Hello, my loves. Today, I am joined by my incredible client, Abigail Elizabeth.

You may recognize her because we had a chat a few months ago, but we were just catching up and chatting about how things have changed in her life since the retreats, and we thought that it would be really beneficial and supportive for you all if we did a part two!

There’s a sentiment out there that once you do the work, everything’s amazing and easy. But in reality, what I see happen a lot is that people do the work—whether that’s a course, attending a retreat, etcetera—have all these “Aha!” moments, and then slowly over the next few months, they start to fall off the wagon. Old habits creep in. And six months later, they haven’t actually sustained anything they learned.

Abigail has now been on this journey for a while, and I thought it would be really cool for you all to see what it actually looks like to be on this journey long-term and how you can really continue to implement the things you’ve learned…even with the other people in your life!

Meet Abigail…Again!

Michelle: Abigail, thank you so much for being here. Please tell the people who you are.

Abigail: Absolutely. My name is Abigail Elizabeth, and…well, I do a lot of things! I own several businesses involving photography and design and consulting. I have recently taken on some new roles in sales and doing commercial lending and doing lending specialist stuff, which is really cool because I’m getting to help other business owners take their businesses to the next level.

First and foremost, I’m a mom. The gals from the retreat, they all jokingly call me Mama Abby. But truly, my relationship with my daughters is the most special thing in my life. I think that it’s the coolest experience.

The Ripple Effect

Michelle: I was saying before, I’m obsessed with the relationship you have with your daughters. You are total Mom Goals for me if I decide to have children. I would want to parent my children exactly the way you show up as a mom. It’s really special.

Abigail: Thank you. It’s been the coolest experience being a mom to them. I learn so much in those conversations.

The coolest part of my work with you is being able to implement these tools, not just with my kids, but with other family members. They look at me sometimes like I’m a little crazy, but I’ve seen so much progress and change just since the retreat happened.

In fact, my youngest daughter used to completely shut down and refuse to have any type of conversation where she was coming and openly sharing, and something happened recently that showed just how much this work has changed the way we tackle that.

We had an incident the other day where she was cleaning her room, being very precise about it, and she brought down several boxes of stuff she wanted to get rid of. I stopped her and asked what all that was and what she was throwing away, and she started having a full-blown anxiety attack.

I recognized what was happening and used one of the tools that you had suggested, actually, for one of the ladies to use with their boyfriend. That tool was pausing and saying, “You can go take your time and do your thing, but I need a timeline for when we can address this situation again.”

My daughter was appreciative that I was willing to give that, and she said we could talk when she was done cleaning.

When she came back down, she immediately started talking about this moment when she was little when my ex told her that she had fifteen minutes to clean her room, and everything that was left on the floor was going to be thrown away.

Ever since then, cleaning has felt like this huge anxiety for her. She has to get it done and cannot be distracted, or it becomes a panic moment. She wept her way through explaining it, and we were able to talk through it all, then she took a big breath afterwards and said, “I am so glad we had that talk.”

A week later, she was cleaning again, and she came up and hugged me and was like, “This is the happiest I’ve ever felt cleaning my room.”

I was so happy. That was the best thing ever. Stuff like that just makes it clear how doing the work is working in the coolest ways, because it’s not just me who gets to be affected. It’s also this little person who still hasn’t even had to hit the hardships of life, and she’s already learning how to regulate herself and get curious about her emotions. It’s just a neat thing to experience.

Holding On, Letting Go

Michelle: It just goes to show that what seems like nothing to an outsider is actually the biggest deal for others. “You have fifteen minutes to clean your room, whatever’s on the floor is getting thrown away” might seem like nothing to most people, but she’s held onto it for years.

This is what happens as adults. We don’t realize that we’ve been carrying some comment that happened when we were four years old, and now we’re forty-eight, and it’s like, “Oh, fuck. I’ve actually been living my entire life through the lens of that comment.”

Abigail: Mm-hm. I was sharing before about my mom, who doesn’t like people being bullied to the point where she can’t watch comedies. She gets too upset.

But I recently asked her where that was coming from, and she was able to take a moment and take a breath and use these tools that we’ve been using in our conversations now, which is so weird. I never would’ve talked to my mom about feminine and masculine and all of the woo-woo pieces. But she’s actually so into it.

She ended up coming back and saying it’s from her childhood. She was the only girl in a house of boys, who were constantly roughhousing and pinning her down and farting on her and all kinds of things, and she was trying to be the peacekeeper.

Even now, it’s so triggering for her when anybody gets bullied, because she’s immediately brought back to that little girl self that had no parent there to take care of her. So she wants to protect everybody else.

And so it’s really interesting how much these tools can affect everybody in your life. There’s so much talk right now about breaking generational wounds, because that’s what we’re doing, right? That’s a big piece of what I feel called to do with my daughters, and I can see it branching out and impacting my mom, as well.

Generational Impact

Abigail: When we start to heal these pieces of us, a lot of times we’re having to heal those generational wounds ourselves, because our parents didn’t have the tools. That’s why they didn’t know how to parent us.

Through that, I was able to recognize how one person making the brave choice to continue doing the work, even when it’s hard, can impact other people so expansively—not just the generation after, but the generation before.

I look at my kids and I know the way that they’re going to be able to parent and be in relationships will be entirely different. This changes the line of my family in such a major capacity that like…if you want a purpose in life, that’s the way to go. Like, goddamn.

It can feel scary to become somebody new. And yes, maybe it will mean making hard choices, but you get to decide what steps you take. You get to decide if you stay and sit in the ship for another year, lamenting how everything is the same and how miserable you are, or you could make a choice to believe that there is hope and to believe that you can find it and you can change your entire life by just continuing to choose yourself.

Choose Yourself

This is far from the entirety of what Abigail and I chatted about—there are uncountable ways doing this work has shifted the way her life looks, and she shared all about them inside Episode 209 of UFYR. Strap on your headphones and keep tissues handy.

And when you’ve done that, if Abigail’s story resonates with you, if you’re sick of playing out the same tired patterns of your trauma, if you’re determined the generational trauma train stops with you, then get into my retreats. You won’t leave the same woman you walked in…and you might change the course of your entire family’s lives just by taking that first step. Abigail’s the proof.

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