You Are Love | A Journey Through Depression, Divorce & Rediscovering Your Power

Hello, heroines! This is Alex. I am delighted to be here with you again this afternoon, and I am delighted to be able to bring you Mieczek Meissner. Did I say that right? I did. Okay. And because Mieczek is actually super cool and very interesting, very interesting story, very interesting in the work that she does. And I thought that her knowledge, her experience would be helpful for, for us in the group. So, Michaele, welcome.

Yeah, thank you for having me, Alex. I'm thrilled to be here.

Yeah, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. So let's get started with the basics. Tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're from, and what you do.

Okay, well, I grew up in Brooklyn. A small claim to New York fame there is that when I was 19, I got a hack license and I was a yellow cab driver for about a month or so. But I was so polite, always letting the other cabs in line go ahead of me, that at the end of the day, I wasn't even making minimum wage. And when they, you know, after so many days or weeks, you have to join a union if you're going to stay. And I was like, yeah, I'm out. But it was an interesting, very brief, interesting experience. Drove my mom nuts because I was leaving the house at 3 in the morning to go pick up my cab at 4 in the morning, but we all survived. So anyway, uh, so born in Brooklyn, raised in New York, uh, fled the city as soon as I could for upstate New York to be more among the trees and nature. And for the last 35 or so years, I live in Oregon, um, in a— right now in a small town called Blue River. In the mountains and the trees, and I love that. So that's— I, yeah, I was never— I don't think I was meant to be a city kid, although I went— grew up going to museums and, you know, theater and whatever, and I enjoyed that. I appreciated it. And then I just wanted to be, you know, among the trees and the bugs and the frogs and all that stuff.

So you lost me at bugs.

Yeah. I was surprised that came out of my mouth, but I guess I'm gonna leave it there. I was visited last year by two different praying mantises. Those are bugs. Well, they're insects.

I'm not sure. Yeah. But, but they're cool.

They are cool. Right? So that's different. I don't mean just like bugs, you know, it's cool bugs. Right. Anyway, so, yeah, I've always been just very sensitive. I think I was very psychic and empathic as a kid, but instead, I was just labeled overly sensitive. You know, and who knew back then people would say, oh, you're a little psychic kid, you know. Anyway, I didn't really figure that out until I was in my 30s or 40s, that it wasn't just— I wasn't just clever and sort of good at reading people. There was actually this other layer going on, you know, of information that I had that not everybody— I think we all can, but I don't think we all do. So, yeah, when I was 5, somehow I got the message that I was supposed to save the world. And I don't think I discussed that with anyone for a few decades, but I took it really seriously. And I think it had a lot to do with my being depressed and suicidal most of my life, feeling like a failure, because I really thought I was supposed to know how to do something and do it. And I didn't know what that was. Fortunately, now I have finally come to figure out that my task in being here is simply to be me. Right? To just be whoever that is and grow that. Be more of me instead of more of somebody else.

Or suppressing who you truly are.

Mm-hmm. Right. Between that and not being depressed all the time and being on antidepressants, which also help, my relationships have gotten much better and healthier than they were, you know, for a lot of that time. In my search for how to save the world, I wound up finding out a lot of different ways. Well, to try to— saving myself was sort of last on the list, right? Because my job was for— with other people. And but even when I figured out how to be helpful to other people, how to do energy work and healing and bring upliftment to other people, I still hadn't figured out that it even was worth doing that for myself, right? It was all about, you know, you and I could be so compassionate and so patient and so understanding and insightful. And when it came to myself, you know, there were times I would literally curse myself out. So, you know, tough way to live your life. Fortunately, I do not live that way anymore. And my emphasis really, no matter what I'm teaching, whether I'm doing spoon bending workshops or coaching people individually or running a group or doing a talk, like whatever it is, it's really all of it is about love yourself, your self-worth, your self-respect, and that we are more than just, you know, mind, body, skin. And we're definitely not our emotions. That was a big one for me. We have emotions. We're not our emotions. Right?

That's loaded right there.

Right? You know, I mean, if you are what you feel, then you're stuck with it. But right, I mean, maybe somehow you could change, but it's this huge burden. If I am me, this being, this awareness, this life force, and I'm having emotions, they flow in, they flow out. I can help them flow out even, right? Or invite them in. So that was a big deal. So I work with people. Somebody said life hacks recently, call them life hacks. And they're different tools and perspectives to see, to see your own life, to see life around you differently than what we're generally taught. Well, at least in, you know, in, in sort of mainstream culture. I know everybody's got their own particulars, but, you know, and even just things like life happening to me or life happening for me, right? And making those sort of shifts and just seeing things in a way that it can add to us instead of drag us down and feel like a burden. Even the hard stuff, as we get through it, we build skills, we create empathy, we get stronger. Not to say that you needed that to happen or you deserve that to happen, you know, whatever it is, but it happened. Whatever it was, it happened. Here I am. What am I going to do with it? I'm going to try to be more of me and more true to who I am as I live through it. So that's pretty much the, the method under whatever madness I have going.

And I think what I, what I'm hearing is there's a difference between owning something as part of our identity and going through something.

Right.

And the big— and the difference is when we own something as part of our identity, it's very difficult to get rid of.

Right.

Versus, like you said, working through a process to feel, accept, and release.

Yes. Right. And just, you know, one— a quick example with, you know, depression. I identified as a depressed person. Right? And I— that's how I related to people, to the world, and whatever. And, you know, at some point I was thinking about, you know, if you get sick, you get the flu, you catch something from somebody else, however you get it, and you're, you're laid up in bed or whatever it is for a few days, you don't think, oh my God, my life is terrible, I have to— I'm in the wrong profession, I should be— I need to change my relationship, or You know, whatever it is, you get through. You feed the fever, starve the cold, or whatever it is that you do, you deal with it. And you know that it came in and it's on its way out. You know, when depression, when another sort of round of depression would come up for me, it came with a whole lot of monologue about how not, you know, a failure and this and that. And I would feel like I had to suddenly address my whole life again, because if my life— if I was right, if my life was right, this wouldn't happen. I wouldn't be feeling depressed if I was doing it right. You know, and I mean, you could look at maybe, you know, you're staying out too late, partying too hard. Why are you getting sick? You know, but usually people don't do a whole life review because they caught a cold, you know. And when I saw that it released me from a lot of judgment and a lot of, like, necessity of going through this whole sort of curriculum. And instead, it was like, oh, oh, you again. You know, you unhappy, disgruntled, judgmental voices again. You know, and I actually once had a depression that only lasted about 5 minutes. Because in that I heard, you know, I saw, I felt those rumblings, and I was able to identify it as like, it's all like you, you know, this train of thought was coming in and I sort of, you know, like Aikido or something, kind of sidestepped it and it just kept on going because I didn't identify with it. I didn't grab onto it.

It— I wonder if it felt sometimes like a friend.

Well, yes.

There was a friend that you had to release.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, it was also— I mean, depression was a coping mechanism. I mean, there were so many different pieces, right? But depression was the legitimate, in my mind, excuse for not being able to do this or show up there. Or at one point to leave a relationship that was not working out. And I didn't feel like I had permission or authority in my life to make decisions just solely based on what I wanted or needed. So if the other person was not going to also want to break up with me, I couldn't break up with them. And in that process of feeling so stuck, I wound up feeling pretty suicidal. And at some point it was so bad in my head that I thought, do you mean you're like more willing to be stuck and feel like you need to kill yourself to get out than to say you need to leave this relationship? And it was too unbalanced. It was too clear at that point, right? And I left the relationship. But I saw in that ways that, you know, I was using It's not to say I was faking the depression or feeling suicidal, but it served me, right? I mean, I think really just about anything that we are experiencing within ourselves, our beliefs, our places that we're stuck at some point, somewhere along the path, they served us. It was us trying to protect ourselves, trying to do right by ourselves and make the best of something, you know, especially when you're little. Right? And the only thing you can do is become invisible in order to not get hit, or, you know, whatever it is. And the things don't necessarily— I mean, I think that makes sense. But there are things that we— conclusions we come to that don't necessarily make sense. But they made sense to us at some point, for some reason, to protect us. And then we don't realize it's time to let go of them and come up with new solutions, right? So, you know, even depression Yeah, some biochemical, some— both my parents were depressed, so I sort of came by it honestly, right? I learned it also. There were a lot of different components, but there was definitely a component where it served me, and I had to let go of that too. And I had to figure out how to be and how to relate to people not from that place.

It all centers around the stories we tell ourselves, right? Right, because like you said, everything serves us in one way or another. That's why we have the behaviors or the thoughts or that, that we have. But if we can change the story around what it is, then you write a different chapter.

Yes. Right. And the work that I've been doing for myself, like over this last year, and that I'm studying, I'm hoping to be a certified hypnotherapist.

Oh, okay.

Now is about— now we're adults, we're telling ourselves stories that hold us or liberate us or whatever. And this other— this work that I've discovered that helped me free myself from more things was to look at where did that story originate? When was, like, to the best of your knowledge, where did you first tell yourself that story or come to that conclusion. And often it's when we're very young about how the world works, about how people treat us or how we're supposed, you know, whatever it is. And later it becomes whatever the adult language of the story is, right? And so we can heal that, but there's still, you know, to some degree with some things at least, if we don't dig deeper and find where it really came from and heal that, it's going to keep coming back because I can heal the story now of, you know, I'm brave and I can, you know, get up and speak in front of people. But if I don't make the connection to where that really came from, I can't take care of the little one who was trying to hide back then because of some other reason. Right. So I'm excited because I've I've shifted things. I've healed some things within myself. Been working on myself for years. Even when I was 12 and 13, I was reading self-help books and self-hypnosis and ESP. And, I mean, I was always studying. It's even cultural anthropology. I was always interested in why and how, you know, and it was very helpful for other people, but still not so helpful for me. Right? And so I started working with this woman, Mary Lou Rodriguez, who does a lot of brain rewiring and hypnotherapy and has this very loving path to look at that. Where does it come from? And so I was able to tap into things in an, on a deeper level or in a different way and help my little one really relax and get that sigh of relief and come along with me now. You know, instead of like, "Oh, don't go there," right?

Yeah, because that's what it's about, right? It's about making the little girl in us feel safe because everything that she's experienced has built protection, right? It's like building a shield. And there are good things about protecting, right? But If we put too much up of a wall, then we're not letting the good things in either.

Mm-hmm. Right. And, you know, some of that also is, you know, that little girl learned that, I guess this is pe— how people are gonna treat you. And so this is what to expect or to accept or, right? So some of it is protection and some of it is just, you know, kind of figuring out how the world works, except it's not really how it works. Right? It's just, how you saw it or felt it or how it came at you.

Yeah. It's learned behavior, right? From our role models and everything else. Yeah.

Yeah.

So how did you get started with developing your gift?

Yeah. Through the years of all this, you know, trying to save the world and figure out what that looked like, you know, I was always taking somebody's program or training and And I guess, huh, you know, I just now making this connection. Um, when I was very young, oh, I always liked working with tools and, you know, using my hands for things. And I would go around— we lived in an apartment, so there weren't a lot of things to mess with like if you grow up in a house, right? I remember taking a screwdriver and like loosening the COVID of the light switches so that I could tighten them back up. Or my grandmother lived with us and I would go to her dresser and make sure that her knobs were tight, you know, that kind of thing. My dad taught me how to use tools and how to do things. My grandfather thought it was not appropriate for a girl. When I was in high school, they still didn't let girls get into like machine shop or metalworking. They even had an auto mechanic. I would have like died to be an auto mechanic. Wouldn't let me in. They created a jewelry making program that was open to girls because, you know, it's jewelry. But we did get to work with, you know, pliers and hammers and saws and all that stuff. So that's how I became a jeweler. Okay. So that's like, that sounds like it really—

I didn't realize that that was your origin story on the jewelry thing.

Yeah. I mean, I used to joke, if they had let me into, like, metal shop, I would be working, making, you know, air conditioning ducts right now. Right? But this connection I didn't make, you know, in the beginning, most of the energy work, that you would— I learned, or that one would learn, you're using your hands, but it seems like you're using your hands. I mean, using other stuff, but, you know, even like with Reiki, you're holding your hands in a certain way. Or I learned pranic healing where you're like scooping energy and doing this and doing that. So of course I wanted to work with my hands. That's how I related. Right. And my hands were also sensitive, could feel things, could feel energy. So So that's how that piece came in. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to help people. I, uh, my partner in my mid-20s had been through several, uh, car accidents and had some permanent disabilities and a lot of chronic pain. And so I wanted to help her. And so I just kept amassing these different skills and abilities and I didn't think I was so good at them. I just kept, you know, doing more and more and trying this one and that one. And, you know, I could see results, things were happening, but I always, like, looked at the other people who were better at it or who do more, or the person whose training it was, you know, they were getting people who'd been, you know, bedridden for 6 months and now they're, you know, playing pickleball or, you know, whatever. They were having these amazing things. And I was helping people with their headaches, which is, I mean, that's good, you know, but—

Still important. So the person having the headache, huh?

I still was always coming from a place of something's missing within me. And as the years went by and the antidepressants kicked in, thank you, to just get my head above water, and I started to learn how to love myself and appreciate who I was, I started noticing that I actually had some abilities that were my own. Right? And so even all the things I had learned, I could start doing things through the lens of myself, right? Talk about life living itself through me. And so even the things that I had learned, I was delivering or working with people through me, through my own abilities, my own awarenesses. And then it got strong enough that I actually had this download from who I rec— was my guides. And that's a whole story for another day. But I was sort of gifted or reminded of a modality of working with people that's different than anything that I had learned, that is my own. And that, you know, uses my sense of humor, it uses my metaphor, it uses my repertoire of how I understand things, of how I can explain things to people. So very much my own rather than trying to be a good version of somebody else. And so at this point, I still like to learn things, but I'm not coming from a, you know, half-empty cup, something's missing, I need this so that I can, you know, I feel like, okay, I have everything I need. And actually, my job is to help you see that you also have everything you need. You may have thrown it out. You may have thought it was a piece of junk. You may be using it and not realize what a gift it is. So all of that, everything I went through, like, turn around to become whole and to help others have that within themselves. I hope I answered your question because that was—

Yeah, no, beautifully. Because what I'm getting is you're approaching things, even when you're learning new things, you're not approaching things from a place of lack, right? From needing to fill something inside you, but from a place of enrichment, right? Something that can bring and add to and enhance versus, oh my God, I got to do this because it's not within me. Because you know it is within you, right?

Right. It's coming from excitement and curiosity and exploration and expansion and Um, yeah, you know, and the idea a lot that, you know, we maybe think we're learning things and on some level we're remembering them because we came in not remembering, but we have so much really within us, so much that somehow we can tap. We don't know how necessarily.

And it reminds me of a conversation we had at another time, I think maybe in one of the Bump Pump calls where we were talking about unlearning, right? It's about peeling the layers of stuff that we've learned. To get to the root, which has always been there, but it was just kind of buried under all this muck.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so many traditions— I studied Tibetan Buddhism for 8 years. And, you know, one of the sort of basic tenets of that is that you have Buddha nature within you. You're already that. It's that you have these veils, this obscuration that you cannot see that in yourself or in the world around you. Right. So it's not there. I learned a Rumi quote not long ago. And I believe it goes, do not seek for love. Look for all the things that are in the way of it. Right. Because we already are that. This world already is that. And we don't see it that way. So it's not that we're missing things. It's that there's stuff, physical stuff, stuff in our mind, stuff in our on our— in our understanding or perception. Yeah.

So anything that, um, because you have your own story of uncoupling, or stories of uncoupling— I went through my divorce— anything that, based on what you know, when— what you've learned, what your personal experience is, anything that you think is important for our heroines who are going through that journey now that you'd like to share with them, which you think can make a difference for them?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. A couple of things come to mind. One is, you know, it's easy to come out of a relationship and feel like it was a failure or that you were, you know, that I was a failure. And of course, I mean, that was my specialty, right? Is I'm wrong. I'm a failure. I'm bad. You know, and to not go down that, you know, I mean, it takes vigilance to not go down that path or not stay on that path, right? But if you look at your life, as I try to, from the point of view of us being divine beings who came here to have a spiritual and a human experience, then on that level, no matter what happens, you're fulfilling your purpose. You're having an experience. And your job is to be present for it and say, oh my God, this hurts. I'm going to get out. I mean, I'm not saying like suffering, you should stay in suffering, right? It's about maybe being aware and deciding you don't want to live like that or you don't want to be treated like that or whatever. That's a success. That's a growth, right? So, and it's never one thing, you know, can something ever be all bad or all good? You know, so to not throw away what was worthwhile, what was loving, what was kind, what was fun in the midst of trying to get away from the pain, right? To somehow, you know, to allow those to be present, but also to allow them to not have to drag the trauma back with it, right? I mean, can you give yourself a moment of, you know, yeah, that was a fond moment. Without having to either negate it by saying, yeah, but all the rest of it was terrible, or to bury it under there. So I ended, and it was me who made the decision. We'd been working on things, but I decided that a 19-year relationship that I just didn't think we were going to be able to heal it to the point that I wanted. I don't think she wanted either. But anyway, it was really painful. And Both of us were sure that we were going to, you know, live to our deaths together. And then after that, in the years after, I got even wiser. I got smarter. I got more emotionally stable. I figured things out. And I regretted a lot of the things— who I was today that I couldn't be, couldn't bring then— and felt, you know, sort of guilty and bad about that. So you got to let that go, too. You know, it's like we're just— it's all about growing. Maya Angelou says, you know, when you learn better, you do better. And you can't before that, right? So then after that, I was in a relationship that lasted for 7 years. It was— I still don't understand how we very lovingly stayed together for those 7 years because we were— we're good friends today, but we were very incompatible, you know, time, place, personality. Kind to each other, but lousy relationship. But I was still somehow, or I thought I was, really in love. And so when she announced to me that we were done, I grieved in ways that I did not grieve the 19-year-old, because that was a very long process of change and growth and whatever. But one of the things I remember noticing in myself, and in just one of these moments of I had periods. We actually went to a few sessions of couple counseling, which I thought was to help us get back together. I didn't know we didn't have the same agenda. Her agenda was to figure out how to be friends. Well, I didn't know that. Anyway, I go into the session and literally could not keep myself from crying. I cry easily, but I don't usually cry with inability to stop. And it was like intense. Anyway, one day I realized that my biggest sadness was that I was afraid I was never going to be able to love, to open my heart and love to that degree again. So it wasn't even about her. It wasn't even about that relationship at that point, right? It was really about me and about being open-hearted and willing. And when I realized that, the day I realized that, I remember driving out of my driveway going out to my day of errands and just feeling like I was just like, I don't know, like a dandelion fluff of love. And it was just oozing off of me everywhere. Like my heart was just saying like, you can do this. Like you are love and you don't need this person or this relationship or this circumstance to feel that. That was a very powerful moment and awareness.

That's amazing. Yeah, I think, you know, for most people, myself included, um, love is something you do, it's not something you are. And part of it is something you do, um, but A big part of it is also just who we are. And that's still something that I'm wrapping my head around.

Right. We do things lovingly, but we are love.

Yeah. That's a good way to put it. That's a good way to put it.

Which comes from— I don't know who said this. Some very wise person from the past said, we live with sadness, but we needn't live sadly. And so I would say that this is the opposite of that, right? We are love and we can live lovingly.

Beautiful, beautiful. Míche, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story with our heroines. It's been a pleasure to spend this time with you.