Today on Breakfast of Choices, I'm joined by inspiring Guest, Kristin Campbell. Kristin shares her powerful story of healing from trauma. She opens up about overcoming 13 years of narcissistic abuse through counseling, journaling, and holistic wellness practices.
Kristin gets vulnerable discussing the trauma of past relationships and her ex-husband's suicide, and how unpacking these experiences through therapy has set her free. She shares insights about pursuing a healing environment and how everything can be overcome with active participation. She now helps others as a life coach and energy practitioner.
Kristin also offers hope that anyone can overcome life's deepest wounds. Be sure to listen to her full story to see how she has learned to move forward operating out of healthy boundaries and a greater sense of trusting herself. She has learned to take responsibility for herself and her divine rights.
I hope you find encouragement from Kristin's message of empowerment and take steps toward your own recovery and well-being.
Resources:
Kristin's Book "Unseeable": https://www.amazon.com/Unseeable-process-healing-enduring-effects/dp/B0CZ3SF77J
Kristin's Website: https://www.connectedwellnessllc.com/
\+GH3
From Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
We all have them...every single day, we wake up, we have the chance to make new choices.
We have the power to make our own daily, "Breakfast of Choices"
Resources and ways to connect:
Facebook: Jo Summers
Instagram: @Summersjol
Facebook Support: Chance For Change Women’s circle
National suicide prevention and crisis, hotline number 988
National domestic violence hotline:
800–799–7233
National hotline for substance abuse, and addiction:
844–289–0879
National mental health hotline:
866–903–3787
National child health and child abuse hotline:
800–422–4454
CoDa.org
12. Step recovery program for codependency.
Today on Breakfast of Choices, I'm joined by inspiring Guest, Kristin Campbell. Kristin shares her powerful story of healing from trauma. She opens up about overcoming 13 years of narcissistic abuse through counseling, journaling, and holistic wellness practices.
Kristin gets vulnerable discussing the trauma of past relationships and her ex-husband's suicide, and how unpacking these experiences through therapy has set her free. She shares insights about pursuing a healing environment and how everything can be overcome with active participation. She now helps others as a life coach and energy practitioner.
Kristin also offers hope that anyone can overcome life's deepest wounds. Be sure to listen to her full story to see how she has learned to move forward operating out of healthy boundaries and a greater sense of trusting herself. She has learned to take responsibility for herself and her divine rights.
I hope you find encouragement from Kristin's message of empowerment and take steps toward your own recovery and well-being.
Resources:
Kristin's Book "Unseeable": https://www.amazon.com/Unseeable-process-healing-enduring-effects/dp/B0CZ3SF77J
Kristin's Website: https://www.connectedwellnessllc.com/
\+GH3
From Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
We all have them...every single day, we wake up, we have the chance to make new choices.
We have the power to make our own daily, "Breakfast of Choices"
Resources and ways to connect:
Facebook: Jo Summers
Instagram: @Summersjol
Facebook Support: Chance For Change Women’s circle
National suicide prevention and crisis, hotline number 988
National domestic violence hotline:
800–799–7233
National hotline for substance abuse, and addiction:
844–289–0879
National mental health hotline:
866–903–3787
National child health and child abuse hotline:
800–422–4454
CoDa.org
12. Step recovery program for codependency.
Welcome to Breakfast of Choices, the weekly podcast that shares life stories of transformation. Each episode holds space for people to tell their true, raw and unedited story of overcoming intense adversity. From addiction and incarceration, mental illness, physical and emotional abuse, domestic violence, toxic families, codependency and more. Trauma comes in so many forms. I'm your host, jo Summers, and also someone who hit my lowest point before realizing that I could wake up every day and make a better choice, even if it was a small one. So let's dive into this week's story together to learn from and find hope through someone's journey from rock bottom to rock solid, because I really do believe you have a new chance every day to wake up and make a change, to create your own. Breakfast of Choices. Good morning, welcome to the Breakfast of Choices podcast real-life stories of transformation from rock bottom to rock solid. I'm your host, jo Summers, and my guest today is Kristen Campbell, brand new author of a book titled Unseeable, which we will learn about as she tells her story.
Speaker 2:I met Kristen at a monthly women's group called Wind Down and Reset. We had an exercise that we were doing and we ended up partners and we just found out that we really had a lot of things in common. We talked for a while and I invited Kristen to come on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to talk about overcoming the effects of trauma, physical abuse, mental abuse, narcissism. A traumatic suicide that shook her to the core and overall wellness and learning how to deal with it all. We hope to provide you today with not only hope and encouragement, but even just some tips that you can do for yourself if you're going through any of these struggles.
Speaker 2:The first thing in any recovery is admitting that we need to do some work on ourselves. So we stop carrying our baggage around from relationship to relationship. We stop carrying our baggage around from relationship to relationship. It is incredibly worth it to heal the traumas that we carry and learn to be the person that we want to attract. Hi, kristen, I am so glad that you're here with me today. I'm just going to let you go ahead and get into telling your story, lariah. Thank you so much for having me. Jo, this is definitely a tremendous honor to be present with you today and to get a chance to talk about the things that I'm passionate about and how some aspects of my passion got developed. So it's a real treat, super excited to have you.
Speaker 2:Well, what I would love to share about, first and foremost, is just my desire and hope to give people encouragement that you can overcome the effects of trauma and abuse. And you know I am now five years free about five years free from a 13-year relationship in a marriage that was full of varying aspects of psychological and mental and verbal abuse, with a man who has a lot of highly narcissistic tendencies. There was just periods of time that were so degrading and really ultimately, at the end of that relationship I just felt like a shell of myself, like I really had no idea who I was, and the process through those years of that relationship really took me through, growing back into becoming the fullness of who I am, who I was made to be, and rebuilding myself in so many ways. I love hearing that. Yeah, you know, I'm a big believer in that. There's value in all things. That doesn't mean that all things are good, but good can be worked from all things Absolutely. And certainly I wouldn't have stayed for 13 years if there was never any good moments. There was, and that's part of what abusers can oftentimes use to keep you in the loop and to keep you in it. And I have amazing children also, that you know. I kept thinking well, gosh, at some point things will change.
Speaker 2:I have a tendency to have that personality where the glass is not just half full but it's refillable, and having that enduring and unending optimism that things will get better, and chronically giving the benefit of the doubt. And there are times where that is a beautiful gift, and then there are times where that is taken advantage of and where it's really unwise. And that's ultimately what I had to come to in rebuilding trust with myself. I really got the opportunity to realize that giving trust to people who are untrustworthy is not kind or compassionate to anybody involved. As I continued making excuses for his bad behavior or his inability or unwillingness to engage in healthy, effective communication, I was not being kind or compassionate to any of us that were in our home, and it took a long time for me to really accept and to realize my parts of responsibility in that, because I just kept thinking I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best and I was, but the best that I really could do was say this is not acceptable and this will not continue. And that comes with loving yourself right, absolutely, and knowing yourself and doing the work and doing the healing and figuring out where it came from that you're allowing these behaviors and you've made them somehow in your mind acceptable. There's a lot to unpack with this, I know, and I know you're going to take us backwards a little bit into how some of this comes about and how we compartmentalize and where we put trauma and how we bring it with us. Yes for sure. So prior to that relationship. I had two other main relationships in my life that also paved the way just for trauma upon trauma my ex-husband that I stayed with for 13 years was that I had not taken the time to heal from those previous two relationships and a lot of it was just an unfortunate way of me moving on, and I know you and I have talked about this a little bit before that moving on and moving forward are not the same thing, right? So two things for me in moving on, it was just a well, I'm going to shut away the past and I'm just going to continue with this new relationship, but not really dealing with the things from the past. And now, in my healing process, of healing from that 13-year relationship, now I can say absolutely at this point in my life I'm truly moving forward. I'm taking all of those things that happened in the past and I've integrated them and I've learned the lessons that I needed to learn from them trust in myself, as well as taking full responsibility for me, that it is my divine right and sacred responsibility to take really, really great care of myself, absolutely. So those are the few things that have helped me.
Speaker 2:The one and I felt deeply in love with that man. I felt as though I was, and you know, it just was one of those situations where it was like we had a very passionate relationship, positively and negatively. But unfortunately, that relationship was built on an unsustainable platform of a trauma bond. We had bonded through deep grief. We both had experienced very sudden, very unexpected losses, and only a month apart, less than a month apart, or well around a month apart, something like that, and that really caused us to lean into one another and I think it could have just been a really beautiful thing if we had done so as friends.
Speaker 2:But I was so young I was only 19 years old at the time and you don't know what you don't know until you know better. Say that all the time, say it all the time. Know what we don't know, and it's okay, but we have to be responsible enough to figure it out Absolutely and then, when you know better, do better Right. Yes, absolutely so. For me, the relationship that preceded that short marriage was the primary trauma that shaped my life as a young woman and that was one of my very first real relationships, you know, other than just like a little high school dating. You know, oh, this is my boyfriend. Oh, two months later we broke up. So my relationship with that man led to me becoming a mom.
Speaker 2:I had my first child when I was only 17 years old and there was a lot of trauma just around that as well.
Speaker 2:Being a teen mom was overwhelming, it was frightening. My beautiful, amazing, now 25-year-old daughter was only given a 3% chance to live. I was only given a 40% chance to live. I had complications early on in my pregnancy, at only 20 weeks, and was strongly encouraged to medically abort her, which I refused. All I knew was I can still feel her. She was very much alive and I was like, no, absolutely not. And so thankfully, she thankfully was born only a month early and was this tiny little four pound, 11 ounce bundle of strength and sass. When I took her home from the hospital and her father and I did the very best that we could to make a life together. And he was an amazing man. He was wonderful and he was so kind and he was so thoughtful and so protective in so many ways. And yet he had struggles with drinking and when he would drink excessively he became abusive and it was. It created so much confusion for me and just an overwhelm of so many different emotions, truly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because we were so young and so I could excuse all of those things you know, and we talked about that and how we, how we learn to excuse some of those behaviors by saying, well, they were drunk, or well, they were high, or well they this and they're not really that person, and we learn to excuse those behaviors and we're really doing a disservice not only to them but hugely to ourselves. Yes, yes, and especially in my situation, to children who are involved in that, and and my daughter was so young at the time and yet we know from studies and research and various aspects of psychology that those things that are happening and even just the energy of an environment has a huge impact on children as they're growing up. So I'm very passionate about people taking these things so, so seriously. And had I taken it more seriously and not given in every time, you know, the morning after he would just be so full of what I can absolutely tell was genuine remorse. He had no recollection of the ways that he had treated me when he was in those situations and so it was so easy for me, because of that, to excuse the behavior and to not hold those very honorable standards of excellence. To say this is not acceptable and I know that, as a man, you can't possibly feel good about treating me in this way. Get help, yeah, by holding those healthy standards and boundaries it. It could have changed everything about the outcomes of what our lives were like at that time. And you know that's those. Those were not the ways that I handled it back then, and I do believe that there was a lot more stigma around mental health and addiction and getting help. I'm so grateful that these days there is so much more openness, I believe, around those concepts, around those concepts and so many more resources also that make help more readily available for people who are struggling, whether it be struggling with abusive relationships or struggling with addiction or struggling with mental health issues.
Speaker 2:You know that just was not, that wasn't my story at that time. And and you were what like 17, 18 at this point right, you're getting, and so you're, oh yeah, you're just growing up. Yeah, you're learning, you're growing, you're a new mom in a, in a new relationship with, with also a young person. You know, and it depends, when we know better, we do better. Right, right, right, absolutely, absolutely, and I and I'm grateful for the ways, truly, that my story has unfolded. I'm not grateful that it happened, of course. I'm not grateful that those things happened. However, I'm grateful that through all of it I do genuinely see God working it for good, and that part of it I am incredibly grateful for.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, that relationship, as I mentioned, ended with a very traumatic, very unexpected loss. We were planning a wedding for September 9th of 2000. And at the early part of August of that year he had his bachelor party and he had gotten drunk and had betrayed me in such a very, very horrific way by being intimate with another woman on the night of his bachelor party. And I, you know that was the one thing that I was like firm, hard, boundary there. Like that I absolutely cannot do.
Speaker 2:I made myself believe that at some point he would get help for the drinking and the abuse that followed, or you know that he would grow out of it. You know that the pressures of our life, you know trying to make things work as such young parents, that you know at some point it would just get easier when we get used to it, right, but that was something that I was like. I absolutely cannot do, that I cannot move forward with marrying someone that I don't that that I, that I cannot trust to be faithful to me, right? And? And so it was a very, very difficult couple of weeks following finding out about that infidelity, following finding out about that infidelity, and, you know, filled, of course, with promises you know I'll never drink again and I will get help, you know, and all of those things, but it just felt so overwhelming, and I've written pretty extensively about this experience. You mentioned my book that just recently published, and it's about my experience with him taking his own life.
Speaker 2:He ended up not being able to handle the pressures of all of that and he took his own life on August 20th of 2000, while my daughter and I were home, and so that was a very, very traumatic experience.
Speaker 2:And so you were there and you found him. You had to deal with that, yes, yes, and dealing with that trauma, or rather not dealing with that trauma, or rather not dealing with that trauma and that sense of lifelessness that suicide inevitably leaves behind, being something that disrupted our lives and caused so much difficulty in moving on, so much difficulty in moving forward, really, and that that just led me to move on. The relationship that I then got into after that and just the ways that I carried the effects of that trauma forward into those other relationships. Did you do any kind of work after that happened? You do any kind of work after that happened? Did you do any kind of work healing that trauma, any kind of work on yourself, any kind of counseling, anything after that happened? Because I do know how traumatic that is, you know. You know I have someone that was young in my life that also committed suicide. Although we were not together at the time, it is still a hard event in my life, still something that I work through.
Speaker 1:So, with that situation, with you and you're the one that was- there and you're the one that found him.
Speaker 2:Did you just kind of lock that away in what we talk about our compartments and just kind of move on without moving forward For so long? Yes, that is absolutely what happened. You know I had my daughter and it was two months prior to her second birthday when he took his life and you know, my focus was just on providing a life for her and doing my best to continue to make sure that she had a childhood still that I sustained, you know, our livelihood. I took four days off work after dealing with that and that, to me, is a prime example of moving on and not moving forward. I did not take any time to heal. Yeah or process. It is yeah or process. I didn't know how to process it. Sure, it was so overwhelming and you know, particularly being there when it happened and finding him and dealing with the overwhelming trauma of all of that, I would. I would busy myself because I was terrified to go to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes. That's all I could see. Yeah, and so it was about the one year anniversary of his death.
Speaker 2:I was so overwhelmed with the effects of that trauma that I went to just my regular physician and talked to him about what I was experiencing. He was like how have you not been in here so much longer before this? And I said well, you know, I just I've been doing my best to take care of my daughter and to work and to keep my bills paid and I I'm I'm so grateful that I was able to do all of those things and yet I have so many memory blocks, because I was barely functioning on very limited sleep, yeah. And that doctor said you know, here's some medication and you'll never be able to live like a normal person without it. And he said to me some things are just unseeable. The time there was you know, of course, this is 24 years ago almost. At that time there just was not as much information readily available about the beauty and the benefits of neuroplasticity. They really did believe that trauma changes the brain indefinitely. Believe that trauma changes the brain indefinitely. And while that may be true, now, in the years since then, with these advancements in the field of neuroscience, we know that, even though that is true that trauma changes the brain, there is so much more healing capacity available than what was previous believed. Right, those words stuck in my mind and I'm just enough of a rebel that I knew at some point I'm going to prove him wrong.
Speaker 2:I do not what I want. I do not want a life of medication and yet I absolutely had to have it at that point and that's okay. That's okay, absolutely, absolutely. Yes, it was life-saving and necessary. I needed to be able to sleep. Yes, you need to be able to function without those extreme lows that the effects of post-trauma were having on my life, and yet I hated the way that medication made me feel.
Speaker 2:And that's not my very own opinion, oh yeah, well, how can you not? There is no such thing as a medication that is free of adverse effects, called side effects. But they're really adverse effects, if we're totally honest. Yes, that doesn't mean that they're not life-saving and necessary at times, but it comes with a cost, and it's not always a $5 or $10 copay. The cost is sometimes quite high and in my case that's what I experienced. So I did end up getting in to see a counselor, and that was very short-lived, because the counselor said at one point and I know she meant well, but she said well, I know how you feel and I remember you know, here I was this spicy, probably early 20s, and I said, oh really, you've also found your fiance headless in your basement. Tell me more about that. And I just got up and walked out.
Speaker 2:And so I think when we're working with people, when we're talking with people that are dealing with very heavy situations, we have to be so careful and that's not to add stress, but it's just to stress the importance of really empathetic and effective listening requires us to just hold space for people to tell their story and to heal, and we can't pretend that we know exactly what they're dealing with, because everybody experiences things in their own ways, right, and everybody experiences things in their own ways, right, and everybody handles trauma in their own ways. Everybody would experience that in a different way. You might have had a similar experience that you can portray with someone or talk about with someone, but you can't know how someone feels. You just can't. That is unique. The way that someone feels is unique to themselves, and everybody's rock bottom is different. Everybody's trauma level is different, and it just is. And we have to know that when we're talking with people, 100%. That is so true, that is so true.
Speaker 2:And so I discontinued counseling for an extended amount of time and I think it was. It probably was not until after, or maybe during the separation from my first marriage. You know the, the man that I had shared about. He had an unexpected loss about a month after my fiance's suicide and we already had a friendship and we just continued to support and encourage one another as friends, which in our emotional immaturity and lack of life experience then way too quickly led to a relationship Right, and that is where you were calling that a trauma bond, correct. Relationship Right. And that is where you were calling that a trauma bond, correct. Yes, yes for sure.
Speaker 2:And I have these beautiful blessings that have come out of these relationships. You know, with these men that I maybe should have not been in relationship with but I was, and nonetheless I've got these amazing children that are my gifts. And I say, you know, I have the very best of those men that I was in relationship with, my fiance that committed suicide. I was blessed to raise the very best of him. And the interesting thing is, now I have an almost six-year-old granddaughter. And the interesting thing is, now I have an almost six-year-old granddaughter and there are some times that this precious baby girl will shoot. A look and I'm like, I feel like her grandfather is flashing a look at me through this precious baby girl, because she's got blue eyes, just like her grandfather did, well, and I feel like that very well could be true. So he's looking down, yeah, he's there. Yeah, so that was your first relationship, girl, and that is a lot to carry with you and take to the next one and to the next one.
Speaker 2:So it's like a snowball just keeps on going and keeps on going and you're just picking up more trauma as you go and not dealing with that.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, that becomes so, not only with your mind and your soul, but your body, the trauma that your body goes through and what stress causes. And I just can't even imagine what you were feeling like during those years. Yeah, you know, really there was a tremendous sense of numb. I operated out of this space of feeling overwhelmingly numb in so many ways and you know, as I have unpacked the trauma and melted the snowball, you know that was a perfect analogy. You know this trauma just builds upon itself and it just became this snowball that was rolling downhill and not until it was probably about a decade ago that things really came to a head for me in the trauma and the cycles of abuse that I was experiencing in my 13-year marriage. Within that, it was about a decade ago that things really got to a point where I began to truly unpack a lot of that trauma and to stop the snowball from continuing to roll down the hill and then begin to let it out continuing to roll down the hill and then begin to let it out.
Speaker 1:What do?
Speaker 2:you think was the turning point for you? What do you? Can you look back and go? This happened and I just woke up and decided to like what is the turning point for you? Well, for me, a major turning point was I really realized that I had become, that I had no idea who I was.
Speaker 2:Ultimately was what happened as my youngest child, who is now a very vibrant, almost 15-year-old, as she began school full-time, Our school and our community had a pre-k program and it was a full day pre-k program. So, as things unfolded throughout my life, I had for several years been a stay-at home mom and I loved that and I found a tremendous amount of purpose within that. And then it got to the point where here's my baby girl, my last child, getting prepared to go to school full-time and as I was enrolling her, I was like what am I gonna do? I have no idea who I am. I don't have hobbies. I was in a relationship. That marriage that I was in at the time to her father was one where I did not feel safe or comfortable being myself. Everything's open to criticism and there was a lot of ways of coercive control that really kept me from having a whole lot of social connection as well. You would be very jealous of time that I would spend with friends and very critical about that. And I thought, what am I going to do Once she goes to school? What am I going to do? And so that's really kind of where my full stop began was looking at all of that, and that led into some additional really, really traumatic eruptions within the marriage. I started speaking up for myself more. I got into business with a friend and co-owned a business with her for a while. I started having some of my own income sources and I really began to look at more intentionally the ways that those previous two relationships had impacted me and the ways that the trauma had impacted me.
Speaker 2:I started speaking up for myself more adamantly during the seasons that I would struggle that primary trauma of my fiance's suicide. You know, it just so happens. I mean, for a long time I struggled year round and then it kind of shortened to a window of several months. His birthday was at the end of July, then the trauma of his suicide was in August and of course the anniversary of when we were supposed to be getting married was in September. So it really shortened to a few months and then over time it shortened to where it was about six weeks and I have referred to it as my season of struggle or my season of suck Just found it difficult to function during that season and to maintain the equilibrium that I had that I had kind of forged through the years.
Speaker 2:I could tuck it away and I could keep it compartmentalized, but during that season of struggle there was no way to keep it compartmentalized. I couldn't just keep it tucked away. It just was so overwhelming and demanded attention and I began speaking up more about that and giving myself the space to deal with it, instead of cowering codependently to my then husband's demands that he be enough and nothing else should have mattered, because he was my savior, and that was really kind of an attitude that he projected onto me that I, like I said, codependently cowered to for a long time. And then it just got to the point where I was like I can't, I have to deal with this Around. That same time I got connected with a wonderful 12-step ministry that unpacks not only issues of addiction, which I struggled with food addiction. That was my drug of choice. It was more socially acceptable, it was readily available, and so I have really struggled with body image issues through all of these aspects of the trauma.
Speaker 2:I struggled with overeating and then restricting food and in that fall, when my daughter went to school full time, I finally got to the point where I was like I'm going to just take care of myself and I started to really take responsibility for taking really great care of myself more physically. I think that truly opened me up to taking a deeper look at the mental and the emotional and the spiritual components of healing that are absolutely essential. What did that cause in your marriage at the time? Because I know a little bit from personal experience. When you start taking care of yourself physically, there is this what are you doing? Why are you doing that? I am trying to stop you from doing that in many different ways.
Speaker 1:So how did?
Speaker 2:that affect what was going on in your marriage at that time? Yeah, you know, there was so just an onslaught constantly of accusations of me having an affair oh, I know that you're doing this and you're doing that. And the crazy thing was because I had such distorted body image issues and such distorted perspectives of myself and my then husband was not an affectionate and affirming man, he was very degrading and affirming man. He was very degrading, and so I was beginning to get attention. As I released a lot of weight and as I was working out, I was beginning to get attention. But it was so odd and awkward for me because I didn't see what other people were seeing. I saw this projected image of what my husband saw and so I really laughed off his accusations of an affair and then it kind of turned into this self-fulfilling prophecy where and that's not to abdicate responsibility for my part but there was a man that was present at the place where I was exercising consistently and he started making comments, you know, about the way that I looked and being very affirming and I really didn't give it a whole lot of thought or energy. I was just like, oh yeah, thanks, you know, and I just really brushed it off and I didn't take it seriously. And then I made the mistake of telling that man about my husband's accusations and that was all it took. He doubled down on his efforts and started engaging in even more advances, which, once again, I brushed it off. Brushed it off until my husband and I got in a fight one night and one of his messages to me. I responded to it and I didn't respond to it with any kind of vulgar anything, I just said, oh really, and it was just like oh well, that opened up the floodgates and I ended up having really, really inappropriate communication with that man for a few months. And I did have an incident where I was physically involved with him not sexually, I was kissing him and I just was like this is not me, this is not who I am, and ended it immediately and never had any more contact with him again. But just that, you know and I don't mean to minimize, you know it as though like, oh well, it was no big deal, it was. That was wildly inappropriate and that was absolutely a breaking of my vows in my marriage.
Speaker 2:I'm grateful I say it in the way that I do because I am so grateful that it was not. You know this. I hear about the stories and the ways that it is very destructive mentally, emotionally, for people who have these years long. You know affairs, you know that are so covert and behind the scenes and the living of a double life. You know and, and, and I personally, for me as a woman, I just believe that when something crosses that sexual boundary it makes it even more challenging. So I'm just grateful, but again, not to say that it's a minimization of my actions, but I'm just so grateful that it didn't go to that extent. But that issue actually caused my then husband's years of deceptive infidelity to come to the surface. And so you know, there it just that to that, to me was astonishing the ways that he was shaming me when literally for a decade he had been deceiving me. Isn't that interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, what I have realized is, generally speaking, those who accuse, do you know, when someone is very, very untrusting, it's generally because they're untrustworthy. I couldn't agree more, could not agree more. I feel like we've been kind of all over the place because I have so many facets to my story. Oh, you absolutely do, and I love it because you know, you and I have talked a little bit and we talked the night that we met and you know we realized we had quite a bit of things in common, not only, but really just at that level of working to unpack it all. You know, to where you get, to that point where you finally go. I have to deal with this, I need to deal with this, and now I finally want to deal with this. I think I have to this and now I finally want to deal with this. I think you have to that place. You know you need to, but that place of getting to I finally want to deal with this. It takes such a weight off of you, off of your. It's hard, it's very hard to unpack it all it is and I don't mean to minimize that Like it's, like it just happens overnight, because it absolutely does not but just getting to that place where it's time and the benefits that you start seeing from that.
Speaker 2:You know that man at the gym was able to touch your self-esteem and you had none and he was able to remind you who you were girl. You knew him and you needed that. You needed somebody to go. You are worthy, yes, and and I'm not saying it was okay either. I'm not, you know, not diminishing responsibility in that, but you personally needed that someone to come to you and let you know that you were worthy and for you to start going. Wait a minute, what's happening? What's going on? No, and, and sometimes, unfortunately, it just does take that it takes somebody something, whatever that may be. I'm glad, whatever it was happened for you, but because you definitely had a snowball chasing you down the hill and I am so glad that you got to the point of unpacking that, tell me some of the things that you started doing for yourself and that started changing your mindset.
Speaker 2:You know, really one of the biggest things was I mentioned that I had gotten involved with a ministry, a 12-step recovery ministry, and that was huge because I did the inventory process. I also had been in counseling and I got back into counseling. So I had mentioned that. You know, years prior I had gone to a counselor and I was just like you don't know what I'm dealing with, but I did, thankfully, get connected with a wonderful counselor around that same time and even prior to that I had been back in counseling just to deal with some of the very traumatic ways that things were going in the marriage. So I had already been in counseling.
Speaker 2:And then I add in this 12 step program that has a wonderful recovery process, an inventory process, and it forced me Well, it really didn't. It invited me to unpack the whole snowball and I ended up with like 40 pages of inventory work and it was overwhelming in so many ways and yet there was just this beautiful release. As I looked at all of it, and in that program you know, the final column on the recovery process is taking a very, very good look at your part, absolutely yes. And so, as I examined my part, and then I went on and that process of the inventory happens most effectively in a step study that's what they call. It is a step study. And I did four of them back to back because, girl, I was that messed up, girl, you needed it, you needed that. Yes, I realized I was worth it. It was worth it. It was worth it for me to unpack all of that.
Speaker 2:And each one of those inventory processes unfolded different things. The first one was all of that trauma from those previous relationships and then, after that trauma got out of the way, then the second one I was really looking at a lot of the current relationship dynamics and the current problems that were going on, because I realized, okay, now, once I've dealt with this, all it is is highlighting these really unhealthy dynamics in the current one. And then, in the process of all of that, what was happening in the marriage was that the healthier that I got, the worse the marriage got, because I was no longer tolerating these dysfunctional ways of relating. I was setting higher standards and I was not giving in to those things. So that was just that. Inventory led to really so many of those other ways that I was working on healing. I was taking great care of myself. I was pursuing my purpose and my passions, pursuing education. I was reading a lot of books. I had spent so many years playing the Russian roulette game with the medications of which one is going to work somewhat with the least amount of side effects, and that just was never the best route for me. And so I began looking into holistic health and natural ways of supporting mental, emotional and physical wellness and balance, and that really aligned with me and that worked very, very powerfully for me, so much so that I pursued education so that I could help other people with those same resources, and so all of that really was working together to bring me towards greater stability, and I'm so grateful for all of it.
Speaker 2:So there was obviously a divorce, correct? Yes, okay, and that was how long ago for you plantation land that we went on. That ended with him telling me that he wished he could kill me, and he was stone cold, sober at the time, and truly I've never experienced that overwhelming presence of such evil energy. It was remarkably overwhelming even compared just to the toxic cycles that I had dealt with for so many years, but that led to a very firm separation. And then it took a while, though, between COVID and just his shenanigans COVID and just his shenanigans. It took until December of 2020 was when my divorce was final.
Speaker 2:Okay, you said you pursued education. What are you doing now? So I am blessed to be an energy practitioner. I'm certified in Reiki and Healing Touch practitioner. I'm certified in Reiki and Healing Touch. I am also a certified traditional doctor of naturopathy, and I own a wellness center here in Enid Oklahoma, and I love doing what I do. I'm also a life coach, so I am able to work with people near and far. I love my practice. What is the name of my practice? What is the name of my practice. What is the name of your practice? Connected Wellness. Okay, how can we find you? You can find me online at connectedwellnessllccom, as well as my Facebook page.
Speaker 2:I do my best to be really consistent about posting great, just helpful, small insights. I try not to get into really extensive information, but just give people little bits of helpful information that can help empower people to live well in mind, body and spirit. Absolutely, and we talked about this earlier. Kristen, you know, being able to tell our stories is so healing, and not only so healing for us, but we hope that we're offering encouragement and power and knowledge to someone who might be going through some of the same struggles. And just hear I always call it, just hear that one little thing that sticks right Maybe that's today and having somewhere to go and somebody to talk to and things to look at. Like you offer tips on your social media, just those little tips to get little bits of knowledge that help you want to have more knowledge and more knowledge and start gaining insight into yourself and what makes you you and what makes you tick and what you need to work on.
Speaker 2:And it's so important. It's important for men, it's important for women. It's important for everyone. So by no way, shape or form, are we trying to talk about men and relationships here. We're trying to talk about relationships as a whole and what trauma brings into them and what it allows us to accept and allow. And so I just want everyone to understand we're not bashing anybody here. That is not the not at all. I am incredibly blessed to work with a lot of really amazing men in my practice, yes, and I have every bit of understanding that women can have a lot of toxic traits too, and I had a lot of toxic ways that that trauma that I had not resolved, that I had not dealt with. I had a lot of toxic ways that that manifest within and a lot of reactive abuse and toxic ways that I responded to my husband as well during those 13 years of marriage.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, that's what working on ourselves does, because when we keep repeating the cycle and we keep repeating the pattern and we keep saying it's somebody else doing it to us, that's not helping anybody right, and we have to figure out. What are we doing also to bring that to the table, that light on our forehead that shines, that says pick me, pick me. We're bringing something there right with us and I used to say my picker was broke. That was my phrase all the time. And it's not my picker that was broke, it was me that was broke, right, causing me to not make the best choices right. And again, it's all about the choices that we make, and when we know better, we do better and we make better choices. And that is our whole goal, right, that's our whole goal is to. Maybe we can help people make some better choices because, lord knows, we haven't made the best over the years and you know, being hardheaded and being a rebel and all those things, while that can be cool sometimes, in our everyday lives it not helping us to to make the best choices for ourselves.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, now you said something that a doctor said to you and he said Kristen, this is unseeable. When you went to the doctor for the very first time, tell me what you did with that unseeable. Well, that was a big passion behind my book, which is titled Unseeable, because in reality, like I said, that planted this seed in me of like, absolutely not. I'm going to take this help that I absolutely need to accept at this time in this form of medication, but I refuse to accept that. I will see this for the rest of my life and I'm so blessed to be able to share the reality that for years now, and really a great deal of my healing has happened since I disconnected from that traumatic relationship.
Speaker 2:I am a huge believer that everything can be overcome, but it requires active participation from everyone involved Absolutely, and that did not exist in my marriage and it needed to end. It needed to be done for my safety and for the safety of my children. It had to be done so but but I absolutely am so grateful that putting myself in a healing environment and no longer living in those toxic cycles it's been years since I was heavily affected. Now, every year, you know, during those weeks around the anniversary, I still have some emotional unrest. It still is a reality. Nothing is going to change the reality of what happened, but the beauty of the life that gets to be created when you choose to heal from the trauma is outstanding, and so that's what my book is about. It's all about giving people a hope for healing from the effects of trauma. Yes, I cannot wait to read it. It just came out so I haven't had a chance to get it yet, but I cannot wait to read it.
Speaker 2:I know, just from talking with you and just from getting to know you, just what's in your heart and your passion for helping people. It's beautiful and it radiates from you and you are just an absolutely gorgeous woman inside and out and it's so beautiful it really is, and I know that we have so many things that we could unpack together. We could talk about codependency, we could talk about narcissism, we could talk about health, holistic health and healing, and I know I want to have you back on another time and, you know, share some of those different topics and some things that you know people can do to heal and be able to just offer some of that hope and encouragement. If you're up for it, absolutely, it would be my honor. I have really enjoyed this with you today and I hope that again that someone heard something today that they can take away from this.
Speaker 2:And we sometimes have been through things where we didn't have the choice for what we went through, but we do have the choice to heal what we went through. So I hope that someone hears this today and makes some good choices. So thank you so much, kristen. I hope the same thing, you know. If it helps one person choose to pursue healing, then it's worth it, because everyone is worth wellness. Oh, I love that. I love that let's talk soon, okay.
Speaker 1:I am so grateful that you joined me for this week's episode of Breakfast of Choices. If you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe, give it five stars and share it to help others find hope and encouragement. The opposite of addiction is connection, and we are all in this together. Telling your transformational story can also be an incredible form of healing, so if you would like to share it, I would love to hear it. You can also follow me on social media. I'm your host, Jo Summers, and I can't wait to bring you another story next week. Stay with me for more Transformational Thursdays.