Take Responsibility: Step Out of Victimhood

[00:00:00] Wait a minute, what if, what if I took control of my own life and I didn’t let my past dictate what’s happening now because I am not who I appear to be. I felt like I was an imposter. I felt like everyone who trusted me and came to me for advice and knew me to be this wonderful role model and this wonderful mom and this wonderful daughter, I felt like I was, I was lying.

Because on the inside, that’s not how I felt. And after that day where I was like, what if I changed that and I stopped blaming my abusers and the people who abandoned me?

Welcome to the Onward Podcast. This is Emily Harmon, your host. In this onward podcast episode, I interview Mary Snai. Mary’s a transformational wellness coach and shadow [00:01:00] integration coach. She’s also a member of both the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy and the International Alliance of Holistic Therapists, and she’s a published author.

I wanna give you a heads up that this episode could be triggering for some. Mary was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and spiritual neglect, and we talk about that in this episode. And we also talk about how her path to healing began and how she has transformed her life and now helps others do the same.

Let’s cut to the interview. Mary. Welcome to the Onward Podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Emily. I’m really excited to talk with you. I’m in several different Facebook groups and it looks like we are in the women helping Women entrepreneurs group. Sometimes I have a hard time keeping up with all my groups, but that’s a good one because that’s how I found you.

You made a post about your story and I thought to [00:02:00] myself, wow, Mary would be an awesome podcast guest because. Your story is one that I know impacts other people as well. Other people have experienced some of what you’ve experienced or all of it, and I really feel that by sharing our stories, we become stronger and then we help others become stronger as well.

So can you I agree. Yeah. Can you share your story with our audience? I will, I will. And, and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to have a platform for this story specifically. This is, um, it’ll be the first time that I share specifically my story only verbally to more than one person. Really, this is the first time you’ve talked about it on a podcast.

So my husband and I did a couples podcast where we talked briefly about some of our traumas. But it’s nothing like it will be today. So this is the first time that the [00:03:00] story is coming out to a collective versus a small group of trusted people. Yeah. Wow. You’re very courageous. How do you feel about this?

Like, are you anxious? I feel good, so I will begin. Okay. I come from a really large family. And I was primarily raised by my maternal grandmother. I think she took on the role. The time Spann gets a little blurry because I was small, but I think she took on the full-time role of guardianship when I was seven.

And prior to that I lived with my mom and my dad. My mom is schizophrenic and at the time I understood her also to be manic depressive. So it wasn’t a known thing then, but it was kind of a, a scary and dangerous situation for me to be left alone with her. Not that that. Stopped my dad from doing that.

You know, he had to go to work, so, and he, and she had a pretty unique [00:04:00] relationship. He was an older man, he was 30 years older than my mom. So he came from a different era and he worked really hard and he worked all the time. So my story begins when he’s on the road and my mother, What’s the word I’m looking for?

She got an idea in her head again. She, she’s, she’s schizophrenic. She got this idea in her head that he had sexually abused me and he actually did not. So I was aware enough of the situation to know that he had not, but she was a, she was scary. She was violent and not abusive, but she was. Manic a lot of the time.

So when she told me that she wanted me to show her so that she could examine me to make sure that he had or had not, that was really my first experience with. It wasn’t intentional abuse, but to a five or six year old, you don’t [00:05:00] know. So she did some digging and looking around and determined that he had abused me.

Oh man. Yeah. So that was my first experience. Are you an only child? My mom has a daughter who’s two years older than I with another man. So she was not in the home. I was raised as an only child. Yeah. So my mother packs up our bags. And we leave Arizona, which is where we lived at the time. And we come here to Chicago where my maternal grandmother, her mom lives or lived, her name is Mary.

So we end up here and we’re going through a system of counselors. And I remember being in a room with a therapist that had the little dolls. Yeah. You know, asking where. I was made to touch him or he was made to touch me, and all of this was very odd to me. I didn’t understand [00:06:00] it, but I knew what I was supposed to say because I knew where my mom was looking.

While we were still right in Arizona. So I remember knowing that and I remember being afraid, but I don’t remember what I said real. It’s really strange. I don’t remember what I actually said. So she ended up having a manic episode where she was very violent and she tried to hurt me. So my family called my dad, my grandmother, or one of my aunts or uncles called my dad to have him pick her up.

And which was kind of strange because they thought that he had abused me. Right. Did he know that this was the thought? I don’t know. At this time. I don’t know. Okay. But he did come and take her and I was left in my grandmother’s care. I was ar I was seven. I was in first grade at that time, and pretty much from then on my life was indeed peppered with.

Sexual undertones and sexual abuse from family members. It’s [00:07:00] really strange how that happens because I was taken out of a situation for that reason, but it wasn’t happening and it actually started. So I was seven, and I want to say the undertone, the abusive undertone went on for about seven years. What do you mean by undertone?

So, My, I’m trying to be discreet. Yes. A little here. And I’m, and I want to share, because I think it’s important for anyone listening to know that there is still abuse in this type of nature. So I had people in my family who would masturbate in front of me. And so there wasn’t anything happening between the me and that person.

Right. But it’s, it’s abuse, it’s an undertone. And, um, there were other things. The list kind of goes on and on, and I feel like if I say too much, then I might, I might say too much. Right. But there were, for, from [00:08:00] seven until 14, there were just, You know, there was once when I was 13, so I was a very well developed girl.

Mm-hmm. In sixth grade I had sea cups, so that was, I had larger breasts in sixth grade than all of my aunts, and I have like seven aunts. So in sixth grade, no, I was in seventh grade. I was made to put on a very, very tight fitting black dress. To be a guest at a child’s birthday party to make someone else’s husband jealous.

Wow. Or someone to make the hus, to make a husband look at me to make his wife jealous. Yeah. So I mean, that’s abuse. You know that. It definitely is. And these are people that your mom grew up around. Do you know if she was abused? So my mother comes from a generation there. She has a lot of siblings. I know that they were all abused.

Yes. Okay. And it is a generational thing in my family. I wasn’t the first. [00:09:00] I wasn’t the first of my generation and I wasn’t the first of generations to have abuse within our bloodline. So yeah, there was a lot of undertone like that, those types of things. That went on for about seven years. When I was 10, I was introduced for the first time that I remembered to my maternal grandfather.

And I don’t really wanna talk about the details. That’s not something that really, I’ve talked even with the people that I’ve shared one-on-one with. But I don’t remember how long he was in my life. I would say a couple of months, a handful of months. But I definitely remember every time that I was alone with him.

And there were times where I was not the only grandchild in the house at the time, and we were abused in pairs. So you were living with your. Maternal grandmother. Mm-hmm. But she wasn’t living with her husband or your grandfather? No, he was no longer up. They weren’t [00:10:00] married and he had not been a part of our lives.

Again, I was 10 and I don’t really remember him being in my life very often. He showed up in Illinois and um, he. Actually made a trail of victims. There were a trail of victims. He, again, now I don’t wanna breach other people’s story too much here, but there were several children in my home and outside of my home that he abused.

And it was another child, not in our family who spoke up. And he, instead of being turned into the official, any officials, he was put on a plane and made to leave. Put on a plane by people in the family, and I think part of it was because maybe this is where it gets difficult for me. Part of it could have been because they didn’t wanna believe it or they couldn’t believe it.

But that’s a little difficult for me to wholeheartedly believe because my [00:11:00] mother’s generation, the aunts and uncles, they were part of this same family. So they had to know. Like you don’t, you don’t just live your whole life in a family and not know that these things exist. You know? He felt all together, too comfortable to take off his clothes and make children take off their clothes in the house where his family lived while everyone was gone.

So that doesn’t happen just out of nowhere. Yeah, but then the, the little boy, it was actually a boy who said something to his parents and they said something to family and family got ’em out. How I understand it, I don’t remember cuz I wasn’t part of the adult group, but how I understand it is that as soon as they found out, they got him out of there.

All I know is one day he was gone. How old are you? I’m 38. 38, okay. I’m just trying to think because I mean, I know when I was a little kid, probably, I’ve never told anybody [00:12:00] this except for my family knows, but probably, I don’t know, maybe first grade we were at a daycare and. This one older kid and the lady at the daycare, it was at her house.

And she would hang up the sheets and he’d make us come behind the sheets where they’re outside to dry and pull down our pants. And then he would also take us behind the chimney and like make us take our clothes off and then pretend that he was washing us. Hmm. And I remember telling my parents, And it was scary.

And then I just stopped going there and stuff. But no one went to court or none of that stuff. And I, and that’s why I asked your age, cuz I don’t know if that’s because it, you know, I’m 56. Is that, because, you know, back then that’s how people treated it. My parents would probably handle it differently.

Now I couldn’t even tell you if or how that impacted me. So I can kind of relate. Not ex not, I didn’t go through a lot of what you’ve been through, but I. Can relate a little bit to what you’re talking about and, um, [00:13:00] how scary it is to speak up. Mm-hmm. Cause you, cause you’re afraid you’re gonna get in trouble.

Well, there’s another layer to my story. So I wasn’t afraid I was going to get in trouble. I was afraid. No, not afraid. I was very aware. At the age of eight, that no one was gonna do anything about it anyway. And I know that that’s gonna sound harsh to anyone who might be listening, who I love and who I am in close relationship with.

Now that’s gonna sound really harsh. But it, it is the truth that how I experienced it when I was that young, the reason why I, I knew that it wasn’t a feeling, it wasn’t a thought. The reason why I knew that is because my family thought that my dad had molested me. And although he didn’t, they thought he did.

And when he would come to Illinois up until the age of 16 to visit, I was allowed to leave the state with him. So I did not think it would [00:14:00] matter. I didn’t think that I was going to be protected. So for me, the embarrassment and the shame of it was easier just to keep it in rather than say something and not have like, be proven, have it proven to me that no one was gonna do anything about it.

Yeah. When you say you were, uh, you say you were also abused spiritually? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I believe when children are. Abused sexually. There is a spiritual undercurrent to that. So my family was not religious. It wasn’t any type of spiritual abuse in that nature, like abuse in the name of an entity or a deity, but it was more, I was not acknowledged.

And when I would seek out questions for any type of higher power or divine entity, my mind worked around. There’s gotta be something else because in the earthly realm, I’m not being [00:15:00] protected. And it was very hush hush. Like, no, I wouldn’t. From my family, I was never given anything concrete to hold onto.

Ironically, years later when I became a teenager, a lot of people just turned in my family suddenly they were very religious and there was all sorts of things like that. But when I was younger, I. I’d say eight through 12. I wasn’t, anything divine was held from me, withheld from me, or at least that’s the way I understood it.

I know that it wasn’t intentional. Now that I have gone through the, I call it the shadowlands because I do a lot of my practice is shadow work. Now that I’ve done all of that, I’m fully aware that the adults that were in my environment were not equipped with the tools to help me. It wasn’t intentional that I wasn’t given spiritual knowledge.

It wasn’t intentional that I would hope that it wasn’t intentional from the people that weren’t my abusers. It [00:16:00] wasn’t intentional that I, I wasn’t protected from my abusers. They weren’t equipped with the tools and. Understanding that helps me to be compassionate and, and to work around that. It still doesn’t change the fact that I felt that there was spiritual neglect there.

Right. How were you as a student? Or how did you, this has got to have taken a toll on you as a young child. I mean, did you act out, uh, how did you deal with it? Yeah, so in school my grades were off of the charts. I did very, very well on testing, but I could not, and would not be present in class. So I was the type when we had our big textbooks and we’re supposed to be reading history or science or literature, I would have another book inside of it.

Holding it in so no one could see what I was actually reading. Right. And I was reading things of spiritual nature and I was [00:17:00] reading things. I was reading psychology, and I was reading mythology and astrology, and I was going into a place that took me away from the earthly. Space just for the time being.

That said, it wasn’t helping me at that time, so I was downloading all of this information, but I was very angry. I joke and poke fun at myself by saying I was a bully of the bullies. I fought a lot. I fought a lot, and I ma I justified it because I would only fight the people who were bullies. And I was defending the people who couldn’t defend themselves, so that made it okay.

Very violent. I started drinking when I was 12. I was definitely an alcoholic by 18. I was pregnant with my first son a month before I turned 17. And I mean that I was fast. I was aggressive. I was exclusively angry. I was having sex very young. I was drinking very young. I [00:18:00] somehow missed the train for doing drugs.

I was like, the only I missed that I missed. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. You know, I’ve heard that victims of. Sexual abuse, they react in different ways and sometimes they abstain from sex and other times they just have sex all the time. That’s kind of normal. Mm-hmm. Um, for people who have been abused that way to react and to act out.

Yeah. To me it seemed so I’ve done a lot of digging. And I’ve come to to a, and I know it, it doesn’t matter what type of sexual trauma, it could be childhood, childhood, sexual abuse, or it can be some sort of rape or sexual trauma when you’re older. And the same things can happen where you either become promiscuous or you abstain, like you said.

Right? But for me, I wouldn’t say that it was either one of those two extremes. What happened with me was I identified my [00:19:00] worth with my body. And I was taught that not so much from the abuse from my grandfather, which was hands-on, but from the abuse from the other people where there was an undertone of sexuality all the time.

So I almost learned how to be. And yeah, I was too young for sex to be so important for me, but it wasn’t like with all over, it wasn’t, it wasn’t like with a bunch of different people, but sex should not be important to a 14 year old. It was, it was important to me. So, I don’t know how much you wanna say about this, but it sounds like.

There were undertones, people masturbating in front of you, comments people would make, just the looks that they’d give you. And then you had your grandfather putting his hands on you. Was there ever full intercourse against your will? No. Okay. Not that that’s means it’s any less. No, I’m trying to say that, yeah, I [00:20:00] don’t believe that.

Um, and I mean this wholeheartedly. I’ve had people drop their jaw at me. I don’t believe that any childhood trauma is any more or less severe than the next, because from the ages of zero to seven, we are operating on unconscious brain waves. We are not, we are literally, it’s um, theta, theta, brainwaves and below.

So we’re operating on this consciousness that is the same as though you’re under hypnosis, zero to seven. So what we’re doing when we’re abused in any fashion during that age group is we are downloading. How life should be right and what you need to do to survive and what you need to do to be accepted or to feel worthy.

It does not matter the type of abuse it is. I wouldn’t say that mine is any worse than the next, or if someone were [00:21:00] penetrated, it w were any worse than mine. Have you had people that, I know you haven’t shared your story that much, but I bet you there’s people that have the attitude that since there was no penetration, I mean, how ca how bad could it have been?

I mean, what’s the big deal? Yeah. One of the first people that I ever mentioned my abuse to, I was. Really young, and I was drunk. It was a boy that I was dating, and he made that comment, and I didn’t even tell him the whole story. He wasn’t even, he didn’t witness me, he didn’t get the whole story. I just, men had mentioned, you know, I had some, some incident happen and he, he had asked me, were you raped?

And to me at this time, I was still being, Abused with the undercurrent. Right. And so, um, I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what he meant by that because I did, I, I say that I was raped. It was a spiritual rape Was by men or were there [00:22:00] women in your family too that were this way? Besides my grandfather, he, he was the only man.

The rest were women. Interesting. Wow. So you’ve talked to your family members about this. So my, let’s see here. How can I. Fast track. So the people that I call my parents right now are maternity, my uncle and his wife. So it’s my, my biological mom’s brother and his wife. I have shared a lot with them. After I ended up pregnant with my first son, I became very close with them because they, I trusted them.

And they have a son who is my age, who has been my best friend since I was five years old, and he’s always been my protector. So for me, it was easy to create a relationship, a core relationship with that family. So they know my dad, he does not know about the abuse. Outside of my grandfather. Mm-hmm. So [00:23:00] that will be news to him.

My mom does and my brothers do. How will your family find out? Are you going to say, listen to this podcast, or are you going to, I know you have a, a book coming out. You’re part of a book. Coming out. How are you going to tell them? I haven’t decided yet. I haven’t decided yet. I’m trying to figure out which people are important, like who is it necessary that they know?

Mm-hmm. And I’ll be honest, Emily, I don’t think that it’s really necessary for anyone to know and. Including my dad. If he finds out, he finds out. Mm-hmm. But you don’t have to make it a point to go say, Hey, this book’s coming out, or I went on this podcast, or I’m starting to tell my story. Yeah. So he knows about the book.

And before, before I, this is so crazy. You wanna hear a a, a good synchronicity story. Yes. I had a [00:24:00] podcast episode on Synchronicity. Yes. It’s magic baby, I’m telling you. So my husband is also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Who ha is scheduled the talk with you next week? Yes. So you’ll have the male’s perspective.

Okay. So he and I have been toying around with a few ideas of what it would mean to create a non-for-profit that is just a, a resource with information, educational information and support and anything you want, including. Retreats for both survivors and families of survivors, so the families can be equipped to support the children and the adults that they love, who have experienced the things we’ve experienced.

So before he and I are able to do this back, if we backtrack. 10 months from now, it had to be put out there into the world that I, that I’m a survivor. We can’t [00:25:00] just say, okay, we have this, you know, this non-for-profit and we’re gonna help people, but and not admit that you’ve been Yeah, we went to my parents’ house one day with the intention of me saying to them, so both of them know about my grandfather, only my mom knows about the other abusers.

We went there so that I could. Tell them I’m probably going to write a book or. On my business website, the six house website, I’m going to put a blog post, something, it’s going to come out in the public. I need to know that you guys are gonna support me, and so on and so forth. Well, I told my mom that day, my dad ended up being out with his friend, so he didn’t learn of this.

But here’s the synchronicity. A week later, The contract for my book landed in my lap. Whoa. Yeah. You see people say, put it out in the universe and it’s gonna happen. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So [00:26:00] actually my dad does not know about the book yet. My mom does. He knows about the book, but he doesn’t know what’s in the book.

And in the book, I do not name my abusers. I do not name, I don’t talk about the undercurrent too much. It’s mostly focused on my grandfather because again, it’s just a chapter in a collaboration. Right. And I only had so many words, so I had to be very choosy about what was important to share, you know? So you’re biological mom, are you in touch with her?

I’m not. You’re not? Okay. She doesn’t, she have a conversation with her about whether or not. Your dad actually abused you. Did you ever have a conversation with her about that? I did not because since the, the day that she was taken away, when I was left in my grandmother’s care, she has been pretty much institutionalized.

In one state or another. So my dad would come and pick me up and bring me to Indiana or [00:27:00] Ohio, wherever she would be at that time, and I would visit her, but I was never alone with her. And I was little, I was right. I was a little girl at the time. And for me, I. I pushed it in the back of my mind and I just Right, right, right.

Forgot about it, you know? But even now, you’re not in touch with her or do you ever? No. So she, she lives not too far from me, and I did tr I have tried to cultivate, she’s very, I don’t know how to stress how very, very ill she is. She, most of the time she doesn’t even recognize me. So I don’t have a relationship with her.

When I was in my early twenties, I tried for consecutively every weekend and for almost a year to cultivate a relationship with her, and one day I brought my small son, who’s now 20, but I brought him when. With me and she really scared him. And I’ll be honest, she scared me as well. And I remembered, I remember now remembering then how it felt to be a, a [00:28:00] child in her presence and be afraid.

I didn’t wanna subject him to that anymore. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And it was hard on me. It was really emotionally taxing on me as a 22 year old girl, the only daughter. My dad was out of state. He left her here in Illinois and went about his business, and it was difficult for me to go and give her money. I was a single 22 on my own with my son in Chicago.

I’d bring her money, I’d bring her out to eat. I’d buy her clothing for the seasons, and most of the time she would just take from my hands. And walk away. And then other times she would not even recognize me. And then other times she would be mean, she would say hateful things and things that she didn’t mean it’s her illness, but they Right.

They tore at my trauma, so, yeah. I get it. You, um, say that one day you became curious, you say in these, uh, remarks that you sent me, before we conduct the podcast episode, you answered some of the questions that I had just to prepare and you said, [00:29:00] One day you became curious about what it might mean to step away from the conditioning of my childhood and to live a better life.

I’d like for you to talk about why do you think one day you became curious about that? What was it? Was there an incident that led you to start thinking, how can I live a better life or, yes. So after my. Eldest son was born. I stopped being physically violent with people, but without that release, there was a lot of very volatile emotions and I was really explosive.

And I’d say 10 years from now, it’s been, it’s been 10, uh, yeah, it was about 10 years from now. I started to, well, it was 12 years ago. I gained a lot of weight. My hair started falling out. I had stress, headache, and I was so, so angry, and I was mean to my son’s father. So at this time, I, I hadn’t had my second son [00:30:00] yet, but I was still dating his father and I was mean to him.

Yeah. And, and I just started to be calm, curious about what would happen if I took better care of myself. I stopped drinking. I started being honest with the people around me about what I was feeling on the inside, because on the outside I was very sociable. I was happy, I was protective of my family, very loyal to my friends.

Everyone came to me for advice. It’s still the same way. So on the outside I was very similar to how I am now, but on the inside I was suffering and. I literally just became curious what would it mean if I started being honest with myself about what I’m going through? And at the time, I was a medical assistant in Chicago, so it’s not, it wasn’t a foreign idea to me that there’s, you can help yourself, you know?

So I stopped drinking as often. And I started a diet and [00:31:00] exercise regimen. I lost, I was about 45 pounds overweight. I lost the weight. I, my hair stopped falling out, and so I, I started physically changing and I started working on. My first step was working on being honest with myself. I really started analyzing, self-analyzing, why am I doing this?

Not even through a counselor. This is just something you’re starting on your own. I’ve, I’ve never seen a therapist. Well, that’s a lie. I saw a therapist very briefly while my eldest son and I lived in a, a shelter. So I left his dad and we were in a shelter, um, temporarily, and I saw a counselor there because I had to.

I had to see a therapist to be in the place. Right. But yeah, no, I’ve, I’ve never seen a therapist. I have never gone to any professional in any sort of healing realm. But I studied it on my own. I started studying the healing modalities. I became a certified aromatherapist. I became a certified herbalist. [00:32:00] I started working in crystal therapy.

I did tons of research on. Psychological, different psychological theories and philosophies, and that was after that aha moment. Like, wait a minute, what if, what if I took control of my own life and I didn’t let my past dictate what’s happening now because I am not who I appear to be. I felt like I was an imposter.

I felt like everyone who trusted me and came to me for advice and knew me to be this wonderful role model and this wonderful mom and this wonderful daughter, I felt like I was, I was lying because on the inside, that’s not how I felt. And. After that day where I was like, what if I changed that? And I stopped blaming my abusers and the people who abandoned me.

So I had that abandonment issue, problem, you know, abandonment from my biological mother and abandonment from my father, abandonment from my grandmother who didn’t protect me, [00:33:00] you know, and kind of covered up the story. That’s the way I understood it. So once I started to, Work on compassion for myself. I started to let myself off the hook a little bit, not guilting myself for being an alcoholic and not guilting myself for screaming at my son when he had barely did anything worth a, a yell.

And yeah, I, I released responsibility for my shitty life. Quote unquote, I released that responsibility from the people who conditioned me to be the way I was, and very quickly things accelerated for me where I just started shedding skins, and That’s amazing. You say you were an alcoholic, so you never went to na, I mean Alcoholics Anonymous or anything.

You just stopped drinking on your own. Do you drink? I stop. I stopped abusing it on my own. I still drink. I wonder if you were an alcoholic though, or just a, I mean, not just, but an alcohol [00:34:00] abuser or an alcoholic. Well, I guess I’ve never gone so deep into Stu into the study to differentiate the two. Yeah.

But what I can tell you is that when I was in my twenties, I would not be at an event if I wasn’t drinking. I could not function if I felt emotionally and mentally and socially unequipped, and I know, I know that it was because I was numbing. I understand that now. So I guess, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know either.

I’m just, but I’m thinking, well, my son’s an alcoholic. Okay. If he has one drink, if he had one sip, he would just, we’ve talked about in an episode, just go off the deep end and keep, and start drinking. So I’m wondering, I I, I think the facts that you could stop on your own. I’m thinking you are an alcohol abuser.

I’m not an expert. Mm-hmm. Instead of an alcoholic. Yeah, you could be right. I will be transparent with you. [00:35:00] I still struggle with it. For me, if I have a drink and I’m feeling good, it’s not unlike me to drink too much and to be hungover the next day. Yeah. You know, so although I stopped drinking every day and although I stopped doing weekend binges and I definitely stopped going to work still drunk, I used to, I did that and it was so shameful.

Oh my goodness, Emily. It was the worst. And then I would. Drink because I felt ashamed of drinking. Yes. Well, maybe. Maybe. You know, so I don’t know. I don’t know. And you know what? It may not even be important, but I definitely willed myself to change my environment. Yes. And change the environment for my children, or at the time my, my son Louis.

So by the time my second son was born, he’s seven now. By the time he was born, I was no longer dependent on the drink in order [00:36:00] to have a good time and to feel like I could let loose. Yeah, yeah. I used to do that when I was younger, drink and I would drink too much and then, One of my friends said, you know, just have water.

You can have just as much fun. And it was actually, you know, I was able to do that. I was able to just have water and then watch other people, but still it was hard because the drinking may, he helped me feel like I could interact better and less self-conscious. I don’t know. I, I can’t put my finger on ever really feeling self-conscious.

I probably did, but it’s not something I recognize now. My thing was I needed it in order to put down my guard and have a good time. Interesting. I just, I didn’t trust anyone. Anyone. Yeah. You just always are on your toes. On your, just always. So you say that you’re now thriving and blazing trails of healing for others.

Like you said that, you told me that when you started posting about this on, on social media a [00:37:00] little bit, a lot of your posts just went viral. So many people, I guess they could relate. Yes. I have women who reached out to me from all over the world. Wow. I now have clients from all over the world. That’s amazing.

Yeah. And all it takes is something that I’ve learned, and this is something that I say often. The more you tell your story, the more you heal. And it seems as though it might not be true because you tell your story and you cry and it brings up pain and it brings up shame and guilt and all of these emotions that are attached to.

Any sort of trauma, but the more you talk about it, the more you heal. And I, I feel like I was a catalyst for a lot of these women who didn’t feel like they were in a safe place with someone who, who wasn’t going to judge them. Yes, definitely. When, so when you say your clients, what [00:38:00] is the work that you do?

So right now it keeps evolving. I am a holistic wellness coach. However, the main tool that I use is shadow work, which is where you, it’s essentially in scientific terminology. It is the psychological process of doing self-analysis. So this is when you sit down and you really dig into the things that are unconscious and you bring them to, I like to call it, bring it to the conscious table, and then you work through the trauma behind that unknown.

Entity. So I’ll give you an example cuz I know it seems like rubbish unless you’re familiar with shadow work, are you? No, I, no I’m not. Yeah. Okay. So I’ll give you a pretty, a pretty decent example. So there are several ways that we can tap into what’s unconscious in our psyche. Our [00:39:00] judgments of other people and not the little judgments, not things like, oh, her pants look terrible on her ass.

Not those types of judgments, uhhuh, but things like, she’s a really crappy human being, or who is he to think he can, blah, blah, blah. When we, when we have an emotional charge on a judgment against another person. Things that trigger us. It can be anything. Anything. If there is a smell and it triggers us, if there is a human behavior that triggers us, a person that triggers us, those are indicators.

Our dreams are indicators, and anytime we have explosive emotion. So these are the four main flags that you’re dealing with Shadow. Material. And what we do is with my clients, it’s the same thing that I taught myself to do. I started doing this about eight years ago, is you put down the information, you know, which is one of the triggers, and then you unpack it.

[00:40:00] So the philosophy is, uh, do you know who Carl Young is? So it’s Carl Yung is the person who put the name to the shadow archetype. It’s a part of our psyche that is in the unconscious and it harbors things that we repress and we suppress when we’re young and we go through trauma. So that material turns into judgments against other people, triggers, dream realms.

This material comes up in ways that we don’t have control over, and therefore it controls our lives. So in shadow work, what we, oh, I see a question. No, I, I’m just thinking, I’m, I’m starting to get it. So instead of it really being about that person or that person that cuts you off in traffic or that smell you just don’t like, it’s kind of looking internally to figure out, well, it’s really more about you and an experience that you had.

It’s not about that person. Yes. And you ha, I guess you have to be really quiet and take time cuz our lives are so [00:41:00] busy that we just don’t have time to do that. And then when you do take the time to do that, it can be painful. So you don’t wanna do it. So then you go drink some alcohol or eat some candy or watch a tv.

I think that Western Medicine has a similar approach with therapy, but it’s different therapists. They’re generally speaking therapists. Within the paradigm of Western medicine are not allowed to tap into that kind of stuff. Usually they’ll just probably give you a pill for your anxiety. Hmm. Some of them, yeah.

And then other times it’ll be, you know, just talk it out. You know, my husband will tell you when you guys have your, your interview, he went, For many years to therapy, and he never really, he had a lot of, a lot of good things came out of it, but he never was able to tap into the stuff that I tap in into with, with my coaching clients right now.

Yeah. And the thing is, you, [00:42:00] you don’t give advice. It’s not about giving advice, it’s about asking evocative questions, mirroring patterns, pointing out things that. That people are saying that are contradictory and my clients come to the conclusions on their own. Yeah, they just have some, do you go to any, do you have to go get certified in this or get a class in it, or it’s just stuff that you’ve taught yourself?

So for me, it’s stuff that I’ve taught myself. I am a coach right now, so I don’t. Obviously there’s no medicine involved. There’s also not that boundaries of the western medicine paradigm. I’m not a therapist. I’m only a coach. I’m a wellness coach, right? So on top of the shadow work I do herbal therapies and aromatherapy diet, exercise, sound medicine.

Crystal healing. There’s a lot of modalities that I use. That said, I am a psychology student, so I am working towards getting a degree in youngy y analytical therapy, but I’m [00:43:00] not going to be a registered therapist. I just want it for the credentials to continue doing what I’m doing because again, that the boundaries for Western medicines paradigm are very, very restricting.

And I want to be able to share the spiritual and the mystical aspects to the shadow work with my clients. I don’t want that to be taken away. And you can do your client work remotely, right? Someone? You can do it on Zoom, just like we’re doing this interview on Zoom. You can your clients. I do it, I do it mostly, all of it on Zoom, Uhhuh.

I have clients in Canada, in, well, British Columbia, in India now Brazil, like they’re, they’re all over the place. So most of my clients are Zoom. That’s awesome. So your, let’s see. Your practice is called the sixth house. How’d you come up with that term? That name? So in addition to the wellness modalities, I’m also an astrologer and I work with my client’s birth charts a lot to pull out shadow material.

So anything that [00:44:00] indicates trauma or lessons that need to be learned in order to evolve in this lifetime. And, um, In astrology, the sixth house in our birth chart indicate service to the collective and wellness. And my sixth house in my birth chart is crazy saturated with activity. So it just seemed appropriate.

Oh God. When did you start this? Oh gosh. So, My interest sparked when I was 14 or 15, the Sunday newspaper astrology column, the getting your, the horoscopes there. And I recognized right away that there was some, there was something there. There was something there, and so I dabbled in it a little bit when I wasn’t out drinking or getting in trouble with my friends.

Kind of a hobby. After I had my first son when I was 17, I started to be a little more. [00:45:00] Dedicated to that interest and that learning, and I’d go to the library and take out books, and I started to collect more information. And then in my twenties, I started casting birth charts for colleagues and friends and whoever would have me, you know, whoever would allow me to do it.

And I really turned some heads, you know? I bet. Yeah. The problem is that then that I was not reliable. Because I was either drunk or hungover or angry, so it just didn’t, it didn’t gel well with people. But now that I’ve since, since I’ve entered into my thirties, I’ve not had that dependency on drinking.

So I’ve really been able to help a lot of people by looking at their stars. That’s awesome. So you’re doing it kind of one-on-one, but you wanna start reaching more people. I do. How do you, how do you plan on doing that? So, one thing that I mentioned a little earlier is that my husband and I have toyed around with that, um, non-for-profit.

[00:46:00] That has the, so that would be for big masses. And then also being able to bring it in in shorter groups with a retreat one day. One day. Right. But I am not, right now, I’m designing a workshop or a series of workshops so that I can start having groups of people come in and do some, not the heavy work, not real heavy, because it is really heavy.

It’s exhausting, but more educational workshops on education and letting more people in. On the secret behind this, I call it magic. You tap into your inner space and you can transform. And I think the more people that know that this is available and you have it inside of yourself, you just have to make that commitment and have that spark of curiosity.

Like I did every person who. Heals to the magnitude that I have is able to help other people heal, and it’s really important for me to [00:47:00] start creating waves and having more people overcome their traumas. And so informative Educational workshops are definitely gonna be landing in sometime in early 2020.

And is that gonna be through Zoom too, or? I’ve not decided yet. My husband’s a big champion behind that. He thinks it’ll be a good idea, but I would really love to share physical space with people as well. So. Right. So how long does it take for this transformation? How long does a typical client work with you on shadow work?

I’m, I mean, I know it does. It is impacted by how much effort the client puts into it, and maybe by the deepness of the trauma or the experience. But I mean, what, do you have like a, an average time timeline of how long a client would work with you or not yet? As of now, no one has stopped working with me.

Okay. So I did not have a guide or a coach. And I’ve been doing this for over eight years now. Mm-hmm. And I still do it every [00:48:00] single day, so I’m still tapping in and asking the, asking myself the difficult questions. Anytime I feel something come up, I will tell you. So my, the, the initial appointment or the intake is what I call it, the intake for our new client is two hours.

Really. Wow. Mm-hmm. And then after that, every session is an hour and I have yet to have a single shadow specific shadow, work specific, because the, the reasons people come to me are vast, but shadow specific. I have yet to have someone come to me to that second, first session after the intake and not have.

Had these aha moments where they are already feeling transformation. Wow, that’s awesome. Yeah. So what tools do you use? It’s mostly listening, talking, you know, like you, you said, um, asking questions, calling ’em out maybe when they’re, when a client might be. [00:49:00] Blaming somebody else or saying something when really you’re asking ’em to take a look at it from a different point of view.

So the two main tools that I use are the astrology birth chart, the astrological birth chart, and then the shadow work in and of itself is a tool and what I, what I personally provide, As interactional tools within shadow work are, I ask why a lot and I, I tell people to take responsibility and I tell them that they’re making excuses.

I’m, I’m brutal. I think I can be brutal. I think I can be brutal, but this is what separates my clients from clients that might go to a different type of, Coach, I am very upfront that you have to mean it. You have to be willing to roll up your sleeves, put on your big girl and big boy pants and really like sit in the shit because it’s shitty, you know?

It is [00:50:00] not fun. And so when we are, when we are going in and we’re uncovering the, these pieces, Of ourselves that have been repressed. Sometimes they’re beautiful things. Sometimes it’s creativity, you know, that was put away because for whatever reason it didn’t serve us when we were kids. Sometimes it, it is sexuality, sometimes it is trust, and then other times it’s jealousy, um, greed.

So all of these things make us who we innately are when we’re born. We’re here having our human experience. It’s a spiritual life and a human experience. Or you can say it’s a human experience and a spiritual life. Or did I just repeat myself? I don’t know. Yeah. Everyone has their own outlook on what it is to be human right now on earth.

But when we’re born, we are given all of these traits and from birth until seven or eight and then thereafter as well. But birth until seven or [00:51:00] eight is the heavy hitting years where. Parts of us that we’re supposed to have in order to experience the full spectrum of human experience, they’re put away.

Mm-hmm. And in shadow work, when you uncover them, the number one thing I say to my clients is, you have to take responsibility because although you are not the person that created the environment, and you’re not the person that did the traumatic act. You are the person that rejected a part of your innate spirit and sent it away.

So taking responsibility is a huge thing in this practice. And you know what? My clients are very courageous. They go in and they mean business. They get it done, and every single time, every client, every new session, they are just amazing. So what’s the most common blockage for people when it comes to trying to improve their state of being and their wellness?

Hmm. It’s fear, for sure. It’s fear. The main core [00:52:00] is fear. Everyone has a different type of fear or a fear of a different thing, but it’s fear and a lot of times it is fear of change and fear of losing. This is going to sound super messed up, but it’s true. Fear of losing the comfort in the chaos. Yes, I know, I understand that.

Yeah. Fear of who they are and this is the, what they’re used to in their lives. And I say they, I mean, I’m, I’m sure I could mm-hmm. Hire you as well, but this is what we’re used to in our lives. And so it’s the fear of the unknown. You know, if I confront it, what’s gonna happen? And there’s a fear of taking responsibility too.

Yeah. Because easier to say, well, I’m that way because, uh, My mom was mean or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I actually just put a post up on Facebook about this very thing today. I’m gonna read it. It’s very short. Okay. I’m gonna read it to you. It’s funny how that very thing came up. So my post says, happy Tuesday, tribe.

Here is a [00:53:00] Tuesday teaching victim mentality versus Victor mentality. Victor mentality. The faster we step out of victimhood, the faster we release the energy of powerlessness. I know it feels as though it’s easier to place blame of the condition of our lives on others, but this forfeits our power by rejecting the title of victim.

We step victoriously into empowerment, be brave, be victorious, and be well. And that is the foundation of every single session with every single client. So, but it’s okay to say, I understand that I’m this way, or I might be this way because of, this is what happened. Is that okay? Or is that still being a victim by saying, I’m this way cause my parents treated me a certain way or somebody treated me a certain way, understanding it instead of blaming them.

Are those two different things or is that, is that still being a victim? When you say, I’m this [00:54:00] way, be kind of because of my environment? If you’re not willing to change, yes. But if you’re willing to change, if you’re not blaming them and you’re trying to improve yourself, then that’s okay. That’s, yeah. So the victim mentality is the person who says, my life was crappy and I’m this way because you didn’t live through what I lived through.

Right? Like, try living in my shoes for a day. Nope. You are giving up your power to be in a better place. Yes, I get that. Yes. So now, if that same person says, The condition of my life is based off of the conditioning of my childhood. It was real crappy. I was abused, I was neglected, and it turned me into this really put the a, you know, fill in the adjective.

It made me this way and this really sucks. I wanna change. I wanna take back vitality. I wanna take back happiness, and happiness is almost an illusionary word to me. I prefer to use the word joy, [00:55:00] take back joy, because that is part of who you are. It’s not a feeling, it’s not something that comes and goes.

So I think there is a big difference in the way people use. Their language and their willingness to take responsibility point forward. Right. Got it. So how can people find you if they wanted to hire you, how would they track you down and start to work with you? I can be found at either my website or on Facebook.

So the website is the sixth house.com, and I’ll put this in the show notes. Yeah, cuz the six, it’s not spelled out. The six is not spelled out. So the six house.com is my website. And what about Facebook? Yeah. What’s that on Facebook? It is at, so if you just, at the six house, I feel like on Facebook there might be other six house.

Pages, but it’s not entirely spelled out the way mine [00:56:00] is, so, okay. It’s just a matter of looking for that. But yeah, either way you can schedule an appointment either way, or you can check out my daily advice and musings. And can you subscribe to like a newsletter that you put out or is it mostly you do have a newsletter?

I don’t have a newsletter, but if you go to my website, there is a popup that will come up if you want to be on the mailing list. So anytime there’s new material, if there’s a new blog post or a new event that I’m going, I’m speaking at that, um, emails do go out for that. Mary, any last bit of advice for the listeners as we, uh, bring this interview to a close?

I could talk for days, I could talk for days. With that simply said, I would say that there really, really truly isn’t anything that we can experience. Or live through or any way that we can be feeling that we can’t overcome. We’re all, [00:57:00] each of us innately are capable of making the choice to commit to having a better life, and it is well within your reach.

You just have to make the first step. I have a blog. That says, the second step to radical wellness is making a commitment. And then the first step is making the choice, making the choice to have it better. And the second and most important step is making a commitment to yourself. Well, thank you very much, Mary, for being on the Onward Podcast, and I’m excited to get this interview published.

Thank you so much for having me. I love how Mary talks about how she started to heal. And how she asked herself that question, what if I took control of my own life? I’m going through that process myself, some of that inner work, and so are some of us in the Onward movement. If you’d like to join the Onward Movement where we’re really working hard on releasing our [00:58:00] fear of judgment and confidently moving forward to pursue our dreams and to discover our authentic selves, please come on over and join us.

I put a link to the onward movement in the show notes, and you can also just search in Facebook on Onward Movement in groups. Have a great day, everybody. Take care of yourself. Stay healthy.