#98 | Mindful Parenting with Courage: Ally Guidance for LGBTQ Families

Welcome back to Just Breathe. I am really happy you are here today, that you have chosen just to spend a little time, whether you are on a walk or getting some chores done or just taking a few moments for yourself. Welcome. I'm really happy you are here. And I'm really happy to share today's interview with you with someone who is absolutely certain to just make you feel super calm and give you some really, really wise insight, um, and certainly some things that you will walk away thinking, hmm, I'd like to, I'd like to try that out. I certainly had a, a fantastic time interviewing her and talking with her and learning so much from her as well. So just to give you a little background on today's wonderful guest, Modern Anne Webster is a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in the integration of Eastern and Western philosophies for mental health. For over 20 years, she has empowered clients to connect with themselves and others through mindfulness and psychotherapy interventions. She applies her profound understanding of the importance of open communication as her successful private practice in Napa, California. Her first book, The Stressless Brain, makes a scientific argument for the positive influence meditation has on the psyche. She is currently working on her second book. In addition to releasing over 60 meditation singles, Modern Anne maintains international outreach by appearing on podcasts and holding meditation workshops. I am really, really thrilled to bring this conversation to you today, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Welcome to Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen, the podcast transforming the conversation around loving and raising an LGBTQ child. My name is Heather Hester, and I am so grateful you are here. I want you to take a deep breath and know that for the time we are together, you are in the safety of the Just Breathe nest. Whether today's show is an amazing guest, or me sharing stories, resources, strategies, or lessons I've learned along our journey, I want you to feel like we're just hanging out at a coffee shop having a cozy chat. Most of all, I want you to remember that wherever you are on this journey right now, in this moment in time, you are not alone.

Welcome back to Just Breathe. I'm so happy you all are here, and I'm really, really happy for this conversation that I get to have with Madhu Nann. And it is just going to be fascinating, I think, for all of us, especially those who are curious about meditation and the psychology behind it and how all of this works. So welcome, welcome to the show. I'm so happy you're here.

Thank you, Heather Hester. It's great to be here.

So I'd love to start out just kind of with a broad, broad question of, you know, who are you and how did you get into this really, really unique work?

So I'm a psychotherapist of about 22 years and I live in Northern California, Napa County, and I love working with people. And I actually, interestingly enough, I was in international business marketing when I first was in college many years ago. I was studying Japanese. I spoke fluent German and English, and I just kind of decided it wasn't for me. And so, like, 2 years in, I switched majors and completely went a completely different direction. And it really was around— I really love helping people and supporting people and holding that space. And I've been on a journey of doing that ever since. I'm a mother and wife of 28 years, mother of 2 sons, 18 and 20.

The good ages.

Every age has, has a blessing and a thorn.

Yes, it is very, very true. Yes, I say that, you know, having teenagers as well and thinking, Heather, so amazing, and they also are just a different level of awesome learning.

Yes.

For sure.

They're my greatest teacher.

Oh my goodness. I could not agree more. And I, I think that's such a gift to be able to actually look at them that way, right? Because I don't know, I mean, I'm— you maybe did, but I didn't always look at it that way. And now that I do, I'm like, gosh, this is so fascinating. Like, I'm always just kind of fascinated by the way their brains work and how they come up with these thoughts that they have.

And oh, for sure. I remember when my older son was 4 and saying something super wise and deep and being like, I knew my children were going to surpass me, but age 4? Really? Like, I'm gonna have to like step up my game.

That's right, exactly. Oh my goodness. Yes. That I love that happens all the time with my, both of my daughters. I mean, all of my kids really, but like they too, like recently have said things and have done things that I've been like, oh, they have so far surpassed me and like emotional intelligence and just the way that they understand things. I was, I mean, light years away from that when I was their age. So I always think, oh, this is like so great that you are entering the real world like this, you know. I'm just so happy. Um, so it is kind of wonderful and fascinating. So the—

my one—

I had so many questions about meditation because I am— I do love to meditate, and I'm always kind of playing with different— whether it's different modalities, or do I sit in a chair, do I sit on the floor, do I, you know, am I supposed to have thoughts, am I not supposed to have thoughts, is it, you know, all these different questions. And, and you do a very specific and teach a very specific kind of meditation, which is from Kundalini Yoga, and then that transfers or translates into the meditation. So I'd love if you could talk about that a little bit because I think that's so interesting.

Yeah, so Kundalini yoga and meditation has been very active in the world, if you will, for about 52 years. And it does come out of an organized religion/cult-like. I mean, anytime you kind of get a group of people, it can get a little narrow-minded and you get culture involved and egos and, and control. And yet the idea of the word Kundalini has to do— means awakening, aware, awareness. And actually Carl Jung and other philosophers brought the concept of Kundalini energy to the West in, in many, many years, even before this organization grew, is the technique as well. And what I really love is that there is, there's a couple of things I'm gonna tie in some mental health stuff, and that, you know, a lot of people have anxiety and stress. And, and let's say you don't have anxiety and stuff. Let's say you have a lot of some like functioning depression, which means that you go to work and you go home and you have a family, but you worry a lot. And that can be like anxiety and depression. And what I love about breath and chanting meditation and movement meditation is that it gives your mind something to do while you're going into that process of self-awareness and mindfulness. For many people with mental health issues, which all of us have to some level, if it's a 1 or a 10, we all have, we're on that trajectory or that, you know, space. And what I love about chanting and breath and movement is that it gives your mind something to do. So you kind of get your neuroses out of the way to be able to connect to the concept and the feeling of being in centeredness.

Oh, I love that. Which really, that's one of the biggest things that people who are like, oh, I know meditation would be great, but I can't get my mind to be quiet, I can't, I can't be still, right? Like whether it's mentally or physically. So this is a really great form of meditation for someone like that. And really anybody, right?

It is anybody. I mean, if, if you break it all down, I believe that prayer in, in different religions were— was the original meditation. So being in your synagogue or in your church or in your community center and reading from a holy scripture as, as a whole congregation out loud, that is a form of meditation. You're tuning into a frequency altogether, and that naturally relaxes us. There's actually science scientific research that shows that when you chant or read scriptures or do out loud affirmations or even talk in tongues and do all that kind of more stranger meditation stuff, it actually activates a certain part of the brain, which is the top part of the brain, which is the partial— the upper partial part of the brain, and it increases more white matter. And science research has found that white matter helps us to emotionally process what we're going through in that moment. So when you're having a really hard time, I tell people meditation doesn't have to be like this quiet serenity space with an altar and quietness and the perfect sitting stool or blanket. No. Sometimes it might be you doing dishes and reciting a prayer or a poem out loud. It might be singing a hymn or a chant. I find that our brains are so incredibly powerful. We're able to do multiple things at once. We can drive from work and in our heads and all upset, and we don't even know how we got home because we're so preoccupied with our thoughts. So if you throw in chanting out loud or singing a prayer, even this, like, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Like, it seems so simple and maybe even silly or religious. But it's that idea of when your mind is in like a cycle of just like, and then this happened, and then this happened, this always, and it never. When you bring in that frequency, it's like a little bit of a bleep. And then you do enough of the bleeps, your brain starts to rewire how you're processing your trauma drama in the moment.

Oh, that's so cool. So it's like a pattern interrupt. Really?

Right.

So it really could be, I mean, whatever, like find what works for you.

Yeah. 100%. And I actually have a very cute story that I share quite frequently when I was driving in the car and those, you know, the parents listening, when you have your kids in the back and they're having a complete meltdown and you're driving, you're just like, I just got to get home. I just got to get home. And my oldest son's having a meltdown. He's screaming, he's yelling. He's probably trying to hit his brother simultaneously. Who's across on the other end of this seat in his car seat. And I'm just like, I'm trying to convince him, like, just, you know, like, stop, you know, stop crying. I'm saying, look outside, look at the tree. I'm like, I'm trying to distract him. Nothing's working. And I can just feel this, like, anxiousness starting to rise in my body. And I just started chanting out loud. And I was just like, I was just chanting. There's an old chant, a Sikh prayer, which is Guru Guru Waheguru Ram Das Guru. And I'm just chanting out loud. And my son's like, stop chanting. What are you chanting? And I said, I'm chanting for myself to calm down. And it goes totally silent in the car. And he goes, Mama, will you chant for me too? And so it's that piece of— it's like you said, it's interrupting a pattern and it allows us to go in that frequency because being a parent It's tough. Like, we have so many things happening. And nowadays, like, the pressure to be this perfect parent for our children, all the responsibility to raise these healthy, whole individuals is so tough. Like, it's overwhelming. Like, no one's perfect. And so by doing something like that, you can interrupt the the like locked in space that we get in our thoughts, with our partner, with our children, with our parents, with our neighbor, with our coworker. And it's that simple thing. And it's silly. And at first when people do it, they're gonna be like, oh my God, this feels weird. But it does work.

That's, I mean, you can, I, now that you're saying it, like just like this, I can totally see how that works. And just the other thing that I know happens for me, and I imagine happens for a lot of people, is that when you are in that space of like, like your example, where you feel yourself like getting more and more anxious, like you feel that, and you, if that continues, you eventually get to a place where everything just kind of goes blank, right? So you completely lose all self-awareness, all like awareness. And so being able to do that, like, also kind of reconnects you with self. And that's so huge, right?

I mean, you know, part of parenting is children want connection. They always— and as a child develops, they pull more and more away, which is appropriate. But what happens is it is our job as parents to keep holding that space. And I tell parents, I do a lot of parenting support, and there's 5 basic needs that every child needs, which is to feel heard, to feel seen, to have boundaries, to have unconditional love, and to feel safe. Those are the 5 basics. I mean, like, they're big, but those are the things a child needs, and none of us get all of them.

Now.

And so part of it is like the boundary piece and, and the meditation piece. It's that piece of who am I and who is my child. And when they're little, we're in like the same orbit. And as they grow and develop, they have to come out of— they have to start creating their own orbit. And then they sometimes don't want to, you know, like they have unconscious and conscious reactivity to building their own orbit, and or the parent has unconscious and conscious reactivity of the child pulling away, finding their own identity, or, you know, their own voice or whatever it is. And so there is that piece of meditation and chanting and breathwork and doing that mindful practice every day, even 3 minutes. Research has found that 3 minutes of meditation lowers your blood pressure. So it is meaningful. You don't have to do an hour, you don't have to do 20 minutes, It could be 3 minutes, it could be 1 minute, right? And, and so it's just a piece of, you know, life is like, you know, that saying, the one constant in life is change, right? So meditation brings us to our, you know, the source within us, our self, our capital S self, and it allows us to navigate the changes at least easier. Doesn't always fix it, makes it just a little, little bit easier, which is can be a lot sometimes.

It really can. Oh my goodness. And I think just that helping to reconnect, reconnect, right, and get kind of grounded and be like, okay, this is what's going on, instead of like floating and frenetic and— right. Um, and I think, you know, going back just a little bit, what I, I love those the 5. And I know for me personally, the boundaries was the most difficult. And a big reason is because I never learned what boundaries were. I never learned how to set them. And so I was kind of learning at the same time I was teaching my kids. And I was also like, I, you know, what I was taught was that we're here to essentially like program our kids and put them into the world, right? Well, you know, that isn't— we all know that now. But if you're trying to do that, like the whole— that kind of blows up everything else, right? And so you're feeling like all this panic and stress because your child is doing what they're supposed to be doing by like doing the separation and trying to like create their own orbit. I love that visual, thank you. And, and just kind of step into their own. And if we don't have a good understanding of boundaries and we don't have a good understanding of what our purpose is as a parent, then that's really hard to give them the space to be able to do that and to know what they're doing.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, interesting. We, we actually all have two boundaries, and this comes out of the work of Terry Real Relational Life Therapy, which is a couples technique, but I do it with my family therapy as well, with parents and children and adult children and parents. And it's like an orange peel. So the orange peel has the orange part on the outside and that has the white peel on the inside. Those are two boundaries. And we all humans have two boundaries. We have the inner one and then we have an outer one. And so the outer boundary, which is what most of us talk about in our culture, which is you're standing too close to me, or you're impacting me, or you don't, you know, I don't want to go, or I don't want to be with you. These are all these external boundaries, which an external boundary is us protecting ourselves from the world. An internal boundary is us protecting the world from our stuff. Oh, so, so if you think about parenting, is it is our responsibility as best as we can. I mean, it does go through our DNA to some extent. That's another whole conversation. But it's keeping our neuroses and not dumping them on our children. And that is an internal boundary. An external boundary would be the, you know, maybe an external boundary is like, and they can go up and down. They don't have to always be up, but boundaries are not always, you don't want to always, if you have your boundaries up all the time, you'd be alone.

Right.

You have to know, you got to learn how to like, oh, my internal boundary is up, but my outside boundary is down. I want to engage, but I'm going to, you know, I'm going to hold like, like with, you know, I'm in a bad mood and my child wants a hug. If I have both boundaries up, then that child's going to feel abandoned. They're going to feel like you're not there for them. They're going to feel like they don't understand. They're going to wonder, like, what did I do? If not, depending on the age of the child. But sometimes you might have to lower your outside boundary, which is you're allowing the child to step in because you're their boundary to some extent. You're their security, but you're holding an internal boundary that you're not dumping your energy or, oh my God, did you know what your dad did or your mom did or what grandma did? You're holding that in, that you don't put that on your child. So that would be outside boundary down, inside boundary up. But let's say you're with your partner and you're having a hard conversation. You want them a little bit down, but also up when they're— if they're reactive, you got to put your boundary up, but still have your inner down so that you can still be vulnerable and connect. I mean, it's complicated.

It is complicated. But I think it's one of those things that is so good to know and to understand because I mean, just like everything, once you understand it and you can conceptualize it, then you can actually do it and not successfully all the time, but at least, right? Like, yeah, no. And I mean, I think it's, it's, there are tools that are available to you, right? So if you don't know that they're there, or if you don't know what you're feeling, right? You might be feeling all these things and like having it, you know, just an innate feeling that, oh, I should be doing this, I shouldn't be doing this, but not really understanding why or what to do, what to change it. Correct.

No, this is not healthy, but I just don't know what else to do. And you may not even know that intellectually or cognitively, it's just a feeling, right?

Yeah. It's a lot of that, like, I feel it here, or I feel it, you know, in the gut, and you're like, I just can't articulate it. And so, so very helpful. Now you have your second edition of your first book, Stressful— The Stressful Brain.

Stressless Brain. Stressless Brain.

We want it to be stressless, not stressful. We're going to take the stress out of the brain. Okay. The second edition is coming very, very soon. Do you talk about this? And is this part of— okay.

I don't talk about the boundary piece or the 5 basic needs of a child. That will come in another book that maybe in a year or two. I kind of have a few in the lineup that I love. My goal is to write a book a year for 10 years. By the time I'm 60, my goal is to write 10 books. So I'm about 1.5 down, so, or 1.5 in.

That's impressive.

So that's my goal. But the book, The Stressless Brain, does have the meditation. It has all the psychology and meditation philosophy in there. It also comes with 26 downloadable meditation tracks that comes free with the book, plus instructions. And I really talk about how the difference between stress and anxiety, and that, that they are normal to some extent. The problem is, our culture has gotten to a place that it's really normal to hear people say like, how are you? Oh my god, I'm so stressed. Oh, I'm so stressed too. You want to go get a cup of coffee? And it's like, but it's like, well, what does that mean? Or I'm just so anxious. And so the book really talks about the difference between them and how some is some is normal and some becomes unhealthy. Right.

Could you just add to that, like, just a really high level a little bit? Because I think that is something that is so common. I mean, you totally hit the nail on the head there, where it is— it's like one of those things that we used to say, I'm fine, or I'm busy. I'm busy is such a big one, right? Well, what does busy mean? So I think stress is another one, like, I'm so stressed. Well, a lot of times I'll like say that and then I'll be like, well, actually I'm not. Why am I saying that?

Right? I mean, I mean, I mean, that's not me. I can analyze that, right? Not you necessarily, but just our culture. And I think that there's, I think that people saying I'm so stressed, it is another way of saying I'm so busy. I have so much going on. And it gives an underlying, it's a message. I'm important. Unfortunately, I think that if you break it, if you kind of like break it down, break it down, come to the core, it is a sense of a certain sense of I must be important if I'm so busy. And then if I'm so busy, then I'm stressed. The big thing to think about with stress is stress is part of life, we can't avoid it. So the difference is when it's healthy stress versus it becomes a toxic stress that turns into anxiety, is that when you're stressed about something, and the something happens, and your stress does not go away. So let's say you're giving a speech at work, or let's say you're in a play, or let's say you're gonna propose to your partner, or let's say you have this event happening, you're preparing for it, you're thinking it's appropriate to be nervous, it's appropriate to be a little stressed, like, how's it going to work out? Am I going to say the right thing? Am I gonna— do I understand what I'm saying? Or what are they going to think? That's normal to some extent. When the event happens, and you open your mouth and you're in 5 minutes into it, the stress should be going down every handful of 5 minutes. And when you're done with it, the stress should be gone. That is healthy stress. Because it's anticipation, we just don't know what, what it's going to be like, and we want to do a good job, or we want it to work out. Unhealthy stress, when it starts becoming more of anxiety, which is toxic stress, is when we're worried about something, the event happens, and we're still worried.

So does that translate into something else then? Like, does that—

because if the event is over, it becomes anxiety. It means— I mean, there's plenty of people who live in a constant state of anxiety. It's almost like one thing ends and they're like, oh my God, okay, oh my God, oh yay, my kid graduated, you know, from middle school, or, you know, oh my God, now there's high school. It's like instantly, like, they just go and they're always in that state of worry, worry, worry, worry. That is one kind of stress and anxiety. And that's the piece where some people unconsciously feel and think, worrying means that I am taking care of things, that I'm going to get in front of it, that I can anticipate what's going to happen. But what happens physiologically, what happens in our body and our brain, is our amygdala, our adrenals, our glandular system are in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze, and fix. We're constantly like Do I run? Do I stay? Do I fix it? Do I freeze? Maybe they don't notice me. And when we do that, we— it, you know, like tons— all health problems, most health problems, not all, but most health problems come from that state. There's a really great documentary on— you can go— I think it's on YouTube, or you can Google it— called Stress by National Geographic. I actually mentioned this research. It's a professor from Stanford, and he talks about how stress affects stress. So this is a little tip for our listeners. If you have a really stressful experience, and you have that cortisol release in your body, and the best thing to do is to walk or dance. So if you can't leave the house or the office, and you can't go for a 20-minute, 40-minute walk, because there's— they've— he found in the research is that whole motion of walking is that you're actually releasing the cortisol out of your body. And we don't store it. So a good negative example is, oh my God, I'm late for work. I got another red light. Oh my God, I have a presentation at work. Oh my God, another red light. So all that cortisol is pumping. Your amygdala does not know that this is not danger. It's just stress. It's It's not danger, but your amygdala thinks, "We're being attacked by a cyber tooth tiger. Oh my God, fight, flight, freeze, fix, fight, flight, freeze." You get to work and what do you do? You sit down in your desk for 8 hours and all that cortisol goes to your stomach, goes to your hips, goes into your organs. And then you do repeat, "Oh my God, I'm late to get home for work. Oh my God, my kids, I gotta pick up my kid at the school." Here we are again.

Right.

So if you can't do the walk, go in your office, go in the bathroom, close the door, put on some music and shake your whole body. Shake, shake, shake. It helps to release the cortisol. Good. Have a good old dance party by yourself.

That is awesome. That is really, really great advice. First of all, because we've all been there.

I mean, all of us, me included. Yes.

I mean, it's just kind of part of being human, right? I'm wondering how much of this response, like the using stress as kind of a, almost a coping technique or, or letting it, allowing it to get to that toxic and then anxiety stage. How much of that originally started as also a coping technique. Like, and what I'm thinking is, like, if you were in situations where to, in your mind, survive, you needed to, like, know what all the potential outcomes of whatever situation were going to be.

Sure. Um, I mean, I mean, this is when we can kind of get into a little bit, unfortunately, how our ancestors impact us. I mean, there's one study I read, or research paper, many years ago that says that when the mother is pregnant and she's under a tremendous amount of stress, she's not only taxing her own adrenal, she's taxing the adrenal of her unborn child in her, in her belly. So the baby comes out already at a deficit. And not that— again, no shaming out there, please don't take it on. We all— it just happens. It's— there's a book called It Didn't Start With You, which talks about how our trauma drama is passed through our DNA. And there's another research study I actually read recently that found that grandchildren of grandparents who were in concentration camps in Germany had the same digestive problems as their grandparents who were born and raised in New York City with normal diets. So part of it is in our— it's in our DNA, a certain like if we have a disposition to depression or anxiety. Now, the good news— I don't want to leave it all on the bad news— the good news is we can change it. We can change it through our diet. We can change it through supplements. We can change it through meditation. We can change it through exercise. We can change it through doing our own mental health work, because that supports— like, I tell adult parents that are adults in my office, you working on yourself is going to benefit your children, even if they're 30. Because when they see you shifting in your, your, your anxious approach, or your depressive approach, or your anger approach, or whatever your disposition might be, you create a change inside of you, and that has a ripple effect into your family.

Yeah, it does.

And even when I have children whose parents won't go to therapy or won't work on themselves, adult children, it's like, you doing the work— not that it's your responsibility necessarily, but doing the work does have benefits.

Oh my goodness, it absolutely does. It absolutely does. Well, even like you mentioned earlier, doing that, if you can, 20-minute walk, right? I love the idea of a dance party. I mean, who isn't up for a dance party? Even in your car. I was saying this to somebody earlier. Like, if you love music and you're in that space, like, flip on your favorite, you know, pull up your Spotify playlist and car dance and sing. And who cares who sees you, right?

100%. And that is going to help. Will it fix everything? No, but it does make a huge difference. And it's not about— there's a great— I often— I said this to a client many weeks ago. I said, it's not the finish line, it's the journey there. The finish line is our last breath. Not to be morbid. Our finish line is when we die. It's all about the journey there. There's a great quote. I can't remember who said it, but I love it. It's not the life you live, it's the courage you bring to it.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, that is a really good one. It's so true. I mean, it's gonna be messy. That's what I say all the time. It's just all— it's all messy, but it's beautiful. There's— it's both, right? I mean, it's just— it is both. And we, we are all works in progress, so, you know, it's never too late to to start working on yourself, to start trying some of these things and seeing what works for you and what you connect with and what just, holy cow. Yeah. One step at a time. Yeah. I want to shift a little bit here because we were talking before we started recording and I just want to touch on this question, but this is something that I was asked recently and, you know, we'll kind of touch on down the road a bit. But talking about— it's talking about trauma and then grief. So in this specific question was handling and processing the grief that comes when you come out after a loved one, whether it's a parent, grandparent, has passed away and how to deal with that, you know, not either not being able to tell them or having waited to to, you know, come out until after the, you know, why that happened, right? So how does one kind of— and it goes into like the bigger overarching, like, how do we process grief? But I think that is a very specific scenario that would be, you know, speak to my audience for sure.

Well, there's a couple things. One is there's a great saying that I also share that got the concept from Gabor Maté's work, which is, it's not what happens to you, it's how you make sense of it. So in that concept of how you make sense of it, so when a person chooses to not tell a parent about your identity or your grandparent, there's one that's like the logistics of it. What's hurting us is how we make sense of us choosing to not share or choosing to wait. What meaning are you giving that, what you chose to do? And that the meaning that you give yourself, why I did something or didn't do something, that's going to be more of the tug. I call them hooks. That might be more of a pulling and stuck feeling that maybe I wait to tell my grandparents until they pass. And now I come out and I just— I still don't feel like a sense of relief. And that's when we want to look at, well, what's the meaning I'm still holding that I give to this choice I made? Not about good or bad, right or wrong. Not talking about that. We're talking about the meaning each individual person gives to the choices you make. Now, we don't always know that cognitively. We don't always No, well, I know I did this because of this. That's where spending some time to really sit with, wow, I'm still feeling hurt, pain, anger, confusion in this choice I made or didn't make. What meaning am I giving it that's allowing me or holding me stuck in the journey of why of doing it?

I love that. That's such a great question. That's a question that you can ask yourself. Like, you don't need someone to—

no, you ask yourself. Yeah, you can go journal, you go for a walk, and you ask it multiple times. If you're still holding it, then you say again, what meaning am I giving it now that keeps me from letting go?

Right.

Oh, that is so great. That is something that we all can do. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And grief has multiple, multiple steps. And grief is not linear. It's all over the place. So the steps are in no— and this is the order they are, but you go in and out of different ones. So it's shock and denial. Anger, sadness, depression, acceptance. And then you throw in there, every once in a while, you throw in there wishful thinking, numbing. And we bounce around, like one moment we're angry, and anger can— there's lots of different kinds of anger. And then we're just in denial. Well, I'm just not gonna think about it. And then we're just like— and then 3 days later, 3 weeks later, we're just kind of sad. I wonder why I'm feeling melancholy. I wonder— well, okay, come back to like, there's something I'm processing and I'm still— and we're working towards acceptance. And there's a great sharing from the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It's very good. And he talks about that one of the things that I'm paraphrasing, just this, I'll be writing about this in my next book, hopefully comes out in December. That part of how we get out of anger and sadness and shock and denial, part of what gets us out is the idea of wonder. I wonder what it would feel like, be like if I wasn't feeling sad, depressed, angry. I wonder, I wonder what my life would be like if I wasn't holding on to this. I wonder what my life would transform if I were to grieve the loss of X, whatever that is? When you can start wondering, it opens up a space for new growth to happen. But as long as the wondering is closed, you're more likely to unconsciously or consciously be bouncing around these other steps.

That makes so much sense. And I love too that this is something that you can really process, like take upon yourself to process, right? And if you need the help of a professional therapist, then absolutely, right? But it's something that you can spend time journaling, or you can, you know, walk and just kind of let it— but opening up that, I mean, that makes so much sense to just open. That's like the idea of parallel to just being curious, right? Um, which I, I use a lot. So that— I had forgotten I read that book 100 years ago, it feels like. Yeah, that's such— it's so good.

I had to do it in, in like stages because it is heavy. It is. So I had to like do it and then take a little break, read something else, and then read it and then take a little break.

And yeah, I think it's one of those books that if you kind of have to have a little life under your belt to read, because if you read it too young, it doesn't make any sense, or you miss a lot of, a lot of it, right?

Yeah.

Oh my goodness. So I have just— I'm trying to decide here. I have a couple more questions, and maybe we'll touch on this one because I think it'll be a good parallel to my audience. So it's a little bit about trauma, talking about trauma and when, when is good to acknowledge it, to work on it. And when we shouldn't do that, when it— when, how do we know when it's not the right time? Yeah.

Well, I'll start with the latter. I think it's not the right time when you have, when you have something that you're really trying, like you're in college, or you're really trying to get through college, then you want to be able to say, okay, I'm going to work on this when I'm not so focused on something, or let's say you're trying, you're focusing on something else. When we unpack trauma and we have other things going on simultaneously, it can feel like Pandora's box, and we can feel a sense of we're treading water in our life, which can bring us into depression. Or we can feel like nothing ever works out for me, and we can get into that mindset. And I also think that, and I say this very gingerly, gently, is when you're younger, like when you're from birth until 30, your brain is not fully developed. And so the idea of self-awareness, I mean, it— you have it, but who I was— that we were talking about earlier, who I was at 20 is not the same person I was when I was 30 or 40 or now in my 50s. Like, it's not the same. And it's not about better or worse. It's different. And, and that's the part of when you're in your teens and your 20s, it's really about cultivating experiences. You are a sponge and your brain is developing so much. They say that you can learn the most in these ages. But then when you're older, you have the ability to reflect a little bit different because you have more experience. So when you're younger, you're really gathering information and experiences. So that's one. Second is how to do our trauma. Part of it again comes to that concept I was sharing earlier. It's not what happens to us, it's how we make sense of it. So when you have— let's say you have two siblings and yourself in a family and there is a traumatic or dramatic experience in the family system, all three of the children are going to have a different kind of trauma or pain. And one is not better or worse than the other. They're just different. And so part of it is when you want to do some work, there's lots of books out there that can kind of guide you through, but it's really coming to the idea of what are the parts that come up in me when I think about this trauma, because that will be an example of how you've made sense of it. I'm not enough. I'm too much. Things never work out for me. I never get what I want. People don't see me. I'm never understood. Like all of those always and nevers, those are— that's our hooks. Right. And it's being able to really sit with that and give yourself time. Set up a time. Maybe it's weekly that you're going to reflect on it. And then you're going to say, like, okay, I'm going back to my life. And it sounds kind of corny, but you say, like, whatever. Like, is it the inner parts work? Like, hey, my 4-year-old self, I love you. I'm going to be back. And then The next week on that dot, you got to be back. It's really important because that's building internal trust inside of ourselves. And that is when healing— that's when the click, click, click shifts into that shifting of healing. And remember wonder so we can get to acceptance.

Exactly.

Exactly. And interesting. Interesting the parallel between processing grief and processing trauma. I mean, yeah, they are intertwined for sure, but that is, that is interesting. And, and just also the awareness piece and having, you know, a fully formed, fully developed brain, right?

Yeah, it does make a difference.

Oh my goodness.

Difference.

I even think, you know, the work that, you know, my son has done, that all of my kids have done. I mean, obviously they're all under the age of 30, um, and, you know, he's still only 23 but has already done, you know, work. And I often think about this, like, what— where will he— how will he be processing this 10 years from now, because it'll be so different, right? And my hope is just that they know what their tools are, right? They know these different little pieces that while it may not make sense, or it makes sense in a very different way than it's going to 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from down the road, right? That, that they can do that.

I think a big piece of it is when any of us are working on trauma drama or feelings or memories, it's just pausing. Like, what do I need right now? Which is different than what do I need in my life? Like, you're not going to know what you need in 20 years. So it's really about what do I need right now? And maybe it's like, you know what? I don't want to deal with this right now. Write a letter of the trauma drama and go put it somewhere in your and say, I'll come back to you and put a date, put a reminder in your calendar for 3 years from now, if that's what you choose. And then you go back and look at the letter. I mean, like, it's okay to say, I'm going to pause. But the thing is, don't just pause and then sit there. Go— remember, it's bringing in experiences, bringing in knowledge, bringing in learning. Like, that's where— that's building self-esteem and self-worth. And self-esteem and self-worth is an antidote. It is one of the most important tools to being able to do the work. So if you can't yet because you're too sensitive, you don't feel you're enough, then put a pin in it and go do the work to build your self-esteem and your self-worth so that you have the capacity to hold uncomfortable feelings and self-reflect the past, yourself, other people.

Right. Well, I think there's so much power in that, being able to just pause. I need to pause. I need to shelve it, whether it's for, you know, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, right? And, and come back to it when, you know, there are different pieces in place. So, but that just that gift to yourself in and of, you know, to not should on yourself all the time. Right.

So, and I think it's really important to do things that uplift you and make you feel whole and make you feel, because when we do nothing, I always tell people like nothingness is not a good thing because it makes us complacent and complacent makes, takes, we take steps back. Yeah, it's really— and that's that piece of, and, you know, inside-outside boundaries. It's like, I gotta protect my partner or my children or my co-workers from my whoosh feeling, like, you never, and you always. It's like, well, I gotta look at that. I can't plop that on the other person.

No, no. And that alone is, you know, Such wonderful just knowledge to have. And on that note, I'm watching our time. And so I want to just really quickly end with a thought on meditation because that's where we started and wonder if you could just give a really quick, whether it's a recommendation or point everyone to, you know, where you— I know that you have a number of things on your website that are wonderful.

Yes, I— so I have like probably over 50 or 60 meditations on my website, and they do come— most of them come out of the Kundalini technology space. And I've started creating— I have a Christian album coming out for those of you who are listening who are Christian, or I have a Jewish one coming out because I just want to be able to have something for everyone and they can connect to. So it's on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, they're in all the streaming spaces. And one thing I'll leave listeners with is that singing, chanting, or breathing in a sequence, like where you're having a pattern, like a, a pattern breath, Any of those things stimulate your body, stimulate the vagus nerve, which when you stimulate the vagus nerve, you actually naturally can calm yourself from the inside out. So if you sing in your car, like you were saying, if you do a chant or you do a breath where you're— some people, there's like a box breathing that you want to be really You got to create a little pulse with your breath. It can't just be long, deep breathing. It needs to be like a pulse where you're stimulating the lungs, which then, which is your vagus nerve, is in the center of your chest and connects to all your organs and glands except for your adrenals. So by stimulating it, by doing those things, you're able to create a relaxation starting from the inside out.

That's my sharing. I love it. That is the perfect, perfect way to, to end. Thank you so much, and it is such an honor to have you here.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Heather. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Me too.

Thanks so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would be so grateful for a rating or review. Click on the link in the show notes or go to my website, chrysalismama.com, to stay up to date on my latest resources as well as to learn how you can work with me. Please share this podcast with anyone who needs to know that they are not alone, and remember to just breathe. Until next time.