Finding Strength From the Shadows: My Top 10 Insights to Overcome Alienation

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelley Nur episode number 56 stay tuned welcome to Beyond The High Road you guys um first off I just want to say I'm so sorry for um if you see me right now you'll see um for the such a late um release of the podcast episode I literally literally was just Burying my sweet Nita so I know that's probably TMI um but I feel like I can be real with you guys um and I also feel like I I really try my hardest to get you guys the episode like as soon is physically humanly possible every week and I work really hard at doing it and I just want you to know know that that I um when I'm late um there's a reason and in this case

um yeah Nita did not make it so you'll in the episode you'll hear me talking about how she just gotten sick but um she is as of today she's she's not here anymore in anyway I don't uh want to depress you anymore I uh I was so close to uh to stopping what I was doing and sto being burying her to um try to release the episode but I I felt like I owed you guys a at least something just a little explanation because it's very late now so anyway um okay all right I will you there is an ask me anything Saturday I will be around I will be okay in fact I will probably need the distraction so ask me anything is still Saturday at 10:30 a.m. eastern time okay either join the Facebook group or

um follow the link that I put in the show notes okay I've got dirt all over my face a mess I mean I literally just came in from in from outside from anyway um okay all right enjoyed the episode sorry if I just totally uh bummed you out it is what it is Jesus it was it's okay okay hey you guys if you're watching this then you see my background I'd done the episode cover art and had this handy and my darling Pig carnita I woke up this morning was no kitty I've got all of the animals coming to me right now because because I'm here I'm accessible I'm literally on the floor in the corner of a room so I woke up this morning and business as usual you know did my morning routine and I came in to

get my pig who's normally up and making noise and ready to eat and this morning she was at at first I thought it was just her being lazy and then I realized that she is labored breathing and is lame in her back legs so yeah there's that I was on the phone all morning with the vet I'm just I think in a place it's been a rough skull of it today it look like I'm petting the air right now she's there it's but yeah so here I am recording from my Pig's bed in the corner of a room hence the virtual background because it's not so pretty right here and yeah it's my sweet kiddo when she was a year old her year birthday I thought outfitting to put that up there for the podcast year

anniversary everything I do is for my babe everything that's all for her it just seemed like a fitting episode art for situation so anyway yeah I'm going to Quick Change that maybe just take her out of it so it's just happy birthday that way it doesn't look like I've got good looking at the thing right now looks little strange so I'm just going to be right back at you wasn't she cute she still is darling but also hopefully you guys can hear me because I'm not talking as loud as I normally would I've got a different camera set up out out here or over here so it's just I'm a little off kilter today when it rains it pours I will be dead honest with you before we get started like this episode

originally I don't often write full on outlines anymore it's been a while since I really did that and I wrote one for this episode because I had a story I wanted to tell and I wanted it to not be very long and the general mud of it was going to be a bit celebratory and this week has started off as a doozy of a week you know sometimes it's just it is what it is today is Tuesday on Sunday I I had a really tough day say with regard to emotions about my babe I can't remember exactly what kicked it off what initially started the mood but I was just sad you know and I allowed for the sadness and I didn't fight it I didn't love it to be there but I also didn't want it to go away you know what I mean

like I want to be sad about what's going on I want to miss her and I'm going to cry you know thinking about it I wouldn't ever not want to miss her you know I don't think at this point anyway and so it's appropriate it's appropriate discomfort appropriate amount of sadness I guess that I'm feeling sometimes it just comes in like bigger waves than others and that's what happened this week and so it started on Sunday and actually through all day yesterday and it's been a while since I it's been that long of a wave I think it probably added to my emotion when when yesterday my plan was all along to look for us through her first birthday pictures and find one for the episode art and looking

through old photos you know that always sort of does it to all of us so along with missing my babe I haven't spoken to her last month she wrote the night before the first Zoom visit in October asking to have the entire month off she wrote it to the supervisor so anyway so I haven't seen her either so basically my message here is is I go through the same hardships that I think that that you guys do life throws punches all the time and it's what you do with it you know I think it's really important to to remember that well let me just start by saying so this week's topic is the top 10 things that I've learned since beginning my healing there was 10 and I guess I'll just add an 11th and that one

is that you roll with the punches things do happen life happens and it doesn't stop I wish I could say that life all of a sudden you'll get you know this is what we always think about you know when we're in the darkest places we we look at other people and we think look at their Liv it looks so easy oh they've got it made oh at least they have blah blah blah when I get there then things will be easy and I just want to offer to you that it's not true you know that life is always going to hand your good and bad and it's what you want to see sometimes there's no way but to see the challenges and I know that you know that part very well so depending on where you

are in your healing maybe you've already begun to see and feel the joyous moments following alienation and maybe you haven't just know that if you are the the lowest Point thus far that it does get better but it gets better because of the perspective that you choose that is everything because it can always get worse it just depends on how you're thinking in your mind there has been no shift in the in my custody situation partly I take responsibility because I have not actively pursued you know going back to court and do all those things but there's been no change in the custody situation and life has gotten better so I used to always think that the only way things can get better and

the only way that I'll find happiness is if my daughter comes back home and I just want to offer that it doesn't have to be that way not to say that I wouldn't be and you wouldn't be elated if your children came home to you and for me too I would drop I would forget many things in fact I would drop everything to have my daughter home with me but that isn't the only way for you to find joy believe it or not there's a balance that you can create for yourself that enables you to find Serendipity find Joy meaning purpose so let's get into the planned content for today sometimes I don't know it's like I quickly forget little things I look down at my outline and there it was in black

and white earlier i' said I don't even know what started the whole going down memory lane and I have it written down right here it's the first paragraph in the outline for the healing and reinvention program I'm adding a feature and that feature is a private podcast while I was uploading the first episode this weekend I was looking trying to locate the audio file on my desktop and it ended up being in a folder with about 10 other audio files and these audio files were I didn't know it at the time when I was opening them the other day but they happened to be all from a chunk of time back in 2015 when my daughter had just left and gone to her father's back in 2015 I was with that we'll call

him Byron not my daughter's father but the other guy you know that one that I never have a nickname for he shall be named Byron that was still unfortunately going strong in fact earlier that year be very end of January I married Byron and we did it down in the Florida Keys and then from there left family and friends and went into the Caribbean and did our honeymoon and upon return I got my kiddo from school had her for that night and then the next morning I dropped her off to school and would have her for the rest of the week when I dropped her off to school after being gone for roughly 3 weeks I was checking my voicemail messages on the way home and one of the messages ID received was

from a few days before from the local children's hospital and it was a nurse requesting that I bring my daughter in for some pre-procedure blood work and I was like what are you talking about because I had scheduled no procedure for her and so when I called her back and found out that my daughter was scheduled for an elective surgery that I did not not know anything about while I was gone so when my daughter was born I had an emergency csection and so if you guys know if you've been in the room for dads or if you as a mom if you had a C-section or no you know until the bring the baby around to you you can't see your baby being delivered because there's that sheet right there to cover

you right and so my daughter was immediately taken she had like a cough right immediately taken to the nicku for just a very short period of time just to make sure she was okay and so she was and so I didn't see her for the first hour and it was like the most painful long stretch of time they bring her to me she's this beautiful baby with a head of hair and she was just perfect right one of the first things there was two things that her father said to me right at her birth one of them was let's give her your middle name which I thought was very sweet it was endearing and of course we did that and the other thing that he said was we can get that removed and he was pointing to a beautiful birth

mark on her knee and it as an inant it was large that time I don't know when she was around eight it was around 2 inches long and it was almost flat to the surface of her skin I had a very good friend while I lived in Austin I mean he's still a dear friend of mine who was a dermatologist and in fact we would go out to lunch at least once a month and each time we went he would always give her and I really body checks right and make sure we were good so he was always checking her her knee to make sure that it wasn't anything to worry about right and it wasn't long story short is that this is what the procedure was for I found out and I was livid of course but at the same time I had been

through previous situations where I would act to protect her my you know her daughter my daughter and things got very volatile let's say right and so I dreaded having to squawk you know rock any boat I really tried to keep everything as status quo just Trucking along without causing any major waves so I was really annoyed that this came up because because for obvious reasons I got off the phone with the nurse at first I was totally annoyed and then I was like you know let me call them back I wanted to make sure I was willing to not put up a fight and just let them do it if the conditions this procedure was right right if it was not in any way going to be risky if there

were things that I didn't know that he had found out you know I was open I was open and to make a very long story short and not go into all the details I spoke with the nurse it was is going to be a an hour under general anesthesia not local and she was going to be out of activities and in a full leg Breeze the whole nine for five weeks or so and so I was like this is crazy just so happened that my then across the street neighbor was a physician's assistant and in fact she did a lot of surgeries and her daughter was roughly the same age as my daughter is her daughter was a grade younger than mine just because her birthday was in November I believe and so anyway I went over there and I was

like hey would you opt to get Mazy surgery to get a birth mark removed and being under Dent anesthesia for an hour and she was like no absolutely not she of course then asked what I was talking about and I explained just so happened that the surgery center that my daughter was being taken to happened to be her my cross the street neighbor's partner happened to be the lead surgeon right he led that team and so it was perfect in fact I knew the guy just from my neighbor so I got my daughter in for a second third whatever opinion and of course he confirmed my thoughts about this my suspicions I guess you will that it was not a necessary procedure that it was entirely cosmetic elective and that

if it were I asked him if he would do it he if it were him he would not opt to do the surgery so so I was really upset because I felt like it put me into a pickle of a place I didn't want to have to stop anything I didn't want to have to I didn't want to have to advocate for my daughter in this way right because I knew what it was going to cause I knew what the aftermath might look like I felt it I knew because any time in the past that I'd gone to protect her the payback was hell right and so I didn't you know I was terrified but I didn't make my decision I kept trying to keep my mind open all the way up until the pretty much moments before surgery happened her dad never notified me of

this secret surgery he had planned right this was all pled behind my back and so then finally when I let him know that I knew he assured me that he' gone through we had standard custody order where if the parents don't agree then there's a tiebreaker and that tiebreaker is usually the pediatrician or The Specialist and so he told me assured me that he had gotten the pediatrician's referral so I ended up getting the information back from the doctor I'd been waiting across the street at the Starbucks my hands were shaking I was so nervous I did not want to have to stop the surgery but the doctor came back and said no a referral was never given this was done on their own they hadn't

followed the protocol basically so I went in and stopped the surgery so of course as you probably can imagine all hell broke loose in the surgery center and her father threatened me and he was you know it wasn't a pretty scene I knew what was to come by doing it I did I knew that I was going to face the WRA this had happened one other time not with a medical thing something something did completely unrelated and although I won in court the price I paid out of fork socially with what he did to follow what they did did to follow basically anytime I acted to protect her I got punished and I knew it I knew what I was going into and that's why I was so nervous when I got punished I got scared

when I get scared I Buckle under pressure or that's what I believed about myself back then and that's that's sort of made happen right I I stuck my head in the sand and so although I was able to hold it together and advocate for my daughter in the short term I wasn't able to advocate for myself for the Long Haul so I did everything I needed to do both times this surgery time and the other time beforehand I did everything I needed to do to protect my daughter and make sure she was safe and then then I crumbled it was like I I was using willpower and like that protective mom part of me for her and to make sure she was safe and then when it came to advocating for my own self I didn't know

how to do it and that is really just like a theme of mine throughout my life that I am still to this day working on I didn't know this back then I didn't know what was happening with me so of course I was repeating that that same pattern so I got served I knew it was coming and it was fine at first until the pressure started coming on from them I was being followed I was being badgered and bullied and and harass basically the more pressure I felt the more I wanted to retreat into my show and pretend it wasn't happening I tell you the story to illustrate where I was back then how I was too afraid to look at my own faults I was too afraid to face and acknowledge

the alienation because I was terrified of being shamed I was refusing I remember being very stubborn in that I refused to let them do the shaming and having been a part of many hearings in years prior I refused to see her smug face sitting across from me in the hearings and watch the production that was put on in the courtroom by them by the Stepmom I couldn't take it I couldn't at the time I felt like her sler than thou yet very it was just an awful display of I'll be nice here and just say Dramatics was repulsive to me and I couldn't take watching her try to make me out to be the bad parent the the one who was repulsive and I don't say this to be judgy I say this to share

with you where my head was at where my focus was at back then this was what kept me from advocating for myself basically I was cutting off my nose despite my face because I was focusing on them and what they were thinking about me and what they were wanting to do to me in my mind like I was saying or just a few minutes ago I lost sight of my true goal which was always to parent my child told myself I couldn't face the alienation without numbing myself without having a reward at the end of the day for dealing with all of it for everything I had been through I needed something as like a little helper to decompressed after putting up with so much I also told myself that look other

parents other moms drink just as much as I do right they have the bottle of wine at night too and they're still actively Mommy why should I be any different why is it that I'm the one that gets punished my drinking has nothing to do with my ability to parent my child although these things are technically true looking back on that now I know that the amount of energy I expended in protecting my habit was not healthy it's fine and dandy if there are no repercussions but it just so happened that there were repercussions for me and yes it was a different situation and other moms other dads other parents that were split could do the things that I was doing and still actively parent

their child but those parents were not dealing with the same thing I was dealing and so to me though at the time it didn't make sense why should I be punished for their efforts their pathology basically and I was looking at it wrong so back to the original thing that I was talking about what prompted all this I told myself at the time that no other guy would put up with this kind of baggage all of the harassment and the bullying and the crap that because of this custody situation this custody nightmare that I was going through that I was never going to be able to find anybody better than who I was currently with I was I just remember always thinking like who would volunteer or

sign on to be a part of this hell because I was living it was like my own personal hell and I know that you guys know that really well too so instead I remained with the abusive guy that would soon be the demise of my relationship with my daughter looking back on that I realized that I allowed the custody situation to Define me to Define who I was aside from being a mom I allowed it to have an effect on my own perceived worth today I look back on that version of me and I feel so sad right I feel so I pity that version of me that girl back then I was listening to my voice the sound of my voice and the words that were coming out of my mouth and that weren't coming out of my mouth and

listening to what Byron was saying just felt like this deep sadness and longing for that girl that version of me for what she needed I felt it brought me right back there and I feel like that girl is so familiar yet so very foreign to me so I want to share with you the things that I've learned since then I was going to do like the things I've learned in the last year since the podcast started but I really think it might be more helpful for y'all depending on where you're at and you're in this whole process right coming back to your self-healing advocating for your own selves I thought it would be more helpful to basically give you the top 10 things I've learned since then the

darkest place the girl that was on those audio recordings that I was listening to this weekend I have these written down so number one is I am worth more than rubies and so so are you and so this actually that first part of that sentence I'm worth more than rubies is actually comes from a verse in the Bible but it does not matter whether you are uh Christian or not it's still this message applies just take it for face value you are worth so much more than I would bet that you give yourself credit for or that you recognize I think all of us doesn't matter how high or amazing your self-esteem and self view is I just truly believe that none of us give ourselves enough recognition and so I

try to tell myself every day now that very thing I am capable of so much more than I can ever even imagine that you know you and me both we are you hear me say it if youve listened to this podcast before is that we're superheroes you're a superhero I'm a superhero we can do things we don't there's so much untapped potential in these brains of ours you know we don't use near the potential and the capability that we have so don't say yourself short is basically my lesson one about a year and a half after my daughter left I sold the home that I built for her and I and I moved out to the country not the house on the hill but one before that and had a bunch more land it was great my pig and it was

closer to her it was right around the corner from her and I wanted to be on her bus route but that Christmas the second Christmas she was gone was into woodworking at the time and really feeling my Artistry painting and stuff and I made her this big chest you know like a one to go at the edge of her bed out of Maplewood and so it was this big heavy Maplewood chest and I painted on each one of its sides and on the top of it and one of the things that I painted was this the scripture basically saying that you are worth more than rubies as I was doing the artwork for this I was shaming myself and sort of reprimanding myself for not knowing better for not leaving Byron earlier for not knowing

how to advocate for myself following me standing up for her and stopping the surgery by the way to this day I do stand by my decision to stop the surgery I won't share it now but maybe at a different time I'll share what happened after that surgery and how it didn't work to my advantage but well for many reasons but no matter what if I was to do it all over again I would still stop the surgery because I truly didn't believe in why it was being done not only why it was being done how it was being done that she was going to be under and I didn't believe in putting her through the risk if given the choice to do something over that wouldn't be it just don't believe that that that was

the right thing for her to have that surgery but I would take back and do over what I did with myself and my my lack of advocating for myself afterwards and therefore her advocating for her in the Long Haul that I would change so you are worth way more and also how you treat yourself what you allow yourself to have in life what you expect from your yourself you deserve so much more than you're giving yourself is basically the message there okay so number two is sometimes I suck and that's okay right it's perfectly fine I think we all suck at times we all do we're human we're fallible it's when we're able to embrace the suck that we're able to use the suck to our benefit embracing it not with

self-deprecation but embracing it with humility and dignity that's when you can start harnessing it right and embracing it also allows it like kind of takes the air out of it so if there are things that you don't like about yourself for me I find a lot of relief when I reveal those things to other people when I don't keep them hidden and shame myself for the things that I don't like instead I I use them to sort of Empower and just lay it all out on the line for anybody really instead of trying to hide it and trying to put make myself somebody that I'm not that always causes me to act really weird and I can't say creepy but kind of like just weird and awkward and

so I prefer just to lay it all all down the line you know this is who I am and I do suck sometimes you guys I think it was the do you appreciate you episode I think that's the one where I talked about some of the things that I don't love about myself but like that I'm impatient and I'm stubborn burn and I am a lot to handle a lot of the time the very people say that I've got a big personality and you're so many times I can tell you I mean I can think back so many times where I wished I could shrink myself like my personality so that I wasn't so stand out trust me especially during the whole mess with my with my ex I really wished that I could be a little more quiet but it's just not who I am

not when I at my happiest and at my my truest self it's who I am so I've learned to for the most part embrace it and so those things that you cringe about yourself instead of cringing instead of like oh I hate that about myself I challenge you to to take a different perspective and and find reasons why you love those things about yourself because I guarantee you no matter what those things that you don't like can turn out to be your greatest Assets in the right application okay so yeah the third thing I've learned is talking about the issue causes you to have authority over it and I know that you guys probably have heard this before or know it for yourself but

throughout the last year I know just how true this is it used to be that sitting down to just even write out about like doing a thought download or trying to write about what had happened over the course of the years right with my daughter's father and even Byron afterwards when I would sit down and try to write about it just with myself I would enter into a trauma response after trauma response after trauma response it was just so activating to even think about but over this last year especially for me I've learned that talking about it talking about what has happened has caused me to have authority over it but also has caused me to to settle into it and sort of get some distance from it

right right because I've created a purpose for it and so what my hope is is that each one of you no matter how you do it all in your own ways find a way to express yourself about what has gone on you can actually gain a lot of authority over it by doing this talking it out is everything and then number four is just because you think it doesn't make it true question everything so maybe you've heard me say before but I used to believe that if it occurred in my mind it was true it had to be true because my brain thought it and like if this especially applies to like if I had a craving if the craving happened if I had this like an urge to have a drink then I

was done for right if you've list to the habits episode I'm sure one of those habits any of the habits episodes you heard me say this right and I I did I really truly thought if it occurred to me I had believe believe it it was true I had to follow through with whatever it was nobody had ever taught me any different and so the one of the biggest lessons I've learned over the last I don't know six seven so years is that that's not true just because it occurs to you doesn't make it true it just means it occurred to you sometimes it's just a fleeing thought and I can just let it Fleet Float On by I don't have to act on it right and so number five is just because it's true doesn't mean have

to think it you hear me say this all the time if it doesn't serve you if it's not working for you then don't continue to think it it's as simple as that something can be true it can be proved in a court of law but if it's not working for you in your life and it has no benefit to thinking it then then don't don't do it don't torture yourself there's no need to to create an environment inside your own body inside your own head where you live of uneasiness or whatever it is that the thought is if it's not working for you okay find a thought that moves you to where you want to go okay it's not that you're ignoring the truth but you can find a version of that truth that pushes

you into the direction that you want to go number six defining who you are means that you must also Define who you are not this one can bring up some fear because when we have to Define what we don't want in our lives this can cause us to feel very vulnerable it depends on who we're speaking about here but it can cause us like in a romantic relationship and in some even in friendships it can cause you to feel very vulnerable and then when it comes to like your children it can cause you to feel uneasy like if you stand up for what you don't want in your life that you might end up cutting them out inadvertently and so it can feel very scary to even ask yourself

what it is that you don't want to put up with because if you're not willing to put up with certain things like the way that our brains work those things are already there in your mind things that you don't like things that you act you respond not so well to let's just say we're talking about boundaries those unacceptable things acts done by somebody else you already don't respond well to them and you probably already do sort of retract or respond to them in a way that you don't want but when you're stating it beforehand this is what I will not accept that means that you're taking the first step to possibly opening up the door for them to walk the other direction and that's scary stating

and being clear about your boundaries means that you inevitably are going to inadvertently repel some people so defining who you are also means that you must Define who you're not number seven being different doesn't make you less relevant it makes you more relatable so the six and seven sort of go together so in one you are uh stating what you will not put up with right you're putting up a boundary but when you actually effectively put up these boundaries for yourself what you will accept in your life and and what will do if somebody crosses that boundary listen to the boundaries episode the people that accept and respect those boundaries and that are you know have no problem with

that you have now sort of accepted them into your life and you've created a space where love can grow those people are your ride or died people they feel privileged and happy and want to celebrate you for having boundaries standards basically those standards work for those people so seven is being different doesn't make you less relevant it makes you more relatable eight putting yourself out there for what you believe is worth the risk just like I was saying listen even in the case of my daughter I don't know if I'd ever be able to sit with myself if I hadn't stopped that surgery that day no matter what the the repercussions were and the repercussions were here I sit right

without her today I don't know that I would ever have been able to stop their efforts to alienate but the direct result of me stopping that surgery was this lawsuit but I to this day I would regret not stopping that surgery not advocating for my daughter putting myself out there to stand up for what I believe in means everything to me even when I was trembling in the moment for taking those steps and doing it like I was saying my regret lies in what I I did or didn't do after I didn't advocate for myself effectively and therefore inadvertently didn't didn't advocate for her in the long run and that's where my regret lands but I truly believed and acted on what I believed in by stopping

that surgery so I think putting yourself out there for what you believe is always worth the risk and it doesn't have to be as drastic dramatic as the the steps that I took it can be in the everyday things just standing up for what it is that you believe in for yourself and for those who you've claimed as your own right number nine stress does not have to be a bad thing if you've heard that recent stress is enhancing episode this is what I'm talking about here stress is not what causes long-term Health it's what we believe about the stress that causes the longterm health problems right if I want to believe like the other day I was having a a bunch of stressed about the car situation it's

coming down to the wire and I haven't yet fully settled on a car so I was stressed about that I was not feeling so great about my daughter I was missing my daughter and then I have this thing with my pig going on today there's been a lot of stress going on in my world maybe it's not like the height of alienation kind of stress but still feels like the hits te coming this week right and so back in the day I would have made that stress be like D and today I am looking at each one of these little stresses as though these are things that I'm supposed to grow through so there are like little challenges for me little obstacles that I am already equipped to complete I just have to figure out how

to do it and so when I look at each one of these stressors as a challenge as opposed to my demise then life is so much better the stress response yet yesterday I was walking in circles in my house and I was telling myself you're going to be okay this is just a challenge this is just an obstacle you have to get through and my whole day ended up so much better right I wasn't exhausted you know by 3 o' in the afternoon I was fine stress does not have to be a bad thing each one of the stressors that come to you are there to grow you okay and then the last thing is helping others is where it's at for healing giving your time and and uh attention and love directing it into

somebody that needs it is everything not only does it create a sense of relief in your own system but it opens your heart to so much more love and it does it distracts you a little bit even even during it causes you and especially if you're helping other people with challenges that you've already been through then your your sense of purpose feeling necessary irre able a sense of your life having meaning always comes from doing service work no matter what it is right so helping others is definitely where it's at helps to normalize your pain not in a way that you are allowing bad things to happen to you but allowing it in your body so that you can move through it and grow from it

okay so there you have it you guys I hope you guys are having a lovely week I'm going to go and take care of my very sick Pig who is still not moved mov d one inch well maybe one inch since last night so forgive me I will talk with you guys next week okay take care thanks so much for listening today guys I'm honored that you chose to share your time with me if you like what you've been hearing and you want more come join me in the new monthly membership where we take the concepts that you hear about here and using a logical framework you learn to apply them to your specific situations upgrading your thoughts and your life even while experiencing the grief of

alienation for more information go to beyond the high road.com see you soon