When Your Body Keeps Sending You Signals with Tammy Scarlett

Hello, heroines, and welcome back to another interview. Today I am bringing to you Tammy Scarlett. Tammy and I have known each other for a little bit, and she is the founder of the Women's Wellness Network, which we will hear a little bit more about. But Tammy, welcome.

Thanks, Alex. Oh, it's so nice to be here. It's been a while, of course, since we got to have a conversation, and be in interviews together and all that kind of stuff. I've kind of taken a bit of a break, a personal growth period, I guess, if you want to call it that, and expanding myself, expanding my networks, and expanding my reach, I guess, ultimately.

Oh, but it's good, you know, sometimes we need to do that to be able to— we kind of have to take a step back so we can take that bigger step forward. So tell us a little bit about who Tammy is.

Oh my, well, okay, Tammy. Tammy's a whole lot of, a whole lot of things. I'm currently studying to become a doctor of holistic health, and that has taken up a bit of my time, but it's so interesting, and I feel like I've already, you know, done a lot of it and kind of, I have a really good understanding about the things that we've gone through so far. So it's uplifting me in a way that I didn't anticipate, you know, because usually when you start studying something, it's like drudgery and, oh, like stress, and I gotta remember this and whatever. But it's totally not like that. It's fun, and it's, uh, it's also helping me be creative, I think, in other ways, because then I'm, you know, I'm improving myself, I'm evolving, but it's in a way that's, uh, interesting to me, not just, you know, you have to do this work if you want to do this thing. It's like Oh, you like this work. So let's, let's see what we can do with it.

And it makes a difference, right? When you actually enjoy the topic versus when you are studying something because you have to. I'm sure if you have to study like Econ 101 right now, probably not your favorite topic. No.

Oh my goodness. No kidding, right? And I think that's the thing, like, well, especially women's wellness because I'm a woman and I've been on this crazy health journey. You know, going through breast cancer and then right on the heels in between, you know, finding out, getting a divorce and navigating that path and then bursting out on the other end, you know, full of vim and vigor and like excited for life, right? Like, let me get back to living, let me do some things. And I was doing that. It was great, you know, learning all these things and taking courses and becoming an integrative energy healer and you know, just different things. And bam, you know, there has to be something else that happens. And, you know, I've always been— I always try to just, you know, just keep going, just keep going, just keep going. But I started to realize that there was really some big, uh, blind spots in my world, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me because I was continuously having accidents and things were happening to me. And I thought, I don't want to live like this anymore. I can't do this anymore. So when I said bam, I had had full reconstruction after breast cancer and had to have the implants removed due to a capsule rupture. So the natural capsule that your body puts around the implant itself burst. And in between the implant and my natural capsule was all of this goo and poison. Yeah. So that was a really terrible eye-opening experience. You know, when you go through cancer, it's like, oh well, you know, we're going to do this protocol and we're going to do this. And these are— this is the information and it's pretty set out. Had I done, you know, know the things that I know now, I would definitely do my cancer journey different. But it was so much easier than when I had the rupture, because when the rupture happened, there was not a lot of information out there. And the people that I did, you know, connect with— not holistically, allopathically— didn't have information and they didn't know what to do with me. And they didn't know. They just didn't know. And that's a very scary position to be in when I was a lot more sick with that than I had ever been with cancer. So it was scary. And I thought, you know, I need to do something. I need to make some kind of change in the world so that there's somewhere for people to go, somewhere for people to be able to connect with me, at least if nothing else, because I'd had to figure out, you know, a lot of things for myself. So making the Woman's Wellness Network was just one of those passion projects that was born because of necessity, um, you know, a little bit for myself. I think, you know, I really wanted to pull the information together because let's face it, things are still going to happen in life. Shit's still going to go down, right? Things are still going to come up. I want to have people around me who I can either go to, that I know that I can go to because of these awesome interviews that we have, um, or I can navigate that, the group myself, to pick out little things that, you know, would be helpful and find different details that maybe I missed, you know, just while you're in there, because there's so much content, it's, you know, hard to figure out, you know, what do I need at this very moment? So having all that, all that, all the resources and things in there, and then being able to just be a figure that somebody could ask a question to. Is so, so important. You know, I always want to have my door open. I always want to, you know, it's an open world for me. If you have a question or a concern or something that you just can't figure out on your own, or you want a different opinion on, ask me. Like, I, you know, I've been down the road in a lot of different areas, and I really, I feel like I have, you know, some good advice and some good knowledge and some wise old wisdom sometimes.

And that's the key, right, is you've been through so many different things that you can, and you can help people through their own journey. But even if you don't have personal experience, you know enough people that you can at least point them in the right direction.

Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness. And I mean, the basis of my whole I don't even want to call it coaching. I don't, I don't like to use that word. But, you know, my guidance that I give people is to really help them to get back into their body because that was like my biggest issue. I was not living in my body. I was not present. You know, that's probably part of the reason that things that happened with my, with my marriage also, right? I really wasn't. I was doing all the things that I thought I should be doing. And, you know, that perfectionist thing where you, you know, you believe you're on a pedestal and you need to keep everything, you know, going well so that you don't fall off of it. And that's just not a good place to live from.

And it's a lot of pressure.

It's too much pressure. Yeah, we don't need that. And I mean, really, we do it to ourselves. You know, it's just a matter of How much do you want to take on and, and take responsibility for? But if you're not living in your body and things keep happening, you know, I would— I mentioned, of course, I mentioned cancer, I mentioned divorce, I mentioned the poisoning. But also in that small period of time, I'd fallen off a bicycle and broke my ribs. Yeah, I'd fallen downstairs and displaced my sternum. So there's like, yeah, like, and, and things are like, hey, Tammy, hello, are you home? Are you listening? We're trying to send you these signals. Gus was working really hard, but I was— I didn't know Gus's name then, I guess. So those of you who don't know, Gus for me is God, universe, spirit. I like to just lump it all in there because it's all the same thing in my opinion. So just really not living in my body, not being connected to anything except all these things, you know, the pressures and all the negative stuff. And I see you formulating something there. I was just going to— all the negative stuff. Even that is something, because when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, it was triple negative. Breast cancer that they diagnosed me with. And the first thing in my human mind is like, oh my word, I've been so negative in obviously 3 key areas in my world, and now I've caused myself to get this cancer, which is of course isn't correct. That's not how, how the, how it's, you know, determined. That diagnosis isn't determined by 3 negative aspects of your being. But when I started to look at it in that way, it made me realize, shit, I am not in my body. I don't even know, I don't know my body. I don't know anything about it. I don't know, you know, all the things that I had gone through, you know, even just traumas when you're, you know, younger and you don't have control of situations in your life and things happen. Just, really going back to that space and realizing, uh, I think I've been out of my body since then. And, you know, I raised two children and did all these things, and, and still I wasn't present. I wasn't as present as I could have been and should have probably been, um, with my own self. Present with the world, but not with myself.

The image that came to my mind as you tell some of your story is of you walking side by side with you but not being you.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, now I understand more about the threefold flame— let's just call it that— within ourselves, right? So we've got our masculine side, we've got our neg— our feminine side, and then we've got our you know, our whole, our wholeness, which is both things connected together, which brings us to a completely different understanding and behaviors and in the way that we are in the world and the way that we perceive things and perceive ourselves. So that is really what you just said is true, because I was walking with, you know, Gus on one side and Gaia on the other side, and I wasn't hearing either. And it's like I was completely out of touch, not just out of balance. I was like way out of balance. Obviously, you don't get diseases like cancer without being out of balance. And I think that's, you know, one of those things that we could probably work a little bit better at the prevention of, you know, in the world. It never used to be as prevalent. And we know we have all these stressors and all these crazy things going on. And of course, in our food and in our environment and, you know, all that stuff. But when I was diagnosed and I went through the genetic testing to make sure that it wasn't that, even though I do know now, you know, you can have the gene, but it doesn't mean it's going to get turned on. And I think that's, you know, that's part of the— that's part of the understanding and the learning that I wish I would have known before.

But I heard that.

You're right. So what is the— what are the factors that make it turn on? And that is the thing. That's the chemistry inside your body, the way you feel about yourself, the way you think about yourself, the way you think the world is around you. Those are the things that cause the disease and the issues. It's not anything else. It's, it's all inside. It's an inside job, whether it's good or bad, right? And, uh, you know, it manifests into different ways. And if you're not, you know, noticing, then you end up, you know, not being fully in your relationships, not being present with your own health, not being present in your own world, you know, like ending up in accidents or falling downstairs or falling off bikes.

Which is interesting because what you said in the beginning when we started chatting was after your divorce you wanted to— and after, I believe, your cancer, you wanted to go back to living. So it's just interesting that you were living before, but living took on a new meaning for you after you went through that. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Yes, which is also so interesting, because, you know, in my understandings of what happens when you die, or that, you know, those paths that take you to the other side, I breached them in different ways. So my fear of death wasn't really— I didn't really feel like I was going to die, like, because I knew, you know, different aspects about that. I won't get too much into that part of it right now, but deep down in me, I knew I wasn't going to die. So I thought, if I had this, if I've been, you know, blessed with this situation, this challenge, what am I going to take from it? What is it that I need to receive from it? Why have I been given this? So first of all, it was definitely learning how to get back into my body and realizing that that was a thing. And it took a long time. Like, even after I started the work, um, I became a life coach and still just kept, you know, journeying through that, my own healing transition. Um, it took a lot. Like, it took again the rupture to happen for me to still realize I was still missing some vital pieces of the puzzle. And now at least I've figured them out. So seriously, it would be, you know, every— at least every 2 years, something really dramatic and drastic would be happening in my world. And after the rupture, I thought, I can't do this anymore. Because I, as I said, it was far worse than having the illness with cancer. Even through the chemo, the 28 courses of radiation, like all of the things were nothing compared to that rupture. And if I can do something to help somebody else, you know, either not get cancer or have a better understanding of what it means to have, you know, the implants put in, maybe get a better relationship with their own self so that they don't have to put those in so that it doesn't have to be a topic, an issue, or whatever. Because there are other options. It's not just that implants are not just the only thing. And I didn't know that at the time either. And, you know, I'm going to take it back a little bit here because I was, you know, living in this blissful la-la land, if you want to call it that, right before up until like my marriage was breaking down and I knew it was happening. I could see it happening. And I was always sort of informed that it was going to happen. And while it's going on, I'm still like, not there. I'm still like, not, you know, saying the things I should be saying. I'm not participating. I'm just letting the universe carry me along down this, you know, into the rapids without paying attention. You know, you just, okay, I'm gonna hold my breath and hope like hell. And I almost drowned when I was a kid. So It's not some— I don't— I'm not saying that lightly. I mean, it's like, you know, that you throw yourself into that and it's like, am I going to be taken out? You know, is this going to be the thing that takes me out?

Or—

because you get to that point where you're, you know, feeling so low and feeling so, um, without assistance or without help. And the way my marriage unraveled there was a lot of close people that I could not trust anymore. And that just broke my heart again. You know, I just had it broken from my husband. But just, you know, friends and things that I knew that knew what was going on but didn't share. And I was one of those people who had that knock on the door with a stranger coming to tell me what was happening. And right, so it's just like the trust levels just kept falling and falling and falling and falling. And you know, when it comes to your own healing, so I was already not trusting anybody, you know, because of the divorce, because of what was going on. I lived in a small town and everybody knows everybody, and, um, you know, it's uncomfortable, let's just say that. And I didn't want to start poking around and asking people things when I wasn't comfortable, you know, receiving information from them because now I don't have a good feeling about them. So it took that, it took this really long journey of trying to figure out how to just at least trust myself, because if I couldn't trust anybody else and I wasn't going to talk to anybody else, I just, I'm just going to have to learn how to, how to do it. And that I think was the most difficult task I've ever been charged with, learning how to trust myself and really give myself the permission to lead me. So that's when I got reconnected with Gus. That's when I started to, you know, really listen and to understand how disobedient I had been. And it's not, you know, it's all of the things, you know, I was a rebellious child, I didn't have a very good home life, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it just carried on through my life. And going back and doing the work and seeing, you know, where I— damn, I could have done better here. Oh, that was me. Oh, oh, why did I do that? You know, all those things you start to realize It was me. I made all those choices. I was the one who put me in all those positions. I was the one who, you know, I either didn't stand up to something and give myself courage in that moment and then carry all that crap inside of me, or I, you know, felt unloved and then didn't speak up and carried all that inside of me too. So, like, carrying all that stuff, eventually it ends up in something like cancer. It's heavy. We're not supposed to carry that stuff. We're supposed to, you know, have people that we can, yeah, give it out to the world, put it out into the universe, and, uh, have it healed and, and carried away so that we don't have to take it with us. Yeah. And I think that's the beauty, you know, I got, I didn't get married to get a divorce. I can tell you that. Um, and I, as I said, I did everything in my power to make that not happen. Um, but at the same time, now I realize, you know, there's so many different avenues and aspects that I can perceive and conceive now because of that position of being divorced, of because of having cancer, of because of being poisoned. Like, all of those things have— as terrible as they were, um really helped me, you know, shed my own stuff. It really helped me understand how I got into that position and what I needed to do to get out of that position. And now what I can do to help other people either not get there, you know, figure it out before you start having to go down there. Because I think most people, they can look back and go, oh, that was me, that was me, that was me. And you can just start from there, right? I mean, it's all in the past. It doesn't matter. It's all— it's not going to— you don't have to carry it forward. It's just go back and see what's there because it's super interesting to discover who you are. And then, you know, the treasure, the gold, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is this now. Like me now. I feel like I'm probably the happiest person that I know. I don't let stuff sit with me. If there's an issue, I'm gonna bring it forward. You know, it's time to really just stand up for ourselves and be strong for ourselves. And I, you know, that's where I came, that's how I got here.

And you know, it sounds to me like You were talking about before you were walking with Gus and Gaia to each side of you, right? And it feels as you went through your journey that you started taking responsibility and ownership for yourself. You started making your choices based on the things that you wanted either for yourself or do you— that you wanted to see happen in your life. And I feel like that's the turning point, is that when we get back behind the wheel of our car instead of being a passenger in the car and letting everybody else drive the car.

Yeah, it's very true. I feel like you, you mentioned that, and, and it's, and it's the slow integration of Gaia and Gus to me. It's the slow integration of learning where my masculine is wounded, learning where my feminine is, um, you know, hiding. Like, what are those things and those aspects of me that are there? They've always been there, they've always walked with me, but, you know, no, I don't want to hear that, or, or that's not right, or no, that, that can't be me. Or, you know what I mean? Like tuning that, tuning that Tammy voice out, I think, is, it was the key. I saw this, I saw this video the other day and this woman, she's riding along and she said, you know, I had this conversation with my brain and she calls her brain Becky. And she's like, Becky, that's enough of that. So we're not going to talk about that right now. We don't need any of that. So I'm like, I need to pick a name for my brain because that really is the thing. But if, if I'm not this 3D person who came into this world and was born and named Tammy, Tammy belongs to the brain in my head. It doesn't belong to, you know, who I am as a spirit, as a soul. It's, you know, it's— I'll be a different name and then in a different lifetime. So yeah, it's just really interesting. I love that. Separation of those two aspects of myself. And, you know, when you pile them up, you know, you've got my Tammy brain, and now I can have my, you know, my higher self, my higher blessed self, where Gaia and Gus meet, come together. Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting because if you've ever read the book Positive Intelligence by Charmy— I can't even say his name and I can't think of it off the top of my head. But anyways, the book is named Positive Intelligence. And his whole premise is that we all have 10 saboteurs that live within us at different degrees. And we all have a judge. And then everybody else, or everybody has, you know, an avoider, a people pleaser, a perfectionist. A hypervigilant, a victim, and all kinds of other things. But one of the ways that you can start to dismantle those things is by giving that entity a name and basically telling it to shut up when it comes up, because its opinion is not relevant here, right? Because it gets in the way of us kind of showing up for ourselves because it's that voice of fear.

Yeah, totally. Yep. There's your amygdala, then there's my Tammy brain, and then there's my higher self. And yet if you can't get past that level to even hear your own reasoning, uh, yeah, you just end up in big trouble. You end up with disease, you end up having accidents. You end up doing stupid things.

You end up breaking your ribs. Um, so earlier in the conversation you talked about blind spots and that you found you had all of these different blind spots. How did you identify what they were? Is there something like— how did you get to know you had those blind spots? I'm just thinking for our heroines, we all have blind spots. Um, and for somebody who's not— who hasn't yet figured out what theirs are, kind of like, how would they go about doing that?

Well, I think generally you can start right with the fight, flight, or freeze and see which one of those you are, because that's like a real, you know, like I said, right? The amygdala is at the bottom. It's the first thing that's going to put up the the roadblock. So knowing that, how you, how you respond, you know, do you run away? Do you, um, you know, just avoid things? Or do you, you know, be— become a bully? Do you become a manipulator? Or, uh, do you say nothing? Do you shrink and hide? And, uh, yeah, I did a lot of shrinking and hiding. I didn't even know that I was doing that. So I think that the very first thing that you can do for yourself is to just at least acknowledge that and see how you do that and show up. Because then at least the next time that happens— because, you know, things happen all the time, every day, and it's a matter of putting it into practice— when you realize, oh, I'm doing that thing, oh, I'm doing that thing, okay, hang on, let me do it a different way, let me reframe it, let me step up a little bit, let me use whatever it is that it's— that is being called that I'm keeping from coming out? Do I need a voice? Do I need to say something? Do I need to speak up? Or do I need to actually really take a step away? Not running away, but just, you know, taking a timeout. Or the fighting thing, the manipulating, or, you know, bully— trying to bully somebody into your, your opinion so that it goes your own way, you know, worrying about having the control. So where do you fit into that thing? And I think that's one of the easiest things we can figure out for ourselves because we all have it.

And adding to that, I think showing up in our own life with intention versus just on autopilot makes a difference, right?

Well, that's the thing. When, especially when you're not in your body, when you're disembodied, let's just call it that, um, you, you skirt around all of those three kinds of aspects of fear and you become a, become a, a master, let's say, of utilizing the ways that you can, uh, you know, work through it. So it's, I think as soon as we recognize that we're doing it, then we at least we start to see that we're doing something, you know, detrimental to ourselves. And having— just having the awareness. And if, and if you, if you have that intention set out right from the beginning, hey, I want to see these things that I'm not seeing about myself, um, start being an observer. Start watching. Start noticing the things— how you are in conversation, how you are with certain people, how you feel about something before it happens. You know, what is that level because a lot of people work themselves into a great big tizzy over something that really is nothing. It's just those— you get yourself all ginned up and all these past experiences and maybe things you haven't dealt with come screaming up. They come like flying up to the surface. Right.

And I would add to that, do it from a place of curiosity versus a place of judgment.

Yes. Yes. Oh, my goodness. 100%.