Ep 54. The Full Human Experience

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 54: The Full Human Experience.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own wellbeing and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s gonna be fun. Let’s go.

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. So, I have had a very exhausted week this week. I just wanted to get caught up, but I don’t know that I ever really got caught up. And so, I am accepting all of the full human experience, that I’m just a normal human being on the planet, that has the 50 experiences, the 50/50 of life. And I kind of just love it all. I’m not even trying to make it better than it is. So, I just thought maybe this would be useful for you to know.

And actually, my trainer told me, “You need to talk about that because we need to know that you’re fully human.” So, this morning I’m here to tell you I’m fully human. So, over the weekend we flew to San Diego for a beautiful, magical wedding. It was so fun. It was one of my close friend’s daughter, her baby daughter. And it was just a beautiful resort that we all stayed at. And we got to spend time with friends from Bakersfield that we don’t get to see very often and just get caught up. And it was such a sweet special weekend. Jeff and I had a really good time together which I love.

And also on Saturday, so Saturday was September 10th and that was my dad’s birthday. And it’s his first birthday since he’s passed and so he has been just extra on my mind. And so, I’ve carried this grief with me all year and I’ve held space for it. And I just have let myself be sad when I’m sad, and when I miss him, and also joyful when I think about him and what a wonderful dad, what a wonderful man, what a wonderful human, and how blessed I was to have had such a father.

So, I know if you’ve listened to episode 10 of this podcast, you know a lot of my feelings about my dad and my experience with my dad. And then on Sunday, September 11th, was actually my husband Jeff’s 60th birthday. So, I held space for that as well. We’ve been celebrating for the last couple of weeks, just celebrating him and how wonderful and marvelous he is as a human being and as a husband, and as a dad, and as a financial advisor. I mean oh my gosh, he is just a really amazing man in every area. I don’t know anyone else like him.

So, I’m obviously extremely lucky and I feel so lucky to have had the experience of a really unique beautiful father and then have married a unique beautiful man. And so, I know that’s not everyone’s experience, but it certainly is mine. And I realize it. I don’t take it for granted. I celebrate it. And the older I get the more precious it becomes to me. So, I had a lot of emotion this last weekend, especially it was so fun to be with friends and to celebrate a beautiful couple who were married.

And I’m always so grateful to be included, to be invited. We all love to be included and invited. So, there is a lot of emotion in that for me, and then also with my dad and celebrating my husband. And then when we got home, we flew home Sunday afternoon and my sister, my precious sister, her, and my brother-in-law had a spur of the moment party at their house that we didn’t know about until that day.

And so, we drove straight from the airport to their house. And my kids were there, and grandbabies were there. And my niece and her fiancé, or her longtime boyfriend who’s a part of our family, my sister’s daughter, her name’s, Mekynzi. And her boyfriend, Nick. And they live in Nashville. So, they had flown home for the week so that was really the reason they had this barbecue. And so, it was just so special to be together with my family, nothing means more to me than that.

But when I got home Sunday night I felt overwhelmed. I had that feeling of being just overwhelmed with everything. And I just let myself be overwhelmed. And I had tons of laundry, just things that I don’t normally experience because of the way I manage my life, my thoughts, and my emotions. Everything felt like a lot to me, and it has kind of felt like a lot to me this entire week. I felt just a little bit out of sorts I’m going to say, this entire week. It’s Thursday morning right now.

I just got back from working out with my trainer. And swimming, you know how I normally swim a mile on Monday, Thursday, and Fridays. But I swam a half a mile this morning because I was like, “I just can’t swim a mile today.” I’m going to do a half a mile. And then just be okay with that and be good with that. And that’s what I am. And then I decided, I’m going to come home, take a shower, wash my hair. And then just talk to you guys and just talk about the full human experience that I’ve been experiencing this week.

I hold space for all of it and it’s all amazing to me. And I think that’s what I want you to know, we’re not supposed to feel good all of the time. We’re supposed to have the full human experience of emotion, and not making ourselves wrong for that. I talked to you on one of my videos this week about the shame blame cycle. And how useful that has been for me. It’s been so useful for me to know about this. Because I think that I’ve spent a lot of my life in a shame blame cycle, and I didn’t know how to name it. I didn’t actually know what it was or what I was doing.

I’m a recovering people pleaser. I really am not a people pleaser anymore, I just am not. I worked so hard to get here. But this weekend I found myself kind of dipping into a shame blame cycle. And I want to explain that to you in case you experience this as well. So, I was raised by a mom who was upset, and I mean most of my memories of my mom when she was raising us was she was upset. That was her primary emotion. And most of my memories of me was that I was trying to cheer her up and I felt responsible for her upset-ness.

And I have a lot of memories of her blaming me and not talking to me, freezing me out for days and weeks at a time. She’d either be yelling at me because she blamed me, because I had done something wrong to upset her. Or she was shutting me out, not talking to me at all. So, this was a lot of my experience with my mom. And I haven’t spoken to my mom in probably over 20 years and that’s the reason.

I had for my own wellbeing, my own emotional mental health and to raise my own kids and have a healthy family of my own, I couldn’t be in a relationship with my mom because she never grew out of emotional childhood. I’m going to just cover it with that. But what I learned really well was the shame blame cycle. And I carried that with me the first 50 years of my life and it’s just been in the last 10 years that I’ve been able to figure that out and realized that I am not responsible for other people’s negative emotions. I just am not.

But I didn’t know that before because I made myself wrong any time someone was upset with me. I would shame myself for doing something wrong when I really just wanted to be a nice person. And I just wanted people to like me. I would make myself wrong and then I would feel that cold, that hot and cold heaviness of shame in me. And then when I was tired of doing that I would turn around and blame the person for being mad at me. I would be mad at them back. And I would spend some time there.

And I would find all the evidence why they shouldn’t be mad at me. And then when I was tired of being mad at them I would turn around and shame myself again. And I just couldn’t seem to get out of it until everything was okay. And the only way everything would be okay is if they would start talking to me again or they would forgive me, or they would stop yelling at me, or stop shutting me out.

And I realized as an adult that my little self, my little girl inside of me was just trained to be this way, just taking full responsibility starting with my mom and then carrying it over to my friends, and my siblings, and my husband, and then my kids, and just everyone. I just took on the responsibility for keeping people feeling okay and keeping people happy and in a good space and not rocking the boat.

So, I got just so good at that. And it was never to my benefit, it really was never to my benefit because I never learned how to love myself, to give myself what I need, to trust myself. To know that I’m only responsible for my own emotions, my thoughts, and emotions. And if someone is mad at me that’s just like a regulator light on my dashboard going off for me to check, did I do something wrong. That’s what you can ask yourself when someone’s mad at you, do a self-check.

Did you do something wrong? And if the answer is yes then you can apologize for that. And you can ask for forgiveness, and you can talk it out and be okay with that person. That’s repentance. But if the answer is no, when you ask yourself, did I do something wrong and the answer is no, I didn’t do anything wrong then there’s no shame there. You can drop out of the shame blame cycle. If the person’s upset, that’s okay, they can be upset.

And this is the other thing too. I always would just make it mean that they were upset with me. It was always the filter, I was the reason. But now I know it has nothing to do with me. people get to have the full human experience just like I do. They get to feel negative feelings when they feel them, and it never has anything to do with me. Or if I did do something wrong, I can make peace with them about that. But if I didn’t do anything wrong, which is most of the time, you guys, because I never intentionally do anything wrong towards people.

I feel like the kindest most compassionate, most loving person that I can possibly be. I never talk about anybody. I just am always cheering people on. I know this about me. And I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. So, I trust myself when it comes to hurting people’s feelings. I just never intentionally, I just would never ever do that but not to say that I don’t. Maybe people get their feelings hurt because I do something but it’s up to them to let me know because otherwise I will check to see what my intentions were, what I actually did.

And if I decide I haven’t done anything wrong, I can drop out of that shame blame cycle and go on with my life, and stay in my own lane, and keep doing the things that I’m doing and creating a life I love, and setting myself free. Then it’s up to them to make peace with me if they need to, to come to me and be clear and direct because I promise you, my whole intention every day is to be clear, direct, and honest. And not ever be passive aggressive, not ever beat around the bush, not ever do anything but from a place of love and compassion and seeing everybody as their highest self.

That’s what I do, that’s my intentional work every day. I see me from my highest self, and I see everybody else from their highest self. So that’s how I drop out of the shame blame cycle. When you’re in it, it is exhausting, let me tell you that. A lot of your exhaustion is coming from that making yourself wrong, or making someone else wrong. And I promise you it’s so helpful when you do this work. It’s helped me so much.

So, this week emotionally, and physically, and mentally I’m tired. And I’m just loving myself in this space that I’m in. So, the reason I’m sharing this with you today is because my trainer, Kristen, she today this morning was my very last session with Kristen. And the reason is she’s moving to Texas to start a whole new life with her fiancé and I’m so excited for her. But I wrote her a card and I said to my favorite trainer of all, the fairest trainer of all, you guys, I have worked with her for a few months now, every Monday morning, every Thursday morning, she’s never been late.

She always coaches me past my time. I’ve never been this strong and she has listened to me. She has been my coach, my trainer, my friend, we will always be connected. I have found out she’s written several books. She’s an author. She’s a straight up badass. I am so inspired by her. And she in turn is very inspired by me. I want more Kristen’s in my life. She has helped me so much, build so much strength and endurance in my body and in my brain, and my mentality about working out.

She’s taught me so much. She’s just a natural at it but this morning was our last session together. And Monday morning when our sessions are at 6:30 Monday and Thursday mornings. But when I went to bed on Sunday night, I was, remember, back at the beginning of this episode I was telling you I was really tired on Sunday night, just emotionally, just spent. And part of me wanted to text her which I have never done since I hired any trainers, I have never ever done this, texted her to say, “I am exhausted, and I will not be there in the morning.”

But I didn’t, I didn’t do it because I knew this was our last week. And I knew that once I got up and had my cappuccino in the morning, that I would have time to rest during the day on Monday. And I really didn’t want to miss my second to the last time training with her. When I got there on Monday morning I told her about that, told her, “I almost texted you last night and just said I can’t do it.” And she says, “Well, I want you to do a podcast about this. I want you to tell us about this experience for you and just how you keep showing up anyways, you keep doing it.”

And you guys, so that’s why I’m doing this episode, the full human experience, we are fully human, we’re fully, we’re here and we’re magnificent. And we’re supposed to experience it all and I’m here for it. I want you to be here for the whole human experience, not make yourself wrong when you’re mentally, and physically, and emotionally drained and exhausted. But you know what the best gift is? Knowing the reason why. I know why I am, and I love all my reasons.

I want to be mourning my dad. I want to be celebrating my husband. I wanted to fly to a wedding. I love coaching my clients. I actually started a new group this week so of course that was on my mind as well. And by the way I still have one spot left in that group and it’s not too late. I’m going to keep that spot open for the next couple of weeks until it fills. So, you are not too late. And it’s an amazing small group. This group will only have three clients in it. It’s like a little super power group, it’s just four of us. You will be the fourth member of the group.

And I’m going to tell you, you’re going to be an exceptional fit if you have a dream in your mind that you would like to be motivated to take action on. You’re going to be a perfect fit for this. So come grab that spot and you’re not too late. And it’s 11 o’clock on Wednesdays, Wednesday mornings Pacific time. You’ll love the women in the group, it’s just, we’re going to create so many amazing things in the next six months for all of us actually.

So anyways, this is what I have for you. Know that if you’re sad, if you’re in a shame blame cycle, I for sure can help you with that, it takes some intention and some acknowledgement, some intentional work. It takes some acceptance of what is. And actually, more than acceptance, it takes kind of like a love and a compassion for what is, who you are, how far you’ve come and how far there is to go, and how fun it is to be in the second half of life.

I’m telling you guys, 61, I have never been happier. I’ve never felt more secure, and more safe, and more grounded, and more sure of who I am and where I’m headed. And there’s just not a better feeling in the world. So, I want you to experience that with me. Okay, well, I hope that you are having a full human experience. I want you to love yourself, to accept yourself just as you are. I want you to see yourself with the utmost respect, treat yourself with the highest esteem, to know how amazing, how unique, how fabulous you are just right now as you are.

See yourself like that, show up as her. And know that whatever you’re feeling you’re supposed to be feeling. Acknowledge it. Rest when you need to rest. Take really good care of yourself but never ever, ever make yourself a victim to your life ever. You are the most powerful person in your life so be her. Okay, I love you for showing up today. Happy Thursday and I will see you next week.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.