Permission to Heal Episode #19 - A Conversation with Natasha Link as we chat about finding and identifying ideal romantic relationships and healing ourselves so we are ready for them.

Natasha Link is a freelance copywriter, a philosopher, and a mom of two daughters based in rural Minnesota. She studied psychology in college and worked in a variety of different fields before starting her own business. She is genuine, straightforward, and sarcastic. She has an open mind and a fierce heart. She is raising two strong, sassy little girls amidst the chaos of life. Natasha still believes in Magic. Love is her religion, and writing is her Church. She loves the way a good book makes her feel when she finishes it and hopes her words will inspire others in that way.

She writes for Elephant Journal and Medium magazine and started publishing my pieces there. Her first copywriting client found her through one of my EJ articles. After that, she launched her website and took a leap of faith, so far it has been one of the best decisions of her life. 

Her overall message is simply to live as authentically as you can. Find yourself through healing and embrace who you truly are. Loving yourself is the highest form of magic and gratitude is the love language of the Universe. Each person has a purpose here, but we need the courage to fulfill it. Her hope is that my words inspire others to find the strength to go after their dreams. 

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Connect with Natasha
Wesbite - https://natashalink.com/
Emaill -.natashalink1@gmail.com

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Transcript

welcome. Welcome everyone. This is permission to heal. I am Marci Brockman, and I am very thrilled that you're here today. we have Natasha link. Natasha is from Rushford Minnesota. She is a freelance copywriter.

She studied psychology in college and has worked a variety of different fields before starting her own business as a copywriter. She is genuine straight forward and sarcastic love that she has an open mind and a fierce heart. She's raising two strong sassy, little girls amidst the chaos of life.

Natasha still believes in magic love is her religion and writing as her church. She loves the way a good book makes her feel when she finishes it and hopes her words will inspire others in that way. I love. Love reading a good book and feeling like the characters and my friends.  Natasha is a prolific writer for elephant journal among a few other publications, which is where I found her.

 I'm an avid reader of elephant journal and am a writer for that publication also, and her writing and the topics and the specificity of her prose speaks to me on a cellular level. And I had to invite her to be, To take part in our permission to heal family. So welcome. Welcome. Welcome, Natasha.

I'm thrilled that you're here. Thank you. I'm happy to be here.  Herman message overall is to simply to live as authentically as you can, to find yourself through healing and to embrace who you truly are loving yourself is the highest form of magic and gratitude is the love language of the universe.

Don't you just love that gratitude is the love language of the universe. She believes that each person has their own purpose, but we need courage to fulfill it. Her hope is that her words inspire others to find genuine strength and to go after their dreams, which really resonates with me because that, that.

Is my message as well, the message of permission to land my, my memoir and the companion journal, and really the mission of permission to heal, loving yourself as the highest form of magic and gratitude is the love language of the universe. I just love the way you, right. Thank you so much. You seem to say exactly what I want to say in words that I.

Hadn't thought of saying them in, Oh, well that's an amazing compliment. , admittedly, I'm a bunch better writer than I am speaker, so you'll have to bear with me here. Totally fine. I feel that way too, to an extent. I mean, although teaching has kind of bridged the gap there a little bit, but I, I like. The, the idea that when you're writing, you have time to craft exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it.

And when you're speaking, you know, once it's out, it's out,

 Overall I found. It's really hard for people to even like themselves, let alone except themselves, and really fully love themselves and not in a, in a selfish way, but just to grace, they flies and be comfortable in their own skin. And that's what I already difficult thing. I hope that more people can do because it's so important.

And just like. Being yourself and being okay with it, all your little quirks and all your imperfections and there's, nobody's perfect. And it's this thought that we need to be perfect. That makes everybody so unhappy.  Why do you think that we feel this need to be perfect?

Like where does that come from? I think that how it's gotten so bad is. Social media and, you know, everybody posting their highlight reel and everybody looking at that and comparing that to their reality, but they're not seeing the other people's reality. So they think, gosh, they're doing their studying version of what they want you to say.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's making it worse. I think that that's, this ideal has been around for a long time and people are always striving to be the certain image that's perpetuated in the media, or, you know, all over this image of who you should be. And it's like, nobody's that? That's not real now.

What's beautiful. Is the quirky, like you said, the idiosyncratic, the different weird peculiarities that make each of us unique and different from everyone else. You wouldn't want, like, my husband is a fish keeper and literally about an hour ago, he just bought 13 of these identical fish. They're all called Harlequin.

they're so cute. I mean, they're all identical and I liked them cause they schooled together. You know, they all move the same way at the same time. I think it's very relaxing to look at, but I wouldn't want my friend group to be that way. I wouldn't want to be a schooling fish where I just looked like everyone else or behaved exactly like everyone else.

What makes us. Unique is what makes us amazing and beautiful and flawed and a little crazy and a little sarcastic and a little brilliant. And, you know, I mean, it's all of those things together that make up the package of who we are. Pulling fish into that conversation. All right. So I usually start interviews or conversations as I like to call them with these six questions.

What five words would you use to describe yourself?

Um, so now I can't remember what I said. You don't have to remember what you said. I don't even have written down what you said. I want to know what you think now. Cause it might be different than what you said a week ago when you filled out the guest survey, right? Um, definitely a genuine, um, It isn't a test,

uh, genuine, uh, sarcastic, um, kind fun, loving, um, and a little chaotic. We're going to get along. Great. Natasha. I love that loving, chaotic. Absolutely. Um, what's your favorite way to spend a day? Gosh, my favorite. So I mean, you know, I'm a copywriter right now, but I love when I get to just work on my own writing projects and I have no interruptions and the days just for me, which doesn't happen much anymore.

Well, you've got two young children. I would imagine. Quiet. Writing days are at a premium, right? So, um, my day, my little one is at daycare most of the time during the week, but my older one is home doing zoom school, right? Oh, there is a lot of need for technical assistance or. Help with homework, or just a reminder to do chores and not sit on Tik TOK all day.

Um, so there's a lot of interruptions, but when no one else is home and I get to just write whatever I want to write, those are the best days. Lovely. Yeah, I, I, I, when I'm writing and I'm in the zone, I don't like to be interrupted either. Just totally gets rid of the flow. And, um, what is your favorite childhood memory?

So I have so many favorites, but thinking about it from the perspective of where I'm at now in my life, I. Always remember the very first time that somebody told me that I could be a writer that they saw talent in my writing ability. I think it was fifth grade and it was my reading teacher. Really. We had to write.

Like a fake newspaper article based on a book, we were reading in a scene in it and it was so fun to do and she loved it. And just that very first time that somebody tells you that you're good at something that you love doing. Sure. That's that's like magic, you know, it's like external confirmation or, or permission to be able to love the thing that you love.

Yeah, definitely. As, as a teacher, I'm a high school English teacher. So your, your memory triggered thoughts, triggers a myriad of thoughts in my head related to. When I find a student who has that writing ability that, that creative little spark, and really just runs with an assignment. I just, I love that.

It turns me on as a teacher and I know that it turns them on to the students. It's just like equal flow going in and outs. Awesome. Okay. What is your favorite meal? Okay. There's a restaurant in Rochester, Minnesota called Prescott's and they make something called the creamy chicken. Bazell. Ooh. And it is phenomenal.

I love that. It's made with like a cayenne pepper, cream sauce. And chicken and button mushrooms and Roma tomatoes and abortion cheese. It's just delectable sounds fabulous. I'm not a great cook. I'm very mediocre. I don't get fancy in the kitchen. Right. The ultimate thing for me is like, can we go there?

And we've actually even with the lockdown or did it

just go there and pick it up or do they deliver it? They don't deliver. I live like an hour from there actually. So we really have to plan ahead for this. This isn't a spur of the moment thing. No, it's been one time since March. There's a restaurant that's not so far from here. , that makes this lovely, like orange Shetty pasta, which is like these little.

They sort of look like little hats or little ears and it's in a, they make it in like a garlicky. Olive oil sauce with sauteed broccoli and sun dried tomatoes and sweet Italian sausage. And just, it's just it's heaven. I've tried to replicate it and it's not that difficult to do, but there's something maybe it's the sausage they use or this specific kind of tomato.

I don't know. Whatever it is are a little special concoction is just fabulous. Some secret ingredients, they would never tell you. No, of course not. Of course not. There's a diner, not so far from here that has been around since I was a little girl that my kids loved going to because when you sat down at their tables, as long as it wasn't breakfast time, they'd give you like a bowl of macaroni salad.

You know, it's like noodles and some sort of white. Cold sauce with broccoli and peppers and some like chickpeas or whatever. And, you know, it's just a little something for the table instead of a bread basket kind of thing, while you're figuring out what you want to order. So my kids always call this a noodle salad and they want to go to the diner with the noodles.

I mean, they're in college and grad school now, so they don't say it like that. But when they were little, we want to go with the noodle salad. And for years I've been trying to figure out what they put on this. It's not Mayo. It's not miracle whip. It's not, there's some salad, there's a vinegary taste to it, but it doesn't take, I've tried everything that I possibly can think of and I can't replicate it and they will not tell me

aspect. Many times. Oh, well just keep me coming back there. , what is one piece of advice you would like to give your younger self? If I could give my younger self advice, it would have been to, to never. Let that self doubt into my mind and to keep writing and to believe in myself, because for the longest time I didn't write it all for over 10 years.

Probably. I didn't want it other than like in college, but I didn't write for myself between college after college. And, maybe like a year and a half ago. I wasn't really writing at all. Really. How did you go from not writing at all to being so prolific and having a copywriting business?

It just kind of all came together and that's why it feels so like, Meant to be in like, this is what I was always supposed to be doing. And I thought that originally as a child, I wanted to be a writer. I was going to be a writer and then it's like, everybody else gets in your head. It makes you think that you have to do something else and tries to give you advice and you should do this and know that you're not going to make money as a writer.

You're going to, you're going to have to do something else and then just write for fun as a hobby or whatever. And then, you know, life happens and things happen. And I think what was so hard is I went through some really tough stuff, you know?  And so when I first tried writing again, all that was coming out was that test stuff.

And I was like, this is too hard and you need time to heal. And, and then when you were away from it a little bit, then you can write about it cause it doesn't hurt as much. And, and if your purpose is to write something that hopefully benefits someone else and sharing your stories that might touch somebody else and help them find that same healing.

And so I honestly think I had to go through all that first before. Well, of course you wouldn't have anything to written. You wouldn't have anything to write about, right. I mean, there's always something, but, but what you do write about comes from a place of I've been there before, you know, I, I can give you this advice or I can say this with certainty because I felt this way and there's, there's a very keen sense of that in what it is that you do.

Right. , okay. But before we get to that, let's do the six question. What is the one thing that you would most like to change about the world? So hard to choose one thing. I want to change everything right now. I just wish that more people could find kindness and understanding for others and themselves and selves, but there's not enough people who are kind to themselves.

And I think those same people that are unkind to themselves are unkind to other people. That's very profound that if they were kind of themselves, that would find it easier to be kind to others. Yeah. Cause if you're, if you are able to forgive yourself for your mistakes and your imperfections and, and know that we're all just human and flawed and that's just the way it is sometimes, all the time, all the time, then maybe you can be more kind and understanding other people, very profound, Natasha.

Very profound. Well, okay, so we're already here. So in one of the articles that you wrote recently called the 10 qualities of a true, I'm going to curse here, sorry. 10 qualities of a true fucking warrior and a lifelong partner.

 It really resonated with me on a very deep level. And, and I, and I, I've almost in less than 20 days, I will be married four years to a man amazing man named Michael who meets every single one of these characteristics. And I don't think that any other person that I have ever been involved with prior to him would have met even two or three of them.

I was just picking all the wrong people. It seems to me that anybody who could come up with this list and I'll, I'll just read the list itself to the audience who is not necessarily looking at this. When I am, it is on elephant journal. It's called the 10 qualities of a true fucking warrior and lifelong partner.

 And here are the 10 qualities he's putting in effort. He's consistent. He communicates clearly. He has a good sense of humor. He is secure in who he is. He has a healthy relationship with his mother. He is kind, he respects nature and animals. He gives your life balance and he sees you and believes in you.

And I do also want to say that this isn't just for heterosexual relationships, this applies eyes to every possible LGBTQ, , Variation of this as well. Anybody that you would consider a life partner in my estimation, and clearly Natasha's estimation to have these 10 qualities or at least nine of them.

You know, and it seems to me that anybody who could come up with this list and all the reasons why she puts behind the reason she explains for each one of these characteristics had to have gone through some shit. Yeah. Can you speak to this a little bit? How did you come up with this list? Well, I just, honestly, I was thinking about, again, like what I would write to my younger self had.

Had I known better and maybe not wasted so much time dating all these wrong men and I thought about the things that I loved about my husband and the things that I maybe wouldn't have ever known that that's what I needed until I met him. Right. And so I just kind of originally, it was just going to be like , Something different, but it changed because the title came to me and I was like, okay, now I have to adjust this to make it fit.

This originally got applied for like the 10 things to make a relationship last  the 10 ingredients needed to make relationship last, but then I kind of geared it more towards the qualities of a person person. You know, I, I went through a lot of crap. I was in a really bad abusive relationship years ago.

And, you know, w you know, it was more mental, emotional, psychological, abusive than. Physical. Well, it did get physical at times. I think, I think, you know, not to disqualify the physical because physical abuse  is horrible. Nobody should have to endure that. But I think in some respects, the invisibility of emotional abuse is worse because it's not obvious to anybody else that it's going on.

And the person, the victim who's being emotionally abused has to prove it and defend. Themselves, you know, and, and, you know, it's something that you don't even necessarily realize you were in until afterwards, sometimes, or, or to the, when it gets to the point where it's so extreme and because of it, it's so manipulative and there's so much gaslighting and you, and you've, you doubt yourself and you become.

I don't know, you just come in like a shell of yourself. Then I actually did write about that in one of my articles too, but healing from that,

it took a while. And then. I continue to date the wrong kind of men. And, but even before that, even it was just, it's just been like a lifelong battle, which I think, yeah. I mean, you have a certain preconceived notion of what are your relationships are going to look like, whether it comes from your childhood as mine.

Did we grow up with some sort of. Idea of what we think our relationships gonna look like, what we think our relationship's going to feel like what we think we're going to feel like when we're in it. And then sometimes without us really even noticing what's going on, it just slowly becomes something unhealthy.

And we still might even be comfortable with the unhealthy, like, I was very comfortable with the unhealthy, because I thought that that was what was supposed to be. I didn't realize how unhealthy it was until I reached a point where I couldn't figure out where I was in the whole thing. And you write about that too.

Not necessarily in this article, but in you write about that too, where you just you're so busy, people-pleasing so busy trying to be the person that you think others. Expect you to be, or want you to be that you lose touch with who you actually are, even to the point where you don't recognize yourself.

Definitely. I think that everybody does that to an extent, and especially with dating, cause you you're like, you want them to like you, so you try to assimilate to what they're looking for. Or, and I, and I finally got to a point where I was. Happy with who I was. Right. And wasn't going to pretend to be anything else and had gotten to a point where I was done with all the bullshit.

Exactly. And, and it's, it was the funniest thing is that when I met my husband, Because he was younger than me. I didn't think it was going to be anything serious at all. I thought it was just going to be fun and, and then it ended up being the love of my life. And well, it could be, I mean, I'm just hearing this for the first time, but it could be.

That because you didn't think it was going to be serious. You allowed yourself to be more authentically Natasha and therefore was a better girlfriend and a better partner. Then you would have been had you had a preconceived notion that it might have been something. And then you might have been more tempted to curate a version of yourself for him.

Right. Does that make any sense? I think you hit the nail on the head with that one, for sure. Definitely. Yeah. I was married for 12 years in a relationship that was very unhealthy. And then I spent the next decade single and dating and I was dating all sorts of. Men who were in varying degrees. Exactly.

Like my ex-husband and exactly like my mom and they were all the same type of person and I over and over and over and over again was the same version of me. And each time. I would find myself in a similar situation where I was doing all the people pleasing and I was trying to be somebody that I was not.

And then suddenly I was resentful that I didn't get to be who I actually am. And you know, it just sets up this toxic thing because they think they're in a relationship with somebody who doesn't actually exist and, you know, it's this big mess. And then at some point in my late mid forties, I was sitting across the table from a guy on a.

Date first date. Like I met him like, I'm on a dating site. I forget which online dating site. And I realized that I didn't like him, that we had no chemistry. I was not interested in a freaking thing that was coming out of his mouth. And I didn't like. The way I was perceiving him, wanting me to be, which could have just been my crazy head and had nothing to do with what he was actually thinking.

But it suddenly dawned on me that it wasn't important at all. Whether he liked me. The only thing that was important was whether I liked me with him. Did I get to be myself? And was that. What was that accepted or was that received well, and it totally changed the way I looked at dating after that. Yeah.

And, you know, I think I kind of went through this. I went through online dating too as actually how I met my husband. I know a lot of couples that got together that way. My dad and my stepmom got together while it was more than 30 years ago. So it was before the internet, but through a personal ad in New York magazine, he answered her ad and they went out and they'd been married with 30 some odd years.

So, I mean, it works. Yeah, it does. But I went through that same thing. Like you you're dating you in and you get to this point where you're just tired, you're just tired. And you're like, you know what, this is me. Take it or leave it.

Right. It's not like you don't care, but you're just, you've gotten to the point where just you're just beyond fashioning yourself for someone else, ? You like yourself enough, you're comfortable enough with who you are, where you like this. This is me, know all of my glory and all of my flaws and all of my idiosyncratic weirdness.

This is me, I think one of my favorite things about my husband is that he makes me laugh. Like I've never laughed ever. He just says we have the same quirky, silly, ridiculous, weird sense of humor. And he could just say one little offhanded thing and I'm doubled over hysterical, laughing.

I just, I love that. And his ability to buoy me, buoy me up. He believes in me, even when I don't believe in me. And when I'm having doubts about what I'm doing or the direction I'm taking, he's always the one who's there.  Giving me applause and rooting for me and pushing me forward and I just adore him and, and it took me a long time to figure out my way here.

Yeah. I think it takes a lot of us a long time to get here. Yeah. I think, I think this is. I don't know if it's a social media thing or it's the fact that we can stream any movie or TV show or anything that we ever want to see. We don't have to wait for anything anymore. You know, you can order something on Amazon and have it delivered in some cases later that day or the next day.

I don't think that as a culture, we know what it's like to wait for things anymore. I think we're losing the ability to. Wait for long-term gratification to wait for something to grow or to evolve or to heal or to fix itself.  I think that we want what we want and we want it now and too many of us rush and push things and then wind up in situations where we don't really know who the other person is.

Yeah.  Like former student of mine who was engaged at a very young age, She just broke up with this guy a few months ago. And she thought he was everything that she would ever want, but they hadn't known each other very long. And so over the course of the time that they were engaged, more of his personality, characteristics came out and she slowly started to see that those things in him that she might have noticed before they got engaged.

Had she actually not jumped in prematurely? You know, and then she had to break off the engagement, which was harder than just breaking up with the boyfriend, but at least they didn't get married. You know,

I think that people do that very quickly and when they jump. Into a relationship because the beginning part of it, that honeymoon phase feel so good. And you've got all the endorphins going and,  you're just the chemistry and you're all over each other and you can't keep your hands off each other.

And everything that they say is fabulous and wonderful, you know, that stage. And at that stage, you could think anybody was fabulous. And if you let yourself, if you let yourself get too deep into a relationship during that stage, you don't know what you're going to wind up with when the honeymoon stage is over.

And you're sort of in that messy middle, , I think that it would be who've anybody getting into a serious relationship to weight their way through the messy middle before committing. That you don't know how you're going to handle the hard things in life together. If you rush and hard things are always going to come, right.

And you have to be able to get through those things together. And. You don't know that if you've been dating six months, I really don't think you do. No, I agree. I agree. Now I was only dating my husband for six months. When I proposed to him, I proposed out first and I proposed to him and then we got married less than a year after we both said, I love you.

But the caveat to this is that we had been friends since 1987. So we'd been friends for 29 years at that point. I think I knew him enough and he knew me enough. We're only dating six months. Really didn't matter. You know, because we had three decades to get to know one another. There were no secrets in the closet that we didn't know about.

You know, at that point he is who he is and I am who I, you know, he was 50 and I was 48 when we started dating. So. At that point, I love that you proposed, I love hearing that I threatened.

What did you say? I just was like, I don't even remember, but I was just like, if you don't do this soon, I'm going to have to do it.  We were, we were watching. A movie with Ryan Reynolds called definitely, maybe and he plays a divorcing dad. Who's talking to his daughter who I believe is played by Abigail Breslin, and she wants to know why her parents are getting divorced and he has got no easy answer.

And he says that romance is difficult and, and subtle and nuanced, and there's all sorts of stuff. And,  And, and she didn't understand, she was like eight or nine, maybe 10 years old or something. And so the whole movie is him explaining who his three serious girlfriends were after college. And she was supposed to pick out which one of those based on his description, which one wound up being her mother.

And it was just a delightful, wonderful movie, but he, Ryan Reynolds, his character proposes to all of the women and. It's just charming and sweet and I love romcoms anyway. And so my husband and I, or my boyfriend at the time, and I were watching and he said, you know, I proposed to two women in my life and , the next time I get married, I want to be the one that's proposed to.

And I was like, I can do that. Wait. I knew he was going to say yes, but I'm like, I could totally do that. That would be fun. And, and I knew that he would have eventually have proposed to me, but I didn't like his timeline. You know, I wanted to do it faster and I knew he was going to wait at least until the following spring.

And it was like July. And I was like, no, I want to do it now. So I made him a YouTube video and I took him out to dinner and.

We're selling patient aren't we, you know, when I told my dad, I called my father on the phone and I said, Michael and I are engaged. And he says, Oh my God, that's so wonderful. How did he ask? And I'm like, well, he didn't. I did. And that was silence. And I got the judgmental really. Is this a real thing?

Can I tell people, would he have asked you anyway? Like he just. Couldn't figure out how to feel about this. And it was just too outside his wheelhouse, his comfort zone, you know? And, uh, and I said, aren't you proud of the fact that you raised a daughter who knows her own mind, who knows what she wants and is willing to go after it and to go ask for it, rather than just sit in the shadows and wait for it passively to come to her.

 He thought about it for a second. And. And he was like, yeah, that is better. No shit.

So this brings us to the next article. Perfect segue. I could not have created one better myself. That really just speaks to so many things it's called your healing is in your hands. Be your own damn hero. I couldn't have said it better. Couldn't have said it better because in this world, if there's anything that I have learned, it's that we ourselves are responsible for our happiness.

We are responsible for our healing. We are responsible for every damn thing. We think every damn thing we do. And if we wait for anyone else to do it for us, we'll be waiting forever. So true. It's so true. I actually have an article that I wrote called, stop being afraid of happiness. That is on medium.

Oh, I'll have to look that one up, but I actually was thinking about rewriting it for elephant too, just to reach a larger audience.  But it's so important. Everybody is looking for happiness outside of themselves, and you can't do that. You can't find it.  That's not real happiness. No. And along with that comes healing.

Like you, you're not in control of what happens to you and fad. Things are going to happen too. Sometimes that you had no control over, but he only pandemic,

but you're healing from those things is your responsibility. And nobody else's like, nobody else can fix you. Absolutely. And so many people are just like waiting for somebody else to make them happy or waiting for something to magically, fix them and make them okay. And they have to do that work. No one else can do that for them.

Absolutely. It's a lesson. My mother, my poor sweet darling. Crazy mother never learned, she wanted her parents to fix her. She wanted her first husband, who was my dad to fix her. She wanted her, her second husband to fix her. And no matter what I said to her or therapist said to her or her friend said to her, she didn't get that she was responsible for her own happiness, that she was responsible for our own healing and that nobody could do it for her.

And she was. Always looking to other people around her to make her happy and was angry at us because we failed, but we had no shot at ever succeeding. She was miserable, miserable because I couldn't make her happy. And I was miserable about myself because I couldn't make her happy.

And once I learned to make myself happy and to stop people pleasing because that wasn't getting me anywhere.  I. Absolved myself of the guilt over failing to make her happy. I don't know if that makes sense to anybody, but it makes clear sense to me. I'm going to read a little bit of what you wrote.

If you mind me reading, but you reading you to you. You wrote healing is not linear. I say this all the time. Wrote it in my book totally all the time. It's not linear. Sometimes we have to take a few steps back before we can navigate the way forward. Again, we all find ourselves faltering. Occasionally we are simply human and beautifully flawed, continuously learning and growing and evolving.

Give yourself a little bit of grace, then turn it around and fight against the part of you that wants to give up. No one else can save you from the chaos of your own mind. Sometimes you gotta be your own goddamn hero. Remind yourself that you have made it through so much worse than this. You are fierce.

You are brave. You are unstoppable. A freaking man. Baby love that you will come out on the other side of this too. Unfortunately, we can't always prevent bad things from happening, but we must endure every single time. Love that. Love that I it's very long, but I would like to get it tattooed on my shoulder or something.

That's just freaking awesome. No one can save you from the chaos of your own mind. You gotta be your own goddamn hero. Yeah, well, and I think it's important that people don't give themselves that grace, because things are going to happen that trigger you and those old wounds in recently as this actually just happened to me and I, you know, I I'm on Twitter and I have a, quite a big following on there.

And it seems like once a week, somebody trolls me and like, In an attacking way and I shouldn't let it get to me, but I do. And it like ruins my whole night. I'd say that to me. And I'm so sensitive, even though I have thick skin and I've been through a lot in that moment, I'm just like, I totally get that.

And, and I realized the other day, why it bothered me so much is cause it's, it's triggering and, and reminds me of that really bad relationship I was in, in, in. And those scalings come back up. So it wasn't even necessarily that person said it was that old wound ripping apart. And that's what got to me.

And, and then realizing that that's what bothered me, made it so much easier to handle. And I think many people are unaware of their triggers or why they feel so bad when certain things happen or. Great. And I think by, by recognizing the trigger and alert, knowing yourself to feel again, the pain of that old wound helps you heal over that wound just a little bit more.

And each time we allow ourselves to go back and. Revisit, not necessarily ruminate over and over again, like a hamster on a hamster wheel where you're not allowing yourself to move on. And you're just thinking about it over and over again. That's not what I mean, but going back and remembering what that felt like and realizing that you've.

You've improved. You're happier. You've healed yourself a lot of the way that you've learned so much about yourself and the world and et cetera that you have grown since then reminds us of. Of how strong we really are. It increases the awareness of our own resilience and makes us feel more powerful and diminishes then the impact of that past pain.

So that maybe next time we're not triggered as deeply. Right. Yeah. There's layers and layers and layers to healing. Yeah, absolutely. And remembering these things. And the, the pain and the struggle and, and the path to healing is really where empathy is born. I think you were talking before about, about kindness to ourselves and kindness to others.

And I think that comes from recognizing. Our resilience from pain, recognizing that we all, although circumstances might be different between people, the basic human emotions that are underpinning all of them. And the, that is all shared. That is, is all common between us. And so, , you might've experienced your pain differently than mine.

But ultimately we have the same feelings of sensitivity of vulnerability, of feeling hurt or weakened we're dismayed or whatever the word is.  When someone hurts us or, attacks us or. Points points dark light. I don't know if that makes any sense,  awareness over some of our weaknesses or perceived weaknesses or something.

Do you agree? Yeah, I definitely agree. , and, and that's why. Some of us are so forgiving and understanding and compassionate. And we understand that when someone else is going through something, they're not the best version of themselves. And we give that grace and I don't know why some people are missing that.

And then because everybody experiences pain, no one gets out of life without that experience. But I think a lot of people. Aren't doing the work of healing and they're not realizing how strong their no, because you have to be able to look at an experience and think, what did I learn? What, what growth did I gain from this?

Instead of just that victim mentality, like this was horrible and it broke me. You can't, you Hickey. You can feel that sometimes, but you can't live there. You have to be able to. Pull yourself out of it. And like, what was this trying to teach me? What did I need to, I have a deeper understanding for those emotions.

That everything that happens to us ultimately does happen for us. You wrote this to help us become who we are meant to be. We are intended to gain strength, resilience, and determination from our hardships that steal our spine. I love that put steel in our spine, gives us the tenacity required to move mountains.

And it is not a by-product of an easy life that I think is something that we all need to really. Impart to our children. I think it's really important that as parents, we teach our children that life isn't supposed to be easy. We want to protect them and we don't want them to go through pain and we don't want them to feel alone or excluded or like they don't belong.

And we want them to feel all happy and light and wonderful. But if we protect them from all of those things, then. They won't learn resilience and they won't grow up with seal in their spine.  They won't be able to really handle the things that are the realities of life. Right. And I think that has become a serious issue in society today.

I didn't have an easy childhood  and I look at my daughters and I feel like. They are going to have a somewhat easy childhood  and I worry, and I think of other people I know, and it's like, everything just totally breaks them. Like one little thing, because they've never experienced any adversity, they don't know how to handle it.

Right. And I'm like, Ooh, gosh, I hope. How do you give them just enough? For the two year old, when she spills her ice cream on the floor, that's trauma,  there's trauma in stages. We don't necessarily need catastrophic trauma, but little subtle life disappointments. No, you cannot have dessert for breakfast

 You have to wait until Christmas morning to open up your presence.  Whatever. Like just anything that I think staves off the immediate gratification that a small child wants teaching a little bit of resilience. Things don't have to be bad. And I think that the normal growing pains and the normal social things that go on in school is probably more than enough, probably.

 I think the important thing is teaching them. And I've tried to do this with my own, with my own kids and with my students is teaching them emotional literacy.  Teaching them that their feelings are okay, that their feelings are fine and acceptable. And a part of life feelings are meant to be felt hence they're called feelings, and help them name what it is they're feeling.

So they grow up, being able to identify how they feel. And I think that it becomes much less overwhelming and much more manageable. To feel the breadth of human emotions when we feel like we're not being battered around by them,  that we have some measure of control, that we don't have to live and ruminate and stay in that same feeling, but that we have.

Oh, I recognize this. I feel dejected or I feel like I'm not included and I feel left out. I know what this feeling is like. So when I feel this way, these are the things that I can do to make myself feel better. I can go hang out with mom. I can hang out with my big sister. I can go and play a video game, or I can go write in my journal.

I can play my guitar or go bake a cake whatever. Like something that gives us passion and gives us the feeds our own souls I think when we learn positive compensation, I don't think that's the right word I'm looking for. But when we find things, a behaviors that we can engage in that align with who we are, then we can compensate for some of those negative experiences.

And that in itself is resilience right there. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, they have it a little bit worse than we did. As kids today, social media, you're going to say, yeah, because we can, we could get away from it. Like we could have the worst day ever at school, but we could go home and no one can touch us.

Right. Exactly. I'm home. My home base. The teasing had to stop, but now it goes on 24. Seven. Yeah. Yeah. It's worse. It's worse. all this different. Forms, they have Snapchat. They know how to talk. They have Instagram and it's so-and-so Finsta. Then they've got fake Instagram pages that their parents don't know about.

So my daughter sent out an Instagram page that she allows me to see what she posts and I've known since she was like 14 or, or so on that she had a fake Instagram page where she posts the things that her friends see, but that mom's not allowed to see. Oh, God, I didn't even know about this. They call them Finstas

and I don't know how you find them.  I just heard about it. Because of my students, I heard them saying it and I'm like, what's a fence done. And then they told me, and I'm like, Oh, you know what? I bet my daughter has one of those. And then I just asked her point blank and she was like, yeah, I've got one and no, you can't be a part of it.

You know, she's 19. She tells me everything. So I think, and then I find out last night that she had last night, You know, December, whatever. I find out that she's got a Tik TOK account that she won't let me follow, but a Tik TOK account that she does, let me follow. And I'm like, what are you posting that I don't know about?

She's like, trust me. There are just some things you don't want to see. Okay. We all have our privacy, you know, there's some things about me that she doesn't want to know either. And that's the way it should be, I suppose. Okay. But I agree with you about the social media. You know, I think that people get away with saying things that they would never say to your face.

Like those people who are mean to you on Twitter, I would pretty much like. Bet the whole farm. So to speak that none of those people who say mean things to you on Twitter would say those same things to your face. Never, but because they're anonymous and you don't know who, Q X R four, eight seven is they're free to say whatever it is they want to say, which also means that you have to discount it completely.

And not let it into your soul or psyche or heart, because they're just cowards who were, are just miserable and they have to spread misery. Haters will hate leave him alone. That's what I'm trying to realize is that it could be worse. That could be them. Exactly, exactly. Exactly. You know, I think that as a country, I don't.

I would know. I don't know if it's a global thing, but I do know that people have a very diminished ability to politely listen to other people's opinions when they are different from theirs, that we've lost. It is a global thing. I don't know. But we've lost the ability to have a discussion, a polite, respectful, intelligent discussion.

When we're on the opposite sides of an issue it's immediately gets intense and emotional antagonistic and, discrediting, and snide and obnoxious. And I don't, I think we need to fix that. Cause I don't think we're ever going to fix what's wrong with the world until we can. Come together and have those kinds of conversations.

It's a hundred percent true. And the hardest part is, do you feel, even if you're in the middle of an issue that you can't say anything without getting attacked, right? If you, you mean, cause we always blame the victims in these, in these situations too, so, right. But you, you feel like even if you can see.

Some of valid points from side a and some valid points from side B. You're going to get lit on fire by both. Right. You just can't win. I think the only way that we lose though, is if we don't keep trying. Yeah, I think we have to keep trying to have those conversations and being as real and honest and authentic as possible with ourselves and with the people we're talking to in order to get anywhere.

And, and this, I think stands for family relationships as well as political relationships, as well as,  community relationships, educational relationships. I think that it it's applicable everywhere that we just have to keep talking or we're not going to get anywhere. Yeah. Stories, heel sharing heels.

Yeah, absolutely.  So do you have any last sounds so final when I flipped phrase it like that, but any, , wisdom or philosophy or something you want to leave the listeners with? Perfect. I hope that going into 2021 things look a lot brighter and we can hopefully, as a society come back together and work on a way forward, and finding solutions to all these issues 

yeah. Like you said, we have to keep having those conversations, but I mean, we're still so torn apart. And we need to find our way back together and we need to realize that we are all connected and we are a part of one thing, big human family. We need to find that unity or. It's not going to work. No. Well, we're just going to keep destroying ourselves.

Yep. And planet planet. Absolutely. Well, that's a whole other episode healing the planet. Well, thank you very much for being here, Natasha. I am thrilled that we were able to have this conversation. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It was, it was fun.