021 - Moving Past Trauma to Unlock Intimacy & Fulfillment
Have you ever felt like your trauma is keeping you frozen in time, unable to move forward? What if this also holds the possibility for serving as a pathway to greater relational intimacy and fulfillment?
Amilya Antonetti is my walking partner on today’s episode of On This Walk to break down these very questions. As the creator and CEO of Designing Genius and a world-renowned human behavior expert, she helps individuals and leaders in and out of workplaces move through challenging moments in their lives, find their purpose, and unpack their trauma.
Amilya is also full of fire, passion and personal experience.
In today’s episode, we’re discussing how to move past trauma and into fulfillment, how her trauma informed her perspective on the world, our tendency toward “sloppiness” in our relationships, why isolation is a trauma response, the importance of restoring harmony after a trigger, and the moments in her life that acted as turning points.
In This Episode
(4:43) Amilya shares how trauma has played a role in her everyday life
(8:54) Why empathy and care in our relationships are so critical
(13:14) Beware of the impact of minimizing our own pain in our healing journey
(17:50) How a lack of safety as a child shows up decades later
(25:32) Amilya uncovers the trauma that’s at the heart of isolation
(28:17) The turning point that changed everything for Amilya
(33:58) How to find your way back to the present and verbalize triggers
(37:23) Important anchor points: communicate, develop trust, and ground yourself
(43:07) Trust is like tree rings
(50:42) The truth about introverts and extroverts
(55:43) How trauma allows us to balance our masculine and feminine energy
(59:20) The role of intimacy in pain and trauma
Notable Quotes
-
“We’re holding onto certainty because that’s our house of cards. That’s the way that we believe that we feel and hold onto safety. I can tell you right now, regardless of whatever the trauma is that you've been through in your life, if you’re listening, this is true for you. And I know that this wrestling match that we have with uncertainty is at the core of so much of the struggle and so much of the dance where we’d rather put up the illusion. We’d rather believe that we’re in this house of cards but it’s built with brick. Even though it’s NOT.”
-
“For me, I follow a tree… Inside of a tree and then there’s rings… You have to demonstrate to me my ability to trust you based on your ability to take responsibility for it. And so my inside ring of a tree has very few people in there, and then I have a next layer and a next layer and a next layer. And those layers are based on my comfortability of how they can or cannot trigger me and work through that. So not everybody is invited into the inside circle. And they shouldn't be because there’s a lot of responsibility there. And then I loosen the responsibility as I move out, and then I’m always gauging where somebody really should live to honor them and honor myself.”
Our Guest
Amilya Antonetti is the creator and CEO of Designing Genius and a world-renowned human behavior expert that has been featured on Oprah, The Steve Harvey Show, Dr. Phil, and more. Her mission is to help individuals and leaders in and out of workplaces move through obstacles and come out the other side with greater insight on their purpose.
Resources & Links
On This Walk
Amilya Antonetti
-
Luke (00:00:01):
Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart centered guests each week, as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically. Uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul and with something bigger than ourselves. Now let's go on this walk.
Thank you everyone for tuning in to On This Walk. And today is a conversation I gotta tell you, I have been looking forward to for several weeks. First, because of my walking partner, her energy perspective, you're, you'll get it, you'll understand. Alright? Second is also actually because the challenging nature of the topic that we're gonna get into. So let me start here. A lot of what I've been sharing on this show is about my own journey of healing and wholing, to borrow a phrase that I first heard from Bill Plotkin of the Animas Valley Institute. And my guest and I have shared a lot about the healing work that we've done, we're still doing, as well as some of the wholing or wholeness activities that we undertake, cause it's really inseparable to healing. That's why healing and wholing are so coupled in together.
And so we've talked about all number of issues. We've talked about burnout, we've talked about various personal hardships. We've talked about hiding behind masks and what have created those masks. We've discovered and discussed, how do we navigate change as well as the importance of looking deeply at our stories, that narrative that is running in the background of our lives and how often that narrative constrains and constricts us when we're not consciously choosing and regularly revisiting it. So what we haven't specifically done yet though, is to overtly talk about trauma and the role that it plays or has played within our lives. And so, as I've been prone to do on this show, I wanted to take a personal walk with this, meaning I didn't want to have a conceptual or theoretical or academic conversation, but a personal one from personal experience. And that possibility emerged because of my walking partner today and her willingness to have this conversation and share both from her experience as well as from the work that she's done in supporting others.
And so I've had the joy of getting to know Amilya over the course of the last several months, as we've discussed a lot of the exciting work that she's doing out there in the world with her company designing genius. I'll get to that in a moment, but that's not our focus for the conversation today. You see, Amilya has a unique perspective on the healing and growth side of trauma, as well as what she found to be misconceptions or limitations in the way that many people can perceive trauma. And we wanna unlock some of that today. So we wanna talk about how trauma can also unlock great insight as well as power within us. How we can not only heal and grow, but how we can find powerful light even amidst this incredible darkness that we may go through or be going through. And I'm curious, to be honest, to see how this all unfolds.
Because I can tell you right now, we do not have all the answers. As a matter, matter of fact, I'm not even sure if we have many answers, but I, what I do know is we've got personal experience and that's what this show is about, is sharing from sort of that inside view of what we're going through, what we can share from our learned and felt experience, and see what that begins to open up for us as well as for you. And so with that, let me properly introduce my guest today, Amilya Antonetti, Amilya's the creator and CEO of Designing Genius, which by the way, start to look for that on Amazon because there is a book now by the same name. She's one of the most sought after human behavior experts and strategic advisors in the world. In fact, her current work with Designing Genius is pioneering the role of the Chief Behavior Officer throughout organizations.
She's appeared as a regular business behavior expert on Oprah, The Steve Harvey Show, Dr. Phil, and many more. And the good news is, is all of that is not what we're talking about today. For more than 25 years, Amilya has dedicated her life to help people and leaders through some of the most challenging and scariest parts of their lives. That's why she's here today. Because it's that experience as well as Amilya's personal background, her energy and her wisdom, which is why she was the walking partner I wanted for this conversation. With that, if you are new to the show, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button and now let's go on this walk with Amilya and the growth, healing, and light that our trauma can unlock. Amilya, welcome to the show.
Amilya (00:04:17):
I'm so excited to be here. I'm just so excited, right, about this whole topic that I have been too waiting weeks, right? I keep telling people, hang on, hang on, we're gonna address the topic. Hang on.
Luke (00:04:28):
Let me ask you before we completely jump at the deep end, something I do occasionally ask some of my guests is they just come on, is just in, in thinking about us being here in this moment to have this conversation. Anything that came up during, during the introduction I gave, I'm just curious what's alive for you in this moment?
Amilya (00:04:46):
I think that what's alive for me, and I think it continues to be alive for me, is how much my own personal traumas are still part of why I wake up every day. Right? That they really play an active role, and when I decide to, you know, take on the day, take on a project, take on relationships, I have to always consider that third part of me, which is my trauma.
Luke (00:05:10):
Let me just go with that for a second, because it's part of why you wake up every day as part of the way that you said that. And so I'm curious if you could expand a little bit more on how does it, like when you wake up in the morning, what is it that's present for you and how is that part of your orienting yourself towards what is gonna come for the day?
Amilya (00:05:30):
So I had to kind of come up with like my overall like purpose in the world, right? When you survive through things, you start to say, what the heck? Right? Why am I here? Like this, is somebody kidding, right? Like, like what is this? Right? And so what years and years and years of work, my, just years of work, really kind of created this overarching theme that has followed me since I was little and I couldn't really describe it, but my purpose for being here is to heal unintended pain. That is why I exist. And it's the unintended pain that really just deliberates people, right? It really, it really does. And now if you have an active trauma with small little cuts every single day, right? Even though it's not intentional, it's paralyzing. And so when I get up in the morning, you know, my first take on it is my multiple prong trauma growing up led me to these dead ends of, it was impossible for me to be productive. There was just not a place for me in this world that the chances of me to either self-medicate or commit suicide was so high that I might as well just throw in the towel. And again, I'm, we're, I'm in high school, you know, like my life was over and it just was like this continual messages of what I was going to have to move through just was impossible. And so the victim mentality was on top of how isolated I already felt, how disconnected I already felt like I already was dealing with that. And then I got this like, well, life is just gonna be average at best.
And so when I wake up in the morning, I know that my work and my commitment to this topic is what's gonna open up the ceiling for somebody who's listening because I don't subscribe to any of that. And my life is living proof that the things that I've had to survive through to get where I am is monstrous. I mean, if you act, it's monstrous, you know, it would, it would bring you down to a fetal position. You would need, you know, many, many, you know, handkerchiefs. But I learned not to make my trauma and all the people that I work with, right? I mean, I've been at the worst scenarios of clients. I mean literally at their needs that it doesn't have to be part of our identity that cripples us. It could be the kryptonite, right? That elevates us into the passion.
Luke (00:08:05):
The two things which we're gonna come back to, but I'm gonna call them out now, is that recognition and that mission to support people that healing of unintended pain. Because it's funny, cause I, I actually just talked about this just a couple of of episodes ago of, yeah I put it in relation to like generational and ancestral traumas, is that there is so much, obviously we don't intend, we don't intend to pass these things on. We don't intend to pass that hurt on, we don't necessarily wanna project this out onto the world, but that doesn't mean that it's not gonna happen, which is the unintended part of this, unless we are deepening into our process to really begin to pick this apart and move through it in different ways, we'll obviously definitely come back to this part of the identity and how that kryptonite can actually be the thing that elevates us of the purpose and mission and meaning and all those things.
Amilya (00:08:54):
And there's a whole behavior wrap around this. And, and this is where, why I've been able to move people so quickly, right? Is around what you just said, right? The epigenics that come down through our history, the things that, you know, our parents, whatever is these behavioral tools that can free us to where we need to go, right? Because it shapes who we are. And that's an inner battle, right? Because we don't want it to, we don't want it to, we don't want, the first thing people who come through say, I don't want this to be my identity. Right? If you talk to somebody who survives major illness, or a major car accident, or a major episode in their life, even divorce, I don't wanna be labeled by this episode, right? Which is the toxic world out there sending us these messages that pigeonhole us. Right? I'm proud that every step that I've taken is part of who I am. And when you decide to get into a relationship with me, and it doesn't matter what kind of relationship, this is who I am because my response to everything in the world is different than yours. And you have to understand that because when we intersect with other humans, right? We have to take it with great responsibility. We've moved too far away from that. We have sloppy relationships, sloppy, right? We have sloppy parenting, we have sloppy investments, we have bad relationships with money, time, focus, freedom, you name it. We just gotten sloppy and that's why there's so much pain because we can't muddle through the quicksand without any tools.
Luke (00:10:38):
What just kind of came up for me as you're describing that, okay. Is that through my family, without going into all of the details, because it's not necessarily my story to share all of this. Through my family, we've wrestled with and dealt with mental health in a variety of different ways and some family members that are far away, some family members are very, very close and near and dear. And for me, it's part of what I need to, you know, be able to recognize is I haven't struggled with that in those ways. Now you could say that frankly we don't, none of us struggle the same way as another human being anyway. But it's not something that I, I really, truly, personally have been through in the way that others have experienced the depth of some mental health struggles. And at the same time, because these are some close family members that I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I know very, very well and around all the time, it is the type of thing that I need to not be sloppy in those relationships.
I've gotta take the time to be incredibly, you know, I'd say even slow in the sense of slowing myself down to be very patient, to be very understanding, to sit there and, and when I say understanding, I mean to take the time to say, I don't get this, I don't understand, I don't have your experience, so I am going to shut my mouth and I'm going to listen and listen and listen and try to feel everything that you wish to share or express at this time. And I, I share it that way because I think that's this, this, everything from the unintended pain as well as to what you're describing, which is the care that we need to give these, our relationships need to begin to get back to that. To recognize that, you know, these exchanges that we have, not everyone is supposed to be a 32 minute power lunch and onto the next meeting. It's, it is meant to be this real true relational quality of I really genuinely care about your experience and your experience isn't the same as mine. So the only way I will ever know more about this life, this world, this thing, we call this whatever we're in, is to slow down long enough and to get to know what your experience is.
Amilya (00:12:43):
Right. Or choose not to. Because it's the people who choose sloppy, right. They give the signals that they want to be in the relationship, but they don't show that's who does the most amount of damage. Right. It's not the people who go, hey listen, I think you're great. However, I don't see a friendship here. I don't see a business relationship. See that person's healthy. It's the one who goes, oh my God, call me and I don't mean it. Right. That's the person that creates more pain on top of trauma. Right. And then the other thing I wanna point out here is that as you referenced your trauma, which is very, very typical of somebody who's experienced trauma, you asked for a forgiveness statement to start, well my trauma is not as bad as others.
Luke (00:13:28):
Well pointed out. Absolutely.
Amilya (00:13:29):
And that starts the slippery slope of unhealing because you're looking for something, right? I always talk about, people look for grand gestures, they look for this huge thing. You're like, your subconscious is saying, well I'm not dead, so it wasn't as bad as somebody else. Right? Without understanding that that's part of the trauma that you're suffering from. Right? You're suffering from the fact that in your head it's not enough to warrant your pain. And I go, absolutely it is. Pain is pain, right? Bleeding is bleeding. So if you and I are both bleeding, does it really matter why? How come? We're both in pain. And so people in your life, right, who are part of your healing journey, lean into things like that to lean, stop it while you do it and go, you know what, yes, your pain is real. Yes it's real. Yes, you're justified. Not to allow you to stay in the story that it has to be more grand.
Luke (00:14:28):
So that's again, another wonderful thing that you pointed out there, right? Is that we diminish the pain, the trauma that we maybe have experienced for whatever reason we put that in comparison with others and we say it's bigger than, less than, whatever then, when really all we need to say is it's different.
Amilya (00:14:42):
And if you're a male, it's that much harder. It's that much harder because we've put this crazy wrapping around men without realizing that we're losing our men, we're losing our men because we have them stuck in sludge and they can't see the way out. And now with the wrestling of masculine and in feminine energy, now you add that on top of yeah, men are literally dying from the inside. They're dying from the inside. And it's a crisis because without men, the family unit doesn't work. We need that energy. Right. I keep saying, you know, when people talk to me about this, I said listen, we can't be that smart. Right? We either, we would all be women or we would all be men. There's a reason why every species has one of each. Right. I'm not here to tell you what it is, but I'm telling you, well we both need something else or there would only be one species. Right? And so if we don't understand how I am more of me in vibration to you, but if I don't allow that part of you, which is the richest part of you, right, your pain, then we never have connection. We never have it. Right. And that's the false, superficial, social media swipe left and right. Relationships that we've taught this next generation that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. And so we have skills that are, it doesn't really matter. So nobody's seen and nobody belongs and nobody connects. And we're starving for human connection.
Luke (00:16:18):
We absolutely are. The way even you were describing that specifically, whether it be for for men or for women, is to find a way to start to have the space. Because everything you described is hard work, right? This is not, this is, no, we're not saying that this is easy by any measure. And at the same time, it is having the space and putting in the time to do that work, to create those clearings, to even create spaces that are kind of containers that are feeling safe and trusted and accepting so that we can allow ourselves to pour into those environments so that we can learn how to get this stuff out. We can learn how to express it, we can learn how to process it. And when we are caught up in the swipe left, swipe right, move on to the next thing kind of world, we are just constantly putting that much more pressure on ourselves.
We've talked about it in the past shows, but I don't want it to go unmentioned because it's relevant here, puts pressure on our nervous system, which further jacks up any, any other issues that we have had along the way. It's part of what keeps that trauma stuck inside of us, and we've got all of these things in so-called modern society that keep this in a really, really stuck set of patterns. And so it, it really takes time to, it takes the time to create the space to create the interrupt so that we can do this type of work. But I also wanna then come back to is you mentioned this behavior wrap around the, you know, around our identity, around the trauma and everything else. And that's part of what I, I wanted to dive back into because there are many different ways of, of approaching these things.
But I am curious from both your, your expert view but also your personal view of this behavior wrap. Because I've said this even before that when I've gotten very stuck in my mind of a particular way of thinking, let alone something that was trauma that, that, that was informing that way of thinking, that it's almost been like, you know what, I almost need to just live my way into new way of thinking as opposed to, to create the new way of living. And so we need different patterns, we need different paths to be able to break these things up. And the way that you approach behavior is one that's very conscious and, and changes a lot of things relatively rapidly while we are kind of making it a deep process. It's not just a simple like, oh do this different, it's a much more involved process. And that's what I wanted to, to hear about this behavior wrap.
Amilya (00:18:35):
Right. And so, you know, when I try to help guide not only the individual but usually his partner, right. Because there's a, there's all the ways that we interpret other people's behavior. And what I will tell you is that we are programmed as a specie to fall to the negative. Right? So if you're behaving different, I think it's about me and I think it's because you don't like me and that you don't love, I make it all about me. Even though that's not what's going on. And so when a trauma and a non-trauma individual walk into an environment, the non-trauma person is open to receive joy and pleasure, they can go in a party and they go, oh my God, this is so great. Look how cool all this amazing things going. And they feed through the bucket of joy. A trauma person looks at that exact same situation and completely starts zeroing into who could possibly hurt them, where the trauma's going to leave. So one person is seeking out the person of danger and the other is person is seeking out a person of joy. Same scenario. And the expectation between two people with very good intentions, the intentions are good, is get over it.
Get over it, right? Try something different without understanding that inside of you is a pattern that is hooked onto, and I'll give you some things, but I mean by this, a very typical US parenting style is when a very young child, two, three years old, is out with a parent and introduces them to another adult and the child hides behind the parent, rips them out from the front and says, be nice to that person. Causing trauma. Right? It's memory trauma that if there was no other big trauma in your life wouldn't surface. But that feeling of unsafety from very young, to ask you to behave away different than you were feeling rises up in every occasion where your gut said one thing and you were forced to do something else. Like, get over it. Just have a good time. Loosen up.
Why are you so serious? Without understanding that in this moment what you're asking me to do is I'm, it's, I'm triggered all over the place. Right? All over the place because it's over stimulating for somebody who survived trauma. And that is what people around you need to understand. We are overstimulated. Too much light, too much noise, too many people talking at the same time. Too much of too much is triggering the trauma. So you can't ask me to go to, like where I'm trying to create my little safety bubble and then throw me out there and think I'm not gonna have a response. Especially when you abandoned me emotionally before the event because you're now them. Get over it, right? And so in these relationships, right, for me, I'll use myself, right? I have to teach you how to have a relationship with Amilya, with great responsibility.
And if that responsibility is too much for you, I am okay with just being acquaintances because what I've learned over surviving through my trauma and so many other people, you would rather have a very small, aware and responsible circle and enjoy life than try to mimic average people's life. Because let's just be truthful for a second. The average person is fucking miserable. They're miserable. Right. So we don't wanna be them anyway. Right. Because I've yet to meet, right. Everything is like hanging on threads right now and at least we're aware and we're in the work, most people are literally living in a delusion. And so when I try to do behavioral classes and I say to people, tell me what you think is happening, tell me what you think is happening, tell me. Right. I try to give people to start to talk about what they think is happening and in a very small circle what they realize is like nobody in the circle said the same thing. Which then you're looking at like, well like you start to think you're crazy but that is what's happening. Right. What's happening every day is what you think is going on is never what's going on. And that uncertainty is a trigger for people with trauma. Because people with trauma are trying to detect certainty. That's what they're trying to do. Right. I need this to be certain so that I'm okay. So until you unwind the attachment to that, they will suffer.
Luke (00:23:17):
Yeah. Let me break a few things down for, for everybody, cause I'm gonna repeat a little bit of this in some of my own language and connection here. Is that number one, part of what you're describing is that for everybody to understand, we are born with a negativity bias. That's what it's called. It's called negativity bias. It's another thing which you just simply say is part of our survival instincts. That's part of how it developed, right? Was there used to be sabertooth tigers, they were chasing us around, they revved us up. We need, we don't, we don't wanna be lunch, we'd rather eat lunch. Right? And so the negativity bias is something that's there. It's true for everybody. Now if you combine into somebody's experience, actually let me say it this way, every single one of us, the way in which we view anything that's unfolding inside our life is based on the sum of all of the experiences we have had up until that moment of time. Right.
Amilya (00:24:03):
And that's our truth.
Luke (00:24:04):
That's our truth. Because that's what we believe is the truth of what's unfolding, even if it just happens to only be true for us. Right?
Amilya (00:24:11):
Correct. And you will defend that position. That's what people don't, you will defend that position as the truth so that the house of cards doesn't come down. That's why healing is so hard because I can't see what you're telling me because I have to, hold on, I have pieced my life together over here. Right. So don't you dare rock my boat. Yeah.
Luke (00:24:29):
And that's the thing, right? So if, if in our past, in the sum of those experiences, there are some, you know, certain levels of trauma that continue come up. Whether it's a big trauma events, a lot of trauma events, whatever those trauma events happen to be for each one of us, now all of a sudden that's telling the de negativity bias. Yeah man. Stay, stay alert because we've been hurt in the past when that was offline or we thought we were trusting and so we're scanning for all of these different things that can go wrong. And I love the way that you just described that, which is that we're holding onto certainty because that's our house cards. That's the way that we believe that we feel. And we hold on to safety. And I can tell you right now, regardless, whatever the trauma is that you have been through in your life, if you are listening, this is true for you. And I know that this wrestling match that we have with uncertainty is at the core of so much of the struggle and so much of the dance where we would rather put up the illusion. We'd rather believe that we're in this house of cards, but it's built with brick even though it's not. We'd rather that than what you just said.
Amilya (00:25:33):
And isolate. Right. So now they isolate and this massive isolation is what creates another trauma because we are meant to belong. Right? And so what's happening in relationship dynamics is if we are in a relationship, my expectations are that you are consistent. I need you to be consistent. And when you are not consistent, you rock my entire belief system of being able to pick somebody. Right. Because now I don't trust myself. It's not trust with you, it's trust with myself. Right? And now the other person is unaware of how you, the trauma person gains and earns trust repeatedly. They don't realize that every day you're looking for evidence for certainty. Right. And predictability. And this is what happens in all trauma, right. Because you are living in the trauma. And so when these relationships, again unintended, right? Unintended, they think you're going to get over it. They think you're overreacting. So you have nowhere to go but to isolate, to self-medicate. It's your only friend because nobody else understands. And then you continue to create a story that there's amazingness going on for everybody else in the world but you, you're now comparing yourself to the average Joe and their life looks incredible. And the more that story grows, the more hurt and isolation you, you retreat to. Because it seems like to you, you tell yourself a story that you can't figure, why can't you figure this out?
Luke (00:27:14):
Yeah. Some of the things that, that I'm hearing in here, number one is if we break down that behavior wrap right at the moment, is that scanning constantly inside of the environment for anything that feels like it could be dangerous, we're constantly scanning for the things that hopefully will provide us certainty because we need to gravitate towards that. And we need to gravitate away from the things that are uncertain. And the more in which that certainty and uncertainty is either mismatched or or uncomfortable inside of our lives, it'll create another behavior which is isolation. Because if we, if we can't get certainty out here, we're gonna create certainty by just kind of boxing and walling off in what's there. And then the joy of comparison just is, uh, wonderfully comes up inside of the human psyche. And we now, I mean obviously everything people post on social media is true. And therefore we look at social media and see how great their lives are and we feel isolated. And so there's a, there's a cascade effect that creates this, you know, self-fulfilling travesty in the way that it's playing out. And so for you, at what point did this change? What, what was it for you, before you, you can tell us the way that it changed, you know, in terms of like the mechanics, I wanna know for you, when did it was like, oh, I can see this different now.
Amilya (00:28:29):
So I think for me, where the change started right? Was I was suffering from a heartache that my father didn't save me, right? I was like, how could all of this be going on? And you just left me in it, right? Because my dad was, you know, the provider, right? So he left every week and then came, you know, he worked, he was on the road, right? So he was always, you know, he would leave on a, you know, a Sunday night to go out and then come home on Friday and in a very different space and time. And he left me. And so I was like, what the heck? Right? And so I wrestled with that heartache in my relationship to the male energy that was supposed to be my protector, right? As a young, young girl. Cause my abuse started around two and a half, three years old.
And so without realizing that that was heartache, like I didn't have a word for it, right? I just, I knew I had tension between my dad and I and I who had trust issues. But it started to shape for me that in my relationship with men, they broke my heart. And so I was trying to unwrap, why do I give, why am I such an over carer, over nurture, over whatever, I'm hitting all the boxes and then you break my heart. And what I had to start to learn, which became the journey for me, was that when our hearts are broken, it actually has nothing to do with the other person. Nothing. Because if I'm in love with you, what I start to do is I create a story of our future. All the things that we're going to do. And so when our relationship ends, it's not you I'm mourning, I'm mourning a future that never existed. That is where my heart is broken from. Right. The future. And so when I started to realize that what I was suffering from was a father that didn't exist, I created a father that came in and he picked me up and he took me out of the situation and he was my hero. I created, that's what I did when I was sitting in the basement, like laughed and shackles right. In my abuse. I visualized him coming to rescue me. And so that became my father. I attached to the father story, not to the father who actually was showing up because that guy was hurting me. And so I created that. When I started to realize was that was my pattern. I would meet a man and I would create who he was, not who was in front of me.
I was creating something else. I always saw his highest potential, like all this stuff. And that's what I attached to. And I was doing that because I suffer from trauma. So when you suffer from trauma, you never actually wanna be in the reality. So you escape and you escape into stories. And then what happens is you start to realize the pattern that you're in relationships with people in the story. Because the story is certain, I know that story because I created it. Right. And that's what creates the isolation and the fear. Because there's a fear that you're going to figure out that I'm in love with the story. And what you're picking up on your side is this weird inconsistent energy that you're not really sure if I'm in. Like you don't even know, like I think she's in like all the actions are there, but I feel like I can't really reach her.
Like she's here but not here. And so it creates these two really weird frequencies because neither one of them is real. Right? And so when you pick people who haven't done the work, they will allow you to be in their relationship with them without being present. See, you can't be in a relationship with me now without being present because I'm gonna call you on it. Because if you're not present, I feel pain. And if I go to my habit, which is the false you, our relationship is over, it's over. It's just the beginning of it. It's the beginning of over.
Luke (00:32:36):
So if I unwind that a little bit there, part of the recognition there was, you know, having gone through your own exploration process to be able to recognize that there was a narrative that was being created there and you were attaching yourself to the narrative of, you know, how you would like things to be in a really generic way of saying it.
Amilya (00:32:53):
Because the narrative was safer.
Luke (00:32:57):
The narrative was, was safer. It gave more hope. It had all of the things that would draw you forward into perceived safety, perceived certainty in a new direction, right? Rather than, and I think this is the piece I wanted to come back to, rather than being present in the moment of, because being present in the moment of was where the trauma had occurred and where it was occurring.
Amilya (00:33:16):
And I don't know how to see you that way. Right? So if, if you just show up right? As a regular person, right. And you show emotion of confusion or anger or disappointment, I am right back in my trauma. I don't know how to respond that the man I create in you doesn't have any of those things. Right? And so I can't stay present because I'm fearful of the reality. I don't know how to deal with the reality. I know how to deal with a false front. So now what happens is I create a false Amilya who's in love with a false you and those people try to stay together until there's enough evidence that neither one of us are real. And so we have nowhere to go but to break up.
Luke (00:33:59):
Part of your, your process was being able to go through the exploration to be able to uncover the story that was there. But the other part of your process was being able to come back to the present. And draw people into the present. Can you, can you talk about that? Because I mean that's,
Amilya (00:34:12):
For all trauma victims, for all people.
Luke (00:34:14):
For all trauma that, I mean that's the, the grant fear, as well as the,
Amilya (00:34:19):
Medicine out, the medicine out. Yeah. Right. So what happens is when you learn to come to present, and decode what is actually happening, right? Remember that the events that are taking place only have emotion if we give it to it. We give events what they mean. They really don't mean anything until we give it meaning. And so I had to learn two things. I had to learn how do I come present even though I'm scared to death to be present. Right? So I had to start teaching the people in my environment what I needed in order to show up authentic and true. Right. I need you to give me space because I'm gonna do something very vulnerable and this is how I need you to behave. Or I'm going to retreat. Step one, present. Then I also have a whole bunch of like tools that I invite people in my team, I call them should and should nots. So that if they start to witness behavior that does not serve my best me, my should nots, they call attention to it. So that I don't travel into the land of the abyss where I'm going to get hurt. I have to stay present. And then the second thing that I had to learn is how to correctly interpret what was happening without assigning emotion. So now what I do is I will ask, I'm like, wow. It's a typical thing I say when, when you're in any relationship with anybody, if you're one who has trauma, is to assign everybody what I call a safe word, which is ouch, right?
So if you're doing something, I would just turn around and go, ouch. Right? That always people are like, what are you talking about? Now you have no idea, right? That when you turn your head to the left, it's a trigger for me. Like you wouldn't know. But at least if I said ouch, I'm now communicating that I am now not at my best self because I've knocked my energy off. That allows you to slow down and inquire. Most people when triggered overcompensate that it's okay. Instead of going the opposite way to say ouch. Nothing that you've done, I've got an ouch right now. So that's, and then I had to go, okay, what you just did, which is you went to the kitchen and you got yourself something to drink and you didn't ask me, I feel abandoned. Did you do that because you're angry with me and you to go, no, I just was thirsty. And for you to understand that when you leave me out of what I consider intimacy events, which are proof that we are together, I'm in my trauma of abandonment so that you understand what that event means. And for me to understand that I gave it meaning that you never intended. And when you can start working through that with an individual, you start creating a platform of safety.
Luke (00:37:25):
I think by now many of you have picked up on the fact that I'm a fairly grounded individual. I don't tend to get easily unsettled. I tend not to project stories on events that have the potential to run away with my thoughts and emotions. And that comes from a place of being present and being aware. Both of those allow me to connect to a sense of safety within myself, a sense of emotional and mental and even spiritual safety. And yet that hasn't always been the case. In fact, I've had to circle back around on so many occasions to keep going deeper. Let me share it this way, of what it is that I would experience. You see, one of the primary ways my sense of safety would get rattled would be when I felt like others didn't have my back. If I trusted you to support me, to help me see my blind spots, to give me a hand when I was struggling, or even just to show me that you're with me, you're in my corner, that you genuinely care and are interested in whatever it is I'm investing my energy in.
If I trusted you in these ways, well that set or focused my expectations. So if something would happen and it felt different than expected, my sense of safety would drop. And as my sense of safety would drop, I'd be that much more likely to fall into whatever tale my mind would spin. And those could be tales of being let down or a narrative that would bolster me to make me feel all self-righteous or tales to build myself up so that I could feel like I was safer within my story, within the ways I was trying to build myself up and protect myself. And yet underneath these stories, whatever hurt I was feeling, it wouldn't get addressed. The ways I felt that trust had be broken wouldn't get spoken about because I didn't feel safe to go there. And that's all regardless of whether or not I was experiencing other stress in my life that might have my body, my nervous system operating in a stress response to begin with.
So these narratives, when you no longer feel safe, your sense of trust in others is waning. It's going to alter your behavior, just like Amilya was saying before, you wrap behaviors around this. And so I would go from being aware, meaning being mindful and present and conscious to being alert, meaning scanning the environment and people for threats for judgments about whether or not they could be trusted and so on. And I would then begin to trust others less, which would mean that I would show up with other behaviors such as not being as open with them, not communicating as much withdrawing or withholding and not just information, but withholding emotions and connection and those intangibles that keep us in rapport and relationship with each other. And so it becomes a vicious cycle. One that can keep you trapped in the story, trapped in a behavior loop until something interrupts it.
Now that interrupt can be something that's supportive and compassionate or that interrupt can be things like burnout, was for me, health issues or some kind of loss that gets you to stop in your tracks or that interrupt can also be something that you plan for and practice. Amilya gave a great example of just simply a safe word or a simple call out that interrupts our patterning. Something that others can use with us or that we can call out ourselves. And really it's meant as an awareness tool. It's a prompt that gives us pause that reminds us to come back to the present and what's actually happening instead of spinning out in a story and then being able to proceed more mindfully. Other practices you've heard me talk about that I use are meditation, journaling, even walking out in nature. These are my go-tos on a regular basis so that I'm taking space and not allowing events to keep stacking on top of one another without the time to reflect, without the time to let things settle and breathe.
I know that if I go a long period without any of these practices, I am so much more likely to get stuck in a loop to get stuck in the story of things. Now there's one more key element to all of this though, because it's not simply about the practices. There is something missing that Amilya brought up in this perspective of a platform of safety that I do not wanna miss. It's about making the unspoken, spoken, or the unseen, seen. So let me use my example, the way that I trusted others, what trust meant, what it looked like to me, it was all completely unspoken. I hadn't verbalized what trust was to me or how I wanted to be supported. For a while, I didn't even know what, what it was that I was looking for. We can't have agreements with one another unless we actually speak about it.
Unless we have a way to know what the other is looking for and needing from us and us from them. And yet we do this all the time. We hold others accountable to agreements they don't even know they've made with us. So to have this platform of safety, it requires each of us to take responsibility, to do our own inner work, to ask these tougher questions, these tough to answer questions. Like what do I really need? What supports my safety? How do I trust others? And so on, that we have to be willing to look at where our healing is needed around these questions. We can't simply ask others to walk on eggshells around us. We have to work at releasing our hurts so that the false narratives ultimately lose their power so that we can come back to this present moment. And as we do all this work, we need to be able to share that with those that we trust. We need to share it with those that we're in relationship with based on the nature of that relationship. And so let's rejoin our conversation with Amilya because we're gonna get further into making this a more conscious process for ourselves, but also she's gonna provide a really great reference point for, call it the rings of trust that we can create.
I wanna break down this trusted space and this safe space that you have just walked us through. And before we kind of walk into that, the kind of the, the question that already really pops into my mind is that once you have that and you are able to explore inside of that space, did you find, do you find that that space begins to expand? Meaning that once you're able to start expressing in that way, processing in that way, is that something that has to be managed and maintained, you know, constantly around? Or does that space get bigger and bigger and bigger so that you, you feel like you are safer to explore in a much larger environment at this point?
Amilya (00:43:53):
I personally look always to the laws of nature because to me that's where I find answers. And so for me, I follow like a tree, right? Inside of the tree and then there's rings and what you have to demonstrate, you have to demonstrate to me, right? My ability to trust you based on your ability to take responsibility for it. And so my inside ring of the tree has very few people in there. And then I have a next layer and a next layer and a next layer. And those layers are based on my comfortability of how they're, they can or cannot trigger me and work through it. So not everybody is invited into the inside circle and they shouldn't be. Because there's a lot of responsibility there. Right. And then I loosen the responsibility as I move out.
And then I'm always gauging where somebody really should live to honor them and honor myself. See, giving somebody more responsibility than they're equipped for is shame on you. I can't just do that and it's okay for me because this is how the, the way that I see myself, right? I realized early on all kinds of circumstances that my goal in life was not to be average. I'm not average, I don't behave average. Nothing I've ever done is average, my entire, nothing's average. And I'm okay because my goal is not to be average. So because I am a natural overachiever, then I have overachiever friends that are in that inside circle and we hold each other to a higher than normal standard. So when I meet somebody who has subscribed to a lifestyle that's more average, I'm very happy for them. But I don't compare myself because that's not my goal.
My goal is never to be average. So the average conversations and the average rules and the average, those things I completely tune out because that is not the life I'm choosing. It's not the life that I'm designing. And so when you're meeting people, you just have to witness how they behave, right? Their ability to move from where they are to where they say they want to be and can they travel that journey independently tells me if I can interact because I travel that very much, right? I travel like I'm committed to self-development, to the day I die. I'm always discovering the better version of me than I was yesterday, a better version than I was yesterday. And that's ongoing for me. And that's never gonna go away. And so that's a little bit more than say average person would like to have in their life.
Again, no judgment, but for me that's an active part of who I am. And so I need people around me who have that active part. And then we have built a relationship that says, my intention is not to hurt you. My intention is to inform you. So that they tell me, Amilya, there's one of your should nots. And I go, oh my goodness, I didn't even see it. Right? Because I will go, no matter how many, 35 years of constant work, I can easily go back to that reprogramming. And so it's my environment and where I will and will not invest my time, energy and focus that allows me to continue, grow and scale. There's certain things that I will never do again. And that is okay by me, it's okay by me. If it bothers you, that's on your side, it's not my side. And so I don't pick up baggages anymore. I used to pick up everybody's baggage and then realize it was exhausting. Now what I will do is I will hand you back your baggage and ask you what I can do to help you with that heavy bag that you're carrying. But I won't carry it for you.
Luke (00:47:45):
So what I wanna just, you know, put, put here to everybody, few things. Number one, think about how conscious of a process this needs to be for each of us. So in terms of, of the whole of this healing process, we can talk about it many, many different angles. But even just under this, this lens that we're looking at right now through the relationships we have, whether that be intimate, professional, personal friendship, what have you, is that we are looking for those that can support being in that inner ring. I love the analogy of the, the the tree rings that you described there, right? Is so that, in that inner ring, which is our safety, that's our, you know, our sacred space, so to speak, that is there. And that's where we want to be as fully ourselves as we possibly can. And so for that, for us to be the loving selves that we can be, we need a degree of trust. We need a very high degree of trust, complete level of trust. And what that requires is a lot of conversation and setting up of here's what the needs are, here's what you know my needs are. Here's what I need from you to support me inside of that space. And same, what do you need from me? What is it that I can support you in? And so how could we approach this through a partnership in the way that we are getting there.
Amilya (00:48:54):
So most of the trauma therapy you go to, they leave this illusion like everybody's gonna get there. Like that's what I was struggling with was that, you know, I was like, oh, maybe I'm gonna be a hermit because I couldn't get everybody there to that inner circle. And the minute that I realized what a) I don't want everybody there. Right? And two, it's okay to let people choose where they are. Right. And that was such a relief for me was that they don't all have to be in the middle.
Luke (00:49:23):
A relief in terms of they don't all have to be in the middle, as well as the fact of you releasing the story of like, everybody needs to be this savior, everybody needs to be this great, everybody needs to be this highest image that I'm gonna paint for them. And here and you, when you release that, that part of your story of them needing to be this and accept them just as this is you. And that's great. And this is, if you're in, in terms of all of the kind of the conscious responsibility of relationship, then you're gonna be a lot closer to the center. But if you're not there, that's okay. That just means we're gonna have a different kind of a relationship. And that's perfectly fine too. So there's a, there's a lot of acceptance that's being allowed through that process as opposed to the attachment that was being described before of, you know, attaching to this is the way things need to be, or I'm only gonna view them this way. And you're opening yourself up because you're not really having a relationship with that person. You're having a relationship with the story.
Amilya (00:50:18):
Correct. And then I started to feel bad, right? I felt bad about myself that I couldn't have more friends, right? Because remember I'm also a public figure, right? So I kept saying, well, if I was more healthy, right, I'd have more, more of this abundance as if more is better. And so I had a detach from that behavior that more is not better, more is just more. That's all it is, is more. And realizing that my truest sense of self, right? And this took me a minute because again, I love all the myths that are out there that are just not true. I was always told that I was an extrovert, right? I'm confident in my speaking. I've done a lot of, I've done a lot of stuff. So people like you are an extrovert. Well, when I actually started to study, right? What makes somebody an introvert versus an extrovert, I am 100% an introvert. Like 100% an introvert. But the way people describe it is incorrect. So I was using the wrong measurement and then telling myself and feeling really bad, which was just another layer on top of my trauma, right? More evidence, right? There's something wrong with me without me realizing that I am an introvert and I actually really like being an introvert. Like I really like it. And so the fact that I don't have all these people shoved into my middle circle, which gives me anxiety because I feel like, oh my god, I gotta call all these people, right? That's just not who I am. I am a thinker, right? I'm a thinker, I'm a reader. I'm a study of knowledge. I love to be innate. I could be by myself for weeks, weeks, right?
And so I had to realize that the description was what's off. So an introvert is somebody that goes into a social situation completely function in the same, well I take the stage, I do all kinds of social stuff, but what happens is it drains my energy and I need time to recoup. Same person goes into the same event, has the same good time, and it fuels them up. So if a social situation fuels you, you're an extrovert. If a social situation drains you, you're an introvert. It has nothing to do with the performance at the time. Both people will look like they're performing, but the recovery is what determines if you're an introvert or an extrovert. When I understood that, again, such relief, such relief of me not having to be something that other people were telling me I was supposed to be and I was supposed to be enjoying it.
Luke (00:52:45):
Yeah. Let me add one more thing to the, to the introvert, extrovert side of that, because this was actually something I also needed to, to understand was to, for everybody to recognize that introvert and extrovert is not black and white. Right. That this is a huge spectrum. That goes in between the two. And so we, you know, to understand where on that spectrum we are for a lot of actually, I mean a lot of what you're describing, and it's funny because I'm literally, stay tuned, everybody, there's an episode literally on this topic in like three episodes. Unfolding perfectly. Is just that nature that many people have assumed that I was extroverted because of the way that I would exactly what you're describing, right. The way I would show up, the way that I put myself out there, I'm more, much more on the introverted scale and I know how to play in an extroverted world. And so for me it was something I had to become comfortable with. And then how did I create kind of my rings? What were my containers to make sure, how can I operate in a way that consistently is recharging, that is consistently regenerative to me and allows me to do what I then need to do outside of those, those containers, as it were.
Amilya (00:53:51):
But when you get so many of those mixed messages, right? Because humans don't do well with mixed messages. So when I'm being told I'm an extrovert and that becomes part of my identity, but it doesn't fit, I think there's something wrong with me. And when you have trauma in your history, that's the message you don't need more of. I don't need more evidence that there's something wrong with me. I've got plenty of that evidence. Right. And you're trying to spin it around, but it keeps surfacing. Right? And so when you start to change the approach, right? I am so grateful for my trauma because it makes me hyper aware. And that hyper awareness has allowed me to tune into people who have great pain that go unnoticed. I notice it, I'm so sensitive. Like I'll walk in and I'm like, oh, I know what that is. Right? So that I can lean in, right. And share tools, but more importantly to create a space of knowing that most people have never had. They've never had. And that's what they're craving.
Luke (00:54:52):
I wanna lean a little further into that because I've also having, you know, seen some of this, these conversations read all sorts of different things. There are many different ways of, of talking about this, but for trauma as well as a certain type of very, very heightened emotions when we work through them, what tends to awaken is number one, this level of compassion that starts to come out of us. Number two, this level of, I'm not even call it empathetic, it's really truly being empathic because our, our, our sensitivity exactly as you described, there's a sensitivity that is so heightened to the energetic vibration of what somebody has gone through. And that it allows us to connect, to tune in, in a very, very different way in that regard. And curious, we wanna expand on that. But what you describe it as is it, it opened up a superpower for you.
And I think that's what I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about before we, we start to wrap up our time is that we can talk about, listen, we can talk about trauma from the perspective of post-traumatic growth, right? That's something that, that came up in the, the last many years. And it's great to show how people can actually get to this stage of growth as opposed to stress through what it is that they've been through. We can talk about how it opens up certain meaning and certain purpose, but there is something in the way that I've heard you talk about this both here as well as some conversations we've had offline that is almost like there's actually a light here. There's something that our trauma can unlock inside of us. And I'm curious if you could comment because it seemed like it was even a bit more transformative or evolutionary in what's possible that even exceeds the value of the meaning and the purpose and all those things that can be drawn from it as well.
Amilya (00:56:27):
Yeah. So what I think for me, right? And for so many of my clients, what I've noticed is that we interconnect in a much more receptive and healthy manner between our masculine and our feminine energy. We have a fluidity between those two things within us, right? That isn't normally available through other non-traumatic individuals. Because in order to grow through your trauma, you are teetering back and forth between those two energies. Remember masculine energy is of doing right? There's a need to do, solve, fix. And then there's the empathy, the nurturing, the awareness part of it, right? That's that zero and in be able to go ooh, you know? Right. That kind of thing. And so what happens is in my work, right, because I carry straight strength in me, even as a female, like people pick up on my strength right away. And that is oftentimes the only safe place another masculine man can fall because he knows I've got him.
Hmm, I got you. I got you. For just that moment. And the thing about trauma is it doesn't need to be cared for for long periods of time. This is what people don't understand. The minute your trauma is relieved for one second, it then becomes possible. And this is why the work is so important. People who then go to extremes is because they cannot see it will ever end. Yeah. It will ever end. And my thing is hand it to me for two seconds and then I'm gonna hand it back. And I walk them through, handing me the trauma now already demonstrate I'm strong enough, I've demonstrated because I can speak the language that you can trust me and you can have it back. I'm not taking anything from you. But that couple of seconds of relief allows them to have the evidence that it's possible.
And now the behavioral tools, right? The other things we put into your life is the hand off, the trauma's not going away, but we learn where to place it so that it becomes manageable. We learn to communicate with others when they need to help us carry that load. Not change who we are. Right. But to learn to love all of who we are. And that's why I think the work is so powerful because I'm not ever asking it to go away. What I'm asking to do is how to love it for all that it brings. Right. My ability to be able to identify with both my masculine and feminine on demand makes me very powerful.
Luke (00:59:22):
Yeah. Can you describe what you mean or what it looks like for someone to hand you their trauma and therefore then the, the, the behavior set that can then follow when it's quote unquote handed back?
Amilya (00:59:35):
I think that that moment is the greatest evidence of trust in life. When somebody can hand you your, their pain, it is a, an bond of intimacy that I don't even know how to describe. It's a friendship that will last forever and we're craving intimacy. We're craving it. Right? We don't want to be alone. None of us wants to be alone. We just don't know how not to be. And that's why the work must get out there. The behavior work. When I teach couples right, how to hold each other's pain, it's magical. It's magical. But we don't teach it. And so it seems impossible. So I am like, let me just show you. And literally I work in seconds of this exchange. And what happens is you start to see each other in a way you've never seen each other before because you're working on the evidence that you need in order to share it.
Luke (01:00:37):
And then as they begin to do that work, what, you know, I wanted to describe and certainly elaborate on this, is that when they then begin to recognize that these are some of the new behaviors in terms of the way that we're gonna relate, the way that we're gonna communicate the, the safe words that we may use, when we see some of the shoulds and the should nots type of things. Right. What that's doing is that it's creating a new set which is for integration. It's for, or you can call it reintegration. And I think that's, you know, that's a part of this that does not always get some of the conversation that it needs to get, which is that as we create these releases, just as you described before, that if you don't have some of the, the shoulds and the should nots and you don't have people within certain rings of trust or further out, if you don't have those things, it's easy to revert back to some of the, the traumatized experiences and behaviors and patterns that had been there.
And so for us, it's very important for us to create those behaviors that create the integration that allows us to then implement this kind of new way of showing up. But at the same time having, you know, some of the, some of the, the guardrails, so to speak, boundaries that support us on that journey at the same time. And so I think that's, you know, it's, it's one of those things that we need to be just as intentional and just as conscious about that part as we are about the, the deep work that creates the initial release.
Amilya (01:01:57):
But that present experience is so powerful because remember the presence in that experience is stronger than any of the story of the trauma. That presence is what brings its power. Right. And then over small periods of time, you start feeding what you wish and releasing of what no longer serves you. And you literally move through exercises where you acknowledge the trauma, you thank the trauma, you're grateful for the trauma and you release it to serve somewhere else. It's no longer needed. Right. And you get to the point where you just have these little pieces of trauma that actually add value to your life. But every year there's parts of me that I no longer need and I let them go. Right. And this process is what allows you not to feel so overwhelmed that there's this monstrous work that you need to do. No, everybody's gotta do work.
I don't care who you are, you've got work to do. If you don't think so, trust me, that's what gives you more evidence that you need to do work. Right. Everybody's gotta work through their stuff. But what happens is we don't teach people how to work through it. Right. We just get, we hope people figure it out. You have to figure out what the tools are. So you have to set aside time. Right. Learn communication starters. What are safe words? When is, you know, when are those signals that it's not working for the other person asking to be able to say, how can I serve you without wanting something in return? Right. Don't use our interaction as a weapon. And so I do that with couples right away. I'm like, what is the weapon that is the deal breaker. Right? It's held in such sacred space. Don't use that against me. Right. Help me move through it. And I think it's these processes and people seeing other people demonstrate it because I'm telling you, when you see a couple that is locked in there, you're like, wow. Like whatever they got going on, I want that too. But they work at it. It's not like they found it at Walmart. They work at it every day, every day, every day. And that is just the way it rolls, right? But people who have trauma are also the most in tune, loving, caring, and present partners.
Luke (01:04:17):
Yeah. Love it. Amilya, I wanna thank you for this conversation, for this walk that we have gotten to go on together on this one. I think there is, you know, this is such an important topic for us to, to continue to dive into in many, many different ways. And the, the intentionality with which you describe things, the conscious process and with which you describe things, there's a lot here for everybody to listen into and, you know, make your notes, draw up your stories, start to recognize the things you're gonna pop from this, this given conversation. Because there is a lot here to sink into. And you know, I think the, the beauty that you described there is so much that can be unlocked. And there is that for those that have gone through certain trauma experiences, there is also so much light. There is so many gifts and talents and love that they have that is so needed for this world. And especially right now.
Amilya (01:05:10):
Desperately so.
Luke (01:05:12):
Desperately so. And so I think what you're sharing this conversation is one of those things that I hope that they really truly deeply hear. Maybe even more importantly, they feel.
Amilya (01:05:22):
I love it. Thank you so much for having the conversation and leading it and I'm just so blessed to be here.
Luke (01:05:27):
Thank you Amilya.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com and click on Community in the upper right hand corner. It's free to join. Until we go on this walk again, I'm Luke Iorio. Be well.