From Caregiver to Self-Healer: Carrie Pierce on Grief, Core Wounds & Reclaiming Self-Worth

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hello, Melissa Crook here at TheField Podcast.
We've got ways to engage for youtoday with our episode Feeling
to Healing with Carrie Pierce. Take time to consider your core
wounds, starting from childhood.Sit with the emotions that come
up during the explorations that you do during this time, while

(00:22):
remembering that there are no good or bad emotions.
I feel very strongly about that.Emotions are clues to help you
to get to the bottom of the realissue.
Healing yourself from the past continues to heal yourself into
the future, setting you up for further success mentally,

(00:42):
physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
We hope these ways to engage really make you sit down and
think. Today as you're engaging with
this episode, we have with Carrie Pierce.
Thanks so much for being with us.

(01:02):
Finding power, men embracing layers.
Yet we get to. We get to feel hello field
podcast audience welcome back this week.
I have a new friend here with metoday.
Her name is Carrie Pierce. I think this is going to be a
fascinating conversation. Carrie has a really rich multi

(01:24):
layered background. I think she's going to have a
ton of insights to share wisdom to share a lot of thoughts about
each of our talking points and you'll see what I mean as we get
into it. I, I've learned about Carrie
from our good friends at Pod Match and then her publishing
company's been fantastic about keeping in contact and helping

(01:44):
us get the information to each other that we needed.
And so I'm really excited to have her here with me today.
Kerry describes herself as tactful, strategic and
observant. Carrie Pierce, Welcome to the
Field podcast. Oh, hello, Melissa.
Thank you so much. It's a true joy and an honor to
be with you and your audience today, and I hope I can deliver

(02:07):
on that wonderful introduction. No pressure there, no.
Pressure and I'm I'm very confident you're going to be
just fine. I have a good feeling about
this. OK, let's get right into this
because this is a really important topic for women and
I'm sure something that you've come across in different seasons
of your life and also experiencehow it's changed for you in

(02:31):
different seasons of your life depending on what you needed in
that moment. And that's the idea of self-care
in your life, prioritizing that,taking care of yourself.
Like I said, you've gone throughdifferent seasons, you've had
different experiences. So what you needed in one moment
and one season may have changed in another season.

(02:51):
So talk to me about yourself care journey and how you've
learned to adapt to the different places and spaces
you've been in to continue to find practices and time that
work for you. I mean, when you and I got on,
you were simply talked about thejoy of sitting there, having a
moment of quiet with your tea tojust relax and not do anything.

(03:13):
And I think we underestimate thevalue of that.
Indeed so and you know, you bring up a really good point and
how how you describe the seasonsof our lives and self-care and
how that needs to shift. And for years and years I was a
caregiver to both of my parents.My father had a horrible journey
through Lewy body dementia, which is the worst of the worst

(03:35):
dementia. It's, it brings a lot of
hallucinations and violence withit.
And mom and I took care of him for many, many years until he
unfortunately lost that battle. And you know, as you move
through life and address traumasand and pains and difficulties

(03:55):
and stuffed feelings and emotions accrue.
And if we don't take the time todeal with them, they do come up
in in certain different ugly ways, disease processes,
anxiety, panic attacks, those kind of things.
And so for a lot of years myself, care was pretty much non
existent. It was as I could snatch it

(04:17):
because I couldn't leave my dad alone too long and I couldn't
leave him alone too long with mymom because I was afraid that he
would hurt her unwittingly. He never meant to.
He was a very gentleman. But that's a very vicious
disease. And so then mom and I, after he
passed, we had a couple years ofintense grief and and a lot of

(04:39):
PTSD from that experience. And we worked through that in
the remaining years of mom's life.
We tried to make as sweet as possible and in that we began to
re implement more with a concerted effort, self-care in
an attempt to put ourselves backtogether and then not only put

(05:01):
ourselves back together but thenevolve from those experiences
and find out who the heck we really were after that.
So now that she has passed and she died a couple years ago just
as the two of us moved to a new community to start a new life,
she died very unexpectedly and left me alone.
I have had to go through the component of self-care for kind

(05:26):
of triaging myself from all of that trauma and grief and then
learning who I really am at thisstage in my life.
So self-care was always a component of my life given my my
background. I started out in film and TV
makeup and I was an esthetician and, and I gave facials and
helped women with their own self-care for years.

(05:49):
But I had to learn to apply it to this 60 year old me, all
alone, all by myself, with no one else to think about.
And that, I think, brings a truly healing emotional
component to self-care. Most people think of self-care

(06:09):
as slap a mud pack on your face while you're cleaning the house
or have a massage. That is a component of it.
But self-care is also resting well, sleeping well, staying
hydrated, crying when you need to, feeling your feelings,
laughing, eating well, taking your vitamins, all of those
things. Brushing your teeth more than

(06:32):
twice a week when you're in grief.
Yes, yeah, no, but those are thethings that come up.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I have to, I say this
a lot because self-care can there's it's one of those, you
know, niche phrases out there right now.

(06:53):
And so I'm always really carefulwhen I talk about something.
One, it's unique to everyone andtwo, that self-care is
healthcare. It's meeting those basic needs.
It's addressing all those parts of your health, the mental,
emotional, physical, spiritual, it's all those pieces.
So if you can do the spa day andall those things and you and
that's a particular part of yourcare for yourself, great.

(07:16):
But make sure you're tending to all the pieces of it because
we'll get into this in a moment because that emotional, mental,
physical health connection is real.
And you touched on it already and we'll talk about it again in
a moment. But yeah, it is.
It's the whole package and beingcognitive of where you are in

(07:37):
the moment. And sometimes if you need to
adjust, you might have a great menu or routine in place, but
are you all of a sudden feeling still feeling a little angsty or
you're not feeling fulfilled or it's not feeling your cup the
same way it used to. Take a look at where you at,
you're at, what's changed what, what do you, how do you need to
adjust it? And I think that's something

(07:57):
that you touched on really well.It's just all those different
spaces and places that you go through.
And you went through a series quite quickly too.
So constantly being in in flux with that and just noticing what
that does to you. Grief is complicated.

(08:17):
It is. It is.
So I mean it, it really is. I mean we lost both my in laws
within five months of each otherin 2023.
My mother-in-law had, yeah, it was, it's still a little bumpy.
And my husband was very close with his parents.
My mother-in-law had Alzheimer'sand so we had grieved her a

(08:38):
while ago as she was, but then grieving that she's actually
gone. And then three weeks later my
father-in-law had a stroke and he never came out of the
rehabilitation center in and died five months later.
They had been together since they were 12 years old.
And so I think, you know, and a lot of, and he had other health
things going on before she passed, but he also spent a lot

(09:00):
of time taking care of her. It was A and so to have all of a
sudden we were expecting her to go, We expected to have him for
another 5 to 10 years. And when that didn't happen, and
that was probably an unrealisticexpectation in our own heads,
but but that's kind of where we were.
And he seemed to be bouncing back from all the, the stroke

(09:21):
and all the things. And so when we got the phone
call, we were on our at the end of our 30th anniversary trip,
just coming back into the UnitedStates from Victoria, BC.
And it's just happened so quick.So I say all that to say, I
understand it. I have, I've, I've experienced
it myself and then watched my husband unravel it and looked at

(09:44):
like, OK, these are the things we got to address now.
This is and it you get through 1hill of it and you think you've
come out of the valley and then all of a sudden something hits
you that you just aren't even expecting, you didn't even see
coming. So I, I wanted to spend some
time saying all that to say thatwhen you're in that mode, you
have to be very attentive to what it is you need each day

(10:06):
because you never know what is going to impact you that you
maybe didn't expect. That is so very well said and
you know, I jotted a couple things down that I think are
very important points. Talking about self-care.
There is external self-care and then there is definitely
internal self-care. And you bring up a really good

(10:28):
point about caregivers. When mom died, it was just this
compressed, incredible, traumatic experience.
It came out of nowhere, just as when we're moving to a community
where we had never been. We knew no one.
We were all optimistic to start this new life.
And she was eaten up with cancer, didn't even know.

(10:50):
And by the time she died, I was 25 lbs underweight.
My hair was coming out. I had lived for six months on
beef sticks and peanut butter because that's all I had time
for. And I was completely I had
cannibalized myself just to keepgoing.
I had no muscle left. I had broken heart syndrome,

(11:15):
chest pains. I mean, it was just awful.
I looked awful and I felt awful.And it took the first year and a
half of intensive IV vitamin therapy, acupuncture, massive
doses of vitamins, sobbing, crying, counseling, which I'm
still in. I love counseling, but
caregivers go first most of the time.

(11:38):
And and I think This is why, because our needs just keep
getting pushed to the side, pushed to the side, pushed to
the side and not only pushed to the side, they then are are just
buried under everything else that's rolling along.
It's like a steamroller that's just rolling over you and you
can't, once it gets that tiny toe and rolls over your toe,

(12:03):
then it just rolls over the restof you and you can't get away.
So I, I do think it's important to note that that self-care is
incredibly important. But if and when you are a
caregiver and you are fulfillingthat role, which is an honor and
a privilege to be able to do, it's also potentially a death

(12:23):
sentence. If you don't take care of
yourself, like like you're in ICU yourself, it can be a death
sentence. And so I think it's important to
really hammer on that. And I'm, I'm so sorry that you
guys had such loss in such a short period of time.
There's never an easy way to lose a loved one, But when you

(12:45):
lose them incredibly close together, that really compounds
things. And I think especially too, when
you lose loved ones over the holidays, that's extremely
cruel. It's and it is completely
different threshold of pain. Yeah.
And it adds a layer to that timeof year that you had that you're

(13:07):
left to unpack and you don't necessarily know until you come
around the next time what it's going to do to you.
So I think that's a really good point too.
My friend Aaron Copeland has been on here on the show, both
the podcasts and other shows that I've done on the Internet,
on the Internet radio and on ourYouTube panels.
And she now provides resources for caregivers and she hits hard

(13:34):
on the self-care piece and has awhole book, a whole manual.
She's on a variety of shows. She works with people, she
coaches them through it because of that very thing you're
talking about. And, and it is you've got to
take care. You cannot take care of anyone
else if you are not taking care of yourself well.

(13:54):
And so many times, I mean, we saw on my side of the family and
some adopted family and, and Grandpa Jean was taking care of
Grandma Evie for years. She had Alzheimer's we didn't
even know about because he was hiding it and protecting it was
that generation. He was from that greatest
generation. You didn't, you didn't.
And he survived World War 2. So nothing could really be worse

(14:15):
than that. So you just didn't talk about
those things. So he passed, kind of got very
sick in mid February about, gosh, it's been about 12 or 13
years ago now, maybe 15 years ago.
I think it's me 15 years ago next month and went to the
hospital and never came home. And it was such a shock.

(14:35):
And then all of a sudden, we were left and the reality of how
Brahma Evie actually was doing all came to the forefront
quickly. And there had to be quick
responses to care for her because we quickly realized she
can't live alone. She can't like.
And it took about 3 weeks, threeto six weeks to put together all

(14:58):
the pieces of how far gone she actually was in her dementia.
But the toll that it took on himfor all those years and it's so,
yeah. And so it's like so a message to
those dealing with grief, those that are caregivers, take good

(15:18):
care of yourselves. We've got resources to help you.
We wanna give you support in this.
Know how valuable you are and how ask for help.
That's a big thing that Erin talks about.
Don't be afraid to ask for help for support.
And I'll put that link to her stuff and our show notes because

(15:41):
this is such an important topic.And I'm so glad you hit on that
for people to go back to and, and, and turn to because it is
such an A, an valuable thing that gets ignored.
Everybody asks how the person isbeing cared for is that's true.
And people don't always stop to ask how the caregivers doing,

(16:01):
but you can. Always tell when a person asks
you as a caregiver or as you thegriever.
And grief is also a killer. Yes.
There's caregiving, but grief onits own, whether you're
caregiving for the person or not, grief on its own is a
killer. And that's a completely
different, the whole entirely different show too.
But when, when you have been through the process, you know to

(16:26):
look at the caregiver and you know to look at the griever.
How are you? Are you eating?
Are you sleeping? Are you really OK?
Do you need help? Are you are you thinking about
doing yourself in? Are you, are you, are you
thinking about death a lot? Are you, are you OK?
Are you crying? Are you are you able to be with
your feelings? When you get somebody that asks
you those questions, you know they have walked the path you're

(16:49):
on. And, and most people, we are not
a grief literate society, especially they it's something
to race through or ignore or just put a smile on and walk by
real fast. I think, I think in we, we
sometimes tend to think of death, and I did for a long time
when I was younger as like a virus we might accidentally

(17:11):
contract and bring home to our left wing.
So we just want to hurry by it and just act like it doesn't
exist. And I think we have a tendency
to do that. And unfortunately, death has a
lot of really valuable lessons and blessings to bring.
And you know, we we face it withsuch fear and horror, like
something has gone hideously wrong.

(17:34):
Even though it's something's we're all going to experience
someday. Well, yeah, And it's perfectly
natural and it's part of the cycle of life.
But we act like, oh, my God, something is hardly wrong.
Something broke. God looked away for two seconds
and this hideous thing happened.And how could this possibly
happen? Is this horrible, dismal
accident? But it's it's not.
And and what I have had to learnbecause mom was my best friend

(17:58):
and it completely, it was like 3/4 of me was amputated when she
died. And I mean, I was walking around
just this quivering raw lump of flesh that was all that was left
of me when she died. And she died in my arms.
I watched her take her last breath.
The last words I got to say to her was how much I loved her.

(18:19):
It was a perfect death. In terms of how death goes.
My father's was not. His was the exact opposite.
It was hellish and horrible and terrifying and so but, but death
and grief are enormously valuable teachers and we tend to
flee from them. We want to race through it.

(18:40):
We want to, we want to get to the other side of it.
There is no other side. And I think you know this,
having walked this path as well.This is not like a river you're
swimming across and you're goingto get to the other side.
There is no other side. And you have to learn to swim
with the current. You have to learn to roll with

(19:00):
the waves you and but in the course of doing so, you develop
muscles, emotional muscles, spiritual muscles, mental
muscles, physical muscles. You develop muscles that you
could develop no other way. And it's a kind of akin to a
butterfly having to struggle to get out of the the the

(19:21):
chrysalis, the cocoon. If you help that butterfly, you
kill it. Yeah.
So you have to go through these lessons to become fully
blossomed as a soul and as a human, and I did.
That's a really important message.
I know people don't want to hearit, but it's the truth.

(19:41):
Yeah, it is. And it's what enables you to
move forward. I mean, I think, you know, my
husband and I took a trip to Ireland in September this last
fall. My my mother-in-law was 100%
Irish. She had been many times, I don't
know, 7 to 10 times over the years and had done a lot of her
own family genealogy and history.

(20:02):
And so we had never been and hadalways wanted to go.
But it was also kind of an homage to her to, to learn about
those places that her family originally came from.
And in my husband's family, you know, originally came from and,
and, and walk those places that she walked in and also have our
own experience there and. It was a little over.

(20:23):
We left a little over a year after my father in
It's like not that their grief is over when we get home, but it

(20:46):
feels like we've come full circle in this season.
We've allowed ourselves the space and time and we've we've
know what we've learned from what we know.
There's parts of this that will always be with us, but we can
start taking steps forward. We can make sure we're doing the
things health wise that we need to do for ourselves to live the

(21:06):
life that we want to live, that they would want us to continue
to live. So, you know, I think those are
important pieces too. But people want to put a
timeline on grief. You can't.
Do that. They're big.
There is no timeline. And so I think it's still really
hard to talk about it with people because they're like, oh
gosh, your parent, your loved one, your spouse, your partner,

(21:27):
your child, what your best friend, what whoever it was,
they passed over a year ago now,gosh, you're still in this
place. And that's not, you know, you
have to get up out of bed. You got to put 1 foot in front
of the other. But grief is multi layered and
nuanced and so I think you bringup such a good point of taking

(21:51):
those things you can learn from it.
How do you want to live your life moving forward while you're
still here based on what you've learned from that?
And then when do you get those moments, those memories that
bring tears or laughter or both?Sit with them, remember them,
honor them instead of getting. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm

(22:11):
still feeling this. Because there's this societal
pressure to hurry up and get through it, welcome it in, move
through it. Because if you don't, if you
stuff it, it's gonna come up in a very unhealthy way later.
And. And it's just so true.
Yeah. So.
True. And you.
You what? You bring up an interesting
point. People that tell you you need to

(22:34):
be over it by now. They have never lost anything
that has really mattered to them.
They just don't get it. And some people that were out
there saying it's been a year, it's been 2 years, been three
years. You can grieve somebody the rest
of your life if you freaking want to, because that was your
personal relationship, that was your personal loss.
Nobody has a right to look at a wristwatch and tell you you

(22:56):
should be here by now. You should be here by now.
Even those stages of grief, they're misapplied and they're
used incorrectly. But the thing that really stuck
out to me that I think it's important to touch on as you,
you grieved for a year and then you went to Ireland, which my
dad's side of the family is all,all from Ireland too.

(23:17):
You had done grieving and then you had taken steps to move your
grief into active mourning. And grief and mourning are two
very different things. I did not know this until I
started having to save my own life alone in the fetal
position, alone in my little house, in my little community,
all by myself, learning this stuff.

(23:39):
Grief is grief. That's what you feel.
It's the internal process of loss and and the horrible
heartache and the all the awfulness that comes with it,
all of those feelings. But if you don't move it into
active mourning, which is the moving grief out of you tangibly

(23:59):
through you by crying, by going to counseling, by journaling, by
putting together a little memoriam pieces to your loved
one, by doing steps to honor your grief and to to deal with
your grief, that's what mourningis.
And without the act of mourning,you don't, you don't move on.

(24:24):
You don't heal. And that is something that I do
wish we still allowed. It boggles my mind that when you
lose and an astounding loved 1 you get 3 days off at work and
then you're expected to be back in like everything's like in our
old ways of doing things. Older society, Victorian times
women when they lost their husbands, they wore black for a

(24:47):
year. They wore titles for a year.
The, the, the husbands that werewidowed, the, the children that
had lost parents wore black arm bands for a year at least to
tell the other people that was that would be coming into
contact with them. I'm in mourning.
Please be kind. I need you to be extra kind.
I'm in mourning. We don't, we don't know when we

(25:11):
leave our house every day who weare encountering that is barely
holding it together because theyjust lost somebody.
And, and since the advent of, ofthe office, horrible, horrible
COVID stuff, we encounter young children in today's world that
have lost carrots and, and we, we encounter struggling little

(25:32):
hearts and souls every day out there.
And we have no idea. We honk at them because they,
they're not driving like we think they should.
We yell at them at the clerk at the grocery store and she's
barely able to hold it together.I, when mom died for four months
after she died, I would be shopping for groceries at our
grocery store. I would have to leave my full

(25:53):
cart and run and get in the car and drive home.
I would have to leave my cart full of groceries on aisle 7
because I had to just get out ofthere and go home.
And Saab and one of the Hospice counselors we I talked to, and
God bless her, I think of her sooften.
She said she laughed and she said, you know, that's job
security for somebody at the grocery store.

(26:17):
If if you have to run out and leave your full cart on aisle 7
because you have to, you can't cope and you have to race home
and cry, they pay somebody to look for people like you and go
and put the stuff up. So you're actually giving
somebody job security and all the pressure off.
It was wonderful. That's the most empathetic
response. I love that so much.

(26:38):
Gosh, so many good things there,Carrie.
I'm so thankful for this. And and that's why I knew this
conversation was going to be so rich.
Thank you for all of that. So good.
And and I'm going to move into now and into confidently setting
boundaries in your life around your time.
I mean, this was like, again, going back to the seasons you've

(26:59):
had seasons in your life where there weren't there were none
sometimes because there couldn'tbe.
And and so, but you also have a very busy work life of of your
own writing and helping other writers and protecting your time
there, knowing what stories to take on that fit, knowing what

(27:20):
stories that don't. So there's a lot of different
spaces and places for you where imagine figuring out who how to
get manage your time and still take care of yourself.
Well have come up. So.
So talk to me about your journeywith that.
Well, you know, I think to be anartist of any sort and I I can

(27:42):
tell by speaking to you, you areas one as well.
You have to have tendencies toward being an empath.
Yeah. And what that sets you up for.
And it certainly did for me. So I'm speaking from my own
personal experience for many decades as an empath, you're
basically pray. Yeah, you're praying for

(28:02):
predators because you're you're nice.
You're a people pleaser. You care too much.
You take on people's problems. You feel people's emotions as
you're. So you're constantly nurturing
and and you're traipsing throughthe world spewing all of this
love on everybody, thinking if Ifill up these these holes enough
with love, the world would be a better place.
And these people will be happierand healthier and just love,

(28:25):
love, love. Well, you end up being preyed
upon by every type of predator that comes along.
And I think at some point life pummels you to the point where
you have to, you have to learn how to set boundaries.
And, and what I've recently beenlearning about that is the
concept of a dark empath. And it sounds horrible, but it's

(28:49):
really not. And so for years as a writer,
you know, I just felt everything.
I felt everybody's everything. I felt all the angst in the
world. I mean, otherwise you're not a
good writer. And I think it was Robert Cross
that said no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
So you have to feel in order to be a good writer because

(29:10):
otherwise, what's the point? You're not reaching anybody
through the words that you're putting on a page.
You're not you're not compelling.
But after life kind of pummels you, you realize you do have a
right to set boundaries, and boundaries are very important.
Boundaries are so much more thanjust running a good schedule.

(29:31):
What I had to learn was when yousay no to someone or something,
you're actually saying yes to yourself.
Yeah. And I had to really struggle
with that because we're not raised, most of us and to to say
yes to ourselves or to acknowledge our weaknesses or to
acknowledge our needs. We're not, you know, nice people

(29:53):
don't do that. That's selfish.
But when you become a dark empath, what that actually means
is you are a highly empowered, still open, still loving, still
nurturing person, but you can smell a predator from 10,000
miles away. And before they get to you, they

(30:15):
know they no longer have the right to gnaw in your hide like
a hyena. Yeah, Well, I have had to to
learn this in the last couple years in counseling and I've had
to spend a lot of time delving into my past childhood and my
upbringing and and all of that. And I think anybody that cares
about healing should do that. You you can't heal if you don't

(30:36):
look at all of your childhood core wounds, because we're
driven by our core wounds. And so in terms of setting
boundaries, what I had to reallysit with was the concept of the
importance of the pause and allowing the pause to be there.
And most empaths and I think a lot of women cannot cope with

(30:59):
the pause. Will we feel like if there's a
lull in a conversation, it's ourfault.
It's our responsibility to keep things lively and moving along
and be the perfect Hostess. It's not.
And we also don't deal well, or at least I don't, with liminal
spaces. And so I had to sit with the

(31:20):
concept of liminal spaces for a long time.
And I don't do well with liminalspaces.
And liminal spaces are things like airports or hallways where
you're leaving one known point and you're traversing through
the unknown to get to the next known point.
So that's really what the definition of a liminal space

(31:41):
is. But liminal space happens in our
lives all the time. Yeah, yeah.
Divorce is a liminal space separation.
Death is a liminal space. We are traversing from what life
used to be and who and what we used to be through an unknown,

(32:01):
very uncomfortable wilderness. A lot of darkness, a lot of
unknown, a lot of aloneness in this wilderness to where we come
out the other side into the light, a completely new person
with a completely new life. So in order to set successful

(32:24):
boundaries for me, I had to sit with the fact that liminal space
has to happen. It has to happen and and we need
to find a way to be comfortable with it while it is happening
and to make the most of it, which is where we're self
characterized back in. But also we need to understand
that the magic happens in the pause.

(32:48):
In music, that's where you're touched the most, is in the
pause between the notes. In life, it's the same thing.
And in poetry, it's the same thing.
The pause between the words, thepause between the syllables, the
inflection, that's where all themagic happens.
And so once you realize all of that, at least in my personal

(33:10):
journey, once I realized all of that, I, I came to the
conclusion that it is possible and very necessary to set
healthy boundaries, to say yes to myself and no to other things
more than I had in the past. And to make peace with the fact
that in doing so, that does not make me selfish, that makes me

(33:36):
more effective as a tool to be used by God.
Yeah. And I know that's like a grand
statement to make. I'm not saying I'm I'm this, but
it works that way for anybody. Yeah.
When when you protect yourself and and not in a conceited way
or a self absorbed way, that is not the way to do it.

(33:57):
That is not the way to go about it.
Yeah, when you set healthy boundaries, that frees you to be
more effective and be more productive and offer more to
life and to those people that cross your path.
So I hope that makes sense. It does.
And the last piece, I love the pause because I was not good at

(34:20):
the pause for years and I've hadto learn to get comfortable in
sitting in the quiet and unknownand letting the things that
needed to unfold to me, that I needed to address and feel and
acknowledge and move through happen.
The silence. The silence is very important.

(34:41):
And we are taught to fear it. And, you know, God speaks in a
still small voice. Yeah.
And he's, he's a gentleman and he doesn't force himself on us
into our lives. And he doesn't scream and holler
and he. It's all in the silence.
And we have to quit being afraidof it.

(35:02):
Yes. Yes.
And allow what needs to happen to happen into it.
And I also love the pause when you're thinking about whether
you're going to say yes or no tosomething, that allows you the
time to really consider if this is an alignment with your
purpose. If this is really in alignment,
feel it in your body. How does it feel?
Does it feel like a match? Does it feel authentic?

(35:23):
Does it feel forced? It just really allows you to be
make good decisions and then like you said, then you can be
available to yourself and the people that you are giving your
time to in such a productive, authentic, energized way and not
depleted and wondering how you got there, You know, I mean, and

(35:46):
there's such a difference when you learn how to accept that and
move through that and sit in thequiet and it takes so much
pressure off having to fill the gaps all the time.
Oh, indeed, so and and you know,you, you bring up an interesting
point. If you continue to force
yourself to help people, you're no longer doing that out of

(36:08):
love. You're you're doing it out of
resentment. It's building resentment and
it's an obligation. And then you just hate
everything. You hate them.
You're mad at yourself, you, you, it's just it's not a loving
thing like it should be. And I2 things I write down while
you were talking my counselor, Ilearned from my counselor and

(36:29):
this was such a mind blowing concept.
The very simple but all empowering phrase.
Let me think about that and I'llget back with you.
That's all it takes to get you out of that uncomfortable spot.
We do not ever feel we have the right to say that.
You know, let me think about that and I'll get back with you
on. I let me think about that.

(36:49):
Yeah. That's all I that's all it
takes. And I had, I have a a dear
relation that had such a she's so loving and she had such a
hard time setting boundaries. She could never say no.
And the rest of of people, they're constantly taking
advantage of her for that fact because they knew she was a
pushover. She could never say no.

(37:11):
She would never say no. Even if she did, she would never
say no. Well, finally life pummeled her
to the point where she had to work through all of these things
and Start learning to set boundaries.
And she got into counseling. She did something I thought was
so brilliant, and my mom and I used to marvel as this.
She took a little clear fishbowland she sat down one day and she

(37:33):
wrote on little pieces of paper 45 extremely legitimate excuses
as to why she couldn't do something.
And she cut them in little pieces of squares and folded
them and put them in the little fishbowl by her phone.
And so when people would call with their demands, because she
knew she couldn't lie successfully, she was a horrible

(37:56):
liar, they would know she was lying.
She, she would rifle around veryquietly while they were, you
know, saying I need you to do this and I want you to do this
and blah, blah, blah, and this and that.
She would reach into the bowl and she would pull a piece of
paper out and she would, when itwas her time to talk with great
feeling and sincerity, she wouldread the excuse on the piece of

(38:18):
paper. And then once she used an
excuse, she would throw it away so she didn't accidentally use
it again on same present. And it really wasn't lying,
right? They were legitimate excuses and
she didn't have to hurt their feelings by Hemming and hawing
and obviously lying. And it saved her life until she
learned. Let me think about that and get

(38:39):
back with you. I, I, you know, I don't know if
I'll be able to help you with that or not.
Until she was able to do that inlifetime.
It was just a little help her todo that, but we thought it was
just brilliant. It really is.
It's so brilliant because it gives your mind, your
subconscious, the time to adjustto the new habit of saying no

(39:00):
when you haven't been used to. It doesn't put you of like
you're stumbling and you're trying to come up with something
in the moment and you're not thinking of it because you're
not used to showing up that way.It gives you that immediate
response and that allows time tolearn that new habit.
For that new habit to feel rightand safe and good like it is.
That is brilliant. I love that.

(39:20):
I know just I and I could, I could see her doing it.
She was so good. But now here's the thing.
You don't want to say no all thetime because absolutely.
And but when you help someone oryou agree to do something for
someone, you want to do it out of love and out of care and out
of of being genuine and. Authentically wanting to be

(39:41):
there and be out of it. But obligation it it just sucks
the magic out of. Everything it really does, it
really does oh so good. Thank you so much for that.
That sentence is so key that just let me think about that and
I'll get back to you. That's that's your take away
today, folks. That is it.
You get nothing and there's beena lot of gems throwing already,

(40:04):
but if you get nothing else out of this that is your go to.
And it just buys you time for the pause.
And then there's one other one that's equally as good, the
phrase. And I used to try to get my mom
to say this because she was horrible at this too.
I'm sorry that doesn't work for me.
Now that sounds a little bit more selfish, I have to admit,

(40:26):
but I'm sorry that doesn't work for me.
That yes, the schedule does. I'm sorry that doesn't work with
my schedule. I'm sorry that doesn't work for
this obligation. I've I've already committed.
I'm sorry that doesn't work for me.
Yeah, maybe next time. So, so that's that's the next
one. That's the.
Yes, that's a follow up. Very good.
Thank you so much, Kerry. Those are awesome.
I love those and such simple phrases, but with so much power

(40:49):
in them. So I love that so much.
It easy to remember write those down by your you know put a note
in your cell phone put the sticky note on your mirror if
you need to remember those so good.
OK, you touched on this already,but we're going to come back to
it and dive into a little more taking care of our emotional
health, our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual

(41:11):
health. We know we've touched on it
already. If we stuff and ignore and don't
deal with things, they're going to manifest themselves in a
very, very harmful way to ask. So talk to me about your
experience with that, what you've learned from that, and as
you've gone through these seasons, where that's shown up

(41:32):
for you. Well, if, if I'm understanding
you correctly, I, I, it sounds like we're talking about, again,
touching on core ones. Yeah.
Is that true? Pretty much what humanity boils
down to in my opinion. And I, I, I observe a lot of

(41:56):
humanity a lot because I'm a writer and I, and before I was a
writer, I was in the film industry.
So, you know, that teaches you to look at things and see things
in a different way. Basically every person that is
alive that we encounter operatesfrom unhealed, unaddressed core

(42:17):
wounds. Core wounds drive us until they
are healed. The, the decisions we make, the
relationships we get into. And you know, we touched on
earlier before we, we started the show, we were having a
conversation about promiscuous young women and where in some

(42:38):
cases that actually comes from sexual child abuse, child sexual
abuse. And, but, but we judge people by
their behaviors and we judge people by their choices without
stepping back and really observing what is that driving
factor beneath all of them. And so until we sit with those

(43:02):
unhealed, unaddressed core wounds, and usually by the time
we're 5 or 6, we've encountered the first one or two at the at
the very least, that's usually where the first big thing in
life came rolls over us until wedeal with those, those layers of
the onion, we are being driven by every single the decision we

(43:26):
make, every feeling that we feel, every emotion we have,
every thought that we think, pretty much every belief system
that we we have, It's all drivenby those core wounds.
So to, to finally get to the place in life, and usually it
comes later for most people, where we can then turn back to

(43:50):
the, our little self that was five years old and reached back
for that little self and heal that little self.
We're not whole. And that is, I think where the
spiritual emotional walk is so important because you, you can
only heal so much physically. Without healing emotionally,

(44:12):
mentally and spiritually, it's not going to work.
No, no, because it'll show up. It'll matter.
I mean, I think there's so many ailments and diseases that show
up as a result of these things that we've stuffed and not move
through and not processed. We're anxious, we're depressed,

(44:32):
we've got high blood pressure, we've got, you know, all these
different things because of thisway.
It's manifesting through our bodies.
And so thank you for that. I was such a good explanation of
that. I appreciate that so much.
And it just brings the empathy back to think about, you know,
get curious rather than judgmental first with yourself

(44:55):
and also with other people, yeah.
And, and I think what what helped me do that?
And then there's one other quickthing to touch on with this was
learning to ask what else might also be true when you when you
look at a situation or you're judging a person or you're
judging a situation or you come to a snap decision about

(45:18):
something. And I'm not saying second guess
your gut instincts because gut instincts are always right.
And I think they're there for a reason.
Those need to be paid attention to.
But when you're in your head andyou're judging situations or
you're judging people, or you think you have read a situation,
it's always and again goes back to the pause.
Take a breath, sit with it for amoment, and then say, well, what

(45:39):
else might also be true in this situation?
And that's what a good writer will do.
What else might also be true in this plot?
What else might also be true with this character?
And by doing so, you're opening up a whole aspect of life and
living and feeling and being anddoing that never otherwise gets

(45:59):
opened up. Yeah.
Oh, that was so good. Thank you for that.
I I love that you added that on that was that's so important to
think about and really a powerful thing that if again,
it's getting ourselves to stock,if we can give ourselves just a
few seconds, a few minutes, we're such a such a do, do, do
go, go, go society that there's so much power.

(46:20):
We can minimize so much of the issues, problems, damaging
things we say and do. If we just stopped and paused
for a moment and thought about what else could be true here.
That's a key question. Thank you.
Oh, that's good. So good.
All right, living unapologetically, both

(46:41):
supporting yourself in it and other women in it.
Talk to me about your journey with that, what that looks like
for you. I would I would say that a lot
of what you do in your writing world, the the possibilities
that you offer people is a is a portion of that.
But but talk to me about your journey with that.

(47:01):
Of living, of learning to live unapologetically.
It's I've only kind of, I'm still arriving at that wonderful
destination. It's been 60 years in the
making. I I think until we heal, we are
constantly apologizing or we're feeling constantly inferior.
I think there's a lot of secret shame that's there that we carry

(47:24):
and all of this stuff, but it takes a hell of a lot of work
undoing all of that to get to the place where you can finally
be and be unapologetically. So a component for me in that is
working to keep my senses, my heart and my spirit alive.

(47:45):
As I get older, we tend to get jaded and even our tastes and
our sense of smell kind of dull with with age.
We have to, we have to approach life as though everything is
art, which I believe it is. The food that you cook is art.
The way you put it on your plateis art.

(48:06):
The clothes that we wear is art.The perfume that we pick is art.
The soap that we bathe in is art.
How we decorate our homes is art.
How we carry ourselves out in public, it's art.
Everything is art. And so I think we have to work
to stay alive on every level andto not be jaded and become

(48:27):
hardened and cynical, which I think we are programmed
societally to do and be. And I think what you said about
constantly being driven, that's done to us on purpose.
Yeah, we absolutely, if we're constantly distracted or we're
constantly racing, then we can'tsit in the silence and hear God.
We can't sit and commune with Spirit.

(48:49):
And I think it's done to us on purpose.
But that's just probably for another show.
So living unapologetically, I'm only just now learning to do,
and it's been a 60 year journey.I think in order to do that

(49:10):
successfully, and in order to get there successfully, you
pretty much have to take all of the steps we've just talked
about. Yeah, you have to grieve.
You have to feel, you have to heal your core wounds.
You have to look back at your childhood and programming things
that weren't healed from back then.
Yeah. You have to set boundaries.

(49:30):
I mean, all of this that we've discussed today actually leads
to then the freedom and the wisdom and the ability to live
unapologetically. So applying it to my writing and
ghostwriting for people and, andworking with authors and, and
with Morgan Pierce, the publishing house, it is

(49:54):
wonderful to to work with someone to help them really get
their voice and use their voice effectively.
That is the beauty of of the written word.
It's different than the spoken word or the the the word that is

(50:15):
released in song. There's a tremendous amount of
power in words and in terms of living unapologetically.
I grew up with my father always saying to me, and I've just now
come to where I really appreciate it.
I always applied it in my life because I saw the wisdom in it,

(50:35):
but I never really truly appreciated it.
Mean what you say and say what you mean.
That simplifies everything. And if you can can live that
same way, then that gets you to the living unapologetically.
So I don't know if I've answeredthat question.

(50:56):
That you actually answered it beautifully.
I loved all of that. And no, that was a really,
really good explanation of that and how you've arrived at that.
And it is a journey. And I think, you know, continue
being a learner. That's the one way, the way that
I have learned. I'm, you know, I'm 55, so I am
on this journey too. And it really wasn't until five

(51:18):
years ago that I really started unpacking all of it.
I've done pieces of it along theway, but I had some, I hit a
wall and I had some things that really got my attention that
made me really sit back and be like, all right, it's time to
get really serious about this process.
And the most valuable thing I'velearned and I've really learned
it, I think especially the last 10 years through some different

(51:39):
seasons and experiences, it's just continue being a learner,
stay curious, be willing to be like, OK, I used to believe
that, but I've learned this now.So this is now I know it'll feel
differently or it's broadened myview on this.
I mean, just continually, it keeps you fresh, it keeps you
aware, it keeps you feeling alive.

(52:03):
You don't get stagnant, evolving.
Exactly, exactly. So I love what you said about
all of that. But you know, you are very young
for for your age. You look because I would have
thought you know, maybe 40 by bylooking at you.
So but you bring up but this brings up something that ties
into the living unapologetically.
I think age if if seen as the gift that it actually is because

(52:30):
it beats the hell out of the alternative right.
So but when a woman hits menopause, not only does it do
stuff to her brain and emotions and and Andrew pause in a man

(52:50):
does this too, but we don't allow them.
They're not allowed their emotions and and loss.
Yeah, from a, from a very young age.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but when a guy hits
Anderpuzz, he just races off fortestosterone supplements because
he's supposed to be virile and and the little blue pill and all
this stuff. And we don't talk about it, but

(53:12):
yeah. And, and I used to write health
and beauty articles aimed at midlife men and women.
I did that for many years. And my desire at that time was
to bring men and women together in midlife so that Andrew pause
and a man and menopause and a woman could be the gift it was
meant to be. Actually allow them to come
together with the masks dropped being very human as they move

(53:36):
through the aging process. So when a woman goes through
menopause and the aging starts to physically happen, if she is
wise, in my opinion she will make peace with that process
instead of racing off to the plastic surgeon to get nipped

(54:00):
and tacked repeatedly because that there's nothing more
unapologetic and also nothing more attractive, in my opinion,
as somebody that used to be in the beauty industry than an
older woman who is comfortable in her skin no matter what she
looks like and is engaged actively in life.

(54:24):
That is a sexy damn woman. I love that.
Yes, OK, good. So that's just my personal
opinion about all of that. I love that.
So that's where unapologeticallyliving comes in.
You either get there willingly or life's going to pummel the
hell out of you and force you toget there.

(54:44):
So you can do it with screaming or you can do it, you know, just
happy and skipping along the way.
So I'm just throwing it out there.
No, that's really good. I love that so much.
And I want to point out too, andI haven't thought about this
before, with the andropause and the menopause, we noticed a word
at the end that you and I have already talked about today.
Yes, pause. Yes.

(55:05):
Take a pause, take a look at your life, take, you know, take
note of where you are. Where do you want to be?
Are you on that track or do you need to dive into some things,
heal some things, move in just to think, let some things go.
Take the pause and think about what do you want this next
season of your life to look like?

(55:27):
This isn't the end. It's just the beginning of
another student. And so taking that pause too, so
that you can show up continually, unapologetically,
as your authentic self, the way you were designed to be.
Yes, beautifully sad. Beautifully sad that.
Was just the let me solve that problem.

(55:49):
Awesome. All right, let's check that on
we did it OK, everybody run withthat.
Yes, OK. The importance of setting and
coming back to your why and yourvalues and everything you do,
you are faced all the time with decisions to make on what you're
going to engage with time wise, content wise, who you're going

(56:11):
to work with, who you're going to surround yourself in and out
of your workspace. So talk to me about where that
those why and values come into play with that.
Wow. You know, when you wow, that's a
question. I think the first time I
encountered that was when I was working in Hollywood in the film

(56:33):
industry back in the 80s. So I was in my, my early to mid
20s at the time. And it was disturbing out there
anyway for many reasons. But I came up, I was given a
script and I was a special effects makeup artist.
I was given a script that had the most horrible special effect

(56:56):
they wanted me to devise, and itbasically consisted of peeling
this woman's skin off while she was alive.
This this guy was going to come in and was, but it didn't have
anything to do with the movie. It had nothing to do with the
script, but they had to have thescene in it.

(57:17):
And I remember reading the script and sitting there and I
thought, I can't, I can't do this.
This is totally gratuitous. I asked the director why it was
even in the script and he later admitted to me that the producer

(57:40):
hated his wife and they were going through a hideous divorce
and this was what he fantasized about doing to her but couldn't.
What about poor wounds? Affecting your decisions.
Exactly. And so that was the first time I
ever really realized I have a right to say no, even though I
have I'm, I'm in this field and I, I've worked hard to have

(58:04):
these skills and to be here. I have a right to say, I'm
sorry, this doesn't work for me.But it was still very hard to
do. And I paid a big price for it.
But I turned down that film because I just could not devise
that. Yeah, make up for that effect
that we had absolutely no reasonto be in the film.

(58:26):
And so I, there is a lot of freedom that comes from, from
living a life that is aligned with your values and your Y.
If you forget your Y, it's very easy to get blown off track and
most people forget their Y. Once you disengage from your Y,

(58:50):
then you lose the rudder and youjust kind of eventually float
out into the middle of the oceanand you have no rudder because
your Y is gone. So the Y is very important and
you have the Y does not stay consistent and solid throughout
your life as you absolutely why should evolve and you need to
make peace with that and let it be so.

(59:11):
But the why fundamentally at itscore, should kind of always stay
the same in, in my opinion, but values as an artist, it's hard
to do your best work if you're working on something that
doesn't resonate with you or that you don't care about or
that fundamentally flies in the face of everything that you hold

(59:32):
dear. You can't do your best work.
And I think if you're living a life that is out of alignment
with your values, then you're living a life that is not
bringing out the best in you. And you're, you're, you're
contributing to life in a mannerthat does not bring the spice,

(59:54):
if you will. So I, again, I don't know if
that makes sense. IA, dear friend of mine, said
something to me about a month and a half ago that I thought
about a lot. It really resonated with me.
She said, I, I envy you. And I think about it a lot
because I'm not married and, andthis person is.

(01:00:16):
And she said, you set the tone in your home all the time.
You have the freedom to set the tone.
In your home, when you get up inthe morning, your home is going
to flow how you need want it to flow.
That is a total luxury. And I've never looked at it that

(01:00:36):
way before. And I spent a lot of time
looking at that and I realized that my whys and my values, I'm
living them now. But there was a period where I
felt loss around them and I, I questioned if I'd made the right

(01:00:56):
decision. And it was hard.
You know, I never married, but, you know, I was in long
relationships and I never got married, did not have kids for
health reasons, couldn't have kids.
And and so here I sit older, I, I wish sometimes tremendously
that that things had been different or I had made better

(01:01:19):
choices. See, that's the thing.
My Corwin's were driving me. So consequently, I did not pick
healthy men and I and I, that's the thing.
If you don't address your core wounds, then your choices, you
pick things to just continue working out those unaddressed.

(01:01:39):
Issues. Absolutely.
So that's where counseling comesin.
That's so important because it finally helps you break that
cycle. But I'm living honestly now the
life that I always knew, even asa little girl, that I would
live. I never saw myself buried as a
little girl. I always saw myself as a writer,
although I didn't know the firstthing about it, now I am.

(01:01:59):
It was like an inner programmingthat I had come I've been
designed with. But it was a lot of, there were
a lot of painful years. There were a lot of years of
that seemed like drifting. But now I know that they
weren't. They were.
It was hibernating, yeah. Yeah, yeah, because we need

(01:02:21):
those winter seasons too. I think, you know, we need the
winters. We want to live in summer all
the time, but we but we need thewinters.
Wintering is a lovely, very important thing.
And I do think it goes back to the pause.
That is where most of the magic happens is in the wintering

(01:02:43):
where we sit alone and we sit inthe silence and we question and
we look and we ask and we poke and we we rehash and we make
peace with and it's very important.
And and what comes after winter,Spring and blasphemy.
Exactly, exactly. Yes, I love that.

(01:03:03):
Oh, thank you so good. All right, Living out of your
own expectations versus others. You've really just described
that. I mean, you've really, you have
really done that over time over learning how to do that.
And I, you know, I think sometimes and I, I feel like
boundaries and values and expectations, they all are
intertwined within each other and it requires good

(01:03:25):
communication. But it's something you have to
grow into because working in themovie industry, I mean, my gosh,
talk about a land of expectations that everybody else
wants to impose upon you. You know, but, and you talked
about when we were talking aboutvalues, how you had to say no to
something because it just wasn'taligned with your values.
That's a hard thing to do when you're in your 20s trying to

(01:03:48):
start out in a tough industry already.
So, so talk to me about that expectations piece and how that
has evolved through time becauseit's something very clearly that
you operate out of. I'm not OK.
Can you clarify that for me in Chinese?
Yeah. You very clearly, yeah, you very

(01:04:08):
clearly live out of your own expectations versus other
people's expectations of you through choices you've made in
all the different seasons and parts of your life.
Is that something that was natural to you or is that
something you had to learn over time because you did it early on
in the in the movie situation, you you tapped into your own

(01:04:29):
expectations of yourself to liveout of your values.
A lot of 20 year olds, and no shame on them, would have taken
that job anyway because they would have been afraid of the
consequences of saying no to an opportunity at that point in
their. Career well, that was there.
I mean, you know, it was there. I I needed to eat and I needed
money, but not that bad. And so I think I, I, so I am

(01:04:54):
grateful for that. I had two very dear parents and
I think they were an, an incredible mix.
My father was a sweet, sweet manwith a very dry, wicked sense of
humor. He was a a Texan named Billy
Jack and he was an air traffic controller.
So with my father, there was a great deal of stay inside the

(01:05:17):
lines because if you don't, people die, you know, as an air
traffic controller. And again, the the say what you
mean and mean what you say. And he also taught me if you
give your word to someone, you keep it no matter what.
Well, so I lived most of my lifewith that.
You know, I do think giving yourword to someone is extremely

(01:05:37):
important. Keeping it is extremely
important. It is a bond, but I he taught me
even if it kills you. So I had to unlearn that part of
it, that little part. Yeah.
Any any good thing done too extreme turns into a bad thing
real quickly. Yeah.
So I I just recently removed that part and I I still my word

(01:06:00):
is my bond and I do still I keepmy word.
But you know, I no longer would I let it.
Kill me, right? My mom on the other hand, was a
jazz singer and just magical. She just had, she was just magic
in flesh and she loved life. She had many, many tragedies and
traumas in her life. And every day she got up, even

(01:06:24):
the day before she died, she gotup wondering what she was going
to be when she grew up. And she loved life.
I, I don't know how she did it with all of the losses she had
had in her life. I don't know how she had such
magical passion for this earthlyplane and being alive, but she

(01:06:45):
did. And so I think I'm very grateful
to both of them because Mom instilled in the values as well
and, and the importance of beingarticulate and understanding
words. She loved a lyric.
She could deliver a lyric like Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra.

(01:07:06):
I mean, she understood lyrics. And I think that's where my love
of words comes from, my appreciation of words.
They're extremely powerful. But I think the combination of
the two of my folks gave me a balance that I wouldn't have
gotten any other way. So I have the big, wonderful,
artsy, fartsy magical, you know,side and then I have my kind of

(01:07:31):
still stay inside the lines because people could die sides,
but it's blended in a way. So I again, I'm not sure I'm
answering your questions becausewe go down a rabbit hole and
then it leads to another one. So I'm I'm not really sure how
have I answered that. Yeah, yeah, you, you, you had

(01:07:51):
guidance, you had, you had these.
I love the different, how you blend these two different parts.
And then it builds a, a framework for you to live off,
to make sure you're living true to yourself, to make sure you're
living authentic to yourself andto sense when you're getting off
kilter. Like, OK, can't do this till it
kills me. Got to swing back in and make
sure that I'm meeting myself in a place that's actually healthy

(01:08:14):
for me. It gives that framework for you
to do that. Well, there is another component
that I should probably throw in there then, now that I'm
thinking of it, not to interruptyou.
When I when I was 11, I was extremely ill and horribly ill
and continued to be for a few years.
And it turned out to be celiac disease, which of course, back
in the 70s nobody had ever heardof.

(01:08:37):
And I mean, I had it horribly, brain swelling, seizures, the
color was horrible, my, my skin coming off in sheets.
And mom prayed and prayed and prayed.
Nobody could find out what was wrong with me.
And she just prayed that God would intervene.
And she woke up in the middle ofthe night one night saying it
starts with AC. It starts with AC.

(01:08:57):
And my dad set up and he said, what are you?
Are you having a nightmare? What are you talking about?
She said, no, what, what's wrongwith Carrie starts with AC?
And so that next day she packed a little lunch and she went to
the local health food store and she got this big, huge health
encyclopedia out and she went through all of the CS and she

(01:09:18):
finally got late in the afternoon to celiac disease.
I had every one of the symptoms and so that led to years of mega
vitamin therapy and it led to years of diet changes.
That of course made me a social pariah as a teenager because I
couldn't eat everything that a teenager eats and I couldn't.

(01:09:39):
But she told me one time, I knowthis is very hard for you now
and I know you feel left out of life.
I need you to trust me that there will come a time in your
life where you will look back onthis and realize what a gift it
is because it will save you froma lot.

(01:10:00):
And I am I, I'm at that stage now.
I can't eat junk. So my diet is very healthy.
I'm healthier than most people my age.
And, and because I, that hit me in my formative years, I had to
live and think and do and be outside of the box outside.

(01:10:24):
And I think that is another veryimportant component.
And for many years I was ashamedto talk about that.
It, it was shame and embarrassment to me.
And my mom was very open about it.
But you know, it was like, well,that's my personal story.
I kind of want people to know I was such a freak, but now I do
see it and now I do get it. And it was an astounding

(01:10:46):
blessing, but it made me have tothink for myself.
I had to, at an early age, say no, I can't have that.
Do you have this instead? No, I can't eat that.
I can do this instead. No, I don't feel good today.
So I, I, I'll do this over here instead because I'm not feeling

(01:11:07):
well today. So I have to grow up in a
completely different way than most people did.
And I am very grateful for that now.
And I, and again, it boils back to what we were talking about at
the first of the show, which is the pain of loss and trauma and
grief and how life plummet pummels you and demands things
of you. But there are blessings at every

(01:11:29):
turn. Sometimes we just have to really
dig hard and deep to get them. Yeah, that's a component.
I'm glad I didn't forget to. That was a.
Really good component and an excellent example.
Thank you so much. And yeah, I mean, I understand
that celiac, peanut allergies, those things were not things
that we're talking about. And even when I was raising my

(01:11:52):
girls and they're in their, well, my oldest is 30 and the
mid to late 20s, it was just starting to be talked about.
When they were growing up and they had friends that dealt with
these things, they still was kind of that stigma around of
like, oh, we have to make thingsthat way because this kid, you
know, kind of. You're one of those.

(01:12:14):
Yeah, it's yeah. And it was just so brutal what
we did to those poor kid, what societally and culturally we did
to these kids. It you have no control over
that. And it's literally a life and
death situation. Where's Here's the.
Other thing, carry it even further, back in the 70s because
there is such a nervous system component and now we're

(01:12:35):
realizing that everything is in the gut, your immune.
System. Your emotions, how your brain
works, it's all in the gut. I mean, the things we're
learning about gut health today are just staggering and, and way
past due. But back when I had celiac
disease, most of the time they institutionalized people.

(01:12:55):
Wow. And so how many people do we
have in mental institutions thatactually just can't handle
gluten or they have food sensitivities that have impacted
their brain chemistry? I mean that, that is something I
wish people would look at. I, I know of people that have
lived their entire lives in mental institutions that once

(01:13:16):
they were put on a gluten free diet immediately, within weeks
they were perfectly fine or, or efficiency and schizophrenia,
all of those things. I mean, people need to pay
attention to that. Yeah, and ask those questions
and don't be afraid to advocate for yourself in those areas.
Oh my gosh. But you know.

(01:13:37):
We we have to advocate for ourselves in every way and we
should and that is the ultimate self-care is self advocacy.
Yes. And living unapologetically all
those things. Absolutely, absolutely.
Oh yeah, that was good. Thank you for that.
Thank you so much for sharing that accepting the layered
aspects of ourselves. You've been talking about this

(01:13:58):
really already, that accepting all those parts and pieces of
our stories that make up who we are, the parts we love, the
parts we don't love. You've talked about grief and
growing up with celiac and when no one knew what it was and
different relationships over time and saying no to things
because to follow your values and, and, and all these pieces

(01:14:22):
make up the layers of our story.Talk to me about that.
You're accepting that because you, you have, you have accepted
it. You have acknowledged it.
You, you understand the importance of dealing with those
core wounds and healing those things.
What would you say to someone, because you've really done this,
you've accept the layered aspects of yourself, and that's

(01:14:43):
a marvelous thing and a very freeing thing when you're able
to do that. What would you say to someone
who's struggling with that notion of layers?
Well, when you have all that work in front of you, it really
and pardon me for being crude. It really sucks when somebody

(01:15:05):
says, oh, you know, we got to peel this layer back and healing
is, is like an onion. You have to peel this layer and
then another disease pops up, then you have to peel that.
You know, you don't want to hearthat.
You just like, I just want to get on with it.
Let's just get on with it. I don't have time for all this
peeling crap. It's it's crap.
Let's get on with it. But the fact of the matter is,
and again, like we talked about with the paws and and that the

(01:15:30):
layers, that's where all the spice is.
And you, you can live. You can keep sweeping things
under your rug until you have this giant mountain with a tiny
rug over it, a whole mountain ofcrap with a tiny little rug over
the top of it. That can be your life.
Or you can sit with a little whisk broom and a dustpan and

(01:15:54):
you can go through the dirt and you can scoop a little at a time
and filter it and sift it and throw it away and then vacuum
your nice little flat rug. And that can be your life.
So you have, you have those two living room choices to live in.
You don't when you you haven't done the work, you don't want to

(01:16:15):
think about what everything, everything that's lurking under
those layers. And and yeah, it's natural to
fear removing even the first layer because you don't know
what's going to come pouring out.
And most of us, if we haven't done the work, we are like
little pustules. I'm going to go back to my
aesthetician certification. We are like pustules, little

(01:16:36):
pimples. And we're afraid to to poke
them. But if we don't, they're just
going to keep getting fuller andbigger and fuller and bigger.
It's a gross analogy, but we don't want to be full of pus.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So. So at some point and it, it will
be the journey of your lifetime and it will be the most, the

(01:16:57):
most important work of your life.
The peeling back, the poking, the pustule and the cleaning it
out. That is why we are here in my
opinion. And that is the work that we are
called to do. The breaking of the generational
curses, the, the, the looking atthe, the horribleness that has

(01:17:22):
come down through our family lineage and why it was allowed
to be and how it perpetuated over time and, and how it just
continues to roll like a freighttrain down the track until
somebody does something about it.
And, and I think that's if you're called to be a
generational curse breaker, yourlife is not going to be easy.

(01:17:42):
If you are chosen, your life is not going to be easy.
It is guaranteed to be difficultbecause that is why you have
come here to do that work. That is the work of a lifetime.
And you are not only doing it for yourself, you're doing it
for the generations behind you and you're doing it for the
generations that come after you.It is the most important work of

(01:18:06):
being human, in my opinion, is the peeling back and the
addressing of the layers. And again, there will be
blessings mixed amongst the pus and the pain, but in order to
get to those blessings, you're going to have to go through the
icky, goopy parts and a lot of people just don't want to do it.

(01:18:28):
Yeah, that is so true. I'm you.
Did you explain that so well? I remember when I really decided
a little over five years ago nowto really dive in and start
really unpacking. I got to a point in my life
where I'm like, I don't want to live in this hyper vigilant,
anxious feeling like I've got tosave everybody all the time,

(01:18:50):
state waiting for the next shoe to drop all the time.
This is not the way I want to live my life.
And seeing my daughters make different choices.
They're not living their lives this way.
There's got to be a better way to do this.
And, and so I, I, I, I went on that journey and I went into it.
I laughed. Now I'm going to go, I'm going

(01:19:12):
to go hardcore and therapy. I'm going to go for six months
and really hit it hard and then I'm going to be better.
I, I know, I know that's hilarious, funny.
Here I am over five years later and I will tell you if I'd know
what was coming, I don't know ifI would have done it, but I

(01:19:33):
can't imagine not doing it now. I can't imagine I wouldn't be
sitting here with you today having this conversation.
I wouldn't have, I wouldn't be have all the amazing
relationships and conversations that I've built over the last
three plus years, not to mentionother, I mean, I just can't
imagine not doing it. And so if your listeners, if

(01:19:56):
you're listening to Carrie and Itoday know that you're worth it,
know that it is worth it. And, and, and there's resources
and places and frameworks here to support you.
And that's why we're here havingthese conversations today.
So you feel like you can do thistoo?
I hope I'm in counseling the rest of my life.

(01:20:18):
But with that said, I do want toput this out there.
You need to be extremely carefulin the selection of your
counselor, absolutely, because if you get a bad one, they can
undo you completely. And there are bad ones out there
and also a lot of narcissists that are in psychopaths that are

(01:20:38):
in positions of authority. You have got to do due diligence
and you have got to make certainthat your counselor meshes with
your values and your why that they understand you and that you
understand them and that that they are open to being

(01:20:58):
questioned about themselves. Because not all counselors, you
know, and not any group of anybody is all good or all bad.
And, and, but, but when you are going into counseling, you have
basically agreed with life to betotally vulnerable.

(01:21:20):
And if you are going into counseling unwilling to be
totally open and vulnerable, then you're wasting your time.
But in the process of doing that, you must make certain that
your choice of counselor is a good, sound one.
Yeah, absolutely. Such important information.
And and listen to your instincts.

(01:21:41):
They will tell you if this isn'tthe right match for you.
And it's because nobody is all knowing.
I don't care how many degrees they have or how much background
history or if they worked for your best friend, that doesn't
mean they're a match for you. And trust that inner knowing.
And that ain't when it's tellingyou this might not, might not be
the right fit. And also know there is somebody

(01:22:03):
out there for you. Oh.
Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, yeah, quit in your
search. But I think another telling
thing is if you have a counselorthat is telling you, oh, in, in
a year from now, you'll be all well or run because yeah, nobody
can tell you. But it's not a time frame on, on
this work. It is entirely personal.

(01:22:26):
And it, it does need to be self-paced because it can be
dangerous, risky work. You're going to be opening
yourself to looking at enormous amounts of pain and in a lot of,
a lot of times and, and spaces doing it by yourself alone.
And you need to be up to the challenge because it's very

(01:22:49):
difficult work. Yeah, it's again that pause that
we talked about. Don't be afraid to take the
pause and don't over overdo yoursystem and give yourself time
and space to process each thing as you go along.
So good. Thank you so much Carrie.
So good. So many, so much gold in this
episode. I'm so excited.

(01:23:10):
Really about all that you've you've shared, I feel as I've
been taking notes. Oh, that's wonderful.
I love this. All right, we are getting down
to the the end here, but and living out feel, finding
empowerment, embracing layers which you have done you and you
continue to do in your life. Talk to me about the impact that

(01:23:32):
has on your relationship with yourself as well as your
relationship with other. People.
OK, OK, I'm writing this time. I'm not going down a rabbit
hall. I'm writing this down.
When you become healthier withinyourself, you make healthier
choices. And when you quit being run by

(01:23:54):
unhealed core wounds, you start attracting healthy people.
Yeah. Consequently, in the course of
that happening, your life becomes healthier.
So my relationship with myself and and I think this is, isn't a

(01:24:15):
perpetually evolving process. I mean, it's like anything.
There are some days I think, oh,I could lose 10 lbs and, you
know, I kind of poke it myself. And then there are other days
when I think that might, I thinkwhat?
Tearing yourself apart and, you know, for an old gal, you look,
you look pretty OK. And and so it's, you know, it's
it's a journey. It's still a journey.
It's like another thing. You don't really arrive.

(01:24:36):
And yeah, you got to make peace with that liminal space.
But I, I am a firm believer in what you put out, you receive.
And not so much in the law of attraction Y kind of way like
everybody tries to do, you know,the sacred and all that.
I'm not talking about that. But what you put out in your

(01:25:00):
world and in your life, you thenreceive.
And that's where the magic happens once you start to heal,
is you start putting out a healthier version of yourself.
Yeah. Healthier mindsets, healthier
attitudes, more peace, more joy,more quiet, more contentment,

(01:25:21):
more security within yourself that then attracts healthier
people to you. I have some very dear, dear,
precious, healthy friends that Icherish.
I I am not and maybe this is a failing on my part.

(01:25:43):
I am not that open to relationships, male, female
lovey dovey relationships right now because I'm I'm focusing on
other things. I love and appreciate men.
I think they're absolutely wonderful.
I I am great, so grateful for them.
But I haven't been open to a relationship in a while because
I've been building the publishing house with my

(01:26:04):
business partner Sandra and I'vebeen writing books like crazy
and we're and working on other people's books.
So it's my season right now has been being a 60 year old woman
recovering from grief and tryingto build a life with where I am
right now. And it's so foreign to me.

(01:26:26):
It's taken me some time to get my bearings and my footing
because it's like I woke up one day and everybody was speaking
Greek and I didn't know how to speak Greek, so I had to learn
quickly. So a lot of what has happened to
me in the last three years has been totally foreign, which has
been incredibly scary and difficult and invigorating and

(01:26:46):
thrilling all at the same time. Yeah.
So the when you become more respectful toward yourself, you
then tend to attract people thatwill also be respectful of you
and your humanity, more so than in the past.
And it is definitely something that has been happening in my

(01:27:10):
life, and I'm very grateful, yeah, for that.
But it does still fall upon you to be consistent with your
boundaries. And if you see someone off in
the distance that reeks a littlebit of predator or unhealthy or
toxic, then you need to be tactful and set that boundary.

(01:27:30):
And you need to be quick with setting those boundaries.
So it it again, it all ties intoto everything.
It's becomes the implementation of pretty much everything we've
talked about today. But it has a bearing on
everything. Once, once you you do the
healing, it impacts every relationship that you have,
whether it's business, romance, friendship, whatever.

(01:27:57):
It impacts every single person you interact with.
And I think that's why it ultimately is the most important
work you will ever do on this earthly plane as a human,
because the energy you put out there causes a ripple.
Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Again, really well said. Thank you so much for that.

(01:28:19):
And it it, it really. Yeah.
I mean, it just it you, you do, you emanate that energy and then
you. But also, you know, you talked
about this, you've mentioned a couple of times that's the whole
purpose of these conversations, to give us a framework.
Like life has hills and valleys,canyons, mountains, and we live
somewhere in the in between mostof the time.

(01:28:40):
But we need a framework to help keep us on the trail because
we're going to fall off the trail, surprises are going to
happen, things we didn't see coming, you know, all those
kinds of different things. But if that framework's there
and we're checking in with ourselves via the framework,
then it can help keep us on track to being and living the
way we were designed to and thatwe want to.

(01:29:02):
That feels authentic and healthyto us.
And you're in grabs. Is very important to being just
being grateful. I mean, you know, with
everything that has happened with the fires and hurricanes
and people losing their homes, Ihave become so mindful of how
luxurious it is to get out of a warm bed and have a cup of

(01:29:22):
coffee in the morning. There are people right now that
they don't even have that. And of course, there are people
around the world that never havethat, but it's just to just be
grateful. And as you were speaking, I
remembered an acquaintance I hadone time.
He was an older man. He had a very difficult life,

(01:29:43):
and he had recently lost a leg. But his outlook was so precious.
And this, this man was probably 70 when I was 18.
And we were talking one day. And there are two, two bits of
wisdom. But his concept of the, the

(01:30:04):
meaning of life, what made for agood life, He said keep your
stomach full and your bowels empty.
He boiled it down to that. But then he also said to me,
like you said, mountaintops and valleys.
And he said don't ever be afraidof the valleys, the dark
valleys, because that's where all the big berries grow.

(01:30:27):
That's where all the good juicy blackberries are, in the deep
valleys. Yeah.
And I thought, man, you know, with the life he had LED and
having recently lost his leg, I mean that that was his take on
things. Don't be afraid of the deep
valleys because that's where allthe best berries are.
Yeah. Well, and I think when you're

(01:30:47):
living true and authentic to yourself and you're tending to
yourself well, you can find the gratitude each day because
you're made room for it. You've cleared out the gunk,
you've felt the feelings, you'veacknowledged the things that
have happened. You aren't hiding or stuffing or
living out of your core wounds. And it makes space to feel and

(01:31:07):
acknowledge and see. The gratitude, yeah, yeah.
But even gratitude can be, you know, it getting back to my dad
and the worst of his dementia, it was it was hellish.
It was hell for him and it was hell for us.
And and it was absolutely horrifying.

(01:31:28):
And when the doctor diagnosed him, he came into the room and
we were all there and he sat down with Dad's file and he
actually said, I think I know what's wrong with Billy Jack.
And you all need to go home and pray I'm wrong.
Because if I'm right, you are infor a trip through the bowels of
hell. And I've only seen one other

(01:31:48):
case in my career. And this is going to be hellish.
And unfortunately, he was right.But in the worst of my father's
state, there were times when I went down into my bathroom
because I lived with them, because they were, you know,
elderly. And I couldn't.
I couldn't trust my mom's safety.

(01:32:10):
Sure. So I lived with him.
I would go down into my bathroomand lock the door and I would
cry and then I would pray. Thank you, Father, that Dad is
still in my life, even though he's in this hellish, awful
place and this is absolutely horrible.

(01:32:30):
Thank you that he is still in mylife and I can go upstairs and
hug him. And so even in the dark moments,
thank you, Lord, that I'm alive to experience this.
Thank you, Lord, that you're with me in this.
Thank you that there is hope that tomorrow will be better.

(01:32:51):
Or if not tomorrow, a year from now, it will be better.
Or thank you, Lord, that that you're walking this with us that
we're not having to do. You are here And and you can
always find any something. Thank you, Lord, that I have a
carrot to eat for dinner tonight.
I mean, it's because there are people that don't.

(01:33:12):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So it doesn't have to be this great grandiose gratitude
journal. Oh, this happened.
I. Know.
Filet mignon for dinner and champagne about, you know, it
doesn't have to be that stuff. Thank you that that I have a
clean pair of sheets to sleep ontonight.
And yeah. And a roof over my head.

(01:33:35):
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that.
So good. All right, We are down to the
rapid fire named 5I. Know I'm not good at that.
You ought to. Know that there's nothing rapid
about me. It's it's in name only 5

(01:33:56):
activities that nourish you. Five activities that nourish me.
Prayer daily walks when? When I can get them.
I love my long morning walk, 55 activities that nourish me OK
Prayer, reading, a good book, a nice Epsom salt, soap with

(01:34:17):
candles and listening to good music.
Great. All right.
And five words on how you want to feel the next six months.
Oh, peaceful, successful, joyous.

(01:34:39):
I would like to feel prosperous and be prosperous.
Loved slash loving. I cheated.
I threw an extra 1 in there but the.
That's all right. That's OK there.
Well, we can blend them. Thank you very much.
You bet. All right, Kerry, tell people
where they can find you and follow you.

(01:35:00):
This will all be on our website at embracinglayers.com, on our
resources page. We'll share it on our socials,
but take some time right now to share with people real quick
where they can find you and follow you.
Well, thank you very much. I I am Co director of a hybrid
publishing house with my business partner and friend

(01:35:21):
Sandra Morgan. So it is Morgan Pierce Media
publishing.com and they can reach me directly there at
Carrie Carrie at Morgan Pierce Media publishing.com.
I have an author page on Facebook, author Carrie E
Pierce. And then I have lots of social

(01:35:43):
media that's just out there. But I do want to let your
listeners know. Oddly enough, there is another
writer out there by the name of Carrie Pierce.
Oh, so it is incredibly important that if you are
searching for me or any of my books, that you do so under
Carrie, Carrie middle initial E for Elizabeth Pierce Pierce.

(01:36:05):
So the E makes all the difference.
OK, OK. Perfect.
Thank you for that. Thank you for that
clarification. That's important.
All right, thank you so much foryour time today.
This has just been a wonderful conversation, a treasure trove
of insights and wisdom and resources.
Listeners, I I know there's so much you're probably going to
have to go back and listen. Bring your pen with you.

(01:36:27):
Check out how you can follow Carrie and learn from her.
If you're a writer, take a look at the ways she can help you
with that. If it's a good fit for you, take
a look at the books that she offers.
She's got all kinds, the things out there that are available,
whether you're looking for children's books or other things
that she's written. I know she's got something new
coming out soon that's completely different than what

(01:36:49):
she's done before. So, but check all those things
out and, and, and take care of yourselves this week and, and
think about if you have some core wounds that need some
addressing that need some attention, that that needs some
time and some healing. Pause.
That's going to be your take away this week.

(01:37:10):
It's just pause this week. Sit with yourself, think about
what it is you need. You're worth it, you're
valuable. This is a journey and and
there's so many resources here that we want to share with you
both from this episode today. And I'll just go to our
resources page and, and there's all kinds of, you know, things
that will be LinkedIn our show notes, as we talked earlier in

(01:37:32):
the episode about caregiving and, and the kinds of things
that are necessary to take care of yourself there.
But Carrie, thank you so much for your time today.
Oh, Melissa, thank you. And I appreciate you, this
opportunity and your listeners. I've really enjoyed it.
Oh, good, I have too. I've learned so much.
Thank you so much, listeners. Take good care of yourselves
this week. Take a pause and have a great

(01:37:54):
week. Hello, Melissa Crook here.
Thank you so much for joining uson the field podcast today.
Finding Empowerment. Embracing Layers.
I hope you found today's framework and resources
supportive and informative. To learn more about all that we

(01:38:14):
offer here at the Embracing Layers Network, visit
embracinglayers.com. You can go to our contact form
to schedule me as a speaker for your next conference, workshop,
or seminar. You can go to our book page to
order our book, The Jessica Garrison, our wonderful and
talented writer and author authored with my support and

(01:38:37):
engage with this framework in written form with your journal
or in a book club with other women inviting them on this
journey with you. You can look at our resources
page for all of the helpful and insightful resources our guests
offer and share. You can find the schedule for
our weekly Together We Feel Women's panel conversations that

(01:38:59):
we're holding each Monday on ourYouTube channel, and you can
find the links to all the spacesand places.
You can then follow engage with us on social media and join our
engagements that are happening on our Sub Stat site.
There is also a donation page where you can donate to support
our work to ensure we can continue to bring you these

(01:39:21):
incredible guest conversations and support.
Thanks again for joining me thisweek.
Share with your friends and giveus a review on your favorite
listening platform. Your feedback helps us ensure
we're bringing you the content that will best support you and
having an empowered Embracing Layers journey.

(01:39:42):
Take good care and thanks for giving us some of your valuable
time today. We truly appreciate you so
deeply.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Caregiver to Self-Healer: Carrie Pierce on Grief, Core Wounds & Reclaiming Self-Worth

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

All Episodes

From Caregiver to Self-Healer: Carrie Pierce on Grief, Core Wounds & Reclaiming Self-Worth

Stuff You Should Know