Show notes
HUGE CW - contains topics of abuse and violence! Below is an automatically generated script! Hey Wendy. How are you doing,Hey there. I'm great. How are you?I am doing interesting. I've had lots of conferences that I need to process. They're both church conferences for how can we make church spaces more inclusive? Your post the other day about that. I was like, as someone walking around with complex trauma and ptsd, I never actually thought about that, but yes, if I wanted to run, I gotta deal with Susan here, being like, Wendy, where are you going? You know? And that doesn't make me feel safe. Susan's great, but, uh, yeah.Yeah. That's that whole thing of I already feel like that, but I cannot imagine people that need that safety because of other issues than, than being a trans woman. like, can we think about space design, physical space design? Instead of, let's start a church. Let's go theater style. Can we hire a consultant that can think about the, the makeup of our space?More importantly, can you pay said consultant for their knowledge and theirexpertise? Cuz the church loves to just like, you know, pimp you out for like, , lack of better word.. Say more. What do I hear? Some saltiness for churches not willing to pay consultants.Um, do I feel like they, perpetuate free labor at the cost of emotional health and wellbeing? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Like, I'm definitely very salty about that.Yeah. There, there you said it. And I think that needs to be said more. You are valuable. I know you do consulting, you're valuable. and not just monetarily. People need to see that. You need to be acknowledged. So let's start this off by, I acknowledge you, you are special. Not in a, like you're special, but you are special.You are worth it. And I acknowledge you from one consultant to another. Thank you for the work that you're doing.Same to you as well. You are valuable. Yes.Thanks. So we just started off about saltiness and consultants and churches, but for the people who are listening to this, they have no idea who you are. Can you give a small introduction?Sure. So when I meet most people and they hear about what I do for a living, they're very quick to either tell me one of two things, they wanna tell me their life story or convince me that they've never experienced trauma. And pretty quickly when the latter of the two I, I'm ready to dispel any notion that you have never gone through traumaand just let you know that no one gets out. Life unsaid. So I'm a healing coach and I'm the founder and executive director of a nonprofit called Grip Plus Gumption Farmstead. Um, we serve women survivors of sexual exploitation and domestic violence. We provide free therapeutic services. We build community with them.We host quarterly healing retreats, all with the sole purpose of empowering women to continually pursue holistic healing. within a safe community. So, I've been working in anti-trafficking for nearly eight years. We worked in Houston before and now I'm in the Dallas Fort Worth area. I've also served as a trainer for trafficking awareness in several capacities.ran a ministry in Brenham, Texas, which is a little town that's halfway in between Houston and Austin. during a time when the oil field was collapsing in Houston and many people were flocking to Austin, so we're right along that main drag and we saw a lot of trafficking happen. in that time I'm still of course, so I'm not new to the road of healing.I personally live with PTSD and complex trauma. I'm a survivor of both, domestic violence and sexual exploitation. So we are a survivor led organization. I'm very open about the intimate partner violence and domestic violence experiences that I've had, but I'm still kind of healing and recovering for sure from the sexual exploitation, because that was actually a new memory that came to me just last year.So, I mean, you can already see like between everything that I do that like obviously healing is not linear. We don't start an end, right? We just never fully arrive at this destination. We just keep like crawl, clawing our way, you know, forward. So, besides that, I'm also a mom and a wife. My family and I live on two acres just south of Fort Worth.And you know, I have to say, because I live in Texas, I was not born here. I was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and then when I was like nine or 10, we moved to Houston and I grew up there. So we've lived all over, but we've been here for over five years.. I, I hear a little bit of personal passion for why you started Grid Plus Gum, but can you tell me a little bit more about why you were interested in becoming a healing coach?About four years ago, I wanted to get back into anti-trafficking work after taking a hiatus. And so I went and saw my friend Emily. She runs Jesus said Love down in Waco. She's an amazing human being. And I was like, you know, how do I. Get back into this, What do you think I should do? Who do you think I should talk to?And she paused and she looked at me and she said, You know, Wendy, the people that have longevity in this type of the work are the people that know their stories really well. And I was like, I know my story really well. Like, there's just a lot of stuff going on there. Like, it's a long story, you know?And she was like, I want you to read this book. So I devoured this book called To Be Told by Dan Allander within 24 hours of getting home. And, I just fell in love with it. The idea of story work to do as a modality for healing completely changed my life. I started working for free at the church and leading women's groups through story work.I don't recommend that. but I did. And then shortly after that, I felt. I was actually at a conference in Austin and I felt the, the words keep coming to me. Healing coach. Healing coach. And I was like, I don't even know what that is. And so if you're gonna ask something weird of someone in Texas, they gotta be in Austin.Like Austin people are just down. Okay. And I was like, Do you even think that's a thing? And they were all very, That's totally a thing. Like they knew a healing coach or something. So I was like, Okay, well I'll just dive right in. So of course, continuing to do my own personal story work and just seeing the benefits of it, just how it had completely changed everything for me.And I just saw things in a new perspective. I was like, More people need to know about this. So that's eventually just how I became a healing.That is awesome. I love that you say that you are attracted by this story based model. You cannot detract from stories. You can be academic and say, when we talk about science, people can't see me now. I'm pulling up my glasses that I don't have on, Like be sophisticated, but a story you cannot detract from that.This is my story. It's your, your lived experience.Like no one can argue with that at all. It's the, you're an expert on your lived experience. No one else is. Right. power. We do things without knowing it, like we behave on autopilot 90% of the time.So What is trauma contributing to that 90% of autopilot?when you experience trauma, your lens completely changes. So think of, You . As I've gotten older, I've need more glasses and stronger glasses, right? So like each year I go in and get a different prescription. So think of trauma as just that different prescription that you see the world through instead of, you know, in some ways I would say you see it more clearly, unfortunately, and otherwise you see it more, blurry. For example, in my lived experience, I was, raised by a narcissistic parent, and, I immediately jumped into many other abusive relationships because abuse is my norm, right? So that doesn't seem out of the norm at all. as well as experiencing neglect and. Later in life, sexual assault and, and all these things change and shape the way that we see and experience the world and the way that we see and experience each other, you know, there's always those videos on the internet of like some woman completely freaking out, you know, in the middle of Starbucks.and like people just wanna be like, Oh, she's crazy, you know, whatever. Um, she's probably having a nervous breakdown and she's probably dealing with unde trauma, or in fact not dealing with her unde trauma. So it completely changes the way that we interact with one another. The way that we trust or don't trust one another, it completely changes our lens and until we start dealing with that trauma, we're not seeing clearly, if that makes sense. absolutely. Last week I had Maddie Samson on a podcast and she does research on, childhood trauma, or specifically she focuses on poverty in the district in dc and how talking about trauma using play therapy can help kids reframe their realities to help them cope with it. if you're listening to this, Maddie, and I just messed up your dissertation, I'm so, so sorry, um, but I told her I think it made it in the podcast as well, that I thought that the golf war was normal when I was in Israel.When I lived in Israel and played around with gas masks until it was not, until I said it out loud. And people were like, That is ridiculous. Me. That is terrifying. There's nothing so sobering as when you talk about your internal family, like your family of Origins, experience, to someone else and they look at you or they don't say anything and you're like, Oh, that, that was crazy. That's, that's cra Okay, cool. Like, it just, it really will throw you off and be like, make you question everything about your life.It's, it's very sobering for sure.And sobering in a way of this should be a fundamental skill that we learn, right? I have conversations with people that think that they have not lived through a traumatic experience, and then I changed the character from them to somebody else. A very vulnerable person we both know, and they're like, Stop saying that's, that's terrible, but that's what you just went through.yes, Because why? Because we're arm, we're so armored up, right? If it happens to me, it's fine. If it happens to someone else, it's a tragedy.And we learn that as children, like in our family of origins, we're just taught and groomed in a way to, to live that way. and just accept this is, this is what this is. And it's, I mean, it's a total internal in your, in your brain. I don't know the actual word for it or whatever, but your brain is protecting you.It's a like a survival mechanism to be able to keep moving forward. Otherwise, we'd be crushed. Under the weight of these sort of literal tragedies happening to us. It must be related to heuristics. It's something that I study where your brain is preventing proteins and energies from being usurped. So it's just saying, Well, we're not gonna focus on this because this costs a lot of energy.Yes.So hypothetically, because I'm not a psych psychology psychologist,Psych, Oh my gosh. Please put that on your business card. That is a new word. If not, I, you know, I just ordered new business cards, otherwise I would totally psychologIt's an unprotected title. I can do this. So if you're, I'm not a psychologist, I reckon hypothetically that heuristics can be affected by those traumas and then happen what you say now, from now on, my body responds in a certain way that does not, make me freak out because I'm trying to protect myself or preserve energy.And, and your body, like at the point of trauma, you separate from your body, right? So you're walking around this dismembered person, this un whole person because you're not integrated with your body. So like the whole work of healing is getting you back into your body and picking up all those pieces that you've like dismantled all throughout your entire life.So you're not trusting your body either, but your body is still sending you signals this entire time. So if you come into a situation where, you, there's a creepy guy, here we go. That's like a, everybody knows, like if I say, if I say creepy guy, everybody, Oh, I've got, I've got an instance I can think of.Your body is going to react in a way before you even can think this guy is creepy. Like, your body shows up first,So it's, it's kind, it's working against you. Your survival, your protection, all, all those things really are working against you and being able to function a hundred percent. In the world.why do we do that? I mean, you know, I am person of faith, so I believe God like created the body like perfectly knowing all the things that were gonna be thrown at us. it's a safe way to keep moving forward. So, for example, let's say a child is being abused by a parent. That child loves that parent, even if they drastically violently abuse them every day.because a child will always protect, their own family. As a way to survive. The child does not want to break up the family or, because that's their safety net. That's all they know. Children are very aware of their vulnerability in this world. They know I am a tiny person and these are bigger people than me, and I can't live on my own.So I need this other person as awful as they are, to still be with me to, in a way protect me, even though in actuality they're not. it's so, it's a, it's all about survival in a way.Yeah,I mean, you think of like things in our bodies, like, we have our wisdom teeth removed, you know, when we get older. but like those were there to help.Eat certain foods, you know, caveman days or whatever. there's, the appendix and like other body parts that we have that we needed, but we no longer need as we've evolved and the world has changed, so will these things change? I'm not sure. You know, I think the more that we, teach and learn and are willing to learn and, and choose healing over every, I think there'll be a progression towards wholeness.but I don't think, I don't think everyone's gonna get it. I don't think we're ever gonna live in a perfect world this is not gonna happen. But can we be equipped to move forward in a better, healthy way? Absolutely. How do we discern from understanding this is a good feeling, this creep alert. We need to listen to this creep alert and when should we say calm down? It's time to take a step back.I have two kids. One has known me, his most of his life as someone's still living out of their trauma. The other one, has known me more as a healing version. Right? I am very quick to teach my daughter to always trust her gut a hundred percent. and we've been doing that for years, as soon as I learned, because she was not a, she's not a , she was not a friendly child.she's great, but like she, you know how kids you go up to them in the store and like, typically, you know, their parents will be like, Oh, say hi and whatever. And I'd be like, say hi. And she'd just like, give him a look and look at me and go, No And I had to learn to respect that. Like she knew.she didn't wanna talk to that person and I can't make her, or, well, I mean, I shouldn't make her right, I shouldn't make her give people hugs. I mean, that was only like a few years ago. She's only 10 now. So like most of her life I've lived under this, listen to your kids.They, they have this discernment. and just, and fostering that and like watering it, I remember when my, my daughter was really young. Me and my husband had gone back to church and he told me something that I thought was wildly crazy and partially, what's the word they like a here. Or whatever , like you're going to hell no.Um, he said, I believe that babies are born with the Holy Spirit. And I was like, You're crazy. because, you know, I'd been taught my whole, you know, Southern Baptist and Catholic life that like, you don't get the Holy Spirit until, you know, whatever. And then I watched my daughter discern these things about really adult situations that I was like, Oh, maybe she already has that.Like, that's already in her. I just need to water it. Like I don't need to put it in there. Like, it's already there. So we're already born with that internal system. You know, some people call it their gut, some people call it the Holy Spirit. Literally had this conversation again with my son last night, but like, whatever you wanna call it, like it's inside of you already and if you water it, it'll grow.Now my son on the other. born with it. He also says autism. So, like just a straight shooter. Right. world has, because of his trauma, because of his trauma responses, the world has already started washing that out of him, and he questions it. I'm like, No, you, you know what is, what is right? What is good and what is true.Like you already know that. Go back to that. When you lose your way, when you're lost and when you're confused and when you're feeling torn, go back to like the internal, like what is in there, What is that telling you? Not up in your head, like you're huddled drive you crazy all night long till 3:00 AM in your gut, go lower, Get outta your head. What does your body say about this? and I, I use this on everything. Me and my husband went to go buy a couch a few weeks ago. And he wanted this other couch. And I was like, I don't know, you know? And I was like, I'm gonna take a big deep breath and I'm gonna, I'm like, It's not this couch.It's the other couch. And I feel completely at peace about the couch we bought.Let's goSo it's, it's with everything you can feel good and at peace when you're trusting that, that internal gut feeling, whatever you call that, your internal guide, for lack of a better word.Huh? I never heard of that before I'm gonna like process this. Of course, I'm excited to process this. my, my first response right away is that, that is so helpful because If you put it like this, your gut will rarely tell you, Oh, oh, sl that person's throat,Yes, I, Well, I don't wanna say, you know, I mean like, I think there's an exception for like psychopaths and things like, I'm not sure how their guts is.Maybe, have no clue. But for ex not, they're not, they're not psych agents. Okay. No, but they,Yeah.they may be wired differently, but I would say for the mass majority of the world, 98% your gut is just not gonna lead you wrong.Your gut doesn't tell you go use drugs. Your gut doesn't tell you go drink yourself under the table. Your gut doesn't tell you I should cheat on my partner. No, it. Your gut response. If we, if we just make a value statement of. It is probably not wrong to listen to your gut. And if you need a little bit more time, it is okay to tell anybody I need 24 hours to process this. I don't have to decide now. What is it with this culture and minimizing gut? Why do we put rationality so high on the scale of skills that we need?I don't even think it's rationality. I think it's the BS politeness thing we have going on. The only people that do it better than Americans are probably the Brits where it's like the, the, the mask of the politeness, and, and that gets us in trouble. I mean, there's a person that, talks about, being nice will get you killed, in almost every situation where a woman was, assaulted, mugged.You name it. Niceness played a part, I mean, Jeffrey Daher, you know, his victims that were women that, you know, and he was a good looking man. So like, obviously he's not a creep, you know, and I'm just gonna be nice. And then, we all know how that story ends. So it's the politeness, I think that washes away the inherent need to trust our gut.we put that over everything. I'm being honest, but I'm not being polite. Well, it's actually better to be honest, in kindness. Kindness is, you know, love, honesty and truth, you know, but being nice and being polite, Dan Aller always says, niceness avoids kindness, pushes inYes. Whew. A whole different episodes only on this topic would be great. But we asserted that trauma affects our mental models big time. And we have asserted that guts and mental models are, are connected with each other, and that sometimes we need to listen to our gut a little bit more. and we also need to discern when our gut is messed up because of our trauma. That is very tangible for me and for you and for everybody. And, and it frustrates me that I still enter faith spaces, churches. That's, this is my field, right? I want to talk with churches about how they can be a leadership organization. That's what a church essentially is. Let me give a background there an explanation of why I. Believe that because if you strip away the congregants, there's only leaders left. There's a volunteer leader, there's a children's leader, there's a pastor, they're all leaders. They need leadership development. But for some reason, their main focus is Jesus, and Jesus is essential. Let , I don't wanna downplay it, but lately I've been saying, why do pastors know Calvin Luther or maybe even Bill Hybels, but they have no clue who, Daniel Goldman is or Peter Caza who are seminal leaders when it comes to emotional intelligence in leadership.because you are a leadership organization, but you focus on things that are, in my opinion, not necessarily irrelevant, but. I would rate them as lower priority. So this is another thing. Yeah. Surface, right? Or some, some are even very important, like Jesus, very important, but it's, It's, it's not Jesus's function. I've been saying this for weeks. It's not Jesus's function to, to heal somebody from trauma. Jesus can certainly help, but that's not the reason why Jesus came on earth. that's my personal faith statement right there. recognizing these traumas and these effects, how can we teach leaders?I guess there's two parts to this question. How can we raise awareness for leaders that the way our body stores trauma is absolutely massively important and. How can faith leaders be more inclusive words? People with trauma, like how can we make them not just aware of their own trauma and their own gut, but also have a better radar for people with trauma in their congregation so they can serve them better?So I think a pivotal book, that's come out in the last decade. Probably is the Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Vander Col. talks about trauma in the body, the effects of trauma in the body, how that leads to health issues, blah, blah, blah. Okay. all the things, the, like psychology, Bible on trauma,Mm-hmm. ? if you will. if a faith leader has not done their own work of healing from their trauma, there's no way they're gonna recognize trauma in someone else. In fact, they're probably gonna be triggered by other people more than they're going to be, able to recognize trauma in someone else. So a trauma informed leadership, just trauma inform people in general would be great, I think of how, police officers are not that trauma informed and that's disturbing, because they have to make quick assessments and judgements on, on situations and sometimes, They need to already have that in their toolbox.So same with, when I get my yearly mammogram, I would love for her to be trauma informed, you know, so that she would know I'm freaking out in here, I'm in a closed room and you're molesting my boob right now, and luckily the place I go to, they're very good and I would consider them trauma informed.And is there a class? Is there a book? There's everything, like trauma informed is not something that, like you can just log on and take this class and are, are there programs that do that? Sure. But it's just knowing your own trauma, processing that trauma, and then you'll be able to see it better in others, but also to just learn more.Be trauma informed. Learn more about your own trauma, will help you recognize other people's trauma. And then just continue to be a learner and, more curious about other people and about trauma. Read a book every once in a while, you know, when you guys get together to do your leadership, whatever getaways, like have someone come and teach you something about trauma.it's healthy for you and it's healthy for your, I was gonna say constituents, that's not the right word, Congregation.Yes,Um, and the other thing that like bothered the heck outta me is that, will use the verse in the Bible that says, I'm a new creation in Christ. Cool. Yeah, you are. and also do the work.You are not, healed from your trauma because you decide to follow Jesus. So many times they use the Jesus bandaid as like, Well, I follow Jesus now so my life is better. And I'm like, Who are you selling this garbage too? Because I can tell you, as soon as I started following Jesus, my life got worse.Yeah.People are looking for a shortcut. there is no shortcut to healing. It is a lifelong road that you will walk and continue to walk and you'll take a break and sit on the side for a little bit. But it's a lifelong walk and there's no shortcut to it. Is Jesus helpful in your healing?Uh, yeah. Obviously. Okay, But it's not Jesus, period. The end. Now, the rest of my life will be great and. I cannot be the only person that loves Jesus that thinks this as well and thinks or knows that the church is selling some kind of garbage pop psychology about this Jesus bandaid that's just gonna fix everything.It's like using Jesus as a crutch. But again, that's not the function of Jesus. how can we change the narrative around that in, in churches, what needs to happen?I love a vulnerable leader, one that, doesn't try to BS their way through You know, pride is a very toxic, drug. A lot of faith leaders are high on. there's something about that position too, and it's been studied and people, I mean, I think we see it, We have been seeing it.for the last, at least 10 years of like, this role is very taxing. And something happens, when certain people lead large groups of people and become idolized and they start to hide behind that guarded wall of I'm a perfect individual, be like me. But if you read the Bible, like everything Paul wrote is like, I'm a horrible human being.Like, where's the humility? that I personally struggle with as well, because as a leader, like you think you need to have all your stuff together. Otherwise, are you really a leader? But that's only because it's been modeled for us for so long that like leaders don't fall and then, We see leaders fall.So really, where's, where, where's the lie? Do leaders fall? Are they infallible? when are we gonna get away from that? When are we gonna start to see that? Like, we're all human beings. This is our very first go around the sun here. we're all new here.something that we tell our son all the time is, we've never raised a, right now, 17 year old before. And he looks at us baffled. Like suddenly he thinks we went to college to raise a 17 year old, You're our first kid. Okay? You're our first pancake.We're gonna burn you. on accident. Of course the first pancake doesn't turn out as great. Because this is our first time doing this. We're going to fail. We're not gonna do it perfectly. We're all still learning. So can we just get to a place of humility and admit that we are all very messed up individuals? I just had a conversation with Aaron Bailey from Launchpad Partners. If you're listening to this high about something similar, that that data shows us that we need to take care of our bodies. We need to take breaks. 38 hour weeks or more productive than 80 hour weeks.As a matter of fact, 80 hour weeks study over study shows has adverse effects. On productivity and again, the marketplace is slowly adjusting, but face bases, Oh no, you should work for $25,000 a year, no insurance, and you need to work 52 Sundays and the rest of the days no sabbaticals. No vacations, terrible. I'm not surprised that the leaders that we are all listening to don't have bandwidth to learn anything. Trauma informed.Where do, where's the space? Yeah. There's no space for them. And I mean, we see that the same in nonprofit world too, where people are underpaid, overworked, undervalued. it, you're right, like in the marketplace. Absolutely. Like things are starting to shift even though they're very slowly shifting. And I think the other part of that is like in our world in general, like you talked about, teaching inclusive leadership is not also not linear.It's not like, do this, do this, do this check done. Here you go. Here's your, here's your trophy. you're now an inclusive leader. Um, because things are changing. we have learned more about ourselves and the brain in the last 20 years than we have in the last what, hundred. and so because ironically just like technology is moving a lot faster than it has in even our lifetime, the thirst for knowledge, the curiosity has blown up so much so that we are learning things, we're learning more things, we're learning them at a rapid speed. and we're gonna continue that. I think, I don't think this train is slowing down. I don't think it's stopping at the station or going back to the 1950s.Like some people would, have it happen. There's opportunity here. at this point, ignorance is a choice. So if you choose to be ignorant about something, that's on you, that's something you're gonna have to deal with.what is your message to the faith leaders across the nation?listen to people that are not like you. there has been more times than not where I have sat across. From a pastor or two or three, who have talked to me like I'm new here, who have decided that because I'm a woman, my opinion is not valuable and I'm, you know, a cisgender woman, white woman.so if they don't value my opinion, I can't think of, or I can imagine how little they put value towards the bipo community, the LGBTQ plus community. so that's a problem. Listen to people that are different from you, have different experiences than you and value what they share. Even if you don't like it, you don't have to like what everyone says, but a broken clock is right.Twice a day, you're gonna glean some sort of wisdom from listening to somebody that is not like,That's good advice. Thank you so much.Thank you.Thank you so much for being on this podcast thanks for sharing your wisdom with us. I feel like we could do this. Absolutely. I think we could do this for a couple of hours and change the world together.Exactly. Just give us like two more hours. We'll have it allYes, that's it. Yes. Uh, I think I have auto transcription on this software so we can even publish it and send it to the White House. there we right? Yeah, But thanks for sharing wisdom. Thanks for being on the podcast. And please, I, I think, uh, I shared this with Jen that I wanna do a special addition of a podcast where we talk about trauma and sex.Me and Jen willlove that Yes. Maybe you guys together and I'll just sit down and let you talkand there will be a lot of FBOs dropped betweenme and okay. okay. uncle. It's fine. It's good.
