From Childhood Chaos To Nervous System Healing

A school shooting. A childhood shaped by addiction and neglect. A brother’s sudden death witnessed up close. Melissa’s story is hard to hear at times, but it also explains something many of us feel and cannot name: trauma does not stay in the past just because we stop talking about it. 

We continue our conversation with Melissa, an RN turned holistic trauma and anxiety coach, as she shares how complex PTSD, anxiety, and grief showed up in her life through nightmares, hypervigilance, risky coping, and a deep sense of self-blame. We also talk about the way trauma can steer our choices, including how working in a pediatric ICU can be meaningful while still keeping the nervous system in constant survival mode. If you have ever wondered why you feel “fine” on the outside but your body says otherwise, you will recognize the mind-body connection in her experience with physical symptoms like IBS, hives, migraines, and chronic stress. 

From there, we shift into healing. Melissa breaks down nervous system regulation in plain language and offers a powerful reframe: trauma is not the event, it is what happens inside you when you do not feel safe, seen, or supported. She challenges the habit of ranking pain as “big T” or “little t,” and we explore why validating your emotions matters, without letting emotions drive the bus. We also discuss meditation, neuroplasticity, somatic work, and how prayer and faith can become part of recovery for some people. 

If trauma, anxiety, PTSD recovery, or holistic healing is part of your world, this conversation will help you feel less alone and more equipped. Subscribe to Words of Wellness, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find these stories.

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In Health, 

Shelly

Transcript

A Loss That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My brother, who was five years older than me, he was killed tragically in an accident right in front of my face. And um it was, I mean, my life exploded. And um, I had so much trauma and stuff that I hadn't dealt with that what that did is it just threw me right back into the middle of it, and I just wanted to die. I wanted it to all go away.

Melissa Returns For Part Two

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Do you get confused by all of the information that bars us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or should not be eating, how to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley, and I will be your host. And today I have a special guest. This is actually part two of our time with Melissa. She's a coach, a speaker, an author, and she is a holistic trauma and anxiety coach. And she is an RN turned holistic coach. And she has quite the story to share with us kind of her own personal journey and her personal experience that led her to a path of helping others with their own personal trauma and anxiety. And we just felt we wanted to move forward and share this as kind of a a continuing, continuation from our last episode. So I'm so excited, Melissa. Thank you for for being for being back.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yes, absolutely. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you, Shelly, for having me. It's always a good time.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah, it is for sure. I mean, I just I can I know we've like, I feel like we've known each other for a really long time just by our our little short amount of talking and getting to know each other. So this has been really, really special. So let's dive in for our listeners because you know, in our last episode, we were kind of sharing about your journey as a nurse and how you got into what you're doing today, and a big part of that has to do with what you experienced as a young child and just the different traumatic events and the anxiety. And you know, I know they always say you're best positioned to serve the the person you once were, and you are precisely like that. And so I would just love for you to give some information, maybe share with our listeners what what you experienced.

Assault Followed By Silence

Surviving A School Shooting

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah, sure, I'd love to. Um, yeah, so my childhood was less than ideal. Um I was born to drug-addicted parents. Um, my parents both were addicted to heroin and methamphetamine from a very, you know, when I was born, and then from um all through the my earliest memories, that's what we existed in was drugs. I'm one of four, um, the second in birth order. And um my everything that goes along with like parents who are addicted to heroin and methamphetamine is what you would expect my life to have been like, right? Like we had we moved a lot, sometimes we were homeless, we lived in a tent um like at a lake for a significant amount of those years. Um, we didn't have food, we didn't get Christmas presents, you know. We had to stand in line to get Christmas presents and to get food at the homeless shelter and um lots of people in and out, lots of chaos. My parents fought a ton, you know. My dad was very physically abusive toward my mom and my brother, who was older than me. Um, never toward I'm I'm the second, and my next two siblings are also uh girls. So he was never abusive toward us girls, but um really abusive towards my mom and to my older brother. And so that was really all I knew. Um, right? Like my mom, when when they divorced when when I was about six, my dad left and never came back. And my mom, as a result of her own um trauma, and we know like epigenetics, Mariel, Dr. Mariel Bouquet has a fantastic book. It's called Break the Cycle. It's all about intergenerational trauma and how trauma is actually passed down in our DNA. Um, and so like my mom had trauma in her past. So it makes sense that like my we kind of repeated the cycle, right? And it goes back at least five generations that I'm aware of on my mom's side. I don't know anything about my dad's side. Um, but yeah, so as a result of her own trauma and and limitations, um, she was really emotionally abusive, um, really like verbally abusive and emotionally unavailable. She would often, like for days at a time, she would lock herself in her room and we would never see her, right? And I was like eight. And I so I was like getting myself and my sisters up and getting us to school, and like we would come home from school and um with no parent to greet us, right? My mom was physically there, she never worked, she was just always in her room, and um, she would really only come out to yell at us. And um, I would make us macaroni and cheese or cereal or whatever I knew how to make, right? And I really had to like be the parent at that, at that really young age. And my brother was five years older than me. He was kind of off, you know, just being with his friends. He rarely came home, um, you know, except to sleep, um, always getting into trouble and and just, you know, really, you know, on a bad path. Um, and so that's really how we lived for many, many years on welfare, on government assistance. My mom didn't work. Um, and then uh when I was 11, I was um sexually assaulted by my at the time best friend's grandfather. And um I it only happened one time, but I thought I deserved it. And um, that was just like what life was, right? Um, I told my mom, she actually did call the police. The police basically told us there was nothing that we could do about it because he denied it. So um I never told another person, right? And we just never talked about it. And um, then when I was 15, I survived a school shooting. I went to school one day and this guy just started shooting. And um, I didn't know what it was at first. I I thought I had never heard a gun before. So in my 15-year-old brain, I just was trying to make sense of what was going on. It was a loud popping noise. And I thought, well, it's definitely firecrackers in a trash can, because that makes sense. You know, like I don't know why I thought that. I had never even heard firecrackers in a trash can. So I don't, you know, like that's just what I thought it was. Um, and then when everybody started running and screaming, I realized that it was danger, you know. Um, and come to find out later, um, you know, within a short period of time, it was a it was a single, uh, a single shooter. Um, two people died, 13 people were shot, were injured. Um, you know, we were I ran, I grew up in San Diego, so we were in um our the school is like outside, like the classrooms are inside, but the the the hallways are outside, right? Like they're open to the air. So it was just in the center of our school, which we called the quad. So it's just an open air, like, you know, field, basically. But it was in the center of our school, and all of the classrooms were in the perimeter, you know. Um, so I just ran to my first class and we waited. And I remember being in that um in that room thinking like this is the end, like I'm gonna die. Um, and and really not even fully understanding like exactly what had happened, right? Um, and then ultimately eventually, it feels like hours later, but I I don't think it was hours. I think it was, you know, probably, I don't know, minutes, maybe 30 minutes at the most, I would say. Um, we eventually were um, you know, evacuated from the school. We police came, you know, and they had their rifles and you know, their, it's like, you know, the SWAT team was there and and they had apprehended the shooter, but they still didn't know had he acted alone, like was there another, you know, what was going on? This is two years post-columbine. So this is really, you know, in a small town in San Diego, we were, you know, told to, you know, walk out like with your hands up, don't make any sudden movements, do not put your hands down because they will shoot you. So we walked out and then they took us across the street and uh to a grocery store across the street. And um, just in the parking lot, we just kind of the whole school just took over the parking lot, you know. And we at that time it was 2001. So we didn't not not a whole lot of people had cell phones yet. Like I had a pager. If you remember pagers, I had a little transless translucent pager, but I couldn't, I didn't have a cell phone, so I couldn't call anybody. But there was a couple people, like there was a mom who had a cell phone who was nearby, and I remember asking her, like, can I use your cell phone to call my mom? So I called my mom. So she heard it from me. She had not heard it on the news or anything, um, which is a blessing. And so she obviously came, you know, to get me. We weren't allowed to leave, like our parents had to come get us, you know. When my mom got there, she had a cell phone. And somehow I wound up on the phone with my best friend at the time, who told me that it was our friend who had been who had been the shooter. He's she um she said, Melissa, it was Andy. And I said, like what? Like Andy died? Like he was, and she said, no, it was him, like he's the shooter. And she didn't go to the same school that I lived, that I went to, but we lived um close to each other. We lived a few houses down from each other. So so I was like confused, like, wait, what? Like it was Andy. Andy was the shooter. He had been at my house the very night before. Um, I had no idea that it was gonna happen. I had no clue whatsoever. He was 14, I was 15. He was new-ish to our school, a little bit odd, I would say, like a little quirky, tall, skinny, 14-year-old boy, had lots of acne. Like it was not, you know, like he wasn't, it was he's 14. Like, who doesn't feel uncomfortable at 14, right? Like, but he was the new kid. And I don't think my school was one that was really welcoming. Um, so he was bullied a lot. And not to excuse his behavior at all, but like he had a really hard home life. His mom left when he was three, just up and left. And his dad was, um, by all accounts, like probably one could say maybe abusive. He had confided in me some of the things that his dad um had done, and and he didn't feel support, you know, didn't feel like he had a safe adult. And um, then when he started getting, and he had moved schools a lot and had kind of a history of being abused of being made fun of, bullied, severe bullying, not just like, hey, you're ugly, but like like beating him up, and like I, you know, at my school they had like taken his skateboard, he got a skateboard for Christmas, it was March, and they broke his skateboard, brand new skateboard, like, you know, just really, you know, mean things, and uh he not excusing his behavior at all, because this is not what you should do, but he decided that he was gonna make people pay, right? And so he brought a gun to school and shot people. Um, he's still in prison now. Um, but that made me feel very I I like I told you before we recorded, you know, like I I did, I think what probably most 15-year-old girls do, right? Like they make it about them, like I made it about myself. I was obviously responsible for that, right? Because he was my friend. How could I not see this coming? He was a nice guy. Like I, for all intents and purposes, he was a nice guy. Like he was, I did not have any grief with him. He was, it's he wasn't uh mean, he wasn't aggressive, he wasn't, he was actually quite pleasant and charming, if you know, funny, not kind, very kind.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Just for one quick second, it makes me think about these instances that you hear about, and you no wonder you would take it to heart and feel guilty. But I feel like this is such a common theme that there's not uh any uh not any sign that something like this would would be would would happen.

PTSD Symptoms And Risky Coping

Leaving School And Starting Over

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, yeah, I think that is the case for for some people, right? Like in this particular case, he had confessed to some other people what he was planning. He had actually confessed to some friends and one of those friends um stepparent, and and none of those people reported it. Like days before that, he had confessed what he was gonna do, but he did not confess anything to me. I had no knowledge of what was happen was going to happen. Um, and so yeah, I felt like, how did I not see this coming? And that made me believe that I couldn't trust my own perception on the world around me, right? Like if I couldn't see this, like what else am I missing? Right. Um, and so I was diagnosed shortly after that. I was I I struggled so much with complex PTSD. I had horrible nightmares, flashbacks, I couldn't sleep. Um, I started really engaging in a lot of risky behavior, started using drugs, started having sex way too early, all of the things, right? Looking for something to help me escape from the immense amount of pain that I felt during all of this. And I didn't have my mom was not supportive. She couldn't really be. She was she was traumatized in her own right, but she made it very much about her because um that's that's how she existed in the world, was was um still very much in her own traumatized state, right? Um and so I I was very unwell for the years after that. I I a couple times was you know admitted to an inpatient psychiatric state. I had suicidal ideations, I was put on antipsychotics, I was um put on antidepressants, anxiety meds, I was all of the things. I was in therapy, I was I wanted to die. I wanted the pain to go away. Um, and then I feel like when I was um, you know, I I lived there for probably like a year, a year and a half, maybe close, you know, two years. When I was 16, 17, I started to finally feel like, okay, like maybe I can just put this behind me. I just don't have to think about this anymore. And I could just like move on, right? And I um I put all my effort into I started school early. I grabbed I I started school, I skipped kindergarten. And so I was already kind of young for my age. Um, and and um I've always, you know, school came easy for me. Um, so I just put everything into my schooling. And um I realized I was told in in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, it happened in March, school was done in June. We didn't have any more school for the rest of the year, right? Like school completely changed. We still went to school, but we didn't do school. We did counseling like every day. Um, they had they brought in, you know, those um like modulars, you know, or um, yeah, modulars and and surrounded the whole school. And they had police and they had, you know, um therapists and psych psychiatrists and all kinds, you know, like it was a full-on counseling school. Um, and so I was told in the midst of all of that and and and being diagnosed with PTSD that I could actually just, you know, take an extra class um the following year and I could graduate a year early. And so that's what I decided to do because I'm like, I want the heck out of here. I don't want to be here anymore. Going there was traumatizing, being there was traumatizing. A lot of people turned on me because I was friends with him. And how did I not know this? And I was on Larry King Live right after that happened. I was interviewed by Larry King. So I so that like that was in hindsight, not great for my social life, right? Because everybody was like, Oh, you're talking about the shooting, and like because this was kind of the conversation that I was having. I was like, I had no idea, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

I feel like it had happened prior, like you were referring to Columbine, but it was a little bit newer, right? And so it was the national news and everybody's hearing about it.

Brother’s Death And Becoming A Nurse

When Trauma Shows Up Physically

SPEAKER_00 19:16

It had happened before, but like we didn't we didn't have social media, so it's not like you had instant like footage of it. You didn't have instant like update, you know, up to the second updates on it because people didn't have cell phones and we didn't have social media yet. But yeah, it was it was things like this had happened, but they were on like national news, right? It wasn't like a social media kind of thing and because it didn't exist, yeah. So I was just really outcasted at school, and so I decided I'm gonna graduate, I'm gonna graduate early and I'm gonna like just be done with this and never have to deal with this place ever again. And so that's what I did. So I graduated when I was 16. I started working and I met my now husband, then boyfriend, when I was 16, and um just really like tried to forget about it. And then um I decided, okay, I'll start college. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Um, I kind of had an inkling that I would go into medicine. I thought maybe I want to be a doctor, but I was like, I really don't want to go to school for that long. I don't know. And so I enrolled in junior college and I started taking some general education classes and I was working full time. I was going to night school and working full-time during the day at a horse ranch. I loved that job, shoveling manure most of the day. It was a great job and feeding horses. And then when I turned 18, my brother, who was five years older than me, he was killed tragically in an accident right in front of my face. And um, it was, I mean, my life exploded. And um, I had so much trauma and stuff that I hadn't dealt with that what that did is it just threw me right back into the middle of it. And I just wanted to die. I wanted it to all go away. Um by the grace of God, I was able to compartmentalize that like absolute despair that I was in. And I was able, I I decided three weeks after my brother died that I was gonna be a nurse. I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I'm gonna do. Um, he was in an he was riding a four-wheeler, he was riding a quad. Um, we called him quads, they're called four-wheelers. He wasn't wearing a helmet, he was riding it on the asphalt with sand tires. So he had no business doing any of that. And the bike flipped and he hit his head on the on the asphalt going really fast and he died instantly. Right, and I was right there. I was standing right there with him. So it was the middle of the day, you know, it was like a Tuesday. There's like people walking their dogs, and like my mom was at the grocery store. Um Um, and I had so much self-hatred and self-blame. I obviously, I or I felt like I obviously had had caused that, right? Like, why didn't I know? Why didn't I tell him to stop? Like, why didn't I tell him to put a helmet on? He had a helmet on the bed of his truck. Like his tailgate was there was a helmet right there, like his arm's reach. He could have put his helmet on and he chose not to. And um, so I really beat myself up, you know, in those in that immediate aftermath. And and something just three weeks later, he was in the hospital and we decided to donate his organs, which is not a quick process. Um, so I um the nurses were like angels on earth. They took care of us, they brought us, you know, graham crackers. I never left his bedside. Um, so like they would bring me graham crackers, little cups of cranberry juice. Um, honey, you should go get some sleep. I would sleep right there on his bed. I'm uh like with my head, you know, I never left his bedside. Um, and I just believed that he was gonna live. And then they told us he was, you know, brain dead, it's not gonna work, you know, he we have to donate his organs, or not, we have to, we got to choose choose that, but I still believed up until the moment that I we wheeled him into the surgery suite that he was gonna live, that he was gonna make a miraculous recovery. And obviously he didn't. And um, so three weeks later, I was like, oh my gosh, like this is I'm supposed to be a nurse. Like, that's I want to help people like that. I I'm gonna go to the ICU, I want to help people. And I I've always loved kids, so I was like, uh, but I'm also gonna do pediatric ICU because I don't really like adults. So that's what I did. I I I you know declared my my major as nursing, and I never looked back and I was able to really compartmentalize. And the only way I think is the grace of God. Like I I wasn't, I didn't have to deal with that when I was at school. I could just focus on being, you know, just doing school. And I did exceptionally well. I I got into a very difficult program to get into. I graduated top of my class. I got that position at the children's hospital that was there was 500 applicants for two positions. I got one of them as a as a resident, new grad resident, and um started on my career. And um, I lived in that trauma. That trauma controlled me. And, you know, I said on our last episode, like if it if you don't deal with your issues, it rests in your tissues. That's what happened for me. And it really started to manifest in my physical body and my physical symptoms. I started, I had obviously I had all the emotional symptoms. I had severe PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, like all of the emotional stuff, all of it. Um, and I also had developed um IBS symptoms. I developed skin rashes. I would wake up covered head to toe in hives with no answers. Um, I had horrible migraines. Um and yeah, multiple, multiple um, you know, physical symptoms, felt physically heavy. I was gaining weight, but I wasn't eating. I was drinking like, you know, alcohol, drinking a ton of alcohol, trying to numb. And um yeah, I really lived there until until I was 24 is when I found meditation. And I shared this in our last episode. That's how it started. I discovered the mind-body connection and the power of the power of the mind, um, the power of connecting to your body, neuroplasticity, somatic work. For me, meditation ultimately eventually too also turned into prayer, and I started to um foster a relationship with God. Um, and that was really pivotal. Um, yeah, and it's kind of been an a journey since then.

Meditation Prayer And Mind Body Healing

unknown 26:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

That was a long story.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Sorry. No, don't be sorry because you're just sharing your truth and what you experienced. And I think it's so important for our listeners to to hear this and to know that if you have gone through something like this, or maybe going through it, that you are not alone, and that you have someone like Melissa who can support you and help you work through it. And I think that oh, I could just feel emotional from what everything just going through all the phases that you went through and the the trauma and how kind of wild that you were brought into working in the ICU. It's like you traded one trauma for another. Like that was that was almost like what was known and comfort, comfortable to you, right? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Yeah, and in hindsight, it probably wasn't a great job for me, right? Like I felt traumatized every time I went there. And you can't uns like there's nothing, there's nothing more beautiful than bringing a child back from the brink of death, right? Like I was a part of that. Like I've done compressions on small children, I've watched kids who who are not thought to to survive walk out of the ICU. Like there's nothing more incredible than that. But also my mental health suffered greatly being there because I can't unsee those things still. I mean, I haven't worked there for in 10 years, and I still see those, I still have the images in my head. You can't unsee the stuff that that comes through those doors. And we need those, we need those places, we need those nurses, we need those doctors. But for me personally, it probably wasn't the right fit.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Well, I think going back to also helping people with anxiety and and regulating their nervous system, that's something that my daughter and I we talk about a lot being in that environment. It's you walk into chaos, not knowing what you're walking into. And I would imagine for many, they don't realize till after the fact, or maybe once they leave that line of work how highly stressed they were. Like you're in it and you're used to it, right? And that's your work and that's your focus is. But once you once you step away from it, like I can imagine it's it's quite something where you can go, wow, I didn't realize how how stressed I was in so many different ways.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Yeah, and I feel I feel called to share too, like just some encouragement. There's in the trauma space, um, I shared this in the last episode, but like trauma is not the event, it's what happens inside of you as a result of that event. So when you have really emotional events happen and you don't feel safe and seen and supported, that's the landscape in which trauma is imprinted inside of you. Now, in the trauma space, they talk a lot about like big T trauma and little T trauma. And I feel called right now to just um cast that out right now. Like I hate that that differentiation. I hate the that people classify it as like big T trauma and little T trauma. And a lot of times when I share my story, I I get the the like, oh my gosh, you've been through so much. Like that's such big trauma. That's so much. And I and I get it, I understand, right? Like it is a lot. I get it. But trauma is not the event, it's what happens inside of you as the result of the event. So even if you have, quote, little trauma, I think calling it little is actually doing people a disservice because they feel like, oh, well, my trauma is just little. I don't have big trauma like you, so I shouldn't be as affected by it, you know, because it's little. And I just I don't believe that. I think it's trauma is trauma, is trauma is trauma, is trauma, right? And it doesn't matter what the event is, it's what happens inside of you as a result of that event. So the trauma doesn't have to be, you know, heroin-addicted parents and a school shooting and molestation and um uh your brother dying in front of you. It can be being made fun of by a you know, kid on the playground, or by a teacher in second grade, or your parents amicably divorcing, and you have to go back and forth between the parents' households, right? Or a car accident, or your first boyfriend breaking up with you. Like all of those things can be trauma and they are just as important and um impactful inside of your body as the quote big things. So just know that like your response to it, it's all normal. It doesn't matter what the event was and allowing yourself, we don't we don't let the emotions drive the bus, right? But allowing yourself to actually feel the emotions and say, like, man, that person making fun of me was hard. That hurt, right? But I hear from women a lot of times they'll be like, oh, like, well, yeah, like I ran into this person. I just got off a call before I got on the call with you. Like I had a call with somebody, and she said, you know, she had this really traumatic thing happen at work, and then she ran into one of her old uh co-workers or somebody who was involved in the situation, and she said to me, gosh, it's just so stupid that I reacted that way. Like I was so like, I was shaking and I just I felt so like angry and sad and scared, and it's just so stupid that I felt like that. And I was like, No, you're not allowed to say I felt this way, but it was so stupid that I feel this way, because that's just immediately invalidating your own experience. And you would never say to your best friend, hey, it's so stupid that you feel that way. You would never say that because it's not stupid. It makes sense. That's what your nervous system does. You're not gonna maybe let the emotions drive the bus, right? She was angry, she was scared, she didn't let her emotions get the better of her and run out of there screaming or like get a fistbite with the person, right? Because we are in we can be in control of our emotions. You don't let them drive the bus, but like acknowledging them. Emotions are like three-year-olds, they just want to be acknowledged.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

That's such a great way to put it. They just need to be acknowledged. And I 100% agree with you that trauma is trauma, and everybody is going to have different levels of it, but also you have different personalities and how they're going to respond to it, right? Some individuals are going to take quote unquote small smaller events a lot harder than maybe the next person. So I completely agree with you. I mean, it doesn't, it does not matter, and let's not let's not like disqualify it or or not feel any less than little and somebody else's is big.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Like, no, that's not true. Throw that out the window.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Gabor Mate actually shares a lot. He does a lot of work on trauma and he talks about um no two people, even if they're siblings, have the same parents because your parents show, like I as parent, as a parent, I can for sure say this is like I show up differently with each of my children, right? I show, I have a different relationship with each kid. Each kid is different, each kid has their own. I mean, there's birth order, there's like other like biological influences. There's what is our environment at the time, right? Like I'm showing up in a different time right now than I was when my son, when my youngest was born in July of 2020, right? In the height of COVID, right? Like he was that was a really stressful, stressful time. Um, and I'm showing up as a completely different parent for him as a newborn baby than I was for my other as a newborn baby, right?

Support Resources And Closing Message

SPEAKER_01 34:34

It's so true. I mean, that's that's also spot on. It's just different timing, and you're dealing with different personalities, and we are different with each child. It's so, so true. This has been so amazing, Melissa. Thank you so much. I just appreciate you opening up your heart and sharing, sharing all of your experiences. And I again, this is for all of our listeners out there, you know, if you're again, if you're going through something or you've had some trauma traumatic experiences, take care of yourself. And if you you need to have some support and coaching, uh, reach out to Melissa. I will um all of our information in the show notes. And again, if you if you happen to miss the first episode, last week's episode, um, with Melissa, go back and listen. And this again is part two. And again, thank you so very much for sharing. I appreciate I appreciate you so much, and thank you for all that you are doing.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Thank you for having me. It's an honor.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Absolutely. And again, for all of our listeners, take time for yourself and your wellness on this day, and we'll see you next time on Words of Wellness. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed week.