10. Healing Through Love and Loss: A Journey to Self-Discovery

In this episode of 'Becoming Sunshine,' the host delves into the personal and transformative journey following her decision to have an abortion on Valentine's Day three years ago. She discusses the impact this event had on her relationships, career, and overall life direction. The host shares the emotional and physical struggles she faced, including depression and grief, and the various healing modalities she explored, such as plant medicine, ketamine therapy, and yoga. She also touches on the significance of self-love, the importance of healing one's body, and the spiritual connection she experienced with her unborn child. This episode aims to offer support and comfort to others who may have faced similar situations, highlighting the importance of moving from a place of love and self-compassion.

00:00 Introduction to Becoming Sunshine

01:19 Valentine's Day Reflections

02:14 Personal Journey and Turning Points

06:51 Healing and Self-Discovery

12:58 The Role of Physical and Emotional Healing

38:35 Spiritual Encounters and Closure

45:32 Final Thoughts and Gratitude

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Mentioned in this episode

To Be Magnetic- Neural Manifestation and Healing Work

Mindbloom- Accessible Ketamine Therapy from Home

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Transcript

Madeline: 0:00

Welcome to Becoming Sunshine. For those of you that know me, you know that sunshine has been an alias of mine for almost a decade now, and sunshine also is me becoming my highest self, and that's what this podcast is about. I'm here to help you understand yourself better, and maybe learn some more about myself along the way. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm excited. Hey friends, welcome back to becoming sunshine. So this isn't really the episode that I wanted to release like right after another pretty big, controversial coming out episode, but I feel like the timing of everything, just it is what it is and around this time of year I always think a lot about this topic. And so I felt like it was just meant to be this way, and I have to go with my intuition and my gut, and I know that it's going to reach the people that it's meant to. I think this time of year it's really about self love more than anything. It's about romantic love. It's about love for your family, love for your children. It's just about love in general, and so I think this episode is really fitting. Yeah, let's just get into it. So tomorrow is Valentine's day. I know a lot of people have like mixed feelings about Valentine's day, but I think at the end of the day, the days about love however you want to interpret that, and three years ago on Valentine's day. I had an abortion and yeah, I know that's a sensitive topic for people. Touchy, especially in certain states, especially with the political climate going on right now. And maybe that's why this is important to talk about. We just had the full moon in Leo. Yesterday, so there's a lot going on with that, and there was a lot of really heavy aspects with that lunation about women and how there's a lot against women right now, just with everything going on. So honestly, maybe this is the perfect episodes right now. Anyways, yeah definitely a canon event in my life. Not everyone knows about that. Honestly my life has changed dramatically in the last three years. my friend grew up my relationships, my career, like my whole life, honestly. When I think about my life three years ago I'm like a completely different person and I think this was a huge turning point for me in so many ways. I feel like it was a reality check and a wake up call in every sense of the word. I realized how far off my life was from where it needed to be in order to bring a child into the world and to be a good mother. I was really fortunate that the guy that I ended up having this accidental pregnancy with was someone that I had known for years, like we had been close friends for years. We dated at one point, but we hadn't been together romantically officially in a while, and we had actually just started seeing each other, so when this happened it was definitely a surprise and neither of us were really ready to be parents. He was pretty established in his career. He made good money, like we would have been fine, but I still hadn't really figured out what I wanted to do with my life, with my career, what I was passionate about. At the time I was pursuing a different vertical that is like the natural pipeline from working at nightlife to like sales, but it really wasn't something that I was passionate about and it's not something that I ended up doing. And yeah, I was still working in the club at the time and it just it's not something that is conducive to raising a child. I wasn't about to put my baby to bed and go to work. That's just not something that I wanted to ever do and I also didn't want him or me to feel like we had to be together because we are having this kid on the way, and we both had just gotten out of pretty tricky relationships. He was just getting over a breakup that was pretty traumatic, honestly, and I still had feelings for someone that I had been dating on and off for the few years prior to that and we were still in each other's lives at this time, and honestly, getting pregnant with this other guy was kind of the thing that I needed to let go of him once and for all, we just weren't right for each other and we needed to let go of each other and we had been needing to let go of each other, and yeah so this pregnancy brought a lot into my life and took a lot away. Honestly, it's something that needed to happen I think. I really do believe everything happens for a reason and as traumatic as it was, and as difficult of a decision as it was, I think that ultimately we made the correct decision. It's hard, like I still think about it all the time. I actually went and saw a Shaman this past Fall about something else, and I didn't realize it at the time, but the week that I went to go see the Shaman was actually the same week it would have been my baby's birthday, it would have been their birthday. They would have been two, and I think that was divine and very kismet. I actually ended up connecting with my baby and getting to speak to them, which was crazy and honestly very healing, and I didn't realize at the time, but I think there had been a lot that I thought I had healed, but I really hadn't and that experience brought up a lot of emotions and I think I was finally able to heal some things and now I feel I have this little baby looking over me. Anyways, me and the father, we had just started seeing each other again, and we weren't official or anything when this happened, and neither of us were really in a place to be parents. We weren't technically together and I didn't want to feel like we had to all of a sudden be together because I think when relationships are forced like that, they don't end up working out, and I had no aspirations of being a single mom. I have a lot of friends that are single moms and it's a really hard. I've been hanging out with one of my girlfriends a lot lately. She's a single mom and we actually had this conversation recently and she was like only a good mom will tell you that abortion is okay. Because only a good mom knows how much you have to sacrifice in order to be a good mom, and how much time and energy it takes. I think, three years ago, I really didn't have any direction. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I basically was living like a 20 something year old teenager, like I didn't really have a lot of responsibilities. I didn't really have a lot of I don't want to say drive because honestly at the time, I had just gotten into remission, so the couple of years, two or three years before this, I was so debilitatingly sick. I really didn't have any aspirations for the future, any plans, because I don't know if you guys know, or if you yourself have ever been debilitatingly sick before, but when you're sick like that, you can't even really think about the future. All you can think about is getting better and getting healthy, and that's really why they say, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything because if you're not healthy, nothing else matters. I wasn't worried about money, I wasn't worried about my career, I wasn't worried about anything. Before I was healthy, that was my only goal. That's all I could think about, and also too for a long time, when you're sick, like that it starts to become part of your identity, and I was so scared. I just thought maybe that was my new normal and I was going to be like that forever. I was going to feel like that forever, and so when I first got into remission, I first started to feel better. I was finally able to think about who I wanted to be now that I was healthy, like what I wanted to do and I feel like finding yourself, like after being sick like that, people don't really talk about it as much, but it's a journey like you're not the person you were before you're sick, you're not the person you were when you were sick and the person you after, like you have to figure out who that is, especially, if you go through this during your twenties, cause your twenties, you're already focusing on finding yourself and figuring stuff out. So especially if you go through like a major illness during this time, it just adds to all of it, it's a lot. When I got pregnant, I had just undergone a surgery, and so that was like a whole other thing. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. I was definitely dealing with some like crazy self-esteem, self-worth like identity issues, and then I found out I was pregnant like a few weeks after I had just had the surgery. I was still recovering and I just feel like my mental health at the time was so bad. I don't know if any of you have experienced this, but going through a surgery, a facial surgery where there's a lot of swelling at first, especially if you have really thick skin like I do. You don't look better at first. You don't look better for a while. Dealing with that, especially when I work in an industry that's very aesthetic based, image based. I had tied my livelihood to my image and honestly my self worth to my image for pretty much my whole twenties, my whole livelihood was tied to that. So when you do a surgery, you pay a bunch of money and go through a surgery, go through the recovery, and then you don't look better for a long time at first, that's hard. Then at the same time, I just found out I was pregnant with somebody that I wasn't really with romantically, like officially we were not officially boyfriend and girlfriend, like that sucked. I wasn't in a place where I was ready to just be with this guy. We're just going to move in together? We're just going to be together all of a sudden, even though maybe we wouldn't have ended up together otherwise, like that didn't sound very promising, and I also didn't want him to feel like he was trapped or I was trapping him. I don't think he would think that I just would never do that, but it was just not a good situation all around. I was raised catholic and very conservative in the Midwest, and my family was very much into the church and everything. I was an altar server every Sunday for years, my grandma started the bereavement program. I was raised with these certain values and I never thought I would be in this situation. I think a lot of women and people in general think they might have a certain opinion about this, but until you're actually in this situation, you can't really say like what you would have done in that situation, and I'm sure I would've figured it out, but I think trauma happens in the womb and I've learned a lot about trauma and like healing my own trauma, childhood trauma, and I just want to make sure I am the best parent that I can be. Of course, I'm going to end up messing up my children either way. There's some trauma that you can't really avoid putting on your kids, but if there's anything in my power that I can keep my kids from felling or dealing with, I want to try, and I never want my child to feel like I don't want them or they weren't wanted, or that me and their father didn't deeply love each other. I think when I made this decision, it was coming from a place of self-love and it was also coming from a place of love for my baby. I want to give my baby the best life, and at the time if I had kept the baby, I really think I would have limited my partner, and I think I would have limited myself, and if I'm limiting both of us with this decision, I don't think we would have been the best parents. I think we would have probably ended up resenting each other. I don't want to ever be in a situation where the baby wasn't wanted or resented at any point, because I really do feel like they can feel that. The guy is a great guy. I think he would've ended up loving the baby and being happy about it. I think we both would, but our lives would be drastically different, and who knows, like maybe I wouldn't have gone down the path that I did go down because I would have thought it's a lot of pressure to figure things out a lot sooner, and I think everything happens for a reason. Everything happens in divine timing, and honestly that experience catapulted my growth in a lot of ways. I really started to dig deep about what I wanted to do and what I was passionate about and what I felt called to do. It took some time, but you know, like I probably never would have started this podcast. I probably wouldn't have wanted to help people heal because I wouldn't have gone through everything that I went through and part of that experience, I had to heal myself. I was depressed for almost a year after my abortion. I think the whole surgery, like happening in tandem with that didn't help either. I had a lot of swelling in my face for like literally almost two years. So that first year, it was like literally 10 months at least where I just couldn't feel better, and I think something that people don't talk about is the grief you feel in your body. Even if your mind can understand something logically, your mind and body is connected. Your body had this baby growing inside of it, and then all of a sudden it didn't. So my brain logically understands, I made the choice not to keep the baby, but my body doesn't know that. My body just knows one minute we were pregnant, one minute we're not, and I think the timing of when I ended the pregnancy didn't help. I didn't know I was pregnant until I was about seven weeks pregnant. I missed a period, but I didn't really think too much of it because I had just had surgery and I thought the anesthesia messed up my cycle, and so I didn't really think too much about it. So by the time I found out I was pregnant, I was about seven weeks pregnant, and then there was like a huge snow storm in Austin where I live and we had to change our travel plans, and I ended up having to reschedule the procedure, and by the time I had the procedure, I was nine or 10 weeks pregnant, which is when there's the most amount of the HCG hormone in your body, and I went from this really high level of this pregnancy hormone to none at all, and I think my body just freaked out. Also just my hormones, being all over the place, didn't help with my autoimmune disease. I think that triggered a lot of thyroid symptoms and aggravated my auto immune disease. I had finally just healed that and then my body was all messed up again and I had to almost heal my body again, and then I also had to heal like my grieving body. It's hard to explain, but that's the only way I can think to explain it. It's like, my body was sad. Like my body was grieving and I just felt so sad and depressed and I just couldn't like logic my way out of it. I remember after he tried to be there for me and I was just so sad. Like it was just go over to his house and just cry and he didn't know how to help me. I think he did his best, but he would just be like I want like happy Maddie back and it's like yeah, no shit me too fuck. I don't know. I think sometimes men, or just like men that aren't maybe the most equipped or emotionally mature or seasoned. They don't know what to say. They don't know how to handle all the emotions. I know he did his best, but yeah, it was a really hard time and I'm sure he had his own grieving process too that I never really talked about with him. We never really addressed it because we were always so worried about me and my process and my healing, but he lost a baby too, and he's older than me. He's nine years older than me, so he was definitely old enough to like have the baby and I know he wants to have a family one day and I'm sure he thinks about it sometimes. Like what if we had kept the baby? Cause we were really good friends for a long time. We got along. We probably would have been good co-parents. I know he's told me a few times that if my circumstances had been different at the time, we probably would've got married and maybe we would've kept the kid. I don't know, and I believe that I do I think he probably would have married me. I think I'm pretty great, but obviously it wasn't meant to be, and we weren't right for each other at the end of the day. I think if we were right for each other, we probably would have ended up together. For whatever reason, it just never worked between us. We couldn't let go of other people, or we just weren't the right fit and that's okay. I still see him every now and then actually, I just saw him last week. And he was with a new girl that looks just like me, she's a cutie. I should probably leave that part out. But yeah, I don't know if a lot of people talk about this. I remember when I was going through this. Depression, I guess you could say. I was trying to find other people, or just anywhere on the internet, people talking about in depth or like in detail, like what I was going through and what I was feeling, and there was nothing. People talk about postpartum depression after you have a baby, I feel like there's a lot of literature on that, but there isn't really a lot of literature on the depression you feel after you have an abortion sometimes. I don't know if that's because this is such a controversial topic, and this is such a controversial issue and, people don't want to talk about abortion like it's okay, or like it's an option honestly, and so any type of comfort for these women, it's just not a priority, or those women don't deserve comfort. I don't know, but we definitely do. I just remember there wasn't a lot of comfort out there or literature or I didn't find a lot of other people talking about this and talking about what I was going through. I remember trying to figure out how to heal myself and how to feel better, and there really wasn't much. I remember I wanted to maybe do a plant medicine journey to try to heal myself and I have dabbled in that a little bit and that's helped. I never ended up actually doing like a big retreat somewhere. I just was like, so sad and committing to anything or following through with anything at the time was really hard. I remember, I barely worked that whole 10 months, yeah, honestly I don't even have a lot of memories of that time. I feel like when you're sad like that and you're down bad like that, it's just yeah, it was hard, but a lot of good did come out of this. Honestly, like I said, until this happened, I hadn't really thought a lot about my future and what I wanted to do, and honestly going through this and Being in this low place for this extended period of time. I really had to dig myself out of this hole, and I never really had to do that before. I never really struggled with depression or anything like that. I had anxiety when I was sick, that was a symptom of my auto-immune condition. A lot of thyroid symptoms, they can trigger anxiety. Honestly, a lot of psychological symptoms are really related to thyroid and that's why people go misdiagnosed sometimes, because it feels like a psychological issue and it's really just your thyroid, but I had never really struggled with my mental health like this before, and I wasn't really equipped. I didn't really know what to do, and so I started really diving into healing myself and when I was sick before, one of the ways that I healed my body was healing my trauma and like my emotional trauma. I feel like it's all connected. It's all the same, and so when I started to heal my mind and my soul, when I was sick with my autoimmune disease, I really did start to heal my body, and so I kind of took a page out of that book again, and I started to heal myself by doing the same types of things. I really started to get back to journaling, and doing the guided meditations and the deep imaginings with the to be magnetic work, I started walking every day. That was one of the biggest things that really helped heal me. I didn't used to walk every day before this honestly, and walking outside and getting fresh air and getting sunshine and listening to podcasts and listening to other people talk about healing and just getting inspired really helped me work through this. I remember my functional medicine doctor, he got me to start gratitude journaling, and just thinking about everything I was grateful for really shifted my mindset. I feel like that was one of the biggest things that changed everything. I think during this time, I started walking, I started listening to podcasts all the time, and I think that's when I started to think about what I was really passionate about and what felt aligned and what helped me. And honestly, I think if it weren't for this time, this period in my life I ever would have you know, started listening to podcasts the way that I do, and I probably never, would've got the idea to start a podcast, honestly. If I hadn't ever had to heal myself from like major depression I probably never would have really thought about healing and helping other people heal as something that I wanted to do for a living. You have to go through this shit in order to help other people, and in order to inspire other people. You don't just wake up one day and you're like oh, I want to help people heal, I want to have a podcast. There's usually some sort of initiation or, something really challenging that you have to go through. One of the things was healing my body, from my auto immune disease, and then the second really big one was healing my soul and my mind from this deep dark depression that I was in for almost a year. So yeah any type of healing, I've done it. I've gotten through it, and when things are really hard. I just remind myself of everything I've already overcome, and remember to give myself a lot of grace. Yeah so I feel like pretty much every way you need to learn to heal yourself whether thats physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, like I have figured it out or had to go through it in some capacity, and so I think going through this definitely helped me figure out what I'm passionate about, what I'm meant to do, and also like I said, I looked for other people that had gone through this and I was looking for help and it wasn't there, and so I think that there's definitely other women like me that could use just someone to relate to someone that has been through it and knows how they're feeling, and also women deserve to be seen, like making this decision. It's an act of love in a lot of cases, maybe not everybody feels that way, and people have really firm stances on this topic, but I think choosing not to bring a child into a world that's unstable, and that's uncertain, and that is not the most healed and the most equipped home. I I think that is an act of love. I'm sure I would have been a good mom. I would have figured it out. He would have been a great father. He's going to be a great father. One day, I'm going to be a great mom one day, but I don't think the union we were at the time would have made the best home for a baby, and I think that that decision ultimately was out of love more than anything. So yeah, I think that perspective needs to be shared and also I think about it sometimes. I think what did I make the right decision? I think I did the best with the tools that I had at the time, and I made the decision that made the most sense for me at the time. I just feel like women like me deserve support and help, and validation that their decision was okay, or not even validation, just a community or just I don't know anyone to relate to. I felt so alone, like I said, the father did his best to support me. He couldn't really relate to what I was going through. Yeah, he lost a baby as well, obviously like our experiences are different, our hormones are different. It was my body, especially with how fragile my body is like already, just because of my health issues. I had literally just healed and also recovering from a surgery. Like it was just a lot. It was a lot. I just remember feeling really desperate at this time. I really didn't know how to heal myself and there really wasn't a lot of guidance out there. I had a girlfriend that was really into plant medicine and I've done therapy before, but traditional talk therapy has never really been something that has really worked for me. I personally feel like somatic healing, or EMDR, or like plant medicine, or something where you're able to tap into your body and heal your body. I feel like that honestly helps a lot more like going for walks even, tapping. I got into a lot of stuff like that because this experience, I feel like it traumatized my body more than a traumatized my mind. Like of course mentally I was not okay, but logically I could understand the decision I made, I understood why I made the decision I made. I understood what happened, like why I was pregnant one minute, why was not pregnant at the next minute, but my body didn't understand. I felt like I needed to figure out how to heal that, and so I feel like moving your body is one of the best ways and activating your nervous system while moving your body is one of the best ways to process trauma and process stress that's locked into the body and stored in the body. Honestly the whole procedure in general was pretty traumatic. I had a complication and it was pretty scary. I remember when I was having the procedure, it was pretty traumatic. There was three women in the room with me, one was doing the procedure and other one was like holding me down, and then the other one was like holding my legs open. This is probably really triggering. I'm probably gonna cut this out, but like even just having space to talk about that, talking about my experience with other women, there was none of that. There was no community, there was nothing. Afterwards, I had to wait like a really long time before they released me, and I could definitely tell something didn't exactly go a hundred percent right, and I ended up getting a pelvic infection afterwards. So that wasn't great. The whole experience in general was pretty traumatic. Not being really with the father officially, it was traumatic, being depressed after for almost a year it was traumatic. Not knowing how to heal myself was really hard, but I think when I realized that it was my body that was sad and my body that was grieving, I needed to heal through my body. So I think doing these walks every day, and working out really intuitively and being really gentle with myself was really key. I remember some things that really helped me too. I ended up getting a prescription for ketamine, and I had heard before about ketamine therapy. There's plenty of places that you can go through. You can work with a practitioner and stuff. I intuitively, I feel like I kinda know how to heal myself, and I would do these really deep meditations, and I would do a bunch of ketamine, my provider, he would joke with me because initially I got the ketamine to help me be better at work and I didn't have to drink, and I ended up not liking it. I'm not really a person that really likes to do drugs, or really uses them recreationally. I definitely am more into like plant medicine or doing things more spiritually, and so when he first prescribed it to me, he'd be like if I'm taking it to go out with friends or go to a bar, I'll do three or four little puffs of the nasal spray, but then he's like, if I'm gonna go meditate, I'll do seven or eight. And so I was like, let me try this, you know, like can't fucking hurt. Like what I have to lose. And it's crazy, so I remember I started using it for that. I would lay on my couch, put on a meditation and I would basically put myself in a K-hole. I feel like I would do a lot. I would do a lot of it. I would do a bunch of ketamine and like see God, basically. I feel like that helped me move through so much trauma, like so much faster, and I was able to heal and integrate so much faster than just on my own. I feel like it was able to unlock parts of my subconscious and my brain. One of my favorite ways to do this was in the tub. Obviously be careful, you don't want to drown or anything. I just feel like in the tub maybe, cause I'm a Pisces maybe because I'm a water sign. I felt like a sensory deprivation type of thing, but I would do it in the tub and listened to a meditation, and I just feel like I was able to go so much deeper than when I was laying on my couch with an eye mask or something. I would do it in the dark with candlelight and have all my crystals around, and listening to like binaural beats and healing frequencies and doing a meditation, like a guided meditation, or I would just think about everything with this in the tub, and then at the end, I would imagine everything just leaving my body, like all the stress, all the sadness, everything, as I would drain the tub, like it would go away with the water, it would wash away, like down the drain with the water. I feel like whenever I would do that, whether, you know, it was like when I was healing this, I was healing a breakup, whatever I was like trying to work through and trying to heal, whenever I would do these really deep ketamine meditations, I feel like I would heal so much. Another thing that I started doing, that really helped was doing yoga. I never was like a huge Yogi before. Honestly, I need to do it more, but I feel like whenever I'm like really going through something or feeling overwhelmed, Literally just yesterday. During the full moon. I was feeling really overwhelmed on the way to the gym and there was a yoga class about to start, and I was like, you know what? I feel like I really need to just go do some yoga. It's been a few couple months, like I've just been going through a lot and I feel like you're able to process this stress sometimes better when you're moving your body, because it's stored in there. It's trapped in there, like doing breath work with your hips open, or doing breath work in general. I started doing breath work during this time, and any time I do breath work, I pretty much cry. Especially if I have my hips open when I'm doing it because a lot of trauma's stored in the hips, especially after this traumatic experience. Getting a pelvic infection and just like everything. I feel like I just needed all the healing, and it's like a way to heal your body, and to heal this stress and this trauma in a way that your mind can't. So, I think doing these things in tandem, like doing the journaling, doing the deep meditations, but then also moving your body, going on these walks, and even doing the guided meditations while you're on a walk, like you're able to move through and process when you're moving your body. I think it's just so important and I didn't really ever know about this before, and so I think going through this experience really taught me so much, about healing, about different types of healing, different modalities and like what worked for me, what didn't work. Maybe some of the stuff I'm talking about is controversial, and of course I'm not a doctor, I'm not suggesting you do some of these like more controversial things, but definitely I think they're worth looking into. I know there's so many different ways to do ketamine therapy, and it's way more accessible than it was three years ago even. I don't know, I just feel like traditional talk therapy was never really for me, and I also don't think it really makes sense because a lot of trauma is stored in the body, and so if you're not addressing that aspect of it, I feel like you're not going to get as far. Honestly, sometimes I think just talking about stuff can be healing. It can be helpful, but also too, you can just retraumatize yourself, and it's like, okay, now what? Like we talked about it, it still hurts. It's still stored in my body. It's not the whole picture. Literally just yesterday, I was doing yoga, and I had a really tough week last week. Honestly, it's been a tough few months, let's be real, and I just got this intuitive little ping. At first I was going to go to the gym, just like work out or whatever, and I was going on a walk before the gym, listening to different podcasts and stuff. Like my little routine that just gets me in the right head space, and makes me happy, and I got there and I was like, you know what it's the full moon, like I'm feeling really overwhelmed in my body. I don't really think lifting weights is what my body needs right now, like I think I really just need to like, do some yoga. And so literally, I started doing yoga, and luckily these rooms are dark, and I literally start crying while doing yoga, and I feel like it's because I'm moving my body and like all this stress that's been stored in my body over the past few weeks is like finally able to be released because I'm moving intentionally. I'm not distracted. A lot of times I'm at the gym, I'll be following a workout class, and so I'm a very plugged in. I'm not able to like think about things and I'm sure also too, it's like the music, the frequencies, just like the community around me, and I literally started like tearing up, you know, in like downward dog, and I'm just like oh, thank God these rooms are dark. Also too, at the start of class, this guy put his mat like way too close to my mat, in my opinion. I don't think it was like in a weird way. I think he just was trying to make more room for other students, and I felt triggered by it. I was just like, we don't need to be this close, but I like recognize that I was getting triggered by this very harmless thing. This wasn't like a weird guy. He was an older guy. He probably just doesn't have a clue, but I was just like, why am I feeling so reactive by this guy's mat, like a little bit closer to my mat than I would prefer. And it's okay, like obviously, I'm feeling overstimulated and maybe, just men in general, have just overstimulated me recently or their energy just feels like too much for me to handle. And I think that goes along with some of the themes that I've been dealing with lately, and it forced me to check in and be like okay, obviously there's something that has been bothering me not and, you know, work through. So of course I just scoot my mat over a little bit, it's fine, everything's fine. It just shined a light on some stuff that was going on with me before the class had even started, and then we literally just started getting into a flow. I'm starting to tear up, but I think it's because there's stuff that I needed to work through and moving your body, your body's able to process trauma, and also hot yoga activates your nervous system because of the heat, because of the movement, because of the frequencies and stuff, so it's really healing. Obviously, there was a lot that I needed to process because I actually started to get really dizzy during the class, and I started to get a headache and I started get really nauseous. Like I literally had to stop a few times and sit down and the instructor had to bring me like a cold little eucalyptus towel, and I was just like damn, but this is exactly what I needed. I needed to process this trauma and the stress and honestly, after the class, I felt really exhausted and still kinda nauseous, and I think that's normal. I think when we're processing a lot of trauma, especially if it's stored in our body for awhile. We're going to feel a little bit drained, and even after I do these really deep meditations, or if I do a sound bath or something, like I feel exhausted because processing trauma and healing it and letting it out, like it is a lot. It is a lot on your nervous system. I feel like giving yourself that licensing to relax after and take it easy is so important. That's why after a massage sometimes you feel really tired and drained and of course it's the buildup of the lactic acid and stuff, like that's, what's going on physiologically, but also a lot of stress is held in your body and it's being released. I don't think that's always discussed. I'm sure there's like a reason, I don't think most massage therapists are going to even share that unless it's like maybe more of a spiritually inclined place because you can enjoy a massage without getting into all the woo, but I think that's a big part of it. A couple of weeks ago, I got a massage because I was just feeling really overwhelmed with my nervous system, and I feel like now, after going through you know what I went through with my pregnancy and how I healed my body after that. I know now intuitively that when I'm feeling really activated and really overwhelmed that I need to do something for my body, I need to move my body in some type of way, whether that's yoga, whether that's a massage or that's a walk, whether that's all of the above. Even just like taking a shower or a bath, mindfully, and just like getting the water, like just wash it, for me personally, I just feel like that's always really healing and like cleansing, like my aura and like cleansing my body. Not just like physically cleaning myself, but like emotionally, spiritually. Definitely something that has been really healing. I talked about this a little bit earlier, but I kind of wanted to get into it more. So, back in September, I went to go see a Shaman and one of my girlfriend's has been going to her for years. I'd never seen a Shaman before, I've gone to different readers, like astrology readers, like other types of readers, but I'd never seen a Shaman. I initially went to her for something else, but ironically, I went to her the same week that my baby would have turned two. I didn't even realize it. I always think about my baby around this time of year, because this is the time of year that I terminated the pregnancy, and I always get emotional, around Valentine's day. Honestly, it's sad, yeah, that it was on Valentine's day, but I think too, it just reminds me the depths of love and that there's so many different forms of love. Like, love you give yourself, love you give other people, like it's not this superficial Hallmarky type of love, it's not just like romantic love. It's like what love really means, like the depths of love. So honestly I think it's beautiful that it happened on Valentine's day and now every year I always think about this and I'm reminded of the capabilities of love and everything that love entails. But yeah, I sorta remember, around the time that I would've had her, in the fall, but I think I was just going through so much other stuff at the time, I hadn't really thought about it, and yeah, literally the week I was seeing the Shaman is the week that my baby would have turned two, and so during the reading, she actually came through, like her spirit came through, and my Shaman like randomly asked me if I'd ever had a miscarriage. I was just like no, but I've had an abortion. She was like okay, and she was like your baby is speaking to me. I immediately started sobbing immediately, you know, obviously there's so much unhealed stuff there that I didn't realize. It had been like two years, like almost three years. I really thought I had healed most of this, and then realizing there still is so much that I hadn't worked through was challenging and just eye-opening. She told me it would have been a girl, so that was hard, and she told me that she understood my decision, but that she knows I would have been a great mom. That was really good to hear, but it was also really hard, and then she also was like, don't do that again. If you get pregnant again, keep it. I don't know if the same soul comes through. I've heard that the same soul comes through, like when they're ready. I don't know if that's true, but I know that our children are always older soul levels than us, so they understand the depths of things on a level that we fully don't know, we fully don't understand, so I know my daughter is way wiser than me, and I also know that now I always have this soul like looking out for me, and being able to communicate with her was really special. And just having her know that, I love her was amazing. We ended up doing this ritual for her. I came back and I brought her some toys and I connected with the father and we gave her a name. I think that was really important and really healing for everybody. I think just being able to talk to her, and do this ritual was kind of like the missing piece that I needed, and I didn't even realize that I needed. Like I said, I went to the Shaman for something completely separate, and that ended up being so healing, and so I definitely would recommend that too. Maybe if I had done that like a couple years ago, I would have facilitated the healing process or just sped it up, but again, everything happens when it's supposed to. This time last year, I met somebody that ended up having a really big impact on my life, and now when I think about this time of year, I don't so much only think about her and that traumatic experience and like the sadness. I also think about the time that this person came into my life, and I think about a lot of love and a lot of joy. This person that came into my life when they came into my life, it was a very familiar energy. It was like a soul that I had already met, like in another lifetime, not to get like super woo, and so I don't think it would be crazy to think that may be my baby or like my baby's soul sent me another familiar soul, as like comfort during that time. Like I said, our children are older soul levels than us. They're a lot more wise than us, and I think maybe she sent me that energy that I needed at the time. I do believe that she's always looking out for me and I have a little angel looking out for me and watching over me. That whole experience was a huge catalyst for my growth, and also this person that came into my life around the same time last year was a huge catalyst for my growth, so I don't think it's crazy to think that maybe that was connected or she sent them or whatever. I just think this time of year in general is just always going to be a important part of the year, and just like a huge growth part of the year. Just reminding me how far I've come, how far I want to go, and where I want to take everything. I don't know what's going to happen with this other person. We're still in each other's lives. In different capacities, like it's been a crazy year, but this person definitely has been another Canon event in my life and a huge catalyst for my growth. Honestly, like one of the biggest since this pregnancy, so I think it makes a lot of sense that maybe that was connected and that was her sending like a little guidance my way. I don't know what's going to happen with this other person, whether we're going to end up being in each other's lives for the long term in a big capacity, but I think that it's not a coincidence. You know that I met this person at this part of the year. I could have met them any part of the year. I have had kind of a complicated relationship with this person, and both of us were like, why did we meet when we met? Maybe things would have been different because we both were unhealed when we met, but I just think that everything is divine and we met when we were supposed to, and I think maybe my little guardian angel sent this soul when I needed it the most, and honestly, I think if I hadn't have had that familiarity and that comfort during this time last year. I was going through a bunch of other stuff at the time. This time of year is just always hard. I think that I would have felt really lost. So I'm grateful. This was a heavier episode, I know, and I'm sure it was triggering for some of you. I hope that it resonated with the right people, and that if you went through something similar, you're going through something similar that you don't feel as alone and it's okay to feel conflicted about your decision, but what's not okay is to feel like your decision isn't valid or you don't deserve comfort, or help, because maybe not everybody agrees with your decision. It's your body, it's your life, and I think at the end of the day, if you're moving from a place of love for yourself, love for your baby, love for your partner, and you're doing what you think is best at the time, then there's nothing you need to feel bad about or guilty about. Anyways, I know this was a heavy episode and controversial, but I know it's going to reach the people that it needs to, and I know that if I had found someone that was talking about this, when I was going through it, it would have helped me. Also, maybe it wouldn't have taken me almost a year to feel better if I had figured out how to heal myself and to heal my body and, how to feel better sooner. Hopefully this is helpful. If you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. My DMS are open, you can message me. If you liked this episode, please send it to your friends or someone that you think could get some value out of it. Thank you everyone for listening, I have already gotten so much feedback about my podcast, and so many girls have come up to me, and told me that they love it and it's resonated so much, and that just makes me so happy. Even if I just help one person, like my younger self, like even myself, like last week, it's worth it and that's all I want to do here. So I really appreciate you guys. Please comment, like, subscribe, rate it. Five stars, send it to your friends. It really does help me. I just want to be able to reach as many people as I can and grow and help more people heal because, yeah, it's hard out there. Yeah, and I'm still healing. We all are you know. It's a journey, anyways thank you guys. I love you, bye.