Healing from Trauma: How to Reclaim Yourself After Life’s Challenges with Julie Brumley

Can I be real with you for a second? Healing isn’t always pretty. 

It’s messy, confusing, and sometimes it feels like you’re completely lost. I’ve been there, sobbing on my guest bed, wondering if I would ever find myself again after my marriage ended. And then you take one small step forward, then another. Sometimes you take two steps backward before you can take another step forward. 

This episode is all about healing, growth, and discovering who you really are so you can reclaim yourself one step at a time. One of those important steps is to stop abandoning yourself for others. 

My conversation with fellow adoptee, coach, therapist, Julie Brumley is rich and heartfelt. She shares her personal journey of overcoming trauma, healing from a painful divorce, and learning to truly belong to herself.

What you’ll learn:

• How paying attention to your body can help you stop abandoning yourself and feel more connected.
• The signs of self-abandonment and how to connect them with the sensations in your body. 
• The difference between ego and intuition, and how to trust your inner voice.
• How big life changes, like divorce, can open the door to new purpose and freedom.
• The importance of slowing down and how to feel more grounded. 

If you’re looking for inspiration or practical ways to heal and grow in the new year, this episode is for you. 

Tune in and let’s grow together! 

Love,

Laurie

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Connect with Julie Brumley:
https://cominghometoself.co/
https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley
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Transcript

Laurie James  

Hey, there free birds. Before we get started on today's episode, I just wanted to reach out to many of you listeners who live in the LA area and may be affected by the recent fires that we've been experiencing, know that I am safe and my house is safe, my family is safe, but I wanted to let you know my heart goes out to any of you listeners who have been impacted in any way by these fires, whether you've lost your home or you've been displaced temporarily and feeling the uncertainty of the future, I do believe in the collective strength of our community, and know that with time, we will find resilience and rebuild. But in the meantime, know that you aren't alone. If you are looking for ways to help or looking for help, I have listed a few vetted places to either donate your money or get help. There are a tremendous amount of resources out there, and that can be overwhelming. These are organizations that mostly need money right now because so many Angelinos have stepped up and already provided clothing and other things that were in need right now, and many of these shelters and nonprofits are full of those items. And can we just take a moment to be grateful to all the first responders or families of first responders who have put themselves at risk to protect these communities. We wouldn't be in communication like this without them. In addition, if you need support, please don't hesitate to reach out if you would like to stay informed about new offerings for those who are affected, please make sure to subscribe to my email list. I am contemplating and creating some things that I'm not quite ready to share yet. I do believe in our collective strength and as a community, we will find resilience and continue to take steps toward healing as we navigate these uncertain days, because that's what we do as humans. And I hope you enjoy my conversation with Julie Brumley on today's podcast. She is a fellow adoptee, she's also a coach therapist, and our conversation is going to highlight her insights on how she navigated and healed from her recent divorce and the pivots and changes that she had to make along the way. So I hope you find this conversation helpful, and thank you so much for being here.

Laurie James  

Welcome to Confessions of a Freebird podcast. I'm your host. Laurie James, a mother, divorcee, a recovering caregiver, the author of Sandwiched A Memoir of holding on and letting go, a therapy junkie, relationship coach, somatic healer and now podcaster, I'm a free spirit, and here to lift you up on this podcast, I'll share soulful confessions and empowering conversations with influential experts so you can learn to spread your Wings and make the most of your second half. So pop in those ear buds, turn up the volume, and let's get inspired, because my mission is to help you create your most joyful, purpose driven life. One confession at a time. 

Laurie James  

Hello there, free birds. I am so excited to be with my guest today. I have the pleasure today of speaking with Julie Brumley, and she is a fellow adoptee coach. She has been helping adoptees overcome addictive behaviors and heal from their primal wounds of abandonment for many, many years, when we started talking, we realized that we had so much in common. We were, you know, a sister from another mister. I think what we came up with, Julie is also the CEO of coming home to self, a company dedicated to helping adoptees heal after her own birth mother tried to abort her twice. Oh, my God, I couldn't imagine. She found herself frozen in an unconscious trauma response for decades, until she found the power of somatic trauma healing. Now she uses nervous system regulation, personal experience and her master's in counseling to help other adult adoptees find their way out of their own trauma and into a life of radical self belonging. I love that So Julie, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, I love being here with you. Laurie, it's been so wonderful to get to know you. 

Laurie James  

Yes, ditto. I feel the same way. So can you start by telling us more about that pivotal point when you realized you had been frozen in a trauma response for decades, and how discovering somatic healing helped you move out of that. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, I'd totally love to tell you about that, not a fun time of my life, to be honest, but it's never I don't think it is for anybody, but I think for me, it was adoptees. A lot of times talk about this as coming out of the fog. But I think I didn't even realize that I was cycling through these trauma states, fight, flight, fawn, freeze, flop. I literally cycled through them consistently, until I started a program, a somatic coaching program, in 2022 and as I started that, I actually started like searching somatic like healers on Insta. You know, that's what we do. We try to get to know everything about what it is that we're delving into. And I found a person named Sarah Jackson. She's wonderful. And so I did some of her zoom calls. And there was the first call that we did, she talked about the polyvagal ladder being in dorsal, vagal shutdown, and all of that stuff. And I remember sitting there and listening to I was on the floor in my office doing whatever she was asking, and I just started sobbing, because I realized I have been in all of these for multiple years, and had no idea, like no idea. And the crazy thing is, I got my masters back in 2014 and you think I would have come out and understood it. Then I just didn't. I was comfortable in this place because it was something that I was honestly born into. As adoptees, we really are born with complex PTSD, when you think about it, like the immediate severing of the only relationship you've ever known for people like us in the 60s and 70s, when we were born, taken immediately and never saw your birth mother, that they just didn't do that then. And so I didn't realize that was actually occurring in inside of me, and that I was trying to regulate with unhealthy things until then, until 2022, so literally just two, two and a half years ago. So that realization, and then me doing the somatic coaching program and learning how to go from dorsal vagal up to ventral vagal. But it took a while, right? I had to be aware and then titrate up the ladder and figure out how to come out of that when it showed up. And so it was really just me getting to know me. It was me learning how my body responded, because I had never connected to that before. My body definitely was screaming at me for years, like I had pain in my lower back, pain in my hips, pain in my shoulders, my neck, all of these areas that actually speak to different things, that traumas that I've experienced, but just would medicate them. Let me just go get a Tylenol, or let me just go get an ibuprofen without really paying attention to what they're trying to say, right? You know, does that make sense? 

Laurie James  

Yeah, no, it makes complete sense. And I am familiar with the nervous system ladder, the polyvagal theory. And just for our listeners, just to kind of give them a little bit more information, you know, when you're talking about that dorsal vagal that is the parasympathetic, and to be more specific, like that's when we disconnect from ourselves and others. That's when we shut down. We might remove ourselves from social situations. We might feel numb. We have a decreased sense of body function and for lack of also better word, which is what I have done I did for a lot of my life is I disassociated. Yes, absolutely. And all of these techniques are necessary at various times in our lives. But then what happens is, if we don't come out of that and complete that fight, flight or freeze response, that's when we can stay stuck. And that's what Julie's talking about is she has stayed stuck in that state. And so the next level of that ladder is what we call the sympathetic, which is we're in a fight, flight or protection response, but we're not shut down. And then ultimately, we want to move up. One more level into what we call ventral vagal, which is where we can connect with others. We can get into a place we can get into more of a parasympathetic place of rest and digest, where we can feel social, but not necessarily need that social interaction. We can be more present. We can be creative. We can't have a sense of hope about our future, which it's like, I have lived in fight flight or freeze most of my life, too, like you, so I can totally relate. 

Julie Brumley  

Well, right? I mean, that's the whole point. It's like, it's weird. We didn't know any better. For me, I was born into this. So to me, it's what I knew, and that was safe, if you will. Like, there's that phrase that our nervous system won't seek an unfamiliar heaven when it's used to an unfamiliar hell like that. Just was me. I didn't know any different until I did, and once I did, I was like, oh my goodness, like it was so eye opening for me. 

Laurie James  

Well, and the beautiful thing I think about somatic experiencing and polyvagal theory is it gives us language around what is happening in our bodies, and there's no judgment, no shame around it, and we get out of our heads and really connecting with our bodies. Of okay, what am I experiencing? I mean, I've experienced pain, too at various times in my life. I've talked about it, but I felt very ill after I left my marriage, ended up in the hospital twice, felt like I stuck my finger in a light socket and like, my whole nervous system had been fried. And so it's like, how do we continue to get in touch with what we're feeling, the sensations, so we can move out of that fight, flight or freeze response? 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, it's true. That word was huge for me, the sensations, yeah, I needed to hear that word a lot, like, what are the sensations that you're feeling? And I was like, gosh, I don't I really need to be curious and tune in, because nobody had ever asked me that question before. They'd asked me, What are you feeling in your body? And I could never answer.

Laurie James  

Yeah. And that's why that sensation piece is huge. And if anybody's listening, who wants to, I have a free download. It's called the beginner's guide to somatic healing that has a whole sheet of all these sensations so you can start developing that relationship with what's happening. It's so, so helpful. So this was recent. You felt like you were frozen when you realized it for the majority of your life then. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, I truly was. I know you understand this. I had tried therapy, off and on for years, trying to access things, trying to EMDR, even back in the early 2000s I had tried and I'd access some early stuff, but nothing having to do with my adoption, and nobody ever asked me about that, which we've heard these stories of adoptees going to get help, and when they say they're adopted, they're like, oh, that doesn't really have anything to do. Okay, let's move on. 

Laurie James  

Well, therapists aren't trained, I know, yeah, in adoption, and even the therapists that I know, they say, Well, I have abandonment issues too, or, you know, I've experienced this, and I get it, and yes, I'm not taking away from what they've experienced. But I think when you're living in somebody's womb knowing that you're not wanted, or you're going to be given away, and then you don't have that contact for the first three four days because you're in the hospital with little to no human contact, that is all pre verbal and that has an effect on us.

Julie Brumley  

It absolutely does. I mean, think about it, your amygdala is developed before you're even nine weeks old. So your brain, the emotional component already developed. You already know how to have fear. So she attempted to abort me between 12 and 16 weeks. The brain's already freaking out. So it's interesting like that, in and of itself, is like intrinsic trauma. It happened with the tissue that was surrounding me, yeah, I call that like that cellular level, yes, absolutely. And so that's why, like, I say, I feel like I was born with complex PTSD. Didn't know that. And I'm not saying, I'm not labeling myself and saying I'm screwed up and I'm a mess I have been. I definitely feel like there were broken parts of me, and I believed that I was broken and defective for a long, long time. I'm not there anymore, and I worked a lot on the mind from 2005 to 2022 a lot like I did a lot of work in my head. But what I didn't know, we've talked about this, 80% of the messages that are received go from the body to the brain, and only 20% from the brain to the body. So. Wonder I was struggling with integrating all of that knowledge until, yeah, until the body stuff kicked in. And then I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, it just felt all of it kind of made sense now. And I was like, Oh, this is what everybody talks about, that I've been missing. And in my training, as you talked about, I graduated in 2000 and I'm 14, so 10 years ago, with a degree in counseling, Master's degree in counseling, no somatic training. They talked about it. Talked about it. I knew what somatic was, but there was no training in it at all. 

Laurie James  

Yeah. So yeah, that's extra, and it'll be interesting to see if the different schools start to integrate that in because of the new information that's coming out, and research that is showing how effective the somatic work is in the body, in the healing, whether it's, you know, healing from an adoption or healing from a divorce or healing from childhood trauma or abuse or whatever somebody has experienced, you know, an unhealthy relationship, so you focus on working with abandonment. But as I've touched on just a couple minutes ago, abandonment doesn't only happen to adoptees. Can we talk a little bit more about that abandonment wound, and how can someone recognize if they might have abandonment issues?

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, I think the best way that I have learned to describe this is through the lens of self abandonment. We can recognize when we're actually self abandoning. If we are constantly pushing through and not paying attention to taking care of body, mind, spirit, like if we recognize that, okay, so and so told me I need to data, but my whole body has a reaction of No, and we still do it. That is self abandonment. So if there's abandonment wounds there, we're gonna do that. We're gonna naturally do that, because we're seeking acceptance through, pushing through and finding it through other people. So that's one way. It can also be through people pleasing, which adoptees do that very well, but so do any people

Laurie James  

Right? Because it's the way that they were able to survive their childhood.

Julie Brumley  

Correct, right? And so if I just people please and make this person happy and lose myself in the process, then I'm going to be accepted again. And this isn't just adoptees. Everybody deals with this.

Laurie James  

Before you go on. I also think I just want to mention too I think women in general do that more than men, not always, and I don't want to label but we're nurturers, we're the peacekeepers, right? So we have a tendency to do that a little bit more than men do, and I think that that's an important piece to point out and to start bringing a little bit more awareness around. If somebody's listening and you're like, Yeah, I'm a people pleaser, because I did too, and I was abandoning myself until I couldn't take it anymore.

Julie Brumley  

Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely not alone in that, because most women do this. Like you said, it's not just the adoptee population. I think the adoptee population can take it to a whole other level. But I mean, it starts with this is how I recognized that there were wounds for me. That's why I'm saying. It started with me, with me recognizing I'm not even paying attention to what my body is telling me, or even my mind, I would have that Heck no, and be like, well, but in order to be accepted, approved of, I just need to push through, or I just need to please. I just need to become a chameleon. And as I began to recognize, wait a minute, I'm literally abandoning what my body is telling me I need. Something's off here. And that's how I started to recognize I have abandonment wounds. That was the beginning of me really being able to go, Okay, let me start actually paying attention and see how my life shifts, how it shifts from I'm just gonna do whatever everybody else tells me to do to No. Let me listen to see what the hell yeses and the hell nos are and actually follow through with those and see if tuning into my intuition will shift that and allow me to feel more secure in myself. It was an experiment, and oh my gosh, it was like night and day difference. I started to realize I don't need other people to approve of me, and we all know this. But I think experiencing it for me was a beautiful realization, and it happened after I found my birth family. So I found them, and thought all of my belonging is here. I belong now. I found my people. I'm okay. What I realized was I put so much effort into that search and effort into, I don't know if it's the right word, is effort. Clout. Wait on them being the final I fit. That's my identity, right? Yeah, I belong. Yes, that is the word that I think everybody wants that, but adoptees cling to that word we try so hard to fit in, which, again, is self abandoning you're not what is your true, authentic, vulnerable self reveal that we're afraid to and so for me, once I realized I found it, I found it. I have arrived, but I hadn't, and it's not because of them. It was because we're human. There's going to be challenges. And if I put all my weight into what they view me as I'm right back where I started, right? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. And so I had to recognize it's inside. I have to find it in here. My inherent worth does not come from the biological mirroring, although that's powerful, and man, is that powerful, but that's not where my worth comes from

Laurie James  

Right. So you started with awareness. Then you realized that your belonging doesn't come from the outside, it comes from within, right? And we belong to ourselves. What happened next?

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, well, it was actually that was the end game, okay, so the self belonging piece came through awareness, which we've talked about having the awareness. Then it was acceptance. It was me being able to recognize I'm stuck in a shame spiral here. I'm feeling like I am worthless and I'm defective, and all of those shame messages shame, I have a acrostic that I use called, should have already mastered everything. 

Laurie James  

Oh, my God, I love that. Wait, hold on. Say that one more time, because I love that.

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, it's should have already mastered everything. 

Laurie James  

So true. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah. And what I've noticed is whenever should is present, shame is not far behind. And so I recognized that and accepted that, and had to learn, okay, how do I respond to shame? Like, what does my body do? And that's when I really started recognizing I collapse. I go internal. I don't want to share with anybody. I isolate, but shame thrives in that environment. So I had to start going, okay, fu shame. I'm gonna start like speaking this out loud. And as I started doing that, it helped me to have compassion on myself. No wonder you've been living in this spiral for so long. Let me show you love here. That's where the compassion came in. Then after that, I started to take responsibility for my own stuff. I stopped blaming. Well, it's because I didn't find my birth family, or it's because my adoptive family did this, which they were great. There's no like, no more blaming. I need to start taking I'm an adult human. I need to start taking responsibility for my stuff. And that's when I really started paying attention to putting words to feelings, let's name them that whole, name it detainment idea. Let's name them. Then I moved into that transformational part where I recognized that those feelings that start here show up as emotions in my body show up as energy down here. And I need to start recognizing that they actually give off a vibe that sounds very woo, woo. But you know what I'm talking about. 

Laurie James  

Our bodies process so much more information than our brains do, right? And as you said earlier, that's what's sending the information to our brain. So why wouldn't we start listening to our body sooner? Why wouldn't we be in touch, whether it's on touching a hot stove that's hot, right? Or that person, I don't feel good when that person is around. But the problem is, if that's what we equated to love to is not feeling good around somebody, then we repeat that pattern until we can walk through this process that you're describing and rewire those neuro pathways in our brains. 

Julie Brumley  

Yep, it's true.

Laurie James  

and it takes time. 

Julie Brumley  

It does it takes time and it also this is what I like to say, the connector between those two is what our voice, it's our throat. So the more we are able to speak our truth, it connects the two of them, versus keeping it hidden. And so that's where the transformation began. I was able to go, Ooh, okay, so sadness is the emotion or is the feeling? I have sad thoughts, right? Well, where does that live in my body? Well, it showed up in my heart. I could feel the energy there. I'm grieving. Okay, cool. Now, what am I going to do? I'm going to put my hand over my heart. I'm going to attune to that need that's a very simple grounding tool. And then I'm going to move through that allow it to show. Allow the vibe to go and do its thing, versus stuffing, which is what I did before, right.

Laurie James  

Stuffing or bypassing it, right? We either stuff or we bypass it. So we need to allow that to emerge, so that way we can experience it, express it and expel it.

Julie Brumley  

Absolutely and then from there, that's when I can actually show myself the love that I was party to when I was a baby, right? I can immediately go, that's where the nurture comes in. That's where I'm going to show myself the love it needs. Whatever that looks like. I'm going to identify what is needed here, and that is to show myself love, and then from there, I'm able to actually recognize I belong to me. I do. I got this. I don't need to be like strung along by all of these inner critics that I have. I can actually show them compassion and realize that all of those parts belong, and that's what's beautiful.

Laurie James  

Well, and when you develop that relationship with those inner critics or those beliefs, I think what happens is we're able to tame them a little bit more. And you know, it's like, Hey, I see you, I hear you, and you might be partially right, but I got this. Your adult self has this, yeah, that might be a voice from the past. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, it's true. I think one of the mantras that has really helped me here is I use a tool with most of my clients called the saboteur assessment, where they it's a 10 minute assessment that they can take, and it actually highlights what their loudest voices are. And so once I know what those are, not just for them, but it helped me. It allowed me to be able to actually, like you said, name them to tame them. I can say Stickler, which is my top one. I named her, Sally. I can say, Hey, Sally, I see that you're here, and I know you're trying to protect me, but it's my turn to protect you. You've been doing that all my life, and I got this like letting her know because she's loud because I'm not acknowledging her. So the minute I start acknowledging her and recognizing that she's there, she quiets. It's really interesting, the more you ignore the more they are loud.

Laurie James  

So that's a little bit of internal family systems work, right? I mean, which is also becoming very popular right now too. So you've also gone through a divorce recently. Can you share a little bit more about that, how that played into your healing journey? Because it sounds like a lot happened in the last two years. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, the last three and a half, since 2020 to be honest. I mean, I think the journey really started when my father in law passed away. My dad who raised me, my adopted dad died when I was 15, and so when I got married at 22 you know, he was my dad, from 22 all the way to when he died in 2020 so for 25 years. So it was just, it was really interesting for me to lose another father. Yeah, so there was that that was really difficult, and I think it really impacted my then husband a lot, and it really became difficult for us to connect emotionally, and we both have done a lot of work. He was seeing a grief therapist. I was seeing an adoption therapist at the time, actually, and we worked through some things, but I think in that working through we grew apart, and there just was, I don't know, a discrepancy in what we wanted from the relationship. It was really, really difficult. I respect him and his process, and it's been difficult. I mean, we were married for almost 28 years, and have two adult children, and so it's been a tough thing for me to have it felt like a severing, to be honest. 

Laurie James  

Well, yeah, it is, yeah, right. I mean, 28 years is not something to sneeze at, and you don't just get over that overnight.

Julie Brumley  

No, oh no. I mean, a divorce was final, December 6 of last year. So I'm coming up on a year, so it's very, very new, but it definitely just felt the word is severing. And what's interesting is, I would say the same about adoption, trauma. It's a severing. It was a severing of a nine month relationship that you only that's all you knew, right? It's a severing of the umbilical cord, yeah? I mean, yeah. And then bye, bye.

Laurie James  

End of the family, right? And then all of a sudden you have all these people in your family, kind of floating around trying to figure out, Where do I belong? What is family? Look like now, and so it's like everything just like explodes, and then you have to wait for the dust to settle. And I'm seven years out from my divorce, well, from leaving my marriage, not from my divorce, but leaving my marriage. And I just talked about this on a podcast a couple weeks ago, but I had a moment that grief came back again, so it was from November, but that grief, it gets less intense and further apart, but it's like there is no time frame, and a lot of times people want a road map, right? I mean, everybody is different. Everybody's experience is different, and that's part of that acceptance of grief is going to show up in different ways. It's not the primary grief, it's a secondary grief that I learned from another podcast, from a grief expert, which was also a great podcast, but that was really interesting to kind of better understand. And so I don't want to discourage anybody who's listening, who's like in the thick of it. But, you know, it had been a while since that kind of dropped on me that, you know, and it was a little unexpected too. 

Julie Brumley  

Well, yeah. And I think that can definitely happen. I mean, I'm still living in the house. I'm still so there's stuff everywhere that can and I still have his pictures up and I will he's my son's dad. I'm not that kind of person. I'm not a vindictive at least, I don't feel like I am. Maybe other people would think I am. I really don't have bitterness or resentment. I don't and I'm grateful for that. I've realized at church this last Sunday, actually, he was talking about, if you had the authority of Jesus, who would you heal? And what went through my head was, and I don't I'm not saying that Matt is broken. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is what went through my head wasn't this was a really big indicator for me. Was like, I would just love for his mind and heart to be healed, that's what I would love. And I was like, Oh, wow, okay, that's great that I'm there. Like, I really believe that the time that we had together made me who I am today. I wouldn't be who I am if it weren't for the growth that we had, that we pushed and fought and tried to get to a good place. It just didn't end up that it was together.

Laurie James  

But do you think that the fact that you don't have that anger and resentment towards a relationship, because I certainly did when I left my marriage, yeah, I my marriage ended under different circumstances, so I did. But do you think that that's partly due to the work that you have done? 

Julie Brumley  

Oh, 100% yes, absolutely, I definitely would say that. I think there was so much self discovery. You know what it reminds me of? It makes me think of like when we study in our counseling programs that growth of neurons that we have as children. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like early on in the development, we just there's these growth spurts of neurons. Well, I kind of feel like that happened to me in the last few years. To be honest, I had all of this growth that happened that I think could have potentially been intimidating. And I'm not saying I'm better. That's not at all what I'm saying. 

Laurie James  

Tell me if I'm wrong. I think it's more that he saw you changing, and maybe that scared him 

Julie Brumley  

Very well. Could have. I haven't talked to him about it, so I don't know, but yeah.

Laurie James  

Right, you were changing and growing, because I know that that's what I felt like was happening in my marriage. It's like we develop this awareness, and then we get curious, and we start doing our own work, and they look at, you know, and when you're both not growing at the same pace, it's hard for one to not feel less than I mean. Oftentimes they talk about, you know, as you we're on our growth journey. We're going to leave people behind because people are fearful or resentful for our changing because they liked us in the version that we were.

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, or wanted us in a different version, and we were disappointing because we couldn't meet whatever that version was. And I think in a lot of ways, that's kind of where we were, and I hope, I really do hope, we can get back to being friends in the future, because I really do feel like we had a great friendship. I mean, he's, you know, in communication with the boys, and that's good. I just it definitely was really hard. It was a hard time for me. There was a nine month period where I felt like, in a lot of ways, there was almost a subconscious floundering that was happening for me, but yet at the same time, because my identity, in a lot of ways, was wrapped up in the relationship 28 years, right? So it was that differentiating of me trying to figure out, Okay, now, what does this mean about who I am now, and how do I. I not self abandoned anymore. How do I actually look for what I need and nurture that and all of that so-

Laurie James  

Well, you had a death and a rebirth. 

Julie Brumley  

Yes, I did. 

Laurie James  

Right? So you talked about the severing of that relationship with which caused a death for a part of you, the married part of you, and so we do flounder. I floundered, and I think that that's normal, and it's hard for us, because I was not kind to myself during those floundering years, months, whatever it was. And so if somebody's listening, please try and be kind to yourself during that process, because we need to be that self compassion, that because when we're not kind to us, it kind of goes back to what you said earlier. That is self abandonment. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, no, it really is. So you asked the question at the beginning, how did that help you with the divorce, all of your healing? And I think that was the key for me, was being able to show myself compassion through it and not judge myself through it. The words like that first year, the words that I had for my year, I don't ever do like New Year's resolutions. I do words and my word for that year, words for that year were just be curious. I can't remember what the other one was, because it was two years ago, but those were the two. I'm such a doer, like move, move, move, do things. I needed to figure out how to just be and then be curious about what was going on, versus judgmental. And maybe that's what it was, don't judge like it was something like that. And that helped me so much.

Laurie James  

Was it hard for you to just be ?

Julie Brumley  

Oh my gosh, yes. Okay, so I'm an Enneagram one, and if anybody knows that, we're perfectionists and our inner critics are really loud. So Enneagram ones are really good doers and feelers. We're not great being still thinkers. We're just not and so that was something I had to cultivate, and I'm still working on that daily. Now, well, and sometimes it's better, but I'll set a timer for like, 15 to 20 minutes, and it's my stillness time. I literally just am still and listen. Sometimes maybe I play music. Other times, I might listen to a meditation or something from Joe Dispenza, which I don't know if you know Joe. I love him. He's great. So those things are what I do in my stillness time. But it's not the same. I'll literally ask, I have a very deep relationship with God. I love him. He's he gets me through a lot of things. And I'll ask him, Okay, what do you want me to do today?

Laurie James  

That's great though, right? God, your higher self, which, you know, we all have a different virtual guide. 

Julie Brumley  

Totally. All of us do, whether we believe it or not. And he told me today, he's like, I think you need to color. And I was like, All right, so I just sat in stillness and colored for a while. And sometimes I need to be still and listen and receive. And so I have cultivated that practice. It is not something that is easy for me, but I have begun to look forward to it because of what it produces in me. There's a over time, it's created this sense of peace that I just I can surrender and know that if I continue to do this and tune into my intuition and the internal Holy Spirit within me, I'll be okay, you know? So it's been really cool.

Laurie James  

I love that, because I think that's one of the hardest things for many of us to do, especially in our very fast paced world and with so much information getting thrown at us, is to allow us that time to slow down. And here's the thing I talked about this on a previous podcast, is our nervous system is hundreds of millions of years old. It has not caught up to the fast paced environment and all the technology and media and so if we don't give ourselves that time to slow down and feel we will never feel better. And it was hard for me because I was so attached to my to do list for all my life. I still am on some levels, but I know how to slow down. I know how to give myself those little pockets of time throughout the day, and it's a work in progress, too, for all of us. Like, I think that's the other thing, you know. I want to point out is it's something that I continue to work on, and will continue to work on. It's not like, Okay, I'm going to do this for a week or two or 21 days, and then I'm going to go back to my old schedule. It's like, No, you have to make it a practice. It's a lifestyle change. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, it's true even you. I'm gonna call you out here, even in prepping for this podcast, you messaged me and were like, I have back to back recordings. I need a 15 minute window between. Does that work for you? And I so honor that, Lori, because what you're doing is you're giving. Yourself that window to just kind of refresh, recharge real quick and do what you need to do. And I think it's so important for us to do that, to have whether it's 15 minutes or a half a day, I don't care. We have to build that into our life and slowing down as a grounding tool, like, just take it a little slower. I mean, there have been times where I've been at the sink, and I'm like, I'm just gonna pay attention to the water on my hands. I'm gonna just, you know what it sounds like, such a little thing, but,

Laurie James  

but those little things, those are great, simple somatic practices, or you're in the shower, instead of thinking about everything for the rest of the day, I'm just gonna sit here and feel what does the water feel like, yeah, the sensations, right? What are the sensations I'm feeling as the water is hitting my skin? And what that also does is it brings us back into the present. So we're not thinking about what everything we have to do for that day. We're not thinking about what happened last night or the argument that we had with our kid or our significant other, or ex or whoever it is, right? It brings us back in the present. But what that also does is it signals to our nervous system that we are safe in this moment right here, that we are safe. That's such an important tool for us. You know, whether it's just like feel the chair underneath you. Feel your feet on the floor right now, whatever it is, like, there's I have, you know, again, my guide has, and I'm sure you have guides too. 

Julie Brumley  

We all do have multiple things, like, when we work in somatics, that's what you do, right, right?

Laurie James  

Exactly. So what do you think has been the hardest part about your divorce, and what has been the biggest gift from your divorce? 

Julie Brumley  

Oh, gosh, I don't think I have been asked that question. So give me a second to think about this. That's that's really good. I think the hardest part has been watching my boys like having to and they're adults, so being able to be hands off, and they need to figure this out. It's their relationship, not mine. So I think, and watching the hurt, you know, and just how hard it was for them to navigate, which is understandable. This is a family that they were a part of for 20 something years for them, you know, and they're grieving too, correct. So I think that was probably the hardest for me, next to the severing that I already talked about, that just like one day we're together, another we're just not and that you've been sleeping with somebody for as long as you have, there's just this. It's a desolation. It just feels so probably those pieces, and then the biggest gift, I would say finding my new purpose, and that it shifted being able to feel not that I wouldn't have had it in the relationship, but that severing gave me the ability to have the freedom to do what I'm doing now, to be able to explore helping adoptees in the way that I am. So I think that's probably been the biggest gift was it freed up some energy for me, if you will, to receive what I feel like I was put on this earth to actually do, and I feel very aligned with that now. 

Laurie James  

How beautiful. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, I think that's how I'd answer that. 

Laurie James  

Yeah. I love that, because that just goes to show that even as hard as divorces and as difficult and painful when we let something go, it makes room for something else more beautiful to come in.

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, it does. It does. It doesn't mean-

Laurie James  

hard and it's scary, and, yeah, it's painful and all of those things,

Julie Brumley  

Yes, but I think the biggest other gift came through as you were talking is I wouldn't trade what I had. I'm glad I had it, because I think I may have said this, I don't remember, but I it's made me who I am today. It grew me to be who I am today. So I think there's another gift there too.

Laurie James  

Absolutely, and I would agree with you, I would not be here doing this if I stayed married. But as I've said before on my podcast, is I felt like my soul was going to wither away and die if I stayed in my marriage. I had that realization when I was crying in the guest bed, you know, for the 100th time, and I was like, if I stay, My soul is truly gonna wither away and die. That's awful. I'm so sorry you experienced that. Yeah, and you know, I'm just not that person. I'm, you know, active and love life, and I feel like the world is my oyster. And there's so many things I want to do and see, and you got to do that recently, a little bit did I did, and I've got more fun scheduled too.

Julie Brumley  

I love that so much. 

Laurie James  

It's going to be a year of celebration for me. 

Julie Brumley  

Well, yeah, it's a big birthday. Yeah. So I think that's a great. 

Laurie James  

A year of celebration ski trips and couple of fun ski trips come a big skier and some other fun travel planet to weddings and all kinds of goodness. So what does coming home to self mean to you, and how do you incorporate that when you work with your clients. I know we probably touched on that a little bit at the beginning, but I wanted to circle back around to that. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah. I mean, I appreciate that. I think it's really interesting. I didn't even know well, I knew, but I'd forgotten that Nancy, various book, she has a book called coming home to self. I don't know if you you know that it's like an adoptee Bible. I mean, look at this thing. It's it's huge. It's basically about healing the primal wound, like, what are the things that happen? And so that was one of the things that I read right after I did my first EMDR. I totally forgot that that was the name of the title of the book. And so as I was naming my company, that is just what came through. And later somebody said, so did you name that after Nancy various book? And I was like, what? Like Donna 

Laurie James  

connection, yeah.

Julie Brumley  

And so now I'm like, oh gosh, please don't let me get in trouble. So anyway, I think for me, what that means is what I've already described, it is getting to know who I am, separate of everybody else's thoughts, what everybody else says, what everybody else thinks, and being able to tune into my own still small inner voice and love that voice, whether It's harsh, sometimes you're not being able to really embrace that and know that that voice has what's best. For me, it's not something that I need to exile, whatever the voices are, and really being able to know that my ego versus my intuition are two different things, and there's nothing bad about those inner critics. There truly isn't. They want what's best for us. That's the reason why they do what they do. So for me, it's being able to love, like I said earlier, all parts of myself. And then when I'm able to do that, I increase those superpowers within me. And I do believe that abandonment can be a superpower when we learn how to harness the energy that it gives us, once we recognize where it came from. And so I think for me, it's been able to come home to that not identify as a label, but to know that who I am inherently is valuable, and that's intrinsically within me. My wholeness doesn't come from other people. It comes from within me, and-

Laurie James  

 it doesn't come from what we do, which is what our society says. And I struggle with that still of like, what am I doing? And equating it to self worth, right?

Julie Brumley  

Right? That that's my value. My value is whatever I put out into the world. 

Laurie James  

Because that came from my father. He struggled with that. Never recognized it. But yeah, so you also talked about ego versus intuition. Can you touch on in your mind the difference between those two and how people a listener might be able to recognize the difference in themselves? 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, totally. I actually recorded a pretty intense podcast on this with someone called ego versus intuition. But, and maybe I should give you the link so you could put that in the thing. But basically, the ego is what we were just talking about earlier. It's all those inner critic voices. It's loud, it's demanding. Is based upon fear. It's not based upon peace, it's confusion, it's all of those things. And Its job is to protect. That's its job. So that's why we don't want to exile it. We want to be able to hear it, but we have to quiet it first, and the way that we do that is by weakening them and increasing what I would call and what the guy that does the saboteur assessment calls the sage powers, which are things called innovation, creation, navigation, creativity and empathy, these are the things that build that right side of our brain versus the left side of our brain. And so the intuition piece is a gentle whisper. It will not feel forced, and sometimes it's illogical. That's the other thing that's really interesting to me, and it's you can actually test them by Little things like, Huh? I think I want an orange. I'm gonna go eat that orange and see if I feel good when I eat it. That sounds ridiculous, but it's how you test whether or not you're tuning into your intuition. Sometimes we even. Self abandoned with little things like, I have to go to the bathroom. Well, no, I'm just gonna avoid and avoid and avoid and not and then we've gotta really go. It's like, No, when your body tells you to do something, pay attention. That's the intuition leading you. 

Laurie James  

The other thing I'll just add to that intuition based off of my experience, is two things. One, the intuition comes to us when we are in a calm state. It's not when we're heightened. It's not when we're in, you know, coming off reading a crappy email or a, you know, whatever it is, or just come, you know, getting off a phone call with somebody, and we're heated and we want to then do something. That's not intuition. It's in those quiet moments when we're taking that 1015, minutes to ourselves and a thought comes up, or an idea comes up, or and the other thing, and tell me, if this has happened to you, is our intuition. They're those small little nudges, you know, and sometimes they continue, and it's that small, little quiet voice that keeps showing up, right? It's not super loud, it's not screaming at you, but it's that thought, huh, I should be writing this down, right? I should be writing this down. Or people telling you you should really write that down. There's a story here. You know those repeated messages that keep showing up in your life?

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, it's like the synchronicities, or what my really good friend calls sacred breadcrumbs, like they're they're there, they're being dropped, and are we being aware enough to follow them, or are we too caught in our head to not be able to recognize them? Our body does, but our head sometimes pulls us the wrong direction,

Laurie James  

Which is why the somatic work that you and I have done on ourselves and offer to our clients is so important for people to start learning how to connect with their bodies so that the way they can become more in tune with their intuition. Yeah, it's true. Absolutely, yep. So as we come to a close here, what's one confession that you'd like to share with our listeners that maybe we haven't touched on already. 

Julie Brumley  

Oh gosh, 

Laurie James  

we've covered a lot. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, we have covered a ton. This is the one that just popped into my head. This is a random thing, but I absolutely love singing. It is my favorite thing, and it's a way that I heal, or dancing. So let's say that I need to move something out of my body. You know, a lot of times humming helps, like, that's one of the things that helps with somatically, for me, I'll sing. That's a confession. I sing a lot. There are times where I'll do that, or I'll dance. 

Laurie James  

So it's, it's a way to move that energy through us, right? I mean, music is a beautiful way to if you're feeling sad, to have that music kind of provoke and allow that emotion to emerge. Or if you're trying to get ready for a party or an event, and you know, you want to get a little excited, put on some of your favorite upbeat music. I mean, music is a beautiful, beautiful resource for us.

Julie Brumley  

But it's also a Vegas nerve stimulator in a good way. So singing, for specifically is and so I found that that I've loved singing. And anybody who knows me knows that. I mean, I do worship at church, but this, what I mean is I like doing it. I'll be walking downstairs singing, I mean, it's just it. I like it, yeah. 

Laurie James  

I love that. I love that, yeah. Well, Julie, thank you so much for being here with me today. How can people find you? And if you have any freebies you want to share. 

Julie Brumley  

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and I'll obviously send you those links from the show notes. Yeah, in the show notes and my website, I can share my website with you too. And I definitely have freebies. I have an ego versus intuition freebie that I can actually send you too, because we talked about that. I would love to share that with you. I have a lot of other freebies too, but we'll start with that we don't need to overwhelm people. 

Laurie James  

Yes, exactly. Well. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to be with me, and no problem sharing this valuable conversation with our listeners.

Julie Brumley  

I'm so happy to do it, and thank you for having me. I feel honored.

Laurie James  

Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Freebird. I'm grateful to be in your ears and hearts. If you're interested in becoming a free bird, I'd love to support you. Please check out my website at laurieejames.com to learn how we can work together, or to sign up for my newsletter so you can receive tips on how to date in relationship differently and ultimately, find more freedom and joy in your life. If you found this podcast helpful, please follow or subscribe, rate and review and share it with friends so they can find more freedom in their second or third act also. Until next time.