Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck
Speaking our stories sets us free. Listening lets us know we aren't alone. On the Alive & Kicking podcast I talk to ordinary people walking the extraordinary path of waking up to their highest truth. We learn that breakdowns aren't failures, setbacks aren't mistakes and calm follows the storm, always. Join us as we step into real and vulnerable dialogue and reveal the healing that's possible for us all.
Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck
Michelle Dunk -- Perfectionism, Surrender & God
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Early on, Michelle Dunk became a perfectionist to manage what she calls her self-manufactured pressures and fears. When her father went into recovery when she was sixteen, he shared a perspective that became the key to her spiritual expansion and her eventual return to a biblical understanding of God. The perfectionism, however, didn’t just evaporate. It would prove to be her biggest challenge in many aspects of her life from partnership to parenting.
One of my favorite gems from this conversation was this: The story we tell ourselves about our regrets is that things should have, could have been different when the truth is that the past was never a problem. It was the experience you needed to get you to where you are now.
Michelle is a visionary entrepreneur, motivational speaker, author, and coach. She has worked with countless teens and adults, helping to transform the lives of each client in alignment with their unique God-given goals, dreams, and potential. She continues two decades of work balancing motherhood with an active commitment to motivation, healing, and mentoring through her non-profit work, entrepreneurial pursuits, and coaching.
https://www.visionarymentoringgroup.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-dunk-1b686319a
https://www.instagram.com/visionarymentor/
https://www.facebook.com/visionarymentor
Video Production by Cyber Citrus Creative.
So my life was up until that point pretending everything was great and trying to be perfect to make sure that everyone around me that I loved could survive and function.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Alive and Kicking Podcast, everybody. I feel very fortunate today to have my dear friend Michelle Dunk with me. Welcome, Michelle. Thank you so much for having me, Kay. This is going to be a really fun conversation, I know, because we've already had part of part of it when we were earlier chatting, and you were talking a little bit about um a portion of your spiritual journey, which really made me wonder about when this journey began for you. So what is your earliest recollection of Michelle the spirit, in addition to Michelle the the human being, the little girl, what have you?
SPEAKER_00He was an alcoholic until um, you know, in my teens. So as a little girl, I saw something that was different pre-recovery to post-recovery. And, you know, my mother was very, we grew up Catholic and she was very um traditional in how she raised us and what our um ideas were. And I saw a father who was struggling quite a bit. And so when he went into recovery, he said something that completely changed my life. He told me, so part of the reason that he was an alcoholic, and I'm won't speak for him, but he's very open about it and um shares this openly. But he had some religious trauma himself. And so when he decided to get sober, he said that when he would go into the meetings, they didn't want to know your religion, they didn't want to know your political um beliefs, they didn't want anything that was going to stop you from healing. Because the moment I say something that you don't agree with, I might check out. And this was life or death for these people. They they needed to believe and lean into each other. And so when my father told me that, he made this more broad spiritual accessibility that I didn't know before. And so it wasn't about which one's right and which one's wrong, and what do I believe and what if I don't believe the right thing? It was more about, for some reason, relaxing into the idea that I didn't have to know. And so at 16, I started to believe that um that I would be okay because I was a perfectionist. And if I got it wrong before, there was this disapproving God that would not love me. But for the first time, I got the idea that maybe I was okay the way I was. And so, yeah, and so at 16 was the first time that I feel like I remember Michelle, the spirit came through. Like, you're gonna be okay, you've been loved this whole time. This whole you're not good enough, or you might be punished, or um, whatever the thought process I had was self-induced, and I had not known that. I thought it was coming from, yeah, like again, um a hierarchy of what everything I was doing wrong.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That that thing that your father said is so profoundly it's so profound, yeah, and the effect of it could have been um, you know, complete fear, complete chaos, or complete freedom. But and uh what made it more of a freedom experience for you?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's the interesting part, too, because I've watched his journey. He's dabbled into everything. I mean, my father would go and meditate with monks up in the mountains, and he would, we would have people in our home that, you know, grown adult men who never learn to read, and we'd be teaching people to read, and we'd donate people that we he knew that were living in the woods, and we'd go and bring food. Like I had this very different experience living in this beautiful neighborhood where everybody had more than enough, where I started to see the world differently and I was exposed to different things. So when you say I could have shut me down, like, oh my gosh, what is right? What is wrong? Um, it actually opened my eyes to we were all trying to get back home. And I became what I call a seeker. I wasn't necessarily seeking what is the right thing, what is the wrong thing, what is the appropriate thing. I was just seeking truth. And to your point, you use the word freedom, but I think the word that I use more is a safety in my world, in my body, in who I was. And um all roads led to God. No matter how I got there, no matter what path, the books I read, and um, you know, cultures and religions I studied, whatever it was, all roads finally led back to him. So I think the freedom was that um God was in all of it, just calling me back to him.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's amazing. So this environment of your home for the first 16 years, you said that your father experienced religious trauma, and you there was a certain amount of consequence to your growing up Catholic, and then your father makes this decision to get sober and suddenly the whole spiritual realm becomes very expansive for your family. So, how did your mother cope with that? What was her response?
SPEAKER_00Oh, listen, we still we went to church on Sundays and we did our thing, but my dad, um, you know, he taught us to meditate. He let he had me reading tick notes. Like I was not your typical 16-year-old. Let me let me say it like that. Um, but my mom stayed the way she always stayed. I mean, I lost my mom when I was 26 years old, and I remember her in the hospital asking me if I could go and get her blessed mother um pin so she can put on her pillow and the prayers that we did, none of that changed. So the way that I look at that, and uh again, it's I know it's a um triggering conversation for some people hearing that, but I I love the tradition of the way that I was raised. I love so much of it, and there's beauty in all of it, and yet um actually, I'm I guess I'm kind of skipping ahead a few chapters, but it fine, my truth seeking finally led me to God's word, read the Bible. I had read it, um, was scared of it, judged it, decided I didn't like that part of God's story, or I didn't I wouldn't have done it that way, or uh this can't be true. You know, I I read all that and and had some resistance to it. So I liked I liked my devotionals better, and I liked the writing of Course in Miracles better, and I and I still I love all of it. Um, just like my mom, it brought me comfort, it was what I knew, and I got to self-select what I thought was good because it fit into my desires for how I wanted life to be and what I wanted myself to look like, and I left everything else. And if you speak long enough, you will finally want the absolute truth. And when I finally started to read the Bible, read his word, this is part um in John. And I'm not someone that has scripture memorized and could, you know, um kind of rattle that off to you like some people, but I have knowledge, I have wisdom of it. Um, I read every day and what has changed my life completely, it's changed my relationship with God and the way I do life. Um, but in John, it says, if you want to do the work of God, and this is where it got me, because I look at the work you and I are doing as God's work. Like I'm employed by God, like he's my CEO. I want to make sure that when I'm touching people, when I'm I'm working with people, that I'm doing what he would want me to do, not what my ego wants. And it says, if you want to do the work of God, you have to believe in the one he sent. And I was like, oh my gosh, here we go. We're coming back to all the stuff that I had resisted or I was afraid, or you know, all of that. So I really had to understand the Bible and the context because I think I had so many teachers along the way that did exactly what I was doing, just took the parts that they liked and then maybe used their own interpretation of that. And I had to be uncomfortable enough and maybe I don't know if it's brave or I don't know what it is, but have the audacity to sit and read it through God's lens and in order and in context to understand. And I just fell in love with it and his word, and I just felt like I understood people, life, um, the craziness that goes on in such a better way. And what I mean by that is a conversation you and I had right before we hit play is that I now don't try to figure it out. I'm not in charge of fixing everything, I'm not in charge of controlling everything. I'm not in charge of having a hierarchy of who's right and who's wrong or judging. I have one job is to surrender it to God and ask to see it through his eyes. And that work has changed my life. It's changed my client's life. And it's something you do daily, sometimes minute by minute, is to trust that somebody does know what they're doing here, and it doesn't have to be you. Um, one of the things I say to my clients all the time is your kids have a God and you're not it. You're you have a God and you're not it. Your neighbor has a God and you're not it. The person on the internet has a God and you're not it. You do not have to be the one that takes the responsibility of being in charge of everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's really hard to do for a perfectionist. So let's oh yeah, yeah, hard to make that. That's quite a jump. So let's wind back to your your teenage years um a little bit and talk to me about how this um change in your life uh changed your experience of the teen years.
SPEAKER_00So you use the word perfectionist, which I still struggle with because it's innately in me, right? So the work that I know now, and so I can describe my teenage years from the perception of what I'm telling what I know now, but um, we all have, and again, I'm gonna just again use my terminology, a nervous system that is wired to survive. And so it's gonna look around at your family and the people that are raising you, and that you're you know, your caretakers, and it's gonna say, what do they believe? Because I need to belong, I need to survive. And so I looked around at my family that maybe was in more chaos than I recognized. The best, my parents are high school sweethearts, um, were married 35 years before my mom passed away. Best friends, danced in the kitchen, but like everyone else, they had, you know, their issues. And I looked around and I saw maybe money stress and I saw an addiction, and I saw my mom go through cancer. And there were things that were really, really hard. And what I noticed as being the youngest, also in the family, is that who I had to be to feel safe within those dynamics, what I interpreted it as was I had to be perfect. I could not ruffle any more feathers because they couldn't handle it. Like the reservoir was full. Everyone was at their capacity, everyone was in survival. So as long as I was a good girl, did all the right things, you know, received the awards and appraises and got the grades and on the teams and didn't follow the rules and didn't get in trouble. I felt like I was keeping everything at a steady. And I did take on that responsibility, which again is a kind of a uh very, you know, the definition of a child of an alcoholic is like we take on this ability to pretend it's perfect when it's not. And so that's the role that I took on. So my life was up until that point, pretending everything was great and trying to be perfect to make sure that everyone around me that I loved could survive and function. After that experience and my dad's spiritual journey, there was some massive changes that took place. And one of them was not that I suddenly was not a perfectionist. Now there was going to be a perfectionist about learning all of this. There was a whole new world that I hadn't been exposed to before. And I again felt like my survival kicked in of I have to learn it perfectly. Um, and there was so much information that that was overwhelming to me. So um I will tell you that there was not a huge difference in how I showed up in the world from prior to 16 to 16. It more happened when I became a mother that I could no longer hold all of the things. Um, and I had to realize that that's when surrender was necessary.
SPEAKER_01Well, I want to get to that. Um, but before we leave your teen years, I want to ask you um, because uh I I'm really curious about sort of the low-grade uh terror or fear that runs beneath uh a situation when you have a parent who is struggling with addiction. Because I know people as adults now who uh had that situation when they were young and still don't recognize how it may have affected them. So talk a little bit about uh how somebody would recognize that in themselves and what what what that low-level fear might have been like.
SPEAKER_00Yes, okay, so this is a really good conversation. The way that I look at it and the way that I've studied it as again as an adult in in my industry, is I as a child, again, trying to find a sense of belonging, trying to feel safe, trying to feel love, would see that my my father would choose alcohol over a dance recital. You know what I mean? Like an vent out to have drink more than come home on a Friday night to have pizza if there was an opportunity. And let me just be crystal clear. When I grew up, the idea of having an alcoholic in your family was someone who was abusive, who was drunk all the time, who was not kind, who was not a good father, not a good husband. And it was the exact opposite in our household. I'm sure there are lots of instances where that is the case. But my father was actually and still is my favorite person and so wise and so smart and so loving. And his addiction was him numbing his own pain and his own fears. But what I saw was this amazing father who we loved so much, make choices to not be present at certain times when we needed him or wanted him. And so I took that internally as I must not be enough if he's choosing that over me. I have to be better, I have to prove myself. So that's where perfectionism kind of comes, where you have to figure out and you're fighting for how can I get you to love me more? Who do I need to be that I'm worth staying here for? That I'm worth leaving when it's time to leave for, right? So it was a very subconscious thing, but looking back, my body was fighting for, I can actually remember times where um it would cause my parents to fight. And again, this is not this is a functioning alcoholic. So this wasn't someone that was like drunk and acting a fool all the time. He had his moments, but this was somebody that was loving and caretaking. But when he did have an opportunity to go out and let loose, it would cause stress in our home. And my mom and him would fight. And I can remember thinking that it was up to me to stop that fighting and cause somebody to go back because I had created this perfect image of what we were supposed to be, and they were ruining it. I would from a very early age step in and take responsibility for either covering things up for him or mending things or being the uh mediator of it. And I was a very young girl who that was not her responsibility, still isn't her responsibility, but I took that on. And so if it didn't go well, I beat myself up relentlessly. So if you're asking what are some of the traits, the traits are believing that you were not enough, you didn't do enough, you were the cause of it, or you should have done something to prevent it. And obviously, again, they have a God and I'm not it, but I started playing God at a very early age, which is why I felt so distant from him, because when we try to take his role, we ask him to take a seat. And the hard times that that calls for me was never because I didn't have a kind God, it was because I was so far from him and didn't allow him to come in and help.
SPEAKER_01That's such an enormous burden on a child. It's it's hard to imagine that any child could hold up under that type of uh that type of burden. So, how did this impact your relationships as an adult?
SPEAKER_00Uh codependency for sure. Um, I was I'm still someone that I always thought I was like, I look on the bright side, the glass is half full, but I am definitely someone that has been programmed to believe that no one wants to see it or I shouldn't show anyone anything but perfect you know perfect. I've worked really hard. I'm 51 years old. I've worked so hard in the last two plus decades on that. Um, but it's innately still in there that that was a survival mechanism for me. So it feels very unsafe to say, you know what, we're going through it, or you know what? I and again, I don't want to fast forward too much, but that definitely showed up in my parenting and for my children. And that's something that was the breaking point for me. I did not want them to feel like they had to be perfect to be loved, or that their greatness had anything to do with me. That was the other thing. Like the whole world I felt like was if it was good, it was because of me. If it was bad, it was because of me. And that to use your words was a heavy burden because guess what? It could not always be good, and it was not always my fault.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. What an that's such an ego struggle. That's like an ego out of control, right? Thousand percent, thousand percent. Yeah. So, what do you think is the the spiritual reason why your soul chose that environment to grow up in?
SPEAKER_00I wish I could give you this beautiful, elegant answer, but I do believe that I chose it. Um I would like to say, like, for instance, and again, I feel like I'm jumping um ahead, but I remember beating myself up about, you know, when my kids struggled, like, oh, well, I should have been better for them or whatever it was. And I had this epiphany, and you know, maybe it was one of those God moments where my experience growing up and how what I went through in my journey made me incredibly emotionally intelligent and self-aware when I was parenting them to not make it about me. And suddenly I realized like, I I actually am the perfect mom for them. I'm not the worst mom. I'm the I'm human, I'm messing up, and you know, and they're gonna be human. But that experience that I had led me to be the mom to these two girls that need it. This kind of mother. So if you're I don't have this perfect answer, but I do believe it was divinely chosen that I had the parents that I had, and then I have the children that I have. I wish I could go into the mind of God to know exactly why, but I can tell you that I'm so grateful for both.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. It's that that understanding or that surrender of responsibility is definitely one of the perks of a spiritual path. And it doesn't mean that you're not responsible for your life or your actions and the outcomes, but it does, you know, it's like walking side by side with grace, you know, holding on. Like you don't have to walk the path alone because you have grace. So um let's talk a little bit about um your your walk into into motherhood. What was would you I guess you would consider that to be one of the pivotal points in your life teachings I don't think you could become a parent and not have some kind of spiritual awareness.
SPEAKER_00Like that is to me, there was nothing that wanted me to heal more than becoming a mom myself. Now, in my circumstances, I lost my mom um before right before I had my oldest. So I was grieving and missing, and you talk about perfectionism, and this is kind of a little off topic, but my mom was in a car accident um with my sister and her husband and their three kids, and it was a horrific situation, um, really traumatic in all ways. And my mom ended up passing away six weeks later from um, well, it's a long story, but it it wasn't, she was supposed to come home, and there was a lot of human error that did occur. And I don't hold any kind of like, oh my gosh, I should have. I really do trust God's plan. I mean, it you know, we can't override that in that sense. However, what was happening was my oldest sister and um had a young son, and her husband and her were just opening a second business, so they were very overwhelmed with that. My sister that was in the accident, her husband and her, they were injured, her babies, like there was so much going on there. And then my dad, who again grew up with my mom, high school sweetheart, he, the strongest man in the world, was Jell-O. That was his whole world, and he was struggling. So at 26, I feel like I was responsible for making decisions. I was trying to get her to move into a different hospital. We all were, don't get me wrong, but I felt at least I internalized it like on the one, because they all have all of this going on. I've got to fix this, I gotta figure this out. And I was making the phone calls every day and I was working with people. And the day that she passed away, I got a phone call from the other hospital that said, we have a bed ready. And I lost it because I thought, if I could have just gotten her in there a day earlier. So again, now her, now I felt responsible for this as well. So my perfectionism was like, I'm never enough. People are getting hurt. And so when I had my babies, there was this healing that had to take place because I was struggling so much in how do I keep them safe when everyone I love, I couldn't keep safe. Like I just couldn't do it. So talk about spiritual awakening. It's like I've got to trust God because I was so angry at him. I was so angry that this happened. Um, I was the good girl that did everything right, following all the rules. And this you let this happen. And my mom was the most amazing woman ever. So this is where faith is activated because you cannot survive that kind of trauma and sadness and grief if you do not lean into the truth of, I guess, for me anyway, I don't want to speak for everybody, but what eternity will look like for me and my mom and my family and people I love. And that was the only thing that got me through is to finally get to a place where I could believe that there was going to be a time that I would be reunited. And um and that was what kept me going through those days. So motherhood was my um permission to finally heal a lot of trauma and want to show up for my girls in a way that I wasn't able to when I was struggling. So yeah, I think it's a spiritual walk in itself, even if you don't have the childhood I had or the the trigger I had right before. I think it's just you want to you want to be good for them. You want to be healed and whole as much as you possibly can.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's such a crucible, isn't it? Oh my gosh. Yikes. I mean, I highly recommend it, but whoa. Yes, yeah. Especially the part about, you know, this realization. You had just been through this incredibly challenging time where one person was taken from you, others were on the brink, you know, a family in in crisis, really. And here, you know, you're starting on your journey as a mother.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, talk about postpartum. I felt alone and I was grieving, and I didn't have the tools. And um, to your point, it was it was what I pictured in my head, and I'm gonna speak to anybody in the audience that is listening that thinks this. My younger self, the girl that had a childhood where she wanted it to look different than it was sometimes, thought when I become a mom, it's gonna look like this. And so when I stepped into motherhood and I'm grieving, and I have a broken tailbone and I'm postpartum and I gained weight, and my husband's working around the clock because I left my career to stay home, and all of that is happening. I had to come into terms with the fact that what I thought it was gonna look like didn't, and let that be okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's tough. Oh my gosh. That's that's really tough. I can remember sitting at home with my first child and thinking, wow, how can such a small person make me so angry? I know. I mean, I it it's yeah, it's it's quite a ride, quite a ride. I'm sure that you also were not the mother that you thought you were going to be. So, what what kind of mother were you? And how did you move the needle toward what you wanted to be?
SPEAKER_00Um, one of the things that I I would love to give myself permission to do now that I wasn't able to do then was it's not too late. It's not too late to be the mother that you wanted to be or you wish you could have been. Um, our relationship is still growing and evolving all of the time. I have a 20 and 22-year-old, and I'm so crazy proud, not just of them, but the relationship we have. And yet there's still room for improvement, of course, right? So um I will say this who I was in those beginning years was anxious and struggling and just full of love for them. They got everything of me, they got everything I had. Was that enough at times? Probably not, um, because I was the shell of a person, but they got everything. And so as I healed, I had the opportunity to show up better and and and differently for them. And I used to say to myself, this is good. This is good. They'll see what healing looks like, they'll be able to take some of these tools for themselves someday. Like I tried not to beat myself up. I will say this if I could go back in time, and I have apologized to them for this, if I could go back in time, I wouldn't be much different, as we all were. But what I meant was I let other people influence how I parented them. I grew up in a very, very strict household. My parents were incredibly strict and um it worked. We were great girls and we did, you know, looked great in the community and all those things, but that caused a lot of stress. And when I was raising my girls, um, I felt that voice in the back of my head, like, and my sisters, you know, were my second mom after my mom passed away, and I they would say that all the time, you're not their friend, you're their mom. And I would behave in ways that went against my innate mother intuition, where I would be like, No, you know, you're gonna cry down in that bed or whatever it is, where I felt like if I were to go there now, I know what self-regulation looks like and I would teach them. I know what co-regulation looks like and I would teach them. I know that I wasn't the authority figure that I wanted. I I am most proud now that I get to be their mother and their friend. And that's something I never got to have with my mother because I lost her early because she was my mother first. And so I would just say to my younger self, you can trust your intuition. If you are going against what everybody else is saying to do, trust it. God puts you in charge of these two babies because that's what they need, and not make it anything about me, make it all about their well-being. And I think I did that. I think I poured nothing but love into them. But um, going back in time, I've had a lot of inner criticism and a lot of self-judgment that wasn't fair, didn't serve either any of us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. There's this occurrence when you're raising children, especially if you're committed to growth, which the really is all the spiritual path is, is you're you're growing, you're healing, you're learning alongside of your children. You're making mistakes in real time that impact them. And this is this is um difficult. That is a difficult thing to go through. And um, I'm wondering if you have any insight as to, you know, that how to how to manage that, like, you know, like being willing to apologize and and and when you, you know, when it's not necessary to to apologize, and um be you know, because you're you're doing something that they don't like, and and maybe it was a mistake, but there was no other information, you couldn't have made a a different decision. So, how do you kind of sort all that out?
SPEAKER_00Um, well, A, one of the things that I am really trying to do, and I teach other people to do, is again, not be their God. I'm gonna be imperfect, that is a guarantee. They're gonna be imperfect, that is a guarantee. I don't mistake me wanting to um trust my intuition to saying, well, I'm just gonna let them screw up and let them figure it out. I am here as a guide, certainly. But I think where the, you know, the line kind of can get blurred is what I don't want to do is take this is what most people do. So we when we're talking about a dysregulated nervous system, we're basically talking about survival brain and nervous system that is programmed and wired for survival, where it's going to look at the past and say, here's all the evidence of what has occurred in the past. Here's what everybody told you you're supposed to do, here's the things that you got punished for if you didn't do, here's the things that society says, your girlfriends say, all of that. And you're trying to do something a little bit different. Or if you don't do that, there will be a consequence. And so, what I want people to recognize is that most of the time when we're not seeing eye to eye with our children, whether that's young children or young adults, it's usually because they have a history of evidence and data in their bodies and their nervous system, and you have a whole slew of evidence and history that you're both bringing into the present moment that doesn't belong. And so we're both fearing that what happened in the past is going to happen again, or I'm predicting the way you're showing up is the same way it did before. And so you want to notice that you're not responding to the present moment, you're responding to all of the moments that happened before. And so I often try to bring my kids, I will say things to them like, you know, I want to hear what's upsetting you, or I want to hear, you know, how I upset you or offended you. And then I'll listen to them. I am so open to being wrong. So open to being wrong. That is something our generation didn't get raised. Like there was a right way, and it was never the child's way, it was always the adult, right? So I'm very open to being wrong, and I'm also open to showing them a different perspective if they are looking at it through the lens of their past experiences or their past trauma or their past fear. I will offer them a different option that makes sense that you feel that way. That makes total sense. That is valid. That, you know, I will totally confirm that what they're seeing through the lens of fear or the lens of trauma or the lens of a past experience makes a hundred percent sense. And if we take that lens off and just look at this circumstance, is it possible that you are reacting to that instead of this? Is there a different way we can look at it? And I'm willing to apologize, I'm willing to see things differently too, but I'm also willing to offer you a different perspective if I feel that my view on this might actually not be triggered by my trauma. Yours might be triggered. So it's always looking at both ways. Um, I think for me, the best spiritual homework that we all have is the ability to say, I'm not trying to be right. I'm trying to make sure we're safe and protected and feel loved. And so my way of doing that is saying, giving it to God and asking the Holy Spirit to reinterpret it for me. Don't let my ego, my trauma, my fear interpret this for me. Let the Holy Spirit show me what is truth here. And I always get washed with peace when I do it that way. It's not about me being right or wrong, it's about me teaching my children how to call on spirit, how to call on God, how to trust themselves, and how to, you know, again, shift perception that comes from truth and peace and love and not the fear of the past.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I mean, that that feels like so important in any kind of relationship, not just a parent-child, but partner relationship. And so is that something that you utilize? You must utilize that in your marriage as well.
SPEAKER_00I can think of some circumstances where I have um reacted in a way from our early marriage instead of the present moment, because we're completely different human beings, like not even the same. We still have the same love, if not greater, but we're not just we are so evolved. We have definitely walked, um, we have a faith walk that's so deep and and a commitment that's so much greater than it even was when we first met. Um, so I always look at that as like, no, we're not being triggered. But there's definitely times where um circumstances where that's happened. And we're really good communicators in that way. Like he is, my husband is a great listener, a great listener. But I will always say, like, raise your hand if you're having fun. He's also someone that doesn't express a lot of emotion. So I like when I am he's listening and I'm pouring my heart out, he'll just listen. And I'll be like, no, I'm actually requiring a response here, like some like something else. So those are things where I'll tell myself a story about it. Like, oh, he he doesn't think, he doesn't agree with me, where he's like, Oh, I thought you just wanted me to listen. I didn't know you needed me to validate that. Um, so yes, we we communication usually happens for every person in your life to to recognize that you're meeting them where your nervous system is left off. Everyone, person at a grocery store, the you know, your neighbor, your loved ones, you're meeting them from where your nervous system is in its current state. And so when you realize that, you could just shift and regulate to meet them from a very grounded, peaceful present state instead of bringing in all the past baggage. But the key is to know, even when you do that work for yourself, you're meeting everyone in their current nervous system state as well. And you can give them grace and you can surrender that and help, like I said, help reinterpret that. Um, it just takes a lot of weight off, a lot of pressure on yourself and and the relationships and the people that you love when you start to look at life through the lens of God and love and possibility instead of what was and what's hard and what might go wrong and what did go wrong. It just changes the way you experience life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's beautiful. So it's such a I would have loved to have some of that language and understanding years, all of my relationships. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so uh on this spiritual path that you've been on, obviously, you know, it's obvious that you've you've done both professional and personal work, and they've, you know, you've kind of have a whole universe of language and tools and things like that. But I'm wondering if there has been anything in your post, not post-adult, in your adult life where you were challenged significantly uh to overcome a situation that you, you know, maybe the tools didn't work or you know, how you got through something like that?
SPEAKER_00Uh I'm challenged all of the time. That's welcome to the human experience, right? I'm challenged all the time. And I I will say this the only times the tools don't work is when you don't use them. And that's the case for me. I forget to use them. I play God again, like, oh, I'm gonna power through this one, I'm gonna fix this one, I'm gonna, I'm the person, I'm gonna save everybody. Is when I don't do the tools. What's the tools for me is a shift in perception, going back to God, surrendering to God, recognizing that I'm not here to save the world, I'm here to be a divine representation of what it can look like if we live in that state of constant alignment, what I call spiritual alignment.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Thank you. Well, this seems like a good spot to shift gears a little bit. And I'm wondering if it's be a good time for you if we did a little lightning round.
SPEAKER_00All right, I'm here for it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, you ready? Mm-hmm. Okay, number one. Uh, what are your gifts? And are you currently using them?
SPEAKER_00As a recovering perfectionist, I hate to talk about anything about myself because I don't think any of things are good enough. But I will say this one of my best gifts is that I get to bring people closer to God in a relatable way, that I don't make it seem difficult. I don't use language that's untouchable or that I'm in a hierarchy where I'm better than them. I bring them close to God because I'm on that path with them.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. So you're currently using those, obviously.
SPEAKER_00Currently using it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what is your favorite natural wonder? Favorite natural wonder? Like a supplement? No, like a thing in nature.
SPEAKER_00Oh, um, well, I would it's so funny. I'm looking at nature. I would say, like just grounding. My my favorite thing is to really be in alignment with nature because one of the things that happened when I was chronically anxious when I was younger is that it causes a lot of self-isolation where you are afraid to move because you don't know what to do next. And it's like, you know, that decision fatigue. When I'm outside and I see that nature is never anxious, it's never worried, it never isolates, it's always. Is moving forward. And when I'm outside in it, I can't help but feel that connection and that peace that everything's right in the universe when I'm there.
SPEAKER_01So you all of them, you would say, I think all of the natural wonders.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, like the beach is my favorite, but I'm looking out in the woods. I live close to the beach. I'm looking out in the woods. So yeah, I don't think there's any place in nature that I could be that I wouldn't feel that. But if I had to pick, it would definitely be the beach.
SPEAKER_01Okay, beautiful. Thank you. What's the worst job you've ever had?
SPEAKER_00In college, I um worked in telemarketing. And then I quickly became the manager of telemarketing and sales. And that probably was the most challenging because this is before, you know, I don't think we had cell phones, so nobody would nobody would screen the call. Like you would get people that were very angry, and I'd have to um get on the phone and calm them down, which I was good at. Um, so it was challenging, but still I didn't mind it. I I handled it okay. But maybe that was probably the worst job that I can think of.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. I love that. I had to work in a um one summer, I I think it was a no, it was probably in high school. Um, I worked in a small candy company and like in their warehouse or where they were making the candy. And it was during the summer, the building was not air conditioned, and they were they were pouring these hot slabs of brittle onto these steel tables, and it was just it was so hot. It was so hot, it was a hard job. Um, have you ever run out of gas? And by this I mean in your car. No. Okay, because you're very close.
SPEAKER_00Very close. No, my dad always told me to have a quarter tank of gas, and I never do. I wait until I'm on fumes. This is an embarrassing fact, but I'll just share it with y'all. I'm from New Jersey where we don't pump our own gas. So when I moved down to South Carolina, I have gotten gas twice since I've been here in two years. My husband fills the tank. So I don't have to worry about it anymore because I'm such a Jersey girl and at heart in that way. But um, many, many close calls, I just manifested my way right on into that gas tank until I because you know you're not gonna do it yourself. Right. I guess that's it.
SPEAKER_01That's funny. Okay, final question. Do you have a nerdy side? And if so, what does it look like? Oh, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00I I nerd out on um spirituality, I nerd out on God, I nerd out on quantum physics, I nerd out on anything to do with my kids. I'll do a constant research and deep dive with them. But um, if the definition of a nerd is someone that likes things that the majority of the people aren't into, that's me. I always felt like the outsider who was interested in things that the quote unquote normal people weren't, but I hid it well. I can shove up at the party and do small talk, even though it drains me, but I will go home and I will find complete satisfaction and fulfillment with some crazy rabbit hole that um yeah.
SPEAKER_01I love a good rabbit hole. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Did you bring in question for me today?
SPEAKER_00I did. I was thinking about this when um you and I were talking about earlier. In your spiritual journey, we again evolve at different times, and maybe some of us aren't ever going to, you know, see the same kind had the same experiences. That's part of it. Is there anything about your spiritual journey that you would change as far as the people you sharing it with the people you loved? Because I feel like that's the toughest thing, right? Is uh for me, I'm just gonna share that as soon as I started learning what I learned, and my life changed the way it changed, and I saw life in the world the way I saw it, and I understood God the way I'm learning to understand him. And by the way, like CS CS Lewis talks about um the more I get to know God, the more I know I don't know him. Like you just want more and more and more and more, right? Like deeper. That is when I wanted everyone I loved to know what I was knowing or research the way what I was researching, understand what I was starting to understand. And so you're innately wanting to tell people that, but it doesn't always mean they're ready to receive it. Do you have regrets about what you shared or how you show up?
SPEAKER_01I do have regrets in that regard, but I'm not sure that it could have been done differently. But I I I was very devotional as a child. I grew up Catholic too. Um, I've mentioned it a million times. Um, but I never I never shared that with anybody. Um, I always tried to fit in and to uh be with the crowd, uh, but it was so obvious that I didn't fit in. You know, I'd be in a a a crowd and I'd be the one in the corner just observing, you know. And I was always interested in philosophy and you know, just it I just didn't know anybody else that was like that. And also some of the most difficult periods of my life I recognized as that I was like in this void of having left organized religion behind, but being in like a desert, not knowing anything about anything, and feeling really scared and frightened. And I never shared that with anybody either. And so so much of my trauma and my way of being in the world was um being uh influenced by that that longing that I had for this spiritual connection to know who I truly was, and I never told anybody, and so um later in life, if I would um try to now I can't help it, you know, it's just like such a part of who I am, and I find that you know, people that I know um from way back and my kids and relationships and friends, and they don't it it's like a foreign language, you know, they they don't recognize me as being that person. So in a way, I have enormous regrets about that. I wish I could have known what I was seeking and been very forward with that, but um but I but I wasn't. I just wasn't. Can you help me with that?
SPEAKER_00I was actually just thinking that, like the same way I said, they only, you know, what is the word I want to say? Maybe for anyone that feels the way you do. I have this um belief that we innately, our egos, our our nervous system, our survival brain wants to look at that as a problem. That's a problem I need to fix. That's a problem I need to figure out. Where the soul doesn't look at it as a problem, it looks at it as um an opportunity to seek a solution or an opportunity to stand on a proving ground of what you know now. And when we are, you know, I always say God is so kind, He set up this universe with energetics to always give us real-time feedback of where we are in relationship to where we want to be or in proximity to him at any given moment. And most of us look at that as feedback like some I'm doing it wrong, I did it wrong, I'm now wrong, everything has to stay wrong, instead of recognizing that the kindness is showing you that the story you're telling yourself about all of that is that it should have been done differently. It would have been better if you did it differently. It could have, and now it can't be, right? The story you're in a relationship with is the problem that you're trying to fix instead of shifting the story to the truth, which is that it was never a problem. It was an experience that you have now gotten to the place that God was calling you to. This is a proving opportunity where you stand on the promise that you know you have from him. And everyone else gets to witness that and then decide on their own whether they want to join you there or stay where they are. And that part is not your responsibility. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's almost like you can't let yourself be known if you don't know who you are, but just that's just the way it is, you know. So I I feel like I struggled with going through the the process, which was very demanding, very deep, very demanding, and also being able to articulate it to people who did not have a frame of reference for it. Like I struggled with that. I probably still do.
SPEAKER_00I do too. I absolutely do. I think my um evolution has changed so much. I started off with like like my dad, the meditating and the um, you know, the journaling and the retreats, and I love all that stuff, but I look at those as tools that helps me get into alignment with God. I was doing everything but having a relationship with God. It's like literally, like, I just want to feel good. And so give me all the tools that make me feel good. And so you can't know that until you're testing all the tools, and on the way, there's this God calling you to it. Like, look, if meditation gets you to me, do it more. If journaling gets you to me, do it more. If community gets you to me, do it more. If reading books get you to me, do it more. But at the end of the day, it's about are you in alignment, locking eyes with him, or are you looking at the world and saying, you guys validate me, you guys tell me who I am, you guys give me praise. And I was as a perfectionist seeking that praise, and nothing will fill you up, nothing will ever fill you up until you finally have that relationship with God where He says, You can't earn my love and you can't outsend my love. It is freely yours. Beautiful. I love that.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I I I think of like how long, how much of my spiritual journey did not have anything to do with God. You know, it's just it feels like it took me forever, but oh well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. It's part of the journey. It was right, it was him calling you home. And and look, you and I, we're still a work in progress. That's why we're here. If we got to the finish line, we wouldn't be here. Right. If we knew it all, we wouldn't be here. Maybe there's a few enlightened people on the planet that are a little different than that, but the human experience is us remembering that we get to evolve, shift, change, rearrange, change our mind, change who we are. That's part of it. And we're gonna call in the right people and the right guides and the right teachers and the right family members who understand us at the times that we need them to, and vice versa. Um, but that's not a call for criticism on yourself. It's a call for more God, less us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, we and we talked about it earlier, this idea that I, you know, I'm no longer dependent on people knowing who I am in order to know who I am and to feel um okay, okay with it and with them. So yeah, that's such a such an enormous freedom. So well, Michelle, I have I could talk to you forever and um hopefully we'll get a chance to do something like this again. Um, just want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing so freely. I I just adore you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00I adore you too. Thanks for having me. Thank you.