Wretched of the Earth Ch. 1

[MUSIC] Welcome to SCARS to Stars, where conversations and personal stories let us know we are not alone. In this show, you will meet authors and speakers from our books and events as they share vulnerable personal stories to spread hope and inspire you through adversities in your own life. The world is a difficult place. You will find like-minded people here with kind hearts and supportive souls. I am your host, Dina Brown Mitchell. I am a suicide survivor and the founder of the Realized Foundation. I am so glad you are here. Let's dig into this meaningful conversation. Hi everybody, it's Dina at the Realized Foundation and I'm back with another special guest for you. And Katie's been on our podcast before, but today she's going to talk about something different and she is an author in our new SCARS to Stars volume five books. So we have a whole new story to talk about. So Katie, will you introduce yourself first? Thank you now. Thank you. Yes, I'm Katie Miller. I am a certified mindset reset coach and theta healer. I help people disassemble the emotions from the events of their past so then that way they're no longer triggered. Awesome. That's needed so much in the world. But I needed it myself, which is why I now do it. I know I read your chapter last night. I'm going to I'm going to disappear for a minute. I'm going to let you talk about your story that you wrote. Yes, thank you for that. The chapter I wrote for this volume five of SCARS to Stars is called the Quiet Rebuilding of Myself. And to put it up in a nutshell, quick synopsis, I got married right out of high school and was married for 24 years and recently filed for divorce and discovered that living alone by myself for the first time, I was experiencing a lot of the anxieties most teenagers felt when they first moved out of their house, their parents' house at 18. So I was incredibly overwhelmed because not only was I dealing with that anxiety, I was also dealing with grief, grief of losing a sense of identity. So I've done a lot of healing. I haven't done as much shocking because the one thing that I realized is the story of my marriage and divorce is not just my story. It impacts other people in my life, one of them being my ex, the other one being my son. So when I wrote this chapter, I wrote it from the perspective of the milestones that I remember from meeting my former spouse at the age of 14 to what it was like to realize that I was growing and changing as a person and they were not on the same path as I was. And then what it was like when now I'm a single person because my son's off at college, he doesn't live at home. And the steps that I had learned in reference to that it's okay to not be okay, that waking up can begin accomplishment all on its own, getting out of bed and even bigger one, remembering to brush our teeth, this is a big one. And that it's okay, you know, I don't have to be perfect for anybody. I don't even have to be perfect for myself because I realize that we are constantly growing, constantly learning. And there are aspects that I want to share about what I experienced through this, I'm not even calling it a chapter of my life, it's an actual like mini book series inside of the grand scheme of things because I spent within 50% of my life married to this individual. And a lot of my identity was wrapped around what they needed and what their family needed, which meant that because I was filling that role, I lost part of myself. So that's really what the chapter is about. It's the recognition that hindsight being 2020, I can see the mile markers, I can see the big moments where I decided to keep my mouth shut because it was safer than speaking up. Where I decided to agree because it was safer than causing a confrontation to moments where I didn't even realize the decisions I was making because I had become conditioned to answer them or respond to situations a certain way. So I'm still learning, still growing, but the chapter is written in a way that's really my perspective. I can't blame anyone for the relationship other than taking responsibility for my half. I know now that this is decisions I made were made with the information and the emotional resilience I had at the time. When I started growing and started learning about emotional intelligence and learning about mindset work and how to retrain my brain so then that way limiting beliefs no longer controlled my life, I could make empowering decisions and create something that was predictive, create something that was happy, something that was exceptional. Realizing that not everyone is going to go on that journey with me. So this was pretty much the layout of what this chapter was and not nobody knows the whole story except for me and my ex and it's probably going to say that way to be honest. There are a few people who know specifics because they were touched by those components of my life. But I don't want to the best way I can describe it is I have seen speakers who have shared traumatic events in their past and they were very impactful speakers. They delivered a very powerful message, especially how they overcame and became empowered because they chose to do something about it instead of remain a victim. But I've also heard of speakers who their talk was nothing but a trauma dump and I felt worse listening to them because they didn't show me that I could overcome something and that was really the primary focus of this chapter was showing that we can overcome and we can share with we can share aspects that are comfortable. We don't have to tell anyone the full story because we shouldn't be defined by our past because everybody has a past but we can find people who will help us grow and move forward. Yes, agreed with all of them. It's a lot. I went back and I thought about it and I was like wow that's you know even right now it's still more than 50% of my life that I was living with this individual and I look back and I'm like where did Katie from high school go? Where was the confident teenager who didn't care what anyone thought about her and just paved her own way? So she'd been rediscovered now. Well I'm really interested in learning more about how you discovered how to shift your mindset and what that whole journey was. Well it started unconsciously is the best way that I can put it because my family had started the teen suicide prevention society back in 2020 which is how we first met you know because we're on similar missions we wanted to help people find hope to see that they were not alone and that there was a way to break open that negative echo chamber that we sometimes get in when all we have is a repeating negative thought. So that was the start of the mindset work that I was doing was to help people realize that you can shift your perspective 1% and it'll make a huge impact on your life and it was doing that work even though the non-profit's not a nonprofit anymore right now it's just a pure labor of love where the tools are up for free on the website that I manage. The decision to start learning about how we talk to ourselves subconsciously and sometimes even consciously and the words that we say to ourselves are even more impactful than words that we hear from other people which is why when we speak something out loud it's more impactful than when somebody else says the same thing to us and it was learning that and learning how to to deal with grief that really shifted my perspective into the mindset and rewarding what has happened to me. It's not diminishing anything that's happened to me, but it's allowing me to reframe it into something that I can use as an empowerment versus being negative energy that sucks me down. And during this time frame of this five years of when the nonprofit started to when my divorce happened, it I had changed so much internally that I started to see the inconsistencies and the quote unquote red flags of my relationship that were not healthy. And it was interesting because I could always see it in quote unquote other people. And I heard someone say you know when you point your finger at someone there's one finger pointing at them and three fingers pointing back at you. Well, I was able to recognize it in them because it was in my own relationship. I just never identified it or labeled it as what it was. And that's nobody's fault, but my own I understand that completely. But it's challenging to be able to step outside of something that has become your norm, whether it be a relationship or whether it be a job that you've been in for an extended period of time. You know, or belief that you've had for an extended period of time to be able to change something like that is scary. It's terrifying, fine, it's painful, emotionally, sometimes even physically. But that's what happens when we grow. And that's why the bark cracks on a tree as it's growing. It's because it's making room for more space. And we are allowed to take up space. It's a good analogy. I'm wondering when you when someone approaches you about what you do and how you help them, how does that start? What does that look like? Well, most of the time it's someone just asking me what it is that I do. It depends on, I guess, where I am and everything like that. But usually it starts out with, I just help people shift their limiting beliefs into empowering decisions. You know, I've worked on so much content with helping shift the thought of not wanting to be here and to finding the little bits of joy that make me want to stay. And then coming across a limiting belief as to I can't make money as an entrepreneur, to wait a minute, I used to get paid to walk dogs when I was a teenager. I used to get paid to babysit as a teenager. I used to go door to door selling girls cow cookies. That wasn't my money, but still I was selling stuff. I know how to do this. Maybe not exactly this way, but I know I could figure it out. And going through that process worked because I ended up making more money in one month as an entrepreneur than I did at a corporate job. I worked that for 14 years before COVID. So I realized how impactful this could be and wanted to share it with other people because we all deserve to have that hope. We all deserve to have our big definite dream and take steps to get it. Yeah, agreed. So what is your big dream now? Now believe it or not, it's still being defined. My original big definite dream was to have a house. Well, I have a house. And it's too much space for just me by myself. So that's not my big definite dream anymore. But I've the umbrella falls underneath of raising the positivity level of the planet. Everyone's allowed to have bad days, but it's the power that we have to not stay stuck there. And providing people with tools and with tips and tricks and workshops and communities to remind us that we can find people who will lift us up. We can find communities who have the same values and have the same integrity or maybe even better integrity so that we can learn from them. So we continue to grow and can become the best person we can as an individual. And then when we do that, we hope build the community up around us. So other people can become their best selves. Very true. I think community is, I don't know what the right word is. I want to say imperative, but I think it's community is what holds us accountable in some way because if we're alone and we live by ourselves and we don't have to show up for something, it's very easy for us to get in a dark place. It is we as human beings evolved from people who knew that they needed their tribe. I mean, everyone had their own role in their tribe or their community. And you had the chief, you had the shaman, you had the people who did the hunting, the gathering, the raising of the kids, the making of clothes, the cooking. I mean, everyone had their own part in it, but they all worked together and in times of struggle, they were all there to support each other. And we and humans are designed that way. Yes, isolation is great for a period of time, but not full time 24/7, 365 for however many years because we start to lose what's most intricate to us the human element. Hi there, it's Dina. If you like our podcasts and you're enjoying learning about other people's stories of overcoming adversity, please go over to therealizefoundation.org and support us by donating. We believe that conversations, community and personal story can change lives and and reduce suicide ideation. And we also have a way, if you have a business, you can support us without money out of your pocket. So go on over to realizefoundation.org and look at the donate page and you can learn how to support us as a business and also you can donate any amount. Thank you so much. And now that everybody has their own house and we don't have communities like we have back then. It's like there's just more weight on each person because there's less people in every household, you know, unless you have multiple kids, which I don't know if I'm making a new sense, but No, you you are because it's true. I live on the street that is full of townhouses, rowhouses. Yeah. I've been here for 10 years. I know the neighbor immediately on that wall and the neighbor immediately on that wall. I don't know any of my other neighbors. You know, now I've been in other communities where I visited friends or family members where everyone on the street knows everyone else on the street. I grew up in a community like that. I couldn't get away with anything as a teenager because somebody would tell my parents what was going on. But there was a sense of safety there. There was a sense of security. I knew that I could walk up it down that street and not have to worry about anything. I didn't have the same stress or anxieties I have as a single independent female walking through the park and lot at the shopping mall around Christmas. That's terrifying. I don't go to the mall because it's scary. It's because I knew these people in my community. And that's what I know a lot of people virtually now. You're one of them. We have a great community where we get together and we chat. I know what everyone's doing. How can we help you? How can we support you? Getting that in a physical context is something that I think a lot of people are missing because we were forced into isolation from COVID. So we gave up all that personal contact. Now we can get to grow that again. It's true. We gave up a lot and lost a lot. There's a lot of things that we didn't realize were important to us until we lost everything due to COVID. But COVID also opened up our eyes to things that we were brushing underneath the rug that needed to be addressed that were just festering. It's true. So it, a blessing on a curse, but most things in the world are a blessing on a curse, depending on what's going on in your personal world. Because one thing that's traumatic for me might not be traumatic for you or vice versa. Something that's fantastic news for me might not be fantastic news for somebody else. It's true. Well. Maybe we should have a formal list of lessons learned from isolation in 2020. That would be an interesting list. One of them is make sure you have a really good strong internet connection and a working computer. Yeah. That's true. Because it was our only connection to the outside world then. And some of those connections are still struggling. I mean, I still consider you and I very good friends from all the time we've talked since then, even though we've never met in person. I know. You know, eventually it'll happen. I know it will. Well, I was just doing another podcast with an author and we were saying how we've said for years now, not only on book five, we've said for years that we were going to have like a reunion in person, but everybody's so all over the world that is like how, you know, it would be expensive for a lot of them to come to Colorado. So I don't know. We have to we have to figure that out, figure out maybe if we can raise enough funds to do something like that because I think it would be really cool. Well, planning is key definitely for something of that volume with that many people on it. And I know that if I put all my calendar that it next year, there's going to be an event in Colorado that I'm going to start putting money aside to start saving for it. Yeah. Maybe I should just do it. I mean, it could even be like a. A picnic. I mean, it could be something. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It'll just be all of us getting together talking, hanging out and sharing lots of hugs and tears over how much it's changed. I mean, because so much change since when I wrote for book three. I know. I'm completely different person now than I was that. And that was only two years ago. I think that's why multiple people write in more than one book because it's it's first about healing. Oh, very much. Yes. And it's just a way to have another community because of how we do it in the process and how we all get to know each other. It's really cool. So I always say like I've written in a bunch of business anthologies where they're like give me thousands of dollars, give me twenty five hundred words and we'll let you know when it's published. And that's just not what we do here. We become family in this project and it's really important. Yeah. And we've contributed to two that that were very much paid a play kind of aspect and granted there are times that payment is important because we have to pay for the people who's doing the editing and doing all the publishing work or creating designs for the cover or anything else like that. But it's the integrity of the group. I think it's what's most important because it wasn't just a for those. It was the same thing. You pay, you write, it's going to be published on this date and your name's not going to be listed as one of the authors when it goes up on Amazon. Great. That's true. Even if it's sold on Amazon, it was in. Even though it was sold on Amazon. I was in the chain series with Jim Loot and Jim Brett and Les Browns on the cover with me and you know, all that. That was probably the most money I've paid for one and it's not on Amazon. You can order the books or you can you know, and sell them yourself, but it's not even on Amazon. So it's there's different ways people do it. I mean, people do pay to write in our books, but it's a donation and it's, we've been charging 500 for people to write in the book. But you've also made it very clear that it's a donation. Right. Made it very clear that this is to support getting this work out into the world because all of our stories are so impactful. We're able to help share an experience that someone else might be able to go through and they will realize that I'll be okay at the end of it because someone else has already gone through this. Yeah, that's true. And I think it's so important that people get to write and heal and share their story, but it's also so important that people get to read the stories and find hope and realize that they're not alone. And you know, a lot of people that I talk to about fundraising and board members and stuff like that is like, we should be charging more. And I was like, well, I would like to because we really do need to raise money. But at the same time, I want people to be able to participate and get involved. And maybe one day they'll be in a better place and they'll bless the foundation with something. Who knows? And it's not always about money. It's about people buying books and donating them to homeless shelters and chainholes and libraries and hospitals and places where people need hope. It is very important for that. And we've shared before stories of having a book available and passing it off, I think you said it was a doctor's office that you had shared number three with. You know, I was a dentist office. Okay, I bought five when I was in volume three. And three of them, I left in completely random places. And one of them went to one of those people have them in their yard. Their boxes that hold books that you can like drop a book off and you can borrow. It's like a personal library that you can borrow somebody's book from kind of deal. And I left one of them in one of those over by my uncle's house. I'm just like, this looks like a good place for it. It was by a high school here. Let's put it in there. So I have no idea where that book went because I didn't put any of my contact information or anything at it. But it felt like that was where it needed to go. And we tend to be able to hear that intuitively on where people are that need to hear these kinds of messages. It's true. And I think people, you know, it's, it's funny because I do a lot of social media about business, you know, other than the foundation. And almost every time I connect with somebody for a business reason, I somehow in the next week or so get a message from them saying, I really love the mission of your nonprofit. Or I really love what you're doing with this. And it's like people notice. And I think we're finally in a place in the world where people are talking more about mental health, talking about suicide. Where, you know, 20 years ago, nobody talks about that. Honey, even 10 years ago. Yeah. And I remember graduating high school and finding out that one of my teachers passed from suicide like the year after I graduated. And the only reason that I knew was because my sister Stephanie was a student in his class and knew about it and shared it with me. It wasn't announced through like the school alumni or anything else like that. And he had been a teacher there for well over 10 years. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of people who die by suicide and have obituaries that say nothing about it. Yeah. And it's sad because, you know, I have a friend right now who just lost her husband. Somebody haven't seen it in a long time. But there's no information about what happened. And he was young. And that's like if nobody says anything that's where my mind goes. Right. And it's like, it's not. It's not something that we should be ashamed of. It's something that we should be more aware of and talk about. So it doesn't happen as much. True. But I think there's also the precedent that's been set that like for example, when a celebrity takes their lives, it's all over the news. And then everyone speculating about why there were no signs. Why didn't so and so do this? Why didn't so and so do that? And I think that for me, if I had a family member who chose to leave that way, I would be guarded about who I shared that with because people on the internet can be cruel because they don't know everything. They only know what they're told. On the outside, my marriage looked fine. Everyone thought everything was great. And I really knew that I was walking around unhappy with everything else that was going on for so long because I hit it well. And people who struggle mask because we don't want people to know what we're going through. I know. I think it's getting better, but it is because we're creating these safe spaces for people. Yeah, I mean we just have to be able to take better care of ourselves and have permission to do that. And I always use the hashtag, put yourself first, and in another book I wrote, I talk about entrepreneurs and how they need to put themselves first. They need to have boundaries. They need to have more balance in their life and how to do that. Because it's so important, like, we can't take care of our families and the people around us and our employees if we're not taking care of ourselves. I'm so happy you joined us for this conversation. My wish is that you found comfort and hope in your own unique situation. If you resonated with our message, please head over to therealizefoundation.org where you can apply to write your own story in one of our books. You can also download our 60 ideas for self-care on the resources page. I can't wait to hear from you. Until next time, you are not alone, you are worthy, and you are enough. [MUSIC]