Beyond the Facade: A High Achiever’s Battle with the Illusion of Having It All | Aimee Wood

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the I was born to do this podcast. You are on an author adventure with me and Amy Wood.

Hello.

And we are in Cabo San Lucas in the most magical house of all. And we are at the end of her author adventure. So, per usual, we're going to just jam. We're going to talk about this week. We're going to talk about her upcoming book and all of the magic that occurred for us. So, Amy, why don't you start off with telling me and then, like, who you are?

Sure.

Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

My name is Amy Wood. I am a mother of three beautiful children and two stepchildren, a wife, and I'm an executive at my company. I run operations for a utility management company. We live in Chicago, and I've only lived there for about two and a half years, but I absolutely love that city. Moved from Logan, Utah, where I lived for 20 years.

Love it. And I would say the call that you had to write this book was so loud, and also, you had such a call to come here to Cabo. So I want to talk about. Let's talk about the call to write the book. We'll talk about why we came here. But first, why don't you tell everyone what it is that, like, made you want to write a book?

Yeah, I definitely felt the call to share my story for quite a long time, actually. There's just something in me that felt like there was something for others to learn from my experiences. And so I felt that way for a long time. And then I started working with a mentor, actually, and he suggested, like, you should write a book. And I was like, I know. I felt that way for so long. And I signed up with a publishing company, but the process was not what I personally needed. And so when I began to see your author adventures, Kira, I was extremely emotional every time I watched any of the authors on this adventure. And I took that as the sign that, like, this is the way to write a book for me. And so reaching out to you was super exciting to just be like, let's go. Let's shut the world out for an entire week and extract everything inside of me that needed to come out. The reason why I felt the call to write a book was not because my story is special. It's kind of actually the opposite, because I feel like my story is so relatable in that we all struggle with wounding. We all have wounding inside of us, and that drives us to be a certain way in our life. What my wounding drove me to do was achieve. It made me so successful in that I had this drive to never meet anybody ever in my life, essentially.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was the only one that I could count on to pick me up when I was low or to provide for me and my three children. And so I built up this massive armor of resources so that I never needed anybody. But deep down inside, all I wanted was for someone to love me for exactly who I was. Without, like, separate from all of my successes and achievements, separate from the money, the house, the job title, separate from all of that, I just wanted someone to actually love me. But that process of laying down the armor and allowing myself to truly be seen was the scariest and yet most fulfilling process that I've ever been through.

I love it. And what I love about your book is that I don't think, okay, so the people who need your book, I don't think that they've had a book written for them. And I love when we can tap into that, that kind of niche of, like, wait, no one's found this crew?

Yeah.

And they need it so bad. So why don't you talk to us about, like, who is it? Like, who is it that you're writing this book for? Like, who needs this book? But no one thinks they need it?

Well, let me first talk about the reason why nobody thinks that they need it.

Yeah.

It's because women like me. Project to the world that we have our together. Because perceivably we do. Yeah. We can do it all. We can achieve it all. We can have it all. We can have it all. And so we actually create this Persona that we're fine, that we don't need anybody, that we've got it all together. And so to the outside world, we don't look like victims, which we're not victims. But there's an inherent need for human connection and for the desire to be loved. And I don't believe I've never found a book that's been written directly to me. I clearly, you know, connect with other authors in their story, but I've never seen a book that's written to the high achiever that projects to the world that they have it all together when behind the scenes, you know, self. Admittedly, you know, drinking, popping pills, all the numbing modalities that you could think of were happening behind the scenes. And it was only when I got sick of my own bullshit, to be truly honest, and when I got so low that I was like, something has to change. Yeah.

And that's why I'm so excited about your book, because it's for the successful woman. And no one thinks that she needs help because she's raising her kids on her own, she's running business, she's got her shit together. We don't need to worry about her. All these other people who need help, but it's like, no, they need. They need to know they're not alone. And the way that you write, you go straight into the center and you just really help them feel seen and feel heard. And I just think it's so extraordinary. I'd love for you to tell everyone what the title is of your book.

Yeah, the title was really so organically born because. And it was born out of in my life. It was this constant pursuit to become what I thought I was supposed to be, what I thought I should be. And what I really came to realize. It was actually when I stripped everything away, away and unbecome everything that I thought I was supposed to be that I truly found who I was, which was inherently this perfect whole being. And so the title was born out of that. And it's unbecoming from. From Armor to Authenticity.

Oh, it's so good. It's so good.

It truly captures the power of the book in that we build up this armor and we think that the armor is there to protect us. And it really weighs us down. And the only thing it protects us from is being seen in our authenticity, which is what we actually truly desire. We truly desire to be loved as the authentic version of ourselves. So beautiful. Thank you.

So beautiful. And we don't know when the book will be out yet. I think we'll. We'll know sooner than later. Like I feel like end of summer, maybe early fall, but we'll do another episode as the book launches. What I want you to talk about or what is the highlights of this week so that we always remember this magical week. Why did you choose Cabo? Let's talk about why you chose Cabo.

When I do travel quite a bit and there's certain places that I have been that where the land just has an energy and it speaks to me. And Mexico is one of those places. And of course it's beautiful. So beautiful.

Oh my gosh.

But the energy of the land just carry something. And so I knew I wanted to go to Mexico. I originally thought Cancun and then my husband kept being drawn to houses in Cabo. And then when I heard that you were scared of going to Mexico.

I've never been to Mexico. In My whole life, this has been one of my greatest fears, actually, is to come to Mexico.

And so when I heard that you were scared to come to Mexico, I was like, that's where we're going.

That's it.

Because I think because it leveled the playing field, because I was scared to write a book. And so I was like, okay, we're going to be scared together, and we're going to do this. I'm going to stretch you because I know you're going to stretch me.

Yeah.

And so why don't you tell everybody about your experience coming to Mexico for the first time. Scared out of your mind.

I was scared out of my mind. And, like, it's not like we decided to stay at a resort that was, like, covered with people. We literally are 30 minutes away from Cabo San Lucas in the middle of nowhere that you, like, have to go up a dirt road. So we missed, clearly. We got so lost trying to find this place. And you literally drive these windy dirt roads to this house on the edge of a hill. It's on a cliff. We're at the edge of the world right here, and we're all by ourselves. There's, like, maybe five houses, and they're very far away from us. And I was terrified the first night. Like, I barely could sleep. I was like, this is how we die. Like, two women in. In the middle of nowhere, Mexico, trying to write a book, and they die. Like, this is it. And I had to really drop into faith and prayer and be like, what am I talking about? I work with angels every day. Like, we're gonna be fine, and we're going to be safe. And this ended up being the most extraordinary week of my life.

It was filled with just, like, pure magic and majesty. Like the earth. I'm literally watching a whale jump out the window.

Oh, my gosh.

Like the earth. And what God has provided for this experience was just pure inspiration, was.

We have watched the day one.

We.

I mean, we're literally. I wish you could see it. We are like, we could throw a rock into the ocean from this house. We watched five. No, no, no, no. We watched 15 whales jump out of the water on day one. Every day. We watched whales. We watched a mama whale and her baby. Well, like, flip their tails like the mom was teaching the baby.

We had. Sweetest thing I've ever seen.

The most amazing thing. Then we had three pelicans who decided that they were actually our writing coaches. They were. Would walk into the house every day and sat next to us while we wrote the book, like, literally sitting on.

The laptop yesterday on the couch. And I look out of the corner.

Of my eye and I'm like, oh, shh. He's back. There's pelican just sitting next to us.

Next to the couch.

Literally, just. And they, like, I don't know if I've ever seen a pelican, but they feel like they're humans and they, like, look at you with their eyes and it just would look at us. We were like, what is happening? So then the. The wildlife here has been like, a part of this book of just, like, the power that's in the earth, the power that's here on the planet, and how taken care of we have been this week.

Yeah, it's been like, we've been so protected. It's been. We've been protected from, like, the energy of other people. We have not left. We didn't leave this house one time, not once. We had dinners out planned. We're like, no, we'll just stay here.

We just hired a chef who ate days.

We haven't left the house.

It's been amazing. I've never done that in my life. Yeah. I've never stayed in one place for six days.

And we don't want to leave.

No, I don't want to leave. Like, I literally, like, I don't think I can ever leave this home.

Yeah.

We had a chef come in every day and his energy was so lovely. We just randomly had someone pick a chef for us. And he just brought so much joy into this experience. And we were so taken care of. He made all of our food that was literally, like, out of this world. Also did all the dishes.

Like, we were so cared for this.

Week, and I feel like we were almost held, like, in a cradle of, like, love to bring forth a book of such profound love.

Well, one of the parts of the book is, is really facing your fears, going through, you know, your pain, anything that you're most afraid of. But this experience of just diving in head first to what you are afraid of, what lies on the other side of that is always beauty, power, perfection. In my experiences, every single time I've gone into my fear, I'm always like, why didn't I do that sooner? Like, just freer. And, like, now you get to come to Mexico.

I am. I'm coming. I'm bringing my kids back. I've decided next February, in whale season, I'm bringing all five of my kids and they get to witness this. This absolute miraculous space that you didn't know existed. That I didn't know how you faced it here right now. So this is just a little. Little snippet of our time together here. This is not the end of us. We will be doing lots of amazing things together. And if there's one message that you could give to all the successful women in the world who, in a way, I feel like are the forgotten, they're the forgotten because everyone thinks they've got it together. And so no one's, like, out rallying around them. What would your message be to them today?

It's interesting that you use the word forgotten, because it's almost like that's part of the wounding that we carry, which is why we've created and become who we have become, because maybe nobody showed up for us. We've felt forgotten. And so that is actually a familiar feeling. And all we want is to, like I. Like I mentioned before, just. Just truly be seen and loved for who we authentically are and which. The part about being seen is we're really comfortable being seen with the armor on, because if we get rejected, you didn't reject the part of me that was who I really am inside, that hurts so much less. It's when we take the armor off and we are our authentic selves, and when we show that to others, that's. That hurts so much more. If we feel rejection, yeah. But it's in the process of finding true love for yourself, true love and acceptance. That doesn't make that so scary, because we know we love ourselves. And if someone rejects us or inflicts pain, that's actually about them. It's not about us.

I love it. And I think the message that comes to me as I've been sitting with your book all week is that those of you who are successful women, you are not forgotten. And you are so seen and so loved. And this book is going to find you, and it's going to meet you in all these corners that you've tried to hide, that you've tried to, like, push underneath the bed or underneath rugs. And, like, as Amy uncovers it, it will free you and. And you will unbecome and ultimately find your path of peace and freedom and joy. And this has been my deepest honor to sit with you in this book.

Thank you so much, Kara. Like, I couldn't have done it any other way. So thank you.

You're so welcome.

Wow.

Now, onward we go. Yes, Onward we go. All right. Thank you guys for being with us. Stay tuned. Her book will be out later, 2020.