Healing Fucking Sucks: The Joy and Grief in the Healing Journey

Is the path to healing always a straight line? Join us as we question the norm and discuss the complexities of healing and self-discovery, unraveling the influences of society, past lives, and familial ties. We share our struggles with recognizing our own journeys and the power of setting an intention to heal, even for external reasons. This conversation intricately peels back the layers on how societal ideals of perfection and spiritual bankruptcy can impact your journey.

Diving deeper into the healing process, we discuss the unique challenges faced by Black and Brown communities. We uncover the pain that often goes unaddressed and the implications of dominant culture on healing. Questioning the colonization of the healing process, we explore the myth of miraculous healing and the significance of allowing ourselves to grieve. We shed light on systemic oppression and its impact on healing, discussing the historical implications of redlining on Black and Brown communities.

In the midst of life's complexities, we speak to finding joy - from the small everyday moments to the bigger decisions that define our paths. We delve into our experiences with grief, expressing its surprising capability to bring both sorrow and joy. In our quest for spiritual healing, we emphasize the importance of setting boundaries, trusting ourselves, and finding our own path. This conversation is rich, empathetic, and offers practical tips for spiritual healing and self-care. So, tune in and join us on this beautiful journey of self-discovery.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Whenever we pick our subject, you just think it's funny when I'm the one signing on the subject, not you, it's not me today. I'm like, all right, our topic is Our topic is my life. I think my topic is everybody's life. But I think, yeah, right now I'm like, fuck, all right, here we go, welcome to Motherland. I don't even know what they're in for.

Speaker 2: 1:04

So today we are talking about why is healing so hard? Yeah, that's the end of the episode, so we'll see you all next week.

Speaker 1: 1:12

I know, because it sucks, because we're not born perfect. I don't know. Do you think we're born perfect?

Speaker 2: 1:18

I think we're born whole.

Speaker 1: 1:20

I don't like the word perfect, I do. So you think we're born whole and then all of a sudden we just kind of a society with parents. Everything comes in and programs us and then we're just a shit storm that has to fix itself.

Speaker 2: 1:38

I think it's a combination of things. I also believe in past lives, so I think there's also lessons that we're born into. So I think that's also a factor. And then there's the factor of the family that you're born into, and the parents you've chosen or the people that you've chosen to bring you into the world, are not necessarily the people who are your caregivers when you grow up. I think society is a big part of it. Who's around you, who's supporting you? Who sees you Right?

Speaker 1: 2:16

I think I do believe in past lives and I think that we sign up for our contract before we come down on the lessons that we need to learn or things we need to heal. I'm trying to ask in myself, as I'm asking this question, as I'm saying it out loud even though we may be born with, let's say, lessons to learn or things that we're supposed to fulfill, are we born whole? I think my answer to that is in some aspect, yes and in some aspect no. That's part of the journey, but I don't think that our life is supposed to be I'm going to use the word perfect. I don't think our life is supposed to be perfect. I think that would be boring anyways.

Speaker 2: 3:03

I think perfection is a construct of colonization, if you want me to.

Speaker 1: 3:07

I think it's a trauma. I teach on trauma all the time, and perfection is a form of trauma. That's a whole other idea of what that is. But yeah, I guess, when we talk about spirituality, I think, like we've said it before in past episodes, that people step into spirituality thinking we're about to go on to this perfect, amazing, beautiful journey, and then it's quite opposite. At times of that, we get into situations where we are trying to heal or we're trying to grow, and then we're finding ourselves back into what we thought. Maybe we moved past or it's not as easy as I know.

Speaker 1: 3:47

This choice or this person, relationship, work, whatever it is, is not healthy for me. Therefore, I choose otherwise, we make a choice otherwise, but I think we have to realize that the choice you made in the first place to be in the situation that you're in came with a load of beliefs. It came with a load of beliefs. It came with a load of stories that you told yourself that you somehow needed that situation or whatever it is that you were in. So when you choose to make a change in your life, like I tell people, you literally have to reprogram your brain again and it's hard, and then you think you're doing good and we go along and we do well, and then something triggers you. And then you're triggered and you're right back. You're like I thought we worked through this shit, I thought I was done with this, I thought I didn't feel this way anymore. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 4:38

Yeah, I don't think I even went on a spiritual healing journey on purpose. I think that also causes.

Speaker 1: 4:48

I didn't either. Proper growths, right, right.

Speaker 2: 4:51

Because you don't realize that that's the journey that you're on. So there's resistance, unconsciously, I think. When I went on a, my first intentional healing journey was when I went into therapy. I was suicidal for a while and even spent some time in a hospital, and so I wanted to get well, and I've mentioned this in other episodes. I made a choice to say I'm going to get well. So that was an intention, right, like that was a focus. I spent time in therapy and investigated things and while I felt better, I don't think I would have called a healing. I think I was just out of a crisis.

Speaker 1: 5:34

I don't think that when we're really healing, that we realize we're healing. I think that takes some type of an awareness or perspective that we have maybe later on, but I think during the midst of it it's really hard to sit back and be like I'm healing.

Speaker 2: 5:45

No, I think no, because I really think the difference for me when I was in therapy, it was to get me out of a crisis, because I was at rock bottom. The reason I wanted to get better was because I didn't want to embarrass my family and I didn't want to embarrass myself. It was not around the fact that I wanted to get well, it was. This is not a good look. This is not a good look for the people that I surround myself with, and I didn't want to ruin my career. I was all around. Image Like this is not a way that I need to look and that is why I think the big part of why I intentionally went down this path, like I need to get my shit together but it wasn't necessarily because I wanted to feel good and I functioned, my career, flourished. All of those things, everything that I said I wanted to do, I ended up accomplishing. I was spiritually bankrupt still.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Yeah, I'm listening to you and I'm like having a like. This is what I find interesting about what she said. When I chose this journey, I'm sure I made a choice somewhere, right that I was like this is my spiritual journey, this is what I'm going to do. I chose it not to heal. It was never about healing, it was about whatever. That's a whole nother story in itself.

Speaker 1: 7:13

On how I got there, it wasn't until years later that I was going through my own depression and suicide spot of just like I hate my life. I hate it so bad. You know, I wanted to end life. World will be easier. I'm just not a part of it. Like it was so bad.

Speaker 1: 7:32

And I just remember sitting there crying and crying. I literally remember just huddling in the corner, crying because I was tired of the image I held. It wasn't about the image of for others from, I guess it was, but I was holding the image for others. But I was tired of holding that image. And that's where I was like I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be this image that somehow I got assigned in this life and I need to figure out what that looks like for me. But that's for me where everything started was because, like you were saying, like you may start making choices based on like oh, I was worried, you know, for other people, or I thought about what other people thought of me I did. But I also was like I was so tired of giving a fuck, like I was like I'm done.

Speaker 2: 8:19

That is when I think I shed the external wanting to stop. I couldn't carry that anymore. That, I think, happened when Eric got killed in Iraq.

Speaker 2: 8:30

And I think that's when it became very clear to me that I realized that life was short and I did an evaluation of my life, and that's when I realized that I was not happy. I may have been successful, but I wasn't happy, and it was the first time that I dare to even ask myself what do you want? Yeah, that's a big one. Who do you want to be? Is this the life that you want? And the answer was a resounding no. And I think that's when I started to explore yeah, that's the same.

Speaker 1: 9:09

I mean, that's kind of what came out of me, like I was just like who am I and what do I desire? And I think I kind of always knew. But I had told myself I wasn't allowed to be this person, I wasn't allowed to have these thoughts or I wasn't allowed to choose myself in my culture, like you're not as a woman, you were taught you weren't allowed to choose yourself right, submit to your husband, be a good wife, do all these things I wanted out. And the day I wanted out. So I think for me that healing process was I had to let everything go. So I let everything go.

Speaker 1: 9:53

So I think that's why, when I'm like, why is it so hard? It's because when you truly heal I think it's like you said you have to ask your questions of what do you want? What do you want for yourself? What does that look like? You know, forget the book definition, forget the family definition, forget society's definition, like what you want, what does that look like for you? And it's scary as F to really figure out what that looks like, because it means you have to give yourself permission to do that, because once you give yourself permission to see what it even looks like so much harder to forget that.

Speaker 2: 10:26

Yeah, I think there's also this, this idea, especially for for us as black and brown people, when we want to go on this journey, and I think of my own discovery of yoga and meditation practices that I found so healing and transformative and they were taught through this lens of dominant culture, so practices that I felt like were helping me were also hurting me because of how they were taught. Yeah, so I was balancing that, and then, on top of it, the I think, the colonized ways of thinking around healing, that healing is somehow linear and it's not linear.

Speaker 2: 11:07

And that you know we think we're supposed to get someplace and that it's all done. And then recognizing like no, indeed, it is never all done and it's two steps forward, one step back. It's happening in time, it's not happening at all. And I think a lot of what I considered healing was recognizing that I needed to unlearn a lot of the things that I had learned and reconnect with, I think, with wisdom that was always there, but I just I didn't trust before.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Yeah, do you think people are waiting for like some miraculous thing to occur during this healing process?

Speaker 2: 11:53

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I do. I think people think I think I thought too, you know, and it can be confusing because sometimes big things do happen, right, and I remember one of the first times I did a meditation and it was, like, you know, psychedelic and is. Does it always have to be like this Like? Is it always this big sort of like going down a wormhole? And you know, I let me talk from my perspective I think I thought it needed to be big all of the time and I slowly started to realize that the healing wasn't necessarily in what I was doing, but it was recognizing when something came up that I didn't respond the same way that I did before. And that's when I was like, oh okay.

Speaker 1: 12:43

I see, I think that goes in the sense of talking like how everyone kind of bypasses our pain, like you know, and that's part of the healing, like we're like why is it so hard? Because we've trained ourselves to not to bypass your pain, like to not look at it right, to retreat from the discomfort, and so I think that's why it's like when you truly start stepping into this, we're no longer stepping away from the pain, but we're allowing ourselves to go into the pain. And that's hard and you know, to really allow yourself to feel something when you really think about like you've probably never felt this before.

Speaker 2: 13:24

And even and I and again, like I think, thinking about us as black and brown people, part of it is is that we are actually so used to pain on some level, historically and individually, that when we bump into pain as we begin to explore emotional and psychic wounds, we have been so dysregulated to pain that we don't know what to do with it.

Speaker 2: 13:58

So we completely retreat, right, like there's this, like no, I'm not doing like, I do this already all the time. Why do I have to do this now? So, because we don't have conversations around the pain that we carry regularly, because of just existing in society, we're reluctant to explore the necessary part of pain that's a part of healing, because we haven't allowed ourselves to grieve the pain that we carry. That is an hour is an hour, responsibility, yeah, and so I think the bypassing can be different, for for us, in some ways, right Like, and it almost feels okay to bypass, but it's not, and that's the challenging part that it is completely unfair of what's happened to our communities collectively, socioeconomically, all of those things, and we still have to do the work, you know and I'm laughing because I was thinking about this the other day, in the sense that there was something that was coming up, and I don't know what it was.

Speaker 1: 15:10

I was watching something. I was talking about redlining. I was thinking about the fact of how many people don't like their situation, but there's nothing to it. Do you know what I mean? You don't like it, but that's what it is at the end of the day, and we just live with it. I was thinking about it and thinking about it in relations. I don't know if people know what redlining is. I don't even know what that is, but I'm pretty sure you do. You're educated.

Speaker 2: 15:45

I'm talking educated person.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Basically, to sum it up, everyone that's listening I have to remember our listeners don't always know what we're speaking about. Black and brown people were not allowed to purchase or live in certain areas of, I'm going to say, the country. Actually, even though I'm in San Diego of the country, they were only allowed to purchase homes in one area. These areas were not the best areas. It's where people built, industrialized them, maybe, didn't build parks. They did a lot of things in these areas. That's why, even now, predominantly, if you go into certain parts of the world or in the country, in the US, you'll see where most people are situated and there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that you were literally not allowed to purchase property if you weren't white. That's redlining, because the lines on the map are red FYI. That's why it's called. I think I summed it up as basically as like a basic.

Speaker 2: 16:41

I think that's yeah, it's a really smart, accessible explanation.

Speaker 1: 16:47

When you're talking about, when we're talking about the signs of like, I'm not allowed to feel. This is a great example of that. This is a great example of it because I was just thinking about the other day. I'm like, yeah, nobody was really taught to feel. I think back to my own upbringing, especially being raised by my grandfather, where it was weak, you don't complain, we don't complain. Suck it up, you deal with it and you move forward. Just be better. That was always the thing. Be better then.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Don't air anybody's dirty. We don't air our laundry, we don't. But you can be better. Be better than others. Don't talk about this Like, even if there were things to talk. You don't talk to strangers about our business. You know there's. I think communally that was a big part of the conversation, and also healing practices that were created by Black and Brown people were also appropriated, repackaged and sold back to us.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Are we talking about relevance now, like that's what it is now Exactly?

Speaker 2: 17:47

And so it's like. This is another reason why it's so hard. Right, there's individually why the reason's so hard. There's historically why the reason's so hard, and I think it requires patience that we don't always have because of, you know, our society and gentleness, as well as a discipline and a rigor Like there's. There's like you need to do both. You need to be gentle in places and then you need to be disciplined and show up in places, and I think often we I wanted to give up and keep talking about me. I wanted to give up in the places where I should have kept going and rested, and kept going in places where I should have rested, and I think that is because I wasn't, I wasn't unpacking or unlearning so much of what I learned and embodied inside. That was self-loathing, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:45

I teach that a lot to people, especially a lot to my clients and students is allowing themselves to slow down and take a step back. It's like you may see yourself healing and you may be like on this really great path of it. Maybe you guys are doing really good of it and you can see the change coming, or your desires or your dreams right up ahead and we want to rush to it. So bad Like I just want to go like, oh, I'm good with change, I embrace change. I'm you know we've heard this right, Like I'm great with change, but you're only great with change when you're choosing to rush past things. Right, Like I'm great with change, but just let me hurry up and just get there and then I'm good. Well, why, Like, what about all the in between moments that you actually have to let yourself slow down? Um, so it makes you question are you good with change? Are you really because you're trying to rush into whatever that next step is or whatever that that looks like right? So I don't know. I just thought about it.

Speaker 2: 19:39

No, you're right, and I think also we're good with change when we choose the change. We aren't good with change when it's not changed that we chose.

Speaker 1: 19:48

I know, I know, but you're like. The fact is, in my like I don't care, my own situation always comes up. But like I'm good with change, I chose this change. But wait, I think it was going to look like this, like this isn't what I thought it was going to be.

Speaker 2: 20:08

I was told there would be no math on this exam.

Speaker 1: 20:10

Wait a minute. Like, hold on. Like this is not what I signed up for at all. Like there's and there's no going back. It's just like I, there's not even a fucking map. Like I want, I want the map. There's no fucking map. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Like and honestly I hate it, Like the Virgo in me hates it. I'm like give me the recipe, give me the structure, give me the order. Like you said, not everyone's, everyone's. Healing looks different. I know this. I teach it all the time. Like, at the end of the day, I can teach it to you, I can read you, I can call in your guides, but for me, I'm just aft, Just aft. I'm like all right, I'm walking a blindfold right now and I, I don't like it, I don't like it.

Speaker 2: 21:05

We teach what we need to learn. We do, we do. We teach what we need to learn. I, I. I am in a very I mean yeah but I think we all struggle and I think it's. I think we would benefit if we had more conversations around the discomfort and not pretending that it all looks a certain way, and I think that's what I appreciate about you and us and what we're talking about, that we talk about the messiness of it all and that it's. It's uncomfortable because it's supposed to be.

Speaker 1: 21:46

I think that's the real of it. There is, like you said, like it's uncomfortable because it's supposed to be, and I think that's where we get in trouble with ourselves when we're healing, because we go back, because we seek that comfort in whatever unhealthy way that looked like. We seek that comfort Right, right, like, even, yeah, like I was telling you right now, like my season in life right now and learning how to just be right, like I'm learning how to surrender, I'm learning how to, you know, be by myself in a way. But I know 120% I can find some unhealthy match right now to be super comfortable in. Like I can go back you know what I mean Like I can, like, I can find comfort, but no, we're not, and you might even enjoy it for a little while. Yeah, I might enjoy it for a little while and I might be like this is it, and I might try to create those stories and those beliefs again that this is exactly where I need to be, where I need to be because I'm comfortable in it.

Speaker 1: 22:49

Right, this is the joy. Look at the joy, this has to be right and because I'm comfortable in it. But, as I'm hearing my guide say, you know, expansion is growth, like I know I'm double saying the same word, but you know what I mean and in order to expand means that you have to move past that uncomfortability and you have to allow yourself to look at. Okay, well, let me look at what this can look like. Let me look at what you know. The other side is that makes me literally crawl in my skin and be like, like I said earlier, before we recorded I don't know what the F I'm doing, but I'm figuring it out. You know I'm figuring it out.

Speaker 2: 23:28

So, yeah, and I don't think that anything in our history what are ways that you're taking care of yourself as you're going through this transition right now?

Speaker 1: 23:43

trying to listen to myself on what makes me happy. I really do prioritize my. I saw that post the other day and I loved it. I loved it. Which one, I don't know which one Post about joy, oh Post about joy and being happy.

Speaker 2: 23:58

I thought that really, that really I felt that inside my body when I was reading that. That really resonated with me.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Yeah, my posts have been resonating with a lot of people, even though, like I said, they're not my typical posts. Everybody's been like liking them, I think, because I'm just being real but just letting myself be happy and whatever that looks like. I think that's like you're like, what are you doing? Well, like for me one, I back into working out like crazy. I like working out that. I find joy in working out. I find joy in pushing my limits in my body. It's psycho and crazy, but I really do. Like my trainers are even like what are you doing to rest? Because you like to just go hard and intense, but that's my joy.

Speaker 1: 24:35

I'm the crazy one boxing for real. I'm the crazy one lifting like hard that's my joy. And then just doing me in whatever way, and even in the sense, like you're like, what are you doing for yourself? Like, yeah, I'm dating, you know, but like taking bold moves in that you know, and allowing myself to be vulnerable, as weird as I'm saying this out loud, there is some kind of joy in that too, because like, okay, I don't know if I'm really dating anymore, I don't know, but that's a whole nother story or topic. I don't want to go there, so, but I think that's the way I'm redoing my home. My wall is getting painted soon. I just redid my whole bathroom myself. I'm all on my own shelves.

Speaker 2: 25:19

For people who aren't watching right now. It's a lavender, it's really bright purple grape almost. Right now it looks lavender on the. Xanthum so yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 25:33

So my wall behind me is a very dark purple. You probably seen it on Tik Tok or lives, and I'm painting it a gray. I want, I like a gray. I'm going more of a muted, like a slate almost, but, and I'm rearranging so like I wallpapered my bathroom by myself, I put up my own shelves with a drill gun, like there's things that I'm just like this is what I, that's my own way. So when you're like, what do you do? Like be me, be me and whatever day, and if that's some days that I'm call those girls and I'm like let's grab drinks and we can have great adventures, like you know, this last weekend, go to Burbank for the day and then go to Santa Monica for the day, and then, you know, just do whatever I can do. In this part of the moments, that's my joy. I guess I don't know. They answer the question.

Speaker 2: 26:24

No, you did. I think that's helpful. You know, and I think what? What I heard is that understanding what makes you feel a sense of joy in the moment is really important, and it may not look like what other people, what it looks like for other people, and I think that's okay and that's when we really know that we are. We're moving for us and not for other people's expectations.

Speaker 1: 26:53

Yeah, I've even changed my work Like I don't even feel like I'm flowing with work like I used to, you know, because I just feel lately I can't even work unless I'm fully in it.

Speaker 2: 27:05

Yes, you know, yes, yeah, yes, because we've talked about that. I feel part of what I'm. I recognize now that I used to say yes to everything because I thought I had to and I don't think that served anyone. So now I'm I'm really discerning about what I say yes to, yeah, and I think that comes from a place of healing, right Like I don't think I'm healed, but I don't think I'll ever be healed Cause there's always trauma and things that happen to you. You know what I mean. It's not like we're stagnant.

Speaker 1: 27:50

It's not like Do you really always think there's going to be new trauma? I mean, I don't think that. I don't know. I think I'm taking on trauma. I feel like I'm here.

Speaker 2: 27:59

There will always be opportunities that come up and because life is not stagnant, that there will be things that will trigger me, like grief, for example. Um, you know I saw your post and I was yeah before. Yeah, that day before yesterday. I think it's a great example. You know I was. It's a New York, you have alternate side of the street parking so I had to move my car. So I'm sitting and I'm driving up the block overcast day, really chilly, classic fall day on the East coast have my coffee and as soon as I pull up, mpr was like playing some jazz. The steering wheel was cold and I could smell the coffee and I just, um, I lost it for a second because it really hit me like, oh shit, my dad is not coming back. Is this yesterday? Yeah, day before.

Speaker 1: 28:47

Yeah, I have to tell you what happened. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 28:51

So it was yesterday and you know, my dad's been, my dad's been gone for four years. But in a moment, just in that moment, it felt like, oh my God, like I just found out, you know, and for you know, if you've lost somebody, you know, this is part of Greek and that's and I think that's what I mean. It's not like I feel like I'm gonna be making the same mistakes, but things will always arise that allow you to recognize that things will always come up. And I was. You know, it wasn't like it took me under, but it really was just like oh yeah, this is with me forever. And I felt like he was.

Speaker 2: 29:28

I'm using my hands if you can't see me, I'm using my hands because I felt like he was in front, like he was right in front of me, just in another dimension, if that makes sense. So he was right there and I think maybe that's what I was also feeling. It's like he felt very close and far away at the exact same time, and I allowed myself to just be in it and there was almost a sense of joy being able to miss him, like we miss people that we loved a lot. It would mean nothing if I was just like oh, whatever.

Speaker 1: 30:02

There's no timeline in grief and there's no timeline in healing, and I thought there are people need to understand and that you know it comes in waves. There's moments and there's times. You know I was on the phone last night with a friend and I was sad like I was crying. You know I was saying I have. I mean, like you know, I have a wedding coming up in Oaxaca. It's a big family wedding. I'm super happy for the couple getting married but my family's going really big and everybody's there. Besides that, everybody's there with a couple and then there's I'm like I'm only actually, I only think I might be two, like I'm one of the very few that are single. Everybody's coupled up. But regardless of that, I was telling my friend, I was telling him I was like I was crying because I was like I miss my grandfather.

Speaker 1: 30:47

Like I was like I almost did a post where it was just I was trying to find a picture from my grandpa that was so weird to talk about grief and I saw it yesterday. I was like I was literally gonna post this and I don't think people understand. I mean, I've kind of talked about like the fact that he was my father.

Speaker 1: 31:03

In a sense he raised me and I just really miss him, like I was like I don't, even though I'm going to this wedding and it's really hard sometimes going to things as where very people are coupled up and you're like the only single person. It is kind of weird. No offense to that, there's a part of it. That's like I'm like I just I want my grandpa, like yeah, I'm gonna cry. I'm like you know, I want my grandpa and so much of my own. As we're talking about I'm just having these reflections as we're talking about spiritual healing. A lot of my spiritual healing that I had to do was allowing myself to break out of the mold and role that was assigned to me by being his granddaughter. You know I was raised by him, so I was his granddaughter, but yet I was his daughter and I took on this very matriarch next in line role for the family. I've had to hold very high standards in the sense where people looked up to me. They followed my lead in a sense. You know my marriage lead, my family lead, like my lead. I held the family holiday parties. I did all of it, and so when I went to, my spiritual healing was not just ripping of my own self, but it was also the family kind of had to change their structure. It was huge. Like literally, people don't talk to certain people. It was just a very big family structural change. But at the end of the day, going into this wedding, I'm just like I don't know. I don't even have words to say other than like I just miss him. I'm like I want my grandpa, like I want to see him there, I want to be with him. It's weird to say there's a part of me that feels I hold him with, like energetic-wise, in my own being, like in a room or space, but like I don't want to hold him in my own being spaces. I'm trying to put this in sense like I don't. I feel like I've somehow taken a part of this, but I also don't want to take that representation either. Does that make sense? Yeah, so it's like I know that. Like when people look or people like that's kind of part of it, you know, and they will like there's people that'll easily come to me and be like, oh my gosh, grandpa would be so, or grandpa this or grandpa that, and I'm just like, yeah, but there's a part of me that's like I just I don't, that's a part. I'm looking at where I'm going to Mexico and I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of triggers coming up for me.

Speaker 1: 33:26

There's a lot of triggers in missing my grandfather in this amazing place that holds so much of our culture and he loves so much, like it's triggering. You know, it's triggering for that. It's triggering because he's not there. It's triggering because I'm not I'm not married, like I don't. You know, I'm like do I want to get married again? Yes, like, but also being at a wedding is very uncomfortable, you know, like it's triggering because of that. It's just a lot of things and at the end of the day, even though he's not here, you still want someone. I still want him there to be my backbone. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 34:04

So I saw your post and I was like oh, my God, I was going to post something around grief and I was looking for a picture and I'm like, oh, like I don't know how to explain that. So, yeah, yesterday I crashed, I cried and then I felt bad for this person I was talking to, because I'm like I just dumped a whole lot of emotions on you, but at the end of the night I was like okay, I'm going to bed. It's like nine is like good night. Like I'm so sorry, like I didn't say sorry to them, but I'm thinking it like I gave you my emotions.

Speaker 2: 34:33

Yeah, sometimes we have to do that, right, we have to. Yeah, oh my God.

Speaker 1: 34:41

Literally they just text. You guys like energy and timing is so weird. Fyi, the first time I was talking about dumping my crap on just texted. So I.

Speaker 2: 34:56

Yeah, it's a journey. I think it is a journey.

Speaker 1: 35:06

Is it weird and perverse, perverse? I don't think it is to say that when you're allow yourself to step out of the perspective actually the one being healed, it's actually a really beautiful journey. It's it has its highs, it has its lows, it has its muddiness and long depths that you're just like. I don't even know if I can find the top of this, but there's a beauty to it. There's a beauty to it and it's like I have this image of like when the ocean is mad and it's dark not clear, but dark, you know and the waves are rough and you don't know which direction. There's a beauty to that, right, like you look at it, and there's a beauty to it. And I think, I think in all of it that it's like healing is ugly, healing is. I don't think it's pretty, but I think, at the end of the day, if you allow yourself to like, stand back, you're like it can be beautiful.

Speaker 1: 35:59

I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud of the mess that I had, the mess that I made. I'm proud of like, yeah, I ripped shit up, like I'll do it again. I'll do it again, you know why? Because, at the end of the day, I have kids that are following my lead. I'll do it again for my cousins that have come to me and said I'm really was scared of what you chose in your life, because I saw myself Exactly and I knew that you know. I do it again for the older generation that has come up and said thank you, because I didn't have the words to speak out about my own abilities and gifts and another subject.

Speaker 1: 36:31

You know it's like I would do it again for my clients, like I would never choose to not do it again. But it was hard and it still is hard and I know I'm in another stage in life now where people are like we wanna know about your dating, we wanna know about the healing part of this, we wanna hear it. You know I give it what I can give it. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:58

I think it's always ongoing, depending upon where you are in life too, and that's why it's hard. You know, I think just when we think we get to a place where you think you have it all figured out, you know, something else comes in to trip you up. But I think that's light, I think that's what life is, and I think if we let go of the idea that things have to be perfect, right.

Speaker 1: 37:26

Let's just get rid of it. I don't like we seriously do need to get rid of that word. I hate that word. It's a horrible word.

Speaker 2: 37:33

And it's not helpful.

Speaker 1: 37:36

Who made the rule? I mean we all, but don't answer that that's a whole talk.

Speaker 2: 37:40

We all made the rule. We know who made it, but it's not. It's just so harmful. It's so harmful.

Speaker 1: 37:49

And it's such a thing we chase, like, how many listeners sitting here, how many of you guys are chasing perfectionism, perfectionism on whose rules that's? I feel we should have covered that topic, but like it's a horrible thing, there's no problem. There's your journey, there's my journey. We don't look alike. We may mirror some things, but there's no less to it and there's no timeline. So we need to like embrace, embrace, patience and, oh no, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 38:23

How's that? Having children talks about healing. I can't remember what book it is, but she says you know, if it were easy. She talks about healing as enlightenment right, and she's like if we could just get enlightened by snapping our fingers. I mean she said we'd be insufferable, like people would just be insufferable because you'd look at people who are suffering, like what's wrong with you, why can't you just get it together? So I think there's also some compassion that gets built into this process as well, that we can see the suffering in other people and be compassionate because we've experienced it for ourselves, or at least that's the hope as we're on this journey.

Speaker 1: 39:12

It's hard, though, to look at your inner demons and to hold that mirror up to yourself and be like. You know. That's why I tell people from my job for living, I'm like I got you. I'll hold the mirror up for a little while, let you see yourself. You know that sounds so bad, isabel, but you get what I say when I do. But you know I'll hold it up and like, but it's hard for us to see our inner demons and what we've created and what we've chosen to be a part of.

Speaker 2: 39:36

Yeah, to sit with the shame or embarrassment or just things that make us uncomfortable things that we were told that we should feel uncomfortable about, and I think that's also part of it, right? It's that constant balance between sitting with yourself and then recognizing narratives that you are fed about the things that you're looking at and somehow making you less them and making you less perfect versus. This is just who you are and you did what you did because you needed to at that time.

Speaker 1: 40:03

You brought in a crazy thing earlier when we were talking about I think you mentioned something about religion too, like how religion can bring aspects into us that we've chosen believe to affect our healing. I was listening to a talk earlier on, was it last week? Yeah, it was last week when my professor was talking about spirituality, the growth of spirituality versus religion, and I'm just thinking about it right now because I'm like, well, we're talking about spiritual healing. I don't know where I was going with my thought, but I was trying to think about, like how she was talking about healing and I'm like I think people chose the spiritual route at times to heal because it's less constraint than the religious aspect.

Speaker 2: 40:42

Yeah, that part is yeah, and I didn't grow up with religion but and I didn't grow up with spirituality either, but there's a gentleness that I think I have with myself that I did not have before I was not.

Speaker 1: 41:02

I think I was more of a bee when I was religious than I was spiritual, Like no, I mean.

Speaker 2: 41:07

I was all sharp, sharp edges. That's a great story, yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:14

Yeah, everything had to be black and white. Follow these lines, things like that.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yes, there was no wiggle room, not for me and not for anybody else.

Speaker 1: 41:26

No, no, yeah, it was literally fire and brimstone or heaven. There was no me.

Speaker 2: 41:30

Yeah, yeah. And the harm in that right, the harm in that inflexibility.

Speaker 1: 41:40

Yeah, that's like a whole another conversation. I think people would be really surprised to say, like when I told you like I look back on the church that I was a part of and the way that I would drill my children at the dining room table, like I'm telling you guys, we followed a thing where I was like why was God made, what is he here, how is he present? Like, and they had to be like omnipresent, omnipotent, like it was like a drill, like bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. It was crazy.

Speaker 2: 42:05

I was a little crazy, just a little bit, but we, you know, we grow.

Speaker 1: 42:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:14

We grow.

Speaker 1: 42:16

And that's why it's hard. You know, I don't know anything else. I mean, I'm like we said why is it hard? We're like I don't know, guys, because you're learning all the time, you're growing, you think you got your shit figured out and then all of a sudden, you don't got shit figured out, that's it, that's it. All of a sudden, you go from like ah to like fudge, what just happened, like it literally is like that. And then you know what the beautiful thing is is that you'll take from what you learned last time and you'll be like I got this. You will. I got this. I'm gonna approach this time differently. And I got this. I made it out of that. I'm gonna make it out of this.

Speaker 1: 42:55

I got this, even though right now I was telling Onika earlier that it sucks sometimes being alone. I think I've learned so much in my life how to be alone. In the retrospect. You asked a really good question like well, weren't you alone then too? And I think the reality is is I've always been alone. And, like at my childhood, I look at my marriage, I look at my last relationship, like I've always been alone and I think at the end of it it's like I got this, like I got this. This is who I am. I got this and, yeah, I don't think I'll be alone forever, if that's a whole nother time.

Speaker 2: 43:27

I don't think you're alone now, and I think that's also what's important to me, and we need people, and you don't need a lot of people, you know, for those of you out there, I think sometimes we think we need this whole giant community, but sometimes you just need one person who can see you, and that makes it hard.

Speaker 1: 43:44

That's our best community right now. Like I was thinking about these days, I was like I have the best community I've ever had and maybe consist of three to four people and it is all in.

Speaker 2: 43:56

Yeah, yeah, my love. Yeah, I do feel like I have places where I can go to be seen and to feel, to feel held, and that was not something that I could do for a while. I didn't feel like safe enough that people could hold space for me and that wasn't the same.

Speaker 1: 44:18

That's a big one. I like that. You said that I don't feel I didn't feel safe enough for people to hold space for me. Yeah, I didn't. That's big and I think that's a big thing for a lot of us that we don't feel safe enough for people to hold space for us. We don't feel safe enough to even let people see us.

Speaker 2: 44:35

I didn't feel safe enough inside myself, yeah, and I think that kept me away from me and also from finding community. And I think when I was able to be vulnerable with myself and even say that out loud, it shifted a lot for me. Like before, even five years ago, I had said those words out loud, I would be in a crumpled pile on the floor right now in tears because it was so raw and I think it's still there to some degree. I think some things in us don't change. We just learn how to make peace with them. Right, like the grief. Grief changes, but it doesn't go away and I think I think I'm discerning about who I'm close with, like in who I share with.

Speaker 1: 45:23

I think that's part of healing too, is understanding that my time and my space and my energy is valuable. You have a right to be discerning of that. That's part of healing, I think, yeah, you've been taught that we weren't allowed to do that, right? I mean, we go back into, like you say, black and brown and the fact of, like, we weren't taught boundaries, weren't allowed to have boundaries, like you know. Then, allowing yourself to kind of explore and do that, that's helpful.

Speaker 2: 45:46

Yeah, and being you know, I made some mistakes, like sometimes I was too close with people that I shouldn't have been, and there are people I probably should have confided in and I didn't. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 45:59

I think I want to say too in this, in the spiritual aspect of it just because you know what I'm saying, just because somebody is spiritual or says they're spiritual doesn't necessarily mean they're a value of your time or space or energy. Yeah, and I think that goes into healing. So when you're healing, even as you're healing and you're growing, you're knowing yourself. The most important thing is you trust your intuition and your instinct, and if somebody's projecting an energy that it's just not, it's not for you, it's not for you.

Speaker 1: 46:26

And I say that because I think that we can be trustworthy of people because of titles given or because people say they are yeah, yeah, like I knew when I met you, I was like, oh, she could hold space for me, yeah, I liked you when I met you. I remember meeting you and I was like oh, we could talk forever.

Speaker 2: 46:46

I was like, yeah, no, I remember that too and that's not. You know, it's not always the case and I think that's fine, but I think it's. I think that's a big part of also what makes it hard, where I think. For me I was also. Once I started on this journey, I was afraid to make mistakes, going back to perfectionism.

Speaker 1: 47:06

Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing, though, is that it's okay to make mistakes. I talk about that all the time. I don't even that's another word I don't like mistakes. I don't believe we make mistakes. I believe that we get, we get opportunity to grow from, and that's it, at the end of the day, right. We grow from them, and that's. I don't believe in mistakes like that. What'd you learn Great? Did you learn it? Yes, okay, done, move on, move on. I think the only mistake that we can make is when we learn from it and we redo it again.

Speaker 2: 47:39

Yeah, I told you last week. That's when my boss is like okay, you make a mistake, great, don't make it again, right?

Speaker 1: 47:46

Right, that's it. That's all the, I think, quote the mistake we have. It's like oh well, you let yourself do it again. You know he was good with the one liners like that.

Speaker 2: 47:56

He would do like a high low of the day. He would say like what's your high, what's your low? High, lows of the day.

Speaker 1: 48:01

It was real.

Speaker 2: 48:02

It was very cool to have a boss like ask you those questions. Like it was unusual.

Speaker 1: 48:08

I like my low of the day. Those are good ones. Those are good ones.

Speaker 2: 48:11

Yeah, yeah, he had some. He had some good ones. Yeah, he was tough, he was funny, good, all right.

Speaker 1: 48:21

Any other tips before we close it out? No, I think that's it. All right, guys, I think that's everything. If you have questions about spiritual healing, let us know. I think there's a lot of layers to it. I think that we've covered a lot of layers in our last podcast, even because we've talked about it. Even as you're healing right, especially as a black, brown person, you heal, you'll find freak I got to go heal some other shit that was been in there for generations and years. So I think it's just allowing yourself that grace, that patience, and to fill into it, and don't compare, don't compare. Yeah, all right, talk to you guys later.

Speaker 2: 48:59

Bye, bye, everyone, bye Bye.