In this episode:
In this episode, I discuss the power of looking at your past as full of learning experiences rather than letting shame and guilt overpower you. You’re the best source of knowledge for how to navigate decision-making moving forward. It’s a matter of tapping into yourself to be able to do so.
Resources:
Poem – I have been a thousand different women
Bottomless to Sober – Workshops, Writing Classes, and Coaching
Transcript:
Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone. So this is the part two to the self-compassion theme. I just felt like making it into two separate episodes. So in this episode, I wanna focus on the self-compassion for ourselves based off the things that we did in the past, right? And understanding that we are in different places today than where we were before. And again, that a huge block to anyone’s recovery journey is going to be that self- I don’t even know what the word is, but just being hard on yourself, not forgiving yourself, being resentful towards yourself, being embarrassed. And really it comes down to shame and guilt, right? If you are trapped in shame and guilt, you’re not going to make as much progress as you would if you practice kindness towards yourself. And so I’ll actually want to start off by reading this poem. It’s been kind of all over the internet in the past couple of days. It’s written by Emery Hall. And the poem is titled, I have been a thousand different women. And if you’re listening to this and you are a man, or you identify something different, just think about you’ve been a thousand different yous. Okay. Um, but the poem is titled, I have been a thousand different women. Make peace with all the women you once were. Lay flowers at their feet. Offer them incense and honey and forgiveness. Honor them and give them your silence. Listen, bless them and let them be. For they are the bones of the temple you sit in now. For they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea. I’ll read that one more time. I have been a thousand different women by Emery Hall. Make peace with all the women you once were. Lay flowers at their feet. offer them incense and honey and forgiveness. Honor them and give them your silence. Listen, bless them and let them be. For they are the bones of the temple you sit in now. For they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea. Now, such a beautiful poem and What I really, really love is the imagery of the past versions of ourselves being rivers of wisdom, right? Because the past versions of ourselves, we can definitely let those versions of ourselves fuel shame, fuel guilt. And by doing that, we can let those versions of ourselves stunt our growth. Or we can look at all the past versions of ourselves, recognize that we were doing the best that we could with what we had. and also extract a ton of knowledge, a ton of wisdom from the past versions of ourselves so that we make decisions moving forward that are in alignment with where we wanna go. So I will give you a personal example of mine. So I’ll use dating. I feel like dating is always kind of like a really easy way to explain things, at least for me. So I think in the previous episode, I talked about a relationship I’ll just give you the context in case you didn’t listen to the episode. So right after I got divorced, like back in 2017, I got into a relationship with someone who I was super excited about. Everything seemed great, except that I noticed that this person was always very resistant to anything having to do with social media. So even if we had hit a milestone and I were to tag him in the milestone, he would be resisting towards it and he would either remove himself from the tag or then he would just say, no, I’m just a private person. You know, I’m private. I don’t like to put my business out there. Back then, an old version of Jessica, she knew that there was something wrong with that. The old version of me had a very strong inclination that there was a serious reason why this man did not want to be tagged by me in anything. Right? And of course, time revealed itself that there was a whole other woman. And that’s why he did not want to be tagged in anything, right? Because he had two different worlds that he was living in himself that he couldn’t be tagged from one because it would then be revealed in the other and his whole world would blow apart. Spoiler alert, his life did get blown apart because eventually everything did get revealed. But back to that moment when I knew there was something really wrong with the secrecy of it all. But here’s where old Jessica operated from. Old Jessica was operating from a wounded broken heart from going through a divorce. Old Jessica was just happy that someone, anyone would give her attention and validate her who was attractive, educated, you know, and felt like she could get along with. Therefore, old Jessica was willing to put up with anything, including not listening to her own judgment because she was so scared of being alone. Right, I want you to sit with that. Now, let’s fast forward to current me, right? So I did take, thankfully I did learn from that experience and I did learn that if someone is operating in secret, it means that they’ve got something to hide. And so fast forward to me today, and in the last two years when I started to like date again after losing my boyfriend, That was one of the things that I really paid attention to, right? Like, do you operate in secret? Are you being secretive? Because if you are, that means that there’s something that you’re hiding, and I’m not OK with that, and I’m not sticking around for that. So there was somebody who I had met back in early, I think it was early 2022, and he was incredibly secretive. Again, and I mean, it was so early on, I didn’t need to, like, tag him in anything, so to speak. But there, it was like he never could look at his phone where the screen was visible and he always had to remove himself from the space to go take a phone call, right? Everything that he did had to be done in a way that it wasn’t visible to me. And that was a huge red flag for me. Now, I had that same feeling, that same old feeling of, well, I don’t wanna be alone, I really like him, he’s really cool, we get along well. He checked off all the boxes for me, but I had that same… sick feeling that something was wrong that I had years ago that I didn’t listen to years ago. So what did I do this time around? I listened to that feeling and I removed myself from that situation. I, to this day, I don’t know. Did he have a secret? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is, is that I didn’t stick around to find out because when I confronted him about his secrecy, he gave me a vague wishy washy answer. And that was all that I needed. I didn’t need to sit around and go through a whole entire relationship to then become heartbroken for me to find out that there’s probably something going on that wasn’t in alignment with what I needed, right? And why is that? Because I leaned on my prior experience, that prior river of knowledge to lead me to the sea. So as soon as I removed myself from that situation, in time, I found my current partner. And I don’t know where things are gonna go with me and my current partner. Like sure, it’d be great to have a great long lasting outcome. I don’t know that yet. But the point is, is that with my current partner, I pay attention to the things that he does. And so say, for example, with the online thing, there’s clearly no secrecy in that current situation that I’m in. If there’s something special that happens and I choose to post and I choose to tag him, that man is not hiding a single post. He’s very open and very transparent. He’s not running to his phone to hide it when it’s ringing, right? So that I can’t see who’s calling. Those are all the things that have led me to the sea. So I’m like at that point with regard to say dating other things. No, I’m not at the sea yet. I’m on my, I’m on my way down the river to get there. But I highlight those examples, you all, because that is a manner of how I leaned on my prior self to lean on that experience. so that my future decisions don’t backfire on me, right? But the way that could have looked differently, right, was when that, with that guy from early 2022, if he had been secretive, if I had felt that there was something wrong there and I would have still chosen to go along with it, right? That would be me choosing to not learn from the river of wisdom that I have. And so I love that poem because There is so much value in our past experiences, no matter how dark they were, no matter how awful they were, no matter how shame we are for them. There’s so much value in where we come from that we really can outline a great future for ourselves if we just tap in and pay attention to everything that we went through. But when we’ve gone through something, and we choose to ignore it when we see it coming back up again, I promise you that your life is going to put you in experiences where that situation is going to repeat itself over and over and over again until you choose to break from that pattern and do something different. And so in terms of what’s a tangible takeaway from this conversation that we’re having, a.k.a. this one-sided conversation that I’m having with the microphone and hopefully you’re listening to, I would say it is this. When you are today facing a situation that is making you uncomfortable, it’s making you take pause. I want you to stop. I want you to pull out that journal or however else you like to process and write. And I want you to think about a time in your past where something similar was happening. Right? Obviously, circumstances are not always going to be identical, but when does this go back to in time to? What do you remember? And I want you to think about what you learned from that prior situation. What is similar? What are the parallels? Write them down. What do these situations have in common? Then I want you to pay attention to what did you do in the past and what was the outcome and did you like that outcome? If you did not like that outcome, what could you have done differently in the past and notice I’m not asking you about the other person. I’m not asking about the other circumstances. This whole conversation is focused on you because you’re the only one that’s in control at any given moment, right? So from your previous situation, what was the circumstance? What did you do? What outcome did you get? Did you like the outcome? If you did not like that outcome, then go back, what could you have done differently and what may have that outcome look like? And then I want you to look at your current situation and look at what your options are. What are your options? What are you empowered to do right now? What is option A and what may be the outcome there? How does that outcome sound to you? Is it like something that you can, that you can get with? Do you like it, dislike it? It’s okay to dislike, to dislike outcomes if they’re the right thing for you. Right? Like every choice that we make is not going to be pleasant and it’s not going to be easy. but it’s going to be right sometimes. So I want you to look at your current situation and outline what you can do, what are the possible outcomes for doing those different actions, and then use that information to guide you, because I promise you that you carry all the wisdom that you need within you to make best choices for yourself. And if you’re struggling, then this is a great opportunity for you to find where you can reach out. who you can connect to help you tap into yourself. Right? So really that’s all that I wanted to kind of share in this episode. I want you to be kind to yourself and rather than feel shame and guilt for what you used to do, what type of person you used to be like, use that previous person to provide you all the information that you need. for how to move forward because you are a source, you are the best source of information for how to live your life. So with that, I’m gonna go ahead and close out. I hope that everyone has an awesome day, share the podcast and I will talk to you soon.
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