Landy Peek (00:01)
Welcome back to the Landy Peak Podcast. This is your friend and host, Landy Peak, and today is a big one. Today is episode 50 of the Landy Peak Podcast. And I want to begin by saying thank you. Whether you've been here since the beginning or this is your first listen, thank you for trusting me to speak into the quiet corners of your experiences.
Thank you for trusting me to speak into the quiet corners of your experiences. This episode, it's personal. It's a love letter to the part of you that's been holding it all, sometimes beautifully, sometimes barely. It's for the strong one in you, the one who's carried the weight, stayed steady, kept it together,
who's quietly wondering, is there more? There's gotta be more than this. I don't wanna do more, but I wanna feel more. I wanna live more. I don't wanna do this existence anymore. I'm kind of at my edge, my max. I'm overwhelmed. Well, today we're going there with honesty.
with softness and with a lot of humanity. A big part of my journey to get here to episode 50 actually began a while ago. I was sitting at the river. My kids are arguing loudly, passionately, again. We'd come out to have a picnic, to give me a break, to play in the river, to sit in peace.
And as I was unloading everything, I'd forgotten the silverware and the plates. And while we had food, we had nothing to eat them on.
It was chaos in that moment. And I should have been losing my mind. Nothing was going the way that I wanted it to. It was that feeling.
Nothing was going the way that I wanted it to. But in that moment, I wasn't losing it.
I was able to take this big breath.
the arguing wasn't setting me on edge. I was going with the flow. We'll use our hands. We'll figure it out. And in that moment, something different happened. And honestly, wonderful.
And I've known for a while that the river has a very calming effect on me. I love the river. I have since I was a little girl. It was always my escape. I breathe differently and I feel differently. And it's not that I was able to escape the everyday chaos of my life. I brought that all with me.
It's that life right here felt different. The disappointments, the kids yelling, it's in that moment when I'm sitting out by the river that I'm no longer performing. I'm not bracing. I'm not managing anyone's experience. I'm not silently calculating.
if I'm doing enough, being enough, holding it all together, in that moment, I'm not regulating to survive. I'm simply here. It's like the world falls away and I can actually live. And in that moment, when it felt like everything was falling apart, I realized that this was the key, that this is what I
craved in the rest of my life. How could I make this, this experience where chaos was surrounding me and I was okay? How could I bring that okayness of this moment to the rest of my existence? So as I lived life and the world was falling apart, I would continue to feel okay.
This was part of the beginning of my journey to figure out how I could create the sense of okayness in other areas of my life. So I felt better.
When it was the water and the river and the sounds, this shifted everything for me.
But in that moment, not only am I okay, but the feeling that the rest of my family is okay. And it dawned on me like this deep exhale after years of shallow breathing, this is it. This is what I've been looking for. Not relief, not perfection, not peace that comes with ev-
not peace that comes with everything finally being in order, but a peace that exists within the imperfection. Because the truth is, don't, because the truth is, I don't always feel like this. Even now, as I'm really embracing this human existence, the imperfection, because I am the strong one. I'm the one that handles it all, manages it all.
does all the schedules, anchors everyone else in, but I'm also the one who loses it behind closed doors. I yell when I feel cornered. I snap when I've run dry. And then I spiral because the shame hits fast and hard. I'm supposed to know better. I'm supposed to stay calm. A good mother stays calm.
I teach this stuff. This is my work. This is who I am as a professional. I talk about the nervous system. I should have a better control over it than anyone.
How can I teach nervous system work and regulation when I lose it on my family? But here's the thing I realized.
That was stories. We've been fed a story, and maybe you know it all too well, that good mothers don't lose their cool. They're calm and serene and loving at all times. Healthy relationships? You never argue. It's always peaceful. There's no tension. There's no mad. There's no slamming doors. We've been fed the story that if you really healed,
You will never raise your voice or slam a cabinet or want to disappear behind a bathroom door and let the shower run so no one hears you so you have a few minutes of silence, perhaps to cry. But here's what I've learned from that moment in the river to standing here today on my 50th episode of the Landy Peak podcast. From the work that I have done and created and researched.
The truth is what no one else has told us. We don't actually regulate to stay calm. Calm is not the goal.
The story that we've been fed around being calm.
It's bullshit. We actually regulate to feel real. And sometimes being real means being a whole damn human being.
Tears, yelling, upsets, feeling crappy and all. But we've confused calm with morality. With being a good mom, a good partner, a good entrepreneur, a good worker, a good person. So when we fall apart, we don't just feel overwhelmed. We feel ashamed. We feel like we failed. Not just at the moment.
not just at the moment, but at the whole identity of who we are, of who we've been trying to hold together. And when we do manage to stay calm, and when we do manage to stay calm, sometimes it's a calm because we disconnect. We feel numb. We've literally disassociated from our experience.
We disappear in the process of doing quote unquote right. And so we swing between shame for losing it, stress for trying to keep it all together, and emptiness because we've abandoned ourselves in the process and we're praised for it. We see other people out in the world and, she looks like she has it all together. She always reacts so.
and kindly with her children. We don't see how much we are giving up of ourselves in the process. Now I'm not saying that we should be yelling and making
how much we give up ourselves in process. Now, I'm not saying that we should be the creators of chaos. What I'm saying is we should give up the unrealistic expectations that we're okay all of the time, that we're calm and serene and we've got it together all of the time, that we...
that we actually feel feelings and allow our own experience to be true and raw and not gaslight ourselves because those feelings don't fit the mold. It's okay to grieve. It's okay to be mad, to rage. It's not okay for behaviors that we hurt others, but the feelings in themselves, that's part of the human experience.
That's part of what regulating gives us. Our nervous system, the work that we do is not to keep us calm, it's to allow us to be real and to really feel the experience. And while we're in that experience, to not tip over into behaviors that aren't good for us. We don't have to numb with
food or alcohol. We don't have to worry about going overboard because we know what it feels like to be safe in that experience of the feelings.
We swing between being the steady one and secretly wanting, craving, wishing that anyone would be the steady one for us to be held.
And the part no one sees, how many emotional burdens, and the part that no one sees is how many emotional burdens we carry that don't even.
And the part that no one sees is how many emotional burdens that we carry aren't even ours. We hold space for everyone else. We're the emotional regulators for everyone else. We hold the trauma that our family holds. But no one sees how heavy it is to constantly be the one who's always okay. We manage everyone else's energy.
Because their pain, it activates our own wounds. And when we haven't really sat with our own wounds, we do everything we can to make sure that no one else's pain triggers us. We silence ourselves to keep the peace. Because it's easier to bite your tongue than go into one more argument that you just don't have the energy or capacity to deal with.
We say yes to our kids just so that we don't have to have the tantrum. We over function to compensate for what others never learned to hold. And all of it, every unspoken, unseen part of us lives in our bodies. Our bodies do keep the score, which is why this moment by the river matters so much because nothing
on the outside changed.
But I had changed on the inside.
I had gotten to a place in my life where I stopped bracing. I stopped performing strength. I stopped apologizing to myself for being tired and overwhelmed. And in that tiny crack of presence, something opened up. Not just breath, but freedom. And that's when I finally saw it clearly. My healing
had just become another place I was trying to get it right. I was on a mission thinking that healing was the end goal. If I could just heal all the past trauma, if I could just heal the beliefs and thought processes that had gotten me where I am today, if I had just figured out how to regulate my nervous system good enough that I could finally feel on top of it.
Home was my goal. Healing was something that I needed to accomplish and thought I would one day hit this point where I had healed. Regulation had become my new perfectionism. And what I realized in that moment...
I wasn't healing. I was performing wellness. And in that moment, that realization didn't shatter me. It actually freed me because I finally understood what I'd been chasing and what my body had been asking for all along. It didn't want mastery. It didn't want performance. It didn't need more rules or more tools, but life.
more laughter, more breath, more mess, more honesty, more me. So in that moment, I let go of chasing and reading and journaling and meditating and going to therapy. Because in that moment, I realized that what I was craving wasn't to be perfect, to finally get it. What I was craving was to be honest and real.
to really see that the human, to really see that to be human meant to experience the emotions, the good, the bad, the hard, the ugly, the happy, the joyful. That there was a difference between feeling it and acting out in a way that I didn't like, the behaviors that I didn't love.
It was the behaviors that I didn't love. But the behaviors came because I never allowed myself to really feel the feelings. So it overwhelmed me. But the feelings, they were real. The feelings were needed. Honoring the times that I felt angry, honoring the times that I felt grief.
honoring the times that I felt joy, honoring the times that I needed peace and space. It was honoring me.
So I wanna say it clearly and very lovingly.
Like I'm saying it to the version of you who's bracing right now, who may feel stuck on the hamster wheel of healing, who has done it all. You've read the books, you've listened to the podcasts, you've gone to therapy, you've worked with so many different coaches. You're not tired because you've done something wrong. You're tired because you've held everything for too long.
You've been strong in a thousand different ways that no one ever saw. You've shown up again and again with an empty tank. How many times have you sat
feeling so overwhelmed, telling yourself, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this.
and then you've wiped your tears and you've done it anyway.
You've shown up again and again with an empty tank. How many of times have you sat and thought, I can't do this anymore? I'm done, I really can't. And then, dried your tears and gotten up and did it anyway. We've turned regulation into another expectation. How many reels and memes
And things do we see on social media that talk about how the mom cries, wipes her tears and does it anyway. How many times have you yourself thought, you can't do this anymore. I can't handle this. I can't do it. And then you've gotten up, done it anyway. Maybe, maybe this is your wake up call and you're waking up to the truth that healing was never the goal. Calm was never the end point. What you're craving
is you, the freedom to be you, to be the honest, real you, without the worries of what someone else is gonna think, without the fears of life is gonna crash down on me if I don't hold it all.
The freedom to not have to hold it all. The freedom to be seen in your humanness and to be held. The freedom to truly feel without needing to fix it, without needing to change it. The freedom to live and not manage your life. And so here's what I want you to know. Here's what I know to the depths of my soul. And what I offer you as we celebrate this 50th episode.
as I've talked to so many different guests and to women that I love and women that I've worked with and women that I've just met. Healing isn't about becoming more calm. Healing isn't about having more control.
Healing is just the door. It's the gateway.
that there is value.
Healing is the door that opens for the rest of your life. It's that there is value in getting really, really curious about your own stories and your own beliefs. There is value in getting really curious about your own stories and your own beliefs and your own feelings and the experiences that you've had. Healing is allowing those pieces to feel at peace.
so that you can walk through that doorway, so that you can walk through the doorway to feel you, to feel laughter, to feel love, to feel joy, to feel free, to be human. Healing is about opening the door to becoming more of you, to being okay with you, to loving you. Healing isn't about being the strong one forever. It's about letting someone else hold the weight.
and not feel guilty about it. It's about laughing out loud, really loud, crying sooner and saying, I need help without an apology or an excuse. It's saying no without having to tell why or coming up with a reason that you can't go. Healing isn't about performing peace. It's about coming home to you. And when I say it's about coming home to you, it's this settled feeling of
I'm okay. I'm okay in this moment. And in this moment. And home isn't silent. It's alive. It's dynamic. It's changing. It's riding the waves. You don't need to try harder to hold it all together. You honestly don't need another strategy. You don't need to earn your right to rest, although we do feel like we do. And we have guilt for resting.
You just need to know you're not alone. Yeah.
You just need to know you're not alone in this. You've done nothing wrong. This is how society has set us up. And at this point in life, you get to choose different. There are so many of us strong ones out there that are holding it all together with a smile on our face while we're in public, looking great on the outside, but crumbling on the inside. You're not too much.
You're, Isaac, don't squeak it, please. You're not too much. Your emotions, your feelings, the way that you express it, the way that you show up in the world, even though as a little girl, you may have been told that you were too much or made to feel like you were too much. You're not behind, even if you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s or beyond, and you don't know what the hell you're doing.
And you don't know what you want out of life or what you want it to even look like. And you don't even know who you are. You're not behind. You've bought into the stories that society has given us. To mold yourself. And while you're trying so hard to mold yourself so that you're accepted and that you feel okay on the outside,
You've never been given the opportunity to get curious about what you really want. So it makes sense that you'd feel behind because we've got all these circumstances and ideas of what we should be doing. And I hate it when people say, you're not behind, you're right where you should be, because it doesn't feel like it is. It feels awful in the moment. It feels like when we compare ourselves to somebody else, well, I should have the book.
written by now. I should have the Ted Talk. I should have the business and the money and the house and the things. But what I really learned is that we all have a different starting place. This is an aha moment to me when I really realized that we're not all starting from the same spot.
that you and I have different journeys, that we have had different obstacles to overcome. And while we might have similar goals of where we want to end up, we're not on the same path. We're not on the same trail. We are conquering and overcoming so many different things that I have no idea that's going on in your life. And you probably have no idea what's going on in mine, although I share a lot. But what I really learned
is from these different starting places, we can't compare to someone else. It's not apples to apples. It's not, I'm a therapist, you're a therapist, I'm a mom, you're a mom, and we're heading in the same direction, so we should be on the exact same pace and space. We're not. We each have our own journey, and you're just stuck somewhere in the middle of this crazy journey, and maybe like we've talked in episodes before,
around the hero's journey. Maybe this is your opportunity. This is the calling to the take that, this is the calling to take the quest. This episode, this moment, maybe you're stuck somewhere in the middle, hoping you can find a guide or a light or some things that says you're on the right path. Maybe you're feeling like, I've got this. I've overcome a lot.
but you're on a journey and one of the coolest things that I have really realized and starting looking at in my own life. And this comes from Kate Northrup in her book, Do Less.
She talks about everything is in a cycle, in a circle. And yes, I totally get it. I track my own menstrual cycle. We have the cycle of the seasons, but the aha moment was when she said, every single day is in a circle. Our day is a circle. Our life is a circle. The timeframes that we are following and going around is a circle. And in a circle,
not a line. We think of things in linear, like our life. We think of our time, our life story, as a linear time. It begins when we are born and ends when we die. But really, we're just being dropped into an existing storyline. If we look at our life as a circle, there is no behind or ahead because in a circle, when the day ends, a new one just begins. And we start that pattern over again.
There really is no stop and start.
We're all just going around in this circle and it takes off the pressure. It gave me so much peace because I don't look at my day as like, ā it's coming to an end and I didn't get everything done. I look at it as it just carries over to the next day.
I don't have to get everything done today because it'll just carry over to the next day and it took off the pressure.
I know so many of us feel like we're failing. Failing at motherhood, failing at our careers, failing at being a partner, failing at being human, failing at healing. Because I have done so much therapy about this one certain topic and I thought I got it. I thought I did it and it pops back up again in my life. That's not because you failed at healing.
It's because you've upleveled and it is part of your story. It's part of your existence and that's not going to change. You're going to interact with that experience differently. You're going to feel differently about that experience. That experience isn't going to... That experience isn't going to... That experience isn't going to overflow onto the rest of your life in the same way that it might have five years ago.
But none of that means that you're failing. What it is is that feeling comes from a mismatch of expectations in reality. It's not failure. It's that we've had this bar set so high of expectations for us being calm, for us being healed, for having it all together, for knowing exactly what we're going to do and what comes next. And in reality, in our humanness, we can't live up to it. There's no way.
And so it feels like we're failing because we're not living up to the unrealistic expectations that have been set for us, that we set for ourselves. There's nothing wrong with you.
Even though the world tells us there's so much wrong with us, there's nothing wrong with you. You're a human who's had a lot of experiences. And sometimes it's hard to process those when we're not given the space to actually experience, to actually experience emotions, to process those, to have an empathetic witness, to sit with us, to talk about things, to really live in the humaneness, not just push on to the next thing.
to allow ourselves to grieve when we want to grieve and need to grieve for the length of time we need to grieve, to rage when we feel like we need to rage without needing to turn it down and to feel in the length of time that we need to feel.
This can be an eye-opening experience to a new existence, to a new way of being. Because the tired one, because the strong one, she is tired.
But she's not broken.
Even though we feel like we're broken, that that brokenness comes from feeling like we can't do it anymore, doing the impossible, but we don't see it as impossible. What we see when we're showing calm on all fronts that the public sees, that the world sees, what we're setting up is the expectation that, well, she's got it. She can do it. Why can't I? But she doesn't have it. None of us do.
The secret that nobody wants to say is that we're all losing it. All of us, we're crumbling, but we are showing that we're okay in every way that we can. And when it might not be falling apart with tears or yelling, we're so connected that we, we're so disconnected that we don't even realize that we're disconnected. There's a different way, a different path.
And there's a way to create that feeling of okayness, not calm.
especially not all the time. But presence, the feeling that I'm alive and I'm okay in this moment, is that feeling that I have at the river every time I'm there. It's the feeling that I have in the mountains every time I'm there. It's the feeling that I had when I sat by the ocean. And it's because that's how we're supposed to live.
We're supposed to be present and when we're in nature, presence just surrounds us so deeply and fully that we can exhale. But we can exhale in real life too.
because it matters more in how we are doing life than what we are doing, how we are feeling, how we show up within ourselves, how we experience.
our intentions versus the what that actually gets done.
This isn't, we're gonna feel the same way throughout our existence.
The goal isn't to be okay all the time because you're not. It's okay to feel the ups and downs. It's just riding the waves. The goal in this experience of life is to have the capacity, the flexibility to ride the waves, to have the ups and the downs and the inbetweens.
It's the capacity to have the big and little feelings without any of it overwhelming our system. It's becoming free in this breath, in this truth, in this moment, in this beginning. It's not another round of fixing, but finally, wildly, beautifully living.
And if something in you today is like, that's it.
I hope you felt seen. If you let a breath that you didn't know you were holding out, I want you to know that that matters. That while we have been praised for being the strong one all of the time, and honestly, we have been praised so much and we have taken on the role of being the strong one. And that has become our identity. It's who we are. It's who we see we are. And the scariest thing that you could really face is looking at
Who am I if I'm not the strong one? If I'm not holding it all together for everyone else, what the hell is gonna happen to my life, to my family? Everything is gonna crash down if I let go. I this conversation with a client the other day, terrified of just pausing, of resting, because if she lets go of just one thing, what's gonna happen?
to her marriage, to her kids, to herself, to her work. And I'm gonna tell you, they're gonna be okay. If your life ends up being anything like mine, it's actually gonna be better because you can breathe. And it's not that you still don't handle most of the things in life. I'm still the person that does the groceries and the schedules and the school stuff and what I've learned.
is that I am the thermometer of my life. And I get to set the temperature, which is so much easier than...
What I have learned is that I'm the thermostat of my life. I get to set the temperature, which is so much easier than being the thermometer, which is where I was living before. I was constantly reading everybody's energy, everything throughout the day. I was constantly on, trying to anticipate what needed to happen before it happened to avoid the big feelings. But as the thermometer,
But as the thermostat? Yes, everybody regulates off of me. But I get to set the tone.
I get to be the space that says, okay, we're at 72 degrees. It feels good. We're not going up and crazy. It's not skyrocketing and coming back down. It gets to be more level and that's not calm.
It's just, I'm okay. But it took a shift in that I, as the thermostat of the household of my life, I have to be number one priority. I have to look at what I need to maintain being the thermostat so that I'm not constantly trying to regulate off of everyone else.
that my centered-ness, that my okay-ness just gives everyone else space and peace.
I also know that I get to tune into me and say, you know what? Right now I need rest. So stuff's not getting done or someone else has to do it. It's being okay with saying no because I just don't want to do it. And that's okay. Or I just don't have the capacity right now to do whatever is being asked of me.
in a space that feels good.
It's having family be more tuned in to our needs, not just me tuning into everyone else, but my kids and my husband tuning into, okay, what do you need right now? My daughter's great at asking, what capacity do you have right now, Before she asks for something big. It's knowing and being okay that my kids have big emotions.
And it doesn't mean anything about me. That the behaviors that come out of my husband, my kids, my family don't have anything to do about me. It's living in a space that I'm not okay all the time, but I am safe in those moments. And there's the difference. There is a difference in I am mad, I am upset, I am sad. I feel and I feel safe in that moment. Take a moment to let that sink in. Do you feel, do you feel safe?
in the emotions? Do you feel safe when you're happy, when you're sad, when you're mad?
Safety is the goal.
and it's okay to not be okay. We can still feel safe and not feel okay. The key for a nervous system regulation is not calm, but safety. Our nervous system isn't designed to keep us in Zen.
Zen is not the goal, but safety is. Because so many of us have no idea what safety really is inside our own bodies. Because we never really felt safe. And it doesn't mean that you had a traumatic childhood or bad parents or a hard upbringing. You could have had a great childhood and amazing wonderful parents and the expectations of the world, the constant go, go, go, and not being able to sit without feeling like you need to do a thousand things. That.
set you up for failure, for feeling like you're never enough. It's our system's ability, our nervous system's ability to feel safe, to feel okay, to feel like you're not going to collapse, cave, or crumble. That's the key.
One of the things I've learned is the key around anxiety, around our fears. Our anxiety and our fears, it comes from the fear that we're not going to be able to handle it.
and anxiety dissipates when we have this deep inside knowing that you can handle whatever comes your way.
and I'm gonna offer a flip on the script for you.
Because let's be honest, you can handle it. You always have. There probably hasn't ever been something that you haven't handled. Now that doesn't mean it wasn't hard. It doesn't mean that you liked it. It could have sucked the entire situation, but you survived it. You handled it. You came out on the other side. You did it. But you are meant. But you are not meant.
But you were never meant to carry it all. You were never meant to just survive.
You can still get things done and show up in a way that you want to show up without the pressure to feel like if you don't show up, the world is going to collapse. Because honestly, if you don't show up, the world is going to keep going. Now people might be upset and that's okay. People can be upset. Another aha, people can be upset. They get to have their own emotional experience and it doesn't mean anything about you.
So if you don't feel like caring at all, holding it all, ā so if you feel like you're caring at all, holding it all, and the world is gonna collapse if you don't, invite you to just be present with that feeling. You're allowed to feel deeply and fully human, to be beautifully fully human because it is beautiful. We're here for the experience, not the outcome.
And everything that I've looked at, I looked
and everything that I've everything that I've researched, everything that I've heard about when people are on their deathbeds, what are their biggest regrets? It's never a regret about doing more.
It's not that they wanted to do more, make more, but they missed out on actually living life, on the fun, on the laughter, on the big emotions and being there with other humans. So invite you to just give yourself a little bit of grace. Get curious about what you want, who you want to be.
And it's okay if you don't know. That's the curiosity part.
You don't have to do it alone. And you're not alone. Isaac, can you stop please? Thanks. And you're not alone.
I want to thank you for being here for 50 episodes. Thank you for letting me walk with you. We're just getting started and I'm so excited about what's to come. I am truly so grateful that you are in my life. I love you and I like you and I want you to know you are strong and you are capable, but you already know that. You are also beautifully human. You were loved during your big emotional outburst.
loved when you feel like no one else can love you, that you are making a difference in the world. You are kind. Isaac, please stop moving. You're loving, you're brave, you're curious and creative and fun and funny, even when you don't feel like you are.
You are making a difference in your life because you're making, you're making a difference in your life. And because you're making a difference in your life, you're making a difference in others lives. Your presence in this world, your energy in this world, not what you do, but just being you is really what is changing the existence for yourself and others. I want to thank you for 50 episodes. And as a gift, I would love if you would share.
I would love if you would share the Landy Peak podcast. Share your favorite episode, this one or another one. Share it to a friend. Share it to a loved one. Show them that you care. And I personally would really appreciate it if you would leave a review. My goal is to grow this community because I have yet to meet a woman in her mid stages of life that is not experiencing all of this crazy stuff.
Please share, help us grow, help other women feel like they're not crazy, they're not alone and they're not broken. And if you feel like you're alone, like you're going crazy and that you are broken, know that that's part of this human experience and that's okay. There's no shame in that. I've been there too. And we may swing back to being there again because the goal is not healing to be perfect. The goal is healing to feel safe.
to say I'm okay and safe in this moment.
And there is support and you're not alone if you've decided this is what you don't want anymore and you want something different. That's why I created my program Magneticar so that you can be held and can shift away from the belief systems that you have to do at all and be the strong one and really truly feel and live the human experience. I truly love you.
and I want to wish you all of the happiness that today can bring. I will see you on the next episode.
