Unmasking the Layers: Eating Disorders, Sexual Shame & the Journey to Self-Healing with Leslie Draffin

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, Melissa Crook here from the Field podcast.
Welcome to today's episode unmasking the layers eating
disorders, sexual shame and the journey to self healing with
Leslie Draffen. The ways to engage with today's
episode are as follows. Challenge yourself to look at
your health in a different way. If you're constantly checking

(00:23):
the number on the scale, start looking at how much water you
drink in a day or how many stepsyou get in.
If you I feel like you don't have any time for yourself,
start carving out small amounts of time to let yourself breathe.
This might be in the car ride towork, or on the car ride home,
or sitting it outside the house before you go in at the end of

(00:43):
the day at your lunch break. So there's some examples of
where maybe you can find those minutes.
And even if it's just four or five minutes, these things add
up and matter. A fresh perspective allows for
different results and new ideas in your journey.
We hope you find these helpful and supportive as you listen

(01:04):
today to our powerful episode with Leslie Draffin.
Thanks so much for being with us.

(01:25):
Hello Field podcast audience. Welcome back.
This week I have a new friend here with me thanks to our good
friends at Podmatch. They're always bringing me such
insightful and interesting smartwomen that I can have these
conversations with, and this is another example of that.
I have Leslie Draffin here with me today and Leslie and I are

(01:46):
going to have, I'm really excited about our conversation.
She's doing work that is so in alignment with things we talk
about here on the podcast of caring for ourselves well,
caring for ourselves holistically, mind, body,
spirit, mentally, emotionally, prioritizing our Wellness.
These are such an intricate partof the work that she does.

(02:09):
And living authentically out of our own expectations from a
healed sense, embracing all of our layers, all all the parts
that make us who we are, withoutshame, without feeling like we
need to keep secrets about that.She addresses this so
intuitively. And she learned a lot of these
lessons the hard way. And she had to go on her own

(02:30):
journey before she got to the space where she is today.
So I'm excited to share her story and background with you
today as it unfolds through the talking points.
She describes herself as passionate, purpose driven,
grounded, intuitive, resilient, a cheerleader and a
permissionary, which we're goingto talk about that more 'cause I

(02:52):
love that word. Leslie Giraffe and Welcome to
the Field podcast. Thanks so much for having me
Melissa. I am so excited to be here.
I am so excited to have you. OK, we're gonna jump right into
it. Talk to me about prioritizing
self-care in your life and what that journey has looked like for
you from, because I, I imagine early on that was something that

(03:16):
wasn't something you necessarilyfelt like was OK for you to do
or that maybe you needed permission to prioritize
yourself. I'm, I'm guessing so, but I'm
going to let you kind of unfold and walk us through your journey
with that. Yeah.
So, you know, self-care for me, I think didn't really become
something I fully understood until I was in my mid to late

(03:37):
30s. And you know, in my 20s, I was
doing the self-care that was thepopular thing very much centered
around materialism and capitalism where it was like a
skin care mask here, girls nightout there, a, a bubble bath.
And, and so for me, what switched was when I realized
that self-care is self-serving. And I, and I feel like there's

(04:01):
that like mantra out there, self-care isn't selfish.
Honestly, I think it is. And that's fine.
And it should because it takes you getting a little selfish to
understand that if you don't treat yourself as sacred, then
you're not going to take care ofyourself in the ways that you
need to. And so self-care started to look
for me like things that weren't that fun, like, you know,

(04:22):
looking at my shadows, looking at my triggers, journaling and
discovering, you know, all the blocks that were holding me
back. Now my self-care really does
look like sticking to my somaticpractices every day when I'm in
a micro dosing protocol, spending time with medicine and
being reverent and gracious to the medicine.

(04:43):
And then, you know, the little nitty gritty things that someone
who struggled with depression like myself sometimes still
struggles with, which is the showers, which is the skin care,
which is the, are we making surewhen we are in a functional
freeze that we're still changingour clothes every day?
So that's sort of my progressionwith self-care.
It's certainly been something that I've wanted to embody for a

(05:07):
really long time, but it wasn't until I understood how to really
love myself that I understood what self-care really could be.
Yeah, and my friend Erin Copeland calls it self full,
which I love because you want tomake sure yourself is full, full
of what you need to show up the way you want to.
And it is, it's meeting yourselfwherever you are.

(05:28):
And it, it can be different things every day.
It can be different things in every season.
And it's it, it's tending to whatever your body needs.
Does it need rest? Does it need food?
Does it need sleep? Does it need water?
Does it need therapy? You are there things you need to
unpack? Does it need movement?
I mean, there's so many pieces spiritually, what does it need?

(05:51):
Do you need to? And you've said something so
important. We will prioritize what we
value, what we see as worthwhileand worthy.
So if we don't value ourselves, it's going to be very difficult
to prioritize that if we don't see ourselves as being worth
that time. And and that's such an integral

(06:12):
piece of this journey. And so many times we as women,
if something comes up, we will put ourselves on the back burner
and we will make room for that other thing that comes up.
And I had to realize real quickly, I've got to make myself
a non negotiable too. I can't just move and adjust.

(06:32):
Of course, life requires flexibility, but it can't always
be me the one that's losing whatthat adjustment has to be made.
Is that something you can relateto?
For sure. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that, you know, whenI started my healing journey,
which interestingly enough is 6 years ago in January when we're
talking, I felt so weird about asking for the space in the

(06:56):
mornings from my husband to do things I wanted to do because I
was doing meditation at that point and I was making weird
sounds in our guest room. And I felt so nervous, so
ashamed, so kind of scared to carve out that time for myself
because of that whole thought that oh, he's going to think I'm
weird. He's going to think this and

(07:17):
this and this. And he'd already seen me at this
point, like, you know, doing theself-care routines that I'd
mentioned before that felt very materialistic and kind of basic.
And it took me finally asking him to do these things with me
for me to feel comfortable enough to be like, OK, this is
what I'm doing and this is when I'm going to do it.

(07:38):
So it for me, it wasn't as much of an issue having the time
carved out. It was having the safety in our
own home so that I felt safe enough to do the things and felt
encouraged to do the things. And now, you know, he has his
own spiritual path, and I have my own spiritual path.
And so we each kind of hold eachother accountable.
Be like, hey, have you done yourthing yet?

(07:59):
OK, Yeah. I'm going to do my thing.
You can go do your thing on the other side of the house.
We don't have kids. We have a puppy.
So it's different. Obviously, my life is different
than folks who have, you know, little ones.
Yeah. But it was tricky to figure out
how to ask for what I needed. Yeah, especially when you're not
used to. I think that's an A learned
practice and because, and I talkabout this all the time this

(08:20):
season, it seems to be coming upa lot, but our nervous systems a
lot of times equate safety with familiarity instead of safety
with actually meeting yourself where you are with what you need
in that moment. And so you have to retrain it
that this new thing is safe, that I don't need all these

(08:43):
warning signs and other things to show up and protect me
anymore. I'm in a different environment
now that anxiety, that hyper vigilance that is no longer
serving me. And so we're going to go and
take this new route. And I think so many times when
that happens, we will take that sometimes early on that
discomfort, we're so uncomfortable being

(09:05):
uncomfortable that we'll take that discomfort as a sign that
we're doing something wrong rather than realizing, no, this
you've, your body has been trained, your mind, your, the
system has been trained to operate X way for X amount of
years. It's going to take some time for
your system to accept this new reality as the the right, best,

(09:28):
healthiest way forward. For sure.
Yeah. I think the saying is like we'll
always pick a comfortable, comfortable hell versus an
uncomfortable heaven because like, that's what we know.
We know. But for me, what was interesting
is, and now it's coming back to me too, because this came up in
a mushroom journey as well. I have struggled my whole life

(09:50):
with asking for what I need and using my voice to express what I
authentically want. Which is funny seeing as how I
was a news anchor for 15 years literally being paid to use my
voice. Wow.
So yeah, multiple layers in there.
Yeah, well, the irony of that too.
And that's another, I think, reminder for us to you never

(10:12):
know someone's story and don't make assumptions about what
you're seeing on, on on just a one-on-one in a social setting
scenario or a workplace that doesn't necessarily told tell
the whole story. And so being really mindful
about that as we approach peopleand and ask questions and get

(10:34):
curious or even, you know, the danger of making assumptions
when we don't have all of the information.
This goes really nicely into, you know, confidently setting
boundaries when you find when you finally figure it out.
OK, wait, this is this way of operating is not working for me
anywhere. I've got to create some some

(10:56):
boundaries here around what I will engage in, the kind of
people I will surround myself with, what is healthy for me and
not healthy for me, how much of my time I can give away.
All those kinds of things that you have to become accustomed to
when you finally start prioritizing your Wellness and
not just giving yourself away all the time.

(11:18):
So talk to me about that journeyfor you.
Oh, boundaries, I know. Wow, yeah, I had them.
I had none of them for so long in my 20s for sure.
And it really came out a lot in my work where I would, you know,
say yes to projects or say yes to doing, you know, an
appearance and, and being so deeply disconnected from my

(11:41):
body's ability to tell me yes orno that I was always in my head.
And so for me, what helped to beable to confidently set
boundaries was to get into the body and understand what does it
feel like in the body for this to be a yes or a no.
And I did that through a couple of things.
One was aligning with my menstrual cycle, understanding

(12:02):
what my unique cycle phases looklike, what I need in each phase.
And so when I began to set boundaries through the lens of
my cycle, one, I would in the beginning just like blame my
cycle, like, oh, it's just this.And that was helpful.
And I and your cycle will let you.
And she's not going to be upset about the fact that you're
blaming her for your boundaries.But it really did like, help me

(12:25):
understand and help me articulate to my husband and to
my friends and to my family. I am not available during these
days. I don't want I love you and do
not do not call me. I will not answer. 1st is 2
weeks from now I am available for all of these things.
And so for me, boundaries in my personal life do seem to shift

(12:46):
cyclically. So do self-care routines.
And that really did start to help me understand what my body
was helping me see that I needed.
And so that's where I started iswhat can I feel in the body and
how can that help me set this boundary?
The other thing that really helped me was doing that work

(13:09):
around using my voice. And I did that through somatic
work, through vocal toning, through eating magic mushrooms
and, you know, through coaching and all of those things.
But as I was able to unleash thevoice and understand how to say
what I needed, boundaries becamea little bit easier.

(13:32):
But I'm going to be completely honest, I'm not great at
boundaries with certain people in my life, my mother in
particular, and I don't know if I ever will be just because of
the nature of our relationship. And for me, that's not something
that bothers me too much. But again, like I'm, I guess I
share that because I can talk about boundaries all day and
then go and mess up in a phone call in two hours after this

(13:56):
call, you know, So I think that's, you know, I guess the
other thing I'll say is for me, I give myself grace for that
when I came from a place with noboundaries.
Never learned that as a as a kid.
Are you? Serious.
I was a preacher. 'S daughter there was literally
no boundaries. There was a saying my mother had
we live in a fishbowl, everyone is watching all the time and I

(14:19):
was like, oh, talk about an in it like the boundary of glass.
This see through invisible wall,no boundaries.
No new boundaries and a lot of room for everyone to in in bring
their own judgements and expectations and all the
pressures. And we'll get into that as we go
along in this conversation. But something so important here

(14:42):
that she said a couple things. Cycles, my friend Valencia San
Luis, a cycles coach, and we talked about cycles on here
before. Our cycles are when we know how
to manage them. We won't understand how they
work in our body. I talked about this with
Isabella Thor as well. They're actually quite
miraculous. They let you know when you've

(15:04):
got more energy, when you need to be a little more reserved,
when you've got a lot to give, when it's more of a time of
thinking and processing and, andresetting.
And I mean, there's just so manypieces to it.
When you can come to understand it and then live out of that
space, it really does allow you to meet yourself right where you

(15:27):
are all the time and communicatethat to other people as well to
really powerful, you know, forcethat exists within that.
And that somatic piece. I tell you, when I started my
journey five years ago, little over five years ago now, when my
system finally felt safe to kindof let down and allow me to feel

(15:51):
all that had been going on that I had been disassociating from
and stuffing and ignoring in some cases.
For. 3540 years. Other things not as long.
All of a sudden my I just felt Everything Everywhere.
And it really took some time. And as I slowly unraveled and

(16:15):
unwound, I used EMDR that was really effective for me.
I think slowly these physical manifestations would subside or
go away. And I mean, I had this numbness
that existed in my midsection for months.
I had this pressure in the crownof my, my nose between my

(16:38):
eyebrows. It existed for months, went off
and on. And it'll still come up every
once in a while if I'm feeling, if I'm really deeply impacted by
something, you know, stress wiseor anxiety wise.
I mean, all these different spaces and I'm like, has this
been here all along? And they're like, am I

(16:59):
therapist? Like it's been there.
It just didn't feel safe to comeout.
And you're now opening the door,you've, you've opened the, the,
the tunnel and it's, it's starting to, you know, and then
I had to learn how to really move through feel process.
I mean, I would do my therapy with her, but then she would

(17:19):
give me a physical activity of like, all right, there was a lot
of anger wrapped up in that. You need to do something really,
you know, get some go to an anger room or hit some, hit a
wall with some pillows. I mean, there is all these
different ways that I was a, that I was able to find for me
to help me process that. And so I, I, I, and that goes

(17:41):
nicely into when we're looking at our health, we got to look at
the emotional health, the mentalhealth, the physical health, the
sexual health, the spiritual health.
There's so many pieces to our health.
It's not just physical and the connections between.
I mean, at the end we feel a lotof these physically, but we'll

(18:02):
throw a pill at something and wewon't ask ourselves why am I
feeling that? What is it, the root of that?
I mean, for the first couple of years I was in therapy and I was
seeing a holistic Dr. So he was looking at all the pieces and
even he is like for now, until we can get to the root of this,
we're going to put you on a blood pressure medication.
I think this is probably hormoneand anxiety related, but until

(18:25):
we can get to the root of it, sure enough, you know, a year
and a half later, I was heads, Iwas off the blood pressure
medication because we did figureout I was learning how to
regulate the hyper vigilance andanxiety that had been living
very vivaciously, you know, within me.
And it's still something that I deal with to this day.

(18:47):
And I do still have one Med thatI do take for the anxiety piece
to help me manage that. But I have a whole list of
practices that are in place. But it was me understanding and
recognizing all the places that I felt those things physically
and how they manifested themselves through the anxiety
through blood. Pressure.

(19:08):
Through racing heartbeat, through headaches, I mean,
there's just so many manifestations.
So talk to me more about that. And then also how you found the
healing Rd. that you're on now to treat those because not we
talked about this before, not a not one-size-fits-all.

(19:28):
And there's a lot of modalities out there that are available.
And if you haven't found yours yet, keep looking.
There's something that will workfor you.
But talk to me how you decided to go on the journey you were on
because on the outside you looked great.
You were the successful anchor, beautiful, you know, out there

(19:48):
with the people engaging all those things.
And at some point you had to be like this is not working.
Right. Yeah.
So, you know, to talk about and to talk to that whole idea of
supporting all the aspects of yourself, not just your physical
body. You know, I suffered from eating
disorders for 20 years and I waslike, perfect BMI, probably low

(20:14):
on the low BMI, but like, you know, where a doctor would be
like, great check off. No, no doctor except one ever.
Talk to me about my weight. Being low and what was so
interesting it's because you know we I was so focused on that
aspect of my life hyper focused on that aspect of life that in

(20:35):
reality it was just a symptom ofmy disconnection to my body to
be hurting my body in the way that I did for 20 years.
And so you asked how I got to where I am now.
So. And this is all retrospect,
right? Like, this is not so funny how
we always know when we look back.
So I, yeah, spent 15 years as a news anchor.
I left in the middle of 2022 because of my mental health

(20:57):
challenges. But for me, you know, when I
started my healing journey at 2019, I dove really hard into
not only therapy and the Westernmedical model to try and help my
anxiety, to try and help my depression, but meditation and

(21:17):
podcasts and journaling and manifestation and affirmations
and crystals. Like all of the things, right?
All of the woo things. And so like you mentioned, you
know, I looked from the outside in like I had it all together.
But in reality, I was really suffering.
And for me, what I uncovered is that I had and have always had a

(21:38):
deep wound around feeling worthyand feeling worthy of love.
And so when I was 18, four months, 4 weeks, excuse me,
after I lost my virginity, I wasdiagnosed with herpes.
And my dad's a preacher in the Deep South of the United States,
super conservative. And so this shame that just

(21:58):
manifested in my entire body activated that wound that I'd
had since birth because I'm alsoadopted.
So I had the in utero trauma that very likely was again, the
wound around unworthiness. I was in a foster home for a
month, like as an infant. Who can say what was happening
in my little subconscious? But that shame spiral activated

(22:20):
within me not only a worse eating disorder, but also here
comes alcohol, here comes alcohol abuse, all the things
that we. Can do to soothe and not feel.
For sure. And and the other thing I did to
soothe and not feel was to become an overachiever.
I already was, but become addicted to this hustling and

(22:40):
achieving. And so 15 years into my news
anchoring, you know I am at the peak of overachieving.
I'm at the peak of trying to prove how much I deserve love.
Like, in my mindset especially, you know, I got divorced in my
late 20s. And in that year afterwards, I
saw it come out so heavy. Like, how can I prove to these

(23:03):
new partners that I'm so lovable?
Oh, look, I make all this money.Oh, look, I have this amazing
job. Oh, look, this and this.
I look like this. And so it all came crashing down
as one does, when I really beganto look into, you know, what was
my emotional health like, what was my spiritual health like,
what was my sexual health and mymy pleasure body feeling.

(23:29):
And so I tried that therapy, I tried meditation, I tried even
embodiment practices and nothingworked for me until I started to
microdose magic mushrooms. And so you talk about different
modalities for different people.I never even tried psychedelics
until I was in my 30s. I was absolutely a DARE kid.
And so and I was still anchoringand I was doing things that were

(23:53):
not legal where I was right. And so I took on a lot of risk
and I had to address a lot of internalized bias and taboo to
find in modality that worked so deeply for me.
And it shifted things cat, like catastrophically in some ways,
but also like, I think that sometimes you need the chaos to

(24:13):
rise out of those ashes. I'm sober now for more than two
years. My eating disorders are gone.
I've stopped actively dieting. Now I have a more holistic
approach to the way that my bodylooks and the way that I handle
that. And now the table is steady,
right? So when you look at the pillars
of your health, there's all these legs on a table.
For me, it was like the physicalthing was all I had focused on

(24:35):
and I had become hyper focused on it.
So that table leg was so long, the table was like a lopsided
mess. And now they've come back into
being even where you can actually sit at that table and
and holistically approach life. Yeah.
You know, isn't it? It's so interesting when you
finally, because when you're in it, when you're hyper vigilant,

(24:57):
you're focused on achieving. I very much came from a
background where it was very conservative.
There was a very particular ideaaround the way girls were
supposed to connect themselves, but was and wasn't appropriate.
Had a very traumatic experience when I shared with my parents
that I had, you know, had had sex before marriage and all
these things and how it was madeto feel within that and how I

(25:20):
felt about myself when then thatcarried that for years.
It's a very abbreviated version but impacted so many.
It impacted my marriage for years in ways I didn't fully
understand. It impacted how I saw myself
that I have to keep showing up in the best way possible because
I am awesome and I got to keep being and achieving and being

(25:42):
great at everything so everyone can see how awesome I am.
And I will over explain everything I'm doing so everyone
will understand how awesome I am.
So, so all of these things in somany ways have such a personal
connect. And then you finally get to a
point where you're just at this desperation point where it's
like, I can't look like this anymore.

(26:04):
This is just costing me too much.
So I've got to find something that I can connect with.
And so I think sometimes that desperation opens up your mind
to things you wouldn't have maybe been open to before,
because you just know you've gotto find a way to move this
through, to heal, to deal, to get on a better way of living

(26:29):
and seeing yourself. Would you say that because there
are so many stigmas? I mean, we've talked about in
the past with my friend Lindsay Kerr, we talked about ketamine
therapy on that and, and, and micro dosing is another one of
those things. There's a lot of stigmas around
and, and a lot of biases and a lot of bad information.
And you know, and so being willing to go down that road and

(26:52):
being in such a public space as you were learning this too, I
mean, this wasn't just any old job.
You were on the front, you were the face of a station.
And so just that kind of I thinkcan give people the idea of
like, I had to do something. I had to get some kind of
semblance of control in a healthy way and start defining

(27:15):
who I was and seeing myself or I'm this is not going to work.
I'm going to, there's going to be some really, really dramatic
consequences if I don't get right the ship on that.
So how did you find this? Because you talk about
meditation, there's a lot of things you go to your website,
you practice a lot of different things within this.

(27:36):
You talk about somatics and meditation and yoga.
I mean, there's a lot of pieces to these journeys and, and ways
you meet and help people that you're working with.
How did you learn about because it the micro dosing in the and
these things are tricky. They're not legal in every
state. I think it's becoming better
now, but also to finding the right person to work with.

(27:57):
It knows how to do it in a way that's healthy and can get these
really helpful. Results.
Sure. Yep.
So you know, enough was enough for me when I continued to go to
my therapist and she would say how great I was at therapy and
how great I wasn't talking aboutmy problems.
And then I'd sit in the car afterwards and feel terrible

(28:17):
like this does not make sense. And so I don't know when I was,
I don't know where I was, but I was listening to a podcast and
that's where I heard about microdosing.
I listened to a woman, her name is Biju Finney.
I don't know what show she was on, but I was just immediately
intrigued. And interestingly enough, my
news director had asked me to doa story about micro dosing a

(28:39):
couple years before for my weekly series, which was called
Your Best Life. And I looked at him and was
like, how am I going to do that if it's illegal?
And that was the only conversation.
So I actually still credit him to this day with being the one
who planted the first seed. And he was, he's a deadhead.
So like, of course he planted that.
So anyway, so I heard Bijou on apodcast and she was talking

(29:03):
specifically about how psilocybin or magic mushrooms
can be really beneficial to assisting people as they deal
with sexual shame or sexual trauma.
I'm like, let me get this woman on my podcast.
I invited her on to my show and as soon as we hung up the call,
I'm like, OK, I have to, I've got to hire you.
Like, this seems like the necessary next step.

(29:26):
And so while I was doing that inearly 2022, I was also sick.
I had been sick in early 22 and I was still anchoring at this
time from like early January through March.
And I could not figure out what was wrong.
I thought I had COVID. I took a week off of work.
I kept testing negative, but it felt like COVID, Yeah.
And I had been the essential anchor at work for the whole

(29:49):
pandemic. So everyone else got to sit at
home, and I had to go into work.And that was just a whole new
secondary trauma for me and so much more stress and activation.
And TV news is like fight and flight every single day.
I can't believe it. So little did I know and
understand at that point, because I was in it, I was in

(30:12):
massive burnout. I was in like late stage
burnout. And so micro dosing while in
late stage burnout activated even more things.
And the joke in the psychedelic space is like the medicine will
show you what is for you, what is not for you.
Couple months after I began, I'dsay three months after I started

(30:36):
my micro dosing, I took leave from my work.
I took a mental health leave. I was blessed to be able to
qualify for FMLA for that. And then I never went back and
mushrooms really showed me what I was supposed to be doing and
what I was not supposed to be doing.
And then a lot of other things happened.
It was a very dark night of the soul.

(30:57):
But I I share all of that because I heard about it on a
podcast and it was like in my body, I just felt, OK, maybe
this is it. Like, oh, my gosh, there was
hope because I've been doing everything.
I have been prescribed meds. I have been in therapy.
I had gone to multiple differenttherapists.
I had tried EMDR. I had, like you said, done all

(31:18):
of the things. Yeah.
And for me, it was like mushrooms in these tiny little
doses where I wasn't high, I could still go about my everyday
life, help me open the door to my subconscious and look at it
with like a flashlight so I could shine it on the things
that I was ready to look at little by little.
And it opened the door, right? Like, I was so consciously

(31:41):
blocking that through my intellectualizing of my trauma
that I couldn't get into the body and into those layers
underneath. And so that's how I found it.
I will say, and I think you can really put this and hit the nail
on the head, right? Like there is so much taboo,
there is so much bias. And when this is for you, you

(32:02):
will not need convincing. You will likely still have to do
a little deprogramming because Icertainly did.
And you will then begin to ask yourself things like, and I
think the pandemic made me ask this too.
Why would a loving government not want me to expand my
consciousness? Why would they want me to stay

(32:23):
sick? Why, you know, and so those
types of questions begin to be the ones that we're asking.
And you get to the answers that you get to they'll be individual
to you. But like, that all comes, I
think, from taking that step into the unknown and, and, and
taking a step into things that can feel really scary because it

(32:44):
did feel so, so scary. And I wasn't talking about it on
the Internet. I wasn't telling anybody.
I didn't tell the soul at this point.
So that's a whole other kind of worms when I, like came out of
the psychedelic closet online. Yeah.
But that's how I found it. I found it in a podcast.
I felt like that woman. And she was a great coach.
She was a great mentor. She just spoke straight to what

(33:06):
I needed. And yeah, I think she really
helped to foster within me, as did the mushrooms, the purpose
and life path that I'm on now. And I think I was in my purpose
and in my path as an anchor because I really did see myself.
And I continue to see myself as someone who lights the way and
shines a light on the little dark places in society.

(33:30):
Sure. Just doing it in a slightly
different way now. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
I thank you for that. I think it's, did you notice
before you started going, were there things showing up for you
physically that were manifesting?
And this doesn't always show up for a while for me, things
didn't really show up physicallyfor a while.
But were you noticing things were showing up for you

(33:50):
physically before you started going down this road?
And you're like, we just kind ofblame it on other things like I
had or or were you so disassociated that it's like,
no, I'm just zipping through, I'm shutting down.
I don't feel anything. Well, the first thing that
started to happen when I startedmy healing in 2019, which is
when my spiritual awakening happened, is I started to have

(34:12):
these like intuitive hits duringmy meditations that I had to
come off of birth control because I was stifling my
feminine energy. And I was like, wait, what even
is feminine energy? So then I came off of birth
control, lost my libido completely.
You talked about numbness, my clit and my, my vulva, so numb.

(34:32):
They were so numb for months afterwards.
And so that physical manifestation, lo and behold, to
the spoiler alert, it was sexualshame.
It was that sexual trauma of having that stigma, right.
Yeah. And I, and I say, you know what?
I had a sexual trauma because trauma isn't about what happens
to you. It's how you deal with what

(34:53):
happens to you. Yeah.
Yeah. And so while no violence was
done on me, I took what happenedand that stigma that I placed on
myself and society placed on myself, and the judgement that I
got from that partner and from my parents.
And yeah, that was traumatic. So yeah, yes, things definitely
did manifest what was fascinating in the three months

(35:16):
of early 2022. I had a lot of issues with my
voice. Oh wow.
While I was sick and burnt out, I'm like, oh, that's so funny.
Yeah. And so.
But like, at that point, I was still holding on to my career
with, like, a death grip, man. Like, I did not want to let go.
That was my whole identity. It's everything that I have

(35:39):
wanted to be since I was in fifth grade.
And I was like, literally a death grasp prying my cold, dead
fingers away from this career. And mushrooms finally let me
understand to just, like, just let go.
Yeah, there were a lot of thingsthat manifested.
And it's always interesting to look back.
Right, because you don't know itat the moment, right when you

(36:00):
look back on it and you're like,oh, that's what that was.
I mean, that's so interesting, the way the body works and the
way that so many times we look at our bodies as being against
us and our bodies are actually really, really for us and trying
to give us clues and let us knowthat something needs to be
addressed. And I think that that what
you're talking about and this modality that's worked for you

(36:21):
is another example of, of being able to tap into those areas
because sometimes things are stepped down and buried so
difficult, you know, talking about, you know, leaving talk
therapy and just feeling miserable and in in tears
afterwards. That doesn't work for everybody.
Sometimes that's re traumatizing, you know, you
know, And so it's not, you know,so being mindful of the fact

(36:43):
that if you try one thing, it feels like that, you know,
there's just, there's a lot of different avenues you can take
out there and being open to those because you are worse
healing and you are worthy of being your most authentic,
beautiful self, as you are with all of your layers and pieces

(37:03):
and parts of you. And but that can be really
difficult, especially when you've been stuffing and and so
many things that are shrouded inshame that you want to hide that
you wish never happened. And, and you talked about, you
know, earlier, you know, the trauma comes and how you process
it. There's a lot of damage that's
done when people that you love and respect and, and thought

(37:26):
were for you have such a heavy opinion or judgment about
something that's happened to youthat doesn't feel like
unconditional love at all. It feels really hurtful.
That has a deep, deep impact. For sure.
And for me, what's interesting, and this is such a pattern that

(37:48):
I have been, you know, reminded of constantly is, you know, my
family wasn't really verbally judgy.
They just didn't talk about it. It was like it didn't exist.
It was completely ignored and itwas just for me, a chasm that
like a separation, right? And and when we talk about

(38:10):
trauma, like trauma often is a separation and that has, has and
will continue to be just this massive, you know, shift that
happened when I was 18, you know, and so it doesn't always
look like them berating you or, or, you know, putting it out
there, putting you on blast or like talking down to you.

(38:32):
Sometimes it's them not saying it.
At all. Right.
Yeah, and, and, and that was in 20, 2004, 2005, I guess it was
2005. And so therapy wasn't even like
a real thing. I was away at college.
It was like out of sight, out ofmind and.
I sweeping the whole never talk about it again.
Yeah, and that's why I filled that hole, that chasm within

(38:55):
myself with the alcohol, with the overachieving and with
starving myself. And then when I would finally
eat, throwing up. Yeah, yeah.
Finding all those other ways to be.
Yeah. Oh, that's, that's a really good
point. I'm glad you brought that up
because there are a lot of when there, when you're live in a
fish bowl and you live in a background in a family whose

(39:18):
jobs environment choices kind ofput you there by nature of just
the type of job and and space and community that you're in.
It is all about appearance. It is all about what looks.
And so there are things. I mean, I remember even growing
up, it was very taboo to talk about what was happening in our

(39:40):
family that wasn't good or healthy.
It was very taboo to talk to it about to anybody outside of the
house about it. That was unacceptable.
I went to a family friend who also happened to be our high
school assistant principal and athletic director and he was in
the same faith community as we were.

(40:00):
And there was some things happening in my home with my dad
and in general. And that I was just really
concerned about and was like kind of being asked to carry a
live that I didn't feel like it was really my 15 year old self
to carry. And I, I went to him and talked
to him about it in hopes that maybe he could help me navigate
this or find someone that could help.

(40:21):
And so I didn't overtly tell him, don't tell my parents.
I came and talked to you. So he so he, so he circled back.
He's like, I'm really concerned.She came to me.
I got in trouble. I got grounded.
I got grounded for going and talking about that thing that
was happening within our family dynamic outside because now

(40:42):
other people knew that we didn'thave it all together and, and it
was, you know, those kinds of things.
So that that I know what you mean about that.
Like, Nope, this is who we are. This is the persona that we will
be and we will not be anything different.
And don't you dare say otherwise.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, heavy load with that.

(41:03):
All right, how we can support ourselves and other women in
living unapologetically. You have really in your journey
grown into this space and now you're helping other women as
well. Talk to me about the progression
of getting to like, OK, I've, I've finally got into this space
myself. Oh, I think I can help others

(41:25):
with this too. Yeah, you know, it was
interesting. It was a Co worker back in 2021.
It was very much a joke where like the anchors always continue
to get older and older, but everyone else stays the same
age. The joke.
It's because all the new reporters are always like 2223.

(41:45):
And so it was a newer reporter. Her name is Nikki.
And she would come to me for like life advice.
And so she told me one day she'slike, you should be a life
coach. I was like, oh, that's so sweet
of you to say because I had I had thought a while, maybe I
wanted to go do counseling or dotherapy.
And this was, you know, back in my late 20s.
So that was just some sort of like something that was floating

(42:08):
in the ether, right? This thing she had said.
And where for me, it began to shift, though, was, you know, as
I started to learn about my menstrual cycle and learn all
the things I did not know. I came off of the pill after
being on it for 16 years. I'm 3334 years old.
We're in the pandemic. The doctor, like, can't see me.

(42:29):
And also the doctor can't reallyhelp me.
And so I have have to scour the Internet.
Now I have a special set of skills, basically Liam Neeson,
when it comes to investigating information.
I was put on this planet to be someone who is a researcher.
I research it all, I try it all.I'm like a little experimenter.
And so I am very good at pullinginformation and synthesizing

(42:55):
that into things that like make sense for people.
And I always knew that that was probably why I was really good
at my job. Yeah.
I started to do that with menstrual cycle information and
then I went into a coaching certification for that.
And when I began to work one-on-one with clients around
their cycle, that's, I think when things started to shift
because they come to me with like period paying and

(43:16):
underneath it was sexual assaultor underneath it was some other
sexual trauma. And then it really started to
bubble up in myself, my own trauma, my own sexual shame.
And so how did I become someone who could then help be an
initiator of those in initiationor a witness to their rites of
passage? I think it was because I did

(43:38):
work to make the things that were wounds for me into scars.
So what I mean by that is there are things in your life that are
pillars around your healing and when they become scars and not
wounds, that is a really great time to start sharing about that
if you feel called. But we do not share about our

(44:00):
wounds because that still feels too raw.
So a great example of this is, you know, I'm coaching in the
coaching space from 2021 on, andI do not talk about herpes.
I talk about it with my clients.I think I'd mentioned it on a
podcast once or twice. But I had never come out of the
closet on being like, tah, I have herpes because it was still
a little bit of a wound. Well, thanks to mushrooms,

(44:23):
thanks to a lot of inner work and this inner thing within me
that like hates a secret. I hate a secret.
I'm like, damn, I need to. You know what?
It's time. So a year ago I came out on the
Internet and posted, you know, about having herpes very
publicly. And it went about as good as you

(44:46):
could think you would think about.
No, I'm kidding. It went actually really well.
The person that was the most upset was like the most
surprising person. It was an ex-boyfriend, but it
wasn't the ex-boyfriend. It was a different one.
Oh, wow. And so and I was shocked at how
upset he was. But you know, he was like, he
wanted me to take it down and, and that I had somehow hurt his

(45:07):
relationship and hadn't spoken to his man in 20 years.
I'm like, you know what? I will never take this down
because it is what I needed whenI was 18.
I needed me. I needed me.
And let me tell you how many young women have come to me for
advice and for just someone to hold their hand a little bit
virtually, mostly because of their own recent diagnosis.

(45:29):
And like, OK, that solidified and confirmed for me that that
thing that was like the skeletonin my closet, that was such a
festering wound for 20, almost 20 years when I did the work to
heal it and it became a scar so that it could be out in the
world. It was healing for others too.

(45:50):
Yeah. And you don't have to have
herpes to like, have this work, right?
Whatever it is that you are go are going through, right.
When you get to the place where you have looked at that shadow
enough, you've looked at that trigger, you've looked at that
trauma enough and you can confidently feel it is a scar
now and not a wound. That's, I believe your

(46:10):
permission to begin talking about that because you never
under you never know who you're going to help.
You never know. And for me that was really, I
think a key part of my like coming into my authenticity
because it felt like something Ihad hidden for so long.
And I the other thing I thought to myself when I started to do

(46:32):
that, when I started to share that it's like is can anyone
hurt me if I shared this? And the answer was no, because
my husband, he he's known since day one of our relationship.
My parents know and and they areeither watching my Instagram
things or they're not, who can say?
And it's like, and I didn't havea job.

(46:52):
Now, I have probably made myselffairly unemployable, but you
know, that's why I work for myself.
And like, no one could hurt me in that decision.
Yeah. And so for me, that was what
unapologetically being authenticlooked like because I'm like,
all right, here it is. Let me just bear it all.
And my nervous system really didn't like it for about 24

(47:14):
hours, and then we settled back into it.
And we continue to remind ourselves through our practices
and through, you know, the loving, supportive system that I
have that it was absolutely the right call.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think, you know, when it is, I think, and I think too,
when you go into work and where you've decided, OK, I'm going to

(47:35):
take this next step, I'm going to help others too.
It wakes up in authenticity because it's like, if I'm going
to invite others to be authenticand open and feel safe, then
I've got to do that too. I've got to model that in all
these different areas. And so I think that can really
awaken that part of you too. And once you do it and you're
like, oh, wait a minute, everything's OK.

(47:57):
The world did not cave in and the people that love me and know
me and want the what's well and good for me are here standing
with me, supporting me in this. And I'm here for me.
And I 'cause you said something important earlier that you were
the voice that you needed when you were 18 years old.

(48:17):
And I think that can be so true for so many times.
And just never know the impact that you're going to have on
someone. And sometimes it's the people
you least expect. I mean, you just, you'd never
know who's going to show up being the ones that needed that
thing, that needed that permission, which talk to me
about your word commissionary. This is a good.

(48:40):
Place to launch into this beforewe go into the why and values
piece of our conversation. Well, I cannot say that I came
up with it. I've heard it from Rachel
Pringle, who was on my show years ago.
But I kind of love it just because in my opinion, it is,
you know, someone who goes out and proselytizes that you have

(49:02):
permission to do whatever you want.
Yeah, whatever you want, right, If you, so long as you're not
hurting someone, let me say that.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like in your healing journey,
you have permission to try the thing, to say no to the thing,
to take a break from healing, right?
Like there's such a trance of self improvement.

(49:22):
Like if you want to stop, just stop, honey.
Like you can stop. You can just take a pause.
And so the other thing that I really felt was so, I mean, the
the tongue in cheekness of the fact that like I'm a preacher's
kid, my husband was a missionarykid, like the permissionary and
the little revel in me. I love that so much.

(49:44):
That makes the story even better.
But I love that. But I think so many times as
women, we feel like that. We feel like we've got to have
permission because of all the narratives and stereotypes.
Especially if you've come up in a really conservative space that
just manifests those things evenmore.
So thank you for sharing that. I love that so much.

(50:04):
And and this really goes back into as you went on this
journey, it was really a time for you to discover your why,
your values. And that can be really tricky to
parse those out from what it wasyou grew up with.
I was like, I can't pull out what's actually mine here and
what I actually believe and value versus what I was told I

(50:27):
was supposed to. And on this stage, in this
looking glass in fishbowl was being protruded out, but wasn't
necessarily what was it within me?
Right. Yeah.
You know, I think the biggest thing that helped me was coming
into my spiritual connection with the divine feminine.

(50:48):
You know, I think I spent all ofmy 20s, well, since 18 on very
mad at God, very God. And you know, because I have
been told my whole life, if you have sex before marriage,
something bad will happen and something bad did happen.
And so I'm like, wow, I'm so mad.
I'm so angry. And and also I felt like I

(51:09):
couldn't really be in the churchbecause of this, like red
scarlet H that now. Yeah, yeah.
And, and it wasn't like that washow I was treated.
I have to point that out. Like that was me, my
internalized judgement on myself, my internalized bias.
Like I don't think I actually experienced these things
consciously, but like I was in such a shame spiral that I felt

(51:31):
that way internally. And so everything revolved
around that shame spiral. And so finding the divine
feminine for me was so instrumental back in 2019
because I had really spent a lotof time probably agnostic, never
atheist, but like something bigger is out there.
And yeah, I just can't wrap my head around it being like the

(51:53):
Father had the Godhead 3, that male figure only because it and
as I connected to my menstrual cycle, I'm like, yeah, I.
Really can't get down with. That I just don't, it don't make
sense the math and math then. And so I found that by
connecting with my cycle, by connecting with the archetypes

(52:14):
within myself of maiden, mother,wild woman, Crone throughout
each phase of my menstrual cycle, and then aligning that
with the divine feminine for me,it really did start to help me
live my life in a way that felt more sacred.
And for me, learning that that could still be a major value for

(52:35):
me because I think I really always had this desire to like
be around ritual and to be around things that were sacred
and to have that connection to something bigger than myself.
And yet it it got like cut off because of how I was taught that
there was just one way. Yeah, you know.
And so for me, it was very much connecting to the divine,

(52:57):
connecting to the divine within me, which mushrooms help me see,
and connecting with the idea that there is this greater
creatrix life force energy out there that I am a divine
embodiment of here on earth. Yeah.
And so that certainly helped me understand, you know, how I
wanted to live my life and how Iwant my life to look.
And as someone who was highly successful and overachiever,

(53:21):
addicted to hustling, I was verymuch in my wounded masculine
energy. The whole world is in a wounded
masculine energy phase in this capitalistic materialist
society. And so a big part of my healing
had to come from me getting moreconnected to the divine
feminine, even when I was beginning as a menstrual cycle

(53:41):
coach. I joke about this, I'm about to
do a podcast episode for my showwhere I talk about how I
masculine to my menstrual cycle and it did not work like that.
Like the bio hackers who want tolike cycle sync to do XY and ZI
really see that as a very masculine approach to your
menstrual cycle. And like, Goddess bless you.
Like, yes, maybe it'll work for you.
It did not work for me. I just got more burnt out.

(54:03):
So I had to connect to the idea of flow, of slowness.
And when I finally understood what that could feel like in the
body, I think that's when I finally understood how I wanted
to live my life, how I wanted myday-to-day life to look.
And yeah, I think my values justreally started to back that up

(54:27):
thanks to the embodiment work and thanks to that connection.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that.
I think you get on such an important piece and I think I
know we talk about it all the time, but going back to 2020, it
just really forced us inside ourselves and to really take a
retrospective look at things. And I, I did the same thing.
And our daughters did we have three grown daughters.
We all did on our own, in our own way, really took a step back

(54:51):
from these spaces we had been inhabiting and look at things.
And I, it was finally, you know,I've always, I went from a
Mormon space to an evangelical space.
And the evangelical space felt more free than the Mormon space.
But over time, I realized it wasa lot of the same narratives and
a lot of the same messaging and,and all these different kinds of

(55:14):
things. And I kind of got to this
breaking point in 2020. I'm like, I have been my whole
life trying to make myself fit this square, you know, brown pig
into this square box or vice versa.
I'm not sure I'm saying that right.
And I've always found ways to explain away the parts that
weren't sitting right with me. And I wasn't listening to my

(55:35):
inner knowing and I wasn't trusting my inner wisdom because
this other patriarchal approach had told me that wasn't the
right way and that was wrong. And that was being tempted by
the devil and all these other things instead of just.
And I finally had to sit with myself.
I'm like this way I've been going about it has not worked.

(55:55):
I am in this entangled anxiety fit of a mess at 50 years old
that nobody on the outside knew about.
I looked like I had all things going great gangbusters, but
within me and my family knew my family's sons.
And I finally just had to take it all apart and kind of burn it

(56:15):
all down. And within that sound, it's like
has women are we're 50% of the population here.
There's this this all patriarchal way of existing
doesn't make sense. It just doesn't add up.
And that can be a very revealing, very freeing when you
finally get in touch with what it is you're connecting with

(56:39):
versus what you've been told andbe able to parse out the
difference and remove the fear because it's so fear based to
keep you in line on this one trajectory.
And the allowance for exploration and really finding
your connection to what that what God feels like to you, what
the divine feels like to you doesn't feel like a place you

(57:00):
can go. But when you finally give
yourself a going back to permission area, the permission
to do that and explore and find your connection, it really does
OfferUp. It really opens up that ability
to show up authentically withoutapology anymore.
I'm like, this is where I've landed at my body finally feels
in alignment with how I'm proceeding and how I'm doing.
I'm finally not getting these nudges that I'm pushing back.

(57:24):
And and because I was told at such a young age that my body
wasn't trustworthy and it would lead me astray and not to
listen, you know, to that and bedragged down by that.
And you're, I know you understand that very well when
you finally get to a place like no, this body was given to me
and created by a divine with allthese tools equipped in a way to

(57:46):
take care of me, for me to listen to, for me to trust and
follow and see as the guy that it is a. 100% and I love that.
I think you just man, hit the nail on the head because I think
that so much of the work that I do with myself and such a key
part of my values with clients is helping women remember.

(58:08):
Remember what you already know. And yet society has made you
forget because like you said, ifthe if God gave us this body,
like, why are we not supposed totrust it like that is, Yeah.
I mean, the nationalized Westernmedical model will tell you not
to trust your body. Church will tell you do not
trust it. It is of the flesh.

(58:30):
And so, yeah, wow, Thank you forpointing that part out.
Because yes, remembering that you can trust yourself like you
have the sovereign right to makeyour own choices for your own
self and your body will show youthe way when you can learn to
understand the language that sheis speaking to you, which is
hard in this world. Because we get tired of it.

(58:52):
Yes. Yeah.
And we have to, you know, and wehave to remove the fear.
And I've really learned, too. I think that you have too if
like anything based in fear is not good for me, that's not a
good thing if it's based in fearand not in love and trust.
Not that things won't be hard, but if, if, if fear is the the

(59:12):
mechanism that's being used to keep me in line or keep me in a
place that's not from God, no, that it's just not from.
And that's not divine, that's not loving, that's not welcoming
kind. And that's not I was created and
that's not what I was created for.
So, yeah, I think that's such animportant part and it's an
important part of that. Showing up, unapologetic,

(59:35):
embracing your values, knowing what your why is what you were
created to be and how you were created to show up in the world
for yourself and for others. And that goes nicely into living
out of your own expectations versus others.
Your your, your journey is the whole journey of that.
And we've been, we've really been hitting on that all along.
But but to kind of talk bring that home for me as we as we hit

(59:59):
this talking point. Yeah, You know, I think that,
yeah. I I I really do think that
whatever happened in 2022 on a cellular level, when I started
to eat these mushrooms really just catapulted me into a place
where I started to see what I really wanted in life and didn't

(01:00:27):
feel as afraid to grab it. And so the expectation was
probably for me to stay in TVI was making six figures.
Why would I have left? That's psycho.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. To go work for yourself in the
most taboo of ways. So fortunately, you know, I have
an amazing husband who supports me through and through and

(01:00:50):
through. And he's also an entrepreneur,
so he gets a lot of the stress. But like, making a life that
felt like success to me, you know, looked different after
2022, right? Like, I had made the money.
I had gotten to the job. I had done all the things I'd
wanted to do since I was in fifth grade.
And then I got to look again at what success felt like.

(01:01:11):
And for me now, the most successful I ever feel and the
expectations that I now like allow that success to become is
like when I get to sit outside on my porch, listen to all of my
birds, have morning coffee, be so slow, hang out with my dog
and like go for a walk. When I want to go for a walk,
go, you know, work with clients at a time when I feel like I

(01:01:32):
want to work with clients, talk to you on a podcast.
When it's like that is success. It doesn't look like for me
anymore. This like certain monetary value
or this certain title. And that was not me 10 years
ago. That was not me probably 7 years
ago, right? Yeah.
But I think what's happened is as I've peeled back these layers

(01:01:55):
and layers of societal programming and expectations of
what I should do and like, family expectations and like, Oh
my gosh, what is the word I'm looking for?
Like your potential? Yeah.
Oh, yes, yes. When you begin to peel back that
and like understand that just being right here, just having

(01:02:19):
the time to have like a breath and like a coffee with a friend
and like that can become such a sweet, beautiful spot that now
this is what success looks like or this is what, you know, an
expectation of life can look like.
And my husband and I have been talking about, you know, what do
we want the three-year plan to look like?
What do we want the five year plan to look like?

(01:02:41):
And you know, we're child free by choice.
Another expectation that. Yeah.
This vastly against society. Yeah.
You know, So I guess what I'm saying is the mushrooms allowed
me to come to this place where Iunderstood and continue to learn
because I'm still on the path ofunderstanding what it is that I
truly want, what I truly feel isfor me.

(01:03:04):
And so now I'm able to make those new decisions and live
from that place, live from that area of expectation.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And this is this is kind of tied
into that. Talk to me about how you brought
all of this together into what you offer women now because you
have these different pieces. You went from a cycle coach, but

(01:03:25):
also realizing how much that. The mushroom piece, micro dosing
piece could help as well. Talk to me about that kind of
bringing of this all together. Yeah.
So like like you mentioned, I started off as a menstrual cycle
coach and then I started to see deep layers of trauma be held in
the wombs of the people that I was working with.

(01:03:47):
And so I knew that I needed someway to get to that.
It was my own story. It was the story of the women
that were coming to me. And so I took additional
trainings, trauma informed trainings around somatic
therapy, and then again layered in my trainings with
psychedelics to finally manifestwhat it is that I do now with
work, which is helping women reconnect to their body through

(01:04:12):
somatics, somatic breath work specifically, and psychedelics.
So it's very much morphed. You know, I used to be very
psychedelic first, psychedelic forward.
And now what I've realized is nervous system regulation is
absolutely the first thing that I work with people on.
And then we let them eat some mushrooms in a couple weeks if

(01:04:33):
they want to. Because I really think that you
can have massive changes within your life.
You can see massive changes within your connection to your
body through somatics, through breath work, through intentional
cyclical living, even if you do not have a cycle, and through
connecting to your body. And then mushrooms really do

(01:04:53):
come in as this beautiful extra layer.
It's like the glitter on top to say like, all right now we're
going to rocket you into the next phase.
So that's what I what I do to help the women that I work with.
I work in Group and I also work with individuals.
And so that's sort of how they, the ecosystem, the ecology of my

(01:05:15):
offerings is that they all pair so beautifully together.
And there's a whole, I talked about it on my podcast, which
folks can check out, you know, to hear all of that.
But I do like to look at it as like an ecology.
How are these things in relationship to each other?
The cycle, the womb, the breath,somatics, so on and so forth.

(01:05:37):
Yeah, and I brought that up withthe expectations piece we were
talking about because the way ifpeople look at it on the
surface, it might not be the except expected combinations for
people to see. So I wanted to give you a moment
to really bring that all together for people and
understand why how it is you gotthere and why it is you offer it
in that way. So thank you so much for that.
That was such a great explanation.

(01:05:57):
I love the ecological piece too.That really brought it together
for me as I, as I've been looking at your stuff the last
few weeks, accepting the layeredaspects of ourselves.
You have displayed that really beautifully and layers have come
up multiple times in our conversation, which is, I mean,
as I was looking for yourself, Iknew you were going to be so
naturally aligned because you understand that piece so

(01:06:19):
intuitively. What do you tell?
You've obviously been on your own journey of accepting these
layers. So how do you, when you're
helping others, how do you introduce that concept to them?
Because that for people that don't haven't talked about it or
thought about it in that way before and it's you kind of have

(01:06:41):
to find a bridge or a place to approach them with because it
can feel very overwhelming if it's not language or a journey
you've already been on for a little bit.
You know, I think what's helpfulis maybe not necessarily using
the term layers, but using the term parts.
And you know, I'm not someone who is, I've taken a training

(01:07:02):
around parts work, but not a parts work, you know, therapist
or anything. But anyone can understand this,
this idea, right? Because there's that colloquial
phrase like, well, a part of me kind of wants to go to the party
and a part of me really just wants to stay home.
Yes, If you understand that, youunderstand that, like, duality
of like wanting a thing and alsowanting a different thing, then
this is a layer, right? So a part of me feels like, you

(01:07:27):
know, we'll just keep with this analogy.
A part of me feels like I reallywant to go to the party, OK?
And a part of me feels like I don't really want to see all
these people. What could that be showing me?
And especially if these then become habits, that's another
thing that you can look at. What part of you is habitual?
So it's like a whole. It's so fascinatingly layered.
So for me, what I'm currently going through and what I'm

(01:07:51):
currently working on is the layers of myself that are very
deeply rooted in functional freeze.
And I picked up on that and noticed that was a layer because
of these little parts of me thatcontinued to want to like stay
at home bedrock doom scroll, even though I know logically and
cognitively that's not good for me.

(01:08:13):
But that was a deep layer that was like a part of me stuck in
that situation. So when I work with people and
start to help them understand, it's either, all right, let's
talk about what parts of you came up during this argument,
like you part of you really wanted to speak up or a part of
you wanted to shut down. The other thing that you can

(01:08:35):
look at is just allowing them tohave the analogy of the onion.
Like that's very much something I use with people who are doing
psychedelic work. Micro dosing will start to help
you unpeel layer by layer all ofthe different little parts of
your cells. Here is the part of me that is,
you know, scared to speak for myself.

(01:08:57):
Here's the part of me that, you know, was a little wounded by
this past relationship and so onand so forth.
Micro dosing is really good at helping you peel back those
things and then notice I like laying all the layers out.
This is why I am the way I am. So for me, oh, I was so addicted
to hustling because deeply inside of the core of this onion

(01:09:18):
is this wound around being afraid of not of not being
lovable, right? And so that's I guess, I guess I
share my own experience of learning through my layers to
help them kind of get the premise of what layers are and
then helping them dig through their own layers to see, oh,

(01:09:39):
what this, what could this be showing?
Because it's very subjective, obviously.
And it's really only in hindsight that we get these aha
moments a lot of the time. However, I will say that one of
the things I love about psychedelics is that you have
aha moments in real time. Like it is such an interesting,
I say, if you have you seen The Hunger Games, like how you know

(01:10:02):
they've got like the people in the bubble out there, They're
like the game makers. I see micro dosing is like
making you the game maker where you can like look down in any
situation with like this abilityto presence yourself and pause.
Like, OK, I could choose your own adventure.
I could react this way and it'llprobably go this way, this way,
this way, this way, this way, orI could do this and this, this,

(01:10:23):
this, this, this. So like I share that to your ask
about like how do I help people understand the layers to explain
that psychedelics are really great at helping you unpack
these little layers and then also notice in real time that
you're doing that work. It's just such a funny way.

(01:10:44):
It's like you'll just be you'll just zoom out so fast.
Like, Oh my gosh, this is a layer.
This is my part that is upset about this.
And all this is connected to my root wound.
So yeah, that might not make that much sense, but.
No, I see what you're seeing andit also allows you to see the
choices that you have available to you.
I think so many times we feel like we don't have a choice.

(01:11:05):
We're stuck in this situation and it allows us to see it from
a place of having choices. And also for me, I always talk
to people about get curious rather than judgmental, perfect
curious about why it is responding that way and what
that's rooted in and why insteadof beating yourself up for
making that decision when you were 18 years old, what was

(01:11:27):
going on around you that played into that?
What part of that? And what do you still carry with
you now that is connected to that?
And in my a couple things that you said that piece and my
therapist told me a few years ago, and you hit on this a
little while ago that we are when we go on, I went to therapy

(01:11:47):
and I'm like, I'm going to do this for six months and I'm
going to be better. And then I'm just going to move
on with my life. Five years later, here we are.
I've moved to different state, had to get a new therapist, But
but what I learned is like, thisis like a journey.
It's a continuation. And I'm going to pull back one
layer and going to heal. I'm going to learn something new
about myself. I'm going to go this different

(01:12:07):
way, but also I can take a break.
My, my, my therapist that I had my first one who I was able to
journey with for four years and made so much progress with, She
was like, you're not doing anything on this vacation or
this weekend. No journaling.
No, you're just going to take a break.

(01:12:28):
I want you to veg out in front of Netflix.
I want you to go to that football, whatever it is, go on
a walk, eat a bunch of chocolate, whatever it is you're
going to do, you're going to give yourself a break.
You are not going to take 10 steps back if you quit working
on healing because if you, you've got to give yourself rest
and a chance to regenerate and rejuvenate.

(01:12:49):
You don't want this to become a check, you know, a item on your
checklist because I loved a good, I love a good checklist
where I can show everybody how much I'm doing and how great I
am and how much I'm accomplishing.
And so really had to like, release that from myself and
take apart that narrative and what it was feeding.

(01:13:10):
And and that was such a revelation to me.
But also, yeah, just. And then bringing in that
curiosity and pulling things back and seeing that you have
choices and understanding the why behind where you came from
and what informed that. And yes, of course, I won't make
that decision again. It was terrible.
But also not going to, you know,live in this shame spiral and

(01:13:31):
beat myself up for it either because I understand how I got
there. So yeah, thank you for all that.
So good. All right, in living out feel,
finding empowerment, embracing layers, which is what your
journey is such a great example of such a story of.
Talk to me about how that's impacted your relationship with
yourself as well as your relationship with other people.

(01:13:53):
I see finding empowerment, embracing layers as self
intimacy, honestly, like you know, I know myself so well now
that you had mentioned earlier coming from a place of fear,
like when I and this happens as an entrepreneur, let's say you

(01:14:18):
think you need to hire a coach or you need to invest in this
new thing. I now can pinpoint within my
body pretty quickly, is this fear?
Is this a fear response? Is this excitement?
Is this a good excitement? Or is this a, is it a yes or a
no? So that I think has been the
most impactful day-to-day thing that has come from me doing this
work is being able to very quickly within my body, get a

(01:14:43):
get a good reading on OK, is this fear?
Is this love? Does this feel expansive?
Does this feel contracting? Does this feel like something
that I'm excited about or something I want to run from?
So that self intimacy has been deeply impacted by the work with
mushrooms, by the work with my cycle.
And then as far as my relationships go, you know, I

(01:15:06):
think that as I become even better at knowing myself, I'm
able to show up as my fullest self and allow myself to be
loved. And so that deeply impacts my
relationship with my husband. It deeply impacts my ability to
be in relationship with women asfriends.
Right. Because I didn't see my mom with
close friends. Yeah.

(01:15:28):
And that deeply embedded in me that women were untrustworthy.
Yeah. And so then you throw me into
one of the most highly competitive job out there.
Absolutely. Oh.
My gosh. I was really blessed, you know,
where there were a couple of women who were pretty
backstabby, but for the most part I felt like it was OK,

(01:15:51):
right? I didn't feel like it was that
mean world mentality and maybe Iwas oblivious to it.
I remember like one place that it was very much mean girl.
But I really do just think that the more I know myself, the more
I see my relationship with myself grow, the relationship
with my body grow, the relationship with my language of

(01:16:13):
my body, the more I'm able to, like I said, radiate out,
understand what I will and will not accept.
Yeah. And that's deeply affected
relationships because when I gotsober, I had to cut a lot of
people off. Yeah.
No longer am available for your small talk.
I'm no longer available for, youknow, people who believe certain
things. And I think I wouldn't have been

(01:16:35):
here if they if I hadn't been doing that work of.
Feel. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Thank you for that. That's such a good example.
And you and I talked about this before we got on this, showing
up unapologetically and supporting other women in doing
so. We've got to get rid of this
idea that was put out there. It's been out there for
thousands of years. We've seen it play out in

(01:16:56):
different ways over and over again.
That if you're going to make it in the world as a woman, you got
to knock every other woman down on the way.
That's just playing into the patriarchy's hand.
That's just playing into old stigmas, old narratives hands.
There's room for all of us. There's multiple ways for us to
all show up. Different people are going to
connect with us in different ways and, and it's important for

(01:17:17):
all of us to lift each other up and let each other know we exist
so those people that need to find us can find us.
And maybe they only hear about us or see us because we're
supporting each other in the process.
But they stopped this idea of being threatened by and
celebrated. Because when you succeed, I
succeed, it opens another door. It grows another opportunity.

(01:17:39):
And we have to start embodying and embracing that piece rather.
And so if we're going to really make meaningful shifts for women
in the world when it comes to our well-being, our health, our
safety, continue to push these narratives, researching real
science, real information about what's best and healthy for us

(01:18:01):
and not, you know, not believingthis idea.
That's the way it's always been done.
So that's the way we're going todo it.
And when people push back against it, get curious about
that, why are they pushing back?What are they afraid of?
Why do they feel threatened? I mean, there's room and for all
of us, it shouldn't be a threat or a problem to anybody who's
living authentically and well and healthy.

(01:18:24):
And so, but it's that as having these conversations and I'm
pointing those things down. It's so interesting to me.
You brought up here, here is your mom as a pastor's wife.
But I know I've known a lot of pastors wives over the years.
That's a very lonely place to reside because of the
expectations, because people treat you as this other and and

(01:18:48):
you're on this pedestal, but also they don't know how to
connect with you. But also they're afraid to let
you know who they really are because you're this other and
you're just a human trying that needs community and people too.
I mean, so it's such an interesting dynamic in a space
of place that is supposed to be about Jesus and community and

(01:19:10):
love and inclusion. It can be such an isolating
space for so many women. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. So anyway, thank you for all of
that and I'm glad we got to bring that up because I wanted
to touch on that, that piece andthat importance of us showing up
for each other, for ourselves and each other in that way.

(01:19:31):
Coming down to the rapid fire here at the end, name 5
activities that nourish you. Singing with my cycle, bird
washing, painting, self pleasureand I'll say obviously eating
mushrooms. Nice, I'd love that you brought
those things up and you did it with a smile and, and, and when

(01:19:55):
you think back to yourself 10 to15 years ago, it must give you
such great joy to know that you're in a space where you can
do that authentically now and and feel safe in doing so.
I mean, that's I always loved those things.
You went out there like man, myself 10 or 15 years ago, could
see me now. It's always such a fun kind of

(01:20:15):
spaces. Sit in for a minute and reflect
on on your journey. 5 words on how you want to feel the next
six months. Oh, the next six months, bless
us. Free.
I want to feel free. I want, I want to feel mystical.
I want to feel empowered. I want to feel light and I want

(01:20:42):
to feel grounded at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. All right.
Tell people how they can find you, follow you, learn more from
you. This is also going to be on our
website on embracinglayers.com, on our resources page.
It'll be there forever once the episode drops.
But share with people right now where they can find Leslie

(01:21:03):
Draffen or like, OK, this connected with me.
I want to find this right now. Perfect Well, I am on social
medias at Leslie Draffen. I have a podcast, The light
within. But if you're listening and you
would like to dip your toe into the ecology of my offerings,
then the best place to start is with my shift method.
It is a 9 minute somatic practice I created last year

(01:21:24):
when I was in the depths of grief to help you get out of
your head and into your body. No meditation required.
So I have a super simple e-book that explains it all.
It talks about the science behind shift, why it works with
your nervous system. It's a practice that includes
journaling, breath work and movement.
And the best part about the Shift Method e-book is there are

(01:21:46):
free super juicy playlists that are perfectly timed to help you
use Shift in your everyday life.So I'd love to give you a link
to put that in the show notes. Yeah, within Shift you'll also
find a link to my micro dosing work.
You can book a call through thatsame little e-book and it gets
you on my e-mail list. Because in the world that we
live in, who can say what's going to happen?

(01:22:08):
But e-mail will still be there. Don't.
Know what other socials are going to be there?
Pretty sure emails are going to be there.
I love it. Yeah.
No kidding. What a time.
Oh, my goodness. Well, Leslie, thank you so much
for this time today. I've loved this conversation.
I look forward to future conversations with you.
I think we have more of those coming.
And I've just loved this time today to connect with you and

(01:22:30):
share your voice with our audience, your story.
Listeners, take a look and thinkabout if anything you heard
today, it was like, oh, I'm not supposed to do that.
Unpack that, get and unpack thatand make sure that the
information that you're using toguide that thought is actually

(01:22:50):
based in truth. Is it based or is it based in
stigma? And that's like I said earlier,
we've all got to find their way and the things that work for us.
And there's going to be different modalities, but I
think there's a lot of modalities out there that are
available on. This is one of them that we've
talked about today with the micro that can be really helpful
to people if we can get around the stigmas that exist and work

(01:23:13):
with qualified people who know what they're doing, doing this
in a healthy way. Leslie is one of those people.
But unpack that and, and, and dive into a little bit more of
what's underlying that stigma, that fear, what needs to be
unpacked. Get curious.
And because we want you all to be well and we want you to find

(01:23:33):
tools and resources that are going to enable you to do that,
to show up as your most authentic, healthy self
unapologetically in all the spaces you inhabit.
So hopefully this this will giveyou a little nudge and
inspiration to do that. I encourage you if you're doing
that already. But thank you so much for being
with us today. Thank you, Leslie, for your
time. I've loved this conversation.

(01:23:54):
So have I. Thanks for having me.
You bet. All right, everybody, take care.
Have a great week. Check out the resources page and
check out Leslie's podcast. I got a chance to listen.
It's got some great stuff on there and all that'll be on our
resources page and our show notes.
But take good care and have a great week.
Hello, Melissa Crook here. Thank you so much for joining us

(01:24:17):
on 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 offer here at the Embracing
Layers network, visit embracinglayers.com.
You can go to our contact form to schedule me as a speaker for

(01:24:39):
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 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.

(01:25:01):
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 thatwe're holding each Monday on our
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and places. You can then follow engage with

(01:25:23):
us on social media and join our engagements that are happening
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where you can donate to support our work to ensure we can
continue to bring you these incredible guest conversations
and support. Thanks again for joining me this
week. Share with your friends and give

(01:25:45):
us a review on your favorite listening platform.
Your feedback helps us ensure we're bringing you the content
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We truly appreciate you so deeply.

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