Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
317. Seeing Resurrection is No Small Thing with Aundi Kolber
Janell welcomes Aundi Kolber, a Licensed Professional Counselor and author, to explore how the flow of strength helps us move beyond trauma to true flourishing. Aundi reminds us "that seeing resurrection is no small thing."
• Aundi explains the "window of tolerance" – the optimal zone where we can feel emotions without being overwhelmed.
• Trauma can narrow our window of tolerance, making us feel unsafe even when we're secure.
• The "flow of strength" moves us from situational survival responses to integrated strength that combines fierceness with tenderness.
• Our nervous systems need "metabolization" to process difficult experiences into long-term memory rather than fragmented triggers.
• Practical grounding techniques help orient us to present safety when we feel activated by past trauma.
• Practicing simple awareness techniques, such as "I am aware of the light coming through my room," helps regulate our nervous system.
• True strength is "the capacity to meet life's challenges," not suppressing emotions or white-knuckling through difficulty.
• "We work FROM love, not FOR love" – our value doesn't come from how well we heal.
• Self-compassion practices might need to start with small steps if safety feels threatening after prolonged trauma.
Explore more through Aundi's books "Try Softer," "Strong Like Water," and "Take What You Need: Soft Words for Hard Days." Order them here.
Watch Aundi as she describes what it means "to try softer." Aundi on YouTube.
Begin Your Heartlifter's Journey:
- Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide.
- Download the "Overcoming Hurtful Words" Study Guide PDF: BECOMING EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY
- Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon
- Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW
- Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon
- Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International
As I've listened to the stories of thousands of women of all ages in all kinds of stages through the years, I've kept their stories locked in the vault of my heart. I feel as if they've been walking around with me all through these years. They've bothered me, they've prodded me and sometimes kept me up at night. Ultimately, they've increased my passion to reframe and reimagine the powerful positions of mother and matriarch within the family system. I'm a problem solver, so I set out to find a way to perhaps change the trajectory of this silent and sad scenario about a dynamic yet untapped source of potential and purpose sitting in our homes and churches. It is time to come to the table, heartlifters, and unleash the power of maternal presence into the world. Welcome to Mothering for the Ages, our 2025 theme, here on today's Heart Lift. I'm Janelle. I am your guide here on this heartlifting journey. I invite you to grab a pen, a journal and a cup of something really delicious. May today's conversation give you clarity, courage and a revived sense of camaraderie. You see, you're not on this journey alone. We are unified as heartlifters and committed to bringing change into the world one heart at a time. Hello, heartlifter, and welcome to this very special Holy Week presentation Temptation To celebrate Easter in grand fashion. We have with us today someone who I've been longing and desiring to have a conversation with for quite some time. But you know what? She's right on time. We love Cairo's time here. I want to welcome Andi Kalber, licensed professional counselor and author of the bestselling book Try Softer, a fresh approach to move us out of anxiety, stress and survival mode and into a life of connection and joy. Her second book, strong Like Water, finding the freedom, safety and compassion to move through hard things and experience true flourishing. And her latest book, which is such a beautiful, beautiful offering Take what you Need Soft Words for Hard Days. Andi is such a beautiful, beautiful woman, wife, mother. As I said, she's a licensed professional counselor and she lives in Colorado. She specializes in trauma and, as you will hear, body-centered therapies, and she is passionate, like we are here, about the integration of faith and psychology. Andi, thank you for being here, thank you for saying yes, and we welcome you with open arms into our heartlifting community.
Speaker 1:Andi Kolber, goodness gracious, seeing your face pop up on the screen just added so many years to my life. I'm so grateful to have you here. Yes, I'm, you know. I'm not embarrassed to say I'm a fangirl. No, I love your work. Your work is succinct, your work is clear. What you have done in two books and now with this third beautiful devotional book, kind of I like to say breath prayer book, centering prayer, a book used to help us in our meditative practices Combining both of the books into that is just brilliant. And so thank you for your offerings, thank you for all that goes with those offerings in your private life as a mom and a wife and a community member. So I understand the underpinnings of the author life and what people like to think it is. But behind the scenes is a different story, because it's a struggle and it's hard and it's lonely and yet celebratory all at once.
Speaker 1:So, thank you and welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I got a little teary-eyed just hearing you, I've already cried this morning.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for that kindness and yeah, it's really good to be with you.
Speaker 1:Well, as I said before we started, I have some real strategic questions. I know you have been on so many podcasts. I've listened to not all but most, and so I will put a lot of those in the show notes for people who want to dig deeper, For my audience this year, my listeners we are working on mothering, focusing on the mom life, but mothering encompasses anyone who really is caregiving and nurturing, and I think that the answer to many of the problems in our culture, in the world, is that mothers need to rise. We need, like Deborah said in Judges, I arose a mother, and I feel like it is time for all of us to say I arose a mother too. Whatever your community is, whatever you feel called to mother, because it's just the world needs some mother, and so, in light of that, we need healthy.
Speaker 1:Now I'll throw words around that, might you know, you might want to challenge wholehearted, emotionally sound, mentally sane. Sound mentally sane, relationally healthy, relationally whole, spiritually authentic. I just want us to become strong like water and, in the process, try softer. How do we do this? I have really wanted to have you talk about the window of tolerance, Andi, because I have studied, I've listened, I've learned from many, many, many, many people in the field of psychology, coaching, counseling, spiritual formation. With a quote by one of my favorite literary pieces and I have taught it extensively to high school students when I taught writing and literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.
Speaker 1:And we're talking about the good old Scarlet Letter. And she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom I think defines my life and so many of our lives when we have experienced childhood trauma, which you did, and you're very open about it and talk about it, and why that quote?
Speaker 2:I just want to know why you chose that quote, because it says it all. Well, yeah, thank you, for I don't think anyone. I mean, the book's been out for almost five and a half years. No one's ever asked me. I think directly about that quote which that's?
Speaker 2:that's a really great insight and I just want to say, yeah, I mean, I think all of this, just you know this direction you're going with the role of mothering, and even you know the way in which we all and I and I know that this is probably more geared towards women, but even, in a way, men do the work of sometimes having to do reparative self-mothering right, absolutely yeah, and I think about that like I've had to do some of my own self-fathering and I also have had to do some of my own self-mothering. So, really like honoring this not only as, like, the actual things that happened to us, but then the reparative pieces needed, like the God-given sort of, you know, divine, feminine, really like that honors like this need of this ability, this tenderness, right and this type of compassion, and then also that we, even as women, have this fierceness and are really made to
Speaker 2:also embody those things and so these beautiful energies right that, like God designed us with, there's a fullness, that even in God's image there is a reflection of the fullness. So I just think that's beautiful and then you're tying it. Thank you for what you said about the window of tolerance. That has been, first of all, a deeply transformative topic for me like concept. I always talk about that first. So I always talk about that. You know, first Dr Dan Siegel really coined this concept, but a lot of how I teach it has also been really braided into things like the polyvagal theory, and you do it well. Thank you so much. I very directly also incorporate my experiences in trauma therapy, specifically because of how much it's like I get to actually see in a way that is very. It feels very clear and embodied to me that the way the window of tolerance plays itself out in trauma therapy. So all that to say?
Speaker 2:coming back to your question, yeah, no, but I love it and I love how you're weaving these things together. But this particular quote, um, I read the Scarlet letter in high school and I you know it was impactful and that you know I was obviously still quite young and and and thinking about a lot of different ideas, but I it's so common, not only for me in my own life, because I didn't, I did not personally know the level of my own trauma until I became an adult oh for sure, absolutely Right. I was sort of the embodiment of that quote, like I had no idea the weight I was carrying, I had no idea how little, how little I would was able to fully exhale, how there was such a lack of feeling like I could fully be myself be myself.
Speaker 1:Who is myself? Right? I mean? You say that like to be fully human, alive. What the heck does that even mean? I'm asking myself that at 65 and still, that's why I'm so happy you're here to really help us, I guess. Know the weight so we can feel the freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and this particular thing I think this is the role and again, why it's such complex and deep work is that sometimes we come to know the weight because someone else begins to reflect back to us in a way that a lot of times we never have experienced before Like, maybe, especially with like things like developmental trauma, childhood trauma, but even later in life, if you're having significant ruptures relationally, or trauma like this lack of being known or seen, being known or seen and that creates like, almost like a vortex in our body where it's like we don't have the like, we're not tracking, you know the one of the words, for that is interoception.
Speaker 2:We lack the ability to track with the experience of our body, and this is a really common thing that happens with especially things like developmental trauma, but other types of trauma too. This is what we mean when we say that the body is literally. You know, when Bessel van der Kolk talks about keeping the score. This is one of the implications that I can't literally tell the weight implications that I can't literally tell the weight.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, no. And it's sometimes it's even physical weight Like we gain weight. Right, there's a, there's. It could be spirit, soul, body. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yep, there's so many different ways so that I can't tell you necessarily. Or someone couldn't necessarily say, hey, here's the extent of my pain or here's why. They haven't probably even come close to fully making sense of what they've gone through. Or if they have, that narrative is lacking the fullness of the reality of actually, maybe, what did happen, of the reality of actually maybe what did happen. Because, in service of survival, yes, we often cut ourselves off, we or we cannot help, but our body instantaneously and unconsciously moves towards more of a place of disconnection in order to keep going to function right or numb the heck out of it.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, exactly, yeah, but we don't even know why we're numbing. For me anyway, Sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so when we begin and this is where this quote captures it in some ways more quickly than a lot of people experience it- yeah. Because sometimes it's not just like weight than freedom. Sometimes it's like weight.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I'm so sorry. Rarely, is it right? I mean I'm sure you there are. You know God moments. God is God, god is real. We are in Holy Week. Resurrection is coming. There are times where you know fully in the scripture he touches someone or the woman touches his garment and you know, voila. But there were 12 years up to that moment. So I think it's very rare when it is miraculous, but we certainly believe in the miraculous.
Speaker 2:Sure Well, and I you know Sarah Bessie uses the term. It's been a while, but she says process miracle. I love that. I think of a lot of therapeutic work as a process miracle.
Speaker 1:That's your next book. I like it, isn't that?
Speaker 2:beautiful. Yeah Well, props to Sarah Bessie for that. But I think all of this work is that, and what I mean too, is that we notice the weight and then often like then it's grief, then it's feeling the yeah, then it's feeling the feelings, then it's making sure we have the resources and the care and then, finally, we may begin to metabolize, love it.
Speaker 1:That's why I love you.
Speaker 2:And then in that process, we begin to notice the freedom and we begin to notice also oh, this is how bad this is, how big this is how big this is, how much was taken from me, how much I didn't receive. And often I have a quote that I've shared many times, but it's something to the effect of saying sometimes people think they are really really tough, people think they are really really tough, but what's happened is they've learned that they've normalized being treated badly or being harmed and they, in their mind, have come to make sense of that as like, oh, I'm just really tough, I can put up with this, when really what it is is we've come to expect that that's the only thing I deserve, and this is what it means to be tough.
Speaker 1:That's so good. Can I interrupt you just for a second? Sure, I'm not going to interrupt, but it just leads to. Okay, we will come back to the wise Nathaniel Hawthorne who, in his day understanding so much about that psychological flexibility and all those things. Yeah, you write about a flow of strength in strong like water. I loved it because I wrote Stronger Every Day and then a couple years later, your book comes out strong like water and I'm like gosh, that's really right.
Speaker 1:That's really right, she's so good. But you write this in strong like water in chapter nine. So this wasn't where I was going, but it's, it's perfect. Strength with integration. And I love EE Cummings. You are just. I mean, there are so many quotes in the world and I mean, I guess, being an author, I always look at the quote in the beginning of a chapter, because that's typical of what we do, but you, just you just got them right. This one says it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. Oh gosh, so good. February 2019, you write in the beginning that you travel back to your hometown in the Pacific Northwest where I mean girl where I was inducted into my high school's hall of fame as the all-time leading scorer for basketball. That is incredible, Andi. So it shows your, shall we say, high functioning. Can we say that? Or it just shows our capacity to press on, press through?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was certainly one of the ways Basketball was a resource to me. It gave me a venue to channel a lot of the fierceness and the anger that I was not allowed to really feel or show in response to the abuse I was experiencing. It gave me one place where I could be really fierce and really tough. Honestly, you were, you know what, I was a pretty dang good basketball player and I and I I love I mean it was a beautiful part of. In some ways it was a beautiful part of my life and it was. You know, in that chapter I go on to explain that it was also complicated because it was also wrapped up in my trauma and I came to. There were parts of it that also became a little. There were parts of it that I've had to really process and metabolize and heal, because it also became sort of like one of the ways that I got maybe some of my attachment needs met, but not in ways that were always actually fully healthy.
Speaker 2:It was like, hey, look, how impressive I am, I know, and it was sort of like what I really wanted was to simply belong and just to be able to have connection. But you know, in things like sports. It's like, essentially you're as good as your last game, correct it is, you are. It's very fragile, right, like you have to be amazing all the time to maintain whatever it is that you are getting from that. And so it was very flimsy in that respect, even though I was very good, I was very talented.
Speaker 2:But you know, that's why, in my adulthood, it's become a deep value to me to say I work from love, that is my, that's where, that's why I'm here. I work from love, that's my home and that's my identity. And if I find myself working for love, I have to get curious about why that is. Why don't I feel safe about why that is? Why don't I feel safe? Why do I feel the need to hustle or prove or what's coming up for me, that it feels necessary to do that and and so in my, so in my childhood, in my teen years, basketball was this important, complicated space for me, um, that ultimately, I have been able to almost return to and almost reclaim that fierceness. But for a long while it was so connected to my trauma that I was afraid. I felt afraid to connect to the fierceness that I once embodied.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I wanted to get to, because I get that. So for me it was dance, it was twirl and dance and then became pageant thing, performance, wanting to be Miss America, all of that. Okay, so it was for love, for sure, right, and I love how you frame that, which you frame so well to work from love and that really, I think we need to take a pause. If you're really, if this is resonating in you like it's resonating in me, heartlifters, maybe pause here and read through chapter nine in Strong Like Water and work on that, think about that, do some heart work, because I think, okay, what I would love to know is two things I wanted to ask you to explain, metabolize, but I think that I mean, maybe, if you can just do that quickly, because you're saying that a lot, I just want to make sure that this is my year to really give language to all my heart lifters so they can go.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's what I'm doing, because I know in my healing journey I haven't had the words. I didn't know the words. It's probably why I went back and got my master's in counseling at 50, because I was just frustrated as an author because women were hurting and then it was like I don't know what these things are and I want to know what they're called and I want to know why I have it. And so what does it mean then to metabolize when you keep saying that yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, great question. So metabolize. What I'm meaning by that is it's almost like a fuller, I believe, more accurate definition of what we mean when we say we process something, and what I mean from like, because my one of my main specialties is body centered therapy, and so essentially what I'm saying is that when we are actually, when we're in that window of tolerance, when we are, when we have access to the range of arousal in which we can feel our feelings, part of what's happening is that some really important parts of our nervous system, and particularly our brain, so like our prefrontal cortex, is online, and when we begin to get activated because we feel unsafe from a real or perceived threat or like, let's say, we are going through trauma or we are re-remembering or re-experiencing trauma, that prefrontal cortex goes offline. It does.
Speaker 2:The implications of that is that some of the processes of our body that allow us to essentially, fully feel what needs to be felt, what to fully, essentially like, almost like food, needs to be digested in our bodies. Metabolizing is like digesting an experience and our body can, if it's digested properly, then take that experience and some parts of it will go to long-term memory and other parts will essentially be discarded. So when that doesn't happen, that is what potentially creates a traumatic experience, because that thing that was overwhelming to the nervous system remains fragmented in the nervous system and it's not stored in the same way as long-term memory. No, which means when it gets, when something sort of triggers or activates a re-experiencing like maybe we smell something that reminds us or we see something, or we're in a space, a room where something happened.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean it can be lots of things it could be an emotion and this. And I'm saying this I want people to know there's a lot of nuance.
Speaker 2:I'm really making this concise, gotta read the book. But essentially, when those things happen, that is like when the you know, it might get re-experienced in our body, all the sensations, all the things that happened when the event that was disturbing first happened, right. And so that's like the consequences of an experience not, and especially a disturbing experience yes, not getting metabolized Right, a disturbing experience not getting metabolized. So, as humans, we really want to aim as much as we're able. We're never going to do it perfectly, we're always going to have unfinishedness, that's okay. But we want to create environments, and even environments in ourselves, like the hospitality in ourselves.
Speaker 1:I think it's the biggest place and that's why I love your body therapy, because I mean for me, anyway I can do the mind, the heart and all of that, but it's still I gotta metabolize it in my body. I have to make peace with it there.
Speaker 2:The body is where is really the place, the sort of the foundational place in which this occurs, right and so without the body, there can be no full healing, because we can't think or pray or you know, or hustle our way out of trauma or out of disturbing experiences. And so that metabolization really is essentially the functions, the mechanisms of our body being online, that we have enough support and safety to feel what needs to be felt, to experience what needs to be experienced, and then we are ultimately able sometimes we have to this is from Peter Levine's work, but we might have to like.
Speaker 2:we might have to like move some energy through, Like you might need to go on a walk or dance, or you may need to.
Speaker 2:Actually even you may feel compelled to set a boundary because you process it. You might be like, oh, that actually was not good with me, and for that thing to feel complete, you might be like, hey, so-and-so, I'm really not comfortable with how that went and I just wanted you to know that in the future I'd really like for us to handle that differently, right? So all of these ways are sort of and this is kind of where I ultimately go in in Strong Like Water is that we ultimately are talking about that whole flow of strength is ultimately about metabolization. I mean, really that's what we're talking about whole flow of strength is ultimately about metabolization.
Speaker 2:I mean, really that's what we're talking about is the ability for our body to move through. Yes, what? Is in front of us.
Speaker 1:Yes, let me get this little chart, so on page 19, on my Kindle anyway, not sure that it's the same as in the paperback. You have this flow of strength and so you're just going to have to look at it for yourself, but hopefully, andi, you can help us see it. In our mind's eye, you go from situational strength to transitional strength, to integrated strength, and I just I mean that made me weep today when I went over it again. You know, you just say what if our innate ability to survive distressing, overwhelming or traumatic experience is strength? Here's the shift, right, but so are tenderness, compassion, feeling our feelings and learning to rest. What if it's not a question of either or, but instead both, and it's not binary.
Speaker 1:This, my dear reader, you write, is what brought me to conceptualize the flow of strength. So here's another big word conceptualize which I wanted to ask you about Before we get there. I wrote this down. Can you explain to us, andi, as you were just saying, if something activates our nervous system right, if we get triggered, if we get activated, whether it's a smell or being in the same space where the trauma happened?
Speaker 1:You write, there is a particular order in which our bodies respond, based on attachment, which we talk a lot about. My heart lifters are very well attuned to that physiology, which is you're telling us our body and then life experiences. How do we create a new framework? And the even more beautiful question that you brought to us, oh, my goodness, was how do I see God in the window? How do I see God in my window of tolerance? How do I expand this? And I think you know that's what I love about the flow pun intended of your books, because you know, try Softer is helping us with the compassion and so many other things in our window of tolerance, but then we can flow in the strength of it once we learn how to do that. So yeah, 12 questions in one.
Speaker 2:No, I'll try, I love it. I mean I, just I. So I so appreciate your, just your excitement, and just I. It's, it's an honor to hear how you resonate, so that's, that's beautiful and I, yeah. Let me say just a couple things about that. The first thing is is that in a way, I wrote strong like water because, well, it's like a lot of people were like, try softer, and then strong like water, like it's like, it's almost like, wait, you're writing about strength now and what has been, and it was exactly the book.
Speaker 2:I. I'm so glad I wrote that book, because what I wanted to do and what I was seeing in folks is it's really common, I think, especially when you've read, try Softer, you're like, okay, now I'm just going to be so gentle with myself and I'm going to just be so compassionate and, and first of all, that's beautiful, I hope that happens. Right, what I, what I found, sometimes some of the language I was sometimes hearing, but it also was connected to my own story is this feeling of like. If I'm not doing that perfectly, if I'm ever white knuckling, white knuckling there, it is Like almost like, then I'm maybe bad or I'm failing. If I'm leaving my window of tolerance. Maybe that's some sort of failure. And the reason I felt like Strong Like Water was so important to write was to say, oh, no, no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all strength. It's all strength, that's right, that's all strength. I love it.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that everything that we do when we're out of our window of tolerance is like the thing we always want to be doing. Right, because sometimes we act really outside of like our values. Or sometimes we do things and we're like why did I do that, right? Yes, so this is not me excusing things like particularly. It's like not OK to cause harm to things like that. That's not OK. No, to cause harm to things like that, that's not okay. But what we can come to understand is that, if we truly believe that God designed our bodies to survive, if our bodies are literally, our nervous system is always working to keep us safe, and I mean always, always. I mean always, not just when we've like finished something traumatic, but also five years after, when the trauma has ended but it doesn't feel like it's ended.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when does it end? I can hear the echoes like please feel strength, let me really feel. You know freedom Right. Yeah, yeah, feel strength, let me really feel.
Speaker 2:You know, freedom, right, yeah, but this is why I want to connect these ideas, because that's what I believe, I mean, that's what, strong, like Water, that's the trajectory is that it's. It's holding the compassion, it's holding the honoring, it's not using shame or self-hate as the motivation for why we heal Again. We work. From love we work from love. You can't be more valuable than you are right now. There's nothing, there's no amount of healing or striving or goal setting that could make you more valuable than you are. That's the biggest work isn't it.
Speaker 1:That is that would you say was your greater work Was your really accepting? The love of God, the deep, deep love.
Speaker 2:It's a huge part of it, but I see it as an ebb and a flow, because as we come to heal, we come to more deeply embody. As we come to heal, we come to more deeply embody. But this is where, so this is where these things are connected. Is that try softer? Is it's almost like people are like. So how do I, for example, expand my window of tolerance? And what I would say is is that the flow of strength is that key, because when our body experiences what I call compassionate resources, which is various cues of safety and glimmers and goodness and withness and God's care for us and relational care from others, all that is good, right. When that is experienced by our body, what begins to happen is we move along that flow of strength, which is happening concurrently with. That's essentially that work that allows that window of tolerance to expand.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, it's holding them both right. No-transcript her so anxious and I said I think it's peace, I think it's freedom. I think you just got a taste, like on the tip of your tongue, and I've had those moments where you do like Nathaniel Hawthorne said all of a sudden you didn't recognize the weight you were carrying until you put the weight down. So a lot of the exercise like I used to put brooks, uh, bricks and a suitcase on my front porch because I work out of my home and have that person pick it up and bring it into the office, you know, and it's, it's like that was heavy. But when you put it down, what did you feel? Because you don't know. So I think what you're saying is to celebrate, perhaps, the moment where all that synergy comes and you feel something that you never felt before, that it's like what is this? And this feels really good and I'm laughing a lot more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh Well. I think that, absolutely, celebration can be a really big part of it, and here's what I'll say, though, is that, depending on someone's history, yes, we're going to need to pace this in a way that feels doable to our body. So, for some people and this is going to maybe sound kind of funny to some of your listeners for some people, they are again so used to the weight that the thought of putting down the weight is triggering.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Thank you Right, Let alone let alone actually putting it down, right. So here's what I want to say to those listeners, because some people are going to be like, yep, I can do it and I can put it down and I'm celebrating it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful, I love that. That's great. But part of this work is the attunement to say but for those whose pain is really complicated, I think of it like a ball of string. That's like you know. You want to untangle the string.
Speaker 1:It could be heredity epigenetics too, like when trauma is locked in the family system.
Speaker 2:Yes, there can be many dynamics. Oftentimes it's you know there's so many different dynamics. And then, not to mention what could be happening in your life currently, there can also be systemic issues that are making it harder. Maybe you don't have access to all the things you need, to the support you need or to the food you need, or you know what I mean. There's so many things. So so when we so I for those people and this is why I write the books, the way that I do is to say I kind of think of it like I try to make lots of different on-ramps and lots of different exit ramps to say I want the reader, I want the person to be listening to what is actually working for them. Because what can happen is if we try to move too quick, if we try to move to celebration or even sometimes, safety Now hear me say safety really matters but when all you have known is unsafety.
Speaker 2:Yes, fear, yes, sometimes we actually yeah, we have to actually start with things like neutrality first.
Speaker 1:Yes, Maybe we're not ready for the full meal deal rich cake, can't eat dessert first.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, we're like actually, could I just maybe start with like some a few veggies? Could that like? Can I just start let?
Speaker 1:me just see, what does that look like. Yeah, yeah, so this is where we give. I like just start, let me just see, what does that look like.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, so this is where we give I like to give people a lot of freedom, and this is where the body-centered piece matters, because our body will be one of the indicators of our pace and our window of tolerance Right so like.
Speaker 2:Let me just give you an example. There are lots of folks who I think you know they're like so excited about these concepts, but as they get into the practicalities of it, they're like my mind wants this, mm hmm. But when I try to do X, whatever that is maybe it's like a meditation, maybe it's a whatever they're like, I just I can't. No, their body won't let them. I just dread it. Yeah, I end up missing it. I push it off, I, I and and here's the thing is that this is where people start to feel like I guess I'm just bad, yep.
Speaker 1:Can't do that either. I guess I'm broken.
Speaker 2:There's the shame, I'm broken. There's the shame Right, and this is why I say things like we can't. We also cannot white knuckle our way into healing. Oh, it's so hard.
Speaker 1:Andi, it's so complicated.
Speaker 2:It is, but this is why it is and I want to honor that. But even if all that someone can do today is to say you know what this is like, I understand that my body has been doing all that it can to keep me safe, and maybe I don't fully understand every part of this, but like I'm noticing this level of resistance, maybe I could just even have like compassion for the fact that I feel that much resistance. Or, if compassion is too hard, maybe it's just like I just like I'm just accepting this reality that this is something I really wanna do and something about that feels a little bit too big and I'm curious, like is there one tiny step in that direction? I could make.
Speaker 1:That's what we were at. Like what? How do I stick out of my window? How do I make someone has just been triggered, someone is just back in a space, or a smell or you know, a touch or something. Okay. So what's what's? You know this isn't a move in these steps either. You know it's. It isn't that none of your books are due A through Z and you'll be great, yeah, but what is that? One first movement, if it's not go meditate, if it's not, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I again, I, I want to acknowledge that this is not going to be true for everybody.
Speaker 1:No, it's not, it depends on you. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And I think one of the things that probably makes my work a little bit unique than what has often been out in the world is that I like to be mindful of the people I mean I think of probably Jesus would be thinking about the most on the margin right, like the ones who are like, yes, they're, like this is not accessible to me, correct, and even what I'm saying, like not that I'm doing it perfectly, but what I, what I would say is that understanding, you know that okay, let's say you are a person where you're like some of those things sound great, but that just is too much for me, like it's just I can't even like the thought of yeah, like the thought of like getting up every morning and doing centering prayer, or like the thought of journaling every day, right, like, they're just like sorry, no, sorry, not a writer.
Speaker 1:No, sorry, don't like the pen yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what I would actually invite folks to consider I mean, some of these may be people who have even heard of a real simple one that I talk about a lot is there are various forms of what I would call grounding, or that's a form of grounding, yeah, grounding. So here's why I talk about grounding a lot, and this is because one of the things that happens when our body gets really activated or triggered is that we are losing most of that is happening in the right hemisphere of our brain, and when that happens, the right hemisphere of our brain cannot tell the difference between past and present. That means, if you are getting triggered around something that was really yucky like whatever that means for you Scary right Hard scary
Speaker 1:shaming oppressive, whatever that thing was. I know our faces are like raw.
Speaker 2:Whatever that thing was for you, if that's feeling like you're re-experiencing that in the present, that is all. First of all. That's a lot, a lot, that's a lot. And our body again. We can't white knuckle into simply living differently.
Speaker 1:Stop it you write so much about, and I love Tiffany's story in here. I just love so many stories. I love your own story getting back to your basketball story, going back to the hometown wrestling so much with just be fierce here. My mom was one of the first women Marines, so, hello, she was a badass, so there's no other word. And so I can do hospital corners. I can buck up. I know how to do it. You know it's like, yeah, buck up baby, but that's why I love that chapter so much. I love that you're saying you know, integrated strength is the greatest strength. So that's what you're saying here. It's not like in that moment, go come on, girl, buck up, you got this. You know you're done your work. That's a really hard voice in that brain, is that? It's? That's not what you're saying, that's what you mean by white knuckling.
Speaker 2:You're not like, don't pull yourself up by the root straps. Yeah, I mean like anything that's rooted in shame. So that's going to sound different for different people. Correct Like right, and so I think what I would say is like whatever that voice is that makes you feel like if I can't get myself out of this, then I am bad.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, you're right.
Speaker 2:Spot on, yes, so here's one of yeah, so one of the things that I like to encourage people to do in a version of grounding is, essentially, it's like we're basically orienting ourselves to the actually, to the here and now. That's what grounding is doing. We're working to communicate from a sensory perspective to our body, like, essentially, here's what's true now, because oftentimes the present not always, but often the present is actually safe, is safe, and so it's like for me, I'm like you know even there's a simple practice called I am aware, and I and I might just go around my room and be like I am aware of the weight of my glass. Yes, right, I am aware of the clarity of the water. Yeah, I am aware of the light coming through my room this early morning light, beautiful. I am aware that the temperature is pretty neutral in this room. I am aware of the blue on this pen right, it's the white door Against the white doors.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, oh thank you, yeah.
Speaker 2:So so what we're doing here and I just did that was a really short example. It's beautiful. What I would encourage folks to do is we're basically look, we're zooming in on the present, yeah, and we're getting really detailed. And we're basically look, we're zooming in on the present and we're getting really detailed and we're trying to use our five senses. So you could, you know, in my TriSofter guided journey, which is like the companion book to TriSofter, I have something called the TriSofter toolbox and essentially it's like using our five senses and using things that are comforting to our five senses, and when we feel like we're having a hard time, we might go to that toolbox and be like, okay, here's my, you know, maybe it's a cozy blanket, maybe it's my, um, my bright colors. Yeah, maybe it could be a puppy, could be, um, some essential oils that are really soothing to me. Got the diffuser on, yes, yep. So what we're doing is we're creating. We can't always predict if we will get triggered or not. Rarely, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they're usually very surprising.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and sometimes you know if you go like every time I go to this person's house.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, but what we can do is begin to create plans and ways to say here's what I'm going to do when I'm beginning to leave that window Right and so, and what I want to put together too, is that that is helping people travel the flow of strength. When we use those resources, we begin to move along that flow of strength into at least that transitional strength, which is where the prefrontal cortex begins to come online, the metabolizing begins to be restored, more of our resources are available to us and we have better capacity, first of all, to lessen the potential harm of what we're experiencing, and also we get to think and move and be and experience things from a fuller place, because we are. You know, earlier you had talked about God in the window, and I think part of this is like I think of. We begin to see reality more accurately, including God.
Speaker 1:Oh, andi, we could go on for days on. Just that, you know, it isn't that I've had the beautiful Trevor Hudson, I mean, just, he just said so much about the picture we have of God, you know, and it's just stuck with me forever and I think, yeah, we got to get our picture of God right. We have to. Or, you know, I mean my father is an alcoholic, so, hello, you know, I mean, like you said, we have to reparent, we have to remother, we have to refather, and so, yes, I think it is most definitely what's the word like? Metabolizing our picture of God?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think both right, like it's not only the metabolizing of what was maybe harmful about God, but hopefully also repairing and looking for reparative experiences and maybe reparative people right and reparative maybe theology reparative literature, reparative church experiences reparative God with us in this moment right, that's so good, andi.
Speaker 2:One of my deep prayers, especially this last five years, has been to say God, give me eyes to see the way you're already here.
Speaker 2:You're here. I cannot make you more here than you already are, right, and I think about for me and for anybody who's thinking about oh man, I just can't figure out why I just can't see God, you know, whatever I want to just offer that. You know, one of one of my favorite verses, you know, is from Romans, where Paul talks about like I am convinced that nothing, that there is no thing, no thing, including trauma, including any of the shenanigans that happen in this life that can separate us, right. So here's, the thing is that this is not about creating, like getting something to come. It's here, it's already here, it's here and it's ours and it's available and there is compassion available, right, and it's ours and it's available and there is compassion available right. This is where it's like we can trust that as we continue to come more in alignment with reality. Yeah, that you know. I love that verse because it's such an attachment truth, it's beautiful. There's no thing.
Speaker 1:There is no thing, no thing that can separate us. Oh, my goodness gracious yes, and I am convinced he says that's right. So is it safe to say that I'm in this triggered space? I know something that's worked for me. You tell me if it's yay or nay or whatever goes for you, but you know, you did it a few minutes ago. You subconsciously just put your hand right over your heart. You just right, you just did it subconsciously. I wonder if that's something that you have done to help you ground and you know in those moments I'll just do that and I just feel my feet or my knees or whatever.
Speaker 1:If I'm down on my knees or if my feet or wherever I'm at, I just will put my hand over my heart and the line store in the store and just go, like you said. Now it's making me want to transform it into god. I know you're here because I know I do, and the key there is no k-n-o-w right well, and sometimes the prayer is like help me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there we go come to know.
Speaker 1:There you go. Yeah, mine was first.
Speaker 2:Initially was just god help me, just yeah, and that's okay and just know that you get to do. Please design this in the way that feels good and supportive to you. And to answer your question absolutely, I, I am always like I pretty much.
Speaker 2:I loved it here and I do, I do, I also you can't see it here, but I also do often my tummy. I'll do my, my tummy and then I'll do my chest. But I also often invite folks and it's not, and I will again the caveat is is not immediately always a resource to everyone but, sometimes finding other.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe it's for some people it's placing a hand behind their neck and feeling that support. Sometimes I have clients who enjoy, you know, a it's for some people it's placing a hand behind their neck and feeling that support. Sometimes I have clients who enjoy, you know, a little bit of a self hug.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I rock, I do a lot, I do a lot of swaying, I do a lot of and and what we're doing and again, this is going to look different for different people as you continue to. I think of it like you get to build your toolbox. I love it. You know this is your tool belt, Makes you feel safe To do the work. That it's like. It's like your repair tool belt, Perfect, and and or whatever language feels good, but I think it's that way to say. When there has been great harm, yeah, good, but I think it's that way to say.
Speaker 1:When there has been great harm, we are working to provide and create and be open to great repair. Well, that is the perfect place to stop, which I don't want to do. I just have one little, tiny little thing, if you don't mind, and then I have to let you go. You write about the cost of being a certain kind of strong, which is like integrating your fierceness with your softness, which is, I've said, you know, integrating tough love and tender love in my own being. I love that because when I do get fierce and I feel my truest self, I back down because it's always gotten me in trouble. So that really resonated, and more than ever in my life, and I have a lot of women in my community that are in my phase of life that want to feel fierce, and I think it's a call to be fierce and not back down from that fierceness. Know how to contextualize it, would you say, or conceptualize it, but you do write.
Speaker 1:You write trauma decontextualized in a person looks like personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits. Trauma in a people looks like culture. That's a quote from Resmaa Menneken. Once again, your quotes, holy cow. So I just wanted to and I think maybe you've already answered it, but make sure I cover my basis about being adaptive. And how do we conceptualize strength then, in moving forward to integrate strength and be women who are imaging Deborah in the sense that I arose a mother, when I feel like when she sang, that it gives me chills, it makes me go. I talked to her all the time.
Speaker 2:Like Deborah, give it to me, I love it. I love it. Come on, yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for that Naming that quote. I really respect Resmaa's work and his work. He's done a lot of work around racial trauma. But I think also that quote is just. It's like it speaks to a lot of the fullness of how trauma affects.
Speaker 1:So how do we do this conceptualized strength, integrated million dollar question. I know you don't have. You know, just go do this and you'll be great.
Speaker 2:But as we close, yes, yeah, Well, yeah, I think that this concept of strength I think a big reason why I also wanted to write Strong Like Water, specifically is because I wanted to push back specifically around our cultural, our current cultural definitions of strength, because the current cultural definition is essentially like pull yourself up by your butt, your bootstraps, suppress your feelings and just do whatever it takes kind of, and it can be like.
Speaker 2:I think it gives way to violence very easily, I think it gives very easily over to things like bullying, but it also gives way to like unhealthy forms of self-sacrifice, unhealthy forms of self, like emotional suppression, things like that. So so the way our culture currently talks about strength is bothersome to me and be not. But this is why I wanted to make sure that in this book, I wanted to include these different kinds of strength, because, basically, I think most of our cultural definition of strength is that situational strength. It's essentially this life or death energy, where it's rooted in this belief that it's oftentimes unresolved trauma, it's communal trauma, it's unresolved issues, that things that haven't really been dealt with in all these different spaces, and then we're praising it, which gets confusing, because then people think, well, if that's how I get affirmation, I guess I'll go do that Right.
Speaker 2:So what I? What I would say to folks is to begin to you know, I mean, there's so many different ways I want to respond to this, but I think the way that we can honor strength is to say it is the capacity to meet life's challenges. That's how I think of strength, beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yes, capacity is such a huge word. It's one of my favorite words, and so, therefore, if we've had a missing capacity which I've just realized is a thing, and now we're getting a capacity I love that you say that and we can actually enlarge our capacity, grow our capacity by implementing these beautiful tools in the Try Softer toolbox and in Strong Like Water and have this beautiful book. Take what you need. I'm taking it. Do you have it in front of you by chance?
Speaker 2:I actually do. Yes, can you read?
Speaker 1:us out. I'm going to just make this our Easter meditation. I actually do. Yes, can you read us out? I'm going to just make this our Easter meditation, quiet moment, however you want to say it, page 54 and 55.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'd be honored. Okay, I believe you matter. The intricacies of your life and personhood matter. They matter not only to me as a fellow image bearer, but to our world and to the God who formed you. Every time we feel the sun on our cheeks and the wind in our hair and the breath in our lungs, when we laugh at a joke or feel the embrace of people who love us, we are practicing the brave work of resurrection. In a world where there is much pain and destruction, seeing resurrection is no small thing. Thank you, andy. You are so welcome. Welcome.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, me oh, heartlifters, what a glorious, glorious conversation with andy. She has truly invited us into understanding God, his Son Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit in a beautiful way. I just want to close with these questions that Andi proffers to us in her newest book. Take what you Need Soft Words for Hard Days. This is page 48. Try softer language If it feels like a helpful resource.
Speaker 1:Take a few moments today to sit with one of the following questions what is the gentlest thing I could do today? What words or affirmations remind me of my true self? I wonder if I could take this in smaller steps. What would help me stay in my window of tolerance? What kind of support do I need to make this happen? Whom could I reach out to if I'm feeling overwhelmed? How could I help my body feel safe right now? What part of myself needs support right now? What activity would be soothing for me when I'm feeling triggered? Is there a way I could move my body to help me feel more connected to myself? Choose one. I close with her words you can't white knuckle yourself into trying softer, but as you learn to gradually embrace even the hard parts of your story, the intensity of your pain will lessen and you will move forward To God be the glory.
