Creating the Life You Want with Rebeccah Silence

Welcome to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast.

I'm your host, Mari Reesberg.

Over the past several years, I've combined my degrees in acting and somatic psychology to share my sustaining creativity techniques with performers. And now I've decided to share with a bigger audience that includes you!

I believe we are all creative and this podcast is all about that.

I'll be interviewing people from all backgrounds, ages, and creativity experiences to share just how creative we all are. Today I'll be chatting with Rebeccah Silence, self-healing and relationship expert. Please enjoy Rebeccah Silence.

Welcome to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast.

Today I'm chatting with self-healing and relationship expert Rebeccah Silence.

Welcome to the show.

Well, hello, Mari. I'm so happy to be here, and I am all about creativity, so let's make magic.

I cannot wait. I know you have such an extended life experience of creative pursuits and just how creativity shows up in your own life. But before we get there, let's just take a minute and let our listeners know a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Yeah, well, I always like to say I'm the space where all healing is possible, and what I mean when I talk about healing is freedom. And I think creativity is a huge path to freedom and liberation, especially in those non-preferential doozy moments where there just doesn't seem to be any hope or possibility. And, you know, I got here by growing up in domestic violence and thinking there had to be a better way. Then, no matter how much I learned or understood, I still found myself in patterns and experiences that were familiar, and if I'm honest, comforting because I knew how to survive them. And I decided, all right, my traditional training with a master's degree in counseling wasn't enough for me to feel different, even if I understood better. And so I started immersing myself in the coaching world as a pioneer, one of the first coaches out there, combining the best of therapy and the best of coaching, creating what I call the practice of emotional healing. And, you know, I'm always client zero being as emotionally clear and healed as possible so I can teach other people how to get 100% of the life and love they want. And, you know, my life today, I always say, is the example more than anything, and the greatest testimony that healing is possible. This dream come true, magically delicious, blissful life I'm living— not necessarily all of the insane Lifetime Movie Network life I had prior, right? Because it's supposed to be good. And I really want us in an empowering conversation when it comes to trauma. I want us to know there's no trauma you can't use to your advantage, or, you know, plug into creativity to use to your advantage.

Absolutely. Oh my gosh, I am even more excited, and I was already excited to talk to you about creativity and the ways in which it arrives in your life with your clients, how what you do with your clients is your expression of creativity as well. But before we get there, when you think of creativity, what does it mean to you to be creative?

For me, honestly, creativity is about honoring how freaking fun I am. You know, like, I grew up as that parentified, over-responsible oldest child, you know. And I remember my first class in grad school, it was personality theories, and we took a quiz and it was like you're going to get a dominant and then two secondary. And the two secondary, one is the mask you wear and one is the truth of who you are. And I almost fell out of my chair because I could not believe I'm actually fun. So creativity, because it was like my number one was control and then my two were perfection and fun. And I remember like, I'm perfection all day. And then I remember really realizing No, I'm not. I'm fun. And I just remember thinking, I'm fun. I'm fun. I'm fun. Who the hell knew I was fun? I didn't, you know? So when I'm creative, I get to play with who I really am. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. So that moment of realization that I am fun, how did that like shift your trajectory in that moment? That recognition of—

I mean, it was one of the most impactful moments in my life that I almost never talk about, quite frankly, because I just remember thinking, well, at the time, my first husband was playing and fun and not responsible at all. So I was— everything was in my name, the house, the cars. I, I was trying to be just like growing up because there is such a correlation between how you feel as an adult at home now and you felt growing up if you haven't healed it yet, right? So I just knew without really understanding what to do with it, this isn't going to be my life. How I'm living now is not going to be my life. And I am fun and I'm having no fun, therefore there's a gap to figure out how to close.

Yeah, absolutely. So how did that recognition of that I am fun. I'm not having fun. It sounds like you went through many years of navigating that to—

oh God, yeah, where you are today. I wasn't having fun for probably 5 more years, this is the truth. But at least I had a permission slip that that was a destination worth fighting for and a finish line worth being committed to crossing no matter what, right? So You know, it took a while because I had to have my whole life fall apart so I could figure out who I was and put my life back together again, you know? But it was fun to decide that I was going to heal until I was having fun.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. I mean, first of all, congratulations of, like, finding fun again and expressing it and having it be such a power in your life. Now, in terms of like navigating those challenges the next 5 years before, like, you know, tearing things down, rebuilding, how did you face those challenges? Like, if you think back with creativity.

Yeah. And I love looking at it this from, from this angle because I, I've never talked about how creative I had to be. And I really have had to be creative. And in my private practice, you know, I've been helping people heal since 2002. And in my private practice, hundreds upon hundreds of success stories of healing, it's always creativity that closes the gap between how we're feeling and how we want to feel. And a lot of people focus on, if the external could just change, then internally I'll be okay, right?

Yeah.

But I have to get creative about facing the darkest corners of my soul so I can handle the truth of who I am and how I feel. So I can create the life I want even if external doesn't change. And this is what I've taught my clients over the years, is we don't need the external to change for us to be okay or foundationally sound or feeling how we want to feel. We think it's the external that's the problem. This person looked at me cross-eyed. This, you know, person got the promotion and I didn't. This spouse that I've given my whole heart to is cheating on me and lying to me, and I don't deserve this, right? But the external changes isn't going to change your inner world, and you are the master of your inner landscape. And so for me, it was about going, until I fall in love— this is literally what it was— until I fall in love with the part of me that's convinced that shutting down and freezing is the way, I won't be able to win. That me is gonna win until I get to the point where the part of me that wants to fight and blame and pity the fool that tried to mess with me, because you picked the wrong bitch, I gotta fall in love with that me if the healed me is gonna win and not that me. And then the same thing with the part of me that wants to run, because there's fight, flight, freeze, and then there's healed. And until you're creatively embracing all these versions of you that take over, when your survival self is convinced you can only survive if you fight, flight, freeze, you don't get to meet the healed you. And the healed you doesn't win.

Yeah, well, we're all, all of it. Exactly. And it's time to meet the healed us and participate in this bad person.

Yeah, but this is the thing. You're not going to wake up one day and know who that is, right? You wake up one day and go, I'm surviving. And we're all bipolar. I'm sorry, I'm trained to diagnose you and I'm not going to. And when I'm saying we're all bipolar, I'm not saying the traditional DSM version of the diagnosis. I'm saying there's a, there's a version of you you created to survive. And then you think it's who you are. And if it was who you are, you wouldn't feel like shit.

Yeah.

Right. But we don't know who we are except for who we became to survive. And the scariest, most liberating, delicious work you can do that is also the darkest, most painful work you can do is to go, I'm going to let myself break through survival so I can design who I want to be.

I love that, right? Finding who you want to be, first recognizing I'm in survival, and then that choice to break through. For people who this may all be very new language or new experience, where, where do you recommend people start?

Buy my book, because I literally wrote a roadmap for you. Not because I know your answers, but I know how to get you to the place where you can access your truth. Right? And we know it's your truth when it feels good. And nobody tells us, like, it's supposed to feel good. Life is supposed to be joyful. Life is supposed to be magically delicious. And we're supposed to let ourselves creatively let love in as much as we want to give all of this love we have inside of us, right? And I think everybody lies when we're growing up about what do you want to be when you grow up, because the real answer is love.

Mm.

Yeah. But how do you start? You've gotta figure out who have I become and what about that do we wanna keep? And what about that is just inherited generational love trauma that I don't have to carry with me or pass on to my own kids?

Mm-hmm.

So I wrote a book. It's Coming Back to Life: A Roadmap to Heal from Pain to Create the Life You Want. And again, it's not me saying I have your answers. It's me saying you do. And I'm going to help you access them. And I wanted to write a book about turning the trauma story on its head. I wanted to write a book that was like, there's no trauma you can't use to your advantage. And there is so much life beyond survival. And I validate, you know, when we start to admit we're in survival, let alone decide to break up with survival, it can literally feel like we're dying.

Mm-hmm.

But we're not. Yeah, it's just we're letting go of who we're not. And that feels like a threat because we know we can survive survival. We don't know we can survive alignment. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, everything you're saying, in my mind I'm just like, the creative process and creative experience of all of it is amazing. And talking about identity and the choice, and that identity is something that we have the capacity to choose. Like, we create who we want.

We have to reinvent ourselves, right? My clients, yeah, say yes to reinventing themselves, and I'm the coach that's going to tell you, you need a breakdown to break through. You just need to decide to decide to live and to take your life back and to take you back. So many of us are living in a way where we're trying to fit in versus designing a life that fits in with us. But you can't design a life that fits in with you if you don't know who you are. And almost nobody knows who they are, right? Yeah.

And that, that the creative, the curiosity that goes into learning who you are, discovering what those pieces and aspects are that you want to keep, that you want to let go of, that you want to develop. And yeah, all of that is very exciting to hear that you're doing this work. And that, you know, how people— I think oftentimes the psychotherapy world has a lot of taboo, and it's still really steeped in stigma for so many people. So to experience you talking about something and seeing your joy and your passion come through, I can only imagine what it is for people hearing about it who are also experiencing, oh wow, this can be exciting. It doesn't have to be a complete rock bottom.

No. And often we wait because I, I created this term a couple years ago. I call it high-functioning unhappiness. So many more, right, are high-functioning and unhappy. And I just like that term better than generational trauma healing because it scares people half to death, right? Sure. But like, if we look at it through the lens of high-functioning unhappiness, what I mean by that is so many of you are already high performers, high achievers, and successful on paper, right? When I got out of a domestic violence marriage with a 2-year-old, the bottom had fell out of my life, but it almost was like I had nothing to lose. Because everything had broken and I thought I was broken. And I just— I will give myself some credit because I had to have courage. I could have stayed in that, but I was just unwilling to. And I knew I was going to lose everything and have to build it all back up, right? Yeah. And when you're in a place where you've lost everything and you have nothing to lose, it's really easy, if we're honest, to say yes to reinventing ourselves. But what about when we're high functioning? And when we don't want to threaten what we've built, right? So high-functioning unhappiness is about recognizing, wait a minute, if I don't threaten the unhappiness, the high-functioning parts of my life are going to fall away, even if I'm holding on for dear life. Because if I'm not happy, it's not sustainable. I'm going to get sick, I'm going to burn out, I'm going to light a match and want to blow it all up. So the clients I serve in my private practice are coming to me because they're high-functioning and unhappy, and I just make it safe and fun to creatively threaten the unhappiness because it does exist. Happiness does exist. Happiness does exist. It's not like a unicorn that is evading you, and we don't need to choose independence. Or what we've built. We need to get back to the place where we're high functioning and happy because we're living our lives our way.

I love that.

Yeah, I mean, I just hear so— I mean, I don't know your clients, but I, in hearing you talk, can only imagine how inspired they are to hear your journey and your story and know that change and transformation and growth is possible.

Yes.

But where do you find your inspiration? Like, who or what is inspiring you these days?

Well, you know, for me, it took— and I go way deeper in Coming Back to Life, my book about all of this— but it took my life falling apart when I ended up getting married again, doing all this healing work in between the two husbands, and building a company, and getting my footing and my bearings. But I was still hardwired to think achievement. Was how I would know I was valuable. I still thought I need to be needed and I need to prove that I'm worth taking up space in this life. And so I was killing myself, working myself almost to death. And I had gotten married again. Everything seems like, okay, this is my dream come true life. And I got pregnant again and then got diagnosed with cancer, and they only gave me a 5% chance to live. And it was so cruel because I had no family history of cancer. Yeah, I had those. Like, I felt very well. My business was thriving, right? So for me, how do I find inspiration? I know that me in alignment with the truth of who I am is all that matters. And I've had to survive and face all my biggest fears, and now I'm still here with no reason to be. And I just feel like my life is on divine assignment. So all I do now is pursue pleasure and fun. That's it.

Oh my gosh. Well, now I need to ask, what do you do for that in that inspire pleasure and fun in your own life?

Yeah, well, I had to decide I was going to be a lifestyle entrepreneur for the rest of my life, right? I'm not an entrepreneur that needs to achieve to prove something.

Mm-hmm.

I'm a lifestyle entrepreneur, so I do all this so I can have the life I want. That's the first thing, right? And this is what I help my clients with, is how do you set your life up to for you. So I'm in a commitment that my life has to work for me and that I have to be set up to win, honoring and respecting and taking care of me 100% of the time. And that even in the non-preferential BS moments that are inevitable, right, because, right, it's gonna go our way and then it isn't gonna go our way. Yeah, that's about you. It's just life being life, right? And from there, I get to focus on Who am I going to be? What am I in the pursuit of creating? And what's the experience I want to have? These are the 3 big things I always have control over— who I'm choosing to be and what I'm creating and the experience I want to have. And for me, it took cancer to know who I was and to commit to, I'm going to be this me. Because it's easy to be this me in the face of everything on paper is perfect. But what about when you're diagnosed with cancer while you're pregnant and everything you thought you were, you don't get? Those success metrics anymore because I can't be the sexy wife now and I can't be the rockstar business owner making money hand over fist and I can't be the mom I want to be or the friend or the community member, right? But I get to be the Rebeccah that's peaceful and joyful and love no matter what. I get to have joy and excitement as the rule I live by. I get to be her, right? Empowered, powerfully relaxed. What am I creating? And what's the experience I want to have, I get to plug those 3 things into the spiritual GPS no matter what, right? Yeah. So I'll tell you, it inspires the shit out of me that I get to create me and my experience 100% of the time. But I love, you know, the— these little things like my home. I work here, I live here, I never have to leave here. It's an amazing home, and every room is like like not a museum in a way where you can't touch it, but it's pristine. My environment inspires me.

Yeah.

And then what I'm feeding myself spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, it inspires me. And I just, I get to, instead of trying to fit in, make sure every moment is fitting in with me. So I wear the big funky jewelry. I am not afraid. You go to my website, the Rebeccah Silence woman. I'm in like tulle robes and lipstick with crazy jewelry because I'm just like, this is me. And if you're down, great. And if you're not, bye. I'll blow you a kiss and no problem. But I'm not like dumbing it down, editing myself, trying to be what I think I'm supposed to be. And that's inspiring. And my space inspires me and I'm intentional AF, which keeps me inspired. And I'm a music therapist, so music, it's one of my go-tos. I'm listening to music sick all the time, and I'm learning every day, and I'm serving every day, and I'm letting myself be loved every day without pushing that away because it feels threatening. And I could go on for days, but every part of my life is inspiring, or it's a no thank you.

I love that. I, I love all of that, and that just the intention behind all of the pieces the home, the environment, the space you create to experience joy and to be joyful within. And yeah, so for people who are just starting on their rediscovering joy in their life journey, what are maybe a few initial tips that might, might set them up to start to experience a little joy?

Yeah, so what I want to teach right now is the practice of emotional healing in a nutshell. This is the Reader's Digest version. The book will give you more. You go to theunsilentwoman.com or rebeccahsilence.com, and I have free gifts for you and more on all of this. But my jam— I created what I call the practice of emotional healing, and what I know for sure is I wouldn't be alive without it. And we need more than mindset and strategy. And where traditional therapy fails us is it's trying to help you heal your emotions through the mind.

Mm.

And that just doesn't work. And I'm not saying there's not phenomenal therapists out there, but if you're like, I've done the therapy, I've read the books, I've studied, and I still don't feel how I want to feel, that's because you haven't learned the practice of emotional healing yet. So what the practice of emotional healing does is it makes makes life super simple doesn't mean it's easy. I teach there's a huge distinction between our feelings about what's happening and the emotions underneath it all we need to feel. Okay, so I teach there's only 5 emotions: anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement. Anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement. A baby is born knowing that these are emotions to follow and to not resist. And a baby can go through anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement in 5 seconds, right? Because they haven't learned to edit themselves yet. Our feelings about what's going on— we learned overwhelm, we learned abandonment, we learned betrayal, disappointment, right?

All—

I could go on for days. Guilt, shame, etc., etc., etc. Those ways of feeling about what's going on or how we're coping so we don't have to be with the emotion underneath it.

Yeah.

And if you want joy and excitement to be the rule you live by, you have to have a healthy relationship with anger, fear, grief, joy, and excitement. Because this emotional weather isn't because of what someone said or did or a circumstance.

Mm-hmm.

It's just where you are emotionally. So when you get to the point where no emotion is a threat, that's how you're free. And when you're not resisting any of the emotions, because some of you can't cannot stand joy and excitement. I have a client, she's top 4 in the country in her industry, and she's so happy. Fiancé just bought her a $70,000 engagement ring, and her business is thriving, and her kids great. She doesn't know how to be happy. She doesn't know how to handle the joy. Yeah, right. And I love— there's a meme out there, I didn't create this, I don't know who did, but it talks about we're not healing to handle the trauma. You're good at that. We're healing to handle the Mm.

Yeah.

So emotional healing is something you always have control over, and it's a huge missing across the globe in personal development. Mm-hmm. Because we think our feelings are because of, we don't know how to master anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement.

Mm-hmm.

So that's what I teach. I give you a huge taste of it in the book. And again, you can find me online at theunsilentwoman.com or rebeccahsilence.com to learn more. But I want you to master emotional healing so you can get get back to joy and excitement as the rule instead of joy and excitement being the exception.

Amen. Yeah, like, aho, all of it. Sign me up.

I love it.

It's fantastic. And thank you so much for taking the time to break things down for us, give us little tidbits and snippets, and sharing your own life and your own experience and the things that have helped you find joy and excitement in your own life. I just have one last question.

Yeah.

What does it feel like in your body to be creative?

Great question. I mean, the first word I hear is alive, you know? And for me, when I'm creative, I'm not alone in it. So I started years and years and years ago. I've been on the radio in New for 15 years now, every single week, talking to a few hundred thousand people. And when I first got this radio show gig with no media training, just the guidance came through. Yeah. I would drive to the radio station at 5:30 in the morning, and I would say, all right, God, get Rebeccah Silence out of the way.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And just come through me. What would you have me say? I'm here for it. Show me. I don't want to figure it out. And And for me, when I'm creative, I'm literally in a co-creation with God. So it's delicious, it's magical, and it's super fun to let myself be delighted and surprised by the downloads. I really am a portal at this point. I just plug in and Source flows through me. So I'm alive, but I'm so connected and almost like when I'm creative, I'm in a hug from God, and I just get to be the messenger of the divine intelligence, divine love, and divine guidance. And it is magically delicious.

Well, what a great phrase to end on. It's magically delicious. I love it. Well, remind people where they can find all of your— yeah, things that you have in the world, get in touch with you.

Yeah, @RebeccahSilence. It's R-E-B-E-C-C-A-H anywhere. Rebeccah Silence YouTube channel, @RebeccahSilence Instagram, @TheUnsilentWoman Instagram. And if you DM me Creativity, I'll send you an extra free gift. The websites are theunsilentwoman.com and rebeccahsilence.com. And for any women out there that would love to experience me as their coach, I have a brand new membership for women called the Own Your Voice Society where you get me live twice a month. Every single week we drop workbooks and content and growth sessions for you, and there's huge community, and these women are up to cool things. So it is for women wanting to take their lives back and their voices back, but it's mostly women that already have a voice, they just don't know how to use it for them, for their joy, for their peace, for their fun, for their fulfillment. So at theunsilentwoman.com you can check that out too.

Awesome. Well, I will put links in show notes so people have easy access. And thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. This has been such a delightful conversation. I was going to say magically delicious conversation and all of it. So thank you again.

Thanks for this show. Thank you all for being someone who cares about creativity. It's so important. And I think we get to create the life we want and we get to to create the emotional experience we want and who we want to be for the rest of our lives. So take creativity and pour it into your identity.

Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you, Rebeccah Silence, so much.

This was such a treat. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast. We'd love to keep in touch, so follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We are @sustainingcreativity. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Tag your friends and family so they can listen too. We love to hear from you, so leave your reviews, comments, and questions. Check out our website sustainingcreativity.com for upcoming offerings and creativity coaching. Tune in Tuesdays for our next episode. Episode. And remember, with creativity, anything's possible.