Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
The Art of Creative Healing: Megan Edge's Transformational Journey
A simple greeting card with a painted rose and a profound quote by Anaïs Nin became the catalyst for Megan Edge's transformation: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." This powerful insight revealed the connection between her chronic physical pain and the emotional patterns she'd been maintaining in her life and relationships.
In this deeply moving conversation, Megan shares how expressive arts became her pathway to healing and ultimately led to her contribution to the bestselling book "Expressive Arts: The Ultimate Creative Guide to Transforming Stress." Drawing from her extensive background as a counselor, metaphysical practitioner, and nature-connected healer, she illuminates how creative processes help us bypass our conscious resistance and tap into our body's innate wisdom.
We explore the fascinating intersection between creativity and wellness, examining how photography, writing, gardening, and even foraging can become powerful therapeutic tools. Megan reveals how photographing heart shapes she discovered in nature began as a personal healing practice and eventually evolved into her Heart's Journey Oracle Cards and guidebook.
The conversation takes a powerful turn as Megan courageously shares her personal journey of following her intuition through a difficult marriage transition, highlighting how vulnerability and emotional authenticity are essential components of true healing. She offers compelling insights into how traditional medicine often addresses symptoms while holistic approaches can address root causes by considering emotional, spiritual, and energetic dimensions alongside physical symptoms.
Whether you're navigating physical pain, emotional challenges, or simply seeking more authentic self-expression, this episode offers practical wisdom about harnessing your creative impulses as pathways to wholeness and health. Try Megan's simple yet profound suggestion today: do something creative, anything at all, and notice how it feels in your body. Your healing journey might begin with a single creative act.
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On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Expressive-Arts-Ultimate-Creative-Transforming/dp/1961493780
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Megan-Edge/author/B01C3EDMR8
https://meganedgehealing.thrivecart.com/expressive-arts/
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and I'm super excited. Today we have back for the second time, megan Edge, and if you have listened to her before, I will tell you again about her amazing background. And if you haven't, I encourage you to listen to the first episode we did a couple months ago. And what an amazing woman.
Speaker 1:So since 2007, megan Edge has been helping people through her counseling services, with a focus on empowerment and deep healing of emotional, energetic and physical trauma. After three decades of study in the metaphysical fields of astral projections, runes, stones, dream work, tarot chakras, eft, auras, angel therapy and past lives, and completing various certificate programs, along with degrees in social work, women's study and geology, she's been named a master healer, a generational forager, and Megan has ethically harvested from the forest since a kid. Amazing stories about that from that first episode and now, through her shot Beyond the Garden Gate, she shares Mother Nature's healing bounty with her teas, salves and tinctures. She's also the creator of the Heart's Journey, healing Hearts, oracle Guards and Guidebook, and she's got a website. But today we're here to talk about a book that she has participated in, and it's called Expressive Arts the Ultimate Creative Guide to Transforming Stress. And this just matches right along with everything, megan. Without further ado, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Joe. I'm really excited to be here. It's so interesting when I experience that when you go back, I do the same thing.
Speaker 1:When people ask me for a bio, I'm like, well, what do you want me to focus on? Because I've got you know all these different worlds that I've lived my life in and I think when you're talking about, you know people's personal empowerment. A lot of times we get lost in where we're at and the struggles that we're in and we feel like I'm not doing anything, I'm stuck, I can't get anywhere. But if you just take a second look back a little bit, you're like oh wow, I've been climbing this big old mountain one step at a time. Huh.
Speaker 2:It's so true, and actually that just reminds me that years and years ago I used to help people write their resumes, and part of that process is helping a person remember all the things that they have done in their lives that have value and that contribute to who they are and why someone would want to hire them.
Speaker 2:And there's so many parts of a person's life that they don't necessarily appreciate makes them unique or gives them a different perspective or a new way of looking at it. And with something as simple but also important as a resume or a CV, being able to pull those skill sets out and then communicate them in a way that is understandable by somebody else is a really important part of that process of defining who we are. And so many times after we'd completed a person's resume, they'd look at it. Then they'd say exactly what I just said who is this person?
Speaker 1:But it's them. Well, it's so funny that you know people think that to get a job, the only experience that qualifies you are previous jobs. But you know, I never graduated college but I work with doctors on a peer-to-peer level. Your life's experience is just that and you know we can take it and do with it as we see fit.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the life experience. That is the learning. That's where the wisdom comes from. You know, saying that you worked at McDonald's for six months or you were an assistant somebody for a year, that doesn't tell anyone anything about you, right, about your life and the parts of your life that you're able to acknowledge as being significant, even if they seem minor. That's a whole different level of communicating with another person who you are and how you're showing up in the world.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. So I'm really excited. You know you've already written many things and you created these oracle cards and you know you're a creative person. As, as it is um me working with the gardens of hope, we're starting to um work on some art type projects with rock painting and and even just the gardens themselves I consider to be an artwork. Absolutely, I really believe that art is a healing tool, that I really believe that most healing comes from inside, comes from your own body just putting itself back together. We're given the ability to do that and we we rely on doctors and drugs so much to do these things for us, but the truth is they don't do it for us. They cover things up, they open up doors, they they make it possible for us to do it ourselves. But art and music and and horticultural therapy, all these things that we're talking about, they, I believe, sort of put us in a place, just like meditation or prayer or whatever. You let your guard down, you connect with yourself on a level that kind of just lets it flow.
Speaker 2:Well, that's exactly it. You get out of your own way because we are our own worst enemies, and especially when it comes to our health and well-being, mainly because we've been taught to give away our health sovereignty to a structure that is profit-driven. Let's be honest yeah, so there isn't a lot of impetus in mainstream medicine for the patient to become well not at all and there's certainly not a lot of education around empowering ourselves. You know, we don't go to the doctor and say, hey, how can you help me change my life? We go to the doctor and say this hurts, and the doctor says here's a prescription right, let me treat you so that I can keep on treating you.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and, and I know that that's not always why a person goes into medicine.
Speaker 1:It's not sinister necessarily.
Speaker 2:No but.
Speaker 1:It's the nature of the beast.
Speaker 2:It is the nature of the beast, and so something like the expressive arts and this amazing book that I was invited to be a co-author in, was invited to be a co-author in it really is allowing and helping to educate people, demonstrating to people how important the holistic approach to wholeness and wellness is. And for me personally, my chapter is chapter 18, and it's titled the Heart's Journey to Healing and Wholeness from Chronic Pain to Self-Love. Chronic pain is an indicator that the individual is not loving themselves at that level, and we can look at inflammation and we can look at markers and we can look at all of those things at the physical level, but that physical pain is the body's attempt to communicate with the individual, with the host. Hey.
Speaker 1:I'm over here.
Speaker 2:I'm over here and hey, you're not addressing these circumstances. And for me, the journey was this aha moment that I had standing in a metaphysical shop here in Victoria BC where I live, and I was looking at a card. It was just like a little greeting card and on the outside of the card was this beautiful painted rose and the rose was tight in a bud but it was just starting to unfurl. Nice, can I read it from you? Yes, please, absolutely Okay. This is how it all started and this actually ties in with the heart's journey, because the heart's journey Oracle cards, hearts that I found in nature was my symbol. I believed from the universe when I said please show me a symbol that I'm following my heart. Wow, through this transformative experience of realizing that the man I was married to, we were no longer together on the journey, wow.
Speaker 2:Wow. So it all ties into it. But so I say the story my story starts with. How does she know? How does Anais Nin know precisely how I feel? Before I even know. All these years I've asked why? Why am I in such pain? Why does my body hurt, ache, feel numb and tight all the time? I stand in front of a rack of greeting cards in a local metaphysical shop. The shop is full of customers browsing the shelves and seeking answers to solve their problems. In a world of crystals, oracle cards, candles and incense. I'm drawn to a card with a painted rose just beginning to open. I like the pink hues and the Wow. And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. That quote, joe, changed my life.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 2:More accurately. I let that quote change my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, because I read that and I felt something just go like clunk in my body, a defining moment.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like this lightning bolt of recognition where I realized, oh my God, all the pain I'm carrying in my body is like being that tight little bud and instead of naturally allowing myself to open and blossom and express and be in the world in this beautiful being that I am, I was denying myself that and I was denying the world that.
Speaker 2:The energy it took to stay tight. That's where the pain was coming from, and with that understanding, I could start to unweave all the things that I had woven together to keep myself safe and protected, which was creating all the pain. And that journey began with that quote. And then it took all of my courage and, some days, all of my vulnerability to realize that I couldn't go backwards, right. I couldn't go back into the bud.
Speaker 1:We never can.
Speaker 2:No, we never can, you can't?
Speaker 1:It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2:No, no, it doesn't. And for me, part of that journey was the realization that part of who I was keeping myself tight as a bud for was for my husband at the time.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I had fit myself into his expectation of me and I had allowed that to become who I was, and his expectation of me was that I would never change, that I would always stay the same, and he even said that those were his words in one of our many exhaustive conversations over the next couple of years, which was you can't change. I want you to be the woman I married forever. Wow. I was 27, when we got married.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's funny. I always tell people you're either going forward or you're going backwards. And if you're going backwards, it's generally because you're not doing anything, because the world's turning, you can't not move. You're either going to go one way or you're going to go the other way. And the other thing is that word vulnerability. I think that we just did a men's circle a couple of weeks ago and that came up as the power of vulnerability. It's, it's weird because, uh, you know, as I'm doing more work on myself, I get all emotional easier and easier and I'm like whoa, where are these tears coming from? I just turned into a big old cry baby all the time. And it's not that I'm sad, I just, you know, I just feel emotion. I just I don't even know what it is. Sometimes you hear music and tears start coming. I'm like what the heck is this? Yeah, but there's something about, like what you're talking about, all that energy to hold something back.
Speaker 1:Answer is just letting go well, let yourself, start to unfold, let yourself be this thing that it's trying to be. It doesn't truly even take an effort. It takes just to be able to relax.
Speaker 2:And for me, the expressive arts part of it.
Speaker 2:Like you said earlier, I am a very creative person and I feel like now in my life, at 56, everything I do is a creative process, Whether I'm drying mushrooms that I just went out into the forest and picked and I'm thinking what am I going to make with these mushrooms? Am I going to powder them? Am I going to cook them and freeze them? Am I going to dry them? How am I going to use them medicinally that whole process, that whole thought process, is a creative expression when we look at our health and our well-being. And in this book. There's 22 authors from around the world who've contributed to this book.
Speaker 2:And each of us shares a story of when our creative process became the healing modality that we now share and teach. And then we share a tool at the end of the chapter, and the tool that I teach is about how to create a sacred space for an oracle card reading. You can tap into that inner knowing and that inner wisdom that you have. I never thought of myself as an artist, particularly. I can still draw really great stick figures and I look at my daughters.
Speaker 2:My daughters are incredible artists. They are amazing. I don't think it came from me necessarily.
Speaker 1:All right, I would be a great artist, as about a three-year-old, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2:But the creativity the creativity that I like to think that came from me because I'm always engaged in that creative process. So where I went and how this all ties in to the healing journey, to the work that I do, to nature, to the Oracle cards and all of it, is that when I started to see these hearts in nature, like little hearts in stones on the beach or the shape of clouds or in trees or leaves, I started to take photographs of them and I'd always loved photography. I especially loved micro photography, and I tried numerous times in my life to learn how to be a photographer and it never really took hold until I decided that it was okay.
Speaker 2:I gave myself permission that's a key point. I gave myself permission to just take pictures of these hearts with my phone, as I found them Right, and so the quality of these photographs, I mean. Here's an example of one of them. This is a beautiful Ousmane, it's a type of lichen. Wow, a little heart shape in the middle of it. You know, here's a cloud I love it wow I'm not a professional photographer. Here's one that's a little heart-shaped rock. I love it, but I can see things.
Speaker 1:I see things differently than other people yeah, yeah, that's really the key to photography. My wife is a great photographer. I go around, I just click buttons and you know, sometimes I get lucky and catch a good one where she just like every time she clicks something like, well, how'd you get that? You know it's, it's, it's, it's an eye, it's a. It's definitely a gift.
Speaker 2:It's an intuitive process, right, and that's that's the whole thing with with the expressive arts, it isn't. It's tapping into your intuition. Whether you're dancing or you're painting, or you're taking photographs or you're creating meditations, whatever it is, you're creating gardens, it's all part of that intuitive creative spark that we all have. How does that tie into well-being? Because what better way is there to help manage and navigate stress? And I use those words particularly, rather than deal with stress, Because dealing with stress is a very, you know, task-oriented, masculine-oriented way of achieving something. Achieving results.
Speaker 1:It's actually kind of bullshit really. I mean to be frank, stress is part of life and you know it's like sailing. You know you're never going to master the ocean, you're just going to try to navigate it, try to keep yourself afloat.
Speaker 2:That's right, and I love that word navigate. I have a client right now who is in. She has stage four kidney cancer and she's in hospice right now and a lot of people are talking about how she's dying of cancer and I keep reminding her look, you're still alive, so you're living with this cancer.
Speaker 1:Can testify to that one.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, you know. And I say to her you can walk out of hospice. People do leave hospice alive. It can happen many times. And part of her creative process right now is writing her book, her next book, Nice. It's a beautiful book and I'm helping her to edit it and to do the word crafting oh fantastic, I'm also an editor as well. Just one more thing I do. Just one more thing I do. And her book is all about letters and it's called. It's called, If you Only Knew, A Healing Book of Letters.
Speaker 2:And these are letters she's written over her lifetime to various people, places, experiences and using.
Speaker 1:There's a lost art.
Speaker 2:Exactly Well, and that's part of this book is reintroducing people to the lost art of letter writing, and then also using letter writing as a therapeutic tool, and also the destruction of letters that no longer serve a purpose or that you're ready to release the energy of Powerful work. Yeah, I love it and this is work that she and I are doing while she's living with cancer in hospice right.
Speaker 1:She's probably forgetting that she's dying too. Huh, Exactly.
Speaker 2:Aging in a creative process. So I would say, for anybody who has been given any kind of diagnosis and cancer is one of those diagnoses, as you well and intimately know is just one of those devastating oh my gosh. And the immediate response is you've got to start taking chemo and you've got to start taking radiation or we're going to cut it out or whatever. It's very drastic yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very aggressive. It's very aggressive. It would be so fascinating and so wonderful if an oncologist, upon delivering this news, if the first words out of his or her mouth were so what kind of creative process would you like to?
Speaker 1:engage. I love it. Yeah, you never know. I mean, I've been meeting a lot of oncologists and some of these integrative folks have got some pretty good tricks up their sleeves. So I think that there's as much as the standard of care side of things is rigid and strong and overpowering. There's a handful of rebels sort of breaking free and seeing some truth on the other side of it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it's so beautiful to watch that. And there's amazing documentaries that are being produced right now, looking at this phenomenon of cancer, for example, and then different places in the world's response to it, beliefs about it, research on it, understanding what it is, and then looking at alternative. I mean, we call them alternatives, but really in many other cultures, the primary care is right. Let's start counseling immediately. What are you carrying in your body? Anger-wise, trauma-wise, belief-wise, grief-wise?
Speaker 1:What are you eating? How are you sleeping?
Speaker 2:How are you eating? How are you sleeping?
Speaker 1:Relationships like yeah, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:And you know it's interesting because when I was in that first marriage and he and I, we met when we were teenagers, we were best friends, we had wonderful beautiful times.
Speaker 1:I had one of those too, yeah beautiful times.
Speaker 2:We created two beautiful daughters. I mean, you know it wasn't like it was all bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I do remember, as I was coming into this process of beginning to recognize my own need for healing at a really deep level, and that part of the pain I was carrying was the dysfunction in the relationship. I remember feeling intuitively if I don't do something about this, I will get cancer.
Speaker 2:And of all the diseases I could manifest, all the ways my body could tell me that it wasn't happy, that things were not going well.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right. That's about the most dramatic one.
Speaker 2:And it's not that I wanted it at all but I remember that little voice at the back of my head saying listen, you've got to change something about this relationship, something about your relationship with yourself. You have to start taking care of yourself, or else this is how it's going to show up for you, and then that will be your journey. And I mean it's always a journey, right, Right, it hasn't been my journey to have a cancer diagnosis. I've never had cancer that. I'm aware of.
Speaker 1:Should it stay that way the rest of your life? I love it.
Speaker 2:Instantaneously heal all sorts of things, yeah, but having worked with many, many clients for whom that is their journey or has been their journey, I feel just so passionate about helping people recognize the importance of holistic health Agreed.
Speaker 2:On every level, and that's where the food as medicine comes in, that's where nature as medicine comes in, that's where just taking care of yourself and asking questions outside the box about the why of this, and when I hear some of the beautiful things that you're doing on your own healing journey with this, I want that for everybody.
Speaker 1:Me too. That's part of the purpose of this podcast and building a community around holistic wellness, you know, and all these different facets and things I never even thought of sometimes. And you know I'm grateful that you've become part of the community, coming back, and you actually sat in one of Dr Hoffman's calls and you know you'd get able to get a taste. One day you're going to come out and see our gardens and maybe forest, and you know, but that's what it's all about is sharing our experiences and, and you know, we're all teachers and we're all students and unless we don't do anything and yes, it's all up to us well, I really would like to hear a little more about your chapter. And you know we talk about expressive arts and unfurling your potential and all of this. But let's get into like, what sort of? You know, are we talking about painting? Are we talking about music? How do we get into this?
Speaker 2:For me personally.
Speaker 1:Well, no, just as you shared with the chapter in the book.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, in my chapter, what I'm sharing is that, that moment of recognition like the oh my gosh, this is what I'm doing. And then what happened when I arrived home that day? Okay and said to my husband oh my gosh, I had this incredible epiphany. You know, let let's do this together. Let's blossom together. And the response that I received was not what I was expecting.
Speaker 2:This is somebody that I'd spent so much of my youth with, and my 20s and my 30s, and I thought that I knew him and then I discovered that I didn't. And if I can read a little bit more, I'll share it, oh, please yeah yeah, I write.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to get home and share this epiphany with my husband. I always take care of his emotional needs, but it's time for things to change. Later that evening, after I make dinner, clean the kitchen and put our daughters to bed, I'm ready to relax and tell him about my day and my newfound understanding. I can't wait to show him my greeting card and read the quote together. I know he's going to be as moved as I am. It turns out I'm wrong.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:I don't see any reason to change anything about our lives, he tells me, leave the past in the past. What do you need to rehash? Everything that's rich Coming from the man who only lives in the past and is afraid of planning for the.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:He sees the look on my face, he realizes I'm serious and he backpedals. I promise to be a better husband. I'll help more around the house and stop leaving my dirty socks on the floor. I'll look after the girls when I get home from work so you can have a break. I'll do anything you need me to do. Just promise me one thing Don't change so much that you realize you don't need me. Just don't leave me. This isn't the first time I've heard this mantra of promises. I must have absorbed Aeneas Nin's words into my very cells because I feel an unsettling emotion. I think it's distrust. I realize my husband's promises have an emptiness to them. There's a pattern he says the words but fails to follow up with lasting actions. His love comes with the condition that I don't question his motives or his behaviors. This is it, I think to myself. This is the moment his control of me begins to slip, because I can see through his manipulations. I can see what he's so afraid of.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's heavy.
Speaker 2:Yes, and from that moment, you see, the gift that I gave myself was that I started to look at my life. I started to notice certain patterns, behaviors in myself in response to him. And he was just coming from a scared place. I get that Nobody wants their life to suddenly be upheaved.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, I'm sorry, all of those changes, yeah, so I go on to say I see red flags within my marriage trying to get my attention my husband's emotional affairs, his addiction to spending our money on his collections, and his controlling and manipulative behaviors. And the question I had to ask myself was this how have I allowed these behaviors to persist? And, more importantly, why? How have I unwillingly or willingly participated? And, more importantly, why? How have I unwillingly or willingly participated? How is it possible that I find myself in an emotionally and financially abusive marriage? This must be the emotional source of my pain.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's powerful because you took ownership.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. But here's the wake-up call. This is this moment. Oh, where are we now? Right? So there's a car accident, which was also a pivotal point to this whole story. Okay, and what I had done is I had said to the universe I think I need a wake-up call, like I can't see the way through, I can't see the forest for the trees. Something needs to happen that's going to pull the rug out from underneath me, and in some people's cases it's a diagnosis of cancer that stops you in your tracks and you go.
Speaker 2:Wait, I have to look at my life now, right For me. When the car accident happened, I thought that was the wake-up call, because I'd never been in a car accident before. We were rear-ended. It's a whole series of events. We were rear-ended and I was the one that got injured. My husband and my children were in the car too. They were okay, thank goodness. And so I thought, right, well, this is the thing that stops me, because I can't be Wonder Woman anymore. With my injuries, I can't do all the things that I used to do. But that wasn't the wake-up call.
Speaker 2:It's a few weeks after the accident and my husband comes home from work grinning. You'll never guess who poked me on Facebook. I go through the list of our high school friends but come up empty-handed and a little exasperated. I have three pots on the stove, a two-year-old wearing nothing but the Cheerios she's just dumped all over the floor and herself and my neck is killing me. Read the room. I want to shout at him here. I'll show you. He says as he opens his Facebook page At my husband's insistence I don't have a Facebook account, you don't have the time.
Speaker 2:He says All our friends are the same anyways, you don't need your own account. Oh my god, that's my first boyfriend from high school. Oh my god, that's my first boyfriend from high school. How on earth my heart drops into my stomach when I see the photo of him and his wife. That should have been me.
Speaker 2:Wait what? Where did that come from? I'm perfectly happy in my marriage. I intend to spend the rest of my life with my husband, grow old with him and live happily ever after, don't I? Aren't we going to save our marriage together? I don't want this. This can't be happening. I don't need this. You should message him. I hear the words, but I don't understand what he means. Whatever, for I say Well, to clear away any lingering feelings you still have for him, it'll be good for both of us, if you do like, how it's been good for me to reconnect with all my past crushes. But there are no lingering feelings. I loved him once, but that was long ago. I'm not holding a torch for him. Of this I am very aware, at least not for the boy he was then. The man he is now, I don't know. Yet. I realize my husband is still talking to me. I smell the now overcooked broccoli and realize my daughter is no longer in the kitchen.
Speaker 2:I follow the trail of Cheerios into the living room to find her. I need a distraction. I can't deal with this right now. It's midnight and the house is asleep, except for me. I quietly get out of bed and head to the kitchen. I open the family computer. My husband's left his Facebook page open, just in case you change your mind, he told me. I look at my old boyfriend's profile, feeling deliciously daring and equally terrified. I feel an unmistakable pull of energy, vast and insistent. So this is my wake-up call, the one thing I cannot ignore, make sense of or dismiss. Now, what? Now, what? Indeed, with nothing to lose, I ask the universe Show me a sign, a sign so obvious I can't miss it. A sign so that I will know I am following my heart above all other voices and making my choices from a place of integrity and love.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow.
Speaker 2:Healing comes from so many different places.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, comes from so many different places. Yeah, yeah, wow, yeah. And and from that did you end up reaching out to him, or did?
Speaker 2:you just realize what you needed to do. I am married to him. Oh my God I've been for the last 15 years Wow.
Speaker 1:Wow yeah, holy cow man, your intuition is quite a guiding light for you.
Speaker 2:It is, and you know, here's the thing about listening to one's intuition. It isn't always easy.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Our intuition tells us the things we need to know, but then it's our job to choose or not to choose to follow that intuition.
Speaker 1:And it's often not what we want to hear.
Speaker 2:It is often not what we want to hear. And for the next two years, after that realization and that reconnection, at my then husband's assistance, so many things changed, obviously, but so many things had to be healed in that process and they had to be questioned in that process, and I had to learn to speak my truth, to stand up for myself. And most of that time was spent both with myself and my now husband desperately fighting against what was showing up for us Right. And if you've been in that situation, I get it.
Speaker 1:I've gone down in my quest to live the life I'm here to live. I've done things that I just was not going to do. But when my goal and my desire was to do what I'm here to do, I couldn't avoid those things. And now I embrace them. But when you're walking up into it, you're going this is not what I want to do and I don't like this, but I have to do it for whatever reason. And you do what you need to do if you have integrity. And then you find yourself it's like oh wow, I wouldn't have ever discovered this world or this purpose or this talent or whatever, had I not, you know, just stuck to what I should have done.
Speaker 2:Well, that's exactly it, and the thing that happens I know from personal experience and also all the clients that I've worked with over the years when those blinders fall off, whatever they are for, and I always think of it like a horse that has the blinders on so that it can't get distracted by the things that are on the side right it's a great analogy when those blinders fall off and you start looking around and realizing, huh, there are things that I have been ignoring.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And the things that I've been ignoring are the cause of my pain, my disease, my injury, whatever it is the way that the body is trying to help you get back on track, and I know that when a person is stuck, it's usually because there aren't the things yet in place for them to move forward.
Speaker 2:Got it the things yet in place for them to move forward. So that being stuck keeps you in a safe, comfortable place. Even if that comfortableness is discomfort and dis-ease, I love it. Until everything is in place right.
Speaker 2:I was prepared to go through the incredible, excruciating pain that I was in after my car accident and I'd already been living with chronic pain, fibromyalgia, for decades and all kinds of other, a host of other health issues for a very long time. So I was familiar with pain, but this was a different level of pain that I was in after the car accident. But I was prepared to go through the physiotherapy, take the medication. I was on Demerol for the pain and I was just ready to, you know, shoulder forward and keep going and get back to being Wonder Woman. And when this showed up, it hit me at a deep physical level in a way that I had never experienced before and there was no going back. There was no going back even if my then husband and I had been able to somehow cross that bridge over all the water that was already under it, it never would have been the same.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't have, and it wouldn't have been the same for him nor for me. By him I mean my former husband. And here's the other point of it. In any relationship, joe, there's two people participating. We get there together and I remember sitting in counseling with my then husband and he believes he's desperately trying to save the marriage. I'm trying to understand how we got to that point in the marriage.
Speaker 2:That's what I said to the counselor If this marriage is saved, okay. But before that can happen I need to understand how and why we got to this place together.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And considering that it was my then husband who kept insisting that I reconnect with this old boyfriend, for whom I truly had no residual feelings at all, he must have known on some level.
Speaker 1:He knew, he did know.
Speaker 2:He knew his own unhappiness.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he knew his own inability at the time to do anything about it Right. So he put it on me and I said okay, as the stronger one in this relationship, I will be the one.
Speaker 1:Somebody's got to take that step, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's not an easy step to take, but it's also a very empowering step, exactly.
Speaker 1:Well it never comes without discomfort, that's for sure, or at least it doesn't seem to.
Speaker 2:Well, sure, and like it wasn't a breeze, you know, there was a lot, of, a lot of long, painful conversations into the night. There was a lot of a lot of things that came up for me physically, health wise, as I was processing all of it and really getting clear on who do I want to be in the world and how do I want to show up in the world, and is this the person who can support me and walk with me in order to do that? And, by his own admission, he was not that man to walk with me. And when my now husband showed up, there was just something there that I didn't want at the time, but I did. I just didn't know. That's what I wanted.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. But you were putting yourself in a place where you could understand that. Well, listen, as I suspected we're going to, we breezed through our block of time and I really want you know, this book sounds fascinating, and that's you know. Really, I don't mean just, and that's you know. Really I don't mean just, but that's your chapter 18 out of how many chapters?
Speaker 2:22.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. So what I'll do, joe, is I'll send a link to the author page on well, send a link to my author page because it's listed there, but also the books page on Amazon.
Speaker 1:Perfect.
Speaker 2:And I'll create a coupon that. I can send to your audience and so if anybody wants to purchase the book through me, I will sign it and I'm happy to do that on the personal, or they can purchase it directly through Amazon, and that helps all of us authors too, because every purchase brings us up. We are number one in six different categories in health and wellness and self-help, and empowerment and stress, and I think on the launch week we were number five on Amazon for this book.
Speaker 1:Well, I love it. Sign me up. I will certainly purchase a copy and have your signature on it and send me what I need to do. And I'm tickled. I think this is fantastic and we'll put all that stuff into the show notes so everybody can see it. And, megan, this is I guess you're you're parting shot. What's that mean? It sounds like an amazing, powerful book. I I look forward to more conversations with you. Every time we get in here, it's a easier conversation.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love this connection that we've created on and off the podcast and I'm really looking forward to coming down and seeing what you've created and in the future, as a parting, I want to bring it back to this idea of the expressive arts. And what is that? And really what it is is how you choose to express yourself creatively, and if all you can draw is stick figures, then draw stick figures.
Speaker 2:You know, you don't have to do it for anybody else, you do it for yourself. And when I first started taking photographs of these hearts as I was going through this whole process, I just kept them for myself. I had no intention of sharing them and I didn't know.
Speaker 1:They're magnificent. I mean, I'm glad you did.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. Yes, me as well, but that's the point. You know, I did it for me. And then they became something that helped other people, and that's a beautiful thing. If it should happen or you know what I could have just kept them on my phone and had them just be for me, and that would have been perfect as well. So do something today when you're listening to this beautiful podcast. Do something creative today, anything. And just notice how you feel, feel it in your body, see what happens. Why not?
Speaker 1:I love it. That's a beautiful, a beautiful set of words and, Megan, I'm just so tickled and I look forward to having you back to continue this conversation and to the listeners. I'm super grateful for all the support we're getting. This podcast continues to grow and thank you for all your support and we will see you next time.
