where he's like, oh, maybe I need to leave. I don't know. I I'm sure I pushed the boundaries in our relationship, but getting treatment has been the best thing I could have ever done, and I've read a lot of self-help books too, and nothing is like actually getting the help you really need. And that goes beyond leaning into my faith.

Speaker 1: 1:00:59

Yeah, and another thing and you've talked about it a lot today that you and I have in common and they go together is this forgiveness piece. Because in my story I was, by all intents and purposes, really successful on the outside, started a business, had a husband and a big bustling life out here in California and my marriage was starting to fall apart. And five years sober, spiritually bankrupt, right I hit the ground face down, pit of despair. And where I first got introduced to a forgiveness practice was with a sponsor. I had had a bunch of sponsors at that point in recovery.

Speaker 1: 1:02:01

This woman said what if we did the steps on your marriage? What if we stopped making it about substances? That's not what you're. You're not about to call the cocaine dealer If we don't treat your spiritual malady. Perhaps you will, but in the meantime let's make these steps resonate. Little did I know this is what my entire book would become about 10 years later. But one by one we went through these steps in a really practical way and we got to the ninth step, which is making an amends in recovery. I was 30 years old. I had made so many amends. I had hurt all kinds of people in my addiction. I had made amends to the people who offended me the most, to my parents, who were seemingly not so good caregivers, even though they did the best they could with the tools they had. I had done all that really hard work, but nobody ever, ever had said have you ever made amends to yourself ever?

Speaker 1: 1:02:55

ever had said have you ever made amends to yourself? Until this woman asked me that? And the reason why that moment was really the beginning of my whole life was because it was the beginning, and I always say this because man forgiveness is not linear. It is not like I waved a wand, looked in the mirror and said I love and forgive you, samantha, little Sam, 12-year-old Sam, 16-year-old Sam, highly addicted to cocaine, who cheated on her boyfriend Sam. Nope, that's not what happened, but I had made a start.

Speaker 1: 1:03:25

I had gotten into a practice of loving self-talk for the first time in my life as a 30-year-old woman. And what that did was it finally started to lift the shame that I was carrying inside of me, so that I could finally hear my intuitive voice, which I now call God, the God of my own understanding. And every time I listen to her and I trust her and I take a step in the direction she's nudging me, my whole life expands and explodes in the best way, am into different places and spaces and speak, yes, about the science of real change, but also the soulfulness of my lived experience, how I've overcome grief and found joy again how I can continue to find hope in every type of heartbreak. I most of all share what I share, like you do, because I want people to feel less ashamed.

Speaker 1: 1:04:32

I want people to know that shame is the most corrosive thing they can carry inside of them, that it will kill their spirit and, if not treated, it will kill their body. And if anything I share lifts that shame even a little bit, then it was worth it and I feel like we are the same in that way that that is, in some ways, the real flex of all of this shit, and it's amazing to build businesses and earn money and get nice things. That stuff is great, but it really is empty. It really is Without this other stuff underneath.

Speaker 3: 1:05:24

Yeah, you know, I had a family member ask me once why are you sharing all this? Like, what's your purpose of sharing all this? And it's exactly what you just said. I, the first time I ever shared something that I had pushed down, um, that I was ashamed of, was at a retreat, a women's retreat. There was 10 of us there and five of us had experienced the same uh type of experience.

Speaker 3: 1:05:52

So I realized that that and I was the first person to share. So it like opened the floodgates out to other people to have the ability to share and I think that they thought, well, if she can do this and create this business and have this family and yet went through this, then let me share what I've gone through. I can be open about what I've gone through. I can be open about what I've gone through. I think it's important to share what we've been through and where we are now because I think it gives hope and I think it can give tools. I mean, I'm not telling everybody when I talk about this, you need to go and do EMDR. That's not what I'm saying. But the power of forgiveness is huge and I believe I couldn't have the business I have now and the family I have now had I not gone through I would have destroyed what I have if I hadn't gone through the therapy and learned how to forgive and go through like the forgiveness is a choice but the healing is a process If I hadn't gone through that process and really worked hard. It was hard work. I can remember coming home and having to take a nap. I was exhausted and it's hard work and it's not fun, but it's so worth it to get those tools and to be able to. Just forgiveness alone lifts weights off, it makes you lighter, it makes you happier, it makes you have the ability to grow and our tough circumstances are, I mean, nothing easy provides growth. Right, you grow from hard things, doing hard things, and we've both been through some hard things. I think you've been through harder things than I've been through, but you know, I guess it's all relative. We can't really judge how hard things are for others versus us. But if I give anybody any kind of hope, if I can, like I opened that on stage with you there. I my whole goal was just to get somebody to think about who they needed to forgive and really go through the process of forgiveness, because I've had tremendous growth from forgiveness and and the ability to feel joy and happy again, which buying my dream house on the water didn't do it. Buying my don't hate me Tesla X didn't do it.

Speaker 3: 1:08:11

Um. Buying like dropping $15,000 at Bloomingdale's in New York didn't do it. Um, I went on a massive shopping spree as like one of my first gifts to myself, giving money to open an orphanage. That would felt good. That did feel good, but that didn't change things for me. But that didn't change things for me. I gave more money to a church that I don't even go to anymore than I did when we bought our first house. That didn't feel good. Going on fancy trips didn't feel good.

Speaker 1: 1:08:57

It just yeah. It wasn't until I did this work and could forgive myself and forgive others that I felt like had damaged me or hurt me. I want to ask you two things before we wrap up. The first is I want to know where you're at with all of the autoimmune stuff, if you're open to sharing that. And the second is taking us up to date on the inspiration to start your latest company and what your goals and dreams are for that.

Speaker 3: 1:09:19

Well, I'm grateful that I'm not on any medication. I did do that full circle moment where I got sick again and then I discovered Soursop, which is an anti-inflammatory. It reduces your blood sugars. We're studying it right now for people that are getting off of Ozempic um because it does a similar thing to your blood sugars. It does sell regeneration.

Speaker 3: 1:09:40

I think it has been fighting for me when I didn't even realize that my body needed um to fight. It's been such a gift to me, but originally was for somebody else. Um for cancer, which I can never promote it for cancer. I think it's been such a blessing for me. But then it's like my oh, by the way, the team that didn't speak to me. They are now with me. They're investors in this company and we're running it together again. So it's like the dream team again. But they remind me all the time when I'm like gosh, this is so hard, I don't remember this. And they're like that's because we went through this with cauliflower, you're, you're not remembering it. Like it's kind of like pregnancy when you have a baby. You forget what it's like, those labor pains. So we're in the midst of that. You know it's a new company. It's a new company. There's a lot of pains to launching a new company and I did things very different this time.

Speaker 3: 1:10:36

I learned I made so many mistakes with cauliflower and of course, you learn in your failures, not your successes. So little things like for your viewers out there, like if they have a website, make sure it's handicap compliant. I got sued with cauliflower that mine wasn't. I didn't know that you were supposed to do that and had to pay like $18,000 and it's only $27 a month to make sure your website is own your own fonts. That was another thing. I got sued for um. File your um wordmark, your trademark, your design, because my competitor copied the O and the cauliflower. The cauliflower was the O of our brand and there was nothing I could do about it because I didn't file the design mark. So there was a lot of confusion between our brands. So little things like that that I've learned we're doing that. I know that to exit a company it's better not to be locked into an ingredient. So you know Soursop is now be me, or it always has been be me, but for SEO purposes it was Soursop.

Speaker 3: 1:11:38

This product is a fruit that's grown outside the United States. It is grown a little bit now in Miami. It's grown in Hawaii. You don't hear a lot about it because it is a miracle super fruit. It can do so many things, I swear. If you're a type two diabetic it can control your blood sugars. But I can't promote it for that. There's so many things that it can combat that I think big pharma will never let it be in, and so we're doing a double blind, placebo, control, controlled study to prove its efficacy, but also to protect us if we get sued. Cause no doubt, when you get popular, you get sued, and I remember the venture capitalist saying that to me, cause I was in the middle of a lawsuit when we closed and they said you know you made it when you get sued, and so just to avoid whether you made it or not, you know, get your website handicap compliant, buy your fonts those are under a hundred dollars, things hire a decent lawyer that can file a design mark so you protect your, protect your, your logo and your name. And then there's a lot of other things I've learned that I'm trying to just teach people now on how to build a business and using AI and things like that. So where am I going with this? Where was our original question, cause I'm going off on this whole tangent.

Speaker 3: 1:13:00

It's been very difficult. Yes, my autoimmune is controlled. I think from the soursop have I done some. You know, I said I think I need to go back and have a refresher course on uh in therapy again, because I do find myself going into some bad habits again and I can stop myself Like I will. I, I have been known to binge eat a little bit. I'm nowhere where I used to be, um, and so I'm just getting ready to start this new health program that basically I'm focused on exercise and eating a very, very clean program, um, that will hopefully re-trigger my brain. That when I want to grab something that isn't good for me, that, I know, hurts me. That I recognize that I'm just hurting myself and I need to do something that's loving for myself, which is maybe go for a walk on the beach, distract myself. So put in some of those coping mechanisms.

Speaker 3: 1:14:00

But but there are times where the stress rears its ugly head again and it's like old habits, old patterns, old thought processes, and it all starts with your, what you're thinking, you know, and I'll start thinking am I cut out to do this? Do I? You know? Is big pharma going to come after me, like how am I going to have the money to be able to fight them? I know how powerful this product is. Everybody should have it in their hands, but how can I get it to them? That kind of thing. And I, and then I just want to, you know, self-sabotage myself and it's just it's not right. And sometimes I'll do it when I'm really successful too. It's like I'm almost afraid to be too successful. So it's like this double whammy, like I need to be balanced for things to be smooth. If it's over on one side, I'll self-sabotage. If it's over, if it's too much success, I'll self-sabotage. If it's too much success, I'll self-sabotage.

Speaker 1: 1:14:56

So it's kind of a balance and yeah, I'm always a work in progress, always yeah, and I mean to that I would say we never graduate from our spiritual curriculum. The same way that pain continues again and again to be the touchstone for spiritual growth. Every time we are in a new situation and this is true for my recovery, every lived sober experience that I've gotten to the other side of that, I thought I couldn't survive. Yes, it arms me with tools, but there will be something I've never gone through and in the face of that, how I show up to it is completely contingent on how spiritually fit I am at any given moment.

Speaker 1: 1:15:43

Because, if I'm not, I will slip back into the old behavior. And the biggest thing in terms of my journey anyway, being a recovered perfectionist, the biggest thing is to not beat myself up when I slide, but is to be to honestly be in communion with myself about what's happening and to say we can do it this way. We have a lot of experience of what happens and what this looks like. Do it this way. We have a lot of experience of what happens and what this looks like. Or we can go and do some more work and do some more digging. You know which one do you want to do?

Speaker 3: 1:16:20

Yeah, yeah, it's so true, and I and I'm choosing to be. When I wake up, I'm trying to get the hard stuff out of the way right away, because I found that I used to procrastinate and the hard stuff would hit at the end of the day and that's like my four o'clock time was like my binge time. I'm like, no, get the hard stuff out in the morning when you're fresh, refreshed, and then choose what who you're going to be that day. Are you going to be extra kind? You're going to be extra loving, like be the person you choose to be, but cognizantly. Is that right? Is that word right? I think so. You choose who you're going to be for that day.

Speaker 3: 1:17:00

There's a book called alter ego by Todd Harmon that I've used often before I get on a stage, like it's almost like that Beyonce being somebody else. It's not that I'm trying to be somebody else or be fake, but I want to choose who I am. When I get up in the morning, I look at myself in the mirror when I go to brush my teeth. Okay, today I'm going to be this person.

Speaker 3: 1:17:18

I know I have some tough, tough meetings or tough decisions to make, or things aren't going quite right, or I have to meet with this person that I dread meeting with, but I'm going to choose to be this no matter what. But I'm going to choose to be this no matter what, and when I purposely choose to be something be kind, be loving, be understanding, be patient then usually it works out because I've chosen to be that and that's building my character. Um, whereas in the past, my lack of emotional intelligence would choose what I was going to be, little things can make me angry, and then I was an angry person, you know, and I never want to be that. So, yeah, I work on my character all the time.

Speaker 1: 1:18:04

Yeah, that reminds me of IFS, which I find really fascinating. I don't know if you've ever done internal family systems work, but I always think about how, for so long in my life, my inner critic was 100% sitting in the seat of CEO and somewhere at the boardroom table. My highest self was there, but she was so quiet and in the shadows. And now my work every day is not that I'm not going to have the critic or the one who's full of anger or fear rate I mean, I'm going to have all the parts of me but it's a question of can I mindfully invite my highest self into the seat of CEO?

Speaker 3: 1:18:48

today For the forefront, with the person. Yeah, so I'm not trying to be fake, I'm just trying to be like. Just like you said, I'm trying to be the best version of myself and realize who that is and put that best person forward on all circumstances and not let the scared, fearful one come out and sabotage. So, yeah, it's, it's a journey, sure is.

Speaker 1: 1:19:18

It's a journey I want to know just for the listener who, on a soul level, resonates with being in that pit of despair, that place of I just can't keep going on. What would you want them to know right now?

Speaker 3: 1:19:39

Oh well I know, yeah, it's a hard place to be in and I would want that person to do something that distracts themselves from where they're at. Um, for me, that might be going for a walk on the beach, maybe it's listening to a song, taking a few minutes to do something totally distracting from that person. Um, because that when we get that way, we make decisions that often will hurt us even more, and so we need to distract that feeling, distract that person, do something kind for that person, for ourselves, and and that means maybe listening to a song, like I said, or going for a walk, or just having the patience, giving yourself that 24 hours, um, taking a nap, whatever it is, take a hot bath, just get yourself out of that funk. And our perceptive perception is our reality. So we've got to change what that looks like. That's what I would do.

Speaker 3: 1:20:51

Um's what's helped me and I did that even before therapy, and I think that's what saved me. Honestly was just like taking a step back and doing something, getting out of the environment where I felt so scared and fearful and was reacting to those emotions. It's hard, it's really hard, but I think it's like I never want to be the mom that gives a trophy to every kid. I think it's really good to go through hard things. I think it builds your character. I think when you go through like, a lot of people will say, well, how did you deal with all those nose? And I'm like, because I've dealt with so much worse.

Speaker 3: 1:21:30

Like those are nothing compared to what I've dealt with, like I can deal with most stuff now because of it, you know. And so I think I look at my circumstances and I'm proud of it and I'm glad I went through what I went through because I think it's made me a very strong person today and I think I'm just getting started Like I'm 54. I know age is a little bit against me, but I'm just getting started Like I'm. I'm going to be so much bigger than I am now, not for myself, but for others and for for this product. I think is amazing. I think it's going to change a lot of lives.

Speaker 3: 1:22:08

So, yeah, just getting started, just feeling like a new version of me, and I want to share the old version because I want to give people hope, if they've been through something, that there is hope out there. Yeah, I wish this person could have been. I wish I could have known my dad as this person because maybe I could have helped him. I don't know dad as this person because maybe I could have helped him. I don't know, you have to help yourself, but he died an addict and I wish and similar to what your sister did, I wish I could have been there for him, but you know you have to be there for yourself too. You know there's only so much you can do for an addict, and so yeah, yeah, I can.

Speaker 1: 1:22:55

I mean, I can speak to that because I was this person, I was this version of myself.

Speaker 3: 1:23:03

And I did everything I could. Yeah, answer your own question. When you get in a position that makes you feel like you want to relapse or or go down a dark place, what do you do to get out of that? What does the version of you today do? Well, what's?

Speaker 1: 1:23:24

what's amazing about having time in recovery? Because because, really, besides what I'm about to say, no difference between 50 days and 50 years, because I've seen addiction kill people with all the time in the world, including my first sponsor, who was a dear friend he relapsed at the end of my first year after 22 years sober from heroin. So the only thing that time has granted me is an extremely low threshold for emotional dysregulation and discomfort. So I am astutely aware now, when I am afraid, when I am in grief, when I am in rage, there is a presentation that is not just cerebral, which looks like me ruminating and obsessing and trying to figure it out I'm going to figure this out it's also physiological. I feel a low grade anxiety, that sense of pit in your stomach, but not in a good way, where you're really excited but kind of nervous about something, a gross feeling. And when that stuff shows up I have the body presentation and the mental presentation. I know immediately that something is up for me, that I feel out of control, that I feel really sad and that I need to love on myself, and sometimes that looks like telling my husband I'm going through something right now. I am not my best self. I feel angry and irritable. I'm not. I don't even know what it is yet, but I'm just letting you know so that you are aware and I and I'm going to try not to take it out on you. Thank you so much for the heads up. Sometimes that looks like you know. I know we were supposed to to take it out on you. Thank you so much for the heads up. Sometimes that looks like you know. I know we were supposed to do this thing as a family.

Speaker 1: 1:25:37

I really got to go to yoga this morning before I do anything else Like I got to get. I got to shift this energy. I have to calm my nervous system because I always say yoga is the boyfriend. That was good for me, that I wasn't ready to date and now we're married. Yoga is the place I get so many God shots. I just get downloads from God when I'm doing yoga. So when I need to switch out of that ruminating space and get info from the belly up instead of the brain down, I go to yoga.

Speaker 1: 1:26:08

You know if it's these two metrics that I live by, you know, every day since my sister died I swore that the only thing I was chasing down every 24 hours was joy and truth. That's it. If I get a good belly laughing and I have a conversation like the one I'm having with you, the day was unbelievable and anything else that happened is just a bonus. So I am a. I am so aware when my well is drying up and I have unpacked through all the losses, all the different ways in which I can rediscover joy and meaning.

Speaker 1: 1:26:51

Dance is my love language. I fucking love dancing. I mean, it's something I did when I was young. I'm doing it now again, as an adult mom of two. I went on tour last year in Japan as a choreographer, which is just ridiculous. My kids were home when I was running around Japan like a fool. So I get to get really clear and aware really quickly in sobriety when I'm not right, when those sort of spiritual beams are knocked off of their axis, and I mean the alignment between my head, my heart and my gut when I'm fully stacked up, the light shines all the way down to the bottom and right back up and it's this beautiful, clear channel.

Speaker 1: 1:27:31

But when the blocks are misaligned they's static, like when you're changing the radio station, and that static is my, my knowing that I need to recalibrate. And then I go. Which of the modalities of self-soothing of nervous system regulation do you need to call upon right now? Wow, feel better. Regulation do you need to call?

Speaker 3: 1:27:56

upon right now. Wow, that's powerful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on, really appreciate it, and I'll talk to you next month before then.

Speaker 1: 1:28:04

Okay, sounds good.

Speaker 3: 1:28:05

Okay, bye.

Speaker 1: 1:28:06

Bye.

Speaker 2: 1:28:17

Waking up. I hear the desperation call. I turn my back and hit my head against the wall. Don't need a crucifix to take me to my knees. I'm whipping my mistakes To jump over the grief. Breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Sick and tired of the voice Inside my head, never good enough, it's leaving me for dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Hey, gotta break the pattern. Find a new reprieve. Breaking the circuit, making it worth it.

Speaker 2: 1:29:08

Oh, I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I gotta live the life. I can be brave and afraid at the same time. Practice self-compassion, compassion, start to calm my mind, taking tiny steps to loving all of me. Just the process, cause it's gonna set me free. Breaking the circuit, making it worth it all. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got the the life. Gotta gotta gotta love this life. Gotta gotta gotta break it or fake it till we make it. Gotta gotta gotta break it. Come on, woo, two, three. I am ready to make a change. One, two, three. I am red. So make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside, I got this this life.