Overcoming Family Trauma & Finding Joy with Blythe Donovan

Welcome to another inspiring episode of Breakfast of Choices. Today I'm thrilled to have Blythe Donovan on the show to share her powerful story of resilience and hope. As Blythe opens up about her challenging childhood dealing with family trauma, abuse, and the impact it had on her life, it's clear that her journey involved immense courage and healing to move forward.

Blythe gets vulnerable in discussing difficult topics like confronting her father's alcoholism as a child, dealing with the aftermath of sexual abuse, and navigating infidelity and divorce as an adult. Through it all, she found the strength to not only survive but thrive - becoming a devoted mother, a business owner as a Joy Coach, and a public speaker helping others overcome generational wounds.

Blythe shares insightful perspectives on topics like faith, female friendships, codependency, and choosing joy despite life's hardships. Her story exemplifies the power of resilience, community support, and hope to transform even the deepest pain into personal growth. I hope you'll join Blythe and I for this thought-provoking discussion on facing life's challenges with grace, grit, and ultimately finding light on the other side.

Connect with Blythe:
https://blythedonovan.com/
https://www.facebook.com/blythedonovan/
https://www.instagram.com/blythedonovan.joycoach/

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.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

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, this is Jo Summers with Breakfast of Choices, and I'm here with Blythe Donovan this morning.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Good morning, blythe, so happy to have you. Good morning Jo. Thank you so much for having me on. It's always wonderful to get time with you. No, thank you. So I have a very long and extended story, but I think the overarching theme of my story is resiliency and joy. Those are the two things that kind of stand out to me when I think about it. I was born in Arizona, grew up there. My family had some pretty significant trauma and things going on. My dad was an alcoholic. He had multiple affairs. He was a alcoholic. He was what. I was, four, I think. Our pediatrician asked me to draw a picture of my dad and I drew a picture of him holding a beer mug Because the only time I ever saw him and that I also that same year, asked my mom if I could see a picture of my dad because I really looked like and my parents were still married.

Speaker 2: 2:15

You know, several years ago when my mom passed away, they they worked through everything and and stayed married, which is just a beautiful testimony in and of itself. But because of the volatility in my family, my mom was very, very angry. All this time for good reasons, and she had a lot of childhood things that she had carried over. I believe that each generation tries to do better than the one before when we have kids and sometimes the things that us that are not healed end up influencing trauma and forwarding that on through the generations so that I can see, definitely and I almost look at my life as though I have like probably four separate sections. But since my childhood, which I most measure in six, was not awful I was not phenomenal either, although I really I was born an optimist. That's how I came out looking for the good in things, seeing the positive side, because of the anger and the alcoholism, and I kind of stepped into the I need to manage all of the feelings of the family mode. So I was codependent from a very, very young age and didn't understand until probably 10 or 15 years ago really, what codependency meant, because to me it seemed like I'm just being nice, I'm just being a good person. So I've done a lot of work on that. As we grew up, my dad ended up leaving his job and staying home. After some things came out very heavily about his affairs and he did get into treatment. I confronted him, which was kind of the first ever. So I really ever spoke up for myself, because I was such a people pleaser that I wouldn't do anything and I would bend over backwards to keep people happy and try to manage the emotions so that everybody else was happy, because that was what was comfortable for me. And the last time that my dad, you know, was drinking massively around us as a family was at a barbecue with all of his friends, all of my parents' friends. We had this big group from church that we would get together with and we did holidays with them and it was kind of like having our family, our extended family, around. And as as we were, had that barbecue, he got so drunk that he fell down, had let's stretch his knee at his face and didn't feel it. So, if you walk around, just really messed up and I was holding us. There was something wrong, that there was something going on and I didn't really know what it was, but I knew that I did not want to be around it. So when we got home I asked my mom what was wrong with dad, what was that about? And she said well, he was drunk and we had a talk to him about it and I said I'm not going to be around him if that's how he's hitting me, I'm just not. And she said you need to tell him. So I confronted him on it and he was at ADA the next day and he really that was one of the turning points kind of in our family because he did stop drinking, works. The program did a great job. He's a totally different person than he was in those days. He went through and healed a lot. That's incredible.

Speaker 2: 5:52

So that's kind of the first little section of my story. Living on through that. At that time I was also. I was being sexually abused by another child who was slightly younger than I was. Also I was being sexually abused by another child who was slightly younger than I was and it was not a safe situation.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Another one of those things where I allowed things to happen because I wasn't willing to share it with myself and make silly deals and hurt people and my fear learned to inpatient treatment when I was in sixth grade to kind of deal with the fallout of all of the things that were happening. And one of the things that happened was the counselor said if you like they go through this whole long thing. We have a super kid program. They would do this whole long thing and they said if you are being sexually abused, it is always the older person's fault. And I was a little more a year older than this person and so I went oh my gosh, I'm never, nope, not gonna tell anyone about that, because clearly I had a problem. I'm sorry that happened. Thank you, with my adult brain now I know that what they were meaning is, if you are a child and an adult is abusing you, it is their fault, it is not your fault, right? But that was not what was said. Yeah, that's not it for sure. No, for years I carried that around. I mean, it's still like that. One hurts a little bit to say it. I can see that Because I'm still. I have to change that tape in my head regularly and go, you were not at fault, you were not at all for everything that happened. So that kind of changed my perspective on things and really caused a lot of anger and hurt and resentment to the love in me that I carried around with me for years.

Speaker 2: 7:48

This person and I don't really speak. I wish them well. I am not in near-harboring bridges or anything. I hope that they have a good life and that things go well for them. Did you just hold on to it? You did not tell. Oh, so I did not tell anybody until I was 30. And I found out that the same thing had happened to my siblings, with dispersion and some of the reasons that I allowed it. It's hot when I was in victory, because at that point I said, nope, I'm old enough now to know that this isn't okay. But it had been several years at that point. And so when I found out it had happened to my siblings, I was devastated, because the only reason I let it go on that long is because this person was threatening them and saying well, you know, if you don't let me do this to you, then I'm just going to do this to them.

Speaker 2: 8:39

And I am five years older than my brother and I am eight years older than my sister and I was very much the other parent in their lives for the beginning, half because my dad was really not in a good place and I, especially with my sister. My brother and I are very, very similar in terms of. He's very emotionally intelligent. He catches on to things very quickly. He's also a recovering people pleaser and the relationship that I have with him it hurt to be around him because both of us were so sensitive that he and I were not as close growing up as they are now my sister I just had to adopted her like she was mine. We joked that she was my firstborn and so I very much wanted to protect them.

Speaker 2: 9:33

In fact, the date so there was a date the day before I started sixth grade when news about my dad's affairs came out on the front page of our hometown newspaper and our last name was not one you could miss. My maiden name is kirstie river, it's. It's not like there were, you know, 30,000 of us running around town. Yeah, it's not smith. No, mistaking that, right. Right, it was. Yeah, it was pretty obvious who his family that was. Um, so that was a hard thing to navigate and that that day.

Speaker 2: 10:08

There are a few things that stand out to me about that day. You know I we've talked about this before. There are certain days in your life that like, oh, this one was pivotal, yeah, this is. And that's where the breakfast of choices thing comes in. This is the day where I made a swiss. That's on a different side and the things I remember about that day.

Speaker 2: 10:28

It kind of shifted my family's dynamic a little bit, where my mom and it was this other day my mom loaded all in us kids and took us to church and she sat in church wearing her big sunglasses and, like unbelief, crying, crying like full on, like people were turning around looking like and I was like this is the most embarrassing thing you've ever done in my entire life and I cannot believe that you're sitting here crying this loudly, publicly in front of everyone, which you know, if that's a 12, 12 year old lens didn't know why, right, because at age 80 you only have a bit of capacity to focus on you and kind of how things are affecting you. Sure, I ever. And later on I asked her. I said why, why in the world did you make this go to church, then go out there in public? At that point?

Speaker 2: 11:26

Because that warning things had been weird anyway, because the phone started ringing off the foot. My parents wouldn't let me get the comics out of the paper, like it was a weird warning. So my radar was very. It was going off all over. I was like there is something happening here and I didn't know at that point what it was. But my mom told me later.

Speaker 2: 11:48

She said I felt like the only place that was safe at that moment was turning to God. That stuck with me through my entire life and I could have moments as an adult where I now understand that and I understand feeling of I don't have a safe place other than Him that I've been through right now because the people that are closest to me are really hurting me. So that moment really did change my life because it gave me faith and it showed me strength for things that I would go through later on in my life and showed me the importance of faith. And I think faith in something bigger than ourselves is critical to life as a human. I don't even care as much what people call it, even though God, the universe for me it's God and I am 100%. I've seen his work in my life. The Holy Spirit talks to me regularly. That is what's right for me. But I think in general, if I could wish one thing for everyone, it would be to believe that there is something bigger than themselves out there. Sure, absolutely A higher power, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, a higher power, absolutely, absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 13:09

But that day when we came home from church, my mom and my dad locked themselves in their room and my mom was taking a towel and like hitting the furniture in their room because she was so angry at him. It's a horrible way to find out your husband is cheating on you. Yeah, I was on the front page of the newspaper. I don't think we ever take to help that.

Speaker 2: 13:31

It was on the ground, reach of the news and crew because my dad was a psychiatrist and one of the women was his patient and they had had a relationship for several years at that point, is my understanding, and he had been playing her blackmail not to time and he stopped. The affair was, you know, was working on not not living that lifestyle anymore, as he were, on his sobriety and things like that is my understanding and he stopped making her blackmail and so she sued him. Um, yeah, I'm not negating that it was absolutely not an ethical decision on my desk part, but she, she was suing him and so that was pretty juicy gossip for our little town. Yeah, you were, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 14:27

And then for the next seven years, the case kept going to court and it wouldn't get thrown out or the judge would rule in my dad's favor because he had evidence of the fact that, like this was consensual, this was not like you know, like you were blackmailing me also. This was not that you know, like you were blackmailing me also, which lets me know you knew what was going on, because that's what she was claiming, it's all. I had no idea what's happening. And then she was claiming that he had hypnotized her and that this was not potential and that it and I am very much an advocate for women's rights that I also feel like it's very wrong to lie about being raped or not. Oh goodness, are they forced to do that? That's not okay. Yeah, so that was over the next seven years of my family.

Speaker 2: 15:13

we kind of kept being dragged after it, dragged after it dragged after it so hard so, and my mom really much checked out at that point she shut down. So then I really stepped into the other, really the only functioning adult in the household role at 12 or 13, which was a role that I kept up for the most part until I went to college. But by the way to college, my mom my mom did not my mom it hurt my kids the way she fed it, I'll be honest. She said you need to get out, you need to go, you need to go spread your wings. And later on I talked to her about that and said you know that really that hurt because I felt like you guys were my entire world and I had given my entire life up to now, clearly so I'll just be a little you know I've given my entire life up to now, clearly so I was being a little, you know, different. I'd given my entire life up to now to be things of suit for our family and we should be just told no, when you're 18, you need to get out. What she was meaning is I don't want your whole life to have to be about taking care of us, right? I want you to go out and figure out who you are. Radale was about to turn 20, which seems ridiculous to me I'd be all fast in my 40s. But now, looking at it through the lens of somebody who sees her and sees you know a daughter who is a beautiful young lady, who has so much strength and so much freedom and is on the verge of really just an in-depth girl whole life, I understand wanting to encourage you to have that chance.

Speaker 2: 16:56

My family has the cartoon that we have around frequently. It's a bird like standing at the top of a tree and there's a nest and the mom bird like takes the baby bird out and goes fly bitch. We use a jokingly to. You know my family has a racist keyword. It's one of the things that bought us through where we were to where we are. Well, and it that's our job as parents right To raise them, to be able to go out and do the world, and it's hard wanting to keep them.

Speaker 2: 17:29

But I also feel like that for me would be very selfish if I had to hold my kids back from where they're supposed to be in. I also want them to be able to function on their own. That matters. Yeah, we may not always be here, right, and if and I don't teach them how to um function on their own, what are we doing for them exactly? So now, as an adult and there are a lot of things I think that as an adult, you can look back on your childhood or your your, you know young adult life with a lot more perspective.

Speaker 2: 18:03

But I didn't understand the point. So what ended up happening is I moved from Flagstaff to Hedges and went to a very small private college there and I was not ready to be out on my own. I had not dealt with the trauma and everything for my childhood. I didn't know how to have healthy relationships. I'm very blessed to this day because I have this group of friends from college who have seen me through some very ugly lifetimes and times where I wasn't very lovable and a lot of time I didn't love myself. I'm really grateful that I was met with people who understood unconditional love and had healthier relationships than my family had, because that has been a gift in my life for sure.

Speaker 1: 18:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:57

First weekend. We used the second weekend Like one of the very first things that happened when I got to college is something else that I did not remember until I was until this last year actually I joined a sorority which, at a very small school sororities are israelis Then, at the very big school so when I say sorority, it was more like me and 40 friends in the house the only thing that happened was I went to a tertiary house and I never had anything to do before. I was pretty against alcohol. Until that point in my life I had been for everything that happened in my family. I was still very sheltered and I'm pretty protected from the outside world. Like we didn't pass. We don't wear shoes in the house, like any way that you can be very protected. We were, which seems weird when you hear all the other things so we were exposed to me, but it's just. That's just how I'm rough. I didn't think anything of it. We try to control what we can control at the moment, right, and those are things we control. Yep, and my mom was very controlling. There was a storm, storms at first, right.

Speaker 2: 20:06

So the first time that I ever dreamed anything, I got that ridiculous jump and passed out in a bed and I was raped and I had like little glimpses of it but I was like that didn't really happen. And then I was able to help her on how to's properly open. And then I've been refuting health or I'm kind of feeling unsteady with other things from my lifetime over the last few years. And during one of our sessions it kind of clicked and then that night I had a dream that I didn't remember everything. I was like, oh okay, that explains a lot, because for the rest of college I was not the sleep pretentive I was so put ahead in, but not in the same way as person. I was rage, I was filled with rage and I didn't know why. I thought it was just me, you spreading my wings and testing out life and figuring out who I was. And now that I remember that, it makes sense to me why I was so angry all the time, because your body remembers things like that, even if you don't. It's trauma, yeah, absolutely. And so I had a fear of college being too off-putting. As I look back on it, I mean I was still myself, I was still friendly and bubbly, and my whole life I've joked that I collect people Like not that I preview any, but I just go through life and I love people, I love hearing their stories, I love being to know them.

Speaker 2: 21:42

I'm an introvert, for sure, which a lot of people don't believe, but I would much rather have a very deep conversation one-on-one than do small talk in a huge group like Couch, the same, same, very same. And yeah, after I got in the huge group, I needed that 100% of the time, fear of I need to die, 100% of the time. I totally understand that. Nobody would believe that, right, because we appear extroverted when we are out and we are in the middle of the pool and we are extroverted in those moments. But we also need our space, a lot of downtime, a lot of soul searching and we're deep. We're just deeper, deep people and that's hard for people to understand sometimes, that we have to protect our peace, and so I totally understand you on that and I can totally feel that and see that about you. Well, thank you, I see that in you too and I think it's one of the reasons that we clicked, because I was like, oh, something I can be real and authentic with, and so you will understand if I say I don't have the capacity right now. Yeah, absolutely, totally no problem. I think it's best. As you can see, it's happened in the last 10 to 15 years just in women in general. I feel like we are all a lot more, and maybe it's just the women I have in my life. I don't know if this is universal, but I feel as though we are more accepting now. I'm not sure if it's an age thing or just where we are in society we're talking about trauma and mental health and healing more than we used to or if it's just. This is how 45 looks, so this is what happens when you're in your 40s.

Speaker 2: 23:21

I have only found this in the last few years, and I just call it finding my tribe. I haven't looked yet, though I haven't been out there looking for it, and I have really found it in the last couple years and it's been so eye-opening, and so I don't even know enlightening, and I wasn't someone to be around a group of women often and never. You know enlightening, and I wasn't someone to be around a group of women often and never. You know places and things and situations I've been in in my world. Women weren't really to be trusted, and so that's something that I have really had to overcome and I feel like I have and, wow, what an eye-opening experience to realize we need this, we need this soul tribe and we need these women in our lives and it's really changed a lot for me and I'm really glad you brought that up because I think it's very important. I agree, the female friendships are beautiful to me, the women that you could be real with, and it doesn't matter if you've known them for four years or four minutes. When you find the real women who are part of your sisterhood, like you said, your soul friends, that's bold and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Speaker 2: 24:41

I think being able to have beautiful female friendships is really another gift that I got from my mom because that was something she showed. I received a lot of gifts from her and I'm grateful for that. And it seems weird to people when they hear my story and they're like, oh, your mom was like scary and angry all the time in Israel, yes, but then also she's softened and she healed and I think the fact that my parents were still married years later after alcoholism and lawsuits and affairs and even you know down to really dumb little things that would happen that would hurt my mom's feelings and bring up all those things again again. You know, a word would trigger her, a saw would trigger her. At one point my dad gave her a receipt for jewelry he bought for another woman and it was years late, like I mean, that was when I was in my 20s, I think, and it was years after anything had ever happened. And he just found it when he was cleaning out. It was like, how are there a few scully of this? And she's like so there are things that would come up that would bring her back there. But they also had a really beautiful friendship and marriage by the end of her life.

Speaker 2: 25:55

So when I was 30, I went through college and got married and I was really in college to get my MRS to be late my entire life. All I wanted to do was be a mom, because really that's all that's what I had bound up until that point With my siblings. Let's step into that motherhood role. And so I met a guy who he was very funny and he had blue eyes, which my mom had told me my whole life growing up. You have to marry someone with blue eyes. You have to marry someone with blue eyes so that your kids will have blue eyes, which my mom had told me my whole life growing up. You have to marry someone with blue eyes. You have to marry someone with blue eyes so that your kids will have blue eyes. That was very important and I didn't take it with any depth or anything. I was like, okay, check, he's got blue eyes. He makes me laugh, like we have fun together.

Speaker 2: 26:41

But when I met him, I was taking one college course because I was going to finish my my college degree elsewhere and I knew that at that point because I had not, I'd not done well in school because I was so angry and I was looking to escape through drinking and smoking pot and hanging out with people who were not right influences to how didn't take it seriously at all the school aspect of it. So when I met he's now the husband which will get it to you. But when I met, my future was good. At that point we were hanging out drinking during tequila shots till three or four in the morning because I was taking one pass and it was golf. What, oh my goodness. So it wasn't like a strenuous senior schedule, that's funny.

Speaker 2: 27:29

And he moved back to Arizona with me. We met in February, we were engaged in July, we got married the following June. So things happened very quickly and there were a lot of like. We did have a lot of really good times, but she and I think this is a problem. I hear from a lot of like. We did have a lot of really good times, but she and I think this is a problem. I hear from a lot of my female friends. They get married expecting that we're going to grow and change and things aren't going to stay the same. And men get married expecting this is who I married and they want that same person. And so we had some conflict. We had our daughter almost two years up before we got married.

Speaker 2: 28:10

She was born and since being a mom was the only goal I had had for my life. I remember standing there we lived in Denver at the time. I was standing there holding my beautiful newborn daughter and looking at her. It was the first day that we didn't have moms in town helping out and my husband had gone to work and we were standing in a beautiful house in Denver and I looked down at her and I was like cool, I made it. What do I do now? I've achieved all my goals.

Speaker 2: 28:37

I moved through several things in Denver and then moved to Kansas because it was a lot more affordable. So I had more of a chance to be a stay-at-home mom. I ran a daycare for Paul. That's when I first started being a serial entrepreneur and I got done those times with a lot of joy. I was very, very happy to have my daughter she did to be a mom, to get to stay home with her and and I loved his and I thought to. I was very grateful for the life I was living then.

Speaker 2: 29:08

While we were in kansas, my husband that I wanted to do some hard times. He started having relationships with somebody else and had an emotional affair and the new work and we separated for a little while and were very seriously thinking about the foresight that he was done. I was not a healthy person so I know I'm certainly not faulting him with the only reason for that, but we decided to work on it and once it dropped down and things got better, I started on antidepressants. For the first time in my life I realized that like, oh, this is much better.

Speaker 2: 29:51

I'm much less hard to live with when my mood is regulating where it's supposed to be. And he, you know, had complaint pipe from the time we had kids. What is like, you're not who I. You're all as fun as you used to be and I thought, well, I wouldn't want to do a tequila shots till three or four. The warning person raising my kids, that's it. You're supposed to grow up was how I saw it Right. And I think we were both right and we were both wrong, and so, like I could have been more fun I could have once we had our kids. Really, my kids were my entire family. I was just frivolous to that, which is not healthy in a marriage.

Speaker 2: 30:33

That's not how a marriage is supposed to feel. But like cool, well, you did your job and got me pregnant, so I'm just going to put you over here for a while, right? No, it does not trap, but a lot of women could fall into it and there is blame to go around for sure, if you're in a very healthy marriage, I don't think they end. I think you work on it so, but you can only be as healthy as the work you've done, right? So when we had decided to stay together, she was my son Surprise, and it was a little bit scary to me.

Speaker 2: 31:10

I remember my first thought when I took the pregnancy test is oh my gosh, I'm going to be a single mom with two kids now instead of one, and my husband was pretty serious about pregnancy. He was very much like he was excited to have a bro and a boy. We were doing a lot better throughout the whole pregnancy. We decided to move to Oklahoma so that we could be near his family and so that I did afford to be a stay-at-home mom for our family than what we had in Kansas. So we decided we were going to do a fresh start down here and moved, and I've been in Ucklehaas since then. Within a couple of years of moving here he started seeking to hire women again and was texting like literally all day, from like six in the morning until like two in the morning, back and forth with one woman and was having an affair with one of our neighbors and was having an affair with one of our neighbors and I knew there was something wrong.

Speaker 2: 32:06

Like all of my instincts were firing and I have very good instincts. My life had not taught me to listen to them up until this point. So that's another one of those kind of two little moments in my life where I knew in my gut there was something wrong. And in fact there was one day where it was at 11.30 in the morning and I all of a sudden felt like I was plunged in the gut and my anxiety spiked at like a level 10. And I started crying for no reason and I texted my husband and said there is something wrong and I don't know what it is, but what's going on. And he turned it around on me and said you're crazy.

Speaker 2: 32:55

Well, later on I found out and he admitted that me at that moment he was kicking and they were obsolete and was like see, we got here very well now. And as we've talked about it, he was like, yeah, it scared me. He was like I had no idea how you knew, and I do think that was the Holy Spirit. I was like, hey, girl, there's something going on. When you're connected to somebody. You know what I mean. When you're connected to that person, the Holy Spirit, the universe, lets you know that something's going on with your person. Yes, spirit, the universe, lets you know that that something, something's going on with your person, yes, so we ended up going through a divorce that was very hard and devastating and then a lot, of, a lot of things that happened during that that were we fought quite a bit.

Speaker 2: 33:38

He moved out and moved in with her. They got an apartment while we were still married and he introduced her to his parents, who I loved, and I was excited to be near them. I was excited to raise our kids near family and at that point it really felt to me like they picked me up and sent me over there and put picture out and just put her in my place and I was now expected to share my children with somebody who hurt me very, very much. I was expected to just get over it and, you know, stop holding onto a grudge I was told about. Like maybe two months after we got, I found out everything I asked, but this is still an okay time period for me to be angry at you about. So at that time I was working at Jivri playing music like three hours a week or something ridiculous like that, and I had been watching iNafu for a moment. So that stopped. And then I talked to the owner of Jivri and she was wanting to get out, and so my parents helped me buy the Jivri Play Music panties, because it was really important to me to get to be home with my kids before school and after school, because being a mom was still critically important to me.

Speaker 2: 34:57

I bought the business and it was great and I had no idea what I was doing running my business. I learned very quickly how right how to run a business. I was great at the, the teaching and interaction of the tourists, and I loved it. It was such a fun job and I had a fantastic staff. I learned how to, how to be awesome and I had to take care of my people. I learned boundaries I. I really grew quite a bit through learning that and then through healing from the divorce and moving forward. I'm raising my kids and I had a lot more strength than I would have thought I did to be able to go through all of those things, which was wonderful. I'm grateful that I got that opportunity so I owned that for five years.

Speaker 2: 35:50

At the end of year three and beginning of year four I was audited by the Oklahoma Tech Institution who thought I was running a country club. I don't know if you've ever been to a country club, but it is surely not a country club. What they do is teach developmentally appropriate classes for children ages 0 through 5, and then it's a lot of fun, but it is not a relaxing environment, so it was not a spa or country club like they said. So for a year my friend from Norma who owned the franchise down there also was audited at the same time because they were just going through it and trying to. Honestly, they were trying to join up with me for this date.

Speaker 2: 36:31

So I was like, how do I have to prove that I'm not a spot or country club? That I had to go through get into the whole year of my emotional vanity, my business not being able to market, all these things that I just kept stacking. So all of my energy was focused on proving that I didn't owe the state $50,000. And my business started to decline some because of it and it just felt like everywhere I looked I was getting lost down. So we talked with corporate. Corporate was not willing to help me with the audit at all. They were basically like, oh, that was like you should probably get a lawyer. I was like, no, I'd pay franchise fees so that you will help me with this.

Speaker 2: 37:18

We did end up winning. We did end up proving our case that we were not running a country club in the spa. But by that point I was so disillusioned by lack of support so I was drowning in debt at that point. So we put the business up for sale and had a buyer lined up and he was going to move it. The location where we were was not our ideal demographics. Everything was like moving forward. We were supposed to visit a week not our ideal demographics. Everything was like moving forward. We were supposed to visit a week.

Speaker 2: 37:51

A week before closing he emailed me and said, yeah, and I was devastated. I didn't know what to do. I was like, okay, well, now I don't have time to find another bite. So we talked to a friend of mine and ended up having to close. Also, that month my mom was diagnosed with stage four uterine cancer and the test decides throughout her body.

Speaker 2: 38:08

As she was one of his partners. She was my financer and she was my cheerleader and we, you know, we were talking things through and she knew she wasn't going to have the energy to do it and I knew I didn't have the emotional energy after having to fight so hard, to just kind of survive the boss of the years. Then we're just getting older and I just needed I needed a change. So I didn't sign the lease, I closed my business. It was very, very humbling to me to have to close me to house and clothes and my staff was wonderful. They stayed by me, they packed things up and for my no-day classes I had to have an emergency call so I was physically not able to be there. If I was in the ER and this is another one of those gifts of my life where, because I had cultivated those relationships with the beautiful women who worked for me and other beautiful women who were my friends, my time all surrounded me, couldn't get out of bed because it hurt so much.

Speaker 2: 39:18

It's very humbling to be somebody who has done that, being on her own for the last you know, at that, about 35 years, and to be able to trust that other women are going to show up for me and I would step in and take care of things. People showed up in miraculous ways for me, so I felt very loved and supported. I am.

Speaker 2: 39:40

That's wonderful, but it was humbling to go through all of that and hard, and I've been just kind of going through life, picking up skills here and there and healing everything that I you know, when things come up, we heal. At one point, my siblings and I did a bit together I thought the person that had used us and that was very it was very hard and it was very chilling as well, and we are all closer for it. I think I've worked with several pastors over the years and I've read all of this. Like in 2016, god showed me that I'm part of the public speaker and that I was going to write a book and that my mission is to teach people about joy, and I went, okay, I'm in, let's do it. And then all of this happened and I felt like, okay, well, now's not the time.

Speaker 2: 40:37

And then in 2020, when I was pedestally established in insurance, I found out about some trauma that my kids were going through and I was respectful of them. I gave a lot of details about that, but we were in an unsafe situation. They'd been in an unsafe situation for a long time and my son he's just as bothered, isn't he? And he is so charismatic, he can talk to anyone, and he had. He is so charismatic it can talk to anyone. He's interested in people and his whole. He was just furious at the world and would like I'm like you, rock, but I had rage and you know, with there are several tangents for what felt like years, uh. And so I had taken him to counselor at your counselor therapist I think there is no. What is going on with this kid like years. And so I had taken him to a counselor a graduate counselor, a therapist. I said what is going on with this kid? We've had a lot of testing yet We've had visible testing yet We've tried all of these things. And then I found out about the situation that he was in. The pieces kind of fell together Much like the rage you were experiencing in college. Yeah, much like that. Yes, and if you didn't know how it went at the age of three or four, you don't have the, the still set to explain why those emotions are occurring.

Speaker 2: 41:58

When I found out, so the this, the unsafe situation, was a visit by somebody on new york where we lived, since we moved to Oklahoma, and so in 2020, we moved immediately because we don't allow this person to continue to be near my children. We got them into counseling and it was a very, very hard season, like for the majority of my life as a single mom. I felt as though I was tearing my kids up above my head, like we were walking through water, and most of the time the water was like excellent for it. I was holding them up above it so that they could still breathe. And every once in a while there would be this, you know, break in my life where I felt like I could walk out onto the shore and pass by a gruff for a minute and then it's like we would be clenched right back underwater. And then that happened. Help out more strongly than I ever had before. I felt like, okay, I'm going to get my students. I have the tools to help them deal with and heal from the things that have been happening to them. I have the ability to find those resources. I would have it on earth for my kids.

Speaker 2: 43:10

So the kids went through, you know, court and counseling, and, just like it was just a very hard year I've been living in this little tiny house, not only the pandemic but this situation that I had not known about, and I tried to help them heal from it and I didn't feel like I could put my feelings about it on them, which is one of the reasons I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom was to make sure nothing bad ever happened to my kids, and it really like it was like somebody just popped my balloon when I fell out the eye even though I was with them, so they, dad, still happened. Yeah, so I had. I have this one. There's a women's ministry group and I've called people restoration and and and I went there after being my son into you know, counseling, that you're more needed to be, and my guy was with her dad that night and I went and I just sat there like in the corner and I felt like my mom, which is the only place that I felt like I could feel my emotions about what was going on, because I didn't want to add to it, to make them feel guilty or make them feel like what had happened to them was about me in any way, because it was wrong, right, and I sat there and I was just like ugly crying and they were playing video and I was like growling and it was really like God shut everyone else up.

Speaker 2: 44:40

I could not hear anything but him and he said, like I created you specifically for this season All of the generations of abuse to your family, that kind of all of them were leading to you so that you can help families break off generational curses and learn to heal and live in joy. And that was pretty clear. It was a pretty. I was like, like, and my response was I'm busy right now and so I'm sorry, could you tell me later? I'm really so. I tell you that around with me now I'm the best where I was hanging because you know, I just found 15. When he said, oh, you're blessed to teach people about joy, I was like, okay, cool, how, yeah, I'm only joyful. Then, yeah, yes, and I I'm a very firm believer in that.

Speaker 2: 45:35

Joy does not mean everything in your life is perfect, right. Joy means you have hope for the future. You know that where you are right now is not where you're going to be forever. And joy and happiness although I think in our world a lot of people use them simultaneously To me joy is happiness at a soul-dealing level, not based on circumstances. Nobody can take your joy away from you. It is a choice. It is choosing to have hope that things are going to change and that everything will work out in the end. Yeah, and happiness is like hey, I got a really good parking spot or I got a new purse, like happiness is temporary. Right, happiness can be temporary. That's so important, blythe. That is so important that people know the difference.

Speaker 2: 46:26

In that my word for the year last year was joy, and that was why I needed to. I needed to tell them that deep joy needed to be experienced, and I'm so glad that you pointed that out, because there is a complete difference in joy and happiness moments, you know. So we kind of got through that season. We're still. You know, whenever something traumatic happens in your life, I feel like you have to reprocess it at each new stage in your life and kind of look at it through this filter. Not because I think you need to just haul those things around with you, but that part of you, like your scars, your battle wounds, your emotional scars they do stay with you and they can heal, but you can still see where they were. So we're headed in that cycle now of reprocessing some things.

Speaker 2: 47:22

And after all of that, I met somebody and got remarried and I was never going to get remarried again.

Speaker 2: 47:30

That was another one of those surprise things in my life.

Speaker 2: 47:33

That has been a blessing for me, and I lost my mom at the end of 2021.

Speaker 2: 47:41

We were very, very fortunate to have five bonus years after she was diagnosed with cancer, because she was originally told you about six months and and so I'm grateful for all of the extra time that we got and I by the end of their lives and really, you know, even before that so I could actually have them together for almost 50 years by the same amount of cost. But it was really nice to see my dad take care of her and my mom softened it enough to trust him to allow him to take care of her, and it healed me enough that I was able to move forward and give Mary to the other child and it's beautiful to be all the way that everything intertwines and the lessons do kind of repeat during generations, but hopefully in healthier and healthier ways each time to repeat until we really get in there right and deal with it and heal the trauma and start healing those generational curses and start healing that trauma that we carry around from relationship to relationship, place to place, thing to thing, we can't run from ourselves right.

Speaker 2: 49:04

So we're like, no matter how long it was, it would be lovely to know, goodness, I've tried, girl, goodness I've tried, girl, I've tried so many times, right, I have moved and moved and moved and moved. I just come with me. So, until you really start healing, that, yes, it, it doesn't, it doesn't change anything and it's so, so important to talk about healing. And you know trauma and trauma and those aren't buzzwords, those are not buzzwords, those that is real and that is deep. And trauma comes in so many forms. And what, what one person's trauma is? We don't compare traumas. Everybody feels it differently and the whole reason to to do this podcast is to deal with the drama and to let people have a place and a safe place to tell their stories and to hope that someone else hears what they need to hear To they haven't healed. Or if they have someone in their lives that they go, hey, you can deliver to her out and offer it. Yes, that hand up that helping hand. Yeah, bring people deliver To turn around and offer it. Yes, that hand up that helping hand, yeah, and bring people up. Yes, I use it. Turn around and offer that hand up, yeah, yeah, make it through this Absolutely, and you are a shining example of making it through this and you know you've had some things that could have broke you and I'm'm gonna get emotional here when you talk about the things with your kids and getting through that. Again, not comparing, but the strength that it takes to get through that beautiful. Yes, because your whole heart is with your kids and and so somebody hurting them, somebody doing something to harm them, it I mean, it feels like that. It feels like they're just attacking the most important thing in your whole world. Yeah, they are. Yes, and I, one of the things that I really noticed through that time is the grit and the resiliency that my kids both have. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that from you, mr. They got that from you. I had no thing that you, it was. It was really.

Speaker 2: 51:23

It was beautiful to see and big unseen beauty in the broken also. That's a big theme in my mind. Yes, because a lot of people will look at the different things the way like, no, I don't know how, you're joyful, like either you just missed the point or, um, you're angry or whatever, but I, I see a lot of beauty in the hard things, in things of falling down and in breaking time and time and time again, because every time that you break, you have a chance to rebuild right, right, and and that is beautiful, it's the phoenix rising from the ashes. You have a chance to build that, you know, have rebirth every time and you get stronger and stronger and stronger, and that's the beauty. In the broken, right there, you get stronger and stronger and stronger. Absolutely One of the first things I did when I got divorced.

Speaker 2: 52:19

There were two things I did. First One I bought a Tripoli, because it was one of them and I had this feeling that it's impossible to get happy. Chomping on a Tripoli it totally is it, 100% is. It makes you right back to childhood. As a child, I had a chance to go to Phoenix. What Me too, girl, yeah, take, take Me too. Oh, I love it. Well, I'll just show you my nose, not my naughty foot. I am sad about it. I love the Phoenix analogy. Yeah, I am sad about I love this Phoenix analogy. Yeah, and it is true, you do, you rise up and you get stronger and stronger and stronger and it is possible. It is possible and I'm so glad that you did this with me today.

Speaker 2: 53:01

When we met literally we had met for 22 seconds and we were deep in our stories already and I thought that was so true that not true. We sat down and we were deep in our stories already and I thought that was so not true. We sat down and we were like so and you know, you had your best friend with you and it was just such a beautiful morning and you know, I'm glad that you reached out and I'm glad that we met for coffee and it was just so obvious that we had this connection because we were able to just sit down and get like talk about getting to the grit right away, just absolutely right away, and and really just connect on a deep level. And you cannot do that with everybody. You just cannot do that with everybody. So that was right. I love that day, I love the time that we had and love the time we spent together as much as I love the time we're spending together now. So you're a beautiful person and even I was telling you this morning even your email is beautiful, joyfully abundant. Not me, I just resonate joy and I can't imagine anyone else being a joy coach but you. So thank you Got me all of those. Thank you so much for having me on. Yes, absolutely, and I'm so glad we did this and I want you to let everybody know what you're doing now and how they can find you. I thought thank you so much for having me on, jo. You were a highlight in my week, last week and again this week.

Speaker 2: 54:28

So right now I am a joy coach and public speaker. What a joy coach does? I believe that by working through different things in our life, learning to really love ourselves, putting in the work on accepting the pieces of us that don't seem lovable to us, but if we can learn to fall in love with those and find better work-life balance and have healthier relationships, all of that kind of comes together to lead to a more joyfully abundant life. So my company name is Joyfully Abundant Life. I have a proof coaching program. I do one-on-one coaching. I do business consulting for people who are meeting a better culture in their workplace, learning how to get better boss, how to have stronger relationships, and then my heart is really with speaking to anyone. I have spent several years mentoring single moms and people who are going to do divorce and being a serial entrepreneur. So I have multiple passions, but getting to help people like to share in my story and offering when I blend, and how to really love yourself and have healthy relationships is why talk was my favorite PhD.

Speaker 2: 55:49

So how can somebody connect with you? Do you have a website? Do you have an? Is Y-T-O-W-E-N-D-E-S-T-H-E-R-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-D-E-N-O-V-A-Ncom. I have a couple back end things that I'm still working on for it, but it will be offline Monday and I'm on Facebook and Instagram as livebonovanjoycoach, I believe, on Instagram livebonovanjoycoach, I think, right now, and then I'm on Facebook as, and also as JoyfullyAbundant. So sorry, that's kind of an awkward list of things. That's okay. If someone gets the chance to connect with you and seeks you out, it's a beautiful experience, and I left that day feeling incredibly joyful. And we weren't talking about a whole lot of joyful things right, we were deep, but it's just your personality and your light that you bring to the table.

Speaker 1: 57:00

And again, being joyful doesn't mean we don't get sad and we're never not positive.

Speaker 2: 57:06

It means we've learned to find the joy in life, in life experiences, that everything's a lesson. You've got a lesson, you've got a blessing. You've got something to learn from everything, and maybe the hard lesson that you learned is being able to help someone else.

Speaker 1: 57:20

So thank you again so much for doing this. I know we will talk again soon. And thanks, blythe, 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.