Transformations through Trauma: A Journey of Healing and Self-Discovery

Finding Self-Love and Acceptance After Abuse with Jeannine Kim

Michael: How did you start to understand who you were? How did you allow that person to be? How did you handle the moments where you reverted to your old behavior patterns? Like what was that time period like for you as you're becoming this different version and shedding the skin of the person that you used to be?

Jeannine: It continued actually upon this internal journey, it was very private to me, even though I was doing yoga and you know, on my high rise and then going to work in the financial industry in the morning it was brewing, and I just kept it really silent. Every time I tried to share it, every time I tried to bring it up, it was ridiculed, it was made fun of when I wanted to eat organic food, there was one whole foods on the west side of Chicago and I was with my ex-husband at the time and he was fine with it, he was up for it. We would go and we would come back, but I couldn't use the word past lives, like if I read Shirley Maclaine’s book or you know, too much about this natural stuff. But what also called me to that was my body, because I'm really sensitive. My body reacts to medicines in certain ways, and I was starting to get stomach issues. I remember going to the doctor and they're like, oh, here and they hand me a bag of like acid blockers, and I literally said to the guy, just common sense in my mind I'm like, I wasn't born with these. Why you're saying I have to stay on these for the rest of my life and then I ended up with cervical cancer. And they had to remove a good chunk of my cervix and they're like, oh, you may not have children. And I had to go back like every three or four months to make sure it never came back and it never did. But in that moment, I remember taking all of this that was building, building, building and saying, you know what? I'm putting the patterns together and there's a different holistic way to live, and I'm not gonna be afraid of what is going on in my body, why is it changing? And I ended up researching and finding out ways that I could make sure that cancer didn't come back by way of B-vitamins, getting off the pill, like all these different ways, and I've never had a problem since went on to have two kids in my late thirties, early forties, very easily, knock on wood. And it was like my body was asking me to shift into a holistic way of living, my soul needed it and before you knew it, all the information that I was taking in just kind of bursted open and I could no longer show up to work every day and pretend like it was okay for me.

Michael: I remember having this moment where I sat down with my three best friends at the time, this was heading into almost a decade ago now we're very, very close to that window. And I had reached that point, you just used a great terminology, like I had burst it open, I was like, I cannot be this person anymore. And it was really an uprooting of all the things that I had known at the time. But when I made that choice and I made that decision, in a lot of ways, it felt like learning to love myself. Right. This was really the first time I was like, I'm gonna stand up for myself, I'm not gonna be co-dependent, I'm not gonna be a doormat. Most of this language I didn't have, then obviously I was just like, I got to do something differently. Right? And I looked at that time period and I was like, okay, like how do you actually tap into this? Because a lot of people start the journey and they make it a day or a week or six months even, and then it's like, boom, they're ripped right back into that old identity, that old version of themselves. How did you continue to go forward into being you?

Jeannine: You know, it was interesting because I was going on this path quietly, not really knowing where it was gonna take me, probably on some level, hoping everything would stay as it was, there were massive things that happened along the way that told me otherwise. There was my ex-husband at the time wasn't showing up for me mentally, emotionally, you know, just kind of like a revisiting of my childhood right there we were having problems and it wasn't until my father died and he decided he needed to go on a golfing journey with his friends and bike riding journey and not show up that I finally said, you know, I am always there for his family. My father was such a sweet man, I mean, he was an alcoholic, but he had his struggles and to not show up for him, and he died very, very quickly of cancer. And I said, you know, you could do that to me, but you can't do that to him. And something in me again switches so I needed something like that, harsh to do it. And then on top of it, I was just, then at that point we had moved to California and that shifted me hugely ‘cuz I land in California. I'm like, what? Organic fast-food restaurants. Like, I'm like, oh my gosh, these are my people. Like things like this that were little parts of my life just started to feed me and call me even more.

So, I began to go to school in the evening for massage therapy and I became a Reiki practitioner all while I was doing IPO trading for Salomon Smith Barney in the middle of the day, you know, in the daytime. And then I decided, you know what? I've gotta leave. I've gotta leave this financial industry, I'm going to do it in October. And it was like February. I'm like, I was sensing that shifts were happening at work as well. So sure enough, like I bought the plane tickets, I paid for my schooling in Beijing and for traditional Chinese medicine, Fortuna. And I'm like, I just have to tell 'em between now and then and within a month they called me into the office and said, we have to let you go, they left my computer off because I could have made trades that would've totally messed up. So, they said, we have to let you go and there is no reason, we're going to give you a check. We are going to pay for your insurance for the next year and that was it. So, it was almost like I had to build the life and I just really had to not look back. I had to almost like, if you build it, they will come type of a thing and I built it and then all of a sudden these things started to fall into place for me. And I'm not saying that happens to anybody all the time, but after my father died, I was getting at a point in my life where I was like, you know what? What am I doing? I was so unhappy where I was at, the marriage was off, the work was off, all of it was off.

Breaking Generational Cycles of Family Trauma | with Jennifer Westcott

Michael: Yeah, it's such a difficult subject matter, and this is something I've shared publicly. This is well known. I've been on television shows and all kinds of things sharing this. I was molested by a woman who was in our church. And part of me, as fucked up as it may sound, I'm like, before I took her to the hangman's noose, I'm like, I would love to understand what the fuck was happening in her life, right? That a grown woman would do that to an eight year old child. And you can't have that conversation and people will say you got to side with the victim. I'm speaking from a victim perspective where I'm looking at this and I'm going, if we understood this, maybe we can solve the problem, but this is the same thing we continue to run into where it's we're ignoring it and sweeping it under the rug until it comes to us. To this giant explosion. And we saw that happen. I think about me too, movement being a big catalyst of something like that. And it's eventually it always comes out, but on the other side of it, you have these people who immediately in which obviously I understand want to demonize, hurt, kill in prison, lock away and throw away the key on these people. But I'm like, It probably happened to them.

Jennifer: This is the thing. It's like the whole bullying thing. We want, you know what, there's this word in psychology, and this is the way I define it, so I hope I'm not wrong, because I've been saying it for years, dissonance.

Michael: Yeah, totally.

Jennifer: What it means is your poor old brain can't handle holding two opposing thoughts at the same time. So we want to pick a camp. So if someone's a molester, we can't handle seeing them as being abused too, It's your family member and you love them and because when it's your mom, like I was sexually abused by a neighbor He was a pedophile across the back lane when I was growing up between like age seven and eight nine I had a lot easier time handling that I could easily put him in the box of that's what He was a used to say to my therapist. He was like a nice straightforward Pedophile like I knew how to conceptualize him when I finally started healing because he wasn't my family became oh my god, my mom did this to me somebody would maybe as a brother or Someone they I love her to this day I love so I'm always stuck trying to hold two opposing things at the same time How do you love someone that did this? And I just think it gets really messy that we just go, Oh, God, let's not talk about it. Or the worst of all, we want kids and victims to be able to prove it before we'll actually stand behind them and listen. you can't go around accusing people of this willy nilly. People don't. Nobody wants that. To go down this road and unless it's happened.

Michael: Yeah. Children especially.

Jennifer: Oh,

Michael: Children, especially we, I would say for adults a little bit different. I think a lot of people are guilty before proven innocent, but children don't generally speaking, just pull this out of a hat. There's something here. I think that a part of the difficulty, In having these conversations, even in the space of a therapeutic or coaching setting is that people feel a tremendous amount of shame and guilt. And I am one of those people. Let me rephrase that. I was one of those people when I first started this journey and I was like, okay, I'm going to tell the truth about this. It probably took me two years of therapy before I opened up, and it was one of those things where it was. So I was embarrassed because for whatever reason, the stigma or shame gets attached to it about your self worth about who you are, about what it is that you represent as a human being, that you're not lovable or if you go down the path that I went, you become hyper promiscuous. Like I'm, Fucking everybody who's a lot like it's a whole thing, right? It's a dark place to be. And then I realized like you can only see light by walking through the darkness. And I had to sit and have these unbelievably painful conversations. If somebody is like beginning this journey and they're having some aha moments and they're thinking to themselves, that did happen with my uncle, that happened with my dad, that happened with my mom or my sister, or that happened with. In any capacity, or maybe this was a thing. And I remember mom did that, but dad did this and they're not sure. And they sit across from you in this therapeutic setting where do you open up the space to talk about this? ‘Cause I think that this is one of those really. Dark realities that keeps people from their full potential that keeps them from love, from happiness, from relationships, from real true, genuine connection. How do we open up that space as practitioners and professionals here? Do we open up the space? Is it like, is it the client's responsibility? And then if I'm sitting here and I'm a client and I'm like, I want to deal with this, but I'm terrified, where do I start?

Jennifer: Yeah. Yes. You're asking such great questions and it does. Because what I've noticed, I've worked in lots of different settings, and what I've noticed is we rarely ask this question and when we do, we expect that clients come in with conscious awareness and know why they're in therapy, and know what they want to work on, and know that, tick the box, have you ever been sexually abused as a child, it's on the intake form, they said no, we don't need to go there. That is so not my experience. My experience is people need to feel safe and, the whole thing about and guilt lends itself well to denial which I thought meant I was pretending not to know when I really did know. until I came out of my own amnesia about what happened with my mom that I realized it's that old saying denial is don't even know I am lying. I didn't even know. So I think lost our way a little bit with not attending to the unconscious enough anymore in therapy. We want it all to be this, think a different thought and you'll be cured. People could do their healing work from their conscious awareness, they would do it. wants to be able to look after themselves. But is I find that people need to be asked more than one time at more than one place in the process. Where do you think this came from? Has anything ever happened to you? Why do you think you're reacting this way to this? Have you ever considered? And it's a dance, like I don't say to people, I know you were sexually abused, I can tell. Because who am I to say that? A lot of therapists, I think, nowadays are afraid to ask the question. 

How Religious Trauma Shaped an Ethical Leader | with Shana Francesca

Michael: It's more the impact of the theft of our identity and if you're. Having that negatively reinforced. You go look at something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the safety of the physical body is first and foremost, predominant as you go up that scale to get to this place of ultimate, self actualization. And if you don't feel safe within yourself, you can never go into the world with autonomy.

Shana: And also I think that really, truly discovering ourselves happens in true community. And when we're trying to control other people, that's not community, that's control. That's an abusive environment. That's not real community. Real community is understanding what relationship is and understanding what it requires and showing up in ethical relationship with the people around us. That's what's meant to, that's what's meant to support us as we grow and learn as children, but that's not what showed up for me and that's not what showed up for you either. So I think, for me, I had to like, in my self discovery. Also figure out what relationship is and what it requires and find people who were safe for me to be around and be my, not even be myself yet, just to discover what that meant, what questions I could ask, what I, who I could become, what was possible for me, because curiosity is connected to all possibility, right? Because it's connected to all learning. And then, as we learn, we discover what actually aligns with who, with us, right? And then we're able to discover how we want to contribute to the world and our talents and our purpose and all of these things. But when your education and your understanding of the world is narrowed purposely, you're less likely to find your purpose. You're less likely to find that thing that ignites your soul. You don't even know it exists, right? And so there's like the killing off of your soul that happens. Because You're being forced to show up in the world in such narrow definitions and it's excruciatingly harmful And I think a lot of my trauma really solidified as trauma because I didn't have the support to experience the pain I didn't have the support around me to say yes, this thing was painful. You have a right to be you know, hurt by it, and I'm here to support you in healing from it. That's when it solidified as trauma for me, is not having the support I needed when I was harmed to actually work through it.

Michael: Yeah, and I think that's true for probably anyone in those environments. And, as I've mentioned on the show before, I grew up in the Mormon church, which in its own right, is a cult. And anyone who dares says otherwise, I'm more than happy to have an in depth conversation with you. But the truth is like growing up in that culture, while the parlay of growing up in the hood with drug addict, alcoholic, abusive parents, you really questioned everything. And I questioned God, religion, leadership at such a young age. And I found myself often being the kid who was getting kicked out of Bible study and Sunday school, because I was questioning and asking why. And the answer was never Anything other than this is what we say. And so this is what it is. And as I think my contrarian nature probably came through that because I just contrarian I've always wanted to understand for the sake of understanding, not just for the sake of asking the question. And then you end up in this place where, like you said, it kills your soul. And what's so devastating about that is some people don't have the ability to recover that, not only because they don't have community, but because forever they are indoctrinated into the idea like this is what life is and here's the truth and you know this propaganda and indoctrination is the American way don't ever be confused about that and you have to be open to the idea That at any given moment you're being propositioned into a certain alignment of thinking And whatever it is that you believe about the world, if you don't challenge it, and this is my opinion, if you do not challenge what the world is telling you the world is, you will forever be trapped.

Shana: Yeah, it's about approaching. It's about recognizing that there's a broader context that isn't necessarily being presented to you because the person presenting you information, whatever that information may be, has a very specific reason for presenting the information. They are the way they are. Even if they're telling you the story of the lived experience, they're telling you because they want you to draw certain conclusions. And that doesn't mean that everybody speaking to you has sinister intentions, that's not what I mean, but what I do mean is when we approach the world around us with curiosity, we're going to ask one or two questions deeper, and we're going to find way more information, and we're going to find that broader context, and it's going to provide us a way of understanding all of the all of our interconnectedness, our impact on the world around us, it's going to provide the information necessary for us to truly be able to step out of propaganda, step out of the specific narrative and understand the world in a more broad context.

A Warrior's Path to Overcoming PTSD | with Kelsi Sheren

Michael: For people who are trauma survivors who have gone through violence, whether it's at a young age and it's complex PTSD, or if it's adult and you were in the military, you went to fucking Afghanistan, or God knows the things that you bore witness to as a human being on this planet in the time we live in. And you're affected by PTSD. If you know how to effectively approach any situation that you could possibly be in within reason, because some things you just aren't going to be able to handle within reason, you can navigate the world with more peace. Would you agree with that?

Kelsi: A thousand percent. If people understood that the key to removing fear from your life, is taking action and control. No one would be afraid to do anything, but we teach helicopter parenting. We teach people that it's not safe. Yes. The world's dark when you're looking like this at a screen and yes, the world has heavy places for sure. But the majority of the world does not like that. And I'm not saying not to be cautious and aware and conscious of what's going on, but to be proportionate about where you live. For example, again I live in an area that's predominantly pretty safe up until kind of recently. And I'm consciously aware that I live on the border. I'm one of the two more trafficked parts of the border from Canada to the United States. So when my child went missing from school and the principal blamed my child, trust me, you have to learn how to handle that real quick, or you're going to hurt someone. And so you have to be conscious. And my response to her was, do you understand where you live? And she said, we live in one of the safest areas. I said, really, where do you get your facts? She goes look around you. And I said, for sure, everyone looks around nice, but let me tell you about the area you live in, honey. And then I spit a whole bunch of facts, but it's one of the largest gang populations about 10 minutes from us about all of the fentanyl flowing in about all of the human trafficking going across our borders, five minutes from that school about the people who actually legitimately attempted to take children of the park down the street. Don't tell me because we also can see where every child predator lives in our country in red dots. So don't tell me that it wasn't a big deal. You had a child go missing on your watch and then you did it again six months later and you still have your job. So when people say, Oh, and everything's safe. Sure. Depends on who, depends on who your Intel comes from. Notice I said, Intel, not news, radically different. Part of the problem with the career I had. Was I'm heavily tapped in. I know more now than I knew then. And that's an asset sometimes. And it's hard sometimes to, you have to balance that. So, I'm consciously aware of what goes on in the world, but I don't allow the fear of the world to creep into my home or to be put onto my son. He goes to jujitsu. He understands what to do. But the biggest fear for me is I've raised a leader in the truest sense. And if something happens at that school. My child's not going to run, my child's going to run at the thing.

Michael: Yeah. And you have to, and it's so hard for people to reconcile the reality of it. And I know, because I know the audience and the people who are listening to the show, they've been through hell. Like there, there are people who are listening to the show. Like even my story makes it look like a fucking, a trip to McDonald's play place, and I've been through a lot and I think about that and I can't help but wonder, like when we're faced with such dire circumstances in life, it's like, how do you keep going? You mentioned the career that you used to have, and I would love for you to talk a little bit more about that and your experiences and journey that have led you a little bit towards where you are right now.

Kelsi: Yeah. I'll give a brief overview. We don't want to strain too many people's brains.

Michael: Yeah, for sure

Kelsi: So I'm a Canadian combat veteran. I was an artillery gunner and a mortar man. And a RWS remote weapon system gunner for a tank. I worked with the French unit from Belcarche, Quebec on the east coast of Canada. I ultimately deployed in 2009 with that unit. And I ran the triple sevens there until I got borrowed by the British. And what that means is at the time in 2009, they didn't have people to go outside the wire with the men to search the women and children. Our rules of engagement are that we follow the Geneva Convention, which states that in the countries we were in. The women's that wear burqas and children and everything like that, we have to be able to search them, but the men can't touch them and they can't see them without them off, which means they needed someone to go. So I got a call and I got picked up and I went out with the British and did a job I wasn't properly trained for. And we went on an operation with them that went ultimately quite sideways and we lost a lot of humans. And really tragic and violent, the worst violence you could ever imagine in, in ways that I was 19 years old when I was there, so I couldn't wrap my brain around again what I was witnessing, let alone fully understood it because we don't get, we don't learn about the Quran and we don't learn about the caliphate and we don't learn about, we learned that the Taliban are bad people and they're the enemy, so we take them out. All right, roger that. Let's go. And when you start to see, I said this on Trigonometry a couple weeks ago, and it's resonated, and I'm going to say it again because I think it matters a lot. When you see your own people die, it flips a switch in you, and you're now willing to do a lot worse. That's it. That's just the hard truth. You can't witness violence and not be touched by it. Whether it affects you emotionally physically makes you sick, or whatever it does to you, it does something, and we know that. And at 19, I didn't know how to cope with what I was seeing. Or doing right. It's not just seeing. I'm also participating. I'm an active participant, willing, but active. And that means when you drop artillery rounds for the 1st time, it's not on targets anymore. Those targets are humans, and those are big bombs, and they flatten everything in its sight. And we drop white phosphorus, and we drop loom, which lights up the sky, and then we drop rounds. And when you miss. So you adjust, so when you start to realize that, yes, I was at a FOB for a little while, and I didn't see everything up close, what caught me off guard is when I finally went outside the wire to do something I just wasn't prepared for. And that's when I saw it up front, and then I enacted the same level of violence. And a lot of people came back and said you were in a fob the whole time. No, I wasn't, no, I wasn't. I was stacking on doors and I was running and I was gunning and I was putting women and kids in rooms and I was zap strapping them and watching them scream and searching them while they scream for their mothers. So, I understand what violence looks like and smells like and feels like. And what I realized from that was that it was a gift. It was a gift to be able to experience the full extremes of war. It was a gift in the sense that I would not be who I am now. It gave me something to overcome, it gave me something, it gave me something to beat, it gave me a purpose and a mission again, and that was to save myself, to walk away from the war, even though I had been diagnosed in the country and I was put on 11 different pharmaceutical drugs while I was in the country running the machine guns. When they told me I was useless and it would be easier if I died, and they sent me back alone, and no one called. Ever again, I realized that the world is a hard place, but I realized that young enough that I had enough time to work through it. And because I was raised properly, I didn't quit, even though I wanted to die every day.