Stephanie: Hi, Sha. Welcome to the podcast.

Sha: Hi, Stephanie. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to dive in and always a joy to have a conversation with you. So I'm excited about this.

Stephanie: Oh, thank you. That's so kind. What a great way to start. Tell me about your formative years. What were the forces that shaped you to be the person you were when our story starts, which, for you, is about 34, 35. Tell me a little bit about young Sha.

Sha: Oh boy. Poor little girl. She was, a fighter and a peacemaker all rolled into one. Definitely was exposed to abuse, bullying, addiction, depression, anger at a very young age and didn't really even comprehend what any of that meant until, you know, many years later, like you said, 34, 35. But when I was, sixth grade, so what is that, 11 years old?

First time I got drunk. I started smoking a pack a day of cigarettes at 14. I was 15, I was drinking daily. At 16, I got a DUI. And at 25, I quit drinking altogether.

Stephanie: Wow. Well, and you'd already had a full career of it by then, though.

Sha: Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know, it's funny cause, as a podcaster too, I always like to let know like people's defining moments.

And so for me, one of my defining moment was definitely getting a DUI at 16. I woke up the next morning and I really got a deep sense, unfortunately, like smack in the face of what being humble looks like, because you have to be humiliated first. And it was like I was brought to my knees in humiliation of getting a DUI at 16.

And I said, okay. I'm a spiritual person, so I said, okay, God, I'm done. I've messed this life up enough. You do with it what you want. I'm clearly messing it up. I'm done. And, it's never like the movies, like, clap of the hands and all of a sudden everything's in Technicolor, you know, and fun and great and perfect.

It wasn't like that at all, but it was interesting that was definitely a defining moment for me.

Stephanie: Wow. 16. That's almost incomprehensible to me. That's so young. So obviously you were working to escape from life.

Sha: Yep.

Stephanie: Life and my home. I mean, it wasn'thorrific, like some people's, but it wasn't loving or caring, nurturing either. My parents were still married up until I was 16, but my dad was absentee. He worked as a salesperson through the week. So he was gone Monday through Friday. We grew up on a farm in the middle of the country. And so he was in the field on the weekends and then in the bars on the weekend nights.

okay.

Sha: So it was just, that was normal. Quote unquote normalcy. And, you know, I grew up as a little kid sitting on his lap, sipping beer out of his beer can. And people say, Oh, you fell in love with how it made you feel.

And I'm like, that's for me. That's not it at all. I fell in love with the taste. And I think for me, it was like, that was the intriguing part that pulled me back in later on.

Stephanie: Interesting. The taste. You liked the taste of beer.

Sha: Oh, that's interesting. Cause when I started drinking, I would drink literally anything but beer.

Most people do.

Stephanie: Yeah, I had an illustrious drinking career myself but I could never pick up the taste for beer. So if we're at a party where it was only beer, I was like, all right, well, I guess I'm not drinking tonight.

So, that's interesting. So escaping the household. through drinking, escaping life, DUI at 16. Did you go to college?

Sha: I tried college, typical college. I went to a community college for computer science. So, by the time I was a junior in high school, I was like, all right, I got to do something with my life to get out of here. So I buckled down and, said, all right, I'm going to figure out this thing called life. And I'm going to go to college to get my PhD in computer science and move to Japan because then that way I can definitely get out of here.

And I took one semester and was like, this is not for me. What am I doing? I have no desire to sit in front of a computer all day. And so then I moved out, lived, uh,with my two best friends and lived off my savings and partied and whooped it up. And then, the day after I turned 19, I moved to a different state to live with my dad.

My parents had gotten a divorce. Right before I was a senior, my dad left, and that's a whole nother podcast of a story in itself. Basically he left, he told me I had to tell my mom. My senior year, all hell broke loose as far as, like, I became the parent. My mom was, non functional for a while, and, I became the caregiver.

And so my senior year, somehow I pulled a 4. 0. I think maybe the teachers just felt sorry for me. And so, when now, all of a sudden I'm like, alright, I'm gonna get out of here and move to Japan. And then all of that went away very quickly. Like, alright, this is not for me.

My dad had moved to a bigger town, a bigger city, Kansas City, and said, why don't you come live here? There's schools and jobs and opportunities. And so the day after my 19th birthday, I packed up and moved. And when I got there, he said, you have a week to decide what you're going to do. Either get a job or go to school, or you go back.

And so I, went to cosmetology school. And that was another moment that really saved my life. I really understood what purpose meant being of service to people in the cosmetology industry.

That served me very well. I had a career of that full time for 28 years. And now it's very part time. Yeah, I had my own salon for half of that. And just really, I'm still honored that when I go back to Kansas City, I have clients of 25 years that I've done that still want me to do their hair and still, you know, say amazing things about me. So, you know, it was just a, what a gift that I gave myself that I didn't even know I was doing at the time.

Stephanie: Oh, that sounds like a real bright light in your early life.

Sha: Yeah, it was another escapism. Again, didn't realize that. But being able to pour into my job and my clients means I didn't have to talk about me. I didn't have to focus on me. It was more about making sure that they were taken care of and okay. And you know, I Still was drinking, I was smoking. I was still smoking a pack a day in the beginning years. And, you know, didn't really exercise a whole lot and ate Snickers for breakfast and a can of Pepsi on the way to work. And that was a normal for me and.

Stephanie: Yes, but we can all do that in our 20s, can't we?

Sha: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. True. Very true. Very true. But when I was 21, I worked in a salon where a woman said, I said, I think I need healing. And she said, I think you need to take the Landmark Forum. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Stephanie: I've heard the name.

Sha: IT is a self development company. I'll put it that way. But it's a, like a long weekend where it's a deep dive into personal development. And it really shaped another defining moment, really shaped who I was going forward. There's an exercise that you do in there and you really get that the story that we tell ourself is about a situation that happened. And we make ourselves bad, wrong, or ugly or horrible or something, right? We make ourselves into that and then there's the reality of what this is. So there was like the story we told ourselves about this thing that happened, this event. And then the truth that it was just an event.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Sha: So that was really huge for me. And that just literally kind of started the, if you will, like if I was a sticker, that didn't come off something and you're kind of budging it, you're doing everything that you possibly can to let go of that sticker. This was the very beginning of the corner edge peeling off like, oh, there's, there's relief in sight to get rid of that sticker. So that's how I felt.

Stephanie: Wow. So meanwhile, in your early twenties, can we shift a little bit to romance, to your love life? Let's talk a little bit about that.

Sha: Yeah. So I thought, like most people in their 20s thought, Oh, I've met the love of my life. He's amazing. We had so much fun together, cause you know, we were partiers. So we partied a lot. And then things got very ugly, within a year. And, I didn't really grasp the concept that I was a victim, so we partied a lot.

He was what I, again, I know now as a functioning alcoholic, so he drank every day and I drank a lot. And then at one point, after partying one morning, he woke up and he's like, you know, you do really stupid things when you drink. And, that was it.

I told the beer in the refrigerator goodbye. I could never have another one again and I never drank, haven't drank since, 25 years ago. But what's crazy is that it was because he was projecting himself onto me because he's the one who did really stupid things when we were out. Talk to other women, get their phone numbers, things like that.

I was, not oblivious to it. My intuition was like something's not right here. But when I questioned him, he was so good at, as we know now, the term gaslighting, so good at gaslighting, manipulating me and turning it around, making it like I'm seeing something that I'm not seeing. I'm crazy. You know, things like that, that I ended up staying with him for a long 12 years and they were abusive in every way, shape, and form that you can think of, during those 12 years.

Stephanie: I'm so sorry. I also spent, a handful of years, not as many, but five with a functional alcoholic. He was, again, very similar. We were partiers when we first met and, it's the kind of thing that, there were red flags within, the first couple of months, but you ignore them because it's so much fun. And somebody's, living the similar lifestyle. We spend about 5 years together and in the last couple of years our paths had diverged and he was still in the party party party.

He was also in an industry, he was in the entertainment industry. So, it was very common. There were other people who were drinking at lunch and after work. Whereas I had gone, into the business community and, couldn't, be like that anymore.

And was, growing up a little bit, and I remember he would always throw in my face, where did my fun girlfriend go? I was like, well, I, you know, I, we went out and I had 3 drinks, like, I just didn't have, you know, 12,

And then in the last couple of years, it was similarly, he was having, what I would call to today emotional affairs with people.

I don't think he really had the gumption to, like, actually go out and cheat on me, but, you know, I would find him on the phone with ex girlfriends, or I would, you know, this is not the best look for me, but the trust was not there, so I would check his phone, and there would be text messages with other women, and.

I can empathize with a good amount of your experience. He was never abusive. That was, I was fortunate in that way, but, it was not a great relationship. It was fun for a couple of years and then not.

Sha: Right. Well, and that's how they lure you in, right, as, they're all the good time guy. And, which as, again, this term was not even used back then, but narcissists, right?

Kind of the, what they use, they're like the best guy ever and then they turn. And then it's all of a sudden your fault that you are no longer the fun girlfriend, right?

And, you know, we're conditioned, especially our generation, we're conditioned that Disney, even though I love Disney, sorry, Disney, I'm not throwing you under the bus, but the fairy tale of love and romance is, oh, the butterflies, oh, the ooey gooeys. And I had to learn for myself that those butterflies meant red flags. Listen up.

Stephanie: Interesting.

Sha: And once I figured that out, it was like, got it. Keep your eyes open. What's really going on here?

Listen up.

Stephanie: Early warning system.

Sha: Yeah.

Stephanie: Interesting. I've never heard butterflies characterized that way before, and I'm trying to think back. It's been so long, right?

I'd never thought of this particular person as being a narcissist. And I've talked to so many people who've been with narcissists that I feel like now I'd have to go and sit down with him and with what I know of narcissists and wonder if that was, if that fit him.

He definitely, the gas lighting, definitely the, it's your fault. Definitely the escapism. He came from some troubled background. So,

Sha: What I learned with my own, so I quit drinking, but when I got the DUI, I had to go through AA and all of that back in when I was 16. So I had, I know the steps, so to speak, and then have since done like celebrate recovery and things like that. And so you learn that addiction, or substance abuse of any kind is extremely selfish. And so when you look at narcissism and being selfish. You can see again, it's not a technical diagnosis or a clinical diagnosis. I'm not a doctor, but you can see the similarities of anyone who's a alcoholic to a narcissist because of the selfishness.

Stephanie: Well, and I'm curious, so you're in your early to mid twenties, you go through the Landmark program, you meet the man, you quit drinking. So you've already scratched the surface on the personal development and you've taken away the addiction piece. And yet you stayed with him for many, many years after that.

Sha: So what was it when you were 34, 35 that finally opened your eyes or woke you up? Or what, was it that, allowed you or empowered you to step away from that? Great question. So a couple of different things. So first of all, like I said before, I'm a very spiritual person. So at some point, my health started to take a really bad downturn and I was in extreme amount of pain and I went to years of doctors after doctors trying to find the diagnosis. And at the time, again, this is 20 something years ago, right?

At the time, it's like, fibromyalgia was a new term. And they said, we can put you on a cocktail of antidepressants, sleeping pills. And painkillers and a hair client of mine had been talking to me about her daughter, getting acupuncture and how that really saved her. And she's like, you might think about this.

So I immediately went from finally getting diagnosed after years of trying to find something wrong with me.

Stephanie: And to be honest, I was kind of in the back of my head. Like, could you just. Find the cancer so I could die already because I'm trying to get out of this relationship, right? And I had a fear. I didn't have a fear of dying. I had a fear of him killing me.

As a teenager I learned very quickly how suicidal I was growing up. That's why I drank as much as I did. I think I was trying to drink myself to death back then. And had thought, at other times, I had broken a knee when I was a teenager and the pain was so excruciating of, , ending it all then too.

Sha: So, that was always kind of in the back of my head. So the thought of dying wasn't the hard part. It was that he was going to kill me and that was always right here. Like, not in the back of my mind. It was right here in my face. So now here I am, I'm getting, acupuncture.

I'm starting to feel better within a few weeks. I'm like, whew, wow, what a difference. The pain is gone. The clarity that showed up was start journaling. And so I started journaling on a daily basis and they quickly turned into a thank you note to God every day. I'm really focusing on, what I could be grateful for.

And even though I had this chaos going on at home, and that's the only word I know how to describe it was chaos. But I could depend on that hour every morning with my cup of coffee journaling when he was not around. And so at some point, and I'm not even sure exactly what happened, but I would always pray for him in these journals.

And at some point something clicked and I added praying for me. I was always praying for him, but then I started to add praying for me, and it was, Okay, God, what do you want me to do? Instead of God, heal him, help him, you know, show him what to do. It was, okay, God, heal me, help me. What do you want me to do?

So then over the course of several years, I decided to leave my salon and start my own. And so I did that. And within six months, the CEO of the former salon called me and asked me to become partner, asked me to come back and I counter offered with a consultant position. And the weird thing was, is that I had been receiving these postcards in the mail that said, start your own consulting practice online. When I counter offered, I thought, well, if I'm not consulting for them, when they said, no, I said, well, maybe I need to be consulting for someone else. So I took a consulting practice or this class, how to start your own consulting practice online. And I was almost to the end of that class and I had a dream, three nights in a row.

And I woke up at the same time. The same dream. And it was very weird like, huh? Like this is so bizarre. And so by the third night, I finally wrote it down and I was like, okay this is crazy. And the dream was that I was the owner of a office building and I had a salon on the first floor had a software idea on the second floor and started a foundation on the third floor. And it was extremely, daunting of a dream, if you will, because I felt this responsibility, pressure and the imposter syndrome of, there's no way, no way I could ever do anything like that. I am not equipped to be an owner of all of those things. And so it was then praying about this and the journals of, well, where did this come from?

Is this something from the enemy? Is this something, demonic. What is this? And then after so long of praying about it was like, well, okay, if this is what you want for me, then 2 things need to happen. I've been trying to break up with the ex for so long. And several years prior to this, I was actually, I didn't mention this until now, but several years prior to this, I was on the couch on the phone with him because we didn't live together. We lived together for a short period of time, and then I said no at the end of that. So we didn't live together for a long time, but he, you know, we end up staying in each other's places. But for the most part, we had still had our own place. At one point, I was on the phone with him at my house, and I was breaking up with him. And as I'm sitting on the couch, it was as if there was someone sitting next to me that was whispering in my ear that said, not now, not now. And at the time, I thought not now meant it was my own fear. That, oh, I didn't want to be alone.

And so now here I am several years later, and I'm like journaling, and I'm like, literally, I can remember it. I'm like, okay, God, if you are the one who said not now, then you are the one that has to take care of this because I've tried and it hasn't worked. So I don't know what I am supposed to do and still be able to hold what I wanted, which was my career and my business and, you know, I didn't want to give that up for him. I was bound and determined I wasn't going to give that up for him. I worked too hard for that. I was like, absolutely not.

And so, 6 months later, he was in a car accident out of the blue. I had started going to a church in the neighborhood and he was on his way to my house at 4 in the morning and he lost control of his car. Somehow, went up on the curb sideways backwards at an angle and slid into a tree in the church parking lot. Right in the yard of the church I had been going to and literally like hit his head on the tree. They had to cut him out with the jaws of life and he was in a coma.

And that day never forget it. It was just weird. Like he didn't answer his phone and when I did call sometimes it would go to voicemail. Sometimes it didn't. Just weird. And I kept trying to like find him. And then the other part was like, well, if he's found someone else, then so be it. I shouldn't be concerned, but there was this intuition feeling that was like, there's something more. And so I tracked him down at the hospital. He was an ICU in this coma. And, you know, I go there, I let his family know, his mom and his sister. And when they got there, then we had to get out of the room, because you can only have so many people in ICU. They turned on me and was like, well, this is your fault. I know. And I was like, wait a minute here, you gotta be kidding me.

So it was interesting because he never really came out of that. He ended up moving from an ICU, to one below it, to a long term care facility, to a nursing home. And he lived in a nursing home for 14 years, I think. He just passed away last year.

Stephanie: Oh my goodness.

Sha: Yeah, last year or two years ago? I think it was two years ago. Passed away two years ago. And the crazy thing about that is that I, had to break up with his sister. I had to break up with his sister.

Stephanie: What do you

Sha: Because his. So they were trying to blame me and then they were trying to get me to be responsible. Well, you then now have to do this. You have to do this. You have to take care of his life insurance, his insurance and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no. He couldn't make it. He was a kind of comatose. He opened his eyes after the first week and that was it. As far as I know, he was never, I never saw him verbal again.

But I didn't see him after he moved to the nursing home. Someone had to get guardianship of him to make decisions. And His mom and his sister were like that's you. And I said absolutely not. So I went to his sister and I said look here's the thing. I've been trying to break up with him for years He was abusive. I think he has something called borderline personality disorder, which is bipolar and schizophrenia. It can be stemmed from child abuse. And she was like, he's never been abused in his life. And I said, your aunt and uncle informed me that he was.

Stephanie: And, she said, well, he's a compulsive liar. He's not who told me, they were. And so to have the truth come out. And there's so much more. I mean, during this time of 12 years, he had a double life as well. He had met someone, had, married her, had a baby. Yeah, oh, yeah. all these things.

Sha: Oh, yeah.in fact, we were living together, and I believe right after we moved in together, he married her.

Stephanie: Oh, Sha.,

And they're like, yes. Why did you stay? And I said, well, I stayed because, one, he threatened to kill me if I didn't. He would come to my job. He would do this. He would constantly find me. Number one. Number two, he threatened me and I say threatened because it was more of like a promise. He had a threatening promise that I was going to be an amazing stepmom one day, with his child. And, that he was going to take custody and all of this.

And she goes, I never, anything that he told you, it was such a lie. I said, I understand that. I have zero attachment to him. What about you? And I said, do you understand what trauma looks like in the brain and why he did the way he did? And she goes, well, you know, he's a compulsive liar. And I said, oh, honey, this has nothing to do with him.

This is all about the work that I've done since him. And the research I've done and the understanding for my own sake. And, she in her mind, unfortunately, was like, well, I just had a bad marriage. No, you had a lie. And it's unfortunate because we were innocent in this, but we lived a lie for all those years. And she's like, well, we were together for 12 years. And I said, so were we. So to wrap your head around everything I knew as a lie, rather than going, oh, my ex husband was this, and this. It's like, no, everything was a lie. It doesn't even, none of it makes sense.

Stephanie: Right.

Sha: And, that was the probably the really hard part is when you remove yourself from, an abusive situation, as humans, we want to try to understand.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Sha: Like, our brain wants to go right. Like, try to make some sort of sense of this. And I had to learn that logically, it didn't make sense. Rationally, it didn't make sense. Because people who are abusive are not logical or rational.

Stephanie: Right.

Sha: So none of it really matters. The attachment to needing to know and the attachment to I have to understand this. Why me? Why did this happen? All of that released. And I will tell you all the therapy, all the coaching, all the journaling, everything I've ever done, that was by far, I think, the greatest gift I received was really releasing the attachment to I have to understand what happened.

Stephanie: And for your listeners, I hope that, you know, if you're ever in a situation like, you're like, I'm trying to figure out why this happened, that, and when you get to the point when you're, I think it's what five or six, seven stages of grief and you get to the acceptance part of it just is.

Right,

Sha: That's when the true healing can begin.

Right. So, I'm curious to go back to 34, 35, you had been trying to break up with him and a ton of fear in your life, and then he gets in this big accident and you finally break up with his family and separate yourself from the situation. What do the next couple of years look like for you? What are you focusing on there in your mid thirties? So the first week, as I was driving home from the hospital. That first night, I'm literally getting off the highway at my exit and it was like, an aha moment of, Oh God, now I know what not now means. Not now means I have to hand him back to his family.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Sha: Got it. Okay. So I had been given a name of a counselor probably three years before this, and I just kept the name and number in my wallet. And the next day I got up and I made that phone call and I got in within a week of his accident. And I'm talking to the therapist and he says, tell me what's happened. And I told him, and he said, you've been abused. And I went, abused? And I whispered it and questioned it because that thought had never crossed my mind.

Stephanie: Really? It had never crossed your mind.

Sha: I was looking at it from the standpoint of the lie that I was told as a kid, I made my bed, I have to lie in it.

Okay. And so, I then realized that if I had acknowledged that I had been abused, somehow, in my head, it got wrapped up of being a victim, and we're not allowed to be victims, we're not allowed to be hurt.

You know, growing up in my house, we're not allowed to be hurt. You know, go walk it off, go rub dirt on it, whatever you gotta do, keep going. You can't have a sick day, you know, all of that nonsense. It was a weird learning to unlearn what I heard growing up. Was the next few years of that walk, that journey.

But I started my healing journey that next week. And as I call it peel away the layer of the onion, right? And as I started to do that and heal, I started to change. It all starts with what we say to ourselves. Whether someone else had said it first or not is another story. But what we say to ourselves. And as I started to change the way I spoke to myself, I started to change the way I spoke to everyone around me, especially my family, especially my father.

And there's two books that I read that changed my life. One is the book Boundaries,which I highly recommend for everyone. And the other book is called Women Who Love Too Much. And I have recommended that to so many of my coaching clients, even men, because it should be titled People Who Love Too Hard.

Stephanie: Okay.

Sha: Because it shows us how our childhood experiences shape our adult decisions in the people that we choose to be in relationships with. So once I started to, talk to my dad and I said, well, dad, are you asking me to do this thing for you right now? Are you trying to manipulate me into doing it? And he was like, what? Like I don't even know what you're talking about. And I said, I was with someone who was manipulative, and I have learned, that's okay behavior. So what it sounds like is that you want me to do this thing for you, but you're not actually asking me a question to do it. You're not asking me to do it. You're telling me to do it, and it's wrapped in a disappointment tone that you're gonna be really mad at me if I don't do it.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Or a guilt trip or something. Yeah.

Sha: And both my mom and him were really good at that. And so I said, so tell me, what is it your intention? And he was like, he was blown away. He's like, I have no idea. And then when I said it to my mom, my mom was like, oh, I, oh, I'm not manipulating. I go, I get you're not, and yet that's how I took it. You gotta understand, as a child, we don't know that you're not manipulating. All I took it as is being manipulated.

Stephanie: Oh, interesting. Hold on. I want to dig into that. So the way you're telling the story, both of your parents reacted, I'm going to say positively to this question from you. There was not a lot of, in the way you're telling it, there was not a lot of denial or, you know, right? So, so are you telling me that your parents weren't manipulative? By just sort of day to day by, you know, by character or were they? I'm confused here. Help me. Help me understand

Sha: Well, that's a great distinction.

Stephanie: Okay.

Sha: What I have, because I only know what you know, right? We only know what we know. So if you take that concept and apply that to your parents,

Stephanie: Right.

Sha: that they only know what they know, then you go, wow. Were they talking to me like they were talked to, as children, and they grew up in that same pattern.

I don't have a definitive answer. What I have is what the language that they used was no longer at this stage of my life, was no longer going to work for me. And I'm going to call them out on it, so that we can get a more clear, and my feelings can be heard, or at least my feelings can be expressed. Whether they heard it or not, is not up to me. I was able to express it, right?

Stephanie: So

Sha: And that was for

Stephanie: So you're suggesting there's a difference between the motivation of manipulation and a communication pattern.

Sha: Yes. I love that.

Stephanie: Yes.

Sha: So,

Stephanie: For your parents, you think it was a communication pattern more than that motivation to manipulate, but you put a stake in the ground and said,

Sha: No more.

Stephanie: I need the communication pattern to change because it's no good for me.

Sha: Yeah. So, typically, if you'll go by the definition, a true narcissist will basically blame you. No, it's your fault. You're the one that's taking it that way, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? My ex was that way. So if I would say, are you trying to manipulate me,

He's like, no, that's you're taking it wrong. My brother, he's passed away now, did that. So I asked my brother, are you manipulating me? He's like, no, I'm not manipulating you, you're just taking it wrong. It's you. And I was like,no, I'm done being manipulated.

What I had to learn is that if

Stephanie: Mm

Sha: you look at a whole, right? Parents, I don't have children, but parents typically want, they try to do their best for their children. So if you look at parents motive in the world, like that's who they, at the core, who they quote unquote should be, right?

Then there are those parents whose intention is to cause havoc. And I say parents because, let's be honest people. Our childhood experiences shape our adult decisions. So if you're looking at the, a person as at one point they were a child, so how did their parents talk to them?Is it something that they're repeating the pattern that they've been conditioned by from their parents?

Stephanie: So they're completely unaware that any of it's going on because it's normal to them.

Yeah.

Sha: So I asked myself this question when I first started journaling. And I give it to a lot of my clients is, what is it that I don't know that I need to know in order to move forward? And after his accident, I just by journaling that. The first thing that popped up was real love.

Stephanie: You don't know real

Sha: I didn't know what it looked like.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Sha: I didn't know what it felt like because I could say honestly say at that point in my life. I had never felt loved by my parents. And my therapist and I would go over this and he's like, well, your parents loved you. I go, no, they did not. He's like, yes, they did. Inherently, parents love their children. So again, taking that shame and blame I had put on them for so many years, 34, 35 years up until this point. And going, okay, it is what it is. They're doing the best they can. If all they knew, if all the tools they had was to be this particular way, that's all they know.

Stephanie: Right.

Sha: So when you think about a person that you're coming in contact with, like your ex, my ex, his mom was a, alcoholic and abusive. That's all he knows. That's all he knows.

Stephanie: Right.

Sha: So he doesn't have any idea what love is.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Sha: And at the heart of every person I truly believe, especially nowin my 50 years of wisdom, I truly believe that at the heart of every person, we're just trying to get love.

Stephanie: Yeah, of course.

Sha: And we're gonna go about it the wrong way most of the time, because we're trying to heal those parts of our childhood that we're trying to heal. But we don't even know it. We don't even realize it. So it's not until, I believe, mid thirties that something happens, or an epiphany happens, whether it's a, an accident, or a breakup, or, you know, a death of a parent. Something. Unemployment, right? You get laid off or fired from your job, and all of a sudden you get smacked in the head of what's really important,

Stephanie: Yeah.

Sha: and what's fulfilling.

And maybe the people I've chosen to be with in my 20s are now in my 30s are not fulfilling me. So, instead of looking outward of what can I get fulfilled from, how can I fill myself up?

Stephanie: Yeah. Ding, ding, ding. There it is. That's it. The transition that people go through around this period in time, you're talking about it from one point of view. The other piece that, and I'm not, let me say it out loud. I'm not sure if it's the same or if it's a different shade of this, is that we go from relying on other people's opinions, the shoulds, people who are older and wiser than us, to tell us what to do. How we're going to be happy, healthy, successful and safe, right?

You should do this. You should do that. You're supposed to do this. You're supposed to do that. And then around this period in time, we realize that now I've got 10 or 15 years as an adult. I've got my experience as an adult. And when I followed all those shoulds. I got here.

Sha: Right.

Stephanie: And so then we start realizing that, well, if I was going to make the decision, I might make it a little differently.

I'm sure my dad wants the best for me, or my mom wants the best for me, but, I would make a different decision, and we finally start trusting ourselves. And so the piece that I think ties over to where you are, what you're talking about is, I think I have come to realize that this period in time, late 30s, early 40s, is also when we start to realize. So, sure, we realize I've worked really hard. I've done all the things I'm supposed to and kind of this is where I've gotten. But also, I think we start to realize the things about ourselves that are holding us back. And so we finally get the perspective, maybe even the courage to look at those things that happened when we were kids, that are now, that created these habits or these patterns that served us then, that are holding us back now.

Sha: Well, and I will say that, uh, you're absolutely spot on. And, It's our generation

Stephanie: that has now surfaced as, wait a minute, what's going on inside me?

Sha: Because that's what my parents were doing at the ends of their life.

Stephanie: Interesting.

Sha: And I was with them during both of their ends of life. And, my dad had all the work that we had gone through when he'd become my best friend in the last five years of his life. And, my mom and we had beautiful conversations about forgiveness and love and what that looks like and the butterflies and all the things.

And it's like, you know, her take on love was the butterflies. You know, because fairy tales, that's kind of what you were, primed to know, right? So they were still looking at, well, in fact, my mom, it was her mom. She was looking at, well, the way her mom raised her.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Sha: And my dad, it was blaming my mom. Even though they hadn't been together for 25 years, you know, he was blaming her.

And I was like, but now you're married to someone new, 25 years. I don't get it. And he would blame her too. But it was like, wow. So it was interesting. So when you said that, it's like, yes, spot on. And I believe that our generation that came after that really kind of went, wait a minute here. Maybe it's us and we got to figure this out and I can tell you younger generations, they're already working on that personal development piece, earlier on, right. They're not waiting to the mid thirties forties. They're like, working on it in their, you know, mid twenty fives or twenties and beyond. So,

Yeah.

good.

Stephanie: It is. It's interesting, right? Because when you say our generation, let's be clear. We're Gen X, the forgotten generation. I was sideline. I was literally at a meeting this week and somebody was saying, oh, you know, the silent generation and the boomers, they did this, but the millennials, they're doing this. I guffawed out loud because I was like, hello.

Anyway, you're right. The generation that's turning 40 now that is in this transitional period, this 35 to 45, they are the millennials and they are much more introspective. They are much more, looking for the things that are holding them up, looking for, you know, what's going on in their lives. Where I think, you know, a generation ago, or 10 or 15 years ago, when we were going through this, it was, you know, again, just head down,dig, keep going, keep pushing. Like, so while this is a, predictable stage of adult development and everybody's gone through it. I mean, for our parents, it was that stereotypical midlife crisis, which the millennials do not feel as relevant to them.

And I agree. It's different these days than it was, you know, 40 years ago, or 30 years ago, whenever our parents turned 40. But, I do feel like this next generation behind us is doing a better job of looking up sooner, looking inward sooner, Which is the whole point for the podcast, is to help them, get through it with, with a little bit more grace and ease than maybe you or I did.

Stephanie: yeah. It wasn't used.

Sha: Gaslighting was nowhere. So, to hear young women who are in their teenage to twenties use those words in everyday language and they understand the context of what that means, it's like, they're way ahead of the game.

And I feel like because of the, of what we've gone through, I feel like we, taught that next generation of the millennials better boundaries and understanding of boundaries, and to speak up of, Hey, this doesn't feel right. Let's talk about this. Rather than, you know, it was, buck up and shut up. You know, shut up buttercup.

Stephanie: I'll give you something cry about.

Sha: Yeah. Those types of things. Which, you know, it makes me laugh and I love that you're laughing, which goes to, I hope that your listeners will take away anything from all of this is the word forgiveness.

Stephanie: Right.

Sha: I had to learn to forgive everyone in my life and myself.

And to be kind to myself and to really look at how we're all just trying to find love.

And we're all doing the best we can with the tools that we have. And when we know better, we can do better. Mm hmm.

Stephanie: Hmm. Yeah. Sha. Oh, it was so good to spend time with you today. Thank you so much for coming on and being so generous with your story. I have loved this conversation.

Sha: Oh, well, thank you, Stephanie. I love what you're, what you're doing, what you're standing for and who you're standing up for. So thank you.

Stephanie: Thank you.