401: Breaking Free from Self-Abandonment - Andrea Owen's Lessons in Love & Letting Go

Ella: 00:00:03

Welcome, you're on air with Ella, where we share simple strategies and tips for living a little better every day.

If you're interested in mindset and wellness, or healthy habits and relationships, or hormone health, aging well and eating well, honestly, if you're into just living better and with more energy, then you're in the right place. Welcome to real honest, no fluff conversations about creating a better you. We're not here for perfect. We're here for a little better every day.

Let's go. Hey, you're on air with Ella. And I am joined today by my good friend, Andrea Owen. Hey, Andrea, how are you?

Andrea: 00:00:39

I'm so good now that I get to talk to you.

Ella: 00:00:41

I know, God, it's been way too long, but Andrea has joined us. I mean, Andrea, I want to say three or four times, officially a friend of the podcast. Okay. Officially a friend of the podcast.

I will link to all the shows that we've done before because I think you were the first time we talked about gray area drinking, Andrea.

And we have talked about overcoming people pleasing and overcoming our need for control and perfectionism and how to stop self sabotage and dealing with numbing behaviors. And I mean, the list goes on. We have covered the gamut. And so I will link to those, but really, I just wanted to have a conversation with you. Just.

I'm just gonna record it.

Andrea: 00:01:23

A friend, catch up, where we talk about things that might help other people. Yes, yes.

Ella: 00:01:27

Because I gotta be honest, because I know you will be. You. You've had a shit year.

Andrea: 00:01:31

s. Yes. So it started January: 2023

Ella: 00:01:38

Okay. But who's counting? Two years. Officially two years. I'm celebrating my 10th anniversary of the show.

You're celebrating two full years of a full kaka storm?

Andrea: 00:01:48

Yeah. Just burned it all down. Rebuilding it.

Ella: 00:01:51

Yeah. And so, I mean, first of all, I love your vulnerability. Everybody loves your vulnerability.

So I know that you, you are so willing to share the mire, the muck and the. But the truth is, I'm not here to, like, exploit your personal tragedy, Andrea.

But here's what I love about these opportunities and about our friendship. You talk to high achieving women and you help them sharpen their saw and you help them live their best life.

And I just think it's so incredibly useful to share when stuff goes awry, like how you pull yourself out of it and that's. It's not like you're on the other side. And now you're sitting comfortably on the other side. And it's all neat and tidy again, am I right?

Andrea: 00:02:31

No, not yet. I mean, for sure, I've had to pull out my own tools and use them very, in a very messy way.

Ella: 00:02:38

So, yes, I want to just talk about the reality of life, even for people who spend their lives in personal development and personal growth. And your toolbox is real, real big and you needed it. So let me ask you this, what kicked off this special, special time for you, Andrea?

Andrea: 00:02:58

Well, I left my marriage, made the decision, the mutual decision to my marriage. And this was my second marriage. And it just for the first few months it was like, oh, this isn't going to be hard.

It's going to be easy and civil and all those things. And then it was until it wasn't.

And then, so for the past about 18 months, I've had to navigate a more difficult time with that separation and soon to be divorce.

Ella: 00:03:23

Yeah. And I know that there are children involved, of course, and I got divorced in my gosh, I guess in my 20s.

And so my current husband, I like to call him my current husband, keep him on his toes. He is my perma husband, but I enjoy keeping the man on his toes. So love that we've now been married for, you know, like 16 years, I think.

But I can recall like it was yesterday, Andrea, how painful and world turning, upside downing breaking your marriage apart can be. You're just unmoored. And I want to respect that there are two people in this situation.

So we will only talk about your experience today obviously, but what was that like for you when you first realized that this was the beginning of the end of something you thought was forever?

Andrea: 00:04:15

I think it's, it's one of those things that, you know, I listened to. There's this divorce attorney that I follow on Instagram, I think, and he, someone asked him the question, how do marriages end?

And he said very slowly over time and then suddenly all at once. That was very much my experience.

And I will say, you know, in defense of both me and my soon to be ex husband, we went to the ends of the earth to try to save it. And you know, the last year spent in therapy and, and I want to give respect where respect is due on that.

At the end of the day you, you have to kind of look that thing in the mirror that's telling you, round peg, square hole type of thing. And it's, it's really time to move on.

And, and it's excruciating and, and you know, having been through this before and I knew what was in store for me in terms of my own personal growth. I knew this was going to suck, this is going to be terrible.

But I also knew, I trusted myself enough to know that I'm resilient and that it's going to be worth it on the other side as long as I truly bet on myself and try to put my children in the center of all of this. And so there's a long way of saying not easy. Not easy at all. Here's what. Here's how I want to bottom line it. I knew I was done self abandoning.

And what I mean by that is by me ignoring the voice that was telling me, this has been great and it's time for you to move on. This book has been wonderful, and we've reached the last chapter.

I knew that by ignoring that, I was yet again self abandoning and walking away from myself.

And so that was one of the hardest things to do, I think, was to break a pattern of self abandoning and choose myself, because for so long I had chosen other people. So that was also a difficult aspect of it.

Ella: 00:05:56

I feel like, you know, we're on this planet apparently to learn the same lessons over and over again. Andrea, maybe it's just me.

I believe part of our iterative path is to learn these lessons, bump up against them again, to learn them again, bump up against them again when the stakes are higher, and learn them again. But I really do believe that we are here to hopefully truly metabolize those lessons and weave them into the fabric of our existence going forward.

And I feel like what you just said, I feel like that is a part of who you are now. I don't think you can ever fall backward on that lesson.

Andrea: 00:06:31

s. It's sort of ironic in, in: 2016

And the grief was unimaginable and at times feeling like there was no way I could keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I got the word surrender tattooed on my arm in my own handwriting.

And, and I don't know if it was a spell that I put on myself through that tattoo ink or what, but the, the surrendering that I. And it's like, it's literally on my. It's on my body and that's, that's. That and detachment and they're, they're directly related.

Surrendering and detaching have been my two biggest lessons that for some reason keep coming smacking me in the face. And I'm like double middle finger up to him sometimes. But they are the lessons that help me come back home to myself over and over again.

Ella: 00:07:26

Well, when I think of detachment and the lessons I've had to learn around that myself, it is detaching from expectation of any outcome and doing what I know to be right for me or doing what I know to be right.

And even though in micro dynamics, like just in relationship with people, not even just outside of my own home, just in relationship with people, detaching myself from expectation of any outcome and just proceeding with love or empathy or kindness or even just in some cases, communication and not waiting for it from them and essentially just detaching myself from expectation of an outcome that I want and proceeding anyway. What do you mean when you talk.

Andrea: 00:08:10

About detachment, all of that and detaching that people's reactions or opinions or behaviors have anything to do with me and my worth and who I am as a person, as someone who started dating again, I knew I was in no mood or readiness to be in a real relationship if I felt like this person is going to save me. Because forever I thought that's what love was for. Like, you're here to save me from myself, from hurt and all of these things.

And it's like detaching from that this person's, however they view me has anything to do with my worth as a person. And that can seem a little bit esoteric, but it's like, of course I'm going to be upset if they don't like me back and things like that.

That it's not about being unfeeling or being so resilient to hurtful things. It's not about that at all. It's just. It's detaching from making meaning of things that really don't mean anything about us.

Ella: 00:09:10

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I'll put a link right here in the show notes. Okay, back to Andrea.

I was looking back at some of my old notes for something that I'm working on now and I was talking about how we, I don't know, are we programmed this way to seek external validation? I'm pretty sure we're programmed that way and socialize that way and a lot of other verbs that way. Right.

But we are almost coached to seek external validation in every way, shape and form. And I was writing about this concept of self validation and I just wanted to sort of raise the term here.

And I was like, I'm here to stamp my own ticket and that's not self aggrandizing. That is with great humility, still being willing to recognize my own worth and self validate.

I feel like I'm like parking, I'm going to stamp my own parking ticket. I am self validating. I am not putting forward my Ticket for somebody else to punch.

I have to decide within me that I am worthy, that I have value independent of anyone else's opinion of me or assumptions about me?

Andrea: 00:12:39

that. And I, you know, in. In: 2023

I'm not here to tell anybody that, you know, I'm better than my ex or anyone. Like, it takes two people to make a marriage and to break it. And so I thought to myself, okay, what. What is the stuff that.

From these two marriages that now I. I've been in? Because as I'm a collector of ex husbands, I like to say, what is it that I need to work on? And what has been the pattern?

What has been the thing that my exes have said about me where it's like, okay, it might be me.

Ella: 00:13:13

I see a common denominator, and it's me.

Andrea: 00:13:16

But part of it was. Was what we're just talking. I decided that I'm the prize. Like, I am the prize. And again, it's not about thinking that I'm better than anyone else.

I know that as. As women, we have such a kind of like. Like, don't want anyone to think that we're conceited or vain or anything like that.

I'm here to be like, hey, can we embrace that just a little bit? And so what did that look like in real life was that I knew it was a privilege for people to get my time and attention. And especially.

Especially in dating circumstances, like my body, it is a privilege to do so. So it's about me being discerning about where I'm put it.

Allowed that path, allowed me to pick myself and to bet on myself, because I hadn't done that in so long. I was waiting for someone else to say, like, yes, you're cool. Come closer to me. And then I'm like, ooh. Or doing this like.

Like dance to try to entertain someone enough so then I would be validated. And so I'm like, I wonder what would happen if I just made the decision that. That's it. And I. And I. I don't mean to make it sound easy. It was.

A lot went into that decision, you know, 40, almost 50 years went into. But I can tell you what, that really changed my life. And yeah, it was a rocky road to get here, but just that was immensely helpful.

Ella: 00:14:30

Well, can we talk a little bit about some of the work that you actually did? Because again, like, I Said only slightly, tongue in cheek, that your toolkit's pretty expansive. Like, you've got a lot of tools to draw from.

You've written how many books?

Andrea: 00:14:42

Four now. The fourth one comes out later this year.

Ella: 00:14:45

Yeah. And you've interviewed countless, countless experts, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you obviously are well versed in.

Okay, how do I pull myself out of this? Okay, how do I work on my mindset? Okay, how do I manage my emotions here? But can we talk brass tacks? Like what didn't work for you and what did?

Andrea: 00:15:02

Yeah, I think that most everything worked at least a little bit. You know, some things moved the needle more than others.

And in terms of, you know, actual things that I did that that took a little bit more heavy lifting. I'm a huge fan of talk therapy. I think that's incredibly helpful, which I think most people are like, yeah, that's cool.

I also, I've been sober for 13 years, like doing that, and going through 12 step program programs was immensely helpful and like, kind of the basics, you know, journaling and meditating and moving your body and all of those things I know that you talk about on your show a ton. All helpful. And I got to the point where.

nd I hired a new therapist in: 2020

You know, the ones with like, the serrated scoop out the part of my brain that's making me feel like I can't land on the plane.

There's some things that have happened to me where I, like, like there's this one particular person that was in my life that's not in my life anymore. And I'm like, why can I not land the plane with this person? Why do I keep looping with these things?

And so I heard about psychedelic therapy, and I have kind of been following the resurgence, the renaissance, if you will, about it. And I was a little nervous given that I am someone in long term recovery.

You know, it's kind of frowned upon to like, go and trip out on mushrooms, you know, But I. I kept looking at the research, and I'm so happy that the. The research is actually happening for it.

h ketamine therapy earlier in: 2024

Ella: 00:16:39

Is that guided or is that something you do just a little bit every day? I know Nothing about it.

Andrea: 00:16:43

You can. So there are clinics popping up everywhere. If people are listening to this who are living a.

Not even a major city, but just like a decent, you know, metropolitan type of city. There's probably a clinic near you. And depending on your state, there's I think, think four states in the US that, where it's still illegal.

And I know in, in Canada, I don't, I think there's problems with that too. So I chose Mind Bloom. They're a company that, it's an at home.

So you meet with a doctor online, they prescribe it, you have a certain amount of sessions. And I, I think that they, they, they do it very, very well. It can help tremendously.

People who really struggle with anxiety and depression symptoms like that is I, I start crying when I start thinking about it because I'm like, oh my gosh, like, these people are finding relief. But I did 12 sessions and the things that I saw. I'll describe it like this. Here's the metaphor I use.

Do you remember when you were a little kid and you truly believed in Santa Claus?

Ella: 00:17:31

Yes. I think I can conjure that up.

Andrea: 00:17:33

And for people listening, like, remember what it felt to like, truly be in that place of like, there's just no other. Like, we believe it. And then when you get a little bit older and you find out that he's not real, but you still kind of believe in the magic.

I feel like I went from the kid who found out that Santa's not real, but you kind of believe the magic to truly believing in Santa Claus again. It's like it wipes the slate clean. Clean.

And what the research says is, like, it can change the neurotransmitters in the brain pathways that we know neuroplasticity exists and it allows you to kind of start over. I've talked to people who have done it, who, who were sexual abuse survivors, and they said, I still remember what happened to me.

It just doesn't have the charge to it anymore. It doesn't have the heaviness. Like, it doesn't feel like I'm being hit by a truck. And that's how I feel.

And like, I mean, I can share with you, like, one of the things that I saw that was just like, I get up on my soapbox about it. So.

Ella: 00:18:24

Okay, I want you on that soapbox. I'm clearly going to have to offer a spoiler alert regarding Santa, so thanks for that. Sorry anyone who had to find out this way.

Andrea, I want to hear about that because we talked about medicinal mushrooms on this show with a neuroscientist or a neurologist.

So she knows her stuff and in the Western medical world and allopathic medicine, and she is an enormous believer in medicinal mushrooms and the power of plant therapy. I don't know anything about what you're describing.

So I have one practical question, and then, yes, I absolutely want to hear one of the things that was revealed to you, but my practical question is they just hook you up and leave you to do this in your home. Like, can you paint a picture for.

Andrea: 00:19:09

Me the first time? So you meet with your clinician, which is the doctor, and they ask you some questions, and then they prescribe you based on your weight.

And the first time that you do it, you meet online with a guide that works for the company, like, the whole time. No, but they. They require you to have.

They call it like a peer monitor friend there with you, and they meet with the peer monitor friend, and then that your friend stays with you.

So if you and I were to do it, like, I would stay with you, and you're, like, in the room, and I might be in the next room or with you, and then you immediately get back on zoom with your. With your coach, and you go through what happened, and then they also talk to your. Your peer friend. That's the first session.

Ella: 00:19:50

Sorry. How long does it last?

Andrea: 00:19:52

The experience or the trip, as we like to call it as kids from the 90s? About 30 minutes.

Ella: 00:20:01

Okay. Okay. That's really helpful because we have no idea. Like, so many of us have absolutely no idea.

Andrea: 00:20:05

Yeah. Lsd, like, psilocybin, might be longer like that, but ketamine. And this is why I wanted to start with ketamine.

Like, I wanted to kind of tiptoe in, but that's how they do it. I felt very safe.

And then they ask you how it went, and they might up your dosage depending on the experience that you had, or they might keep you exactly where they are. They start you out pretty low. Like, I'll say that, like, the first time you're like, oh, okay.

Ella: 00:20:29

And you did not have concerns during this experience or. Or any resulting concerns about any addictive properties here.

Andrea: 00:20:38

Sounds like the research shows that it's not addictive. And I was very cognizant of that and mindful. I.

I think, you know, the only reason that I would want to do it again is to see any more insights that I might have. But I got so much out of it. Like, I'm good for a minute. Like, is gonna take Me through the. Like, the decade.

Ella: 00:20:56

Okay, tell me what you got out of it.

Andrea: 00:20:58

So 1. In one of the sessions, and it was one of the later ones. And. And what people often experience are. It's a lot like dreams, like, you. Metaphors or.

Or symbols and things like that. I mean, you've woken up from a dream, and you're like, why was Abraham Lincoln in my dream? Like, in my elementary school?

And then we were at church, you know, that I was. And then he was folding a fitted sheet.

Ella: 00:21:20

You know, it's so kind of like an alligator. I don't know why.

Andrea: 00:21:24

One of the things that.

That I felt like I needed the exorcism over was this very long relationship that I was in from when I was 17 until I was 30, and I was married to this person. Our relationship when I was 17, we had only known each other for a few months, and I got pregnant. I was a senior in high school.

It was incredibly traumatic. I only told my best friend and my cheerleading coach.

At the time, I didn't feel like I had the support that I needed to make a really, really difficult decision. I was a child, and it's something that's been. Although I'm staunchly pro choice, it was something that is still with me. And I.

It's because I didn't have. I think at the time, I didn't have the support that I needed.

Ella: 00:21:59

So you terminated that pregnancy?

Andrea: 00:22:00

I did. I terminated that pregnancy. And it was. It was an incredibly difficult decision for a child to make on her own, I'll say that. And.

And then when I was 30, my then husband. So I got pregnant with this, my first husband, that it was with him.

Ella: 00:22:13

Him.

Andrea: 00:22:13

That was when we first met. So later we're married.

We were planning on conceiving our first child, and he had an affair with our neighbor and got her pregnant, which led to our divorce. So I never realized it until later. And I was like, oh, that whole relationship was bookended by two very traumatic events.

And that's what I was saying when I felt like I couldn't land the plane with this person. And I'm like, I don't want to be with him. Like, why? What is going on? Well, these two traumatic events were going on in my brain.

I knew that it was in my subconscious. I knew that, like, my subconscious just could not make sense of this and was, like, trying to organize it and. And just didn't know how.

That's what I wanted to fix. I felt in my intuition, and I'm like, if I can just Sort this I can change. This is gonna change my life.

Ella: 00:22:56

Just so I understand this relationship that you're talking about, it started with something emotionally and physically, absolutely devastating.

Andrea: 00:23:03

Right.

Ella: 00:23:03

And then it ended with like Jerry Springer level drama and blew up and.

Andrea: 00:23:10

Was indirectly connected with a baby that was conceived, but it wasn't mine because neighbor lady.

Ella: 00:23:17

Okay, Yeah.

Andrea: 00:23:18

I wanted a baby with him and he had a baby with our neighbor.

Ella: 00:23:22

Okay.

Andrea: 00:23:22

Which universe was looking out for me because I'm glad that he and I never shared children. But at the time I thought it was, you know, it was devastating. So. Yes to what you.

Ella: 00:23:32

Okay, so. So open wounds. But what's interesting is you had the awareness to know the root cause, but you couldn't fix it, so to speak.

So I'm really keen to hear what shifted.

Andrea: 00:23:43

So it was several ketamine sessions in.

And I mean, I saw things like, like during my ketamine sessions, there was one where I was riding a bike down a dirt path and there was all these houses and then suddenly my dad was there. And so it was again like, like dreams. And I had one where I was falling backwards down a black hole.

And there was all these people that I know, and most of them were smiling at me and I'm reaching for certain people and they didn't put out their hand. And these were people that, that had hurt me in the past. So it was like all these very symbolic things.

And then when you get out of it and you're like, what does it mean? And it's like, that's really not for you to know. But there was one particular session that I had where I had this profound knowing.

What I heard and knew in that session was that it was not current Andrea that was grieving the losses of what happened. It was my former selves that were stuck. That immediately was like.

It allowed me to unhook from feeling like I had to fix it, like present me had to fix it. Because I kept thinking, you know, in my conscious mind, like, I am smart. I have written three goddamn books on personal growth.

Why can't I fix this one thing? And so knowing that it was these, these younger versions of me that were stuck, it was like they got frozen in time and they were still in my body.

And I saw an image of my 30 year old self carrying my 17 year old self. And I. And my 17 year old self was just like practically unconscious. And my 30 year old self was so exhausted from carrying her.

And I thought to myself in, in the session and I'm like, oh my God, And I told them both and I said, you don't have to do this anymore. You don't, you don't. You can, you can lay it all down. You can lay all of the pain and the grief down. It's safe. And that's what I needed to tell them.

Like my 49 year old self needed to tell them. It's safe to let this go. You don't have to hold onto it anymore. And it was so profound.

It was like having a dream where you wake up and you think it was real, like it really happened. Like I can still see it when I tell that story in another session. This is indirectly related.

I felt again like believing in Santa Claus that my whole purpose on this earth, my life purpose. Because I've always been the kind of life coach that's like, I don't think we all have like one life purpose, you guys.

Like, I don't even know if this job is my life purpose. I felt and heard and saw vividly that to come from everything, from a place of love is my only purpose.

And I saw four words and they were love Fiercely, hold loosely. And that's probably going to be a title of a book. Don't anybody steal it. I'm going to come after you.

Ella: 00:26:30

I know. I feel like I should bleep it out. It's so good.

Andrea: 00:26:33

Love Fiercely, hold loosely. And what that means for me, this goes back to detachment. It's that I, this is my holy gift.

This is my giving back to love the crap out of everyone and everything and also be detached from it being reciprocal, from being detached.

For that reciprocity to mean anything about me and that if I do that, I'm good, then I have showed up and done my service in this lifetime on this earth.

Ella: 00:27:03

First of all, good job. Like you got a return on that investment, right?

Andrea: 00:27:10

Yeah, it was profound. And I do not say that often.

Ella: 00:27:14

Sorry, you know me, I'm partially joking because it's so damn moving and I don't have. I don't want to parrot what you just said.

I want to like leave it there and let it sit there for 20 minutes and have us all just like sit in silence and marinate on that. But it's my job to ask you another question. And what I want to ask you about is how does that translate into other relationships?

Because you mentioned, let's use that metaphor of falling down that well and people whose faces you knew weren't reaching out to help you. Yeah, that's not a Met. Like, it doesn't take chatgpt to unwind that one.

Andrea: 00:27:47

Right.

Ella: 00:27:49

And I feel that in my bones. And it reminds me of friendship breakups, not just romantic partnerships.

You and I have both experienced friendship breakups that really leave a mark, just shake you. And I want to know how do you apply some of these deep, deep learnings to relationships that feel unfairly broken?

Andrea: 00:28:12

Yeah, yeah.

Then this, this is because using that example, whether you're talking about divorce and we can talk about, you know, how I've completely reframed into thinking I don't use the term failed marriage, I just don't think there is such a thing or even like failed friendship. But they hurt so much. These breakups hurt so much because we have this intimate connection with someone.

It's the thing where like two seemingly paradoxical things can be the same.

Where I can be devastated, brought to my knees, experience the most grief ever from a divorce or a breakup or a friendship and a friendship breakup, which I've experienced both in the last, you know, 18 months, two years, and at the same time know that some things are. Most things I should say are temporary and that I can look back on it and say, like, did I love this person and myself as best I could.

For me, what helps in those situations to ease the pain and the grief is making sure that I have expressed gratitude to that person.

And if you're not in communication with them, you don't have to maybe give it to them, but write out a letter like of all of the things that you're grateful for from learning from them, whether it was about yourself or life or whatever, and just doing your best to express love instead of hurt and pain and know it can all coexist. But I think it's detachment is what it is, is being detached from any outcome.

And it just, it's one of those things where you have to walk through the fire and know. And I used to hate it when like 50 year olds would tell me this. I was like, but I'm gonna say it because I'm almost 50.

The things that will bring you to your knees, the most difficult parts of life are the things that are going to make you better.

Humans, if you let it, they're going to make you wiser, they're going to make you more resilient, they're going to make you realize things about yourself that you didn't know before. Great things about yourself. I just, it's not, it's not up to me. Some things are up to me. Like we have free will.

I believe that I don't Believe in like total destiny.

Ella: 00:30:16

But yeah, yeah, it's interesting because at the end of the day, and this gets a bit meta, but you can control very, very few things. You can influence an enormous number of things. And then there are some things you have to accept and adapt to.

And at the same time, we're operating in those spaces with free will. Like, we get to choose. We get to choose how we think about ourselves.

We get to choose the words that come out of our mouth, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it. Yeah, we get to choose what thoughts we allow to play over and over again. We actually have mastery over that if we so choose to operate it.

I think it's a really wonderful and impactful reminder that we're not just mattresses on the sea, bouncing until the next wave comes.

Andrea: 00:31:00

Although that would be fun.

Ella: 00:31:01

We have some dominion. Put me on the Caribbean. I'll suffer through.

Like, we'll work at the end of the day, your life and your ability to experience joy and to believe in relationship again.

Andrea: 00:31:16

Yeah.

Ella: 00:31:16

All of those things are just testimony to what you preach, is also what you practice. Practice. But also that the 50 year olds were right. God damn it. And the truth is every failure, every disaster you survive is a lesson.

Andrea: 00:31:33

Yeah. If we choose to look at it that way. So much of it is a choice. Like, do you want to?

Apparently, like, this is the feedback I get from most of my clients is I'm really good at a reframe. You know, it's like, well, that's one way to look at it.

That's like one of the things I say all the time when people come at me with like, this is how it is. And I'm like, well, that's one way to look at it.

Or what if it's this life is so much easier, like, when you know, you have the freedom to choose what lens you're going to look at it through. It's like you're being at the optometrist who's like, this one or this one? It's like, well, I'm a choose which one feels better. You get to choose.

Ella: 00:32:04

I'll tell you what that served me when I was in one of the worst places of my life, one of the lowest places of my life, and I had what I experienced as an addiction and that was a binge eating, disordered relationship with food. I'm not willing to call it a binge eating disorder because that sounds like a diagnosis and it takes away from my agency.

So I had a disordered relationship with food. But I experienced it like an addiction.

And one of the best realizations that I had in the bowels of that misery was, oh, this is actually a choice that I'm making. Nothing else is in charge of me. This is a choice that I'm making. It doesn't feel like a choice. I don't experience it as a choice.

But at the end of the day, it's my body, it's my hands are doing what they're doing, my mouth is doing what it's doing, my mind is doing what it's doing. And I have agency over all of those things.

So even when you're in the muck and the mire, taking just radical accountability for it, in my mind is actually one of the most freeing choices that we can make.

Andrea: 00:33:06

And be careful with falling too far down the rabbit hole into self blame. Can you take responsibility without beating yourself up over it? To where then you say, okay, now what can I do about it?

Instead of falling off and going into, I'm a terrible human because I can't control it.

Ella: 00:33:21

I just heard something so brilliant, and wouldn't it be cool if I could attribute it to its author? But I can't. But I'll look it up. I just heard such good wisdom yesterday, and this guy, it was a guy. Okay, I've narrowed it down.

Andrea: 00:33:36

It was a man.

Ella: 00:33:37

Man.

Andrea: 00:33:38

You think?

Ella: 00:33:39

He said, we so often realize our bad behavior or our negative behavior. However, I can express that simply, right? And we want to then have shame because we're like, oh, here I go again.

The proper response is gratitude for making the observation.

Andrea: 00:33:55

Yes.

Ella: 00:33:55

Why would you punish yourself for making the observation that you erred? Like, the fact that you're even able to recognize it as such is something you should be grateful for, not punitive about.

So when you can reframe that shame as, oh, wait, look at me being aware that I just did this again, because when I was 20, I would have just blazed a whole through this. I would not have passed go.

I would not have paid one minute's worth of attention, and I just would have sat in the consequences wondering how I got there. Right? Isn't that what being 20 is?

Andrea: 00:34:29

For me, that was like what being like 35 was too like. It wasn't until I got sober at 37 did I really start to do my own work. And so even if people are listening to this and you're our age, it's okay.

There's still time. You still plenty of time.

Ella: 00:34:43

I just love the idea of turning our observations of our shortcomings into moments of gratitude going, hey, good for me that I can be cognizant of this, right?

Andrea: 00:34:55

It's like, even if, like, if you walk into your house and there's like a pile of crap on the floor, like, you're still gonna be like, oh, dang it. But you're not gonna. It's like, thank goodness that you saw it.

Ella: 00:35:05

I don't, I don't love this analogy at all. I'd like to walk away from this analogy. Andrea, I love you and I'm so proud of you.

And I hope more importantly, that you're proud of yourself, that you can see own strength in this, that you can see your own resilience in this, that you can see your openness. And that's what is so remarkable here.

And that's what I want to leave with those who are joining us at this imaginary table that we're all sitting around having this conversation about. And that is you're not here to be like. And then it was easy. And I, and it was so cool. I took this supplement and lifeless brand.

I, I love your truth telling. Thank you for also just showing us what's possible and showing us that resilience, that willingness to remain open, that it pays off in joy.

And you are an example of that.

Andrea: 00:35:54

Thank you. It's. And it's a choice. I, I choose it every day. But I appreciate, I appreciate you. Thank you.

Ella: 00:36:01

Well, we'll make it very easy to find you, but can you tell us about the most recent book, please?

Andrea: 00:36:06

That is the re release. Yes. 52 Ways to Live a Kick Ass Life came out 11 years ago when I was just a baby life coach.

f there. Don't. Don't be mad.: 2012

It was so: 2012

But I was able to scrap a few chapters, revise many of them, add new tools, add questions to the end of each chapter for people who really want to do the work. And it's got a brand new updated cover with, with almost 50 year old me on the COVID And so yeah, it's, it's the same title.

52 Ways to Live a Kick Ass Life.

Ella: 00:36:40

Okay, you're saying that title really fast.

Andrea: 00:36:43

52 Ways to Live a Kick Ass Life.

Ella: 00:36:45

Thank you so much.

Andrea: 00:36:47

Thank you.

Ella: 00:36:49

Okay, if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with someone you care about and be sure to check out our new YouTube channel and head to onairella.com for today's show notes. You can also learn about how to work with me there on air Ella.com and I would love to hear from you.

So if you DM me on Instagram I promise I will reply. Psych. All the links you need for us to connect are right here in your podcast app in the description for today's episode. Check them out.

Thanks for listening and thanks for inspiring me. You are quite simply awesome.