Transcript: AMY

Not Saving It For Later — Hannah Hembree Bell with Amy Edwards

Source file: AMY (1).mp4 · Duration: 00:57:25 · ~11,000 words

Transcript

I didn't know that I didn't love myself. You don't know what you don't know. There's another one. And I started to go like, I cheated in both my marriages. I thought that was about something other than self love. I mean, yes, it's about validation, but I thought, oh, I'm just naturally not cut out for this probably or something like that. That's not the case. It was really a search for more love and more validation because I didn't have it within myself. Let's be honest, most of us were taught to wait our turn

to tone it down, to save it for later. Later, when the kids are grown later, when the timing's right, later when you finally stop caring what they think. Well, I'm done waiting. I'm Hannah Hymbe Bell, Texas Divorce Lawyer, mom and woman who rebuilt her life from the wreckage. This is not saving it for later. The podcast guiding women through divorce and beyond. All right, everybody. I am so excited for this conversation today. I have with me a very special guest.

Her name is Amy Edwards. And I could probably spend at least 10 minutes telling you all the things about her. But she is a podcast host, an author, musician. I mean, just one of these like multi-high-finite talents. And we met actually not that long ago, and I immediately became obsessed with her as you will. And I am now her number one biggest social media fan. And look forward every single day. I'm sure they're daily like to her videos. So don't worry, you're gonna wanna know where all of them are. And I find them on everything about Amy's so delightful

and so encouraging. And you know the people you're around, y'all. That just make you feel like maybe there's a whole different dimension of life possible. And somehow you didn't get the memo or like nobody loot you into the secret code or whatever. Amy does that for us. And so I am very excited to dive in. Did I miss anything, Amy? Who knows? I don't know. I'm just going to go with that.

And thank you for that beautiful intro. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to show people that there is life to be had that gets better and better as we age. And I think your audience is particularly, I guess, suited to that mindset because after divorce, we can get into this thought process that who would want me now is life over? You know, like, am I any good? Am I damaged goods? Or just all this? Yes, that we're told from society over and over. And so are you got baggage? That's why I hate you got baggage. Give me a break. Who does that? Well, if you live life, you've had things happen to you. If you've been in the arena, right?

Yes. woman in their arena. We have that in our house. And I know Brittany Brown quotes it, but it's like, if you're out there actually living, you're a moving target, right? Things are going to happen to you. People who don't have baggage and things to discuss have been, you know, playing it safe. And that's one of the things Amy that, you know, just for little context for everybody. If it's okay, I'm going to some, I do this as a lawyer, like I'm going to tell a few things I know when you do it where I'm wrong. Okay, too. So, Amy has been divorced twice, married three times. That is correct.

Is inner 50s? Right. I explain that because she's very, very open about that on our podcast, anything but mid. Right? Anything but mid is my comedy wellness podcast. Okay. And then I have my own show called the AMI AdWords show that's all about living your best life at any age through mindset shifts, better habits, all that kind of stuff. Any way that we can optimize and feel better at any age. Yeah.

And I think that part, like for those of you who are just listening, If you are looking at Amy, zero percent of you would think this is a gal in her 50s. And I think it's yes, the way we look, but I think it's also the energy that we bring to whatever we're doing. You meet some of those women who are in their 70s. You're like, they still have this fresh young, vibrant thing. And I think obviously 50s doesn't mean the same thing as it used to be. Anyway, but I think just for a bit of context, understanding for a lot of us listening that Amy is on a journey that a lot of us are either starting or afraid to start or maybe in the middle of ourselves. And on this season of the show, I mean, we're diving in quite a bit to the place whereby we repeat our same patterns from our marriage in our future relationships. And for me, myself and I, I did exactly that.

So I was married for nine years. I got married when I was 21 years old. And I was married for nine years, had three kids, and got divorced. And it was my decision. And I think like a lot of people, you think, okay, I'll get divorced. I won't have this big problem anymore. And so then everything will be sort of better after that. Or I hope it'll be better after that or something. I just know I won't have this problem. And then one day I'll have some other man,

and then it'll be happily ever after with him. Only to find out that we get into these new relationships in the same energy that we were in our first marriage. From our first pick-me situation, when we first got married, we carry that forward into the next relationship or the next marriage. And never stop and do the work, whatever, I'm do the work, I'm using air quotes, like whatever that means to be a different person and so that we can receive a different experience, have a different experience

the second time around. So can you share a little bit with us about your experience if that resonates with you and, and, you know, what you've sort of learned along the way, I guess it absolutely resonates, you know. Even just the second divorce, I couldn't believe I was getting a second divorce. And I've only come out recently on social media talking about this because I was like, People need to hear this. People are getting divorced. People need some encouragement to know that there's life afterward.

I mean, I've talked about it on my podcast for a long time, but in social media, you know, it's a different world. You can take a lot of criticism. And so it's a little challenging to be really open about it. But at the same time, I was like, there are people out there that need this. And so that's why I've been talking about it. Right? And I looked back after my second divorce, I really was like, what's going on here? I had, they were both my choice, but things deteriorated in similar ways. And I, the two guys, my first husband and second husband are completely different. Like, I'm the common denominator in the common denominator. I'm the problem.

Yes. Hi. I'm the problem with me. Yes. And like, yeah, I could blame them all day, right? I could find ways to blame them and they certainly found ways to blame me. But it takes two and I just, I knew that there was something within me that I had to look at. And I'm also the type of person and I think a lot of women are that take a lot of responsibility, right? We'll look to ourselves and hold ourselves accountable in so many ways and we're so hard on ourselves.

And so, you know, I think there's a balance that you can strike there where you don't want to be too hard on yourself. But at the same time, you want to really take responsibility for your own life and say, okay, what's going on here? Right? I'm the common denominator. What's going on? And I really started to do a lot of self work. And this is after the second divorce. This is after the second divorce. Because that's when you realize like, okay, and I guess for everybody listening, not so that we're not saying this so that you have to get a second divorce.

But it's also say like, hey, perhaps for some of us, we don't need to go through the second divorce if we can learn from Amy's lessons of the work that you did and how to kind of make peace with your part of it. So okay, so it's making sure. And you know, it's complicated. There's lots of things. I'll show a walk out of here and be like, oh, I forgot, you know, X, Y, but I jumped from one marriage right to the other. Yeah. My second husband's someone I knew from way back in high school. And so jumping from one to the other, I didn't have any time to reflect. And I think after the second I was like, I need space and I got really depressed. It, everybody knows divorce can be really hard. You can get bullied. You can be spoken to in ways that you just never even dreamed that the person that said I love you would speak to you. And that's hard, right? And I got into like a pretty dark hole. And I remember listening to a podcast and the woman was like, do you have hope? And I was, I can't remember where I was sitting in downtown Austin in my car.

And I used to start crying because I really felt like I didn't have hope at that point. You know, my kids were like eight and 12 and here I was getting a second divorce. I left. I felt like a bad person for them. I felt like just shitty. Yeah. And I say that feeling is like worse than the gum on the bottom of your shoe. It is. It is. It is. Yeah. I knew I didn't want to feel like that, but at the same time when you're in it, it's

real, real hard to get out. So anybody listening, I just want you to know that if you're looking at me and thinking, she doesn't get it, I do. And I had felt like that after my first marriage, too, in that divorce, it was a dark time. And I tell this story. You know, after that, I mean, I just remember times where I was like, the world would be better off without me. You know, I had moments. And I got through it day by day because I'm just like, okay, can I just get through today? And then the next day it looks a little bit brighter. But feeling like I didn't have hope was exceptionally challenging and you're draining

money with a divorce. You're just getting kind of beat up from every direction your kids are asking questions if they're old enough to. And it's just challenging from all angles. And so I had to look at myself and think, okay, what were the common factors here? Where was I giving away my power? Where was I compromising myself, which I did in both? Yeah. You know, they could be totally different people and you're still compromising yourself in ways. I'm a people pleaser. I'm a band-in-air.

I have band-in-air myself. I have band-in-air myself. Yes. And I can't remember how I started doing this self work. I think someone offered a psychedelic journey for me. And I just said yes. And I was scared to death, but I did it. And it was even dark after that. Like I was still depressed, but things started to just look a little bit brighter. Like I started to remember who I was, meaning way back, as a child, meaning like the finding that love for myself.

And I'll preach self love till the cows come home. that's where it's at for me. That's what saved me. And it was just the simple thing of remembering to love myself. And you have that power to give yourself. You know, there's some of those things that people talk a lot about self-love. And I always do this. I think it's a lawyer and me. A little bit going back to definitions. You know, if you've ever read a contract,

it says like here are the definitions of things. And people say you have to love yourself. And that feels like one of those throw away things that people say, Instagram, Gals say, or that your grandma said, or you read on a sticker. When you say, like, let's just, can we all get on the same page about what do we mean? What do you think it means to love yourself? What does that look like? How do you know if you love yourself? How do you know if you don't love yourself? Yeah.

Because I think it's like, I don't know. I mean, I do love myself, but that's not how I think of it. I think I love myself, depending on what we're meaning. Does that make sense? It's just like not how I conceptualize it. So I wonder if some people feel the same, like what does it mean to love yourself? And maybe you need to say what it means if you don't. Maybe sometimes you define something by what it's not. Right, so I don't really think. Sure, sure. And I get it is kind of like a throwaway line,

but a lot of times cliches are cliches because they're true. Yeah. And I didn't know that I didn't love myself. You don't know what you don't know. And there's another one. And I guess I started to go like, I cheated in both my marriages and I thought, I thought that was about something other than self-love. I thought that was about, I mean, yes, it's about validation, but I thought, oh, I'm just naturally not cut out

for this probably, or something like that. But that's not the case. It was really a search for more love and more validation because I didn't have it within myself. And you start to take a hard look at yourself and think, where are these spaces that I'm giving myself away? Like pick me energy, like seeking that out from someone else that perhaps I could look into giving it to myself. For me, that was a read a book called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. Have you read it? Oh no, that sounds awesome. It's excellent. It's a Kamal Ravikant and he it's about a breakup, but he talks a lot about just the simplest

self love practices and what he recommends, which I adopted to is a mirror practice where you literally just thinking of looking in the mirror. Have you done it? I think so. Go ahead and say what it is. I think so. You need to do it intentionally. Right. And like it's really intentional. You set your phone timer for five minutes and you look in the mirror in your own eyes and you say, I love you. And I know it's a little odd and it's, I talked about it on social media the other day.

Maybe that's all I was thinking of it. I thought you, I heard you saying I probably did and, you know, dudes are commenting like, who read Flag if she's looking in the mirror or saying I love you, but you know they expect you to do it to them. And like we're expected to do it to everybody and we give it so freely, but not to ourselves. So what does that feel like and how uncomfortable do you get looking in the mirror and saying I'll let you tear yourself, right? So I started doing that and the first time I did it I started crying and you kind of start riffing on it too And you're like you're amazing which I would see to you so freely but looking in my own eyes feels weird and intimate and odd and uncomfortable and

So I did it and I started doing it every day and that's what he does in the book and it really is so Basic but at the same time you start to realize I've never given myself love that I give everybody else else that I gave my ex husbands and I thought, let me give them more and that'll fix this relationship or, you know, let me let my kids more and let me be more perfect. And that's not the key, right? It's such a paradox. We start to love ourselves more and it heals these old wounds. It starts to heal the validation that we needed. It starts to heal the need to be chosen, the need to be chosen. I think that that's it for us women. I think we are so conditioned. At least, I'm 42.

So definitely my age. I think even it's true. Maybe some of this is shifting for the younger little pumpkins in their early 20s or teens, different kind of thought. But we have been so conditioned to see our worth in whether or not a man chooses us. Whether or not we're wanted, whether or not we're chosen. And I'm not saying that men don't have their own, Men have a very difficult, different path. So this is no slide on them.

I'm just speaking for us. Is, you know, do you or not have a date to homecoming? Or the dance? Right. Are you a loser? And nobody wants you from the beginning. And so I think so much of women's, especially in our 20s, mistakes we make are out of a desire just for to pick me for someone to want me. I know absolutely 1,000% pick me energy played to me in my 20s and even into my 30s. And one thing I was thinking about with self love,

okay, how would I describe like what that means? I think you would know it if you have it by a few things. Like number one, my thought would be, can you sit alone in the quiet with yourself?

And if not, there's at least a question there to follow. Do you, do you always have to fill the car with music? Do you always have to have a plan with somebody to hang out? If you're at home on a Friday night by yourself, do you automatically lay your stories about what this means about you? Or do you come to a place where you can be comfortable just being there by yourself and even in the quieter with the journal or whatever? After I got divorced, I had to 0% of that ability. Like, when I remember the first time where there weren't kids, and it wasn't crazy, it It wasn't busy. And, dad, I had come home in San Antonio to the rental house where I was living. And I talked to, even my thin boyfriend, I was already with my now husband Drew.

I was already with him, but he lived far away. I had already run to the grocery store to get dinner. I didn't really have anything else to do. And I sat down at the table and he couldn't talk anymore because he was like busy being important the way or whatever. I didn't really have any friends to talk to at the time. And I just sat at the table and cried my eyes out. Like there I was left with just me. And that lack of comfort, I think, evident could evidence or did for me a lack of self-love. And I think close by with love goes respect.

Because if you love yourself, if people you love really love, I think right behind that would be treating them with respect. And so if you have that care and concern for yourself, you will have some respect. And the other thing I was thinking about is, whether or not you believe that your preference is matter. Totally. Evidence is how much you love yourself or not. Like for instance, with your kiddos. So I've got ranging from almost 19 down to five.

And I say, in parenting years, I'm 20, 20 something years old. It has been a long time. And when I have a choice to make or where something's happening for my kids, where I always keep their preferences in mind. and how they like their eggs cooked. Whether or not we do this or that because they might be uncomfortable at that time of day or hungrier, sleepier, tired or whatever. And like we don't give so often ourselves that same consideration because we don't think our preference is matter

as women of all. We're not gonna put them high. I'm not gonna put them above other people. Now some people are different than this, but I guess you all would just say, first of all asking the question, like do you have a self-love issue? Like, can you sit alone by yourself? Can you do this mirror exercise or for five minutes you say I love you? And then eventually evolve into some other things? Like, do you prioritize your own preferences?

Like, Abby, echo this gal from online. I don't know if you follow her. She's been a guest on the show. She is awesome. And she talks about centering yourself in your own life. And how so many women don't. Like, oh, I can't do X, Y, Z thing I wanna do. Go to a pottery class on a Tuesday because they're soccer practice and pass the ball. Well, right. Dad can help or oh well, everyone else. I want to do this thing.

So I'm going to do this thing. And so I think the first step of for women in the middle of your divorce, wherever you are for all of us, in case any of this resonates is to say like wait a minute, do I have self love? Like what does that look like? It sounds like that's the journey you started to heal or to kind of wake up. I think it's the most fundamental. We start there of what you're talking about because really you're not going to value your own interests or even know what those are.

And for if you don't have that love and start to feel worthy. Right. And I think the love comes before the worthiness. You're not going to feel self-worth if you don't love yourself and the self-respect. And I'd add a layer of self-trust on there. Right. or trusting yourself to make these decisions. That just takes time. And like I really did have to sit, learn to meditate, be quiet in my brain, and focus on like my shock or right here in my solar plexus, this golden thing that I just completely neglected.

And that was the surprise to me. And I just had to learn to sit and love myself and look in the mirror and treat myself the way I would love to treat someone that I love. But that's essentially what we're not doing. And the self-trust piece of it, I think, really comes along with it and speaking your truth and knowing that you are a person that can be trusted and knowing that you trust yourself, right? Well, and I think, I didn't even know we were talking about this, but I wanna slow down a second too about self-worth and then self-trust.

Because I think people just throw these words around all the time and we don't agree or necessarily know what they mean. So like I and my work as a divorce lawyer and with my confident divorce and supporting women in that space, what comes up so much is the concept of worthiness. And I do this webinar where we talk about the things you can do to prepare for divorce without losing your kids' money insanity, right? That's kind of the premise of my confident force. And each time I've done this webinar in the chat, somehow it comes around to, I don't know if I'm worthy to that.

And I started saying to people, I didn't, it just started coming out of my mouth before I knew what I was even saying is, you are worthy because you exist a million percent. Like, full stop. Just that's it. That's it. Because you exist, you are worthy. And I think what that means is, you're worthy of a happy life. Yeah. Did you know life doesn't have to like medium suck forever?

Did you know you're worthy of joy? You're worthy of peace. You're worthy of a calm home. You're worthy of looking the way you wanna look. Trusting the way. Having the money you wanna have, you are worthy and you don't, there's that Mary all over Pelham about, you don't have to crawl across the desert, repenting, right? You just want to change. Right, soft body love what it loves. And I always take that to mean like,

I don't have to cry like, earn it, you don't have to repent for it. And we all made mistakes in our marriages. And I think a lot of women carry so much shame with different things. But like, you don't have to earn your way the worthiness in my opinion. No, it's not even your opinion. That is a fact. That is a fact. It is an absolute fact. And I even at the end of both marriages,

I was like, look at all this stuff I bring to the table. Look what I brought to the table. Look how much I was doing. And now once I started doing this work, I was like, there is no table. There is no table. It's like, no, like it's not about that. It is about just your inherent worth, period. Well, and I think layered on top of that, you also worth, it's just like that you, I think the worth, you could almost do a little bit of a switcharoo with the word deserve.

Like you deserve these things, your desires, the things you want to be treated well, simply because you're a human being. And you know, likewise, the people were divorcing, our children, people we don't like, people we do like. They also are worthy. You know, that's a kind of a next layer of thing. But I think on top of that, so we've got self-love, self-worth, self-respect and self-trust to me, go together. And I think that one takes a little bit longer to work your way through and how important it is.

I'll give an example of what self-trust like doesn't look like. I do not have self-trust with myself when it comes to watching a really great TV show or reading a really great book. Because what I will do is why I just- You just ditch it all life and do. I am just like, like I watched or I read- Getting everything I'm in this now. The dragon books that the young girls were reading, I forget what they're called, my daughter Lucy had recommended them to me.

And in this summer, I'd be like, two o'clock in the morning, reading these books. And I'd tell myself, just one more chapter, but I keep going. Now, I'm impressed you can stay awake. I can, I don't care about my book is, my eyes are closing. It fits an amazing book or amazing show. I could keep going. I'd probably stay up till the more, like I'm not, I like four o'clock in the morning, but I'm a mom with all these children and business

and all this. And so I realized that for me, I didn't keep going to develop the skill of self trust. I just like, I'm not gonna do that thing. Or somebody will recommend to show to me. I'm like, I do not have time to go down that wormhole. you don't like parent yourself at that point. Right. You have to sort of divide yourself into these little, you know, pieces and be like, no, Hannah, it's time to go to bed. You're going to put the book, you know, you have to be right yourself. Well, that's how, that's just like one kind of silly example of gaining self trust. And, and I think that

that's, you know, with reading a book and there are a lot worse things that one can do, but it also comes to, you know, um, tech being a triple-texter, uh, in the dating world where you're like chasing after that guy after he already, that's a a whole other episode if we need to do it, we're not dating. Because I learned a lot. But I'm in the throes of my second divorce, right? 2018. And I had written a double album at that time and was getting ready to release that. And one day, things were not good, right? We were messaging me a lot.

I don't engage with that because I knew that was what he wanted. And so I wouldn't engage, but one day I just woke up and I was like, I think I was sick. And I was like, I feel like I have a cold. Anyway, I got worse and worse. This was July and we had filed, I had filed maybe in March and moved out. And so July I'm sick, things were really dark and hard and contentious. And I didn't get better. And then I realized it was a sinus infection or something.

I went on rounds of antibiotics, still not getting better. So then I started to lose my voice. And I am all about boys. I have a radio background for 30 plus years. I'm a voiceover artist. I do freelance commercial work. I've been a singer. I was releasing an album at the time and I started to lose my voice. And so I'm releasing this album and I couldn't do a show. I couldn't perform it live because I couldn't sing.

And I was like, what in the world? And so right then it coincided with, to this is like September now. Can't talk. And I realized, like, he starts to fight me in ways that I don't want to go into now. We're on good terms now, but it was a tough time. People go crazy in the divorce. Yeah. As you know. And he did some things that forced me to stand up for myself in ways that I never had. Yeah. To find my own voice.

And I realized that losing my voice was actually representative of what I was going through, that I didn't know how to speak up for myself. Even at 46 years old, I didn't know how. And here I was counting on my voice and I thought, I see this. And I had to file a restraining order. I had to do supervised visitation, which if any of your listeners have done that. It is so expensive and so horrible for everyone and kids and every. Yeah, I have a child from each marriage. And I mean, it was so hard.

But I had to, I remember speaking to my attorney and saying, I don't wanna do this, and she was like, if you don't, and something else happens, they're gonna say why didn't you? You have to. And I was like, is this bad enough? Like I'm still not trusting myself. I was like, is this bad enough for me to stand up for myself? Or for me to do this, and they were like, yes, yes. And again, there's self-worth in there, right? There's not trusting your own voice.

It's all just a big mess of all this stuff together. And if you untangle, I think it the core is self-love. And so I learned to stand up for myself in that moment. I did your voice come back. No, it still didn't come back. So finally in December, I'm like, I don't know what to do. But so I had to have a medical procedure. I had to have a sinewplasty where they go in and they put these little balloons in your sinuses and start to clear it out. And that coincided with someone asking me to do a psychedelic experience journey. And all of this stuff happened in December of 2018. And that's when the darkness started to subside.

The clouds started to depart. I started understanding my own voice, understanding my own long standing lack of self-love, which it really was. I mean, those times that I was in pick me energy, which is like for me, compromising myself in ways that are just like, oh, it'll be fine. I trust this person, you know, that I'm with it. It'll be fine. And I was always with older men. And I thought, oh, there's something there. You know, I'm giving away my power a little bit and always trusting someone else just a little bit more than me. Yeah.

Yeah. And so to go ahead of you, take care of that. Yeah. Now my husband is 15 years younger than me and that's not a coincidence. It feels to me like a much more balanced relationship because I had been so deep in giving away my power to an older man in particular, right? And which we're pretty conditioned to do. I was just watching a show on Netflix called False Profit, Trust Me, False Profit, and It's an FLDS community and they are trained to be obedient from birth. Right? And there's so much puritanical Christianity, evangelical things in our society. I was raised Protestant Methodist, but there's this biblical training in there to be

subservient and to look to a man. And that's designed to keep women obedient. All of this stuff, right? Then we're giving away our power and we're not trust. That's fostering losing yourself and not trusting yourself. So I had to really dive into like, okay, who am I? I gotta trust myself. Forget this all the way being, because it's clearly not working. And plus, I have two daughters. What am I teaching them? Yeah.

And so, because I've always been a big proponent, I took up music in my late 30s. And it was a huge part of who I was teaching my children that you can do anything as a woman at absolutely any age. And so I was like, okay, what am I modeling to them here? And I had to learn how to date, I had to learn how to love myself, because there's a whole rig of a roll around dating, like, oh, dating sucks, and then it's awful out there. Don't do it then. Either find ways to have a good time and enjoy what you're doing or don't do it.

I'd always kill somebody, I hear people talk about it like that. I'm like, are people, I'm like, Do not, I was telling my friend the other day. Do not claim that bullshit for yourself. You're claim it. It's not claim, oh, there's no good men out there. Dad, I, I mean, with that attitude, you won't find anything. No, I mean, I know exactly. At this point in my life, I've been around some really great men, I think partially

because I started to believe that they exist. Right. And then to see them, I mean, there's no way you can know this, but I struggle with vocal issues my whole life. You have such a cute voice. Oh, thank you. I guess that in East Texas where I'm from, I didn't know this, but something about the way we mostly all speak. A lot of us have this where our vocal court is a sobering. Like a fry or... It creates a lower register than maybe we're meant to talk. And it creates these nodules on your vocal courts.

That's the physiological. And so at different points in my life, my voice will go. Even to this day, there will be no other explanation. And I wake up and it is hard to speak. And it's that stuff for you in the line of work. Oh my god. It's forced. It is the people we were close to became really depressed. It is it is hard on really hard. And what happens is it takes so much more energy to get every single word out and you hear yourself in your own ears, which is very taxing because it doesn't sound like you're used to. So anyway, I think probably even as you're speaking about this and I'm sure there are people listening who've experienced this that there is certainly the body keeps the score right. And I have struggle throughout my life. I'm silencing myself, trying to go along to get along to not say the thing I'm, I think

in like the deep parts of myself, to try to be pleasing to not be too big and not be too much. And a lot of people say that. I mean, it's just sort of like, and make things agreeable. I don't, I can conflict, but I do not like it. I want things to be calm and peaceful and good and a lot of people pleasing. And so I can relate to all that by the way. Yeah. And my voice for me has been an unreliable instrument in the past. I'm not claiming that for the future. And it's also a lagging indicator for me

of when I've stretched myself too thin. I've been going too much, not enough rest, et cetera. My voice is on that edge of what's gonna go. But I say all that in case for y'all listening to, it sounds like Amy and I shared that physical symptom. You may also experience some other physical symptoms that coincide with what's going on inside of you energetically, emotionally, psychologically. And your body, because you're not listening to your intuition, you're not listening to that still small voice inside. Your body's going to get, it's get its message across to you one way or the other. And I always think my body, so we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. You can listen right now, totally. Or we can go through this journey. So,

and what was the hard way? My eyes too. Oh, yeah. I'm still all the time. I mean, the way I'm seeing it now for me is showing up in relationships that are longer term. My current self and any new relationships has a lot less difficulty speaking what I really think, setting some boundaries, holding my own worth, et cetera. It's a muscle that you work out. It takes practice. And like that was just a slap in the face for me like, oh, I'm going to have to do this hard legal stuff and use my voice in that way. And then it started to heal and and it started to be self-work like oh, I can't trust myself and it it doesn't happen overnight and you know that right and like it just takes time and Going easy on yourself and then you start to develop that muscle and then it happens again

And you're like oh yeah, I remember this and you're able to bounce back quicker and that's the thing It's not about it not happening at all. It's about at least for me I feel like life is about that. It's not about it not happening at all. It's about happening and then you're able to remember quicker and bounce back quicker and write the ship a lot faster. And the way I think about the way life works is that I don't know why I have this image in my mind but I think of a high school track. And there are certain lessons, at different phases that we have to learn. That's in front of us. The thing, keeping us smaller, maybe holding us back from our next level or higher frequency,

or whatever that is for anybody listening, like the next thing. And that kind of keeps you stuck where you are. And I think about us going around this track at the high school. I didn't like running around tracks. I still don't like running around tracks. I haven't tried to do it in a long time, but I don't think I want to get, it seems terrible. But anyway, going around this track, and as I've gotten older, I start to be like recognizing this pattern. So it's this pattern.

I'm going around the track. And I think about, okay, here is my opportunity to learn this lesson now or learn it later. I can do it now or I can do it later. And then what happens is I think y'all, when you know you've started to heal and you started to make this progress is you shorten the time it takes you to stop going around the same track. Of like, okay, here's this lesson. I can learn about not allowing small sort of small sort of infractions against a boundary or things left unsaid in allowing those just to go

because they're in BD, not that big of a deal. I don't want to make a scene. I don't want to be angry whatever. And letting those go. And then they build into resentment. Right. It's like avoidance always sends an invoice. Yeah. And so avoiding those things. And now what I'm starting to see is I see myself trying to do that. And I'm like, ooh, okay, this is my opportunity. Do I want to learn this lesson again in six months or a year? Or do I want to make this the choice and take this step right now to advance to some other lessons, right? And whatever comes next. So I guess what I'm easier lessons. Yeah, easier lessons. Yes, maybe maybe deeper, But I think for everybody listening, can you reflect back to things that keep showing up in your life over time? And if you're 20 years old, that may be a little harder for you, but I bet you, even at 20, you've got some fodder, sister. And to look back and like, what are things that keep showing up?

And like Amy shared with us in marriage, one in marriage, two different fellows, different circumstances different kids, same or similar issues, same Amy. Yeah. And so I mean, from the get go to like from the wedding date, like there were things I could look back, I mean, hindsight, right? But there were things I could look back on and I was like, Oh, I gave away my power there. I gave away my power there. I was leaning in and trying to fix. And you know, just you start to see all your own little patterns and what are we doing over and over. Now I'm pretty conscious of it and I still can notice it in my relationship now and I can say, ah, okay, I see that. How the thing, I studied this like Facebook group. It's her name is like

Giordana, Tokuna Derry or something like that. It's called like, um, high value woman or something like that. And I started reading a lot of her stuff. And I'll have to find it. Yeah, find it when you put it in the channel. Yes, yes. And I would just keep that in my notes and just constantly write it down. But the gist of it is she says lean back. And like what that means is you're not fixing everything outside yourself or making things okay, you're really just focused on this, your own beautiful life because it's worthy, right? And so you love yourself and you start focusing

on your own beautiful life. And magically everything starts to get better. And it's the same principle in Alonon, which my husband is in active recovery now. And so that was another little learning experience, right? Once we got together, I thought I'd done all this work. And then I'm with somebody who is in addiction. And I'm like, okay, why am I attracting this? Like looking at myself. And so I did a lot of Alonon work, which is the exact same principle and the same thing that we're talking about.

Because it just makes life better in every single way. And that is focusing on yourself because we can't control this other stuff in the outside. We think we can, we like to try. And even, you know, like you're talking about people pleasing or pick me energy or anything, you can't control that. Someone still is not gonna pick you maybe, or you know. And the more you want them to, the less they're going to, it's like a desperate energy is not appealing, right?

And that's what we're in when we're wanting and fixing. And what this does is shift your energy completely into this beautiful glow, right? And it's that falling in love glow only with yourself. So it doesn't go away. And you're able to just really relax into, oh, and it doesn't have to be big. It can be drawing a bath. It can be doing things that please you and why people are on some candles. I like it screaming at me in my head. Somebody is thinking this is,

but what if when they sit with theirself and when they look in the mirror, they don't love theirself? What if they, they probably don't? What do you look in the mirror? like if you haven't done the simple work on it and done some mirror work and really sat with yourself and you probably don't. And that's perfectly fine. And honestly, sadly, normal, right? We aren't taught it. So why should we know how? And so I had to actually learn it. I had to you think you can learn it to love yourself. A million percent. You can absolutely learn it with the baths. What you're saying, the way is mirror work, just tapping into a few things you like, maybe you like flowers. Go buy yourself one flower, you know, put it in a little dainty vase by your bed. I mean, just these little things that start to make you happy

just for the sheer beauty of it, right? Like just treat yourself the way you would treat someone you love because you're worth it and you start to look in the mirror and perhaps even if you see something you don't like, can you look in the mirror and laugh together? And I'm pretending I'm staring in the mirror, right? And like, laugh together and just like you would with a best friend. Just free or see that. I think it grows. So by doing those bits of things, it would. It's a consistency. And those are just some very simple ways. But it's about focusing on your own beautiful life because you do have your own beautiful life. And it doesn't require a man, a partner. It doesn't require anything other than you. Right? It can just be going for a walk in nature, treating yourself. Like, I didn't even know what I liked sexually. Isn't that wild, right? I thought I did, but I asked, I remember calling my best friend and I was like, do you really know what you like and bad? Because so often we're just doing what we think the

other person wants and kind of, it's like performative energy. And it's not that I didn't enjoy it a lot of times, but I didn't even have a concept of what the options really were for me. And And once I was like, oh, I can just like somebody just gently touching me. You know, my arm or a foot massager like, oh, that's allowed. You know, like it's it's this reclamation of ourselves. And I think it comes with age two. I do not think that it's as easy when you don't have the lived life experience. And so I just say go easy on yourself. If you're feeling like I've never done this, and I'm not even worth it, and I can't, it's too late for real to love myself. It's not, you really can at any age.

You can start right now, and you can look in the mirror and set your timer for five minutes and see what happens. Chances are you're gonna cry. It's gonna feel weird, and you're gonna realize that you haven't. I'm kinda choked up saying that. You haven't looked in the mirror and given that person the love that they deserve, and you've given it to everybody else. And I think our joint thesis would be that doing this work, whether you're in the middle

of your marriage, okay, maybe you've been thinking of the course is the way whether you're in the middle of a divorce or you're after a divorce. Y'all, this is the journey, collectively as women and probably people, but I don't know about the guys but for us, the journey for us to make, to get, I'm okay with me. And in fact, I'm better than okay. I love me and because of that, I am gonna be treated in a certain way in my life. I'm gonna give that treatment to myself and other things that don't align, they can fall off. And y'all, if we do this and you do, and when people say do the work,

I think largely, largely, largely at the root. This is what they mean. What they mean. It's what I mean for sure. I think, but you know, if that's one of those other things people say they do the work. What are you talking about? I think so many people use that and I mean, I when I first got divorced people said, oh, you've got to take time to heal. And I'd be like, what the fuck does that mean? Yeah. What do you mean, heal? How back then there wasn't all the Instagrams everything to tell you, but like what did

literally everybody would like order me to heal and then never tell me how to do it or what to do. And I had no idea. about, oh, after my divorce, I didn't cry not one day. I just kept going to the like it was bragging rights. Now I know I just skipped it. I skipped any kind of healing, any kind of grief from my divorce with busyness and forward movement, which is like kind of my personality. I just read that ambition is an avoidant strategy and I was like, I mean, it could be a good thing too. But true. I think that the idea would be that if you do this work, then you will make choices based on a stable, strong structure in confidence and relationship with yourself versus carrying forward that same energy like Amy talks about when she went into her second marriage. And like happened to me in my second marriage, I just lucked out that the person who did pick me was Dribbel and he's the best guy ever. Like it all has worked out. I did the work

inside of this marriage. You absolutely can. You can do that. And it's like doing it in this marriage. But like, I think that we so often as women skips right from out of the frying pan and into the fire. Just like from one thing to the next. And so I think our recommendation would be that you take some space and doesn't even have to be that much space. It's actually a little bitty this is in that's along the way to get okay with quiet by yourself. To be able to look in the mirror for five minutes without running away. Yeah. Do it able to. To be able to. Yeah. You're in your car when you're waiting on a kid. Yeah.

You know, looking to wear remarre and and take the time to say it to yourself. Just give your give it a shot. Do it for 30 seconds, right? Do it just slow down enough to listen to yourself. And I think that that's like a key that you're talking about to rights being able to sit with yourself. And just clear your head and like you don't bring all the same problems from your first marriage into your second one. Have a second divorce third for it. I don't have any judgment around that. Like I've made, you know, someone was out ordered the wrong food at the restaurant. I want a different, I want to hamburger instead when I ordered the salad. I'm like, this gal, you know, I need a cheeseburger or whatever. Um, so there's no judgment around that. But I think that if, if we did this work up front either before, if you're a young in before you ever get married,

And you get okay with you. The quality of your relationships from then on will be night and day. Because actually what you're doing is presenting your true self, your full self. If you love yourself, you let that person out and let her take more of the center stage. When you do that and you speak in your voice and you speak up for her, the quality of your relationship is just going to be more authentic and more true. And hopefully, it's been that way for me. Yeah. I was just like, hopefully you find a guy who's done the same thing. I was just like, we did it together. Like, you know, like I said, he's in recovery and he had relapsed a few times and one of my coping strategies at that point was eating.

I love chips and I gained 35 pounds when he went to rehab and stuff. And I was just shocked because I loved myself so much then and I was like, huh, that's interesting. I've gained weight and I'm not being hard on myself. And I was like, and I love myself. And I was like, that's very interesting. And you know, it just surprised me because I was able to love myself unconditionally and really mean it, you know, like you're gonna have things happen. Maybe you do games, maybe you have something come up and you're just able to give yourself this unconditional and unconditional means you're not going,

okay, I'm gonna love you when you're thin, I'm only gonna love you when your face looks good or whatever, name the thing, right? And so it was just a really eye-opening moment for me that I'm like, oh, this feels really, really good. And I had another point that I totally forgot it. Well, and it's just my wish. I, you know, if I could go back, like what, we can go ahead and do that. So one of the things we ask, everybody who comes on the show is if they only had one piece of advice for the women of divorce land,

what would that be? And like what, I'm just like, normally I don't answer, but my answer would be to stop and do the work. work wherever you are in the process to get okay with you and okay with just you and you and you are okay with you. Nothing can touch you. You won't pick your spouse, your job, or whatever from pick me energies just because you want to be chosen because you choose you. And that's enough, like ultimately. And so I wish I didn't start getting that energy late 30s, early 40s for sure. Yeah. And where I really do feel that way now, if I could go back at 14, 10, however, and learn that lesson sooner,

and do the exercises that Amy's telling us about in this intraday show, that's what my advice would be. What would your piece of advice be? I think it would be that it's really truly a paradox. The more you love yourself, the better everything gets. And it is never, ever too late to start doing that, to start leaning into yourself and really loving yourself. Mine happened to coincide with the pandemic. And so, cause it was like 2019, I'm starting this right, I'm still in this divorce, so it took way too long.

And so 2020, I sort of played a game with myself, right? Because the world was shutting down and I thought, okay, what if it is just me? What if it is just me? What if I never meet anybody? What if I just have myself, am I gonna choose to enjoy this life or am I going to be miserable and be like, oh, I don't have a partner? I was like, no, screw that. I'm going to choose me. I'm gonna choose then to just love life, to love myself, so I started.

And this is a little crazy, but I mean, maybe it's TMI, but I started having sex with myself, I start and like, you know, like the whole nine and loving yourself, taking yourself on dates, like really truly treating yourself like someone you love. And it's just, if you find yourself in that space post divorce and you're like, nobody's gonna want me, you have that feeling for a minute, it's too late. Well then, what are you gonna do? Play the game, right? Like just go like, let's try a little experiment then. I love treating things like an experiment,

like even the self-love, right? don't take it to, don't get too freaked out about it. Just try a little experiment. Right? For the reason what happened. What's the worst that happened? You don't like it. So then you stop. Big deal, right? But what if it starts to work? Right. What if you start to feel better?

What if you start to magnetize your best life? What if you start to feel better at 53, then you've ever felt in your life and you're like, I didn't see this one cut. This wasn't on my bingo card. You know? And like, I think just you can treat it like it's never too late. You can treat it like an experiment. It's not a lifelong commitment or maybe it is because you start to realize you're feeling better and better all the time. So even if you're in a marriage, even if you're in a relationship, you can still do these things. And it's that leaning back energy, leaning into your own beautiful life and just trying

it as an experiment. And I just, my message is just that it is never, ever too late. Yeah. Well, and I had read this quote not to go that still is shaken me. And I, you know, the next thing we always ask is about your dominant thought. And it's certainly been my dominant thought that you can do it as battle or dancing. The same actions battle or dancing. I choose dancing to unite my husband. We say this to each other. We've been going through a house remodel and oh, just all the things. And like each day we were my remember battle or dancing, let's use dancing,

right? Whatever the thing is. So do you have a dominant thought that's been on your mind the last week or I found that usually we're sort of noodling on one thing. I don't always love to know what that is. Do you have something you've been noodling on lately dominant thought? You know, it's funny. I always keep, just, I think everything that we just talked about, even just that leaning back energy. It's interesting that I still do that in my marriage. And like, I'll notice, and I just did it like in the last few days.

And like, I'll notice I have a tendency to want to lean in, to fix, to control the things around me and like get you like me and everything gets better when I just lean back and I have to exercise that muscle and realize it and I just did it the other day and I was like, oh, yeah, listen, focus on your own beautiful life. And that doesn't mean you don't, you know, focus on your kids too and all that. Of course, right? We have a respect part of your beautiful. Yes, but you don't discount yourself, right? And you're able to still find time for the things that you love and understand the things that you love and treat yourself the way that you deserve to be treated by yourself. Yeah, it's very much like a person called runaway bride, the movie with Julia Roberts. You should watch it.

She doesn't know how she likes her eggs. And every relationship, she orders the eggs, the way that her partner orders their eggs. You're like, that sounds good. I know what they're doing so it must be good. Yeah. And eventually she takes the time to learn. She's doing it. So I think that that could be so hard homework. Yeah. They'll watch that movie, everybody. It's exactly that. That's kind of the journey.

Julia knew, of course she did. And the name of the show is not saving it for later. And usually people have some sort of reaction or thought about not saving it for later. What does that mean to you, as I thought about it too, as I was coming today? I love the title because it is about living in the present and seizing this moment. And, you know, putting on your sparkly clothes, putting on your sequence. That's what I do on social media, right? I dress up in sparkly clothes because we have a shine. We have an inner shine. And your inner shine deserves to come out now. And I mean, saving it for later does imply that there's going to be better days ahead. But we don't have again any control of what the future holds.

So why not go for it right now? Yeah. And what I found is when you when you spend the thing now, when you live in it now and not, thinking about, well, someday in the future will be better.

It comes from an abundance place. And what I found is like using that perfume or burning that candle or for me, it's always felt like which spoon I use when I stir my coffee or my tea. it's like, I'll wait, you know, there's literally a dishwasher. It's so dumb. There was an outfit I was going to wear again the other day. Like, save it for what? Like, what else? Right. And what I find is when you get in the habit of choosing to do the thing now, just more stuff comes right after I guess what? You probably have some more perfume. You can wash your stones. You'll get a new outfit. Yeah. Right. It's just, it's also, I think, when you don't save it for labor, you're, you're claiming more of that kind of stuff in your present tense of like, you're not needing to save it for later and pushing off enjoyment or pleasure or peace or whatever. Because all we ever do is experience those in the now. And when you bring them forward and do it now,

I think more of it comes. It does. It does. It definitely attracts more. And I mean, I always say some of your best days haven't even happened yet. And it's really acknowledging that this time is good. Right. And when you're believing, when you're in that mindset, you're going to attract more of that a million percent. Well, I'm excited. I mean, you're going to have to come back next season. the dating episode. I already know everybody is going to be dying because I didn't, I went, got divorced. There was like basically not much dating met my husband and I said, I don't have basically anything to say, but it sounds like you got a lot to say. So I had to relearn today after 23 years, I think it was. So yeah, okay. I did like it 22 met my husband. You know, my first husband went straight to another and then

at 46, I had to start dating again or 47. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll have to do that. that one. I thank you for coming. Thank you. I know all of y'all loved it. We'll give you all the places and ways to follow Amy and listen to her stuff. And right away follow on social media. It's one of the favorite things. I must I see it every time I open my phone. So it's so much fun. I post a lot. I don't know whether to be sorry or thank you. All right. Well, thanks everybody.

Timestamped Transcript

[00:00:00.00] I didn't know that I didn't love myself.

[00:00:01.88] You don't know what you don't know.

[00:00:02.76] There's another one.

[00:00:04.08] And I started to go like, I cheated in both my marriages.

[00:00:07.44] I thought that was about something other than self love.

[00:00:10.92] I mean, yes, it's about validation, but I thought,

[00:00:12.76] oh, I'm just naturally not cut out for this probably

[00:00:15.40] or something like that.

[00:00:16.72] That's not the case.

[00:00:17.68] It was really a search for more love and more validation

[00:00:21.40] because I didn't have it within myself.

[00:00:23.88] Let's be honest, most of us were taught to wait our turn

[00:00:28.56] to tone it down, to save it for later.

[00:00:32.32] Later, when the kids are grown later,

[00:00:34.84] when the timing's right,

[00:00:36.48] later when you finally stop caring what they think.

[00:00:41.04] Well, I'm done waiting.

[00:00:44.88] I'm Hannah Hymbe Bell, Texas Divorce Lawyer,

[00:00:47.64] mom and woman who rebuilt her life from the wreckage.

[00:00:51.52] This is not saving it for later.

[00:00:53.88] The podcast guiding women through divorce and beyond.

[00:00:57.76] All right, everybody.

[00:00:59.04] I am so excited for this conversation today.

[00:01:01.72] I have with me a very special guest.

[00:01:03.80] Her name is Amy Edwards.

[00:01:05.40] And I could probably spend at least 10 minutes telling you

[00:01:08.28] all the things about her.

[00:01:10.40] But she is a podcast host, an author, musician.

[00:01:15.40] I mean, just one of these like multi-high-finite talents.

[00:01:19.40] And we met actually not that long ago,

[00:01:21.64] and I immediately became obsessed with her as you will.

[00:01:24.96] And I am now her number one biggest social media fan.

[00:01:28.04] And look forward every single day.

[00:01:30.04] I'm sure they're daily like to her videos.

[00:01:32.76] So don't worry, you're gonna wanna know where all of them are.

[00:01:34.96] And I find them on everything about Amy's so delightful

[00:01:38.84] and so encouraging.

[00:01:40.40] And you know the people you're around, y'all.

[00:01:42.44] That just make you feel like maybe there's a whole

[00:01:45.88] different dimension of life possible.

[00:01:49.12] And somehow you didn't get the memo

[00:01:50.68] or like nobody loot you into the secret code or whatever.

[00:01:53.60] Amy does that for us.

[00:01:55.20] And so I am very excited to dive in.

[00:01:57.28] Did I miss anything, Amy?

[00:01:59.00] Who knows?

[00:01:59.84] I don't know.

[00:02:00.84] I'm just going to go with that.

[00:02:01.84] And thank you for that beautiful intro.

[00:02:03.36] And that's what I'm trying to do.

[00:02:05.12] I'm trying to show people that there is life

[00:02:08.80] to be had that gets better and better as we age.

[00:02:12.56] And I think your audience is particularly, I guess,

[00:02:18.68] suited to that mindset because after divorce,

[00:02:22.04] we can get into this thought process that who would want me now is life over?

[00:02:28.42] You know, like, am I any good? Am I damaged goods? Or just all this?

[00:02:33.20] Yes, that we're told from society over and over. And so are you got baggage?

[00:02:38.72] That's why I hate you got baggage. Give me a break. Who does that?

[00:02:43.00] Well, if you live life, you've had things happen to you.

[00:02:46.64] If you've been in the arena, right?

[00:02:48.60] Yes.

[00:02:49.60] woman in their arena. We have that in our house. And I know

[00:02:54.10] Brittany Brown quotes it, but it's like, if you're out there

[00:02:57.10] actually living, you're a moving target, right? Things are

[00:03:00.50] going to happen to you. People who don't have baggage and

[00:03:03.06] things to discuss have been, you know, playing it safe. And

[00:03:05.90] that's one of the things Amy that, you know, just for

[00:03:07.82] little context for everybody. If it's okay, I'm going to

[00:03:10.46] some, I do this as a lawyer, like I'm going to tell a few

[00:03:12.82] things I know when you do it where I'm wrong. Okay, too. So, Amy

[00:03:17.14] has been divorced twice, married three times.

[00:03:21.50] That is correct.

[00:03:22.34] Is inner 50s?

[00:03:23.50] Right.

[00:03:24.50] I explain that because she's very, very open about that

[00:03:26.24] on our podcast, anything but mid.

[00:03:28.34] Right?

[00:03:29.18] Anything but mid is my comedy wellness podcast.

[00:03:30.98] Okay.

[00:03:31.82] And then I have my own show called the AMI AdWords show

[00:03:33.42] that's all about living your best life at any age

[00:03:35.42] through mindset shifts, better habits, all that kind of stuff.

[00:03:38.34] Any way that we can optimize and feel better at any age.

[00:03:41.34] Yeah.

[00:03:42.18] And I think that part, like for those of you who are just listening,

[00:03:44.50] If you are looking at Amy, zero percent of you would think this is a gal in her 50s.

[00:03:49.58] And I think it's yes, the way we look, but I think it's also the energy that we bring

[00:03:54.10] to whatever we're doing.

[00:03:55.10] You meet some of those women who are in their 70s.

[00:03:57.10] You're like, they still have this fresh young, vibrant thing.

[00:04:00.34] And I think obviously 50s doesn't mean the same thing as it used to be.

[00:04:04.50] Anyway, but I think just for a bit of context, understanding for a lot of us listening

[00:04:10.18] that Amy is on a journey that a lot of us are either starting or afraid to start or maybe

[00:04:16.90] in the middle of ourselves. And on this season of the show, I mean, we're diving in quite a bit

[00:04:23.70] to the place whereby we repeat our same patterns from our marriage in our future relationships.

[00:04:33.78] And for me, myself and I, I did exactly that.

[00:04:38.50] So I was married for nine years.

[00:04:40.66] I got married when I was 21 years old.

[00:04:42.74] And I was married for nine years, had three kids,

[00:04:46.14] and got divorced.

[00:04:47.86] And it was my decision.

[00:04:49.62] And I think like a lot of people,

[00:04:51.98] you think, okay, I'll get divorced.

[00:04:53.66] I won't have this big problem anymore.

[00:04:56.38] And so then everything will be sort of better after that.

[00:04:59.38] Or I hope it'll be better after that or something.

[00:05:02.10] I just know I won't have this problem.

[00:05:04.16] And then one day I'll have some other man,

[00:05:06.24] and then it'll be happily ever after with him.

[00:05:09.40] Only to find out that we get into these new relationships

[00:05:13.44] in the same energy that we were in our first marriage.

[00:05:17.04] From our first pick-me situation,

[00:05:19.80] when we first got married,

[00:05:20.96] we carry that forward into the next relationship

[00:05:23.88] or the next marriage.

[00:05:25.84] And never stop and do the work,

[00:05:28.32] whatever, I'm do the work, I'm using air quotes,

[00:05:30.00] like whatever that means

[00:05:31.72] to be a different person and so that we can receive

[00:05:36.40] a different experience, have a different experience

[00:05:39.88] the second time around.

[00:05:40.88] So can you share a little bit with us about your experience

[00:05:43.88] if that resonates with you and,

[00:05:45.60] and, you know, what you've sort of learned along the way,

[00:05:49.16] I guess it absolutely resonates, you know.

[00:05:52.04] Even just the second divorce, I couldn't believe

[00:05:54.56] I was getting a second divorce.

[00:05:55.80] And I've only come out recently on social media

[00:05:58.32] talking about this because I was like,

[00:06:00.44] People need to hear this.

[00:06:01.44] People are getting divorced.

[00:06:02.44] People need some encouragement to know that there's life afterward.

[00:06:05.44] I mean, I've talked about it on my podcast for a long time, but in social media, you

[00:06:09.80] know, it's a different world.

[00:06:10.76] You can take a lot of criticism.

[00:06:12.08] And so it's a little challenging to be really open about it.

[00:06:16.76] But at the same time, I was like, there are people out there that need this.

[00:06:19.96] And so that's why I've been talking about it.

[00:06:22.56] Right?

[00:06:23.56] And I looked back after my second divorce, I really was like, what's going on here?

[00:06:29.72] I had, they were both my choice, but things deteriorated in similar ways.

[00:06:36.76] And I, the two guys, my first husband and second husband are completely different.

[00:06:42.92] Like, I'm the common denominator in the common denominator.

[00:06:45.88] I'm the problem.

[00:06:46.88] Yes.

[00:06:47.88] Hi.

[00:06:48.88] I'm the problem with me.

[00:06:49.88] Yes.

[00:06:50.88] And like, yeah, I could blame them all day, right?

[00:06:52.84] I could find ways to blame them and they certainly found ways to blame me.

[00:06:56.04] But it takes two and I just, I knew that there was something within me that I had to look

[00:07:03.40] at.

[00:07:04.40] And I'm also the type of person and I think a lot of women are that take a lot of responsibility,

[00:07:09.76] right?

[00:07:10.76] We'll look to ourselves and hold ourselves accountable in so many ways and we're so hard

[00:07:16.52] on ourselves.

[00:07:17.52] And so, you know, I think there's a balance that you can strike there where you don't

[00:07:21.72] want to be too hard on yourself.

[00:07:23.00] But at the same time, you want to really take responsibility for your own life and say, okay,

[00:07:27.34] what's going on here?

[00:07:28.34] Right?

[00:07:29.34] I'm the common denominator.

[00:07:30.34] What's going on?

[00:07:31.34] And I really started to do a lot of self work.

[00:07:34.58] And this is after the second divorce.

[00:07:36.06] This is after the second divorce.

[00:07:37.06] Because that's when you realize like, okay, and I guess for everybody listening, not so

[00:07:42.26] that we're not saying this so that you have to get a second divorce.

[00:07:44.78] But it's also say like, hey, perhaps for some of us, we don't need to go through the

[00:07:49.14] second divorce if we can learn from Amy's lessons of the work that you did and how to kind of

[00:07:54.26] make peace with your part of it. So okay, so it's making sure. And you know, it's complicated.

[00:07:58.42] There's lots of things. I'll show a walk out of here and be like, oh, I forgot, you know, X, Y,

[00:08:04.10] but I jumped from one marriage right to the other. Yeah. My second husband's someone I knew from

[00:08:08.90] way back in high school. And so jumping from one to the other, I didn't have any time to reflect.

[00:08:14.18] And I think after the second I was like, I need space and I got really depressed.

[00:08:20.18] It, everybody knows divorce can be really hard. You can get bullied.

[00:08:24.18] You can be spoken to in ways that you just never even dreamed that the person that said I love you would speak to you.

[00:08:30.18] And that's hard, right? And I got into like a pretty dark hole.

[00:08:37.18] And I remember listening to a podcast and the woman was like, do you have hope?

[00:08:42.18] And I was, I can't remember where I was sitting in downtown Austin in my car.

[00:08:47.18] And I used to start crying because I really felt like I didn't have hope at that point.

[00:08:51.42] You know, my kids were like eight and 12 and here I was getting a second divorce.

[00:08:56.50] I left.

[00:08:57.50] I felt like a bad person for them.

[00:09:00.26] I felt like just shitty.

[00:09:03.46] Yeah.

[00:09:04.46] And I say that feeling is like worse than the gum on the bottom of your shoe.

[00:09:07.78] It is.

[00:09:08.78] It is.

[00:09:09.78] It is.

[00:09:10.78] Yeah.

[00:09:11.78] I knew I didn't want to feel like that, but at the same time when you're in it, it's

[00:09:16.30] real, real hard to get out.

[00:09:17.98] So anybody listening, I just want you to know that if you're looking at me and thinking,

[00:09:22.18] she doesn't get it, I do.

[00:09:24.14] And I had felt like that after my first marriage, too, in that divorce, it was a dark

[00:09:29.22] time.

[00:09:30.94] And I tell this story.

[00:09:33.34] You know, after that, I mean, I just remember times where I was like, the world would

[00:09:36.62] be better off without me.

[00:09:37.94] You know, I had moments.

[00:09:39.50] And I got through it day by day because I'm just like, okay, can I just get through today?

[00:09:45.30] And then the next day it looks a little bit brighter.

[00:09:47.74] But feeling like I didn't have hope was exceptionally challenging and you're draining

[00:09:53.58] money with a divorce.

[00:09:56.74] You're just getting kind of beat up from every direction your kids are asking questions

[00:10:01.86] if they're old enough to.

[00:10:03.54] And it's just challenging from all angles.

[00:10:06.62] And so I had to look at myself and think, okay, what were the common factors here?

[00:10:13.42] Where was I giving away my power?

[00:10:15.06] Where was I compromising myself, which I did in both?

[00:10:19.38] Yeah.

[00:10:20.38] You know, they could be totally different people and you're still compromising yourself in

[00:10:22.86] ways.

[00:10:23.86] I'm a people pleaser.

[00:10:24.94] I'm a band-in-air.

[00:10:25.94] I have band-in-air myself.

[00:10:26.94] I have band-in-air myself.

[00:10:27.94] Yes.

[00:10:28.94] And I can't remember how I started doing this self work.

[00:10:33.82] I think someone offered a psychedelic journey for me.

[00:10:36.94] And I just said yes.

[00:10:38.66] And I was scared to death, but I did it.

[00:10:41.70] And it was even dark after that.

[00:10:44.54] Like I was still depressed, but things started

[00:10:47.86] to just look a little bit brighter.

[00:10:49.18] Like I started to remember who I was, meaning way back,

[00:10:55.18] as a child, meaning like the finding that love for myself.

[00:11:01.06] And I'll preach self love till the cows come home.

[00:11:03.34] that's where it's at for me.

[00:11:05.62] That's what saved me.

[00:11:08.14] And it was just the simple thing

[00:11:11.86] of remembering to love myself.

[00:11:14.30] And you have that power to give yourself.

[00:11:17.86] You know, there's some of those things

[00:11:19.26] that people talk a lot about self-love.

[00:11:21.42] And I always do this.

[00:11:22.50] I think it's a lawyer and me.

[00:11:24.26] A little bit going back to definitions.

[00:11:25.90] You know, if you've ever read a contract,

[00:11:27.06] it says like here are the definitions of things.

[00:11:29.14] And people say you have to love yourself.

[00:11:30.54] And that feels like one of those throw away things

[00:11:34.38] that people say, Instagram, Gals say,

[00:11:36.74] or that your grandma said, or you read on a sticker.

[00:11:40.78] When you say, like, let's just,

[00:11:42.66] can we all get on the same page about what do we mean?

[00:11:45.50] What do you think it means to love yourself?

[00:11:47.54] What does that look like?

[00:11:48.82] How do you know if you love yourself?

[00:11:50.26] How do you know if you don't love yourself?

[00:11:52.14] Yeah.

[00:11:52.98] Because I think it's like, I don't know.

[00:11:54.70] I mean, I do love myself, but that's not how I think of it.

[00:11:58.62] I think I love myself, depending on what we're meaning.

[00:12:00.52] Does that make sense?

[00:12:01.36] It's just like not how I conceptualize it.

[00:12:03.08] So I wonder if some people feel the same,

[00:12:04.44] like what does it mean to love yourself?

[00:12:07.28] And maybe you need to say what it means if you don't.

[00:12:09.84] Maybe sometimes you define something by what it's not.

[00:12:11.68] Right, so I don't really think.

[00:12:13.08] Sure, sure.

[00:12:14.08] And I get it is kind of like a throwaway line,

[00:12:17.04] but a lot of times cliches are cliches

[00:12:18.76] because they're true.

[00:12:19.60] Yeah.

[00:12:20.44] And I didn't know that I didn't love myself.

[00:12:22.76] You don't know what you don't know.

[00:12:23.96] And there's another one.

[00:12:25.84] And I guess I started to go like,

[00:12:29.76] I cheated in both my marriages and I thought,

[00:12:33.48] I thought that was about something other than self-love.

[00:12:36.92] I thought that was about,

[00:12:38.52] I mean, yes, it's about validation,

[00:12:39.96] but I thought, oh, I'm just naturally not cut out

[00:12:41.96] for this probably, or something like that.

[00:12:44.72] But that's not the case.

[00:12:46.08] It was really a search for more love and more validation

[00:12:50.28] because I didn't have it within myself.

[00:12:52.48] And you start to take a hard look at yourself and think,

[00:12:57.48] where are these spaces that I'm giving myself away?

[00:13:02.48] Like pick me energy, like seeking that out from someone else

[00:13:07.48] that perhaps I could look into giving it to myself.

[00:13:10.48] For me, that was a read a book called Love Yourself Like Your Life

[00:13:15.48] Depends on It. Have you read it?

[00:13:16.48] Oh no, that sounds awesome. It's excellent.

[00:13:18.48] It's a Kamal Ravikant and he it's about a breakup, but he talks a lot about just the simplest

[00:13:26.24] self love practices and what he recommends, which I adopted to is a mirror practice where you

[00:13:32.16] literally just thinking of looking in the mirror.

[00:13:35.36] Have you done it?

[00:13:36.32] I think so.

[00:13:37.52] Go ahead and say what it is.

[00:13:38.52] I think so.

[00:13:39.52] You need to do it intentionally.

[00:13:40.52] Right.

[00:13:41.52] And like it's really intentional.

[00:13:43.08] You set your phone timer for five minutes and you look in the mirror in your own eyes and

[00:13:46.96] you say, I love you.

[00:13:48.44] And I know it's a little odd and it's, I talked about it on social media the other day.

[00:13:52.80] Maybe that's all I was thinking of it.

[00:13:54.30] I thought you, I heard you saying I probably did and, you know, dudes are commenting like,

[00:13:59.20] who read Flag if she's looking in the mirror or saying I love you, but you know they expect

[00:14:03.00] you to do it to them.

[00:14:04.68] And like we're expected to do it to everybody and we give it so freely, but not to ourselves.

[00:14:09.96] So what does that feel like and how uncomfortable do you get looking in the mirror and saying

[00:14:13.52] I'll let you tear yourself, right?

[00:14:15.12] So I started doing that and the first time I did it I started crying and you kind of start riffing on it too

[00:14:21.18] And you're like you're amazing which I would see to you so freely

[00:14:24.40] but looking in my own eyes feels weird and intimate and

[00:14:29.28] odd and

[00:14:31.28] uncomfortable and

[00:14:33.28] So I did it and I started doing it every day and that's what he does in the book and it really is so

[00:14:38.48] Basic but at the same time you start to realize I've never given myself love that I give everybody else

[00:14:44.16] else that I gave my ex husbands and I thought, let me give them more and that'll fix this

[00:14:49.48] relationship or, you know, let me let my kids more and let me be more perfect.

[00:14:54.24] And that's not the key, right?

[00:14:57.00] It's such a paradox.

[00:14:58.92] We start to love ourselves more and it heals these old wounds.

[00:15:02.72] It starts to heal the validation that we needed.

[00:15:05.64] It starts to heal the need to be chosen, the need to be chosen.

[00:15:10.48] I think that that's it for us women.

[00:15:13.00] I think we are so conditioned.

[00:15:15.80] At least, I'm 42.

[00:15:18.36] So definitely my age.

[00:15:20.16] I think even it's true.

[00:15:22.56] Maybe some of this is shifting for the younger little

[00:15:25.18] pumpkins in their early 20s or teens,

[00:15:27.96] different kind of thought.

[00:15:28.80] But we have been so conditioned to see our worth

[00:15:34.04] in whether or not a man chooses us.

[00:15:36.20] Whether or not we're wanted,

[00:15:37.88] whether or not we're chosen.

[00:15:39.20] And I'm not saying that men don't have their own,

[00:15:41.00] Men have a very difficult, different path.

[00:15:44.96] So this is no slide on them.

[00:15:45.96] I'm just speaking for us.

[00:15:47.96] Is, you know, do you or not have a date to homecoming?

[00:15:50.76] Or the dance?

[00:15:51.60] Right.

[00:15:52.44] Are you a loser?

[00:15:53.28] And nobody wants you from the beginning.

[00:15:54.20] And so I think so much of women's, especially in our 20s,

[00:15:58.24] mistakes we make are out of a desire just for to pick me

[00:16:01.40] for someone to want me.

[00:16:02.56] I know absolutely 1,000% pick me energy

[00:16:07.96] played to me in my 20s and even into my 30s.

[00:16:11.80] And one thing I was thinking about with self love,

[00:16:14.60] okay, how would I describe like what that means?

[00:16:17.24] I think you would know it if you have it by a few things.

[00:16:21.16] Like number one, my thought would be,

[00:16:23.56] can you sit alone in the quiet with yourself?

[00:16:28.16] And if not, there's at least a question there to follow.

[00:16:32.84] Do you, do you always have to fill the car with music?

[00:16:36.64] Do you always have to have a plan with somebody to hang out?

[00:16:40.08] If you're at home on a Friday night by yourself, do you automatically lay your stories about

[00:16:45.04] what this means about you?

[00:16:47.60] Or do you come to a place where you can be comfortable just being there by yourself and

[00:16:52.60] even in the quieter with the journal or whatever?

[00:16:56.76] After I got divorced, I had to 0% of that ability.

[00:17:01.88] Like, when I remember the first time where there weren't kids, and it wasn't crazy, it

[00:17:05.52] It wasn't busy.

[00:17:06.52] And, dad, I had come home in San Antonio to the rental house where I was living.

[00:17:11.84] And I talked to, even my thin boyfriend, I was already with my now husband Drew.

[00:17:15.88] I was already with him, but he lived far away.

[00:17:18.04] I had already run to the grocery store to get dinner.

[00:17:20.60] I didn't really have anything else to do.

[00:17:22.76] And I sat down at the table and he couldn't talk anymore because he was like busy being

[00:17:25.96] important the way or whatever.

[00:17:26.96] I didn't really have any friends to talk to at the time.

[00:17:29.88] And I just sat at the table and cried my eyes out.

[00:17:32.08] Like there I was left with just me.

[00:17:34.64] And that lack of comfort, I think,

[00:17:36.68] evident could evidence or did for me

[00:17:39.48] a lack of self-love.

[00:17:41.64] And I think close by with love goes respect.

[00:17:45.04] Because if you love yourself,

[00:17:46.68] if people you love really love,

[00:17:49.00] I think right behind that would be treating them

[00:17:51.56] with respect.

[00:17:53.40] And so if you have that care and concern for yourself,

[00:17:56.96] you will have some respect.

[00:17:58.36] And the other thing I was thinking about is,

[00:18:00.28] whether or not you believe that your preference is matter.

[00:18:04.48] Totally.

[00:18:05.32] Evidence is how much you love yourself or not.

[00:18:08.20] Like for instance, with your kiddos.

[00:18:10.92] So I've got ranging from almost 19 down to five.

[00:18:15.16] And I say, in parenting years, I'm 20, 20 something years old.

[00:18:18.56] It has been a long time.

[00:18:20.88] And when I have a choice to make

[00:18:23.56] or where something's happening for my kids,

[00:18:25.04] where I always keep their preferences in mind.

[00:18:27.32] and how they like their eggs cooked.

[00:18:30.32] Whether or not we do this or that

[00:18:31.76] because they might be uncomfortable at that time of day

[00:18:34.04] or hungrier, sleepier, tired or whatever.

[00:18:37.20] And like we don't give so often ourselves

[00:18:40.64] that same consideration

[00:18:42.36] because we don't think our preference is matter

[00:18:44.72] as women of all.

[00:18:46.04] We're not gonna put them high.

[00:18:47.60] I'm not gonna put them above other people.

[00:18:49.28] Now some people are different than this,

[00:18:50.36] but I guess you all would just say,

[00:18:52.84] first of all asking the question,

[00:18:54.56] like do you have a self-love issue?

[00:18:57.04] Like, can you sit alone by yourself?

[00:18:59.04] Can you do this mirror exercise

[00:19:00.80] or for five minutes you say I love you?

[00:19:02.60] And then eventually evolve into some other things?

[00:19:04.76] Like, do you prioritize your own preferences?

[00:19:07.76] Like, Abby, echo this gal from online.

[00:19:10.48] I don't know if you follow her.

[00:19:11.40] She's been a guest on the show.

[00:19:12.88] She is awesome.

[00:19:13.80] And she talks about centering yourself in your own life.

[00:19:16.40] And how so many women don't.

[00:19:19.64] Like, oh, I can't do X, Y, Z thing I wanna do.

[00:19:23.40] Go to a pottery class on a Tuesday

[00:19:25.12] because they're soccer practice and pass the ball.

[00:19:27.18] Well, right.

[00:19:28.02] Dad can help or oh well, everyone else.

[00:19:31.00] I want to do this thing.

[00:19:32.28] So I'm going to do this thing.

[00:19:33.52] And so I think the first step of for women

[00:19:37.68] in the middle of your divorce,

[00:19:39.20] wherever you are for all of us,

[00:19:41.36] in case any of this resonates is to say like wait a minute,

[00:19:44.20] do I have self love?

[00:19:46.56] Like what does that look like?

[00:19:47.76] It sounds like that's the journey you started to heal

[00:19:51.16] or to kind of wake up.

[00:19:53.00] I think it's the most fundamental.

[00:19:54.72] We start there of what you're talking about because really you're not going to value your

[00:20:00.70] own interests or even know what those are.

[00:20:03.76] And for if you don't have that love and start to feel worthy.

[00:20:08.64] Right.

[00:20:09.64] And I think the love comes before the worthiness.

[00:20:11.96] You're not going to feel self-worth if you don't love yourself and the self-respect.

[00:20:19.80] And I'd add a layer of self-trust on there.

[00:20:22.04] Right.

[00:20:23.04] or trusting yourself to make these decisions.

[00:20:25.30] That just takes time.

[00:20:26.50] And like I really did have to sit, learn to meditate,

[00:20:30.50] be quiet in my brain, and focus on like my shock

[00:20:35.90] or right here in my solar plexus, this golden thing

[00:20:40.70] that I just completely neglected.

[00:20:43.42] And that was the surprise to me.

[00:20:45.98] And I just had to learn to sit and love myself

[00:20:50.66] and look in the mirror and treat myself

[00:20:52.26] the way I would love to treat someone that I love.

[00:20:54.74] But that's essentially what we're not doing.

[00:20:57.50] And the self-trust piece of it, I think,

[00:20:59.74] really comes along with it and speaking your truth

[00:21:03.14] and knowing that you are a person that can be trusted

[00:21:06.14] and knowing that you trust yourself, right?

[00:21:08.74] Well, and I think, I didn't even know

[00:21:10.46] we were talking about this, but I wanna slow down

[00:21:12.94] a second too about self-worth and then self-trust.

[00:21:15.26] Because I think people just throw these words around

[00:21:16.94] all the time and we don't agree

[00:21:19.22] or necessarily know what they mean.

[00:21:20.46] So like I and my work as a divorce lawyer and with my

[00:21:24.50] confident divorce and supporting women in that space,

[00:21:29.54] what comes up so much is the concept of worthiness.

[00:21:34.82] And I do this webinar where we talk about the things

[00:21:39.10] you can do to prepare for divorce without losing

[00:21:41.10] your kids' money insanity, right?

[00:21:42.38] That's kind of the premise of my confident force.

[00:21:45.02] And each time I've done this webinar in the chat,

[00:21:48.66] somehow it comes around to, I don't know if I'm worthy to that.

[00:21:53.02] And I started saying to people, I didn't,

[00:21:55.70] it just started coming out of my mouth

[00:21:56.90] before I knew what I was even saying is,

[00:21:58.96] you are worthy because you exist a million percent.

[00:22:03.50] Like, full stop.

[00:22:04.50] Just that's it.

[00:22:05.50] That's it.

[00:22:06.34] Because you exist, you are worthy.

[00:22:08.42] And I think what that means is,

[00:22:10.06] you're worthy of a happy life.

[00:22:12.74] Yeah.

[00:22:13.58] Did you know life doesn't have to like medium suck forever?

[00:22:17.42] Did you know you're worthy of joy?

[00:22:19.98] You're worthy of peace.

[00:22:21.98] You're worthy of a calm home.

[00:22:24.38] You're worthy of looking the way you wanna look.

[00:22:28.38] Trusting the way.

[00:22:29.22] Having the money you wanna have,

[00:22:31.02] you are worthy and you don't,

[00:22:32.46] there's that Mary all over Pelham about,

[00:22:33.90] you don't have to crawl across the desert, repenting, right?

[00:22:36.94] You just want to change.

[00:22:37.78] Right, soft body love what it loves.

[00:22:39.34] And I always take that to mean like,

[00:22:41.54] I don't have to cry like,

[00:22:43.90] earn it, you don't have to repent for it.

[00:22:46.70] And we all made mistakes in our marriages.

[00:22:48.50] And I think a lot of women carry so much shame

[00:22:51.74] with different things.

[00:22:52.46] But like, you don't have to earn your way the worthiness

[00:22:56.06] in my opinion.

[00:22:57.54] No, it's not even your opinion.

[00:22:58.82] That is a fact.

[00:22:59.74] That is a fact.

[00:23:00.86] It is an absolute fact.

[00:23:01.86] And I even at the end of both marriages,

[00:23:04.26] I was like, look at all this stuff I bring to the table.

[00:23:06.78] Look what I brought to the table.

[00:23:08.78] Look how much I was doing.

[00:23:10.46] And now once I started doing this work,

[00:23:13.34] I was like, there is no table.

[00:23:15.34] There is no table.

[00:23:16.34] It's like, no, like it's not about that.

[00:23:19.90] It is about just your inherent worth, period.

[00:23:24.34] Well, and I think layered on top of that,

[00:23:25.86] you also worth, it's just like that you,

[00:23:29.50] I think the worth, you could almost do a little bit

[00:23:31.74] of a switcharoo with the word deserve.

[00:23:33.38] Like you deserve these things, your desires,

[00:23:36.58] the things you want to be treated well,

[00:23:38.70] simply because you're a human being.

[00:23:40.66] And you know, likewise, the people were divorcing,

[00:23:44.66] our children, people we don't like, people we do like.

[00:23:47.20] They also are worthy.

[00:23:49.20] You know, that's a kind of a next layer of thing.

[00:23:52.60] But I think on top of that, so we've got self-love,

[00:23:56.18] self-worth, self-respect and self-trust to me,

[00:23:59.60] go together.

[00:24:01.00] And I think that one takes a little bit longer

[00:24:03.28] to work your way through and how important it is.

[00:24:06.32] I'll give an example of what self-trust

[00:24:08.12] like doesn't look like.

[00:24:09.76] I do not have self-trust with myself

[00:24:12.24] when it comes to watching a really great TV show

[00:24:15.52] or reading a really great book.

[00:24:17.72] Because what I will do is why I just-

[00:24:19.08] You just ditch it all life and do.

[00:24:21.04] I am just like, like I watched or I read-

[00:24:23.76] Getting everything I'm in this now.

[00:24:25.72] The dragon books that the young girls were reading,

[00:24:30.72] I forget what they're called,

[00:24:31.76] my daughter Lucy had recommended them to me.

[00:24:34.84] And in this summer, I'd be like,

[00:24:36.56] two o'clock in the morning, reading these books.

[00:24:39.56] And I'd tell myself,

[00:24:40.40] just one more chapter, but I keep going.

[00:24:42.64] Now, I'm impressed you can stay awake.

[00:24:44.48] I can, I don't care about my book is,

[00:24:46.72] my eyes are closing.

[00:24:48.04] It fits an amazing book or amazing show.

[00:24:49.60] I could keep going.

[00:24:50.44] I'd probably stay up till the more,

[00:24:51.56] like I'm not, I like four o'clock in the morning,

[00:24:53.68] but I'm a mom with all these children and business

[00:24:55.92] and all this.

[00:24:57.32] And so I realized that for me,

[00:25:00.60] I didn't keep going to develop the skill of self trust.

[00:25:03.12] I just like, I'm not gonna do that thing.

[00:25:05.40] Or somebody will recommend to show to me.

[00:25:06.64] I'm like, I do not have time to go down that wormhole.

[00:25:08.76] you don't like parent yourself at that point.

[00:25:10.72] Right. You have to sort of divide yourself into these little,

[00:25:13.56] you know, pieces and be like, no, Hannah, it's time to go to bed.

[00:25:17.96] You're going to put the book, you know, you have to be

[00:25:19.64] right yourself. Well, that's how, that's just like one kind of

[00:25:22.08] silly example of gaining self trust. And, and I think that

[00:25:25.84] that's, you know, with reading a book and there are a lot

[00:25:28.12] worse things that one can do, but it also comes to, you know,

[00:25:32.16] um, tech being a triple-texter, uh, in the dating world where

[00:25:35.72] you're like chasing after that guy after he already, that's a

[00:25:38.12] a whole other episode if we need to do it, we're not dating.

[00:25:40.72] Because I learned a lot.

[00:25:42.08] But I'm in the throes of my second divorce, right?

[00:25:44.28] 2018.

[00:25:45.80] And I had written a double album at that time

[00:25:48.80] and was getting ready to release that.

[00:25:50.72] And one day, things were not good, right?

[00:25:54.28] We were messaging me a lot.

[00:25:56.48] I don't engage with that because I knew

[00:25:59.64] that was what he wanted.

[00:26:01.52] And so I wouldn't engage, but one day I just woke up

[00:26:05.44] and I was like, I think I was sick.

[00:26:07.28] And I was like, I feel like I have a cold.

[00:26:11.40] Anyway, I got worse and worse.

[00:26:12.84] This was July and we had filed, I had filed maybe in March

[00:26:17.24] and moved out.

[00:26:18.68] And so July I'm sick, things were really dark and hard

[00:26:23.36] and contentious.

[00:26:26.24] And I didn't get better.

[00:26:28.04] And then I realized it was a sinus infection or something.

[00:26:30.24] I went on rounds of antibiotics, still not getting better.

[00:26:32.72] So then I started to lose my voice.

[00:26:34.84] And I am all about boys.

[00:26:36.52] I have a radio background for 30 plus years.

[00:26:39.32] I'm a voiceover artist.

[00:26:41.44] I do freelance commercial work.

[00:26:43.20] I've been a singer.

[00:26:44.20] I was releasing an album at the time

[00:26:47.00] and I started to lose my voice.

[00:26:48.64] And so I'm releasing this album

[00:26:50.04] and I couldn't do a show.

[00:26:51.04] I couldn't perform it live because I couldn't sing.

[00:26:54.24] And I was like, what in the world?

[00:26:55.76] And so right then it coincided with,

[00:26:58.24] to this is like September now.

[00:27:00.08] Can't talk.

[00:27:01.28] And I realized, like, he starts to fight me in ways that I don't want to go into now.

[00:27:09.72] We're on good terms now, but it was a tough time.

[00:27:11.84] People go crazy in the divorce.

[00:27:13.24] Yeah.

[00:27:13.60] As you know.

[00:27:14.52] And he did some things that forced me to stand up for myself in ways that I never had.

[00:27:21.56] Yeah.

[00:27:21.96] To find my own voice.

[00:27:23.24] And I realized that losing my voice was actually representative of what I was going through,

[00:27:28.92] that I didn't know how to speak up for myself.

[00:27:31.72] Even at 46 years old, I didn't know how.

[00:27:35.36] And here I was counting on my voice

[00:27:37.60] and I thought, I see this.

[00:27:40.68] And I had to file a restraining order.

[00:27:44.12] I had to do supervised visitation,

[00:27:45.72] which if any of your listeners have done that.

[00:27:47.84] It is so expensive and so horrible

[00:27:51.20] for everyone and kids and every.

[00:27:53.00] Yeah, I have a child from each marriage.

[00:27:54.64] And I mean, it was so hard.

[00:27:58.00] But I had to, I remember speaking to my attorney

[00:28:00.92] and saying, I don't wanna do this,

[00:28:03.16] and she was like, if you don't,

[00:28:06.20] and something else happens,

[00:28:07.76] they're gonna say why didn't you?

[00:28:09.60] You have to.

[00:28:11.24] And I was like, is this bad enough?

[00:28:13.04] Like I'm still not trusting myself.

[00:28:14.20] I was like, is this bad enough for me to stand up for myself?

[00:28:16.64] Or for me to do this, and they were like, yes, yes.

[00:28:19.88] And again, there's self-worth in there, right?

[00:28:22.36] There's not trusting your own voice.

[00:28:24.16] It's all just a big mess of all this stuff together.

[00:28:28.28] And if you untangle, I think it the core is self-love.

[00:28:32.24] And so I learned to stand up for myself in that moment.

[00:28:36.56] I did your voice come back.

[00:28:38.36] No, it still didn't come back.

[00:28:40.20] So finally in December, I'm like, I don't know what to do.

[00:28:43.20] But so I had to have a medical procedure.

[00:28:45.76] I had to have a sinewplasty where they go in and they put these little balloons in your

[00:28:50.12] sinuses and start to clear it out.

[00:28:52.08] And that coincided with someone asking me to do a psychedelic experience journey.

[00:28:56.98] And all of this stuff happened in December of 2018.

[00:29:00.64] And that's when the darkness started to subside.

[00:29:04.78] The clouds started to depart.

[00:29:06.64] I started understanding my own voice, understanding my own long standing lack of self-love,

[00:29:15.40] which it really was.

[00:29:16.84] I mean, those times that I was in pick me energy, which is like for me, compromising myself

[00:29:22.96] in ways that are just like, oh, it'll be fine.

[00:29:25.04] I trust this person, you know, that I'm with it.

[00:29:27.48] It'll be fine.

[00:29:28.48] And I was always with older men.

[00:29:32.64] And I thought, oh, there's something there.

[00:29:35.04] You know, I'm giving away my power a little bit and always trusting someone else just

[00:29:39.32] a little bit more than me.

[00:29:40.88] Yeah.

[00:29:41.88] Yeah.

[00:29:42.88] And so to go ahead of you, take care of that.

[00:29:43.88] Yeah.

[00:29:44.88] Now my husband is 15 years younger than me and that's not a coincidence.

[00:29:48.96] It feels to me like a much more balanced relationship because I had been so deep in giving

[00:29:57.44] away my power to an older man in particular, right?

[00:30:03.76] And which we're pretty conditioned to do.

[00:30:05.80] I was just watching a show on Netflix called False Profit, Trust Me, False Profit, and

[00:30:11.92] It's an FLDS community and they are trained to be obedient from birth.

[00:30:17.88] Right?

[00:30:18.88] And there's so much puritanical Christianity, evangelical things in our society.

[00:30:23.24] I was raised Protestant Methodist, but there's this biblical training in there to be

[00:30:30.24] subservient and to look to a man.

[00:30:33.88] And that's designed to keep women obedient.

[00:30:40.36] All of this stuff, right?

[00:30:42.22] Then we're giving away our power and we're not trust.

[00:30:44.30] That's fostering losing yourself and not trusting yourself.

[00:30:47.26] So I had to really dive into like, okay, who am I?

[00:30:51.38] I gotta trust myself.

[00:30:53.74] Forget this all the way being,

[00:30:54.90] because it's clearly not working.

[00:30:56.94] And plus, I have two daughters.

[00:30:58.62] What am I teaching them?

[00:30:59.66] Yeah.

[00:31:00.50] And so, because I've always been a big proponent,

[00:31:01.70] I took up music in my late 30s.

[00:31:03.82] And it was a huge part of who I was teaching my children

[00:31:08.22] that you can do anything as a woman at absolutely any age.

[00:31:12.18] And so I was like, okay, what am I modeling to them here?

[00:31:16.54] And I had to learn how to date,

[00:31:18.46] I had to learn how to love myself,

[00:31:19.76] because there's a whole rig of a roll around dating,

[00:31:22.18] like, oh, dating sucks, and then it's awful out there.

[00:31:25.74] Don't do it then.

[00:31:27.22] Either find ways to have a good time

[00:31:30.98] and enjoy what you're doing or don't do it.

[00:31:32.94] I'd always kill somebody,

[00:31:33.78] I hear people talk about it like that.

[00:31:34.94] I'm like, are people, I'm like,

[00:31:36.36] Do not, I was telling my friend the other day.

[00:31:38.50] Do not claim that bullshit for yourself.

[00:31:40.78] You're claim it.

[00:31:41.62] It's not claim, oh, there's no good men out there.

[00:31:43.70] Dad, I, I mean, with that attitude,

[00:31:46.22] you won't find anything.

[00:31:47.06] No, I mean, I know exactly.

[00:31:48.66] At this point in my life, I've been around

[00:31:50.70] some really great men, I think partially

[00:31:53.58] because I started to believe that they exist.

[00:31:55.42] Right.

[00:31:56.26] And then to see them, I mean, there's no way

[00:31:58.50] you can know this, but I struggle with vocal issues

[00:32:01.42] my whole life.

[00:32:03.02] You have such a cute voice.

[00:32:04.10] Oh, thank you.

[00:32:04.94] I guess that in East Texas where I'm from, I didn't know this, but something about the way we mostly all speak.

[00:32:12.94] A lot of us have this where our vocal court is a sobering.

[00:32:15.94] Like a fry or...

[00:32:16.94] It creates a lower register than maybe we're meant to talk.

[00:32:19.94] And it creates these nodules on your vocal courts.

[00:32:21.94] That's the physiological.

[00:32:23.94] And so at different points in my life, my voice will go.

[00:32:26.94] Even to this day, there will be no other explanation.

[00:32:30.94] And I wake up and it is hard to speak.

[00:32:33.94] And it's that stuff for you in the line of work. Oh my god. It's forced. It is the people

[00:32:39.18] we were close to became really depressed. It is it is hard on really hard. And what happens

[00:32:43.78] is it takes so much more energy to get every single word out and you hear yourself in

[00:32:47.86] your own ears, which is very taxing because it doesn't sound like you're used to. So anyway,

[00:32:53.54] I think probably even as you're speaking about this and I'm sure there are people listening

[00:32:57.18] who've experienced this that there is certainly the body keeps the score right. And I have

[00:33:03.50] struggle throughout my life.

[00:33:05.82] I'm silencing myself, trying to go along to get along to not say the thing I'm, I think

[00:33:12.54] in like the deep parts of myself, to try to be pleasing to not be too big and not be too

[00:33:17.54] much.

[00:33:18.54] And a lot of people say that.

[00:33:19.54] I mean, it's just sort of like, and make things agreeable.

[00:33:21.58] I don't, I can conflict, but I do not like it.

[00:33:25.86] I want things to be calm and peaceful and good and a lot of people pleasing.

[00:33:29.70] And so I can relate to all that by the way.

[00:33:31.74] Yeah.

[00:33:32.74] And my voice for me has been an unreliable instrument

[00:33:37.38] in the past.

[00:33:38.22] I'm not claiming that for the future.

[00:33:40.18] And it's also a lagging indicator for me

[00:33:43.94] of when I've stretched myself too thin.

[00:33:47.30] I've been going too much, not enough rest, et cetera.

[00:33:50.50] My voice is on that edge of what's gonna go.

[00:33:52.42] But I say all that in case for y'all listening to,

[00:33:55.78] it sounds like Amy and I shared that physical symptom.

[00:33:58.26] You may also experience some other physical symptoms

[00:34:01.18] that coincide with what's going on inside of you energetically, emotionally,

[00:34:06.14] psychologically. And your body, because you're not listening to your intuition,

[00:34:10.86] you're not listening to that still small voice inside. Your body's going to get,

[00:34:14.62] it's get its message across to you one way or the other. And I always think my body,

[00:34:19.82] so we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. You can listen right now,

[00:34:23.02] totally. Or we can go through this journey. So,

[00:34:25.42] and what was the hard way? My eyes too. Oh, yeah. I'm still all the time.

[00:34:29.42] I mean, the way I'm seeing it now for me is showing up in relationships that are longer

[00:34:35.42] term.

[00:34:36.42] My current self and any new relationships has a lot less difficulty speaking what I really

[00:34:42.42] think, setting some boundaries, holding my own worth, et cetera.

[00:34:47.22] It's a muscle that you work out.

[00:34:48.82] It takes practice.

[00:34:50.14] And like that was just a slap in the face for me like, oh, I'm going to have to do this

[00:34:53.26] hard legal stuff and use my voice in that way.

[00:34:57.02] And then it started to heal and and it started to be self-work like oh, I can't trust myself and it it doesn't happen overnight

[00:35:04.38] and you know that right and like it just takes time and

[00:35:10.22] Going easy on yourself and then you start to develop that muscle and then it happens again

[00:35:16.26] And you're like oh yeah, I remember this and you're able to bounce back quicker and that's the thing

[00:35:19.62] It's not about it not happening at all. It's about at least for me

[00:35:22.54] I feel like life is about that.

[00:35:25.10] It's not about it not happening at all.

[00:35:26.94] It's about happening and then you're able to remember quicker and bounce back quicker

[00:35:31.42] and write the ship a lot faster.

[00:35:34.62] And the way I think about the way life works is that I don't know why I have this image

[00:35:41.02] in my mind but I think of a high school track.

[00:35:43.90] And there are certain lessons, at different phases that we have to learn.

[00:35:47.02] That's in front of us.

[00:35:48.02] The thing, keeping us smaller, maybe holding us back

[00:35:50.58] from our next level or higher frequency,

[00:35:52.90] or whatever that is for anybody listening,

[00:35:55.10] like the next thing.

[00:35:56.18] And that kind of keeps you stuck where you are.

[00:35:58.26] And I think about us going around this track at the high school.

[00:36:00.42] I didn't like running around tracks.

[00:36:01.70] I still don't like running around tracks.

[00:36:03.54] I haven't tried to do it in a long time,

[00:36:05.22] but I don't think I want to get, it seems terrible.

[00:36:07.34] But anyway, going around this track,

[00:36:09.34] and as I've gotten older, I start to be like recognizing

[00:36:13.42] this pattern.

[00:36:14.10] So it's this pattern.

[00:36:14.78] I'm going around the track.

[00:36:15.70] And I think about, okay, here is my opportunity

[00:36:18.50] to learn this lesson now or learn it later.

[00:36:21.54] I can do it now or I can do it later.

[00:36:23.42] And then what happens is I think y'all,

[00:36:26.38] when you know you've started to heal

[00:36:27.82] and you started to make this progress is

[00:36:29.62] you shorten the time it takes you

[00:36:32.42] to stop going around the same track.

[00:36:34.30] Of like, okay, here's this lesson.

[00:36:35.98] I can learn about not allowing small sort of

[00:36:40.98] small sort of infractions against a boundary or things left unsaid in allowing those just to go

[00:36:47.70] because they're in BD, not that big of a deal. I don't want to make a scene. I don't want to be angry

[00:36:51.94] whatever. And letting those go. And then they build into resentment. Right. It's like avoidance

[00:36:58.90] always sends an invoice. Yeah. And so avoiding those things. And now what I'm starting to see is I

[00:37:04.02] see myself trying to do that. And I'm like, ooh, okay, this is my opportunity. Do I want

[00:37:11.02] to learn this lesson again in six months or a year? Or do I want to make this the choice

[00:37:16.58] and take this step right now to advance to some other lessons, right? And whatever comes

[00:37:21.54] next. So I guess what I'm easier lessons. Yeah, easier lessons. Yes, maybe maybe deeper,

[00:37:28.34] But I think for everybody listening, can you reflect back to things that keep showing up

[00:37:35.66] in your life over time?

[00:37:37.02] And if you're 20 years old, that may be a little harder for you, but I bet you, even

[00:37:41.58] at 20, you've got some fodder, sister.

[00:37:44.74] And to look back and like, what are things that keep showing up?

[00:37:49.10] And like Amy shared with us in marriage, one in marriage, two different fellows, different

[00:37:53.46] circumstances different kids, same or similar issues, same Amy.

[00:37:59.26] Yeah.

[00:37:59.76] And so I mean, from the get go to like from the wedding date, like there were things

[00:38:04.26] I could look back, I mean, hindsight, right?

[00:38:06.66] But there were things I could look back on and I was like, Oh, I gave away my power there.

[00:38:11.30] I gave away my power there.

[00:38:12.82] I was leaning in and trying to fix.

[00:38:15.18] And you know, just you start to see all your own little patterns and what are we doing

[00:38:20.34] over and over.

[00:38:21.34] Now I'm pretty conscious of it and I still can notice it in my relationship now and I can say,

[00:38:27.58] ah, okay, I see that. How the thing, I studied this like Facebook group. It's her name is like

[00:38:36.46] Giordana, Tokuna Derry or something like that. It's called like, um, high value woman or something

[00:38:42.30] like that. And I started reading a lot of her stuff. And I'll have to find it.

[00:38:48.54] Yeah, find it when you put it in the channel.

[00:38:50.06] Yes, yes.

[00:38:51.26] And I would just keep that in my notes

[00:38:53.50] and just constantly write it down.

[00:38:54.86] But the gist of it is she says lean back.

[00:38:59.26] And like what that means is you're not fixing everything

[00:39:03.78] outside yourself or making things okay,

[00:39:06.74] you're really just focused on this, your own beautiful life

[00:39:10.26] because it's worthy, right?

[00:39:11.58] And so you love yourself and you start focusing

[00:39:13.46] on your own beautiful life.

[00:39:14.58] And magically everything starts to get better.

[00:39:17.26] And it's the same principle in Alonon,

[00:39:18.90] which my husband is in active recovery now.

[00:39:21.46] And so that was another little learning experience, right?

[00:39:24.30] Once we got together, I thought I'd done all this work.

[00:39:26.38] And then I'm with somebody who is in addiction.

[00:39:30.14] And I'm like, okay, why am I attracting this?

[00:39:34.30] Like looking at myself.

[00:39:36.86] And so I did a lot of Alonon work,

[00:39:39.06] which is the exact same principle

[00:39:40.70] and the same thing that we're talking about.

[00:39:42.26] Because it just makes life better in every single way.

[00:39:45.58] And that is focusing on yourself

[00:39:48.62] because we can't control this other stuff in the outside.

[00:39:51.06] We think we can, we like to try.

[00:39:53.42] And even, you know, like you're talking about people

[00:39:56.30] pleasing or pick me energy or anything,

[00:39:57.74] you can't control that.

[00:39:58.66] Someone still is not gonna pick you maybe,

[00:40:00.50] or you know.

[00:40:01.34] And the more you want them to,

[00:40:02.10] the less they're going to,

[00:40:03.10] it's like a desperate energy is not appealing, right?

[00:40:05.86] And that's what we're in when we're wanting and fixing.

[00:40:09.70] And what this does is shift your energy completely

[00:40:12.70] into this beautiful glow, right?

[00:40:15.90] And it's that falling in love glow only with yourself.

[00:40:19.30] So it doesn't go away.

[00:40:20.50] And you're able to just really relax into, oh,

[00:40:24.42] and it doesn't have to be big.

[00:40:26.54] It can be drawing a bath.

[00:40:28.58] It can be doing things that please you

[00:40:30.78] and why people are on some candles.

[00:40:32.34] I like it screaming at me in my head.

[00:40:34.10] Somebody is thinking this is,

[00:40:35.94] but what if when they sit with theirself

[00:40:37.50] and when they look in the mirror,

[00:40:38.58] they don't love theirself?

[00:40:40.06] What if they, they probably don't?

[00:40:41.42] What do you look in the mirror?

[00:40:42.62] like if you haven't done the simple work on it and done some mirror work and really sat with

[00:40:47.50] yourself and you probably don't. And that's perfectly fine. And honestly, sadly, normal, right?

[00:40:53.42] We aren't taught it. So why should we know how? And so I had to actually learn it. I had to

[00:41:01.58] you think you can learn it to love yourself. A million percent. You can absolutely

[00:41:05.26] learn it with the baths. What you're saying, the way is mirror work, just tapping into a few things

[00:41:11.34] you like, maybe you like flowers. Go buy yourself one flower, you know, put it in a little

[00:41:16.06] dainty vase by your bed. I mean, just these little things that start to make you happy

[00:41:22.38] just for the sheer beauty of it, right? Like just treat yourself the way you would treat someone

[00:41:28.54] you love because you're worth it and you start to look in the mirror and perhaps even if you see

[00:41:35.34] something you don't like, can you look in the mirror and laugh together? And I'm pretending

[00:41:40.46] I'm staring in the mirror, right? And like, laugh together and just like you would with a best friend.

[00:41:47.10] Just free or see that.

[00:41:48.46] I think it grows. So by doing those bits of things, it would.

[00:41:52.14] It's a consistency. And those are just some very simple ways. But it's about focusing on your

[00:41:57.66] own beautiful life because you do have your own beautiful life. And it doesn't require a man,

[00:42:03.74] a partner. It doesn't require anything other than you. Right? It can just be going for a walk

[00:42:10.22] in nature, treating yourself. Like, I didn't even know what I liked sexually. Isn't that wild,

[00:42:17.66] right? I thought I did, but I asked, I remember calling my best friend and I was like,

[00:42:22.14] do you really know what you like and bad? Because so often we're just doing what we think the

[00:42:26.62] other person wants and kind of, it's like performative energy. And it's not that I didn't enjoy it

[00:42:31.66] a lot of times, but I didn't even have a concept of what the options really were for me. And

[00:42:37.90] And once I was like, oh, I can just like somebody just gently touching me.

[00:42:42.82] You know, my arm or a foot massager like, oh, that's allowed.

[00:42:47.74] You know, like it's it's this reclamation of ourselves.

[00:42:55.06] And I think it comes with age two.

[00:42:56.98] I do not think that it's as easy when you don't have the lived life experience.

[00:43:02.94] And so I just say go easy on yourself.

[00:43:06.38] If you're feeling like I've never done this,

[00:43:07.98] and I'm not even worth it,

[00:43:09.74] and I can't, it's too late for real to love myself.

[00:43:12.78] It's not, you really can at any age.

[00:43:14.98] You can start right now,

[00:43:16.18] and you can look in the mirror

[00:43:17.18] and set your timer for five minutes

[00:43:18.38] and see what happens.

[00:43:19.22] Chances are you're gonna cry.

[00:43:20.86] It's gonna feel weird,

[00:43:21.70] and you're gonna realize that you haven't.

[00:43:23.46] I'm kinda choked up saying that.

[00:43:24.66] You haven't looked in the mirror

[00:43:25.94] and given that person the love that they deserve,

[00:43:29.66] and you've given it to everybody else.

[00:43:31.86] And I think our joint thesis would be that doing this work, whether you're in the middle

[00:43:42.26] of your marriage, okay, maybe you've been thinking of the course is the way whether you're

[00:43:48.54] in the middle of a divorce or you're after a divorce.

[00:43:51.92] Y'all, this is the journey, collectively as women and probably people, but I don't know

[00:43:56.88] about the guys but for us, the journey for us to make,

[00:44:02.76] to get, I'm okay with me.

[00:44:05.12] And in fact, I'm better than okay.

[00:44:06.52] I love me and because of that,

[00:44:10.04] I am gonna be treated in a certain way in my life.

[00:44:13.24] I'm gonna give that treatment to myself

[00:44:15.20] and other things that don't align, they can fall off.

[00:44:17.32] And y'all, if we do this and you do,

[00:44:19.36] and when people say do the work,

[00:44:20.68] I think largely, largely, largely at the root.

[00:44:23.88] This is what they mean.

[00:44:25.24] What they mean.

[00:44:26.52] It's what I mean for sure.

[00:44:27.72] I think, but you know, if that's one of those other things people say they do the work.

[00:44:31.20] What are you talking about?

[00:44:33.40] I think so many people use that and I mean, I when I first got divorced people said, oh,

[00:44:38.00] you've got to take time to heal.

[00:44:39.40] And I'd be like, what the fuck does that mean?

[00:44:41.56] Yeah.

[00:44:42.56] What do you mean, heal?

[00:44:43.56] How back then there wasn't all the Instagrams everything to tell you, but like what did

[00:44:46.80] literally everybody would like order me to heal and then never tell me how to do it or what

[00:44:51.52] to do.

[00:44:52.52] And I had no idea.

[00:44:53.52] about, oh, after my divorce, I didn't cry not one day. I just kept going to the like it was

[00:44:58.16] bragging rights. Now I know I just skipped it. I skipped any kind of healing, any kind of grief

[00:45:04.56] from my divorce with busyness and forward movement, which is like kind of my personality.

[00:45:08.80] I just read that ambition is an avoidant strategy and I was like, I mean, it could be a good thing too.

[00:45:13.92] But true. I think that the idea would be that if you do this work, then you will make

[00:45:22.96] choices based on a stable, strong structure in confidence and relationship with yourself

[00:45:34.16] versus carrying forward that same energy like Amy talks about when she went into her second

[00:45:40.16] marriage. And like happened to me in my second marriage, I just lucked out that the person who

[00:45:44.96] did pick me was Dribbel and he's the best guy ever. Like it all has worked out. I did the work

[00:45:49.68] inside of this marriage. You absolutely can. You can do that. And it's like doing it in this

[00:45:55.20] marriage. But like, I think that we so often as women skips right from out of the frying pan and

[00:46:03.52] into the fire. Just like from one thing to the next. And so I think our recommendation would be

[00:46:09.12] that you take some space and doesn't even have to be that much space. It's actually a little

[00:46:14.08] bitty this is in that's along the way to get okay with quiet by yourself.

[00:46:19.76] To be able to look in the mirror for five minutes without running away.

[00:46:22.80] Yeah.

[00:46:23.12] Do it able to.

[00:46:23.84] To be able to.

[00:46:24.16] Yeah.

[00:46:24.48] You're in your car when you're waiting on a kid.

[00:46:26.16] Yeah.

[00:46:26.64] You know, looking to wear remarre and and take the time to say it to yourself.

[00:46:30.48] Just give your give it a shot.

[00:46:32.00] Do it for 30 seconds, right?

[00:46:33.52] Do it just slow down enough to listen to yourself.

[00:46:37.04] And I think that that's like a key that you're talking about to rights being able to

[00:46:41.68] sit with yourself.

[00:46:42.96] And just clear your head and like you don't bring all the same problems from your first marriage

[00:46:49.36] into your second one. Have a second divorce third for it. I don't have any judgment around that.

[00:46:54.16] Like I've made, you know, someone was out ordered the wrong food at the restaurant. I want

[00:46:57.76] a different, I want to hamburger instead when I ordered the salad. I'm like, this gal, you know,

[00:47:00.96] I need a cheeseburger or whatever. Um, so there's no judgment around that. But I think that

[00:47:06.24] if, if we did this work up front either before, if you're a young in before you ever get married,

[00:47:11.20] And you get okay with you.

[00:47:13.86] The quality of your relationships from then on will be night and day.

[00:47:19.22] Because actually what you're doing is presenting your true self, your full self.

[00:47:23.58] If you love yourself, you let that person out and let her take more of the center stage.

[00:47:28.58] When you do that and you speak in your voice and you speak up for her, the quality of your

[00:47:32.46] relationship is just going to be more authentic and more true.

[00:47:36.06] And hopefully, it's been that way for me.

[00:47:40.06] Yeah.

[00:47:41.06] I was just like, hopefully you find a guy who's done the same thing.

[00:47:43.06] I was just like, we did it together.

[00:47:45.18] Like, you know, like I said, he's in recovery and he had relapsed a few times and one

[00:47:50.22] of my coping strategies at that point was eating.

[00:47:52.46] I love chips and I gained 35 pounds when he went to rehab and stuff.

[00:47:57.82] And I was just shocked because I loved myself so much then and I was like, huh, that's

[00:48:04.54] interesting.

[00:48:05.54] I've gained weight and I'm not being hard on myself.

[00:48:08.66] And I was like, and I love myself.

[00:48:10.34] And I was like, that's very interesting.

[00:48:12.66] And you know, it just surprised me

[00:48:15.26] because I was able to love myself unconditionally

[00:48:18.34] and really mean it, you know, like you're gonna have things happen.

[00:48:21.54] Maybe you do games, maybe you have something come up

[00:48:23.62] and you're just able to give yourself this unconditional

[00:48:27.38] and unconditional means you're not going,

[00:48:30.58] okay, I'm gonna love you when you're thin,

[00:48:32.22] I'm only gonna love you when your face looks good

[00:48:34.78] or whatever, name the thing, right?

[00:48:37.22] And so it was just a really eye-opening moment for me

[00:48:40.66] that I'm like, oh, this feels really, really good.

[00:48:44.38] And I had another point that I totally forgot it.

[00:48:46.18] Well, and it's just my wish.

[00:48:48.34] I, you know, if I could go back, like what,

[00:48:50.38] we can go ahead and do that.

[00:48:51.22] So one of the things we ask,

[00:48:52.62] everybody who comes on the show is if they only had one

[00:48:55.90] piece of advice for the women of divorce land,

[00:48:58.62] what would that be?

[00:48:59.46] And like what, I'm just like, normally I don't answer,

[00:49:01.38] but my answer would be to stop and do the work.

[00:49:06.38] work wherever you are in the process to get okay with you and okay with just you and you

[00:49:14.62] and you are okay with you. Nothing can touch you. You won't pick your spouse, your job,

[00:49:22.78] or whatever from pick me energies just because you want to be chosen because you choose

[00:49:25.78] you. And that's enough, like ultimately. And so I wish I didn't start getting that energy

[00:49:31.90] late 30s, early 40s for sure.

[00:49:34.24] Yeah.

[00:49:35.40] And where I really do feel that way now,

[00:49:39.34] if I could go back at 14, 10,

[00:49:43.58] however, and learn that lesson sooner,

[00:49:46.88] and do the exercises that Amy's telling us about

[00:49:49.08] in this intraday show, that's what my advice would be.

[00:49:52.18] What would your piece of advice be?

[00:49:54.22] I think it would be that it's really truly a paradox.

[00:49:58.52] The more you love yourself, the better everything gets.

[00:50:01.52] And it is never, ever too late to start doing that,

[00:50:06.64] to start leaning into yourself

[00:50:09.84] and really loving yourself.

[00:50:11.56] Mine happened to coincide with the pandemic.

[00:50:14.68] And so, cause it was like 2019,

[00:50:16.76] I'm starting this right, I'm still in this divorce,

[00:50:19.64] so it took way too long.

[00:50:21.32] And so 2020, I sort of played a game with myself, right?

[00:50:24.56] Because the world was shutting down and I thought,

[00:50:27.08] okay, what if it is just me?

[00:50:30.56] What if it is just me?

[00:50:31.80] What if I never meet anybody?

[00:50:34.04] What if I just have myself, am I gonna choose

[00:50:38.56] to enjoy this life or am I going to be miserable

[00:50:42.64] and be like, oh, I don't have a partner?

[00:50:45.60] I was like, no, screw that.

[00:50:47.20] I'm going to choose me.

[00:50:49.56] I'm gonna choose then to just love life,

[00:50:53.56] to love myself, so I started.

[00:50:56.32] And this is a little crazy, but I mean, maybe it's TMI,

[00:51:00.00] but I started having sex with myself, I start and like,

[00:51:03.76] you know, like the whole nine and loving yourself,

[00:51:07.60] taking yourself on dates, like really truly treating yourself

[00:51:10.96] like someone you love.

[00:51:12.00] And it's just, if you find yourself in that space post

[00:51:14.80] divorce and you're like, nobody's gonna want me,

[00:51:17.52] you have that feeling for a minute, it's too late.

[00:51:19.76] Well then, what are you gonna do?

[00:51:21.20] Play the game, right?

[00:51:22.16] Like just go like, let's try a little experiment then.

[00:51:24.72] I love treating things like an experiment,

[00:51:26.32] like even the self-love, right?

[00:51:27.96] don't take it to, don't get too freaked out about it.

[00:51:30.90] Just try a little experiment.

[00:51:32.32] Right?

[00:51:33.32] For the reason what happened.

[00:51:34.32] What's the worst that happened?

[00:51:35.32] You don't like it.

[00:51:36.32] So then you stop.

[00:51:37.32] Big deal, right?

[00:51:38.32] But what if it starts to work?

[00:51:39.32] Right.

[00:51:40.32] What if you start to feel better?

[00:51:42.40] What if you start to magnetize your best life?

[00:51:44.40] What if you start to feel better at 53, then you've ever felt in your life and you're

[00:51:48.60] like, I didn't see this one cut.

[00:51:50.40] This wasn't on my bingo card.

[00:51:52.08] You know?

[00:51:53.08] And like, I think just you can treat it like it's never too late.

[00:51:55.48] You can treat it like an experiment.

[00:51:57.88] It's not a lifelong commitment or maybe it is because you start to realize you're feeling

[00:52:02.20] better and better all the time.

[00:52:03.36] So even if you're in a marriage, even if you're in a relationship, you can still do these

[00:52:07.12] things.

[00:52:08.12] And it's that leaning back energy, leaning into your own beautiful life and just trying

[00:52:12.82] it as an experiment.

[00:52:13.82] And I just, my message is just that it is never, ever too late.

[00:52:18.24] Yeah.

[00:52:19.24] Well, and I had read this quote not to go that still is shaken me.

[00:52:24.00] And I, you know, the next thing we always ask is about your dominant thought.

[00:52:27.40] And it's certainly been my dominant thought that you can do it as battle or

[00:52:31.64] dancing.

[00:52:32.88] The same actions battle or dancing.

[00:52:34.40] I choose dancing to unite my husband.

[00:52:36.24] We say this to each other.

[00:52:37.12] We've been going through a house remodel and oh, just all the things.

[00:52:41.04] And like each day we were my remember battle or dancing, let's use dancing,

[00:52:47.44] right?

[00:52:47.60] Whatever the thing is.

[00:52:48.92] So do you have a dominant thought that's been on your mind the last week or

[00:52:52.92] I found that usually we're sort of noodling on one thing.

[00:52:56.44] I don't always love to know what that is.

[00:52:57.80] Do you have something you've been noodling

[00:52:59.00] on lately dominant thought?

[00:53:00.44] You know, it's funny.

[00:53:01.64] I always keep, just, I think everything that we just talked about,

[00:53:04.44] even just that leaning back energy.

[00:53:06.44] It's interesting that I still do that in my marriage.

[00:53:09.48] And like, I'll notice, and I just did it like in the last few days.

[00:53:15.56] And like, I'll notice I have a tendency to want to lean in, to fix, to control the things around

[00:53:22.44] me and like get you like me and everything gets better when I just lean back and I have

[00:53:28.00] to exercise that muscle and realize it and I just did it the other day and I was like, oh,

[00:53:33.20] yeah, listen, focus on your own beautiful life.

[00:53:37.26] And that doesn't mean you don't, you know, focus on your kids too and all that.

[00:53:40.76] Of course, right?

[00:53:41.76] We have a respect part of your beautiful.

[00:53:43.48] Yes, but you don't discount yourself, right?

[00:53:47.20] And you're able to still find time for the things that you love and understand the things

[00:53:54.40] that you love and treat yourself the way that you deserve to be treated by yourself.

[00:54:00.16] Yeah, it's very much like a person called runaway bride, the movie with Julia Roberts.

[00:54:04.76] You should watch it.

[00:54:05.76] She doesn't know how she likes her eggs.

[00:54:08.44] And every relationship, she orders the eggs, the way that her partner orders their eggs.

[00:54:14.48] You're like, that sounds good.

[00:54:16.04] I know what they're doing so it must be good.

[00:54:18.56] Yeah.

[00:54:19.56] And eventually she takes the time to learn.

[00:54:21.56] She's doing it.

[00:54:22.56] So I think that that could be so hard homework.

[00:54:23.56] Yeah.

[00:54:24.56] They'll watch that movie, everybody.

[00:54:25.56] It's exactly that.

[00:54:27.44] That's kind of the journey.

[00:54:28.44] Julia knew, of course she did.

[00:54:31.72] And the name of the show is not saving it for later.

[00:54:34.88] And usually people have some sort of reaction or thought about not saving it for later.

[00:54:39.44] What does that mean to you, as I thought about it too, as I was coming today?

[00:54:43.96] I love the title because it is about living in the present and seizing this moment.

[00:54:50.96] And, you know, putting on your sparkly clothes, putting on your sequence.

[00:54:54.96] That's what I do on social media, right?

[00:54:56.96] I dress up in sparkly clothes because we have a shine.

[00:55:00.96] We have an inner shine.

[00:55:01.96] And your inner shine deserves to come out now.

[00:55:04.96] And I mean, saving it for later does imply that there's going to be better days ahead.

[00:55:10.96] But we don't have again any control of what the future holds.

[00:55:15.60] So why not go for it right now?

[00:55:17.76] Yeah.

[00:55:18.16] And what I found is when you when you spend the thing now, when you live in it now and not,

[00:55:24.96] thinking about, well, someday in the future will be better.

[00:55:28.48] It comes from an abundance place.

[00:55:30.32] And what I found is like using that perfume or burning that candle or for me,

[00:55:34.80] it's always felt like which spoon I use when I stir my coffee or my tea.

[00:55:38.16] it's like, I'll wait, you know, there's literally a dishwasher. It's so dumb. There was an outfit

[00:55:43.20] I was going to wear again the other day. Like, save it for what? Like, what else? Right. And what I find is

[00:55:48.16] when you get in the habit of choosing to do the thing now, just more stuff comes right after

[00:55:52.88] I guess what? You probably have some more perfume. You can wash your stones. You'll get a new outfit.

[00:55:58.24] Yeah. Right. It's just, it's also, I think, when you don't save it for labor, you're, you're claiming

[00:56:03.12] more of that kind of stuff in your present tense of like, you're not needing to save it for later

[00:56:07.28] and pushing off enjoyment or pleasure or peace or whatever.

[00:56:10.40] Because all we ever do is experience those in the now.

[00:56:12.48] And when you bring them forward and do it now,

[00:56:14.96] I think more of it comes.

[00:56:16.08] It does. It does. It definitely attracts more.

[00:56:19.20] And I mean, I always say some of your best days haven't even happened yet.

[00:56:22.40] And it's really acknowledging that this time is good.

[00:56:26.16] Right. And when you're believing, when you're in that mindset,

[00:56:28.96] you're going to attract more of that a million percent.

[00:56:32.08] Well, I'm excited. I mean, you're going to have to come back next season.

[00:56:34.88] the dating episode. I already know everybody is going to be dying because I didn't, I went,

[00:56:40.08] got divorced. There was like basically not much dating met my husband and I said, I don't have

[00:56:44.56] basically anything to say, but it sounds like you got a lot to say. So I had to relearn today

[00:56:48.08] after 23 years, I think it was. So yeah, okay.

[00:56:52.48] I did like it 22 met my husband. You know, my first husband went straight to another and then

[00:56:57.52] at 46, I had to start dating again or 47. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll have to do that.

[00:57:01.44] that one. I thank you for coming. Thank you. I know all of y'all loved it. We'll give you

[00:57:05.28] all the places and ways to follow Amy and listen to her stuff. And right away follow on social

[00:57:09.68] media. It's one of the favorite things. I must I see it every time I open my phone. So

[00:57:13.68] it's so much fun. I post a lot. I don't know whether to be sorry or thank you. All right. Well,

[00:57:19.36] thanks everybody.