Hello, friends. It's been Ages. Welcome back. Welcome back to the Artists Within podcast. This podcast is produced and sponsored by Project Human Think a New Way to Think About Mental and Emotional Health. It is an organization that I founded to provide humans a space and place to express their existence and through to be able to educate themselves on how to become an advocate, to inform themselves in ways of existence that they might not have been able to have before. So I'm really proud of that, and I can't wait to share so much with you this season about the organization, what we're doing, and of course what the season is all about. Reflections. I want to open it up with two things. One, that we are not medical professionals. We are peer-to-peer advocates. I am a peer-to-peer advocate, not a professional. This podcast for me is my way to communicate, express uh the things and the thoughts that I may not know yet or understand, and to walk through them with you. Um, and of course, to share my experiences in this life with you, because I think that a lot of times we don't we don't share what's we don't share the really, really, really hard part, and I know that I have not. So I know that most people will share the processes of what they're going through and share some of their trials and tribulations, but then there's a part of us inside of us that we don't share, and that's something that I have been battling my whole life and figuring out how to create something better than the monster that I had seen. And um, so that's what I'm here with to do and to talk to you so that anything I talk to you coming up in this podcast this year, on my personal experience, um, through my trauma and through what I have been diagnosed with and what I've researched and what I know in my human experience. Again, take it with a grain of salt because I am just a human experience. This I have no medical professional training. However, I am a certified nuisance in my humanity, and I will stand up for advocate, especially now for myself and for those who need to um need to in my presence, need to be stood up for in my presence as well. And so I'm I'm very, very excited again to be back this season to talk to you, to share with you so much more and to navigate this new journey that we have going on. I want to share the second part, which is our quote of this season, and it's with today grounded, reflect on the strength, courage, and grace that carried you to this moment and what they are still teaching you. I added to this moment because I'm reflecting from this moment back on to moments in my life that absolutely changed and transformed me in ways that I never I never thought I could be transformed, I could be part of this world or I could exist in this world, and let alone hold relationships and build the relationship that I have and the home that I have. Um so oh, I am I'm so full of life, you guys. I'm so excited, I'm so full of life. This particular episode is uh about literally my last year of life that's kind of happened. Um, but it's gonna take you starting off at 2019 because that was an extremely important and reflective year for me. Um, and I want to share that with you because it's my testimony of how God has protected me my whole life and how I am here in this life to be able to now learn it and process it and understand it from the perspective and the and this being an existence in mind that I've been given, not the one that I have thought I needed to chase. Um so to get kick it off before I go back to 2019. Um, I want to officially, not officially, like announce as an announcement, um, but I've never said it publicly. I've never made it a big thing to um, I don't know what to even call it. This is not this is not a big thing, but it feels big to me, if you will. It feels really big to me. Um, I've shared this with my my most personal people or people around me that I know, or in casual conversations that I have with humans when I'm connecting, but it isn't something that I've shared officially again publicly this way. But I have been uh diagnosed with dissociative amnesia and complex PTSD, which really should be complex PTSD, and then dissociative amnesia, because dissociative amnesia stems from complex PTSD. And so um complex PTSD is complex post post-stromatic stress, post-traumatic stress disorder. Um, and dissociative amnesia is a is where the mind erases um your memories in protection or creates new ones, uh, in my case, uh due to prolonged exposure to trauma. And so I have spent these last years in my building of my life and everything that I've been doing really trying to navigate who I am, what my story is, what my narrative is going to be, how I'm gonna redefine the rest of my life. Um, and I spent so much time working from the backwards versus working from the point of where I'm at, right? So I would be living because of the complexity of the trauma and the trauma PTSD is not is no joke. Uh, and it's not something that I understood at the level and at any level really until I understood the symptoms of my life and what was happening to my body, and to what level PTSD, even a small level of PTSD, can debilitate a human body physically, let alone mentally and psychologically. But then what complex, like just the intricacy, intricate level of someone's human experience at such a young age and such a developmental age, can do to the physical body because of what it what the physical body does to protect itself, right? And what the mind does to protect itself. In my case, I was I was a child of war. Like that's my biggest, biggest trauma, if you will. I have way more than that prior to that, that have obviously impacted me at such a at such a scale of my how I interact with human beings now and understanding what that means on my nurturing and my need to be a caretaker and a giver, because that was not given to me at the earliest of age, even though it it was attempted, if you will. Um, it just wasn't provided to the level that I had required as a child, and that any child literally requires, right? And, you know, at five, the war happened to me. And until I came to America, which was 11, it didn't stop that way. But then when I came to America, a whole new set of trauma happened because it's a whole new cultural shift, whole whole new life, leaving an identity. And because my mind was already used to erasing life of and my story, if you will, it was easy to erase any bad things that happened when I came here too. So up until like my 20s, I spent my whole life just not knowing or understanding who I was and where I was going to. And I acted like I did. I fit in very easily. I was able to achieve so many great things. I'm an A student, whether I have a memory of it or not. It's just ingrained in my body and my being and my spirit to be an ambitious and very um uplifting human who wants to, who wants the best, not only for myself, but for those around me and those I interact with. I want the best because we're here for that. And, you know, I didn't know that it started with me. I I really thought it had I had to work through the world systems to get there and fit into so many boxes in different ways and shape shift and change my life and change who I was to be able to achieve goals and live this life of what someone else yet again has constructed for me. And so by the time I was in my 30s and I had my son, I was married in 2017. I created Project Human. And in 2017, I was I was at my lowest. I was at my lowest in in my space because I had attempted to take my life that like a year prior to that, almost a year prior to that. In 2016, and it was just the hardest year. And 2017 was a year that I had accepted and I was gonna try, and that was hard. Trying was hard, trying to exist, trying to breathe, trying to navigate my that I had a body that I had just trying to know I was here was was excruciating. I I don't even know how to explain it. On top of that, that was just mentally like and spiritual battles that I was battling. The physical battle was so much more intense because of my trauma. And again, I didn't know this at the time at all, but the physical part of me was so intense. The levels of cortisol and how much my adrenal glands were overused and overblown because of the war is just incomprehensible to even me or to a human being because the pain levels that I was experiencing in my body were to the point where I would beg for literally over a decade. I begged my family and friends to break my bones because it would feel so much better than the pain that I was in. Like I think back on moments of sitting on my couch and just bending my wrists, bending, bending, asking my husband to beat on me, you know, and he's like, no, absolutely not. Like you're insane. He didn't say you're insane, but I'm sure he thought it. Um and and I and I would beg, I would please somebody. And nobody would listen, nobody could, nobody understood because I didn't understand either. Like I had no understanding. And I had one doctor whom I was very mean to, and I apologized later on. Um, but uh he told me, Adela, it's in your head, and he didn't mean it, I don't think. Uh, he didn't mean it to be so it's in your head, it's nothing like to do with you. Because prior to that, he also said you're a woman, Adela, and hormonal. So there are two things that were happening prior to that, that the in the head part just went over my head. Um, and and so I remember just sitting there thinking, it's not in my head, there is something wrong with my body. There's something wrong with me. I don't know what it is, I cannot tell you what it is, but you're supposed to be the expert, you're supposed to know, and nobody's telling me. Try these things, try these medications, try that, try this. So I did, I did all of that. And in 2017, it was my last attempt of any of that because I was I was really when I told my son, who saved my life, by the way, when I told my son that I would try, he was four years old when he stopped me from doing the worst thing that I could have ever, possibly the worst decision I could have ever possibly made in my life. And I told him I would try. I really truly meant it. Like, I don't know how to explain this knowledge in me, this no, other than I've known it since I was five, I've known it since in any of my most vulnerable and hardest moments of my life. I've known that this little piece of me that knows that if I just try and trust the process, it'll be okay. Now I know that that's been God this whole time. But at that time I didn't know. And so when I told him I would try, I really meant it. And I would try with creating life instead of destruction. I would try being a better human being. I would try actually not even being a better human being. I would try by starting to find my humanity. I'd realized I lost every bit of my humanity. I lost who I was. I mean, I didn't even know who I was, let's be real. So that's out the window, right? So I don't even know who I am. I have three timelines of my life, three stories, three ideas and and narratives going on in my head that is, I don't know what's real, what's not. And I'm sitting here trying to define my story, write my story for whatever work I was doing or whatever business aspiration or goal I had on such a false level of a built character, right? The story that I, and I'm not saying that my character is not a lot of what I was, my ambition and my um my tenaciousness and my determination, my hard work, all of those parts are ingrained in me because they're just ingrained in me. But the story I was telling of who I was, that I was so strong and so independent, there's nothing that can touch me, and that I am capable of anything and everything at any given moment, any given time. And not that I'm not, not that I'm not, guys, not that we're not. But in real honesty and truth, we're not all at once if our being is not where it needs to be. And so in 2016, I was like, I'll start a nonprofit, I'll do this little thing. 2017, I made it official and started working on some things. And when we got our official letters in 2017, which was in July, we got our official letter saying, Hey, you guys are official, IRS approved us. I was like, yes, let's go gung-ho. I started working with another uh uh human here in the community, fantastic human, but started working with another human here who was holding a fashion show, and we were doing another fashion show. I was doing fashion shows all around, all around the place. But we were doing fashion shows, and I was uh and I've produced a bunch of them at that time too. And what I had noticed during all of these productions and all of these interactions was that there's a certain level of hard work you're putting in and you're getting to, and it's like the final hour of someone's life or something that you're pulling off. It's like literally the day before or two days before these events or an event, and you're getting the call of, I don't want to do this, I don't care, I'm done. It's this is ridiculous. Nobody's listening, nobody cares, nobody's this, nobody's that. And you're going like, what the heck is happening? I can't even process my own stuff, let alone this stuff over here. This is your thing. I'm just helping. Now we're gonna stop it. And for me, I have always been when you give your word to someone or you give your word to a community, you do your best to keep it. Now, have I kept my word all the time? No. Have I been the best at keeping my word um at a timely manner? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. But I've what I've realized is my time though is not God's time. So I am keeping my word just in God's time, God's way, because apparently He's got better, greater things planned for me than I can think of. So I have to just keep following the path. And so in 2017, talking about the path, in 2017, I let me pull this up now. For those of you who watching, we're gonna look at our uh on our YouTube channel for those of you who watching. For those of you who are listening, I have uh a picture, a slideshow I'm pulling up of a tattoo I got in 2017 in a remembrance, an oath to myself and a commitment to myself that I was going to do my best to get the world to not even the world, it was at the world at the time. Now it, you know, now I look back, it was really just the people around me, but get the world to see the world through my eyes, to see how I view this this space and existence, to see the life and joy and positivity I have for this life and and the gratitude I had for this life. Not that I knew how to express it or what it really meant, but I knew I had it. I knew I wanted to share that with humans and be here. And so I got this tattoo, and it's got the shape of an eye, because you know, seeing the world through my eyes, and then the world inside of it with a 717, which was the my birth month. Um, I'm born in July, and then the year 17, which was the birth month of Fink. And that was my 30th birthday gift to me. And I said every year from this point on, I'm going to gift myself an accomplishment. I'm going to gift myself something that I can achieve. I don't care how big it is, I don't care what scale it is, but I will finish something. I will commit to keep my word to myself. Have I been great at everything? No. Have I finished and done something for my birthday for myself and created something? Yes, 100% I have. And that has been the beauty. Has it all been exactly what I wanted? Now not at all, not at all. I've had to change things and change my mind and have been because in the creative world and in your expressive world and in the world that I make in an especially documentary world or any of that, it's it's different. You you are forced sometimes to navigate and shift the narrative because the narrative just doesn't fit where you started. And so 207 or 2017, I got that tattoo, and again, that's that tattoo. Now, fast forward to 2019, okay. 2019, I am driving down two days before an event. Okay. Remember, I just talked about how people don't care for an event. They don't, we don't care that we're we're we we've committed or we're here or we started something, and I've been there. I do it all the time, every day, even with this podcast, even with everything that I'm building. I'm like, I don't wanna, this is, I don't wanna do this. This is too much. And so here I am. I'm driving, I'm going to work, and I was driving uh to work up some somewhere in Callahan area. And the reason I mentioned that is just because of the big trees that it has and the and the way that this this was set up. It was just so beautiful, and I remember it was out that way. So at the time I was doing hair, and so I was going out to a client to take care of them. And as I'm driving, I get the call, and so I get off the call, and now I'm sobbing. I am at this moment sobbing my eyes out. I am asking God that I'm asking, I literally was like, I, you know, I hear people say, and I've heard people say, God, send me a sign, show me that I'm supposed to be where I'm supposed to be because I'm done. I I've heard that saying, and they've had this transactional moment, this like moment of him really listening and hearing you. And I didn't understand how much this moment was him giving me my sign because I've not seen it since then. By the way, 2019, not once have I seen it since. Now once have I, not to say that I haven't, because I see things, you know, we see things where we want to see them. This is a real clear sign. I'm telling you this for those of you who are watching it. Again, I have my eye tattoo. It is the shape of an eye with a world inside, and I go, God, you you showed me, you've like guided me this way. For some reason I was so vulnerable to to really be there to say, God, you've guided me, because I wasn't speaking in those terms at the time. I was really speaking in universal terms. Um, but in that moment, I was so, so distraught because what we were working on meant so much to me. It was for humans who needed the who who humans who really needed the help or humans who absolutely had no more than what, you know, had had way less than what we had. And the things that we could do for them was just to show up and create or fundraise and and how hard was that. And to me, showing up to just something as simple, how again, I couldn't process of how hard it was to do that. Now I know, but I couldn't process of how hard it was. And I'm driving and I'm driving and I ask God, and as I ask and as I'm crying, I look up at the sky, and I kid you not, I kid you not. Do you guys see this right here? For those of you who are watching, okay? Those of you listening, there is a straight road, just a straight path with these big trees of the same level on both sides, like they're a guarded gate to me, okay, with a straight path. Nothing in my sight, nothing at all, no one, there's no cars, there's no, there's nothing but a straight path. And in the sky itself, gray sky, okay. It was a gray day, it was a gloomy day. In the sky itself, there is an image of the tattoo of my eye, of the eye. I kid you not, I like it is right there. It's right there. There's nothing else I can tell you. So, for those of you who are listening and want to see it, you know, we're at the 23 mark of this episode. Take a listen. It's it's insane to me that this was shown to me. And I remember driving. Don't do this, do not drive and pull your phone out and you know, take the pictures. Do not, but I remember because it there was nobody on that road. There was nobody. I I remember driving straight, stopping my car for a second, just a split second, taking these photos on my little phone, and just looking at this. There's the level of relief, okay. The level of peace and relief that came over me in this moment was the same level of peace and relief that was felt like literally guided over me when I was five years old, right before the war on April 16th happened, and right before my whole world turned around for me that way. That moment was trust me, it will be okay. And it was so warm and so comforting and so shielding. I can't even explain it to you. Even as I'm explaining it now, I feel it. Like I just feel this level of his hand on me and his protection. And that moment was just like that. And I remember going, Okay, I got you. I trust you, I got you. And I've been at it since then every day, and it's been a struggle for me. I promise it has not been easy. But I trust that he has given me a sign at a level that I can't ever comprehend. I the and and thanks to technology now, I get to capture this moment, this this moment of this testimony from me to share, like it's literally I can't see it here, like on my arm, but like it's on my arm. The tattoo is on my arm, that eye is in the sky, it is it is his sign letting me know that I'm on the right path, and that everything that I'm doing with Project Cuban, everything that I'm doing in this space with this podcast, or any creative thing that I'm doing, as long as I am creating and I am following that path every day, getting up, creating my life, I have won. And I'm again, I was astonished at the level of I'm astonished at the level of detail and how hard he heard me that day, that he showed me something I needed to see that I would understand. Like literally, that I would understand, and that I would get on my path, and that I would have the visual reminder because I'm a visual being, a visual reminder that I need to stay the course. The path is clear, it has been done and set, and it is already done. It has been paved, it has been marked, it has been everything you need. It's a straight path forward. And all I have to do is follow it. Stop deviating and trying to do these side quests. Use, you know, figure out how to use my ADHD on a straight path instead of needing to side quest all the time. It has been difficult that part. But I'm I'm I'm making progress. I'll say that. It stick to the path and come back, and you will you will be fine, I promise. And so 2019 that happens, and that gives me such a boost of energy, such a renewed sense of let's go and let's get this done. And we kick off everything now by December of 2019. We're like, let's go do all these things. I'm traveling with the Parachute Goddess Project, we're doing these pictures, we're across the United States and all these places, meeting wonderful women, hearing all these amazing stories. And of course, the big C word, uh, I don't know what YouTube will do on the algorithm anymore about it. Um, but COVID, of course, happens, right? And then shuts everything down. And here we are now into 21, 22, and we're trying to, I'm trying to navigate this online and learn what I'm doing with this, at the same time experiencing the worst PTSD I could, but I didn't know I was. And my physical body was getting worse and worse and worse. So much so worse that by 2023, um, I was starting to have nosebleeds that were running for like 15 minutes, and just as I'm walking across my house, it would just blood everywhere. Um, and my arms would give out, I would just start to throw things, I would have spasms in my legs, and I couldn't move and and the idea that I was losing my mobility, my limbs at such a young age. I literally was in my 30s. I was 34, 33, 34, and maybe even 30, no, 34. And I'm trying to navigate this. I have a young son. I am showing to the public that I am bold, tenacious, I'm shaving my head on the sides, I'm coloring my hair, I am expressing all these things that I am, you will not, you will, you, you will not defeat me, right? Like I am out there having my my voice heard. And while I'm doing all of that and putting this front on, because let me be real, it was such a front. I had in that time of my front already filmed one doc, you know, one one one music video where I shaved my head and was navigating that life and out of that. Another music video with a whole bunch of humans coming and putting them together where we're like, no, you will not box us in. We're going to play this game of checkmate and this game of chess our way, and how we play it, how we do it on an individual level is up to us. You don't get to navigate it, you don't get to do it. I don't care that it's not fluid this way or this way, or I don't care that it's rigid here or it's not here. I don't care. This is my story, my narrative. So we do that in the midst of the shutdowns, in the midst of all the craziness, we're doing that. While privately I am literally trying to feed myself after I get off of a set or after I do that. I didn't realize and I didn't know that those times and those moments were the thing that was feeding me, right? Like I didn't know that that was how I was getting my high. My adrenal grands were so shot and beyond the ability to comprehend what was excitement, what was fear, what was just your everyday I need to move, work, energy. Like it did not know. It either had it all the way cranked up beyond its own limit and seeking for a drug, or it was depleted beyond the ability of remembering who I was, where I was, losing a month of time of my life and coming back pretending like everything was fine. It was so intense, and like I said, by the time 2023 hit, those nosebleeds were getting bad. I had to retire from doing hair. I closed on my business. I'm not under, like, I don't know if I can do any of this at this time. Like I am, I start going to the doctors, we start doing tests, and we start asking questions. We do vials and vials of blood work. When I tell you I had like 40 vials of blood work within a week's span, every time I went into that lab core, they kept by the end of it, they were like, Do you have anything left in you? I had become so thin at the time, too. I couldn't eat. Um, there's nothing I could keep down. Medication wasn't all working, and I refused at that point any medication anyway because it was it was screwing with my mind so bad. It was like it was, it just I could not let it have it. I was already told that I was crazy. I was already told that everything was in my head. I was already told that no matter what, there's no help for me. So why would I be taking things to make everybody else right? Right? Like, why would I make them give me an ex like for them to have an excuse for why I was crazy? Well, she's on medication, so of course she's crazy and she's lost her shit. Um oh well, of course she's on this, she's taking this. I was like, no, I refuse it. I will suffer my physical pain without anything. Um and it was where it was only over-the-counter medicine that I was taking for a long time, even like 2020 to 2023. I was all my liver, I promise you, that I have worked really hard, hopefully, to repair something. But my the amount of like Tylenol, alive, and Bayer medications I was taking on a daily basis to alleviate my pain. Weekly basis, I would be going to through two to three bottles of any combination. Obviously, not healthy at all. Not healthy at all. Thank God today I'm nothing, not even Tylenol for a headache. I I've figured out how to not to necessarily say meditate through it, talk through it, but I've learned what it means to connect with my body now and my mind, and how how everything works and where to keep it. So I'm so glad to be as a call sober from all of all of those things. Um and so yeah, so 23 and 2023 hit. I start going to the doctor, I start navigating that. We're trying to navigate what's going on while I'm having these noble's. I see the nose specialist, the doctors, the throat nose specialists, I see the uh sleep specialist, because my sleep was obviously so completely not good at all. And even though I was trying, I was trying really hard. Um, because I wanted what I was saying in Project Human, even at the time that I was starting, I wanted it to be real. I wanted my walk and my path that I was saying to actually be real. I wanted it to be as honest as possible because I knew that there was something about honesty, something about the truth that mattered more than anything. And now I can't find the truth of the world, right? And I don't know the truth of the world at all. I'll never know that. But I can work really hard on finding and discovering my own truth and who I am and what I stand for. And there that then nothing, nothing or no one can take that away from me. And that's been the journey for me this whole time of finding my home. That's been the definition of what I've figured out, right? And so I I go and I do these sleep studies. I'm hooked up to all these machines for a while, for a couple of days. We study that, they come back and they say, hey, everything is normal. Um, we do see some irr irregularities here. We do nerve tests, we need nerve studies, they find some irregularities that things aren't connecting in certain ways. And so they go, we go down the line of what could possibly be. We go through that it could be MS at some point, we go through that it could be lupus or all these other, or some and even more nerve, nerve kind of debilitating diseases. I go through the MRIs, I get my brain scanned, I get my lumbar scanned, I get my everything scanned, my or I mean my spa uh my my cervix scanned, all of everything scanned. Where obviously this is taking now from I started in March of 2023 and going all the way now until almost the next following March that we're trying to figure this out. So I am going back and forth from doctors. I am being offered all these different theories, these different narratives, these different ways. And I'm offered these different solutions. Adela, well, your fibromyalgia is this, your rheumatoid, your rheumatoid arthritis is this. So I was like, well, let's go rule the let I want to rule it all out. So all I ruled, I wanted to rule everything out. It took me a year to rule out that the doctor that diagnosed me in 2021 was wrong. Um, I don't have fibromyalgia, I don't have rheumatoid arthritis, I I am actually extremely healthy for someone my age. And with what I've gone through, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I am extremely healthy and I've worked really hard to be there. And I believed really wholeheartedly that there was a possibility of me having the power to take control over my life. Now I didn't have the confidence to say it, I didn't have the words during those times. I didn't even have the capacity to understand what was happening until I actually looked back on those moments and sat in them and go and went, you know what? I did not like how these doctors spoke to me. I did not like how these lab results were not what I had asked because the tests weren't what I had asked. The tests were what the doctor assumed I wanted or whatever, and just didn't listen. And so I started noticing all these little times in my life during that process in 2023 up to 2024, where the again, I am I am a nitpicker. For those people that know me, know that I am a nitpicker. I will nitpick the hell out of my life. But when you start to be around me in my life and there's patterns that I recognize and there's things that start to fall into place. I like patterns, I like things to be in certain ways. And when I notice patterns to be not so good patterns, I will call them out. I absolutely will. Now, whether or not I'll call I whether or not I would have called them out the way I've called them out now is a different story, but I'll call them out. And so I started calling them out. I started getting very agitated in offices. I started feeling like nobody cared about my health, nobody was listening, feeling so unheard, unseen, uh, and like I didn't know what I was talking about, right? Like I I was being told that I didn't know what I was talking about, that I lived it within my body, and I lived within my body my whole life. And nobody would talk to me about it, nobody would direct me in any direction that would be solving the problem or getting to the root of the problem, but they would absolutely give me a diagnosis and then give me medication for it. And again, I I'm a rule follower too, right? So at first, in my early 2016, 2017, 2018 days, I followed those rules. I would take the medications, I would follow, they would be bad, I'd get off of them, I'd do this, I'd do that, I'd do this, I do that, trial and error, right? And but I'm also smart. Like I am actually quite smart. I may not present a lot of ways that I am, but I am smart. And again, I love pattern recognition. I love looking at things around me within me that don't make sense. And how do I figure out how to make them make sense to me? And I started recognizing in my own patterns that I was listening to things that didn't make sense. Okay, well, then if I was listening to things that didn't make sense, how am I gonna start taking control of my own life? Again, think that's how it came in. I had to be responsible and accountable for what I was saying and what I was doing. And I had to stand and walk the path that I was doing, that I was gonna do. And because of art and because of every human that was ever coming into my life and holding me accountable or holding me responsible for things, or even just telling me to be in, like telling me the truth, I learned to start internalizing some things and going, okay, where am I allowing myself to shut off and not be receptive to what's happening so that I can really be prepared for my own defense? Like, where are my shields? What's going on? Because right now everything is hitting me everywhere, and nobody's listening, nobody cares. And I felt that around even the people around me that I called friends or partners or people I wanted to be around me. There was such an it like deep, I don't even know. I envy of humans to have relationships who cared about humans, where at least it seemed like they cared about humans in certain ways. But by the time I am where I am now, it was all superficial. Everybody just cared for superficial things, not the depth of a human. And I've realized that you don't really find that much anywhere anymore unless you are, you know, really close with humans that you really love and like and just really like. But no extension to that to your neighbor now, so or to or to a stranger. And and I'm sure there is plenty of it because I experience plenty of it, but what I see on on social media, what we see, what we're permitting in different ways, it's not that. It's not an appropriate human level of treatment across the globe or across the spaces. And and there's a lot more good than bad, right? But I started noticing those patterns within myself. I was contributing to that. I was contributing to that in my words and my actions and my reactions, and I was contributing to that even in my care with my doctors because they weren't taking me seriously. I had to become so serious about myself. So 2024 comes around March. We come back that, hey, it's not MS. Thank God. It's not um, you know, this, it's not that, it's not this, it's not that. Um, Adela, we've ruled this out. Adela, we've done this. We recommend a psychological evaluation for extreme for for complete for complex PTSD. The way he said to me, my neurologist at the time was he goes for extreme complex PTSD with your case. Um, because I couldn't, again, I couldn't process what reality, I really could not understand reality. And this is 2024, you guys, now this is just like over a year and a half ago, and that I'm still was still learning to navigate, even though I was living in this world and doing all these things and accomplishing, I was not understanding reality. And so he sat me down and he was so kind to me in some way, but a little harsh but kind at the same time. And he goes, Adela, you went to an extremely traumatic experience. I see this in soldiers all the time. I see this in humans who have been in positions that you have been. You've never truly spoken about the event. And even if you have in therapies or you've done that, you've never done the level of processing that you should have within yourself to accept what's happened to you. And I'm going, well, of course I have. I've created a documentary, I'm doing these things, I've I've interviewed my mom, I've um, you know, I've found my prisoners. I found the people who kept me captive in in the prison. I found them. Like I have really deep dived into facing and accepting what happened to me. He goes, No, no, no, no. He's like, You you have you you may have in in in a way, but what is what is the retention of what what you're diving into? And that kind of made me pause because it wasn't retaining anything. There was like I have no memory of interviewing my mom, even though I sat down with it and I have hours of the footage I can look back on it. I have personally no memory of it. In this house, we did it. Um, I have no memory of certain situations, certain things in my life. And then I, of course, have no memory of like 20 years of my life. And the memories I do have are not real, but they're not real because they are. They've been misconstrued by my own mind for the safety of my own self and survival, right? So when I was in prison, my mind, instead of being in a prison cold, wet, damp, concrete cell with women and children and guards shooting out there, screaming and yelling and torturing, right? Instead of that, my mind in my own little corner decided that it was going to be in a field with a sundress, in a blue sundress, with a white collar, and I was gonna be free in that space and roam, and they were wildflowers. And just to think that that is what I believe so wholeheartedly was my reality, was not my reality because my mind decided that it was gonna be better to recreate to create something in something so not happening, so opposite to protect me from whatever the tragedy was going on around me. Now I know the stories, right? I've like I said, I dwelt uh deep into them and tried to understand them and learn them, but I don't I don't know it. I have no real no ability to relate to that level of what happened there because it's so hard for me to say I was there, I know that those things happened to me with any kind of level depth of emotion in some sense of like hey, this little kid did these things. Hey, this this this these things happen to this child, and yet today I talk about it as if, hey, you know what, standing in front of a gun to take be shot because that's the most logical choice to make in the situation. Like that's that to me is just a fact and just an action that happened, and that happened in there. The rest of anything is like even that was hard to admit that that that could have happened, that I did that until I had my memory back on some parts, which is great that I am, and sometimes not getting it back, right? And so 2024, I decided that I was going to April 2024 with that message of what he told me that I have complex BTSD, and because I suffer from dissociative amnesia, which he diagnosed me with too, he said, Adela, some people will get their memories back, some people will, some people, or some people won't, and some people will live a lifetime with you know both those those realities. And that was hard to accept because how can I live with two, three realities in my head and my mind, and not be called crazy and not be associated with like multiple personalities or be associated with bipolar or schizophrenia or all these other definitions when I know reality and I understand and I can live in it, but I also don't understand it at the same time. And I know that's a that's a that's a um paradox to to say because how can I understand and not understand? Because I live here today in this space. I, Adella of today, does not understand the trauma of what the child within me went through. There is a child within me that I'm still healing. Now she's growing up and she's you know she's making progress. But at the time of all of this, and the time of understanding, I was picture this. The child is living in a corner of a city or or you know, a rubble or whatever it is that you might be traumatic or might be something that that's in there. But for me, it was a corner, it was a street corner, and she's homeless, she's out there, she's got a teddy bear and a machete. And there's humans walking by all the time. It's a busy, busy street. It is a busy, busy, busy space. And I'd see a familiar face. And that familiar face, I didn't know that familiar face was me for a long time, but I'd see a familiar face. There was a familiar familiarity to this being that I would trust enough that I would extend my teddy bear hand and she would take me and she would take me out, but I would get hurt again. She would take me to a place and space where it would hurt me. She would sabotage me, she would put me in positions that I didn't want to be in. She would create positions or situations and narratives that did not define who I was. And yes, that's I'm talking about me making decisions for something that didn't sit with the core of who I was. And then I'd have to run back into my little corner, I'd have to run back into my space. And in that space, I'd have to figure out again who can I trust. And when another person would come by, my machete would be up now. Now, if another familiar feeling woman would come by, my machete was up more, my machete was up more, and each time it would be up more and more and more until the point that I could not feel my humanity, and all I wanted to do was just hurt, realizing that the thing that hurt me the most was me. Now I'm not saying that my war and that what people have caused me and the trauma that I had suffered at every level from every space, some that I'm not ready to talk about, and some that I'll never probably talk about because it just there's no point to it in my thought process. And maybe there might be. I I know that we say it helps people and all that, but sometimes the gruesomeness of it is just not necessary to understand the feeling of knowing that I've been there, I know it. And I didn't know that they weren't causing me that pain anymore because they weren't in control of my being and my physical experience anymore. So 2024, in 2024, I am 35 years old, and I am asking myself, what am I gonna do with this life? Because I'm sitting here at 30 asking myself what I was gonna do. I gave myself Project Human, I'm gonna do these things. And at 34, my child's growing up, my husband, I'm achieving my dream at home, I'm achieving these little things, yet I am so empty and so unable to do anything. And again, God is so good, and He, if I listen, I'll hear it. And if I decide to follow the instruction, I will, and I will bear the fruits of that instruction and the and the seeds that are sown. And here I am, he goes, claim it and relive it. And just like a couple weeks prior to that, I had a breakdown of some stuff because memories came up, and I had somebody I confided in with and said, Adela, you're you're talking about something that like it didn't happen to you, it happened to you. You're really literally refusing to accept the fact that you were tortured in so many aspects of your life as a child, and all the way up to certain levels that you've literally erased your life, and you think that it is okay to be able to live without that acknowledgement that way. And she didn't say that way in that sense, but she said it in so many of those words, and I really have thought about that moment back and going, claim it, claim it, and then God said, you know, claim it and live it. And so April 16th, 2024, I decided that I was gonna relive my day every day, and that I had my war every day. Starting at 6 a.m., I would wake up and I would relive whatever feeling was happening in my body, whatever thought was coming in. Some might be good, some might be bad. I was just gonna live in that space because I didn't know what that meant. And let me tell you, the first two, three weeks were not so good because I had already decided to anticipate the trauma of those couple of weeks, right? I went into this knowingly. So the dreams were not good, my experiences were not good, I couldn't tell sometimes my days apart. But with more persistence and with everyday waking up at that same time now with the intention of just reliving up to this moment and up to this moment with what I knew and what I had, and allowing my body to experience and feel it, allowing to express what it expressed, knowing I had no limitations in my health and that I was healthy and that I could, that gave me so much, obviously, so much confidence. And I started really pushing forward to learning what it meant to live, how it meant to live the way I needed to live. And eating healthy, obviously, sleeping, writing down in my book, um, all the things I needed to do and coming back to my faith. And that has been obviously the greatest strength that has been given me to what I need to is now my daily rituals are just it's it's I took what happened to me in the war at the time that was so scary to me and decided that I was gonna relive it every single day, not knowing what I was living, but I was gonna recreate it in a way that I decided was meant for me, not the way that the universe or the another human being or anything else, I decided what was for me. And I knew from the and and when I say I decided, I really mean this conscious living of deciding to live the way I live. And the way I live is with Christ through through Christ, and every single day with that knowledge and understanding, really knowing that I walked away with the most up, like the most protected being ever. I walked away without a scar. I walked away without a physical, mental scar. Emotionally, I am damaged as can be, if you will, like on a human level. I have a lot to work through. But to know that I walked away when so many have not, will not, and continue to not because of the human hand. It really is like it's such a gift to be alive here, right? So I decided I'm gonna throw it. What is so hard for me than to feel what I'm processing and living? Why is that so hard? And because it's it's difficult to feel your emotions. That's that's why. And I promise I was there. It was difficult to, it's still difficult to feel my emotions on certain levels or certain subjects or certain things. But I know though, now, I know though, I know now though that feeling them means that I'm gonna be lighter at the end of them. It means the release of them, it means the letting go of them, it means the acknowledgement of something within me that I was literally refusing because I wanted to define it in some way or shape and not let it define me, which is great. But the decision to live the way I live is different than defining the narrative or the story. So before you can make that decision, before you can do that, you have to define it. And so I spent that year defining it. What does it mean to live in this way? What does fear mean? I went back to my doctors, asked my doctors back and forth the questions about adrenaline and cortisol. And this was also during 2023, just asking these questions when they would give me answers that I didn't like because I was understanding some things. And they'd say, Well, yeah, of course that would have an impact. Of course that would have an impact. Of course that would have an impact. Well, maybe you should try that. Maybe you should try that. And I did, and it worked. So holistic approaches do work, you guys. It just requires a little bit more work and a little bit more feeling through life. 2024, I'm kicking butt, I'm making it happen. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna win, I'm gonna do this. And come 2025, of course, as everybody's having their 2025, we're moving forward, and in April of 2025, one year, one year almost to the day. Um to the day of the war, where I'm like, I am one year in, I'm gonna do this. What's the next? I'm gonna like I can't believe I made it through here. Okay, I can do another year then, or I can live through another thing, or whatever it might be. I well, I don't decide to, but God made a little bit of a decision. God made a little bit of a decision, you guys, to give me a little bit of a present. Now I didn't start this um presentation the right way, so I'm gonna start it the right way that I need to, really quick. Bear with me. Let me see if my my oh, there it is, my slideshow. Here we go. My slideshow. So here's what happened on April 10th. Now I can finally talk about this. So here's now I can finally talk about this. I have so much to talk about this in some upcoming episodes too, but I'm gonna give you a tidbit of that. This year was really God's way of patience testing me and testing my resilience and testing my ooh, testing my reaction, testing my tongue, testing my everything. Okay. So April 10th. Again, I am on this journey. I'm like, I can do this now. We're winning, we're I'm making it happen. And April 10th, I'm driving. I am maybe, I don't know, uh less than a half a football field away from I don't know what that's in your ads or that. I'm not great at distance, you guys. But I'm like half a football field away, maybe a football field away from the entrance to my son's school when someone decides to run a stop sign because they think they can, and they did, and then what happened was we got into a car accident. Um, so I t-boned them. I t-boned the heck out of them. When I tell you, when she came out, so for those of you who are watching on the uh or listening, there's uh the image on the screen showing you is the street from which she came. And she came, there's a stop sign there, and she came from that side, and she came so fast. She had apparently stopped for a split second and then decided that she couldn't make it through because there was a witness who had called 911. Thank God. This incident was all God's hand. I promise you, all God's hand, another mirac, miraculous testimony to my existence today, and why I'm so glad that I am able to do what I'm doing today. But she runs that, and as I'm coming, I T-bone her, right? So, like I straight shot T-bone her, and my front gets because she then speeds up a bit. So my front front gets pulled in and swept to the side into my son's side. Our airbags implode, everything just implodes, everything is like going crazy. But as that is imploding, as that's all happening in that moment, okay. My window is a little bit down. I remember like it, like I remember crashing and seeing the the airbags explode, but I promise you the airbag did not touch me because the next thing I saw with that airbag hitting was literally like a palm. It was it was just an aura of a palm that came through. I can't explain it, that came through and just put right in front of me. And so when that airbag exploded, because I had my glasses on, there was no, like there was, I there was not, there was no memory of me smacking my face at all. I was consciously conscious, like it was just, it was such a I can't even explain how jello like the whole experience was, even though that it was not, okay, because the pictures prove that it was not. So we slam in. Um the sea belt though does cut me really hard on my on my right, and my shoulder gets messed up, my left shoulder here. And so all that's happening. Pedestrians and people around are walking up, running up and going, Hey, we saw it, we saw it. I look out my wind, I look out the window, and I remember the first thought going, besides my kids okay, because I look over my kids okay, because I also put my arm out too this way, and thankfully, like I didn't hurt my shoulder so much on my right arm. Um, but I remember looking out the window as it was all happening and going, God, whatever you got in store for me better be good, because this was not part of my plan. And I remember having this giggle in the moment going, That's your plan. My plans are greater. And I just had to trust that process in that moment. Like I had to trust to promise you that this last year was really the test of trust of all of the things I've done because this was a knowing trust of my my existence and knowing the patience that I had to and knowing the steps back I had to pull back, just this knowledge of slow down, pause, you cannot, my plans are greater than what you think. And so, as that's happening, you know, we had the paramedics come out. I asked them to check Lee out. They check Lee out, and he they're like, he's okay. Um, there's the other car. She that's where she ended up, um, right there, because of the way I slammed into her, and um her whole like midsection is just not completely caved in, but her frame is pretty caved in. There was no movement to that vehicle either because the way she came and the way I was going, and I wasn't even going fast, I was going to the speed limit like 25, 28, because the speed limit's 30 there. And so she was like, so so we hit it. So my poor baby, my Hyundai, which was paid off, which was we I I was I was gonna drive that car till the wheels fell off. I had had that car for over a decade, paid off. This baby has survived everything with me, and I mean everything. My just she has seen me grown up, she has watched me grown up, she has listened to my cries, she's comforted me when there was no one to comfort. She was there. That car was my baby, okay? And so she got whammed, she sacrificed her life for me. Literally, you can see on here the red uh liquid that is out there is from the I think they told me the engine. Now, I don't know. I'm I don't know anything about cars, but she just she she decided to take her, she decided to take it for me, and she did, and she really, really, truly did. She was look at that, she's so bent up, she's just so crooked, like just just a oh poor sad little thing. And it made me, oh, it made me so so sad. It made me so sad to have to leave her. It made me so sad to be like because I didn't know what to do next. I've been with this car before technology was invented for cars the way it is now, so I didn't even know where I was gonna begin. And then two, I don't like change, okay? I uh I'm a fluid person, but in my personal space and who I am, I am very rigid in not liking change. I can change for the world or fit in and flow, be fluid and mold and do what I need to do to survive. I would prefer not to have that in my personal life. So if I could have the same car, same thing, same whatever, that would be great. Like the same soup every day. I'm I'm okay with that. Like literally, the less choices I have in my personal life, the better. Because it gives me less anxiety. I don't like the amount of choices there is in the world. Like it really does. I I like I like one thing. So anyway, she was gone. I cried, I had to take her back, and she had to be towed. We towed her to the house. She stood there for a day or two until insurance could pick her up and she was out there, and then of course we had to go through all the stuff. My recommendation, if you're ever in a literally my recommendation, if you're ever in a car accident, it's not your fault, get a lawyer, period, and a discussion. Because if I had not had one during this time, I would have been not only screwed out of so much because I I was, um, but I also would have been put into a position that I would not have been able to be out of, or or like I caught my doctor lying. There's so many things that I'm gonna talk about in a little while, um, or probably the next episode, just because it was such an intense process of having to learn this year of how to navigate this car accident. And so I want you to, my recommendation literally, I am recommending that, get a lawyer, just call them, talk to them. It's not gonna hurt you, but to let them know. And that's what I did, thanks to my friend who was like, get a lawyer, talk to them. And I did, and so glad that I did. Um, but then on the good side, so yes, so I lose my baby, I lose all that stuff, and now I am in search of a car, right? We had planned to get me my dream car. My dream car, which is a BMW. Now, I didn't care what kind of BMW, honestly. I really didn't. It was just that I was gonna have a BMW. Here's why. When I was a little kid during the war and right after the war, uh we would be playing out there with our bikes. So we had these little dirt bikes, uh, my cousins and me. And at least that's a memory in my head. Now I could be wrong. Like I said, my realities are not the same realities, and I accept that now and I know that now. But uh the memory is really ingrained because it was so hardcore somehow, some emotional way to that. Um, that it was that it was it was at a location that something tragic again happened that way too. But uh we were playing in this, we were playing out there in the in the field area running around, and I found the emblem to the BMW cars, one of the emblems. And I remember looking at it, putting on my bike and going, when I am one day when I'm rich and I am older and we get out of here, and when I can, I'm going to own a BMW. Like, I'm gonna buy me a BMW. And so this accident happens, and I'm like, well, there's just no way now because it wasn't our plan. My husband had just purchased his dream car. We had just done all these things to work to be working. out of debt. Like there's just so many plans we had. And we were gonna run this for the next, you know, at least two years so that I could be able to get what I wanted. And of course that wasn't gonna happen now. So I'm not only did I just get into a car accident, my shoulders messed up, I'm trying to having to navigate all these things. And I'm also having to fight yes the disappointment because it was disappointing that I might now be able to get the car that I had wanted. Not that I needed the material things I didn't I would I would be so happy with whatever I had. Again I was going to be riding my car until it was gonna you know wheels fall off hopefully it was like you know two to five years. But so I so I'm disappointed in there and we settle some stuff insurance. We do all this stuff and you know we have to get a car and I'm talking to my husband and I'm telling him that hey I really you know I don't care let's just go get a car whatever's in our budget let's make it happen because we need a vehicle and he's like what do you want blah blah blah I'm like well what I really want I'm not gonna be able to get so I don't want to talk about it. I don't even want to put it out there because what's the point? I'm already disappointed. And I said it like that in some way. And he's like we can still go to the BMW lot and look and I'm like can we? He goes yeah we don't have we can't get you a new one obviously he's like but I'm sure we might be able to find you a used one and maybe might not be exactly what you want but you'll still get a BMW car right if that's what you really just want. I'm like yeah I just want a BMW car like I just want to have a BMW car. I I know you guys this is this is this is a little kid's little girl with a teddy bear having a moment okay and so we go to the lot and we go to the Orange Park our Orange Park location and Mr. Isaac greets us and we walk you know we're out there and we're looking at these places and I see Mr Miss Ginger up on that lot and she's just sitting up there. She's the only ginger at the lot at the at the time and I just look at her and I was like that is my car. There's no way we can get it like I just there was like there's no way but that's my car. So we go through and we look at all these other models we look at all this other stuff and I'm just like uh uh my husband knows me so well because he looks at me he goes you know what you want I was like I do and he's like which one I was like that one so we walk over we look at it the interior is beautiful the outside is beautiful it matches my car it matches my spirit it matches everything I'm like this is my car this is my car it's a little out of our budget you know he's like whatnot I'm like that's okay let's let's go look around let's you know see and if I'm still like I can't find something else like and if this is just not for me it's not for me he's like okay so we walk we drive around and we go to all these other car lots which by the way all these other car lots that I went to I did not appreciate the such super sales absolutely you don't care what I'm listening to and you just want to get me out the door sales kind of deal um and you don't really care that I have actual preferences um I didn't like that so just wanted you to know that's why I didn't buy a car from you uh and if you see me and hear this and you're free watching which you might not be because you don't know who I am but if you are and you see it like that's why um but I did because I didn't like them. And so every time they would walk in they'll be like what are you looking for right now and I was like well I would prefer to have you know a lighter color or this or that they would walk me and give me this like really dark dark car. Just it was so dark. That's all the other way I could say and I'm like no and I'll sit in and I'm like nah nah nah I was like honey I'm so sorry but I you told me to be picky this time I'm gonna be picky. None of this is compared to what I had seen and what I liked and the joy that it brings me he's like okay so again we go through all these other places uh and and we're looking and we spend a couple uh a couple hours looking at that go away come back we come back to BMW Isaac's there and he talks to us and he's like listen you know here's what we can do and here's these things and and it actually has just gone down a little bit more with this and so God's so good because on that same day that car went down another 10k that was obviously you know way out of our budget but it put it right within our budget where we could adjust a few things and so he was like if you really want it I'm sure we can make it work and we go home we crunch numbers we do what we need to do and by the end of that next um that next like day or two or whatever it was 19th so April 10th a car accident happens april 16th is the anniversary of my award and what I'm me living through it and having this moment right and April 19th I get to walk into the BMW ownership or dealership and get me my own BMW car. You guys the tears that I had at like this little girl getting a car like I come from literally night and day of a life and to be here to have it is just such a blessing to me I can't even fathom like that little girl can't fathom what I'm living and I can't fathom what she's living which is why it's so hard for me because I'm lived both and I know both but I don't understand neither one and it's it's crazy. Anyway so as as teary as I am now and as teary as teary teary as I was then um I remember the day before asking my husband hey do you think they'll have it in the showroom for me because it was outside and whatever and he goes no no no no they're not put in the showroom you know it's for the special new cars or whatever he's like that's you know yours is off the lot and I was like okay I was like what do you think he goes no I was like with bow he goes nah I'm like I think they'll do it and he's like nah so then we walk in and guess what they do you guys they have it in the showroom with the bow on it they put it in the showroom with the bow on it and they didn't even know my story like they didn't even know the story of I know it doesn't seem like it's a lot but to be treated so it's a car it's a silly car like you guys get it like it's whatever but that experience showed me the level of again treatment of when you work really hard and and you show up for yourself and you dedicate yourself and your family to to what matters to you and to to the light around you and and you followed a path and again God showed it to me in 2019 and he's always been following me since then but to follow it and to be there and to trust the process despite how difficult it is despite the challenges that come through it um and to be here and to say that now I have it and and I I got to drive off of it. Look I I'm so joyful you guys they put the rivet on they put it on I got to drive off with my car and that's Miss Ginger uh she has been with me for a few months now uh well well almost a year now actually I haven't been able to talk about this I was in litigation for almost a year so I couldn't talk about any of this I couldn't share nothing um and I just didn't want to talk about anything if I couldn't share it in real life with you guys of where I was at in my state of existence what what was happening because it didn't make sense to start a can of worms that I couldn't finish or close or whatever. So here is an open can of worms of what's happened. Here is a finished can of worms of me so excitedly driving off my lot um off the lot I call it my lot but off the lot with my car because God blessed me so graciously to make all my little dreams come true. To me they're massive dreams to me having a home having a stable peaceful structural home is a massive dream and I have it. Having a husband and a son who actually adore me and they too and I adore them and and uh a um a flow in my life that just is that makes sense that I get to navigate get to create that nothing else matters outside is priceless right and getting to achieve these little moments as a girl as a young little child that I never thought would be possible that every single time that these accomplishments happen in my life or these moments these big moments in my life happen I am able to look and say look at what I did and walk up to her and be like I won't hurt you this time I really won't and she has every right to keep that machete up with me still but I see that she's trusting me enough to let me take charge now and let me be forward because I am stable enough for that I am strong enough in my own light in my own foundation for that and on top of all of that I have God with me now that I am not I'm not willing to be my my own downfall which in turn means that I will not allow her to be hurt anymore allow that inner child to be put into positions and places and spaces that do not belong for her that are not for her and being a mother taught me that having my child having my son knowing knowing what I would never allow for him to experience why would I ever have allowed it to happen to me and why would I continue to be the one to be in charge of that right and why would I deviate from God's plan of what he has set for me which is the peace the structure the stability of my life the the absolute blessing of life literally the life and the breath that I have that I get to create whichever way possible way I could you know it just reminded me of of somebody telling me one day Adela pick a lane and stay in it you have so many talents and you're so great at so many things and many people have said this to me and they said you'll never succeed if you don't pick a lane you don't pick a lane but this one kind of stuck with me a lot because I for some reason was just really enamored by this being and I was like their opinion really mattered to me and for them to say that to me it stung for some reason because I was like well I think being you know a complex artist or a lot of different things is great. But again I always look back and go they were right right in what they said in the way that they said it just not in the way that they knew what they meant to say that way for me in in the space and place that I needed but they were right when they said to pick a lane or to do these things I did pick a lane and God showed me that lane he gave me a literally a clear path again he gave me that picture he said Adela I don't know what else to tell you other than you have it it's right there it's it's a clear path here's the stamp go for it why are you not walking that path um today I get to say that I am today I get to say that I'm really excited to navigate this new journey of my life and to reflect back on pieces of my of my of my adventure as I'd like to call it and in which part of my story I started to really reclaim parts of who I was which parts I'm still navigating and how now I understand to advocate for myself um this car accident again really taught me really taught me that I couldn't be afraid and in that space God said Adela are you really sure you're going to go down this path you keep asking here you go the question really was posed for me are you sure you want to advocate are you sure you want to stand for this and I was like absolutely and then the choice was then are you going to advocate for yourself yes or no and the oath I took to Christ was yes 100% which means that yes I will advocate for myself and that I can't wait to talk to you about on the next episode but I wanted to share with you my reflections and where I've been these last couple years because I have not shared that uh uh the struggle for me is real in connecting on a personal level with humans because I don't know my real story I want to know it so deeply so hard whole like wholeheartedly um but at the same time it does not matter I know the story of who I am I know the place that I'm supposed to be I am light I am joy I am I am his child and I am made in his flesh and I am supposed to be here to create and to love and to nurture not just this whole world that we have to but really truly nurture myself be a steward of my home steward of my body steward of my mind and my soul steward of my of my home and my my husband and my son and my everything that means to me on that on a level that we would give to the outworldly all the time and my 10 years of being in outside world yes I absolutely had the opportunities absolute opportunities for the successes of the world but at what cost would that been? There was always a question for me what cost and it was never at the cost of my soul or my existence and the least the cost of my humanity because without my humanity there is no way I can connect to compassion and empathy. Without my humanity I become the exact monsters that did the things to me that they did when I was a child or that they are doing to humans and to children all around the world now. And I will never be that I will never be my own downfall. I will never not know what I am who I am or my narrative you will never ever ever question ever you can question I mean you can question it's a free country you can question whatever you want but you'll never be able to question me and me not be able to come back and say nah you're wrong and I say that with such confidence because I have the proof to say I know me. I spent time with myself I did exactly what the doctor ordered they said Adela it's in your head fix your head so I went into my head and I fixed my head I went into myself and I decided that yes you're right I am the problem but I'm also the solution I am also the solution so my whole message to you out of this podcast I hope is that do not give up even in the midst of your own trials and tribulation when no one's listening when you're in your corner in your bathroom in your closet when you're in so much pain and you're crying or you have just that one human who can be there for you to process it with just for that even though they may not understand but are willing to take it on with you treasure that treasure the moments that give you the strength within you to move forward one step at a time and build on that building block because the foundation of you is a lot stronger than you think. And that's something I'm really looking forward to coming to you guys this year with my absolute certainty of again who I am what I am what my narrative is and what I truly believe in this world to be the truth and that is one Jesus is King two that we human beings are brothers and sisters and so worth the effort of life with just us like we're worth it I don't care what you think I don't care what you believe I don't care what you do in your life I don't care I don't care because you don't care about mine and that's okay we're not supposed to care. We don't have the capacity to care for everything. But here's what I will tell you I love you. I do love you and I wish nothing but the success for you. I wish you the joy I wish you light I wish you happiness because you're worth all of that and I know what that is now I understand what that means now and it means so much accountability for your life it means so much responsibility for the things that you say you're gonna do and it means really accepting and claiming every part of your life in every facet of its existence because that's the only way you grow. It's the only way you get to truly figure out who you are. And again when I started Project Human and I started even this podcast I thought I knew I thought so many things but even in this just this last year of having to navigate this car accident and having to navigate this whole new system of standing up for myself in a different way of shutting up in a lot of ways and not being able to even have that conversation because of legalities because of whatever might be going on and having to really trust trust the process of it all trust that the next day is going to bring something greater even if it doesn't feel like it I promise days are not easy for me at all. They're not even today every day today did not want to get up it was it was a struggle but I did easier so much easier now I promise and I see it now that it's easier so now that I see that it's easier to do it I do it much faster. Before it was harder but that's the part of hope and never giving up right that's the part of trusting and having faith that you're worth the effort that you put into yourself that you're worth the time of educating yourself and informing yourself and advocating for yourself and learning about who you are so that you can stand on your own two feet. The greatest subject you can invest you invest in and the greatest subject you can learn about is yourself. Everything else you can just be a you know a master of something a little bit in the track of all of it but you know master of none of it but the one you need to be a master of is the one of yourself. And that is the one subject you should be able to know everything about in and out about no one else because no one else lives with you. And these last few years this decade of being in this study of my own self this decade of navigating this organization and what I want to do in creating and just understanding human life has really really solidified my belief that again I am a certified nuisance and I am certified in my own life and that I am allowed to be the expert in my existence because I live it every day. I have gone through the hard knock school I have graduated with the top honors I am the master of my own of the top of the class so who are you to tell me that in your five 10 minutes of meeting or conversation you know me and that part I hope you guys walk away from is again it's harder to to learn it and really get there but it's absolutely possible. Sending you so much love thank you for listening to this conversation I know it's a longer one today but I really have been holding this in for a year and I have been able to talk over a year and I figured I might as well just give it to you here in a big dump. I look forward to talking to you more in the next episode. I want to definitely talk about what it means to advocate and how to keep things and and and track the things that your doctors say and show you my experience with again what I had to go through and how my doctor um did not take care of me the way it was supposed to and um and and just what to do about it when that happens right um because it's important. So I look forward to talking to you about that I hope that you guys are enjoying the rest of this or the beginning of this year, beginning of all of that I hope it hasn't been too bad. And follow like subscribe do all those great things I really appreciate you download the episodes download our past ones we have quite a few great ones so much more education and so much more structures coming hopefully in this space too and I hope you can hear the growth not just in and not just see it in what we're doing but also hear it within me in everything that I'm doing the steps that I'm taking to be a better human being every single day. Wishing you all the best sending you my love a big great hug to you thank you to every subscriber every listener every human who's ever supported me up to this space and place thank you to every human who's ever entered my life in every shape or form in any given moment to give me a moment of their time because you have led me to where I am you have led me to home where I belong and I am so grateful for that. I am so thankful for that and I appreciate every lesson I've ever learned um and I hope you will too. Talk to you in a while my loves