151. Summer Song Series: You Didn't Really Know Me, and I'm Finally Starting to Know Myself

 ​Summer Song Series; Self-Love + Resilience 

Hello. Hello, my amazing, beautiful listeners. Happy Summer thanks for joining me today, wherever you're at. I'm glad that you're here with me and joining the continued summer song series. Got our last episode here, wrapping it up in the month of July with a couple more songs.

I'm telling you what it really is so hard to pick one song, to pick two or just one episode. There are so many, which is why if you go to the show notes I did include. I can't remember if I did this last the last couple summers, but I did include my Healing Me Choosing Me playlist, , that has just about every one of my songs That speaks to me in some way that validates in some way my healing journey. And so if you would like to check out that playlist, I will forewarn you. I do have explicit songs on there, but the songs are tagged with an E. If you don't wanna listen to any of the explicit songs, you can just skip. So there's my warning, but if you would like to go check out that playlist, all of the songs that I've talked about this summer will be in there.

this next song, is one that I think is from an a fairly unknown artist, at least unknown to me. When I found her and when I heard the song, I was like, oh my gosh, this, this resonates so much. and I know this resonates with a lot of the clients that I have.

Today in our final episode of the Summer Song series, We are going to talk about ,  what really looks like when you are healing from betrayal, and why sometimes it just feels annoying, it feels hollow or even pointless. The truth is you didn't choose to be here. you didn't set out on some beautiful soul discovery journey to even get to this podcast.

You were betrayed, you were lied to, you were abused, and now you're the one trying to put all of the pieces back together and all the world has to offer sometimes it seems is just love yourself. Just love yourself really. So this one is for those of you who can pour love into other people, can compliment a stranger in a bathroom. On how beautiful they are, who can check in on friends, forgive people who don't deserve it, but struggles to give yourself that same care, the one who hears the phrase self-love and feels tired, cynical, and maybe even angry.

So if that's you, this song is your anthem, and this episode is your permission to feel all of it and still move towards something truer.

The song is Self Love by aa, and here are the lyrics. You are so pretty. I say to the random girl in the bathroom, I forgive my stupid ex's. Like I have to text my friends just to say, I'm checking on you what it must be like to be on the other side of me, always smiling nice and sweet, deep down. In reality, I hate the way self-love sounds. I hate that. I need some right now. I hate this dumb self-love song. I'm the only one. I don't let myself love I was supposed to write out 10 things I like about me. I only got to three. What does that say about therapy? I posted a caption saying, treat yourself nice. For the life of me, I can't seem to take my own advice, what? It must be like to be thriving in high self-esteem. Confidence is so mainstream. . Maybe it's just not for me. I hate the way self-love sounds. I hate that. I need some right now. I hate this dumb self-love song 'cause I'm the only one. I don't let myself love what it must be like to be anybody else but me.

I hate the way self-love sounds. I hate that I need some right now. I hate this dumb self-love song 'cause I'm the only one. I don't let myself love. I'm the only one. I don't let myself love self-love.

How many of you resonate with that? How many of you are in that space where if you hear one more person say, just love yourself first, you're going to scream, I. How many of you might be finding so many different ways, trying so hard to love yourself, but that part of you finds it easier to just love others and ignore yourself?

Ignore your needs.

How many of you are the emotionally safe person for everybody else? You show up, you give support.

But what would it be like to receive that kind of love and support and patience and care that you so freely give others? The lyric that says, I hate the way self-love sounds. I hate the way, and I hate that I need some right now. No one talks about the bitterness that can come from healing. The, oh, now I have to deal with this type of feeling.

Again, you didn't choose this pain, but you do get to choose how you relate to yourself from here on forward, and that really does matter. I remember thinking so many times like, why am I the one that has to do all of this work, go through all of the therapy, deal with everything that you have to deal with in order to heal from betrayal, and he just gets to move on.

He just gets to move on and live his life and find somebody else and remarry and everything is fine. I am the one that is still devastated, that is still trying to put the pieces of my brain back together, of my body, back together, of my life, back together. It just didn't seem fair, and I feel like that really resonated with me in this line.

Just, oh, I don't even wanna talk about self-love yet. This paradox of knowing that you need it more than ever. And then you do go to therapy and your therapist is like, okay, we're gonna work on self-love and I need you to come up with 10 things that you love about yourself. And you sit there with the pen to paper and you try and you try and you try.

I remember doing this with Gratitude when I first started leaning into Gratitude Journal and did the same thing. I was like, well. I mean, I didn't even wanna write that. I was grateful to be alive at one point in my life. But when you're writing down all the things about yourself, what do I love about myself?

I don't even know. Because you're in this space where everything just seems like it is fallen apart. So to try and jump into this kind of work, it feels so overwhelming. This is the reality of trauma. It absolutely disconnects you from your sense of self. So of course, it's gonna be hard to find some things that you like about you.

Betrayal impacts your self-concept. Not because you're broken, but because someone treated you like you didn't matter over and over and over again. And so part of reclaiming this sense of self is learning right now to even love the parts that hate self-love. Why do they hate it? They have a really good reason right now.

I love the line where it's like confidence is so mainstream. Maybe it's just not for me. Again, just validating this. Glossy version of self-esteem and it's everywhere. But it doesn't reflect the slow, messy reality of rebuilding it because real self-love is not loud, and it is learning to love the parts that are right now maybe triggered the parts that are depressed, the parts that don't wanna take a shower.

The parts that. I cannot see how we're gonna get through another day. The parts that are protective, the parts that are scared, the parts that have a lot of fear are that angry. All of these different parts of you are the parts that we need to learn to love, to understand, to validate this is the part that isn't loud.

This is the part that in those quiet moments where you choose not to abandon. All of these parts of you, even when it would be so much easier to just numb out or even blame.

Real self-love is a trauma response reversal. Trauma taught you that you don't matter or you're not enough, or whatever that narrative is. But self-love says you are. You do matter even right now, and you are enough just as you are. And self-love is the key ingredient to that post-traumatic growth that I was talking about, I don't know how many weeks ago, because it does start to restore that internal safety.

Remember I was talking about the internal focus of control, where we can look inside and find that sense of safety in here, but if we're looking outside of us and everything outside of us is chaos is unsafe or unknown, then it's gonna feel. Impossible to love ourself, to see ourself, but when you have the internal self-love, you're gonna feel safer with you.

You're gonna learn to trust you. It helps rebuild the identity in that self-trust, and it's how you move from surviving to choosing. So again, what would it be like? Like the lyrics say, what would it be like to be on the other side of me? How would it feel to talk to yourself the way that you would talk to your best friend?

What is one small thing that you can do today to not abandon yourself or these parts of you that might be showing up right now? I know it must be so frustrating to see some of these parts. I get it. But what would it be like to not abandon them, to listen, to validate, to see why they feel like they need to be there right now?

What feels hard about self-love right now, and what does that say about what you have been through? Self-love is not about being enough so that someone else will finally choose you. First of all, it's about choosing yourself, especially when no one else has, especially when you have felt invisible, and especially when the betrayal made you believe.

You are unlovable. Look, the self-love is not this bubble bath with candles. It's a return to self. It's a homecoming. And it might start with, I hate the way self-love sounds, but maybe I need some right now.

When we can learn to start loving ourself in that way, it starts to add to your resilience, which leads to my next and final song for the summer, and it is Resilient by Katie Perry. It's one of my all time favorite songs.

In fact, I actually had a picture that I posted on Instagram years ago that attached to this song because I was on a walk and I was walking on the sidewalk and right up through the sidewalk cracks, like there was this little literal crack in the sidewalk and there was a wild flower that was growing right up through the cracks.

It was exactly what this song talks about, and I took a picture of it and I was like, oh my gosh, this song, I love it. It just resonates so much with this idea of being, being resilient and, and being resilient after something really, really tragic.

Every one of you who are listening right now, you have made a choice. You've made hard choices, but you're making the choice to heal. You're making the choice to practice feeling your emotions. You're making the choice to grow even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is lonely. Grief, that lonely grief is like nothing else.

Again, very few words to describe really what that experience is like, but you're choosing to lean into what is not even fair. Especially those of you who are right in the thick of divorce, there's going to be so many things that are not fair giving your kids at 50% of the time. If you've had them a hundred percent of the time, it is not fair because you didn't choose any of this.

But the song says it best. They tried to poison the water, but I was a little stronger. Look at me now. I light up a room. I wanna validate that right now. You probably do not feel like you light up a room.

I love these types of songs that give hope, these types of songs that I had in my playlist. Especially when I was in the thick of all of it. I didn't necessarily resonate with everything that these types of songs maybe spoke to, but it made me believe that I could get there one day. It made me believe that maybe one day I could wake up and say, huh, I actually feel happy.

Or I could answer someone passing me in the halls or in the grocery store that says, Hey, how are you? I could actually be honest in my answer of good. I. Because at one point all of that was just a lie. So listening to these songs that really speak to post-traumatic growth, to resilience, to hope, gave me something to hold onto when I was experiencing the complete opposite.

So if that's where you're at right now, let this song, let these lyrics be just that hope that this too will end. This too shall pass. However you wanna say that. One day you will get through to the other side, I don't care what anybody else says. When you start to become the chooser of your life, the grass is freaking greener on the other side.

Okay? Here are the lyrics to Katy Perry's song Resilient. I know there's gotta be rain. If I want the rainbows, and I know the higher I climb, the harder the wind blows. I've gone to sleep night after night. Hunching a pillow. But do you know the darker the night, the brighter the stars glow?

Because I am resilient. A full flower moment won't let the concrete hold me back. Oh no. I am resilient. Born to be brilliant. You'll see me grow right through the cracks. Yeah. 'cause you're gonna watch this flower grow right through the cracks. I've gotta shed all the skin. If I want the distance, let the sun in, pull out the weeds and focus my vision.

Cause there's no mistakes, just bends and breaks and friction. But do you know the hotter, the fire, the pure, the gold is? 'cause I am resilient. A full flower moment won't let the concrete hold me back. Yeah, I am resilient. Born to be brilliant. I'm gonna grow right through the cracks.

I died every winter, but survived all the weather. Look at me now. Look at me. Now. I'm in full bloom. Yeah, they tried to poison the water, but I was a little stronger. Look at me now look at me Now I light up the room 'cause I am resilient. A full flower moment won't let the concrete hold me back.

Know I am resilient. Born to be brilliant. I'm gonna grow right through those cracks. Oh, you're gonna watch this flower grow right through the cracks. I love this song. It brings tears to my eyes every time because that hope, that fight. When I had that, when I had that imagery right in front of me on the sidewalk, with that flower grew right through the tiniest of crack, the amount of resilience and uncomfortable that that flower went through to be able to grow.

Feels so relatable.

Life is 50 50. It comes with that 50% resilient., The higher you climb, the harder the wind blows. do you want the rainbows? It's gonna rain. We as humans experience the 50 50. But when we step into choice, when we choose, we are resilient through all of it and we can grow anywhere.

when other people circumstances,   or our brain tells us that we can't because the concrete is gonna hold you back when it feels like concrete wall that you were up against. I just want you to have that imagery of the flower growing in between the cracks and nothing is gonna hold you back and everybody is gonna watch you grow because you really were born to be brilliant.

Bold, soft, intuitive, wildly whole. You were never meant to shrink, to survive. You weren't just born to be brilliant. You were born to be seen, to be safe, to be sovereign. Sovereignty matters, and you were born to take up space without apology. You were born to rise, to reclaim, to radiate, especially from the places that once felt absolutely shattered.

You were born to be loved, rightly, held safely, and believed deeply, first by yourself and then by others. You were born to be brilliant, not just in your light. In your healing, your wholeness, your wholeness is your greatest glow up. apparently that's a phrase that's popular right now. Having a glow up. Just learned that from TikTok, but you becoming whole is your next glow up.

So today's song, Self-Love and Resilient, took you a little bit deeper perhaps.

Deeper into maybe the resistance that parts of you feel into the exhaustion of having to do all this work that you never asked for, into the power of realizing that despite it all, you're still here, you're still rising, you're still blooming. You are still becoming, that if self-love was the raw truth of how hard this healing journey can feel.

Especially when you have been betrayed, then resilient is the reminder that you were never too broken to bloom, and that you were never too far gone to grow again. So even if you're still in the cracks, even if you can't list 10 things to love about yourself just yet, even if the phrase self-love still makes your eyeballs roll, I hope that you still hear this, reminder that you are resilient, that you were born to be brilliant.

And that you were never meant to stay buried under that betrayal. You are the chooser in your life, and you can choose the life you want because you can take care  everybody.