Finding Healing from Childhood Trauma in Sobriety and Grace

Anger can feel like protection until you notice what it’s doing to your body. That’s where we start, with a hard truth and a hopeful one: you can have every right to be angry and still choose grace when you’re ready to stop carrying the weight.

I’m joined by April Garcia, author of *The Room to Be Brave*, to talk about how childhood trauma, family roles, and early rejection shape our adult beliefs about belonging, worth, and safety. April explains her “rooms” framework, where a room can be a house, a school, a state, or a single moment you still remember in perfect detail. We dig into why the brain locks certain memories away, how the body keeps the score, and what it looks like to revisit the past without getting swallowed by it.

We also get real about sobriety and emotional healing. April shares how alcohol worked as numbing and social armor, why shame keeps the cycle going, and the quiet moment that finally made stopping feel non-negotiable. From there, we talk about repair at home, honest conversations with a teenager, “changed behavior” as a real apology, and how forgiveness can include accountability. We close with practical tools like an emotional pain scale, gentle steps for facing fear, and the idea that joy is not a reward you earn, it’s a practice you can start today.

If you want more grounded conversations on therapy, trauma recovery, sobriety, and building a life that fits your true nature, subscribe and share this episode with a friend.

You can find April HERE  https://www.aprildaygarcia.com/

It's not too late!! If you're in the Central Pennsylvania area of the US, register to join me for the launch party for my new book! You can do that HERE

Transcript

Anger, Grace, And The Body

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I think that's interesting to say that I have a right to have anger because I did carry anger for a very long time. And now I don't want to anymore. So I did make that decision to give her grace because I don't want to be angry anymore. Because even when you think about how you carry that in your body, the anger carries as a heaviness and a darkness. And grace does not.

Why Childhood Still Runs The Script

April Garcia And A Memoir

Mary 0:28

For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek. But in nature, violets are anything but weak. They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult. It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place. Hey Violets, welcome to the show. When I was trained as a therapist, many of the more recent counseling theories and frameworks weren't yet part of the curriculum. Although I am now certainly familiar with many of the newer approaches, it's rare that I don't address childhood experiences, certainly a vital aspect of the theories of early psychologists like Freud, Jung, and Adler, as part of my treatment plans. There are plenty of approaches that focus pretty exclusively on the present. What choices is someone making and what impact are they having? Or using rating scales to determine what has created a change in behavior or emotions since the last session. These all have their place in my approach, but seeing the shapes of childhood experiences materialize in my clients' current challenges or heartaches is, I imagine, like people who can see aura's around others. I can't imagine not addressing them in my work. We so often fail to reflect on how we got to where we are, or if we do, it's informed so strongly by the assumptions we made at an age when we might just as easily attribute thunder to God rearranging furniture as we might assume our mom would be nicer to us if only we weren't so bad. Our thoughts, hence our feelings, and in turn our behavior, is informed by the conclusions we draw from our relationships and our environment. From those conclusions, we develop our narrative, what we believe to be true about ourselves and why and our place in the world. An overwhelming percentage of the time, our narrative isn't even based in fact, yet we don't realize that. We can often even interpret others' actions through the lens of what we believe to be true about ourselves. My guest today is quite aware that her own childhood informed much of her later life, and revisiting her past was the key to finding herself and healing. April Garcia is the author of The Room to Be Brave, a memoir exploring healing, recovery, and the courage to return to the parts of ourselves that shaped us. Her work focuses on emotional healing, sobriety, and personal growth, with a special emphasis on how our early experiences quietly, and I might even say loudly, influence the lives we build. Welcome to No Shrinking Violets April. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Well, and this is really one of my favorite topics because it's when I'm working with a client, it really does those things sort of come out in bold relief for me a lot of times, like those little hints about what someone experienced. So I always start with asking my guests to talk about flashball moments. But so flashball moments are those times where when you look back over your life, it's like somebody took a snapshot and you know that's where something changed. But I think for you, because you talk about rooms, I would love to know. You have a lot of rooms you talk about in your book. What are some of the spaces or things that when you look back over your life, you think had the biggest impact on not only your trajectory, but where you are now?

Places That Become Emotional Rooms

SPEAKER_02 4:14

That's uh that's such a great turn on uh taking the that flashbulb to the rooms theory. So I I would say there are so many different spaces that changed me as a person that as I went back and thought about who I became because of those experiences, um, I would say the state of California. I'd say the entire West Coast of America. Um, the state of California is like a room to me. It's so funny. When I even talk about California, I have a like a visceral feeling about it. Um, so California is, you know, that's where I grew up. Uh is where I spent my childhood, which is very tumultuous, and it's where I formed a lot of the beliefs about myself that were not great. So these are beliefs that I, you know, thought I wasn't good enough or I was too much, or all of these different things. So it carries a weight, that idea of California. Iowa is I've like, I have like geography makes me uncomfortable. Um Iowa is another place where I felt that I carry I did a lot of things in Iowa that gave me a belief system about myself that pushed me into a certain direction. So, which I mean we'll talk a little bit more about later, but like alcoholism and making a lot of choices that were not good for me, um, good for now, but not good for later. Um, so that I think those two spaces encapsulate so much of my early experiences and where I went.

Mary 5:52

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love that you're talking about that visceral feeling because I feel like there are certain things that make us feel a certain type of way, but we can be disconnected from our body feeling. And so we're avoiding things or we're making choices without the insight of like, why am I doing this?

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Yes, yes, you'll avoid uh, you know, say a doctor's office because of something that happened there. So, oh, I don't go to the doctor because my my dad was sick and we were there all the time, or whatever the experience. I tell a story in the book in my book about I don't have polluted molding in my house or southwestern decor because that particular type of furniture or molding makes me feel a certain way because that's how I felt around it the first time. And we carry that until we start to deal with what happened in those spaces.

Mary 6:49

Yeah. So for somebody who might doubt that childhood has a huge impact, um what would you say? Like, how do you feel like early experiences really do shape us? The way we might handle something, we might cope, even our relationships.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Absolutely. So I would say, first of all, good luck to you if you don't think that you need to go back and work out some of your stuff. I feel like those are the people that are like, I'm good. I did all the work I need to do. I am who I am. Uh, because I think we all need to do work and you're not doing work on the future you without working on you now and how you got here, right? So, oh my gosh, my brain is my brain just like hijacked itself. Um, so going back and doing that work looks when you don't go back and do the work, what it looks like is you were told at a young age, whatever it is, you were unlovable, you were too much, you had to be helpful, you had to keep the peace, whatever it is that you were shaped, how you were shaped in your environment growing up, from your parents, your grandparents, your teachers, whoever, your siblings even. Um, I have an experience where kids in my school made me feel a certain way. And you carry those beliefs into your behaviors. And if you don't change the beliefs and where they came from, or go back to where they came from and change those beliefs, you're never going to change the behavior. So, quick little example is I had an experience when I was 12 that I was walking home from school and I had no friends. We moved so much in the third grade. I was in eight different schools. So I had nobody. I was a loner. And these girls had they came up to me while I was walking home from school and they were like, listen, we're having a sleepover and we really want you to come. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm so excited! Like, it's finally happening. I'm gonna have friends. I ran home. I asked my mom if I could go, and she's absolutely you could go, have a great time. I called the girls to tell them I could come, and they started laughing and they're like, We don't want you in our sleepover. Oh my God, we were just kidding. That brief moment, I could describe to you the entire the kitchen, the furniture, the phone, everything, because that locked that moment in that room in me where I decided based on their opinion, I don't belong in certain spaces. I'm not cool enough, I'm not, I'm not good enough. I carried that until recently when I started doing this work. And now I get to be in the rooms I want to be in. And now I'm even speaking in front of those rooms. So it does make a difference when you go back and look at why you believe things about yourself.

Belonging Wounds And Learned Roles

Mary 9:34

Yeah, I think the question, what else could be true, is really powerful. And I think the other thing that when we're when we're children, we of course trust that what our parents say or do or believe is valid, is right, because we're looking to them for what is going on in the world. That's how we shape our own beliefs and make sense of it. Yes. And when you have a parent, and I don't I didn't finish, get to finish your whole book yet, but your mom had some challenges that visited upon her children, right? So I think that, you know, when you're trying to make sense of that and there is not a solid foundation under anything, then you start to believe, well, whatever's happening here, I either play a part in it, or if my mom is saying I am whatever, lazy, worthless, whatever the fill in the blank. We believe that.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah, and we carry that forward. Imagine the kid, so you have a brother and sister, let's say, and one of your the sister is lovely and she's smart and she does all her schoolwork and all these things. She's the good kid, and then the boy is ADHD or whatever, he doesn't do his schoolwork, he plays out, just wants to be outside, is running amok. That's the bad kid, right? Because he's doing whatever he wants. Now you're being raised as the good kid and the bad kid. There's no way that doesn't affect who you become as an adult, right? Because I'm bad. So I'm going to make decisions like a bad person would. And I think that comes so heavily from your parents because you do put so much trust in them telling you who you are, right? Yeah.

Mary 11:16

And part of that, you know, we talk about nature and nurture, and I'm not sure how much people really understand that, but we're all born with, you know, certain traits or certain types of um ways of being. And then we are in the environment where then we need to react to what's happening. So sometimes people become the people pleaser, sometimes they become the rebel. So I again I didn't get far enough to know, but did you and it's your brother's your older brother's Brian, correct? Yes. So did the two of you react to the environment you were raised in in different ways? And how were you different?

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Absolutely. So I am the people pleaser, I am the doer. And I to this day find myself doing that, uh, taking up projects for people, trying to help, doing too much for too many people because I think that's where my value lies. And if I'm not doing that, I'll be rejected because that was my experience as a child. My brother, on the other hand, was a troublemaker. But we were almost that example where I was this good kid and he was the troublemaker. And now he is, I mean, he's running his own small business and he's doing his thing, but he is alone. He's, I think there must be a piece of him that believes that he isn't good enough any still because he doesn't have a family. He doesn't have he's really alone. It's him and his dogs in Texas by himself. So, and God bless him if he's happy there. Uh I I just think that community is so important. So it I think that does play that childhood, those childhood experiences where I was the good, helpful child and he was the troublemaker. I think that did resonate in the long term.

Mary 13:08

Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, that like you're saying, we carry that identification, like I'm the bad kid, but at the time, you only know what to do because of how you're wired. You do the best you can to survive, and then it stops working. Yeah. It stops working. So for you, um, you you know, you obviously wrote this memoir. So what was the role in that? So, because I think sometimes we can think, you know, it's just journaling. Like we're writing the memoir to work through our stuff. But for you, it sounds like you felt like you needed to heal or or go through some things to get to a different spot before you could write this.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Yes, 1000%. I've tried to write this memoir so many times over the years because uh when you do get through it, you're gonna be like, oh my God, is this how did this many things happen to this one person? Um, and I so I wanted to tell that story of survival. And at the end of the day, while I was still drinking, while I was still in this chaos, unhealed mode, I was writing that story from a place of pain and still from a place of survival. So every time I started to write it, I was like, this, it was so hard. It was like drudging the story up, right? Now, once I've started to actually do the work, which I do a lot of journaling, you should read my journal. It's chaos. It would never work as a book. But I used the journaling, I used therapy, meditation, acts of service, finding joy. I used all of those things to heal so I could tell the story. Because I can't tell the story from a place of like this sucks, and I don't like this person, and I can't believe this happened to me. It's a terrible story. But the survival and actually thriving after the fact, that's the real story.

Mary 15:06

Yeah, because I think being able to show what happened through the journey to healing is really important part of it. Yeah, because yeah. So can we talk a little bit about your use of alcohol? Because as you're talking, and I'm not gonna go, you know, all therapist mode, but what strikes me is you are very aware of your your bodily sensation. So, in other words, when something reminds you, like the, you know, even to the woodwork in your house or the patterns on things, you've recognized that those are really strong. And I don't like the word trigger, but I'm gonna use it. There's a really strong trigger sphere. Yeah. Yeah. So do you feel like that was part of your way of like kind of muting some of those reactions that you had? Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Uh, there's a huge feeling I carry of unworthiness and not belonging. And alcohol covered that because if I was drinking, typically I would be in a bar. So if I'm drinking, I'm in a bar. I belong in every bar. Every person can walk into a bar and you have a hundred friends, or however many people are there, they're your friends. So that was huge to quiet the noise of feeling alone. And then it was also huge for quieting the feeling of pain. And, you know, emotional pain does carry into a physical pain. And I do feel the weight of my life, or I did feel the weight of my life, and alcohol momentarily took that feeling away. However, the next morning, it was not just still there, but now I also carried shame on top of it for whatever happened the night before when I was drinking. So it seemed like this beautiful like elixir to help my situation, and it really was just making it so much worse. But you drink to um you drink to quiet that noise, but then the next morning you have more noise. So you drink to quiet more noise. It's just it's this huge cycle. And so until you're ready to like face some of the noise and feel some of the feelings, I couldn't, I couldn't stop.

Healing Before Telling The Story

Mary 17:21

Yeah. Cause it's almost like when you're describing it, it brings to mind something like when you have like a toothache, so it's so like the nerves are exposed, and there's so much rawness that you can't just for a while, it was almost like you couldn't live with it.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yeah. And what's funny is that once I gave up the alcohol and I actually sat in my own body, all of that stuff, it's not like everything hit me all at once. And I was like, oh my god, my traumatic life. I was able to work through each of these things piece by piece. Yeah. So that I think it's really important to, you know, you do feel more when you give up whatever you're muting your feelings with, whether that's you know, food, alcohol, shopping, gambling, whatever it is, you feel more when you remove those things from your life. Definitely. However, you don't feel all of it at the same time. That's crazy. But on the other hand, too, uh, I still have from the from the day I got sober on my phone, it says, you can't numb the dark without numbing the light. And that really is, I was numbing all of these painful feelings, but I was also numbing so much joy. It was I was so muted. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a little bit of all of that.

Mary 18:44

Well, so I'm curious about what was the moment when you decided I have to stop doing this, I have to stop drinking like this.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

You'd think it would have been like a rock bottom, horrifying tale. And I have some of those, but they weren't the moment. Um, the moment came, it was August 10th, last uh 2024, and I had gone out with work friends, and my husband had dropped me off. I said, I'm gonna have a couple drinks and I'm gonna take an Uber home. We're gonna hang out. We hadn't seen each other a lot lately, so we're gonna hang out. And next thing I know, I wake up at home. I had no idea how I got there, I had no idea what happened. I was looking through my phone, trying to figure out because my husband wasn't in the bed with me. And oh my God, I don't even know. I don't, all I remembered was having a taco and a margarita, and then now I'm home. Um, and it turns out I went missing essentially. My phone died. I went to a friend's house, I fell asleep, uh, and my husband didn't know where I was. So I got up that morning, I went downstairs where he was sleeping on the couch, and he looked up at me with just so much disappointment, and not in me necessarily, but in the fact that this was his life. And I just from that moment, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to make the walk of shame in my own house and disappoint my family. And it was like that moment clicked that it wasn't just about me numbing my own pain. I was I was making this hard for everyone. So, and then that was it. I just never drank.

Mary 20:22

Wow.

Alcohol As Numbing And Belonging

SPEAKER_02 20:23

How hard was that to never drink? Actually, um, I have a very privileged experience because once I made that decision, that was it. And I I won't say I've never been like, oh, that would be fun to have like a couple of drinks, but I don't have like craving for it. I don't feel when I go out with people that I'm left out. I don't carry any of that, which thank God, because it's hard enough to have to go through my life and go back and heal all of these things and share my story. All of that is hard enough without also having to be like quieting the noise from alcohol. So, no, that part wasn't so hard.

Mary 21:06

Thank God. So you just sort of reached that point one day. And you know, I think it's really important that you point it out that when we tend to have this idea of when we drink, it's like, oh, it's a great time, and you know, everybody's laughing, but it's not real. Not real. You're absolutely right. It's not real.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

It's such crap. Well, you couldn't even remember it. Couldn't even remember it. Oh, you know what's so fun now is traveling because I remember where I went. Uh, and I I can't even fathom now that I was spending thousands of dollars to go on these trips and then not remembering them and feeling disgusting the whole time, missing things because I was hungover. I I can't even fathom that that was what I was doing on purpose. Like I couldn't wait to get a drink at the airport and then I'd be drunk by the time I got somewhere. And That's crazy. That's so bananas. Yeah. Now I get to experience the whole thing. And it's it's amazing.

Mary 22:08

So talk a little about what that was like for your partner, for your husband. And you have a child too, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yeah. Yeah. She's 16. Okay. Ugh, the light of my world. I love her so much. Um, so you mean me getting sober?

Mary 22:23

Yeah, because there had to be residue. I mean, they knew they knew all of this. And then you say, I'm going to do this thing. And I know from having alcoholics and you know, addicts in my own family, it's always the raised eyebrow, like, really? Like, is this yeah?

SPEAKER_02 22:40

So when I said I wasn't doing it anymore, he was like, Okay. Like he was still in the moment from the night before when I said it. So in that initial moment, it was like, sure, okay. Um, but moving forward, he could see I bought books, I started listening to podcasts, I joined a community online, I was going to therapy and I was doing the work for it too. And I will tell you, my husband, what a saint. He never threw it back at me, all of those things that I did. He never shamed me, he never like held those things against me. He was like, that was a problem that you had. And he can see that I'm fixing what the problem was. My daughter was finally able to be honest with me about how it made her feel. Uh, she told me one night as we were just, you know, snuggled on the couch, and she said that she used to cry herself to sleep when I would be really drunk because she was afraid. And it never occurred to me that I was affecting her that way.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

And which was such a mind blow for me because I had carried all this resentment for my mother for making the mistakes that she made. And then I thought I was doing so great. I was, I'm such a good mom. I never, I never hit her, I never abandoned her, but I was causing damage in my own way. And that actually brought me to this really amazing healing moment with my mom. Because if I could find forgiveness for myself in those moments, I needed to find it for her as well, offer that grace to her as well. Because we we were doing what we could do just to survive. So that was it was big for them. And then my husband on my sixth, I believe it was on my six month sobriety anniversary. Like he sat me down and he was like, I just I get like emotional. He's like, I just can't tell you how proud I am. And then he gave me money and he goes, go buy some new clothes. It was like just the cutest thing. He was like, buy yourself something nice. Uh, but it was the the fact that it was recognized and he could see how hard I was working. And I I say it in my book too, it's like the best apology is changed behavior, and that's what I'm doing. And I got all weepy.

unknown 24:53

Yeah.

Mary 24:56

Yeah, sorry, God. So you brought up your mom. And I know so a lot of the work that I've done has been with college age students, and it's the first time often that they're away from their family, and they start to realize either what I went through wasn't typical, or you know, they start to see what actually happened and they see it with different eyes. And then there's a lot of guilt. Like I can't, you know, take a stand against my mom, or you know, or sometimes there would be the first time they ever heard the word abuse would be from me, and they would be like, I wasn't abused. And so, you know, I'm sitting there thinking, well, you sh you were, but you know, then it's sort of like I back off a little. But what has that been like for you to to recognize? Because even the the little bit I've read so far, I'm like, holy crap, there's been stuff that you went through. And I'm in your high school years, I think, and in at the point of the book where I am. What's that been like for you to kind of square that in your mind? Like she did the best she could, but yet you have a right to have anger. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

And I did, I think that's interesting to say that I have a right to have anger because I did carry anger for a very long time. And now I don't want to anymore. So I did make that decision to give her grace because I don't want to be angry anymore. Because even when you think uh about how you carry that in your body, like anger carries as a heaviness and a darkness, and grace does not. Grace carries as this light and this beautiful energy. And I don't want to carry the dark, crappy one anymore. But she did do a lot of things. Uh she made a lot of mistakes, and they they did have an impact on me. But we recently spoke uh about the book and about her story and my story, and she was able to, for the first time, tell me some of the things that she experienced when she was growing up, and it really does change the way you look at a situation when you can see the whole person and how the decisions they made. I don't believe for one second that she was in a mindset which like, I'm going to hurt my children. I think there was some disassociation. I think there was just a lot of fracture in her that brought her to that point. So it took a lot of work. Trust me, this didn't just I didn't just like wake up one day like this, but um, it took a lot of sitting with what happened and a lot of journaling with what happened and talking to my therapist and reframing each experience in that mindset that I screwed up to, right? And in the intro of my book, I say, like, there are plenty of people who can write stories about me where I'm the villain, and maybe that's not to that extent, but everyone is everyone's trying so hard to do their best. And she just she failed several times, but I know that she's trying to do better, yeah.

Mary 28:09

Yeah, well, and you talked about your own experience with her parents, right? Your grandparents, because you ended up living in a lot of different places because your mom would reach the end of her rope and then temporarily send you and your brother. So you lived with her father, and it was it her mom also?

The Night Sobriety Became Real

SPEAKER_02 28:29

So they're two, they were two separate experiences. So her parents were divorced, and so my biological grandfather was kind of a monster, and he was abusive, and he his house, even in my memory, is just so dark. And then my grandmother, so her mother, everything around her is so bright for me because she is she was so wonderful to me and supportive and loving, and it was a safety that I didn't have at home when I was with my grandmother. However, she was 14 when she when she got married, and she was 15 when she had my mom. Oh my. Yeah, and she was married to this monster. So my grandmother will tell you like she wasn't the best mother, and she didn't know how. I mean, imagine 14 years old, 15 years old, she was raising a child in an abusive marriage that's clearly problematic. He was a grown man, he was in his 20s and married to a teenager. So I think a lot of that carried over for my mom, but for me, my grandmother got to do the right thing. My grandfather, um, he passed away, I don't even know when, honestly, but I know that none of his children went to his funeral. He was he was not a good person for whatever reason.

Mary 29:51

Yeah. So in this journey, and you mentioned therapy, and I love that you mentioned that because I think that can when you find someone good, it can really have a great impact. So as you're working through all of these different things and these experiences and remembering, recalling, dealing with the emotion, what were some things that were like, whoa, like you you made a connection or you were surprised to sort of make that connection or see how it's impacting you as an adult?

SPEAKER_02 30:21

So, oh, that's such a good question. Um, one of the biggest moments I had in therapy, and it seems so superficial, like I should have known it, or not superficial, but common sense really, is when I was describing growing up with my mother and all these experiences or some of these experiences I was having. And my therapist looked, looked me to dead in the face and was like, you need to know that this wasn't your fault, that you didn't deserve it, and that little girl just needed to be loved. And it was such a it was such a, I don't know if he even realized the impact that he had saying those words, but nobody had really ever said that to me before. And in the moment, it was just like, wow, okay, yeah, that makes sense. But when I went home and I meditated on that and then journaled on that, it really hit me that I could sit in the space with that little girl and you know, metaphorically, and sit with her and tell her and comfort her and let her know she was supposed to be loved and she's okay now. Um, and that none of it was her fault. That kind of thing was huge for me because I carried so much again of that heaviness from it, and him telling me that it it shouldn't have happened, and it I don't know, it gave it like a finite moment where it was like, I didn't need to feel it that way anymore. That was that was really big for me. Yeah.

Mary 31:49

Yeah. So I think what can be hard for people is when you talk about or write about, or or if they're if they're gonna read your book, which I think they should, is when you read about these things, you some of it I'm sure for some people will resonate. Like, oh yeah, like I had these similar experiences. Other people might be like, whoa, like their childhood was very different. But I think what I see, not only from my own life, but in my work, we're probably you're, I think you're probably younger than me. But when we hit this midlife and we start to realize it's like this log jam of all this stuff that has happened, and we have traumas that we don't address, whether they're little traumas or huge traumas. So all this sort of adds up. And then you decide, okay, I'm not gonna drink anymore. I'm going to like really experience the world. So, how do you work through these huge things, but keep doing life? Because I think that's where people, especially women, are like, how can I possibly be a parent and be a partner and go to work? And I'm dealing with the realization of all this, all these things from my life that I now have to resolve and sort of find a place for. That's actually a really great question.

Family Repair And Honest Apologies

SPEAKER_02 33:06

The perspective of that is I hadn't considered it actively that way. But my answer to that is you already are, right? So you're already a mom and a coworker and a daughter and a and wife and all of the things that you are. You're already doing all that with your crap. Like you're carrying it with you anyway. And it's coming out in your behaviors and it's coming out in your choices, and it's also coming out in how you react to your family. So in our house, we use the pain scale. So, like zero is the least pain ever, or zero is nothing, 10 is the worst pain ever, but we use it for our emotional scale. And my daughter will tell me, like, mom, I'm in an eight right now, because now I know that just the tiniest thing is gonna push her to explode. Right. So be like, okay, go find something to bring that down, whatever it is, drawing or talking to her friends or whatever it is. She'll do the same to me. She'll be like, mom, I think you need to meditate. Like you're you're looking nine or 10 right now. So carrying all of that history, carrying all of that crap, leads you at a higher score as a baseline, right? So the more you process that stuff and deal with it, I feel like the lower your score is gonna get. So now instead of running in an eight, I've dealt with a lot of my shame from my alcohol. So now I feel a little better about myself and I'm calmer and now I'm at like a six, right? So I hope that makes sense because in my head it totally makes sense. Um, so really you are carrying it anyway, and it is it's showing up in how you connect with people and it's showing up in how you react to your children when they're being children and when life starts lifing. And so I think that you just take it piece by piece so that you can stop carrying it because it's not going anywhere until you deal, it's not going anywhere, right? So I would say definitely just start, but I would also say don't start with like the biggest one because I would say wade your way in to through like the little traumas first because it just gets you used to the practice and also gets you to a point where you feel a little better and it makes you want more.

Mary 35:24

Well, you're you brought up something really important. Well, a couple of really important things, and I think the one is the way you communicate with your daughter, because sometimes I think we make the mistake of feeling like we need to look like we're okay all the time. And first of all, they're not buying it.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

No, like they know second, they know when you walk in the house, right? We think we're like, oh, I'm great. They know immediately. They know, yeah.

Mary 35:53

And it really, I think, is a way to increase their resilience when you can, when you have the ability to say, I'm actually not reacting to this very well right now, or I'm having a day that I feel, and sometimes we don't even know why we feel elevated. I think, you know, it's we there can be this mistaken um idea that when someone hears someone like you talk, it's like, oh, she's great now. It's like, no, God. That's actually not how that goes.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

And I cried three times yesterday for no reason. So I'm not good. I got a lot of work left to do, but I'm doing better. Go ahead. Sorry.

Mary 36:33

Yeah. And that's the that is the whole thing. It's that you're doing better. And so it's this each day you get to start over. But I think being able to acknowledge to our partner, acknowledge to our kids, and especially daughters, because I am all about, you know, trying to build women up. And I think being able to say, like, I'm actually not okay. And sometimes I understand why that is, and I can think back, oh, here's the thing that happened to me, and this caused me to react this way. And I know it doesn't work anymore, but that's my script still, and I'm working to change it. But opening that dialogue and even empowering your daughter to be able to say to you, Mom, you were scaring me. Like I was crying at night. What a gift that you gave her with that.

Releasing Anger Toward Mom

SPEAKER_02 37:21

Right. And something that never would have happened had I not gotten sober and had I not started my own healing journey because I would have been, she would have said that to me three years ago. I would have been so defensive and I would have it would have hurt. Now I could say, all right, that makes sense. Like, look, I'm trying to see it from her perspective. Of course, you were crying yourself to sleep. Your mom is your safety and she was out of control. So you're unsafe, of course. And I can apologize to her. And I love that she's carried that as well. She will apologize when she's wrong and she will apologize without excuse, which is my favorite. So you're like, oh, I'm sorry, but this is this. No, she's like, I didn't get that right. I'm so sorry. And I love that because she's owning the fact that like you can make a mistake, you can apologize for it, you can move forward, right? You don't have to carry all this like justification.

Mary 38:18

Yeah. And I think going back to what we started with, I think it's important to maybe understand for yourself where that's coming from. Yes. But that then is your inner, it's your inner work that you're doing. And so some the goal, I think, is then to see it coming. Like, oh, when I'm in this situation, like you already know I don't want this decor in my yeah, in my home. Yes. Yeah. So I love that. So I want to circle back, and I probably should have asked you this in the beginning, but why rooms? Like that sort of that idea of how you structure your story. How did you come up with the idea of using rooms?

SPEAKER_02 39:00

So there's this guy, Julio. Um, it's such a such a weird story. Um, so there's this guy, he's a massage therapist, and a friend of mine was seeing him for some healing. So it's a little bit like a somatic healing. Did you read uh The Body Keeps the Score? Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. So that's like his jam. I read it and my friend said you have to meet Julio. So what Julio does is he lays you on the table and he has you go into one of your memories, whatever pops up. So whatever comes to you. And for me, my memory was something that I was afraid of, something that happened that caused fear. So he kind of puts his hand on an organ that's associated with that emotion. So he presses on my bladder because it was fear. And then I go into that space and I was like, he goes, and you need to feel the experience. And I was like, that's cute. I don't feel my experiences. I could read, I could tell you my traumas like I'm reading off a menu. And he said, Of course you are, because you're you're watching your traumas like you're watching TV. I need you to go into the room and like actually be in the moment in that space. So I did uh three or four times I went into the meditation while you held my bladder. And on the final time that we did it, that's when I actually was able to sit with that younger version of me and hold her and tell her that you're okay and you're loved and this shouldn't happen to you. And all of a sudden, that feeling that I had in my body dissipated.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Wow.

Therapy Tools For Daily Life

SPEAKER_02 40:34

So that like heaviness that I was carrying with my mom, like with that one experience. So I took that with me. Um, and I was like, wow, that was really cool. It was amazing that I could feel my trauma because you know the body keeps a score. We don't, our body protects us from feeling that trauma. So it was really neat. And I was like, I want to keep doing that, but he's kind of pricey, so I couldn't keep going to Julio. So I just journal on it and meditate on it and talk to my therapist about it. And that going into the room became how I was able to transform these memories and these moments and change the perspective on them. And then a friend of mine was telling me about his his situation, and I was like, but you gotta go into the room. And the more I said it, I was like, oh, that's what I'm doing, is I'm going into the room. So that's kind of how it all came full circle.

Mary 41:29

Yeah. Because each of as you tell the story, each of those rooms is really a a memory, something that was really pivotal for you. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

But because some of those rooms are, you know, not specifically like literally a room, you know, they're high school is a room, California is a room, but in my body and in my mind, it's encapsulated. The memories are encapsulated in a room idea.

Mary 41:57

Yeah. So you mentioned fear, which I think is huge. So if there's someone listening, and I'm guessing there's more than one someone listening that recognizes they need to go back and deal with some things. First, I would say find a professional. But what if it's fear? What if they're so afraid to really go back and let themselves remember? Do you have any words of wisdom for that?

SPEAKER_02 42:23

I I don't know if they're wise, but I do have words that feeling that you're afraid of is that you're the feeling you're afraid of already happened. So when I look at um, I knew you didn't get this far in the book yet, but I lost my fingers, I had meningitis, and I almost died, and I was in the hospital for a long time, and uh my fingers were amputated. There's a room where the surgeon took the bandages off my hand and I saw it for the first time. That room in my memory was locked and boarded up, and I never went there because of the pain that I felt in that room seeing my hand for the first time. Um when I went back with the with meditation and the journal and all that, the pain was not as significant as it was that day. Right. So we're afraid that it's going to be, that we're gonna feel the exact same feeling, but you're not going to because you survived and you're on the other side of it now. And yes, it was painful, but a fraction of what it was before. So we give these rooms and these moments way more power than they deserve. And I think that's where the fear comes from the most. So it's not going to be as bad as you think. But yes, absolutely get a therapist. Again, it's a professional. Don't just kick down doors and start sitting in your trauma because you will re-traumatize yourself. There is a there is a pathway through, and I think that it's a much gentler journey than just kicking the door open.

Mary 43:57

Yeah. Well, I love imagery. So as your Talking, I'm picturing this huge house, and you know, somebody going through their house, and you talk about safe spaces too. So spending time in the room where you're like, oh, there's good light in here, the couch is comfy, but you know, like down the hall, there's a room where it's locked right now, and you don't go in and clean it, you don't open the door. And so I think sometimes using imagery, like, okay, I'm gonna just think about what might be in that room. I don't need to throw the door open, but think about what might be, and I'm allowed to go back and go into my safe place. But if you don't air out the rooms, eventually, you know, they're just going to diminish the space you let yourself live in.

Going Into The Room Somatically

SPEAKER_02 44:41

Yeah, because then you just start you keep collecting these dark, heavy rooms. So what's fun now is I'm moving forward with the knowledge that I have and the belief systems changed from those dark, heavy rooms. And the rooms I create are mostly filled with joy and light because I'm not carrying all this crap anymore. Not that I don't have any crap, I still got plenty of crap, but I've cleaned out so much of it. You know, you look at like an old haunted house, right? Like, what are you gonna do with that? You're gonna go in and you're gonna clean it out room by room, and then it's gonna be this beautiful house. So that's kind of what I'm working on. So I I heard somebody say once in uh a podcast, and they said, build the castle you want to live in. And I think that coupled with this rooms idea is exactly how I want to live my life. I want to build the castle I want to live in, which is the life I want to be in and the person I want to be and should be, despite what everyone else thought I should be.

Mary 45:42

Well, exactly, and despite what you used to think you deserved.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Yes, yes, absolutely. Oh my God. If 20-year-old April could see 47-year-old April, God, it's a different, it feels like a different person. And it's not, it's just that I started to shine a little light in the parts that were so heavy and dark.

Mary 46:01

Yeah. Well, and I think you allowed yourself then to say, you know, there was a time in my life where I used alcohol and I don't need to revisit the shame. I did the best I could. And I think that is a big key to moving into the future to just accept that you talked about giving grace to your mom, giving grace to yourself. You did the best you could. And, you know, now you're doing the next step. And so I think to be able to recognize and, you know, really believe that you deserve to live in a castle. That's where, that's where a princess lives, right? That's where a queen lives. And we can tell ourselves, I don't deserve that because I did this thing or I made this person. But we all, as you said, you somebody sees you as a villain. There's somebody in our lives that maybe can tell the worst story of our lives. But that doesn't have to be our future, it doesn't have to be our continuing narrative.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Right. And I say that in the very beginning of the book is that being a bad person and doing bad things are not the same. So just because you've done things that you're ashamed of and you're carrying these things that you don't tell anyone about, but they push you forward in this heavy way, it doesn't make you a bad person. It means you made a mistake. And the whole point of these mistakes is to learn from them and not to continue the behavior. So I think we keep continuing the behavior if we don't heal where it came from.

Mary 47:30

Yeah. Well, April, what a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. This was so fun. And tell us again the name of your book. And you have a website. Let us know your website. I'll link everything in the show notes.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Yes, absolutely. So the name of the book is The Room to Be Brave. And the website is aprelda Garcia.com. And uh my social media is at the Room to Be Brave. I do have, if you have two seconds, I have a project that I'm running right now that I just love, and it's for really for us. It's women in the next phase of life, and our kids are getting older, and we're trying to figure out who we are and what we love and how to put more joy into our life purposefully. And that is the Find Your Joy project. You'll see it on my website, and it's a monthly challenge to add joy to your life. So it started this month. This month is uh to do something like a kid to be a kid. That's great. So yeah, so sign up if you if you want, and it's just a really fun, lighthearted find some joy.

Mary 48:33

Yeah. And that can even be a great first step if somebody really is wants to start to wade through things because we think we have to wait for joy.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

We have to do all the stuff until we earn it.

Mary 48:43

Or but joy is small moments too, right?

Facing Fear And Finding Joy

SPEAKER_02 48:46

It's like I think um, so I think joy, um, you know, I think people look at joy as like, oh, beach vacation or a wedding or whatnot. No, joy for me is a cup of coffee in like quiet. That's not like the way the sun comes in, and you're just oh, that is joy to me. And on the heaviest, darkest days, breath, just having the ability to take a deep breath and know I'm getting another one and another one. Like that is the purest sense of joy. So those moments, I think we need to recognize them, yeah, and and purposefully seek them out. Yes, for sure.

Mary 49:24

Yeah, recognize and you know, take the moment to savor it because yeah, we deserve that. So yes, absolutely. Thank you for writing the book. I really think that it will resonate with people and it's it will change, it will change the world for some people.

SPEAKER_02 49:37

So oh, thank you. I hope you finish, and I would love to hear what you think when I when you finish the book. Yeah, for sure.

Mary 49:43

For sure. Yay, thank you. Yes, thank you for being here, and thanks to everyone for listening. If this episode resonated for you, I would love to hear from you. You can actually text me at the link in the show notes. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.