S1 E25 - Fighting For Your Life

Welcome to the Broke to Woke podcast. Our mission for this podcast is to help each and every person out there in the world not only become a force for good, but also uncover those micro magical mental moments that help you become an absolute cerebral pyromaniac.

So, Jeremy, I told you I was gonna ask you a really big, tough question. Yep.

In the last episode. You did.

Yeah. I know this is gonna be difficult, but you went through a lot. You've had a lot of ups and downs. Did you ever contemplate suicide?

That is a tough question.

I did not. I did not.

At least not personally. So, like, internally, I just didn't. It never really came up.

I've told someone, and I hope this is not gonna sound terrible. It probably will.

I'm too egotistical, okay.

To contemplate suicide. I love myself a lot, all right? I do. And I have. I've had struggles. I've had a lot of issues, a lot of things I've had to overcome, but I've always had this inner shine, this confidence, this energy, this, like, vitality that's never gone away, no matter how challenging the issues have come up for me. Now I will say this. Even though I did not contemplate suicide, I did try to find out how far my body could go under duress and under certain, you know, like I said, alcohol and drugs. Like, I try to figure out what I could put my body into. So I would take a lot of pain pills and go, I don't know. Let's see what I can do. You know, let's see if I can drink and drive. I did that. That was horrible. Such a dumb decision. One time, it was snowing in Nashville, and I would just run outside and walk and snow. Barefoot with shorts on. No, no shirt. You know, just walk in and walk around in shorts and just go, let's see how I can. You know, how far I can put my body. I did things like that, and it was dumb, it was immature, it was stupid.

Is it, in a way, a form of cutting? Because I've. Some people turn to the gym, which is what I did.

Yeah.

And when you're putting your body through so much, even though it's a better thing to turn to, thank God.

Yeah.

It's similar where you're putting the pain on the outside versus the inside.

Right.

I've talked to a decent amount of cutters, and they're like, it's distracting from what's going on inside. Do you think it was the same thing?

I think so, yeah. That's a really Good question. I think so. I think that's kind of what it was. And we were talking out after the podcast too, just in general about how people normally don't think that it's okay to pour in as much as you should. Right. We really do focus outwardly and externally more than we do inwardly. And.

The pain aspect is something that people go to because it's primal. So when we talked about early on, when you asked me, how did you become a free thinker and really push and shift and change and make your entire mindset and thoughts and beliefs different from other people? Like, well, there is that pain that's associated with that. That pain is what links us to our humanity.

Wow.

And without it, we won't know and we feel like we need it because without it we can't really tangibly tell. So that pain is what a lot of humans will do in some aspect. Again, the cutting aspect or the self inflicting or the pain. And I know you went through a lot as well. You've had some traumatic experiences. So what is it like for you? I mean, in this situation, I had.

A really incredible ride. So the last one of the last things we talked about was I went from rehabbing to new construction to multifamily and then in new construction, I still have that business going. We scaled to doing larger, you know, mixed use developments and I'm scaling my team and I'm just head down working. But we ended up winning almost every award you can win for speed of growth and trajectory and all this stuff. I even won Forbes 6th fastest growing woman owned company in the world. Fortune number three in the US not even a woman, just Fortune, you know, urban company number three.

It's amazing.

And it was a lot had, you know, woman of the year, all kind of really cool sounding accolades. And I was, you know, teaching even how to live an intentional life because I had taken my purpose and I had turned it into my business, which I was really proud of. And so I knew myself, I knew what I wanted. And I can't believe that I fell in love, which is fine. I fell in love with a.

I had never actually understood.

How abuse works. Yeah, I can't believe that you can be so confident and so sure and have everything in the world working for you and you know who you are and you still.

End up allowing somebody. I allowed it. You know, I'm going to take ownership and say I allowed it. I didn't know I was allowing it. But you can still allow trust and love to.

Completely dismantle you from the inside out. And so fast, too. So I married the person I thought was the love of my life. And I married him really quickly because we're Christians. And we waited.

Did everything you're supposed to, had an amazing wedding. And.

And it went downhill pretty fast, which was crazy. And I've never really talked about it publicly.

Yeah.

But I'm gonna. Because there's some things I learned.

That I wish I had known. And the point of this is broke to woke. And I wish I so badly knew what I know now. And that was that anything that comes in the name of love.

Or in God's name or whatever, but isn't actually love, you'll know because you know them by their fruit. And a lot of what he did.

Sounded right, you know, it was so twisted just so. He was master manipulator. And it was twisted just so that I believed it, especially when used like my God against me.

Yeah.

And.

And I went through so much to even be able to escape that marriage alive. I was probably.

I was probably 30 pounds lighter than this because I couldn't physically eat. It was. It was the worst season of my life when it finally broke and we built such a life together so fast. Like, literally, he got into everything so fast. And.

And on the other side, or even trying to go through that was.

A similar experience to yours. You know, trying to rebuild yourself.

When you have zero confidence anymore. None. And it's so crazy because I'm strong, I'm smart, I know this crap. I'm the whole list. And it can happen to anybody.

You are the whole list, by the way.

Thanks. You are the whole list. Don't mean it like that.

But I do.

My point is that it can happen to anybody. And if you can.

If you can start your life with some really solid foundational truths, then you're not going to get shook the way I was. And that's what I learned. I think I let my own.

I'm going to get through this.

I let my own insecurity of not knowing, quote, unquote, who I was. I let somebody else's voice be the voice that I stood on, not God's. And what healed me was saying, who does God say that I am not this monster.

What are the kinds of things that God would say because he would use so many scriptures against me.

That I believed him? And it sounds. It sounds right.

And I'll say this too, because you said the word alive, right? Like, you left. You got out of the relationship alive. And I want people who are listening to this. To know that this is. You're talking about your life.

Yeah.

Like you were in a spot that was. And I mean, we're talking 99.999% of the world doesn't even know this right now.

Yeah.

You're in a spot that was literally fighting for your life. Like actual literally doing that.

We were talking earlier about why I had my pink gun taken away from me at the airport.

It sounds like a really funny story, but I was.

I was moving it so that he wouldn't kill me and tell everybody that it was suicide as he was trying to paint that story, that that was going to be the case. So I'm not here to bash him. He has his own world of hurt and stuff to deal with. I'm going to take ownership for what I allowed. I allowed a human voice to tell me who I was. I allowed a human voice to speak horrible things about that and my future and to paint a whole bunch of lies.

And what healed me is saying humans understanding really that humans can only see the past and they can only see you through their filters of their own pain. But if God is my source and God's the only thing that actually can see the future, then I should probably listen to him. And one of the kinds of things that a loving father would say.

You'Re amazing, you're enough. I love you, you're blessed. And what are the kinds of things that a loving father would do? And they didn't equate to what this twisted person was saying, even though he said in my name. So I remember crying looking out the window of an airplane one day, like, really, God? Why did you let this happen? It's so embarrassing. I mean, it's so embarrassing. I have my crap together, all right? I'm smart, I'm a great bet, I'm very thorough. I things through. I'm really not that risky. And I looked like the biggest idiot.

And.

I felt like he was just saying that I'll at least be able to use this story. Because you hear that scripture, when people use God's name in vain, this is how they do it.

This is how they do it. It's. This is what God thinks about. And it's twisted.

Yeah. So true.

And you were talking earlier about how God is love. And so when it's not in true, real love and you will know them by their fruits, then it's really not God. And so I want to help break the cage of lies off of so many people that are trapped in manipulation when they say it's God, but it's not truly God. So I did end up escaping for my life. And that was again, the darkest period of my. My life. We had a project overseas that we had been working on together I'd spent over a million dollars on. And he had canceled the insurance three weeks before Irma hit. So all that was gone. And that was, like, such an important vision for my life. 70% of my staff quit at the same time. I had. That was the first time. $3 million was due on Friday, and it was Thursday, and I didn't have any of it. Subs were walking off the jobs. I was in three lawsuits. One of my mentors was suing me.

It was. I had nothing. No one. And I couldn't physically eat. I would have the worst nightmares. Sleeping is worse than being awake.

And I'm not crying because I'm sad. It's like.

These are tears of accomplishment. By the way, I hope you know.

That I had a lot of bitterness in my heart. I had a lot. Because there's so much more that I'm not even sharing. It was so messed up. But one day I was reading a book, and it was Billy Alsbrook's book, Blessed and Unstoppable. First chapter.

Love, Billy. Big fan, Billy.

First chapter, and it talks about forgiveness. And at the end, he has an exercise, and he said, write a list of everybody who's ever hurt you and pray blessings over them. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Sorry, Billy. Not doing that.

Can I get to chapter two now? Because.

Yeah, not doing that. But God said, all right. God talks to me really loud sometimes. Sometimes nothing. But this time he said, okay, write a list of everybody who has ever hurt you. And I was like.

He said, no, write down what they did. Even, like, the slights, not even the massive hurts. And I was like, writing all this stuff, even, like, people you love, like your sister still in your life, but you're just annoyed. And then God said, now write down everything you wouldn't have had I spared you from them ever entering your life.

And I look back at when I was. I've been. I was really mad at God. Like, why did you let me go through this? As I know you're not pro divorce Lord. Like, I'm not. I never agreed with that before. I thought you could always work it out. Had no idea.

And I saw that even though he was a horrible nightmare and on paper, the worst thing I'd ever gone through, all the greatest blessings of my life, the greatest things that I have now in my life. I wouldn't have had I never met him. And I actually look at all the people who have hurt me the worst, the best things have come from it. And it reminds me of my other favorite quote, which is Napoleon Hill, with every obstacle carries with it a seed of equal or greater opportunity.

Every single one. So in the beginning, to cope, I drank champagne and would have watched the office. That was my go to. That was my go to just drink champagne, hide from the world, and just cry. And then, like I said, the nightmares were worse than being awake and didn't.

Sleep much, didn't eat much.

I'd wake up, I'd go throw up at least seven times. I couldn't keep anything down. And I crawled to try to put some clothes on and then walk to the office and throw up in the trash can because it was just so stressed. So stressed.

You know, that he had turned all the closest people to me against me. And you feel so bad. You're like, what did I do? I caused this. You know, all those. All the questions, all the things. I'm not enough. I have. I'm a fake. All this has never been real. I've never been good enough. He's the closest person to me. He must see things I don't see, like, all those things.

And then I decided to look at my life and say, what do I have? What do I have? And I was like, I have money.

I have money, so I can beat the system, just like you. Let's create a checklist. I hired Whitney Weiser as my gym coach, and I knew I could pay her to force me to eat and to check in on me and be tough on me if I didn't eat. So that was my stay alive person. And then I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna need some therapy to get through this. I was like, maybe I can get through it faster if I do three sessions a day.

I don't think that's one of those things you can rapid fire.

Can I heal faster, please?

Yeah. So if I wanted to learn real estate, I'd just completely inundate myself. Learn everything that's my complete world. And with this, that's not something you can do. But. So it took time. It took being on the treadmill and listening to, just like you said, all those motivational YouTube videos. I don't care how cheesy is it. I rebuilt my mind.

You gotta rebuild it.

And I spent time writing and I wrote, who does God say that I am? What is the real vision from life, what actually matters. And at your darkest times, you get an opportunity to reset because you find out when everything's gone, what really does matter.

And I can say two and a half years later, three years later, almost, that there's not one thing that hasn't been redeemed. I remember God saying, never curse this journey. Never curse this journey. Never say something is wasted. Because I spent so much time building our world together and building these literally assets. And it seemed like everything was gone. And God said someday they could come back. It could be 10 years. It's not your business. The point is take the time to heal.

And it does come back. So you never know what you're being protected against.

Yeah. And I think during that whole process, like, one of my. One of my quotes I got was, these problems are happening for you, not to you. I hated it. I hate that quote so much. I love that quote so much. I just want to say thank you for sharing that because you're powerful. That's why I want to appreciate you sharing that. Because there's going to be millions of women out there who are going through something similar. Maybe not the exact same thing, probably not the exact same thing, but they need to hear that. They want to hear that. And they are hearing that all because you are powerful.

If I had a title I remember, I would love to write a book about this. Back in the day, I was like, I have no idea what it would be full of because it was such a confusing, weird situation. But I remember the title would be called divorcing someone you love.

And I want to encourage people not to go get divorced. That's not the point. But to know what love really is.

What a safe situation really is, and that sometimes you have to leave because.

It'S really, really, really not right. And you do know, and you will know them by their fruits, not their words. So I just want to encourage you.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing. This is big. This is the journey. Our journey from broke to woke. I appreciate you all being in here. I know that this is an emotional episode. This. But that's emotions know that we're alive. They help us center. They help us focus. They help give us this energy. Because now I'm going to be so fired up for the next four hours. The amount of things I'm going to go get done. The amount of things you're going to get done. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for listening. The next episode, we're going to be talking and continuing our journey and really asking and diving into some specific, very detailed questions, making sure that we can answer and help you go from Broke to Woke. You guys rock.

Thank you for listening to the Broke to Woke podcast. You can learn more@geforcemastermind.com or by following us on Instagram @GeForce mastermind. Like the Broke to Woke podcast. Click the link in our description to join a Mastermind with other force for good entrepreneurs just like you who are taking their life and their businesses to the next level.