Episode Three: Staying When it Would be Easier to Disappear

In Episode 3 of Becoming the Sanctuary, Kelley explores the emotional reality of functioning while still carrying survival internally, even after healing, even after growth, and even while building something meaningful.

This episode begins at the two month milestone of Thrivewell Hub, a moment Kelley expected would feel more settled emotionally than it actually did. Instead of feeling fully arrived inside the vision she worked so hard to build, she found herself confronting a much deeper realization: parts of her nervous system were still emotionally operating from survival mode underneath the surface.

Not in dramatic ways anymore. Not through chaos or collapse. But through perfectionism, overthinking, overworking, hyper independence, emotional bracing, and the quiet pressure to hold everything together at all times.

Throughout the episode, Kelley reflects on what it feels like to continue building a meaningful life while simultaneously confronting the parts of yourself that still want to disappear when things become uncertain, overwhelming, or emotionally exposing.

The conversation explores the emotional “middle stage” of transformation, the building stage, the waiting stage, the planting stage, the period where life externally has not fully caught up to the vision internally yet.

Kelley discusses the emotional contradiction of carrying both gratitude and pressure simultaneously. Building Thrivewell has become one of the most meaningful experiences of her life, but also one of the most emotionally revealing. Because the deeper she steps into purpose, the more clearly unresolved survival patterns become visible underneath it.

Inspired by reflections from The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest, the current Thrivewell Book Club selection, Kelley shares how reading the book slowly began confronting her with truths she already intellectually understood but had not yet fully embodied. The episode explores the difference between awareness and embodiment, and how healing eventually reaches a point where insight alone is no longer enough.

At the center of the episode is a realization Kelley describes as both empowering and uncomfortable: there is a difference between being lost and finally seeing clearly.

After years of healing, reflection, rebuilding, and survival, she realized she now knows exactly what needs to change in order to fully inhabit the life she has already created.

This episode explores how survival mode can remain active long after life externally begins improving. Kelley reflects on how many people in modern life are functioning externally while remaining emotionally braced internally. Not because they are weak or failing, but because modern culture increasingly rewards survival behaviors: constant productivity, hyper independence, over functioning, over stimulation, over availability, and emotional disconnection disguised as capability.

The conversation expands beyond entrepreneurship and into the collective emotional experience many people are quietly carrying in 2026: parents trying to hold families together while emotionally exhausted, people carrying financial pressure silently, caregivers functioning while overwhelmed, individuals staying constantly busy because slowing down feels emotionally unsafe, and people performing wellness externally while internally feeling disconnected from themselves.

Kelley explores how emotional disappearing changes form over time. Years ago, disappearance looked obvious and destructive through alcohol and emotional chaos. Now, disappearance often appears much quieter: overthinking, doom scrolling, hyper productivity, staying trapped inside the mind, emotionally isolating, and trying to carry everything alone.

One of the central themes of the episode is the idea that people can disappear emotionally while still functioning normally.

You can still go to work. Still answer texts. Still create. Still smile. Still accomplish things, while internally feeling disconnected from your body, emotions, intuition, creativity, and sense of presence.

The episode also explores the emotional consequences of living inside a culture built around constant stimulation and performance. Kelley reflects on how modern nervous systems are carrying levels of input and emotional overload humans were never designed to process continuously: notifications, constant comparison, social media performance, digital overstimulation, financial anxiety, and endless emotional noise.

Rather than turning this into a generalized critique of culture, the conversation remains deeply personal and practical, focusing on how people can begin reconnecting to themselves again in small, realistic ways.

A major turning point in the episode centers around a moment where Kelley realized she was attempting to think her way out of emotional overwhelm instead of physically interrupting the nervous system spiral itself. During a particularly overwhelming week, she began making sweatshirts for the Hub, a repetitive physical task that slowly brought her out of her mind and back into her body.

From there, the episode explores embodiment in a grounded and accessible way: why creativity regulates the nervous system, why tactile tasks matter, why movement matters, why repetitive physical activity can calm emotional overwhelm, and why the body cannot heal entirely through intellectual awareness alone.

Kelley discusses how many people remain trapped entirely inside mental processing for too long, trying to solve emotional exhaustion through more thought instead of reconnection to the body. The conversation expands into examples listeners may relate to in their own lives: walking, gardening, cleaning, stretching, painting, cooking, working with your hands, and slowing the nervous system through sensory grounding.

The episode also revisits an earlier memory from Kelley’s life after sobriety, when her car was totaled while living on Cape Cod. She reflects on the realization that came during that moment: “This is what real stress feels like sober.”

Rather than emotionally escaping the discomfort, she was forced to remain present inside it and discovered something surprising: the emotion itself was survivable.

This realization becomes an important emotional thread throughout the episode. Kelley reflects on how many people unconsciously fear emotions themselves and how emotional avoidance often intensifies suffering far more than the emotion originally would have.

The conversation then moves into the importance of communication, safe connection, and environments that support nervous system regulation. Kelley shares a story from a recent workshop where someone arrived carrying visible emotional overwhelm into the space. Rather than trying to “fix” them, she simply created space for them to speak honestly before allowing the environment itself, the scents, music, lighting, creativity, slowness, and human connection, to gradually regulate their nervous system naturally.

By the end of the workshop, the individual felt visibly lighter, calmer, and more present. Kelley reflects on the realization that nobody fixed them. They simply stopped disappearing from themselves long enough to reconnect again.

Throughout the episode, the conversation continually returns to the idea that healing often looks far less dramatic than people expect. Instead of massive breakthroughs, healing frequently appears through ordinary moments: asking for help sooner, staying emotionally present during discomfort, communicating honestly instead of isolating, creating instead of spiraling, resting before collapse, and slowly building enough internal safety that disappearing no longer feels like the only available response.

At its core, Episode 3 is a conversation about the difference between surviving your life and actually inhabiting it.

It is about learning how to remain emotionally present while uncertainty still exists. How to stay connected to yourself while life keeps moving. How to recognize survival patterns without shaming yourself for them. And how healing eventually becomes less about becoming someone entirely new and more about consistently returning to yourself again and again.

Rather than presenting healing as perfection, the episode presents healing as practice: the practice of staying, returning, reconnecting, and remaining emotionally available to yourself while life continues unfolding around you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello everyone and welcome back to Becoming the Sanctuary. If this is your first time here, my name is Kelly, founder of Thrival Estate, and our very first preview branch, Thrivewell Hub. And this podcast is really a space where we explore healing, embodiment, emotional awareness, nervous system regulation, creativity, human connection, and what it actually means to return to yourself while still living inside a very overwhelming world. And somehow we are already on episode three, which honestly still feels a little surreal because I am very aware that I am learning how to do this podcast in real time. Every week I'm learning more about editing, storytelling, pacing, audio stitching, transitions, all of it. And I've realized very, very quickly through this process how much perfectionism still absolutely lives inside of me. Like I can I can literally hear it while I'm editing these episodes. The overthinking, the self-critique, wanting to re-record sections because one sentence didn't sound right. And if you have listened to my last episode, it was an hour and a half long. So that is just not possible. And I think part of me thought by now, my healing journey, I wouldn't still feel the way as strongly as I do sometimes. But yesterday, um, you know, that marked the two months since the grand opening of Thrivewell Hub. And emotionally, I've been sitting with that milestone a lot this week because I realized something very surprising. Well, I shouldn't really see say very surprising, um, but I thought I'd feel differently by now. Not necessarily more successful, not necessarily bigger, just different internally, more settled, more certain, more emotionally arrived, maybe. And instead, I realized there are still parts of me emotionally operating from survival, and sometimes while simultaneously building something really beautiful. And I think the realization became the beginning of today's episode. Um, staying when it would be easier to disappear. And if you've listened to my first two episodes, you're gonna hear that they had a bit more structure. Um, the first episode was telling my story, and the second episode was describing the philosophy. So those were a lot more rigid because I needed to make sure that I covered everything and it flowed the way that I intended it to flow. And especially when it comes to the philosophy itself, it's so big to be able to, you know, I have a tendency to ramble, which you will start to hear a little bit more in this episode, because what I'm trying to say in a very long-winded way is from this episode forward, it's gonna be a lot more of a free flow. Um, it's really gonna be a lot more of me just speaking. Um, I will, of course, still have my outline because nobody has the time to listen to me ramble for three hours because that's what happens if you leave me to my own devices. Um, so I want to think about um, you know, what it really means to stay when it would be easier to disappear. And so, like I said yesterday, um, the 21st was the two-month mark of being open. And I mean, even just if we even talk about before that, because this is the patterns I'm talking about that we want to recognize in ourselves. When I was listening to my first two episodes of podcasts, and it is no surprise, right? I am not an expert in podcasting, I am not an editor. Um, creating content even and videos is is does not come naturally to me. But what I realize after re-listening to those podcasts back, um, moly moly, my perfectionism and the expectation for myself is still quite high. And I think that leads into the realization that I had this week as well. And because who is expecting me to be perfect with these podcasts? And and why does why do they need to be perfect? Because the whole point of what I'm doing is telling my story. Um, and just trying to continue to watch patterns, watch healing patterns, learn as much as I can to share that with others. Because my whole point is if I could at least help one person, all of this would be worth it. So that kind of leads into what the the two-month mark meant for me emotionally, um, because it's so wild to think that it's been two months, because in in one breath it can feel like a day, like the grand opening was just yesterday. And then the next breath, it can it can feel like it's been 10 years of being in this space and trying to, you know, get the brand awareness bigger, get the foot traffic bigger, and the pressures that come along with that. But I think emotionally what I really felt was trying not to look at it as failure. And I know that sounds wild to say out loud because I know as a new business owner, what I've heard, it takes two to three years for you to even just start seeing a profit, right? So to start judging myself at the two-month mark because people aren't flying in the door. Um, and especially when it's something that you trusted your intuition on, it can really start to have an effect on you. And if I'm being fully honest, um it did. And it really, and I don't know what it was, but it was as soon as I came back from Mexico, I um I've really been, I I there's no better way to say it, but I I've really been in a funk. Um and I think that the realization that I had the other night has really taken me out of that. And again, it's it's always when we look inward and we look at our own patterns. So when I think about why I've been in that funk, right, and this is staying on the topic of what we're talking about, staying when it would be easier to disappear. And it's it's kind of ironic that this was the title that was that was picked for this episode weeks ago when I was planning out the first, I don't know, 20 episodes, because it's meeting me exactly where I am. And um, I think what it was is that I had placed this expectation on myself before the vacation. It was I just have to get through these things and then I can go on vacation, and then when I come back, I'll hit the ground running. And when I came back, um, for those who didn't see, I had a little bit of a struggle to get back. We had a diverted flight. Um, I mean, it was it was almost comical that um, you know, as we're trying to even just get to the hotel to stay overnight because we were diverted to St. Louis, like, you know, the hotel room key wouldn't work, and then my door on the Uber driver wouldn't work. And it's just funny when I think back of it because I think it was this idea that that the universe or whatever that was was slowing me down to look at that you just can't hit the ground running when you come back as the same version of yourself. And I tried it anyways, even though I was seeing the signs. Um, but because we have versions of ourselves, we have seasons of ourselves, and I realized very quickly that so many of the survival tactics were still very much deep ingrained in my body and and in my mind. And we have to realize, unfortunately, um with how long a healing journey takes, right? We're never healed, we are always healing, um, we're always evolving, we're always adapting, that those claws are in pretty deep, um, those those tendencies that we learned because we had to at a time. But now it's very easy, even though we we don't necessarily need these survival tactics the way that we we still have them, um we we need to acknowledge that they're so deep that it's gonna take some time to really, you know, we're gonna work on them and they're gonna disappear for a bit, but man, they can pop right back up because that's that's what happened to me this week. So once I put aside um, you know, that once I put aside that those those patterns were still in myself and that pressure was still in myself, that's what really made me understand why I felt like I was in this holding pattern. You know, I'm sitting here at the hub and I'm like, why is it that I could see this so clearly? Um, and I feel like I'm in this, it's not a void, and and I don't want people to think I'm depressed or and you know, even if I was, that's okay. Um, but it's just this very odd feeling of like I'm stuck again. And I think that's because I'm trying to bring this old version of myself, these old survival tactics, these old um expectations for myself. I'm trying to bring them into the life that I built, and it just won't let me. And that's what you're going to feel is that you get these obstacles and these roadblocks or just stagnancy. Like you're just, I come in, I open, I have amazing conversations, and but I'm I'm waiting for this. I don't know what it is. It's it's hard to it's hard to explain. Um, and I think that when you um, you know, where where I'm coming from is being a new business owner, and when you have to, but this can apply for for any part of of your anybody's life as well, but when you're in the middle of needing to build something and and still needing to be creative and still showing up and still being soft for people to be able to heal and guide, um I I really think we need to look at how difficult that is to continue to maintain that, but not disappear from ourselves over and over and over again. And that's what that's what can happen. Um, because we are, you know, we're we're carrying so much. And survival, the hard part about that, and especially in the world that we're living in today, is that survival can still look productive, right? Because, and this, like I said, this applies to so much more than just entrepreneurs and and um business owners. This applies to parents, to caregivers, to people who are surviving financially, to emotionally overwhelmed people who are still functioning normally. We live in a culture that this is honestly, it can it can blend right in. Because we are in a survival culture, we are in a reactionary culture, and we are in a very digital culture. So talk about being able to disappear from yourself. Um, but so that's where it led me this week, this roller coaster of how am or how on earth am I supposed to be able to continue to teach people to, you know, to stay when it is easier to disappear? Because I want to acknowledge that because it is. But I think it's because I need to really start walking the walk. And you know, the earlier this week, I I I like I could not, I could not get out of my head. I just kept, I felt it, you know, like at the bottom of a drain. I was at like the top loop, and I was like, uh-oh, I'm um, I'm starting to spiral, I'm starting to go down that drain. And so what do I do? Okay, because that's the point of this podcast. What do we do? Well, get out of your get out of your mind and get into your body, do something, clean, cook, um, build something, garden, go, go make a bouquet of flowers, right? Go read, go do something that gets you out of your mind and into your body. And one of the things that was stressing me out was this, you know, the to-do list, the never-ending to-do list. So I got out of my mind and I got into my to-do list. I have been needing to make more sweatshirts since the grand opening, and I've had this stock, this box of sweatshirts in my back room for about a month. Um, and I needed to do it, you know, add the transfers. So that's what I did. And those are my favorite. If if I can give you some advice, my favorite, favorite, favorite tasks to get out of your head and into your body are ones that are tedious. It doesn't take a lot of brain power. It's even better if it's been on your to-do list for a while because you kind of get a double whammy, like like double points. You get something off your to-do list and that feels really good. And then you also get out of your mind and into your body. So I started doing that. I continue to keep doing that, but what really, really helped me is this book that I'm reading. So I don't know if you've some of you have seen, and I'm going to, you know, I'm gonna give it a little plug here. Um, but we have started a Thrive Well book club. We meet on the first Tuesday of every month. I'm pretty sure. I should probably confirm that. Um, sorry, just so many things run through my brain, but I'm pretty sure it's the first Tuesday of every month. So the first one we have is June 2nd. And what we're gonna do is every month we're gonna rotate through the five pillars of return as a theme. So this first month is ground. And the book um that that we picked was The Mountain is You by Brianna Brianna Weist. And if you have not read this book, I'm not saying you have to come to our book club because you might also be listening to this and nowhere near our book club. Um, but I would highly, highly recommend it. The first three chapters alone saved me from myself this week. It just completely changed my mindset because this book is all about taking self-sabotage sabotage. Um, it identifies it, and it also how do you change that into self-mastery? Um, and when I started reading it, I had brought it to Mexico because I wanted to start reading it um down there, but for some reason I started reading a separate book. Um but I started reading it when I came back, and maybe that's why, right? Because I really needed it more when I came back than when I was there. But this book, it just has the ability to really the you know, like slowly when I read the first chapter, I was just like, wow, wow, wow. Like it just kept expanding my mind, expanding my mind, and and especially when you start to think about like how a mountain is formed and and what that is, you know, a lot of the healing journey is a mountain that we have to climb. But slowly, as I started reading, um, the words of the book really started landing really hard for me. Um, and not because the words themselves were harsh, um, it was because it was honest. And I was sitting outside the other night. Um, that that it must have been maybe Tuesday or Wednesday night. I think it was Wednesday night. I do that all the time. It doesn't matter what night it was. There was a night that I was sitting outside um just kind of decompressing from the day and really just trying to understand why I'm feeling the way that I'm feeling, and thinking about this book and how a mountain is formed, and it, you know, it's two plates of the earth coming together, and it pushes it up into a mountain. And I just had this this vision. Sorry, I just hit my back my microphone if you could hear that. Um it's like the old version of yourself and the new version of yourself are colliding and forming this mountain. And when you're walking up the mountain, um, and that's your old self, right? That that that as you're walking up the mountain, you have to let go of these old habits and these old narratives and these old restrictions or or expectations um that you put on yourself, and that's what it takes to get to the top. And it's almost this feeling of like, okay, so then once you get to the top and you are officially in this new version of yourself, this new version that you have to meet to be able to embody the life that you have now created, it's almost like you just slide right down into this new life, and that was the image that I had in my head, and and it's so funny because when you do start really joy like going on your healing journey, and and like I said, there's always seasons because it's like I had a very similar realization. Um, I think if I had known what I was up against in when I first got sober, because it felt like a very similar mountain, um, just in very different reasons why. So I was on the phone, um, and I just had because I was talking it out with with um my mother actually, and I just had the biggest oh shit moment. Like, oh shit. The reason why I feel so stuck and why I feel like I'm in this holding pattern is me. It's it's it's my stuff. It's it's the ex like I said, it's the expectations, it's the old narratives, it's the habits that I need to let go of and the routines that I need to form. You know, like I the answer's been in front of me all along. I just couldn't see it yet. And now that I that I actually know what I need to do, right? Because we talk about in the last episode, awareness is not enough. It's not enough. Maybe it was enough once upon a time, but in today's world, it's not enough anymore. We need embodiment, we need to start walking the walk, okay? And I don't mean just because I can do it too, right? And this isn't, you know, when you're doing the deeper work in these situations, like this isn't for you. For me, it was really easy for me to start even manipulating my own healing, right? Like that I was giving my all when I wasn't. And I was almost embarrassed. Uh, I don't know if embarrassed is the right, the right word, but I realized that in each category of my life, right, whether it's my physical health or or my fitness or you know, my my skin routine or my hygiene or uh thrive well or family life or whatever that is, any category in my life, I made a realization that I was only giving 50%. Because I am so capable, and again, this is why I hold back on on saying that, because I don't want it to sound cocky, but I realize that I am very capable. And if I could accomplish everything that I've already accomplished while giving 50% and still carrying so much old of my old self, what on earth could I accomplish if I started giving 100%? And I think that thought as well scared me because you know, my life as I knew it is gone. The person as I knew her is gone. So sometimes um success can scare us too, or you know, what what path is this going to take me on? But again, I know one of my biggest issues is that I need to officially let go of control. I need to officially um trust this process and surrender the outcome. Because when I try to hold on to control, that's when my expectations come back. But let's let's talk about, you know, let's talk about disappearing because what is that? Look like for you? Because for me, what it used to look like was disappearing into alcohol, emotional chaos, collapse. But now when I disappear, it's overthinking, it's overworking, it's emotional isolation, doom scrolling, staying trapped in your own head, and carrying everything alone, right? Because I think that when I really start to disappear from myself, that's when that hyperindependence comes shooting right back to the forefront. I think that I need to figure out everything myself. I think that I need to do everything myself, and I think that all of this is only my problem. And then I get really self-righteous, and nothing good comes from that, I assure you. Because the truth of the matter is, is that we need to understand two things that we do not need to do everything alone, but nobody is coming to save us, right? Nobody's coming to save me. And I think the the quicker that I realize that, the easier that I can ask for help. And I know that can sound like a paradox in itself, but nobody's just gonna come in here and open the door and say, here, Kelly, here's a million dollars. You're all your solutions are, I mean, all your problems are solved, right? It doesn't work like that. So, but I need to ask for help in ways of somebody who's really good at marketing or somebody who's really good at creating a routine at home. Like I need to talk to the people who have done it, and that's the help that I'm looking for. But it's up to me to not disappear and stay and and really lean into the parts of myself that I still need to work on because there is always going to be something to work on. Because remember what we talked about in 2026, it is really, really, really easy to try to always be on, and that we have to perform, and that we carry this emotional overload, and that's what we need to stop, right? Really, that's what we need to stop. So let's bring it back to what this what this whole episode is all about. How do we stay instead of disappearing? And like I said, it's all about that body versus the mind. The mind is such an interesting thing for us, right? It's it's what sets us apart from other mammals, right? We have the we have awareness, that's a big, big difference, right? That's what makes us human, is that not only do we have the intelligence, because there's other mammals who are very intelligent, but we have the awareness, right? But then that's where we have to, it's a threefold. You have you have the the intelligence, now we have the awareness, now we've got to get to embodied. We need to start practice embodiment. It is it is almost necessary um for the survival of the human species, if I'm being that dramatic. Um, it's what I honestly believe. So think about that. Think about my sweatshirt story, right? Like that really helped me. Um, think about any, try to think your way out of overwhelm, right? Getting back into the body physically, working with your hands, those will regulate you. Creativity as a nervous system regulation. Really think about embodiment versus intellectual awareness. Because the more that you think about the fact that you're aware of the things you need to change and the habits you need to start doing and the routines you need to put into, um, we're just thinking about those things. That's the spiral. You can plan, yes, but when the thoughts become repetitive and they're not turning into action, that's the mind. So again, go for a walk, cook a meal, go out in the garden, start cleaning, stretch, do lots of stretching. That's so good. So good to get out of the mind. Art, tactile tasks. Think about anything with your fine motor skills. Because when you're taught to ground, um, well, when I was taught to ground, I had to touch five different textures, right? That's all we're doing. Getting out of the mind and getting into the body. So I want to think about some times in my life where where I did stay, right? Because it's not like I've been disappearing this whole time. Like you say, it's a constant, um, you know, it's like a it's like a turning door. Why am I drawing a blank on what those are called? But, you know, when you go through a rotating door, like you're coming in and out constantly. And that's that's what happens with with when you choose to stay. But the same way that when I gave up alcohol, I really thought about every minute of every day. Don't drink, don't drink, don't drink, don't drink. But slowly those stops, those thoughts stopped happening. And but I was still not drinking, right? And it's the same with healing, and it's the same with staying versus disappearing. It's just gonna become second nature to you. And I think that when, excuse me, I think when we think about um what it looks like, right, to stay versus disappearing, try to think about moments in your own life. I mean, I had when I was first sober, it was 2021, and I was living down the Cape Um and somebody was using my car and it got total. And I had to handle that. And you know, I was four months sober, maybe, and I remember the stress that I was feeling. It was so much, there was so much paperwork, but I just kept doing it, right? I kept filling out the paperwork that I needed to, I made the phone calls, and I remember talking about oh my gosh, why is this so stressful? And it's because I didn't disappear, but I stayed and I was doing the tasks that I needed to do, and that's what it felt like, and you stay even through the stress, right? Because that's what real stress felt like sober. And you have to know that these emotions that they that brings in, right? When we do go into our mind and we overthink, the the parts that that come in, the emotions, they are survivable. Staying emotionally present during discomfort, not abandoning yourself emotionally anymore. Communicating, communicating helps regulate yourself so much. Because remember, we what it well, not that you remember, but if you're in recovery, you might have heard this, that we're taught that when we get in our head, right, and we start thinking about this isn't, we can't survive this, you know. I have to drink, I have to use drugs, it it's I can't, I can't do this. When we start to get into our own brain, brain and we isolate ourselves, that just deepens the spirals. And we're taught your phone will weigh a thousand pounds in that moment. But the opposite of addiction is connection. So take addiction and plunk it with anything else, right? Anything that that is creating this stress within you, these over these thoughts that just keep happening about your finances or your relationships or where your life is at and what you need to do and what you should do, right? That can replace. So the opposite of that is connection. The more that you communicate with another human being, we can help each other regulate each other's nervous system. That's why if you're around somebody who's all like anxious and and their vape vibration is is really you can feel that, and your nervous system starts to be like, oh gosh, like why am I feeling this way? It goes the same way to regulate it. Okay. So think about your own moments, right? Find the moments in your own life where you stayed versus disappearing. And when you are feeling yourself start to disappear, a big, big thing that we all love to do is the doom scroll, right? Social media is very addictive. They've they've shown that, they're starting to show that. Um, but obviously, the world that we're in, it's become such a tool for businesses, for people who live all over the world to stay connected. So, again, how do we use it and not disappear into it? So, I think as we come to an end of this episode, I want to tell you a story about where the environment that you're in, the people that you're around, getting out of your head and going into your body, how this can really help, um, and how I've seen it help. So, recently I had a workshop, um, a creative workshop, and a person came in, and I could really tell the second they walked in that door that they brought their entire day with them and it didn't feel good for them. I could see it, I could feel it. And um, this person sat down, and as as a guide, right, here in at Thrivewell Hub, it is not my job to sit there and judge you or bash you or say, hey, like we're we're trying to have a nice workshop here, and you just came in here like um bad out of hell. No, it's my job to see the person, it is my job to help guide them into feeling better and not doing it for them. So I asked them about their day, and they told me, you know, it was a tough day, and there was resentment in there, and there was frustration and there was exhaustion. And um, she was really, you know, she's really feeling it. So, so I just listened and I validated their feelings, and um, and then we moved on, and that was it. I wasn't, I wasn't trying to fix them, right? I wasn't trying to solve their problems for them, but then when we moved on into the workshop, we didn't, you know, there was no talk about it. We were just all coming together as human beings, taking an hour to do something with our hands, to do something creative, to come out of our day-to-day. And I just watched all of these people like give themselves that time, and that alone was beautiful. But then at the end of the workshop, right, because I knew what was going to happen, that this what I have built here, this space and the workshop itself, I let it do what it was supposed to do, and it regulated them naturally. The scent, the lighting, the music, the creativity, the slowness. Nobody fixed them, but they felt better before they left. And I got to see that person leave so much lighter than when they came in. And the most beautiful part, the best part of it, is the person acknowledged it themselves. They said, Wow, like I love it here. I just feel so much better, I feel lighter, I feel out of my head, and that are those are the moments of why I practice to continue to stay instead of disappearing. Because I know that I'm meant to help people. Um, I'm I'm meant to continue to help them guide them through their own healing journey. But one thing I need to know without a shadow of a doubt, and I know this now, is that I need to stay now more than ever. Because the only way that I can continue to help guide people through their own healing is to continue to work on my own. And I've got to dig in deep, right? Because I've got a lot of claws still inside of me. And and that's really the difference between surviving and inhabiting your own life. You know, when you're staying connected to yourself while life keeps happening, those small moments matter more now. Like I said, the world is just gonna keep getting faster. It is our job to get the pendulum to start swinging back the other way. We can say no to this speed, we can say no to survival mode, we can stay during overwhelm instead of disappearing, and healing becoming returning instead of escaping, and disappearing is no longer the only option anymore. So I hope this episode helps. Um, and again, I am just a human being who has an ability to see patterns very well, and is is it's become my life's purpose that I continue to work on my own healing, and that helps strengthen my ability to guide you through your own healing. So kind of take this week before you know our next episode next week, and think about what it is um, where are the moments that you can stay instead of disappearing. And if it's overwhelming, just start small. Just start small. And if it's too much to figure out when those moments are, just think about when you can work with your hands when the thoughts in your mind start racing. But I think that is all for today's episode. Thank you so, so much for for joining us at Becoming the Sanctuary, and I will see you next Friday.