Adela: 0:06

Hello, hello, hello, hello. Friends, it has been a week since you've heard me actually, or if you listen to me, and you listen religiously and are a devout follower now. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Welcome to the Artist Within Podcast.

Adela: 0:20

I am your host for season one, the Road to Resilience, adela Hattel, and this podcast is produced, sponsored by and brought to you by Think, a New Way to Think about Mental and Emotional Health, and our mission is to bridge the gap between mental and emotional health, and so the way we do that is through communication, education, advocacy and information, as well as tangible action or tangible expression, and one of our ways that we're doing that is through this podcast. Our podcast is a source of information, is a source of education, as well as a source of advocacy and a creative expression, not only for you as a listener, but also for myself, because I need to create. Creativity is creating, is my life Like, it's my passion, it's everything about my existence, and I can't wait to talk to you about that today. So, before we get into it, I want to give a shout out to everybody who's followed us. I want to give a shout out to everybody who's gotten us to 275 downloads. Can you freaking believe it? 270, 75 downloads. And I also have this, um, green thumb or not. Green thumb, orange thumb, I don't know my colors guys. Well, it's more coral than it is orange. It's a coral. It matches almost every, matches everything in my, on me. If you're watching, you just saw me match, color match everything to myself, because I just did. And if you're listening, well, I just color match everything to myself because I just did. And if you're listening, well, I just color matched everything to myself because I did. But anyway, I decided yesterday that I was going to drill myself because I am.

Adela: 1:56

It is the holiday season, it's the week before Thanksgiving and this year I decided that I was going to really be joyful, really go into the spirit of the holidays and really bring forth the Holy Spirit of life and joy and just abundance of breath, right and freshness and existence. And I wanted to be really inspiring, really motivating, and so I decided to start working on my own home and my own self early this year. I've been traveling, I've had, I've been a little bit under the weather, I'm a full-time mom, I'm a wife, I do all of this. So, plus, I create and and I just there's so many aspects to my one being there really isn't enough time for all that I do and, I know, tells me everyone in the world the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest. I have been coached by some of the best people on this planet, honestly, and I have been put into positions where, if I were to only decide on one thing in my life, I would be skyrocketing to the ends of the earth.

Adela: 3:03

I have something in my eye now. Ow, that just happened. Ow, ow, ow. Ladies, do you know, like when an eyelash or maybe a piece of mascara or a piece of hair gets in the eye and then you just don't know what to do about it? Yeah, and I also have a nose itch that won't stop itching.

Adela: 3:21

Anyway, I've got a lot of problems today from a screwed thumb because I was drilling a screw up in my deck thing and then it slipped and it drilled into me. I wasn't holding the screw, guys, I was really being safe. Yesterday was a day okay, really quick yesterday, no matter how hard, and I tried to be safe and I tried to be good, I tried to be all that stuff. I was not. I got screwed Not only by my own screwdriver by myself. No thumbs up to you. But I also got screwed by getting a ticket. I got a speeding ticket. You guys, I know I haven't had a speeding ticket in over a decade. I have not been in trouble with anything. I have been square, as square as can be and as whatever you want to call it.

Adela: 4:09

And yesterday, because I decided that I was going to pass people and do what everybody does I mean, I've literally seen my husband do it in the car, I've seen everybody do it. And then when I went to do it and speed around the slow people, I get clocked and get pulled over. And here's the funny part, right? So the funny part is that I didn't even know that the popo was for me. I did my thing, like I was in the fast lane and I was. I was going 73 and the people in front of me, like you just tell when, like you get close enough that they're going to be slow, you have to brake or whatever. So I decided I was just gonna zoom right around them.

Adela: 4:52

Well, when I zoom right around them, there was a car, cop, car sitting in a ditch underneath the overpass on the expressway um over here by Normandy, normandy and Chaffee over that way Oakley area, and sitting there and again I go and I'm brr. And then, like I don't know, 10, 15 seconds later, like it was that fast Behind me, the lights are going brr, and I'm like, oh shoot, he's got to go somewhere, let me get over. So I speed up and get over and he gets right over to me and I was like, what is he doing? I'm trying to give him space and I keep going. And then I realized that he's trying to pull me over. So I pull over. And then he was like do you know? Do you know why I pulled you? I was like actually I don't. He's like do you know how fast you were going? I was like just now. He's like I'm so sorry, I do nothing but cost you money. That's all I do. It's all I'm good for is to spend your money, and it was really not an intention.

Adela: 5:53

So anyway, yesterday was a day of so much. I fell off a ladder. Also, I ran into a wall, got a ticket, screwed myself. Some days are just like that, you myself. Some days are just like that, you guys. Some days are just like that, and some days when they are like that and everything around you is going against you. Literally your own existence, your own body is going against you and you want to quit. You should probably quit. You should probably go to sleep for the day because you might end up getting a ticket or something worse at the end of the day. I really just was like I should go to sleep for the day because you might end up getting a ticket or something worse at the end of the day. I really just was like I should go to sleep and I was like, no, I'm gonna persevere through this. No, I am going to win. I can do this. $129 later and a school for points I have to go take and hope my insurance doesn't go up because of my bad decisions.

Adela: 6:48

Wanting to do the thing that everybody does. That's what happens when you're a follower of everybody. Okay, here is a prime example of why you should lead yourself and not follow anyone else, except if I need you to help me for some stuff, I need you to follow me Like that's needed, right. Like I need you to help me for some stuff, I need you to follow me like that's that's needed, right. Like I need you to follow me anyway. So there was that, before I get into my creativity tantrum and my actual topics of the day today, I thought I should share with you my day of yesterday. My day of today is great so far.

Adela: 7:22

I got up, worked out. I realized I was not working out in the morning. I don't even know when I stopped. Honestly, I don't even know when I stopped stretching, but I stopped a while ago, it seems like. And so this morning I got back into my routine of that. I did my stretches, I did my self-care, I did my moments and I feel a lot better and I'm moving forward.

Adela: 7:47

There. Moving forward, there's no rush, there's not a feeling of of anxiety and and stress. It just is, and I'm moving forward. And that is the part that I've learned in my life. Anxiety is the devil. Okay, stress is the devil. I'm not saying we can't have a little bit of the devil here and there because it's around us all the time, right, but I'm just saying that it is the devil. It really sucks the life out of you, the soul out of you, the joy out of you, your being, your existence. And so every time I begin, start to become anxious, nowadays I just turn and I say a little prayer and I remind myself that it's not. I'm not an anxious person, I don't need the anxiety like I'm okay, I'm here and I move forward. And's not. I'm not an anxious person, I don't need the anxiety Like I'm okay, I'm here and I move forward.

Adela: 8:27

And yesterday, now that I'm thinking about it, it was anxiety written which I did not take the time and the initiative to pause for a minute and pray and give myself that space that I needed to reconnect with my body, my mind and my soul. And I did not take the time to recognize that I was allowing so much of other energies and forces to affect me. Because, again, my house is in a disarray right now. My space of normalcy that I normally have is in a disarray, and it's my fault because I'm redoing it. My work is in a bit of a disarray because I've taken it's the holidays and time I take off. During holidays I put things on pause. And not only that. Life has happened. I've lost a friend, I've lost a team member. I've had to figure out and navigate through that and and it's not over yet I go into his celebration of life this coming weekend and navigating that right.

Adela: 9:29

So there's just so much happening in life and I sat there and even yesterday, last night, I was so hard on myself about the whole thing, about everything. You know you did nothing. Right today, adela, you cost so much money. I can't believe you got this. Your husband's trying so hard to do some things right now and you're not really really good. Your anxiety is this your that, like I really was just in such a blame and judge game that I couldn't get past. I couldn't get past it. I could not move forward. I felt so terrible and I didn't show myself grace. And that's move forward. I felt so terrible and I didn't show myself grace and that's the part of showing yourself grace. Like you're allowed to make mistakes, you're allowed to be imperfect, you're allowed to not be the best and the most achieving.

Adela: 10:17

My whole life I've been the most, the highest achiever of my whole. Like the highest achiever I potentially could be, and me being perfect for everyone else, me being the highest and the best of the best for everyone else sucked the life out of me and got to the point where it killed, almost killed, me, and so now, if I'm not the best of the best for myself, if I'm not the most accomplished for myself it, I fall into the trap of thinking that everyone else is going to look at me as a failure and I fall into the trap of thinking that everyone else is judging me because I did not do the things that I said I would do at the time that I said I would do, or that I didn't accomplish them as fast or as great or as whatever, um, or that the judgment of others like I take it on myself when I fall into that space and I have to remind myself again that daily, that I'm genuinely happy today, like the pace I'm moving forward in slowing down in my life, I'm telling happy today, like the pace I'm moving forward in Slowing down in my life. I'm telling you, adela was the bullet train for four years ago. You couldn't stop me. You couldn't stop me from achieving anything I wanted to achieve, but it was literally at the cost of myself. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because it'll go straight into the conversation we're gonna have. I think that'll be. That's gonna be great.

Adela: 11:52

I want to bring up this picture of me that I have for those of you who are on here right now to see it and you're looking. So this picture right here, this being. This was 2015 and I actually have my timelines so confused because I thought it was 2016 that I attempted my suicide. It was not. It was in 2015, because it was I. The reason why I say this and I know that for a fact is because this picture was taken in 2015. This was a couple of days maybe, or maybe a week or two, after my attempt. I had gone dark, I had gone into this place and everybody nobody knew. Nobody around me knew, yet nobody was even aware of what was happening. And this being that I'm looking at right now. I remember this because this being right here is the being that I look at this picture and I posted it on social media. It was on my profile pictures and this I was still not out of the woods, right?

Adela: 13:07

I still in this, in this being space in her mind the guilt, the shame that I was feeling from what I was trying to do then, the inadequacy than the absolute hatred towards myself that I had. When I say hatred, I mean hatred. I hated my existence. I hated every fiber of myself. It was so deep in my bones. Everybody's thoughts of me, everybody's thoughts of me, everybody's ideas of me, everybody's stories, everybody's life, and I mean everybody in my vicinity. It's my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my friends, my husband, my son, my everything, including me.

Adela: 14:00

Everything within the vicinity was placed upon this being since child, since she was a child, and she's taken it on and taking it on. Taking it on, she survived a war. She's come to the United States, she's put this on and she thought she had one thing in her life that was just really one thing she could hold on to, and it was the word positive. And the word negative never came to her mind, like it never came to my mind that way. And when it was said to positive and the word negative never came to her mind, like it never came to my mind that way. And when it was said to me and was put into the hey, you're a negative being. And I'll never forget when I took this picture and I looked at it, I could see my own sadness, I could see all of that and I was like this will be my last picture. I remember taking this picture and I said at least people will think I was good, at least people will think I was happy, at least people will think that they'll ask the question, but how, at least they'll see then and when I this picture will.

Adela: 15:03

For because about two, three years later, when I saw that picture again, those thoughts, those moments were so, those feelings were so real that, had it not been for my son and my like, my son's attunement to me he four fucking years old, part of my french, but to put that responsibility on my child as a grown adult, not realizing that I was a child myself, I was literally a five-year-old child within that body, within that space, that picture I'm looking at right there, you're seeing on that screen, that is in that mind, that is literally a five-year-old, stuck in her own, like she has no concept of what's going on in this world. I had no idea what was going on in this world. That was eight years ago. I had no. Nine years ago now. I had no understanding, no concept of existence of my body right of my breath, of my body right Of my breath, of my nothing.

Adela: 16:05

But I look at this picture and I today I would never put this picture up and say this is a good picture, like I know the signs on this face now. I know the lines, I see the, I see the corner smile. It's literally a corner smile. The sadness in her, in my eyes, right there, literally the despair, how I'm so curled in into a fetal position I just want to be hidden away. Everything in my body language, right there, says that I am not okay, even though I am a picture, perfect picture. But I'm not okay and I wanted to share that with you because I'm, when I look back on this photo, like I'm reminded of the subtle signs we all leave behind when we're not doing okay. I'm reminded of the way that I did those subtle signs. I'm reminded of the way that I would test my surroundings, my environment, my beings. I would test how far they would hear me or how loudly they would hear me, or whether they would hear me or not. I would test whether they would see me or they would not see me, or they would miss me or not miss me. I tested, I tested those around me.

Adela: 17:19

And when we're talking about again, I, a professional not at all, not in any shape or form have no, nothing but lived experience in my uh toolkit here, being on that side, on the dark side of existence, versus on the light side that I'm at today and where I'm at right now, like you could, literally, literally, the images are bipolar opposites. It's it's night and day. I was living in my darkness in my cell, and I say that too because two years ago maybe two years ago I'll have to call my friend and ask her but I had a breakdown, again slight breakdown, where I pulled my hair up and I gave my husband scissors and I was like chop it. This is a professional hairstylist here. I do have professional experience of that. I am a professional licensed cosmetologist and that, and I get to tell you that, don't do that, don't do that. It is a piece of advice. I'm telling you don't do that.

Adela: 18:14

And husbands, significant others, if your being is like, hey, I want you to just ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch okay, um, sometimes sometimes, sure, okay, if you really must sometimes. But if you can divert and take the scissors away, that would be great. That would be great, because the regret they have afterwards and just chopping off their hair is is immense. So you know, when somebody is in space, just take away sharp objects from them. So that was was my thing and about, like I said, a year and a half ago, two years ago now, my hair is long, I just don't put it down, but I decided I was going to put it up to here and shop just like this, because I couldn't.

Adela: 18:56

I went into that space. I went into actually I wasn't really out of my jail cell, I'll tell you that because I went to see my friend to the salon that I hadn't been in a while and we sat there and talked and I was telling her because she's a really good friend of mine and me and her, you know, we talked some depths and as I sat in her chair I was like I just I need to say this out loud I'm stuck in my mind. Like in my mind, my mind is a prison cell, my mind is, and I see the door, I'm so close but I don't know how to get out of it because it's too bright, it's so bright out there. I've lived in such darkness my whole life, like my whole soul has been filled with darkness that opening up a window, opening up the curtains, opening up anything, is like that right, like super hissing sound of a being and I that's how I felt in there Anything I would go out like and you can even see it in my face Like you could see that, yes, there's filter on that, yes, there's all that.

Adela: 19:50

But you could see that I didn't even have color in my being. Like my being was, had no life. It had no life at all. All it had was this idea that I was supposed to be perfect be a mother, be a wife, be an accomplished businesswoman or career woman, be a great child and a daughter and a sister, and be and be and be and be. And the amount of labels and the amount of jobs that you have to be for someone, be a friend, be a partner, be like I'm talking like, and you don't even know how to be as your own being in existence. You don't even know what the be of being is. It can literally suffocate you and that's what happened to me. Right, that literally happened to me. I drowned in my own life because I didn't know my own life. I didn't know who I was. I had no idea who I was. I didn't reflect, I didn't take accountability, I didn't take responsibility. I avoided especially those two words accountability, responsibility of my own self, like a plague. Oh, my gosh, that person that being right there on your screen.

Adela: 21:05

If she, if you were, said you need to be accountable, adela, for the actions and the decisions you make for the consequences of your life. The amount of tantrums that would have came out of her is insane. The tantrum that I would have thrown and I use the word tantrum with all love, okay, with the most love that I can use to say what's happening to us from within when we're literally as a being of. This existed as an adult. When we throw a tantrum and we're anxious and we're stressed and we get angry and we do, it's a child within you saying enough is enough.

Adela: 21:39

I'm not designed for this. I am not designed for this world to move at this pace that I can't even keep up with. My being, my body is not designed for that and we don't listen to that. I had that to be said to me all the time, my whole. For a long time I had the word silence, silence, no, and silence and no and silence and no. And, as you guys know, I talk so damn much. I talk all the time, anytime, and it's in depth and it's heavy and it's not. It's not like things. I'm not a small talker. It is about your life, about your existence, and but before then it was the most empty part of my so-called in-depth talk that I would have with people, because I didn't even understand myself. It was such surface level, it was such crude that's a good word surface level objectification of, if that's even a word now, objectivity maybe Correct me if I'm wrong, look me up of the human being and the being exists, of the existence itself. So I had no idea. I had no idea what it meant and I didn't know what it meant to be accountable for my thoughts in that moment, to be accountable for the space and be responsible for the space and time that I existed in. Nobody showed me that. And when I would reach out and ask for help and I would go to professionals, in that time they would showed me that. And when I would reach out and ask for help and I would go to professionals, in that time they would tell me.

Adela: 23:08

Still to this, I remember and I'm gonna tell you this story because I was wrong. He was right in some sense. I was, I was wrong in a lot of sense and but he was wrong in some sense too, but he was right. So back in the day, when I was going through my journey of health and I didn't understand what was wrong with me, it was right after my son. I was like I'll get better, I'll do what I need to do. It was after this too, I'm like I'll go, I will seek the help I need to help. Something's wrong with me.

Adela: 23:33

One I didn't know I was in postpartum. I didn't know that I was literally I had no idea what, like. We talked about it a little bit back in my day, and this was back in my day, early 2000, and like 11, 12, 13. So it's not that long ago where postpartum was like there was just coming around the conversations and I didn't know that. And as a young being who was trying to this career, and the way we were taught as women, the way I was raised, was that if you were not at your top, you weren't shit. Period, it didn't matter and you had to be at your top in every aspect of your life or you were not desirable, you were not going to be taken, you were, you would like and you better be an independent woman too, which that's a whole different story.

Adela: 24:21

That being right, there was an independent, super depressed, non-existent being like at all. This being is so independent. But I depend, I am so dependent, like I have such dependability on my husband, on those around me now, and, primarily, my dependency is on God. Period, point blank, it's just, that's it. That's the only person, that's the only being, that's the only creature that I am, like, 100% dependent on, because I cannot do it alone. There's no, this independent living to the life.

Adela: 24:56

We, as human beings, are not meant to be on that level of independence, such separation of our existences, but we are meant to be independent and accountable for our own actions, independent in our thinking, independent in our existence, independent in our feeling, independent in our processes, right, but we are meant to exist together and live together and and and create these, these common pathways and these connections that may separate us in the long run, but like, but when we come together and we put our individual input and we put our individual thought and we know each other, we can always come to a really great, you know, compromise and a conclusion of how we can help each other. And so that being had no idea how to do that, that adela had no idea how to do that. That adela fought with swords, with tanks, with grenades, that adela will blow up the world if you tell her no, if you disagreed with her, and just like she told the doctor. Uh, when I was going back back to the story, when I was going back into getting my help, getting what I needed help, uh, again, not the right thing to do. Don't do this, don't say this, this is not. But I went in, I was telling him my symptoms. I'm like, hey, I'm having pains here, hey, I'm this, hey, I'm that. This is what's happened.

Adela: 26:20

And to be fair and to give him her credit to do, knowing what I know now and the education and the information I've learned now, he was doing the right thing, which was to look at the root cause of a problem and to ask what happened in my life and where this such level of pain is coming from. Because they can't find it in tests. And they couldn't. They did all the tests, all the blood work, all the tests. They could not find the pain, but the pain was real to me. I mean, I could not walk, I could not pick things up. It was so debilitating to the point where I would lose absolute feeling in my legs. I would have to drag myself across the house just to be able to get to one, one place to another, and then I would start to throw things, which is why I had stopped doing hair because at some point I wasn't going to risk hurting someone, and I isolated myself so much because I could not figure out what the problem was.

Adela: 27:24

I didn't understand and he asked me what is your root problem? What happened? I told him mind you, he's also foreign, so he understood more than I did but I was a child. I had no idea. A child who pretended she was an adult at like 27 is like isn't it what I'm doing wrong? Oh, and I'm sitting here and asking him, you know, help me. I'm telling you this is what's going. And I'm crying now, at this point, because, like at this point, I have been in pain for a decade. I mean it started when I was like 16, 15, 16 full-on pain, and I'm 27 now. I had a new mom trying to understand this. Like I know what I'm talking about, but I didn't know how to advocate it, I didn't know how to translate it, I didn't know how to communicate it in an informed way, where it made sense and it wasn't so emotionally overridden.

Adela: 28:24

But when you're in that state and your emotion is so unregulated and your whole being is completely like, just not there the decisions you make and the way you communicate and the way you come off. There's not necessarily too much of a logical thinking behind it or a lot or reasoning, because the emotion is so overwhelming and if you've lived in that state for so long, you can't reason, like you can't reason, and I couldn't reason. So he was, you know, telling me do this, change this, do this. And I'm like you don't understand. I've done all of that. I didn't do all of that. Let's be real. I did not do all of that, didn't do all of that. Let's be real. I did not do all of that.

Adela: 29:09

And he said something to me that I'll never forget right and three things. Two of the things were wrong, semi wrong. One of them was completely right and I was completely wrong. Again, just remember, for the words that I said, I was completely wrong. Don't say these words, don't be mean, but this is what happens when you're not, when you're not stable enough to irrational enough to understand what is happening to you, what the conversation is, and you decide to have a tantrum.

Adela: 29:30

So, as I'm in the middle of my, I'm crying boohoo in Thomas right now. He looks at me. He goes sweetheart, number one, don't say that to people when they're in their despair state and they're like don't sweetheart them, don't, just don't do that. It is the most condescending thing ever. But I got sweetheart because that's what people do. So he's a sweetheart. You're a woman and you're hormonal and it's in your head. Oh, my God, okay. So the next words that came out of my mouth Again, I know myself enough to know what kind of a vile creature I am.

Adela: 30:27

I know myself to know myself enough now specifically to know when I'm willing to just say things because I'm willing to say them and go for them and let it all burn, like fuck it all, let it all burn. And now I can also be like it just might not be right. Adela, he does not mean it that way. It's not what that is. Clarify the questions versus what I said.

Adela: 30:45

Instead of again, again, rationally thinking, instead of calming myself down, I amped myself up more and so I lost it a bit more and threw my full-on tantrum and I threw my hands down and I was like I can't believe you would insult me like that and the depth of like wailing that was happening within me in my head at least in my head, I thought I was calm. In my head I looked calm and in my head I was getting my point across, but in my head I was this tiny little being compared to this giant that was really taking control over my body. So this giant green monster came out and she's losing herself. She's standing right there in front of your screen, that thing right there where you're like, oh no, adela can't possibly. No, adela can. Very much so. And so I lost my being and I looked at him and I was like why don't you go back to manhattan and let it burn and drown in there with it? Just you all alone? Oh, I was.

Adela: 31:40

It was terrible, terrible things to say when you're in an angry space. Okay, so regret those words absolutely, because and I've said plenty of things like that like I'm not kidding, I am not a nice person at all. I'm not. I know myself enough to know that I have a sharp tongue, and but that's the part where I've learned that a sharp tongue will come back to bite me in the ass too. So I better be careful with my words.

Adela: 32:02

And you know, I go up on my way and I'm so, so, so devastated, because not only did he tell me that I was a woman, now I'm just hysterical, right, and I'm crazy and I'm just an emotional being that I can't control her emotions because I'm a woman. Uh, it's, it's, I'm hormonal, like my hormones are off the whack. Like what? No, they're not off the whack. How could my hormones be off the whack? They were off the whack. They were so off the whack like what? No, they're not off the whack. How could my hormones be off the whack? They were off the whack. They were so off the whack.

Adela: 32:28

But the other part was where he said the part. It was really the most insulting to me that he said it was in my head and I could. I could not let that go for years. Honestly, for years afterwards, I could not let that go because he said it was in my head and that stuck with me. Why did that piece stick with me? Because he was right.

Adela: 32:46

I have learned along my journey that if something sticks with me a word, a statement, a sentence, something of an interaction of some way sticks with me, there's some truth to it. Okay, there's some truth to what has been said, that it's stuck to you because there's some glue to you right there. Somebody wouldn't have been throwing some stones or some paper or whatever it is that would stick it. Maybe stones won't stick so much, but you know they throw some stuff but they wouldn't be if it wasn't true. So I decided to take it upon myself and start looking into my head, because if it was on my head myself? And start looking into my head because if it wasn't my head.

Adela: 33:26

See, this is the part about adela today that I, she and I share very much. So is that we're both very, very stubborn and we're both very high overachievers and we both love proving people wrong. We both love proving people wrong. We also love being proved wrong, because it's really exciting for us to be wrong. Maybe not so for her back then, but for me absolutely now.

Adela: 33:44

Please don't think I'm crazy because I've had plenty of therapists tell me that I'm crazy for even referring to myself and the two selves that I have. But I have to like. That is the two night and day self. That is the self that I don't want anymore. It is the self that will forever be a part of me because it grew up with me. It is with me, but it is a self that I don't want anymore. So why would I refer to that self as somebody that is part of me right now, when I've decided that she no longer exists. I don't want that version of me, I don't want those behaviors, I don't want those consequences, I don't want those decisions because they're no good for my reality.

Adela: 34:20

So if I say that I am done with that and that identity and that being, that's crazy. But I have to change my whole view of how I, you know, view human beings and everything else in there and in between and have to, you know, unicorn people. That's not crazy. But me saying that I have to separate my identity from the child of trauma and a woman who grew up in trauma and a young adult who grew up in trauma and a mother and a wife who grew up in trauma, a wife who grew up in trauma, not by the man or family she married but by her own self. But those identities and those labels all come along with that trauma. How could I be a better wife? How could I be a better mother? How could I be a better human being, if I was not going to look at that person that being right there on that screen, you guys myself, if I was not going to look at myself and study this being and say what is wrong with what's going on in my head. And so I went down the rabbit hole let me fix it, okay. So they said you're too erratic, adela. Well, let me see if I can fix my erraticness. You're too this well, let me see if I can fix that. You're too that, let me see if I can fix that.

Adela: 35:31

Was it easy? Hell to the no, but what did I learn? I learned so much control. Am I still Adela? 100%? Yes, I am still the most passionate being. I am light, I am an overachiever. I am so ambitious, I believe so wholeheartedly in the goodness of our existence, of human beings. There's you cannot convince me otherwise. I've had that since forever. That is my existence, that is who I am, that is the definition of me. The rest of all of this that's been placed upon and and I've had to trudge and have to figure out all of those were again labels and narratives that define me by others, not by my own self, and this being on the screen that I'm looking at right now too, like I can't imagine.

Adela: 36:23

I go there sometimes. I go there and I say how does it like? And it's genuinely so difficult for me now unless I'm really in that space and she comes out and I really am in in a space of depressed, this depressed existence, and I need to come back into into myself. Where she emerges to a level where she takes over, then it's I look and I check in on her and I go how did you do it? The grace I have for myself right now, for the being that I was. It brings so much emotion to me that I was sitting here looking at myself, looking at this young woman, this young creature, this young being she's a child and berating her left and right and letting the world berate her, letting the world tell her her worth and where she's at, and letting every, every, a child.

Adela: 37:26

Now, I'm not saying that I didn't have decent parents. I'm not saying I didn't have some of the decent stuff in my life. I had decent things, okay. But when you're raised by children and you're a product of children, it doesn't't matter your age, but when the mind is a child, the child's mind, and that trauma has never healed. It just passed on and passed on, and passed on and passed on.

Adela: 37:53

And, like I said when I took that picture, I remember that day going I don't want to look like that anymore. That was the first time I saw my existence and I could make out the shape of my head and my glasses and where my cheeks go and the the, the curves in my lines, and the first time I could make out my own shape. And that was when I started looking in the mirror, started writing sticky notes and sort of really taking the time to get to know myself. How does my brain work? How does my brain think? How does how do I react? What is my emotional scale? Do I even have one? And if I do, is it so broken that it can't be repaired? Am I smart? Am I as smart as I thought I was? Because I could pass through stuff and I could get through things. But can I really critically think? Can I solve problems? Can I be logical and reasonable? Can I be a contributor in this society and in this world and in my own life? Can I contribute to my life instead of we take it away from it?

Adela: 39:05

I had to really rewire everything from that moment and I take this once a year. I look at this picture and and last year when I looked at it I was in a different state. This year, when I look at it and I'm actually sharing it with you this time. Who I am like. I see her in me, I feel her in me, she's there. But on this other side of life is so much grace, so much love, warmth and empathy for the being like yourself. And it's not a I'm going to not be responsible and accountable for the decisions and the actions of my life Like, but you're going to give yourself grace, you're not going to be so hard on yourself and you're going to look at yourself and say you are only human, you only have a limited amount of time. Be happy, enjoy this life, be in this existence and share existence with just pure joy. Everything matters but nothing matters, and when I was going through this I had. I was on a career path to cosmetology school. I was going to be the number one stylist in the world. I was on my way to do so much stuff. I had a plan that had I stuck to that plan and had I gone down that path and had I really decided and taken it on in the way that I thought I was going to, I would have won. I would have won, but I also would have died young.

Adela: 40:43

That's the part where I'm learning now, where I've always had enough conscious awareness within myself and I've never left my faith, I've never left God, and God has never left me, is because every time I've been in a decision or a position of something that's just so despairingly like I can't handle this anymore, the decision for myself me, like my, not anybody else has always been the right one. I've always been guided to the right part of that, and so when I decided that I was going to live my life the way I needed to, it required me creating a new way to think. It required me creating, and you guys know what I didn't creating. And you guys know what I didn't even know I could create. I didn't know I could paint. I didn't know I could put things together. I didn't know I could style. I didn't know I could. I didn't know I could organize and fold my laundry the way I organize and fold my laundry in such a creative and artistic way. It really is. I promise you guys, when you fall in love, creativity. You find creativity everywhere and you're going to want to create everything about your life to be the way you see it for you and if you see it a certain way, you're going to work your butt off to do it. I promise, I promise, and it's for you, not anyone else, it's for you in your life.

Adela: 41:59

Those accomplishments, those moments, the ones that no one sees, when she was trying to get the whole world to see her, I was so depressed, I was so lost. I was seeking for validation from the whole world and all I needed was redemption. I just needed to redeem my own being. I needed to come back to myself and redeem it Really. That was what it was. I needed to recognize that I was okay, recognize and accept and be forgiving for the things that I had no control over, and also forgive myself for the things that I did have control over, but I was set anyway, did anyway, and all the bad things I did.

Adela: 42:35

Forgive myself for that too, because in some sense and shape or form, I didn't have control over my being in there either. And I'm not saying it's excuses in any shape or form, because if I didn't have control over my being in there either and I'm not saying it's excuses in any shape or form because if I didn't change my behavior right, if I didn't change my path and my reality, then what that would mean is that it it then I was doing the same thing, but since I changed it and I, I can forgive myself because we all make mistakes, even us as the human being. So I'm going to take you from that to this other um thing that I did, because it's so awesome and this is how it started. So you saw the picture and you saw me, the, the, the really in my head, hormonal woman, as they said, but so sad, right, that being is so sad and I want to show you how I've changed that by creating. But before I do that, let's take a quick second and break right and pop into our thing. I want you guys to take a look at our website really quick on here. We have our a, our website in here, obviously, but we have our donation site is up. I'm so excited and if it will pull up for me right now, we're having some here we go, we're having some issues on our little thing, but our donation website is up. Uh, here's some of the past work that we've done and I'll, like I said, I'll share with you a few things in here because I think it's important and you can support right here. You can do a one-time or a monthly payment and donation, whatever you want to do. However, you want to help us out that way. We would really appreciate it, because it funds these initiatives right. I don't ask for donations and I wasn't asking for donations until we were ready to actually make moves with our organizations, and now we are. We're in the process of next year making some big moves with the organization because we've done a lot of work.

Adela: 44:31

I'm very proud of the work that I was able to accomplish in my state of being that I had no idea that I was really doing, but I knew something was right for me. I knew that this path was right for me no matter what, and I've had to go through these trials and tribulations to get here. I've had to really paint my own way. I've had to create my own way, and I was not proud of it at all when I was doing it. Let me tell you something I was not proud of myself. The amount of shit I gave myself while I was doing everything was insane. But back again, after you reflect, year after year, year after year, and you see where you are and how far you've come, and you can give yourself grace for what you didn't do, but give yourself thanks and credit for what you did accomplish. It goes a long way. It goes a long way, and so I have to give myself credit.

Adela: 45:15

Right, I have to give myself credit for not being in a good state of mind, not understanding what's happening within my being, within my existence, not understanding how I'm functioning or why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling, why I'm thinking the way I'm thinking. Being told I'm crazy, being told it's impossible. Being told, excuse me, to pick a lane, being told to just give up at some points too, like this is stupid, adela. Nobody cares about creating organizations that will be helpful to humans and serving. Nobody cares about service work. Nobody cares about being good or kind in there. You can't run an honest business, you can't be an honest being and do these things I'm these are the things that were said to me Adela fix everything, like literally all through this time. I was doing it and I would feel the amount of times I would go down on myself and put myself down because I would listen to that. And then I look now and I'm like holy shit, I created magazines, I created photos, I created, I shaved my damn head Like what, what have I done? I've done so many things and I'm so proud of them. So I want to continue creating. I want to continue and I want to be there and I want to push. So I'd really, really appreciate if you guys go onto our website, invest in change and invest in change for us. Help me out, help us out, donate right here.

Adela: 46:43

A dollar makes a huge difference, I promise you. Now we get charged for all of this. I'm just letting you know. We get charged like 40 or 33 cents per dollar, so only like 60, some cents. I'm not good at math. 22 cent, 23 cents plus 67 cents, that's 100. I don't know, I'm not very good at math, um, but we get somewhere along that. So just know, we get charged on that. That's fine. We have to pay fees, we have to pay our dues, we have to do that. But just to kind of heads. If you want to add a little extra, that's fine too. If you have the extra change, that's not. If not. Again, every penny counts. Every penny helps.

Adela: 47:14

I'm going to thank you because your support has been able to get me to here and your belief in me has been able to get me to here, and your faith and what I'm doing has gotten me to here. So thank you so much. We're live on our website on that. So make a donation and we really, really, really appreciate it. And you can leave us a note and we'll read them on the podcast and give a special shout out to everybody. And if you donate $100 or more, you get a special, special treat, special box, special stuff, all kinds of stuff. $50 more There'll be a little something special for you. $20 and less we thank you for your support, we'll shout you out, we'll give you all of our information and you can come on and give us a post and we'll read the comments and we know that every penny counts, every dollar counts. Now I understand that and again, I appreciate you for even letting me get to here and allowing me to do what I do best and that is to create. So let's get into this creating process.

Adela: 48:15

I wanted to share this video with you because I think that this is and this is just a part of it when I started Project Human you'll get to see this I want to share this with you. This is Adela. This is our very first think video. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was so grateful for a human who came into my life to help me DK from DK films. She was fantastic and helping me out to get through this. And so let's, let's so sorry if that was so loud in your ears because that was loud in mine. I apologize to the core of me. But let's look at, look at this little face. Do you see her? She's trying so hard. Oh, oh, my goodness, I'm so proud of her. I'm so. You have to be proud of your being, you guys. You have to be proud of your being. So let's take a look at this.

Adela: 49:07

We are the voice for those who cannot speak. We are the eyes for those who cannot see. We are the ears for those who cannot hear. We are the heart for those who cannot feel. We are united in love, equality and trust in our mission for change in conversation about mental health. Who are we? We are a group of artists and visionaries who believe the world is yours. What is our mission? To bridge the gap in communication, education and positive expression on mental health within ourselves and the community. Project Human Incorporated is starting the Declutter Challenge for everyone in the community from October 1st to November 1st, and we're challenging all of you in our efforts to help ourselves and the community declutter our mental, physical and emotional state. For more information on the challenge, please visit adelahittalcom.

Adela: 49:58

So, as you can see, this is before. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, what I was going to do and any of that Like this, is all before that. I just wanted to, and I knew that starting the way to start something was to declutter, right, and so how are we going to declutter, right? And so how are we going to declutter? I learned that so much of our physical space things that are not done, things that are forgotten or things that are just somewhere become just like RAM that's being used up in our brain and just like just being stored to memory, but it never gets cached out or cleared out. So it just builds and builds and builds and becomes a monica closet in your big brain and then your big brain becomes the full bonica closet. So you have to declutter it, and when we started this and I started this I decluttered my house. I was like, if we're gonna do this, I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna do it step by step. I had, literally from my driveway all the way down, two houses. I had to talk to my neighbors and be like I'm piling up your trash because I had to declutter.

Adela: 51:08

I became a hoarder during that time, like that. What you see, adela was a hoarder during that time. I was a hoarder. I was a hoarder everything and anything, because gosh forbid that I didn't have something, gosh forbid that I. I wasn't capable of saving some way. And becoming that hero complex is such a in trauma. It's such a like real thing. When you're experienced trauma to the levels that I have and others have you, all you want to do is save people so they never feel the way you feel. All you want to do is protect everyone around you and be the one because no one else could. No one else could do it for you, so you can do it for them. No one else but you can. And then you become dependent on being their hero versus your own and again re-engineering your thinking and finding a new way to process some things like maybe I should refocus it on myself and declutter my own self. That might be helpful. So we took a day and took everything out and whatever did not make it back in that house at the end of the day, when it came dark, it didn't matter, it was in the trash and then we still had to get a dumpster.

Adela: 52:26

When I say that we can become so overly obsessed with hoarding things and it could be little things like my, my, my, um, what is it called? Now? My fabric room right now, my sewing room, my craft room, is a cluttered mess. I have collected so much. That is my hoarder room right now. I, my sewing room, my craft room, is a cluttered mess. I have collected so much. That is my hoarder room right now I have. So I need that. I need that. What, if I need that? I need that. I can't completely eradicate the hoarder out of me right now, but I can control them. I can control them so much to one room and I'll go back in there and I'll clean it out and I'll put it into a mess and it'll be on there. But the rest of my being doesn't have to be that way. The rest of my house doesn't have to be that way. I can actually have a physical, closet, physical space. That is, that it's just my own clutter mess and I'm okay with it, but the rest of it doesn't.

Adela: 53:14

And I used to think that as long as my house was clean, but my room was a mess. That was fine because nobody. Nobody was in there, nobody would go in there, and that was a reflection of my mind. Right, your bedroom is a reflection of your mind. And when it's a mess and no one goes in there, no one's in there and you completely avoid it. You avoid it yourself and no one goes. Who's going to clean it up? Who's going to fix it? So every time I'm in my space where I start to feel down, the first room I clean is my bedroom, the first room I make space for and declutter and ensure that it is my bedroom, because it's the most private part of my existence. It's the most private part, just like my brain is, my mind is. No one goes in there, so I better be the one to go in there and clean it up and take care of it, right? No one's going to clean my sock drawer, laundry drawer, like no one's going to do that but me. So I better get in there. And when I realized that that was hard because I avoided them and I avoided everything in my room and everywhere else, now when I clean my room, I have more energy to clean everything else. It just spirals down the road because my my mind becomes cleaner.

Adela: 54:24

So decluttering whether you declutter once a year, every three months, six months, whatever this isn't about does it bring me joy? Do I keep it? No, like you declutter, you clean, you purge, you get rid of and then you make a conscious decision that you're not going to clutter it back in until you and this isn't about living a minimalist style, like I have so much stuff everywhere, but it's about the things that you know what you have. You know the space that they have. It's not using space and empty wasted space, like your drawers right, like your kitchen drawers, and not like it's not a clutter mine, I'm not saying that I don't have them, I have those two. We have that. It can't be perfect, okay, but I'm talking about on a bigger scale. So take a look at your house, take a look at that. Maybe you could declutter this year. That could be a good thing. Reflect and declutter, that would be a new one.

Adela: 55:08

Um, so we did that, started that. And then a couple of um let me see if it's right here couple of do-do-do-do it's on this one. Couple of uh, I don't know, maybe a year later after that, I met a friend of mine, or maybe even a little bit, I don't know. Maybe a year later after that, I met a friend of mine, or maybe even a little bit, I don't know. Sometime after that, I met a friend of mine named Will who had become who's become such a dear friend of mine Not only a dear friend of mine, but a supporter in everything I've done and has actually ensured that the Define, the Narrative documentary is going to happen. And because of his little documentary that we started here, we've started a full documentary.

Adela: 55:47

So I wanted to share some parts of this with you because I want again. The reason why I'm doing this isn't so that we can look at Adela and be like Adela is so great. Ah, it's not. It's not at all. What this is for me is to tell you that you have to reflect upon yourself. You have to look at yourself and you have to go back to see the growth you have. You have to be wanting to be responsible enough to retrace your steps. Look back at your life, be accountable for what you did and what you didn't do. Give yourself grace for where you are or where you are not, or where you were and where you were not. Make decisions today that will impact you for where you want to go and where you're going to continue to stay, not the past. So there's a process to really coming over to the other side, as call it, from this state of absolute survival and absolute fight all the time to a peace, to a living state, to an existing state, to a space where it doesn't honestly like today everything I'm like sitting.

Adela: 56:55

Sometimes I'll get into my head and be like you're not doing good enough, adela, and I said that even with this podcast, even with everything I'm doing here, adela, you're not doing good enough. You're not doing good enough. You should be already at this, you should already be at that, you should already be at this. But damn, adela, you are one person, one human being. You are one human being who's running a whole organization, who's creating programs, who's marketing, who's promoting, who's doing this. Yes, you have help here and there, but you are one being 24-7. You are one being in your mind, in your bedroom. You're also a mother and a wife and a friend and everything else in between. When can you just be a human being and exist?

Adela: 57:38

So, instead of striving for the successes of accolades that I've strived for before, even, as you'll see with Isadella now, I strive for my peace constantly for his school project. He was in film school at the time and he said, hey, I need to do a short little documentary, you know, and do it on somebody who you know, who's inspiring, who's been through some stuff, and I was like sure, I mean, I don't see again, no idea the concept that I have of my being now and what I've gone through and where I'm at, and this isn't me holding me to a pedestal. This is I've gone through and where I'm at, and this isn't me holding me to a pedestal. This is acknowledging the fact that I've survived some shit in my life and I'm here and I have a leg to stand on. I have two of them, to be honest, to stand on, and I have a ground, I have a foundation and I know what I'm talking about in my existence and this Adela was just beginning to see herself that way now, whether or not I had a conscious awareness that I was doing all of these things, I didn't. I didn't personally, like I don't.

Adela: 58:47

I remember doing this interview a bit, but I don't remember. I don't remember being as poised as I, as I think I am. Maybe I'm not and I don't remember. Uh, I just don't remember how it felt to be there. It was such a just like with everything else in my life before. It's such a blip, it's such a pass through on get it done, don't say anything, don't look at it, don't think it is done. But I think that's kind of sometimes a little bit of a detriment.

Adela: 59:23

I was born and raised for some parts of my life in Bosnia-Herzegovina, formerly known as Yugoslavia, back in 1989, before Tito. Well, right after Tito died and then Yugoslavia dispersed, first of all, what do I look like? Thinking I know history and I know what I'm talking about. I'm sure I'm wrong in so many of those things that I just said there, but I was right in some parts. But look at, oh, my goodness, you, you're a little child. I just want to give her a hug. It just she needs a hug. So bad andnia had to give me kind of became up and then it spiraled into a whole lot of other things. But yeah, bosnia, I'm here's what I wanted to share right when, when, a being of now, again, adela, today, and that Adela, the being there, right there, the stoicism that I see and like it's a matter of fact, and this happened and this and it's so serious and it's so well, and I'm not saying I'm not like that, I am very much like that, but the trauma is in full control here.

Adela: 1:00:43

Trauma, my trauma is in full control here. Trauma, my trauma is in full control here. And the fact that I can see it now. I see it in my body, I see it in my eyes, I see it in the way my face is. I see it in my jawline. My goodness, the eyes alone. The eyes alone are so much darker and I get makeup and I get all this stuff at all, but there's so much darker in an essence of existence like this.

Adela: 1:01:10

Being here was in such a trauma mode. A lot of other things, but yeah, I mean the country that you would have farmers markets and you could walk and play with kids. Kids would literally run across town by themselves at the age of like five, like no joke, and you would be okay because everybody knew, everybody knew everybody from across towns. You could know one person in the little city and they would know you across probably like 150 miles and they'd know your parents and they'd know you know. It was really nice. To be honest, I don't remember the first.

Adela: 1:01:41

So I'd like to say that that is all true and I'd like to think that that is all true, but I think that I also had this idea of in my head of what I wanted my life to have been, or it was an idea based off of stories that were passed down to me to be told that we are this. Everybody knows everybody. We're a small little country, we're small. 150 miles is a long miles. Stories that were passed down to me to be told that we are this, everybody knows everybody. We're small little country, we're small. 150 miles is a long miles. Okay, that might be my whole country, okay, 150 miles wide.

Adela: 1:02:10

So again, it just shows you that when you're in a state of trauma, the way that, where you're at and what, what you're trying to attach to details and facts in these moments, versus the experience is, is oh, wow, adela, two different adelas, 15 to 18 years of my life. Very well, um, the first couple years, um, I do have some recollection of. We used to live up on a hill and my parents built a house and we would overlook our little village, and then the war happened. You have the governments that come into and then the rise and falls of things and then they destroy it all. Prior to that slightly. But in 1990 the war outside of what was kind of happening, or the talks of war, kind of reached Bosnia. It was kind of like, okay, this is what we're going to do. And literally overnight life changed. It went from being sleeping and looking out the window and seeing bright moons and stars and to waking up to a burnt village, to waking up to people burnt village, to waking up to people screaming to, to wake it up to just all kinds of stuff.

Adela: 1:03:26

And I wasn't the only one necessarily lost a lot of family or friends and I was fortunate that I didn't lose the immediate family, if you will like, my mom, dad, my, oh, that brings me so much, oh. So I didn't allow myself to cry. Um, I gotta plug my phone in there. We go camera work back at handle. I didn't, I didn't allow myself to cry back.

Adela: 1:03:55

Then you can even see there that I'm holding it back, like, like, it's just a matter of fact that something so terrible and tragic happened to a child, to a being, that something so big happened that I am just it's a matter of it happened. It is what it is. And you know, I'm fortunate, I'm this, I'm that and, yes, all of those things are true. But when you're looking at the impact it has on the actual individual human being, the concept of its own is that, my gosh, like it suppresses. It suppresses everything. It suppresses your need to feel, it suppresses your need to experience, your need to, because what's the point, right? What's the point when you've just experienced the most tragic and gruesome thing of your life at the hands of another human being? What's the point?

Adela: 1:04:56

And I know how that felt there, like I, I see it all over my face. I see it all over my face. I feel it all over my body, my everything. And then to sit and go, you know, but I was one of the lucky ones. Again, all true, but to not allow yourself to feel. And the reason I can talk about it this way now is because I literally went through the feeling modes. The last three years of my life right now have been about strictly feeling this experience. Has it been easy? No, have I broken down and cried at a times and places and spaces that I have no idea? And have I felt? Yes, I have. It has not been fun and I don't like it and the things I've learned? I don't like it at all, but it happened. And that is part of claiming yourself your story, claiming the things that have happened to you, and then saying shit that sucked. How could we have allowed that to happen and how are we allowing it to continue to happen? That's a whole other story and question in itself.

Adela: 1:05:56

Sisters, I was so fortunate, so fortunate, but other people lost a lot more. So my uncle escaped here, actually right after he was freed from prison, and then we were. We lived in Bosnia for a couple more years on the run and then in 97, we got papers. We didn't know if my uncle was alive or not and just got one word that hey, you've got an application to come to America. And my dad I remember this so vividly because my dad said, no, we're not leaving. Like, this is our home, this is where we're staying, and we were in a hideout at that time too and he said, no, we're not leaving. And my mom just looked at me and she was like you know, I leave with or without you kind of thing. And having a woman make a decision specifically in that time or in that place, and to defy a man in that, to know that history of that family was really like. I remember that moment because my mom, like, stood up and I was like and I knew when my mom went through it was a woman part of that, but I stood up to that and then we came here. That part I vaguely remember.

Adela: 1:07:05

I remember us sitting around a table it was a square table that we had in this house and back in and we still, I mean, I still do it here too. We have these big tall tables in the middle of our dining tables with our, with our couches table that we had in this house and back in and we still, I mean, I still do it here too. We have these big, tall tables in the middle of our, uh, dining tables with our, with our couches and, um, I remember sitting on one side and my dad was on this side. I think my mom was standing up and she was holding the papers and she was saying this to him and you, you know, like, hey, we're doing this, blah, blah, blah, blah, and he's like we're not going, and she like, and again, as a child memories are not the greatest, but I do remember her like putting them down and going. I'm leaving with or without you, we're leaving with or without you.

Adela: 1:07:50

And that was a part of me where I was like, oh my god, like he she's making the decisions, because up to that point he made all the decisions right, like he had made all the decisions for us. My mom had asked him to leave, you know, before the war started, because there wasn't rumors my mom had mentioned some things or whatever, but because of where we're at and the culture and everything, like the man's, the man and the words, the man, and so this time she was like no, and I think back on that, I mean in the time and in the space that she was in, and she was 24, 25 at the time, uh, maybe even 20, at the same time that I was when I started this journey of my own self. And I remember I can't, I can't like I look at it this way, I can't imagine being 24 years old, being ripped away from my family, from my children, my children, in a jail cell, me having to go and walk and potentially step on a mine, potentially be put into something, just so, like I am a booby trap, you know, decoy, decoy, like to think that my mom had to go through that, like the stories I've heard nowadays and where I'm at, and to see that child and to know that I've come to here like this level of who I am, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Bow down and credit to the, to the people who do the thing, the things that they have to do. Bow down to those who are really set like bow down to overcoming all of that and still surviving and potentially trying to live.

Adela: 1:09:17

Now I have, I look at this being here, go and I look at myself today and I'm like Adele, you have nothing, nothing to complain about, like you didn't even suffer. You didn't even suffer. You have no memory, you have no physical scars. You have been protected so deeply, so, on such a spiritual and granular level, that you have no concept of that. And it is the truth for me today, not for her right, not for the blue-haired girl who was just trying to find her way and was trying to get attention Not at all. Now, I'm not saying my hair is not colorful. I love my colors. I'm just saying this is no reference to anybody who has got blue hair and think you know me, think something. I'm just saying I had blue hair. I was there shaved at all. I'm just saying those were my attention days. I know what they were for me. They may or may not be for you. They were for me, I don't know.

Adela: 1:10:12

I haven't looked back since in that sense of any of that. I've accepted everything that this new country has given Because I have freedom. Ten years weren't fun. I was the oldest of six kids Bullshit Talk about. I haven't looked back since. The all I Look that look right there. That's the look. That's the look. That's the look Adela gives herself when she gives others the bullshit look. I haven't looked back since. You know what I was doing then. I was chasing it. I was chasing so hard an identity and a culture. I was looking back like there was nobody business. I thought my neck was man. I never thought I'd get to the front. I never thought this neck had a possibility of going to the front. Are you kidding me? I never look back. That face right there. That is adela's face. So are you? Seriously? I still have the same face. That's some shit. You just said adela, that's some bullshit. You just said she even I even called myself out right there. Ah, okay, so that just that's funny. My dad's an alcoholic. Um, my mom had a lot of, obviously a lot of issues. Remember that moment because my mom, like, stood up and I was like and I knew when my mom went through any of that. I've accepted everything that this new country has given because I have freedom. Ten years weren't fun. I was the oldest of six kids. My dad's an alcoholic. My mom had a lot of, obviously a lot of issues mental health issues, of course, medical issues on top of that and so she spent years on antidepressants and drugs and trials and this and that and electroshock.

Adela: 1:11:37

There you can hear it in my voice and in my chest how I'm trying to swallow it like that's normal. I'm just stating it like well, that's just normal. You know, it's normal. It's normal for people to be in such states. It's normal for us to feel, it's normal for people to want to off themselves. It's normal. Normal that's how I'm saying it, that's at least what I'm getting from my own perspective be in all kinds of different things, to kind of have a normal sense of life.

Adela: 1:12:13

And you know I took the and you know I took the brunt of the punches. I took the brunt of the things I needed to take care of, to take care of the kids that needed to be here. I attempted suicide on multiple attempts. I went through the eating disorders, I went through cutting, I went through completely hopelessness of nothing like nothing. How can I come to America, come to here and like, have you know? You go through the family issues that you're going through and you go through the bullying that you're going through, and then you're an immigrant and now you know now the whole status quo of what you are and you don't know English that well. And so now you're what do you do? Like there's a whole and you're 11. So how have you changed to overcome, like, the struggles of ptsd? I love him, it was because.

Adela: 1:13:00

So I say that and I think back on it now and I can't imagine what she's feeling because I don't have the concept of it anymore and I I'm sure that if I dug deep, deep, deep deep, I would I absolutely would but to look at myself and to see how strong I was trying to be and pretend that I was okay, that everything within me was okay, when I was literally on the verge of tears with every word of my life. I can just imagine how I was when I was talking to human beings, whether I was on a verge of tears or anger, whether I was on a verge of I. No wonder people be like Adela you. We never know what we're gonna get with you, because you didn't. She was. She was going through it again. Understandable, absolutely given the grace and then the credit where it's due. But man, was she a handful? Let me tell you something.

Adela: 1:14:01

My son had made me do that the night before. He said hey, mom, I need you to turn me into chaos and I do makeup like I'm a makeup artist. At that time that's what I'm a makeup artist. I do hair and makeup. That's the extent of my powers and my knowledge of what I do. So you know he's like turn me into chaos. I'm like, dude, I do makeup. I don't know what to do. Come on, he goes. Mom, you said you'd try. I'm like you, little sucker. So I was like you know what? Fine, I don't know what to do. So then I was like tell me what chaos is?

Adela: 1:14:30

I look it up and it's this weird painting thing. I'm like oh, that's a little tooth thing. I draw that. It's black, it's dots. I'm like that looks easy. He goes, but you need to do your face too. I'm like, well, I mean, I beat my face all day. Okay, I can beat it. And he's like, no, I'm going to pick the Night of the Dead. And he like picks the half face, full face. And I'm like, so you're really setting me up for failure, like you're not even giving me a chance. And you see that painting right there that I painted that. And then we turned that painting into the rebirth project, into a music video, and so go watch that, because that is the inspiration for me to start healing this journey.

Adela: 1:15:10

I said, if I was gonna do this and I was gonna let myself heal, let myself be something I was gonna be, do it through expressing. And that's what, exactly what I did. I art is such a way. You don't have to be a great artist. I promise you, you don't you. This is not about whether it's about expressing what you're feeling, and colors and and mediums and different textures and different palettes tell stories of your life that you may or may not know it.

Adela: 1:15:36

And I look at her right there like she had this Power Ranger hat on. She tried to be a businesswoman. She the amount of contradictions upon myself right there is insane. I am an artist who is a structured with a beanie and hurt like are you kidding me? Um, now I know who I am, right, just because I can do all the things that I'm doing, and those are skills. I know who I am now.

Adela: 1:15:58

Versus that, I was trying to figure out and trying to navigate and understand every part of me, where I'm at, where I'm going, who I'm with. All of that and Power Rangers has been my thing and, to be honest, I haven't been able to watch Power Rangers since Jason David Frank's passing and he took his own life two years ago now, and it was right after, in this time too, and to me as a kid, as an adult kid, obviously they were my own armor, ok, so I would put my hat on, I would put my headset on, I would take my paintbrushes with me everywhere, like I, really, during this time. Mind you, this is a 30 something year old Adela. This is not. This is like a 30 year old Adela. This is not somebody like now like or, or I mean you know, in her teens like. This is a 30 year old Adela. So please have no shame in your age game or where you're at because she's doing her thing right there and, yeah, I just.

Adela: 1:16:56

It's really cool to look back and to see how far I've come. It's awesome to see what I've been able to do and the emotional structure I've been able to maintain. It's also amazing to see the changes that you can make upon yourself, in your life and in your reality when you stick and you commit to it. All of this is when I decided to even do this podcast. I thought about am I going to react to different videos, to different people, to different narratives, different stories? Like, how is I going to kind of do this?

Adela: 1:17:28

My whole thing has always been this is about the reflection, this is a truth conversation. These are about looking at yourself within yourself and recognizing that you, you're being a responsible for the creation of your life. And how can I judge or talk about anybody else's life when I don't know anything about them? But a 10 second clip, 15 second clip. But I know myself like I know her. I know her like the like I know my kid now, and I don't know my kid, which also tells you that I don't know her enough either. And so how could I ever know another being, how could I ever have any concept when another being is going through, feeling where they're at. All I can do is love and accept and show them grace and have faith that they'll find their way and be the anchor that they need when they need to be. Because I cannot. And to take that responsibility and that burden upon myself and to put it upon myself when I don't even know myself, are you kidding me? Of course you're going to go crazy and deranged. It's like do it, do it. And I'm like, okay, fine, like let's try it. And I did it, dude, I did it. I didn't know it was good, I had no idea I was good, I had no clue, I was good.

Adela: 1:18:52

Through painting that one face, I found art and I went into dwelling into body painting, completely taken. You can see the light coming out of her right here. Compared to the beginning, I'm trying to navigate this light and art and being here, you can see that, like you can see myself coming out right here. So much because it's it's expression, it's feeling, it's it's it's a way of saying things that you don't have the words to say. And when my son asked me to paint him and he said, mom, do this. I was trying to find the picture, to pull it up, but of course not at this moment in time is it going to be there. So it's in one of our spaces. But when he said, mom, I need you to do this and paint this, you said you would try. Try that part, man, that part. And I did, and I didn't know and I surprised myself. You can surprise yourself. You can surprise yourself so well. You don't even know how great you are until you try. And now your try might lead you a different path and you may change your mind.

Adela: 1:19:54

It's okay, you did not waste time. You did not waste time. You did not lose anything. What you did was gain knowledge, information about yourself. That's what you did. Everybody's going to fit to gain information and knowledge about everybody else, because it's the way our world runs. It is runs on information and information and on blackmail and on what can I get out of and the most out of this? How can I get the most dirt on you? Well, my dirt is all out here. Like you don't have to get my. I know my dirt, all my dirt. I don't need your dirt. I don't want your dirt because my gosh, my dirt, is dirty enough and I still cleaning that shit up. So you want me to take it on, your information and all this. No, no, no, no, no, thank you, and if you really want to fish down mine, by all means here, take it, clean it up, because it ain't like you are not exposing anything I don't know. And so to be able to go back and look at yourself and go, man, you've come so far, you've done so great. You should be so proud. I am so proud of that human, that blue hair girl.

Adela: 1:20:56

First of all, really quick, let's talk about those bangs. Compared to these bangs, okay, those were unintentional bangs. I used to work at a barber shop and I had a barber at the time who liked to give an extra layer of a hairline, and he did that. So my hairline went back a little bit more than it should have, and so when it was growing in, that was the part of my hairline that was cut off, and so I had unintentional bangs. These are intentional. These were all done by me. I did them on purpose and you can see the difference. But that one was not me. So let's just talk about that a little bit because, uh, that was not a style fashion choice. I was not ahead of my time, even though I seem to be quite a bit, but I was not. That was total accident and I just rocked it, rocked it like I rock everything else. So yeah, here's me coming to light A human body and putting what was in my head into a story piece, and that's been my canvas so far, my favorite canvas.

Adela: 1:21:55

And I went into painting on canvases actual canvases to photography. You guys, can I just give you a quick that right, there is my first canvas painting. I sketched and, like, did I actually sat down and I did that. That was my very, very, very, very, very, very first one and I gifted it to my friend, will, who helped me complete this project and he has the original he has, but that was my very first one. I've never, I never painted anything, but that is, that image is the story of my whole life.

Adela: 1:22:28

When I talk about suicide or I talk about awareness or talk about life or death, I'm not because the bathtub has always been a source of despair for me and and I've had to face it I mean I, I washed my father's and his army buddies uniforms, bloodied uniforms, full, you know, in the tub, and that was just you put it in and it's blood, like you're literally washing out others blood, and it just my hands did that. And then, you know, I found my mom in the bathtub with her wrist slit and she doesn't talk about it that way. I never talked about it, in a sense that I've talked about it with her once, but it's very hard for her to talk about it, obviously. But it's also something I've had to talk about and figure out because I've tried to do that right, like I tried to do the same pattern, because I didn't understand and we didn't have these conversations and we weren't willing to have these conversations because they're uncomfortable and for me they're the easiest conversation to have. I'm more uncomfortable having a conversation about what I'm going to eat, what color I have to pick. You know, having to choose a detail of something else that I am about.

Adela: 1:23:38

This Mental health and having these real life conversations are like what I existed and what I know. These are easy for me, but living in the real world with people, I don't know how to do that. Those are so difficult. I don't understand. I am so uncomfortable and just I don't understand. I am so uncomfortable and just I don't know how to do that. And so when I look at it that way and I go well, they don't even know how to be in my space and I don't know how to be in their space. Then one of us has to start a conversation. Then who's more comfortable in their space of conversation? I am. I am way more comfortable in my space of conversation than I am in someone else's, or someone else's and theirs.

Adela: 1:24:10

Then I'll just start talking. I'll just start talking about the story. I'll talk, start talking about the experience of that life and her life, because I have resigned myself that I've had to separate two lives to be able to live this one. This life that I have today is of absolute and utter, pure, pure bliss, joy, privilege and and blessing, and there's nothing more than like God's heaven is what I'm living in right now, compared to Satan's hell that I lived in, and so I had to separate that. That being is not me. I don't belong in there. I'm not saying that I have not been redeemed, I've not been saved, I have not been. But she also died in that space, like that whole story died.

Adela: 1:24:51

Now I get to carry on the memory and I get to carry on the story and I get to carry on the honor of sharing these stories and these experiences, but not necessarily from my perspective, because even though I live them, I understand them, I don't remember them and it's difficult. So all I can do is share it from an artistic perspective, in which is when I paint it, when I express it that way, that's what I can talk about. And so when I did this painting, this was a rebirth project. This was me going through and telling the story of the tub and what people do in the tubs and why they do it and what my visuals were, and you know, the therapy that I got from just being able to do that was insane. And then to be able to turn it into a music video and to express it in a way that I never thought I could like, it's insane.

Adela: 1:25:38

Canvas, and I went into painting on on canvases, actual canvases to photography, um, to design, to, to creating productions. Now, also, how conceited do you have to be to make up a magazine that's got your own name, called adela bill? Because and the reason okay, so the reason that came about was because one of my clients, when I wasn't doing hair, she came in and she's like every time I come to you it's like I'm coming into your own world. It's the Adelaville, and everybody gets their own little color and their own little like rainbow house and life and all that. I'm like welcome to Adelaville.

Adela: 1:26:13

And I took it and I run with it. Because that's what I do I take things and I run with them and I'm an opportunist in every shape or form and I will take an opportunity and I will run it. So whether or not it works out, I don't know, but doesn't mean I'm not going to take the opportunity and run it. So that's what I did. I took the opportunity to run it. We made three magazines um, in my name, haha, because why not? And then we did it to where it was supposed to be, which was for project human. Because ultimately, that's what it is right, it's, it's the it's, it's doing so many different things.

Adela: 1:26:42

In the aspect of coping with my own ptsd. I know exactly that I'm gonna succeed and I know exactly why I did that because I desire. I desire the feeling that gives me this peace. I found it. I found this peace that gives me purpose in my own life. That doesn't put me onto the social standards or norms. I can't change what happened to me. I can't and I never want to. I am who I am For every bully, for every person that called me a name, for every person that said I wasn't nothing, for every family member that did the things that they did, for every person, anything and every light thing that life threw at me.

Adela: 1:27:21

I would not be here if it wasn't for that. But I also know I wouldn't be here if I didn't have enough inner self-strength to say, like, I deserve to be here. But if you take a new approach, a new method, a new way and art was my way all of this, everything that we're at to this moment, was my way. Never thought for a moment it would lead me to here. Ever, not even a slightest bit ever. Listen that last part still to the truth, still those words. I found my peace in art. I found my peace in expressing. I found my peace in creating. Uh, I found my peace in existing, and if it wasn't for it, I would not be here. And so, just like this is the, I want to show you one more piece, um, because this is the rawest form of Adela that you'll get to see, and you'll get to see this more in the documentary.

Adela: 1:28:18

We're going to be sharing that, more information about it next year, in 2025. But to find the narrative, this documentary is coming out and I'll kind of share this process that I've slightly talked to you about a little bit, but you'll really really get to see things that no one's seen yet the footage behind the scenes, all the hard work of the projects, of all of this fine-tuned over these last couple years, of how I've learned to define who I am and where I'm at and define my worth and to recognize myself as a good human being, not a terrible one, and to see myself as a force to be reckoned with in a good way and to become a stable creature, to also become very defined in my narrative and what I'm speaking, to become strong and my words that I'm saying and not to just speak words to speak words. So, while she knew what she was trying to say, she was also just speaking words to speak words, without actual context or understanding of what she was saying. So there's a lot of growth that's happened from that Adela and the star to today's Adela and where we're at, and I want to share that with you and again, not because I want to be seen, I want to be looked at. I want to be the center of attention. I really, really don't. I've tried for years to get some other people to be faces. Nobody wants to be the face, but how can anybody be the face of your story, right? How can anybody be the face of your idea or the face of what you know is only in your mind, in your head and where you're at? No one can. So you have to step up to the plate, you have to become more accountable, responsible and you have to show face in that way. And I had to take some time to do that, because you know I did. And here we go. I want to share this last one with you, because this one, this moment right here, is my favorite moment of my, of everything I've done.

Adela: 1:29:56

It was when I shaved my head and it was in that moment that I realized that I had let go of the last bit of Adela that I knew. You see where I come from. Having hair on your head meant that you were pretty. Having long red hair like I did meant that you were an exception, and doing anything outside of that would make you well unacceptable and you would be ugly and you would not be pretty. And so when I was 16 and we moved out here, I decided to be ugly unacceptable and change my hair color, chop my hair off into black, you know, from long, beautiful red hair to bam black hair, jet black, went into the dark phase and that was when my whole that should have been an indication of expression in its artist purest form, the.

Adela: 1:30:46

And that's the thing again, when we look at kids in high schools and we look at children and we look at people through their stages, when they're expressing through their clothing, through their hair, through their some may be just that they really do love that aesthetic and that's who they are, but most of the time they are trying to define their own being, their own identity, their own existence. And navigating from one extreme to the other is like a seesaw, because you don't know how to balance yet, so you just go from one extreme to the other is like a seesaw, because you don't know how to balance yet, so you just go from one end to the other and back and forth. And that's what I did for the longest and until I shaved my head and I let that go and decided where I was going to be and I got off the seesaw and let it just kind of rest and then realize that I don't even need to be on that seesaw. Seesaw doesn't belong to me. Um, it really was like I didn't know how to transform. I didn't know how to make the changes until I did that.

Adela: 1:31:40

Now I'm not saying go out there, shave your head. I'm not saying, have this liberating moment, have this whole thing, but I'm also saying go out there and shave your head and have a liberating moment and have a moment. Or the idea of that, like the idea of shedding something that is no longer you, the idea of letting go of the last bit of you that you're holding on to because it has some sort of an identity attached to it, or some story of you in your being and hair. For me was that. So this is the little preview we did for our project and me and my this is my favorite part of ever Like these words, this Adela, this right here, you get to see like, like raw, almost naked, almost, and just get to like. That is, that was the, that was the beginning of me, of Adela today. Like everything, I'm supposed to be everywhere I'm supposed to go this whole process like this is like I breathe. I never want to go this whole process like this is like I breathe. I never want to stop creating like that. That is Adela. That was Adela, this right here, that was the start of it. This little Adela. I never want to stop. I never want to stop creating.

Adela: 1:32:52

I I, when I started this and this is again 2020, we're talking about four years ago now, in this moment, people would ask me Adela, what do you want to do? You got to make a path, you got to pick a path. What do you want to do? What do you want to do? What do you want to do? And my answer is always I want to create. I don't care what, I just want to create myself the identity of my own existence. I wanted to create this idea of Adela, of who she is now, who she was and who she's supposed to be, but who she is, and connect her to who I actually am.

Adela: 1:33:31

And you know that was a hard part, because when you suffer from dissociative amnesia, when you suffer from the complex ptc that I do, and the memories and the identification, the timelines, nothing makes sense, like nothing makes sense in my life, no matter how long I've tried to make it, I have four different timelines in my life. Things don't add up when they should. Things just are not even when they should have been what they should have been, and then some things are just like fucked already or fucked already that I'll never figure out, okay. So instead of focusing on how to put those timelines that don't even exist anymore together, I had to literally, like Marvel does and all that let those timelines die out. That doesn't mean they're not there in their stories and their histories and their lessons and, like she is, all of that is not there.

Adela: 1:34:19

But that was the day that I decided to create my own timeline. That was the day that I decided to create my own path, the day that I decided that letting go and shedding and having this moment, this was also my own baptism. I didn't necessarily realize that I was baptizing myself through this process until I went through it and I did it and I came to Christ and I was and I'm here now even more in depth than I never thought. But this was my baptism moment. This was my moment that I gave myself away, that I faced my fears, that I faced everything that I, that I decided to face the the back of my past that I didn't understand and to win, and in that moment was in that moment was when I won. In that moment was when I saw myself and started to see myself for what I was, and from this bald-headed girl in 2020 to now, I only had one moment in which, again, like I said, I chopped my hair, which I did. I was like, ah, but that was also in a moment which I found out I got some memories back.

Adela: 1:35:24

Sometimes that'll happen. You'll get memories back. You'll get things back that you didn't expect, that you thought you really thought were past some things and you accepted that you'll never have memories of your life and sometimes, in in ways and shapes and forms, it comes back to you and it might be terrible things and you might instantly spiral down the path that you used to know, because you have 30 years of training versus four years of training on this. And for me, I did slightly, but again, I didn't go to the depths of where I did. I just chopped my head off, not my head, my hair, I just did that now. And then I spent the next two years almost regretting that decision and I looked at my husband, I said don't ever let me do that again, ever like. Don't. No, just take the scissors away. Put them away and give me a hug and it'll be okay. Let my moment pass. Don't say I know what I'm. Don't let like I don't know what I'm doing when I have sharp objects near my hair. I don't know what I'm doing when I have sharp objects near my hair. I don't know what I'm doing. But that's a lesson we both have learned now and that's a lesson we're both going to follow. You know, I think we're going to follow us. If I ever come up again, chop my head off, you'll take it away. We'll give me a hug, we'll work it through, and that's the part of communication you must have for yourself to be.

Adela: 1:36:37

Thank you for taking that long journey on a reflective road of adela. What a wonderful like. All I can say is that being to today's being. I am still adela, I am still adela to the core, like there. That person somewhere is in there and she is still there. And I am anxious still and I'm scared sometimes still, and I am. I overthink, I overanalyze, I do all the stuff, I am a stickler for everything, I am all the things, but I'm also someone who gives myself full grace and everyone to recognize that it doesn't fucking matter. You're here for the, the day you live and love for the day. The future is or is not going to be here. You are not guaranteed it. You may go to bed today and never wake up. And so what have you done today? What have you done today? And if this is all you've done today, which is to get up, brush your teeth, take care of yourself, put in some effort towards yourself today, find some worth Declutter a little bit and give some time and then get some rest, okay, okay.

Adela: 1:37:40

You have to get to the point where you are good with the actions, the decisions you're making for yourself on a daily basis versus everyone else, and getting to the point where it doesn't matter whether anybody else sees the daily grind or the daily sleep that you have to do for a while. It does not matter. It also doesn't matter if you respond to that email or doesn't respond. Okay, so you missed an opportunity. Then go get another one.

Adela: 1:38:05

But the opportunity to take care of yourself, the opportunity to love yourself, the opportunity to give your body the proper health and nutrition and care it needs your mind, your soul, that fades every second of your existence, every moment that you breathe, that deteriorates. You are like a car that's just been bought brand new car, and the moment you drive it off the lot, your whole, like the whole value of that car, has depreciated. That's your whole being. The moment you stepped on this earth, the whole being of it is. So you have to care for it, you have to love it. Nobody's going to want it, nobody cares for it, nobody is, and this is just personal level experience. Nobody cares. So you have to care.

Adela: 1:38:50

And had I not cared enough for me to create, I wouldn't have cared enough in learning that creation is healing. If I didn't care enough about this existence, about myself as a human, then I wouldn't be here to tell you to care enough about yourself. I wish I could have said more of tell you to care enough about yourself. I wish I could have said more of that to my friend Tad. I wish I could have said it in different ways. I wish that he even heard me when I said it. But that's the part that being.

Adela: 1:39:35

The reason I showed you Adela from the past is that being was so unstable and yet she was thriving and yet she was doing all these accomplished things. She is so unstable that, had I done anything like I had planned, like I had talked about, like I had thought about, like I had attempted and had been followed through, the people around me and everyone around me would be how, how, how, why? She did not look it, she did not sound like it, she was just. But all the signs were there, and the only way that I can see that is by studying myself and then studying, studying health and studying what it all means, and looking for those signs and those symptoms with myself and seeing oh okay, well, that's well, that's that. Let's change that. Oh, okay, that's that, let's fix that. Oh, okay, let's make improvements here. Whoa, that's a big red flag, adela. How do we turn it into a green flag?

Adela: 1:40:23

All of this has been years and years and years of working on myself, and I know, when we talk about self-help and we talk about self-care, we go to these workshops and go to these places and people are like and I worked out and I did nutrition and I did this and I did that. I did all of those things too, but I also had full-on conversations, not only with myself, but with you guys too, and through art, about what I was feeling, whether or not I understood it, whether or not anybody listened or cared to listen, and that was another thing too. But I was speaking and then I realized so many of us speak that way, we speak in what's that word? Parables I don't know the word now it's gone, but it's there. But we speak metaphorically, we speak in tongues, we speak in different ways, and if we don't understand the language, of course we're getting dismissed.

Adela: 1:41:17

It, of course it's like whatever, you're just speaking, adela, you're just crazy. Today, adela, you're just erratic. Adela, you're hormonal. Today, adela, you're a woman, and women, you know, we crazy with our emotions, and sure, all that is true, sure, but that was the part of me that stays true forever is that you're not right about me. I'm right about me. You don't know me, you have no idea. The tenacity that's with me, the resilience, and that's the one part about myself that I see throughout that I've never lost is my fight for myself, and I think that has been the hardest thing for everyone around me to even understand, or others who have tried to talk to.

Adela: 1:42:05

Is that I'm not going to, I am not going to degrade, I'm not going to sell. I'm not going to put down the value of my existence to fit your box if it's. If I'm not going to sell, I'm not going to put down the value of my existence to fit your box. If I'm too big for your box, then get a bigger box, man, or come join mine. Mine's big enough for everybody. So at the end of the day, you can either be the box that houses everybody or you can make yourself the smallest box, trying to fit into everybody else's boxes that they're already full and cluttered and they have no more room for and you're just going to be forgotten about anyway. So be your own damn box and make it as big, as beautiful and as awesome as it can be, because you deserve it and you're worth it. Period, end of discussion.

Adela: 1:42:48

And nobody needs to know about your box. Nobody even needs to see your box, nobody even needs to like nobody but you now, is it make it lonely sometimes? Yes, does it make it hard when you're in your space of need and you want to call someone and have a conversation with someone about something and you don't have that space? Yes, it does, yes, it does. But then you turn to God and you go hey, I really need to have a conversation with you because I'm not understanding this. Help me get some clarity, where am I going wrong with this? And then have that come back to have the conversation with you because I'm not understanding this. Help me get some clarity, where am I going wrong with this? And then have that come back to have that devil's advocate talk. Well, adela, maybe you should do this and maybe this Well, are you sure about that?

Adela: 1:43:20

Like, really have a conversation that doesn't make you crazy. Talking to yourself and trying to figure out and process does not make you crazy. Maybe talking to three or four of yourselves doesn't make you crazy either. Maybe just, you just have to process some things out and maybe you have three different ways that you think and maybe you know. But again, I'm not a professional here, so I'm not telling you. I'm not nothing, because I know there's serious illnesses and I know there's serious levels of what I'm saying. But I also understand the therapeutic levels of what we have and that we should not be deprived and we should not deprive ourselves of that. Conversation is natural. Your being needing to have a conversation, to figure something out, to process is natural.

Adela: 1:44:04

You are not designed to know everything. You are not designed to be able to figure it all out. You are not designed to be a one human show. Or, as for us women, we'd like to think one woman show. You're not designed. Are you kidding me? The amount of energy it takes for you to just exist as a woman is three times the energy it takes for a man to exist. Are you kidding me? That's another rant that'll go down on that too.

Adela: 1:44:31

Because again, the Adela today versus the Adela then, that was the independent Adela, that was the gung-ho. I could do it all on my own. There's nothing can stop me. Adela versus today's adela, like hell, nah, uh-uh, not happening. I'm not digging my own grave. Y'all better make sure that you put me in this basket and you do that like I'm not doing that.

Adela: 1:44:50

No, so really seeing yourself for where you're at, what you need, giving yourself that, you yourself, and if that means communicating with those around you and saying, hey, guess what, hubby, I need a year to figure out what I want. And this year is going to be tough. I may not know everything and it's going to be up and downs and I'm going to fall off the wagon, but I need you to hold me accountable because I'm trying to do this. So for a year I asked my husband. I said I remember this. After I shaved my head I came to him and I said this year I'm going to figure out what I want, what I like, what do I want to eat, what kind of flavors do I like, what kind of do I not? And I figured it out.

Adela: 1:45:27

I don't like Mexican. Just come at me, whatever you want. Homemade in the house, in my own kitchen, with people or at somebody's home absolutely 100. Restaurant style not gonna happen. Don't like, it will not happen. Homemade absolutely 100. I will be in there, I will be with you because I know that restaurant style two different things, but that's how I feel about a lot of things. That's what I learned. I don't like out eating. I like cooking. I don't like this, I like this, I don't want this, I want that. Now I stand when somebody says do you want this, do you like this? Like oh, no, it's okay, but I'm willing to compromise and I'm okay with going there. No, I don't like it, but I am willing to go and compromise. I am absolutely. Are you into? I'm okay, because when you have that conversation to yourself, you are more than welcome to and be calmly and confidently, state what you do like, what you don't like. But that doesn't mean you're not willing to compromise.

Adela: 1:46:19

I go to, like I said, I go to Mexican restaurants all the time with my family because they love it. I will go, I will find me a thing or two to eat and I'll be okay. I'm not stressed. I want to be with my family, I want to enjoy them. I want to enjoy them. So it's not about the place, it's not about that. I want them, but if I know what I like, if I know where I want to be, if I know what I want out of a situation, out of something that I get to create that experience for me, not in the other way that I used to, because somebody said it, because then I throw a fit, or that we do this, or then everybody would have to agree with mine because they don't want to hurt Adela's feelings and they don't want to make Adela mad, or we don't want to. We don't want to ruffle Adela's feathers because we don't know where she's standing at today. Believe me, all these things are true. All this I'm saying is nothing about like, this is all what Adela was compared to.

Adela: 1:47:05

Adela today and again the conversations I'm having with you is because I really have spent the time self-reflecting, and and when I tell you self-reflecting, I'm talking about, like journal writing, I'm talking about accounting for myself, I'm talking about my book, my book of this. This is just my if you could see this, this is just my home child, family care, friends, pets care. This is literally the thing that I use to write everything I need to do with my family, with my friends, pets care. This is literally the thing that I use to write everything I need to do with my family, with my friends, with all I'm going to show. This is Adela Home care, every action I take, every action I take Home care, family care.

Adela: 1:47:46

Today is going to be a good day this way. Today is going to be a good day. It's a good day to be happy. I love stickers. I'm a sticker kind of girl. So what I'm saying is that if you don't, you don't have to be Adela, okay, you don't have to be this level crazy to get things done, but you have to start somewhere. So if you start at the lowest of lowest, of just writing your accomplishments down for today. Write your damn accomplishments down for today If you start at the lowest of. Hey, I got out of bed, I made my bed, I brushed my teeth, I got dressed, I washed my face, I made a cup of coffee, I made my son breakfast, or my kid breakfast, or my husband breakfast. Or, if you're alone, I made myself breakfast, I fed my cat, I fed my dog. That is 10 actions that you've already taken. That is 10 energies.

Adela: 1:48:28

You guys like to use spoons. That's, that's what I've heard people say spoons and energies. Okay, you've used 10 spoons I'm talking about you've just used it depends on how long that hour was. You've just used like 50 cents of your time, 50 cents of your time to get all that stuff. If that was 50 minutes, 50 cents of your time to get everything done.

Adela: 1:48:46

I like my, my dollars. You know time is money, money's time, that kind of thing. That makes so much sense to me now that I understand that I'm in control of it and I'm the constant like I create it. So my 24 dollars and my 24 hours are the same thing and I don't get a rewire on them. I don't get like they don't accumulate more. I don't. I don't get more.

Adela: 1:49:04

And am I really being so good with it for myself? I? Am I putting my spoons, my time, my money, my hours wisely, my energy, into the wise things for myself? And if I'm not, then what are the changes that I have to make? Be honest with yourself. That also means that you may have to change some friends. No, excuse me. You may have to change some family structures. You may have to change some environmental structures, some job structures. You may have to change some environmental structures, some job structures. You may have to change some things in your life in order for you to be where you desire to be. You may have to give up a few things, but you'll gain so much more too.

Adela: 1:49:46

I had been on a path like for me when I started this and where I was going, the trajectory that I was going was so fast. I promise you. I promise you, had I stuck to that, I would be at the top of my level and my games. Right now. I would be everywhere I've said I would be. I would be speaking to all the people I said I would be speaking to, but the thing that I cannot give up for all of that. No amount.

Adela: 1:50:12

Fame, glory, money, accolades, success none of it can replace my existence. None of it can replace my existence of my home and of my son and the feeling I have for my pets and my husband. None of that can replace that. None of that. None of that. It just makes it easier. It's just a cherry on top. It's just this, this here. That's replace that. None of that, none of that. It just makes it easier. It's just a cherry on top. It's just this here. That's it. That's the baseline. And are you content with that baseline? I am 100%. Everything else is an added bonus for me.

Adela: 1:50:42

Now I am good that peace I found it. I create every day. I live every day. I create my day daily. Now, whether or not it pays off, whether or not someone listens, whether or not people are here, it doesn't matter. I am very thankful and I thank you. I thank you for listening, I thank you for being here, I thank you for being almost two hours here on this one. This one's a long one. I thank you, but at the end of the day, none of that matters, because I matter. And whether or not, when I walk away from here, am I happy, am I good? Am I solid? Yes, am I fulfilled? Yes, everything else doesn't matter. So there's that. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you. Until next time, have a blessed day, happy early holidays. I will talk to you next week, right before Thanksgiving. Make sure you get that turkey going and make sure you eat good this year. Be kind to each other, love your family, open the doors, be compassionate. Humans need that. We need that so much. You're capable, we're all capable of that.