We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 149. How to Heal with Alex Elle

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

1. Alex’s four most effective healing techniques that you can start today.  2. How it affects us to grow up never seeing our mothers have joy.  3. Why – if you think you don’t have any self-soothing strategies – you actually just have unhealthy self-soothing strategies.  4. Childhood wounds that surface in adulthood, and the path to intergenerational healing.  5. Where to begin when you never receive the apology and closure you deserve. About Alex: Alex Elle is an author, certified breathwork coach, podcast host, and Restorative Writing teacher. Alex’s writing came into her life by way of therapy and the exploration of healing through journaling and mindfulness. Her most recent book, HOW WE HEAL, is available now. TW: @alex_elle IG: @alex

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We have Alex L with us today. Alex L, who is helping heal the world, but who has her work cut out for her today with the three of us. I can't wait. I'm ready. I'm ready. This is going to be a six-hour podcast. Yes. Settle in. Everybody. Settle the hell in. Alex. Alex. who I just freaking adore is an author, certified breathwork coach, podcast host, and restorative writing teacher. Alex's writing came into her life by way of therapy and the exploration of healing through journaling and mindfulness. Her most recent book, How We Heal, So Beautiful, is available now. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things, Alex. Thank you for being here.

Hey y'all. Thank you all for having me. I'm thrilled. I can't wait to dive in with y'all. This is going to be fun. I want to start, Alex, with this idea, which is I believed that the older I got, the more healed I would be. And the freer and bolder and badass and authentic. I just thought it was like a cumulative effort. And the further I got from being born. the further I would get from all of my problems. And what I have truly experienced over the past, really just five years, I'm 46 now, so in my 40s, is Alex, I am closer to my childhood traumas and crap than I have ever been. which to me felt like a bit of a failure. But then I read, you say that the older you got,

the more your childhood wounds surfaced. Is that true? Or were you just saying that? Because I need to know. And my follow-up question is, what the hell? Yeah. Okay. So hell yes, it's true. Okay. I am 33 and I feel like when I turned 30, all of my childhood stuff just came to the surface. And I think that's because I was doing some really challenging deep healing work on my own. I look at healing as like layers. So I was peeling back these layers of my emotional onion thinking, oh yeah, I got this. I'm fine. I'm growing. I'm changing. And then. then it's like, oh, that can be true and I can still have so much work to do.

And I have three children. I have daughters. And so I found that with every birth of a kid, I had even more stuff to work through. From my own mother wounds to really trying to be the best woman I could be from myself so that I could lead by example for my girls. And then mourning the fact that nobody considered me in that way. So it really just started to hit me like, damn, the older I get, the more healing I have to do. Yes, what the hell, but also, okay, I have the tools that I didn't have that then. Yeah. Another thing you said helped me with my original problem, which was

is your idea of self-awareness that as self-awareness increases. So good news, bad news. Like you're a self-aware creature, wonderful. But a lot of things that you become aware of are your own challenge, your own wounds, right? Yes, yes. This is why people avoid going to the doctor. Because it's like, yay, you had an x-ray.

boo, now you have all the information that the x-ray reveals. So is it kind of a positive thing, too? Because it's people who are the more, maybe the more introspection I'm doing, the more work I'm doing, the more what I need to heal becomes apparent. I think it's a beautiful thing. It's a pain in the ass thing. But it's a beautiful thing. Because as I write in my new book, when we heal ourselves, we heal our lineage.

When we heal ourselves, we heal each other. Right? So we really have to start looking at our stuff as this act of community service. Because when we don't know what we have to tackle, when we don't know what we have to heal or we know, but when we don't address, it continuously perpetuates this cycle of ignoring things and hoping that they're going to go away, but they're not. And then we pass that on to our children. We pass that on to our spouses. We pass that on to our relationships in our workplace, right? So if we continue to ignore ourselves, we're never going to be able to see other people.

Damn. How much is this do you think related to like mortality? Because, you know, as you go through your 20s, it feels like 20s are just like, what is life? I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And then you kind of start settling into a groove, well, some of us. I didn't really until I was in my 40s. How much do you think of this process of healing has to do with the idea of, oh, I'm maybe

midway through my life. I'm getting close to midway through my life. Should I start this process now? Obviously, this stuff isn't going away. Maybe. I know for me I wanted to start sooner than later because I saw my mother suffering. I saw my grandmother suffering. I mean, and how I was raised, I'm surprised I'm not suffering.

I'm a big believer in the power of choice and choosing to do something different. Choosing to be self-aware, I think, is essential to being able to be in relationship not only with ourselves, but with other people. And so I didn't want to wait until I was in my 50s or 60s or 70s. I mean, I talked to my grandmother. She's nearing the end of her life,

and she has a lot of stuff that is just now coming to the surface for her because she sees the work that I'm doing. Wow. And so, again, when we heal ourselves, we heal each other. We're leading by example. I would encourage folks to start looking at your wounds and to start celebrating your joy as soon as you can. Because when we're able to do that,

it just starts the cycle of healing a little bit sooner. Can we talk about that healing of lineage? Because your personal story is really remarkable in that your mother and your mother and your mother, grandmother lived in survival mode in raising the next generation. And then you were determined to break that cycle and found yourself pregnant by the time you're 18. And everything would have pointed to you continuing on the same cycle. What was it in you that? That, was so dramatic as to overcome all the myriad reasons why that cycle should have continued.

I knew what I didn't want. I knew that I wanted to be the best woman I could be for myself and that baby that I had at 18. I had no idea what I was doing. None. I wish it didn't take teen motherhood to kind of like get me to where I am. but that's the part of the journey and the story for me, right? And so I think knowing that I didn't want my children to fear me, knowing that I didn't want to pass down my pain to them, knowing that I wanted to be different from how I was raised, it just clicked. I don't know if it was God.

I don't know if it was the universe's energy, but I was just like, this stops with me. Yeah. And my oldest, my oldest, oh my God, she'll be 15. She just started high school. And she is the sweetest soul. She is the sweetest soul. And I often look at her like, wow, look what healing does. When you love yourself, when you are choosing to do differently, look what can happen. Yeah. Our children are our mirrors. I truly believe that. And I was young, black, unwed, all the things stacked against me. And I refused to be who people said I was going to be because there was no way I was going to let anyone continue to tell me who I could and couldn't be. When you say I knew what I didn't want, I mean, I think that's kind of everything, right?

because even that awareness means you are aware that this is in some ways a thing I could build or not. It's not just the world as it is, right? It's something that I can have agency in. When you say, I knew what I didn't want, what are you saying you didn't want? What were the women in your family modeling that insulted your soul? I grew up in a very abusive home. My mom was filled with rage and anger. and I got the brunt of that physically and verbally.

And I was terrified of her. I grew up feeling like I was hated. I grew up feeling like I was unwanted and a mistake. And I'd never wanted my children to feel like that. And I didn't want to feel like that anymore. So I had to make the choice to like, okay, if my mom, mother couldn't love me in the way that I think I deserved to be loved. I have to find a way to love myself. I mean, a big part of me getting pregnant at 18 because I was searching for love in all

the wrong places. I didn't value myself. I didn't value my body. And so that had to change because I was having this kid, another black girl, you know, and I didn't want her to grow up hating herself. I learned self-hatred before I learned self-love. Wow. And it's interesting. My mom and I had a conversation when I was 30. This is probably why all this shit hit the fan because conversations will do that, won't they? Yeah. When my book After the Rain came out, which is like part memoir, part part guide, and I talk a lot about me and my mom's relationship in that book. And I am a big believer in that my stories are not just my stories. And so I gave her the book and I wrote her a letter. And I said, I bookmarked the pages that were about us. And I said, whenever you're ready to talk,

I would love to talk to you about this. And my mom and I had started repairing our relationship. We were able to relate to one another as women and not just mother and daughter. And we sat down and we talked on my 30th birthday. She apologized to me for the first time. And she said, I am so, sorry for not being able to show up for you. I had so much going on. I was so angry and so enraged. And years ago, I probably would have been like, that's a cop out, that's an excuse. But being in the healing that I was in and that I am in, I was like, I see you. I see you. I understand where you were in your life and I understand what self-hatred does, you know? And so it was interesting to have that, to start having those conversations with her as she was willing to tap into

the work that she has to do and the healing that she has to do and had to do. And I think that that's, I know that there's a deep privilege in having a parent who can look at their stuff, even if it's 30 years later and be like, I'm sorry. And I really screwed up. It's beautiful. It's unusual. Yeah. It's unusual. Yeah. Super proud of her for that. And also there's a lot of grieving that happens because then I see her with my children and she's an amazing grandmother. And in the beginning, I was like, oh, so you do know how to act. I used to laugh about that, you know? But like now it feels a lot lighter. But there was a point where I was like, whoa, that's hard to see. Yes. Yes. You talk also about growing up about how you learned not by just what you saw but what you did not see. You said you were taught to hide and to be fearful and you were taught to be unhappy. And no one was telling you that, but you saw it by watching how the women who raised you behaved. And you said this, which I think is so beautiful. You said it's hard to feel like you're kind of.

from a loving home when all the women in your life were just trying to survive. All you saw was survival, you didn't see joy. Is that what your mom was doing? And if so, is there any healing that can be done when you are just in survival mode? Yes, that is what my mom was doing. She was a single mom for a while, a long time before she met my stepdad. She was trying to climb her way up the corporate ladder and all those things. And so she was trying to survive. She was trying to raise me. She was trying to do the best she could with what she knew.

And she didn't know much about love and parenting. She was leading by example. She was leading by example, which was not a great example. We all are. Right? And I think there is healing that can happen in survival mode. But that has to come with self-awareness. That has to come with understanding that you're hurting and taking a step back from trying to survive.

But trying to hold yourself during that survival. I often say that adults also need self-soothing. We don't normally take ourselves up on that. But we need that too. I mean, slowing down in order to see ourselves is important. Yeah. It's a new year, and instead of trying to reinvent myself, I've been asking a simpler question. What would actually support me right now?

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someone who wasn't healed. Yes. I always think of like the work we do as a baton that we pass on to our kids, but it's not. It's backwards and forwards. Right? It's like to our kids. And I see it what you're seeing, that we give it backwards to generations before us. Because your healing allowed you to not think I'm a bad, unlovable person.

Your healing allowed you to look at your mom and say, oh, she was just not healed. It's a gift that you were able to give backwards. I would say, and I think that that's what healing is. It's a love offering to the world. When we heal our world, we start to heal the world. When we see ourselves, we start to see other people. And for so long, especially if you grew up like not feeling seen, not feeling safe or supported, it is really, really, really challenging to be in relationships that are healthy. that are rooted in healthy communication, that aren't rooted in codependency. Like it's all these things that you just have to learn on your own, which makes the healing even harder. Because you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing or where to start or how to even, how to even begin to see myself.

And so a lot of my work when I'm teaching and coaching people is like, what do you want and what do you see? Who are you? What do you need? Like those basic questions, those back to basic questions, has helped so many people kickstart their healing because no one has ever asked them. Exactly. What do you want? Right. And you're flipping it because I feel like we're always told as women, if you heal your community, if you serve your community, that is self-care.

That's your value. You will feel better. Just keep doing it. Healing your community, you're doing everything for your partner, your family. That's good enough for you. Women, you'll feel fulfilled. Trickle down healing. It's trickle down healing.

It's trickle down healing. But you're saying the opposite, because you care just as much about community care as anybody. But you're saying heal myself and that heals your community, not heal your community and that will heal you. Am I saying that right? You are absolutely saying that right. You are absolutely saying that right. I think passing the baton, like you said, is absolutely what it is. it is backwards and forwards because my mom will say now, like, I inspire her.

And that can be heavy, too, because it's like, I wish I had someone who inspired me, you know. But I know that the healing that I'm doing is not just for myself. And a big part of grace and compassion is acceptance for who people are, where they are, and not trying to change the outcome. because things sometimes are what they are. Yeah. I actually want to dig into that. There's a lot of our listeners that won't have a parent like your mom's

was that she could come to you and say with a little self-awareness, even if it's minuscule. A lot of our parents don't have the emotional intelligence or the desire or the need or the understanding or the ability to look at themselves. We call it parental fragility. It's like white fragility, but it's like the parents who are like, I care so much that I was a good parent that I can't hear that I wasn't a good parent. How do you heal? How do we heal when we do have some of these childhood wounds?

How do we heal when we don't have that reciprocity with a parent? Well, for years, I didn't have that reciprocity. And I would get really, really frustrated. So boundaries were really important. And talks with my husband were really important. talks with my close sister friends really important. So community, again, extremely important to be able to be like, wow, they are just not getting it. They don't get it. And a big part of that, again, is acceptance. We may not ever get what we need from the people who raised us. Yeah. Like ever. And that is a tough pill to swallow, but we can't force people and we shouldn't want to force people to change and be who we want them to be because it'll make us feel better.

I don't want any disingenuous behavior in my sphere. Interesting. Right? And so that doesn't make it easier. It's still really hard and hurtful. And there's a deep grieving that we go through when our parents, the people who brought us into this world, are incapable of seeing us and meeting us. But we have to remember what our work is. Our work isn't to change people by over-talking things and forcing and trying to get them to understand.

Our work is to lead by example. Everything else is a bonus, you know? Focusing on our healing is all we can do. Yeah. We live in a world that tells us that we have to like control everything. and that we have to know what we're doing and where we're going and we don't. We may get lost along the way. We may feel lost more times than we feel found.

And I think that that's a big part of the healing too is like accepting when the journey takes us to a place where we're kind of disoriented. Like how do we come back home to ourselves and accept that? You know, my mom just can't meet me. And I'm going to have to walk this path alone. So you believe that the wound does not have to be healed by the person who did the wounding, that you can be healed separate from the person who hurt you. We must be healed separate from the person who hurt us.

Because if we are not, we are going to continuously be in these cycles of external validation and wanting the person to say sorry and wanting the person to, we can want those things. I'm not saying don't want those things, but there has to be acceptance when you don't get those things. That's the hard part. That's the healing work. It's like, how do I accept this? This is freaking terrible.

They were awful to me. They hurt me. They didn't validate me. They didn't raise me how I think I deserve to be raised. So a big part of my healing was accepting that hard work, still working through it, but changing my behavior with how I raise my children. and how I raise myself because as I parent my children,

I am reparenting myself. That's right. That's why all the crap. That's why all the crap. That's why all the crap. Because we're looking forwards and backwards. We're like, I love you so much. Here's what I want for you.

Wait, why the hell didn't I get that? And that's why it pisses you off when your mom calls and asks you seven million questions about your kid. Because you're like, wait a minute. What is healing, Alex? Your definition of healing, like, what are we doing when we're healing? Why do we need it? What is it?

How do we know we need it? Oh, those are big questions. Yeah, and maybe there's no, like, just it's an exploration, you know? Like, what do you think of when I ask you those questions? What is healing? Healing is a vulnerable act of self-advocacy. Self-advocacy. Healing is the choice to choose yourself.

So if you are self-advocating, which I'm obsessed with that response, that means you have to have a self to advocate for. So there has to be a prerequisite to healing, which is who am I and what do I need and why am I hurting. Which is the self-awareness. What am I not getting that I need? Which is why that self-awareness is the first step to any healing is because. it all comes from that center core. I think realizing that you are a self and that you matter just as much as anybody else in this world is reason enough to do some healing work. People get scared by the word healing because it's like, that's a big thing, right?

But healing is not just tackling the trauma. Healing is also celebrating joy. It's a celebration of joy. Because when you see someone who's, quote, unquote, unheeled or who is in their hurting state, you can tell. You can tell, you can feel it, how they interact, how they speak, all those things. And so when we are able to be like, I don't just have to be healing to heal that thing that hurt me, to fix that thing that hurt me, I can be healing and have that be this deep celebration of, I am still here today. Mm-hmm. Getting up out of bed is healing.

When depression is hard and anxiety is hard. I walk through the world with both. I take Zoloft for both. It's finally working for me. And it feels amazing. That is healing. Going to therapy is healing. Going for my morning walks, I just celebrated a year of walking every day.

That is healing. That's a celebration of joy. Right? So it's like how do we get people, especially women, to understand that our aliveness is enough to start the process. That's gorgeous because we also think of healing as it has to be so damn traumatic. Right. But I love what you're saying, which is like, actually, can we just sometimes return to our damn aliveness?

Think the reason why it's so confusing and hard to grip. It's like slippery is because it's actually quite revolution. this insistence that there is a self, that we women have a self, that you as a black woman are like, no, myself and my healing is as important as all of this, the world I'm supposed to caretake. It's quite countercultural. And also the whole idea that Alex, you want there to also be joy in healing. Like this is the first time I've ever experienced that to me. I thought healing was just feeling better. It wasn't an action. It was just like, time was going to heal all wounds.

And then I'd feel better. But maybe I was getting half of it right. I was an am and always have been going towards joy, which is a healing mechanism. Alex, that idea of joy or the will to be alive as being healing, you said that often what scares us most is not having. that lingering feeling of suffering waiting for the shoe to drop. So when we're in a place of not healing, is it that we feel so comfortable in the suffering

that anything that feels like alive is so different and uncomfortable? That strikes me as so terribly true. It feels illegal. It feels like you're not supposed to. to have it. They're going to get struck down. Oh, my gosh. What's that about, Alex? Oh, my gosh. I don't know what it's about, but all of us go through it. I know that when I met my husband, he comes from a big family and they are like really lovey-dovey, super supportive, like very different from how I was

raised. And I remember being like, I don't want to be a part of this family. Too much love happening over here. It felt so foreign to me that I was willing to leave. And I told him, I don't want a family with you. This was before we were married. And I was looking for a way out because I was like, this is too good. His mom loves me. His family loves me. They're kind to me. I'm not worthy of this joy. And Ryan said to me, all I want to do is, love you. Why won't you let me love you? And that question for me was really, really hard to reckon with because love for me meant conditional. Love for me meant, I love you when you are pleasing me and when you are shutting up and sitting down and when you are doing what I say. And if you aren't,

I'm taking my love away from you. So love for me always felt like this carrot dangling. And so I never thought I was really worthy of the love and the joy and the ease, the easefulness that I was receiving. I was so used to chaos and dysfunction that it felt really foreign to have peace in my life. Suspicious even. Like, oh, what would you up to? Like literally. Suspicion. Suspicion.

And here's something that I've grown into. One, I tell my students and my clients often, give yourself permission to be in the middle of your healing. You don't have to be at the ground up. You don't have to be sky high, you know, thinking that, oh, my gosh, I've arrived. First of all, there's no arrival in healing. We're going to be healing to the day we die. Yes. I'm just telling y'all now, I know some of y'all might not like to hear that, but Tickna Khan taught me that there is healing always.

Okay? Being in the middle, easefulness is in the middle. Sweetness, tenderness, patience is in the middle. And so when I started looking at my healing and the love and joy and all those good feelings that were happening as like ease and being in the middle, it felt more comforting. It felt like it felt more accessible. You know, it didn't feel like someone was just going to snatch it from me. For your child, as the school year continues, patterns start to emerge. You can see what's clicking and where a little extra reinforcement could help.

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on a recent pod, I think with Channie Nicholas, sometimes the rules that kept us safe as kids, we have to break those rules as adults to get free, right? So is you're going into an easeful, peaceful family and saying, I'm not worthy of this. This isn't right. That's self-protection, right? That's something you would have had to say as a kid because you had to believe you weren't worthy or you would have felt rejection all the time.

You had to make kids have to make a reason for what they're experiencing. So was that the little Alex L defending yourself against what would inevitably be disappointment? Absolutely. Because that's what I wonder about healing for me. is it just a constant replacement of wrong thinking? Like we were taught a certain way to survive in our little ecosystems. And then later that system got bigger and bigger and bigger.

And we were exposed to different ideas and rules. And maybe the little rules in our teeny ecosystem aren't necessary and aren't working for us anymore in the bigger world. It feels to me like it's a constant thought replacement to make narrow rules wider and bigger and freer? I feel that 100%. And when you were speaking, what was coming up from me was it's this constant unlearning to relearn.

It's a cycle. It's a cycle. Because there's always going to be things that scare us in life. There's always going to be things that trigger us and make us go back to our old self. It's like, how do we redirect? How do we unlearn that, okay,

I was not safe then, but I am safe now. And so it is. It's that constant replacement. And not even constant, but it's that intentional replacement. It's that intentional redirection of, I was not safe then, but I am safe now. How? How? Why?

So something I teach in my writing courses is like, okay, if you're saying I am safe now, I want you to then go and write down, why am I safe? Where am I safe? How am I safe? Who am I safe with? Prove it to yourself. That brings us back. That brings us back to that moment.

And not even prove it, but like remind yourself of where you are today. You know? And so it's hard. Healing, I don't want to say healing is hard, but being intentional about our well-being, about our self-care, about our healing work, about our joy. It's not easy. I don't think it's hard, but it's not easy. We need deeply rooted intention for sure.

Like you said, it's never ending. Yeah, absolutely. Intentional. Being intentional to me as I was reading your work, I was like, that's it. That's the whole ballgame. Because it feels like when you are growing up, again, you have these automatic survival responses to get you through it. And you can live your whole damn life that way. way. The whole way through, you could just keep operating on like your system default coding.

But it's when those moments where you look and you say like, no, I want to do something on purpose. I don't want to do something because it's coded. I want to take an intentional action. Like when your baby was born and you suddenly had the mirror of her reflection back at you and you said, no, I'm going to do something on purpose now. when you met Ryan and you were like, no, I, my coding says, hell no, run, run, red alert, I'm going to on purpose choose you. Mm-hmm. Damn. What are our daily on-purpose intentional acts that aren't based on survival, but are based on our

choice to do and act a certain way to lead our lives? what are those daily practices that we can begin to have ease, even in the act of being intentional? Because that is an odd place to be if you've just been reacting to coding your whole life. Great question. I do self-check-ins a lot. Hey, girl. What's up with us today? Yeah.

How are you feeling today? How are you feeling today? Something else I asked myself. is who are you? Outside of my roles, who am I today? Am I creative today? Am I lighthearted today?

Am I cranky? Like, what is going on? Like, figure it out. And that really helps me because not only does it remind me that I am my own greatest teacher, it also reminds me to tune in and tap in to my truth of The day. That's right. Of the day.

Can we talk about that? I think one of my favorite things about yoga is my instructor who always says, okay, let's see what we're working with today. It's not like, who are you and all of your body? I'm like, I don't know. But today, I'm kind of an asshole. It's like having a meeting with yourself so you know what you're bringing to the world that day, right? Yes. It's good.

Today. I think it's good, too, because. Because you've got to check in with yourself, almost do it every morning. Because when I walk upstairs and you're up there already and she's like, how are you? How did you sleep? And she starts asking me these questions. I am now like, oh, I go into myself, but I haven't had that conversation with myself first. You don't even know.

And so then it becomes the performance, the autopilot of what does she want me to say so that I don't make this morning weird and all that stuff, right? Such a good example. So it's like maybe do like a daily check-in with yourself in the morning before you talk to your partner. Maybe that's why we don't ever know what to say when people say, how are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? If you haven't, if you don't know. I started answering honestly. So tell me what you would say. Like if I say, Alex, how are you? Well, today. I'm not sure I'm feeling. I'm not sure. Or I feel like like shit. Actually. And then some people, a lot of people don't have the capacity for that. Yeah. We're like, okay.

Well. Okay, anyway, here's your fries. Right. But also, here's something, too, that I've learned from my, my dear husband, who can be very cranky. Okay. Cranky guy. I'll be like, hey, babe, how'd you sleep? How are you doing?

You're like, just waking up, babe. I'm like, you're right. I'll check in with you in about, give me, I'll give you an hour. I'll give me about an hour, you know. Especially with the kids. So we have the 14-year-old, we have a 4-year-old, and we have a newly three-year-old. She just turned three. And he gets very flustered.

So I'm just like, okay, let babe wake up, let him brush his teeth. You know what I mean? Like, I don't even talk to him in the morning anymore. I wait for him to talk to me. I'll look at him and just be like, Yeah. That's good, Alex. Like, we know each other.

And for those at home, I just did a head nod. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's loving. And I know that when he's like, hey, babe, like, oh, he's ready. He's done his check-in.

He's ready. I want to get to the hows of how you do this because you actually have, you have the little micro check-ins. But you also have some practices, breathing, walking and writing. Can you talk to us about those three things? Breathing is so confusing to me, but I have had two of the most transformational experiences of my life when someone has made me. me breathe weird for an hour. So you mean correctly. Breathe correctly. Breathe correctly. Breathe intentionally. I call my work intentional breathing. Talk to us about it, please. Breathwork. So how I found breathwork, I had a complete meltdown and anxiety attack at the end of

last year. And I had no idea like what life was. I was back at a really, really dark place. And what I realized after I came out of my fog of depression was I was holding my breath. I had literally, not only was I holding my breath, but I had completely deprioritized myself in my life. During the height of the pandemic, I was teaching online. I taught 15,000 people in 18 months. And I loved it. It was wonderful. was invigorating. It was community care. It was the, you know, leave yourself at the door and

serve these people. I was taking care of kids. All five of us were home. It was a madhouse. It was ridiculous. And I literally would forget to eat. I would forget to drink water. I wouldn't even get out of the bed sometimes. I would be so tired. Tired of doing. Right? And I had a conversation with Ryan, and I was like, I don't want to be here anymore. I wasn't sure what I meant by that, but I was very disoriented, and I was just sobbing. And what I realized was that I had been ignoring myself for two years and that I was caretaking and caretaking. for not only my outside community, but my inside at home community. And I was really devastated by getting so out of touch with myself.

So then I was doing the whole beating myself up thing. You know better. You do this work. And now you're here, you know? And so I was like, okay, let's find a new therapist. Let's get back on medication because I can't cure this with CB. I have tried that too. Everybody freaking freaking telling me CBD. I'm like, that shit is not working.

Alex. That's right. You get half my pantry. Half my pantry is CBD oil. No. Just bathe in it. And so found a new practitioner, got on some meds, new meds that worked, blah, whatever. Great. And then I came out of my fog and I was like, wow, girl, you have been, one, de-prioritizing yourself and two, you've been holding your breath. So then I started looking at breathwork coaching certifications because that's just how my mind works.

It's like, I don't know how to breathe clearly. So I need someone to teach me. Love it. And I learned and it was like, oh, wow, you haven't been breathing. You have not been breathing. How am I alive? I have not been breathing. And so I was able to figure out how to breathe better.

And when I was having my anxiety attacks, because just because you're on meds and in therapy doesn't mean not going to be overwhelmed with anxiety at some point, I can go to my breath. The box breath is my absolute favorite breath. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four. You can do it anywhere on the subway while you're driving, on a walk, locked in your room so your kids don't bust in on you when you need to recalibrate, you know, like truly finding ways to re-center and get back into your body. And that is what I needed to do. was get back into my body. So breathing, the right way and with intention. Number one, writing, of course, outside of being an author, I also really love being able to talk to myself.

And so I like those check-ins. I keep a gratitude list. Simple, one thing a day or night that I'm grateful for. And it can be, okay, I made it through the day, you know? Getting back to basics in life, not necessarily having all these big things to unpack. But like, what are the basic tiny micro moments of joy that I can explore? And then walking. I've been walking for a year every single day. Rain or shine, cold or hot. And I've never missed a day.

And that is where I get back to my body. Wow. Movement every day. Something about that walking. And Pod Squad, are you hearing this? I only trust healing that is back to the basics. What you're saying, breath, walking, writing, all things that don't cost any money. There's an entire industry out there that will swear to you that you need all of these things to heal.

And really it comes back to, I mean, the breath, it's like, that's God. Breath is God. You said you're inspired. That's those words. SPIR is all breath. It's all God. It's all spirit. Spirit, Holy Spirit. It's the thing that we cannot be separated from, the thing that will always be

with us, unless we cut ourselves off from it, is breath. It's what takes us through our entire life. Why is it the walking? Like, what is it about walking? Walking helps me so much. And the more I talk to people who are doing creative grounding work, they always bring up the walking. What is it? So I discovered walking through this awesome woman who I'm now dear friends with. Her name is Libby Delana. And she wrote the book, Do Walk. And she's my absolute favorite person. We are thickest thieves now.

We are family now. I found her in Magnolia Journal a year ago. And I was like, who is this six foot tall, long, white-haired lady? She's so badass. They had a whole, like, feature on her. So I read her article. I looked her up and I bought her book immediately and I went on Instagram. I saw she was following me.

Isn't that the best? I was like, I'm in, I'm in. I love her. I love her. Yes. So I DMed her and said, you know, your book is changing me. And I wasn't ready to start walking yet. But I was just like, I'm listening.

I hear you. And then I decided after my youngest turned two, I was like, I need to get back into my body in another way. I had really gotten outside of myself. So I'm just going to, I'm going to try this walking thing. I don't know what this is about, but I'm going to try this walking thing. And I committed to 30 days. And then I said at the end of the 30 days, if I'm still feeling good, I'm going to go every day.

And I have been going every day since. Me and Libby have a podcast called This Morning Walk, where we talk about the lessons from walking through the world. She's 60. I'm 33. She's a white lady. I'm a black lady. It's like we're so different, but we are so the same.

I go to Massachusetts where she lives with my oldest and we go for walks on the beach and we stay with Libby and we have tea. And it's like walking has shown me who I am. It has shown me that I don't have to know where I'm going. It has shown me like Libby says to put motion to emotion. So when I'm pissed, I go for a walk. When I'm happy, I go for a walk. And it's the promise to myself to move my body every day. And I did it and I'm going to keep doing it because I deserve to keep the promises to myself.

The end. I like so. Damn Alexa. Have you ever hit a point at work where everything just feels heavy? Not just a bad week, but the kind of burnout where you're staring at your laptop thinking, I can't keep doing it like this. You're not alone. Strawberry.

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Strawberry.combe because your career should feel good again. You talked a little bit, Alex, earlier about self-soothing. Can we talk a little bit more about that? Because it's so fascinating to me. Well, those three things that we mentioned, you know, breathing, writing, and walking have been my self-soothing tools. And self-soothing for me is like holding myself in the way that I hold other people and in a way that we're not taught to hold ourselves, you know? When I'm walking, I'm often thinking about like, oh, like I'm rocking myself.

I'm literally loving myself. Yes. And rocking yourself. We view self-soothing as for some reason it's this thing that is appropriate for the first two years of life, and then miraculously it's not appropriate anymore, as opposed to an absolutely vital tool to have for all of life. You know, I, Alex, I sucked my thumb until fifth grade and I had a blankie until college. Somebody stole it from me in college. It's a very upsetting story. But I think about when I quit sucking my thumb is when I became blemick. I'm not saying they're

totally tied, but why are some strategies of self-soothing acceptable and some aren't? Because the way I feel is like we're all self-soothing, but we develop these things. Like, every time someone's a judgmental asshole, they're self-soothing. Like, they can't handle the vulnerability of the moment or the jealousy or the whatever. Assholery is self-soothing. It's just acceptable or something because it's seen as less vulnerable. I'd rather. somebody just stick their thumb in their mouth instead of being an asshole. So the next time someone's an asshole to you, just go up to them and put their thumb in their mouth? With their thumb in their mouth?

And how come, like, things are culturally appropriate self-soothing. Like, it's okay to have sex, six glasses of wine a night. But it's not okay to rock yourself. I think there are healthy ways to self-soothe and unhealthy ways to self-sude. I think that just comes down to it. I think people who struggle with addiction are self-soothing in their own way. It's not healthy. How do we shift the unhealthiness into something that's healthy, into something that's supportive, into something that is life-giving? Because that's really what self-soothing is for me. It replenishes me. It fills me up. It's this nourishing act of self-care.

And so finding healthy ways to self-soothe has been big for me. me too because when I was younger, I didn't have those things. I looked for for love in places that there was none. I dated really terrible people because I was self-soothing or trying to, right? I didn't eat. I struggled with an eating disorder because I was, as you said, self-soothing, right? But that wasn't healthy. It wasn't life-giving. And so when we think about self-soothing, we need to be thinking about filling our cup, replenishing, nourishing. That's the word that really kind of like makes me feel things inside. Like self-soothing equals nourishment. How are we nourishing ourselves in a way that is healthy and sustainable? Yeah. I love that. So the question becomes,

what are your self-soothing strategies? Yes. And if your answer to that is, I don't know or I don't have them, your actual true answer is you are having unhealthy self-soothing strategies. Because if you don't know what they are, then you're the asshole at the meeting. No, no, no, no. They exist. Everyone has them. It's not a question of do you have them or do you not.

It's are you aware of your self-soothing strategies? And if you're not aware of what they are, you might want to, again, Alex L says, be intentional about choosing some that will work for you instead of defaulting to the ones you're no doubt already using. Yes. Because I don't know what mine are. So that definitely means it's probably working too much. It's probably being starkey and mean.

It's probably, you know, so I know I have them, but I have to like take a hot minute and really think through what they are and think about intentionally replacing some of them. so they don't default to the others. I actually see this with my 14-year-old. So she has anxiety as well, and a part of her anxiety is skin picking. And that she doesn't skin pick or self-harm to end her life, but she does it because it feels good to her. Or because she's trying to punish herself for something, right? And so something that we've been working with her psychiatrist on and therapist on is like redirection of that.

Okay, so if you're picking because you're nervous, what can we do instead of picking? Or if you're picking because you are excited, what can we do with our hands instead of that? Right. So it is the redirection, the intentional redirection. So when I see her picking, I'll say, hey, don't pick. I have band-aids. and you want to put a band-aid on? Because I'll redirect her to, oh, okay, let me not do that and let me cover.

And then we can move on to finding something else, right? And as someone who, part of my anxiety is I pull my hair out, which is why I've been keeping my hair short lately. I have, it's called trick, and I literally will pull my hair out. And so what I do, when I get highly anxious and I feel myself tooling with my hair, I start snapping. So there's another self. soothing thing. Like, oh, I can't pick and snap at the same time. It's impossible. Right. So, like,

even if, even starting small, I'm mentioning those things because our kids deal with it, we deal with it, starting small. Maybe it's not going for a walk every day, but maybe it's snapping. Maybe it's not, you know, writing in your gratitude journal as self-soothing tool. Perhaps it's going to make a cup of tea with intention. Bringing your mind back to the moment and slowing down is really what self-soothing is. That's the number. That's the nerve. nourishing act, the slowing down in the redirection. I love that. And crying.

Oh, and crying. People think, we have created this idea that crying is like failing. We say to people, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. It's so weird. It's like saying, don't pee, don't pee. That is an actual biological heal. It's a baptism. It's a getting it all out, starting over, starting fresh.

We should say cry, cry, cry. You know, if that's part of healing. It's not the absence of healing. My mom's favorite phrase growing up is tears don't fix anything or crying doesn't solve problems. And Charlie, who is my oldest daughter, is a crier. And something that I have committed to not doing is telling her to stop crying. Yeah. I will say it's okay for you to cry.

If you want to excuse yourself, go ahead, get yourself together, and you can rejoin us when you're ready to talk. Something that I will say is, I can't understand you when you're crying. And so I love you. Go ahead and get yourself together, and it's no rush. But I'm never going to tell her, stop crying, tears don't solve anything. Because for her, crying, crying is, a self-soothing mechanism.

Right. And I didn't cry for a long, or I would cry in private because I didn't want my mom to see me. And something that I do, too, as a parent, is I cry in front of my kids. Yeah. I don't hide my tears from my kids. And my mom never did that. Like, she was, like, not going to cry in front of you. She cries now, which is really interesting to see her soften in that way.

But it's so, it's so. Crying is so, so, so important. And even for my littles, you can cry. Go ahead and cry. You want to go sit on the steps and cry? You can cry? Can I give you a hug? Sometimes I're like, don't touch me.

He's like, okay, I love you. I don't have to hug you. I'm here when you're ready. And so inviting people to feel safe enough to shed their tears is such a sacred act. It's wild how sacred that is. It's not the thing we get through to get to the thing. It's not like, oh, we just have to sit through the crying so we can get to the words that we're going to say to each other. We always think we have put so much faith in words.

But the actual act of crying and sitting with someone who's crying and not being so uncomfortable with our own stuff that we rush them through the crying, that's not what we suffer through to get to the healing. That is the healing. Just the tears. Alex, you say about crying, give it. life and let it go. So is the crying itself giving life to whatever it is your healing or mourning? It's both. Water is life giving. Our tears are life giving. And they also is a release, right? And I think that that's really important for us to realize like crying doesn't make us weak. It makes us really strong and vulnerable and really like amazing. And I have a friend who she lost

her dad and her sister within the same year. We were having a conversation on FaceTime. And when we were talking on FaceTime, she started crying. And she was talking and crying. And I just was holding space and listening. And at the end, she goes, thank you for not telling me not to cry. And that's a part of like our humanity wants to be seen

in our most vulnerable states. And that's really important. to give ourselves the permission to release, to receive, and also to like, to give our feelings life. If that comes in the form of tears, that comes in the form of tears. It doesn't, it's not wrong. It's like laughter. Exactly. It's like laughter. Don't laugh. Don't laugh. It's the same, just the body's natural response to just emotions, the being overcome. It's like laughter. I don't understand why people have such a weird. Because it's a loss of control and we don't like people to lose control around us. Alex, all of your work is about intergenerational healing, communal healing,

and you are raising three black girls in this world, in this country. What do you want most for them to be able to release? And what do you want most for them to be able to receive? Wow. I want my girls to release the idea that they need to be validated by outside forces, including me and my husband, to receive their power. Connected, those two, directly connected. You're really an example. You're amazing. It's your vulnerability.

And you're doing, you're not just a teacher. You're a student. And that's what we trust. Thank you. I just keep thinking as we end that so much of what you've described as healing is releasing. I think we think of healing as something that has to come in and fix us on the inside. And all this stuff has to happen on the inside for us to change. But actually, everything you're talking about, the writing, the breathing, the walking, the crying.

It's all release. It's just different ways of not holding it all in, not holding our breath, not hiding. So today, let's just think of what we need to release. Oh, not even what. Maybe we don't even know, but just how we're releasing today. How we're exhaling. Maybe that's how we heal. Alex L.

Thank you for who you are in the world. Your new book, How We Heal is just an active service to all of us. It is community care. So thank you. And to the pod squad, just real quick, heal yourself this week and we'll see you next time. No, I think it's like, easy, peasy. I think it's like go for a walk or take a breath or cry. Do one thing intentionally.

Just pick one thing to do with intention today and you will have started your healing. That's right. See you next time. Bye. Bye. We can do hard things. is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the

podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.