Worthy of More

I'm sharing the real, unscripted stories behind my own healing journey — leaving a marriage, a life, and a version of myself that no longer fit, one honest conversation at a time. No script, no perfect answers, just what it actually looks like to decide I deserve more.

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https://daniellelaporte.com/

https://www.stephshanks.com

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Do you ever remember the moment that you decided that the healing journey was going to be difficult? But at the same time, you knew you wanted to try and you didn't know if you could even get there. That's what the story is about. And I remember the moment that I decided I was worthy of trying to not exist in the realm that I was existing and that I wanted more for myself. And up until that point, I think I was just living in trauma response and old programming. I had just returned from a retreat, and the retreat was a goddess retreat. So it was all about reclaiming your femininity, your divine feminine. And the funny thing is that there was, it was, it was probably 30 women, and then there was one guy. And apparently he didn't get the message about what the retreat was about. And he was just there with his wife. So all weekend long at the Christine Center, we had this opportunity to meditate, to grow, to reflect. And at the end of the retreat, we there was a crown, and we all got a chance to put the crown on. And I remember feeling so silly putting this crown on. And I have a picture of it still. And I'm gonna share it with you guys because you can just see how humiliated I was that this I think I was even a little embarrassed of going to the retreat. Like I don't even think I told anybody what the retreat was about. I just knew I needed to get away for the weekend, and that was what I did. But I remember the time spent at lunch with these really amazing women. And they were talking about different books they read and different journaling that they had done. And I I just remember feeling like I wanted to be healed. So going home, I did the typical thing that most do when they return from a retreat. They go on Amazon and buy a bunch of books. So I did that. And I'll have to look up the book because I don't remember that either. I know this is a horrible podcast that I'm not prepared out for at all. But where I wanted to take this today was that the healing journey begins with the agreement that you have with yourself that you deserve more. And it's not anything that can be healed through a spouse, a boss. Uh it's the idea that existence doesn't have to be so painful. But the reality is, now that I'm thinking about it, once you wake up, everything becomes technical, or everything does become more difficult. And the process of overcoming trauma really does start with the belief that you are worthy of more. And during this time in my life, and what I believe happened is that the books that I started to read didn't make a lot of sense to me. I think that there was just too much resistance to the process. I had made the internal agreement to heal myself, but I didn't have the terminology, the tools, the trust to process it all. So what happened was I started listening to near-death experiences on YouTube while I was doing housework. So I'll back up a little bit during this process. Um, my ex and I were opening up an Airbnb. I had time. I had time with headphones on. So, you know, everything is truly divine timing. And we had just moved back from California and still licking my wounds from that because I really thought California was gonna be home for me. But the truth was that moving away only amplified all my greatest fears. It didn't solve anything. So my fear around money amplified. My fear around abandoning my family amplified, everything amplified. And it got to the point in California where I couldn't even go to the grocery store without almost having a panic attack because it was just so overwhelming. My thoughts, everything was just overwhelming. So come back and we decide to start another business. And listening to the near-death experiences on YouTube in my headphones while painting, and there was something about it that gave me hope. And from there I started, I found um the book The Body Keeps Score by Basil van der Koek. And that became my Bible. I listened to his podcasts. I everything I could find on this man and the healing process I devoured. Because up until that point I didn't realize that healing on a deep level was possible. And he talks about the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and he talks about PTSD in veterans. And there was part of that that just gave me hope that if veterans could get healed, then I could get healed. And so I started meditating more. And I think that meditation really opened up and allowed for a guidance system to come into place for me, where up until that point I didn't understand that woo part. But then the physical reality of taking charge of who I am and learning how to deal with the stress and the trauma in the body, how to expel it. And I did what he had said. So I started kickboxing at five in the morning at a local kickboxing gym for women. And I found that hitting things was so it was amazing. And also getting hit, right? Like you stand there and you brace yourself to be hit by another person, kicked by another person. And allowing yourself to move through that process is super healing. I I did roping, I probably said that wrong. Rolfing, it's um it's a form of body care. Body, it's a it's like a type of massage, and I found that super healing. And I started dreaming that my life could be more. And I thought I had everything, which is funny now looking back because I don't really recognize that person anymore. But I just thought I had everything, and I couldn't understand why I wasn't happy. And I would beat myself up over this feeling of unhappiness because I had the gym membership at the best gym. I had the nice vehicle. We had nice vehicles in the driveway. We had a beautiful home. Money was coming in. We went on vacations, and I felt like I was dying from the inside out. There wasn't pleasure. There was monotony. There wasn't, it wasn't what I needed. It was what I needed to keep my past self safe, which was the utmost important piece when you do have a lot of underlying trauma, is creating that space to feel safe. Um, so that was really important. I had that, but I didn't know who I was, and I was in my late 30s at this point, almost 40. And I also didn't know I was going through early menopause. So that was like another aspect of my life that I was going to see doctors and nobody was taking me seriously. Um, which great, I'm grateful now that there is more information out there and it more and more comes out every day. So if you do feel like you are going crazy, make sure you go get um some some some estrogen to kind of balance you out a little bit. 10 out of 10 recommend. And also, I just felt disconnected from my life. So I craft this idea that I'm gonna try California again. That if I can escape my life that I have built, maybe just half the time, maybe I could still keep it. I was desperate to keep the life that I had because it was the only life I knew. But I also had this piece of me that was healing and opening, and wanted more than what I had created for myself. So I decide that I'm gonna spend a month in Santa Barbara. And the Santa Barbara thing came to me in a meditation. I knew um I wanted to go to California, but I didn't know where. And I didn't even know about Santa Barbara at all. It wasn't on my radar. And then after at the end of this meditation, it was just like bam, Santa Barbara. So I had my confirmation, that was where I wanted to go. And I thought that's where I was supposed to live. Like, okay, so I can live six months in Barbou, six months in Santa Barbara, life will be good, everything's happy. I don't have to leave my marriage, I don't have to leave my home. I don't like I can just like create something else, come back. Um, so my son and I set out on this journey for a month to live in Santa Barbara and load up the Forerunner, load up the dog, load up my son and his video games and everything that he needs to make him comfortable. And at this time, I was a few months not, uh I was not drinking at the time. I wouldn't call myself sober, but um, because I didn't have that terminology, but um I felt pretty clear-headed. I knew I needed to be clear-headed for this journey, so I stopped drinking for this journey and we set out and drove the long journey to Santa Barbara. And I remember going to this roadside stand before we even got to our destination and getting a bag of oranges and just sitting there eating this fresh orange and tasting the most amazing sweetness that I'd ever tasted. And I just felt so alive and so far from everything, everything that was holding me down. I felt that was way back in Wisconsin. I had just taken this three-day journey with my son and my dog, and we had hit every sort of weather because it was February, and just now we had made it. And we got to Santa Barbara, I washed my car, and and we're driving, and there's the it's just beautiful. We get to our Airbnb, everything is lovely, and I just start breathing again, and breath has always been a problem for me. Asthma seems to have always existed for me because I'm sure it's a trauma response to just like not breathe.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

And so I start breathing and I cut my hair and I uh found this meditation group pretty much right away in a neighboring town.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

So I started I I knew I needed to network to if I was gonna make this happen, I needed to network, I needed to meet people. I couldn't just stay. I had a purpose while I was out there. So um I started doing that, started doing hikes. My son was uh, I don't know how old he was, 12 at the time, maybe. And he just did not want to do anything out there other than play video games and do his online schooling. So he really just stayed in his room the whole time, which in a way gave me a lot of freedom to really feel things for the first time. And I remember feeling like I was exiting a box, like I was like I had been put I put myself into this tiny box for so long, and I felt myself finally getting out of the box. And I was so scared because even though I it felt so good to like explore who I was, a part of me just wanted to go back into that box because that was my safe point. And this meditation group sitting around, we were outside under this big tree, and I will get you the name of the woman that led this, these meditations because she's amazing. She does them online, and you can you can do them with her. Um, it felt so good. And then I found a hot springs and I would go to Montecito and just sit in like outside of this deli and just watch these famous people and all these people just come in and out, and everybody's talking, and I was just a fly on the wall, basically, and I felt so at peace just existing. And that was the first time that the mask came off. I didn't have to be anybody there, nobody was even looking at me or paying attention to me. I could just simply exist. I didn't have the responsibilities that I had at home. I didn't have to do anything other than be okay. And that was the scariest and most beautiful point in my life up until that point was just existing and deciding for myself for the first time, what am I gonna do today? Am I gonna go to the beach? Am I gonna reach out to clients? Or what am I gonna do? And there was this one spot out in the in the backyard of this house that we had rented, and there was just one spot for the the sunlight to hit your face. Because it was very vegetated there. And so sometimes I would go and sit out and just let the sun hit my face. And everything was going pretty well. There was a lot of um tension within me about my life back home. Uh, the the deeper I got into meditation, the deeper I got into feeling freedom, the deeper I got into feeling just feeling, breathing, feeling, existing, um, the bigger the wedge was between my ex-husband, who was my husband at the time, and I, and the life that I had created back home. And I knew my time was limited, and I knew my ex was coming to hang out for a week. And I I remember feeling excited to see him, excited to pick him up from the airport, and I picked him up. I was so nervous, and he didn't say anything about my haircut, which was pretty rough, I will say that. But um still, I uh I just felt a piece of me crawl back into the hole. Like I, I, the person I had become in the the two and a half weeks, three weeks that I was out there prior to him couldn't exist while he was there. And I just remember putting on a brave face, thinking, I can do this. I don't need a divorce. I can, I can play small, I can be small, I can do small things, and I can be okay. But we just weren't the same. Like we weren't, we didn't vibe on the same level. There wasn't the connection that we had was gone, and there was just a lot of animosity coming from both sides, a lot of ungratefulness. I know on my part, I'm sure on his part. And I saw, I saw myself from the outside for the first time shutting down in order to stay in this relationship. And I think the thing that did it, like the nail in the coffin, so to speak, is that he went outside and sat in a sunny spot, and there was no sunny spot for me. Like we couldn't both have the sunny spot if we were together. And it it hit me there that the marriage was was was most definitely over, and that if I wanted to truly heal, that I couldn't be married anymore. And so I don't know when it was, probably the next day, because I remember laying in bed next to him at night, and knowing that in the morning I was gonna tell him. So, like, this was the last night that we would be sleeping in the same bed as a married couple. And so the next morning I told him, I said, I can't do this anymore. And he said, Okay. And of course, like any couple that tries and tries and tries, you know, there is a million breakups probably in those 10 years we were together on both sides, and he said, This time it feels different, huh? And I said, Yeah, this time it's real. I was devastated and because everything I'd worked so hard for just felt like it was slipping through my fingers. And so he looks at me and he says, So I found a truck I'm gonna buy on this auction site. And I was like, cool. And that was it. That was the conversation, that was the endpoint. That was what all of this had been leading up to was this moment. And we spent the next few days together, um, just enjoying Santa Barbara, doing some hikes as anyone would, I guess. But we weren't together anymore. And um, he left and I had a few days before I had to pack up my stuff and come home. And of course, a huge part of me was just like, I don't want to go home. I'm just gonna stay here. And I Just never go home. I'm just gonna stay in Santa Barbara. This is my new life. Um, but because of the amount of healing work I had done, I hadn't done a ton of marketing or networking. I had done a little bit, but um had made some friends out there pretty quickly. And yeah, so eventually I came home. I didn't eventually come home. I came home when I was supposed to and um drove back into the darkness of Wisconsin in March now and the cold, and I remember being really afraid, scared of what was gonna happen next once I got home because everything had changed. And he said he gave me a hug, and that was it. And um, there was there was a lot of emotions that went into that last few months of us living together um at home. And I know the story is about um, you know, the healing journey and choosing the healing journey. And I guess because now I'm 30 minutes into this story and I've been through this whole process of with you guys that the healing journey wasn't what I thought it was going to be. When I said to myself, I don't know if I can do this work. I had no idea that it was gonna completely shake up my world. And at the same time, I'm so grateful for it. So it's like to truly take your power back, it means taking your power back. It means that every everything you were overgiving to, you have to stop. You can't keep on being the person that people please and gives your life to everybody else around you and not to yourself. Like you can't, you can't keep doing that and heal. You have to allow the process to unwind itself in whatever way that looks and not be afraid of it. Or I suppose a better term would be not to be afraid of it, but not let it control you anymore. And that's that's the difference between the shadow and the light, the dark and the bright. It's not overgiving for the sake of safety or existence. It's truly learning how to give to yourself, but also trusting that you have the tools that you need to get through anything. So if I'm gonna wind up this story because I feel like I need to, and leave you with something that's truly beneficial, is that the person that I was when I went, when I made the choice to go to Santa Barbara, the person that I was when I came home from Santa Barbara, the person that I was when I moved out of my family home and I walked by my son's room for the last time, knowing that I was gonna fucking ruin his life, which I didn't, by the way, but that was my thought. Um, and the person that I am now, you couldn't pay me $10 million to go back a hundred million. There's no price tag that I would ever put on going back to who I was. And I think that's the little nugget in all of this is like, yes, it was painful. Yes, I had to make really hard choices, and I didn't know what I was doing most of the time. But the journey that got me to here is so incredibly beautiful. And my life is so beautiful now. Not perfect, but the moments of pure happiness and beauty and the my ability to see the beauty around me, to see the love that I have in my life, my ability to laugh and to cry and to feel. There's not a price tag on that. And the girl that put on that tiara and just felt so embarrassed and so silly. Like that tiara is on the inside now. Like that tiara, like I am a fucking goddess, right? We all are, but it's not something that you put on your head, it's something you feel in your heart. Bam, that's it. Thank you. I hope you guys listened to this story and got some something out of it. And I will see you next time.