Episode 10: How to Find Relief from the Pain of Your Emotional Wounds Without Toxic Positivity

My mind was like, absolutely not. You're insane. Look at me.

Yeah.

My soul was like, I know. My first memory in my crib, like a baby, was that I was going to be an author. Like, that was what I was supposed to do. Holy. My grief therapist looked at me and said, melissa, someday you're going to write a book.

I've taught in the past that like most people describe worthiness, all worthiness really means is that you've had a frictionless pathway.

Grief isn't a blank. Check to be an asshole.

My grief does not entitle me to be an asshole. Everyone, welcome Back to the MoreLive podcast. I have my sweet friend Melissa here who just wrote a beautiful book called Scar Tissue. How to find relief from the pain of your emotional wounds without toxic positivity. So that's what we are going to be talking about today. If that sounds like a breath of fresh air and something that you need stuff, stay tuned. In. Melissa and I met so many years ago. We're just talking about, like, we actually met in person in 2020 in Sedona when the world was pretty locked down and we have not seen each other in person since. So getting to come together and celebrate her book coming into the world, I know that this has been such a long time in the making. Tell us a little bit about your background journey so that we can get caught up on, on why this book exists and why that matters to you.

Sweet friend, thank you so much for having me. What a journey it's been, for sure. You know, I was in education. I started my career in education and I, I spent 10 years as a high school educator and, and then athletic director. Um, and I, I thought that was my life path. And as we know, many times what we think is our life path is not our life path.

Right.

And I, in 2014 was pregnant with my daughter Layden. And through unanticipated complications, we ended up spending 99 nights out of her four month life at the hospital. And she had four surgeries, she went on life support, she came off life support and actually lived off life support. So at that moment, I didn't think, you know, she was ever gonna pass. So as you can imagine, it was a massive rollercoaster. And so when she did pass and I left the hospital without her, it was like my whole world changed. And I saw everything through a different lens. And this word should became very present for me because I kept connecting Andrea to this should not have happened.

Right?

This shouldn't have happened. We should be home. It should be like this. And I realized, where am I using the word should Everywhere in my life instead of working with the reality of what is or what can be. So, long story long, that kind of ignited what became my entrepreneurial journey, starting in mindset and holistic health coaching. My daughter died of a sick gut and now moving into helping other people with their marketing and branding. And I just knew I wanted to write a book. My grief therapist said to me in her office, this broken girl who could. I could barely. I could barely eat. I could barely move. I. It was awful. My grief therapist looked at me and said, melissa, someday you're going to write a book. And I started the writing process in 2020, and five years later, we're finally published.

Yeah. Wow. When she said that, like, someday you're going to write a book, how did you feel in the moment hearing that?

I had a dual experience. And actually, I think you and your audience will get this in a place that I might not always share. My mind was like, absolutely not. You're insane. Look at me.

Yeah.

My soul was like, I know.

Yeah.

And I had a flashback. This is a story I don't share often because you have to be of, like, I think, a certain energetic vibration to even let this land. But my soul and I had a sudden flash back to when I was in my crib. And it's my first memory that I don't really tell people this. This is way before Leyden. I remembered this before Layden. I've written it down before that my first memory in my crib, like a baby, was that I was going to be an author. Like, that was what I was supposed to do. Holy shit.

When did you recall that memory for the first time?

Believe it was high school. And I got really into. I mean, I studied psychology in college. Like, I was so drawn to understanding human psychology. And I started having, like, a lot of these flashbacks and, like, these memories and these, like, kind of soul connections and things. But I was so in the mind and so in, like, the checklist and the should. It's like you ignore these little winks, right?

Yeah. I've. I've had. I have memories now of times when I was a child, but I've only accessed through, like, states of hypnosis. I've never had. There's one that is maybe around, like, age three, but nothing that early. Now I've accessed memories from, like, two and even in utero, but only through, like, states of hypnosis.

Yeah.

One of in utero was just, like, dark, though, and Like, I just had an awareness that I knew that where I was. It's not like I'm like, I can see things inside my mom's belly. You know what I mean?

Oh, my goodness. That's too good. Yeah, it is. It came to me as dreams, but the same reoccurring dream.

Interesting, Interesting. Okay, so the book is out, and on your podcast, you talk about the power within our pain for somebody who might be in, like, the depths of grief right now. I know I've been through it a lot, even though I haven't. I. I did lose a friend over the summer. A mutual somebody that we know mutually. But, like, what's been coming up for me has been less of that and more of, like, old stuff. Like, it's wild how even like, the outside of my world, I'm not in, like, the throws of, like, present grief, but it's like waves of grief, long that lasting that have, like, come up. And I. I totally understand from my perspective about, like, how that could feel like you're. You're creating power within our pain. But for somebody who. That might sound really difficult to imagine. How do you help people understand that concept without minimizing your minim?

I love the. The nuance of without minimizing it. And a big part of the book is how we navigate it, as you said, without toxic positivity, which a lot of those statements minimize the pain or dismiss it or almost gaslight it. Right. And we can't do that. First, I want to acknowledge that a big premise and intention of the book is to redefine grief beyond death. Relationship loss, identity change, empty nest, pet loss, health issues, aging parent, anticipated grief, divorce. All of these are different depths of grief. And obviously the depth of the grief is going to be completely relevant to the depth of the love that that had. So I think it's important to acknowledge first, before you can even access the power that's within it is what's present, what you're experiencing. Grief. A lot of people are experiencing grief, but they haven't named it. And without naming it, it's very hard to leverage it.

Mm.

So that would be the first thing I would invite anyone into. And then second, if you're very clear that you are working with grief and you're in a grief journey, there's an importance of both honoring the pain in your capacity and then working a little bit harder. And I would explain it kind of like when you go to the gym and you want to change your body. If you go too hard, too fast, you're going to get injured.

Right.

If you stay in your comfort zone the whole time, nothing will change. And you have to find that edge for you. And this is very important in any type of growth or new level, but particularly through grief. Now, energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed and it can be transmuted. So when I talk about working with the pain of grief, it's how do I take this energy, this power, this fire, and work with it in a way where I'm channeling it towards something to my higher good or a higher good. And it's still working with the intensity and the depth. And you still get to make time to cry and to feel sad and to experience all the human emotions. But when you can kind of strip away some of the other stuff and look at it basically as like, it's making a ball mark here, but it's like just an energy ball of power. Because to feel is power. Apathy is the opposite of love, not pain. So if we are feeling, we're alive, we're experiencing, that's power. So then what can we do with that?

As you say that, what I hear is like, it's akin to the feeling of running from something and running towards.

Something or running with something. You know, it's like you have to work with. You have to actively be a co creator with grief.

Yeah.

And it will demand respect at times.

Right.

Like, it will demand you to surrender at times. It will demand you to let go of what your day was supposed to be sometimes. And then there are other times where you're going to feel kind of that energy. And then it's like, okay, what can we create here? How can I use this? How can I serve with this? But it's very humbling when you realize how powerful of an energy it is. And instead of trying to resist it, stuff it, numb it, avoid it, gaslight it. When you can work with it, it like, kind of becomes like your little companion.

How do you feel? Like grief has made you better at what you do or how you exist even. Even in personal relationships. I'm thinking more professionally because I know you definitely have leveraged that. That power in your business and have a really fucking beautiful phenomenal business. So how did that grief make you better?

I would. It's funny, I was just talking about this the other day and I was saying it's a. It's a weird thing to talk about. I'm better because of this. Because you get this guilt of. Well, I don't want anyone to think I would have Chosen this. Right. Or that. I'm happy for this. And so the way that I chose to look at it was, well, am I honoring my daughter Laden's loss and fight if I don't get better?

Right.

And what I went through. And then, secondly, if plan A couldn't go, Plan A is not an option. Right. Then how do I create the most beautiful plan B? And I think that that's something a lot of people can relate to when their plan A doesn't go, and it's like, well, do we throw in the towel, or do we just go be like, all right, how do I create, like, a. Just an absolutely beautiful plan B? So the ways in which I think it impacted me the most was in my business, in particularly, I had a moment where I was walking outside of Boston Children's Hospital, where we were, and my daughter had passed, and I didn't know what to do. I would, like, Uber there and walk around, because it was, like, where I felt connected to her. It was really sad. And, like, this light came down, and I remember being like, I feel like I'm in a movie. And there was this voice that said, melissa, you're walking around like, you are entitled to a healthy child.

Oh, you're more.

You're worthy of one. Yeah, it's. It can. You're worthy of one. You can grieve not having one, and you can heal, but you get to remember you're not entitled to anything in this world. And it was like, yeah.

Oh, dang. I just want to let that seep. You are not entitled to anything, but you're worthy. Yeah.

I know. I get emotional. Like, my whole body is singing.

Wow, we could stop there. We won't. That'll change someone. Wow. Okay.

Yeah.

I suspect, like, take us back a little bit to the shoulds, because I imagine at this time, probably some of the things that, like, one of the major things that you would have. Need to. Needed to resolve was the. It shouldn't have happened. Like, how did you do that? Was this a part of that healing journey for you?

No. A little bit different. I think my faith and my spirituality helped me in letting go of needing to be right, that it shouldn't be that way, and to trust in what I couldn't see. There was a period of time I wondered if I was being punished, and I was looking to beat myself up and so many different things. But I genuinely just made an intentional decision to eliminate the word should from my vocabulary, because I realized it wasn't serving me anywhere. Like, oh, I should Go to dinner with everyone tonight. And I made myself replace that word everywhere. So it would either be I'm not going to dinner or I'm choosing to go to dinner. But when we go to, when we use the word should, like I should go to dinner, it's like we're not in an empowered state of choice and we're giving our power away. And so I became really fascinated by looking at how language and power interconnect. And I'll give you one other quick example of that. But I just literally chose. I made a list of words I'd have to look, but they're probably all in the book. But a list of words that I eliminated during my grief journey. And should was like the primary one, you know, I should work out.

Hear that all the time.

Well, I'm going to work out or I'm not going to work out. Right. And it's just one or the other. But the should puts us in this like disempowered limbo guilt comparison state. And just by making that switch. And so now imagine doing that about my daughter's life. It was freedom. It was freedom.

I can feel the difference just hearing you say it. Like every time you say the should and like, and like the guilt and the shame around it, like my whole being just feels like this ickiness inside side of me. But like either I've decided I will or I've decided I won't. Just feels very matter of fact and there's really nothing to argue there.

Right, right. Or even someone for working out push back ones. But what if I'm doing it because I feel like I should, but I really don't want to? Well, it's like I'm choosing to work out because it aligns with my goals. That's it. You're not, you don't just say like I'm super excited. You know that's toxic positivity. Right, right. It's just like, no, just be in a neutral state of what is.

Sure, we do. We make choices to do things all the time that we don't necessarily want to do, but we're going to do them anyway. For sure.

Correct.

Yeah. Okay. You said something a little earlier about like, I don't want someone to think that I would have chosen this. And then what, what came to me as you were saying that is there's probably a lot of people who are feeling like in order for me to turn that pain into power, that means that I have to move on. Or like that I'm saying this Connection isn't important to me. What do you say to the people who are like, I need my grief because my grief means connection. And in order to. To stay close to that loved one, like, I have to be in the state of almost, like, frozenness.

I can say that I understand, and I was there. I remember the first time I really, truly laughed, feeling guilty. Oh, no, you can't laugh. That means you're overlaid, and it means you don't love her as much.

Yeah.

And there's a term, and I explore this in my book, but it's called linking objects. And so, for example, when Laden died, I was sleeping with her blanket. I was sleeping with her stuffed animals. I kept her car seat in the backseat of my car for almost a year. And these were all what you'd call linking objects, which are things that make you feel physically closer to a person or connected to a person.

Mm.

It's the same thing emotionally when we don't want to leave our grief because the grief actually creates connection.

Right.

But I will tell you that those are surface level ways of connecting. And for me, over time, I don't need any of her things, and I actually feel more connected to her than I ever was.

Yeah.

And I've not moved on. I move forward with her. And so I think it's looking at how am I integrating? And I integrate my daughter every day. And almost coming back to something you asked earlier with how it's impacted me in relationships. I am a much more grounded, a much more present, a much more compassionate, a much more grateful person from integrating her. Ooh. And so when I integrate her in the grief, my way of being shifts. And I don't need everyone around me to know Laden because they just feel her through me.

I remember hearing, oh, gosh, I don't know, a YouTube video years ago. It could have been, like, an Abraham's hick story or something like that. I don't know. I've watched a lot of weird ones.

I love Abrahamics. It was.

It was this woman, though, sharing his story about how when her husband, like, she anticipated that her husband was gonna pass, she knew that he was sick. And then she had worked really hard on, like, staying in the frequency of love and versus going into, like, the depths of despair in order to be closer to him. And she found that when she could do that, she could feel him more. Now I've lost someone that I love very much, but even though she was my best friend, she wasn't, like, in my space every day. Like, maybe a partner Or a child. Like, did you experience once you were able to kind of move through that, did you feel that sensation of, like, as I allowed myself to or as I chose to, like, feel those more connected feelings of love, or did you feel her presence more for yourself?

Percent I think it's, you know, energy grows where energy goes.

Yeah, right.

And so putting that focus on, like, the love and the lessons and the light and the gratitude, I could just feel her more. I get more intuitive hits, have more clarity and dreams. And it started being like this. It's like unveils, like, it unfolds like, oh, this is the path. This is the work. This is where you get to go. Right. And it wasn't. It's not like, immediate. You know, I had to. I'd say the big work that I did after, when I first met you was nervous system regulation, to be honest. Yeah. I didn't realize how shot my nervous system had been.

Right.

From survival mode of her life and then survival mode of her death and then survival mode of the end of the relationship with her father.

Right.

Which was like a huge loss because now I lost what felt like the last thing I was holding onto, which was the family unit. Now Laden felt more dead. And so it was like, bam, bam, bam.

Right. And that happened after she passed?

Yeah, she passed in 2014, and he and I split in January or March of 2020. So right before I met you somewhere. Right?

Wow. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So we were together for a while after.

Wow, okay. When I heard that about, like, the connection with them, how I heard it and interpreted, and maybe you can tell me what your interpretation is. Is, I think, like, okay, if somebody is non physical, then like, their frequency is just the energy of love. Because if all that is is love, which is true at least, or like our belief systems at least, then we. The way to feel connected with them is to like, is to get yourself into that frequency. And I don't know, that just made sense for me. And it felt. It felt soothing for me to think about of, like, when I do get to that point where I, like, I lose somebody that's in, like, that. That closeness state. And I did feel that with, you know, Rachel. I felt her. I didn't grieve her until I actually was at the funeral where, like, that's where it got real of, like, seeing someone's, like, spirit not in their body anymore was, like, very disjointing to. I'd never experienced that before because I hadn't, like, by the grace of God, I hadn't lost anybody close to me until her. And seeing that and experiencing that was very, very difficult. And when I was able to move through that and get myself into a better space, I remember, like, you know how you just, like, automatically go to share pictures? You see a picture and you're like, oh, let me send this to this person and, like, remind them of the memory. Like, we just did that all the time. And I was like, oh, remember when we hear. So, like, every time I would see something of us, I would, like. I would just be going through my camera roll for business, and I would see something, and I would, like, hit the share button, and then I'm like, I can't share that with her. And, like. But I was already in, like, a more feeling state of love previous to that moment. And I remember hearing her say, I got, like, sad for a second, and I'm like, oh, I can't share it with you. And she's like, what are you talking about? I'm right here. And I'm like, really felt like, her everywhere. And I don't know what your experience has been like there.

That's so beautiful. That's so powerful. Um, I definitely would say that I, over time, was able to develop that a bit more. I think you have to be very much out of your mind, right?

Yeah.

And you have to be very tapped into, you know, your intuition. And you have to be tapped into, like, your heart. And I think the clutter has to be cleared. That would be the best way I can put it. Like, the clutter has to be cleared. And so. Or a lot of people might say, I'm not experiencing that, or I never have. It might just be that there has to be clutter that is cleared.

Yeah, you've shared that. Leiden showed you that no matter what state she in all state she was in, all she wanted was to give and feel love. How do you feel? Like that lesson from just a baby has reshaped how you approach your life or relationships or work.

Yeah. It's so interesting that you ask that. Cause I just had a conversation this morning with someone, and I could feel my wounds or past stories or human emotion wanting to lead. And I've really learned the power of pause. And I just asked myself, how does love show up in this moment?

Yeah.

How does detachment, which I think is love, right? Detachment, not forcing. How does just genuine curiosity and love show up in this moment, in this conversation? And when I led from that place, like, the whole conversation shifted. You know, I think even in business, I'll Just add to that. And this was personal relationship. But in business, you know, people say sales is weird. I think it's only weird if you make it weird. And if you're rooted in love and integrity and does this serve a human or not? And if it doesn't, you're honest. And if it does, you're honest and you're detached, but you're willing to, like, stand for their greatness and their stretch and their discomfort. You're willing to stand with them in that because it shouldn't feel comfortable, you know, when you're doing that. But anyways, I, I, I think that when you're really rooted in integrity, sales is actually a very loving, energetic exchange.

Percent oh my God. I've had some of the most beautiful exchanges and like so many of them through sales completely. And that's what I'm like, I'm here for that. That's the only kind of sales that I want to be making. I teach this concept called the spine of the Queen. And essentially what that means is like, the Queen doesn't care about getting what she wants. She cares about divine order, but she can't even know what Divine order is unless she's in her heart. So. And in order to get in her heart, she typically has to pause and she has to move whatever is coming up because any of those, like, ache or frustration or irritation or fear or any of that, like, she's not in her queen. She's in our princess energy, which is essentially like inner child coming up of like, I don't feel safe, you know, but when you get into that, like, the spine of the Queen, she's here for divine order. She accesses her heart. And when she's in her heart, she takes all beings into consideration, whether she knows it or not. And from that space, it is wild how things automatically go better. I teach him, like, if you want to be the most met woman you know, if you want to be the most respected woman, you know, surrendered woman, you know, like, it comes from that space and no other. I love that. That was like, just coming up from you this morning. Yeah, it truly can just take a pause. Like, how would I show up? How would I show up differently? Like, mine is like, how would I correct my spine? Yours is like, how would I show up if I show up from love, all meaning the same thing. Okay.

Yeah.

So you've moved from I don't want to live to becoming someone who finds and helps to find purpose for others and for anyone listening right now who's in that space. And they just can't imagine, like, tomorrow what would be one thing that you would want them to hear.

I think if you don't trust anything, because if you're in that state, you don't trust anything. The one thing that you might be able to trust and hold onto is the impermanence of everything. Meaning how you feel right now is not permanent. And it will pass and not pass in a way where we're rushing it or dismissing it, but it just is not permanent. And if you can hang on through that, and maybe that's the one thing you hold onto right now, trust that this will not be a permanent state. You know, you'll start to find a little shift. And one other strategy that I teach is called reach higher. And I have a chart. And if you look at Dr. Joe Dispenza's work, you know, he's got the vibrations. And what is it? Joy is, like, the very highest, and I think lust or something is like, the very lowest. Right. But there's grief and shame are going to be pretty low. And what I tell people is you're not going to go from shame to joy.

Right.

And that's where toxic positivity comes in. Just think positive. Everything happens for a reason. Like, no, not helpful. Right, Right. She wouldn't want. Yeah, she wouldn't want you to be sad. And I'm like, so now you're telling me, like, what my daughter would want. And then second of all, now I feel guilty for feeling sad.

And I am sad.

So now I'm guilty and sad. So the concept of teach is reach higher. So if. If we were to look at, like, an energetic vibration chart, something that might be higher than grief, maybe could be, you know, maybe sadness, it's a little bit less intense. Maybe we reach for gratitude.

Right.

Maybe we reach for trust. Maybe we reach for patience. But you're not going to get up to, like, joy from there. So just reach a little bit higher.

Yeah. I find that even anger is actually a better space to be in for a little bit. It is grief, right? At least anger is giving you some energy to work with, even though it's like running a marathon off a Snickers bar. You. You really only want to be able to go short distances with it if you're going to leverage it purposefully. So rage room.

Totally. 100%. Yeah. Like Punch pillows. There's ax throwing rooms now there's. There's places where you could. That actually can go and smash plates, like, designed to move rage. Right? No, I think it's really important to. And particularly women were so uncomfortable with rage. But the, It's a, it's a. You can make any emotion sacred if you choose to.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't always know how I feel about the word sacred because. And I think, like, everyone gets to. It depends on how it means for you. I do think a lot of times, like, how it's getting used on the Internet today and maybe you can speak on this, is that like, you have a right to stay there and like, that's where. And I don't think that's how you meant it, but I'm curious, like, what your, what your take is on that.

Yeah, well, for me, when. I mean, the way that I think about it is like, there's something unique and beautiful about it. Like, so there can be something unique and beautiful about an experience of rage because the depth in which you're feeling and it's. It's going to be passing. So. Yeah, it's going to be passing.

I. I remember after my divorce, I found these glasses and I just remembered, like holding them during some of like the worst moments of my marriage. And I took this just brown paper bag, I double bagged it, and I literally just launched the glasses into the brown paper bag so that they couldn't like, burst out. And it was everything that, that is what I would call like a sacred rage moment of like, get it out and then repurpose it and do something better with it.

But sometimes it's 100.

Yeah. Beautiful.

Yeah. And so to answer your question, like, when I think of sacred, it's not like an entitlement. You know how I feel about entitlement or like a right to stay somewhere. I don't believe in. Right. I think entitlement is so low vibration when I. When I think of sacred. To me, it's unique, special, authentic. Because our emotional experiences are unique, special and authentic. You know, they're just ours. And so if we can see like, yeah, anger, I literally want to rage. It's uncomfortable. I don't know how I feel about it, but it's also kind of unique. It's mine, you know, and so that's more what I mean. I haven't seen necessarily what you are referencing on the Internet around like the right to be somewhere or right of like a state. But I. If it is eluded or attached to any sense of entitlement, you know how I feel about that.

So that's such a good distinction. And I think that that's really helpful because where I've seen It a lot is like, in masculine and feminine conversations around polarity of, like, a woman is all of this, and like, a man should, like, hold her energy and be contained. And there was a moment I remember, just like a single moment in my relationship, my new love, where I felt this sense of entitlement to be angry because I'd wanted to be held in it.

And.

And the Internet told me that I could be. And that actually really fell flat in my relationship. Created some tense frustrations to work through where I was just like, can't somebody finally just, like, hold me in this, like, anger? But it was coming very much from an entitled place. Not like I'm choosing to transmute this and not make it someone else's problem. I think that that's the distinction I needed to hear and I think will be beautiful for the audience. Is like, is where. Where is it coming from? Is it rooted in entitlement? Because how I thought it in the moment was like, this is sacred, but it was not.

Yes. Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. I think you can see that a lot around different things where we can put a label like that. It's like how we can weaponize spirituality and spirituality terms, people put a label on that as if it almost creates stagnancy. It can create avoidance. I had a conversation with someone this morning who joined a mastermind. Not one that I run, but joined a mastermind. And yesterday was talking about how much she loved it, and then today was, it doesn't feel good in my body. It's not the right energy. I'm going to quit. And it's only been three days. And so my, like, coaching and encouragement was, if you want new results in something new, it's going to come with doing things that you haven't done, which is going to come with some resistance in your body. Right. And so just kind of to what you're saying, I think sometimes we've gone way too far, because I'm all about listening and intuition and pausing. But there's also a place where that can tip to the other side, where we're avoiding and we're just keeping cushy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is this the truth of my heart? It goes back to what you said earlier of, like, pausing, moving that sensation first and then get. Because it is in the body, but it's only in the heart. And sometimes it's like our gut is like, ew. Only because we've got something else stored there and we're misinterpreting. Wow. Great coaching. Great coaching. Is there anything else that you would love us to know about this beautiful book.

Well, I think first, just. I'm grateful to be able to share and thank you for having me on. This is my mission. This is my purpose. You know, I feel like I'm ch. I was channeling when I wrote it. But what I would say is that I think it's very important to understand that grief is beyond death. And that the hardest lesson that I learned, which went hand in hand with the entitlement and worthiness, because I think a lot of us think, like, we lack worthiness, but we're actually. We have levels of entitlement. And so I had to flip that. Like, I was outsourcing my worthiness everywhere. Yeah, right. And then so I'm outsourcing my worthiness. And then I had this subliminal entitlements. Like, I didn't mean to. No one's walking around being like, I'm entitled to this, this. But sometimes we'll just have conversations and you're like, oh, wow, is that entitlement? Like, even, for example, I would notice I'd be driving in Boston and there'd be traffic, and I would get annoyed, and I would think, melissa, you chose to live in a city with some of the worst roads that is very populated. Do you think you're entitled to. They're not being traffic. You chose this.

Right?

So all of these ways. The word that I will tell anyone listening is when you actually learn the things I teach in the book. It is freedom. It is freedom in your mind. It is freedom in your soul. It is freedom in your relationships. It is freedom in your business. It is truly freedom. And to get there. The book is based on a premise of what I call radical responsibility, which is, you know, when I. When my daughter died in a case termed a catastrophe, I had every right to stay in Victim. I could have stayed in Victim, and people would have justified it. And one of the chapters is called Grief Isn't a Blank Check to be an Asshole? Because I had to realize, like, I didn't have. I didn't get a blank check to be an asshole. I had to be like, who was going to heal me but me?

Yeah.

And I wanted anyone else to heal me. And when I had to pay for grief counseling, I was like, what the heck? So my point is that whether or not you're navigating something, grief in different forms is the most universal experience we have, I believe, more so than love, because I don't think everyone experiences love beyond what we're born with. You know, but we all experience grief, everyone. And so if you can equip yourself to navigate it with grace and through an empowered state and be like the co creator with grief, I think you can find the power that lies within our greatest pain.

Wow. My grief does not entitle me to be an asshole. So beautiful. You know, I keep coming back to the word entitlement. I think that there's just, like, something so special here. I've taught in the past that, like most people describe worthiness, all worthiness really means is that you've had a frictionless pathway. And so if you wanted it and you got it and you didn't have friction on the way then, or it didn't feel necessarily like friction, then people would be like, she's worthy because she wanted it and she got it. Right. And you just added such a critical component of, like, when you don't get it, the entitlement piece comes up. And the entitlement is the friction.

The entitlement is the friction.

Never had a word for it. You literally just completed it for me. Look at that. Yeah, Teamwork makes the dream work. Yes.

Yes.

So I think all the time I think about, like, okay, who were we before language? If we didn't have the word worthiness to create this much suffering for us?

Yeah.

What would we know to be true? Which was, I see something I want and I go get it. And if I don't have access to it, I just build access. So really, like, wanting something is just, do I have access? And if not, can I build it? And it doesn't have anything to do with worthiness at all. It's just that the friction or the entitlement, thinking I should have had it already is what we're describing as not it 100%.

That's so beautiful. Wow.

Yeah, beautiful. Where do people come find you to spend more time with your exceptionally elite soul?

I love hanging out on Instagram, Melissa Dugalecki. And really, if you just put in Melissa dlu, I'll pop right up. I'll spare you the rest of the name. My website is also speakingofmelissa.com where you can find my book, you can find my Instagram. If you can't spell my last name, you can find anything@speakingofmelissa.com beautiful.

Okay, we'll link everything. So no spelling necessary. Thank you. But if you're listening in the car and you want to, like, go Google, obviously you guys can also go to Amazon and you can download or get a copy of Scar Tissue. And I suspect that it's the same if you type. Actually, that's exactly what I did. Type scar tissue. Melissa D. And it came right up.

Perfect. Perfect.

Thank you so much for being here and sharing your daughter's beautiful journey with the world. Obviously, that's not something that you had to do and you chose to do anyway. And so thank you for who you are and for how you share and for how you serve.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for holding the space for these stories to get out there and hearts to be touched. I appreciate it.

My absolute pleasure. You guys. If you heard this episode and you know someone that needs to hear it, because I know you know at least 1, 2 or 3, please hit that share button. Also, please leave a comment and a review and all of the things. But most importantly, we all know that sharing is caring and we know that this is one of those episodes that needs to have the most absolute reach. And I do believe it's a divine responsibility that as soon as we have that person come to mind, you may have already thought of one that we just hit that share button and send it over. But more than that, what's really critical, because the most precious resource is the resource of time. Tell someone why you thought of them for this episode. Because I think the greater chance of them actually pausing and saying, you know what? Out of everything that I could spend my time on today, let me spend my time on this. Their lives will be changed because of you just taking seven extra seconds and telling that person why you thought of them. So this is just one of those episodes where you put a few extra seconds. It really can deeply impact someone's life. So thank you. I know you guys are the type of people who are just the overachievers of the world who are willing to just go that extra mile for the people you love. So thank you for doing that. And also, last request, please send Melissa a message on Instagram and tell her what part of this episode, episode impact Today, Melissa didn't have to show up. She didn't have to share this. Obviously, we want to share her book, but more importantly, she wants that book to be in your hands in order to do something powerful and positive and wonderful for you in your life. So just send her a thank you message because five years it took this book to come to be. That's not nothing. That is a sincere state of devotion. The people that she's intended to reach. So go ahead and just take another seven seconds out of your day and send her a quick. Just a little voice memo on Instagram and let her know how it impacted you and just send a little. Thank you. We love you guys. We appreciate you, and we will see you on the next episode.