Welcome to What Would Amber Do with your host, Amber Howard. Each week, Amber dances in conversation with inspirational leaders how to make a difference for what matters most to people. She brings you incredible guests who share their real life experiences of being a leader and what it looks like to live a truly created life of service to others. And now, here is your host.

Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back to What Would Amber Do. It is my honor and privilege this morning to be speaking with Caitlin Netzley. Caitlin is the founder of the Nurture Tribe, where she teaches people how to trust themselves and their ability to get through life. Caitlin is a mom, a number one best-selling international, international best-selling author and life coach who uses human design to teach self-love, compassion for all, and for all of the processes of growth, which I love. Caitlin, thank you so much for being here today.

Amber, I am super excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. It's a privilege. It really is. And I love the way you said that because my husband actually teases me about that. And he'll call me the number one best-selling international author. So he like messes up the words. That was perfect.

I love it. Talk about trying to get something right, right? There's like a word I can't like at work. There's a word that we use all the time. And then my brain just, it's like so funny what happens in our brains when we try to get things right. We just end up stumbling over our ourselves. So great to have this time with you. Caitlin, for those of listening, is in Michigan. I'm in Bali. I love this about my life that I get to meet all of these incredible people. Caitlin and I met through the She's a Boss book project, which has been incredible and just met so many amazing women. And um so grateful to meet you and have you come into my come into my life, Caitlin. So talk to me a little bit about, and it's funny. So, you know, typically before the recording starts, I get related with my guests. And today Caitlin and I got really related. And at one point I was like, oh, we should be recording this. Um in terms of like how to frame, especially for some of us, you know, myself included, you're not the only one who goes through this, Caitlin. I think when you've been through an awful lot in life, you know, everyone who listens to the show knows I start the conversation with, what's your journey to get to today? Like, how did you get, you know, how did how did you get here? And for some people, it's not about comparisons, but for some people, there's a lot more stops on that journey than others. And and it can be confronting sometimes, I think, for people to know how do I communicate and articulate what the journey's been like or all of the things that I've gone through on the journey. But I do think it's a great opportunity for for all of us to kind of just look and pause and reflect and and what so what is it that you want to say in this moment right now about where you are in your life and how you got here?

Yeah. So I mean, the journey for me kind of has been like a road full of potholes and a flat tire. So I just gotta, I I knew that that was what I was given and that was what I was, you know, allotted in this life. And those were the tools I was handed. And so I was like, all right, I've got to make this work somehow. So, you know, eventually over time, I patch those tires and I patch those potholes. And you know, it it does take a lot of time, it takes a lot of time to heal, and it takes a lot of, and I'm still on a healing journey. I I probably will be for quite some time. And um I know that we had talked beforehand about like some of the abuse that I have witnessed. That's one way that I have reframed the way that it has impacted my life because I can't associate with victimhood because victimhood held me down. It kept me in this place of reminding me that I was powerless and I am not. And as a witness, I was able to say, I saw the way you treated me to be a helpless person, I saw the way that you took advantage of me, I saw the way that you manipulated and controlled my life, and I took back that control, and I took back the way that you handled my life and empowered myself into a direction that really like allowed me to step into my authenticity. And I know that we had talked a little bit about that. You know, it's it's like my worth was always tied into my very codependent family. And, you know, I I do, I love my family. I think that it's something that I will always, I will always love them, but I understand and I can identify the toxic environment that I was brought up in. And that is hard to talk about because you know, it's like it's like putting my family on blast. It's like airing our dirty laundry, but nobody else wants to talk about it. And I can't keep hiding it under the rug. I can't not talk about it because what happened in my family growing up, especially in my early, early childhood, it it changed the way that the rest of my life went. Because, you know, we we can talk about I was molested by a family member. And because of that, there was a lot of covering up that had to be done, a lot of protecting that had to be done, and it wasn't protecting me, it was protecting that person and their image and the image of my family, and so I navigated how that was to heal from my entire life until I got to my teen years, and that was when I finally like opened up to my immediate family about what happened, and again, it was just to protect to protect the person who was sick, and you know, that's a that's a pretty sick thing to hear as a kid is that you know it's an excuse, like that person did this because they were sick, and it's like, well, what about me though? And a lot of my life got put on hold because of what about me?

I uh so one, I just acknowledge you for for having the the the willingness and the vulnerability to be vulnerable and share about the experiences that you've had, Caitlin. I think this is one of my big commitments is that we create safe spaces for people to talk about their experiences of trauma. And, you know, I I know from the the limited conversations that we've had that you're also someone who's really committed to, you know, in taking back your power and empowering yourself to create the life that you want, regardless of the circumstances into which you were born, which I think is, you know, it takes a lot of courage. Um and when it comes to, you know, I struggle with the same thing. I, you know, especially when talking about, you know, my ex-husband or some of the experiences I had earlier in life, because I never wanted to, like, I, you know, when you get to a certain point of like training and, you know, personal development and stuff like that, you're like, oh, it's my personal point of view. And and like I would never, everyone's got their own personal point of view, and I never would want people to be like negatively impacted necessarily by my, you know, by my like by my experience of what happened. And but I think you get to just say that. I think it's okay to just say like this is my this is my experience of what happened. And it may not be your truth, and that's okay that it's not your truth, but this is what I went through and this is what I experienced as a human being, and it's a valid experience because because I'm human and it's mine. And and and I, you know, I've also had people in my life be like, well, why do you talk about the past or why do you talk about the things that you've gone through? And I think it's important because I I think there are lots of people. I think one of the, you know, one of the things that binds us as human beings is being traumatized. And I use that word very intentionally because I think that there's a lot of stigma around the word trauma. I think people have it like trauma is some certain thing that, you know, it's like, oh, I didn't go through experiences of abuse like maybe you and I did. And so, you know, uh no, I'm not traumatized. But to me, trauma, you know, I love the definition by Dr. Gabor Mate, the trauma is what happens to us is a inside of us as a result of what happens to us in our lives. And and each of us has different levels of capacity to deal with trauma, and trauma impacts each of us individually. So for someone, a really what what we might consider a significant experience of trauma if you were to look at it on a spectrum, not from a place of comparison, you know, someone might be able to deal with that better than someone else who had something that might seem relatively minor, but for them, like it destroys their whole world, right? So it's like you, but why talk about these things? Why create spaces to talk about them? Because by talking about them, we remove the shame. We get, you know, that's that's my truth. And so again, I just really want to acknowledge you and thank you for your willingness to have this conversation and talk about what you've gone through. And, you know, families will respond how they respond. You know, when my mom came out to her family about the childhood abuse she went through, she put a letter in them, you know, she sent a letter to everyone because she couldn't even deal with talking about it with them directly and opened a P.O. box, and no one ever responded. And we haven't talked to any of them since. And it's okay. You know, I mean, there was a time in my life I was really angry about that. And and I carried a lot of, you know, on my mom's behalf, I carried a lot of probably rage. If I mean I didn't punch things or anything, but you know, there was a lot of anger for a long time over what had happened in both of my parents. Um, and as a result, myself. Um, but now I just get for whatever reason, for whatever they were dealing with and whatever their story is about their childhood and and the family and all that happened, they just couldn't. They just couldn't react or respond to it in any way that was, you know, that would have made a difference for my mom. So better that they not. Because the last thing I think people want when they've been through the kind of things that you've been through is to be invalidated.

Yeah, have it justified, have it, yeah, invalidated is absolutely right. And you bring up so many good points about like the trauma. And I think that's something really relevant to bring up is how our nervous system was reacting in that moment of trauma. Because I think that there is a complete flight mode that takes us out of the trauma in itself. Like our bodies are still experiencing it, but our spirits are like, hey, I'm out. I don't really want to be part of this. And eventually, though, you have to remember what your body experienced, and your spirit has to come to the realization that what happened wasn't okay. What happened was was in fact traumatizing, even though I can deny it because I don't remember it or I don't remember it fully, or whatever the case may be. And when we come into that state of consciousness where we heal that a conscious awareness of that moment, then all of a sudden your body says, Can we release this now? Because I've been holding on to this for a really long time, spirit. Can you please let this go? And then you sit there and you are in this puddle of a mess in the kitchen floor at your sister's house, screaming at the top of your lungs. I'm so sorry, camera. But you know, it's true. And and this is something that our bodies need to release that. We need to release that energy that it held on to for so long because if we don't, we block ourselves from moving forward and we store all the energy that we can have the capacity to hold, and it becomes negative energy. And we have to release that energy so we can bring in the positive energy that is transformative change and forgiveness to yourself, not to the other people. You don't have to forgive anybody, but you can forgive yourself for holding on to it for as long as you can to get you to the next moment of now.

Yeah, well, and I think that what I hear on what you're talking about is like, you know, and I think this is a huge like having compassion and grace for yourself, and and I think but for others as you go through those journeys of of of transformation and change. And it's interesting, someone else I interviewed early on in the days of the show, this amazing guy from Texas named Grant Hill, he talked about death cycles. And I said that to someone recently. I'm like, I don't want to talk about that. And I'm like, no, not like death as an actual death, although it can feel like that sometimes. But he said, like as we go through change and transformation, like we die into the self, like one of old ways of being and acting. And it it, you know, we talk about transformational work like it's light and fluffy, but it can be quite painful as you go through that process of shedding past parts of yourself that just no or limiting beliefs or views of the world, views of yourself that no longer serve you. So I think, and it's interesting. You talk about the brain. I was um getting ready for a lunch and learn at work with the staff recently, and I just kind of dug back into some of the work around then you know the brain and how it's function. And I learned something that I didn't know. So, like we basically have three brains, right? Like our reptilian brain, our limbic brain, and our neocortex, right? Our what they call our human brain. And they form in sequence. And for children, for women who are heavily stressed during pregnancy, the reptilian brains actually grow bigger. So for babies who's and and and and the the stress level of the home environment and the mother particularly impact the the how those brains develop, even for years after the child is born. So just like for people listening to this conversation, be that be with that for a minute. However, you respond to trauma, however, you respond to your life, like so much of this is like so much of how we do respond to life is impacted by the like by literally the the environment into which we were born and the emotional, what mental, spiritual, physical health and well-being of our mothers and and our fathers, um, at a level at which, you know, most people don't even have any clue. And so I just think that it's to me, knowledge is power, like it's aware the awareness to be able to understand myself and other people. And that gives me a lot of space for for having compassion. And but I've also learned about myself, which I think is also really valuable and important, is back to what you were saying about the emotional energy. I actually have to park all my tools. Like when I have an interaction with someone where I experience being triggered or angry, I literally have I get to give myself permission and say, I'm gonna be angry right now. And I'm gonna put aside all of my compassion and my training on how human beings work and what I know about their brains and their paradigms and all of that stuff. And I'm just gonna, I gotta put that over there so I can allow myself time. And it doesn't usually take long, but to actually process the emotional energy of the deep feelings that I'm feeling, which I didn't know that before. And for most of my life, like you were talking about, Caitlin, I just suppressed it.

And suppressing it is going to cause so many physical ailments to your body. I know I was I was listening to the podcast with Eve, and I was just like so much of what she was saying is is literally what I've been like my whole life. I I have always believed in energy very, very strongly. I'm extremely susceptible to people's energy. And I thought everybody felt that way. I thought everybody feels each other's emotions as as deeply as as I do. And I felt that, you know, everyone felt people's fear. I thought that like everyone was as open and vulnerable energetically as I was. It turns out they are not. Definitely experienced that with my ex-husband. But um, but yeah, no, I truly believe that the physical ailments that we are manifesting in our lives comes from stored trauma, comes from stored energy that is not being released. And it it the the way that it like it correlates is almost magical to the alignments of the chakras that we have, right? If you if you believe in chakras and if you believe the energy that chakras store, those are connected directly to certain elements in certain parts of our bodies. And I my whole life have felt that. Like I was like, okay, well, I I feel like there's some sort of energy block inside me. And then I'd I would get like people telling me, like, what that doesn't even make sense. And I'm like, well, it does to me. And so then I'm like listening to her talk, and I'm just like, I know these things, I know these things. These are things that I have always known. And so it's just it's really interesting to I love, I love hearing how she tied together like the medical industry with spirituality, and that's something that I have been like begging for. Because, for example, when I was going through a lot of trauma with my ex-husband, that that was a perfect example of not realizing the trauma I was in and the moment I was in it because of pure denial of how safe I was, until I looked back at those moments, sat with my husband now, who has never behaved in any of those ways, expressed to him the way that he would behave, and my husband would be like, What? That happened, and I'm like, Yeah, that happened. And so then my body would release and I would have a big cry. But in the moment of it, I had lost 80 pounds in three months because of all the stress and anxiety I felt every day when the man came home from work. It was five o'clock on the dot every day. My body would go into shutdown mode and it would just like I was releasing in a very bad way. I was going to doctors, I was going to oncologists, I was going to all these people trying to get answers. And finally, one doctor pulled me aside and she said, How is your life at home? And I couldn't answer her. I couldn't answer her honestly, because even in that moment I was in such vehement denial that I couldn't even tell her the truth. And but my body was physically in pain, and and I was actually like, I thought he was dying. I was like, I have some just you know, life-threatening disease that's just taking my life, and it was just called an X.

Yeah, it's interesting. I um I love, I don't know if you've ever re read the book You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. And I share it over and over and over again because I just like, you know, it was one of the the most transformative things I ever read. But uh I regularly go to her her list of like, what are, you know, what are your what are your ailments and what are the thought patterns that are causing those ailments? So, you know, it's like the I really do I agree with everything you've said, and I really do believe that our thoughts uh impact, you know, our our lives and our bodies and our physical well-being. And I'm I'm you know, I I equally with you, I'm so grateful that there are people like Eve out there and and many others who are starting to really um like bring to the surface the the commerce conversation about how connected, you know, we're not separate beings, right? Like our our spiritual, physical, emotional, and and mental selves are all connected and and impact each other as well as our energies. And I think it's very important that people are having those conversations and and and I think in a lot of ways validating people's experience. And uh, you know, I remember I remember when I was like early on in my journey. So I, you know, I was a single mom with two kids, and I was probably 20 at the time or 19 at the time, and um and even that was like eye-opening, you know, it's funny, you you talk about like when you're in it, you don't see it, you know. But I was writing an article last week, and the person and I was like, oh man, I was a teenage mom, I'm married with two kids and a single mom by the time I was 20. You know, just that, right? And and for a long time, Caitlin, I like I was literally like in an amygdala hijack for I would say like in flight fright for probably until my 30s, after I left Keegan's father. So this is like, you know, my second significant relationship. And I remember driving home from work, so and and feeling stressed. And I was like, what is wrong with you? Why are you stressed? Like, you know, I had removed like a lot of the things in my life that weren't working. I was like, you know, if you looked on paper at where my life was before and where my life was now, like it was a marked improvement in. In the quality of the circumstances I was in. And I'm driving home and I'm like, why are you so overwhelmed and stressed? And then I was like, oh, single mom to three kids, mother with significant mental health concerns, full-time job, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I was like, oh, like I think what had happened is the adrenaline had just started to dissipate. And my life was stressful. I mean, being a single mom with three kids, working a full-time job, like that, that's enough stress for most people, right? But for me, because I had been in such a heightened sense of adrenaline for so long, that it when that when that start stopped, all of a sudden it was like there was just like a an ability to to heal in a different at a different level and I think shift out of survival mode. Because I think that, you know, that was the first moment where I really had awareness that I was was no longer in survival mode. Um, which I think is I think is very, very powerful when you can, and I don't know that I necessarily saw it at the time, but I also remember like even back as far as 20, 2016, my brother was heading off to New Zealand for two years for a working holiday. And my we were having a plan of care meeting with my mom's psychologist or psychiatrist, and and the the doctor was like, You've had a, you know, my mom was very great at always giving my brother and I time to talk without her in the room to if we needed to talk about anything without, you know, very, very aware that way. And and the psychiatrist said, You guys have had a horrific childhood. And I remember like looking around the room, like, who are you talking to? What do you mean I had a horrific childhood? Because really, even up until that, because so they were talking like what, you know, six years ago, really. Um, no, yeah, like give or take, I was still in this place of like I was just doing what I had to do. Like it was just what there was to do to take care of my mom and take care of my kids. And I didn't have the ability until, you know, around that time in 2016 was when I really started taking a deep dive into my own development and my own self. Um, I didn't have the capacity to actually even get the magnitude of what I'd been through in my life at that time.

That's a lot to go through. And I'm I am sorry that that was what you went through. You know, it's I we acknowledge each other in that way. And it's interesting the moment that someone acknowledges you for the first time, and that denial wants to just take over, and it's like, no, no, no, it wasn't that bad. It's and then and then the actual like conscious brain, the one that says, no, no, no, we're we're this isn't who you are, and and what happened to you isn't who you are, it's not defining you. And is this really who you want to carry? Like, again, it goes back to the witness, don't, don't victimize yourself, witness this, you know, what happened for me. And my very first moment, because I had never told anybody what had been going on with like my ex-husband, and you know, I was I was scared too, because I grew up in a very religious home where you were taught to honor your husband, never talk bad about your husband to anyone ever. That was like that stuck with me. And because of that, like I I went to a lawyer, right? This is like the beginning of my divorce journey. And we I go into the lawyer's office and he goes, In order to help you, I'm going to need you to be real honest with me. You're gonna have to tell me what you've been through in order for me to know exactly what went on, and I just word vomited all over that man. I talked about this a little bit in my chapter too, but um he that was a little bit of its own trauma, but he so I I had just let it all out, but I was just stoically speaking to him, just like you and I are talking right now, talking to him about very, very traumatizing things. And he just looked at me and he was like, Caitlin, I think you're experiencing PTSD because like nobody would say the things you said and not be affected by that. And it was like it was like all of a sudden the reality of it just went and I was like, I think I need to go. Like, I think I need to leave. And so he was like, We're gonna, we're gonna help you. Like he was like, I'm gonna do this pro bono. I'm like, I'm fully on on your court, like I'm on your side, all of that. And so I locked, I walked out, grabbed my door handle, and I just I dropped. I couldn't even open my door, and it was like 120 degrees outside, didn't care. I was just sobbing, and I like I couldn't even breathe because it was just all of it just heavy released all at once. And then that poor man ended up passing away that same night, and I had it in my head that the release of me talking to him in my, you know, just like I was like, oh my gosh, it was me. I no, he was actually like he had, you know, he was in remission for cancer, but you know, in my in my trauma brain, I literally convinced myself that I dropped a person dead because of all the things that I told him. I was like, never tell anybody anything ever again.

That was terrifying.

But you know, and but that moment changed my life, and that was actually back in 2014. So around that same time frame, and then I dropped into single motherhood. And you're right, it is like hats off to single parents. My gosh, I have the deepest respect. My my grandmother was a single mom to seven children. Wow, and she was a working mom, and she, you know, I I understand where my mom came from. I understand the childhood she went through, and and not fully, but I am compassionate for it. So I have to give some type of compassion to the places that she's at now. And you know, we look at people and you want them to be at the same place you are, but sometimes that's not ever going to happen in this life.

And yeah, I think I think it's, you know, for me in my journey anyway, and and I think it's important to say that, right? Because I think each of us gets to, you know, like my commitment is that people live a created life. And and and inside of that, like you get to define not just the results that you want to create and the goals that you have, and but also your experience of attaining those goals and even your own expression of your experience in life and and what it's like for you. And um, so it's been very powerful for me in my life. One of the main abusers in my family was my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. And let's just say, like, you there's a special place that mothers play in families. And I think, you know, there's a a bit of a, this is just my view, a bit of a gatekeeping role that mothers play in terms of protecting children. And when that gate is broken, boy, um not a lot of good comes from that. And especially, you know, and and it's been very powerful in my own journey to to get to the place where I can not only forgive my grandmother for what she did, because God knows what the woman must have gone through in her own life to create, you know, I don't I don't believe that people come out of the womb to do those kinds of things that were done to my mom, to children, and any of that. And and so God, you know, God knows what she went through that caused her to be the kind to become the kind of human being that did the things that she did to my mom and allowed other people to do the kinds of things that she did. And but I also go further than forgiveness to the point where I can now express gratitude to her as the source of my life. Like I literally wouldn't be here today if she didn't exist. And I think that for me, that's important because um anywhere where I'm in a res when I'm in a fight with the what-so of something or I'm resisting what is, like she is my, you know, I am here today because of her. And I'm grateful for my life and and she's part of me, you know, and and so I can, I can, and I was in a training course over the weekend where we really got like this idea of acceptance and granting being to things is not about condoning them, or it's not about saying, if I accept something, I'm not gonna take action. You know, say for example, I accept that I, you know, I accept that I live in a world today where children are molested. That's just what is. It's just what's sold. That is the condition of the world that I live in today. And by accepting it, I'm not saying that I condone it or I want it to be that way, but I'm saying that that is just what's going on in the world that I live in today. And and by not making it wrong, right? And having it like it shouldn't be, then I don't have to give my energy to that. I can give my energy to the create to what it is that I want to create about that. And I think that's because I think the other, the path of making things wrong, and it's very human, by the way, we don't we don't choose to make things wrong. It's just there by default, right? We just live in just part of what it is to be a human being. We make everything wrong. We make ourselves wrong, we make other people wrong, we make our past wrong. It shouldn't have been the way it was, you know, it should have been some other way. We live in fantasy land, right? Like Trump shouldn't be the way Trump is, the government shouldn't be the way the government is, the news media shouldn't be the way they are. Like we, we, we, we often live in fantasy land. And so to me, the more I can just align myself with what is so, and even that is from my perspective, it's not the truth about something, but it's from my view, then I don't, I I can control where my energy goes because to me, that is just a whole, that it like the other path is just a whole.

No, I completely agree with that. And back to your point in the beginning, it takes away the shame of talking about it when we are actually consciously like identifying what's happening. We are literally like saying, like, yes, we know this happens, and I'm a little bit uncomfortable talking about it, but we've got to talk about it. We've got to be able to talk about these things because where are we gonna progress if we are just going to continue to deny what's happening in our lives, in our world? And you know, everybody is going to grab a piece that they feel passionate or nothing about to make a change for. Everybody can't do all the change all at once. And so I think when people do grab onto that change that they want to make, I think we all need to support each other in that way and not just like think that we have to generally, as a whole entire collective, focus on one thing at a time. It's never gonna work like that. We have to like, we have to all talk about the things that have impacted us. And I think that that is part of the things that we've been through, you know, part of the traumas that we've been through, it's going to change the way that we feel about things. And I feel like I'm going on a little bit of a tangent.

No, no, I love it. I think what I'm what I'm also hearing, and this came up in the training over the weekend as well, is like what can we say newly about something? Because typically, like, if you look, and I I really do believe that we're just networks of conversations as human beings. Typically, we're not ever saying we don't say anything new. We're we're using recycled conversations. And and and it actually takes something. Like it takes something to say something new about your partner or about yourself or about the world or about a specific issue in your past, like versus just kind of you know, trafficking in what what of what do we always talk about, or what can't we talk about, right? But like what could I actually what could we say newly? Because I do believe that it's only by by by saying something new that we're gonna create new outcomes. If we just keep talking about the same things that we've talked about, and that's not to say don't talk about your experiences a hundred percent, but it's like that ability to to acknowledge where you've been and then upgrade, like create say something newly about the situation that you haven't said before. And I believe that that's where we're gonna really create it.

Yes, and then what? What next? Okay, so this happened, and then what? What did you do with that? Where are you going with that? What are we, what's gonna happen? And that's it's so easy to get stuck in this pattern of recycle, because that's where that ruminating comes from. That's where that that like I can't fix it, I can't fix it. You're just spinning your wheels, you're you're just grinding your ears, trying to get forward, but you are stuck in this recycled thought process of this happened to me, this happened to me, this happened to me, it's hurting me, it's hurting me, you know. And instead of being like, this happened to me, and now I'm moving forward because this is not helping me. This is no longer helping my life at this point anymore to get stuck on this. Okay, and then what? This happened to me, and then what? Now, now what? What's next? Like you some people will live their entire lives only thinking about the things that hurt them and never moving forward and never letting go.

I um you said something earlier, and I think it it's kind of relevant here too, like the the the conversation about beliefs and and and and having, you know, inside of that conversation for having compassion, you know, the beliefs that we have, and however they operate as a lid or limit us, served us up into a to the point at which they don't serve us anymore. And I think that's a really important thing to get, right? It's like whatever beliefs that you had about yourself, about life, they were necessary. You know, when you're a 10-year-old girl and you look out into the world and there's no adults around to take care of you, then it's a very helpful belief to have that you can't ask for help or that you're, you know, it's not safe to ask for help, or that, you know, because literally, from your view, at that time, there there's there's no one there that's going to be able to, so it's better to rely only on yourself. That belief just isn't particularly helpful at 44, right? When you're trying to create partnerships and transform the planet, and like, you know, like it's like, okay, well, and then well, what do I want to believe now? Right. And and like getting that you get to create that from from in any moment that you're in, that you have the power to be able to say, what do I want to believe now? And how can I create it? What's a what's a belief that I could create that would actually move me forward in my life, not have me stay where I am today. So really beautiful.

Yeah. I think getting to that, like releasing your expectations of that is hard. But I know that, you know, eventually you get there. Releasing the expectations other people have of you, of being a certain way and thinking a certain way, because we're all just conditioning, you know, we're all just being conditioned and and deconditioning ourselves. So it's like even when we decondition ourselves, we're now conditioning ourselves with the next thing. So it's it's just gonna be a constant progress of just grab and pull, grab and pull.

And yeah, you know, I now think I used to, you know, I used to really hope that one day I could do damage to that part of myself that, you know, like the identity, the ego, all of the stuff from the past. And and I think it's now more about for me anyway, about practicing the art of upgrading the conversation. So, like what's gonna show up is gonna show up. Like, you know, I've got many, many like patterns in my neocortex that run, but like operating in life as an adult, not based on my childhood view of what adult is, but like how I see it now, like the possibility of being adults in the world is that capacity. And I really need to acknowledge, you know, the work I've done at Landmark, specifically their wisdom courses for for having this awareness, but that that capacity and that ability to identify a past-based conversation and upgrade it to something new and in something created, and then you know, as well contribute that to other people. And I think that um, because I think it the impact of those childhood conversations or those past patterns gets less and less over time. Um and and maybe one day I'll reach some plant of enlightenment where they don't ever affect me anymore. But I don't, I don't even know if that's the point.

Well, you know, I mean, I don't know where I heard this, but there was like some study about how you are you're the age you're traumatized at is the age your brain gets stuck in, right? So it's like we constantly reach all of these trauma points in our lives. And now if we're having to go through each of those moments individually, we're not gonna do it linearly. We're not gonna be like, oh, I was traumatized when I was born. Now I'm gonna go back to infancy and fix that problem. No, it's like those, those memories.

Okay, wouldn't that be great?

Right. We're just like going through and we're like, all right, I'm ready to heal, let's do this. No, it it it would it would ruin us, it would wreck us if we had to face all of the traumas and heal them all at once. We don't have the energy for that. And we're living in the now. We are living in the conscious state of now and we want to be here. We don't, I don't want to lose the best years of my life reliving trauma, and then now all of a sudden, like I get in a car accident and now I'm like now re-traumatized, and now I'm facing that. Like, I want to live in this present moment, and this is one thing I was talking about with resiliency. Like, I don't want to be resilient anymore. I don't want to have to face resiliency in my life and have to face all the things that I've already lived through. Like, I want to just live in peace. I want to live my life consciously. I want to live my life with intentional consciousness that with everything I do, I'm present in my moment with my children. I'm not sitting there thinking about like, oh my gosh, what if my ex takes me back to court? And then all of a sudden I'm playing out what I would talk to the judge about, about why I don't even want to be there. No, I want to sit and talk with my kids and play with them, and I want to be present in that moment. I want to be present in the conversations with my friends. But instead, my brain says, Remember that time when you were eight and you kicked the chair out from under the girl who sat in front of you and your teacher took you to the hall and screamed in your face. You remember that? And I'm just like, why? Why are we thinking about this? Like, yes, that was horrible of me to do, but I was going through a lot, I'm sure. But you know, it's like, I want to be present, I want to be conscious.

It's so interesting the different frames we have for things. And and I totally get like based on what you just said, what you know, why you would say I don't want to be resilient anymore. But I have such a positive frame around being resilient, and like, and and it's from some of the training that I've done and my own experiences. And and I and it's like I see like the idea of being resilient as like um almost like a framework for me to be able to respond to just the living of life because the way I look at because the way I look at it is like the resilience isn't, I mean, it it's it's tied more to my energy levels and it's tied to the way the brain operates around like expectations and challenging circumstances. So it doesn't matter, like I think as human beings, it doesn't matter whether it's like the, I mean, there there are differences in terms of the scale of the disruption, but you know, you're going through life and you've got to get to work, and you know, you have an expectation that you're gonna get to work in 15 minutes, and then all of a sudden you hop on the highway and there's like a massive accident, and now your 15-minute commute turns into an hour and a half and you're hijacked and you're upset, and there's a gap, right? So we're constantly dealing with this gap between how I expect life to go and how I'm perceiving the reality of how life's going. And so to me, when I think about being resilient, it's a set of tools and awarenesses that allow me to manage the energy and manage the closing of those gaps. And I think no matter what happens in life, and it's funny, our beliefs shape our world, right? So that I believe this is gonna give me one of experience of life, and that you believe what you do is gonna give you another experience of life. Neither of them's right. But for me, the tools I have around resilience and the training I have around it is an access to being able to constantly like tend to my energy. Do I have, you know, am I aware of all of the things that I have on my plate, like the challenging changes that I'm dealing with in life? And am I managing my energy to make sure that I have enough? And and if I don't, then how do I refill my emotional, you know, physical, mental, and spiritual energy levels? How do I deal, how do I calm in the moment, right? To get out of the, you know, to maintain like in the nervous system so that I can respond, not react. So it's I think it's it's powerful just to be able to, and and I think different tool sets and you know, you said something earlier about if we tried to process all of the trauma at the same time, it it would overload us. We couldn't, you know, and I think each of us has our own journey that we go through in terms of look because there's different ways to to engage with these conversations and heal, some of them from subjective experience, some of them from language, some of them from the Level of the emotions. I couldn't have started with the emotional layer. I didn't start that healing until 2019. And I there's no way I could have started there. It just would have crippled me. And so for me, starting at the level of language and beingness through the work I did at Landmark made a huge difference in my ability to just be able to get that, because I had so much shame around my past that being able to understand that these were conver this was something like a phenomenon created in language and at the level of beingness of human, not of Amber, and Amber's done something wrong. But this is part of a collected, a shared set of collective experiences that we have as human beings, enabled me to be able to confront some things about myself and beliefs I had about myself and actions that I'd taken in life from a place of you know victimhood and deal with the impact that that had on, especially my children, not from a place of shame, but from a place of remorse.

Oh yeah. No, I completely understand that. I do. And I think that's where like we have to find that balance of that masculine and feminine energy because to me, masculine energy is protecting us. Masculine energy is that resiliency. That to me is like being in our masculinity is like, I can do this, I can, I can, you know, get through this moment. Feminine energy is that I don't feel that I need to protect myself in order to exist because my existence is here for creation. I'm here to just be and exist in myself. And and you know, feminine energy is all about creation, whether it's actual physical life creation bearing children or creating, you know, where where does all the creativity in the world stem from? It comes from that feminine energy. And that's not to say that you know, men are masculine and women are feminine. No, we already know that is not the way that it works. We all hold both. And so which one to you is which? Which one to you is that what can contributes to the masculine and the feminine? Because to me, masculine energy got me through those hard single mom moments. I had to tap into that masculine energy, I had to block out the things that were making me really me in order to just survive. And then all of a sudden, when my husband stepped in and he was like, Okay, hold on, hold on. You don't need to take the rein so tight, made like feel, feel for a minute, and you're safe here. Like, this is a safe place for you to talk about it. And I got to talk, I got to talk about my things and my feelings, and he validated my emotions, and that was a huge step forward for me. Being able to have somebody not only like listen to you because you've got your best friends, you've got your friends who you talk to, and my friends have saved my life, so I have to give all my love to them. But it's somebody who can sit with you, hear you at your very worst, see those really, really ugly sides of you and say, You're safe here. And I'm not judging you for what you're saying and what you're feeling. I'm gonna be the strong masculine energy so that your feminine energy can heal and you can actually be like in existence and just just create, just be yourself.

Yeah, and I think it's good, I you know, important to know that validating someone's experience isn't necessarily saying that their experience is the truth, right? But it's it's like it's having I think for me anyway, it's leaving the other person gotten and heard and seen in in their in their unique experience of of the events of their own life. And and I think that's like when you can be that space for someone, it's such a gift. Um and and and there's and and I think both people are healed in that, right? I think for your, you know, for equally for your husband, you know, there's probably something very transformative for him about being able to hold that space for you and be that space for you. Caitlin, I could probably talk to you forever. I say that with a lot of my guests. And uh just thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your authenticity and your vulnerability. Thank you for being someone who's got, you know, has such a powerful commitment that to have your experiences in in life be of contribution to other people so that maybe their journey is a little bit easier, or even if it's not easier that they feel supported as they go through whatever that journey of healing is for them. Um yeah, it's just been such a a pleasure speaking with you this morning.

Yeah, you too. Thank you so much for holding space to me today, before and during. You're awesome. I really appreciate what you do. You're amazing.

Thank you for your contribution to this. For everyone listening to the show, you can find out how to connect with Caitlin and her nurture tribe and and all of the things that she's up to and get a copy of her book in the show notes. And um, thank you for being with us on this during this conversation and walking is part of my journey every week. And I love you, and I will talk to you next week.

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For more information on the show and our extraordinary guests, check out what wouldamberdo.com