October 29, 2025 • 26 mins
When the life you’ve built begins to fall apart, could it actually be the beginning of something sacred?
In this heartfelt episode of The Soul Talks Podcast, Theresa Bruno sits down with spiritual teacher and author TJ Woodward for a deeply honest conversation about shame, surrender, and the journey back to wholeness.
TJ shares how losing everything — his business, a relationship, and his sense of identity — became the catalyst for profound spiritual transformation. Together, they explore what it means to reframe our past struggles as brilliant coping strategies that once helped us survive, and how true healing begins when we release shame and remember our divine wholeness.
This episode is an invitation to look at your own unraveling not as failure, but as the soul’s call to freedom.
Listen now to discover how the path of conscious recovery can help you reclaim your spirit and live from your truest self.
Subscribe for more soulful conversations.
Connect with us:
Get your copy of "He's Not Coming Back": https://bit.ly/40qGX6Y
Connect with our guest:
TJ Woodward's website: https://www.tjwoodward.com/
Follow TJ on Instagram: http://bit.ly/3WcRIrd
Find TJ on Facebook: / tjwoodwardauthor
In this heartfelt episode of The Soul Talks Podcast, Theresa Bruno sits down with spiritual teacher and author TJ Woodward for a deeply honest conversation about shame, surrender, and the journey back to wholeness.
TJ shares how losing everything — his business, a relationship, and his sense of identity — became the catalyst for profound spiritual transformation. Together, they explore what it means to reframe our past struggles as brilliant coping strategies that once helped us survive, and how true healing begins when we release shame and remember our divine wholeness.
This episode is an invitation to look at your own unraveling not as failure, but as the soul’s call to freedom.
Listen now to discover how the path of conscious recovery can help you reclaim your spirit and live from your truest self.
Subscribe for more soulful conversations.
Connect with us:
Get your copy of "He's Not Coming Back": https://bit.ly/40qGX6Y
Connect with our guest:
TJ Woodward's website: https://www.tjwoodward.com/
Follow TJ on Instagram: http://bit.ly/3WcRIrd
Find TJ on Facebook: / tjwoodwardauthor
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
So the spiritual search came before becoming involved in addiction recovery.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It did, yes, it informed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
How you saw addictionary.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That's right, that's right. Yeah. And my thirties was all
about success and like external I'm not going to say
I lost sight of but like somehow I pivoted more
to an outer focus life in my thirties and started
the business and got the great house in the car
and all the external trappings, and I love all that,
(00:41):
like I don't have any with that, but there was
a moment, and it was right before I turned forty
or right when I was turning forty. Carl Jung says,
we spent the first forty years developing a healthy ego
and the second forty dismantling. And its paraphrase, yep, but
I love that because I I was in my store
and I was in my fabulousity and just thinking there
(01:06):
needs to be more in life. There's something calling me.
And I ended up going back to school at Unity
Institute for five years and my whole world fell apart
at that point and lost.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
The business of your decision.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Because of my decision.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Wow, that's a sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I don't think that needs to be everyone's path, I
want to be clear. But for me, I think what
happened is I had this higher calling, and then I
realized that a lot of the way I had built
my life had been not in service of spirit and
no judgment around did the financial well, yeah, yeah, I know,
you get it. I feel that.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah. No, I definitely, you know, built a couple of
very successful businesses and then found myself in this place
going I am not spiritually aligned. I am running after
success and perfectionism and false a false world, a false god,
whatever you want to call it. And yeah, my life
sort of it did fall apart. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Mine, I'm actually going to write my fourth book. I
finally decided that I am, and it's going to be
more of an autobiography because I think sometimes I I'll
put it in the eye. I can talk about how
I came to these spiritual realizations and these principles and
practices that have changed my life. I can dedicate myself
(02:33):
to conscious recovery and conscious creation and helping the world
be able to create that's my yeah, that's my third book,
and to be able to create the life of their dreams.
But I have sometimes hesitated to tell the deeper story
of what really happened to create that, and around forty
things collapsed, But it was because I had this higher
(02:56):
calling for my life and all of that, which was
built on a ship foundation, needed to crumble, and I
actually leaned in and embraced it. But it was painful.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Oh Gosha, were you able to lean in spiritually at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Because the leaning and spiritually preceded the collapse. So it
wasn't that my world collapsed and then I said, oh,
I want more spirituality. It was that I had a
calling for more spirituality, and then everything that wasn't incongrus
anything wasn't that wasn't congruent with that needed to crumble.
And in retrospect, I probably could have released it a
little more gently, but instead I still was holding on
(03:35):
and so it ended up being dramatic, dramatic loss of
a business, loss of a partner, loss of a house,
loss of a car, bankrupt, all of it. I did
all of that legal situation, which was really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I did that too.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Look at us, Yeah, oh I have to come see you, Yes,
you absolutely do.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Or I'll come see you. You can see me on
the way to your parents I'll see you when I'm out, Mellick.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That's perfect.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I want to share with our audience more fully.
I'm trying to find my way into the questions that
because I love you. Know, in your writings over and
over and over, you speak to looking at any kind
of addiction. You know, you never even look at the
addiction itself, as though you take it off the person
(04:22):
and you set it on a shelf and you just
begin doing what you talk about in a three day
intensive or whatever. You just begin unraveling the emotional stuff. Yes,
you've said it already, but would you just say it
again because it's so good.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah. I mean a starting point for conscious recovery is
that first principle of that underneath all this behavior, there's
still an essential self that's whole. I perfect if I
can encourage someone to look at the possibilities that maybe
you hear my language, like maybe just maybe this place,
because I've identified in my experience the real causes of
(05:03):
addiction or unresolved trauma, spiritual disconnection and toxic shame. So
the unresolved trauma that people might not want to look at,
and we can go back to like a lot of
men or taught just a man up. So that's a conversation.
But this disconnection, and when we think about spiritual disconnection,
it could easily get well. It gets interpreted through one's
(05:23):
own lege. It can mean a lot of different things
to a lot of different people. All are valid. It's
important to say that I learned a long time ago
that my spiritual beliefs don't actually matter in working with
the client. It's more about what it means to them.
Because spirituality.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
That's interesting that your personal spiritual beliefs don't matter in
working with the client. It's how they perceive them. It's
how it matters to them.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, because I've worked with clients and when conscious Recovery
came out, I didn't know who the audience was going
to be. And I have found kind of surprising, I guess,
maybe surprising, Like people who are very Christian love it.
People who are atheist love it. People are on a
Buddhist path love it. And there's people who do twelve
step love it, people are anti twelve step love it.
And I'm like, Okay, what's going on here? And I
(06:09):
think what's going on is for me, spirituality actually actually
isn't about belief belief can be a part of it,
but it's actually an experience of our true nature. And
I think that's the great you know, that's that's the
place where we all meet, whether you know we're Christian
or Buddhists or none of that, or atheist or we
(06:29):
love you know, God to talk about God or actually,
like I'm triggered by that word a place where we
meet where it's do you remember who you are? Do
you remember coming into the world? And if you can't remember,
Because I have worked with clients who say I don't
ever remember being happy, I invite them to look at
(06:50):
an infant. Are you going to look at that infot
and say you're a little broken human? And I know
some religions teach that were born original sinners, so some
people have to unravel that, but like, I don't think
it's possible to look into the eyes of an infant
and see them it's broken, yea. And so to be
able to frame it in that way and then to
(07:10):
ask someone, did you come into the world that you
were an infant? So that must have been who you are.
And so I'm spending some time on that because when
we start there, then we can start to look at
all the stuff, the shame, the disconnection, and the trauma
that we've experienced. That to me take us away from
(07:31):
who we really are. That's a very different framework than
what's wrong with your behavior and symptoms and how do
we change that? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Absolutely, I think I talk a lot about this because
it's my personal experience. When I went through the whole
business collapse, shuttering a business, being in legal battles, I
had so much shame around that, and it happened because
of fraud. But as a woman, I think we have
(08:02):
maybe we put a lot more on ourselves as entrepreneurs,
you know, because you're told, oh, you can't make it,
you're a woman, you won't be able to do this
by yourself, or you know, all of that speak that
comes forward. I had shame about letting down, you know,
those who had believed in me, Investors, stores who invested
in my product, clients who believed in me. I had
(08:24):
such shame as a creative that I had let that,
and just I just had never really had a business failure.
I didn't know what that looked like. And I saw
people who could bankrupt and walk away and be okay.
And I was sitting in a I mean, and you know,
I know Brene Brown says something to the effect of shame,
(08:44):
as shame is that thing that keeps you in isolation
and you know, forces so much self judgment so that
you know, it's almost impossible to get through it when
you sit in it. And so I was in that
shame bucket, like I was lucky with it. And then
my husband took his life. So coming into that suicide
(09:09):
carrying the shame because they happened within you know, a
fairly short amount of time, that was an interesting walkout
and really pivotal to my spiritual path.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, the shame, attacking the shame, the toxicity of shame.
I love that you.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, and the way I describe shame as it's like
swimming in oatmeal, like no matter what I do, I
can't get through it. Yeah, I feel immobilized and we
could call it depression. But the deepest experience of shame
to me is at our core. And obviously, you know,
this is the definition of shame, as we feel broken,
not that I've done something like you know, I could
(09:50):
one could lose a business and say, okay, I made
these mistakes or I did this, and like in my case,
I made a decision out of fear to sell it
to my friend, and my friend started drinking again and
stole a bunch of stuff and then blamed me. So like,
there's a lot more to it than that. But I
did make a decision out of fear to sell it
to him, so I have to acknowledge that. So if
it's only guilt, like, oh, yeah, that was not smart.
(10:13):
I could have listened to my intuition, but instead I
went into shame as well, like I'm a bad person
because I did this. Something's wrong with me. I'm here,
I am twenty years sober. Here I am in school
to be a spiritual teacher, and all of this is happening,
and I spiritually I could see the perfection in it
(10:33):
because I knew that there was. We call it chemicalization
a new thought. Chemicalization is just when two things interact
and one needs to dissolve so something new can emerge.
And the metaphor is as I realized, my path is
to be a spiritual teacher, whatever that means, and I
didn't know yet what it was going to mean. All
(10:53):
of that that was unlike it needed to dissolve, and
again it was very dramatic, and I did go into shame.
And the way we heal shame is very different than
the way we heal guilt. We heal or fix or
you know, assuage guilt by changing our behavior, by making amends,
by apologizing, by paying the money back, whatever it is anymore.
(11:18):
But shame is completely different. Shame is I need to
find a safe place to share a place of vulnerability,
and usually it precedes the event in other words, and
I think this is important, at least to me. It
is we often say I feel I feel as shamed
because this happened. I am by this happened because I
(11:40):
felt shame because I felt shame like I made this
decision based in fear to sell this business. Shame was
I'm I feel like I can't let anyone know this,
this new business isn't successful. Shame is I don't want
anyone to see my vulnerabilities. And yet the way we
actually heal the shame is through those vulnerabilities. So it's
(12:03):
interesting that we're talking about this as I'm beginning to
think about putting all this down in a book.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, you're causing me to therapuze myself as well over
again because that is, I haven't thought about it that way,
and yet you're exactly right. It's the shame that comes
first for the decision that you make that then you're
ashamed of No.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I get it's right, and that's a shame spiral. It's
a shame spiral. And we interrupt that shame spiral. Yes,
we change the behavior. I think sometimes the mind is like,
it's either this or that. I'm not saying I don't
need to be accountable for my decisions. I still have
some things I'm paying back. And that was many years ago, right,
because I just decided I'm going to take it. I
just decided I'm going to, in good conscience take the
(12:48):
hit for this instead of blame my yep, yeah, and
my lawyers like people don't do that. I just said,
you have two choices, throw him under the busser yourself.
And I said, well, if those are two choices, let's go.
Because I need to live with myself for the rest
of my life. I know that the truth is I'm
the one who puts my head on my pillow and
(13:10):
I can't build a foundation for writing books and being
a spiritual teacher if I would have done that. So
when I got the news that you passed. I had
only love for him, and that's to me that you
had gone.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Through the whole forgiveness cycle and healing. Oh that's amazing,
that's amazing. When you were going through that and you
were twenty years sober, was there any desire to drink
or drug again?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Never a desire, wow, Never a desire. There was a
desire to use all kinds of other brilliant strategies to
not feel though. I want to be clear, like I
think for me, drinking in drugs has really never been
an option ever had that craving since nineteen eighty six.
But there are all kinds of ways that we can
(14:04):
use to escape, and I have used all of them. Shopping,
oh yeah, you know all of it. Like there's anything external, right,
nothing out? I mean the deeper work and we haven't
really gotten to this, But the deeper work is always
doing work. It always includes healing that younger self. So
(14:25):
my deeper work is healing that little seven year old,
that little you know. I remember when my nephew turned
seven and I looked at him and us God is
an angel. Yeah, And that was the year I decided
I was broken unlovable and not good enough, and so
healing from that place of that seven year old has
been such a big part of that process.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
You know, I just kept being stuck in this part
of your story. At forty you're going back to school
for five years to pursue this spiritual path. And you
know today your name is Mint with the thought leaders
in any kind of spiritual path and you've only been
(15:08):
doing that for about fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
You had a short runway from not being known. I mean,
you're there. How in the world does that happen?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, I'll tell you. When all of that was happening,
I had a moment when I knew that I either
needed to lean in and heal some of this deeper,
these deeper issues, or I was going to continue to avoid.
(15:44):
And it showed up as I was part of a
community and the board. There was some stickiness with the
board and the stuff that had happened legally and image
and you know, they there were a lot of layers,
and I remember feeling so much shame and so much sadness,
(16:04):
and I realized I had some deeper work to do.
And there was one point that I woke up and
realized I needed to close the curtains, turn off my phone,
and be with myself until something happened, until there was
a shift, and Teresa, it was seventy two hours alone
(16:26):
in my dark place, moving into the darkness and realizing
that it was time for me to do the deeper transformation.
And it was in that process that I came out
only feeling love for this board, for this community, for
myself or my friend. People said, well, he betrayed you
(16:47):
and living in that and there was just a shift,
there was something that happened and then and I write
about this and in conscious recovery. I went to India
around that same time, and I sometimes get the year off.
It was two thousand and six. I went to India
and I had already started school. I was a couple
of years into school because I graduated from that program
(17:08):
I think a two thousand and eight or nine. And
we went to India and my friend Maureene, I love her.
She's from Alabama. Actually, my friend, my friend Maureen Bass
from Alabama, just absolutely and she lives there now again.
So she said, we're going to ver Nasi, India, which
(17:28):
is said to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited
cities on planet Earth and in the Hindu religion. And
this is an oversimplification, but it's my understanding that many
Hindus believe if they go there to die, their karma
will re remove. So people come there as a pilgrimage
for their own death. And so there's just a lot
(17:51):
of death all around. And my friend Maureen said, you're
going to feel the spiritual energy as you approach. And
we were on our bus, and you know cars can't
go going to this city, it's so old. So we
got off the bus and these two young, like maybe
twelve year old, death boys guided us in. First we
were on bicycles, the rickshaws, and then we walked in
and as I got closer, I just I started feeling
(18:13):
this tingling going up my arm and just I started
opening and this opening experience. We went out onto the boat.
It's called the Arty Festival. It's festival of lights, and
there's seven presung platforms doing this light festival. And I
had an experience at that moment where it felt like
(18:34):
my ego was completely removed and I just knew only
love and I sobbed for like it felt like two hours.
I doubt it was that it felt like that long.
I just sobbed and sobbed, and suddenly, this is such
a magical story, and it really did happen. All the
electrical the lights went out in the whole city, so
it was just dark except for you could see the
(18:56):
arty festival. And then the only thing lighting the sky
was the earning bodies, and we went on boat over
to where the bodies were being burned. I just my
heart just came open in a new way, and I
just had this profound experience of a shift happening, and
of course my ego came back, and of course you
(19:19):
know that experience didn't last forever. But in retrospect, I
realized that I had a profound shift in the way
I viewed myself in the world, and from that moment on,
I just have known that it's my message. And by
the way, all that interesting enough, the culmination of all
that legal stuff actually came after that. Oh wow, it
started happening, and then it came after So it's very layered.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Though through a different lens. Because of those seventy two
hours and then that experience in India, I wanted to
say something for the listeners just just to be cautious,
you know, I think about what you're saying today makes
me want to go into those seventy two hours and
work on some inner child things that I haven't worked on,
(20:04):
and you're bringing them forward to me. And I feel that,
And as we're talking, and I want to cry really hard,
and I want to go be alone, but have to
keep doing more podcasts today. But in your seventy two hours,
you had already acquired a lot of tools.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
That's right. I had been in recovery for twenty years.
I'd been in therapy for many years. I'd been in
spiritual community. I had been doing a lot of this work.
So I think I really appreciate that you're bringing this
to the conversation because I was at a unique place
in my journey where I knew I was ready.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yes, so I would just just a point of caution,
not you know, to our viewers, because you're making me
want to do that work. But let's know that if
we go to that place, we go with someone who
can guide us, or we know we've got the spiritual
therapeutic tools to not go too far. And you can
tell I'm having suicidal pta stay in that area. Yeah, yeah,
(21:03):
but wow, that is.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Absolutely it is really interesting and I and thank you
for saying that, because it's a very nuanced conversation because
in my experience, it's actually not doing that deeper work
where people end up with the suicide with suicidal thoughts.
But we do need to be very not cautious or
(21:27):
even careful, but conscious about who we choose to go
on that with it. And I think that there are
places that are I think of the Meadows. I think
if there's a place called on Site that they do
week long intensive there are a lot of places that
I think are are equipped to help people do this
(21:48):
deeper work. So thank you for bringing that because I
think you know a lot of people are doing plant
medicines now, and I think plant medicines can be a
really wonderful thing, but I also think that can be
used before people are ready. So it's always both and
not ear or Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Well, just a few minutes left for us, and you've
given us so much, and yet I feel like I
need another few hours at a minimum with you to
talk more about what's next for you in this next
book and really dive deep into the next level of
this conversation. And I hope we have.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Well, let's do part two.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Okay, I will definitely.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yes, I would love it, just me too.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Thank you? Could you just leave our listeners with, you know,
just love your talk about our worthiness, our wholeness. Could
you just leave us with a little few minutes of
meditation on that.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah? Before I do that, I want to also just
acknowledge and honor you for the courage that you brought
to this conversation. It created a safe space for me
to be able to do that, and that is truly
a gift. And even where half a country apart or more,
I feel that the spiritual connection with you and that
(23:06):
really is what the world is so hungry for right now.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Thank you. I feel the same in tears as you
can say.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Thank you. Yeah, And so thank you for that. And
what I want to say to anyone watching or listening,
You came into the world as a whole and perfect being,
and that is the truth of you and what you are.
So regardless of what you've done, regardless of what has happened,
(23:37):
not only do you deserve alive filled with love and connection,
that it's your divine purpose on planet Earth. And so
find the love, find the support, find the safe people
in your life where you can do what we talked
about today and start to unlearn all the thoughts of limitation, lack,
(23:58):
and separateness and rest in this deeper reality of oneness.
And it's not only possible, it is the truth of
each and every one of us. So I just am
so grateful that I get to continue to spread this
message and this journey of wholeness because it's it's really
why I'm here and perhaps why we're all here.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
TJ. You're a beautiful man. You are just truly a
beautiful man. You have blessed me to sit with you today.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
H I feel the same.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Thank you.
So the spiritual search came before becoming involved in addiction recovery.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It did, yes, it informed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
How you saw addictionary.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That's right, that's right. Yeah. And my thirties was all
about success and like external I'm not going to say
I lost sight of but like somehow I pivoted more
to an outer focus life in my thirties and started
the business and got the great house in the car
and all the external trappings, and I love all that,
(00:41):
like I don't have any with that, but there was
a moment, and it was right before I turned forty
or right when I was turning forty. Carl Jung says,
we spent the first forty years developing a healthy ego
and the second forty dismantling. And its paraphrase, yep, but
I love that because I I was in my store
and I was in my fabulousity and just thinking there
(01:06):
needs to be more in life. There's something calling me.
And I ended up going back to school at Unity
Institute for five years and my whole world fell apart
at that point and lost.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
The business of your decision.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Because of my decision.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Wow, that's a sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I don't think that needs to be everyone's path, I
want to be clear. But for me, I think what
happened is I had this higher calling, and then I
realized that a lot of the way I had built
my life had been not in service of spirit and
no judgment around did the financial well, yeah, yeah, I know,
you get it. I feel that.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah. No, I definitely, you know, built a couple of
very successful businesses and then found myself in this place
going I am not spiritually aligned. I am running after
success and perfectionism and false a false world, a false god,
whatever you want to call it. And yeah, my life
sort of it did fall apart. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Mine, I'm actually going to write my fourth book. I
finally decided that I am, and it's going to be
more of an autobiography because I think sometimes I I'll
put it in the eye. I can talk about how
I came to these spiritual realizations and these principles and
practices that have changed my life. I can dedicate myself
(02:33):
to conscious recovery and conscious creation and helping the world
be able to create that's my yeah, that's my third book,
and to be able to create the life of their dreams.
But I have sometimes hesitated to tell the deeper story
of what really happened to create that, and around forty
things collapsed, But it was because I had this higher
(02:56):
calling for my life and all of that, which was
built on a ship foundation, needed to crumble, and I
actually leaned in and embraced it. But it was painful.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Oh Gosha, were you able to lean in spiritually at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Because the leaning and spiritually preceded the collapse. So it
wasn't that my world collapsed and then I said, oh,
I want more spirituality. It was that I had a
calling for more spirituality, and then everything that wasn't incongrus
anything wasn't that wasn't congruent with that needed to crumble.
And in retrospect, I probably could have released it a
little more gently, but instead I still was holding on
(03:35):
and so it ended up being dramatic, dramatic loss of
a business, loss of a partner, loss of a house,
loss of a car, bankrupt, all of it. I did
all of that legal situation, which was really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I did that too.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Look at us, Yeah, oh I have to come see you, Yes,
you absolutely do.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Or I'll come see you. You can see me on
the way to your parents I'll see you when I'm out, Mellick.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That's perfect.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I want to share with our audience more fully.
I'm trying to find my way into the questions that
because I love you. Know, in your writings over and
over and over, you speak to looking at any kind
of addiction. You know, you never even look at the
addiction itself, as though you take it off the person
(04:22):
and you set it on a shelf and you just
begin doing what you talk about in a three day
intensive or whatever. You just begin unraveling the emotional stuff. Yes,
you've said it already, but would you just say it
again because it's so good.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah. I mean a starting point for conscious recovery is
that first principle of that underneath all this behavior, there's
still an essential self that's whole. I perfect if I
can encourage someone to look at the possibilities that maybe
you hear my language, like maybe just maybe this place,
because I've identified in my experience the real causes of
(05:03):
addiction or unresolved trauma, spiritual disconnection and toxic shame. So
the unresolved trauma that people might not want to look at,
and we can go back to like a lot of
men or taught just a man up. So that's a conversation.
But this disconnection, and when we think about spiritual disconnection,
it could easily get well. It gets interpreted through one's
(05:23):
own lege. It can mean a lot of different things
to a lot of different people. All are valid. It's
important to say that I learned a long time ago
that my spiritual beliefs don't actually matter in working with
the client. It's more about what it means to them.
Because spirituality.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
That's interesting that your personal spiritual beliefs don't matter in
working with the client. It's how they perceive them. It's
how it matters to them.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, because I've worked with clients and when conscious Recovery
came out, I didn't know who the audience was going
to be. And I have found kind of surprising, I guess,
maybe surprising, Like people who are very Christian love it.
People who are atheist love it. People are on a
Buddhist path love it. And there's people who do twelve
step love it, people are anti twelve step love it.
And I'm like, Okay, what's going on here? And I
(06:09):
think what's going on is for me, spirituality actually actually
isn't about belief belief can be a part of it,
but it's actually an experience of our true nature. And
I think that's the great you know, that's that's the
place where we all meet, whether you know we're Christian
or Buddhists or none of that, or atheist or we
(06:29):
love you know, God to talk about God or actually,
like I'm triggered by that word a place where we
meet where it's do you remember who you are? Do
you remember coming into the world? And if you can't remember,
Because I have worked with clients who say I don't
ever remember being happy, I invite them to look at
(06:50):
an infant. Are you going to look at that infot
and say you're a little broken human? And I know
some religions teach that were born original sinners, so some
people have to unravel that, but like, I don't think
it's possible to look into the eyes of an infant
and see them it's broken, yea. And so to be
able to frame it in that way and then to
(07:10):
ask someone, did you come into the world that you
were an infant? So that must have been who you are.
And so I'm spending some time on that because when
we start there, then we can start to look at
all the stuff, the shame, the disconnection, and the trauma
that we've experienced. That to me take us away from
(07:31):
who we really are. That's a very different framework than
what's wrong with your behavior and symptoms and how do
we change that? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Absolutely, I think I talk a lot about this because
it's my personal experience. When I went through the whole
business collapse, shuttering a business, being in legal battles, I
had so much shame around that, and it happened because
of fraud. But as a woman, I think we have
(08:02):
maybe we put a lot more on ourselves as entrepreneurs,
you know, because you're told, oh, you can't make it,
you're a woman, you won't be able to do this
by yourself, or you know, all of that speak that
comes forward. I had shame about letting down, you know,
those who had believed in me, Investors, stores who invested
in my product, clients who believed in me. I had
(08:24):
such shame as a creative that I had let that,
and just I just had never really had a business failure.
I didn't know what that looked like. And I saw
people who could bankrupt and walk away and be okay.
And I was sitting in a I mean, and you know,
I know Brene Brown says something to the effect of shame,
(08:44):
as shame is that thing that keeps you in isolation
and you know, forces so much self judgment so that
you know, it's almost impossible to get through it when
you sit in it. And so I was in that
shame bucket, like I was lucky with it. And then
my husband took his life. So coming into that suicide
(09:09):
carrying the shame because they happened within you know, a
fairly short amount of time, that was an interesting walkout
and really pivotal to my spiritual path.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, the shame, attacking the shame, the toxicity of shame.
I love that you.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, and the way I describe shame as it's like
swimming in oatmeal, like no matter what I do, I
can't get through it. Yeah, I feel immobilized and we
could call it depression. But the deepest experience of shame
to me is at our core. And obviously, you know,
this is the definition of shame, as we feel broken,
not that I've done something like you know, I could
(09:50):
one could lose a business and say, okay, I made
these mistakes or I did this, and like in my case,
I made a decision out of fear to sell it
to my friend, and my friend started drinking again and
stole a bunch of stuff and then blamed me. So like,
there's a lot more to it than that. But I
did make a decision out of fear to sell it
to him, so I have to acknowledge that. So if
it's only guilt, like, oh, yeah, that was not smart.
(10:13):
I could have listened to my intuition, but instead I
went into shame as well, like I'm a bad person
because I did this. Something's wrong with me. I'm here,
I am twenty years sober. Here I am in school
to be a spiritual teacher, and all of this is happening,
and I spiritually I could see the perfection in it
(10:33):
because I knew that there was. We call it chemicalization
a new thought. Chemicalization is just when two things interact
and one needs to dissolve so something new can emerge.
And the metaphor is as I realized, my path is
to be a spiritual teacher, whatever that means, and I
didn't know yet what it was going to mean. All
(10:53):
of that that was unlike it needed to dissolve, and
again it was very dramatic, and I did go into shame.
And the way we heal shame is very different than
the way we heal guilt. We heal or fix or
you know, assuage guilt by changing our behavior, by making amends,
by apologizing, by paying the money back, whatever it is anymore.
(11:18):
But shame is completely different. Shame is I need to
find a safe place to share a place of vulnerability,
and usually it precedes the event in other words, and
I think this is important, at least to me. It
is we often say I feel I feel as shamed
because this happened. I am by this happened because I
(11:40):
felt shame because I felt shame like I made this
decision based in fear to sell this business. Shame was
I'm I feel like I can't let anyone know this,
this new business isn't successful. Shame is I don't want
anyone to see my vulnerabilities. And yet the way we
actually heal the shame is through those vulnerabilities. So it's
(12:03):
interesting that we're talking about this as I'm beginning to
think about putting all this down in a book.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, you're causing me to therapuze myself as well over
again because that is, I haven't thought about it that way,
and yet you're exactly right. It's the shame that comes
first for the decision that you make that then you're
ashamed of No.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I get it's right, and that's a shame spiral. It's
a shame spiral. And we interrupt that shame spiral. Yes,
we change the behavior. I think sometimes the mind is like,
it's either this or that. I'm not saying I don't
need to be accountable for my decisions. I still have
some things I'm paying back. And that was many years ago, right,
because I just decided I'm going to take it. I
just decided I'm going to, in good conscience take the
(12:48):
hit for this instead of blame my yep, yeah, and
my lawyers like people don't do that. I just said,
you have two choices, throw him under the busser yourself.
And I said, well, if those are two choices, let's go.
Because I need to live with myself for the rest
of my life. I know that the truth is I'm
the one who puts my head on my pillow and
(13:10):
I can't build a foundation for writing books and being
a spiritual teacher if I would have done that. So
when I got the news that you passed. I had
only love for him, and that's to me that you
had gone.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Through the whole forgiveness cycle and healing. Oh that's amazing,
that's amazing. When you were going through that and you
were twenty years sober, was there any desire to drink
or drug again?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Never a desire, wow, Never a desire. There was a
desire to use all kinds of other brilliant strategies to
not feel though. I want to be clear, like I
think for me, drinking in drugs has really never been
an option ever had that craving since nineteen eighty six.
But there are all kinds of ways that we can
(14:04):
use to escape, and I have used all of them. Shopping,
oh yeah, you know all of it. Like there's anything external, right,
nothing out? I mean the deeper work and we haven't
really gotten to this, But the deeper work is always
doing work. It always includes healing that younger self. So
(14:25):
my deeper work is healing that little seven year old,
that little you know. I remember when my nephew turned
seven and I looked at him and us God is
an angel. Yeah, And that was the year I decided
I was broken unlovable and not good enough, and so
healing from that place of that seven year old has
been such a big part of that process.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
You know, I just kept being stuck in this part
of your story. At forty you're going back to school
for five years to pursue this spiritual path. And you
know today your name is Mint with the thought leaders
in any kind of spiritual path and you've only been
(15:08):
doing that for about fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
You had a short runway from not being known. I mean,
you're there. How in the world does that happen?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, I'll tell you. When all of that was happening,
I had a moment when I knew that I either
needed to lean in and heal some of this deeper,
these deeper issues, or I was going to continue to avoid.
(15:44):
And it showed up as I was part of a
community and the board. There was some stickiness with the
board and the stuff that had happened legally and image
and you know, they there were a lot of layers,
and I remember feeling so much shame and so much sadness,
(16:04):
and I realized I had some deeper work to do.
And there was one point that I woke up and
realized I needed to close the curtains, turn off my phone,
and be with myself until something happened, until there was
a shift, and Teresa, it was seventy two hours alone
(16:26):
in my dark place, moving into the darkness and realizing
that it was time for me to do the deeper transformation.
And it was in that process that I came out
only feeling love for this board, for this community, for
myself or my friend. People said, well, he betrayed you
(16:47):
and living in that and there was just a shift,
there was something that happened and then and I write
about this and in conscious recovery. I went to India
around that same time, and I sometimes get the year off.
It was two thousand and six. I went to India
and I had already started school. I was a couple
of years into school because I graduated from that program
(17:08):
I think a two thousand and eight or nine. And
we went to India and my friend Maureene, I love her.
She's from Alabama. Actually, my friend, my friend Maureen Bass
from Alabama, just absolutely and she lives there now again.
So she said, we're going to ver Nasi, India, which
(17:28):
is said to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited
cities on planet Earth and in the Hindu religion. And
this is an oversimplification, but it's my understanding that many
Hindus believe if they go there to die, their karma
will re remove. So people come there as a pilgrimage
for their own death. And so there's just a lot
(17:51):
of death all around. And my friend Maureen said, you're
going to feel the spiritual energy as you approach. And
we were on our bus, and you know cars can't
go going to this city, it's so old. So we
got off the bus and these two young, like maybe
twelve year old, death boys guided us in. First we
were on bicycles, the rickshaws, and then we walked in
and as I got closer, I just I started feeling
(18:13):
this tingling going up my arm and just I started
opening and this opening experience. We went out onto the boat.
It's called the Arty Festival. It's festival of lights, and
there's seven presung platforms doing this light festival. And I
had an experience at that moment where it felt like
(18:34):
my ego was completely removed and I just knew only
love and I sobbed for like it felt like two hours.
I doubt it was that it felt like that long.
I just sobbed and sobbed, and suddenly, this is such
a magical story, and it really did happen. All the
electrical the lights went out in the whole city, so
it was just dark except for you could see the
(18:56):
arty festival. And then the only thing lighting the sky
was the earning bodies, and we went on boat over
to where the bodies were being burned. I just my
heart just came open in a new way, and I
just had this profound experience of a shift happening, and
of course my ego came back, and of course you
(19:19):
know that experience didn't last forever. But in retrospect, I
realized that I had a profound shift in the way
I viewed myself in the world, and from that moment on,
I just have known that it's my message. And by
the way, all that interesting enough, the culmination of all
that legal stuff actually came after that. Oh wow, it
started happening, and then it came after So it's very layered.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Though through a different lens. Because of those seventy two
hours and then that experience in India, I wanted to
say something for the listeners just just to be cautious,
you know, I think about what you're saying today makes
me want to go into those seventy two hours and
work on some inner child things that I haven't worked on,
(20:04):
and you're bringing them forward to me. And I feel that,
And as we're talking, and I want to cry really hard,
and I want to go be alone, but have to
keep doing more podcasts today. But in your seventy two hours,
you had already acquired a lot of tools.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
That's right. I had been in recovery for twenty years.
I'd been in therapy for many years. I'd been in
spiritual community. I had been doing a lot of this work.
So I think I really appreciate that you're bringing this
to the conversation because I was at a unique place
in my journey where I knew I was ready.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yes, so I would just just a point of caution,
not you know, to our viewers, because you're making me
want to do that work. But let's know that if
we go to that place, we go with someone who
can guide us, or we know we've got the spiritual
therapeutic tools to not go too far. And you can
tell I'm having suicidal pta stay in that area. Yeah, yeah,
(21:03):
but wow, that is.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Absolutely it is really interesting and I and thank you
for saying that, because it's a very nuanced conversation because
in my experience, it's actually not doing that deeper work
where people end up with the suicide with suicidal thoughts.
But we do need to be very not cautious or
(21:27):
even careful, but conscious about who we choose to go
on that with it. And I think that there are
places that are I think of the Meadows. I think
if there's a place called on Site that they do
week long intensive there are a lot of places that
I think are are equipped to help people do this
(21:48):
deeper work. So thank you for bringing that because I
think you know a lot of people are doing plant
medicines now, and I think plant medicines can be a
really wonderful thing, but I also think that can be
used before people are ready. So it's always both and
not ear or Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Well, just a few minutes left for us, and you've
given us so much, and yet I feel like I
need another few hours at a minimum with you to
talk more about what's next for you in this next
book and really dive deep into the next level of
this conversation. And I hope we have.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Well, let's do part two.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Okay, I will definitely.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yes, I would love it, just me too.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Thank you? Could you just leave our listeners with, you know,
just love your talk about our worthiness, our wholeness. Could
you just leave us with a little few minutes of
meditation on that.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah? Before I do that, I want to also just
acknowledge and honor you for the courage that you brought
to this conversation. It created a safe space for me
to be able to do that, and that is truly
a gift. And even where half a country apart or more,
I feel that the spiritual connection with you and that
(23:06):
really is what the world is so hungry for right now.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Thank you. I feel the same in tears as you
can say.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Thank you. Yeah, And so thank you for that. And
what I want to say to anyone watching or listening,
You came into the world as a whole and perfect being,
and that is the truth of you and what you are.
So regardless of what you've done, regardless of what has happened,
(23:37):
not only do you deserve alive filled with love and connection,
that it's your divine purpose on planet Earth. And so
find the love, find the support, find the safe people
in your life where you can do what we talked
about today and start to unlearn all the thoughts of limitation, lack,
(23:58):
and separateness and rest in this deeper reality of oneness.
And it's not only possible, it is the truth of
each and every one of us. So I just am
so grateful that I get to continue to spread this
message and this journey of wholeness because it's it's really
why I'm here and perhaps why we're all here.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
TJ. You're a beautiful man. You are just truly a
beautiful man. You have blessed me to sit with you today.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
H I feel the same.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Thank you.
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