Ep. 88 From Addiction to Healing and Purpose with Amanda McKoy Flanagan

[00:00:06] I'm Michele Simms and this is The Beauty in the Mess, a community where people who crave a shift in mindset, personal growth, and connection to like-minded people come together to start rewriting their stories. Through engaging, honest, and insightful conversations, the show will help you embrace the mess to recognize the meanings and the lessons it holds and discover its hidden treasures to help you start making a mindset shift. Let's listen, learn, and reclaim who we were meant to be.

[00:00:33] Hi friend, welcome to The Beauty in the Mess. Today I'm diving deep into a journey of addiction, recovery, and self-discovery. My guest, Amanda McKoy Flanagan, shares her powerful story of overcoming addiction through divine intervention, finding self-worth, and spreading the message of healing and hope. Amanda's story is one of resilience, transformation, and unconditional self-love.

[00:00:59] Stay tuned as I uncover how she turned her pain into purpose and learn how we can all learn to trust ourselves to be all in. Amanda is a native New Yorker who ended up in Colorado. She blends street smarts with tree-hugging for a sensible and spiritual approach to love and loss.

[00:01:17] An award-winning author, motivational speaker, and podcaster, Amanda recently released her debut inspirational memoir, Trust Yourself to Be All In, Safe to Love and Let Go. She is also the co-host of Soul Rising Podcast. She's a co-founder of the non-profit organization Castle Rock Clubhouse, a recovery clubhouse that serves as a meeting space for various 12-step programs.

[00:01:43] Amanda is passionate about sobriety, meditation, and spirituality. A lover of horses, drumming, running, vegan eating, and dancing. She also enjoys singing with a band into loud rock music. Hi, I'm Michelle Sims, your host. I'm just a regular person who, along with my family, have had our share of messes that we, too, have had to overcome. Along the way, I got curious as to how others get through their messes and even triumph over them.

[00:02:12] Maybe there's a better way, a faster way. Maybe we can accelerate our journeys by learning from someone else. That started my pursuit. I think we can all learn from each other through the sharing of our experiences, lessons, and knowledge. So join me for episode 88 of The Beauty and the Mess, called From Addiction to Healing and Purpose, with Amanda McCoy Flanagan. So without further ado, let's dive right into today's conversation. Hi, Amanda.

[00:02:41] Welcome to The Beauty and the Mess. I'm so glad to have you with me today. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, I know you're a blogger, author, podcaster, among many other things. But before we kind of dig into some of that, I was wondering, I know that a lot of your early journey began with addiction and recovery. If you would give us like some of the background on that journey and how it's impacted you today a little bit. Sure. Yeah, I'll try and keep it brief.

[00:03:10] It's been a while. I got sober in 2006. So it's been a pretty long journey. But how I got sober was pretty much divine intervention. I really can't explain it any other reason than that. I tried to stop drinking and doing other drugs many times on my own. And it was always, I was always, I'm never going to do it again. Never going to do it again. I would lie. I would get in trouble. I would let people down. My bottom wasn't, I guess, as severe as some others.

[00:03:39] I was 26 years old. I didn't have a family. I didn't have children. I didn't get a DUI. I didn't go to jail. I didn't do anything so terrible on the books. It was more an emotional bottom for me where I just, I was dying inside. I was kind of walking around as just like a shell of a human, like kind of just existing. I just wasn't living. I didn't know myself. I had zero self-worth. I had zero self-respect. I knew the way that I was living was not normal.

[00:04:08] And I always knew that I drank alcoholically from a very early age, probably about 15 or 16 years old. Wow. I understood that I drank differently than my friends. That wasn't hard to see. But I also, I remember telling my mother one, one night, she was like, Amanda, she goes, you change. She goes, something happens. Your eyes change, your face changes, everything about you. You're like a different person. And I said, mom, I said, I think I have a chemical imbalance.

[00:04:34] I think like something happens in my brain when I ingest alcohol and it doesn't take a neuroscience degree to figure that out. But at 15 years old, I was kind of onto that. And then when I got to the rooms of recovery in our literature, it talks about that, that we have a mental obsession and a physical compulsion. And when we take the drink, it sets off an allergy in our body. So making us want more. That's what, that's how the craving sets in. Oh, wow. So I was just laying in bed one morning hungover.

[00:05:02] I drank for about a day and a half, just, just straight up alcohol, nothing else. And I called in sick to work. I had lied to a couple of friends and I got called out on that. And just something came to me and I knew that I was going to die driving around in a blackout or I was going to kill somebody else driving around in blackout. And that's what I used to do, not proudly, but that's what would happen. I would drink. I'd grab the keys. I don't know why I'd make the music loud. I'd drive fast. It was not okay. Not okay at all.

[00:05:31] I have friends who have killed people, manslaughter in drunk driving accidents. Terrible. Oh, wow. Yeah. So something just came to me that morning. Something just kind of spoke to me. And I knew that if I didn't stop that something really bad was going to happen. So I had known about the 12 step recovery programs. And I was in a outpatient when I was like five years earlier, I was introduced to it and I knew about it.

[00:05:58] And I looked up a meeting and I went to the meeting and I've never looked back. I've never relapsed. I've never, I've had severe emotional bottoms and breakdowns in recovery. I've had three and I did not have to drink over them because I relied on my program because I had that like muscle memory. Like I've always gone to meetings. I've always worked a hard program. I've always sponsored women. I've always had a sponsor. I've always been in the middle of the herd.

[00:06:24] I've always been involved in service in my groups because life keeps getting better. So I keep going. That's amazing. Right. If it wasn't working and if I wasn't living a life pretty much beyond my wildest dreams, I would say if I was miserable, I'd probably go back to drinking. So it's a spiritual program. It is not religious and it works. It works. We have a phrase. It works if you work it and it works and it has impacted my life.

[00:06:52] Like it's so obvious because people say, oh, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It works if you work it, but it's not an easy program, but you have to look at your character defects, which I like to just call flaws or survival traits. I don't think we're defective. And it's interesting because the longer I'm sober and the more spiritual I'm becoming, some of the language, some of the stuff in the program doesn't really jive with my beliefs. I mean, it was written in the late 1930s. A lot has changed since then.

[00:07:17] But the basic principles of turning it over to something greater than myself, trusting the process, looking at myself, taking that inventory, finding some humility to say, where am I at fault? What part did I play here? Trying to clean up my side of the street. All of that. Meditation is one of the steps. Service to others is helping other women get sober. That's how I stay sober. Really. That's what it comes down to. Love and service.

[00:07:45] It just comes down to helping other people get sober is what keeps me sober. But we moved to Colorado in 2015 from New York and my husband and I were very excited about the idea of opening up a clubhouse here, which is just a location for meetings. And there were people talking about it. And that's what we did. We formed a board of seven people and we fundraised for three years and we opened up this clubhouse.

[00:08:10] So now my town where I live, Castle Rock, Colorado has multiple 12 step programs, AA, NA, OA, Al-Anon, ACA, which is adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. And that program has really changed my life a lot. I got into that later in my recovery. But so it's just some, there's some, it's a hard topic. There's a lot of stigma around it still. There's still, especially in like smaller towns and, but it's really a beautiful way of life.

[00:08:38] And I say I'm a grateful alcoholic, meaning that I would not, not be an alcoholic. I actually believe that I chose this life. I chose to be an alcoholic so that it could open me up to a spiritual way of life, which I'm not sure I would have chosen if my life was not on the line. People do it all the time. People choose spiritual paths. Right. I wasn't raised in a spiritual home. I didn't really even know what the word spirituality meant. I knew what religion was. We went to church here and there, but I didn't have a personal relationship with a God or higher power.

[00:09:07] So I'm not sure if I would have been open to that from, to solve my problems because the program solves not just my drinking problem itself. It solves all of my life's problems when I apply this, the principles to it. So the drinking is just the tip of the iceberg. Someone told me that the other day that they wish that there was a 12 step program for non-addiction because it solves so many things that people struggle with.

[00:09:33] And a lot of us struggle with addictions, whether it's food or whatever your choice is, it doesn't have to be alcohol or drugs. But I was wondering like on your journey, what you felt your addiction rooted from, or did you ever get to that point? I mean, is it a lack of self-love or that? I think it's almost like there's an epidemic of women, especially feeling unworthy and not loving themselves.

[00:10:00] So I just wondered if you're stemmed from that or if you think it was something else or. That's funny. You say an epidemic because I actually just posted something recently on Instagram that said the real epidemic is low self-worth or lack of. Yeah. It's a self-worth problem, which is creating all the different types of addictions, all the poor behavior in general, even if it's not an addiction, all the difficult relationships.

[00:10:27] I believe the whole, the world's problems, the majority of them would be solved if we all learned to love ourselves, men and women, and didn't feel the need to run roughshod over people to build ourselves up because that's what we're doing, right? We're trying to strengthen our ego in these other ways. For me, alcohol, it made me feel prettier, made me funnier. It made me more social and I'm a social person to begin with, but it made me more comfortable in social situations.

[00:10:57] My anxiety went away. So yeah, I was compensating for a severe discomfort in my own skin, which comes from a lack of self-worth and then self-love. They're very much connected self-worth and self-love. So how do you learn self-love? I mean, because I feel like our society kind of programs us to be the opposite. You're supposed to love everybody and share love and whatever, but they never teach you and even your parents because they didn't learn it themselves.

[00:11:27] No one teaches you to love yourself. That's just how I feel. No, I agree. Because there's one that I could go on for a while about the next thing I'm going to say, and I won't, but I'm just going to say quickly that the system is set up in a way to keep us wanting more, needing more to satisfy that insecurity inside. Right. Right. I need to, that creates addictions other than alcohol and drugs, shopping, sex, TV, food, whatever it is.

[00:11:56] We want more and more and more to try and fill that void because it is such a soul sickness. That void is such a core deficiency in terms of how painful it is. It is so painful that we just want to fill it, fill it, fill it with whatever we can temporarily to most likely really get that dopamine hit is really what it comes down to. Right. Is that we're looking for something to give us that dopamine hit. So it's very purposeful. It's very, our society runs, especially in America. I don't, I'm not familiar.

[00:12:24] I don't have a lot of information or experience with other countries, but I know in America, I trust that everything is, it's a, it's not, they say it's not broken. It's fixed. Meaning like it's created, it's put in these things, these systems are put in place to keep us wanting and needing more and never feeling our true power. Because if we were really walking around with all of this abundant, unconditional self-worth and self-love, we wouldn't need that thing. Right.

[00:12:50] And that thing, whatever it is, the consumerism or the, whatever it is, but it's, we'd also be loving each other because our society teaches us to be in fear of each other and to have this division and to create this division really probably for political gains. Right. Probably. And if you look, politics are very in bed with the media. It's controlled by the government. It's all one big, big business politics, government, it's all one package deal. So it's working. They're working very closely hand in hand to keep us out of this power because then if

[00:13:20] we step into that power, we're too dangerous. So, but a lot of us are waking up now to this. Right. Talks about parents didn't teach it. Parents didn't know it. They didn't know it. Yeah. That's what I meant. No blame or shame. Just exactly. They weren't taught it either. And I, cause I feel like exactly what you're talking about has been going on for a lot longer than we can even imagine. This whole programming is just crazy to me. A hundred percent.

[00:13:49] When you finally start opening your eyes and you can see it, you see it going way back. Like it's been a form of this power struggle has been going on since almost the beginning of time. The beginning, beginning was not like this in the beginning, beginning, like hundreds of thousands, right? Like beginning it wasn't. And then some powers came in and tried to create this. I mean, if you look back at the Egyptians, they had the pharaohs and the slaves, right? And medieval, we had the lords and the serfs.

[00:14:18] I mean, we've always had this tab and have not, right? We've always had that people trying to the division, first of all, and then people trying to like hustle. Brene Brown says, hustle for your worthiness. She uses that phrase. So, and I love that because it's exactly what we do. We're trying to hustle. We need the car. We need the house. We need the job. We need the clothes. We need the, this to try and prove to you that I am good enough to get your approval. Right? So it needs to come from within. And the question you asked was, how do we get that? Right.

[00:14:48] Oh, there's a lot of principles that I like to use. First is like what you said, the no blame. I don't even know if we really even need to forgive our parents for just not knowing how to do any better. I kind of look at it like, do I need to forgive somebody if they really couldn't do any better? They weren't looking to hurt me. Exactly. Right. They didn't question anything. Like we question now. Right. I say all the time, the only difference between me, my mother and her mother is that I was born in 1980. That's it.

[00:15:16] If I was born in 1952, like my mom and yeah, they were progressive people. So don't get to go around 70s, 80s. I mean, hippies. I mean, like there were definitely some progressive people, but it wasn't mainstream. Right. It wasn't the exposure and the access to these healing modalities and these conversations. I mean, social media, technology. I mean, podcasts. I mean, like the word is out and it's getting out. They didn't have that. Right.

[00:15:41] So it wasn't dinner table conversation, awakening and awarenesses and self-love and stuff. It just, I don't remember ever hearing those words growing up like ever. I don't know. Right. Right. I mean, people in our generation, it just wasn't a thing. It just wasn't a thing. So I can't sit here and say, well, my parents could have done better. They probably would have if they could have. Right. And my parents gave me a lot of great, we're very hard on our parents, a lot of us. And my parents instilled a lot of great values in me.

[00:16:10] Good work ethic, integrity, loyalty. There are so many things that my parents gave me. And it's just looking at it as they just didn't know any better. So, but now we know, now we know, now we have access to a lot of this information. So I'm a big proponent of therapy. I spent a lot of time in and out of therapy the same week I got sober. I went to therapy, stopped. And then I went back when I got engaged and then I stopped and then I went back. I actually had an appointment scheduled the week before my brother died.

[00:16:38] I didn't know obviously that he was going to die. So my brother were bedosed six years ago. I didn't say that. So for your listeners. Wow. I'm sorry. Thank you. And I had called a therapist about a week before because I was just unhappy in my life. And I wanted to end my marriage. And I just felt like it was time. I'd been putting it off. I had been out of therapy for many years, moved to Colorado. My transition here was very difficult. All my pain centers around different forms of grief and most of it anyway, and trauma. And most of us. And so I had to cancel that appointment I made because my brother passed away.

[00:17:07] And when I called her, she goes, oh, well, I also do grief counseling. And I was like, wow, isn't that not a coincidence? That's great. So I went to New York for the funeral. I come back and I start counseling with her. And she taught me so much about self-love and self-worth through healing my grief really is what it came down to. It was in conjunction with 12-step recovery as well because I worked the steps around my marriage. Oh, wow.

[00:17:36] And then I started this other program, ACA, which is adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. My parents were an alcoholic. But it's alcoholism all throughout my family tree and mental illness. But the dysfunctional part definitely applies and probably applies to, I don't know, I'm going to take a guess. 99% of our generation has some form of dysfunction just because of where we are now, right? Right. And my kids will probably look at us as dysfunctional because they're going to know more, right? Every generation does it better. Right.

[00:18:04] So I worked at my issues around the steps. I was in therapy. I spent a lot of time in meditation and really out in nature. And in those meditation and in nature is really where I found myself. Like, I believe that I am one, that we are one. We are all one. There is no separation between humanity, between the trees, between the birds, between anything that is living. We are all one. And in that one, that one is the abundant love.

[00:18:34] That is the source of the abundant love. It started for me back in 2015 after we moved to Colorado. I was really in a bad, bad place. Family members didn't support our move. It was very difficult. We didn't know a lot of people. I didn't have a lot of support. I couldn't get connected to the recovery program here. I just couldn't. And I missed my sponsor. I missed my friends. It was very difficult. I don't like change. I've, that's one thing that I've learned. A lot of us don't like change. A lot. Yeah.

[00:19:02] It's funny that I heard somebody in the program once say, we don't like change that we don't like. If it's great change, if it's moving to a mansion or going on a vacation. Yeah. Yeah. We'll take that change. We don't like the change we don't like. But anyway, I was so desperate. I was sober nine years at this point. And I was not practicing a step 11, which is prayer and meditation. And then my sponsor at the time said, meditate, meditate, meditate. So I said, all right, I'm so desperate. I'm going to do this. So I wake up every morning, like early. My kids were little.

[00:19:28] I think it was like five 30 and I would wake up and I go downstairs and it would be dark and I'd light a candle and I'd read a little passage from a book or some, a few books. And when something resonated, I would just sit. And I just was like staring at this like flame of a candle. And then I closed my eyes and I'd see the flame. And all of a sudden I saw this like being like in my mind's eye walk out like to me and go like this and just give me like this, like beautiful, loving, warm, amber light.

[00:19:58] And it just filled my heart. Like I could feel it, like filling this void. And that was like the beginning of my, and I was crying, like a lot of crying. That was the beginning of my real, my self-worth journey. Because I finally felt that this thing loved me unconditionally, which is something I never felt in my life. That this thing loved me and cared for me no matter what. And since I am one with that thing, I give that to myself as well.

[00:20:28] I had this understanding that yes, there's this thing that is seemingly outside of me giving that to me. But really that's, it's me. It's the spirit in me. We talk, religion really doesn't do a great job of really helping us to feel that power. I mean, they talk about it in scripture here and there in terms of we are the hands and feet. God is within all that kind of stuff, but they don't really hammer it home. They're not really looking for the, for us to believe that we're like little gods walking around.

[00:20:58] And my therapist back in 2009, she introduced the concept. So all this stuff had been like ruminating, right? So she planted seeds in me that then kind of blossomed seven years, six years later. But in 2009, she said, big G, little G. She said, there's big G up there. And I look at big G as the director of the show. And then I'm little G and big G and little G are also co-producers. Oh, wow.

[00:21:24] It's not this thing that's just totally in charge of my life and making things happen. I actually don't think God makes things happen. I don't, I believe our souls choose a lot of that. And a lot of it is man's will, but I believe my high power. God just gives me the courage to walk me through life's difficulties that I believe my soul chose. But anyway, having that connection and that partnership with this thing greater than me gives me the power inside to love myself just as that thing loves me.

[00:21:53] You have to experience it. It's very difficult to explain just cognitively. But if you sit long enough day after day after day in meditation, or you go out in nature and you really connect and you tap into this universal spirit, spirit, this great love, you're going to just start feeling it within. Sort of like a little flame, like a little pilot light.

[00:22:22] I always say we have this pilot light inside and sometimes it's just a little pilot light and sometimes you blow on it and it's this big, beautiful flame. That pilot light is going to burst open into this flame where you're going, it's going to be undeniable that you are not just a child of God, but that you belong in this universe, that you have a part to play, that you're here for a reason. Right. And it's also finding purpose.

[00:22:46] Finding a purpose is really, really for me was key to this self-worth, self-love. So I had all this learning and all this experience for three years before I started writing my book. But one day I just was inspired to just write this book. It wasn't like, hey, I'm just going to sit down and write a book. It was, you need to write a book. It was like, I heard something greater than me. Tell me that. From that, I had no idea whatever else was going to come from that, but now I'm going to become a certified grief coach. I do workshops. I do my podcasts. I speak.

[00:23:16] Like I do all this stuff to give a message of healing and of hope. So that grounds me and makes me feel like I am worthy because I have a role to play in this world that is meaningful, that is not just helpful, but it's healing. And yeah, there's a lot of people out there doing what I do. But there are some people that are only going to be able to hear the message, the same message from me. Right. Right?

[00:23:45] Like I heard for so long, you have a drinking problem. You have a drinking problem. And then one day somebody said it to me and I heard her. Then two weeks later, I had the divine intervention. Wow. So yeah, it was a wild experience that whole, there's a bunch of series of events that led up over the course of two months. So I know that I have a purpose. I have two daughters. I could tell them until I'm blue in the face how much they're loved, how worthy they are.

[00:24:10] But if I'm not embodying that, if I'm not emulating or expressing that, emanating, if I'm not emanating that from deep within that it's true, they're not going to believe it about themselves. So I have a job and I have a duty to get to this place, not just for me, but for others.

[00:24:31] And my main purpose with everything that I'm doing is I believe that healing ourselves and our own wounds and our pain, healing our energy will help heal the collective. So it's not just for me. It's for the good of the world. So I don't know if that answered your questions. Sorry, I'm a little long winded sometimes. Oh, no, I loved it. I can relate to it. It was very pretty.

[00:24:58] I'm just wondering, like, when you're talking about having a purpose, do you feel like you came to earth with this purpose? Or do you feel like you found this purpose? I'm just curious. So nobody's ever asked me that. This is just. Off the bat, I could say. Without meditating and asking my higher power, my higher self, what the truth is. What I think off the bat is I came to learn a lesson. And my lesson is to love no matter what.

[00:25:28] No matter what fear. It's really fear of loss. My whole deal is I have this, and it's probably from past lives or whatever. But I have this immense fear of loss. So that, I think, just naturally shifted into this purpose. I think that my purpose could probably be played out in many different ways. Right. Maybe I could be a professor. Maybe I could just be a writer. But I don't know.

[00:25:55] I don't know if I chose that actual way of delivering it. But I know that my purpose was to heal. That I do believe one of my life lessons was to heal this immense fear of loss with unconditional self-worth and self-love. And then what that means is no matter who stays, no matter who leaves, no matter who dies, I will not self-abandon. I will always have myself. And I'm not like, rah, rah, look at me.

[00:26:25] I'm this Miss Independent. I am independent. It's great to be independent. But it's not I'm so self-sufficient to the point where I don't need anybody. That's not the truth. Right. But those other people now compliment me. They don't validate. They don't validate my worth. I give that to myself and then they compliment and we can enjoy life together because we're not looking to get these needs filled. I'm not like in partnership with you because I'm looking to get all these needs filled.

[00:26:54] And then I'm mad when you don't fill them. Right. Right. I can be in a healthy partnership because I'm giving those needs to myself. And that happens. That happened from healing this fear, this fear of loss. And then that just naturally rolled into my purpose. You discovered that after your brother's death, I'm assuming. Yes. That is how you interpreted it. Yes.

[00:27:16] So I was wondering, I know at one point you've talked about and some of the things I've read that your marriage got rocky after your brother's death as well. So would you want to talk to us a little bit about that? Sure. So it wasn't just my brother's death that my brother's death was the catalyst. Okay.

[00:27:34] It had been brewing for a very long time, probably starting with childhood trauma, sexual traumas, stuff, my parents' divorce, just different things that compounded this like you're not safe kind of feeling. And nobody's to be trusted and all that. So I had my first major loss outside of the typical things, right? Like my grandparents died when I was a teenager. And that was, I was really upset about that. But I had a boyfriend when I was eight months sober. He was also eight months sober who died.

[00:28:04] He didn't wake up on Easter Sunday. He had diabetes and I was told he died in a diabetic coma. But then somebody was like, no, I think he relapsed. And then it probably set off the diabetic coma. Anyway, didn't really deal with that. I didn't really, I talked to my sponsor about it. I wasn't in therapy. I just kind of grieved for a while. I mean, it hit me hard. It hit me hard at the onset, like in the first month or so. And then five months later, I met who was the man who was now my husband.

[00:28:33] And I just didn't want to feel the pain anymore. So I just kind of like kept going with my life. Kept sponsoring women and blah, blah, blah. Then we moved to Colorado. So we had a baby. We had two babies. Moved to Colorado in 2015. So now this is eight years later. And like I said, I had a very difficult time transitioning to Colorado. I had this breakdown. I had a loss of identity, right? More grief. I had no idea who I was. I really, I couldn't even tell you.

[00:29:00] Like I just, I had, my identity was so built around being a New Yorker. My friends, my family, the stores I shopped in. Like it was just this familiarity that just made me who I was. And when I got to Colorado, it was very evident that my identity was based upon external factors. And that I didn't have a true knowing or love or belief in my own self.

[00:29:28] So that is when all the meditation, when I described before, that pain led me to all that meditation. So about a month after we moved here, my aunt died. And then within three years, I don't know the exact order, but within three years, we had five significant family members die. My two aunts, my mom's cousin, my first cousin, who I was very close with. And then my brother four months after her. So when my brother died, that was just like, it just blew the lid off. And I could not contain and hold down this grief anymore.

[00:29:58] I didn't know I was doing. I really didn't. I really thought like I was, I cried a little and I was all right. Like I just convinced myself. But with all the pain and the trauma and the grief, I needed a lot more work. So my brother dies in March of 2018. And about, again, five months later, it's interesting, this five month mark of one, like that Mike died. And then I met my husband, Jeremy dies. And I tell my husband, I don't love you.

[00:30:26] I had this experience where I just felt like I'm not connected to you. Like I had this like awareness that there, it felt like there was this like invisible veil. And like, I couldn't reach him. I was so, at that point, I was so in tune with spirit and with my own soul and my brothers. It was this very, like very interesting. I kind of call it the netherworld. I kind of wasn't here. I obviously wasn't there.

[00:30:56] I was kind of in this weird space. And I needed this connection with my husband that I was aware that I just couldn't get. Now he has PTSD, which is very well under wraps now. He's done his work as a result of all of this. And he's like a new person. But I had massive anxiety when I met him. I was a year sober and he had PTSD. We were like this perfect match at that point because neither of us were going to challenge each other to get vulnerable and to go into this space of emotional intimacy.

[00:31:25] We both were safe, kind of in our own corners, but together. And now I'm 12 years sober. And I'm like, I need that. Like, I'm not going to settle. Like, I need this emotional intimacy with my husband. Like, it's not okay. It's just not. I just knew it wasn't okay. So I said to him, you know what? I said, I actually don't think I love you. I don't think I ever loved you. And I think I just made a very good decision. And he said, and I was convinced.

[00:31:52] And he said, well, your brother just died five months ago. He goes, do you think your grief might be playing a part? And I was, like I said, 12 years sober. And I was like, you know what? Probably. I really don't think so, but I'm willing to investigate. I said, I'm willing. We have two girls. We have two daughters. I'm like, I owe it to them. Right. So I'm in therapy. I'm already in therapy, like I told you. And then he comes along with me and she helped me to unravel this whole story of this generational

[00:32:20] dysfunction we're talking about, what I call the great myth, which is everybody leaves, everybody hurts you, protect your heart. I was literally told it's always better to love a little less in relationships. Oh, wow. So that when they leave or they hurt me, I won't be as devastated, which is just doesn't make any sense because you cannot control how you're going to feel when loss comes. Right. You could try, try to plan and prepare, but it just happens.

[00:32:47] You just have these feelings that come up that you can't control or prepare for. So my therapist was awesome. And she really was able to show me this story through talking about my relationship with my mother, with my father, but all stems from childhood. Right. Well, it was that always, always, always. Yeah. So we talked about that and she real, and she helped me to see that I'd been carrying that

[00:33:10] limited belief system really about love and loss because of my fear of loss that I just wasn't ever able to. I call it, so she taught me something called the good griever concept. And the good griever concept is being able to, I just wrote an article about this yesterday, which is why it's on my mind, taking things in. And I can take it in, I could take in people, places, jobs, situations, events, holidays,

[00:33:40] whatever joy, whatever goodness I can receive lovingly with an open heart. And I can be connected to that thing, knowing that nothing is forever. It's almost like I've made an agreement with myself that an understanding or an acceptance that everything is going to end, but I'm not going to hold myself back because of that. Because I can take it in, I can embrace, and then I can release with peace and ease and know that it's just, I trust the process.

[00:34:10] I trust that whatever comes into my life at whatever time is supposed to be there and whatever's supposed to go is supposed to go. And I can't hold on to anything too tightly because it's just not fair because that's their soul path. Even when people pass away, right? These big traumatic losses. Right. I can't say my brother's supposed to be here. I really can't. A lot of people say that, oh, he's not supposed to die. He's not supposed to be like this. I don't know. I tend to lean towards the side of that's his soul path.

[00:34:39] And I'm not privy to the why. I just have to trust. Right. We say everything happens for a reason. People don't like that. And I don't usually ever say that to anybody in acute grief. And early on, nobody ever wants to hear that. Right. But when you get a little bit of time outside of that, you kind of realize that, yeah, like it does. It does. And I might not know exactly why, but I have to trust that my brother is doing great work from the other side. He's doing everything I'm doing. It's his doing.

[00:35:08] He's doing all of this through me. And I believe I'm doing the work of the heavens and God's work and his work. And I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I could do it still with him here, but I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure I would have been put to the levels of pain and the depths of despair to seek this massive healing that has now inspired me to pass on. So that was what she showed me, what my therapist showed me. You're safe. You're good. So it all comes down to emotional security.

[00:35:38] It all comes down to this. I am good just here, just within me, just within my own aura, within my own self. I am okay. I know how to get help. I know what professionals to turn to. I have good friends. I have support. And if all of that was gone and I had no access to that, I have my belief in something greater than me.

[00:36:01] And that provides me with a comfort and a security and a support and this love and a belief in something greater. And that fills me up that I don't need all, like I said, I don't need all those other people. So my husband, I left this out. My husband's 12 years older than me. He's an 11 first responder. He's chronically ill. He has respiratory illness. So when Jeremy died, and this is how it's going to all make sense now.

[00:36:28] When Jeremy died, my brain unconsciously said, you're never going to feel this pain again, Amanda. You're never going to be laying in bed for three months, crying, unable to take care of your kids. Thank God my husband stepped up and did everything for three months. Your survival and your children's survival is never going to be threatened again like that. So you're going to just eliminate all the other threats to your survival. That's what it came down to because there's something called emotional abandonment. Well, I'll get into that in a second.

[00:36:58] The threat I removed was my husband. Right. Unconscious. By detaching from him. He's next. He's next. So I'm just going to, yeah, I'm going to detach. I'm just going to pull away. I'm just going to kind of grieve him now. This is what grief does. And when we say that grief is like its own animal and it can make you feel crazy, it's true. So I pushed him away and I said, I'm just going to grieve him now. And we're just going to be, I mean, I don't know what I thought was going to come after that.

[00:37:26] I don't know what I thought I was just going to be like skipping through the meadows. I'm free. I'm good. Everything's great. So anyway, that was the reason why I, my brain convinced me that I didn't love him, that I never loved him. And the truth is, I do have to say, I didn't know how to love. I loved him when we got married. I loved him to the best of my ability based on what I thought love was.

[00:37:50] I didn't know about this pure vulnerable connection where I can let him see me in every single state of my being and know that, well, he's great. So I know not everybody's husbands are like this, but he's great. He's so supportive. He's amazing. But I can trust him because I trust myself. Right. So I can share with him because I'm not necessarily even looking for him to, like I said, give me the pat on the back or whatever.

[00:38:18] He does make me feel better about things, but I can go into that vulnerable place with him again. Cause like I said, cause I have myself. So yeah, it was put. So what it comes down to really though is when Jeremy died and what it did is it kicked up this emotional abandonment. I don't know if you've heard that phrase, emotional abandonment. I've heard of it. Yes. So I learned about that in ACA. I learned about it with my therapist and the whole, all my healing was so blessed that time because all these things came together so perfectly.

[00:38:46] The books I was reading, the people I was talking to, I got all this great information and a lot of it was centering around this phrase, emotional abandonment. So I really investigated that. And what that is, is as a child, some very natural things happen. And some not so natural things happen. So there's a spectrum of this abandonment. It sounds a bit, word abandonment sounds really harsh, but it could just be as simple as dropping your child off at preschool or making them cry it out in their crib.

[00:39:16] A baby or a child is going to, where's my mom? Where's my dad? Where are they? Where are they? It's going to just make, give this feeling of abandonment. The word that we can apply to it is that word. And then there's much more severe ones where you're invalidated. You feel unworthy. You feel like you're a nuisance. You feel like you are just in the way and that everything that your parents are doing for you is just a pain, right? Or just invalidated all of that.

[00:39:43] And I had a bit of the second part and my parents weren't abusive. They weren't bad. Again, I think parenting is just a lot different than it was. We were never asked, how do you feel about that? Amanda? Share with me, share your thoughts with me. That wasn't a thing. Right. And as humans, we need that. So again, no blame, just generational stuff. But when Jeremy died, it kicked all of that up because as a child, when you're feeling that it feels like a physical death. And that's why I used the word survival before that my survival was threatened.

[00:40:10] Because when you go through that as a child, it actually feels like a physical death to you. It's terrible. So when Jeremy died, it kicked all of that up. Like all the grief, all the pain, all the deaths that I hadn't grieved all came up. And that's what happens. When you have a major loss in your life, it's going to bring up the other ones. And it opened me up to this awareness that I experienced this emotional abandonment on some level.

[00:40:36] And then Jeremy's death put it like on steroids and made me feel like I was unconsciously, I felt like it was a physical death. And then I pushed my husband away because I never wanted to feel that again. So it was self-preservation. I did it for self-preservation unknowingly, completely unconsciously. I mean, I would leave my therapy sessions, Michelle. Whoa. Like I would tell her all the time, you're so good. Like, how do you know this stuff? Like, how do you see into like my soul?

[00:41:05] Because I'm not unique. That's why. I'm not unique. And there are many, many people out there who are suffering from the same things that I still can suffer from here and there. There's no, I'm never fully there. I say there's no summit of personal development or spiritual development or whatever. It's a constant work in progress. But I've made really great strides to the point where now if those default feelings or emotions

[00:41:35] pop up and I'm feeling unsafe or insecure, I go much more quickly now to a solution. I can say, I can go to, okay, I have these tools. I can pull out these tools. I can say some prayers. I can put things in perspective. I could say, okay, that's just fear. Where is that fear coming from? Is it real? Is it irrational? I honor it. Self-compassion is also another great tool for creating this, finding this unconditional

[00:42:04] self-worth and self-love. Loving all of you, loving all of your parts. There's internal family systems. You probably know about that. It's the whole parts work. It's a therapy and parts work. So it's none of me is bad. Even the stuff that I might label as bad and the things that I've done, none of that is bad. The majority of my bad behavior comes from survival traits from that emotional abandonment that I had to do in order for me to feel like I could survive.

[00:42:32] They're just now I'm an adult and now they're playing out in ways that are hurting myself and hurting other people. So saying, okay, I don't want to live with that, but I'm going to have compassion for myself and I'm going to find a way to really integrate those things and say, how can I use that now as a way to serve me and others? That's awesome. That's awesome. So do you feel like self-trust is another tool that you've learned over this journey? A hundred percent.

[00:43:00] So self-trust comes very closely to that self. I will not self-abandon because I trust myself to show up for myself. Like I have my own back kind of thing. I know that I trust myself to show up for myself when the next major event happens because I'll be 44 next month. Life is going to happen more. I hope not very terrible things, but they're going to die.

[00:43:29] My parents are going to pass away. Things are just life is just going to happen and I'm going to find myself in another painful period. And I know that I will go through a certain amount of devastation or grieving pain. I've had, like I said, three emotional breakdowns. I'll probably have a couple more before I die. Track record kind of tells me that that's my MO, but I know I will get up. I know I trust myself enough really by looking at past experiences.

[00:43:59] If you're learning, wanting to trust yourself, look at your past experiences, use that as a frame of reference to say, I, there was no way I thought I was going to get through that, but I got through that. And most likely you're not just stronger, you're wiser. You now have a story to tell, to help somebody else, right? All these curses or things that we see as these terrible, terrible events can actually turn out to be blessings in disguise where we can say, okay, I got through that. And what did I learn? How did I change?

[00:44:29] Where did that lead me? Where did that one experience lead me? And then say, okay, so now I know I did that. Now going forward, I know I'm always going to be okay. One, like I said, okay, doesn't mean I'm going to, everything's going to be great. I'm going to hit the floor, but I'm going to get up. Right. That's a good way to look at it. I mean, cause we know, like you said, we know things are going to happen. We can't stop life from happening. And there's unfortunately bad things that happen all the time. I did want to touch on connection with you.

[00:44:59] Cause I heard you say a little while ago that even if all these people that you kind of depend on disappeared, you could still depend on yourself. But how important do you think connection is? And is it the connection to self? That's the bigger importance? Or do you feel like we need that connection to other people? Oh, definitely. Right. And it starts with self. Okay. So the blurb of my book in the back of my book, it says inseparable connection to self, others, and the universe.

[00:45:28] And it's in that order for a reason. Because it has to start with self, right? You can't give away something you don't have. You can't fully connect with somebody truly purely unless you're connected with yourself. You can't that whole, you can't love anybody unless you love yourself. So true. So true. You might show love. You might buy the gift. You might send the card. You might sit next to somebody and hold their hand. That's lovely. And that's beautiful. But are you connected in your heart?

[00:45:57] Is it coming from a heart-centered soul-to-soul connection? That can't happen unless you have that with yourself. And then I believe God and spirit comes through other people all the time. So then that's where my connection to the universe comes. But that connection to the universe, or I say universe, but also like God's spirit, I guess that part actually did come first. But then it's through. It's kind of all connected. Right. It's kind of self, others, universe.

[00:46:26] But then really God is first always. Because if I'm not connected to that, I can't feel a connection to myself. Because like I said, we're one. It's one. It's all one. So if I'm cutting that off, then I'm cutting it off. I'm cutting the connection to myself off. That brought up a question for me because I was just wondering. I mean, I've been on a self-love journey on my own. But I've always felt like I absolutely love my kids. I would die for my kids, right? I would.

[00:46:56] I love my husband. I love my dog. But I always struggled with myself. And so when you were just saying that, if you can't love yourself or don't love yourself, you can't love others. Is it that we just, because we were never taught about self-love, we're not recognizing it? Or, yeah, I just wonder if it's, because I had somebody tell me the other day, you know, I struggle with health issues and I'm always trying different things. My family thinks I'm crazy.

[00:47:23] And like changing the diet or changing this or doing that, trying to help health problems. And she said, if you didn't love yourself, you wouldn't be doing these things. You wouldn't be trying to take care of yourself. And that was kind of eye-opening for me. And I do feel like I love myself now, but I mean, there was a time where I didn't, but I still loved other people. And I felt this deep connection to other people. So I was just curious as you were saying that. Yes, I love that. That has to be it.

[00:47:52] And that just sparked a memory for me when I came into the rooms of recovery. I mean, I would say I had no self-worth. Like I said before, I had no self-respect. I must have had a shred. I must have had a little bit to make me get help, right? There was something inside me that wanted to live and that wanted to better myself and to get healthy and to just live like everybody else lives and have a good life. And so I, yeah.

[00:48:20] So I think, yes, that whoever you spoke to is a hundred percent on onto it. You wouldn't be doing those things if there wasn't. So I think it's a matter of not recognizing it. Right. It's in us, right? Like we're born these like perfect little lights, right? We're like these little babies. You look at this baby and it's just like this beautiful, pure thing. And then life just has its way with us. So I think it's always there. Like it's there, like that pilot light.

[00:48:44] It's just life piles on top of it and kind of blocks out that light. Right. And then we just maybe convince ourselves that we don't love ourselves because we've made these choices or we've done this to ourselves or all of that, but really it's always inside you. So it's a re-remembering, right? We're never really finding ourselves or finding our self-love.

[00:49:08] We are remembering who, what our soul and our spirit always has been, what it was in past lives, but it was really in the afterlife when we're just like these pure, like abundant love and joy. And then we come back to the earth. I believe like that. And then life has its way or our soul lessons or whatever it is gets in the way. And I call it in my book, we reach a crescendo of lament. So we reached this point where it's just unbearable.

[00:49:37] It's just unbearable. Something happens. Some major life event happens. They call it the dark night of the soul. And you're in this crescendo of lament where you just can't do it anymore. And you get desperate enough. We have to be desperate enough. We have to be in enough pain. The program, we say pain is a great motivator. You have to be in enough pain to say, all right, I'm done. Throw up my hands. I can't do it anymore. Something else or somebody, something helped me, right? And you call that for help. Like we all reach that moment.

[00:50:06] And then most of us, and then we have midlife crisis. That's pretty much what I believe a midlife crisis is. And then we have that choice to work our way back to what we always were, but just got kind of clouded because of pain and not knowing how to process that pain. Right. And I think we're also taught by society more or less to be so busy that you don't have time to, you don't take the time to focus on yourself because you are doing the kids

[00:50:35] and the sports and the work and the church and whatever you've got going on. You're doing all these different things and you never take time to, like you said, just sit and ponder a question about yourself or meditate, whatever you want to call it. We don't take that time. And so we start feeling disconnected from ourselves even just because it's so chaotic. Yeah. And that chaos and that distraction and that busyness, again, is all very purposeful. I agree. It's to keep us out of having that time to do it.

[00:51:04] But if we don't have that time, then we can never tap into this power that is out there and within. And then we're not a threat, like I said earlier. So, and then, but then we're so conditioned to this running and this getting and these dopamine hits and feeling valuable because I checked off 19 things on my list today. Right. Like I get, I am so guilty of it. I am like, I put everything in my phone so that I could like delete event, delete event. And yes, I did.

[00:51:33] I put my head on the pillow knowing that I got it all done. Like that somehow we've been taught that that is where our value and our worth comes from, but it has, it comes really comes from within. So yeah, it's about the slowing down. I mean, I'm just so grateful. I mean, it's a painful time to be alive, but it's a really exciting time to be alive because all this stuff like that we're talking about, like people are hearing and there's, they're, they're meditating. I mean, there are apps, there's programs. I mean, there's just so much available and people are doing it.

[00:52:03] People are saying, you know what? Right. There's something, there's a pull inside of them. There's something calling to them saying, no. And I believe it all has to do with this spiritual ascension, moving into the new earth and 5d. And that's a whole other conversation, but we're all being called to this next level of existence that happens through this unconditional self-worth and self-love, this trust, self-trust, this self-compassion, finding your resilience, finding who you truly are, that you are strong,

[00:52:32] that you have that power. But we can't do that. Like you said, when we're running around all the time, being so busy, I'm so important. I'm so busy. Thank you. Exactly. Right. I think that's part of the unworthiness though. If you're busy, then it gives you this false sense of importance. This couldn't happen if I wasn't out there doing it or whatever. And it's not true. Someone else would do it. It's just what we tell ourselves. So exactly, exactly.

[00:52:59] And that also lends to, I'm sorry, your codependence, codependent relationships, unhealthy relationships. If I can fix you, change you, or take care of you in some way, then that makes me feel good. We think we're doing it for the other people. Very true. That's huge. Thanks for the reminder because I can get a little squirrely when I'm not busy. I have to remember that. And just because I talk the way that I talk doesn't mean that I have any of this all figured out. I'm learning and growing and healing. Like I said, constant progress, not perfection.

[00:53:27] And that's the way I want it to be. I'm actually afraid to reach this. Crescendo. Exactly. Then what? I'd be really bored. I'm a Gemini. I get bored really easily. I'd be really bored if I had it all figured out. Well, it sounds like you're well on your way for sure. And I love our conversation, but I want to be cognizant of the time. And I want you to tell us a little bit about your book, if you would. Sure. So I've written one book. I'm actually going to start writing one, probably another one next year.

[00:53:55] But so it's called Trust Yourself to Be All In, Safe to Love and Let Go. And again, like I said, that was just, it was, I don't know. I was just, it was like a divine inspiration. I was just running one day and I just had gone through this three years of healing. So the book is pretty much the story that I told you about my marriage, about my brother dying and this journey to this, this unconditional self-worth and self-love that I said before, I don't always, not in that a hundred percent of the time, but it's unconditional meaning it's always inside. Just like that self-love, like we said, it's that pilot light. It's always there.

[00:54:24] It's the experiences of being out in nature. I had this beautiful experience during COVID with this flower, the rose, the song, the rose by Bette Midler is a big, was a big inspiration for it. I was sitting at my kitchen table during COVID and I had had a year and a half already of this therapy under my belt and the song came on. I was coloring with my daughter and the song came on and the lyrics just shot through my heart. I just was like, oh my God, that's what I've been doing. My therapist was trying to show me, but right. You just not ready until you're ready. You just don't know what you don't know until you know it.

[00:54:54] And I was ready and I heard the song. And I was like, oh my God, I've been holding myself back because I'm in fear, right. Of loss of feeling love because I'm going to lose it and all this, right. Stuff that we hold ourselves back from. And so this book is pretty much that the story of how I healed myself basically through healing my marriage. And it, but it was really the partnership was the vehicle.

[00:55:21] It wasn't, the book is not about saving marriages at all. I want to get that out front right now. The book is about healing your own self, your emotional abandonment wounds, your trauma so that you don't bring the same pain and issues into the next relationship. Not every marriage is supposed to stay together. I totally believe that. So it's about, it's, it's a pathway. It's a guidepost. Basically people have called it conversational. You're just, we're like having coffee together. It's not a traditional self-help book. It's been called self-help.

[00:55:51] It's memoir, personal development, mind, body, spirit, little self-help. It's kind of straddles a bunch of genres, but it's not like questions and bullet points and stuff like that. You will question your own behaviors, your own thought process, your own history by reading my story. That's the point of a memoir. It wasn't always a memoir. It was more me kind of just telling you like the lessons, teaching you lessons.

[00:56:16] And my editor was like, no, like your story is the most powerful tool you have. So let's hear it, Amanda. So I go into some pretty tough stuff, but then it's kind of balanced with levity. So it's like deep and then it gets a little funny. And then it's not just about like you and your relationships and your family. It's about, I then in the middle of the book, I take it out into the world, like how we're

[00:56:41] acting out when somebody cuts us off in traffic, how we have to uphold ourselves to these principles to such a high level that we're being called to do that, like to forgive people, to understand. I have a phrase called compassion, forgiveness. So forgiving people based on the idea that they did the best that they could based on their own unhealed life experiences. So the basis of it, again, is healing your own unhealed energy and pain will help heal the collective.

[00:57:11] So I try to then show you how you could bring that out in the world and practice that. Awesome. Awesome. So yeah, you can get on Amazon, you can get it on my website, amandamccoyflanagan.com. It's won a few awards. It was an Amazon bestseller. Congratulations. Thank you. So if you're, it's not for everyone, then it's not supposed to be. If you're ready to kind of do a deep dive and like you're feeling this stuff and you're not really sure how to navigate it, my book might be able to help you. That's pretty wonderful.

[00:57:41] I was wondering if you would tell us about your podcast as well. And I'll have you on it too. It's called Soul Rising, all in on love, loss and connection. So my book is Trust Yourself to be All In. So it's that whole all in concept is kind of what I take throughout my work. And it's all in with you. It's all in with feeling safe in your own emotions. That's like pretty much with my work. So then you can feel safe in relationships and out in the world. So Soul Rising, I have a co-host, my friend Jeannie. She's amazing. She's on the show once a month with me.

[00:58:10] And then I have a guest. So it's every two weeks. And we talk about all things, all emotions, how human emotion serves to connect us or disconnect us from ourselves and then others. And that came about because COVID, I mean, my book came after COVID. It was just this severe division that was so disturbing to me because I believe that we can make all the laws we want in the world. We could stop using plastic. We could stop every, we could do any, we could do anything we want that we think is going to make the world better.

[00:58:38] But if we're at odds with each other, that energy is going to take us down. That's what's taking us down. Right. Our division. So that show, my book, all of it is an attempt to kind of bridge us back to each other through bridging us to ourselves first. So we talk about fear. We talk about judgment. We talk about boundaries. We talk about self-care, self-love. I mean, we talk about all of it and then we bring it back to what that means in terms of how you can connect with yourself and then others. That's a beautiful mission, really.

[00:59:08] I love it. Thank you. So is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you want to make sure the listeners hear? No. We've covered the game. We've covered a lot. I talked a lot. I'm sorry. No, I thought it was awesome. I've enjoyed it. Thank you. No, just you are resilient. You have that. That's in your human spirit. That's all I want to leave you guys with is that no matter how bad you think things are,

[00:59:36] it's all for a reason. Turn your pain into purpose. Okay. And my friend says all the time, don't waste the pain. Don't waste your pain. The pain's going to be there either way. Right. You may as well do something with it. You may as well do it too. I'm not saying you got to be writing books and having a podcast. I'm not saying you have to do any of that. Just take yourself out in the world. Carry yourself in a loving, compassionate way because now you can understand the pain that other people are in. That is just right. I think that's the reason why we go through these painful experiences so that we can

[01:00:07] be empathetic and see other people's pain because we know it and we can be a little bit kinder. So yeah, I think that's it. Well, I thank you. You have a lot of wisdom and a lot of experiences and I appreciate you sharing them with us so much. It's been awesome. Thank you, Michelle. So happy to be here. Thank you. Bye-bye. As we wrap up today's episode, I hope Amanda sharing her knowledge, experience, and wisdom has helped you in some way.

[01:00:34] I think one of the most important things Amanda showed us is that we have the responsibility to figure out this self-love, self-worth thing, not just for ourselves, but more importantly for our children and for the world itself, as she pointed out. I feel this is the cause of so much sadness, despair, anger even possibly, and it's correlated with addiction and so many bad things. It is something that we most likely have never been taught, but we definitely need to figure it out.

[01:01:03] And I think one of the cool things is how she and I sort of stumbled on the idea that maybe we don't have to learn self-love or teach ourselves self-love as much as we just have to start recognizing when we're doing it, become aware. For those of us that believe in God, you know, we're told that we are worthy and that we're loved by the most divine being ever. So I'm sure that God himself instilled self-love within us.

[01:01:29] And it's just something that we have to be aware of and catch ourselves doing it. Lastly, I think she hit on a big thing when she talked about the emotional abandonment and how it can be something seemingly innocent, possibly in our childhood, that stays with us forever. And that is something that we need to ultimately deal with. And even more importantly, we need to make a promise not to emotionally abandon ourselves too. So I hope you enjoyed today's show. I would love to hear from you.

[01:01:58] As always, I hope this episode helps at least one person. And with that, I hope you have a blessed week, my friend. Thank you for listening to The Beauty and the Mess. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share it with a friend. And if you haven't already, please subscribe, rate and review this podcast on your favorite pod player. If you have any questions or comments, any topic ideas you would like to hear about, or

[01:02:23] you think you would be a great guest on the show, you can reach me directly at thebeautyandthemess.com. Thanks for listening.