3 Ways To Turn Your Darkest Moments Into Lasting Impact

KATHLEEN: Hello everyone and welcome to this journey of an awakening spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host, and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV network. The purpose of the show is to help you realize that you are not alone and that you are in control of your life. It doesn't matter where you came from or what your circumstances are.

KATHLEEN: We've all experienced pain, suffering, hurt, abandonment, loneliness, and hopelessness. This show is to help you turn those dark moments around and create. A whole new you. Despite your success, have you felt lonely, angry, frustrated, or even suicidal? Do you long to be supported, recognized, and supported for who you are, not just for the awards and accolades on your walls?

KATHLEEN: You don't want to be known, identified, or remembered in a way that feels fraudulent because you achieve things out of obligation and not passion. Do you find yourself sitting quietly at lunch listening to what lights you up? Only to feel shame, fear, frustration, and resentment.

KATHLEEN: Your inner turmoil and limiting beliefs surface, making you feel not good enough and afraid of doing something different. You've read the books, attended the seminars, and practiced new concepts and principles, yet you still find yourself in the same rut. The lies you tell yourself perpetuate a cycle of disappointment.

KATHLEEN: You say you'll change, but you're self- limiting beliefs keep running the show, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a certified coach, I empower you to become your authentic self. My Soul Journey program aligns you with your true self and guides you to find your soul vision, helping you discover your purpose in life.

KATHLEEN: I provide tools to step into the true magnificence and remember who you are. If you're interested in learning more, contact me at BraveTV at KathleenMFlanagan. Com. Each week we start the show with the sound of the tuning forks bringing in love, happiness, and balance to set the tone for the show to bring out both the best in both myself and my guests. Let's begin.

KATHLEEN: I have a cat who's torturing my office.

KATHLEEN: For the last 18 years, peak performance coach and life strategist Jesse Torres has coached thousands of high performance people from all walks of life and various parts of the world that have achieved success and the highest level of fulfillment.

KATHLEEN: Out of the top 120 coaches on the planet, Jessie ranked either number one or top three in every measurable category while working with the top coaching company in the world. Jessie is fueled by a passionate love for humanity and a burning desire to end suffering. She is driven to discover the truth of the client's deepest potential and unlock the limitless opportunities that leave others in the dark ages.

KATHLEEN: Bringing all levels of mindset, emotional intelligence, energy, and strategy with an authentic client-driven approach, Jessie's teachings will help you transform your life from pain or trauma into purpose and passion. What Jesse refers to as the Fierce Grace. Welcome, Jessie.

JESSIE: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Kathleen. Excited to be here.

KATHLEEN: You're welcome. So Jessie, tell a little bit, tell our audience a little bit about your journey of becoming an awakening spirit.

JESSIE: Oh, okay. Reader's Digest version.

JESSIE: You know, it's interesting because as I get ready to come on different shows or different podcasts, I'm always like, how to explain the divine choreography of the journey, right? I do believe it is all divine.

JESSIE: But in order to make it relevant and to help everyone understand how I got here, you have to understand the depths of darkness sometimes can be the awakening to that spirit that says, okay, if this is... As low as I can get, where's the upside and how to find that light in order to navigate ourselves out.

JESSIE: So I come from a history of child abuse with my father. Once I wanted to escape and realized that I had no safety, I tried to tell my mom when I was 16 and that didn't do anything. So at 18, I wanted out. And I met a man who actually called out what was happening. First time ever anybody had spoken about it. And I fell madly in love.

JESSIE: So I told my mom, I'm out. I'm moving in with this boyfriend. And she said, well, if you're in that much love, then you know what? You should be married. So I moved out. Monday, I was married Friday. And at 18, I was head over heels. I had no idea that I had adopted the belief that I was dirty, filthy, and no one would ever love me.

JESSIE: I didn't know that I was living with shame. I didn't know that I had a belief that I was now unlovable. And, you know, when love first knocked on my door, I was a yes to it because I didn't feel I would get another chance. And not that I didn't fall madly in love. I totally did.

JESSIE: But what we didn't know and why I'm so passionate about this today to help people maximize results in their lives and their businesses is because it's the thing we don't know. It's the invisible layers, right? Like my... Then husband, he was 21 and he came from a very abusive background. He had an alcoholic mother. He was the youngest of four. And his upbringing was quite brutal as well.

JESSIE: And, he would come home to his sisters unconscious on the floor. You know, it was that kind of, I was running from my dad's clutches. So as an 18 and 21 year old, madly in love were like, okay, we're going to have the dog, the cat and the white picket fence and the kids. And he said. My kids will never see me drunk. And I said, my kids will never be molested. And we thought we fixed it.

JESSIE: And what we don't know as we grow, right, is the micro traumas that are taking place in the context of living in that life. Now, what's important to recognize is that trauma, I have a new definition for it. Because sometimes when people think of trauma, they say, oh, it's like a big rape or something like that, which absolutely it is.

JESSIE: However, I say trauma is really what the child made meaning of in the moment of the experience. We don't know. We're human beings. We're meaning-making machines. We create meaning out of our experiences and our unconscious conditioning, and then we start to live our lives with those beliefs. We don't even know it. I didn't know I had adopted a belief that I was unworthy, right?

JESSIE: He didn't know that he adopted a belief that he didn't deserve me, that he was nothing but a loser because that's what his mom called him every day. You know what I mean? He didn't know that he owned that identity. We just came together. And now in the context of me wanting to keep the peace and him being explosive, it was the perfect match, right? But what it led to was a very devastating 18 and a half years for me, right?

JESSIE: I'd gotten to a place where I was so hypervigilant. I felt like I didn't know when the landmine was going to go off. And I got to a state of complete apathy and I didn't want to live. The only reason I... Didn't take my own life was because of my children. But that's how deeply I had gotten into it. I didn't believe there was another way out. Death was the only way.

JESSIE: Divorce is not an option. And that's just what I believe based on my upbringing. And or him dying. And then I could be the widow and that would be okay. You know what I mean? And then I had shame and guilt over thinking such a horrible thing. Right? So it was this madness that I was in. In the context of that, his sister committed suicide and my brother was murdered.

JESSIE: Almost a year ago. Right, to complete tragedy. So we're in this upheaval of all these different tragedies, not to mention the undiagnosed trauma that we were bringing into the marriage. So coming to that state of complete apathy, it was an act of kindness actually that woke me up. It awakened my spirit, but at the time I didn't know yet. All I knew is that whatever flicker of light was left in me, it fueled that flame.

JESSIE: I didn't know to call it kindness. I just knew that whatever the specific people did. It gave me a feeling of hope. It gave me the belief that I don't even know what this feeling is. I don't know what to call it, but if this feeling is available, then life is worth living. And it gave me the courage to get out of my situation that I didn't believe I had an out for.

JESSIE: And that began an insatiable hunger to understand human beings. How did I get here? At that point, I was some 20 years ago, I was 38 years old. I'm like, who am I? I don't even know. I don't even know what my favorite color is. I don't know what my favorite food is.

JESSIE: I literally was molded into everything I needed to be in order to keep the peace. So from that state of survival and me and having to navigate three kids, I became obsessed with understanding. And that's what set me on a quest to where I am today.

KATHLEEN: Okay, sister, that sounds like my story.

JESSIE: I knew there was something about you.

KATHLEEN: Yeah, I know, right? I mean, it is my story on many levels. It was the same thing that you expressed too. And I know that I didn't know either. I didn't know. I remember the first time when, after I moved out to Colorado, I was living with this man and his 16 year old daughter was possibly being raped by stepfather.

KATHLEEN: And I didn't know anything at that moment. I just cried hysterically, shaking him. You've got to help her. You got to help her. You got to help her. And I'm crying hysterically and I'll never forget going, why are you crying? What is this about? Well, it was a memory coming. Forward of that helpless, I'm not safe. There's trauma. I'm in an abusive family.

KATHLEEN: I mean, the whole thing. And it's like little micro moments started to seep in on what I forgot. Yes. Because we do forget because it's too much as a young child to take on. And so we perpetuate and we perpetuate. And, what I found too is, people are like, you're so angry. And I'm like, Yeah. So what's your point?

KATHLEEN: I'm okay with being angry. I didn't care, right? It kept people away from me. But the whole point was, is I really was okay with anger because anger was the only thing that was keeping me alive. Because like you, I wanted to commit suicide too. My mother watched me trying to commit suicide and she's like, what's wrong with my daughter? Oh, I don't know, mom. Could it have been something that you and dad did?

KATHLEEN: You know what I mean? I mean, when I think about it, it was. Because I've been doing a lot of reflecting because I knew you were coming on the show and I know that we have very similar paths.

KATHLEEN: The fact that you remember and I don't because I disembodied and you didn't.

KATHLEEN: But it doesn't matter because I was still following the patterns that you talked about.

JESSIE: Right.

KATHLEEN: And that's the thing that I want to not necessarily go in and elaborate in any way, but just talk more about like. The road to recovery because it takes one little thing for something to change for you to start moving into a different direction. And even though it's a tiny step, it's a gigantic step for somebody who is, that was in our position. Well, we're going to go ahead and take a quick commercial break.

KATHLEEN: Welcome back everyone to the Journey of an Awakening Spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host, and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV network. And we have Jessie Torres in the room. And we were talking during the commercial break about how we want to just have conversations like this and normalize it to release the shame or guilt or trauma or whatever that you may be experiencing out there.

KATHLEEN: And so I want Jessie to continue with where she is because the show is for her. And I just want to interject so that way you guys realize that we may have come from two different walks of life, but the feelings are still the same.

JESSIE: Absolutely. And I think it's important for the listeners to know that shame lives and festers in secrecy.

JESSIE: And so we want to be able to have these conversations because we want you to know you're not alone. And we want you to know that you don't know to know that you have these hidden traumas. So I see trauma as three pillars. There's undiagnosed, there's unacknowledged, and there is unresolved, right? So if you think about the undiagnosed trauma, some of us don't know to know.

JESSIE: Some of us say, no, I had a great upbringing. Mom and dad were awesome. I had a good childhood. But what we don't understand is the human experience. The child, if the child goes to the grocery store with its mother, the mother goes to the end of the aisle to grab something. She can see him, but he can't see her. He's five years old. He lifts his head. He screams, mom.

JESSIE: And that moment, she's like right there, like 10, maybe 20 seconds. But in his nervous system, he anchored, I could be left behind. I could be abandoned. Right. And he doesn't know. He's not doing it on purpose. It's an unconscious conditioning. Mom didn't do anything wrong. She's not abusive. She could see him. Right. But now they go home and the child is a little bit more clingy.

JESSIE: Doesn't like when mom leaves the room. Now when mom goes to the store, he doesn't want to let her go. Now he's 35 and wonders why he can't have a relationship because he's clingy and he's insecure and he's controlling. And he doesn't know that it's tied to that moment in the grocery store. We don't know to know. But my ask is where do you have limitation in your life right now?

JESSIE: Whatever that limitation is, let's talk about it. Because we're going to find what that undiagnosed trauma is that's causing limitation right now. Because my belief is there is no limitation to the human being, only the belief there is one, right? And if I look at unacknowledged trauma, that's like my husband and I. So we acknowledge the big trauma. Oh, I had a father that molested me.

JESSIE: Oh, I had an alcoholic mother. Okay, cool. We know that. But what we didn't know was the unacknowledged trauma, all the micro traumas that go in there. I didn't know I had adopted. I was dirty now and nobody would love me. He didn't know that he adopted the belief he was a loser because his mom called him that. All the underlying things that we don't know to acknowledge.

JESSIE: And then the third one, which is unresolved, which meaning if we don't know, if we don't diagnose it, if we don't acknowledge it, we don't even know to resolve it. And so without that resolution, we are having limitation today, whether that's lack of confidence, whether that's... you're short tempered or angry, like you were saying earlier, right?

JESSIE: It's a form of survival mechanism, coping mechanism that we don't even know we adopted. And it's because that little girl is still running the show. And so without this understanding, we don't realize that it is that very thing. It's so funny. I just talked to a client and actually it was a friend that recommended me and I was chatting with her. She goes, it's so funny. I called you.

JESSIE: Because I wanted help with my business and what to do and some decisions around my business. And I'm talking to you about how I feel so disconnected from my husband. She goes, it's so interesting to me. I go, because it isn't the business. You know what to do, right? You are an expert in your field. You've had mass success in the past. It isn't that. It's all the underlying things.

JESSIE: It's the fact that she's chasing worthiness on the success of her business. And that for her, if the success of the business doesn't thrive, then she is a failure, right? She proved that, her parent or whoever in her family that told her she wouldn't be enough. And she proved them right. And that is death. Right. She doesn't know to tie the two together.

JESSIE: She's just wondering, why isn't my business thriving? Why do I feel disenchanted? Why do I want to just give it all up? I'm sick of it. I'm exhausted. Right. And I told her, I go, listen, if clients were rolling in and business was thriving, would you want to close down the business? And she said, no. I go, then it isn't the business. It's the feeling that you have underneath it not working.

JESSIE: And we started to get really clear on where it came from and all this undiagnosed trauma that she had that she didn't know to acknowledge and she didn't know to bring it to the now and how it was limiting her business. So that's why we're talking about it. We want to shine a light on it so that you not only see it, but you gain power over it.

KATHLEEN: I know that I always thought that I was unworthy, unlovable, undeserving, all of that because And nobody wanted to hear what I had to say because my family let me know they didn't want to hear what I had to say. Or I got smacked because I was a pretty smart little kid. And I dumbed myself down just so nobody would put expectations on me.

KATHLEEN: And when I went into college, I wasn't stupid and I knew I wasn't stupid. So I put myself on the honor roll and thought I was crazy for doing that because there was so much more work. But it wasn't work. It was just a little bit different. But I had to prove not to myself but to other people. Other people that I did this to myself. I'm not a stupid person, but I did it to get your eyes off of me.

KATHLEEN: Because sometimes we do things like that where we will do things so nobody can see us because I became very invisible and I didn't have a mouth so I couldn't speak. And then if I did speak, I would vomit in a roaring angry place because I did not know how to articulate words. So I went to work and became a paralegal. So I could learn to speak so I could learn to problem solve and I could learn to articulate.

KATHLEEN: And I did. I would read a complaint, talk to my boss and said, well, I agree with this. How are you going to do it? Because I didn't know how to do anything. When you said, I don't know how I didn't know what I liked. I don't know what I feel. I don't know that I was the same way. I was like, who am I?

KATHLEEN: When I came out, when I came back into my body at 54, I was like, who am I? What do I think? How do I feel? But I was showing myself because as I reclaimed more parts of my missing self, so to speak, I was able to start letting more of the anger go. It wasn't all gone. It's still not all gone. It will probably never be all gone because that's part of the human conditioning too, is that we get angry.

KATHLEEN: And sometimes that's a good thing. Anger can be a good thing. But the whole point is, is we had to stop. I had to stop and really look at why am I angry? And I'm looking back now going, Jesus Christ, no wonder I was angry with everything that happened in my life. I mean, it was either I stay angry or I put a knife to my throat. It was either or. There was no black or white in that.

KATHLEEN: And so learning, then I met Bob Proctor. And what did he talk about? The unconscious. Limiting beliefs. And it's like, well, what the hell is a limiting belief? You know, I mean, this is what 20, 30 years ago, Bob Proctor's talking about limiting beliefs. That was not a human word back then. Yeah. It's like, what the hell is that?

KATHLEEN: Well, that's the unconscious thinking was like, okay, well then how do you know what's going on down there? If you don't know, there were so many things. It's everything that you said, because you don't know what you don't know. So this was one of the biggest ones though, is my mother said, You go to work to pay your bills. Well, I had no bills and I had no money.

KATHLEEN: And I said, this doesn't work for me.

KATHLEEN: But it was my mother's thought that I took on for some unknown reason. Because, the goal was to be debt free, according to my mother, because you work to pay your bills. And if I had no bills, then why should I have to work? But I wanted to work because I liked working, but I wasn't working. And it was like this vicious cycle. Sometimes we go into vicious cycles.

KATHLEEN: We do. And so let's talk a little bit about that. I'm sure as you were coming out, there was a lot coming up for you with all of your traumas to get to where you are how you've articulated all of this to the degree that you have to have that awareness that is so profound for people to really understand, because there's that journey within that part too.

JESSIE: Yeah, there definitely is. And I mean, there's so many instances where I didn't realize I was awakening. I one of the very first ones I had not heard. I was raised Catholic. Right. So I consider myself spiritual now, not necessarily religious. But I was raised Catholic, so I didn't know anything about meditation.

JESSIE: I didn't know anything about anything other than the strict guidelines I was raised by. And I was still married at the time, and we started to explore. And so we went to this meditation that the local community was having. And there was about probably 25 people in the room, and we're all sitting in chairs. I've never done anything like this before. And so I'm sitting there, and the...

JESSIE: The leader is talking about the, feel the tips of your toes and it's moving up through your ankles and up through your calves and up through your legs. And I'm totally focused. And as it started getting up, like around my thigh area, I started bawling hysterically. I don't think I had ever, like you talk about disassociation.

JESSIE: I don't think I had ever connected to my body in that way. I didn't know, and as I started to feel that I was crying, I couldn't explain it. I didn't even have words for it. But we had to leave. We actually had to leave the meditation because I couldn't stop crying. And I didn't realize that I was connecting to the trauma, right?

JESSIE: I was connecting to what my body had experienced and it was out of control. So now fast forward after my divorce, where now I'm specifically, right, I'm going into it. I'm going to figure this out. I want to know why my dad did what he did, why my mom ignored it. I want to know why my husband did what he did and why I allowed it.

JESSIE: And I started to go to therapy. I started to read books. I started, I remember Cheryl Richardson, The Unmistakable Touch of Grace was one of the very first books I read. And I don't even remember the whole context of the book, but I remember to your point that there was something in there that said I could have a different belief than the one that I had solid gold.

JESSIE: This is my belief, right? I didn't even know, like you, I didn't know to call it a belief. I was just like, what do you mean? What do you mean that I could have a different life? What do you mean that I can think differently? I didn't know, right? Again, but that started to unpack and it started to open my eyes.

JESSIE: And then I kept seeking. And then, my journey, to personal development and starting to read books. I read Awaken the Giant Within. I read Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. And I started to go down the highway. And then once I realized I met Tony Robbins and I was like, oh my God, what is this space? Like, I love this energy.

JESSIE: And I knew I wanted to be a part of that community. Now, by then, I had gone to a couple of his events, but I hadn't yet even fathomed that I could be a part of that team. But I went through my own coach training through Coaches Training Institute and got certified because I talked to my therapist and I said, I want to do what you do, but that's a whole lot of school and a whole lot of time.

JESSIE: And she said, well, you should be a coach. And I'm like, soccer coach? Like, what are you talking about? You know, like this is back in like 2005. I want to say. So, it wasn't as big as it is now. And I started to look into it and I'm a more hands-on person and CTI offered a half virtual half on site.

JESSIE: So I took that one and I absolutely loved it. And to your point, as you're going through coach training, you're coaching yourself, right? You're unpacking the stuff that's inside of you. And I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. All of a sudden I'm peeling back the layers of what I now call heart armor.

JESSIE: Right this armor that we build around our hearts in survival in protection right and as each piece started to fall down I was like oh my god I'm meeting somebody totally different like oh my god and I love you know like what I did it was like catnip to the spirit you know what I mean like what is this feeling and then subsequently I was still working full-time in corporate and trying to build my coaching practice and so it was very difficult and I wanted to go to a business event with Tony Robbins.

JESSIE: And I spoke to the salesperson and he told me it was $10,000. And I'm like, I almost choked on my coffee. I was like, okay, wait, I just got out of a really nasty, very volatile divorce. I mean, there was death threats. It was all kinds of stuff. And he foreclosed the house. I mean, I was a stay-at-home mom from the time that my kids were little.

JESSIE: I worked to just add a little bit additional, but he made all the money. So foreclosed the house, went to the car dealers and said, here's the keys. I'm not paying anymore. Stuff was in my name. I mean, I was turned upside down in every way you could possibly think. I don't even know how low your FICO score can go, but there it was.

JESSIE: And now this guy's telling me I got to pay $10,000 for this business event. And I'm like, you're out of your mind. But I was so committed. And he told me, he goes, look, if it wasn't a money thing, would you come? And I said, absolutely. So he worked with me. I didn't know to think about 401k.

JESSIE: I had not, I didn't, you forget you even sign up. I mean, I was young. I didn't know I'm coming out of trauma. Right. So I cashed in my 401k. I had a couple of little $500 credit cards. I was trying to rebuild my credit and I borrowed some money from my mom. And, I told the guy, I go, look, I gave you everything I've got.

JESSIE: The event was at the Bellagio in Vegas. I said, there's no flipping way I can afford a room there. So you got to help me find a room. And he's like, okay, let me get on it. And so in the meantime, while he was figuring that out, I wanted to connect with the director of coaching because I had already submitted my resume. And I thought, okay, well, if I can't find a room, what am I going to do?

JESSIE: So I lived in California at the time. I was going to drive to Vegas. I downloaded a... A free one week pass to 24 hour fitness. I was going to sleep in my car and shower at the gym. That was my plan. I'm like, I can do this, right? That's how committed I was to really doing this business called coaching and helping people get out of suffering.

JESSIE: And subsequently, when I got there, it's a 10,000 person event. And I asked one of the guys there, and I'm like, hey, I submitted my application. I haven't heard anything. And they're like, look, you got to keep bugging. And I go, well, I don't want to be a pest. You need to be a pest. I'm like, oh, gosh. And they're like, the director of coaching's here.

JESSIE: He is, I said. And I couldn't even remember his name. I'm like, it's Mark Vaughn something. I don't know. But I started to look at every name tag. And I started to say, like, where is this guy in 10,000 people, right? So now fourth day in, it's a six day event. And I'm walking to this place. I can't afford lunch at the Bellagio.

JESSIE: So I get out of the hotel and I'm walking toward this cafe that has $10 salads. And I'm like, okay, I'll do that. I'm standing in line and there's a group of people standing there and they're talking about the event. So I'm curious and my eyes are already conditioned to go to the name tags. And I see the name and I'm like, oh, my God, oh, my God, it's him. It's him. It's him. It's him.

JESSIE: I'm freaking out. I'm at a Tony Robbins event. So I'm like, step up, Jessie, step up. I talk myself into saying hello and introducing myself. So subsequently, they're still talking. I walk over and I'm like, sorry to interrupt. My name is Jessie Torres. I sent you my resume. And. It was so fascinating. He actually, he said, I remember you, you speak Spanish, don't you?

JESSIE: And I said, yes, I do. And we talked for like 20 minutes. Last thing he said was, I will call you. And he did, true to his word. And I became a Tony Robbins coach for about six or seven years. And that allowed me to coach people from all over the world. And when you do that, you recognize that it's the human being, it's patterns.

JESSIE: It isn't that you're from this culture or that country or whatever. It's the human experience. And it started to dive deep into my training. Then I went to India for a year to be a meditation instructor. Then I became a heart math trainer. Then I apprenticed with a shaman for a year. I mean, I just went all in. But here's the thing, Kathleen. Nothing has taught me like my journey.

JESSIE: I have tools and I have resources. And in personal development today, what's great about all those tools is it helps us move beyond our limitation, right? So it gets us to a certain point. But the problem is that we are intellectualizing and knowing our way out of healing.

JESSIE: And when we don't heal, we're installing new software on an old operating system, expecting it not to glitch.

JESSIE: It's not going to work if we don't do the healing. And what hurts the most is when you do personal development, you go to the seminars, you go to the workshops, you know what to do. Right? Think positively, affirmation, write them on your wall. And then you find yourself stuck. It invites a deeper level of shame.

JESSIE: It's just like, now I'm here I am again, and I know what to do. Why am I stuck? And then you want to beat yourself up even more. What is wrong with me? So that's why I'm passionate about this conversation. Because if we don't upgrade the program, we're just installing new stuff on an old system.

JESSIE: And it's going to glitch unless we're willing to look and face off with those things that we created in our unconscious conditioning, bring them to conscious so we can see them. And we can now be empowered to live our lives by our choosing, not by an unconscious conditioning.

KATHLEEN: Wow.

KATHLEEN: That is totally right on the money, because I also know that you have to feel. And I remember when I was in Illinois. And there was a point where the tsunami, and I mean, we're talking tsunami, just came up. And I don't know what caused it other than I was like deep inside of really looking at what happened, where I'm at.

KATHLEEN: I'm talking about I'm in a place I don't want to be in. I don't like Chicago, the whole bit. But this is the book series that I wrote. It's about healing. And it's about looking at the trauma and really digging. Deep inside. And I remember talking and I'm just like, I just was sobbing.

KATHLEEN: And one of the things that came up that really blew me away was after my father had beat me to a pulp, I wasn't angry. I was angry at him as a kid, most of my life about it. But what the emotional trauma was, my mother did nothing to stop it. And that's what hurt. And that was the emotion. And that's when I realized I can heal up here.

KATHLEEN: I have to heal in my heart.

KATHLEEN: And I had started taking off, as you call it, the heart armor, because we all put an armor around our hearts because we don't want to be hurt. But when you don't put armor around your heart, you... Also don't receive all the good that can be yours too, because you can't have one without the other. Your hand is always out in front of you to keep people away.

KATHLEEN: And I realized at that moment that, because like my voice changed, my tone, everything about me changed after that tsunami of that emotional healing. And I realized we have to heal emotionally. This doesn't do it. This like can help rewire the brain. But it's not healing us. And when I realized that, and it sucks, God, does it suck to heal emotionally?

KATHLEEN: Because it's not that you're necessarily reliving the trauma. You're reliving the emotion that you had that you didn't understand so you could bring light onto it and release it. And when you change how you view the emotions, it makes it easier. Now, I mean, we're still, I'm still healing. I mean, I'm still going through lots of stuff.

KATHLEEN: We're always going to be going deeper and deeper and deeper because it's not just this lifetime we're healing. We're healing other lifetimes as well. Right. So I'm sitting here going like, what's going on with me now? And I'm like, Oh God, don't tell me something else is coming up.

KATHLEEN: And it's like, and thank you God that something else is coming up, because it's like that you don't want to feel it, but then, on the other side, you're going to feel great and life will like get easier. And, it's a matter of when you start having the experiences behind you that you realize that when you are in the muck, so to speak, everything is still OK.

KATHLEEN: It's going to be OK because you've been over the other side so many times, kind of like the woman you were working with and thinking her business is failing. And it was her stuff coming up. But that's what we do. We always want to look outside. We don't want to go inside, but we have to go inside to look. We. Always have to go in because to go in is how you're going to go home.

JESSIE: It is. And honestly, if you think about it, it's a journey of love. It really is. It's a journey of falling in love with the essence of you. I say my purpose is to help awaken and heal the true essence within. And that's really what we're doing in all of this.

JESSIE: And when you do, the beauty of it is that not only do you fall in love with yourself, but Knowing that you are a human being, you are part of the whole. So when you fall in love with you, you fall in love with humanity. And you see everyone through a different set of lenses. Now when people are cruel or unkind, you're witness to it as a context of their pain, not your truth.

JESSIE: When someone's unkind or does something that is hurtful, they have to live with that first. They have to eat that first, right? If someone's unkind, they have to eat unkindness first. That's hardcore. So I have nothing but compassion.

JESSIE: It doesn't mean I want to be on the end of their bullseye, but I have a sense of understanding that when someone is cruel, that there's a deep level of pain going on inside of them. And so if we can start to be brave enough to go down our path, because there's another layer, it's not just healing our hearts. It's also healing our bodies from the memory. Right? I remember I was ready to be in relationship, right?

JESSIE: After all this abuse with my father and then the abuse with my husband and all the stuff that I had endured. I'm like, okay, I'm ready. I've healed up here. I've healed down here. I'm ready for a relationship. And I was talking to somebody, a friend of mine, and I was sharing this.

JESSIE: And as I was sharing it, I felt my body go, I was like, what was that? Like my body was uncertain. My body was like, are you putting this out there again? I don't know. And I was like, oh, wow, energetically at the thought of now entering relationship, my body was still in fear. And so I had another layer of healing to do there.

JESSIE: And so my invitation for the listeners is to understand that you have a courage within you that you haven't even met yet. It is deeper and very, very powerful. And if you're willing to be brave enough to look again, we're not going to the past to re-injure. We're going there to get understanding. And here's the key component.

JESSIE: It's not just to notice what happened, but it's also to notice what else was created in the depth of your pain.

JESSIE: There's a little girl for me i used to build traps to warn me when my dad was coming into my room it didn't always stop him but somehow it made me feel better to know that I was getting warned that he was coming and.

JESSIE: You can look at that and say, wow, that's really tragic that a little girl had to build traps to warn her from her father, coming into her room, which is true.

JESSIE: But there's another truth. The other truth is I see a beautiful, creative little girl. I see a very resourceful little girl. I see a very courageous little girl because that is also true. Right. This one makes me feel disempowered and sad. This one has me see through the lenses of like love. Like, oh my God, look at how amazing she was that she did that. So both are true.

JESSIE: The one I choose to focus on is the one that's going to dictate how I live my life. So we have to be willing to see the other story. We're not taught to. So I always say you have to find the beauty and the gift in the pain, because if you don't, you will only remember the pain. And that's what keeps us limited.

KATHLEEN: Well, we're going to go ahead and take a quick commercial break.

KATHLEEN: Welcome back, everyone, to the Journey of an Awakening Spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host, and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV network. And I have Jessie Torres in the room with us. So, Jessie, what is one piece of advice that you would offer our audience to help them move in a different direction to achieve their dreams or become a better person?

JESSIE: Well, I already think you're an amazing person, but there's always a higher level, right? So what I would say is know that you are beautifully worth it and that you can take a step of action right now. Some people might think, this is great, Jessie, but you don't know my situation. I'm stuck here. I have to stay here.

JESSIE: Maybe it's an unhealthy marriage. Maybe it's you feel like you're working three jobs and can't make ends meet, whatever it is. You might feel that contraction around this is good information that you don't understand. Trust me when I tell you, especially right now, there is so much information and so many people that are willing to help reach out.

JESSIE: But if you have to be in the belief that you are worth it, you have to believe that you matter. You matter. If you have children, of course you matter right to them. But if you don't, you matter to the rest of the world. Do you know that the people that treated me kindly? Will never know who they woke up.

JESSIE: They snapped me. I call it short circuit moments. They snapped me out of an apathetic state, enough to give me the strength that was in me already, but I wasn't witness to it. But it gave me the courage to get out of my situation. They will never know. So trust that you out there, you are not helpless. You are not hopeless.

JESSIE: And you matter because your one act of kindness can help change the trajectory of somebody's life like it did mine. So know that you matter. Shift your beliefs, whatever, however you've been raised, whatever you've been told, whatever it is that you believe in this moment, there could be a different belief that will help you move. What if what has gotten you here is not what's going to get you to the next level?

JESSIE: What if you have to think differently? What if you have to, when everybody's going left, you start to look right and you start to think, you know what, maybe I'm going to go this way. You weren't meant to blend. We were meant to stand out. And like I tell my children, whenever we're looking for a leader that we want to honor or we're looking for, somebody that we want us to lead, to lead us out of whatever.

JESSIE: So whenever we think we found somebody and we... You like what they're saying, and then boom, they do something that disappoints. You know, when you're trying to find that person and you can't find them, it's because you're meant to create it. You're meant to create it.

JESSIE: And I believe that the most sensitive, I believe the depth of your darkness is converse to the height of your light. So the deeper your darkness, I believe the greater your light. And if you are one of those light warriors out there that is in the depth of darkness, trust that you matter and we need you.

JESSIE: And that your sensitivity and your ability to love and feel so deeply is what the world needs more of. And now that we've shifted out of the age of Pisces and we're entering the age of Aquarius, it's more heart centered. It's our time. It's our time. It's your time. But you have to take that first step and know that there's a bigger resolve and courage in you that you haven't met yet.

KATHLEEN: I love that. I absolutely love that. How can people get a hold of you?

JESSIE: You can come to IamFierceGrace.com. Okay, I am Fierce Grace. Fierce Grace is the name of my program. And it is something that I love because it identifies both of the powers within us. That mama bear energy and that beautiful desire to love. And we all have masculine feminine.

JESSIE: And so it's how do we combine both and come to that center of the infinity symbol to gain our greatest power. The outcome here is to take all the pain that you've had and alchemize it into power. Power to take your life back. Power to be sovereign. Power to be able to take a stand for you.

JESSIE: And we do that by acknowledging where you're at, getting at the helm of the operating system of the mind, and choosing to reprogram ourselves so that we actually are making a conscious decision of what we choose to believe versus the unconscious conditioning when we didn't know better. And it's still happening today. The media, everything is feeding into our minds, constant stuff.

JESSIE: So be mindful of what you put in here. Be mindful of what you listen to. Be mindful of the peer group you have. You know, they say your life is in direct proportion to the expectation of your peer group. So check in. Are they empowering you or are they in constant complaint and constant chaos? Check in.

JESSIE: Because if you're wanting a different life, you got to surround yourself and put in between these two ears information that helps uplift you like this podcast. That brings you to awareness. If you're here and you're listening, it's because you are a seeker. So I know you're ahead of most. Just take that next step.

KATHLEEN: Well, thank you so much, Jessie, for being on the show with me today. I really do appreciate your insight, your depth of knowledge and your awareness and the things you've done to come from the darkness within to where you are.

KATHLEEN: What's the word I want to say inspiring thank you thank you I mean I know your story and you inspire me and I'm still a work in progress too but you know that's the whole point is again surround yourself with the people that inspire you and be around your tribe because sometimes that's what you need is just to be in your tribe because if they're moving they know is something that maybe you don't know today right I mean, so that's how I look at it.

KATHLEEN: I mean, everybody's a gift and everybody's a messenger. It doesn't matter how they present the message. They're always a messenger. So again, thank you so much.

JESSIE: I love Ram Dass's quote that says, we're all just walking each other home. So there's no hierarchy here. There's just people at different parts of the path, right? And we're here for the people behind us, not the people ahead of us. And the people ahead of us can continue to inspire us, so it's beautiful. And I'm super excited too. I failed to mention, I apologize.

JESSIE: I have a gift for your listeners. And it's a 10-step guide to freedom. And it will actually give you some steps that you could take right now, regardless of your situation. So it's my gift to you guys. And if you guys have a call and you want to connect with me, please do so. You're able to do that on the website. It's a free call and I'd love to connect.

KATHLEEN: Thank you, Jessie. I do appreciate it. And thank you. For all my listeners for joining us today. I hope you found some value. And if you did, please be sure to like and subscribe to the channel and also to send the link to your friends and family. And if you're struggling with what we talked about today and you'd like more information, please feel free to reach out to me or to reach out to Jessie.

KATHLEEN: She gave you how you can get a hold of her. And you can reach me at BraveTV at KathleenMFlanagan. Com. My books, Dancing Souls, The Call, Awakened, and The Dark Night of the Soul are up on Amazon and Kathleen M. Flanagan.

KATHLEEN: And be sure to visit KathleenMFlanagan. Com for the list of services that I provide. And also you have access to a three-minute de-stress meditation that is absolutely free to you that will help bring a little bit more balance into your life and some peace and tranquility.

KATHLEEN: And that is our show for today. I will see all of you guys next week, Tuesday at 4 p. m. Eastern Standard Time. And from my heart to yours, I wish you a fabulous week.