Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Think meditation is hard. Do me a favor, take a slow deep breath in and now breathe out. Congratulations, you just meditated. Hi, I'm Crystal Kakowski and this is Breathe In. Breathe out a weekly mindfulness and meditation podcast for anyone ready to own their own shit and find a little peace while doing it. Hello and welcome to Breathe In, breathe Out. I'm Crystal Jakoskiz. As always. I'm thrilled that you're here this week and I am looking forward to this conversation today. I get to speak with Rev, Rachel, so welcome to my podcast.
Speaker 2 00:00:42 Thank you, crystal. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1 00:00:44 <laugh> Rev, Rachel, I've known each other, um, not a terribly long time, just since um, July of last year and we've had a fast friendship and it's been really fantastic to get to know you and expand on life. Rachel has opened my eyes to a lot of different things and I think I've opened hers a little bit too. So let's tell our listeners just a little bit about you and how you came to be Rev.
Speaker 2 00:01:12 Rachel. Thanks, crystal. You are at a very important part of my life, so I am so, I'm so happy that we found our way to each other and it's such a testament to when you allow yourself to be in the flow. And I think that is part of my story is learning how to let go of control of the world around me and just be present and open to what's coming. And that led me to our relationship and I am just ever so grateful for it. So Rev. Rachel, how did I get to be Rev Rachel? Well, my first kind of interesting part of my upbringing and my story is I was raised a hippie, totally hippie child in New Mexico with Buddhist parents, Uhhuh <affirmative>. So Buddhism started coming into United States in the late sixties, early seventies. And my parents were from Oklahoma and Texas and they met and moved to New Mexico cuz that was the land of milk and honey for hippies, right?
Speaker 2 00:02:13 Yeah. So they moved to New Mexico and I was born in 1970 and right around that same time there was a, a lot of movement around Tibetan Buddhism and some of those teachers came to Santa Fe and my mom was immediately drawn to that and it was a major part of my upbringing and my life and I'm so grateful for that. And so I, I was raised this kind of wild child, interesting way. My, my mom is this incredibly intelligent, spiritual grounded human being. My dad is this super interesting individual hippie folk hero, singer, songwriter Silver Smith, still at 83 years old doing this life that he lives in New Mexico, which is fabulous. And my mom at some point decided being a hippie was great, but being poor was not all that great. Mm. And my parents consciously decoupled before that was a term and they knew that they loved each other, but they wanted different things out of their life.
Speaker 2 00:03:23 My dad really loved this hippie experience. He really enjoyed the communes and being around people and not having very much was comfortable for him. And it all worked out. And my mom really realized that she needed and wanted more for herself. So they made a very loving and conscientious decision to love each other enough to allow them to have lives that were more aligned with them, which I thought was normal. You know, I thought that all parents were this way because it's how it was for us. So my mom then moved, uh, to become a PhD chemist, which is what her field was. And so we ended up moving to Los Alamos, New Mexico and for high school and junior high and high school. And so I went from kind of this crazy hippie, super dirt poor upbringing to a pretty middle class upbringing in a middle class community.
Speaker 2 00:04:23 A really smart community. And I'm really grateful for that too cuz that gave me an entirely different set of values. Yeah. And we came to Boulder, Colorado in 1987 because I was needed to go to college and my mom came to work at the United States Geological Survey and be a Buddhist cuz Boulder has both things. Yeah. And I just never left. So I've been here this whole time and I think it's interesting because I was raised in this very open, loving environment that didn't have chaos or a lot of emotion and it didn't set me up for the world very well in an interesting way. Hmm. That because I didn't have brothers and sisters and because I didn't have parents who had tempers or mood swings on either direction, I learned to be very good and that that's how I got appreciated for being this good, smart, self-reliant, individualist person.
Speaker 2 00:05:31 Yeah. And I didn't know how to deal with chaos. Hmm. And so, interestingly enough, all of my boyfriends were addicts. Everybody that I attracted to me had this energy that I think that I was looking for because I, I felt like my life was kind of flat. Yeah. And so I was interested in people that had this energy that tends to come from addiction. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> not knowing that I was actually an addict all by myself. Not realizing that that was part of my story. And so when I met my husband 30 years ago, he was this bright, shiny penny of a man. He was, he still is to me, just the cutest man on the planet. Um, and he was talented at everything and he was funny and he was beautiful and he drank like I drank. And so we connected through partying and he had this, still does have this very charismatic wild energy and in that energy is chaos.
Speaker 2 00:06:42 Yeah. And confrontation. And I didn't know how to handle it. I never was raised with how to handle it. And so I ended up shutting down and I ended up being not my fullest self in ways that I now can look back and see. Were just purely from pain and dysfunction and not having the capacity at that moment to realize that I was hurting. So I just got more shut down and tried to make everything better. My level, I, I'm, I'm big take on my life is really realizing how we, we try to have other people bring us happiness. That we want other people to show up for us in certain ways. We, we want to, what I think control the environment around us. I wanted rich to be a certain way. I wanted our lives to be a certain way because that would make me feel more comfortable if it was settled down, if it was quieter, if it was not as chaotic if, but I wanted the chaos at the same time.
Speaker 2 00:07:49 It was confusing. Yeah. And through all of that, I just really lost my way. And in the midst of this, we had two beautiful boys Hmm. Who are now 24 and 26 years old. And there were real dark years in my marriage and they were real dark years in raising kids. My husband and I were both active drinking, um, they don't call it alcoholism anymore, they call it alcohol use disorder. Hmm. We were not drinking for reasons that were healthy for us. And in all of that I was going to a spiritual center and spirituality was really important to me, but I wasn't really leaning on it. I was, I wanted it, but I wasn't actually handing it over. Yeah. I was grasping onto control and trying to make my life be the way that I thought that I wanted it to be. And even in the midst of it, my husband and I separated for a year mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:08:57 <affirmative>. And we had had different times of sobriety. And when we separated, we had been sober for a couple years and when we separated I decided that I didn't really have the drinking problem he did. And so I went back to drinking and he decided he was gonna start drinking cuz I wasn't fussing at him about drinking Uhhuh. So he put, he went back to drinking. And in that time, I think that I had this awareness that was really the beginning of healing for me was that separation was realizing that that actually wasn't what was making me unhappy. That my marriage wasn't actually the problem that my internal self and how I related to the world. And there was a period of time in that breakup where I wanted a divorce and he was devastated. He didn't want that. No. And we ended up working through it, thankfully we worked through it and got back together, moved back in together and eventually came back to sobriety. Thank goodness. And this time when I got sober, I had already started thinking I'm on the wrong track. I'm concentrating so much on everybody else and not on me. Yeah. And then that it was the beginning of my, what I call soul recovery journey, because it wasn't the drinking that was killing me, it was my emotions. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it was my insides.
Speaker 1 00:10:36 So how old were you when you realized that it was your issue, your journey? Because you're sitting here right now and you are very self-aware and you are so beautiful and honest in the way that this all came to be. And at some point you recognize that it was chaos, that you were craving. At some point you recognized that it wasn't that you had had all of this calmness and you wanted chaos, you wanted something different and you were looking outside of yourself. So how did that, when did that happen?
Speaker 2 00:11:12 I think it happened in stages. So 10 years ago is maybe 10 or 14 years ago was the first time that I really started to realize that this was really about me. That I was creating suffering and pain in my own life because I wanted somebody else to be different. I wanted the world around me to be different. But it wasn't until the last five years that I've really actually done the work to take responsibility for myself to have such self-compassion. I think forgiveness is such a huge piece of my journey. Yeah. And that forgiveness is new to me. It's a different definition than it was for me five years ago. I think traditional forgiveness is that you just say to somebody, I'm sorry, and the other person says, I forgive you. But really inside, we're still holding onto all of the pain and all the suffering and all the grievance mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:12:20 <affirmative> that is in it. And it's still wrecking us inside. And when we can turn our perception just, just a little bit, just a little bit and realize that we're all human beings, we're all in this, we're all coming from our own experiences and our pain and our life. And that it isn't all just about me. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that I can look at this situation and I can either say, this person maybe have intended to hurt me and they maybe have not intended to hurt me, but it is how I choose to continue to see it. That whether I get hurt more or not. Yeah. I press play on the memory. I press play. And so forgiveness for me now doesn't mean that I look at the situation and I say, it's okay that you, my husband cheated on me. Right. So let's say back where whatever that was, 15, 15 years ago that he had, he had this one night escapade. Right. I could, I could say, it's okay that you cheated on me. And inside I'm just thinking like, how could you do that to me? Yeah. And I'm trying to get past it mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but something in me could see that that scenario had to happen for him to have an awareness that changed how he was in our marriage.
Speaker 2 00:13:49 That I wasn't responsible for his emotions or needs on that day. That he didn't actually cheat on me. He had a need that was not being filled Yeah. For himself
Speaker 1 00:14:03 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Speaker 2 00:14:05 And that I can be angry at him for the rest of my life, or I can let go of the pain that I think it should feel for me.
Speaker 1 00:14:16 How long did it take you to get there? Because, because I know most of us are not, like, that is a new concept to step back and look at it and say, oh wait a minute. So instead of taking it as an affront to me, I'm going to recognize that your needs were not being met in some way, and it is with you, but how do you like, seriously when you say it, when you're talking through it, I'm like, God, that is so wise, that is so introspective and aware, self-aware. And yet getting from that to, to forgiveness, I I'm sure that many of us would struggle getting
Speaker 2 00:15:12 There. Yeah. I think that's where self-compassion really comes in because of course we have all these patterns and all these belief systems that play into why someone would do that to us.
Speaker 1 00:15:27 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:15:28 And that we are, it's like we're, we're proving this, this belief that's aness about ourselves, that I'm unlovable. That I wasn't desirable. And, and so I think that in this particular situation, in my case, I had in my own mind known that it was likely that he would cheat on me at least once based on his past history.
Speaker 2 00:16:01 And I had a dad who was not faithful and I watched my mom not obsess over it. So again, the conscious decoupling that they had and, and, and the modeling that I was lucky enough to have from my parenting. But I think that, because in my mind I kind of knew men are men and this isn't about me. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But it didn't not hurt, you know, when he shared with me what, what had happened at that moment, I was enraged, you know? Yeah. I was devastated and I was pissed and I screamed and I yelled and I, you know, threatened and all the things that you do mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but almost immediately in that situation, and this was, this was actually before I had had these other major awarenesses of how we relate to people and what we think we need from them. And, and it's interesting that this is what came up. Cuz we didn't pre-think this out when we were getting ready <laugh> that something in me knew that this was not about me. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> now, recently, since we're gonna go ahead and talk about my husband <laugh>, uh, he came clean that he has been continuing to dabble and drinking for a year
Speaker 1 00:17:13 Because you guys had gotten sober together. Together completely Right. And had been sober for several years.
Speaker 2 00:17:18 That was my assumption. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm coming up on five years of sobriety. So my assumption was that we were sober together mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so he recently shared on a trip when we went to Mexico that he had actually been drinking for the last couple of years. Mm. Not very much, you know, to him, he was very justified in it. And it, and it went back to what I experienced in this situation with him having the, the tri to the, the cheating situation. But this felt like something I could hold onto because it wasn't just a one night stand where you're like, oh, your needs weren't being met or, you know, I can sort of see you're a guy and guys are guys <laugh> and, uh, things happen. But this was in my mind a couple years of him lying to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:18:13 This was trust. This was an agreement that we had that we didn't lie to each other, which is why he had come clean about the affair or the one night stand, whatever in the first place. And again, I am, I could not be more grateful for this forgiveness work and for what I call soul recovery, because I get to choose, I get to choose whether it's gonna completely tear me up or not. I get to do this work that says I can take it personally. I can think this is all about me. I can, I choose whether my ego needs to be fulfilled or whether I can be present with another human being who is struggling, who is just having their own experience. Yeah. And the peace that comes from releasing the need to be in control of every situation and everybody else's emotions and what they're choosing to do is so profound.
Speaker 2 00:19:19 And it doesn't mean that I'm not sad, you know, it doesn't mean that I wasn't disappointed. I went through, you know, all the stages of being irritated. But it, but this time, actually unlike the cheating where I, I raged at him for that situation and he felt really bad. <laugh> <laugh> this time I did so much internal processing of myself and asking myself questions of why, why am I hurting? Where, where am I afraid? What am I afraid of? What if my marriage doesn't work? Hmm. What if, what if, is this a deal breaker? Yeah. Is it not a deal breaker? Am I gonna live in fear of him relapsing? Or am I going to continue to turn the attention to myself and my work and my healing and my connection to spirituality and my connection to who I am and allow him to have his own experience and not shame him.
Speaker 2 00:20:27 Yeah. And that freedom of being able to do that is so profound. But it's, it means that I have to be kind to myself. It means that I have to be gentle to myself. It means I need to be willing to go back and look at other times when I've felt similar breaks of trust, not only only with my husband, with friends or family members, and, and be kind to each one of those moments of me and see how those patterns develop and how I can heal me and not expect somebody else to heal me. And through that is incredible release and compassion for everybody involved.
Speaker 1 00:21:15 So how does this, you are doing all of this intense inner work, this healing for yourself and the forgiveness for yourself and people around you, and you're literally looking at it and acknowledging it and finding ways to heal it and release it so that you're not carrying it around anymore. How does that affect your relationship? Because oftentimes, if one is choosing a new path, so one decides, for example, one decides to be more spiritual and more self introspective, if the other person doesn't, sometimes there's more of a rift. So now you're spiritual and you are staying sober and you have this husband who may or may not be doing either one of those. And how does that shift your relationship and his actions towards you?
Speaker 2 00:22:04 That's a really great question. And we've been together for 30 years. We've been married for coming up on 29 years. So that is another assumption that I made when we were in our early part of our marriage that it would look like what I thought it was gonna look like. That I thought that there was, I did a, I have a podcast as well, I did a podcast episode about the myth of happily ever after that, even though I came from a divorced family, even though half or more of my friends are from divorce. And of those, how many did you see of marriages where there wasn't dysfunction? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:22:48 <affirmative>,
Speaker 2 00:22:48 Why did I think that mine should look like something that's unattainable and be pissed at him almost constantly for not meeting that need for me? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so when I realized, when I started to have these awarenesses about relationship, my main key is, and this is what I work with or coach people on as well, is it's, it's important that we accept people for exactly who they are, but we are not allowing for us to be used or manipulated or not to be our fullest self. My my word is, if you have to betray yourself to be in your relationship, then that's something to look at. So in my case, luckily for me, my husband allows me to be exactly who I am and he's never asked me to be anything else. And I have such great, great gratitude for that. Yeah. I have asked him to be something else, but he has never actually asked me to be something else.
Speaker 2 00:23:54 He might like it if I was more athletic, but I'm not <laugh> not not because of fitness, but because he's athletic and he would love for us to do those things together. But, you know, he's accepting. So as we've moved in this direction, I think when we first went into recovery together, I got, again, with control, I got super attached to the idea that we were in 12 step together mm-hmm. <affirmative> and that we were gonna go to meetings together and he was gonna have a sponsor and he was gonna work his steps and he, he would start out that way. And then I'm going gung ho with my sponsor and I'm working my steps and I'm reading the book. And he just, it just never really took for him. Hmm. And so I can be angry about that. I can control, I can want him to be showing up in a different way.
Speaker 2 00:24:40 I can want him to be, do, do different things. But what I've found in my relationship is the more I do my spiritual work, the more that I become healthier and I'm not doing it because I want them to be healthier, the healthier they become anyway, the better our relationship is. The better our communication is, the better he feels safer. And so he's more curious about what it is that I'm doing and he is, and he is open to the conversations and he can clearly say to me, I kind of feel like you're coaching me right now <laugh>. And I can say, you're right. I'm totally trying to coach you and you didn't ask for coaching. And so I think that even though we are very different people, it has made it so our relationship is stronger because we really are allowing of each person to express our individuality for exactly who we are.
Speaker 2 00:25:49 And if there comes a point where he makes different choices that don't align with me mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I want to be able to come from a healthy place of making a decision that isn't a rash decision of wanting somebody else to be something that's not real. It needs to be, is this healthy for me? This is a healthy environment. Yeah. Can I be myself here? Are we still having fun? Are we still connected? Um, and at this point, you know, the choice is I'm very happily married. Yeah. But part of that is because I'm realistic about what that looks like. And one of the things that I realize in my gratitude and my friendship with you is there's a lot of things that you can't have in a relationship. You know, that you, they can't be everything. I remember Rich and I went to to counseling really early on, which is so funny that we did, and I was pregnant with our first son, so this is 27 years ago, early in our relationship and I was trading flower arrangements for therapy and I was a florist. And so it was kind of like this fun, like why not? We'll just head some things off, you know? Yeah. We'll just, we'll just knock some things out. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:27:05 We'll just make it better. It's all good.
Speaker 2 00:27:07 Two things that she said. One was that I had an expectation that I wanted my husband to be everything for me. And that was unrealistic and that I needed to make sure that I had plenty of good girlfriends and it couldn't be everything. And the other one was that we are, she said, I think you guys are alcoholics <laugh>. Which is funny cuz we quit going to counseling after that.
Speaker 1 00:27:28 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:27:30 Had, we listened all those years ago. But I did listen to the advice that he couldn't be everything. Yeah. And so, over the years, I do feel like I've had balance of knowing that in any relationship, even a friendship, you know, you can't have one person be where you lay everything. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because it's giving them control. My, my big thing that I say all the time is we have control of nothing outside of ourselves. We think we do. We want to,
Speaker 1 00:28:03 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:28:05 We have not control of nothing outside of ourselves. The only thing we have control of is our emotions, our feelings, our responses, our internal way of being. And yet we give up that control constantly. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> by wanting somebody else to fill us up. So the only thing we have control of, and then I hand over my control, let's say we're talking about my husband to my husband and say, if you behave this way, if you love me the way that I need, if you are this way mm-hmm. <affirmative>, then I can be happy. And we don't have any power in that. Yeah. So it's about learning how to take your power back. And that power comes from owning your own emotions, having forgiveness, letting go of the poison, stopping pressing play on the memories that are painful to us. Yeah. Being willing to dig deep into who we are, releasing the energy that comes from that. Having trusted friends that we can counsel us and share what's going on. It's just, it's, it's this journey of inner growth, inner awareness. Yeah. Instead of outer need, outer want.
Speaker 1 00:29:29 Yeah. There's so many things that you were just saying in the last section and I, I I was like, I wanna touch on that. I want to touch on that. I want to touch on that. But then I'm listening to you so I don't remember even half of them that I touch. Sorry,
Speaker 2 00:29:41 Get going. I can't
Speaker 1 00:29:42 Stop. Which is absolutely perfectly fine. Not a big deal. Because I really hope that you listeners also have those moments of Oh yeah, aha. In this, because from what I hear you saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, but part of it is that the more inner work you did on yourself, allowing yourself to fill your emotions, allowing yourself to be honestly, truly uniquely you, um, and emanating that out to those around you meant that you were also showing your husband that it was okay for him to be himself. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> there was less upset for you recognizing that he was choosing to be himself. And it was like, yeah, okay, well if I'm choosing to be me, then you have every right to be you as well. And you could recognize that it wasn't an affront to you or an attack on you. He's just being him and you're being you. Which means that people around you feel safer to be authentic because you are holding such a space because it is just naturally who you are.
Speaker 2 00:30:47 Yes. And I've also learned a lot about boundaries. Mm. When we first started recovery five years ago, we both jumped in and I had a really great friend who was also in the program who did some work with us that I will, I just appreciate so much cuz we, we didn't have trust in each other. We were so used to attacking each other. Yeah. And so used to blaming each other and we didn't even know how to listen. We didn't even know how to listen. But I didn't know how to listen partially cuz I also didn't know how to ask for what I needed. Yeah. And so the more that I have this internal work and I have more awareness of who I am and how I am in the world, I have a lot more clarity about actually what I need. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it isn't about accepting somebody and then accepting poor behavior or thinking that you have to do everything or you can't have a voice or you can't share what's going on with you. It, it's exactly the opposite. It's almost like the more that you allow yourself to be yourself, and the more you allow them to be them, the more you take the hurt out of it and the shame and the guilt and attack out of it. And you can clearly see situations and people, the more you can set boundaries and have clarity of what you need, and they can hear those needs from a place that doesn't feel like they're less than
Speaker 2 00:32:24 And that allows them to actually show up in different ways and healthier ways. And when I, when I did my studies to be a minister, metaphysical minister, the, the never ending teaching of relying on higher power
Speaker 1 00:32:48 Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:32:49 <affirmative> and letting go of this human aspect of ourself that is so attached to pain and guilt mm-hmm. <affirmative> and opening up to something greater. It's interesting. It's so beautiful. Right. It just seems so simple. Seems like, oh, we should all do that. Doesn't that sound great? Yeah. Why not? No, it's not so easy, <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:33:07 No.
Speaker 2 00:33:08 We want to hold on to grudges and we want someone to be responsible for our own happiness and we wanna be able to blame somebody for why we feel crappy. Yeah. And I just looked back on my life and I thought, man, I spent so many years blaming other people for me not being happy when the truth was I chose my emotions every day. Now you can be hurt and you can feel feelings. And I think that's the other profound thing that's happened in my life is you don't wanna be Pollyanna and spiritually bypass your feelings and just say, oh, I'm not gonna remember the past and it's all over now, and I'm, I'm just gonna be happy and perfect and everything's gonna be perfectly great. It doesn't work that way because inside our bodies store all of our emotions mm-hmm. <affirmative> scientifically, they're discovering even more and more how much is inside of our bodies.
Speaker 2 00:34:10 Yeah. And you've had so many podcasts with these fantastic, you know, healers that have spoken so eloquently and beautifully about different ways of having healings and different modalities of being able to release these things from our bodies. And so it's about recognizing it, it's about utilizing these tools, it's about finding the practices. It's about actually feeling the feelings. Yeah. And allowing the pain so that the pain can go away. The more we try to hold on to not feeling it, the more it actually gets shoved down in there with the pressure cooker. You know, just building, building, building. And the more that we can look at it and allow it, the more it releases.
Speaker 1 00:34:58 And just because we're allowing it doesn't mean we're not talking about it. Right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So an emotion comes up and we recognize that we're upset or excited or whatever that emotion is. And having that conversation with whoever it was after, we understand what's going on for us, Hey, you know, can we talk about this for a minute because it kind of crossed some of my boundaries or it kind of triggered me in this way or that way. It allows us to have a deeper connection because we can talk about what's going on so we're not laying over and just letting anybody treat us the way that they want to treat us. It's a, I love how you say that the more that you learned about yourself, the more you recognized that you could put boundaries up there mm-hmm. <affirmative> and say, because that was one of my questions in the beginning was that I wanted to ask was how does this all feed into your self worth? And making sure that, okay, so great he can, he can do that and he can be there over there and I'm over here. But his actions are still going to affect you in some way, shape, or form because it is your marriage. So how did you find your self-worth and how did you come to an understanding that yes, he can be himself and no, he's not intentionally hurting me. And yet you still have to talk about those difficult moments that are really unhealthy or upsetting in the relationship anyway.
Speaker 2 00:36:21 Absolutely. I love that you bring this up because it sort of wraps that up, which is when Rich had that cheating experience, we had clarity not only about that, that was not okay, but that flirting wasn't, you know, okay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that having friendships that looked a certain way weren't okay. We were able to really have clarity with each other of what that looked like. And I, I'm not a jealous person at all, and there has not been anything that has crossed that line because there was real clarity of what that was. But it was also, I think for me, the more and more I'm learning, I was, I was giving ultimatums before. And I think that even in that situation, it was probably more of an ultimatum. It was probably more of a, listen, if you do that again, you got this one time Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:37:18 <laugh> and if you mess it up again, that's it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But I think when he came to me this time and was talking about how he had been drinking, I was able to share with him in a different way than I did in the past. And to be able to say I am deeply hurt by what felt deceptive to me. Yeah. I am, I'm, I'm rocked to my core that you would deceive me and I can hear you say that you really were trying to protect me and it didn't feel like to you, you knew that it wasn't right, but you weren't actively trying to deceive me. For me, this goes against one of the tenants of our marriage agreement that we have and it doesn't feel okay to me. And I, and I'm not gonna make an ultimatum that says you have to be a certain way, but what I can tell you is that to be in relationship in a healthy way, this will not work for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:38:17 And that feels different than me saying if you ever do that again, and I, you know, won't put up with this and I have to hold that boundary for myself that who I want him to be exactly who he is and I have to know what won't work for me. Yeah. And even him drinking. Do I want a sober house? Yeah. I want a sober house. You know, I mean, there's no alcohol in my house and I'm far enough along that I don't really care if it's around when I go out or do things. But I've become a very <laugh>, you know, spiritually minded person. I basically spend my days sp studying spirituality and recording podcasts and ministering to people and speaking at churches. Like my whole world has sort of become a very different thing than it was in that chaos and dysfunction of us being active drinkers with teenage kids and just the nuttiness that was at our house.
Speaker 2 00:39:20 And I've learned how to deal with conflict. I've learned how to manage the emotions that I didn't feel like I could handle when I was younger because I've been doing this work in me. Yeah. And, and when I show up and have conversations that are difficult with people, I think it's taken me all these years. I'm 53 years old now. I didn't get sober until I was 48. And I think that we have these expectations. I know I look at my boys and I think, man, I wish you could get it. You know, if you could only get these lessons. Yeah. But I needed all of those parts of my life to get me to where I am today. I needed those hard parts. And so that's another part of forgiveness that says I have to accept that this was part of my journey. Yeah. That this pain, that I felt that those years that I was suffering those years that I was so angry and so shut down, were part of my dark night of the soul that instead of blaming what I can see is Yeah, I, I learned something from that and have gratitude for it. Yeah. And to have communications with people and my husband in particular that are complicated in that way that you were saying where you say, Hey, this happened and this, this was hurtful to me.
Speaker 2 00:40:47 There's a new way of feeling through having done this work that isn't about blame. It's about sharing from my heart and not wanting them to then feel sorry for me or take this huge responsibility or, you know, I'm not handing them shame or guilt. I'm actually just trying to be very clean in my experience. Yeah. And it feels very different. And it doesn't always go well <laugh>. No, believe me, it doesn't always go well. But again, I come back to the part that I am interpreting. I choose if I'm going to get hurt mm-hmm. <affirmative> and be frustrated or whether I'm just gonna be tender with my experience and have self-compassion and say nice things to myself and f call a friend and allow myself to feel the feelings that I feel.
Speaker 1 00:41:43 Yeah. I love how you bring up the fact of the matter is that the communications that you have now, the ones that you had in the beginning were more of an outwardly, you didn't do this for the me, you didn't meet this need of mine, you didn't da da, da da. And it comes more from an accusatory and a challenge instead of this centered place of I love you and I'm feeling this way and I would like to talk about it so that we can be better and stronger and work on it together instead of you have to fix something on behalf of me type. And that personal growth that leads to a new communication so that you can be more connected and grounded and have those conversations. Like you said, it does not mean that they're gonna go great every single time because we're still pointing out that there's something that we're upset and frustrated about.
Speaker 1 00:42:37 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so our partner is going to be on a little bit of a defensive, like, okay, where's this going and what do I need to do and how do I need to fix it? But in the same aspect, having that space of, I just wanna talk about this so that we can open up communication and maybe we touch base on it and then we come back to it again or however that works. But the openness and the, I wanna let you be you and I thank you for letting me be me and coming together is absolutely beautiful and I love the connection and the communication part of it that comes from your own personal growth in all of the work that you have done, which then is kind of like an offering invitation for them to be themselves again, you know, where we already talked about that.
Speaker 1 00:43:21 But one of the other things that I love that I do remember I wanted to talk about is your counselor saying he can't be everything for you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and the idea that you have to have other friends, other resources that can help fill all of those other needs. Like you may be your, your husband is very physical and he wants to go out and he wants to do stuff, but you don't necessarily want to do that. So he needs to have friends and people that he can go be very physical with mm-hmm. <affirmative> and go hiking and whatnot. So, you know, whatever that is, this is a concept I've talked with friends about a couple of times because we do go into a relationship expecting our partner to be absolutely everything, the end all be all. And when they fall short of being everything that we think we need, they're not filling our cup the way we expected them to or wanted them to, we failed to step back and recognize that that's actually probably not your partner's area to be filling. That is probably another friend or acquaintance or maybe it's a personal hobby kind of thing that you need to adopt. So I love that your counselor said that to you and was like, no, no, no honey, figure this out because they can't, there is just no way you guys are so every one of us is so unique as a human being and there is absolutely no way that we can be everything to each other.
Speaker 2 00:44:51 Absolutely. And I think I look at a lot of relationships and friends relationships that have not made it. And some of 'em were the right choice. Like my parents were actually the right choice to not stay together. They both went off and had exceptional lives that are more aligned with who they are. Yeah. And because that was my model when Rich and I did separate for that year mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I was in the place where I was, I was saying, we're just not aligned anymore. And he was coming back and saying, I don't think that's what's going on with us. I think that we're alcoholics. I think that we have all this dysfunction that we need to work through. Give us a chance to figure those things out. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and then we can decide if our lives are aligned. Yeah. Which I really respected that that was his take on it and I was willing to do that. But I do look at friends where it seems like it's not the alignment, it's the expectations. And those can be so damaging in the sense that
Speaker 2 00:46:00 We really have to fill our own cup first. We have to fill our own cup first. We have to have spirituality first. And that's kind of the foundation Yeah. Of what makes us happy. And I sometimes I say like our relationships with our, our significant others should be the icing on the cake. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But we want it to be the cake instead. You know? Yeah. Like we need to have the ingredients of our life to have this solid foundation of who we are and then we get to decide. We have the icing, we have decorations and we do need to be able to have variety in where we're getting those resources from and not be shutting that person out at the same time emotionally. Cuz we're like, oh, well you don't fill my, my cup. And Yeah. So I, you know, rich is a river person.
Speaker 2 00:46:50 I go to the river and watch, you know, but I don't go all the time. I don't feel like I have to go all the time. Yeah. And he does, he has his river friends and he has his music friends and I've got my spiritual friends and I have my art friends and, and I, I love that the more that we can see and accept and love each other for exactly who we are, the more you want them to go do the things that fill them up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> that put the ingredients in their cake. Yeah. And you want, and you can't wait for them to come back instead of feeling like, oh I was, he's off at the river again. Part of me's like, yay, he's at the river again. Yeah. Because he's gonna come back and he's gonna be filled up. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:47:30 <affirmative> and his eyes are gonna be lit up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and he's gonna be so happy. And you've been doing your own thing, which means at the end of the day, you have so much to talk about. Tell me about what happened exactly me, about your joy and let's share that with each other. Which that icing, that sweet, delicious topping of, I have a very full life and I get to top it with this wonderful significant other that gets to be themselves and I get to be myself. And we both just get to grow and enjoy everything at the same time. You know,
Speaker 2 00:48:00 So, and be humans. Yes. <laugh>. Which means that it doesn't always go great for either one of us. You know, earlier this year my husband chopped off a tip of his finger, uh, at work. He's a stone mason and a rock came and cut the top of his finger off and he was devastated. Yeah. And it was a big deal for him. He's a musician. He is, he is this athlete. He uses his hands for work. And I was so grateful that I had been working on this practice because I think my old self would've become sugary sweet. Let me fix it for you and how do I accommodate for you? And, and trying to make him be happy because he was really unhappy. He was in grief Yeah. Over this injury, which is changed forever. Like how his, how it works. And I was grateful that I was able to do two things. One was that I was allow, I allowed him to have his own experience without it emotionally affecting me. Like it would've in the past. Like I recognized in the past that I used to say we, for everything we experienced him chopping off his finger. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:49:15 I didn't, my finger wasn't chopped off. Mm-hmm. He chopped off his finger. So I watched myself when it first first happened saying, oh we need to go to the doctor. We, and I'm like, oh, you're doing that thing again where you're, you're part of the experience and yes, he's my spouse and he is, you know, my everything, but this is his experience.
Speaker 1 00:49:40 Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:49:41 <affirmative> and I'm gonna support him and I'm gonna be here for him and I'm gonna allow him to have whatever dark day that he has, but I don't have to have a dark day because he has a dark day. Yeah. And one of my sayings that I used to just wear like a badge of honor was you can only be as happy as your least happy child. Now I had kids that went through some darkness and hard times. And so I had a child in particular who was really not very happy all the time. And so I used to think that I couldn't be happy because he wasn't happy. Yeah. And so what did I do about that? I drank over that. I shut down over that. I went in and fixed. I controlled, I tried to fix his world. I tried to make it better for him.
Speaker 2 00:50:28 Yeah. And all the while everything's just, the sand is just running through my fingers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So having been in the place where I was when my husband had this accident, I felt like I was much more equipped to just be present for him mm-hmm. <affirmative> and allow him to be totally upset Yeah. And terrified and not placate him or not make it be better for him or not try to keep him from having his feelings or not jump on the bandwagon and Yeah. You know, like make it worse. It, it just held space for him and let him be exactly who he was and I let myself still go have fun and be myself and do my thing. And he commented at some point in it how much he appreciated that he could just have gone through his experience and he felt supported. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> but he didn't feel responsible for my feelings either. It actually gave him permission to not be responsible for my feelings cuz I could be responsible for my own feelings.
Speaker 1 00:51:33 Yeah. Because you didn't take on the ownership of it, you know? Right. It's not mine as well. It was,
Speaker 2 00:51:40 It
Speaker 1 00:51:40 Was his. Yeah. It was absolutely his. That's a huge shift and change. I love the illustration and I really love how you've been so open and sharing all of these experiences and I'm sure your husband is okay with
Speaker 2 00:51:55 That <laugh>. Well there's only 200 episodes of my own podcast that specifically talk about every single thing in my life. So both my husband and my kids are, are pretty used to me talking about everything. I think, you know, one of the gifts that podcasts offer and one of the things I love about your podcast as well is there's this place out in the world that we're supposed to be perfect. You know, if you look at Instagram or if you look at social media or even before all that came around to the magazines, I remember just how much pressure there was when I was growing up to look like those girls in the magazines and to have that body and to wear those clothes and to be liked and to be perfect and that's not being human. And so the more that I can share of myself and the realness of what I've been through, if I can make it, you can make it <laugh>, you know?
Speaker 2 00:52:53 Yeah. And, and my dark times were not as dark as some other people's dark times. Yeah. And they were darker than other people's. So we do this thing where we not only compare ourselves in terms of like, you know, one of the things that I love about our relationship is that I was gravitated to you cuz you do the same thing as me. And, and almost instantly I could tell that we, we could have a healthy relationship and we could do the thing where we're like, oh well what's your numbers? Or how many followers do you have? Or, and we don't do that at all. And, and it's completely out of the picture. And what I love about us is that we inspire and encourage each other to be our best selves. That's not how we're taught. What we're taught is that we should compete.
Speaker 2 00:53:42 Yeah. But we also compete in our suffering. So we compete in our I'm better than you and then we also compete in I'm worse than you. Yeah. You know, my pain is worse, my situation's worse. We are all here being human beings with our own relationships and our own sorrow and our own joys. And nobody gets through life without hardship. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so what we learn in spirituality and what we learn in self-help and what we learn in this space of wanting to better our lives is to just love ourselves Exactly. For who we are and for our experience and have compassion for ourselves. And I look back at those years and I think thank goodness that I made it, first of all, there were many a night that I contemplated not making it. Um, but that I came to this place where now my compassion and love for others it's gonna make me cry is so profound. My attachment to myself is decreasing constantly and my ability to see and feel the people around me and the humanness of the people around me and the desire to, um, be present for them and not fix anybody. Yeah. To just share. So if I can share my story and that gives somebody else permission to feel and move through their story mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that's the greatest gift that I can offer
Speaker 1 00:55:29 <laugh>. And this is something she does absolutely beautifully on her podcast. Recover Your Soul. It is very candid, very open. There are moments that are very raw. She's had her husband on there, she's had her kids on there and it's just beautiful to listen to her be so authentic in what's going on in life. So go listen to her, go look her up. Is there anywhere else that they can touch, base with you, find you so that they can connect with the amazing being that
Speaker 2 00:55:59 You are. Thank you Crystal. That's so sweet. I have a website called Recover your soul.net and the Facebook private Facebook group is growing as well. My main space that has ended up happening with recovery, your soul is around people who have other people in their lives who are addicts. And that's not necessarily what I intended for recovery your soul to be, but I love that. What it's, what it's bringing to people is that was my experience was because I'm an addict. My husband's an addict and actually now my kids are addicts. There is a definite number of us who are affected by other people who are addicts. But really it's, it's, it's just life. Right? Yeah. It's that thing that we want something to be different, for us to be okay. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and when we can learn to take our power back, when we can learn to let go of control, we can learn to take care of ourselves, turn the attention to ourselves and our own healing.
Speaker 2 00:57:02 The changes that happen around us are so profound. But what is the most important is the changes within ourselves. Yeah. Are so profound. And in the end we are our own human being and our own soul that lays on our deathbed and needs to be able to close our eyes and know that we did what was right for us in our lifetime. Yeah. And that we were our best and truest selves. And when we let go of the need of somebody else to give us permission for that, we're free. So that's what my community's about.
Speaker 1 00:57:37 I love it. And I want everyone to know and understand that addiction is not just drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 2 00:57:44 Right.
Speaker 1 00:57:45 Addiction. We can be addicted to drama <laugh>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we can be addicted to feeling sorry for ourselves. We can be addicted to control. We need to have control in life. Addiction is something where we have to have something and she's just open about it. The people who come and join our people who recognize that there are other people in their lives or they themselves are addicted to something no matter what that something is. And you need a little extra support and love to continue working through and find yourself mm-hmm. <affirmative> and be amazing yourself.
Speaker 2 00:58:20 So find yourself. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:58:22 So recover your soul. Couple questions
Speaker 2 00:58:24 For you. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:58:25 We are huge on self-care. And so what is your favorite or unique thing for indulging for
Speaker 2 00:58:34 Self-care? Thank you for asking. I think my number one self-care is journaling. I think that journaling has allowed me to slow down the monkey mind And in my past, my old journaling was really a place where I laid out my despair.
Speaker 1 00:58:54 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:58:54 And I think that journaling now has been a place where I can put down what is on my mind, but then I'm asking for clarity and I'm asking for grace. Yeah. And what comes out of that is so amazing cuz it feels like it has a, I feel like I'm being spoken to by spirit. Yeah. You know mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And when I journal I feel like there's a clarity that comes and a release that comes out of that. So I would say Journaling's my number one selfcare.
Speaker 1 00:59:29 Well, that feeds right into my second question, which is, um, in journaling. Is there a journaling prompt that you would recommend our listeners take to the book?
Speaker 2 00:59:41 I believe that having gratitude and allowing yourself to vision is so profound that our lives are what we think and feel and believe they are. And our thoughts are so powerful. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so when I really started to realize this, that when I am stressed
Speaker 1 01:00:04 Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 01:00:05 <affirmative> and I'm in fear, and I'll use Rich's last experience as a, as a marker, I could go and I would start to, you know, write, how could he do this to me? Well, and now what I say is, thank you for letting this come to light. Thank you for giving me the strength to handle this. Mm. Thank you for being here, for me to handle these dark times. Thank you for giving me the insight to know this isn't about me. I'm so happy and grateful that I have the tools to go through this. I am so happy and grateful that we actually have a loving marriage and that this is something that he needs to go through. Yeah. So those, that, that prompt for me is to just turn and open it up to spirit to hold it for me.
Speaker 1 01:01:02 Yeah. I love it. And it brings in the gratitude and the acknowledgement that there is growth mm-hmm. <affirmative> and there is learning in there if we just choose to stop and look at it. Yes. So thank you so much for coming and being here and joining me today. It has been ugh, fabulous. It's filled my cup and it always does. Every time I get to spend time with you, it always fills my cup. So thank you for joining us and yeah. Um, until next week guys, we'll see you again here on breath In, breathe Out. I hope this moment of self-care and healing brought you some hope and peace. I'm Crystal Kowski on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, and I hope you check us out and follow along for more content coming soon. I look forward to being with you again here on Breathe In. Breathe out. Until next time, take
Speaker 0 01:01:57 Care.
