S4:E2 What Screaming at God Taught Me

Divorce, Identity Loss, and the Clarity That Came After Rage

Watch this episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL3AkExW1dE

In this episode, I dive deep into my kitchen floor meltdown: full-throttle, throat-burning, tears-streaming FUCK-YOU's directed right at God. What happened on the other side of that breakdown was the most unexpected peace of my life and the realization that cracked everything open.

The hardest part of the last 3 years, wasn't the marriage or the career that I ended,  it was the identities that I had to let go of. I talk with brutal honesty about the grief of letting go and my stubborn, enduring resistance to it.

This episode has all of it ... why I disappeared, what the coaching industry's collapse looked like from the inside, what full-time single parenting actually costs, and what happens when you stop fighting what is. 

Come find me on Facebook or Instagram and tell me what you're going through. I want to know. I'm not here to perform, I'm here because there are things that need to be said and I'm the one to say them.

00:00 Anniversary Reflections
01:02 Divorce Epiphany Setup
03:01 Why I Quit Coaching
04:03 Divorce Survival Mode
05:18 Tools That Explained Me
11:20 Cracks In Coaching Industry
12:04 Marketing For Other Coaches
15:07 Identity Loss And Aging
18:06 Single Mom Anger
19:55 Screaming At God
23:03 I Got What I Asked For
28:51 Letting Go Takes Time
31:56 Your Role In The Dynamic
32:52 Why Ive Been Quiet
34:48 Podcast Invitation
35:34 Closing Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello. Welcome. Today is April 4th, 4426. Yesterday was my dad's birthday, and tomorrow is my dad's death day. He died April 5th, 2018, and he had just turned 74. Eight years ago, my dad died. That's crazy. Oh, it's crazy. Not here to talk about that, but it is an interesting day. I was about to post something on social media, and I decided this is what I should probably talk about in this next podcast episode. So, as you may or may not know, I have had a podcast for a while. This is the fourth season. I had a good first season, I had a wobbly second season, third season. It was probably the last few years going through my divorce. I dropped everything. And that is what I actually started talking about in the social media post on Facebook and Instagram and wherever the fuck it's gonna go. Was one of the biggest revelations that I had in my divorce happened after me screaming expletives at God. That may trigger some of you, but you're probably not my ideal audience. It triggered me, to be honest. All those like old Catholic, all the old like God rules and dogmas and things that you just can't do. That all just flooded in. At the time I was really pissed off. And I was telling God to fuck off. And what came after that was a clarity and a peace that I wasn't expecting. I'm living a good life. If I can do something, whether it's good or it's fucked up, and then look back on it and be like either a new view of how to look at it, a new appreciation for something, a new lesson. That's my goal. My goal is to live a life that is examined. I learned this back in college, and it was this is like a Socrates thing, or I studied communication, so I studied Plato and Socrates and rhetoric and all the things, which was fascinating to me. But I learned the quote, and it was said to be Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. That's basically been the mantra of my life. It's been my North Star. And again, I'm not talking about this either, but I wanted to talk about what came up for me as I was writing this Facebook post. So I'm gonna read it. And it's an explanation of why I closed my coaching business. So here's how it goes on Facebook. One of the easiest decisions I made when I was heading into my divorce was closing my coaching business. Don't get me wrong, my ego was not liking it because it left a very strong you failed taste in my mouth. Maybe people would think that I couldn't hack it or that I was giving up side note. What people think of me is none of my business, but I digress. I had worked really hard to get my business to that point. I had clients who were raving about my programs, and many of clients, my clients in one program were enrolled simultaneously in another program. And I was like, oh, I've tapped into what my clients need and I'm offering it and they're buying it. And it's a no-brainer. And I got to this place and it was so great. I felt amazing to be in that place. But a very big part of me was relieved to stop coaching. And there were a couple of reasons why. The first reason was I instinctively knew what was ahead, like going into my divorce. I was like, oh, fuck. I knew what I was going to need to focus on for the next year or two, finding and furnishing a new home, making it feel like an awesome second home for my girls, healing my heart from so many huge losses, and holding massive amounts of loving space for my children's pain and healing. I made that my full-time job for the next year. I didn't bury my feelings in work. I didn't turn away from what was hard. I allowed myself a full throttle emotional experience of all of the endings. I was determined as fuck not to do my divorce the typical way, the way I had experienced as a kid. The kind where no one is talking about anything hard. Feelings are avoided and everyone's acting like nothing's wrong. I would not avoid talking to my kids about their pain. I dove in, eyes wide open and fully ready for whatever was to come. What was to come was heart shattering in ways I couldn't have anticipated for me and for them. The second reason why I started to experience cracks, the second reason was I started to experience cracks in the coaching industry as a whole. Now, pause. I'm not no longer reading. If you know me, if you follow me, if you've known me at all, you know that I'm a big human design geek. I love the gene keys, I love astrology. I one of the reasons why I love all of these tools is because I my life revolves around discovering why I do what I do. And it's always been that way. And I have felt bad and wrong for that. I've wanted, for as long as I could remember, to figure out why I am the way I am. Part of that was because for as long as I can remember, everyone's going this way. And I'm like, I'm not going that way. That's not a good way. I don't know why, but I'm not going that way. I'm gonna go over here. It's really lonely over here, and then I would inevitably, especially younger me, think, what the fuck is wrong with you? My inquiry into myself was at least initially, and it was actually not just initially, it was for a very long time to try to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. Like, how come everyone's going into this box in the church and they're confessing their sins? And I'm like, oh, that's a bunch of bullshit. That's a bunch of bullshit right there. That's a bunch of control. That's not God. God did what sin? What? So that was seven. Then in college, graduate with honors, dean's list, and I had graduated high school with a 2.3 GPA. I fucked off in high school. My first two years, I was in a bad situation and didn't give two shits about high school. And I had to work my ass off to graduate just with a 2.3. That's crazy. That's a damn C. I'm smart. And so I'm like, I'm smart, graduated college, did it on my own, worked my way through school. Why the fuck can't I like go just get a job? But there I was, 20, whatever, one, 22, bartending for another eight years after I graduated college. So 32, yeah, I was 24, I was 32 when I figured out, when I started to really dive deep into myself, because that's when I did the landmark forum. But like my whole life has been, my whole existence has been, how come I don't like like again? It sounded like I don't fit in. There's something wrong with me, but how come I don't go that way when everyone's going that way? Human design gave me answers. Human design said, Oh, sweet dear child, you are not designed for that. You're not here for that. The makeup of who you are is designed to bring something new into the world. I'm like, I wish you bitches would have told me like a lot sooner, because I there's been a lot of self-deprecation, there's been a lot of abuse, thinking I'm all fucked up. And one of my gene keys, the shadow, is a shadow of corruption. And that gene key, and if and if you don't get on it, my pearl sequence, the path to prosperity for me is to overcome the shadow of corruption. And I want to say the city is harmony or something, but I have been able to see corruption inside of things like the Catholic Church, like the education system, like corporate America, like our government, like religion, I've been able to see it and been full, full body, fuck no. Full body, you couldn't pay me. You couldn't pay me. So my love for human design is that when I started to dive into it, and I've always been, I haven't been like, oh, read your I'm from the 70s. It's like the Sunday paper, right? You find your horoscope in the cosmopolitan magazine for the month, whatever it is. This is an absolute blueprint based on the time that you were born. And I'm just a fan. I've just, it has given me so much clarity into who I am. And then my next favorite, so human design and then the gene keys. It's the same work, two different interpretations of the same information. Love it because it helped me understand that I have the channel of the wavelength, which basically is you are here things. You're ahead of your time. You're ahead of your time in things before they are here. That has been a hard existence. It's hard when you're young and you're like, I am choosing to not go that way. Everyone's going that way. I'm not going that way. I had no idea why. So now that I know, it's empowering to me. I'm also a Enneagram eight. I'm a numerology life path eight. I'm a fucking eight everywhere. And eight in numerology is financial success and empowerment. So empowerment for me has always been my thing. Human design got me into this place where I started to not, I started to understand why I do what I do, why I see the world the way I see it, and how that's actually, those are actually my superpowers and my gifts. So back to the the Facebook post is I left off here. Second reason I was wanting to close my coaching business was because I was starting to see and experience cracks in the industry as a whole. I started to feel really misaligned with the strategies we were being taught and using. 2015 is when I closed my boot camp. I got a job, but I also was doing coaching on the side. So 2015 to 2022, I was online coaching. Seven years. My math is mathing. So I've often felt like I don't fit in. I've often felt like, why are we doing it this way? Anything that I'm in, I'm like, oh, this is so not good. But I start to see things crumble before they actually crumble. And I started talking about this three, four years ago. So here's what I've been doing for the last two and a half years. For work to keep my lights on, to pay my rent. This is what I've been doing. I didn't know what I actually wanted to do in my business. What I've been doing for the last two and a half years for work is doing the marketing for various online coaches. So I worked with a very well-known, I think he's well-known coach. I worked with him for just about a year doing marketing, lead magnets, email marketing. And then after that, I worked with a husband and wife. They had a wedding industry professional coaching program, but it was messaging. And the first coach was messaging as well. And then this couple sold a coaching program to help wedding industry professionals, photographers, caterers, venues, attract brides. And then the last gig that I had was for a love coach. My experience with each one of these across the board, all of them were doing high-ticket. My first and only business coach, she taught me one thing, one strategy. And my frustration was that even that one strategy came with all these other things that I actually had to know how to do: copywriting, branding, creating graphics. I had to learn all these things, like sales pages, email marketing. So because I learned all those things, I am fully capable of doing the marketing piece for other coaches. So that's what I've been doing for the last two and a half years to keep my lights on. This is what I write. I started to feel really misaligned with the strategies we were being taught and using. I could see years ago what I believe the industry is experiencing now: distrust and skepticism of high-ticket offers. I made a $40,000 high-ticket coaching mistake myself. So that experience was personal. Fatigue of buyers having to filter through countless ads, promises, pitches, AI, algorithms, sales calls, and urgency bonuses and stacks and all the things, it's overwhelming. And then the client having to sort through will this work for me? Should I spend this much money? What if it doesn't work? The promises of coaching started making me nauseated. The pitches started sounding all the same. The format of programs felt yucky to me, but I was in the game, so I had to play. So when all of my programs that I was in, that I was running at the time, my clients ended in October of 2022. And so what I told my clients was, hey, I'm gonna take the month of November off. And when I did that, I felt free. And then the month turned into indefinitely. And then I never went back to coaching. And what I learned is that when it feels off, it probably is. And here's the thing: if it feels off and you've got a whole fucking business tied to something that feels off, that's a hard decision. If I hadn't gone through divorce and gotten a payout from the sale of our house, I wouldn't have been in a position to do that. The hardest thing that I had to deal with during that time was the loss of these identities. And listen, being someone who's half a century old plus a couple years, I'm not the same person I was, and I'm still all those people. I'm in a different phase of life, and I have different things that are challenges for me. But I'll tell you right now, this is what I'm talking about now, the loss of identities. So I lost the identity of being a homeowner, of being a wife, a family of four, and then a coach. And then I was losing being in a marriage or a relationship for 20 years with the same person, and then you go out and you're single. At the time I was 52 years old, I was like, who would want this? As a woman in our culture, my beauty, my youth, my thinness, my external appearance is currency. And as we age, you start to see that currency fade away. So at 52, I'm like, oh shit. Oh shit. I was no longer fit. I was no longer young. Aging is a motherfucker for women. It's just a motherfucker. It is mindfuckery. And these identity losses were the hardest because they left me feeling uncertain, unsteady, disoriented. If I'm not a homeowner, if I'm not a wife, if I'm not a family of four, if I'm not a coach, if I'm not young, thin, and beautiful, like I was in all of those years that I was married, feeling like I gave my best physical years to the marriage, then who am I? I'm saying identity-wise, what I identified with. Now, I haven't been ready to answer the question, who am I? Because the void after letting something go had to be created first. And I wasn't ready to let it go. And so it's taken me three years to, I'm not even gonna say process the losses, but be in the process of letting go. And I'm a fucking Scorpio, man. I don't like to let go. I like to have control, I like to fucking move shit the way I want it. That's not how life goes. But it's taken me three years to fully process the losses, to allow the lessons of grief to teach me, to give up the massive amounts of anger I was holding on to toward my ex and to finally let shit go. But sometimes the emotion does come up. Fuck man. I want to explain, and there's a lot of things I can't talk about, and maybe I can, I don't know. They're facts, and they're also my view of what happened in my marriage and what happened after he did what he did and what the impact was on my children. But I was angry, fucking pissed off because I'm a full-time single parent. My children see their dad zero times. Zero. He lives in California, so I don't get breaks. I have some child support that he pays, but he does no parenting. So the mental, emotional, psychological load, not just of me, but also of my two kids, it's on me. Single parenting is the hardest fucking thing I've ever done. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. And I was pissed about it for a long time. How can he just leave? Who the fuck does that? And I think the sh shock that he did that was probably the hardest thing for me to get over. You moved. You left your children. But you left your children, which means you left your children with me 100% of the time. Hard, hard, hard. Angry because I'm so fucking tired. Angry because you just bounced. You just took the fucking easy road. Angry because who does that? Angry because I was estranged from my dad as a kid. At nine years old, my mom moved us across the country. So I was away from my dad from the time I was nine for the rest of my life. I understand what they're feeling. It is the most disorienting, scary feeling to not have a male presence in your life. It's fucked up. So not only am I doing this with them, I'm reliving my own childhood. And then it all came to a head one day. I'm in my kitchen and I'm terrified because I have no idea how I'm gonna pay my rent. And I'm just in between jobs or something. I don't know what I was doing. Terrified, how am I gonna pay my rent? Frustrated that I had to parent my daughters alone, furious. This is what sent me over the edge. Furious. Like this, the unfairness of life. And I started screaming at God because of all the people on the planet who were not good people, who did not have goodness in their hearts, who were not doing good work for other people for the planet. They weren't doing good work and they were rich as fuck. I started to jest fucking scream. I looked up at the ceiling to the place where God was supposed to be, heaven, right? And I started telling him to fuck off. And I just taunted him and said, Why don't you just take everything else? Fuck you. Go ahead, take it all. The number of times I said fuck you to God, it's astounding. I lost count. Screaming at the top of my lungs to the point where throat, lungs, everything like I'm crying. I mean, screaming, sweating, red, the release of anger and pain opened up something in me. And I didn't hold it back. I didn't hold it in anymore. I said all of the fucked up shit. I had been feeling in inside, but managing for the sake of my kids. And then I had the biggest realization. So here's the realization. I'm so angry at my ex for leaving and making me a single mom. A struggling single mom on welfare, just all the things. But it hit me. So when I Got together with my ex when I was 32. And he was actually someone that I had dated eight years prior. We got together at 24. We dated for six months. And I knew him. So he was like, Am I coming down there? Are you coming up here? Like, you were the one that got away. Let's do this. Y'all women know what I mean when I say I know I was 32 years old. The biological clock is ticking for a 30-plus year old woman. She knows that she has a certain window when she can have children. And I was like, I know him. He's a good guy. I'm 32. I wanted children. I did not want a love affair. I wanted someone stable, someone good, someone kind. And I just went, okay. And I trusted the universe.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

I was like, yeah, let's go. 32, I move up there.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

35, I get married. We move here. I was 36. 37. I get pregnant with my first daughter. 40, I get pregnant with my second daughter. So in that moment, after screaming blasphemy to God, take everything away. Here's what I realized.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

I got what I asked for. Like when it hit me, the amount of peace that I had was unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

I got what I asked for. What I asked for was babies. I wasn't searching for love. I wasn't searching for my soulmate. I was searching for babies, my babies. I needed to have those babies. And I had them and I now have them. They are mine. 100%. They are mine. I raise them fully. It's the three of us. Is it ideal? Is this what I want? Is this how I was putting my order in? No. And that's what I asked for. That was my intention. I gotta have fucking kids. I gotta have babies. I knew I was supposed to be a mama, and I had to be responsible for that's what I was looking for. So huge realization that helped me move past this anger because I got what I wanted. Get what you asked for. And I didn't see it until then. I couldn't see it because I couldn't see anything through the anger. How could you leave? How could you fuck your children over this way? These are sometimes still the thoughts when my kids struggle. When my kids struggle and I know that they're struggling because their dad isn't here, and then I have to talk myself off the ledge and be like, this is also depending on what you believe in, this is also their journey. See, I get pissed because I feel responsible. I get pissed at him for bowing out because I feel responsible for their heartbreak.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

My intention when getting married wasn't, I want to find the love of my life.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

It was I need to have kids. And when I'm sitting here screaming at God, enraged at that he left, that's what I got. That's the realization that I got. That was like, oh fuck. Okay. Yeah, this is what I asked for. This is what I wanted. And you can't be like, this isn't how I wanted it. Not it's not how it works. But when I could actually sit with, oh, this is what I actually wanted, and oh my god, I have them. Because what could be worse? Not having them. Not having my children. That's worse. So there's I've had experiences, and I hope to talk about these as well. Where what are the gifts here? So if I'm looking at the things that I lost, I'll rattle these off again. The identities are the hardest thing for me to say goodbye to, let go of the identities of being a homeowner, really hard to let go of that house. I have so much invested in the house. I conceived my babies, brought my babies home, raised my babies in the house. We've got all the height tick marks on the no longer a wife, no longer in a marriage. Now, I've had people say to me, didn't you want the divorce? It doesn't matter if I wanted this or not. I have been in this identity, in this role, for 20 fucking years. That's an identity. Family of four. Not a family of four. Coach, an entrepreneur. Not that anymore either. And then menopause, throw that fucking cherry on top of the Sunday. Good lord. So the identity part has been the hardest part for me. And then when I saw that this was actually what I wanted, this being a mom, having children, having them, I have them. And I got that. I felt it. It was like this, it was like a thunderbolt.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

And I was like, ah, what the fuck.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

When you can't see anything but the pain, you're not either you're not ready for, I don't ever want to rush people. Grief is a fucking motherfucker. It's crazy. The hardest part of this entire thing was the sheer number of things, the sheer number of identities that I was grieving and letting go of. Coach was one of them. But I asked for this. I wanted this. This was my intention. My intention was I have got to get married so that I can have kids. So here's what I'm hoping that you hear. We outgrow everything. We grow out of everything, including this body.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

I mean that as like when we die, right? Change is the constant.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

It just when it's happening really slowly and you don't see it, you don't feel it. You're just like, oh, this is how it's always been. Nah, it isn't changing all the time. All the time. If there's one thing that I can tell you is let it go when you're ready. Meaning no one on earth could have said, you need to let this go. You need to fucking move on. That they could have said it, and that would have been like this. A, don't tell me what to do. B, I have a saying, and I've used it so many times with so many people, and it's the truest thing that I know. You're gonna do what you do until you don't do it anymore. So be okay with that. You're gonna do what you do until you don't do it anymore. So don't beat yourself up for doing it. Because that's just ridiculous. For me, that was an empowering thing to hear. It was an empowering thing to hear. When people say people don't change, that's a load of bullshit. It's a load of bullshit. We're changing every fucking day. Cells are regenerating when they're dying, and we change every day. I'm aging, I'm changing. So are you? What we witness is that people keep making the same decisions over and over. They keep making the same decisions that they've always made. So you're gonna do what you do until you don't do it anymore, want a different outcome, make a different decision, do different things. But until then, you can't really bitch about it. When I got this kind of epiphany, oh shit, I got what I actually intended when I was going into this marriage. Oh my God, I got my girls. When I realized that, the anger that I felt towards my ex dissipated. Now it comes back because of how little he is in their lives and how much it impacts my children. I get mad, I just got mad the other day. Anytime something happens with one of my kids, my first reaction is that fucking motherfucker. Maybe someday I won't have that reaction. That would be a great day. Most days, I'm just like, is what it is. When I was able to see that, I was freed the fuck up. So the lesson here that I want to share was if you're mad about something or you're frustrated about something, take a look at what you're doing inside of that dynamic. And you'll probably see that you're participating in it. I participated in things inside my marriage that was complicit. I complied, and I have to own that. I could have left. I've seen the one spouse complaining about the other. Yeah, but you're this and you're that. You can leave him, you can leave her. Quit your bitching. But you have to actually be able to pull yourself out of the dynamic and see your own role in it. I could see that I went into this relationship, into this marriage, with one fucking goal in mind: having children. I got them. And when I got that, it fucking opened up so many things. There's multiple reasons why I've been quiet on social media. The main one has been because I have not felt free enough to talk about myself. There's a part of me that felt that I couldn't have a platform where I was speaking out in ways that may contradict what the person that I was working for thought or believed. I was covering my ass. I was saving my own ass. I was like, if she knows what I think about marriage, is she gonna want me to work for her? If he knows what I think about religion, is he really gonna want me to work for him? So I have not felt free and open and free to communicate. And I have also been healing. The way that I heal is to get internal. I'm not saying I'm back, but there are things that I want to talk about. There are things that I find it absolutely necessary to talk about that I have learned from this entire thing, like this one thing, like, oh fuck, I asked for this. This is actually what I wanted. I actually just wanted the kids. I didn't set the intention of finding the love of my life. Wasn't my intention. My intention was get them damn kids. Got them. And that might be a powerful exercise for you if you're listening to this and being like, my husband's an asshole. All right. How are you complicit? Just starting there. Every day you choose to be inside something is a choice that you're saying yes to it. And the anger that I had that he left, I was like, this is not how I would choose for it to go down. I wouldn't wish not having a father onto any girl. I know how hard that is. That is just that is the worst. But that's their experience, and I'm here for it. And I'm here for their heartbreak and their breakthroughs and all the things. So part of what I want to do with this podcast is actually have it be interactive. So I am doing this for me, but I'm also doing it to make a difference for you, for the listener. And I actually want to know, I really do. There's gonna be people who just listen and lurk, but I want to know, I want to hear back from you. I posted on social media a really quick reel a couple days ago, and I got so many people like, oh my god, you're back, you're back, where have you been? And it felt good, like it felt good, and I pull myself away from social media when I feel like I have to, and then whenever I come back, it's like tail between my legs, and I'm just like, fuck that shit, man. I'm over here doing what I need to do, surviving, stop, stop eating myself up. So thank you for listening and also please interact with me. Like, really send me an send me a fucking message on Facebook or Instagram if you're dealing with something, and if there's something that I can help you with, if I can't help you with it, I might have resources. But if there's something that I can help you with, or there's something that you are wondering about that I can help with, please ask because I like podcasting because it's a monologue, but I would really love to know if this is making a difference for anyone out there listening. All right. Till next time. I fucking love you.