Hey Julia Woods
Join me, Julia Woods, a couples coach and wife of over 3 decades, as I share some of my client's stories and my own so that you can be encouraged, inspired, and gain new results in your marriage.
Hey Julia Woods
I Believed I Was Unwanted
I Believed I Was Unwanted
In this episode, Steph Smith-Skipper shares her powerful journey from a challenging childhood and self-doubt to reclaiming her worth and transforming her marriage. Discover how confronting "core lies," setting healthy boundaries, and embracing personal growth can lead to healing and deeper connection. Tune in for inspiring insights and actionable steps to foster love and authenticity in your relationships.
Get Steph’s Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Thank-Failing-Stephanie-Smith-Skipper/dp/B0CZDKQ1PS
💥💥Everything you need to grow the marriage you long for is waiting for you in the Marriage Growth Community:
https://beautifuloutcome.com/marriage-growth-community
🎁 FREE GIFT: Turn Defensiveness into Connection! https://beautifuloutcome.com/e-guide
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👉 Take the free communication quiz! What’s YOUR communication type?! https://beautifuloutcome.com/communication-quiz
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💥💥Everything you need to grow the marriage you long for is waiting for you in the Marriage Growth Community:
https://beautifuloutcome.com/marriage-growth-community
🎁 Free Gift for you! 100 Prompts and Ideas to Connect with your Spouse!
🎁 FREE GIFT: Turn Defensiveness into Connection! https://beautifuloutcome.com/e-guide
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👉 Take the free communication quiz! What’s YOUR communication type?! https://beautifuloutcome.com/communication-quiz
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Where you can find me:
INSTAGRAM: Connect with me at @HeyJuliaWoods
YOUTUBE: Subscribe to @HeyJuliaWoods
SHOP: Marriage resources in my storefront
RETREATS: Attend a Marriage Workshop
WEBSITE: Find more resources at BeautifulOutcome.com
FAC...
Welcome to hey Julia Woods podcast. I'm your host, julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversations. On my podcast, I will share with you the real and raw of the messiness and amazingness of marriage. I'll share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for. Welcome to another episode of hey Julia Woods.
Speaker 1:I am so excited for you to get to hear from our guest today. This is Steph Smith-Skipper and I call her Steph Skipper. She and I got connected randomly through a marriage event that Jeff and I used to speak at and her and her husband used to lead worship or lead the music. She and I connected. I connected extremely quickly with her and I wound up getting to start to coach her. Nine years ago she and I started working together and I loved getting to work with her and she's gone on her journey of healing, continued on her journey of healing in significant ways, and she's just launched a book. She's just written a book that I'm so excited for you to hear more about at the end and overall, just hear her story and get to meet her sweet, sweet, tenacious spirit that I love so much. So thank you, steph, for being here today, thank you for having me, and I do feel like I need to contribute to the intro. Everybody needs to know what a? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say badass, but we're going to sport.
Speaker 1:You are, and in the sense that I also was very drawn to Julia when we met about a decade ago and I she said, I feel like we may work together someday, and I thought, oh my gosh, I don't know how I could contribute or offer anything to you. I just had you on kind of this pedestal and then my world sort of blew up and you had been really vulnerable in sharing and teaching through your own story and experience. And when your world falls apart, sometimes you don't know who is safe. And so I remember crawling to you and being like you're safe, you're safe, you're safe. And in your kind of I don't know mystical, magical way you did, you coached me through and I thought maybe you would, you'd side with me a little bit more, and then you very lovingly saw some things in me that I didn't see yet, and they were areas that were just opportunities for growth. And you just kept holding the mirror up to me and asking me what I can control with me. I can't control other people and so you just kept inviting me to look in myself, look at my own woundings, and it really primed the pump for the next season of my life. But I'm not sure I would have had the backbone or the sense of self to face what came next in my life had you and I not had a really sweet season, and that was very much initiated by your spidey senses and your gift. You just saw something and you very generously helped me build a bit of a framework so that I could then continue to construct the new version. So, anyway, you are a big player in my story and I'm honored to be participating with you today.
Speaker 1:Well, it's such a beautiful segue into today's conversation. I'm quite emotional over here, a lot of tears in my eyes as I hear you talk of just the beauty of how life is and what. The heart of what you and I are going to talk about today is the suffering you've walked through, and when you bring up what I saw in you, it's the beauty of suffering. In in touch with the suffering and the wounds in my life and how they play out and how they attract similar suffering. That's really what I was seeing in you and inviting you to consider. Are you willing and are you ready to start looking at your own suffering and how it might be contributing to what you're experiencing in your marriage?
Speaker 1:Before we dive deeper into today's episode, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. It's a game changer really. To have the relationship you long for, you must take responsibility for yourself and who you are being, moment by moment. It's not about what your spouse needs to change. It's about you taking control of the only thing you can control, which is you. That's the truth that nobody's talking about when they talk about marriage. But I am inside the marriage growth community where I will help you take responsibility for your ability to lead conversations with your spouse to love and connection, so you can have the marriage you dreamed of when you first fell in love. At the very first link in the show notes, you can grab my Marriage Growth Community and that's really going to help. I know that because it's based on the same principles I've used to coach this couple and hundreds of other couples to marriage success over the last nine years. So grab Marriage Growth Community at the top of the show notes. Okay, back to the show.
Speaker 1:Let's just start with. Would you share with the listeners what has been your greatest suffering? Yeah, let's jump in. It's very clear to me today that my greatest suffering is that I entered the world with a belief from conception that I was unwanted, and I carried that with me for many decades. But it was a belief that felt deeply reinforced and reinforced. I was born into this human experience, tulsa, oklahoma, in 1984.
Speaker 1:And I was a surprise. My mom already had a. My brother was only five months old when she found out she was pregnant with me. She was planning to already exit a really unhealthy marriage. So, surprise, she's pregnant again. So we're poverty, food stamps, government housing, my dad's working at a QT gas station, midnight shift, just scorpions in the apartment. I've learned Don't remember the world, just it really hadn't prepared a place for me. It seemed this family unit was already stretched and very broken. And then I came on the scene and pretty quickly my mom's instincts kicked in and she was like all right, this home is not safe and my job is to protect my children, and so she took my brother and I. I was only six months old. She took a flight from Tulsa to Pennsylvania, where she's from. It was supposed to just clear her head in the home.
Speaker 1:My dad was showing signs of mental illness, but in the early 80s that was a little less socially acceptable. Anyway, we didn't return, we didn't go back and my mom did to try and work on the marriage, but my dad handled it the whole situation with anger, his own rejection, and the way he dealt with it was silence. And so I, from six months old, I had a silent father. So it reinforced this. You know you weren't wanted when you showed up and then we kind of got to know you a little and he still didn't want to. You know it worked, yeah, and it's powerful because I've coached people who come from the most secure, wealthy situations to the scorpions in the apartment with food stamps.
Speaker 1:And I have not met a human yet that doesn't have one of these core lies. And I have not met a human yet that doesn't have one of these core lies. And whatever our circumstances are in life, we use to keep making ourselves right about these lies that come to us in the first 1,000 days of our life, and so yours is I'm not wanted, and that is. It's really shocking how many people have that belief in the world or a belief like I'm not lovable or I'm not worthy, or I'm not enough or I don't have what it takes. These are the common core lies that are the deepest suffering for people.
Speaker 1:And then life plays itself out and you have some pretty tragic things that happened. What I would consider tragic, obviously losing your father at coming into a marriage that was already broken and leaving at six months and having no contact with your father. And I remember one of the first times you and I met, the first time I really met you, was I heard this angelic voice coming out of you as you were singing on stage with your husband and I was just blown away at your talent. And then I mean you have gone on to be on the Voice. You have done all kinds of things. This voice has taken you a lot of places, and when you and I met initially, you shared the story that happened one of your biggest betrayals that happened with your father when you were nine, I think and then you also shared about the betrayal that had happened with a music, them in your mind, connected to this belief that I'm not wanted or I'm unwanted, other than what felt very real to me was that the scenario played out and my greatest suffering was triggered and I thought here I'm looking for this father, you know, and I'm looking for this father. Okay, so we'll start there.
Speaker 1:I was 14 and we had a family member pass away. So there had been 14 years of silence from that, six months leaving, and I mean there are no birthday cards, no phone call at Christmas. There was silence. We had not spoken and I'd never met him, met him and there was very limited pictures even of him, because one of the ways he reacted and responded in a pretty unhealthy way to the divorce was he took everything my mom left in Tulsa to the dump, so she lost photo albums and records and I think I had one photo of him.
Speaker 1:So I was very curious and in my head I made up a narrative that helped me offer grace to him and not face this like he doesn't totally not want you. He just doesn't know you. That was the narrative. You know it's been 14 years. There's this cavern he doesn't know how to cross. So if he just meets you someday then he'll understand. So I was trying as a kid to offer him grace and that narrative really failed me, because I did meet him at a funeral when I was 14 and he didn't know we were going to be there and we didn't know he was going to be there. And so our worlds collide in the back of the sanctuary with my dead great-grandmother in a casket front of us. I mean it's just chaos.
Speaker 1:And he awkwardly greets my mom. Obviously assumes the two children who look just like him are his. I mean, we look just like him, both my brother and I. Those genes are strong. And he greets my brother and they do kind of like a manly. My brother was 15 and just like a linebacker, built wide, broad shoulders, just like my dad. So they do like a handshake the shoulder, pat the release, nice view, and you've got this Southern drawl.
Speaker 1:And I'm like a kid in a candy store, like waiting for my turn, and I'm like I'm next, I'm next, I'm next, my turn, my turn, my turn. And I'm like I'm next, I'm next, I'm next, my turn, my turn, my turn. So I reach out my hand I couldn't have been more eager. And he shakes it and he says and you must be Priscilla and Priscilla is my cousin's name who I hadn't met. My dad, brother had him for all, and so I knew it was just confusion and slip up.
Speaker 1:But boy, I remember wanting to run into the bathroom and rip paper towels and kick over a trash can. There was this desire to destroy something and that was my innocent way. I wanted to inflict my anger and charm on something that was like a paper towel. But I can see just how, oh how, wounded I was in that moment and so unequipped to deal with it. Because the usher came up and right after that, I mean, it was like I literally thought where do we go from here? I politely corrected him and said now it's Stephanie. Literally thought where do we go from here? I politely corrected him, said now it's stephanie, and then the usher came and said we'd like the immediate family to take their seats.
Speaker 1:I sobbed through the whole funeral and I know it was because I think I was. I think that's where this unwanted belief I had fought it off. I had fought it off to the best of my ability and it felt like the jury came in with the verdict. They'd taken all the information in and the judge had just ruled that it was true with the slip of the tongue. And I'll tell you I was 14 and I left that funeral a really different little girl.
Speaker 1:I flipped into a bit of a depression in the next year. I got home from that trip and I had like my first boyfriend and he ended up being my first kiss. And the week after we got home from the funeral he broke up with me. So it was like man in a freshman high school's worldview. Yeah, there, it was just punch, just punch, punch, and I didn't know how to recover. I didn't know what emotional pain like that felt, like they didn't know it existed and then I didn't know what to do with it. So I did, I slipped into a bit of a depression.
Speaker 1:I gained weight, my grades dropped, dropped, and again my mom noticed she was attentive and so she took me to the doctor because mono was going around in the school and the doctor came in with a pamphlet you don't have mono. I think you're depressed and I felt like a stigma. My friends weren't dealing with this. You know their biggest drama was like boy, they liked it and sit with them at lunch. You know I was like I don't. So, yeah, I tried, I had some tools. Then my mom got me into. That was my first kind of dance with therapy and, to this child psychologist's credit, she helped me understand that my dad had his own story that he was bringing to the table, because at 14, you're not really thinking that your parents are humans having a human experience. They just are supposed to be everything to you, and haven't they lived long enough to figure it out? So you exist for me, right? So that was a gift and I think it helped carry me through high school.
Speaker 1:And in high school I did find a sense of belonging and I would say I felt wanted in my youth group and I found a decision to go to college to study music. And then college led to an opportunity to get signed to the, honestly, the record deal of my dreams. So I had expectation. This guy was in a band that I grew up listening to and then he started his own label and had a solo career and he went from a poster on my wall for a decade to offering me this record deal. He heard me sing at a music festival and his bus had just rolled in. He was a headliner. So he got a hold of my demo and met me in catering backstage later and just said hey, I just have this feeling about you and oh, like talk about, like tickling my fancy. I felt special, like you have a feeling about me. I stood out. You see me? Yeah, this little girl that just wanted to be seen. And so I've rearranged my whole life and I moved to Nashville and I signed this record deal and I gave it all of me.
Speaker 1:In fact, I think I lost myself in six years that I was signed to this label. I totally did, because I walked into every room I was in and my energy was you tell me who to be, so that you want me. And then, who do I need to be? Yeah, so I belong here. Oh, you want me and I'm pretty good at being a chameleon so I could shape shift and I could. You want me to do that? Okay, yeah, totally, I'm gonna nail it. And it just all failed me, like I did everything they asked me to do and I stopped.
Speaker 1:I think some of the scary and harder work of asking myself who I was and bringing that to the table and the risk of it being rejected and not being a fit. That was not an option to me at the time because I just more than that. I needed the belonging and the attachment of like I'm part of this label. They called it a family and like the guy that owned the label was like the father figure and like it. Just you can't write this stuff. It was a perfect setup for me, just looking for that fatherly acceptance and specialness, belonging, mattering, yeah. So I want to just pause right there, because there's so much like this is the work that I get to do day after day with people and I've done and get to do in my own life, and that's. We don't recognize that.
Speaker 1:One of the things I want to like introduce to people if I haven't introduced this before is that why does every human have one of these core lies? Well, because every human has a life work and this world is light and dark, it is evil and it is good, and in every human being is the good, it's the beauty, the expression of the divine that is in every human, and evil does not like that. And so what is planted in each human when we are given life is our life work and our life sentence is this core lie that if we will believe that and we will entertain that, then we can live life in the darkness. We can live in the suffering, that then we can live life in the darkness. We can live in the suffering, we can live in the self-induced suffering of what we're making life suffering mean. So life is got suffering in it. We are going to suffer.
Speaker 1:There are things that have happened out of your control, and yet, when you believe the truth about who you are, the gift that you are, that the fact that you were given life, you are wanted, right, you were wanted to the point that when this marriage was almost over, god, if you will, in my experience, was like nope, I've got to use this union because there is a beauty that I want to bring into the world through it. And yet evil was like no, if I can help her believe, if I can get her to believe, she's not wanted, she will never step into the beauty of how valuable and important her life really is and how what a miracle it is that she's here. And so those two things war in every day of our lives without us realizing it. And so, while hard things happen to you, it was which were you going to believe? Were you going to believe and come out of the aspect of I'm not wanted, or were you going to come out of the aspect that I'm a miracle and something beautiful wants to happen through me? Yeah, those create two very different realities, yes, and when I met you I wasn't able to see that. Yet I was still.
Speaker 1:You know, I've heard it said like, if you're not ready, you're not ready to do the work. Go try some more suffering and see how that works. You know, go try some more pain on and then, when you're ready, I had just left this record label with my tail between my legs and I left having met a cute boy. So I thought that's my consolation prize, I'm getting hitched to a rock star. And I did. I got the guy and he happened to be kind of passive, introverted guy and I took on the pursuer role. Well, there was something like if I could get this guy because he was kind of mysterious and hard and I was like, challenge accepted, you know, I can make him love me, then maybe I'm lovable me, then maybe I'm lovable. So, again, I'm like signing up for the chaos because I'm revisiting an old trauma, trying to gain mastery over it.
Speaker 1:We revisit these stories and these narratives because we're trying it's a great thing we're doing that to try and rewrite it. But when we come with the narrative, in the end we think we're rewriting it, but unless we do that deeper core work, we're just rewriting it. And especially in survival, I mean when we go into survival as humans which we do we're automatically drawn to the life sentence that will be with us for our entire life. It's not going anywhere. It's just getting better at recognizing. We're letting it run us. We're letting it be the voice that's telling us truth in life. What's the definition for insanity? And that's eventually, what happened for me. We're always waiting for the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. So I'm revisiting the. This is what funned me so much.
Speaker 1:When we started working together is you kept asking how I was participating and I was like no, no, no, this is happening to me so much. When we started working together is you kept asking how I was participating and I was like no, no, no, this is happening to me. And you were like how are you showing up, contributing to this? And I was like no, no, no, I'm the victor here. I was finally able to see like third time's the charm. So we have this kind of core dad wound that calls me the wrong name the first time we meet.
Speaker 1:The other thing I didn't mention is I did pursue him again in college. My dad and we stayed in touch for about two weeks and then he wrote me an email that said please pretend I'm dead. I felt like my dad broke up with me and then, right after that, I meet my childhood idol. He welcomes me into this label and I just shape shift to try and be accepted. And again, that's how I participated. It's like they were the label. They were a mess and that's great, but it's good. They're good people.
Speaker 1:They were out to get me, they were trying to hand me keys to a car and I didn't know how to drive, so I just kept asking them to drive instead of learning how to drive my ownership there, and it didn't work, because they wanted me to learn how to drive and I just kept, like they wanted me to figure out who I was, and then we could all know, honestly, is this a good fit or not? But I didn't know how to do that work. I just knew how to go. You tell me what to do and I'll do it to the hundredth degree.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, I left there with my tail between my legs and got married to this guy who was mysterious and cute and artistic and hidden. And we were about three years into marriage and we had started a, you know, a cute like honeymoon period love song band. It's called Copper Lily and it was well, let's write about what we know. And we're in the honeymoon phase and that's how we got connected to this marriage retreat, like oh, this cute, happy newlywed couple writes songs for married people. I found a sense of connection with him when we were on stage performing together and then, if we weren't performing together, I was so lonely and I have a pretty resilient heart that just won't die and it is a fighter, tenacious, it's tenacious. It only took about three years of like, loneliness and marriage and I was like I think I'm gonna die, like I will die here, I need more, and he did not know how to give me more and it was. It was a mess. I was like I vowed my life to this guy, you know, and at that time marriage was very much, I think, an idol for me because I would have once again lost myself in it and I did, I lost myself in it.
Speaker 1:My experience is that marriage can be one of those things where it's like I'm finally wanted. When someone says will you marry me? Right, and you go to that altar and you commit your lives to each other, it's like the greatest, the greatest day of like you're the bride, you are wanted, you are loved, you are cherished, you are all the things that these core lies tend to tell us. The opposite of the wedding day is kind of like the opposite of that. But what we don't realize is that if we are allowing that lie to drive us, we're attracted to someone who tends to be allowing their core lie to drive them as well. So your woundedness marries each other. Yes, so you marry your monster, in the sense that your monster is actually friendly and wants to help you, but you, like your mess attracts somebody else's mess, and then you press each other's buttons until one or both of you ideally both of you is going. This isn't working. Let's see if there's a different way. Yeah, but yes, I exactly.
Speaker 1:I married this guy and thought, ok, I weaponized his vows because I was, like you said, in front of God and other, and so then, when he wasn't loving me the way I wanted or felt like he should be loving me, you know I felt like I could hold that over his head. You know you promised you, yeah, yes. And so all that to say I met you before, kind of my third rug got pulled out from under me. That's where you shared. You know I was introduced to you by you and your husband, jeff, sharing your story and inviting other people to just some of the truths that you had lived into. You know we all sort of stumble upon it and then those of us that are willing, you know we go okay, there's something here and I'm willing to put the work in. And so you shared very vulnerably and candidly about that and we committed to do the next retreat the next summer and a month before that, next summer, my marriage blew up.
Speaker 1:I mean, it just blew up and it kept blowing up because my husband's poor word was he actually didn't know how to tell the truth and because there was abuse in his past and it taught him really early that he couldn't tell anybody. You know it came through a family friend and so the messages from his parents were trust, you know, respect adults, trust adults. Be a good boy. You know, respect adults, trust adults, be a good boy. And then an adult that he trusted and was deemed trustworthy by his family abused him and said don't tell anybody. So then he was like okay, now I have to survive alone. And then he did and that actually reinforced I don't need anybody, I don't actually have to tell the truth, I can figure this out on my own. So when I mean great good for you until truth comes to light and it affects other people, brother, was truth in his story and actions that came to light.
Speaker 1:And it was a lot. It was betrayal, it trust was broken, it was messy, it was hard and I felt like I was just free falling and I didn't know where I was going to land. If I was going to land, if I would be alive if I landed, I was just Because, you know, as we've established at Nazian, I couldn't bear that. Maybe he didn't want me that. Maybe he didn't want me Because that was just too scary. I had handed him all of my self-aware and then she was now responsible for it Right and his actions.
Speaker 1:So what we do is we let our spouse's actions determine. If we're believing our core lie Right, then their actions are evidence that we use as to more proof that see, if he loved me, if I was really wanted, he wouldn't do these things. Rather than I'm a gift, I'm a miracle. It's a miracle that I'm here. There's an expression of the divine that wants to flow through me and there's hurt going on for him. That isn't about me, but well, yeah, I couldn't see it. Yet we don't recognize it's not about us. We make it about us because it coincides with the lie that we believe that we're not lovable, we're not wanted, whatever our love.
Speaker 1:I couldn't see any other perspective other than my own, because this felt like strike three. I mean, this was the man that promised and said to the world that he wanted me and then voided his actions. In fact, it was like oh you, not only do you not want me, you want somebody else. I was like that, just oh, so it. The gift of that was oh my gosh, this feels like I'm living the same thing like for the third time. I was like, either, I'm inherently unwanted, you know, and like it's just true, nobody wants me. My dad didn't want me, the label didn't want me, my husband doesn't want me. I guess I'm unwanted, wow. But there was this little like it's the imago dei in me. It's like the truth that lives in me was like, or there's something else going on, you know, and that curiosity, that little spark of curiosity, and I again submit that the year I spent with you, or the six months you know, right before my world blew up, it gave me a container, a sense of self to go hold on a minute. This sucks, and there I could feel the war of my old belief and this little baby sprout of a new belief.
Speaker 1:Yes, and eventually, like the gift of my marriage imploding was my husband had his own work that he was invited into and she went to a week-long intensive called Onsite and the facilitator there really connected with him and offered to do an in-house. And it was during that session he looked at me and he said, yeah, your husband has some work to do. You have work to do too. And it was one of those like oh no, he sees me and I don't even know what my work is, but like he's about to call me out. I could just feel it and I was like you know, I wanted to be a good student. So I was like, yeah, yeah, I mean, no one's perfect, like everyone's got something Right. And I looked at him like what's my work? I'm sheikah, he may get well, he may not get well, that's on him.
Speaker 1:Your work is believing that you are loved, you belong and you matter, regardless of what he does. So your work is believing. And don't get me wrong, believing is hard work, but nobody can do it for you and you need to start practicing. And I was like he's so. Oh wait, gotta see us me.
Speaker 1:He saw my pattern before I did, and it was that I felt exposed, but I couldn't deny it. I was like how could his actions not be about me? And I felt like the ship started to happen where I was, like I knew how to run my mouth. You need need to treat me better. You need to take me on a date. You need to. You need to follow through on what you say. You need to honor your commitments. I knew I could see it and I could run my mouth, yeah. And then this the old way was I literally said and if I'm worth it to you, you'll do it. So then, when he didn't, I was like, well, I'm not worth it to him, yes, and you stepped up going. I am no longer going to accept unacceptable behavior because I am one worthy of love and I'm requesting that you treat me as such, and so, when you don't follow through or when you don't live up to this kind of mutual, agreed upon standard of respect that we've established, you actually don't get closeness with me if you can't be a safe place for that, because I love myself. You know and it was this shift I started to like see colors that I had never seen before, where I was like, oh, my gosh, I've done this my whole life. I could see how I showed up and I was like dad, my gosh, I've done this my whole life. I could see how I showed up and I was like dad, do you want me, dad? Do you see me, dad? Do you Dad, dad, dad, dad.
Speaker 1:And then his actions again hadn't taken into account his story of brokenness and that he didn't get what he needed. He had nothing to offer me that I actually was looking for. He was so deeply deprived of his own wellness, right, and then I go into a label and I was like will you tell me who I am? Please tell me who I am. Tell me who I am Tell me, please, please, please. And they just couldn't. They were like, sure, we'll try, maybe you're this. And I was like, okay, maybe I'm that. It was just completely unhealthy. Wow, they go into a marriage. And I was like, all right, if you love me, you'll X, y, z. Wow, he couldn't. So the invitation and you've been hinting at this. But I just kept saying I wasn't there yet, wasn't there yet, but it came to me like the most beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:Truth that I can always return to is that I, against all odds, was conceived, made it to full term, foreign, healthy, and entered the world. I've struggled with infertility for eight years, so I do not take for granted the fact that a sperm and an embryo collided, made its way to the uterus, had everything it needed and you know, I was born and I've been sustained for 40 years now. Okay, so that's so much bigger than my parents, so clearly something bigger than all of us desperately wanted me here. That is like the core of. I am so deeply wanted that, against all odds I'm freaking here yeah, and I had given it away and given it away and I'd looked for man and career and status and father and I just wanted the world to want me, yeah, and father, and I just wanted the world to want me, yeah, instead of believing that I get to participate in the world because I am so wanted.
Speaker 1:It's just such a different mindset. And once you want to be stuff, once you want to be this beautiful life that you were blessed with, then you set boundaries and you say no when someone's not treating you fairly, and when it's hidden, you recognize it and you aren't attracted to them, because you're attracted to people who are standing in the value of who they are and it begins to change. It begins to bounce it in suffering, and you wrote a book that said thank you for feeling me. And it's so beautiful because your relationship with your father went on to greater devastation, greater suffering. And yet you see the other side of you, the side of you that is standing in the beauty of who you are and walking through that devastation in ways that you can. It wasn't about you. You were able to be there for him and learn to love yourself in what he was able to offer you. And I don't I'm not giving away the story. It's just the opposite of you know the label you. You went on and the label wasn't what defines you anymore. You began to decide who you wanted to be and what you wanted to do. With this beautiful voice that you've been given, you've actively been a huge part of transforming your marriage. Thankfully, your husband chose to do the work and you both continue to choose to do the work as you both keep facing suffering.
Speaker 1:The suffering is designed to create so much beauty and so much depth, because it calls us into greater character development. It calls us into seeing more of what we don't want to see, that needs rewritten from that childhood that we keep letting define us. I know that we are closing up here. I want you to just share with people. Define us. I know that we are closing up here. I want you to just share with people maybe twofold, kind of like what brought you to write the book? And let's just start there. What brought you to write the book? Thank you for filling me. It is, you know, loosely well.
Speaker 1:No, it's about my dad and I's story and my marriage, because those were the two biggest, I would say, perceived. It felt like failures done to me. Right, but I actually mean it. I mean the title, and the title came early, like before I even started writing because I really meant it. Had my dad or my husband or even my you know first draft at a career with a record label, had those things, given me what I was looking for, I would have stopped there. They had to fail me. I had to suffer through the perceived rejection you don't want me, you don't love me. Whatever my expectation was of them, they failed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the gift of that was I did get to finally wake up to I am a deeply loved woman before any of those people and nobody can take that from me. And so when I stand in that and I can give it away and I did I gave it away and I gave it away and so there was a reclaiming and then nobody can take it. So now I have what I need on a baseline and then I'm free to ask people about their story and I can actually hear it. And then they're humanized. They're not I'm not objectifying them to get love In some way. I was literally like you exist to establish my worth. Thank you, yeah, exactly. And so there's tons of grace because they're allowed to be human. They're allowed to establish my worth. Thank you, yeah, exactly, and so there's tons of grace because they're allowed to be human. They're allowed to struggle and suffer and fail, because we all do, and I can keep this sense of self and go. Of course, actions affect us, but how far we take the narrative of it being about us is something we can control Exactly.
Speaker 1:I wrote this book because, after my marriage sort of imploded and started to rebuild the gift of rebuilding something with somebody and two people saying yes to the work and trying a new way and very clumsy and messy to take the time and rebuilding trust and showing up in new ways. My husband and I practiced that for several years and the question arrived. I really felt like it was a question that arrived one day and said you want to try again with your dad If there's any time left? And the question that I wanted to ask him wasn't dad, do you see me, dad, do you love me? It was dad. Will you tell me what it's been like for you to be a human? I just want to know your story more. I don't need anything from you While you're here. I'd just like to know what has this human experience been like and what you know? People respond a little better to that energy than being an emotional vacuum that like you attach to the hose to their back and you suck them dry. I had a really sweet couple years with my dad and then the story starts at a funeral and it ends at a very different funeral. So, yeah, I wrote the book.
Speaker 1:I felt released to tell our story and, yeah, powerful, yes, this book was so impactful for me. I've walked with you, I've known your story. You and I lost connection for five or six years in the midst of what you read a lot about in the book. I read this book and it had such an impact on me such a beautiful way. It has called me deeper into my own work and helping me see because that's the beauty of who we're meant to be with each other right, I can use you to make myself right. Oh, steph looked at me this way. Oh, steph didn't call me here. Oh, steph didn't do this. Oh, I must not be worthy because that's my core life, not worthy. Or I can use Steph to be like, wow, death is a gift and she's had suffering and I can be with her and I can learn through her suffering and we can learn as we miss each other, how that might be connected to our own individual suffering, but it doesn't make need to be evidence of my suffering. So I am so grateful for you, I'm so grateful for your vulnerability and willingness to share your story with the world through today and through this book.
Speaker 1:The link to your book will be in the show notes underneath this podcast episode and I would ask you to just, if you can, in a nutshell, just like can you put into words for people the beauty and and suffering? We don't want to suffer. I get it, it's uncomfortable, but I think without it we miss core part of the human experience. The Jesus way is to pick up your cross and to know that a great deal of suffering will be unjust. I think that's what's so hard for many of us is suffering. There is an injustice to it, but we see that modeled and done with humility and a willingness.
Speaker 1:I think the gift of suffering is there is something that is revealed in it. If we spend our life avoiding it, we miss what comes out of it. It's the diamond, the pressure situation. A diamond is made out of great, great, great, intense pressure and suffering, yes, but on the other side you've got a beautiful diamond, and so, man, I don't think we find some of the beauty that is to be known on this side of heaven without suffering.
Speaker 1:Yes, suffering reveals us, and when we don't want to be revealed, when we don't want to see who we are, when we don't want to be called up into the awareness that we need to grow, then suffering just becomes our help on earth and I will say we can't say yes to it in being exposed to areas we need to grow if we don't believe that we're loved as we are. We are allowed to be humans in process and I did not know how to give myself that gift. It's okay if you're not perfect. It's okay if what you find is you're lacking in an area that needs developed. What a beautiful thing to know. But we can't ask that question. If our self-worth is built on being perfect or getting it right, it just comes back to knowing that we are deeply loved in process, as we are not yet completely formed, and it is our birthright to grow into what we will become and who we want to be, and the hardest things of life.
Speaker 1:I love it. Thank you so much, steph. Thank you for having me and thank you for being a badass in my life. Same to you I love you and I'm just so grateful for you. Listeners, thank you for joining us. That's going to do it for this episode of hey, julia woods.
Speaker 1:Now I have a quick favor to ask of you if you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating and a quick review in the app that you're using to listen right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us. This episode shares the power of what can happen when a spouse takes responsibility for who they are, being one conversation at a time, and if you want the marriage that you long for, click that first link in the show notes and this will take you straight to the resource that's going to solve that for you. I can't wait to connect with you inside my membership, where you can get the support you need to grow the marriage you long for 24-7. All right, that's going to do it for the show. My name is Julia Woods. I'll talk to you next time, thank you.