Why Heidi Blackie Chose to Believe in Her Body’s Ability to Heal

00:00 Heidi's story is one of hitting rock bottom and then discovering something she didn't know she had. Belief in herself. After years of illness, loss, and perfectionism driving her life, she found herself stripped of everything that wants to find her. And in that kitchen moment, she chose to trust her own body and begin again. This episode is about what unfolds when survival gives way to presence, when perfectionism loosens its grip, and when we finally believe that healing is possible. 00:30 And I asked this question of myself, which is what am I believing about my ability to heal? And I had never asked myself that question in all these years. And by now it had been 10 years that I had been sick. And I sat there and the answer was actually that I'm believing I'm not going to heal and that I'm going to continue to get worse. And I thought, 01:00 How can I heal if I don't believe I can heal? And in that moment, I said, I'm going to vow to believe in myself and believe in my body's ability to heal. And to be honest, I never really believed in myself very much my whole life. I always felt not enough. I'm Maciel Houli, and this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. 01:38 Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift podcast. am here with Heidi. Hello, Heidi. Hi, Matt. Thank you for wanting to be a part of the Life Shift. It has been this journey that everyone has heard me say now that I just never could have expected for myself. And it's been really like a healing journey. And I'm so happy to do it every time, even if even when the stories are challenging and hard because 02:04 It just gives me another element of the human experience to kind of like either put in my pocket or reconsider or reflect on in the way that my life has unfolded since my life shift. So thank you for just wanting to be a part of this. Thank you so much for having me, Matt. I'm thrilled to be here for anyone that is listening for the first time because you are on the life shift podcast exists because 02:28 of my own personal experience. I'm kind of drawing from that as I created this show. And now it's really expanded into all sorts of different things. But when I was eight, my dad had to sit me down to tell me that my mom had been killed in a motorcycle accident. And my parents were divorced, lived thousands of miles away, different states. At that moment in time, it felt like everything about my life was no longer possible because I lived with my mom full time and 02:56 I went to school up in Massachusetts and like all these, all my family was all up there. My dad lived in Georgia. And at that time, like now my primary parents gone, I have to move somewhere else. I have to start a different school. like all the safety that I had in my life was now ripped from me. And this was late eighties, early nineties. People weren't talking about grief out loud. They weren't talking about how to help a kid through it, right? They were, he'll be fine. He's a kid. He'll bounce right back. And so I saw that. 03:25 people needed that from me and kind of just pushed everything down. And all along I was wondering, do other people have these like line in the sand moments in which like everything changes in like a split second? And it turns out they do, and they have a lot of them, you know, and we have them throughout our lives if we're lucky in some ways, in some ways not so lucky. But these life shift moments I've come to realize aren't always dramatic. There's a lot of people that choose to do things in different ways and change their lives. And so, 03:54 It really has been this wonderful journey of hearing human stories really and how resilient we are and how we can move through things even if they're really messy and hard. So that's what the life shift is about. And I'm looking forward to hearing what we're gonna talk about today for you. I know you have many life shift moments but we're gonna talk about one in particular. I do have one great big giant but it was years in the making. 04:24 That was not a split second. It's funny because I've heard people tell these stories about how they had been kind of working towards something big, you know, and they've like haven't taken that big leap. But then all of a sudden they read this book for like the third time and this one sentence stood out to them. And all of a sudden it was like everything changed, the perspective change and stuff. And those things are so fascinating to me as well. But also there's a build. But I think there's also I bet if we dug down deep enough, we could probably find 04:53 a little moment that pushed you a little over the edge, but we won't challenge you to do that today. Before we get into your story, maybe you can tell us who Heidi is in 2025. How do you identify? How do you show up in the world? 05:07 I show up in the world as a person who is really intentional about how I want to show up, which is a being rather than this list of things that I have to do, although I do have that as a big part of my past. I try to be as present as I can with every conversation. 05:37 with what I do, walking in nature, being present, being mindful. And every day I set intentions to live for my highest good, for the highest good of all. Does that always happen? No, I'm human. But I have this sense of awareness that awoke in me around through this journey. And it has 06:05 put me into this space where I just feel really grounded. Living in alignment with who I am, which is a caring person, a person who feels connected to something so much bigger than me, and a person who wants to make a difference in the world and share my story and my experience in hopes that it can help. 06:33 open the door for other people to change their lives. And as lofty as it sounds, I believe if we can connect with ourselves at a deep, deep level, it makes us able to connect with other people and to our world. And I feel like this is what we need right now in such a big way. And to be a part of that is exciting. 07:03 So I'm a person who's, I'm feeling all the emotions, I think, at a much greater level because I've connected with this depth of myself. But it makes the joy like way up here, but it also makes the pain really visceral. But I wouldn't trade it. Living with such intention, it, now that you're in practice and now that you're in the zone, maybe, 07:32 Is it hard? Like, does it take a lot of work to do that? Because I think that someone that just kind of lives life by the seat of their pants, they're not really thinking there's not a lot of work. It's not that hard to do. So I'm curious if on the other side, it's hard. There are definitely ebbs and flows. So to give you an example, I was living out patterns. We all are. 08:01 We're all on automatic patterning. 95%. I've seen 40 to 95 % of the time we're living out automatic patterns where in our subconscious, it's some other thing, culture, something making our choices for us and feeling trapped at times, locked in at times, or like, I'm going to lose it because this is a trigger. 08:31 So the difference for me is, yes, it's more about being conscious and knowing that I have a choice in every response to everything. Like I was mountain biking last weekend and my husband, I was tired. He knows all these trails, but we've never been on them. We're climbing for an hour and 45 minutes and it's like a mountain and I'm like. 08:58 off the bike, walking back on the bike. It's super technical. And I'm just like, oh my God, I hate this. I hate this. Oh wait, but I'm in nature and it's so beautiful. So it was this tug of war between this automatic, God damn it. Why are we here? Like I just wanted an easy ride today. And wait a minute, that doesn't do me any service to say how tired I am or frustrated. 09:26 And then I was frustrated that I was frustrated. So it was this whole tug of war within. And when I just said, you know what, accept reality right now, there is no turning around. This is a one way trail up and a one way trail down. My husband isn't going to ride my bike for me. So I have to do it. So I have a choice. I can either continue to get pissed off and escalate and blame him. Or I can say, 09:56 Oh my God, there's a million larches out here. This is gorgeous. I'm going to breathe. I'm going to have gratitude and I'm going to say I can do hard things. And it changes the whole experience. So it's kind of like a reframing in a way as well. Yeah. I mean, it's like, what do I choose? You know, do I choose to be mad or do I choose to say 10:26 wait a second, I'm actually out here, my body can do this, which in my story you'll hear, this is huge for my body to be able to do this. And it's a reframing, but it's also a choice of how do I want to respond given here's the situation, it isn't gonna change. I need to be that change. So it's being aware that I do have a choice and I'm not gonna just waste my energy on getting mad. 10:57 and setting the intention for staying on my bike and not being on the ground? To my original question, it's kind of like the hard, it's the harder way for those of us on autopilot to actually stop and reflect and be able to sit in that moment because I think, like you said, in a subconscious level, like so many of us are just kind of living out these patterns. For me growing up, it was very much like what I call society's checklist that was driving whatever I was doing. I felt like I was, 11:26 making those choices, but I don't think I was making them in alignment of what I wanted. I was making them in alignment what I thought other people needed or wanted from me. But I think that all stems to an abandonment feeling of when my mom died, it felt like my mom abandoned me. So I didn't want anyone else to do it. So I had to make everyone happy. So like if I take it all apart, all of that patterning was just out of fear, really, of, you know, survival. Right. 11:55 You know, you don't want your easy. I want to be right. And we don't like discomfort. Right. Yeah. So if I chose something that I wanted, it would feel like, oh, I got I have to do this extra, extra great because I have to prove now that because I chose a different route, you know, it was great. But no. So that that makes sense. And I want to dig into your story because it will probably make more sense to the rest of us as to how you got this way and why you choose. 12:24 live this way, which sounds very fulfilling and also frustrating at times. So maybe you can kind of paint the picture of your life leading up to kind of the main moments that we're going to center today around and what changed the before version of Heidi to kind of that life shift moment. So my mom had lymphoma and in 2000 got a bone marrow transplant. 12:53 I grew up as a doer. Like I was always in motion. And when she had her bone marrow transplant, I took that to mean like, I gotta squeeze the marrow out of every day because I don't know when my last day will be. So I filled my schedule. I had several jobs. I was competitive athlete. Had a house. I was doing projects. was just, from the moment I woke up in the morning till the moment I went to bed, I was just in motion. 13:22 And I always had this scarcity of time because I'm never gonna be able to fit everything in. I was late to a lot of things because I was like, oh, I can get this and this done on the way to this. And it didn't work out because there'd be traffic or whatever. But I lived like this for years and I really thought this is what life is about. This is living. And then I started to get some chronic injuries. 13:51 that wouldn't heal, but I would kind of see a PT, get acupuncture and keep going. And then I started getting chronic illnesses that would level me and I would kind of patch myself up, try to keep going, but then I would get leveled again. And I gradually had to pare down. I pared down with work. I quit racing my bike and then I quit riding my bike. And then I... 14:20 stopped doing things with friends and stopped traveling. And in 2016, I lost my dog to cancer. And then two months after that, my sister committed suicide. And then I had a wedding. I got married six weeks after that. A year later, I moved in with my parents for three months for my mom's last three months to help her get on hospice and just spend the last few months with her. 14:48 All those events were super stressors that created this kind of storm in my body, just everything that had been harboring that I'd been trying to kind of tamp down over the years. It became like a five alarm fire. Eventually in 2021, couldn't, I lost my career. I lost the ability to drive. Like daily tasks seemed 15:18 like mountains. was so, I couldn't find words, I couldn't think, I was leaving the stove on. I was so alone. And I had been resisting my life because I felt like I was always this. 15:42 high achiever, this athlete, this robust person. And I had treated a lot of patients. I'm an occupational therapist and I've treated thousands of patients, but I treated people who had chronic illness and they lost everything. And I was like, that isn't me. And then I looked at all the things that I was losing. I my husband and I met racing our bikes. A huge part of our life is 16:11 active outdoor things. We did a bike trip in New Zealand. We'd go, you know, all over riding and racing our bikes. And I couldn't even ride my bike. I could barely walk around the block. And so there was so much that I had lost in my relationship in addition to my family. And it was this, this moment that I remember and I 16:40 I didn't have a doctor, I didn't have a diagnosis, I didn't have a treatment plan. Were you kind of ignoring all those things? No, I went to a ton of doctors. Okay, so they just couldn't figure it out. They were making it worse with every treatment. And I was really scared because I have a high risk for cancer, for breast cancer, and that's what killed my mom in like five months. And I knew... 17:09 If this is the path, I know I'm gonna get cancer and I'm gonna die. Like I just know I'm, and I'm terrified. And I have my dad who's terrified and my husband is like, maybe this is how you'll be because you've been sick for so long. I mean, it was in my wedding vows, like that he takes care of me. I mean, it's crazy. was, so anyway. 17:38 He stayed though, which is great, which a lot of people's spouses don't. But I was sitting in my kitchen. I had no one other than my dad and my husband, but they didn't understand, you know, like what you talk about. Nobody gets it unless they're there. And I asked this question of myself, which is what am I believing about my ability to heal? And 18:07 I had never asked myself that question in all these years, and by now it had been 10 years that I had been sick. And I sat there and the answer was actually that I'm believing I'm not gonna heal and that I'm gonna continue to get worse. 18:25 And I thought, how can I heal if I don't believe I can heal? And in that moment, I said, I'm gonna vow to believe in myself and believe in my body's ability to heal. And to be honest, I never really believed in myself very much my whole life. I always felt not enough. Is that why you were kind of a doer? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. 18:57 and perfectionist, all that. People pleaser. Yep, that was me. And I had no idea what it would look like, but I committed to doing it. And interestingly, you said you might have had little nudges. I had that voice in 2011 that was a very small voice that said, you have the power to heal inside of you. And I was like, okay, but I don't know how it works. I don't know what to do. 19:25 and I ignored it because the voice of doubt was so much bigger. I knew from all the nervous system stuff and all the somatics and all the things that I was doing, I was doing a ton of things. And I always felt like they felt prescriptive and wrote and there was a piece that I knew was missing and that was me. And so that became kind of my shift. I created rituals. 19:53 I put sticky notes everywhere, believe every time I had fear, tell me I wouldn't get better. I stopped it with belief. And gradually I began to challenge the stories and the beliefs around my illness. I got some momentum and I started to then kind of uncover the layers that I had built up over my lifetime. 20:23 of not enough and of the vulnerabilities that I tried so hard to compensate for. In the meantime, I was also working on acceptance, acceptance of everything, the moment, the circumstance, and the parts of me that are hard to love. And I met them with the compassion I would a friend. And over years of doing this work, and it is work, what has unfolded is this 20:52 this ally inside of me that is what I call my unshakable me because it's given me the strength and the resilience to kind of live in alignment to know who I am and to live being that person that I have found. It's like I've met myself for the first time and I'm 55, you know, it's crazy. 21:22 But I love it. Yeah, no. And I think it's beautiful that, I mean, not beautiful that you got to that place, but maybe that's the place that you needed to be to kind of kind of shake out that. think a lot of people will listen and relate to maybe not the chronic illness part, but the perfectionism piece that keeps us from believing in ourselves, believing that we're good enough. 21:48 choosing the things that we know we can do well, but not the things that we really want to do. Choosing, you know, the safe things and pushing other things down, not letting other people see anything that shows weakness. think we, so many of us that have these tendencies to feel we need to be perfect can relate to this story. And you're certainly not the first person to kind of tell this story. And please. 22:17 Forgive me if this sounds wrong, but I don't mean it in any way, but tell a story like this in which you had trauma after trauma after trauma injury, this, know, like all the things and kind of going to this whole body keeps the score kind of element of your body just holding on because you're not processing it because you're a perfectionist. So you don't want to move through any of those things that might make you look less than right. Because we're assuming that. Yeah. 22:47 because I admit I need help grieving the loss of a pet, which I just experienced in the last year. Like nobody talks about it. It's huge. It's huge. And we've all been kind of programmed to the idea that, it's just a pet. And so then we feel this guilt and we feel like, why am I? So the whole thing, you like you had all this stuff tamped down and then. 23:15 It was about really you just like sitting and seeing yourself for the first time and going like, what the hell are you doing, Heidi? Well, yeah, and it's almost like, you know, like I'm covered with mud, but I'm like, I'm super clean. I don't have any mud on me. You know, it's like, Heidi, you've lost everything, almost everything. Just admit it. You know, quit resisting it. And when you stop resisting, it's so 23:43 I also think too, okay, to have a narrative for 52 years of I'm not enough and then one day line in the sand, I am enough, isn't enough. think it's like even now still, have to, it's like an organism, this enoughness that I have to feed every day with. 24:10 love and belief and compassion and kindness to myself and then, you know, pull the weeds of negative thoughts and intrusive thoughts and when I, you know, screw up and I don't live according to the intention that I want to, that's okay, I'm human. Learn from it. 24:34 choose different next time, or sometimes I do know and I'm going down that path anyway. But it's just realizing that, yeah, seeing perfectionism for what it is and realizing that I think like alcoholism, it's something you're always recovering from. Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's daily. It's daily, you know, I want to do a good job. 25:04 I mean, it's different from alcoholism. don't want to, but it's almost like an addiction in that it's something that I've been doing my whole life and to then say, okay, I'm not going to do it anymore. I have to be really intentional about it and aware and say, okay, I don't have to keep, you know, scrubbing that till it's... 25:33 the stain is gone, it looks fine or whatever it is, know, it's like done is better than perfect. Yeah, it's, love that. It's a hard one. It is. I think, you know, what you what you said the awareness and acknowledgement piece that was a big unlocking for me as well in my journey. took 20 plus years to figure out how to properly grieve for me, grieve the loss of my mom. And one thing I learned at that 26:02 point was what I needed was to acknowledge how I was feeling no matter how I was feeling. So growing up I felt like I could only show people that I was happy or mad because I was a boy, right? Like those were the rules. I wasn't allowed to be sad or any of these other emotions. Now as an adult it's like you can acknowledge you're having a bad day. I'm gonna acknowledge that I'm having a bad day and that's okay. 26:30 and I've been through bad days before, I have the tools to move through it in the way that I need to. And once I gave myself permission to just exist in whatever state it was, it felt like an unlocking. And so what you said kind of like paralleled what I was thinking in that way. Is that similar to what you meant? Yeah, it's like it's freedom. Mm hmm. You know, and I think 26:58 different from like the toxic positivity where it's I can't do that silver lining, you know, it's like that's not real. Life has, you know, I was in the mountains. I was like, wow, there is no flat here. It's either up or it's down. And sometimes that's life. And I think exactly honoring how you feel is important. And and also there's the impermanence to that. 27:28 and knowing you've been there. So I still am healing and I get flare ups and sometimes they last months. But the difference now is that I am not assigning meaning to every symptom for how long it's gonna last and how restrictive it's gonna be. It's more about, all right, this is it in this moment. And I've been here, I know this really well. 27:55 And I've made it through in the past and I know I can get through this and and being okay with sitting with it and taking you know, that's a sign I need to take care of myself more and do a better job of that. Not hide it not shame yourself for it just it is and it sucks and we'll move through it with the tools that I know how or I will seek out new tools and just having that 28:23 Like, yeah, you know, like some of us go through periods of, you know, depression and anxiety and all these elements. And sometimes it comes on and you don't even know why. And sometimes we're like, oh, no, I need to be happy. And it's like makes it 10 times worse because you're trying to like, pretend it's not there. When really, if you sit with it or what I've learned, if I sit with it, I figure it out. So I'm really curious as to like when you started because I know from a 28:52 a perfectionist mindset, I would imagine those first couple days, weeks, months were really challenging, were they, to be really intentional with the post-it notes and really reframing things and feeling differently? Was that hard for you to move into? I mean, to be honest, the whole thing was hard. I I was doing meditation. I was journaling a ton and doing breath work. 29:23 I guess there was a part that I was really curious too of what I might find because it was all so new. I I was like, I can't meditate. I don't sit still. I think too much. But I found Tara Brock and she had great meditations and she had a live group every Wednesday, still does. And I... 29:49 found hers really spoke to me and I would listen to her class afterward. And it just kind of was like this little crack in the door that I was exploring. It's almost hard to articulate, but it was this little journey of one. I I couldn't really do much. I was in bed most of the time. And so I was just like... 30:18 making it up and I'd get up and have my tea and I'd journal and then I would go and meditate and then I'd go back in bed and I would try and visualize the life that I want and health. So it kind of was like a job, a job of healing, a job of learning, a job of figuring out, you know. 30:39 how to get through this. I'm on my own. I didn't have a doctor. I found a doctor who was amazing, but I also found a healer inside me in the meantime and concurrently with what I was doing with her. Would you say that that journey was more like, you said exploring, were exploring different things. 31:06 rather than maybe a previous version looking for a solution? Would that be true? Or were you still like, this will work? But more open? know there's no bullets. I knew that. And I think that was part of my turning point was I was looking outside of me for all these solutions and answers. And it was flipping that inward. 31:34 And I'm a total nerd. love research. So I did a ton of research too on like the biology of belief and the science of gratitude and intention and attention. I joined an intention masterclass and I have an amazing group of people that years later we still meet to do intentions for people. But it was more of turning the lens inward. I'm the subject and I'm the one that I'm researching. 32:04 along with researching, you know, the science of the things that I'm putting into place and trying out. I it was also experimentation, but I knew it was a collective and I knew that I was a big piece of it because I had tried everything else before and it didn't work. so yeah, it was this interesting, it was such an antithesis to how I lived before because I was all in motion and doing and 32:34 And this was all about like going inward, you know, which I think I probably ran from. Yeah. I mean, or you were like, you know, like, I'll find the solve for that later. But I don't know. I was just kind of like, as I'm picturing this is it's more like for what I'm picturing in this story is like you're trying something, seeing how it feels inside, outside all the pieces doesn't work. Going to put this to the side. I'm going to try this. 33:04 That feels good. I'm gonna keep doing that. I'm gonna add this versus maybe the previous version of you would have approached that a little differently. Oh, this doesn't work. This sucks. I'm not gonna try. And this is more of an exploratory journey that you're going on. And I could totally be putting words in your mouth right now. So don't let me do that if I am. No, that's true. Yeah. It feels like there was permission. Maybe permission is the right thing to take on things, let things go. feel tuning in. 33:33 you know, tuning into how you actually feel, try and see how it feels and what comes of it. And it was interesting because even with the meditations, there was an evolution where I liked the guided meditations. But then after a while, I tried some without being guided and I got so much deeper. And I don't 33:56 do guided meditation anymore. was actually more like, oh, I want to do them on my own because I'm experiencing other things that I want to, you know, experience. exactly. And just this, this, this sense of I don't, I couldn't feel where I end and what around me begins, you know, this kind of spaciousness that 34:24 that in some of hers I did feel, but I just, I felt like I was growing a little bit with it. It was- was really, and I'm super into neuroplasticity and read about, you know, the art of meditation is the coming back after you notice, you know, noticing the thought and then coming back is like a little push up for your brain. Yeah. Did you find that as you were growing and kind of like, 34:52 your proof of concepts were aligning and things were working, that you were more able to believe in yourself and what you could do. It was like a snowball growing and growing, and then you're grabbing it on and then changing your life in that way. Yeah. I think it's a little chicken and egg at times because the belief in myself. 35:23 really helped the connection with myself and the connection with myself helped the belief in myself. And the acceptance was kind of what tied it together almost now that I think about it. So, you know, I didn't know what it meant when I was like, I'm going to believe in myself, you know, I'm going to believe that I can do this. Because you had never done it. I hadn't. I had taken one. I had done one other thing in my life that was a huge risk. 35:52 and it turned out fine and belief in myself. And then all the other ones were, there was always this like, hi, I'm Doubt, I'm Doubt, I'm here, I'm right here. So it was just this, try it out, see how it goes. And then looking for the evidence to support belief in me and that inner strength and belief that. 36:21 You know, my body is off the rails, but there is a healing intelligence in all of us that if I can get my head to stop fighting with my body and questioning it, what a great team we would be, you know? So it was really working hard on that and the visualization of what I would be like to be healthy and talking to myself. You know, they're always listening. They're always there. Yeah. 36:51 I think of this like healing this beginning part of your healing journey, kind of like training camp. When did you start playing the games? Like when did things start changing for you? Like, did it start helping you physically? And like, how did that journey unfold? Yeah, so I mean, that was winter of 2021, like early 2021. And I would say probably, I mean, at least a good six to nine months of doing all this. So I really 37:20 started. mean, I had moments where I would, I would feel pretty good and I could walk further. I had a new dog. So that gave me inspiration to move every day and to get out and to be in nature every day. So I would say it was kind of a slow coming out of the hole that was not linear. You know, it was like most of life, you know, two steps forward. 37:49 one step back, two steps forward, one step back. But like you say, Matt, I wouldn't be the person I am without it, without all of it that I went through. I like the person that I am now so much better than the person that I was. And I thought I was kind of a connected person then and I really wasn't. So yeah, it's just, and it's still unfolding, you know, we're still evolving and growing, I hope. 38:18 Well, I mean, if we're lucky, right? I think, you know, we look back on on some of these things and sometimes it's really hard in the moment. I'm sure when you were in that kitchen or wherever you were sitting, it was not a great moment. But at the same time, for this version of you. Yeah, it was a great moment. It was like a kick in the pants, a little tiny match light, whatever it may be. And it was your job to 38:46 get more oxygen in the room to kind of get that fire going and turn into this version of you. And it's really hard in the moment to think, oh God, this moment is gonna be like a pivotal one that's gonna change us, cause it sucks. Well, I mean, it was, it did feel pivotal in the, in the spirit of, wow, I had no idea that was the answer to that question. I had no idea. 39:16 that raw truth of that question. And I was like, wow, okay, there's no way I'm gonna get better if that's the way I'm thinking. It's interesting because are you familiar with Edith Eager? I'm not. She's amazing. She was in Auschwitz pulled from a pile of dead bodies, almost dead herself. And she came back, she's a psychologist, she's amazing. She's like 90, I think. But she wrote a book called The Choice. 39:47 And she said, the greatest prison is in your own mind and in your pocket, you already hold the key. And I read that when I was in my own prison and realized that I was in my own prison. And I was like, wow, you you mentioned at the beginning, a word or a phrase or a book can change somebody's life. And that was like, I felt so seen in that moment. 40:17 because that was both illuminating the prison I felt I was in mentally in addition to my physical limitations, but it also is this empowerment of I have a choice and that is, we all have a choice. And so much of my illness, I felt like I didn't have choices. I felt like all the doors around me closed because that was the life that I wanted. 40:47 back and I wanted to get back there. And it wasn't until I kind of was exploring this new open door to something different that I realized, okay, this is an opportunity. But if you told me at my depth that this is the best thing, I would have hung up on you. I just, yeah. 41:15 I would have been like, you have no idea. Think about the sickest you've ever felt and multiply that by nine months or a year or years. Yeah. Yeah. And also too, had you, I don't know, I sometimes think that like the 20 years that it took to grieve, like I don't think it was any, it could have been any quicker for me. Like I think I just needed to hit. 41:42 the little thing that knocked me into being like, okay, I should probably talk to a therapist now. And know, like all the things had to get in their line for me to hit the point where I was ready or where I was, you know, there's a book called The Noticer by Andy Andrews, I think. And it was one book that I read. It might be a little religious, but I'm not religious. And it was really about flipping the perspective. 42:09 of things and the way you were talking about like your mountain biking and stuff like that. And it was really something that sat with me and I shared it with so many people. And it was around that time in which I was like, man, there's this guilt and shame that comes with the time that I spent being that way. Did you face anything similar to where you were like, man, I wish I would have thought of this 10 years ago or- Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of these like- 42:36 listen, listen, listen, know, And you were like, no. And I was like, first and through, I'm just going. And I think had I listened to those, what would be different now? You know, I think I had to be beaten over the head by a two by four and completely leveled to get to that place. I mean, I started dabbling outside of conventional medicine because I didn't have any answers in conventional medicine. 43:05 And so I was kind of opening up. I'd never been a spiritual person and I was kind of like, and I went to a medical astrologist and he said, you are on a path. don't want to be like, you need to slow down. You need Qigong. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm not into that stuff, you know? And then a couple years later, I'm doing private Qigong sessions with my acupuncturist and I love it, but I just didn't, I resisted it. Cause I, 43:33 I wanted to identify as that, you know, that person, all my friends were in the bike community, my husband and I shared it, you know, it was, that was a big part of my identity and, and all the achievements with my work, all part of it. And so, you know, when you lose all that and it's all stripped away, then it's like, okay, you don't have all that. Who are you? 44:03 When you ask somebody and you meet them for the first time, usually it's, what do you do? What are your labels? I was just talking to a client about this today. We love labels because it makes it easy to know, I know all about Matt. Matt's a podcaster. Matt's had this experience with grief and da-da-da. But you're so much more than that. 44:28 and we're so much more than the labels. And that's something that is rare to find in people who haven't had as big of a journey. I haven't found that in a lot of, you know, a lot of my casual conversations, even with close friends. I have a couple that I can talk to at like a deeper level, but a lot of people haven't experienced so much loss in their life that has changed them. And I think... 44:58 There's a difference there. Yeah. And you had, I mean, you had like four big life altering moments in a row, probably more, right? I had more. Yeah. So you had a lot. You probably weren't processing all of those in a healthy way. Even the happy ones. True. My wedding was survival. was, yeah, was really sick at my wedding and 45:28 It was like, do my makeup, help me. Just one of those could knock someone off their access a little and we are not taught or we're not maybe better now. But I don't think in general we were taught to process, to accept, to acknowledge, to move through, to all the things, to process each of those so that we can, when we come to the next one, we have a couple more tools and we know how to approach that one. 45:57 but when you're just kinda pushing them all down, it just gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah, and I was already really depleted from my career, because I'm an empath. So I'm giving to patients. So I had nothing for myself. And so when I was grieving and going through, and the three months with my mom was extremely traumatic. 46:26 The pain of watching her, it was actually more despair she had than pain and to see her body not giving up even though she wanted to leave this world. Every day it was gutted me, every day. And I didn't have, I was trying to be there for her and do all the, manage all the medications and medical stuff. 46:55 And it was just too much for where I was in my life. And fortunately, I had a good friend who went through it with her dad and we would be on the phone. But I'm in California. I live in Washington. I don't have my dog. I don't have my husband. I don't have any friends. So it was just, it was this world that was my dad, my mom and me. And it was like everything else outside of it. I was envisioning when... 47:23 You you talked about the memorial and the wake and just it's almost surreal, you know, so going through these months, it was just this like other world that we were so detached from the larger world. And it was like survival, you know, every day. Yeah, no, it's it's a. I my grandmother was sick and I dealt with. 47:51 those last couple months and stayed by her side in the last five days of her life. And I understand that I fortunately in my circumstance, because I found the tools that worked for me grieving my mom and my grandmother got sick a couple years later, I knew what I needed to do because I have that ability to like actually process it and feel like a full human again and know, okay, I know how bad this is going to be. I know what I didn't get to do. 48:21 So I'm gonna approach this in the healthiest way for me and for my grandmother to make it as beautiful as it can be, as hard as it is. So I was fortunate in that way. we don't, unless you go through it, I don't know that you get the tools until after, right? And so when we were talking about you having these little voices years ago, had you listen. 48:48 you probably wouldn't be this version of you because you wouldn't have dug so deep. You wouldn't have tried so wide, you know, like all the things that you did because of that moment, you were stripped bare and you could, you could build, build the house of Heidi as, in any direction that you wanted, right? Like you, you really could because there was no other options really. Yeah. then stepping out of my comfort zone, mean, 49:17 It's so funny because before old Heidi, wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be in front of a camera. I mean, I didn't want to have a wedding because I didn't want to be the center of attention. And so I just, I feel like this whole journey has been to get me where I am right now and live in my purpose. And it's been so clear. Yeah, I've become this kind of. 49:46 a spiritual person as a byproduct. I never set out to be on a spiritual journey, but I do feel like everything in my life has led me to this moment and this is what I should be doing. I know it sounds so cliche, but it just, it's... You don't know it until it happens to you. It's such a knowing. There's such a clarity and I'm... 50:14 I'm doing improv, I'm doing Toastmasters. I would never do that. I used to hide in my closet as a kid because my parents signed me up for drama class and I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. they'd have to like pull me out of the closet and throw me in the car. And now it's like, I'm choosing this? This is crazy. Because there's no downside. feels great. Yeah. 50:42 And when you get out of your comfort zone, it builds that trust in yourself. You know, it's like, I can do hard things, you know, whether it's riding my bike or it's being in an improv class and having to sing a song in front of 20 people that I'm making up and a rap or whatever, you know, and it's just, there's so many surprises. It's not, would you say that you've with this? 51:11 version of you now is there's like a new definition of good or good enough. You mean in to replace perfectionism? mean? Yeah, like what I was where that came from is I'm thinking, okay, I could go to improv and like, quote unquote, bomb. But that's okay. Did I have fun? Was it a great experience? You know, where's the whereas a perfectionist version of me would be like, oh, I can never do that again, because I was horrible. 51:39 and I'll never be on Saturday Night Live and know, like all the pieces. So I'm wondering if you see the word good or good enough differently now. Well, in terms of perfectionism, good enough versus perfect. And it's also adjusting my expectations. So being really aware, am I trying to do this to be good enough or am I trying to... 52:07 seek that bar that I'll never reach, you know. And so I have this little check-in with myself about my expectations. Yeah, that's good. And I also have a list on the weekend of a million things, and I'm like, cut that in half and pick three, and that's it, because I will let myself down if I don't get half, you know, to half of the things. But then I'm like, big picture, does it really matter? You didn't get to vacuuming. 52:36 Okay, no big deal. Nobody's, you I'd rather go ride my bike. So, and buy a Roomba is clean. Right. He'll do it for you while you're gone riding your bike. Yeah, I'm curious if if 2025 Heidi, if you could go back to right before you asked yourself that question that day, is there anything that that you living this version of your life would want to tell that version of you? 53:07 I think it would be to start sooner. Like stop seeking and go try to find the answers inside you. I think I spent a ton of money and years on doctors that I believe they're all doing the best they can. I just don't think they weren't looking for what actually is going on. So I think believing 53:36 believing in myself that there is a capacity in me to heal and find that. And when you do find the right doctor, you're gonna be an amazing team and it's gonna supercharge my healing. And I think so many people in my situation spend, I mean, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over long years. They lose support, they, you know, and that's... 54:05 a narrative in our culture that we're conditioned to seek medicine outside of ourselves, but realize there's a lot inside of us that we can heal. And it's in here and it's believing in that and the messages. think there's a lot of people who spontaneously heal from visualization and belief and placebo and all of that. So I think 54:34 do the work, but it's so much easier to just seek it outside yourself because then you're not having to do that inner work. Yeah. I'd probably also tell her to slow down. I would tell her to slow down. I would tell her to slow down. Yeah. I think we all could use that every once in a while, a reminder that we don't have to do it all and that we are human. Yeah. And I think that's... 55:02 You know, to me, I was thinking that was living. And now it's like, this is living. You know, I used to, I feel so bad. used to like, you know, my dog would sniff and I'd be like, no, that's unproductive sniffing. You're not going to the bathroom. Let's go, let's go, let's go. running, we're doing everything. And I feel, I feel really bad about that. And now I stop and sniff flowers and watch bees and hummingbirds and my dog just kind of sits there and. 55:31 waits for me and I let her sniff too. I just feel much more connected versus getting as much out of life as I can, you know. I think there's a different mindset. It's really like stop and smell the roses, like at this, and as cheesy as that sounds, it's like we all need a little reminder that we don't have to do it all. We were never asked to do it all. 55:56 And somehow we assumed that we were supposed to do it all because that's a fulfilled life and sounds like you found a little bit different of a journey that is really helping you feel like a full being as you described yourself. I think that is, I think it's a beautiful journey and I'm happy that you are on this healing journey. Is there more healing to do? Of course, we're all right. We're all trying, like I said earlier, these conversations heal me in ways that I never. 56:24 expected. So thank you for sharing yours in this way. Thank you for giving me the opportunity, Matt. Well, if there are people that want to like they heard your story, they resonate so much with what you're doing, or maybe just feel inspired by what you're doing. What's the best way to like find you get in your orbit, talk to you tell you their story? Like what's how do they find Heidi? unshakableme.com. And that's one word. I've got a lot of 56:53 free resources, there's a get in touch or you can schedule a free zoom call. I'm also on YouTube, Unshakeable Me, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. You're everywhere. I'm in a lot of places. We will send the links. really encourage anyone that if even just something that 57:14 was not about Heidi's life shift moment, but something that she said resonated with you. And whether she wants this or not, I tell you to reach out to her and share your story, because I think there's so much power in telling our stories, right? Like for the person telling it, but also for those of us that get to hear other people's stories, just never know what's going to hit us in certain ways. So please reach out to Heidi and connect with her. Thanks so much, Matt. love it. Yeah. I think, yeah, you're not alone. No. 57:44 Journey, we're all on different journeys, but I think there's such a shared narrative. Agreed. We're just living it in different ways. You're not alone and we all, we're deep in these moments, we feel very alone and we feel that there is no one out there that can understand. And then once we have a little bit more awareness, we've realized that, like you said. 58:08 the narratives or the actual stories might be a little different, but the way that we feel, the way that we connect with others and ourselves, it's very similar. So, thank you again for being a part of this journey. Thank you all for listening. And with that, I'm gonna say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks again, Heidi. Thanks, Matt. 58:41 For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com