Welcome to The Daily Essent, I'm Molly Carmel, and this is the podcast I always wish existed, a bite-sized on-the-ground spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life, to help make us all a little bit more awake, alive, and ascending. So I promise, while I kind of promise that this is my last episode on my EMDR, okay, but it's also like not really about EMDR, so phew! It's about something bigger, it's about the fact that we get to rewrite our stories, all of them, all of the time, and I think that might be one of the greatest gifts of being human. So I've been thinking a lot about this lately.
I really had the opportunity to rewrite my story so many times in this lifetime. I mean, I got sober and that was a rewrite, I healed my eating disorder, another rewrite, I've been in friendships and out of friendships and in relationships and out of relationships and careers, and you know, and each time I came out of something like that, I rewrote who I was and what I believed, you know, and I changed careers and cities and I changed my mind about God and about food and about my body and, you know, and what I deserve in this life, and every single one of those was a story rewrite, right? And I didn't need a special modality for any of them, I needed some honesty, some insight, I needed some people who could see me and guide me, I needed willingness, and I needed to start acting like the new story before the old one was completely gone. I think that's the part that we don't talk about enough, right?
We don't wait until the old story disappears and then step into the new one. We step into the new one while the old one is still yapping, right, while the old one is still playing. We act our way into the rewrite, we start living as if the new story is true, even and especially when part of us still believes the old one. And in my experience slowly and honestly sometimes slower than others, we do this repetition, we do this practice, we garner up a lot of bravery and courage, and the new story gets louder and the old one gets quieter, sometimes without us even noticing.
So just a little note about this EMDR, putting my therapist head on for a second, because it does fit into this a little bit, and I just feel responsible to share this with you, my ascenders. I really have been rewriting stories my whole life, and I would say I'm pretty good at it. But there were a couple of beliefs that were really, really stuck, like stuck on my guts deep in my body, you know, because I worked through them intellectually a long time ago, but my nervous system did not get the memo. And these are core beliefs about my worthiness, about being deserving of forgiveness.
I mean, this is some old, old, stuff that was a concrete in my gut. And what EMDR and sometimes these specific trauma therapies can do is just reach these really stuck places, the ones that all of my other work hadn't quite been able to get to, and it was able to turn the volume down and make those stories kind of like neutral enough that I could finally bring like me, Molly, like my adult self to the table to start to rewrite them, not to pretend that things didn't happen, but to meet them and greet them with new eyes and say, oh, okay, I see you. Oh, okay, I understand why you lived in me the way you did. And I'm ready to give a different story and a different ending.
So this EMDR wasn't the beginning of my rewriting. It was more like it got to the stories that were really cemented in, the ones that needed a lot of extra help to budge, right? But the practice of rewriting, I mean, that's what happening my whole life. And it's been happening in yours too, whether you call it that or not.
And that brings me to our pocket stage today, love, mark, nepo, love, love, love, love, love. And you know, he writes about being alive. It's like some of the most honest work I've ever encountered, which is my love language, honest work is my love language. He just tells the truth about what it is to be human.
And here's what he says in his book called the Book of Awakening. There is very little difference between burying and planting. For often we need to put dead things to rest so that new life can grow. And further, the thing puts a rest, whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form.
Let me read that again for those of you in the back. There is very little difference between burying and planting. For often we need to put dead things to rest so that new life can grow. And further, the thing puts a rest, whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form.
And you know, that's the rewrite, right? The old story that false way of seeing yourself or the world or whatever it is, that doesn't vanish. I mean, I wish it did. It's just not the way it goes.
It just becomes the soil. And so every version of me that I put to rest has fertilized the version that came next. So that woman who was sick became the soil for the woman who got sober, that woman who was terrified of food and you know, and couldn't stop eating. And you know, that became the soil for the woman who helps others heal their relationship with food.
The thing I know, and we say this in the 12 step rooms, like we don't regret the past. I don't regret the past because nothing was wasted, not even the worst chapters. I would say especially not the worst chapters. And so our word of the day today is rewrite.
I love rewrite. I love it. I love it. I love it because it implies there was a first draft.
And there was a first draft. We all have first drafts. We have versions of our story that got written when we were young without our permission or scared or hurt or we didn't have the tools to understand what was happening. And that first draft isn't wrong.
It was like the best we could do at the time, right? It's not the final version. And this reading is really saying that the old story doesn't disappear. It becomes the ground for the new one.
And I want to be honest, at least in my experience, the old story doesn't disappear completely all of the time. Like sometimes you're three years into the new story and the old one fires up on a random Tuesday and suddenly you're back in it, right? You're back in those old beliefs, those old fears, those old ways of seeing yourself. And like, that's not failure.
That's being human. Sometimes it's a message, right? That old software is going to boot up sometimes. The practice is not about never hearing that old story again.
The practice is that when we recognize when it plays, we can either find our way back to the new story or ask for help to get back to the new story. I just had to do that. And the more you act into the new story, the more real it becomes. And that's really the magic.
We don't think our way into a new story. It starts with a thought, but we have to bring action to it. We make one choice from the new version and then another and then another. And slowly but surely, the new story becomes the one your body believes.
And so here's what I want you to sit with today. You know that voice. I hope you have this voice. Oh my gosh, this is the most human part of us.
That one that says you're too much or you're not enough or you don't deserve this. That one that fires up when someone gets close or when you start to succeed or when you look in the mirror. You know that voice that was written by a kid, the kid you were when something happened that was too big to process. And that kid did the best they could.
But we're not that kid anymore. And you have been rewriting your story your entire life every time you choose differently than you were taught to choose every time you stayed when the old version of you would have run every time you said the honest thing instead of the safe thing every time you got back up. That's a rewrite. So you've been doing this in some ways you are very good at it.
But that tightness when your sister calls or that shutdown when someone raises their voice or the way you make yourself small in certain rooms without quite knowing why those are old drafts firing, not facts. They are stories that your body has memorized. And slowly but surely those can be rewritten and not just through therapy though. You know therapy is a nice modality but it's not the only one.
It can be rewritten through any moment where you meet the old story with new eyes and bravely respond from the person you are now instead of the person that you were then. And I just feel it important to say that sometimes like in this case there are stories so deeply cemented in the body that they need a little extra help and that's what EMDR was for me. It was able to reach the ones that years of other work hadn't quite loosened and I'm really grateful for it. And who's to say if it would have loosened without EMDR I don't have to know.
But I don't want you to hear that this episode or anything I'm saying to you says like you need EMDR to change. That's wild and untrue. You definitely don't. You need the willingness to see the old story for what it is which is the first draft and then bring in that courage to start acting into the new one.
One choice at a time. And I hope you hear it in the show. I really do in the way that I talk and what I share and the risks that I take with you. The stories that I've rewritten over the course of my life are the reason I want to sit here and be honest about my mess and my healing and my imperfect ongoing work.
The old stories would have kept me quiet right? And these new ones let me speak and I desperately want that for you too. And so here's our reflective question for the day. What story has your body been carrying that your adult self is ready to rewrite?
And listen I am right here with you as enders learning that the old stories don't have to be the final ones. And if you're picking up what I'm putting down today my goodness what I love if you share this episode with somebody be posted it on your social if you screamed it from your balcony. You know I just am dying to grow this ascender crew. We rise together.
Until next time.