December 17, 2024 • 44 mins
In this transformative episode of the "Stuck In My Mind Podcast," host Wize El Jefe invites the resilient and inspiring Jessie Torres to share her extraordinary journey of resilience, redemption, and embracing limitless potential. The episode, titled "Resilience and Redemption: Jessie Torres on Embracing Limitless Potential," delves deep into the intricacies of trauma, personal growth, and the power of forgiveness.
From the outset, Jessie captivates listeners with her profound understanding of trauma, explaining how it is a universal experience, subjective in nature, manifesting from various life events that disrupt a sense of safety, particularly in childhood. Through vivid examples, she illustrates the long-lasting emotional challenges that stem from unresolved traumas, like a child's fear of abandonment or an adult's relentless pursuit of achievement rooted in a childhood comment.
The conversation takes a poignant turn as Jessie courageously shares her own heart-wrenching experiences, including childhood abuse, an abusive relationship, financial hardships, and the devastating loss of her brothers to murder. Rather than remaining a victim of these circumstances, Jessie interprets these hardships as a "divine choreography" designed for growth and compassion, illustrating her unique perspective on pain as a catalyst for transformation.
Throughout the episode, Jessie provides invaluable advice to those grappling with their emotional scars. She humorously characterizes shame as a "cosmic joke," urging listeners to redefine their identity and consciously decide the individuals they wish to become. This message is underpinned by her personal narratives of confronting fears, initiating a daunting divorce without a concrete plan, and the ultimate realization of her potential through perseverance and inner strength.
A significant theme in Jessie's story is the pivotal role of her children in her healing process. Together, they engage in therapeutic activities, such as sound healing and intentional event coordination, to heal themselves and extend this healing to others. Through her children's innocent courage, Jessie finds strength to face her fears and redefine her life's purpose, a dedication to aiding others in awakening their true essence and rediscovering joy.
Jessie eloquently articulates the power of forgiveness, explaining it as an act of liberation rather than an acceptance of wrongdoings. She underscores the importance of releasing self-judgment and viewing life’s adversities as opportunities for growth and spiritual awakening. This mindset shift is exemplified through her ability to find love, unity, and positive impacts in even the most painful experiences, such as her brother's murder.
The episode further explores the spiritual dimension of healing, a belief in a higher power orchestrating life's journey in a way that fosters personal development. Jessie draws parallels to John Walsh's transformation of personal tragedy into a purposeful mission, inspiring listeners to find their calling amidst chaos.
Host Wize El Jefe contributes to the dialogue with his own experiences of loss and self-development, revealing how his life's challenges spurred the creation of his podcast as a beacon of hope and inspiration for others. His admiration for Jessie's unwavering resilience is evident as he reflects on the importance of shifting away from a victim mindset to initiate a positive life transformation.
Jessie discusses her mission to build a supportive community, referred to as an "army of angels," and her openness to guide others on their healing journeys. She shares details about her website, IAmFierceGrace.com, offering diverse programs, coaching, and a free ebook, extending her support even beyond the podcast.
The episode concludes on an uplifting note with Jessie expressing her deepest joy in witnessing others embrace their authentic selves and recognizing the
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:41):
And welcome to another episode of Stuck in My Mind
podcast. I am your host, w I z e,
and and my guest today is a is a beacon of resilience,
transformation, and divine purpose. Her her
life story is one of unimaginable hardship and triumphant redemption.
I'm excited to have her on the show. Welcome to the show,
(01:04):
Jessie Torres. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having
me. Oh, pleasure's all mine. Pleasure's all mine. I'm excited to to have
you on the show. You've like I said, you you're having a a a remarkable
story. You've been through a lot. And I I just I know you're out you're
here inspiring people, and I would love for you to inspire my audience.
I would love that. I hope that's the outcome today.
(01:26):
Alright. What
what gave you the courage to face your fears
after living in survival mode for so long?
You know, it's, I think, a state of survival at times. Right?
I always say we don't know what we've got until our knees hit the floor.
And when you get to that part where, my children were my
(01:50):
inspiration, I believe, because I knew that not
only were they watching, but they were what all I had. Right? So I
wanted to ensure that no matter how scared I was, no matter
how, the odds were against me, I was gonna do everything I
can to move forward, persevere. And if it
scared me, I put myself on the front lines. I wanted to make sure
(02:12):
that I was able to find my own strength, my own muscle, because I
was afraid of everything at the time that my world blew up.
So for me, it was that perseverance and desire
to to lead my children. Okay. So
how how do you be how do you begin to rebuild your
your sense of self worth after years of abuse
(02:36):
and trauma? You know, you get you get
curious. You know, your life will either take you out or it'll wake
you up. Right? I believe it's meant to wake you up.
It'll take you out only if you let it. In those
moments where your knees hit the floor or where you feel you've gotten an uppercut
in life, you know, one of the things that's important to recognize is
(02:58):
that we don't realize the unconscious conditioning we're
giving our experiences. We can start to have limiting
beliefs around it. You know, having abuse with my father had me
believe that I was now dirty and filthy,
and no one would ever love me. I was damaged goods. That's how I saw
myself. I didn't know. I didn't intentionally say I'm gonna think
(03:21):
these horrible things about myself. It was in my unconscious mind based
on what happened to me. I I decided that. So
now when I walk around with the the belief that nobody's gonna love
me, I attract people to prove me right.
Right? So they say they love me, but they treat me horribly. Right?
And so I'm like, I'm confused. I guess this is all I deserve because I'm
(03:43):
no good. Right? And so in those moments, it's like, gosh.
When I got to a place of complete apathy where just, you know, I was
hoping somebody would blow the red light so I could be done with this life
because I thought if this is living, then I don't wanna be here. Right?
And, in that moment where I woke up and and it was an act of
kindness that actually short circuited me. I thought
(04:04):
I don't even know what this is, but if this feeling's available, then life is
worth living. And from that moment on, it gave me the diligence and
desire to say, you know what? I I choose life.
And from that, it helped me get out of a very difficult situation. But,
again, in our adversity, in our pain, and I know some of you have
been through a ton, and I totally get it. And sometimes it's hard to
(04:26):
forget, and you just replay it, and you replay it, and you replay it. And
you're like, Jesse, I don't you you don't understand. Here's what happened to me. And,
look, I get it. And for whatever hurts you, I'm sorry. But we
have a choice. We either take what happened to us
and pay attention to the beautiful soul that got back
up, or we see the victim that got injured.
(04:47):
Both are true. One empowers us and one disempowers
us. But that other story is why you're
still standing and why you're listening to this podcast because you decided
to persevere even though that happened to you. So what if
that pain was meant to wake you up to a higher level of who you
are versus take you out? It's a decision.
(05:11):
What what what role did forgiveness play in your healing
journey, and how did you reach that point?
Forgiveness is a is a big gateway to freedom. I
to freedom. And one of the things about forgiveness, the big myth,
is that forgiveness people think
it's letting the person off the hook. If I
(05:34):
forgive, then they're off the hook for what they did, and that's not cool. It's
it has nothing to do with the other person. It has everything
to do with you. Who we are is love
innately. When we live in unforgiveness,
it's like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.
Right? It it it it's it's horrible in our system. It's
(05:56):
it's poison. It's it's ruining our sense of if our innate
nature is love and we're in blame
or unforgiveness, it's a heavy weighted energy in our
system that is not congruent with who we are. So
forgiveness is a gateway to say, you know what? I'm
not condoning what happened. I'm not saying it was right.
(06:18):
This isn't about right or wrong. I'm saying this thing happened.
I get to forgive because I free myself. Because, ultimately, when
we're in unforgiveness, there's an unforgiveness in me about
me. I blamed myself
for not fighting my father off. I was a little
(06:39):
girl. I didn't know better. He was my father. I trusted
him. Right? But in my adult mind, well, you coulda done
more. You coulda kicked, screamed. You could've spit. You could've peed yourself. You could've done
a 100 things. You could've poked his eye out. And I'm in judgment.
And when I'm in my own self judgment, then I'm in judgment of
him because to judge myself and hate myself is so hard.
(07:01):
It's easier to blame him and be mad at him. So I'm gonna hold on
to blaming you because then I don't have to look at the
fact that I didn't do something different. Now I was a little girl.
I I didn't know. Right? So I get to forgive
myself for judging myself. I get to forgive myself for believing I
should've done more. I didn't know. It was just part of my divine
(07:24):
choreography. And when you look at forgiveness, you realize
forgiveness is a gateway to understand that everything is in divine order.
Everything happens for our highest and greatest good, even the suck, and I know that's
hard. Some people have been raped. Some people I'm I'm my brothers would have been
murdered. So look. I get it. But if I'm
gonna trust God, the universe, the divine source,
(07:46):
that everything is in some sort of divine order, then I'm gonna look for the
gift. I'm gonna look for the good. And when my little brother
was murdered 2 years ago,
I had done this so much in my life. I conditioned myself to find the
light in the darkest moment. And in the moment of my deepest, darkest
sorrow, I was able to feel that the depth of
(08:10):
my pain was consistent with the depth of my love.
That, you know, my family showed up in a way I've never seen. That 3
of his oldest daughters who had never met before acted like they've grown up
together in their bonding. I was able to see people
write about him on his Instagram in ways that he helped heal them
and serve them, and I was able to see the beauty even though it was
(08:32):
hurtful. There the beauty is always there, but if we don't
look for the gift, then we only remember the pain.
Okay. Definitely. How how
has your perspective on trauma and pain shifted over the
years? I see
trauma and pain as a part of our journey.
(08:55):
Everybody has something. Right? And some people say, oh, I
don't have trauma. I had a great upbringing. And I some people
think trauma is only a raper or something big, which of course it is. But
I define it as trauma is whatever the child made meaning of in the moment
of the experience or when they lost safety.
Right there in our unconscious conditioning, we're creating a story. If a
(09:17):
little boy is in the aisle with playing with toys at the
grocery store and mom is at the end and he can't see her, she can
see him. He lifts up his head. She's gone in his perspective.
He screams, mom. She's like, I'm right here. It's a matter of seconds.
But in that moment, the child anchored, I could be left behind. I could
be abandoned. Now he's clingy to mom. Doesn't want mom to leave the
(09:39):
room. Now he's 35 and wonders why he can't keep a
relationship. He's controlling, possessive, and jealous because he believes
everybody's gonna leave him. He doesn't know to know. Right?
So I invite that when we look at different parts of our journey,
whether it wasn't your maybe it wasn't your parents, maybe it was a teacher, maybe
it was a bully at school, maybe it was somebody who just, you know,
(10:00):
didn't even know you and just said to you like, I had a client who
said that. Her biggest pain on paper, on Facebook, she looked like
she was successful. She was winning. She hit her $5,000,000
mark. She was fit. Oh my gosh. Amazing.
But she was depressed. Her husband was about to leave her because she was
at the soccer game, but she was on her phone. Why? Because she was
(10:23):
consistently competing and comparing herself to every other woman,
her sister, and herself of last year.
All because somebody at when she was 10 years old, a friend of the families,
she didn't even remember who it was, said to her, you'll never be as good
as your sister. Wow. And because of
that, she made that story, and now she'd com competed
(10:44):
her entire life to the point of exhaustion. She was
chasing worthiness on her achievements.
We don't know to know. So what I have learned from it is
that our every one of us has a moment of trauma. If you
look at society today, COVID or the election, it
isn't those things. It's waking up the pain body in
(11:06):
people. All of a sudden, you have COVID, and it's like, if you don't agree
with me, you're uneducated and, you know, don't know what you're
talking about. You're stupid. It's like, oh my gosh. This is somebody who I
cared about who was I thought a friend. Right? And it's just
like, wow. So now we have a difference of opinion. It had nothing to do
with COVID. It has to do with where she felt wronged in the past.
(11:27):
You know? And so now she's gonna fight for it, and this is just the
vehicle. So we're we're emoting like a loose fire
hose because we haven't regulated our nervous system
and understand emotional mastery.
What what advice would you give to someone who feels
(11:50):
trapped in fear and and shame?
Great question. One, I would say in regards to shame,
shame is a cosmic joke. I do invite you all to write that down.
Why do I say that? Shame is a cosmic joke because it's a man made
concept. We made it up. Now you are something to
(12:10):
be ashamed of based on who? Based on what? Who
wrote the rules? Where's the script that says, oh, this
box check the box. You should be something to be ashamed of. It's not
true. We all have our divine choreography. We all do things sometimes we're
not proud of. We say I'm sorry. We move on. We build. We grow
muscle. We decide who we're gonna be. We choose our identity.
(12:33):
So if you feel stuck, just know that you have power right
now to change it. It doesn't matter who you were last year, last
week, 5 minutes ago. You get to make a decision as
to who you choose to be moving forward and where you send all your energy.
And for those naysayers that say, well, what do you mean? Now you're different. It's
like, yeah. Because now I get to make a conscious decision of who I am,
(12:56):
and I choose to be the best version of me. And there's more grit in
me because no matter what, whoever's listening today,
I know you've been through some stuff. You've been through some stuff.
And the fact that you're listening, you got through it.
So grab the gift and leave the rest. What muscle did you
build? Resilience? Perseverance?
(13:18):
Courage? Heck, yeah. But we're not
remembering that part. We're not taught to. We're not taught to see that.
And I'm inviting you to see that. So you recognize the divinity and the beauty
that you are, and you show up accordingly. And
this leads me to to my next question is, how do you see the
concept of of divine choreography in your life? And can
(13:41):
can you share an example? Absolutely. So I
had a child abuse with my father. I had my first 18 years. I
had, I was in an abusive relationship, emotional, mental,
verbal, for 18 my next 18 years. My brother was
murdered when I was 28. My little brother was murdered 2 years
ago. You know, I've I've been
(14:03):
turned upside down financially in 15 ways. I don't even know how low your
FICO score was could go, but that was me. Like, in all of that, I
see the divinity in all of it. Because what it's given me
is the desire to serve humanity at the level that I, as one woman,
can. The the ability to, with deep conviction, help
others come out of their pain and to see their life as a divine
(14:25):
choreography. Somehow, maybe it was scripted. Maybe you had a conversation with
god or your source or whatever you believe in before you came here and you
said, you know what? I wanna come here and I wanna I wanna come down
on earth and I wanna be forgiveness. And god's like, okay. Cool. But
you know what? You're gonna need something to forgive. And then your parent
raised their hand and said, you know what? I'll be that person for you. You're
(14:46):
like, wow. Why would you do that? Well, because I love you. But I'm gonna
be so good at offering you the ability to forgive that I'm gonna
forget how bright my light is. I'm gonna need you to remember.
And each person that hurt you signed up with you in this divine choreography
to be the adversity so that you could be witness to your divinity, to
your power, to your strength, to your ability to forgive. We
(15:08):
don't know light without dark. Life is polarity.
Right? And it and it's in our deepest moments of pain that we find out
who we really are. Yeah.
How has your relationship with your children helped shape
your your healing process? Well, they were my
guiding light for many years, and they still are. They're all in their
(15:30):
thirties and, you know, it doesn't change. It never stops.
You know, now they call me out on stuff, you know,
which is just, so beautiful. But I think they were always my guiding
light, and what's beautiful is that throughout all the pain that we shared,
you know, they are also what I call light warriors. They're
also wanting to bring good into the world. And I think together, we're
(15:54):
a united front of of human beings
that wanna help others come out of their adversity and see their
beauty. My sons are sound healers. My daughter is is an
intentional event coordinator, so she puts intention and everything. And the energy that she
puts in is just incredible. She's also a singer, singing hope
and inspiration to people. You know? So it's like
(16:16):
they I believe we came here as a team to do this
work. Awesome.
Amazing. Can can you describe
the moment when you decided to take control of your
life and face your fears and
and and just confront everything you've been been through? I
(16:39):
would say it started when I decided to get a divorce because
it was so traumatic before because it was so
scary, and I didn't have a plan. I didn't know
what I was gonna do. I just knew that if I stayed where I was,
I would die. And so it was
in that moment of survival where I cried and cried and cried
(17:01):
looking for a place to live. I was making $8 an hour back then,
trying to, you know, raise 3 kids and live on my
own and, find a place to live after we had a, you know,
35 100 square foot home custom made. Now I'm, like, I'll
find an apartment, you know. And so it was in those moments that
I decided that I I was gonna persevere past it. Somehow, some way,
(17:24):
I was gonna find a way.
What what does living with with purpose
mean to you now? And how do you pursue it daily?
Focusing on people that need my help.
I believe that I'm here to help awaken and heal the true essence within.
(17:46):
Right? Our divinity, our beauty, the innocence of a child.
You know, I was holding my friend's 6 day old child. His
name was Timothy. And I was looking at him
and I was looking at his little hands and his little knuckles and I was
like, wow. Just divine perfection. You know, this beautiful little baby
boy. And then I thought, what makes us any
(18:07):
different than that perfection? Not one
thing. Only the belief. Only the
belief is what takes us away from that divinity. Just like me, I thought I
was gross and damaged goods. But I was still that
divinity. I was still that beautiful child, but I lost it along
the way based on my experiences and the meaning I gave it. And
(18:30):
so my outcome is to help bring people back to that innocence.
The beauty of a child that goes to the playground and says, hi. You wanna
play? Yeah. Let's play. And we're friends. You know what I mean? And and and
we're smiling and we're laughing and we giggle at little things. And, you know, I
feel like society has lost their smile. And I think
it's time to bring it back. So every part of my journey, I'm grateful
(18:51):
for. I'm grateful for everyone in it. My ex, my my dad,
you know, all of them. Because it created my
conviction and desire to serve humanity, to bring them out
of their pain, to turn their pain into power and purpose, and ultimately,
passion so that they bring back the smile in their face and they come
alive. How do you help
(19:13):
others find the gift in their pain
and and trauma? You know, oftentimes,
we don't connect our limitation today to a pain of the
past. We think we've resolved it. There's a lot of personal development out there
now. Why? It's just like, oh, no. I read the book. I'm good. I know
I need to forgive. I know I need to let it go. Blah blah blah.
(19:34):
And okay. Cool. Those are great tools. But what's
happening is we're not healing. We're not healing. And what we're
doing is we're mind setting our way out of healing. So what
happens is we still are driving from our wounding. Now we
understand. Hey. I have daddy issues, so you need to
hold space for me. You need to not trigger me because I have daddy
(19:56):
issues versus owning personal responsibility and saying
I have a wound that was created with my father. I'm gonna make sure
that I heal that so that I can be the best version of me in
relationship. And we're not recognizing
that whatever's limiting. If you're afraid, if you're if you lack confidence, if
you lost your voice, if you feel like you're a people please pleaser,
(20:18):
if you feel like you're not asking for the raise, if you feel like you're
not becoming an entrepreneur because you're too scared, wherever you're
limited today, I guarantee you it has a thread of some
limitation that happened to you when you were a child because there is
no limitation to the human being, only the belief there is one.
(20:40):
What what role does spirituality play in your approach
to healing and transformation? It plays a big
role. The
truth of the matter is none of us knows. Mhmm.
I believe there is something greater than me telling my heart to beat.
Mhmm. You know? It's it's our bodies are a walking miracle.
(21:03):
I don't know about you, but I don't plug myself in. My heart just beats
for me every day. You know? My lungs breathe for
me every day. I I don't tell it what to do. I don't plug myself
in. It just does it. We're walking miracles. There's something divine.
Right? I don't know if it's a man with a beard. I don't believe so.
But I know there's something greater than me, and I know it's beautiful, and I
(21:24):
know it's divine, and I know it's of love. And so
for me, if I'm gonna trust that, if I'm gonna have faith in
that, then I have to trust that everything in my journey, in
our lives is happening for some reason, for some greater good.
Mhmm. Even the devastation. I use,
John Walsh as an example. The guy who did America's Most
(21:46):
Wanted. Yeah. His son was murdered. Yeah. His but he he
developed America's Most Wanted on the heels of the murder and
kidnapping of his son, Adam. Yeah. Right? So what if Adam it's
like, you look at that as a tragedy, which it is, but what if Adam's
soul journey was to be here for 6 years
to be the catalyst of his father's awakening because God
(22:08):
knew that John was the one that was gonna save the money.
Yeah. Right? So spirituality has everything to do with
it. And he's and he's done a lot. Yes. John Walsh
has saved a lot of people doing what he's doing because
of of his experience and what he's gone through. It's
it's something like, people ask me because I I was widowed at
(22:30):
31. My wife passed away in a car accident.
Yeah. And I was lost, and and and and,
it was this is someone I was with from
21 to 31. This is someone
that my the beginning of my adult life Right. Was she was in
my she was involved in my life, and and she she's the one
(22:54):
who introduced me into the world of self development and and and all
this. So I think that was her way of preparing me for what
was to come. And, yes, I kind of, lost
my way after after I lost her, and and it
took time for me. And it it was just after losing her, it
was just like one tragedy after another. I reunite with my dad
(23:16):
only to lose him. Right. I I buried 2 brothers, a
aunt and a uncle that helped raise me and and mold me into the man
that I am. And it was
it's just I was I was kinda I was angry. Yeah. I was angry with
everything that was going on. I was like, why me? Am I such a horrible
person that that everything is happening? But
(23:38):
this the voice in my head was like, this isn't your path.
This isn't what you're you're not supposed to be in this darkness. You're not supposed
to be here. We're gonna change that. And and and
I and I sought help. Change started changing my life.
I got remarried, and and just it just kind
of, just kinda prepared me for what to what was
(24:02):
to come because I wasn't I wasn't in media. I wasn't in any of
that. And when I was like, you know what? I wanna start a podcast. I
didn't know what I was what it was gonna be about. Didn't know. And
once I started recording the show, I found my purpose.
It was like, okay. I wanna start giving people a platform so they can share
their stories and and and and hopefully inspire
(24:24):
others once they listen to the podcast that, hey.
Regardless of what you've been through in life, no matter how
hard life has hit you, you can pick yourself
up and really work and and and change
your life around. And And instead of being a
victim, work
(24:45):
towards helping others to to whatever they're going
through. Absolutely. Absolutely.
That's so beautifully said, and I believe that's true. I don't believe god
waste the pain. I believe we do if we choose to. You
know? And and when my brother died 2 years ago, again, 2 totally
separate stories, both to murder. You know? I'm like, okay, god.
(25:07):
So if both of my brothers are meant to be taken, what do you want
with me? And I I'm I'm still searching, and I and I believe I know
because I know my purpose. But how can I deepen that resolve? How can I
do it even more? How could I, you know, help, you know,
get women off the streets? You know, how can I you know, there's just so
many different levels of where I can see my life going?
(25:30):
But right now, I'm I wanna help people heal. I I don't wanna
mindset our way out. I don't want a tool to get us through. I want
us to heal so that we upgrade the operating system of the mind
versus installing new software expecting it not to glitch. Yeah.
And what it does is it it invites deeper levels of shame because now I
read the books. I went to the seminars, but why am I stuck again? And
(25:53):
we beat ourselves up even more. So we have to stop bypassing the
parts of us that need our love, and so I'm committed to that.
Yeah. And and that's something that's, that's why, like I said, that's why
I do the podcast. And when you asked me earlier, it was like, oh, what
what is it that I want my audience to get out from our
conversation is to see the resilience and see your strength
(26:16):
and see how much you've overcome to to and
and you and your and your purpose is to help others and still uplift
others. And and that's what I wanted. It was for you to come and share
that story and and show people, like, regardless of
what you've been through, Do as long as you
you continue to play the victim, you're gonna stay you're gonna stay in that victim
(26:38):
mode. Absolutely. And the moment you decide that you're no longer a
victim, you'll see the shift in your life.
100%. 100%. And it's a decision.
You know? Again, what if life didn't happen to you? It happened for you
and from you. And if it happened from you, it's like, where
(26:59):
were were you vibrating? When I attracted my husband, I was vibrating at the level
of shame. I was not good enough. And my my ex
husband had his own hurt. His own he came from his own trauma. He
had a very brutal alcoholic mother. And so we met
each other in our wounding, but we didn't understand.
Right? He he thought, well, you know, I'll never let my kids see me
(27:21):
drink. And I said, well, my kids will never be molested, and we thought we
fixed it. Right? We didn't know the invisible traumas
underneath that that we were bringing into the relationship. I see it
now. I didn't know it then, and a lot of us don't know it. But
trust me, if I can come from a place of wanting to die and willing
somebody to blow the red light so I could be done, to be where I
(27:42):
am today, excited for life every day, excited. Who am I gonna meet
today that I get to serve? So can you. And you know what?
If your if your vision or your purpose isn't to serve the world, that's okay
because you don't realize you serve one world, and that
could change the world because that could be the next Martin Luther King. That could
be the Starbucks lady. That could be your child. That could be your
(28:04):
neighbor's child that you influenced. Just choose to be the best
version of you and trust that your words of kindness can shift the
trajectory of someone's life like it did mine. Yeah.
Absolutely. What what
lessons did you learn from your the loss of your brothers,
and how do you honor their memory?
(28:28):
By continuing to be me. I think the lessons I've learned,
it was a rude awakening. I had gone through
my own levels of abuse with my father. I
learned a lot about their experience
in our home. It's so interesting. You can be raised with the same parents,
and and everybody has their own experience and their own ways of
(28:51):
perception and how they were treated. And it
just allowed me to have compassion, allowed me to to realize it
wasn't just me, and, you know, I I use them
also as my guiding light. It's like, okay. What did my older brother teach me?
He was my safety. When we were little, he you know, I would crawl
in bed with him and he would protect me and he'd hold my hand when
(29:13):
we walked to school. He was all the safety I knew. And when god took
him, I was like, oh my god. I'm left I'm left alone. But
there was moments where he came to me and he said, you know, Jess, this
is for you to do, not me. When I found books on personal
development, I didn't even know what personal development was. I didn't even read any books.
I'd fall asleep at the first paragraph. You know? And after he passed away, I
(29:35):
found some of his stuff, and there was therapy session notes. There was books he
was reading, and I was like, oh, and then I heard his voice say, this
is for you to do, not me. I did not know what it meant at
the time. Mhmm. But it never left me. And my
little brother, man, there are so many lessons in that.
So many lessons. He was doing so good at the time that all this happened.
(29:56):
And so for him, I see resilience. I see the ability to
to persevere even though he had the odds against him. He was 15 when
our older brother was killed, and he was searching for that brother and every man
he could get a hold of. And he entered gangs and got connected with
the wrong crowd, and god bless him. He tried so hard, and he was
coming out on the other side, and then his destiny was to be
(30:18):
complete, you know? And so there's so many lessons there. He's left children
behind that, you know, I care about and who I choose to be for them.
So there's definitely a ton of lessons in there and I constantly take,
you know, that with me every single day to ensure that I show up as
the best version of me so that others don't have to suffer the way he
did. Absolutely.
(30:43):
What what what was what has been the most rewarding part of
your journey toward self discovery and healing?
I say falling in love. And I say falling
in love with the Jesse of the
journey. Right? Like, I have a
(31:04):
separation of who I am today and the girl that
went through all of that. Right? Like, when I see myself
as a little girl building traps to warn me when my dad was coming, or
I see the woman who was raising 3 kids and, you know,
was surviving, but getting through some very
horrible, ugly moments. I love her. I love her, and I
(31:26):
give thanks for her, and I don't condemn her anymore. I used to beat
myself up so much. I used to think so little of myself. I thought I
was weak. I didn't stand up for myself. I I was a doormat. I mean,
all these things. I had these judgments. Now I have only
love, and and I honor her for being so brave and so
courageous to get through all of that so I could be the woman that I
(31:48):
am today. And so it's been a love journey
to get to this point, and it's why I'm so committed to help you fall
in love with yourself, to help you come back to the essence of
you, your divinity, that beauty within. You are no
different than the moment you took your first breath. You are still that divinity, that
magnificence. So the greatest joy is when I see that in
(32:10):
someone, when I see the innocence coming back to their eyes,
when I see them light up, and it's just like, oh my gosh. Like, I
love myself and the tears come down. And I'm just like, oh, it's one of
the greatest moments to see somebody come back to their own
divinity. The one of the greatest joys of my life.
Yeah. Excuse me.
(32:33):
How do you learn to embrace
and and and celebrate your resilient spirit?
I probably don't celebrate it enough. Sorry. I appreciate the question.
But to me, I celebrate it by continuing. Right? Because here's
the thing, 2 years ago, I did not expect to lose my
(32:56):
brother. Right? My other brother. And in in my mind, I
thought, nope. I already checked the box. I already lost a brother.
Done. Don't have to do that again. Right? So when it happened,
it was a it was a uppercut. It was like a sucker punch. Like, we
didn't no. No. No. No. No. No. No. Like, that already happened in my life.
I can't lose another brother. And so, you know, my
(33:18):
resilience in that moment was to apply all the
practices I've learned, all the things I teach. My message from
God was, Jesse, you need to eat your own medicine. I
know this is a big uppercut, but you need to find the light in this
moment. You need to find the good even in your deepest darkest of pain.
And so I have to celebrate those moments of being able to do that. And
(33:40):
I celebrate it not because, you know, it's
all about me. I celebrate it because I'm a human being
that went through something hard, and I celebrate it because I wanna celebrate it
in you. I want you to find those moments where you took an uppercut,
and I want you to celebrate yourself. I want you to honor yourself just like
you. Well, like, you went through all of that, and here you are wanting to
(34:02):
give back to the world. You're wanting to bring hope back into the minds of
people. Right? And and so so your resilience
matters, and and we don't have anything special
that you can't have out there whoever's listening. The resilience,
it's built in those moments of pain. Right? It's like we don't if if
you go to the gym and you lift £10, you're only gonna build muscle £10
(34:23):
worth. If you want a bigger muscle, you're gonna have to have more resistance.
That's life. Life is gonna continue to challenge us, but it's
it's how you show up from this day forward. Pull that resilience
forward. You've been through stuff. Recognize that. Honor that,
and celebrate it along the way. Oh, yeah.
This this this year has been kinda it's been, kinda
(34:46):
rough. It's,
I I buried my mom in in February. She was Oh, I'm sorry.
884. She had a she had a long life.
It it was, Alzheimer's and dementia, and it it and she,
like, it like, last year
was one of the most
(35:09):
successful years for my podcast, one of the best
years. And but I was dealing with
her deterioration Yeah. Last year, and
and I didn't really get to enjoy and and and and
and celebrate what I was doing. And and
(35:31):
and so when she passed in February, it was like
we we we had a, like, it we had a great moment in the
hospital for when, when she she
said something to us, and it it was she's like, even even
in in her dying, she she still had her sense of
humor. We're talking, and we're
(35:54):
we're just I go and I ask her. I says,
how how are you doing? And she goes,
And and we just all started laughing. And and
it was that moment I realized, like, this is this is
(36:17):
these are the moments that you need to to remember. And
and and regardless of what she was going through,
that was just one of those moments that she had. She was lucid, and and
she knew what she was saying and what was going on.
And to realize that even in that situation,
she can make a joke about it. She can laugh about it and knowing
(36:40):
that that was to us, that was like, okay. We're gonna be alright.
Yeah. How beautiful. Yeah. That's awesome.
So yeah. And it's it's yeah. So it's it's
been a a a wonderful journey being able
to create this platform.
(37:01):
And one of, one of my guests, when they asked
me, is there anything I regret that that's happened or
and I was like, no. I'm like, everything that's happened has
made me into the person that I am today.
Do I wish people go through any of the stuff that I want?
(37:21):
No. Absolutely not.
But everything that's happened to me has helped build me and make me
the person that I am, and and that's what life is about.
It's life you take those those tragedies and you take those
moments and and and it it molds you,
(37:42):
but you you continue. You continue because life is still happening. You're still
you still we're still going on. Yeah and there's still
people that are watching and there's still people that care about you, you know and
so you keep going and it is it is divine. You know
when my father passed away, you know, he was
having dementia and he had leukemia. And,
(38:05):
my my half sister and I were taking care of him at the
time, which was just interesting. And he had 2 weeks before he
passed, he had this lucid moment and I happened to be alone with him.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, I wish I could have
been the father you deserved. And without hesitation, well, I was
able to say, you know what, dad? You were perfect. You were exactly who I
(38:27):
needed you to be so I could be who I am today, and I am
good. And I I know I could see the lightness in his
eyes. It's almost like he had permission to go and pass in
peace, you know, and to not harbor his regret
or his, you know, shame for what he because he always did
have remorse. And so I feel like he was set
(38:48):
free in that moment, and it felt good for me, like you said, to be
able to be I'm I I I wouldn't change anything.
You know? I I do I want my brothers back? Yeah. I do.
But they're not. You know what I mean? And so I I take
everything and I find the gift and and I persevere and I keep going and
I keep looking to affect as many lives as I can with with this
(39:10):
story. Again, it's not about me. It's about it's about
what I I what Jesse went through so that you can connect
and recognize that no matter what you've gone through, what you're going
through, that you can come out the other side, and you can own
the divinity, the divine choreography of all of it. And you can smile again, and
you can fall in love with all aspects of you because you're still standing.
(39:32):
You still decided to get back up. You still decided to tune into this
amazing podcast to see what golden nuggets you can get or what
moments of inspiration and hope that you can find. And I know you're
doing that because it's your the kindness and the bigness of your heart because you
want to be the best version of you or you wouldn't have tuned into this
podcast. So thank you, Will, for putting this together and
(39:54):
being that inspiration and hope for others so that they can find a way out,
a a a group of people that, you know, can still see
the light even though it may seem dark. Definitely. Thank
you for being such a wonderful guest. This has been amazing. This has been a
great conversation. But now it's come to the time where you get the solo
screen, and you get to plug away and let people know where they can find
(40:14):
you, website, everything? Absolutely. You
can go to I am fierce grace.com. I
am fierce grace.com. And on
there, you're gonna find multiple ways to work with me. I, I'm
a speaker as well. So if you have an an opportunity where you need a
speaker, I'm happy to do that. 1 on 1 coaching. I
(40:37):
I have, fierce grace transformation, which is my online
program for healing. It's to help awaken you, to help you see your
divinity, to help you come back to truth, and to be empowered, to be a
sovereign being that gets to decide to live their dreams.
So you can go on there. If you just have questions, you wanna connect with
me, just schedule a call. It's free. And the last thing I wanna
(40:58):
give, to Will here is a free gift.
It's it's a little ebook, and, it's it's,
10 ways that you can take action right now in your life no matter what
your circumstances. I know sometimes it feels like our circumstances
are, you know, nobody would understand, and you feel stuck, and you feel
like there's nothing you can do. I promise you there's something you can do.
(41:21):
I felt the same way. And so I developed this book so that you can
have some things that you can take action on right now to help
motivate you, to help wake you up, to help you realize that you
can have the life of your dreams if you choose it. So that's it.
Thank you so much for giving me the floor. I'm out here. I'm committed to
building an army of angels of other beautiful souls that wanna serve the world.
(41:43):
So if you've been through stuff and you need support, reach out to me. I'm
happy to chat. Awesome. Thank you. Thank
you for being such a great guest. Thank you for the gift.
Once once if you if you email it to me, I'll I'll put it into
the show descriptions and and have people be able to reach,
download it through there. Absolutely. But, thank you so much. This
(42:05):
has been a a great, great show. I appreciate you coming through and
sharing your story and Absolutely. And and inspiring so
many people out there. Thank you for having me, Will. Oh, the
pleasure's all mine. I look forward to to
seeing more of your journey, and and, hopefully, we could we
continue to stay in touch and because I love to have repeat guests. So
(42:28):
Awesome. You're always welcome. If you decide to write a book or if you were
launch a new program, let me know, and we'll have you back on to
share to share that. But, but don't leave the shit. Let
me close out the show. We'll chat a little bit off the air. But, thank
you so much. It's been a Thank you. It's been great having you on the
show. Appreciate it so much. Take care.
(42:51):
Alright, everybody. That was another great show. Thank you to
everybody who tune who's tuning in live. If you're gonna catch the
replay, thank you as well. Please share, subscribe, hit the notification bell. Big shout out
to my RealWise fan. Big shout
out to my RealWise fan, Papi j, Brandy j. Love you guys.
Big shout out to the boss lady. Love you and appreciate everything you do.
(43:13):
Big shout out to to to Jesse Torres for coming on and and sharing her
story and inspiring so many people. And as always, a
big, big shout out to all the essential workers out there. God bless. Y'all be
safe. You know your boy, Wise, does it? Peace
out.
And welcome to another episode of Stuck in My Mind
podcast. I am your host, w I z e,
and and my guest today is a is a beacon of resilience,
transformation, and divine purpose. Her her
life story is one of unimaginable hardship and triumphant redemption.
I'm excited to have her on the show. Welcome to the show,
(01:04):
Jessie Torres. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having
me. Oh, pleasure's all mine. Pleasure's all mine. I'm excited to to have
you on the show. You've like I said, you you're having a a a remarkable
story. You've been through a lot. And I I just I know you're out you're
here inspiring people, and I would love for you to inspire my audience.
I would love that. I hope that's the outcome today.
(01:26):
Alright. What
what gave you the courage to face your fears
after living in survival mode for so long?
You know, it's, I think, a state of survival at times. Right?
I always say we don't know what we've got until our knees hit the floor.
And when you get to that part where, my children were my
(01:50):
inspiration, I believe, because I knew that not
only were they watching, but they were what all I had. Right? So I
wanted to ensure that no matter how scared I was, no matter
how, the odds were against me, I was gonna do everything I
can to move forward, persevere. And if it
scared me, I put myself on the front lines. I wanted to make sure
(02:12):
that I was able to find my own strength, my own muscle, because I
was afraid of everything at the time that my world blew up.
So for me, it was that perseverance and desire
to to lead my children. Okay. So
how how do you be how do you begin to rebuild your
your sense of self worth after years of abuse
(02:36):
and trauma? You know, you get you get
curious. You know, your life will either take you out or it'll wake
you up. Right? I believe it's meant to wake you up.
It'll take you out only if you let it. In those
moments where your knees hit the floor or where you feel you've gotten an uppercut
in life, you know, one of the things that's important to recognize is
(02:58):
that we don't realize the unconscious conditioning we're
giving our experiences. We can start to have limiting
beliefs around it. You know, having abuse with my father had me
believe that I was now dirty and filthy,
and no one would ever love me. I was damaged goods. That's how I saw
myself. I didn't know. I didn't intentionally say I'm gonna think
(03:21):
these horrible things about myself. It was in my unconscious mind based
on what happened to me. I I decided that. So
now when I walk around with the the belief that nobody's gonna love
me, I attract people to prove me right.
Right? So they say they love me, but they treat me horribly. Right?
And so I'm like, I'm confused. I guess this is all I deserve because I'm
(03:43):
no good. Right? And so in those moments, it's like, gosh.
When I got to a place of complete apathy where just, you know, I was
hoping somebody would blow the red light so I could be done with this life
because I thought if this is living, then I don't wanna be here. Right?
And, in that moment where I woke up and and it was an act of
kindness that actually short circuited me. I thought
(04:04):
I don't even know what this is, but if this feeling's available, then life is
worth living. And from that moment on, it gave me the diligence and
desire to say, you know what? I I choose life.
And from that, it helped me get out of a very difficult situation. But,
again, in our adversity, in our pain, and I know some of you have
been through a ton, and I totally get it. And sometimes it's hard to
(04:26):
forget, and you just replay it, and you replay it, and you replay it. And
you're like, Jesse, I don't you you don't understand. Here's what happened to me. And,
look, I get it. And for whatever hurts you, I'm sorry. But we
have a choice. We either take what happened to us
and pay attention to the beautiful soul that got back
up, or we see the victim that got injured.
(04:47):
Both are true. One empowers us and one disempowers
us. But that other story is why you're
still standing and why you're listening to this podcast because you decided
to persevere even though that happened to you. So what if
that pain was meant to wake you up to a higher level of who you
are versus take you out? It's a decision.
(05:11):
What what what role did forgiveness play in your healing
journey, and how did you reach that point?
Forgiveness is a is a big gateway to freedom. I
to freedom. And one of the things about forgiveness, the big myth,
is that forgiveness people think
it's letting the person off the hook. If I
(05:34):
forgive, then they're off the hook for what they did, and that's not cool. It's
it has nothing to do with the other person. It has everything
to do with you. Who we are is love
innately. When we live in unforgiveness,
it's like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.
Right? It it it it's it's horrible in our system. It's
(05:56):
it's poison. It's it's ruining our sense of if our innate
nature is love and we're in blame
or unforgiveness, it's a heavy weighted energy in our
system that is not congruent with who we are. So
forgiveness is a gateway to say, you know what? I'm
not condoning what happened. I'm not saying it was right.
(06:18):
This isn't about right or wrong. I'm saying this thing happened.
I get to forgive because I free myself. Because, ultimately, when
we're in unforgiveness, there's an unforgiveness in me about
me. I blamed myself
for not fighting my father off. I was a little
(06:39):
girl. I didn't know better. He was my father. I trusted
him. Right? But in my adult mind, well, you coulda done
more. You coulda kicked, screamed. You could've spit. You could've peed yourself. You could've done
a 100 things. You could've poked his eye out. And I'm in judgment.
And when I'm in my own self judgment, then I'm in judgment of
him because to judge myself and hate myself is so hard.
(07:01):
It's easier to blame him and be mad at him. So I'm gonna hold on
to blaming you because then I don't have to look at the
fact that I didn't do something different. Now I was a little girl.
I I didn't know. Right? So I get to forgive
myself for judging myself. I get to forgive myself for believing I
should've done more. I didn't know. It was just part of my divine
(07:24):
choreography. And when you look at forgiveness, you realize
forgiveness is a gateway to understand that everything is in divine order.
Everything happens for our highest and greatest good, even the suck, and I know that's
hard. Some people have been raped. Some people I'm I'm my brothers would have been
murdered. So look. I get it. But if I'm
gonna trust God, the universe, the divine source,
(07:46):
that everything is in some sort of divine order, then I'm gonna look for the
gift. I'm gonna look for the good. And when my little brother
was murdered 2 years ago,
I had done this so much in my life. I conditioned myself to find the
light in the darkest moment. And in the moment of my deepest, darkest
sorrow, I was able to feel that the depth of
(08:10):
my pain was consistent with the depth of my love.
That, you know, my family showed up in a way I've never seen. That 3
of his oldest daughters who had never met before acted like they've grown up
together in their bonding. I was able to see people
write about him on his Instagram in ways that he helped heal them
and serve them, and I was able to see the beauty even though it was
(08:32):
hurtful. There the beauty is always there, but if we don't
look for the gift, then we only remember the pain.
Okay. Definitely. How how
has your perspective on trauma and pain shifted over the
years? I see
trauma and pain as a part of our journey.
(08:55):
Everybody has something. Right? And some people say, oh, I
don't have trauma. I had a great upbringing. And I some people
think trauma is only a raper or something big, which of course it is. But
I define it as trauma is whatever the child made meaning of in the moment
of the experience or when they lost safety.
Right there in our unconscious conditioning, we're creating a story. If a
(09:17):
little boy is in the aisle with playing with toys at the
grocery store and mom is at the end and he can't see her, she can
see him. He lifts up his head. She's gone in his perspective.
He screams, mom. She's like, I'm right here. It's a matter of seconds.
But in that moment, the child anchored, I could be left behind. I could
be abandoned. Now he's clingy to mom. Doesn't want mom to leave the
(09:39):
room. Now he's 35 and wonders why he can't keep a
relationship. He's controlling, possessive, and jealous because he believes
everybody's gonna leave him. He doesn't know to know. Right?
So I invite that when we look at different parts of our journey,
whether it wasn't your maybe it wasn't your parents, maybe it was a teacher, maybe
it was a bully at school, maybe it was somebody who just, you know,
(10:00):
didn't even know you and just said to you like, I had a client who
said that. Her biggest pain on paper, on Facebook, she looked like
she was successful. She was winning. She hit her $5,000,000
mark. She was fit. Oh my gosh. Amazing.
But she was depressed. Her husband was about to leave her because she was
at the soccer game, but she was on her phone. Why? Because she was
(10:23):
consistently competing and comparing herself to every other woman,
her sister, and herself of last year.
All because somebody at when she was 10 years old, a friend of the families,
she didn't even remember who it was, said to her, you'll never be as good
as your sister. Wow. And because of
that, she made that story, and now she'd com competed
(10:44):
her entire life to the point of exhaustion. She was
chasing worthiness on her achievements.
We don't know to know. So what I have learned from it is
that our every one of us has a moment of trauma. If you
look at society today, COVID or the election, it
isn't those things. It's waking up the pain body in
(11:06):
people. All of a sudden, you have COVID, and it's like, if you don't agree
with me, you're uneducated and, you know, don't know what you're
talking about. You're stupid. It's like, oh my gosh. This is somebody who I
cared about who was I thought a friend. Right? And it's just
like, wow. So now we have a difference of opinion. It had nothing to do
with COVID. It has to do with where she felt wronged in the past.
(11:27):
You know? And so now she's gonna fight for it, and this is just the
vehicle. So we're we're emoting like a loose fire
hose because we haven't regulated our nervous system
and understand emotional mastery.
What what advice would you give to someone who feels
(11:50):
trapped in fear and and shame?
Great question. One, I would say in regards to shame,
shame is a cosmic joke. I do invite you all to write that down.
Why do I say that? Shame is a cosmic joke because it's a man made
concept. We made it up. Now you are something to
(12:10):
be ashamed of based on who? Based on what? Who
wrote the rules? Where's the script that says, oh, this
box check the box. You should be something to be ashamed of. It's not
true. We all have our divine choreography. We all do things sometimes we're
not proud of. We say I'm sorry. We move on. We build. We grow
muscle. We decide who we're gonna be. We choose our identity.
(12:33):
So if you feel stuck, just know that you have power right
now to change it. It doesn't matter who you were last year, last
week, 5 minutes ago. You get to make a decision as
to who you choose to be moving forward and where you send all your energy.
And for those naysayers that say, well, what do you mean? Now you're different. It's
like, yeah. Because now I get to make a conscious decision of who I am,
(12:56):
and I choose to be the best version of me. And there's more grit in
me because no matter what, whoever's listening today,
I know you've been through some stuff. You've been through some stuff.
And the fact that you're listening, you got through it.
So grab the gift and leave the rest. What muscle did you
build? Resilience? Perseverance?
(13:18):
Courage? Heck, yeah. But we're not
remembering that part. We're not taught to. We're not taught to see that.
And I'm inviting you to see that. So you recognize the divinity and the beauty
that you are, and you show up accordingly. And
this leads me to to my next question is, how do you see the
concept of of divine choreography in your life? And can
(13:41):
can you share an example? Absolutely. So I
had a child abuse with my father. I had my first 18 years. I
had, I was in an abusive relationship, emotional, mental,
verbal, for 18 my next 18 years. My brother was
murdered when I was 28. My little brother was murdered 2 years
ago. You know, I've I've been
(14:03):
turned upside down financially in 15 ways. I don't even know how low your
FICO score was could go, but that was me. Like, in all of that, I
see the divinity in all of it. Because what it's given me
is the desire to serve humanity at the level that I, as one woman,
can. The the ability to, with deep conviction, help
others come out of their pain and to see their life as a divine
(14:25):
choreography. Somehow, maybe it was scripted. Maybe you had a conversation with
god or your source or whatever you believe in before you came here and you
said, you know what? I wanna come here and I wanna I wanna come down
on earth and I wanna be forgiveness. And god's like, okay. Cool. But
you know what? You're gonna need something to forgive. And then your parent
raised their hand and said, you know what? I'll be that person for you. You're
(14:46):
like, wow. Why would you do that? Well, because I love you. But I'm gonna
be so good at offering you the ability to forgive that I'm gonna
forget how bright my light is. I'm gonna need you to remember.
And each person that hurt you signed up with you in this divine choreography
to be the adversity so that you could be witness to your divinity, to
your power, to your strength, to your ability to forgive. We
(15:08):
don't know light without dark. Life is polarity.
Right? And it and it's in our deepest moments of pain that we find out
who we really are. Yeah.
How has your relationship with your children helped shape
your your healing process? Well, they were my
guiding light for many years, and they still are. They're all in their
(15:30):
thirties and, you know, it doesn't change. It never stops.
You know, now they call me out on stuff, you know,
which is just, so beautiful. But I think they were always my guiding
light, and what's beautiful is that throughout all the pain that we shared,
you know, they are also what I call light warriors. They're
also wanting to bring good into the world. And I think together, we're
(15:54):
a united front of of human beings
that wanna help others come out of their adversity and see their
beauty. My sons are sound healers. My daughter is is an
intentional event coordinator, so she puts intention and everything. And the energy that she
puts in is just incredible. She's also a singer, singing hope
and inspiration to people. You know? So it's like
(16:16):
they I believe we came here as a team to do this
work. Awesome.
Amazing. Can can you describe
the moment when you decided to take control of your
life and face your fears and
and and just confront everything you've been been through? I
(16:39):
would say it started when I decided to get a divorce because
it was so traumatic before because it was so
scary, and I didn't have a plan. I didn't know
what I was gonna do. I just knew that if I stayed where I was,
I would die. And so it was
in that moment of survival where I cried and cried and cried
(17:01):
looking for a place to live. I was making $8 an hour back then,
trying to, you know, raise 3 kids and live on my
own and, find a place to live after we had a, you know,
35 100 square foot home custom made. Now I'm, like, I'll
find an apartment, you know. And so it was in those moments that
I decided that I I was gonna persevere past it. Somehow, some way,
(17:24):
I was gonna find a way.
What what does living with with purpose
mean to you now? And how do you pursue it daily?
Focusing on people that need my help.
I believe that I'm here to help awaken and heal the true essence within.
(17:46):
Right? Our divinity, our beauty, the innocence of a child.
You know, I was holding my friend's 6 day old child. His
name was Timothy. And I was looking at him
and I was looking at his little hands and his little knuckles and I was
like, wow. Just divine perfection. You know, this beautiful little baby
boy. And then I thought, what makes us any
(18:07):
different than that perfection? Not one
thing. Only the belief. Only the
belief is what takes us away from that divinity. Just like me, I thought I
was gross and damaged goods. But I was still that
divinity. I was still that beautiful child, but I lost it along
the way based on my experiences and the meaning I gave it. And
(18:30):
so my outcome is to help bring people back to that innocence.
The beauty of a child that goes to the playground and says, hi. You wanna
play? Yeah. Let's play. And we're friends. You know what I mean? And and and
we're smiling and we're laughing and we giggle at little things. And, you know, I
feel like society has lost their smile. And I think
it's time to bring it back. So every part of my journey, I'm grateful
(18:51):
for. I'm grateful for everyone in it. My ex, my my dad,
you know, all of them. Because it created my
conviction and desire to serve humanity, to bring them out
of their pain, to turn their pain into power and purpose, and ultimately,
passion so that they bring back the smile in their face and they come
alive. How do you help
(19:13):
others find the gift in their pain
and and trauma? You know, oftentimes,
we don't connect our limitation today to a pain of the
past. We think we've resolved it. There's a lot of personal development out there
now. Why? It's just like, oh, no. I read the book. I'm good. I know
I need to forgive. I know I need to let it go. Blah blah blah.
(19:34):
And okay. Cool. Those are great tools. But what's
happening is we're not healing. We're not healing. And what we're
doing is we're mind setting our way out of healing. So what
happens is we still are driving from our wounding. Now we
understand. Hey. I have daddy issues, so you need to
hold space for me. You need to not trigger me because I have daddy
(19:56):
issues versus owning personal responsibility and saying
I have a wound that was created with my father. I'm gonna make sure
that I heal that so that I can be the best version of me in
relationship. And we're not recognizing
that whatever's limiting. If you're afraid, if you're if you lack confidence, if
you lost your voice, if you feel like you're a people please pleaser,
(20:18):
if you feel like you're not asking for the raise, if you feel like you're
not becoming an entrepreneur because you're too scared, wherever you're
limited today, I guarantee you it has a thread of some
limitation that happened to you when you were a child because there is
no limitation to the human being, only the belief there is one.
(20:40):
What what role does spirituality play in your approach
to healing and transformation? It plays a big
role. The
truth of the matter is none of us knows. Mhmm.
I believe there is something greater than me telling my heart to beat.
Mhmm. You know? It's it's our bodies are a walking miracle.
(21:03):
I don't know about you, but I don't plug myself in. My heart just beats
for me every day. You know? My lungs breathe for
me every day. I I don't tell it what to do. I don't plug myself
in. It just does it. We're walking miracles. There's something divine.
Right? I don't know if it's a man with a beard. I don't believe so.
But I know there's something greater than me, and I know it's beautiful, and I
(21:24):
know it's divine, and I know it's of love. And so
for me, if I'm gonna trust that, if I'm gonna have faith in
that, then I have to trust that everything in my journey, in
our lives is happening for some reason, for some greater good.
Mhmm. Even the devastation. I use,
John Walsh as an example. The guy who did America's Most
(21:46):
Wanted. Yeah. His son was murdered. Yeah. His but he he
developed America's Most Wanted on the heels of the murder and
kidnapping of his son, Adam. Yeah. Right? So what if Adam it's
like, you look at that as a tragedy, which it is, but what if Adam's
soul journey was to be here for 6 years
to be the catalyst of his father's awakening because God
(22:08):
knew that John was the one that was gonna save the money.
Yeah. Right? So spirituality has everything to do with
it. And he's and he's done a lot. Yes. John Walsh
has saved a lot of people doing what he's doing because
of of his experience and what he's gone through. It's
it's something like, people ask me because I I was widowed at
(22:30):
31. My wife passed away in a car accident.
Yeah. And I was lost, and and and and,
it was this is someone I was with from
21 to 31. This is someone
that my the beginning of my adult life Right. Was she was in
my she was involved in my life, and and she she's the one
(22:54):
who introduced me into the world of self development and and and all
this. So I think that was her way of preparing me for what
was to come. And, yes, I kind of, lost
my way after after I lost her, and and it
took time for me. And it it was just after losing her, it
was just like one tragedy after another. I reunite with my dad
(23:16):
only to lose him. Right. I I buried 2 brothers, a
aunt and a uncle that helped raise me and and mold me into the man
that I am. And it was
it's just I was I was kinda I was angry. Yeah. I was angry with
everything that was going on. I was like, why me? Am I such a horrible
person that that everything is happening? But
(23:38):
this the voice in my head was like, this isn't your path.
This isn't what you're you're not supposed to be in this darkness. You're not supposed
to be here. We're gonna change that. And and and
I and I sought help. Change started changing my life.
I got remarried, and and just it just kind
of, just kinda prepared me for what to what was
(24:02):
to come because I wasn't I wasn't in media. I wasn't in any of
that. And when I was like, you know what? I wanna start a podcast. I
didn't know what I was what it was gonna be about. Didn't know. And
once I started recording the show, I found my purpose.
It was like, okay. I wanna start giving people a platform so they can share
their stories and and and and hopefully inspire
(24:24):
others once they listen to the podcast that, hey.
Regardless of what you've been through in life, no matter how
hard life has hit you, you can pick yourself
up and really work and and and change
your life around. And And instead of being a
victim, work
(24:45):
towards helping others to to whatever they're going
through. Absolutely. Absolutely.
That's so beautifully said, and I believe that's true. I don't believe god
waste the pain. I believe we do if we choose to. You
know? And and when my brother died 2 years ago, again, 2 totally
separate stories, both to murder. You know? I'm like, okay, god.
(25:07):
So if both of my brothers are meant to be taken, what do you want
with me? And I I'm I'm still searching, and I and I believe I know
because I know my purpose. But how can I deepen that resolve? How can I
do it even more? How could I, you know, help, you know,
get women off the streets? You know, how can I you know, there's just so
many different levels of where I can see my life going?
(25:30):
But right now, I'm I wanna help people heal. I I don't wanna
mindset our way out. I don't want a tool to get us through. I want
us to heal so that we upgrade the operating system of the mind
versus installing new software expecting it not to glitch. Yeah.
And what it does is it it invites deeper levels of shame because now I
read the books. I went to the seminars, but why am I stuck again? And
(25:53):
we beat ourselves up even more. So we have to stop bypassing the
parts of us that need our love, and so I'm committed to that.
Yeah. And and that's something that's, that's why, like I said, that's why
I do the podcast. And when you asked me earlier, it was like, oh, what
what is it that I want my audience to get out from our
conversation is to see the resilience and see your strength
(26:16):
and see how much you've overcome to to and
and you and your and your purpose is to help others and still uplift
others. And and that's what I wanted. It was for you to come and share
that story and and show people, like, regardless of
what you've been through, Do as long as you
you continue to play the victim, you're gonna stay you're gonna stay in that victim
(26:38):
mode. Absolutely. And the moment you decide that you're no longer a
victim, you'll see the shift in your life.
100%. 100%. And it's a decision.
You know? Again, what if life didn't happen to you? It happened for you
and from you. And if it happened from you, it's like, where
(26:59):
were were you vibrating? When I attracted my husband, I was vibrating at the level
of shame. I was not good enough. And my my ex
husband had his own hurt. His own he came from his own trauma. He
had a very brutal alcoholic mother. And so we met
each other in our wounding, but we didn't understand.
Right? He he thought, well, you know, I'll never let my kids see me
(27:21):
drink. And I said, well, my kids will never be molested, and we thought we
fixed it. Right? We didn't know the invisible traumas
underneath that that we were bringing into the relationship. I see it
now. I didn't know it then, and a lot of us don't know it. But
trust me, if I can come from a place of wanting to die and willing
somebody to blow the red light so I could be done, to be where I
(27:42):
am today, excited for life every day, excited. Who am I gonna meet
today that I get to serve? So can you. And you know what?
If your if your vision or your purpose isn't to serve the world, that's okay
because you don't realize you serve one world, and that
could change the world because that could be the next Martin Luther King. That could
be the Starbucks lady. That could be your child. That could be your
(28:04):
neighbor's child that you influenced. Just choose to be the best
version of you and trust that your words of kindness can shift the
trajectory of someone's life like it did mine. Yeah.
Absolutely. What what
lessons did you learn from your the loss of your brothers,
and how do you honor their memory?
(28:28):
By continuing to be me. I think the lessons I've learned,
it was a rude awakening. I had gone through
my own levels of abuse with my father. I
learned a lot about their experience
in our home. It's so interesting. You can be raised with the same parents,
and and everybody has their own experience and their own ways of
(28:51):
perception and how they were treated. And it
just allowed me to have compassion, allowed me to to realize it
wasn't just me, and, you know, I I use them
also as my guiding light. It's like, okay. What did my older brother teach me?
He was my safety. When we were little, he you know, I would crawl
in bed with him and he would protect me and he'd hold my hand when
(29:13):
we walked to school. He was all the safety I knew. And when god took
him, I was like, oh my god. I'm left I'm left alone. But
there was moments where he came to me and he said, you know, Jess, this
is for you to do, not me. When I found books on personal
development, I didn't even know what personal development was. I didn't even read any books.
I'd fall asleep at the first paragraph. You know? And after he passed away, I
(29:35):
found some of his stuff, and there was therapy session notes. There was books he
was reading, and I was like, oh, and then I heard his voice say, this
is for you to do, not me. I did not know what it meant at
the time. Mhmm. But it never left me. And my
little brother, man, there are so many lessons in that.
So many lessons. He was doing so good at the time that all this happened.
(29:56):
And so for him, I see resilience. I see the ability to
to persevere even though he had the odds against him. He was 15 when
our older brother was killed, and he was searching for that brother and every man
he could get a hold of. And he entered gangs and got connected with
the wrong crowd, and god bless him. He tried so hard, and he was
coming out on the other side, and then his destiny was to be
(30:18):
complete, you know? And so there's so many lessons there. He's left children
behind that, you know, I care about and who I choose to be for them.
So there's definitely a ton of lessons in there and I constantly take,
you know, that with me every single day to ensure that I show up as
the best version of me so that others don't have to suffer the way he
did. Absolutely.
(30:43):
What what what was what has been the most rewarding part of
your journey toward self discovery and healing?
I say falling in love. And I say falling
in love with the Jesse of the
journey. Right? Like, I have a
(31:04):
separation of who I am today and the girl that
went through all of that. Right? Like, when I see myself
as a little girl building traps to warn me when my dad was coming, or
I see the woman who was raising 3 kids and, you know,
was surviving, but getting through some very
horrible, ugly moments. I love her. I love her, and I
(31:26):
give thanks for her, and I don't condemn her anymore. I used to beat
myself up so much. I used to think so little of myself. I thought I
was weak. I didn't stand up for myself. I I was a doormat. I mean,
all these things. I had these judgments. Now I have only
love, and and I honor her for being so brave and so
courageous to get through all of that so I could be the woman that I
(31:48):
am today. And so it's been a love journey
to get to this point, and it's why I'm so committed to help you fall
in love with yourself, to help you come back to the essence of
you, your divinity, that beauty within. You are no
different than the moment you took your first breath. You are still that divinity, that
magnificence. So the greatest joy is when I see that in
(32:10):
someone, when I see the innocence coming back to their eyes,
when I see them light up, and it's just like, oh my gosh. Like, I
love myself and the tears come down. And I'm just like, oh, it's one of
the greatest moments to see somebody come back to their own
divinity. The one of the greatest joys of my life.
Yeah. Excuse me.
(32:33):
How do you learn to embrace
and and and celebrate your resilient spirit?
I probably don't celebrate it enough. Sorry. I appreciate the question.
But to me, I celebrate it by continuing. Right? Because here's
the thing, 2 years ago, I did not expect to lose my
(32:56):
brother. Right? My other brother. And in in my mind, I
thought, nope. I already checked the box. I already lost a brother.
Done. Don't have to do that again. Right? So when it happened,
it was a it was a uppercut. It was like a sucker punch. Like, we
didn't no. No. No. No. No. No. No. Like, that already happened in my life.
I can't lose another brother. And so, you know, my
(33:18):
resilience in that moment was to apply all the
practices I've learned, all the things I teach. My message from
God was, Jesse, you need to eat your own medicine. I
know this is a big uppercut, but you need to find the light in this
moment. You need to find the good even in your deepest darkest of pain.
And so I have to celebrate those moments of being able to do that. And
(33:40):
I celebrate it not because, you know, it's
all about me. I celebrate it because I'm a human being
that went through something hard, and I celebrate it because I wanna celebrate it
in you. I want you to find those moments where you took an uppercut,
and I want you to celebrate yourself. I want you to honor yourself just like
you. Well, like, you went through all of that, and here you are wanting to
(34:02):
give back to the world. You're wanting to bring hope back into the minds of
people. Right? And and so so your resilience
matters, and and we don't have anything special
that you can't have out there whoever's listening. The resilience,
it's built in those moments of pain. Right? It's like we don't if if
you go to the gym and you lift £10, you're only gonna build muscle £10
(34:23):
worth. If you want a bigger muscle, you're gonna have to have more resistance.
That's life. Life is gonna continue to challenge us, but it's
it's how you show up from this day forward. Pull that resilience
forward. You've been through stuff. Recognize that. Honor that,
and celebrate it along the way. Oh, yeah.
This this this year has been kinda it's been, kinda
(34:46):
rough. It's,
I I buried my mom in in February. She was Oh, I'm sorry.
884. She had a she had a long life.
It it was, Alzheimer's and dementia, and it it and she,
like, it like, last year
was one of the most
(35:09):
successful years for my podcast, one of the best
years. And but I was dealing with
her deterioration Yeah. Last year, and
and I didn't really get to enjoy and and and and
and celebrate what I was doing. And and
(35:31):
and so when she passed in February, it was like
we we we had a, like, it we had a great moment in the
hospital for when, when she she
said something to us, and it it was she's like, even even
in in her dying, she she still had her sense of
humor. We're talking, and we're
(35:54):
we're just I go and I ask her. I says,
how how are you doing? And she goes,
And and we just all started laughing. And and
it was that moment I realized, like, this is this is
(36:17):
these are the moments that you need to to remember. And
and and regardless of what she was going through,
that was just one of those moments that she had. She was lucid, and and
she knew what she was saying and what was going on.
And to realize that even in that situation,
she can make a joke about it. She can laugh about it and knowing
(36:40):
that that was to us, that was like, okay. We're gonna be alright.
Yeah. How beautiful. Yeah. That's awesome.
So yeah. And it's it's yeah. So it's it's
been a a a wonderful journey being able
to create this platform.
(37:01):
And one of, one of my guests, when they asked
me, is there anything I regret that that's happened or
and I was like, no. I'm like, everything that's happened has
made me into the person that I am today.
Do I wish people go through any of the stuff that I want?
(37:21):
No. Absolutely not.
But everything that's happened to me has helped build me and make me
the person that I am, and and that's what life is about.
It's life you take those those tragedies and you take those
moments and and and it it molds you,
(37:42):
but you you continue. You continue because life is still happening. You're still
you still we're still going on. Yeah and there's still
people that are watching and there's still people that care about you, you know and
so you keep going and it is it is divine. You know
when my father passed away, you know, he was
having dementia and he had leukemia. And,
(38:05):
my my half sister and I were taking care of him at the
time, which was just interesting. And he had 2 weeks before he
passed, he had this lucid moment and I happened to be alone with him.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, I wish I could have
been the father you deserved. And without hesitation, well, I was
able to say, you know what, dad? You were perfect. You were exactly who I
(38:27):
needed you to be so I could be who I am today, and I am
good. And I I know I could see the lightness in his
eyes. It's almost like he had permission to go and pass in
peace, you know, and to not harbor his regret
or his, you know, shame for what he because he always did
have remorse. And so I feel like he was set
(38:48):
free in that moment, and it felt good for me, like you said, to be
able to be I'm I I I wouldn't change anything.
You know? I I do I want my brothers back? Yeah. I do.
But they're not. You know what I mean? And so I I take
everything and I find the gift and and I persevere and I keep going and
I keep looking to affect as many lives as I can with with this
(39:10):
story. Again, it's not about me. It's about it's about
what I I what Jesse went through so that you can connect
and recognize that no matter what you've gone through, what you're going
through, that you can come out the other side, and you can own
the divinity, the divine choreography of all of it. And you can smile again, and
you can fall in love with all aspects of you because you're still standing.
(39:32):
You still decided to get back up. You still decided to tune into this
amazing podcast to see what golden nuggets you can get or what
moments of inspiration and hope that you can find. And I know you're
doing that because it's your the kindness and the bigness of your heart because you
want to be the best version of you or you wouldn't have tuned into this
podcast. So thank you, Will, for putting this together and
(39:54):
being that inspiration and hope for others so that they can find a way out,
a a a group of people that, you know, can still see
the light even though it may seem dark. Definitely. Thank
you for being such a wonderful guest. This has been amazing. This has been a
great conversation. But now it's come to the time where you get the solo
screen, and you get to plug away and let people know where they can find
(40:14):
you, website, everything? Absolutely. You
can go to I am fierce grace.com. I
am fierce grace.com. And on
there, you're gonna find multiple ways to work with me. I, I'm
a speaker as well. So if you have an an opportunity where you need a
speaker, I'm happy to do that. 1 on 1 coaching. I
(40:37):
I have, fierce grace transformation, which is my online
program for healing. It's to help awaken you, to help you see your
divinity, to help you come back to truth, and to be empowered, to be a
sovereign being that gets to decide to live their dreams.
So you can go on there. If you just have questions, you wanna connect with
me, just schedule a call. It's free. And the last thing I wanna
(40:58):
give, to Will here is a free gift.
It's it's a little ebook, and, it's it's,
10 ways that you can take action right now in your life no matter what
your circumstances. I know sometimes it feels like our circumstances
are, you know, nobody would understand, and you feel stuck, and you feel
like there's nothing you can do. I promise you there's something you can do.
(41:21):
I felt the same way. And so I developed this book so that you can
have some things that you can take action on right now to help
motivate you, to help wake you up, to help you realize that you
can have the life of your dreams if you choose it. So that's it.
Thank you so much for giving me the floor. I'm out here. I'm committed to
building an army of angels of other beautiful souls that wanna serve the world.
(41:43):
So if you've been through stuff and you need support, reach out to me. I'm
happy to chat. Awesome. Thank you. Thank
you for being such a great guest. Thank you for the gift.
Once once if you if you email it to me, I'll I'll put it into
the show descriptions and and have people be able to reach,
download it through there. Absolutely. But, thank you so much. This
(42:05):
has been a a great, great show. I appreciate you coming through and
sharing your story and Absolutely. And and inspiring so
many people out there. Thank you for having me, Will. Oh, the
pleasure's all mine. I look forward to to
seeing more of your journey, and and, hopefully, we could we
continue to stay in touch and because I love to have repeat guests. So
(42:28):
Awesome. You're always welcome. If you decide to write a book or if you were
launch a new program, let me know, and we'll have you back on to
share to share that. But, but don't leave the shit. Let
me close out the show. We'll chat a little bit off the air. But, thank
you so much. It's been a Thank you. It's been great having you on the
show. Appreciate it so much. Take care.
(42:51):
Alright, everybody. That was another great show. Thank you to
everybody who tune who's tuning in live. If you're gonna catch the
replay, thank you as well. Please share, subscribe, hit the notification bell. Big shout out
to my RealWise fan. Big shout
out to my RealWise fan, Papi j, Brandy j. Love you guys.
Big shout out to the boss lady. Love you and appreciate everything you do.
(43:13):
Big shout out to to to Jesse Torres for coming on and and sharing her
story and inspiring so many people. And as always, a
big, big shout out to all the essential workers out there. God bless. Y'all be
safe. You know your boy, Wise, does it? Peace
out.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.