Hard Times No More Relationship Podcast

The Truth About Emotional Healing -Ep.20

October 31, 2023 • Allesanda Tolomei-Hard • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Let's have an honest heart-to-heart.

Healing isn’t the absence of uncomfortable feelings. It’s all about how you handle hard times.

If you're expecting to reach a point where you're completely healed, never having to deal with your past traumas again, well, I hate to break it to you, but that's setting yourself up for disappointment. Because being human means experiencing the full spectrum of emotions.

Personal and spiritual growth includes those moments when you fall apart, have a good cry, cancel appointments because you're having a rough day, and just accept that life doesn't always go according to plan. It's about going with the flow, even when the current feels more like a stormy sea.

You see, when we resist change or try to suppress our emotions, that's when life's challenges become even harder to bear. But here's the silver lining—no one has to navigate life alone, without help.

So, today, let's chat about all of this and more. It feels like the perfect time for a little check-in. So, get cozy, grab your favorite drink, and let's have a chat. I'll fill you in on what's been happening in my life and how I've been navigating it.


In this episode, we'll chat about:

  • How small wins are indicators of BIG changes. 
  • Ways to support yourself and others during challenging seasons.
  • Healthy independence in relationships. 
  • Life as a fire wife.  

And here's a gentle reminder – always be kind to yourself. If you're going through a challenging season, lean on your tools, whether it's through writing, seeking coaching, connecting with your support system, getting in touch with your spiritual side, or perhaps a combination of all of the above.  

You've got this!

Say "Hi" on Instagram: @Mrs.Hard_TimesNoMore
Or on FaceBook

More info an links on my website: Mrs-Hard.com 

Don't let anxiety control you any longer. Take the first step towards a joyful life without fear. Sign up for my free 3-day coaching series—Stepping Off The Chaos Roller Coaster: 3 Simple Steps For Anxiety Relief

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, and this is Hard Times no More, a podcast for people who are tired of struggling with boundaries, people pleasing and relationship problems.

Speaker 1:

I have overcome some hard times. Within three years, I stopped drinking, my mom died of cancer and my house burnt down in a California wildfire, and those are just the highlights. I have a lot of reasons to be miserable, but I'm not. The truth is, life was more challenging before these events happened. If you are tired of waiting for your circumstances to change to find happiness and peace of mind, you are in the right place. Join me as I share the tools I use and love to transform challenges into assets and interview others about their relationship journeys. Together, let's learn how to have a happy life full of healthy, meaningful relationships and say goodbye to hard times for good. Hey everyone, welcome to the hard times no more relationship podcast. I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, your host.

Speaker 1:

Today. I have a different kind of episode for you. I decided to mix it up and do a little check in. Being a wellness and relationship coach, I like to show up on this podcast and on social media as like a very high vibe professional self, and this is going to still be professional and high vibe, but I wanted to get real with you until you what's really been going on in my life and how I've really been feeling lately, because that's way more relatable than thinking that somebody is fine all the time. I don't want to create that false persona, so I just really want to be raw, authentic and honest with you so that you also know that you're not alone in your struggles and you can get to know a different side of me maybe. So a lot's been going on lately and I'm really happy October is over.

Speaker 1:

As most of you may know, october is a really hard month for me because October 1st of 2016, my mom passed away from lung cancer and then October 10th ish of 2017, the following year, my house burned down in the California wildfire. And this year was harder than the last couple of years and it really caught me off guard because last year I barely felt any grief, and that's the weird thing about grief. I don't know about you if you've experienced grief, but in my experience it comes in waves and it doesn't always make sense and you can't always plan for it. But because last year was so easy, my expectation was that this year was going to be super easy and it wasn't. And I'm more of an analytical, logical person and I love to have a reason why things aren't going well or why things are more challenging. And, with grief, I can't always connect the dots and I just have to accept it is what it is.

Speaker 1:

And so around October 1st, there was like a two week period where I just was feeling really off. I'm somebody who wakes up in the morning, I'm excited for the day, I love to go for a walk, I love to work, I love to be creative, and that energy was not flowing. It was like I had this fog around me and I could tell I was starting to feel anxious. There was a day that I was at the grocery store and I started feeling really panicked, like a little panic attack was coming on. If you've had a panic attack, you know that they come on in weird places, like at the grocery store, when you don't think you're feeling stressed or like anything is going on. And I tried to just shake it off, sit with the feelings, try to be present for them, try to slow down, take care of myself for the rest of that day.

Speaker 1:

And then the next day I woke up and I started my day and I had a full-on panic attack. I tried to restart my day after that, thinking, okay, you know, I can go distract myself, go work out and working out wasn't a good idea at that time because it elevated my heart rate. And then I had another panic attack and I was at my in-laws' house, because I go over there to work out and I spend a lot of time over there and I'm so grateful for them and my sister-in-law because I was able to just fall apart and be a mess and cancel my day and they have become my family, which means so much to me because growing up in my household, my family was dysfunctional because my father's had a chronic illness my whole life and my mom was working like 40, 60, 70 hours a week and we were always just trying to like hold it together and we also weren't a family who could talk about what we were feeling. We just kept on trying to get through it and so it created this like separation and I love my family very much. But when Chris came along, his family to me always seemed like they had it all together and they were so perfect. They had like Christmas traditions and holiday traditions and my family. We didn't have time for that, you know.

Speaker 1:

And when I met Chris, my husband, I met him in a time of my life when I had really low self-esteem and so I had this fear that I wasn't worthy of being loved by anyone or being accepted by a family that seemed so loving and like. They are just. They're just like really joyful and they do fun things, and they've been with me through so much, some of my hardest experiences in my life. His family has been there with me and it's really made me grow closer to them and trust them so much, and I was really grateful to have that breakdown there, because I didn't know what I needed and I knew I didn't have to pretend to be okay or that I didn't have to pretend to be anything other than what I was feeling right then. So I'm super, super grateful for them and after that day, things started to get a lot better, and it was windy that day too, which is a trigger for me because in 2017, when the fires happened, it was really windy where I live, and so, even though I had a panic attack and had a bad day and a rough couple of weeks in the past I used to beat myself up and think, oh, you'll never get over this.

Speaker 1:

You're not you know as far along on your healing journey as you thought you were, and my inner critic would really beat me up when I wasn't doing okay and try to prove to me that I wasn't making progress, which is false, because this time I was able to cancel my day without feeling as much guilt or shame as I would in the past, like I had to power through. I was able to be messy around people I love and not beat myself up for that. I was able to receive help a lot of things that I've struggled with in the past and I didn't try to change my feelings that I was experiencing in the sense of, like suppressing them or running away from them or you, like I've said, powering through. And I also didn't try to be overly busy around this era, because for me, if I become way too busy, sometimes that's a red flag that I'm trying to avoid something. So those were my big wins sitting with the feelings, reaching out for help and being gentle with myself during that time, and so if you're going through anything like this, I know it can be scary to Not be your best and to have these messy moments, but that's just part of the human deal. That just means that you're Having the full grand human experience. So, welcome to the club. And Also, my husband is finished his medic school classes, his clinicals and his internship.

Speaker 1:

Yay, he has been in medic school since last August, so it's been a year and a couple of months, and his medic school was two hours away. And then he also was working during his medic school. And, in case you don't know, my husband's a firefighter. He decided to become a firefighter after the 2017 fires because when the fires happened, they threatened his parents house and and him. His father and two of his friends actually stayed at the house and Saved their house and then also helped save multiple neighbors houses because they stayed behind when people were being evacuated, and From that he decided that he wanted to become a firefighter. He was having a little quarter-life crisis. He used to Want to be a pro baseball player and he was a really, really great baseball player, so that was a real dream for him, something that actually could have happened, and it just wasn't working out. The universe was blocking him, not Helping him go down that path, and he didn't know what he wanted to be because he'd put years of his life Into this dream of being a professional baseball player. And then the fires happened, which were a very tragic and scary thing. But from that Came some blessings, some positive things, and he's loved being a firefighter. He started going to school to be an EMT. Pretty soon after the fires, he became an EMT and then he went to fire Academy and fire Academy was Way up north it was four hours away and we had a long-distance relationship for that. Five months that he was gone and and it's been quite the journey.

Speaker 1:

His first year as a firefighter was in 2020 and where we live there were some massive fires and he was the first engine on this one fire called the lightning complex, and he was on an engine fighting that fire for 96 hours and what they were mostly doing was evacuating people, because at that time we didn't have a lot of resources in this area and Because there was multiple fires in the state in 96 hours straight on an engine, like they had trouble getting food and water. It was crazy and I could see that fire starting from where we live today, which definitely created a lot of PTSD for me. I had packed up my house and evacuated like two days before the actual evacuation warning and and Then he was on a second fire. That was pretty massive and he was the second engine on that fire. So he really jumped in to the firefighter scene right away and it's been fun to see his evolution, because he came in not thinking he wanted to get into the medical stuff and discovering that he really loves the medical stuff and he's really good at it. So he's in in medic school and and For me that has been a little challenging.

Speaker 1:

I'm not gonna lie. I am so proud of him and would not take back any of it. Let me say that. But We've both had to make a lot of sacrifices. During his time in medic school we didn't get to see each other a lot. There were some weeks where I would see him maybe 12 hours a week and I'm really grateful. We had a really strong foundation going into it, and other times he wasn't always a joy to be around. He said I could share these things. By the way, he said I could talk about him going to medic school Because he said it would be relatable for some people, especially if you're a firewife listening or if you're Significant.

Speaker 1:

Other is just really busy with their job and they're going through a season in which they're going back to school or they're doing multiple things or maybe they have some family stuff going on when, as their partner, you need to be there to support them. Like it's a season where they lean on you more, and for me what that's looked like is compartmentalizing my feelings and having my needs met elsewhere, which is an okay thing. You know, in relationships, especially when it's a season of that, you know. You know that there will be an end where you'll be able to spend more time together and enjoy life together and do fun things together. And I'm so grateful for my support group. I have a huge support group and so when my husband wasn't emotionally available for something I was going through, I would lean on his family, I would lean On people in my life who mentor me, I would lean on my friends.

Speaker 1:

I never expected him to be my everything and I could have never done this. Seven years ago and we've been together for A little bit over seven years I used to be very insecure, very needy, and I thought my partner needed to meet all of my needs. They needed to be my best friend. They needed to be my therapist, they needed To be my everything, and I have found that my relationship is so much healthier if that is not the case and I've become very independent In my relationship with my husband. This is the most independent I've ever been in a relationship and he's very independent to and we support each other with whatever endeavors we want to take on.

Speaker 1:

And when you support your significant other so much, it feels really good because not only do you know that you're Showing them love and that you're proud of them during their challenging times, but then you also feel more freedom to pursue whatever your heart desires. And In our relationship that support has been reciprocated. Reciprocated like my husband has never told me you can't do that. That's a silly idea. Don't pursue that. You know like he's been very supportive and we've had talks about how. That's because I've been very supportive towards him and that's, swear to God, because of all the spiritual, internal, personal work and life decisions that I've made to really work on healing myself and To learn to sit with these feelings that come up during hard times and not suppress them, but also to look for the opportunity in the wounds.

Speaker 1:

You know, when Something really challenging happens. Of course you're going to fall apart. Of course you're going to be a mess initially when it happens, but afterwards you have two choices either become a victim of your circumstances and let that fear take over you and create a bunch of coping mechanisms that, honestly, won't work in the long run to try to protect yourself from ever getting hurt again, or you can find the lesson, the gift, in the wound, and that's what I do my best to do and that's what I love. Oh, my gosh, it lights me up so much when other people find that because, for me, when you shift that perspective of like this is happening to me, to like why is this happening? What is this lighting up in my life and taking, I want to say, ownership for it, in the sense that I believe that, as a soul, I came down here and agreed to Most of these life challenges. Right, I made an agreement that my soul was going to experience these things, to evolve, and that helps me take ownership of the situation of like OK, I'm experiencing this. What is the thing that I need to learn, that I need to work on? What is this highlighting within me? And, like I've said, this isn't like a isolated experience, like I lean on my support system and I have people to guide me in my life, and so I'm not trying to figure this out alone, but I'm open to what is the universe trying to show me, which is way better for me than feeling stuck in it or a victim to it. I feel like that's a pretty sufficient check in.

Speaker 1:

And the holidays are around the corner and the holidays used to be challenging, because getting together with your extended family can highlight the absence of people in your life. People can highlight the dysfunction of their family or comparing their family to other people's families, or they feel really stressed or pressured because they're deciding to host Thanksgiving or Christmas, or pressure because they have kids, to buy a lot of presents and to make the holidays perfect. And if you resonate with any of that, think about how you can simplify the holidays coming up. Think about what you need and plan for how you're gonna take care of yourself. I love a good plan Like if you're feeling challenging to hang out with, have a set time limit, show up late, leave early, do some self-care before and after. In self-care, that's like a very broad term. That can be like exercising before, so you get all of your yuck out and tap into your endorphins. It can mean watching a movie with your significant other afterwards or doing some traditional self-care like taking a hot bath or booking a massage the next day.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, life's challenging, man, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

Speaker 1:

It brings us closer together and I hope that hearing these stories on my podcast and getting to know me better helps you feel not alone, because I think that's the worst place to be.

Speaker 1:

I've been there before, thinking I was alone in my struggles, and one of the greatest gifts I've received is knowing that I'm not, and that's what I received from my mentors and my support system, cause it's way easier when you know that you're supported and you don't feel alone. All right, that's all I got for you. If you want to connect, you can reach me on Instagram at Mrs that's MRShard h-a-r-d. Underscore times no more. You can see what I have to offer freebies and upcoming events at Mrshardcom that's MRS-h-a-r-dcom. And yeah, if you're ever wanting to chat, feeling lonely, or if you want to talk more about a podcast episode, you can find me in those spaces, and thank you so much for listening and being a part of this community. It's been an honor to be on this journey with you. Oh, my gosh, this podcast, starting this one of the best things I've done, definitely, and yeah, all, right till next time, take care.