My Transformation Story

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

It's come to my attention that a lot of people are curious about my transformation story. So I decided to hop back on the podcast, use this platform as a space to tell my story for those of you that are interested. My transformation, the one that people can see or talk about, it started about two years ago. And I was driving home from a doctor's appointment, particularly very upset because my doctor wanted to put me on high blood pressure medication. And this was following a doctor's appointment that I had had a few months earlier. And that doctor's appointment is when she told me that I had gained 20 pounds in a year. And she thought that maybe because I had gone through a divorce in the last couple years, that I was had some depression and I was using food as a way to cope with depression or anxiety. So I was already on the well butron to try to lose weight. And then at this next doctor's appointment, she was like, Okay, now let's address like you haven't lost weight, but I also can't let you walk around with high blood pressure. So and she was like, which one do you want? And I don't know anything about high blood pressure medication, so just told her, give me whatever, whatever she wanted. So I was driving home from that appointment, and I was just thinking, like, this isn't me, this isn't who I want to be, this isn't what I thought my life would look like. And it was that drive was the beginning of my transformation. I thought that after my divorce, which happened um, let me see, like four and a half years ago was when it all kind of went down. Um, I thought that was my transformation point. I thought that okay, I did this hard thing, and now I'm good. I kind of thought that was it, right? So I was unhappy in my marriage. I was able to somehow pick myself up and get out of that marriage, which was a big deal. It took a lot, and there was a lot of days that I felt like dying or that I was dying physically, and I made it through. So flash forward to this point, two years later, when I had gained the weight and had high blood pressure, it was because I didn't do the actual work. I was doing the work, but I hadn't, I was still actively in that healing process. And driving home, I knew I had to make a change. I knew that I did not want to be unhealthy, I didn't want to be on medication, and so I never picked up the medication, and I picked up my dog instead, and we went out to Devil's Lake and went for a walk. And I started doing that every day. And I think I lost five or ten pounds during that the first couple months because if you know Baraboo and you know Devil's Lake, it's not just a flat ground, it's it's up a bluff, up and down a bluff, and it's a solid workout. And after that, after I started doing that, I really wanted to change my diet, and at this point I was still drinking quite heavily, so we'll get to that in a minute. But I went, um, I did a sugar cleanse and or a 10-day sugar detox. I kind of got into functional medicine. I was listening to a lot of Dr. Hyman, who talks a lot about sugar toxicity, and so I ended up doing that for I believe 16 days. And so I did it a little bit longer than I needed to, but I felt great. I followed it exactly how it was supposed to be. And I think I lost another 10 pounds, something like that. So I'm down 20 pounds in the first few months, and I still I'm starting to feel better about myself, and that was that was part of the missing piece that I didn't have before. I didn't feel good about leaving my marriage. I didn't feel good about starting over, none of it felt good to me. Like I it was the last thing that I wanted, and I felt a deep amount of shame and a deep amount of disconnection from a community that I thought loved me. So doing the hiking, doing the detox was starting to put me first again, or maybe for the first time putting me first. After that, I kind of mused around with um what do you call it, OMAD? So um, that's eating one meal a day and then fasting the rest of the time. I just couldn't get into fasting, and I found that it actually made me gain weight, and I have a reason for this, and I think it's because growing up, how we did in the 80s and 90s, we put our bodies through hell and to try to be skinny, and I did that, of course. And I think my body not eating, even though there is a lot of scientific proof that fasting is really good for your cells and uh your skin, all this stuff. My body kind of felt like I was depriving it, starving it again. Um, so that didn't work. After that, so I think now we're in September. So this is about six months in after the doctor's appointment. I decided to try a protein diet, so basically carnivore diet, where um, and I know like it's a bad name, but it's it's a high-fat, high protein diet. And I felt amazing after a week of doing that, cutting out um a lot of the vegetables, cutting out salads, but you know, it's not the it's not the vegetables and it's not the salads that necessarily were messing me up. It's all the the oil that's in them, the sugar, the chemicals. I going carnivore when you're just eating basically butter and meat, you you're just eating butter and meat. So, like anything that's processed, anything that is a powder that you don't know what's in it, all of that stuff gets eliminated, and your body just starts healing. And that was amazing for me. I think that's really what changed everything was really just eliminating all the processed things that we as Americans are like it's like shoved down our throats that we need to eat this this stuff that we really don't. And after that, and then after that, um I got sober, so I I quit drinking on um December 31st, 2024 was my last drink. So now I'm about nine months into this process from the doctor's appointment, and quitting drinking was the hardest and the easiest thing I've ever done. I didn't do it to quit completely, I just did it to quit for a day because New Year's Eve, I I think I fell asleep like nine or ten, drunk, and I just was not. I'm like, this isn't my this isn't me again. Like, like who is this person that wants to be drinking? Who is this person that wants to be eating? Who is this person that wants to feel shame and sadness and and remorse and and all of this stuff? And at the time I was kind of in a shitty relationship, it was not not a healing, loving relationship, and again, I think it just went back to this feeling that this shame that I I had messed up my life, and that I'd messed up my kids' life and my stepkids' lives, and that everything was my fault, I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't good enough, and wasn't smart enough, all of these things. So it was all still there, and I think after my divorce, like just having to deal with just me and not anybody, not another person, you know. Um, I was in a relationship, yes, but if we weren't on a like a deep relationship, it was just a surface relationship. So I had to figure out how to deal with me, and quitting drinking was such a huge step for figuring out me because I didn't have a crutch anymore, and I live in Wisconsin, so I was just like, okay, I guess here I am. Um, so I quit drinking in December, and then in April I broke up with the guy. I just couldn't do it anymore, especially because I was sober and he wasn't, and it was just not a healthy, loving, kind relationship that I knew I was I was deserving of, and it was not what I wanted, and I knew I needed, and my own journey at that moment was creating a healthy, loving relationship with myself, and I couldn't do that with um another person that wasn't on that level, that didn't understand a healing process, a healing person, a partner in healing. So that ended, and I just kind of figured out that you know, dating and it just wasn't worth it. And I was just I dated a little bit, but it I wasn't my heart just wasn't in it. I just I just didn't want to do it. Um and I was it so this brings us into summer of last year of 2025, and so I'm feeling better about myself. I am sober, I am figuring out what makes me happy, and I just decided that I was gonna start swimming at night. So all last summer I went to the lake at sunset with my dog and just swam and chilled on the beach at Devil's Lake. I still did a ton of hiking, all that stuff, but I really wasn't like I wasn't focused on anything but accept what I needed to do, and I think that's a huge, huge piece that a lot of us, like I'm so grateful that I had that opportunity at the the time that I did, because so many of us don't get that opportunity to really decide okay, what what actually brings me happiness? Like, like what do I want to bring back into my life? Because everything's gone now. I'm on my own, and I it life is on my own terms. And the first thing I started doing then that summer was swimming, and I met some really cool people out at the lake, by the way. And that's just that's just life. We think we're gonna do life alone, that a healing process has to be alone. And there's people all around that make that process so much more enjoyable than it seems. So there I am last summer. So we are talking one year ago today, and I'm working out every day, I'm swimming, whatever, doing like all these things for myself, doing a ton of journaling and writing, and um I get through the summer. I get through the summer sober, and I move to a new apartment, and that's fantastic, everything is good. And then one day I was on a hike at another little spot called Peewitz Nest. This was last August, and um I see a guy pulling pushing a wheelchair at the park, and the only person I know crazy enough to push a wheelchair through a park, like Peewitz, is myself because my son is in a wheelchair, and I always made sure that he had these moments in nature, he had these moments to be a real person, persons of himself, and nature is such a healing place for me. So I I was obviously intrigued that somebody else was pushing a wheelchair out at Pewitz, and so is my dog. So my dog goes up to these people, this guy and his son and his daughter, and um yeah, we started talking, and turns out that he lives in a neighboring town, and we're the same age, and we're both not seeing anybody's really, and um that conversation led into another conversation just as parents of special needs kids, and eventually we went on a date, and that was then nine months ago, and I think that finding somebody as organically as on a hiking trail, and finding some a special needs parent that understands, even though my son is 28 now, there's something about it that's you know it it drew us together, I guess. And he doesn't drink, so we have all of these things in common, so why not just go on a date? And I think I spent the first few months of this relationship like scared out of my mind because I had never met a guy like this, and and he's an artist, and I am an artist, so I just kind of always thought to myself um that I shouldn't be with somebody that is kind of out of the box thinking because I am so out of the box thinking. So my process up until meeting him was that I would date people that were not as emotional, not as crazy, not as whatever as me. In my head, that's what I thought, anyways. Turns out that's not true. That's just everybody has shit. Anyways, so we so he's out of the box thinking, he says exactly what's on his mind, he processes things out loud, and I'm very introverted, very I have to think about things before I say them. I'm very, I am a Pisces, I'm a Pisces, Pisces, Pisces, like everything is Pisces. I so I'm completely always wrapped up in my emotions, and I feel other people's emotions, and I'm just driving around at this guy thinking this is insane. Like who am I? Who is he, and what are we doing? And um, it's that it's actually beautiful because he truly, by being himself, has helped me become myself even more. So going through that summer alone and going through the summer learning how to love myself and how to be loved by myself, right? There's like a synergic connection in all of that to then meeting somebody that can accept that part of me, and I know that's not the right word, but you know, us Midwest women, we have certain quirks about us about being accepted and all that stuff, but um yeah, like so there wasn't a there wasn't a plain small in this relationship, it's just plain no plane, like this is me. Okay, so this is me. Like this is like we are each, we are our own person, and we're insane and crazy and wild, and also comically beautiful and amazing, all the things, right? No play, and um, so that that that was amazing, right? So you meet somebody that appreciates your independence, appreciates your healing process, and just appreciates everything about you. It makes life a lot a lot nicer, and so it was nice. It was a nice nice to have some uh a man. I have friends that are amazing, of course, but like a man that didn't want me to diminish who I was, like if if anything, encourage me to dig down deeper into my crazy wild self, and and then um winter comes. So now we're talking last winter, and and I've I've had this idea in my head for a while with my business that I I don't want to work with people anymore that don't appreciate me that just hire me because I wasn't charging enough. Oh, that so sucks to say, but yeah, so um there's people that I was keeping my prices a little bit lower for because I knew they didn't appreciate me, so I I was it was like a people-pleasing thing, and I know we all do it, so I guess I'm just gonna be honest about that. And so I s I canceled a lot of stuff, I raised my rates so that everybody was paying the same amount, regardless of if they appreciated me or not, and I gave away some jobs that I knew didn't align with who I was, and I found myself in a predicament of not having any money, and this happened in um kind of started happening in February, March, April, May, and I was completely not working, and that was probably the scariest thing for me to have no income coming in and watching my savings go down to zero, cashing in my Roth, because I am a single woman and I have like when I get paid, I get paid really well. But if during that off time, which is generally For my photography in those months. In January, February, they were like kind of slow too, because I'd already started this process. And I had to face my fears of not having money. And I think that could have broke me. I mean, it made me broke. So I guess in a way it did, but somehow this power came out of me in that process of not having money and having and letting go of the clients that like no longer wanted to work with me because I did raise my prices. Because all along, we know, right? We know in our intuition and in our hearts whether things are aligned or not. But of course, I was worried, and that's why I kept these clients for as long as I did. And um yeah, so I feel like now I'm on the other side of it, and clients are coming in, so thank you very much, universe, for providing that. But I think there is a process in that, I think that was a divinely guided pause for me because I needed to love that side of myself, and what I mean by that is that through this process of exercising and moving my body, and then losing weight and staying away from crappy foods and getting sober and staying away from bad relationships. Like I was doing all of this work, and then like the photography, the business part was the last part for me to adjust, right? I needed to adjust that so that it can also be in alignment with who I am. So like there's nothing out there left that's gonna pull me out of alignment unless I let it. Is to be happy, healed individuals, and I just want that for everybody, especially the people that hurt me because they need it the most, and you know, that's that's life, and so I can say that there's gonna be opinions about me, and I can say that there's gonna be judgment against me, and there always will be, and that's okay, like everyone gets to have their opinions on every everything, but there's no more questioning my worthiness based on any external, any income, any voice, any circumstance that is gonna make me feel less than the person that I know that I am. And that's the secret, that's the change, that's what people are commenting on. It's not something that is necessarily even external, it's the internal, the energy shift of not giving my energy to things that I don't need to. And when that happens, then I guess I I don't know. I don't I don't think it'll happen. I think that now that I have this life, that it's only I'm only gonna attract more of it, and I think that's beautiful. So that is my story, and I appreciate you guys if you've stayed listening for this long, and I will hopefully get back soon.