You’re the Miracle You’ve Been Waiting For | Purpose After Pain

Hello, heroines! This is Alex. Happy Monday! I hope you had a fabulous weekend, and we are kicking off the week right with Cheyenne Kramer. Cheyenne, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

Oh, it's, it's going to be a blast. I can't wait to hear everything that you have to say. So let's just start off easy. Tell us where you're from and what you do.

Oh, kiddo. Well, I am— home is where we park it. We are full-time RVers, although we are considered residents of Florida. I'm currently parked near Knoxville, Tennessee. So we will probably be here for the summer. And, you know, there's kind of two components to what I do. So on the smaller scale, I call myself the Healer Healing on Purpose Activator, because I'm all about helping people to heal body, mind, and spirit so they can live more fully in their purpose. There's too many people we've met on the road who have big visions of what they feel like they're being called to do, but illness, uh, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, tends to stop a lot of people. So that's my micro part of the business. The macro part is why we're here in Tennessee right now, because we are looking for a place to build micro community, uh, where we can help house people, heal people, and educate people. And we're looking at a place here where we're hoping we might be able to partner with some folks, uh, where we could actually create a small community that could help heal veterans and young men who have aged out of foster care.

Oh, that sounds like what you were talking about, very purposeful work. So how did you get started doing all this?

Goodness, and I, I don't know how far back it actually goes. Um, you know, all the way back to high school, I was very aware, um, you know, I had the opportunity to do a speech as we graduated because I was valedictorian, and I chose to speak about following your heart because so many of my classmates had very well-meaning parents, and including my mom, who all wanted us to go and pick a college to go to and where we were going to make the most money. And I had so many friends who were going off to study what their parents wanted them to study, even though they felt there was something else they should be doing. And I had already lost one friend to suicide at that time. And one of my close classmates, who was one of the ones who— he actually wanted to go into ministry kinds of stuff, and they pushed him into accounting, and he was a great accountant. But 10 years ago, he took his life. So that's where a lot of, of the core kind of started to bubble up for me, is I knew I had a purpose. And here's the funny part, My mom, uh, I love her to pieces, but you know, she was bound and determined that I should go to school to be an electrical engineer. And I chose not to go to school right away. I became a manufacturing apprentice and found out during that apprenticeship that I couldn't figure out electronics for nothing. It would have been a disaster, Mom.

That's awesome. It's, you know, and that's the thing, right? We don't know. It's easy to listen to other people. And when we don't know what we want, it's a lot easier to push back when we have that vision and we have that purpose. So, you know, in the group, we support women that have just gone through heartbreak. How do you— how do we get somebody like our heroines to start tapping into that purpose so that they can really find a new way of being after their situation?

And that's such a great question because, yes, I did go through a divorce very early on, and I'll tell you, The reason that I went through that first marriage was because he had a strong calling and he was trying to pursue it, and I wanted to support that. And, you know, he wanted to be a writer, he was trying to teach himself how to play the guitar, he was really into music, all this kind of stuff. But what I ended up finding out after the fact was that he had some severe mental health issues. And so that was what took me down. I mean, I got to a place where I was giving everything to him. I wasn't taking care of myself. Um, I, I got to a place of being extremely depressed and actually quite self-destructive at the time. And it wasn't until I got quite ill, um, and basically went back home so my mother could kind of take care of me. That she's like, you need to do something different. I'm like, yeah, you're right. So, you know, so even then, that was my calling. That was the whole thing, was I wanted to support him so he could live in the purpose he felt he was being called to. The tough part was that I didn't understand that sacrificing myself to do that did not make any sense. So I think, you know, for a lot of people and a lot of women I've met, oh my goodness, they've been in marriages where they feel like they've sacrificed themselves. And learning, discovering more about a purpose or a calling or a mission for your life, I think is so critical. Now, mine, unfortunately, I went through that difficult learning experience. It says You can't force people to change. You can only assist those who are ready to change. That was the big lesson for me at that point in time. But, but, you know, I think when people start to really get clear about a purpose or a mission for themselves, they're much more likely to attract a mate with a similar purpose. And that's really what happened. And it didn't take long for me. I was on the right track. I just wasn't doing for me what I needed to do. And, you know, I've now been married 42 years. And, you know, we are, you know, we are on this mission together. And some parts of it we didn't even discover until way down the path. It was, it was really interesting how a lot of that unfolded. But, you know, there's, there's so much power in finding that purpose.

So I love that, by the way. And I'm curious, how do you define purpose? Because I've heard, you know, purpose has to be this big, grand old thing that drives you and moves you forward. But I've also heard other people say purpose can just be how you show up every day for other people. So where do you, where do you stand on that?

It, it can— it definitely is a broad spectrum. I actually created a class out of my many layoff experiences called Find Your Song and Sing It: Finding or Creating Work You Love. And so in that class, I've always told people there were 4 main questions that could help people to be able to tune into where their purpose lies. Some of them are kind of grandiose. Some of them are not. And then there was always 3 ways that I would share with people on ways that they could create their own situation to be able to share what that purpose was. And, you know, I have no problem sharing these things if, if that's of interest.

I, I think that would definitely be of interest because I was going to ask you anyways to put the link in the comments, so If you're willing to share right now, absolutely.

For sure. And I will definitely put my website in the comments because there is, there is a link on my website that people can go to a free introductory video on YouTube for that class and kind of give them a bigger picture of it. But basically the 4 questions that I've told people they need to answer for themselves. The first one, it's always interesting to see where people go with it because I always say if you had a closet full of money that was never going to run out, what would you do with your time? And far too many adults give you the deer-in-the-headlights look. So, you know, the only thing people can say is, well, I travel. I'm like, well, that tells us that we have a burnt-out society that wants more vacation time, but it doesn't tell us much about you. So the next 3 questions are more about you. And so, um, the second one is Um, you know, what kind of challenges have you been through in your life where you have come through the other side with some kind of wisdom, knowledge, experience that perhaps you should be sharing with other people? And, you know, just like you're talking about, you know, women going through divorce— well, once they've gone through that, is there something out there that they can be sharing with other people? And, you know, maybe it is just a way of being, like you suggested, um, to be supportive of other women going going through the divorce situation. Um, but what if there's something more to it? What if, you know, for, for me, again, a lot of suicides have happened in my life, so that I've been wanting to help with that emotional health piece, which I now actually am certified to do a trauma release kind of healing session, which is, is core to my being. I absolutely love being able to do that. But, you know, I believe we go through our challenges for a reason, and that for a lot of people, that reason may be so they can pay it forward to help somebody else. So that's, that's a big question. The second question is a little less, you know, heavy duty. What kinds of projects, what kind of hobbies do you love doing? Maybe you should be teaching somebody else how to do those things, or maybe it's just creating you know, afghans or quilts or something that you're sharing with other people. I mean, all of those things can be linked to passion, purpose, mission. And then the fourth one, which is kind of a catch-all— if you can't come up with any real good answers for the other one, then I, I, I wonder about you just a bit if you can't come up with something for the fourth one. Because the fourth one is, what around you, as you look around you, makes you feel extremely angry or extremely sad, because those things, those emotions are linked to passion. And so if you, if you're really having an emotional response to something you see around you, there is a good chance there's something that you could be doing to be part of a solution around that. And that could be a very powerful mission.

I love that. And it's funny because I know I've asked myself probably 3 of the 4.

Okay.

As I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do coming out of my divorce, I knew that I would end up coaching, um, although I didn't find that out until later in, you know, after my divorce. Um, but it's not until recently that I finally realized who I wanted to talk to because It was part of my journey, right? And when I got to that point of figuring out what my mission was, it's like my world went from this to this.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

It's, it's amazing. So I wanted to go back to what you said too before about women giving everything, because I think that is definitely symptomatic of how society expects women to show up. Society in general, I believe, expects women to show up for everyone but never for themselves. So how do you make that transition between always giving to allowing yourself to give to yourself and to receive from others.

And that's, that's even, uh, maybe even a bigger one because, yeah, so many of us, we give, we give, we give, we give, and we just, we forget. If we knew, I'm sure we knew at some point in time, but we forget how to receive. And, you know, I think even, um, you know, depending on somebody's spiritual beliefs, you know, people will say all the time it's better to give than to receive. So we kind of get this program programming going on in us that, you know, that we have to just keep giving. And unfortunately for a lot of us, it takes either some kind of major illness to stop us in our tracks and go, oh, I guess I forgot to take care of me, um, some kind of a breakdown of some sort, um, or I'll tell you some of the things that have hit me, and this has actually been in more recent years, um, has has been finding yourself— and I saw a video online that was just so incredible recently about this— but finding myself in the space of people who told me they wanted to work with us, told me they wanted to build community, and yet they— I ended up finding out that they were some of the most narcissistic people I've ever met in my life. And this video I saw the other day said You might be shocked as to why these people show up in your life. And it's why I had to watch the video. And it was really interesting because in it, it talked about how being in a space where somebody is really self-centered, not appreciating you, it, it can often trigger something within you that all of a sudden you're ready to fight and say, no, I have value, I am worth something, and I deserve to receive a little bit of of understanding of what my value is. So that was a, that was a really interesting video for me to see because sometimes these really negative people will show up to almost like back you into the corner so that you come out fighting and go, no, I deserve better than this. And, you know, that's, that's a huge, huge key. A huge key.

Yeah, they almost become your wake-up call.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And I can tell you, some of these people were that for me.

I've had my share also. So, um, I'm just trying to think, is there anything else that, um, you think is important to share with regards to purpose that we haven't talked about yet?

Well, one of the main philosophies my husband and I work with is that we all have one if we're here. And I love to talk about the concept of super puzzle. And I say, you know, if, if in fact what I believe is true and we were all born with a piece of a super puzzle that if we were creating that and snapping it together with other people who were creating pieces of a super puzzle, we would currently be living on a planet with plenty of health, plenty of prosperity, and peace for everyone. And the fact that we're looking around and not seeing as much of that as we would like tells me that there's probably too many people sitting on their puzzle piece. And so our message is heavily about let's stop waiting for— I don't care whether it's a politician, whether you're waiting on Jesus, let's just stop waiting and realize that you are the miracle we're waiting for. If we get up and just start figuring out why are we here, what are we here to create, and how does it connect with all these other people? To create our own version of heaven on earth. That's what I'm here to promote.

And this really lands for me with the caveat that I think one of the reasons why this is not happening is because there are a lot of people who are trauma survivors and who have not done the work of healing because you can't I believe, maybe wrongly, that you can't serve your purpose from a place of pain. You can only serve your purpose from a place of healing. You can use your pain, right, or your past pain as a motivator, but you can do the— only do the work from a place where you're healed.

And, you know, I think, I think as long as you're in a healing process, because I'll tell you just a quick story. I mean, it was only 15 years ago, and my husband and I lost everything. We— he, he was going through some health challenges, had to give up his business. We tried to sell it, we did it in a bad way. Um, we were not prepared financially for what ended up happening after that, and we lost everything, uh, and ended up sharing an apartment with our youngest son, uh, because basically he wasn't going to let us end up in the streets. And that It was a huge trauma, as I'm sure you can imagine. Um, but part of our healing process actually ended up surprising us because there was a number of things we did as we went and got caught in the systems out here that they tell us were designed to help us to— in a recovery process. But the part that upset us was that it had us trapped, and it was like hard to get out of these systems and back moving on our feet again. And so we ended up, um, we ended up doing a number of very interesting things as part of the healing process. One of the first things we did was, because, you know, my husband was a very successful entrepreneur, and if he hadn't had the, the health challenges, he'd probably still be doing it today, but We ended up being invited to work with a group of at-risk teens. These were kids who were already on probation, dropping out of school. They were, you know, in all kinds of challenges. And we ended up doing a young entrepreneur program with them and showing them what was possible for them, which in turn helped to give us hope again. That we could rebuild and do things. So with them, they created their own basketball tournament, their own flea market, and their own community cookout, and they took home all the money they made. So if we hadn't been doing things like that shortly after the trauma, it would have been a lot harder for us to kind of find our footing again. Just a thought.

Yeah, no, agreed. And as I'm listening to you, I made it very black and white, right? Whereas we know life is all shades of gray. So it's not as— in my mind it sounded really clear-cut, but as I'm listening to you, I can see that part of the journey is doing through the healing. Right. That's— and if we wait until we're all healed before we move, then maybe we wait too long.

Very possible. Very possible. Because as we do help others, you know, because that gave us some of our confidence back, right? It's like, oh wow, we just helped all of those really challenged kids to learn enough about entrepreneurship that they made some of their own money. I guess we still have the ability to go out here and do something of value.

Totally, totally agree. Totally can see that. Thank you for sharing that perspective. And thank you so much for being here, Cheyenne. I really, really appreciate everything that you shared with us.