My Story: Part 7

This episode brings both the sweetness of connection and the weight of life’s unexpected turns as I step into Part 7 of my story and begin to close this chapter of the journey.  What started as a season of freedom, travel, and finally having space to just be with Sean quickly became a deeper invitation inward. For the first time, I had the room to focus on myself, to begin intentional healing, and to uncover the parts of me that had been quietly waiting for attention.

In this episode, I share the beauty of our time in Florida, the strengthening of our relationship, and the beginning of my personal commitment to inner work through practices like morning pages and creative exploration. But woven into that growth is also one of the most terrifying moments of my life as a mother, when I received the call that Austin had been in a life-threatening accident. What followed was a long road of recovery, a powerful shift in his life, and ultimately the unexpected path that led him into the military.

As I navigated the emotional weight of almost losing him and then learning to let him go, I was also coming face-to-face with my own unresolved pain. Through writing, reflection, and a deeply personal creative experience, I found a level of healing I had carried for over 20 years. This episode is about the tension between holding on and letting go, about the way our children grow us, and about discovering purpose in the midst of change. If you’ve ever found yourself in a season where everything feels like it’s shifting at once, I hope this reminds you that even there, healing is happening and freedom is still within reach.

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Transcript

Life Shifts After Moving Home

Morning Pages And Inner Work

The Call About Austin’s Accident

Hospital Answers And Long Recovery

Austin Chooses The Navy Fast

Turning 40 And Old Trauma

Art Makes Pain Impossible To Deny

Austin Ships Out Two Days Later

Julia Cameron And The Artist’s Way

COVID Changes Work And Home

Renovating Together Without Quitting

A New Surprise And Closing

Heather 0:02

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Free Advantage. I'm your host, Heather Davis, and I want to invite you into a new season of real stories, real recovery, and real freedom. This show has always been about self-discovery, authenticity, and recovering a life of freedom. And this year, we are taking that journey together in a deeper way. You're gonna hear raw, honest conversations with people walking this path in real time. Stories of growth, healing, purpose, and becoming whole. You'll also hear from me as I reflect on these themes that rise from the stories, answer your questions, and offer small, meaningful takeaways that you can carry back into your week. This is not just a podcast you listen to. It's a place you belong where you are part of the conversation. I hope everybody has had a wonderful week. I know here we have been super busy getting ready for the spring and the summer. The heat is already upon us here in Texas, and I know that in other places it's already getting really warm. Um, but yeah, we've been spring cleaning and getting everything prepared as one does this time of year. So I hope everybody's doing great. I am really looking forward to this episode to um, I mean, we're quickly coming to the end of my story. Um, I know I'm gonna have this episode here, and then next week, Sean's gonna be joining me. So if you have been listening, please come back. I know you're gonna love being able to uh hear from him and and as we talk about all of our things together. I think that's gonna be a fun thing for everybody. But yeah, so this will be part seven of my story as we are quickly coming to a close. So pull up a seat, grab yourself something to drink, and let's get into it. So I think last week I kind of did a I don't know, I wasn't like a timeline episode last week. I know I was had really wanted to like expand on some things that I wasn't hadn't done in some of the other episodes, some stuff that I had mentioned before, such as like my iron and the stuff that had gone on with Sean's family. So I wanted to expound on that. But um if you had picked up um listening to us and you left off maybe in week five or part five, this is where kind of the timeline of stuff that had happened had really left off. So Sean and I had um moved into our new home that we had bought. Um his sister was currently moving out. He had gotten a new job in Florida, where he ended up working back and forth for a couple of years. And he had recently gotten back off of his trip from Nicaragua, and things in our life had really started to change at this point. And if you had listened last week, you kind of know all the ins and outs of what happened with his family. And then after that, it was just Sean and I and Austin in our home for a while. And it was a really weird experience to just be empty. I mean, just the three of us, it was odd. I mean, we had our little dog Ginger, she was our little Dachswah, and it was basically just us. And it was, it was an interesting thing trying to get used to the dynamic of there not being a lot of people in the home. And it felt very different. It felt, I mean, it felt freeing in a lot of ways, but at the same time, you're so used to having all of these other responsibilities to do. It felt kind of like I felt lost a little bit personally because I was mainly the main one basically running everything and taking care of all this stuff. And now Austin's growing up. He's getting to be, you know, he's being an adult and he's got this job and he ends up working graveyard shifts. So I never see him. He's never home, he's very busy. And so when Sean started traveling back and forth to Florida, he was like, Well, why don't you come with me? And we were very lucky that the company that he was working for had a uh they had a company apartment. So every time that we would go, we were allowed to stay there. And for the next like two years, this is what Sean and I did. We went back and forth. We probably lived, I would say, about almost half the year in Florida and then half the year in Georgia back and forth. So like we would spend a couple of weeks there, we would come home for a couple of weeks and go back, and then sometimes longer stretches for a month. But during this time, this is Sean and I really got to spend a lot of time with just one another. It had never just been him and I ever since the beginning. We I have children, and then we were living with family, and then we had family living with us. So it was never just him and I. And so this time in Florida ended up being really special to us because we got to spend so much time with just each other and getting to know each other in a way that we haven't really done before. We were able to go do a lot of fun things, and in spite of him working all the time, it really felt like a vacation in a lot of ways. Um, you know, you're away from home, you know, we're in this beautiful tropical setting. Um, we're living in this apartment and it's really nice and it's on the water. And so life we learned in Florida is a lot different, right? You know, people there they take off work early every day. They, you know, everybody goes and watches the sunset around 5:30, 6 o'clock. So everybody leaves work between like three and four so they can get to where they want to go. And it life is m way more laid back there. And it was a huge change of pace than from what it was in Atlanta. Like nothing is laid back in Atlanta. Everything is it's crazy there. You know, traffic and it's go, go, go. And there's never a sense of of like for us, I never felt a sense of peace or really calm living in Atlanta at all. So it was a big change going to Florida. And it's sunny all year. You know, we would go back to Georgia and it's freezing cold temperatures, and then we would go to Florida and it's like the summer. So it was it was a place that we really fell in love with. And over time, we were like, one day we would love to be here. We would love to live here. We thought it would be such a fun and magical thing for us. And it was a there was a lot of talk about it over, you know, the past the well, it was two years that he worked there. So we spent a lot of time talking about, you know, what would that look like if we were to come here? You know, we ended up buying season passes to Universal. We would go and and and have fun there. We went to Disney, you know, all the proverbial tourist things. But we spent a lot of time like just being on the water, just going to the beach and spending time with one another, eating wonderful food and exploring like the museums. And, you know, we went and saw plays. We did a lot of fun things, and it really drew us together in our relationship in a way that we never really got the chance to do before. And it was a really, really wonderful experience. But also during this time, Sean's career is really expanding. Um, he's branching out into different areas of his career. He's starting to speak nationally. And so he had, excuse me, a lot of time where he was gone. He was away. And during that, I was like, okay, well, what do I do with myself? I didn't have a job, I didn't have anything to really focus on. And so what I started to really do was like, okay, I need something. And one morning I was uh sitting in the apartment in Florida while he was at work, and I was on my phone and I was looking, and there was a lady that I follow on Instagram, and she had this thing called um morning pages that she does. And uh she did like um a little challenge. She's like, So for the next like seven days, you know, I'm gonna do morning pages. If you do it, you know, just take a picture, post it, whatever. So I was like, oh, that sounds really cool. And so I started doing that for the next seven days, and I was really enjoying it, and I thought it was such a really neat thing to do. And so I started doing that. And um this, you know, if you haven't ever heard of morning pages, morning, if you may have if you've listened to my episode before, but morning pages are just a every the first thing you do when you get up in the morning is they are a stream of conscious writing. You just write three pages of just whatever comes, you know, out of your mind. And you want to do it the first thing in the morning, all right? And the quicker you get to the page and write before you're like awake or you do anything, the better. And the point of this is to really help release anything that you kind of hold inside. Like when we write, we typically write them in the evenings or in the afternoons, and then we end up starting writing, we really write about the things we've experienced in our day and how we're feeling and stuff like that. So if you write in the morning, it's kind of the stuff that sits dormant in your subconscious that we don't really ever get rid of. And so the point of that is to start doing that in the morning so it kind of gets out whatever's in there, so you're kind of free and clear for the rest of your day. Um, it's a it's a creative um exercise. Um, and at the time I didn't know all of that. I would just kind of follow this girl. It wasn't until later on um in 2019 that I actually found out what Morning Pages really was and where it came from. But I started doing this and I was really starting to really work on myself. And I'm like, okay, now's the time for me where I don't have a focus on anybody else. I don't have anything else to do, right? That now's the time just focus on myself. And now I know I've mentioned before, you know, being in all these relationships, and if you've heard my story, you understand that I'm living this life, I'm doing better. Obviously, things are doing much better, and I've changed in a lot of ways, and in a lot of ways I've grown, but in a lot of ways I haven't. I'm still dealing with things that I haven't healed from. I'm still dealing with past traumas, I'm still dealing with baggage and stuff that I've been carrying around. So I'm like, now's the time for me to work on that. And because Sean and I were doing so well, I felt safe there. I felt safe to explore those things. And him and I were definitely in a place where, you know, if I needed that support, I could come to him and and I had it. So I I spent a lot of time doing that. Um I read books, you know, I did exercises, trying to find what the right thing for me was. And, you know, I I want to say I went to therapy, but I didn't. Um, you know, I at the time that just wasn't something that crossed my mind. Um, you know, thinking about that. I thought what I what I know and what I've experienced and what I think my tenacity was to do, that um I was functional enough that I could figure out how to do it. And I and you know, over the years I did, but it it was um it was a lot of trial and error to find out what really worked for me and what really drew the right things out of me to get to the place that I really wanted and needed to be. And so it was, you know, late 2018 was I really started that journey for myself. Um, you know, I know that previously I had been out in that journey, right? Working and helping his sister and working through things. I had been working through stuff with myself for a long time. It just wasn't something I realized I was doing and the things that I had learned. And now I'm actively intentionally focused on this, on this path and on this journey for myself. And and it was something that I really dedicated myself to, and I have ever since. And I mean, that's how I am where I am now. And uh it has really become for me completely life-changing, not just you know, obviously, healing is life-changing, but to get to the place where I am now and I can look back on my life, and even like telling this story when I look back, and it's it's so crazy because it feels so far removed from who I am today. But knowing that those things still sit with me, they still reside with me, they are still a part of me because they were a part of my journey, they are a part of of my identity. You know, they have shaped who I am. So with Sean's job during this time as well, they had um decided that they wanted to open up an office in Atlanta. And because that's where we're from, they wanted Sean to head this up. So that, you know, put a little bit of a like kink in our bubble because we were like, oh, right, so now we're gonna be spending more time back at home and less time in Florida. And we were really sad about that because we love being there so much, and it really like kind of kicked up the conversation about whether we wanted to move here or not. And, you know, it it it we talked a lot about it, but it also became that thing where it's like, oh, this is the dream, and it's not something we're probably really gonna do. You know, we have our life back in Atlanta, you know, our family's there, our kids are living with us still, and you know, we're in the middle of a home remodel that we've been working on since we moved in. And, you know, that that whole remodel thing just turned out to be a nightmare from day one. So, you know, it made sense that we would spend more time back at home. And but it was so sad. It was sad for us. But, you know, it is what it is, right? So we're you know, we'll just figure it out as we go. But when we went back, you know, I I we had been back and forth, you know, as as I said, but on one particular weekend, we were at home. It was Mother's Day weekend, and um, I get a phone call. It was Friday morning, um, on the Friday before Mother's Day in 2018, and I got an early phone call. And it's kind of one of those things happen, you know, when something bad happens, you kind of immediately know that what is what is fixing to happen is not good. And I my phone rang and I was still asleep, and it was really early in the morning, and I knew that something was wrong. And I jump up and it's it's Austin, and I was like, oh my gosh, something's wrong. Why is he calling me? Because he should be at work and he works at a golf course, so he's up very early and taking care of all that, and he does all the maintenance and the lawn work there. So I pick up the phone and I'm like, hello, and because I was nervous, and it wasn't him. There was a lady on the other end of the phone, and and and immediately my heart sank because I'm like, oh my God. And yes, you know, my instincts were correct. You know, she said, Um, hey, this is so-and-so from Austin's job. She's like, I do I'm here with Austin. I just need to let you know that he's been in a really bad accident. He's not breathing, but the ambulance is on the way. I need you to get to the hospital. And I'm like, oh my God. And of course, you know, you have all the questions. She and I'm I'm trying to ask. And she's like, look, I can't talk to you right now. She's, I'm trying to help him. So she hangs up the phone. I'm scrambling to like get my mind together, like, get up, get dressed, wake Sean up. You know, I'm I happen to go. Uh Austin's girlfriend had moved in with him in the basement um, just like maybe a month previous to this. And I'm trying to wake her up and tell everybody what's going on. I'm like, we got to get out of here. We got to get to the hospital. And so we are running out of the house, we're driving down the road, and where the golf course is, it's we pass the golf course on the way to the hospital. So I'm like, well, let's just run over there and see what's going on. Of course, we stop. Um, and apparently he's out like on the tenth hole. Um, so nobody really who is at the shop knows what's even happening yet. So we were like informing them that we got a phone call and they're trying to go out there and see what's going on. I don't see an ambulance anywhere, so I'm freaking out, and they're just like, just go to the hospital. So we leave, we go, we move on to the hospital, and of course, we're there. And we're there, and we're there, and we're waiting, and we're waiting. And they're telling us that he's not there, he hasn't been brought in, they don't know what's going on. And so we're just sitting there waiting, and I'm standing outside, just losing my mind. And I'm like, why is it taking them so long? Right. And it's starting to really freak me out. And, you know, Sean's trying to keep me calm. I call my entire family, and everybody is on their way um to the hospital because we just don't know what's going on. I don't even know at this point if Austin is alive. You know, I'm I don't even know what's happened. And it that was I was in shock for sure. Like I didn't, I mean, I wasn't even I wasn't even like really in tears yet because I didn't I was just in such shock and and the anxiety of not knowing what was going on. But you know, we eventually we saw this ambulance pull up and I'm like, that's gotta be him. So we run back in there. And the nurse was like, Yes, this is him. And I'm like, and she and I'm like, I just need to is he alive? And she goes, Yes, he's alive, but they're bringing him in. She goes, as soon as they get him in, I'll call you back. And so, you know, getting him in there felt also like forever. Um, but eventually they called Sean and I back, and then we go in there and we see Austin, and he is just laying there, like flat on his back. And he is in shock himself. And, you know, he's got all of these scrapes and cuts on his mouth, on his nose, his leg is gashed open, and he can barely breathe, and he is in excruciating pain, and they're trying to move him because they're trying to try, you know, they're they're triaging him, trying to figure out what's wrong. Um so basically Austin had been he had been working on the the green, he was in a in a golf cart, and the trails at a golf course are actually for the golf carts, they are not for people to walk and do things like that, and they're people aren't supposed to be on the the golf track there. So he had was coming down a hill and he was coming around a corner at the same time, and there was an older man walking his dog, and he's not supposed to be out there doing that on the green, but he was, and when he Austin came around, he could barely, he's like immediately, I was like, Oh my god, I'm gonna hit this guy and I'm gonna hit his dog, and he did not want to hurt them. So he swerves off of the track onto the green, and when he does, it flips the golf cart, but it throws Austin out of it, and the golf cart flips over and lands on him. Now, in the meantime, Austin is like uh at the point we don't know what's going on. The man sees him, he doesn't try to help Austin, he gets freaked out because he's not supposed to be there, so he walks off and leaves Austin there. And Austin, I guess, I guess he was in shock. He was trying to get up and he was trying to like walk and figure out what was going on. He was all disoriented and he starts kind of like walking down back the hill to where the path is, and he passes out and he rolls down a hill and ends up in a ditch. And he's not breathing. And so I don't know how long he had not been there, but I uh, you know, luckily when the guy walked up, he saw another, another person who works at the golf course, and he was like, Hey, you know, you may want to go check on one of your guys. I think something happened. And the lady was like, Oh, okay. So she kind of like moseies on down there, and then she sees the cart, and then she can't find Austin, so she's looking everywhere, she finds him. I, you know, the grace of God, right? So this woman works part-time at the golf course, but her other full-time job or her other part-time job is she's a paramedic. So when she found Austin and he's unconscious and he's not breathing, she was able to revive him. And that's like right at at that time where she had called, like somebody else had come down to help. She calls me, she finds his phone, calls me, and tells me, like, you need to get to the hospital because they don't know what's going on. And so, you know, now that we kind of know what's going on and what's happened, we're in, we're in here figuring out what what is wrong with him. And of course, they go to move him and the doctor's touching his back, and he is screaming. And he's now he starts crying and he's just like begging, like, please don't do this, please don't touch me there again, please don't do that. Um, and they're like, Okay, well, we need to get him into X-ray, we need to get him into MRI to see what's going on. Does he have internal bleeding? Did he break his back? Like, we don't know. And so basically they they give him a lot of pain medication so he can just, you know, relax as he's in a lot of pain. That helps some, you know, and it's just, you know, in and out going and talking to the family, you know, Sean's boss shows up. Now they're involved, workman's comp, like all these things are happening. And luckily, thank God, they're his company was so nice to just take care of all of those things that we didn't have to worry about any of that. But it was it was very scary. It was very scary. And so waiting for all of the tests to come back and see what's going on. So doctors finally come back in. Um his back wasn't broken. Thank God. But it was very close. It was very close. So what had basically happened is Austin had the way that it fell is it broke three of his ribs and it broke them very, very close to the spine. And so it was it was very painful, and when it did, it damaged his lung and it caused his lung to fill up with blood. So when he stood up and his lungs were filling up with blood, he lost consciousness and couldn't breathe. And so basically now he's got a bleed in his lung, and now they're having to watch him and check and make sure that there's no internal bleeding anywhere else, and making sure that the bleeding stops and goes away in his lungs. So of course they admit him and we're there we were there for a couple of days, you know, making sure that he was okay. And and he was, right? He was thank God that he was okay and he was able to come home, but it was a long recovery. You know, he's he couldn't move, he could barely breathe, you know, everything he did was very difficult. You know, and it was kind of funny because he had been working several jobs and the he had finally had just quit all of them and had just started working just the one job at at this golf course, and he had only been there for two weeks. So I'm like, you're there two weeks, and then you have this massive accident. And it was like a three and a half, four month recovery. Um From what had happened. So now I'm definitely at home. Like when, you know, I wasn't traveling back and forth after that to Florida, you know, because I wanted to be there and make sure I was taking care of Austin. And in the meantime, like in July, Anna had come. So it was just, you know, I'm here. I'm making sure that my baby's okay. And he can't work. So, you know, helping take care of like other things like cars and, you know, you know, some of his expenses that he had to have uh taken care of. Like um, it was crazy. You know, Workman's Comp did cover, he did cover like it was like half of his paycheck. So there were things that did help, but there was a lot going on, right? I had his girlfriend there now. You know, we had gone from not having anybody in the home to now having Austin home all the time, his girlfriend's there, and then Anna comes back. So, you know, I had more, you know, in my my mind, I had more my babies home and I had more to focus on, um, not just myself, but um, getting him well was the most important thing. It was it was a very scary thing. But this time, as Austin is in his going through his healing process, the you know, I think anytime anybody has a moment where they come to terms with their mortality, it can really shift everything in their life. And it did for Austin. You know, Austin was a really hard worker, but he never graduated high school. He didn't have a lot of ambition to or drive to do anything else. Basically, I'm just gonna go to work and life is what it is. This is how it's gonna be, you know. And we always used to joke that he was gonna be the basement troll and he was gonna be there, you know, until he was 40 years old. You know, he would go to work and he would play games, and that was about it. And there wasn't really any bit any ambition to do anything different. You know, he had a girlfriend, but you know, they they didn't really want to like get out and have their own life and things like that. So they were very comfortable where they were in our home. But after this happened, and Austin, once Austin got well, so it was about four months, he goes back to work at the golf course, which was terrifying to me. Excuse me, but he goes back and it was, I mean, that happened in May. So it was just like August, September he went back in. He went back in September, and during this time, Sean had picked up a few more like days where he was supposed to be in Florida. And these were kind of like what ended up being our last days in Florida. Now that Austin was better, um, he's feeling good, he's back at work, you know. Anna's, you know, she's working on herself, you know, she's looking for work, um, all of these things. We are traveling a little bit more in Florida, and it was such a crazy thing because we did not know anything about what Austin was doing. So we had kept encouraging him to go get his GED. And he he was just like, he didn't see a purpose and didn't see a need in that ever. And then there had been some conversation about he had always had this thing about where he always wanted to go into the military, and um, but it he just, you know, it was a thing that he had always said. It wasn't ever anything serious. But, you know, Sean is a former Marine, so you know, wanting to take after his dad, wanting to be able to do these things, and also I guess had been looking into uh the military. And his girlfriend at the time, she was uh she had been in uh R O T C um when she was in high school, and and and she had she had always had this kind of dream to doing those things. So they started talking about it a lot, unbeknownst to us. So one time um they had come and they were like, Well, I'm thinking about I'm thinking about joining the Navy. And I was like, the Navy? Where did this come from? And he was like, Well, you know, I've always kind of thought about joining the military, you know, I wonder what that would look like. And so, oh man. So Sean and him talked a lot about what that looked like, what that meant, you know, and you know, because Austin didn't have a high school diploma, he assumed that he could not go into the Navy. And he's like, Well, I never graduated high school, so I can't. And he goes, and they don't accept GEDs. And then we were looking up stuff and we were like, Well, yes, they do. If you have your GED, you can join. And it was just like that. As soon as Austin realized that he could have a GED and join the Navy, that was it. So from that probably happened in late October, November time frame. By the end of December, Austin has gotten his GED done. He's gotten everything done that he needs to get done. He has decided that he's gonna go into the Navy. Now, these things, now we knew about the GED, but we knew he was like, oh, I'm gonna go take this test. And then all of a sudden, he's just taking it all and he's got it all done, and he's talking about going into the military. Well, he's already seen a recruiter, we didn't know that. And it was um because that had happened in like right before Thanksgiving. So there was a lot of conversation, right? So we get through Christmas, January comes around, and then Austin's like, I've seen a recruiter and I've already enlisted. And I'm going, What? He's like, Yes, I've enlisted. And he comes home and he has all of these papers about what he wants to do. He wanted to be a rescue diver, and then he's bringing me all the paperwork about what that means. Mama's looking at it, and I'm freaking out, and I'm going, Oh my God, no, no, no. I'm like, I'm losing my mind. I mean, from the time that I realized that he had actually enlisted in the Navy, and then he was like working to figure out what he was gonna do and you know, all the process of it all, I was freaking out. Like, yes, I wanted him to have a life. Yes, I wanted him to move out and do the things that, you know, a man should do in his life, but now it's getting really real and it's getting really serious. Last year I feel like I almost lost him, and now you're gonna go off and do something extremely dangerous. You know, I didn't think that that the golf course would have been dangerous, but here we are. And now you're gonna go put yourself in a dangerous situation. So I I really started to struggle a lot. And of course, Sean is trying to comfort me. He's trying to be the support for me. It's not working because Sean's very, very for what is happening. He's like, this is gonna be the best thing that ever happened to him. And I'm just like, oh my God. But at the same time, I'm still trying to be that supportive parent for Austin, even though I'm internally freaking out. You know, I'm not doing that in front of him because I want to support him. I wanted to be a good mother for him. You know, there have been so many things in our life and the journey that Austin has walked with me, like now is the time for me to step up and really be that full support for what he wants to do. And it is, it was hard. I'm not gonna lie. It was hard. And it felt like things moved so fast. It just, you know, from the time that he finished his GED, from the time that he enlisted, then he went to MEPS and he went and did all of his testing. Um, that and then he decided that he was gonna be a rescue diver. They were like, okay, well, he was not gonna leave until it was supposed to be like the beginning of June. And so this by this time it's February. We're coming up like the beginning of February, a fourth, I think, is when he had like gotten all of his stuff. He had done all of his testing and he had tested out for for the job that he wants. And so they were he wasn't supposed to leave until like the beginning of June. So I'm like, okay, he'll be here until after his birthday, you know. So I was like, okay, okay, everything's gonna be okay. I can it gives me time to relax. In the meantime, his girlfriend has also decided that she's going to join the Navy. So it's kind of something they're gonna do together. Not like a buddy system thing that apparently the military has, but they both decided that this is what they were gonna do. And so she enlists, and then she has to lose weight, so she's working in the next couple of months, like losing weight. And for me personally, I'm like I said, I was really struggling. It just kind of seems that everything during this time started really amping up within me. Um, it's it really felt like, okay, I had started doing all of this inner work. You know, I had started really trying to to focus on my healing. And then I kind of like had this moment where I was able to like really focus on the kids some, having some conversations with them and reconciling some things with them over the past year. And now here we are. It's 2019. I'm fixing to turn 40. So my birthday's coming up, like right after Austin had like solidified all of his stuff with the military. I'm fixing to have my 40th birthday. Um I'm planning this huge thing in my head. Like I'm 40s is a huge milestone for me. And I'm, you know, my family had kind of been talking it up, like, oh, it's just gonna be this big thing. We're gonna do all of this stuff. So I was very excited about that. But having all of these really mixed emotions and, you know, I'm losing my son, he's gonna, he's gonna move out. I don't, I don't know what that looks like. You know, it's one thing to have family in your home and then they move out. There's another thing for my firstborn, the one that's been with me through every single thing. He has seen every good and ugly part of me since I was 18 years old. He's leaving. And I am feeling this constant, I'm just feeling this constant anxiety. I'm like in a state of it. And as my birthday started to roll around, Sean then informs me like two days before, he's like, I'm not gonna be able to be here. I have to go to Florida. And I was like, and I, and it was at a time where like he the apartment wasn't available, so he had to stay in a hotel, so I wasn't able to go with him. And I'm like, Well, this is my 40th birthday, we're gonna have this huge thing, which I thought my family was planning this big thing. Turns out they weren't. It didn't happen, and it just turns out nothing happened. So I am I was devastated, and it kind of, you know, now I let you know it is that that time on my birthday, it kind of led into all the way to this year, a whole seven-year like journey of disappointment around my birthday and me having a real like struggle in wrestling with my birthday. It it's just kind of a a weird little like trauma that happened to me and that I kind of suffer in silence. You know, Sean and I suffer together with that, but um, but it it it was something that I was expecting something grand to happen. It was another huge milestone for me that I was hitting and and nothing happened. And I realized with the milestones in my life, it was during this time I I spent a lot of time writing again. You know, Anna was home, Austin's, you know, he's doing his thing, he's working again. So him and his girlfriend are doing their thing, and Sean had left. So the night before my birthday, I was sitting on the couch. It was, you know, I don't know, it was late, I'm sure, 10 or 11 at night. I started having a severe anxiety, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I don't want to have a panic attack, but I'm feeling anxiety that I cannot like shake off. And I had been doing this thing where I was writing about my life, and I was gonna do a 20 to 40, right? So the 20 years from when I was 20 to 40 years old, and I was gonna write about it, and I was gonna sit, I was sitting down and I was starting to write things, and I was listening to some music. Um, I had the you had YouTube up. I was listening to this one song over and over and over again, and I I had this epiphany when I was sitting there writing, because when I sat down and I thought back at 20 years old, that's when my whole journey started when I got pregnant with my second son, right? It was during that time where I went through the whole trauma of losing him and all of the things that ensued. And it was just like, you know, everything was different after that for me. And as I'm writing, I'm like, oh, great, this is where we're starting. You know, I'm 40 now, and this is where I am, and I'm fixing to lose Austin. And I look back and 20 years ago, I was losing another son. Two very different reasons. Um, of course, but ultimately the trigger of it felt the same. It felt the same. And my body, you know, they talk about how the body keeps score. My body was like it's going through the motions as if the trauma that had happened to me 20 years ago was happening all over again. And, you know, it's our mind that tells our body what's different. But I was in such a state about it. And um, you know, I sat down and I would I started writing about that time. I started writing about the experience that I had when I was pregnant and this the experience that I had when I had to give my second son up for adoption, just the whole thing of it. Like I had never sat down and wrote about it. It was just something that was had just always been with me. And I had asked Anna, so our daughter, she's an artist. She's a phenomenal artist. And I asked her if she would do me this huge favor. And I said, it, I said, could you sit and paint me a picture while I'm writing and listening to this song? And she's like, Absolutely. And so she sat in the kitchen at the table and I gave her this picture that I wanted her to paint for me. And I wrote. And like with my chest cut open, like my rib cage, and like you could see it like being pulled open. And you could see my heart and somebody grabbing my heart, like a hand grabbing my heart out of my chest, and like, you know, and I was and I would be crying. Now, granted, I know that that sounds maybe a little gory to some people, but that's that picture in my mind depicts the emotion that I feel when I look back on this situation. Right. And and it was it was twofold. It wasn't just how I felt emotionally, it was when I gave birth to him, is exactly how it felt. It felt like somebody cracked me open, reached up inside of me, and grabbed my ribcage and pulled and was pulling it out of me. That is how I felt. And so when she painted this, I was like, I was blown away when she turned it around. I first off, it was it was excellent, right? Like she did such a beautiful job. But to for the first time, to see my emotion on the outside of me was completely transformational for me. I felt like I had been carrying this around for 20 years. For 20 years I carried this around, feeling shame, feeling judgment about it, feeling regret and the hurt and the pain, from physical to the emotional to the mental and spiritual like strain that it put on me my whole life, and how it has played into every single thing that I have done, and how I'm still like carrying this forward, even in the relationships that I have with my children now, and how this is going to affect me when Austin leaves. And I was like, it just can't be this way. And so when I saw that, I was like, oh my God, it was almost like this instantaneous thing with me. And I was like, oh my God, like I felt like I had lifted a thousand tons off of me. You know, I I still have that picture today, I still have it. Um, I keep it, I carry it with me everywhere I go. Not like everywhere I go because it's big, but like it's never gonna leave me. And I carry it because I even have it on my phone, because I never want to forget how I felt, like I won't ever forget, but I don't want to forget that the possibility of healing. Right. Sometimes we carry things so deeply, we carry them for so long. And we feel that like they're ours to it's the burden we have to carry, right? It's that responsibility of it. But the truth is, it doesn't have to be like that. It doesn't have to be that way. And when I saw it on the outside of me, I was like, wow. And it's funny because immediately I was like, I want everybody to see it. I wanted to show everyone's like, I wanted to show my mom, I wanted to show my dad, and no, I wanted to show my brother, I wanted to show my friends. And what's interesting about it is that nobody else was having the same reaction to it as me. Like I was super excited to see this, and everybody else had a really hard time looking at it. Nobody wanted to look at it. And that was an interesting experience because I was like, well, what do you mean? Like, look, it's beautiful. And they're like, wow, like because it's sitting with them. Right. And it really showed me, it really kind of expanded my horizons when it came to our pain. Because what's really easy for me to carry, this is pain that I feel, this is pain I'm carrying. These things happened to me. These things happened in my life. And you were a part of those things, but you don't have to see it. Right? So it's easy to ignore it. It's easy to not know it, to not see it, to not validate it, to not acknowledge it. But when I put it on a piece of canvas out here, you can't deny it. Because now you're seeing my wound on the outside of me. You know, I talk about it a lot. It's really easy. Like it'd have been easier if I just cut my arm off, because then people don't deny what's happened to you. Because anytime you do things that happen internally to you, it's easy for people to just pretend like it doesn't exist. And so we also do with ourselves. We also walk around pretending like it doesn't exist. We don't tend to the wound, we don't tend to the pain, we don't tend to the hurt. And so it just continues to fester. And for me, it had been festering for 20 years. And now here I am in this place where I'm able to write and get this all out. I'm able to write about my pain. I'm able to write about the experience. I'm able to write about the hurt. And now I have a picture, I have a complete depiction of what that feels like and what that looked like and of that pain on the outside of me. And it brought complete healing to me in that area of my life. You know, God has a funny way of bringing things back around to heal you. You know, I never thought that those moments would have caused that kind of difference in me. But it did. You know, and I think about the orchestration of all the things that have happened in my life that brought me to that place, and how my daughter is now was now a part of that. That another daughter, another child of mine is a part of that healing and has been so instrumental in that. It was a very beautiful moment for me. And it is definitely one that that has reshaped my life moving forward. Um and it's not one I'll ever forget. So that was a big birthday, you know. I think, you know, when I look back and I think about all the things that didn't happen that really did hurt me, right? Like things not happening, not having a big, a big, you know, shindig for people not really, you know, in my mind wasn't being considerate of the fact that this was a huge milestone for me. Um, nobody really was celebrating it. You know, Sean wasn't able to be there. It hurt me a lot. And I had a whole other thing I had to deal with with that. But at the same time, there's no greater gift that I could have received for my birthday other than healing. No greater gift. And you know, that year we continued on. You know, Austin was supposed To end up leaving in June. His girlfriend ended up shipping out in April. And literally a week after she left, we get a phone call. Austin comes upstairs and he's like, My recruiter called. I remember I was standing on the back porch. Our friend, we had friends over. I was standing on the back porch and he comes out and he's like, My recruiter called. And I looked at him and I knew and I said, You're leaving. And he goes, I'm leaving in two days. I'm leaving in two days. And that was at the end of April. I was just blown away that, oh my God, this is happening. And I felt unprepared. I felt caught off guard. I felt like I didn't have enough time, right? It's the grasping for time. It's the grasping for time and realizing it's gone. And I'm not crying because I'm sad. Austin leaving home was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to him. He has a beautiful life that he's created for himself. But the moment of watching your firstborn, of the whole life that you have worked to like create for him, to teach him, to grow him up, and knowing how many mistakes I have made. And then to watch him in spite of those mistakes, to take the beautiful parts of who I am, the beautiful parts of the lessons and the growing and the mom that I have been in spite of the bad things that have happened, to watch him grow into this man was beautiful and very hard to do for me. Excuse me. But he he left, you know. I wrote him every single day when he was in boot camp. I remember right after he was gone, they it's like a week or so, maybe not even that long, maybe just a few days after he's gone, you know, they he they call you and they warn you, like, hey mom, I'm gonna send my stuff home for you to be looking for this box. And I said, Okay, and when the box came, you know, even though I knew it was coming, I was not prepared, you know, you open it up and it's all of his belongings that he left with. It's why it's a wild experience because it feels like it would feel like if he had passed away and they give you the bag of all their stuff. That's how it felt. It's a box and it had his sunglasses and his hat and his jeans and his shoes, it had his flight, his tickets to boot camp, it you know, it had his wallet, his cell phone, like all of these personal effects that most people are never without, right? And he left with that in this tiny backpack, and then like four days later it's sitting on my kitchen table, and you're just like, oh wow, and it is like the life that he once lived is over. And he is living a new one. You know, I know that empty nesting isn't isn't as hard for everyone. And some struggle. And I'm definitely one who struggles even now. You know, that Austin was 21 when he left. Coming up on his 22nd birthday, he'll be 29 this year. It was a ways ago. But it still hurts just as bad thinking of it when he left. And the the hole that it leaves a parent when your child, you know, leaves the nest. Leaves the nest. And I was grateful to have Anna home. I was grateful to still have a child home. You know, Andrew doesn't live with me, so I'm still just getting the visitation. But, you know, it won't be long. Andrew's in high school, it won't be long before he's graduating, you know, and I have at this point I have come to the realization that he's not ever gonna live with us and coming to the terms with that. And so it was a lot during that time. And I would be lying if I said that like I I didn't struggle. I I struggled throughout the rest of that year. You know, I struggled with a lot of anxiety. Um, I was struggling with, you know, I was having a lot of heart palpitations. I was going to the cardiologist, and and it the truth is it was just a lot of stress and it was a lot of anxiety. And I think probably it was right before he left um in April, I had decided, I had, you know, it's funny because I had talked about how I had started doing morning pages. I'm sorry, I'm just such a blubbering mess. I'm sure you guys just love watching me cry, but um I had started writing morning pages in 2018. And right around I said April, I had been researching, doing some stuff too on morning pages. And what I found out is that the the lady that I had found morning pages through was not the lady who had started morning pages. And um, when I found this out, so the lady who did come up with the creative exercise of morning pages is her name is Julia Cameron. Uh, she's an incredible woman. Um, they call her the Queen of Change. She has written a book called The Artist's Way, which is like a book I live by. Um it has been one of the single-handedly one of the most transformational books that I've ever read outside of the Bible that has shifted my perspective, has shifted who I am, and has created a lot of a lot of healing for me. So when I found this out, I was like, oh, I'm getting this book. I'm getting the artist's way and I'm gonna do whatever this is. I don't know what it is, but I'm gonna do it. So I bought it. And right before Ralsen had left, I had started doing this. Now, you know, you know, how life is, it's funny because I needed this book and I needed something to focus on, and and I and and I found it. And I continued to do this throughout the year. It's a 12-week, it's like a 12-week book program where you do something once a week, and then it um has all these essays you read and has a lot of tasks that you focus on. But it's a it's a 12-week program, this book, and it was written for like a creative journey, right? And it's it's really an incredible thing because she's written it, you know, and I always every time I wonder, I'm like, does she really know what she's done? And I think yes, she does. She has to. But when I did the book, I realized like this is so much more, you know, it feels like it's under the guise of creative journey and at creative healing to find your inner artist. But the truth is, it is really a step-by-step path to finding yourself again, to finding your true authentic self and to connecting with that again and helping you walk through a lot of the things that you have trauma around. And as I started out and I started realizing this, I became super connected to the book and connected to who I was and what I was doing. And halfway through, you know, Austin's gone in boot camp. We're we're waiting for him to get out. And as this is going on, Anna's doing her thing. She's still trying to find herself, but I'm coming to this to this place with myself during all of this where I realize like this is what I want to do. I want to help other people. I have walked such a I've walked such a journey, and I have experienced so much. I've already had so much healing. I've already had so much stuff that I've experienced, and in that I'm still on this new journey of healing that's going to bring me to a whole new place. And I knew then that this is what I was gonna do. I didn't know how, I didn't know what, and I didn't know when, but I knew that one day my life, my story, the journey I have walked is going to help someone. And so that became my purpose and my intention behind all the work I started doing. I did all the work with the artist way and I continue to do it over the years. I've done the artist way probably eight times. Um, I write morning pages every single day. You know, there are times where I've slacked and I have to pull myself back into it, but it is something that I've always focused on doing. And it is ultimately where I started, which led me to doing what I'm doing now. You know, Austin, he did. He made it through boot camp. He went to A school and then he got shipped off to California. And, you know, by the grace of God, that's where he stayed. He ended up doing both of his duty stations in California. He met his beautiful wife, Jocelyn, um, and they got married, and they have a beautiful life together. Austin has already done his six-year term in the military, and he's out, and he's going to college now, and he's living in Arizona with his wife. So it it all of these things happen, you know, and I think about, you know, I feel all the time a lot of these things happen in spite of me, you know, feeling like I was constantly a mess. But when I look back now and I look at my children, and I see who they are, and I see what they're doing, and I watch their lives, and I thought, man, I didn't do such a bad job. I didn't do such a bad job. You know, once you know, Austin and his girlfriend were at the time were gone from the home. Anna was there, and you know, she started working, she got her car, you know, and then she ended up getting to a place where she found her own place and wanted to move out and start living her life, and she did. You know, and watching her find herself back and forth in that whole thing and still being there. And then COVID happened, right? COVID happened. And, you know, we had been, in spite of all those things, I it's, you know, like I said, we had been remodeling the home. Um, and it nothing had ever really come of it. We had just kept like fixing all of the systems, so all of the aesthetic stuff, you know, it never really got done. But then by the time COVID came around, we were just there, right? We're in the home, we're kind of stuck. I I was I was blessed because Andrew had just come for spring break and then COVID happened and it got shut down. So it Andrew spent a lot of COVID with us. So that was a really cool and exciting thing that I got to do is spend a lot of time with Andrew during that. Um and in in this, all these these throughout these next years, I really focused, you know, head down on myself. Um, I took a lot of classes, I took a lot of courses, I I had a coach. I um I did all of these different like books, you know, you know, read a lot, you know. I read a lot and learned a lot about life. I learned a lot about myself. And, you know, Sean had in the meantime, he has switched jobs a few times. Um, you know, his career has been expanding. So he's moving in different arenas. Um, and then COVID happened, and he lost his job. He got laid off during COVID. And so we were kind of just all there and spending all this time together. And so we spent a lot of time focusing on ourselves, focusing on our time as a family. We got to spend a lot of time with Andrew, and we focused on the house. It was finally this time we were like, okay, well, we have the money and we have the time. So Sean and I decided that we were going to finally remodel the house by ourselves. We had had flooding in our basement that had gotten completely, had just torn the whole basement up. It ended up getting gutted. Um, we had flooding in our bathroom upstairs. Like, like I said, every all of these things had happened. All of this, all of this crap had happened in this house. And it was just one thing after the other. And Sean ended up doing redoing all of the plumbing. He ended up doing all of the electrical. We we had the uh the AC fixed, everything's finally done. We've taken care of the drainage problem with the with the water. So we've done all of the big things, and now we're gonna focus on the on the house. Now, I'm gonna tell you, if you have never renovated a home with your husband, let me tell you, it will change you. And we fought so much about everything. And I'm gonna tell you what, the main like when we fought about the cabinets, we fought so much about the cabinets, I was like, this is it. This is going to be the thing that breaks us. These cabinets are going to be the end of us. I'm like, you thought it was all this other stuff, you know, in the past, but oh no, it's definitely going to be this. It is going to be these cabinets. And eventually, like we didn't, it didn't, of course, it doesn't. And we came to this place where we're like, okay, we picked the cabinets, we finally kind of got to get in a groove of like finding what it is we liked together and not just me and my style or what he and he wanted, but what our style was together. And we kind of started getting into a groove with that until it came to paint colors. Now, there must have been a hundred swatches of paint on the wall, and they're all some sort of variant of each other. So at this point, I'm like, I don't even think it matters. I don't even think it matters. And we had done them all, it felt like, and we were just out. I'm like, I don't, I don't know what else to do. And he doesn't like anything that I like, and I don't like anything that he likes, and just that's it. We're just gonna give up. And I'm like, we've come through the cabinet debacle onto a paint debacle, and now I'm like, we're stuck. And I remember one night we were in the kitchen just looking at this, the the wall and thinking, I'm like, I can't even look at these. So I just painted it. I primed all of it because I couldn't look at the swatches anymore. I'm like, everything looks the same. And then I was like, he's like, I don't like any of this. You know, because I wish you had something like this. And I'm thinking, hmm, I do have something like that. And I ran down, I am literally like rummaging through what feels like a thousand paint samples. And I find this one thing and I come back up and I paint it on the wall. And he was like, I love that. I love it. And I'm like, You love this? Now, mind you, this is a color that I had been trying to get him to paint another room for like three years. And he was like, No, it's too dark. I don't like it. Um, and now all of a sudden he's in love with it. And we're like, great, that's it. And after that, it was kind of like we had worked through all of this stuff. And once we like between the cabinets and the paint, once that happened, we were just on a roll after that. It was like everything we did was just like go, go, go. We were come like we didn't weren't compromising, we were collaborating finally, and we were coming together on this home. And we spent the next like three or four months completely remodeling the home all by ourselves. We did all of the work. It was exhausting. You know, I knew we didn't even tell anybody we were doing it. I think that's the fun part. I think that's the fun part. Andrew had ended up finally going back home through COVID, and we it was just kind of him and I. And so we spent a lot of time focused on just doing all of the work by ourselves. It was so cool. Um, but it was it was an extreme amount of work. We were exhausted. We would get up and uh in the morning and we would start and we would go until like three o'clock in the morning. And we did it until it was done. I remember after like the quarantine was lifted, um, we called our friends over. So we were completely done. It was like a reveal. It was like a we especially we did a huge kitchen and uh living room reveal. And so we're like, y'all need to just come over here and we hadn't seen them in a while, and they're like, okay, so they come over and we open the door and they're like, What is going on? Like, are y'all okay? And she's like, Is everything all right? And we're like, Yeah, and then we bring them into the kitchen, and it was the absolute greatest moment for us is to watch their reaction. She's screaming, she was screaming, it was so funny because I was like, This is could not have been a better reaction if it had been myself being revealed to my own kitchen. It was really incredible. But they were like, What? How did you even keep this a secret? And to be honest, I don't even know how we kept it a secret, but it was so much fun. We had so much fun doing it. We had so much fun creating everything. Um, and it was just a really, really, really, really cool thing. It was such a cool thing. And we were really enjoying it. We redid the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the whole house, the whole entire house had been redone. And and the time that Sean and I spent doing that together again, like it created this other bond between us and not, you know, watching us do things together, you know, like that was something that wasn't really normal for us, right? We kind of had he kind of worked and this was his life, and then I had did all of this stuff with the kids and with myself and the work that I was working and creating in life. And then like we would just kind of come together for like a family things, but you know, we it for a lot of time it was we I I felt that we were living separate lives a lot. We were very individualistic in our relationship. And it that was something that we struggled with a lot, that I definitely struggled with because I wanted a different kind of connection with Sean that I really wasn't getting. And it was one of the things that was really is kind of the underlying forever like trauma that we suffered in our relationship, which we will talk about next week when he comes on. But um, but we we work so well together. Um, we come together and we collaborate really well together. And what we now we learn is that we create well together, and that was a very exciting thing. And so we spent, you know, Anna's moved out, it's just him and I. Um, and we spent a lot of time just being able to enjoy our home that we've created, that we've worked on, um, together. Then we did it together. So it was it was a really fun thing. And then before you know it, before you know it, there's another big surprise coming. And uh not one I was ready for, and not one I was prepared for, not one I even wanted. What felt like the end of the world turned out to be well one of the greatest things that could have happened. I'm gonna stop there because I want to talk about this whole next part with Sean. I don't want to just share it all by myself because I think it it takes him to really bring the full conversation and the full story together. But yeah. Thank you guys for joining me. Um, I just want to remind you that no matter where you are, no matter what you've done, no matter what you've been through, no matter what you have experienced, that freedom is the advantage you already own. And that as long as you're willing, as long as you're willing to just reach out and grab it, to do the things you need to do to have it, as long as you're willing, it's yours. Thank you guys. I'll see you next week.