82. What Heals All Wounds Better Than Time?

Welcome to the momset podcast, my friend. I'm your coach, Tessa Romero, and as a woman of God, an adoring wife, and a mother of three darling boys, I am passionate about giving you the tools you need to build a mindset skill set that enriches your experience through motherhood and daily life. I've had my fair share of challenges and hardship throughout my life, and that is exactly how I came to this place of finding purpose to my pain and helping you do the same. I know we can thrive right where we are at and it's time for us to take back motherhood by being the mommy that we want to be right right now. Thank you for being here and making this a wonderful place for me to show up alongside you. Oh, my friend, I see you, I feel you, I know you, I hear you. And what I love most about coaching, truly, if it's through the content that I put out like this, if it's through my courses that I have out, if it's through my 12 week groups, if it's one on one, or if it's at my revive retreat, what I love most about it is I feel genuinely so connected to you. I feel like I know where you're at and I know how devastatingly low it can feel and how impossible it can seem to get to the other side. And I know about the other side. I know about the trenches and I know about the peaks. I know about this journey that you're on because I've done it myself. I have done this work. I have learned this work so that I can live this work. And now I get to teach this work. And it started because I learned it first. And it just. It doesn't mean we're running different races. It just means I've been running it a little bit longer. So I have some tips, some pointers, some strategies to share with you in your healing journey. And the one that I wanted us to talk about today is this idea of time heals all wounds. I'm not sure if you've ever heard that saying. It's pretty well known. I feel like when it comes to trying to heal anything, be it your childhood trauma, the way you were treated, maybe you were sexually assaulted, maybe you have terrible relationships with your parents, or you're going through something really hard in your marriage, or you're having a really freaking hard time in motherhood right now. Right. Whatever it is, so often we're told, just give it time. Time heals all wounds. You just got to give it more time. I heard that for over 12 years, 12 of the hardest years of my life, that was the loudest thing I remember hearing, was, give it time, Tessa. Time heals all wounds. And I just don't believe that. I don't believe that it's time that heals us. I believe it's us that heals us. Time did not heal me. I did. Time does not heal all wounds. You do. You do. And I feel like when we really take a step back, to think about the logic behind that, with time and our ability to heal, it makes a lot of sense. Because, yes, everyone wants to say, give it more time. Time heals all wounds. And yet they won't be able to ever tell you. How much time. How much time does it take to forgive? How much time does it take to go through the process of grieving? How much time does it take to mourn the loss of your miscarriage? How much time does it take to trust that your next pregnancy will be successful and you'll be able to hold that baby by the end? How much time does it take to forgive your spouse who has betrayed your trust? How much time does it take to decide to start dating again after you go through a divorce? How much time does it take to forgive your siblings, your parents, your in laws? I truly do not believe that this is a time issue, that you just haven't been given enough time yet. I believe it's a heart issue. It's a mind issue. It's something that is within us and that is so powerful. And I wish I would have thought about that Sooner in my 12 years going through it, because truly I believed it's a time thing. I just need more time. And. And the thing about time is time is so. It's so patient, right? It's gonna let you use it however you choose. And sometimes we completely spoil it, and sometimes we completely take, like, take advantage of it. And we love the way we're spending our time. So time is very patient with us. It doesn't. It does not care how you're pursuing your healing journey. It's like, well, I'm here. I'm gonna keep on ticking. And that's the second thing about time is it's very gracious. So one, it's patient with you. It's not gonna make you do something sooner, right? It might come down to an idea in your head of when you need to have it done. Time itself doesn't tell you to do it. You do. You're the one that says, oh, that due date's up. Oh, there's that family gathering, that family event. It'll be awkward if I don't address this before then, so I better address it now. Like, you know, whatever it is, we put these deadlines in our mind, and time is patient to just continue going for us. And it's gracious because it continues moving at the same pace. Whether you're at your highest of highs, your lowest of lows, it continues just the same. And to me, that's so gracious. That's so gracious that it does that for us so that we know that the joys of our life don't move faster and the hardship doesn't go slower. What changes is our focus? What changes is our ability to. To serve ourselves, to help ourselves, to create and continue cultivating this life that we truly want. And it's so interesting to me that a healing journey is painted in this illusion of time. You need time to forgive people. How much time? I have seen so many stories, so many stories of horrific, horrific events happening, and then people actively seeking out the abuser of that. Of that circumstance so they can forgive that person. Like, we just want to know who did it so we can forgive them now. We don't want to carry hatred. We don't want to carry anger. We want to move into forgiveness. And they alone made that decision. Where there is other people that say, I will never forgive. And what are they doing? They're waiting for healing. Like, healing's gonna accidentally find you. Personally, in my journey of things, healing has never accidentally found me. It's never accidentally found me. If I wanted to sit in anger and just stay there and continue the same thoughts and the same feelings and the same behaviors, I mean, I proved that I could do that for over 12 years. And at no point did time say, ah, your time's up. It's time to move on from this. It's time for this next phase. Here, let me unveil it to you. Time didn't do that. I did that. I can confidently tell you that time did not heal me. I did. Time does not heal all wounds. You do. You do. So when you are sitting in this pain and you're sitting at one of your lows, you're trying to figure out, how do I improve my marriage? How do I start actively enjoying motherhood? Because what are people telling you, oh, this is just a season. This is gonna pass? Are they telling you when, when is the season over? When does it pass? How much longer? How much longer does it take for you to feel better in motherhood? Personally, I Think that's a really just devastating thing to say to a mother that's going through a hard time is that she just kind of needs to wait it out because there's no answer for how long. Oh, once your baby starts sleeping through the night, then, then you'll, you know, you'll feel a lot better. Sure, maybe there's some truth to that. And at the same, in the same breath of that my 5 year old still wakes up every single night. So then what? And then you have another baby? Very. I've got three kids, a five year old, a three year old and a one year old and somebody's up every single night, every single night. And you know, bless them, they all love the morning. They all wake up excited and enthusiastic to start the. And time didn't change what I thought about all of that. I did. I changed what I think about motherhood because I heard the common narrative. It's exhausting. And all mothers don't know who they are. And we all just feel so much resentment towards our spouses because we do more and we bear the mental load and on and on and on. And I intentionally decided to view it differently than that because the childhood experience I had, it was not something that I'm willing to recreate for my kids. It was just unacceptable. That was like a non negotiable for me and I decided to find a way. I threw the idea of time out the window and what happened because of motherhood. For me, motherhood truly is my revival in every single sense of the term. And I run the Revive retreat friends. Like I know what revive looks like. I know what a revival looks like. And I've had the opportunity to see it through 23 women that have come to my retreats and I know exactly what that looks like. And that is what motherhood does for us. And then from there it went into the other relationships of my life. My mom just came and visited us for like 48 hours this past week. And I can confidently tell you this is the first time time that I've like genuinely enjoyed being around her probably since I was 13. Like it's been a long, long, long time. And it wasn't time. Like, yes, there's been so many years that have passed and it wasn't time. It wasn't the amount of years that have passed that made this, this 48 hours with her enjoyable. No, it's me. It's the work I've done, it's the growth I've had, it's the mentality I've built. It's the home I've created. It's knowing who the frick I am and trusting that that's who I'm going to be no matter where I'm at or who I'm with. It's this trust within me. It's the safety that I bring no matter where I go, because I have that trust. That is what brought me to healing. Because for a long time through those 12 years, especially if I heard my stepdad's name said, oh, my gosh, I would literally feel, like, hot all over my body. My hands would get sweaty. Like, every muscle of my body would feel just, like, super tense. My jaw would clench, and I would just feel, like, flooded with these, like, these thoughts. And they were very intense, very aggressive, and just flooded with. With anger. And I tried setting the boundaries. I tried telling people, you know, don't say his name around me. If we're gonna have relationship, you need to respect that. I don't want to hear his name. I don't want to hear his involvement in your life. And wouldn't you know it, people didn't respect that boundary. And my mom would. So that's how I used to feel about it and about him and just his name. I felt completely out of control of myself when his name was said. His name, he was nowhere near me, nowhere near involved in my life. And yet his name, I still felt the same way. I still felt all that hurt flushback, all of that pain come flooding back in like I was just starting all over again for 12 years. And what was interesting was my mom was here this. This past week, and she brought him up, and she brought up these plans and was talking about him. And every part of me felt safe. Every part of me felt at peace. My mind just felt still like, yeah, that's what she's talking about. Yeah, that's what they're doing. Yeah, this is what's happening right now. And I love who I am. I love my life. I love where I'm at and what I have and what I'm doing and the opportunity that I've had to become this person, like, able to still be present and listen without my whole nervous system erupting within me because I no longer feel safe. Like, I kept that confidence and safety within me. And this wasn't a time thing you're gonna, like, how are we gonna say that 12 years isn't enough time. 17 years isn't enough time. I've worked with women that have been battling this shame, this pain, this hardship, these Past experiences from. For over 55 years. That's how long they've been battling it. And we are just now getting to the place of doing the work ourselves. Because time is not what heals us. We do. Time does not heal all wounds. You do. And the way that I treat my husband now in our marriage, if I ever feel upset, I'm not going to use my tongue as a weapon and create this explosive fight. Truly as like the atomic bomb that goes off. I don't do that anymore. I don't ignore him for days. Why? Was it because of time? No, it was not because of time. Because I did that the first two and a half years of our marriage. And then when I got pregnant with Liam, I had a shift in perspective. I had a change of heart. I had a change of mind. Time stayed the same. I've had all the time. Right. I could have done that earlier in my marriage, and. And it wasn't time that did it. It was me. It was this willingness to see the way I'm treating my husband right now is completely unacceptable. And the idea of my son within me, having a wife like me one day feels absolutely unbearable. And I just don't want that for him. And when I started thinking down that road, you know what the next thought was? That I landed on the next perspective that I landed on that cat just catapulted my healing journey. And again, motherhood, still going through everything, Nothing has changed. My entire past is still the same. I have all the same people in my life, all the same experiences. And trust me, most people are still doing the same freaking things they've done since I was like 10 years old. And here I am growing and changing. How? Because I control me. I control my perspective. I can soften my heart and. And open my mind so that I'm free. And the next perspective that was just this catalyst for my healing journey was seeing the way of my mom and I's relationship. Regardless if I wanted an active relationship with her in my life, regardless if I wanted to pursue that. That wasn't the point. The point was what am I about to create with my son? What do I know how to create? What am I prepared to create with him? Because again, this idea, this idea of him and I having a relationship like the one my mom and I have had, or even the one that my mom and I have today, we have a lot of freaking work to do. A lot of work. The idea of one of my sons and I having a relationship like that, oh, my gosh, it's Gut wrenching. It's completely heartbreaking to me. Just the idea. And I decided absolutely no. I will do everything in my power to make sure that I can remain in this position to have excellent relationships with my sons, with all of my children. Right. If, if I have more kids, whatever, whatever it looks like, I, I am going to remain in the position that I have excellent relationships with each of them because I have a soft heart and I have an open mind and I don't need more time to pass before I make that a priority. Time did not change the way I showed up in my marriage. I did. And I want you to consider that with where you're at in your healing journey. If you feel like this, your nervous system just becomes wrecked. Just absolutely havoc. If a name gets brought up or you know, you're going to be around a specific person this holiday, I understand. Like I said, I see you, I feel you, I hear you, I know you. I know this is hard. And what I also know is that you can heal. You don't need more time to pass. You don't need more terrible experiences with the same people doing the same things in order to prove like, oh, well, I guess this really is where it is. Like, you already know you can trust yourself. You just have to become committed to working on you, seeing the things within your control. Because a name does not have more power over you being around a specific person. No one outside of you controls within you. Yes, they may have abused you and hurt you and cut you down and ripped you up in terrible, terrible ways. And I truly believe that the harder the circumstances, the worst things that you've been through, the more you deserve to heal, the more you are readily just welcomed to the path of healing. Because I know how hard it is. God knows how hard it is. He's not trying to withhold light, love and forgiveness and freedom from you. We do that to ourselves. It's not time that stops us. It's just us. Just us. Everybody, I promise you, everybody in your life can remain the exact same. And you can change first. And when you change, it doesn't mean that you allow your life to complacently stay the same. Once you change, everything else is forced to change. Because the vision of your life changes. Who you are changes, how you feel changes. And you know when you change who you believe you are and how you're feeling, oh, baby, watch out. Your actions are about to light up. They are about to increase tenfold along with the energy. You may think, wow, that just sounds impossible right now. Tessa, I feel completely exhausted. Yeah, I understand that. And I've been in those seasons, too, where if I could see how much I do now when just, you know, 12, 17 years ago, if I could see how much I'm doing now and how I'm operating and how I'm thinking and how I'm loving and how I'm laughing and how I'm connecting, my mind would have been freaking blown. Like, I would have just sat there flabbergast. Like, how the frick did you do that? That's insane. And it is insane. It is insane. And it's possible. It's possible. It doesn't have to be easy. It certainly wasn't easy. Right? You don't need easy. Come on. How much. How much goodness of your life has come from just really easy things? Not much. Not much. We've got to look at how much value comes from seeing the hard things that we are capable of doing and how much belief we instill in ourselves when we choose to do hard things like that. Because I no longer get triggered by a name. And I trust myself to love who I am no matter where I'm at or who I'm around. And that's what I know you can have, too. And I'm inviting you to truly get yourself to my Revive retreat, the February retreat of 2024. It's the only one I'm hosting of 2024. And that is what we do there. We dismantle this idea that it can't be now. You can't be the wife you want to be now. You can't be the mom you want to be now. You can't have what you want now. You can't feel the way you want to feel now. Yes, you can. You can be who you want to be now. You can do what you want to do now. You can feel the way you want to feel now. And all of this powers within you. We've just got to tap into it. And when you can just spend. Truly, it's five days. When you can spend five days away from your normal daily life, where your mind thinks 90% of the same thoughts it thought the day before. Did you know that 90% of your thoughts are repetitive? How freaking insane. How do we expect ourselves to stay in the same environment with the same people doing the same things and welcome 90% of New Thoughts? When you put yourself in this new environment, Revive is a new environment with new people, and it's a new place. And we're doing new things and we're eating new Foods, like, everything about it is different. Your thoughts become different too, because they have. Your mind is forced. It's forced to adapt to this environment. And let me tell you, it's powerful, it's healthy, it's nurturing. It's so. It's just filled with compassion that you can just. Gosh, you can touch it. You can touch the compassion. And in that five days, you accelerate your healing and growth. The things that you think are stopping you right now, there'll be nothing at revive. There'll be nothing there. And I'm telling you, we get you to this place of regulating your nervous system. Imagine being able to release the emotions you've stored for your 12 years, your 17 years, however long it's been for you, 55 years. Imagine being able to release all of that. That's why I bring in other coaches and instructors, because I'm not the only one meant to do this. We're meant to do it as a community. We're meant to come together. We're meant to have this connection with one another, right? We're social beings. We're supposed to do it together. And your mind, again, it does this faster when it sees other people doing it too, because you know you're not alone. They're proving it can be done right in front of you. And you're going to prove it for somebody else, too. So I bring in these other coaches and instructors to work alongside me and you for our five days together. We focus on regulating your nervous system, releasing emotions, changing these perspectives. Truly like dialing in the code for your mind to open, it's like a lock, right? And we've just got to dial in the right code for it to break open. It's the cool. And I can see it in your eyes when it happens. It's amazing. And then we've got to. We've got to dial in the right code for your heart because we've got to soften your heart, too. It's not a time issue, it's a heart issue. A mind issue that we've issued our heart to harden and we've issued our mind to remain closed. Keep thinking these things. Keep dishing me out this experience in this way, just as I've. Just as I've programmed it to be in your mind will do an excellent job at that. And it doesn't mean your mind is broken. It actually proves that your mind is working quite well. It knows how to do this job. And it's just gotten more efficient. And with your heart, right, you've issued it to harden because you've believed, this is how I stay safe. This is how I protect myself. I've got nothing left to give. And again, this narrative goes, and the heart says, okay, I'm going to harden up. And then. We lack joy in life. We lack perspective, we lack love, we lack warmth, we lack connection. We lack these ideas that enrich our life and grow us and allow us to pursue those dreams, be it the dream marriage, the dream life and motherhood, or the dream business you want to go after whatever it is. Time is not the answer. It's just not. You are. You are. And when you get yourself to revive and you force your mind to think different and you force your body to feel different because you're in a different place with different people doing different things, we accelerate the healing and growth journey. So I want you to know that time, it doesn't heal all wounds. And I have worked with many, many, many women that held on to their same hurt until they finally decided to heal. And it wasn't time that made that decision for them. It was just them. And I've worked with many, many women that healed remarkably faster than you can even imagine that I've chosen to forgive right when it happened. Did you know that's possible? Did you know it's possible to just actively forgive people as it happens? You don't even have to store it first. There are so many stories I could share, and my goal is to share more of them with you. Because this idea that we have to harden our heart and close off our mind in order to go through a genuine healing journey is insane. There's just no way that you can close off your mind and close off your heart and try to numb your emotions and still feel love the way that we're meant to and still feel joy, still feel connection, still feel compassion, and truly know the most authentic and genuine version of you. There's just no way to do that simultaneously, like you're. You're choosing one over the other. And to wrap up this episode, I just want to share a few testimonials with you from my last Revive that I did in September at Destin Florida. Sabrina says it's hard to fully put into words the experience of Revive. The emotional healing, the release of who you have been in the past, and the capture of who you are underneath. All the tendencies you have been conditioned to use to keep yourself safe come together so beautifully. I felt ready when I left Revive, ready to be who I wanted, ready to show up as the mom and wife I Envision and ready to take on anything good and bad that presents itself. Revive is truly a magical, empowering experience. And then my sweet friend Ashley that came to Revive says exceeded every thought I could have hoped for. I was terrified about coming. I decided day one to show up and surrender to the process. The most life changing event I have ever done. Oh, what the Lord did. And through all these women, miracle after miracle, chains broken, lies unveiled, I will be thankful forever. I believe I am enough. Most exciting news ever. Every single thing we did had such purpose, such intention. I know we went over schedule, but seriously, I wouldn't change anything. You can definitely trust that at Revive we will make it exactly what you need and be willing to change things as we go. And then sweet Sarah says, Amazing. Extremely hard. I came knowing and committed to doing the extremely hard work. I felt loved on and supported at each turn. I, I was all in for five days and came out a completely different person. And then lastly, Michelle says one of the most powerful aspects of the retreat was addressing limiting beliefs. I confronted the self doubts that had held me back for so long and replaced them with a belief in my own potential. It was a transformative shift. But what truly made the Revive Retreat unforgettable was the deep and meaningful friendships with the women there. We shared our stories, supported each other and celebrated our victories. The Revive retreat was a life changing experience and empowered me to embrace my identity, adopt a positive mindset, regulate my emotions, prioritize self care and foster meaningful relationships. I returned home with renewed strength and purpose, better equipped to navigate the beautiful complexities of motherhood. And I just want to reassure you, listening to this, maybe you're considering if, if Revive is a good fit for you and maybe you're thinking that your story is too different. I want to reassure you that Revive is about so much more than motherhood. It's about your life. It's about every moment leading up to who you have been right now and what it's going to take for you to become who you want to be. And how do we fast track that growth into who you want to be? Because there's going to be a flood of emotion that comes in because we're feeling triggered. There's going to be this flood of self doubt and limiting beliefs when you start to think about who you want to be. And Revive is that bridge. It's that bridge that says we know this is coming up for you as you're going through healing and growth. So let us help you get over it. Let us help you get over this bridge, we'll walk over it together. And what makes Revive so unique on top of that is we have our full 12 week mind body alignment course in congruence with Revive. So when you come to Revive in February, you'll be at week eight in Mind body Alignment. So it's not like other events or retreats where you kind of just go and we do the deep digging and try to find stuff while we're there. There. We do that in Mind body alignment for eight weeks leading up to Revive. And then we are able to just fast track that release, that exploration, that growth, that healing, that forgiveness of yourself first. And then if you want to forgive anybody else, yourself comes first in this. We can fast track all that because we've been working together for eight weeks leading up to it. And then you go back home and you have even more accountability to keep going because. Because we're still working in mind body alignment. And now you have connections with 16 other women. There's truly friendships made here. They're just what we cultivate. It's so difficult to describe. And in the amount of time, if we talk about time in five days, I feel like we accomplish what most people dream to do in five years of their healing journey, when they start a healing journey. What they want to feel and who they want to be and what they want the want to do by the end of five years. That's likely exactly what we do in five days at Revive. So time is not the issue. You can do so much in five days and you can do so little in five years. I want to accelerate your healing and growth. I want 2024 to be your year to thrive in your marriage, in your relationships, and especially and motherhood. Because you know what? Every moment matters, every interaction adds up. Especially in motherhood when you're raising little ones and you've got, gosh, can you imagine 30 years from now? 30 years of negative interactions, 30 years of negative experiences together, 30 years of these negative behaviors. Are you going to have the relationship with your kids that you want? Are you going to have the relationship with your spouse that you want? Don't give up. I'm not saying that every moment, every interaction, all of it matters as this pressure to be perfect. No, no. I'm saying that in this way to show you perspective and opportunity, the continuous opportunity that unfolds for you. If every interaction matters, then yes, that poor one mattered just now. And the next excellent one matters too. And the great one after that, and the restoring one after that, and the humbling one after that, we're still gonna have hard moments. We're still gonna have poor interactions. Yes. And you're gonna learn a whole lot faster than them from those now. So everything is on this track for growth for you. I know it. It's coming together. And I'm so proud of you. And just I want you to expand your mind of what's possible for you in five days. Get a clear vision of what you want to accomplish in the five days at Revive. And let it be big. Let it be bold, Let it be just a little bit scary, too. Let it be that. Sign up for Revive and I will see you at the retreat in February, and I'm so excited to see you there. Oh, my sweet friend, thank you for joining me on this week's episode of the momset podcast. Please take a minute to leave a review and share the show. If you loved it, I'd love to stay connected as we continue to learn and grow in motherhood right alongside each other.