Replay from Radiant Resilience: Navigating Family Trauma and Addiction

Welcome back to Stylist Soul Tribe Conversations! This week, we’re sharing a special replay from Radiant Resilience, the incredible podcast hosted by my friend Tawny Palm. In this vulnerable, raw episode, I opened up about my journey in ways I’ve never shared before—both publicly and even privately. If you’re looking for business tips, social media advice, or marketing strategies, this episode is a little different. Today, we’re diving deep into personal experiences that shaped me and the life I’ve created.

This episode is a heartfelt conversation about healing, resilience, and the transformative power of gratitude. If you’re navigating tough times, struggling with family relationships, or simply curious about the journey of self-discovery, this episode offers a glimpse into the complex, yet beautiful path of personal growth. Please note that this episode may touch on sensitive topics, including mental illness, addiction, and trauma.

Connect with Tawny Palm and Radiant Resilience
If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out Tawny's podcast, Radiant Resilience, where she shares inspiring conversations with individuals from all walks of life. You can find it linked in the show notes.

As always, thank you for listening!
If you found this episode helpful, please consider sharing it or leaving a review. Your support helps us continue sharing meaningful conversations. We’ll see you next week for more Stylist Soul Tribe Conversations.

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Transcript

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Hi friends, welcome back to Stylus Old Tribe Conversations. This week's episode is a slightly different episode. It is a replay from a podcast episode that I did with my friend Tawny. She has been on the podcast before. She has a podcast called Radiant Resilience. And she asked me to be on her podcast. She shares stories from many people from many different walks of life just discussing struggles they've been through, some hardships they've dealt with in their life. And I agreed to be on her podcast and this actually dropped a few months ago. But it was a really vulnerable really raw and vulnerable recording of me sharing things that I have never shared before publicly and very rarely even privately. It's a really personal deep dive episode. So if you are here for some business advice, if you are here for, social media or marketing or Anything like that, this is a very different podcast episode. It's a very personal deep dive on my life and my story. I get asked often to open up a little bit more and share a little bit more, and as you guys probably know in your own life, there are certain things that are really hard to talk about, especially publicly and in a format like this that will live on forever. So I recorded it with Tawny, like I said, months ago, and I asked her how she would feel about me recycling the episode over on my podcast and she was totally open for it. So again, Buckle up, it's definitely a different episode. It's a long one and it is very personal, very vulnerable and maybe a little bit even intense. So I hope you guys enjoy. Those of you that are looking for a deeper look into kind of me and my soul and who I am and my story I will have Tawny's podcast linked in the show notes below. And if this is not your jam, that is totally fine. Just Skip this one and we will see you next week. I'll let you guys go ahead and listen. Like I said, this is a recording from radiant resilience with Tawny Palm. Okay. Bye. Before we begin, we want to acknowledge that some stories and discussions in this episode of Radiant Resilience may touch on sensitive and potentially triggering topics. These may include themes of mental illness, including bipolar disorder and psychosis, parental mental health struggles, substance abuse and heroin addiction, relapse and recovery from addiction, emotional and physical trauma, family conflict and divorce, brief mentions of self harm and suicide, stress and anxiety surrounding infertility. Our goal is to share real life stories. And experiences in a respectful and empathetic manner, offering insights into the complexities of the human spirit and the journey towards resilience. However, we understand that some content may be difficult for listeners. We encourage you to prioritize your wellbeing and discretion when deciding to listen. Please remember this podcast is not a substitute for professional advice or support. If you find yourself needing assistance, we urge you to seek help from qualified professionals or trusted support systems. Your mental and emotional health is important to us. Thank you for your courage and for joining us in a space of understanding and compassion. Welcome back to Radiant Resilience. I am here today with a very special person. I think all my people are special. Actually. I feel like I've said that for every interview, but you probably want to have them on if they weren't. It's true. It's true. I have today with me, Lisa Huff, who is actually my business coach for my hair business. Lisa Huff is the founder of Stylist Soul Tribe, has a passion for helping hair stylists create their dream lives and businesses. With over a decade of experience in the industry, she built a thriving business of her own behind the chair. In 2018, inspired by her own yearning for sisterhood and connections she experienced in the industry, Lisa created Stylist Soul Tribe to provide hairstylists with the support and resources they need to succeed. Her mission is to bring hairstylists together and help them achieve their personal and professional goals. Lisa finds true joy in seeing stylists like you come together, celebrate each other's visions, and support one another on their journeys to success. That bio was written a long time ago. I haven't heard that read aloud in a very long time. Oh, really? Can I say that sums it up? Yeah. All right. So me and Lisa met, gosh, I don't know, a few years ago. I have no concept of time these days. It feels like a lifetime. It feels like just a little bit ago. I don't know. Yeah. So we met a few years ago. I think I reached out to you to just do some one on one coaching. And then I joined Stylist Soul Tribe and have been in it for about two, three years, maybe now, and getting to know her a little bit better, but yeah, but we don't want to do all business stuff here. So I'm excited to not have a business conversation right now. Yeah. Yeah. So Lisa has her own podcast for Stylist Soul Tribe as well. And so she does a lot of business talking. A little bit about your story personally, but not a lot of the details. So I'm hoping to learn some about you and hopefully your story will help others as well. So I don't know. Where do you want to start? Do you want to go back to high school? Do you want to, where do you want to go? Oh goodness. I don't know, Tawny. I don't know where we should start. Cause yeah, what you said when, and obviously I was a part of Tawny bringing this podcast to life. I launched my podcast and she's, I've always wanted to do this. Here's the idea I have. So I know that. The theme behind it all is capturing the stories of people's struggles and things that they've gone through and highlighting those in, in hopes of helping other people. Before we hit record, Tawny was just asking me what direction we want to go in and I feel like when it comes to resilience and strength and things like that, there are a couple points in my life that I think really helped shape me into who I am when we're thinking about like the hard things and the struggle thing. So I guess we can go back to Childhood, if you want to start there. I think that's how we, what we all are a product of. So absolutely all of that stuff. I recently read a book called what happened to you by Oprah and some neuroscientist guy, I can never remember his name, but they talk a lot about. your childhood experiences and how much that it, the stuff affects your brain, even just biologically and scientifically, not even just the emotional side of it, just the way your brain processes stuff. So I fully believe that our childhoods shape who we are, for sure. So I've been on a journey of personal growth for many years now, and I also just find nature versus nurture so fascinating. What's hardwired into your DNA versus what was part of your upbringing? I find that really fascinating too. I think it's a balance of both. Yeah, let's start back. On November 5th of 1992, I was born into the world, and I have an older sister who's four and a half years older than me. My dad, my mom, And my memories start, I, it's so fascinating also to hear like when people's brain starts remembering things. Oh, for sure. I have very few memories before I moved from a town called Bolingbrook, which was the town that my parents brought me home from the hospital in Illinois. to Plainfield, Illinois, and I moved to Plainfield, Illinois, when I was five. So I don't have a ton of memory below five. I remember some of my close friends around there, things like that, but then when I moved to my house in Plainfield, I got a group of girlfriends that I'm still very good friends with now, and I think that helps me. solidify the memories. Like you remember the first time you met someone, things like that. And I remember, so I remember meeting those girls when I first moved to Plainfield. Kylie was the first person I met. I'm actually about to be with all of them on Thursday. We all fly to California together for a little trip. So I'm so excited for that. So yeah, my memory starts around five. And. My parents were 30 when they both had me. Tawny asked what I was comfortable sharing with. And I'm like, I try to be really mindful and really thoughtful of my digital footprint. But obviously a lot of, that's what I was saying to her. She's so what do you feel about sharing stuff about your mom? What do you feel about sharing stuff about Ryan? And I just recognize that I'm a person that. Puts my life on social media and my mom doesn't choose to do that. My husband doesn't choose to do that. So I want to be very mindful of like how their stories play to roll into mine. But I feel very comfortable sharing my experience and my perspective because I can own that and that can be mine. From my memory and from my recollection as a five year old kid, what do I know? I vividly remember my mom's mental health always as a kid kind of being a thing. And the memory that I have is around like when I was five and she was, so she was like 35. I remember it starting to affect our lives and it affected my parents marriage and it just affected things. And I think in the beginning, from my understanding, it was like a seasonal depression. Now at 31 years old, we're all like, okay, I get it. I see a bit of that. Yeah. From my memory, it was like seasonal depression. It was starting to affect their marriage. It was starting to affect some other things like that. And then it would progress and get more intense as I got older, and she is now fully diagnosed bipolar. It's treatment for it, she's medicated for it, I'm very proud of her for the work that she's done. But it very much still affects, I can't speak for her, but it affects my relationship every day with her. It just She goes through phases of mania and depression. And I have obviously spoke with a lot of people through just having my own journey and private clients, things like that. Friends of people experience similar things. And my mom's mental illness, from my perspective, the mania is definitely the more intense charged up family emergency, all hands on deck mom needs help. Okay. Where depression, I'm sure she does deal with that, but that's a lot quieter. That doesn't affect my everyday life. And I think at this very moment when we're recording that, that's, I think, what she's dealing with. And again, she's medicated, so I hope she's good, but we just don't talk much when she's down. But then when she ramps up, you know it, because it goes from not hearing from mom for a good eight, nine months to mom's calling you 20 times a day. Oh, wow. being bizarre. And do you and your sister both experience that? So you're both like, she brought both of you in. We do. One more over the other. Oh God, it's weird talking about this tiny bit. I'm just going to go there. This is my story. I haven't shared this deep before, but yeah. So my sister and I are super duper close to the point where probably not anymore, but When our, when my daughter was like a baby and we were really talking like all day every day, I probably was slightly codependent on my sister, but like we have bonded so much. Nobody really gets it except for us. So we have about two hours apart from each other. I moved a little bit further away, I think from my own journey. I just felt right for me. Her and my mom are definitely closer on a daily basis, which I love that. I love that they have their connection to each other, but it's interesting. This is my own thing I should probably work out through therapy, too, is when my mom is manic, my sister becomes the bad guy, and she points us against each other, and she wants more of a relationship with me when she's manic. But then from my perspective, it's like, why does my mom only want a relationship with me when she's out of her mind? That's hurtful. Yeah, for sure. That's it. Oh, yeah. So did you have to eventually put your own boundaries in place? There for that. And I know for my own experience, I didn't have a lot of knowledge and stuff of boundaries and stuff when I was younger. So that stuff is a lot harder or pretty much non existent when I was at age, especially with family. And then as I've gotten older, I've learned what a boundary is and how good they can be and have put some of my own in place. So did you feel like you had to do that? And then what was the timeframe on that, that you feel like you had to do that? Yeah, I think from a young age, and me and my sister have psychoanalyzed this as well. I was five when my mom's mental illness started showing itself, and then it continued to get worse and worse. So my sister, again, being four and a half years older than me, has a lot more good memories with my mom. She had, That childhood before things got really hard. Yeah, so she was like close to 10 or something like that, right? Yeah. So those formative years, they, I think things were really good. I think my mom and my dad's marriage was really good. I think that they lived a very healthy life. And I think our age has something to do with it. I was a very angry child from almost as far back as I can think. I remember my, predominant emotion being anger. And my parents divorce started when I was in fourth grade, so that would make me, what, nine? So mental illness started really taking an effect around five. It was a hard few years. They decided to get divorced, but then their divorce was so messy and so awful, it wasn't finalized until I was in eighth grade. So it was like, my whole really formative years of my childhood was this knock down, drag out. Court, custody, fighting. It took four years for them to finalize and come to an agreement. Wow. Which is messy. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think when my parents got divorced, it was like, They filed and three months later they were divorced. So it's pretty straightforward. Yeah. And like my dad owned a business, so I think that had a part of it. We had a house, we had a boat, we had the kids, but I think my mom's at mental illness just made it really hard because when she is manic and also at this time, she wasn't diagnosed, she wasn't medicated. She was self medicating with not hard drugs, but she was smoking weed. She was drinking. She was not the healthiest trying to cope with her own. This is my, again, my perspective as a child watching that growing into an adult. So I think I just started putting distance from the youngest age. I vividly remember, and I still have a guilt for it. How mean I was to my mom. She, I also was not a safe. person to be around, but I was screaming, angry, mad, mean, locked my doors at night, did not want anything to do with anyone. My dad was a little bit more of my safe place, and I was a mom. I think back, and I don't know if that was all right, I don't know what all, but I just connected with him a little bit more. Through it, I felt a little safer there. I was also a manipulative kid though, so I would pit them against each other. Mom doesn't let me do something, okay, I'll go to Dad's. Julie doesn't let me do it, and then I'll go to Mom's. I feel like most people do that to some degree. Yeah, so I was a little bit of a wild child. So when you say boundaries I started dating my husband, Ryan, that I'm with now, when I was 17. And In high school, I would go a week in my mom's a week in my dad's a week in my mom's a week in my dad's. I'd live on my truck. All of my clothes were in my truck. I'd bounce around. I had all my friends. All I was worried about was my social life. And then by 17, I was basically living with Ryan. So I didn't really have to put boundaries. I put distance between my family and I from such a young age that Now I almost am trying to bring a little bit more closeness because I was, get the fuck away from me for a period of time. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't really need to put, I've learned a lot now and I feel like I can communicate with my family, especially if my mom's going through an episode or something with love. I don't, I used to scream and react out of trauma. And now I'm just like, Hey, you got to do what you need to do. I know you're struggling with this and stuff, but I never really had to, I don't have a memory of, okay, boundaries are getting into place. It was more like a. Are we swearing on here? I guess I'm already swearing. It was very much a fuck you, I hate you for a very long time. And then I grew up and I'm like, no, you're my family. I need to find a happy medium in there. So boundaries, not really. It was just, Lisa wasn't really connected with people for a long time. Interesting. So you were the opposite. That was like my defense mechanism. Yeah. Was to separate, put the distance there. Yeah. And I still do that. That's just like my safety. Interesting. Are there any particular memories that you remember? Popping up for you that you'd be willing to talk about with your, cause I'm trying to think of people listening who have also struggled with a, whether it's a parent or a sister or somebody that also struggles with bipolar and growing up around that and trying to figure it out, was there a specific memory that you feel like was a turning point or that sticks in your brain real? Real deep. I have, and I have shared this stuff with my mom before when we've had some deeper conversations. I just remember feeling afraid of her at a young age, especially when she was manic and even still, I can talk on the phone with my mom if she is switching into a manic episode and in half a second, I can tell you. She switched. Buckle up. The next four months are going to be intense because mom's manic. And my mom has also had episodes of mania that have gotten so far that she's ended up in psychosis and had to have been institutionalized. There's been times that she was like hallucinating at the O'Hare airport and got taken away. Real mental illness. And that's why some people just throw around bipolar and that's fine, but it's very intense what she has. And I know that people in her family had that and that's why That's been a fear that I've been as we come to age and we face mortality and things like that. I think about that too. Is it, I'm not 35 yet. I have those fears all the time when that's been like an internal thing. But no, I have memories just as a kid of just being really embarrassed. She would, she acts really bizarre when she's manic. And so I'd have fun. Friends sleep over and she'd wake us up at the ask crack of dawn, just saying weird stuff. And I remember when there was like the royal wedding whenever Peyton William got married. Oh yeah. Remember? Everyone remembers that. Yeah. It was like a school day morning and my mom's like buddy from AA was over in the middle of the night and she was waking me up and I was pissed off, like just. Shit that kids shouldn't have to deal with. And even now looking back at why I have a really hard time. On part of me, I hope she realized she does listen to this because we should have these conversations. But I look back now as an adult with kids myself, there was a period of time where she let a homeless man live in her basement, who was like a registered sex offender, just really bizarre things. And when she was manic, she'd get really into AA and just be hanging around with like really sketchy, weird people. And she'd be bringing weird people around, but that's the weird thing about bipolar disorder. Is like when I'm describing this, you're like, Oh my man, your mom's like really nuts. But like, when she's not manic, she's not like that. And so it's really hard. She's, I don't know. That's, I still struggle with that. I don't know what the baseline version is because like I said, right now. I call her. I want to talk to her. Hey, mom, how are you doing? And we're on the phone for 17 seconds. And she's okay. Bye. And it's, so I don't really know. It's tricky. It's something I'm still like navigating to this day. Trying to build that relationship back up or just Or even just something of substance. I see her pretty regularly. It just doesn't really feel like it's of substance when she's well. And then when she's unwell, she tries really hard. And then that's, you can't rationalize with that. Someone who's out of their mind. So that's not a proper time to have those conversations Because she's not making sense during that time. Yeah. Yeah Did you guys have to convince her to start medicating for that or did she do it on her own eventually or yeah So I know when I was a kid and she was like trying to figure out what was going on And my dad was part of it. Let me also say my dad is no saint And I used to be the godfather of apartment buildings. But at the time, and I know this is a really stupid, but it was me talking about it, and how I had a wife who was like, I didn't know where to go when she was like dying. She was on and off medications, trying to find something that works. And I've learned a lot through this, just of mental health is like The medication that my mom's on now is not even for bipolar people. It's like a very low dose of an antidepressant and that's all she needs to stabilize her. Oh, what if she doesn't take it? Like she's going to lose her job. She's going to lose her house. Everything's going to hit the fan. So I've also just learned that like mental health medications is all trial and error. Nobody knows what they're doing. The system is so screwed. Like it's so hard to get in with a doctor. And then when you. Are mentally ill, you're either depressed and not going to your visits, or you're choosing not to take medication because you're on a high, or something like that. The one, when it really got serious enough was that time I told you, when she was having a manic episode, it went into psychosis. It was actually No, it wasn't. When was that one? Oh, God. No, it was my sister's wedding. Oh, no. But it happens around really high tense things, like when she's stressed is when she starts to lose, because routine. She stops sleeping as well. She stopped taking her meds, things like that. My sister's wedding was coming up and it was in Florida and my mom was living in a hotel at the time and didn't have the means to get to Florida but wanted to be there for my sister's wedding and the stress was getting really intense for her and that's when she did flip into full blown psychosis and that was terrifying. Oh man. Very scary watching somebody you love go through that and that's when she like the police picked her up from the airport and put her in a facility and she was there for I don't remember a few weeks and then she's been I think that was the only time. And then there was another episode when my nana died, when her mom died. So these high stress situations bring it out of her. She stopped sleeping good. And that one, we tried to get her to go to a hospital, but she wouldn't go. So she ended up just working with her doctors and stabilizing back out. But it's a long run. I know some people with their bipolar, it's by the day they switch a million times. No, my mom's is Months, she'll be down, quiet, things are good, and then it ramps up and it takes a while to get her back to a stable space. So you talked about how angry you were about everything and everyone. What other feelings come up for you when you think back to those times of your young kid? Dealing with that and realistically we should be able to rely on our parents to have some stability. Yeah. So what kind of feelings come up for you? When thinking back on all this stuff? Definitely the older I get, the more empathy I have.'cause there was no empathy for a while. And I do it's our parents first time life too. So I am, have more and more empathy. But yeah, anger, disappointment, sadness, things like that. Because like you said. A kid, a child should have that. And now that I'm an adult, again, thank God, I don't suffer with these things, but in my opinion, and from my perspective, it's not that hard to have your stuff together, I feel, and so it makes me even more, even still, the way me and my husband financially prepare for our lives, the way we just do things how you're supposed to do. I think most people who come from a family who doesn't do that probably feel similar. It's not that hard to just do things how you should, how you, to do it the right way. So I deal with that. But then again, I also have a ton of humility. And every time I catch myself thinking like this, I'm like, Lisa, you're only 31 years old. Who knows what life's going to throw you but that's the interesting thing when my parents were my age and this trips me up to have a storybook picture perfect like we moved into a really nice house in a really nice neighborhood when I was five years old we would boat on the weekends like they were doing my dad is owning a business so I try to have like humility of that too is like life can knock you down and you can lose the things that you've worked really hard for but I think that's just my like desire to do something in this life is I just don't want to be 60 something with nothing to show for it. And yeah, having your kids worried about you and worried what's going to happen next, because that's not fair or right. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any like grief over maybe the childhood you could have had or anger towards that at all? Or, Yeah, I definitely, if you come across those TikToks that are like, oh, I couldn't live without my mom, that is always gonna be a painful thing for me. I will never know a relationship like that, unfortunately. I get glimpses of it, but that makes it almost even more painful that I don't have the stability of that always. So yeah, but I also don't know it. So that's hard to grieve something you don't know. I think my sister probably maybe has more of that because she does have more better memories. Yeah. What about as a mom yourself? I don't know what order I'm going to air all these in, but a couple of my interviews are people who have lost parents or parent, like figures. And one of the things that they've said is that as. As a mom themselves, they wish that they could reach out to their moms for advice at some times. You're like, what did you do in this moment? So I'm assuming that's not something that's super easy for you to do. So even though your mom is still here, do you have moments like that too? What I'm really mindful of, it's so crazy the eclipse is happening and it's starting to get darker outside. That's so wild. Okay. Just asking for advice and things like that, yeah? Yeah, as a mom yourself, wishing you could go to your mom and say, Yeah. So I would say, yeah, I would say I am more mindful of the way you treat a kid will last forever and it will change how you, what your relationship is like when you get older, when they get older. So I, God, I hope that I am doing the best job that I can, that my kids still like me when I'm an adult and want to have a relationship with me and want to be around me. But no, for me personally, my mom sometimes will make comments and try to give that feedback. And that's triggering for me. Maybe that's something I need to work through, but like in my head, I just want to be like, bitch, what are you talking about? So I don't know. That's a tough one for me. That's still some anger and resentment that I hold onto, but like when she gives me advice and one of the biggest like triggers for me, I'll say this and my sister and I have spent a lot of time talking about this every time she's manic, she'll make these comments that say, one day you'll understand. So one day like you'll get what this is like and she used to say that to me as a kid, like I'd be a teenager and she'd say, wait till you have kids, you'll understand one day, the older and older I get, the more and more I'm like, no, I do not understand. And the last time she said that to me when she was manic, I called her on it. I'm like, I'm 31 years old. I am a grown woman. Don't stop telling me I'm going to understand the inner workings of your brain. Take ownership that the inner workings of your brain aren't. Don't make sense in this world. I don't know. Yeah, I think you're coming out. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. It's tough. That's interesting. Now that she's you'll understand one day. What's the one day? I guess maybe that's just something she's just Always said so it's and I think that was something she heard as a kid. Okay, and I don't know how much of this to share also through my own research and digging and stuff. My mom has gone through a lot of trauma herself. She was a one of five children. Her brother, younger brother died when he was 19 years old. He fell through us. Skylight. He's a roofer. My papa fell through and died at 19 when I was like 13 or something when I was a teenager. My aunt committed suicide. I know my nana, my mom's mom had multiple suicide attempts like mental health is bad. Deep in this family and religion is interwoven very deeply and so now I have like religious triggers because my whole life my nana was and I hate talking about something like this she's not around anymore god it's tricky for me to navigate this but as a child She was very, Jesus is coming, the world is ending. It was scary to be around her as a kid because she had mental health stuff and she was extremely religious. And when my mom is manic, she also gets very religious. And so religion is very, I wish that was a safe place that I could explore. And every time I step into that, it's very triggering for me. So there's a lot of deep woven things in there. And I know as a kid, I think my mom experienced some, I don't know, maybe trauma, maybe abuse, maybe something at the hands of church things. So I have a lot of empathy for it too. And the one time she was like hallucinating and she was having her psychosis, every time she has psychosis, she said there was like a Satanic Santa Claus that she saw or something or like the last time she was like running through a parking lot and I was on the phone with her and she was like screaming, talking to Jesus, like deep, hard, yucky, not fun to talk about things. Oh wow. Yeah. So it's a lot. It's intense. Just like we were talking about at the beginning of this I've learned so much through my journey and my years and stuff like that, too. And luckily, I've not been through anything on the extreme end of traumatic. But I'm trying really hard at this stage in my life to have more compassion for all the people because you just don't know what people have been through, right? And I don't think anybody wakes up with a fresh set of life and decides, I'm gonna be a shitty person. Nobody does that. They've had things happen to them and it's shaped them into who they are. And I have a lot of empathy for that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, this is bringing me back to that book again that I was reading about the brain because that's what like their whole premise of the book was because it was called what happened to you. And they talked a lot about, we need to be asking more frequently what happened to you instead of what's wrong with you. Because none of, like you said, none of this stuff just happens to people. There is a root cause to it, whether it was even in childbirth or something like that. We all, we've all been through something. I'm reading The Body Keeps the Score right now and it talks about like how trauma is stored in your body and it is extremely fascinating. It is teaching me a lot about me and people that I love and yes, I completely agree. Super interesting. Yeah, that's pretty crazy living with it. That's the mom stuff. I know, I have this podcast now and everybody like wants to hear more about my story. I'm like, you guys, it's nothing like fun to talk about. I guess you just want and I so respect what you're doing with that. But it's almost like you said, sometimes you want to tie a bow up on it and give a lesson out of it. And sometimes life is just messy and doesn't have a perfect plot and solution to that. And sometimes we're still navigating it. You're forever going to be navigating your mom with bipolar. That's just because that's just how it is. And now I'm just trying to do it the most empathy and grace that I can. So that one day when she's not around or I'm not around, which will come first, I just don't have regrets. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm glad that you're getting through that and you got through it. So I guess maybe we'll back up and go maybe to where you met Ryan and start from there. Yeah, fair to say. Obviously, I've had tons of things along the way, but another big, I think, formative experience. Part of my story and my lifetime and my journey is my husband, who I'm married to now, when we first started dating, or early in our dating years, he dealt with heroin addiction really intense. It was a lot. And so now that I psychoanalyze myself, I'm sure my upbringing and wanting to be out of my house and things like that, I didn't really have the foundation of what a healthy relationship should be and I'm grateful. So we've actually known each other for a very long time. So we lived in the same town. His brother is my age. So Ryan's three years older than me, but like his brother was in my fourth grade class. So I've known him for a long time. You, my friends used to have a crush on Ryan. Like he was his older brother. He was good friends with one of my friends, older sister. So I've known him for a long time, but then Obviously, you grow up and life goes on, and when, since he was three years older than me, I don't even remember ever seeing him in high school, but when I was in between my summer, between my junior year and my senior year, he messaged me on Facebook, and was just like, I haven't seen you in a while, and now I know, he was like, freshly out of prison looking to connect with people, I didn't know that at the time, I was just like, Oh, Ryan Huff and Tawny he's messaging me, but then I quickly learned that he had lived a lot of life in between that time. And so when we started dating, he was clean and sober and he told me these things, but honestly, Tawny, I was 17 and I was like trouble. I thought it was a little bit cool and endearing and I was young. And I, my friends were 17 and Ryan was about to turn 21 and I just knew he could buy me alcohol. And I thought that was cool. And he had tattoos and nobody my age had tattoos. But yeah, our judgment at that age was definitely not. And he drove a motorcycle. He was just like this sexy bad boy. And I was super into that. And I knew, okay, so the town that I grew up in at the time, again, my parents moved to this nice town. We lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. There was, we were about 45 minutes outside of Chicago. I graduated high school in 2011. There was a heroin epidemic in that area. All the kids, parents had money, lived too close to Chicago. I don't know if you've ever watched the show Dope Sick, but it's about the Oxycontin rise. And it was like watching our childhood. Oh, wow. It started with pills. It quickly turned into addiction. Heroin was cheaper. It was a 30 minute drive to the city. And I have lost so many friends. Ryan has lost so many friends. Ryan was one of those people. So I personally, I like to drink. I like to have fun when I was younger. But I was never like going to do that. Like I had my head on straight enough. Like I didn't want to do any hard drugs. I like smoked a little bit of weed. It made me super paranoid. I never wanted to do anything like that. So when I started dating Ryan, I was never like cool with the drugs. Like I never did it with him. I never was like into that, but I was, I fell madly in love with him very quickly. And then he relapsed and I was young and into him. And I went through that hole. I was never cool with it. We fought a lot about it, but he. Yeah. Did drugs for a little bit. I'd find them. I'd flush them. We'd fight. We'd get in these screaming fights. It was a dark time. I sometimes I ended up going on in the car with him to the hood of Chicago to pick up drugs and putting myself in situations I never should have put myself in. He would use in front of me and I don't know why. I look back now and I'm like, why would you put up with that Lisa? But How long into your relationship then did he relapse? It was quick. It was. At the time, it felt like we were soulmates and we were together forever, but we were probably only together for a month or two. Oh, wow. And then he relapsed. It was quick. Yeah. So now I look back. I'm so grateful. I love my husband. He is an incredible man. I love my children. Obviously, everything happened how it was supposed to, but I look back and somebody should have. But I say somebody should have said something. People said things. I wasn't listening. Yeah, that's huge to recognize. And I put people on distance. Like I was just into him and into that. And I guess maybe my intuition knew. I have no idea. I have no idea. Were you a fixer? Did you date a lot of guys you thought you could fix? I had one serious boyfriend other than Ryan. I haven't had a ton of boyfriends. And he was a little bit of a loser. And I didn't, I don't know. I'm sure he's fine now. But yeah, I wasn't like out fixing people. I was young. I was really young. So like I said, in the beginning, it was a thing. Thrill. And then I think it was, I think I was almost addicted to the chaos a little bit and the emotional charge of just the fights and the drugs and all the things. I think that was attractive to me at 17. Obviously, your mom or anybody else, like your childhood, nobody was necessarily addicted to heroin, but maybe that environment mimicked it so it felt normal to you, to a point. And, throughout all of it, Ryan and I really did love each other, and I don't know if I ever felt like, Super duper loved before that. So maybe it was a bit of that. Cause even when he was using, like he wanted to get clean, it was a addiction. Like it was hard and it was loved by, like it was, he wanted to get clean. He wanted to be with me. He wanted this, but he was also fighting this addiction. And I have a lot of empathy for that now too, because I would watch him like pale on the face, shaking, throwing up sick. And I was like, yeah, I want you to feel better too. Only understanding of. a heroin addiction. This is interesting. Actually, just last year, I went to visit my friends in Canada and we were walking around Vancouver and we like to walk. all over cities. We don't normally do many Ubers or anything like that. And so we'd gone to brunch and we were going to walk to this brewery and Colin, like Google maps it. And we start walking there and we start walking down the street and so many homeless people doing drugs right there. I think it was a variation of heroin, Crack, meth, like all of it. I'm not versed enough in any of that to even recognize it. I probably could have told you what it was. I like walk by and palms. I've never seen anybody actually doing drugs, in front of everybody and I was like, oh that happened. Like I missed it the first time anyway So we ended up on this street which all my Canadian friends. I'm sure have heard of I think it's Hastings Street Which is literally not where you should be Of the homeless people on drugs, like covering both sides of the street. And I walked through there now they could care less if we were there. They did not even see us. We heard drug deals going on. We saw people, there were cops around just making sure that everything's safe. That's how Chicago was too. When Ryan used to drive to pick up, like cops didn't even interfere. It was a fear zone. full blown, probably multi million dollar business that was being run on this corner. And you'd pull up and there'd be like a guy on the corner on the phone and then a guy there saying, okay, this white boy from the suburbs is coming. And you'd go pick up, the guy would walk out, give money, boom, you'd leave. Cops didn't even interfere. They could go at any moment and any day. And it was such a big operation that they didn't even take part in it. There was, they had to deal with the cops. shootings and stuff in Chicago. Yeah. And these cops were there, but I think that they were just making sure things didn't get out of hand, right? Lights started happening or something broke out, then they would get involved. But literally I walked past a drug deal happening. They were bargaining over price and we just walked by. So anyway, so we told our friends about it later. And our one friend up there is a paramedic and we started talking about it and they said it started with the opioid epidemic and it started with pills. Yeah. You should watch the show Dope Sick on Hulu. It's really good. Okay. It's like toxic. It's like from the creators, like what Pfizer is. It's like the creators of the drug and how they just falsely pushed it to doctors. Prescribe this to everyone. It's non addictive. And then it turned into the party scene. And then it, seeing firsthand what an opioid addiction withdrawal looks like, you can't blame people. They need it. It is bad. It's really bad. Yeah. Our friend was explaining to us What happens when people start having, when they come off the high and they need it again and he said it was like, it's, he didn't know firsthand, but he's explaining it as a paramedic. Their entire body is like an electric current. That's just like zinging and like on fire, basically physically. And so vomiting and. Yeah, the only thing that shuts it off is doing more. So that's why it's so intensive in addiction because it physically hurts. So like restless leg syndrome, like what you're saying, like the tingling, even until Even to this day, Ryan has been sober now. I should preface this for listeners. Ryan got sober probably 12 years ago, so it's been a long time now. He is fully passed. He used to still have dreams about it for probably a good five to eight years. He used Suboxone to get off of it, which people have different feelings about that. He didn't do a traditional 12 step program. It was its own kind of like journey, but he It is still triggering to him. If he has the flu, and he can't sleep, and his body is aching, to his brain, it goes to dopesick. And he says he remembers one time that he was in jail, I think he was just for a night, he used to sell drugs, he used to do all sorts of stuff. But he was so sick, that he remembers ripping his bedsheets in jail, the overnight holding cell, and tying his legs to cut off the circulation, because the pain, Of his legs tingling and not being able to sleep that's still triggering for him when he can't sleep He like takes a hot shower and it's a it feels like a lifetime ago Obviously, he's not having any of those but those memories will still come back that it's anxiety inducing for him Even still 12 years later and your brain and your body still remembers that like for sure that brain book again I'm, just gonna go right back to it. Apparently. Yeah, you tell the story of this kid who Was abused by his biological father that abused by his foster father to the point that it put him in a coma in the hospital and they brought a, I don't remember the point of this, but they brought a shirt of the biological father, the kid while he was in a coma and the smell of it. Wow. He had a physical reaction in a coma. Just from the smell of that. So that stuff never leaves you like that. It, to some degree, it stays with you mentally, whether it's in your brain or whether it's physically in your body. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, from the beginning, even when Ryan relapsed, it was like, I relapsed, I don't want to be using. It was just. so hard and he was still hanging out with the same friends running into the same people like he slipped up he used again and then it was hard and then he had a period of time where he was sober for eight months and I thought that was like the end of it and he was working for my dad and we were still living up in Naperville near Chicago and he was clean for eight months he was on Suboxone and he relapsed again and I remember that time being like a I really should leave him. I should not do this again. And somehow I stuck around and that is his actual sobriety date. So February 10th, 2012 is like the day he was like, come back to the apartment. I'm going to take a Suboxone right now. I'm done. I promise. Come back. And I remember we put my childhood dog down the day before on February 9th and I was just sad and I just wanted to lay with him. I was just like, okay. So I went back. I'm done. He took it, and from that day, he's never used again. How old were you at that point, and how long had you guys been together by the second rematch? It was 2012. I was 19. We'd been together for two years, doing this on, and then, like I said, it was an eight month stretch of him being clean. It was just chaotic good. We lived together. And then, He got clean that last time and he was like, we need to get out of Chicago. He didn't have his driver's license at this point. He had lost his driver's license. He was still on probation. He like, if he was failed drug test, he was going to go to prison for nine years. Like he really needed to fucking get a shit together. And he knew it. He was struggling though. Suboxone, for those of you that don't know, is like an opioid, yeah, it blocks your opioid receptors, so it stops the withdrawal symptoms, if you use while you're on it, you get viciously ill, you puke, you shit, it's horrible, so you know that people aren't using if they're on Suboxone, but some people have strong opinions that it's trading one addiction for another, but Ryan was on suboxone for two or three years, and I am a huge advocate for that or whatever other, and some people say no, but for two years when we had a baby and a child, it was like he was taking a vitamin every day to live a normal life. Giving off suboxone was very hard for him because it is its own, He withdrawed. You can just control it more. You can take less and do it slowly. But, I would say his dreams and his hardcore cravings didn't go away until he was fully off Suboxone. It took years. It took a long time. He was like, we need to get out of this town. I can't bump into my same old friends. I can't do any of this. We moved. Where his mom was living, which was two hours south. And that's Lincoln, Illinois. And I still work there. And he was like, I'm gonna, at first, he's going to go to school for HVAC. Cause he was working with my dad. My dad owns an HVAC company and he's, I'm going to get clean. I'm going to do this. And then his aunt was like the president of the school he was going to go to. And she was helping him with financial aid and stuff. And with his record, they were like, maybe you shouldn't do HVAC because you have to go in people's houses. And that might run into something. She was like, why don't you do welding? It's super in demand. You can make good money. You should go to school for welding. And so we were like, okay. We're going to move down south. Ryan's aunt is going to take him to and from welding school every single day. And we're going to try this. I was 19 and I was like, I love you. Let's go again. I didn't really care about my parents. Like I wanted to get away. I got into this adventure. And again, I was probably a little bit addicted to the chaos. And the day we moved into the house in Lincoln, I remember it vividly. I will never forget this moment. The only thing there was a mattress, a TV, and that's it. We were going to go the next day to pick up all of our stuff and his mom was going to help us with that move. And I took a pregnancy test and I found out I was pregnant that day. And so then Ryan was like three months clean at this time and I was pregnant. And I was on birth control. It was, I've told you this story, Tawny. I know stories are fucking wild. And then we were like, okay, he was already like on his way back to sobriety and being clean and like creating this better life. And I think Skylar was just like, hands down a God thing. I don't know. I don't know how or why else that could have happened. And then at that point, That must have been, like, May? May? Yeah, and then it was like, okay, we have a baby coming, you need to go to welding school, you need to stay clean, then we had a baby, and then he had, what, maybe a year of sobriety under him to a year and a half, and then he got out of welding school. And all of his teachers were like, Oh, you can make really good money. If you like go down to the coastline and you like do ship work at a shipyard and do all these things. So he was like, okay, let's go. So when Skylar was two months old, Ryan and I got in the car, we drove all the way down to Homo, Louisiana. He took a welding test there. Got a job there, and we've just been going non stop since then, and then obviously getting a track record. But for him, and again this, I've said this to him before, Do you ever feel like you should go speak to recovering addicts? Yeah. Alisa, my story was while he wanted to get clean, yes, it really was out of his control. It was just, One thing in front of another, perfectly aligning, where he could not, one, have access, even if he had a bad moment. Two, had, here's another reason to keep going, here's another reason, here's another reason. For just years, until all of a sudden he looks back and he's whoa, look what we've created. This is crazy. And now I have a 11 year old daughter and an 8 year old son and an incredible, truly, I'm like, truly an incredible life. And I've shared this a little bit. And soul tribe around my own podcast and stuff. A couple of years ago, a few years ago, when I really got into some like personal growth stuff, I had some like serious resentment start to bubble up. I was just like, maybe looking back at my 17 year old self, you are dumb. You have this beautiful life. Things were bad. You should not have participated in that. You should not have been part of that. And then I got really like angry at Ryan all over again for things that we've totally been past, but that I had to work through. And that was a lot of my time with Kristen Sosman and stuff and just energy healing and just healing old wounds that existed in me. Because I get mad at Ryan about our puppy peeing on the floor, but I'm actually mad at Ryan for lying to me It was like old stuff started to bubble up. You didn't I'm assuming that it started bubbling up because you never dealt with it at the time. I guess not. We were just moving so fast. Yeah. And I guess how do you deal with it? When someone breaks your trust so bad or addiction is part of it, you just need to prove yourself. There's no, it's not you snap your fingers and oh, this is healed. Yeah. I was along for the journey. He needed to get a decade of time behind him before we could really open that back up and heal it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Cause you really needed to just focus on him. Getting sober and stank. We were just living life. We had a baby, and then we got married, and then we had another baby, and then I started this business, and life just happens. But then I found myself in this settled calmness. You have the house, you have the cars, you have the white picket fence, you have the family, and all of a sudden I'd start getting mad. My childhood anger would almost bubble up. And I've worked, I've dealt with that and I right now in this very moment for the last couple of years I've felt very solid and I have closed a lot of those chapters and tied up a lot of those loose ends But that's the human experience is just like addressing things as they bubble up Did you guys do any therapy or anything like that? Or how did you just talk about it? Is that how you got through it? We communicate, Ryan and I communicate So deeply all the time always have always will so yeah, but in the moment when I was like angry I didn't even know what it was. I don't even remember when it like hit me. That's what it was that specific one like what I'm Discussing just a few years ago. That was like my own it had nothing to do with Ryan He was good. Like he was living his normal life. I had my own Healing that came or need for healing that came up and I had to work through that on my own because everyone was doing life around me. It was just almost this knock at the door from the past of, oh, I don't know, and I would all of a sudden just lash out and get angry with him or whatever. It was almost like once there was calmness, maybe that was my instinct was to create chaos. I don't know. Interesting. Yeah, I'm always psychoanalyzing. But no, as for therapy, and it's tricky, because like I said, My whole life, my mom went through therapy. Another thing is like, when my mom was manic, like I said, she was very into the AA scene. Okay. She had an affair with an AA. Bad things were happening. That is great for people, but Ryan didn't go the NA route. And that story is, you are always an addict. You always will be an addict. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. It's lasted this long and helped this many people. But I don't know, I've tried therapy, I've tried talking to these things and I remember during that period of time when shit was just bubbling up, it was like my mom's stuff was bubbling up, Ryan's stuff was bubbling up, I tried going to this therapist and she was the same. She was like, here's an Al Anon resource, blah, blah, blah, and I'm just like I just, I think my version of therapy is just like deeply learning and like diving into the inner workings of human behavior and forming my own opinions and communicating and yeah, I attempted therapy for a little while and I found somebody that specifically specialized in infertility stuff too. I don't know. I needed more. I wanted to do something more active because I can call my mom. I can call my sister. I can call my friends and I can talk about it because I'm a pretty open human being to like I'm, but like I went a few times to this therapist and I was just like, All I'm doing is talking and crying about my feelings in circles. Yeah, and at one point she did suggest like journaling and Handed me like a paper on journaling and I'm like, I'm not gonna read this. No, I know I mean Love their therapist and had the most amazing therapy journey. Like I love that. I wish I had that so I'm seeking out Yeah, but it just hasn't been my story. Yeah, I believe in with Ryan. I think we just go through You enough time that we build enough momentum behind us that we just are like, I don't even know what we're doing. Look at this life. I'm very happy with where we're at now. And communication is huge, right? Especially in a relationship. If you can communicate that stuff, I think that's maybe where A lot of people run into issues is not being able to communicate or even acknowledge those feelings. If you're just getting mad at him for no reason and never acknowledging that it was something deeper or something from before that you needed to deal with, you'd just be getting mad at him and you'd just be getting in fights and he'd be like, what's going on? You don't know. And then you could see how it could go downhill from that pretty quickly. Yeah. Life's just a trip. It's just, I haven't chronologically looked back at this in a long time and it is just wild. So a recurring theme that keeps coming up in my interviews is If you could go back and either redo it or change it, would you, because, which is obviously a very difficult question because in, of course, like if you looked back, you would rather your mom be not bipolar. You would rather Ryan had stayed sober from the minute he met you or whatever. But at the same time, as we're looking back on our lives, those are the things that shape us. I'd like your thoughts and opinions on that. Yeah, and Ryan, he actually, I feel like, does this a little bit more than me. Before he got real bad into addiction, he had a professional MMA kind of run. He was, like, being paid for it. He was a very talented MMA fighter and had a professional contract. And then he started really getting into drugs and stuff. So he will say those things a lot. We're big UFC fans now. And you can tell he lives vicariously through. There's a fighter that he'll watch his fights and he'll be like, I fought at a fight. Along with that guy, same age, same old, so like I know he thinks about that quite a bit and I know he thinks about even still His record does still affect his life. Not really anymore, but he can't own firearms He can't there's a lot of things he will never be able to do because he's a four time felon and that's just so I think He has more of that because I don't really have a lasting impact I think it's human nature to be like i'd love a Click a 15 second video to see what the other version would look like the curiosity I think always but because my story Brings my, obviously my children into the world, and thankfully, it's, even if we had the kids and then we ended up growing apart or something, that'd be one thing. But, genuinely, in this very moment, in 2024, I could not ask for anything different in my home life and circle. No, definitely not. But, and I remember even like when I was, when I found out I was pregnant with Skylar. I remember my mom making a comment about not keeping the pregnancy and stuff like that and in the moment I was really angry at that because oh my god, I love this man. Who are you to say that? I was with a three month clean addict. Maybe I get where she's coming from, it's a mom. And he relapsed twice at that point, right? Oh my, he relapsed a million times at that point because how often do you try to get clean? But yeah, he had a long run that, that time. He then relapsed from. Yeah, I think back to just I look sometimes when my Facebook memories come up, the day I graduated cosmetology school. It's like a dark day in my mind. I remember my mom was manic at the time. She was so embarrassing at my Graduation and Ryan was really things were really bad and we slept in a really junky hotel that night. I stayed with him I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to be at my parents house. And so when those Facebook memories come up I just remember looking like tired and skinny and Even nobody knew none of my friends knew, none of my family knew. I think back to that version of Lisa, and I don't know what I would have told her different. Maybe a hug. Maybe you will look at the world different one day, because it was just so bleak, I think, and sad, and unhealthy. But, Other than that, no, I'm really grateful for who I am and now I think that I have this business and this job because I just really fucking love people and find humans so fascinating. And yeah, I'm just, I'm glad that I have the experiences. I'm the person that looks at everybody in the airport and I want to know, are they going on a business trip? Are they going to visit family? There's like a word for that. What is that word? I've seen that quote before, like the realization that All the passing humans around you have a deep, complex story. I feel the same way. I just find human behavior and just stories so fascinating. And no, I don't think I would change anything. I would maybe love to just give her some love and make sure she was safe. But I was always, I did end up being safe. But there was a lot of moments where I could have not been. And so that's scary to think back on. But, yeah. Yeah. It's been interesting because almost everybody I've interviewed so far has said they wouldn't change it. Even though we're talking about lost parents and we're talking about, and there are some bits of it that you wish you didn't have to go through, but that's different because it did make you who you were today and yeah. When did you decide to go more on your path of self discovery and was there a turning point for you? Yeah. Yeah. Where you were like, okay, I need to work on some stuff. Or yeah, like I said, I had my daughter December of 2012. Tony, I'm really sorry if this is also like hard triggering and hard for you, because I'm going to speak very passionately about becoming a mother. So I just want to preface with that. When I had Skylar, I My whole entire brain chemistry changed. I don't know, it was the moment that I had her pregnancy leading up to it, it was happening, but I just remember holding her and just being like, my whole entire life up until that point, I just thought everything was perfect. Bad. The world was bad. People suck. Everyone's horrible. The future's just a bad outlook on everything. I was a little bit of a brat, though, because my life was not that bad. If my friends or family listened back, I did have a lot of great things in my life as well, but I was hardwired into negativity in the moment I had Skylar. It was just like the fog just lifted and it was like, this is the most beautiful, incredible, this is what life is about. This is the, this is it. This, I see now why humans can recreate and why life goes on and why there's a greater possibilities for the next generation. And just from that moment, and I was, just turned 20, a month after I turned 20, I had her. And from that point, I was a much more positive person. She gave me so much life. It was wild to think back on. It was also like, wow, my frontal cortex was developing, so who knows how I would have turned out. Yeah. I don't know when for her, but I remember that vividly. And then, When I had Benny around that time too, I, is when I started following Brit and started just getting into hearing other people talk about the Law of Attraction and things like that, and then that put a whole nother spin on it. Now everything's not bad and negative, but now you can almost make things even better, and then once I got a taste of that, I'm in control of making things better and then seeing results right away. I was hooked and now that's my whole life. I just am obsessed with doing that. I could never imagine you being a negative human being. Everyone says that. Tawni, I literally used to have to I got in a fight in high school with this girl. I pushed her into the bathroom sink and I used to have to go to anger management in the middle of my school. I and that's why sometimes I even I'm over it now, but when I first started posting and being public, I used to be like, people from high school are probably like, What is this bitch talking about? That is not Lisa Smith in High End Plainfield that I knew. Because I just, ugh, I was just a bitch. I was a little bit of a bully. I was not nice. I was not kind. I was not Good in a lot of ways. I'm sure people who loved me would probably tell me there was good things, but looking back, I have a lot of like guilt and regret and I'm just like, what was my problem? But I don't know. I don't know. Skylar helped and just working on myself has helped. And now I feel the quite literally the opposite of that. I think I hopefully only impact people in a positive way now. And yeah, that's my goal at this point. Yeah, so you've gotten a little bit into the woopie stuff, so do you want to talk about that a little bit for healing purposes for somebody that's out there maybe looking for something that may work that's a little bit out of the ordinary that's not your standard therapy or your standard medicating or whatever. So I think that what I'm about to say, I also want to preface with I do see how this can also turn into toxic positivity, and I'm not trying to promote that either. Because sometimes shit is hard, and just reading a book that says, Oh, it's hard because you thought that it was going to be hard, and that's why it's hard, and it's not going to not be hard until you think it's not going to be hard. What kind of chaotic, crazy shit is that? But I think that I genuinely do believe in the law of attraction, which is like attracts like, which means whatever emotion, feeling, state of being you are, like, vibrating on or putting out into the ether is what you get back. And I saw it firsthand as soon as I saw it. Opened up to that and lightened up and loved and expressed gratitude and gave and shared love and like what I was thinking, good things. That's just my story. For me, it was like reading The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, which I know is just so cheesy and everybody like, it's interesting, but like for me, I was just like, I never knew that was possible. Like I just would hear my family talk about. Negative shit or like politics or all these things and it was just like no like you can choose like what? You want to bring in and what you want to put out and just switching to like gratitude, always leading from gratitude and like anytime you find your mind, again, this can be tricky, but anytime you find your mind really in a dark space, in my opinion, as soon as you can pull yourself out of that, like the better things are going to come to you. I genuinely believe that. And that's hard too. Let's give credit to the fact that getting to that point. is not an easy journey, right? To getting to that point of acknowledgement of, and I think it takes practice, right? That's why they call it gratitude practice and stuff like that. It takes practice to pull yourself out of that stuff. It's not easy. And I think it gets easier over time, the more you do it, AKA the practice, but the journey to get to that point is never quick and easy. And. Yeah. I think for some people who are stuck in the depths of that stuff, cause I've been, I've had those moments myself. Like I literally have felt sometimes where I don't think I'm going to be able to pull myself out of this. I don't know if I'm going to, like I had one really scary moment last year we were camping and I just, my brain just it was like middle of the night. It was the first time that I'd ever experienced. Like I could have some more empathy for people who are depressed and suicidal and things like that. Because I went in the middle of the night, my brain went to all the negative, all the bad things, all the things. And we were camping in, we were in the Tetons, Great Teton, Grand Tetons. T Tons. Anyways, National Park. And so we had the 10 hour drive back home that day and I literally sat in the car like dead silent and at one point Colin was like, what's going on with you? And I unloaded on him and I was a mess. And it hit me for, I want to say two and a half days. I had, I couldn't climb out of it. And you don't know what stem, what start sparked that off? Oh, I do. I was in the midst of a transfer, an embryo transfer, and I'd had the transfer, and we went camping, and I was doing all my meds in the campsite, which someday I can talk about all the fun places I've done meds, but all that stuff, and so we were coming up on campfire. Yeah. That pregnancy test for that. And it just, because I'd been through it so many times, like my brain just went to, I'm never going to be a mother. I'm never, this is never going to happen for me. And what if it never happens? And what if none of this works? And it just spiraled into this hole that I took me. It was the first time in all of this stuff. And I've been going through this shit for a long time, but I could not pull myself out of it for two and a half days. And honestly, Tanya, let me say two and a half days is actually pretty impressive. Cause I know at the end of that, there wasn't even. A good news or a light at the end of the tunnel and so that's why I also think what you're doing right now is so important and let me also say I've been on this journey or whatever that I talk about like where I've really grown into this in probably 10 11 years like Skylar was born 11 years ago really things were dark before then so I haven't faced a ton of like Really hard life shit, which I know is bound to happen. I know our parents are gonna get sick, I could lose anyone at any point in time, so I don't know how I'm gonna handle those things. I hope that this has taught me how to be a better version of that, but I also, again, just sink into empathy that if you don't have the answer, I don't know if I do either, because sometimes shit is genuinely just hard, and that's that. And we don't always, like we said before, you don't always need to put a bow or a lesson behind it or anything like that. And it may, depending on the thing, it may take A lifetime sometimes to, yeah, there's people that say that even once they've dealt with infertility stuff, and I only speak to that because that's my, that's your story, my biggest part of my story. And I've talked to women who've had babies and gotten on the other side of it, and they still say it's. That doesn't solve it. That doesn't fix it. That void is still there or something. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe a lifetime of trying to heal from that too. Just everybody's different. Everybody's story is different. And then different things work for different people. Therapy didn't really work for me, but. But a cheesy book about manifestation really did something for me. So who knows what it's going to be for you. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Do you have any parting words? Do you have any words of wisdom for somebody who is potentially going through what you've gone through and have, obviously no story is the same, but somebody who is, do you have any words of advice? Yeah. I guess I just want to say thank you. Thank you for holding this space for me to really open up. Okay, parting words for somebody who's in a similar situation. I would say tap into empathy as much as you can. If you are really relating to the angry child that I'm If you have it and you still Empathy helps me a ton. Gratitude helps me a ton. If you are in a moment where you're like so Upset about other people's wrongdoings. Empathy and gratitude. Like, how can you empathize with them? Why are they the way they are? How can we remove ourselves from that and let it exist on its own? Gratitude for what you do have and what is good and what, even in that person that's bothering you, what is the good in that? And I've also learned a lot of about releasing expectations. I have found that's my key to happiness is not having expectations of others and just being good on my own without expecting and being disappointed by others. My favorite quote, it's on all my vision boards. It's something I always remind myself of is expect nothing, appreciate everything. Some people that might be like hyper independent, not the best advice, but it works really well for me. I cannot be disappointed by anyone if I expect nothing of anyone and I'm just appreciative of the good and then the hard stuff I'll just go with it. Maybe that's again my hyper independence and deal with that how I need to internally. Yeah, those are my advice. Yeah. Yeah life. It's the expectations thing is really hard I think yeah It's hard to not have expectations of people and we all expect people to Act the way we do or handle situations the way we do. And yeah, that's good. I love that. I just don't. Yeah. I love you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming out and opening up and being vulnerable about your story. I really appreciate it. I understand that's not an easy thing to do and I really appreciate it. And hopefully we help some people out there that are going through hardship. So yeah, I agree. Yeah. All right. Thank you. And thank you everyone for tuning in and listening and we'll see you on the next episode.