From Trauma to Triumph: A Story of Resilience & Reclaiming Identity with Michelle Holling-Brooks

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (00:00)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now, the podcast where we dive deep into the moments of transformation, the times when not yet shifts into right now and everything changes. I'm your host Jen Ginty, and this podcast is all about those pivotal moments in our life journeys. You know the ones when the hesitation fades, when we take that first step, even if it feels like a leap. It's in these moments that growth and healing begins.

Each episode will explore stories of resilience, moments of clarity, and the sparks that ignite real change, from personal experiences to expert insights. We'll uncover how people navigate the complex journey we call life and come out stronger on the other side. Whether you're searching for that spark in your own life or just curious about how change unfolds for others, you're in the right place. We'll discuss the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and setbacks, and how to embrace the right now, even when it feels out of reach.

because sometimes the hardest part of the journey is realizing that the moment you've been waiting for has already arrived. So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's get started.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (01:11)
Hello and welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now. Today we have a wonderful guest on, her name is Michelle and I'm just gonna introduce her first. Michelle Holing-Brooks is a passionate author, speaker and trauma informed specialist who empowers individuals to reconnect with their authentic selves. Founder of unbridled change and creator of the unbridled change method and the bridge of connection, Michelle combines her expertise in somatic healing

spiritual arts and trauma-informed coaching to guide people through profound healing. Michelle helps others release past burdens and truly embody their heart and soul. Welcome, Michelle. Aw, thank you. I'm so glad to be here and to be with your beautiful listeners too. Well, thanks. So let's get into it. You have multiple healing journeys that we've discussed, and I would love to get into your origin story.

Yeah, thank you for that. And I want to just pause and say that just the name of your podcast and it's like it like hooked me right at the beginning is like, I've done that. You know, I've been there when I've been like, I don't have to work at that yet. I don't need to really look at that. It's not that bad. It's OK. It's all good. You know, and I just kept trying to push a can down the road until one day it was like, you know what? I don't think that's a good life choice. Yeah.

And maybe your life could feel so much more free and liberated and really able to take those leaps of faith on yourself if you can go clean out the proverbial garage in your system and be able to come back in. so that, you know, when not now becomes now, like that whole idea, I was just like, that resonated a lot with me. Yeah.

I'm finding that there are so many journeys that people have put off. Maybe it's for fear. Maybe it's for just not wanting to deal with it, just wanting to go ahead with life instead of looking backwards.

Yeah, so that looking backwards and not wanting to do and just being like, hey, I'm just living in the present moment. I can claim whatever is mine. I can create whatever I want. I was doing a good job at that given my origin story. So the quick version of the origin story, because it does it comes back into like the backside of it is when I was 13, I was super, super sick. I was bit by a mosquito that had equine eastern encephalitis.

And so my brain itself was like super upset fighting this virus. And then it dominoed at the same time into viral spinal meningitis. So my brainstem itself was swelling outward. The lining of my brain was swelling inward. And together that equaled a very unhappy brain and a very unhappy body because it just couldn't do all of that. Like think of all the basics like breathing and rhythms and.

all the things that come together in those areas of your brain. And all of that was like fighting for space. And eventually it just said, yeah, we can't do this. I ended up slipping into a coma and because it was viral, there was nothing they could do. They were just trying to support my body to be able to like mount a defense. But it was, you know, just the, were telling my parents if she wakes up, she might wake up. But if she does, you know, this is the area of her brain.

that is being really affected the whole middle part of my brain and they couldn't, you know, guarantee what would wake up. Well, what woke up was somebody who was deaf and blind, paralyzed from the middle of the back down. And the other thing that was the most problematic was that I was completely wiped clean of who I was. So didn't know that I was Michelle. I didn't know that I was a human and 13 years old. I didn't know who my family was.

I didn't know anything all like labeling, like this is an apple, this is an orange, all of that was completely wiped out. And so I just knew the semantics, what was happening in that moment in my system was pain, disorganization and immense amount of fear because I didn't one know I should be able to talk, that I should be looking to try to communicate, that I should be trying to reach for anybody. I just thought I was alone in this massive pain.

And then that every once in a while things came into my world that moved me and it hurt and it was startling and it was painful and I didn't understand it and I tried to fight it but it never won. And it turns out those were the nurses, the doctors, my family trying to come and to be with me. And it was, you know, just I'm putting words now on what had no words because language was completely wiped out for me. So it was this.

moment of all I knew that quote, Earth School was, was isolation, pain, disorganization, and unexpected interruptions that were painful, that hurt, that I didn't understand, because they were putting me in and out of machines. I had a halo around the back of my head, so they had to hold me still and I tried to move. And so they had to you know, restrain me and put me down.

all the things they were trying to do to help me, but in the reality, because I had no point of reference, they couldn't soothe me to calm down because there was nothing to soothe. You know, there was no connection. And we think of little babies and I've had people say to me, was like you were like a little baby. And I was like, yeah, but a baby is hardwired to seek connection because they feel it in the womb, right? And they sink to the rhythms that are around them and they know those rhythms and they

they look for them, those rhythms within me were completely shattered. So I didn't know to look for anything or to be with anything. So that's kind of the origin point that created the trauma soup, so to speak, that I eventually, once I started to be able to somewhat, the swelling went down, so it was like I was underwater. So then I could hear, but if you've ever swam underwater, you can hear people talking.

And so I could tell that people were trying to communicate with me. But again, I had zero reason to try to communicate with them because I just saw it as oppression. I just saw it as abuse. They came in, they picked me up, they moved me. They did things to me. I didn't understand it, had no point of reference. And I didn't know that family was something I was supposed to look for. All those things. So it was a big old hot mess of a beginning.

In that, after about three months, I had really synced to the hospital's rhythms. Like I had learned to stop fighting when somebody came in and I actually figured out how to energetically track them and feel them coming down the hall, coming into the room, take a quick assessment. If somebody felt like agitated in their energy field, I knew that they were going to be quick with me. They were just going to move me quickly because I didn't interact with them. You know what I mean? And they were just going to do their things and get out of Dodge.

I could feel as somebody came in with like calm that they were gonna, you know, gently touch my shoulder and attempt to like let me soften into that movement before they moved me. And so I started to very much become aware of that energetic field that is all around us full of information. And that was my first language. So I learned how to do that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's amazing what.

our bodies and brains will do. I mean, you basically came back with no information whatsoever, like period, no information. And your body and your mind started to listen and notice and feel everything around you, even though you couldn't communicate in any way and they couldn't communicate to you. Yeah. And so I started to develop ways that I thought communication was

Turns out it was all energetic. It wasn't through a voice. And so I never really understood that voice had a purpose for a very, it was at least a good year into my healing journey before I was like, this is what they want me to do. They want me to mimic sounds because I started to be able to hear them enough. They started to teach me how to sign and other stuff like that because it took a while to come back in. And if you listen to me still, you'll hear a little bit of a like a

nasally throat guttural sound to it because even with all the speech therapy, there was just a lot of damage that was done until my hearing came back years and years and years later. That's a whole nother story. and so, yeah, it was it was my system started to adapt to work with a broader version of senses. And one of the things that I became very attuned to was people's emotional bodies, because that gave me a heads up of

before they ever touched me. If I waited for them to touch me, I couldn't adjust, you know, but if I could feel into that feel of how they were coming in, and there were three bodies that I just really struggled to understand, and that turned out to be my dad, my mom, and my sister, and it was because I could feel that they wanted something from me. They desperately, desperately, they wanted me to be the Michelle, they wanted to walk in and have me.

like open my eyes and say, see you, I want to see you as a mom. Now I can just imagine what that was like. I always say, you know, this is my story. They've got to tell their own, but I have to honor what that was like for that Michelle that just felt this always unease with them. And that was their own fears, their own worries. How are we going to help her? How are we going to put her in? You know, my sister was in ninth grade, you know, she's a freshman in high school. She's got this sister that was fine.

and now can't move. She's got a family member. My dad was in the military, so he was active duty Desert Storm. And so he was being able to come home for parts of it, but he was also being stationed. And so they were trying to get him back and all that. And so it was just this whole hot mess that was happening for my family.

I could feel that, but I had no point of reference for it. Now years back, look at it I'm like, wow, it's amazing that we made it through it in any way, form or fashion, let alone with some bumps in the road and all those things. So about three months after I had medically gotten to the point where I didn't need the hospital, I had figured out some basic things like people wanted me to eat. When they put my hand on a spoon, I was supposed to put it to my mouth.

I didn't want to eat because I didn't really enjoy it, but because my stomach was a whole hot mess, but I just knew that if I didn't do it, then they would force it. And so everything of all the choices I made were to appease the beings around me because I had no way to fight it off and I had no way to communicate and I didn't understand. And so I figured out push the button when I needed to use a restroom, know, push the thing and.

Everything I did was that way. So they said, okay, she's ready to go home. They sent me home and you know, my family had to keep moving. They had to keep doing. My mom had to keep doing what she was doing. My sister had to do. So I went from this environment that had people that I could access quickly who knew how to like look at me and figure out what it is I needed. Cause I didn't know to an environment that was isolated and alone and felt even more of that same.

crushing energy that I felt when they were there for the hour visit. I felt it now totally. And so it felt like a completely like torture chamber is the best way I could describe it. Isolated and when somebody did come in when I had to, I had a bell that I didn't know at the time it made a sound, but I knew that if I did this thing to this particular thing, somebody came eventually.

And it was just this place of isolation, fear, overwhelm. And luckily my parents at some point, this was in 1990, so how they figured it out, I don't really know, but they were like, hey, we've heard of this equine therapy stuff and she loved horses before, maybe the horses will do something. I was doing PT, but again, I was a lump.

If you moved me like hand over hand, I would let you move my body because I had learned to completely submit at that point. I didn't fight. And I was six one, I went in the hospital like barely five, eight. My body grew four inches to try to disperse all of the excess swelling that was happening. I, and yeah. So like, and so my body was in pain. Think of like growing four inches in that short of time. Like the growing pains is a real thing.

Yeah. So I just, that's all I knew was pain. And so I was this really tall beanpole thing that people had to pick up and move. And I just let them do it because I had learned at this point, it didn't matter. trauma after trauma, emotional, mental, not knowing who you are, where you're at and who are these people around you. Yeah. And just feeling like I can never give them what they want.

So it didn't matter if I tried to do something, I could feel that they wanted more. It was almost like every time I did something they wanted, it's like there was a moment of reprieve and then there was like, she did that, can she, you know, like it's so it was just this onslaught. Again, I can feel from their perspective, but I have to honor that to my system, it was just, there was no reprieve. So the only reprieve I had was complete dissociation. And because I was deaf,

I could just go away and just leave the door open to energetically track if somebody was coming near me. But other than that, I just went into the void. Everyone's like, you went to a happy, I didn't know what a happy place was. It was just this black void until one day when we, my parents grasping at straws, I can only imagine.

what they were trying to figure out to do. They were like, let's take her back to the barn. Maybe that will do something for her because that was her safe place beforehand. We didn't own horses. I rode like at the local like riding barn that was in town. And I was like the little barn rat that, you know, like I'm sure I drove my parents crazy, like, my gosh, is she ever going to leave? And I was like, no, I'm going to sleep here at the stall with the horses. And so they talked the riding barn that I was riding at into having me come out.

And as we were pulling in, they had rolled down the windows and the smell of the barn came in. And for those of you who don't know, our smell sensory is on a different neuro pathway for memory than our other types of memory. And so it can access memory, you know, when people smell like, that's the smell of my favorite person or something like that. It literally is a different pathway. And this pathway happened to not be.

Mess up, for lack of a better word, in my system. So when I smelled the barn, it was the first time I had an inkling of memory. Like there was a curiosity. I remember that visceral desire to pick my head up and like look around. And at that point, the swelling had gone down enough in the visual cortex at the back of my head that as long as I had really dark glasses on, a dark hat, I could make out shadows kind of things.

But if the glasses weren't there, the contrast of the light was too much and it just hurt too much and I couldn't figure it out. But so I was willing to try to see, which was huge because up until this point, I wasn't willing to do anything. And when they put me in the stall into the wheelchair and they were bringing me up to where the stalls was in the barn, I wanted to know what was in that box over there. I didn't know what that box was. I didn't know what was in there, but I knew I wanted to go there.

all again, something that I shouldn't have been able to access because at that point, six months post-coma, I was refusing to do anything because I wasn't like a choice. It was just, I didn't have any purpose to do anything. but I wanted to go there. And as we came around the stall for the first time, I picked up my hands, I put them on the wheelchair with, they've been trying to make me do MPT. And I knew I wanted to go down to the left. And so four stalls down in the left.

was this beautiful, looked like to me with my energy eyeballs, not with my physical eyeballs, he looked like a beautiful golden yellow sparkling highlighter. In real life, he's a dark bay horse. But to me, that's with the other senses that came on board, that's what he looked like. And I could feel this mutual draw from him to me. And I wanted to go to him and every part of me was just like that. And that turned out to be a beautiful horse named Schedule A.

And he was gorgeous. He's the horse that I had been riding prior to me getting sick. So you had the energetic connection to him already. Yeah. And it was a literal like a memory. And it was like that was the anchor point. I wheeled to his stall and I banged into a stall. And this is a high strung thoroughbred jumper. He should have not been OK with because this was not a therapeutic riding barn. The like the wheelchair and the clunky. But he was fine.

He put his head, Ms. Jen, up and over top of me and like pulled me into this beautiful hug. And I just stayed there for what felt like, I don't know, but I don't know how long it was, but it felt like forever to me. And I breathed him in and I willingly let him touch me. And I willingly tried to reach as much as I could to be able to touch him. And that's the first touch I welcomed, you know? That was that first touch that I was willing to say.

I'll come into this body because there's somebody like him in this world. Now again, as a mom now to be witnessing that, can't imagine like excitement that my mom and dad felt for like that moment, but then also like an incredible gut blow that like it wasn't them. But that's their story. This is mine. Exactly. And I wanted to just breathe.

Be like them when we went back home, it felt like such a slingshot. You know, I wanted to do anything that I could do. Luckily, my parents talked the people into trying this crazy thing called therapeutic riding that they didn't know nothing about and what they did. This is not OK. Do not ever if anybody's listening and they think, I want to do this. Don't do what the people did to me. However, it worked.

So they pulled out an old Western saddle, because we were in English jumping barn, and they dusted it off. They put it on the horse on schedule, because they figured out that that's what I really wanted. And they tied me to it so that when I fell, because I had no catch because I was paralyzed from the middle of my back down, they could just push me back up because I was skinny and tall. I didn't weigh a lot, you know? And so they tied my legs to the vendors, and then they tied me to the horn.

It's not safe. Do not do that. my goodness. And yet it worked. And so from riding and being willing to be in partnership with him and being willing to be in my body in connection to him, that started that rhythmic motion of the movement of the horse started to bring back.

Like it's shown a flashlight on my, parts of my nervous system that had been damaged. And it was like, Hey, can we fix this? Can we do a work around? Can we like build a new pathway? and so the core strength started to come back in the lower part of my body started to be able to figure out like a numbness sensation. And then within six months of writing three to four days a week, I was able to use crutches. and within a year after that, as a freshman in high school, I was trying out for.

my basketball team and so physically schedule helped me come back into my body, be willing to come back into my body and then also help me re-engage my body. What the people did with it is they figured out that I wanted him and so they started to use him as a tool. Okay, we're gonna stop him and hold him and not let him move until you sign the word walk.

and you try to make the word walk with your voice. You know what I mean? And so till you sign the word stop or you say, whoa, or you try to pull back with the reins. Like, so I started to communicate. They were very clever and I was already willing to appease them because what I wanted was for them to get out of the way so that I could just be with schedule. So he became my speech therapist. He became my physical therapist.

and everything like that. And so Gold Star, the body was able to come back in, the sight was able, the swelling was able to go down and the walking was able to come back. However, the piece that didn't come back was the memory and all the appeasement of what I figured out to do of just letting people have whatever they want. That became my normal. And that's what I did. Like in school, I was the...

the kid that went away, came back in a wheelchair, couldn't talk, couldn't speak, you know, like, and didn't remember. So somebody said to me, Michelle, this is what you do. Okay. You know, and then, and it was an incredibly abusive world because of that. Because I didn't know to say no, I didn't know to say other things like that. And it just created a real problem. I can imagine, you know, it's when you become at your core, a people pleaser. Yeah.

you know, that everyone else's pleasure is above your being. That is like yet another trauma stacked on top. Yeah. And so I didn't know. And I started to like create this real split between just this Michelle that did whatever people wanted her to do. Body, mind, like I didn't care when I was with them. And then the one that was at the barn. Right. And so the one that was at the barn,

I could be me with the horses. I could have conversations with them. could share my fears, my wants, my worries. And then it's like there was a complete switch that happened when I went back out until my senior year, he suddenly passed away, trigger warning. Sorry, I should have said that first. And my anchor went away. And when that anchor went away, my desire to try to figure out how to be in this world

went away too. And I slung shot from being this pleaser to I would swing back and forth between incredible fighting and incredible pleasing. And there was just like such division that happened to me and that I ended up leaving my house my senior year because the division with the family just got too big. And you know, just trying to make it on my own.

and really then taking up that me against the world mantle. It's like, I survived, I did this, and I'm not going to stand for this. So I slung shot into this warrior personality that she was fierce. And yet she wasn't quite balanced either. So you mean, you're a miracle. You are. You're a miracle. And there's no way to truly understand how

this all came about for you in the end. mean, you do that you've lived in it, but for listeners, it must be mind blowing because it's mind blowing to me and that you're an absolute miracle right here.

Well, and one of the things I love to invite people to do once they hear my story and they they kind of feel as I invite them to go back to it though and realize that in that same time frame that that high school years as middle school, high school, early 20s is like think of the ways in which what literally happened to me happened in your guys world, know, like and people have felt silenced, you know, they felt that their voice was taken away from them. They didn't know who they were. They thought they were just there to

be the good girl or they were labeled as a troublemaker. know, like they were put in some box that they didn't know about and they felt like they couldn't move the way they wanted to, you know, like this is maybe who they felt they were in their body, but it didn't match the people around them. And so as I've started working in the healing field, I realized, okay, the things that happened to me literally happened to so many people in different ways, you know, that they felt.

muted and that they were trying to talk to people with deaf ears and they didn't know how to communicate with people and all the same things and how they slung shot between different personalities, maybe the people pleaser and the rebel and the this, that, and the other, trying to find who they are. When you say it that way, it really resonates with me because as someone who grew up in an abusive childhood,

I really understand what you're saying in that sense. what happened to you didn't happen to me literally, as you said, but I can understand that. can. And you were doing this as a teenager. had not only being, having this happen to you, but also obviously you went through puberty and you had to deal with all of the things that are hard enough on a girl of...

that age and add on you don't even know your body. Yeah. So I didn't know to honor it. didn't know what I didn't know anything about it. And so I call it the abuse years because it just was so much abuse, abuse from other people taking advantage of. But again, what girl doesn't, know what I mean? And then the

us ourselves not honoring or understanding or knowing what our worth is and with that. so like tons of self harm, especially after schedule died, I didn't care about this body. I was just like, you know what? I don't care if there's something that's gonna check me out in this world. I'm willing to take it, do it, you know, like the risky behaviors. It's amazing that I'm alive. Because there was just this like good.

like five to eight year period where it was really, really risky in there. And it was just because I really was perturbed. I'm trying to put my words nicely for a podcast that I woke up. So once I started to figure out what happened to me and I started to put words to it, this is in my early twenties, I was so angry at the universe. Like one, how could that happen?

to WTF world, you know what I mean? And people you should know better, you took advantage of, you know, like all of these different things. I was just so angry in this, like that warrior, that lone wolf warrior, I would say became the major story kind of in my life. A lot of fire energy and a lot of like,

I also want to champion for other people. So I didn't want any other person to feel like their therapies were overriding them. And so I really went into therapeutic writing and equine partner psychotherapy. And I wanted to provide a sanctuary that really honored this person as they were on their healing journey, whether that be physical or emotional. And at that point I was really more in the physical realm with a little bit of the emotional, but I just...

wanted to provide that because there was nobody who had provided it for me until another relationship that I thought was going to be my rock, you know, in our twenties, we were like, this is going to be the one and that and that ended and when that ended, I just really again, it was like the the loss and the trauma of when schedule left. I was like, there's no point. There's no point for me being in this world.

took a handful of pills, tried to like just say peace out. And the beautiful German shepherd that I had at the time Baron, he licked into my mouth and caused a vomit response. And so I woke up, was pissed again, because I'm like, dang it. But as I was sitting there, I felt him giving me this beautiful message that was like, why do you hate yourself?

Why don't you see? And I could see as he was looking at me, there was so much love in his eyes. He didn't see me as broken. He didn't see me as anything but this amazing, beautiful soul. And I was like, I don't see that. I don't see why he would love me the way that he does. I don't see why he would be so devoted to this one. And as I was like taking a shower and pulling the like pills out of my hair and the vomit out, you know.

I remember getting out of the shower and wiping down the mirror and looking and just these hollow eyes were looking back at me. And I was just like, wow, this warrior, she's gonna kill me. She just tried to kill me. like Baron brought me back and I've got to go find her because this hollow eyes is not who I really am.

So that was a first kind of inkling. And that's when I dove into like mental health therapy, all the other things, shamanic practices, you you name it. I went on that Seeker's Journey and got a really cool toolbox. But what I never was willing to do was go backwards. So it's kind of like that moment when I wiped my hand over, I was like, am reborn. You know what I mean? Like I am here. Yeah, I understand that.

And I'm never going back there again. And it's like, I closed this book on that timeframe of my life. And I really only lived present time. And I kind of had a good template for that because my life had already done that once. And so everything that I did was from that moment, but yet it really wasn't grounded in me because I hadn't healed that part of me. That was that first 23 years.

But I didn't have the school, the tools yet or the school inside of me to be able to heal her and to work with her until like my mid 30s. So at this point I was doing equine partner psychotherapy. I had opened up doing energy work and working with people holistically, mind, body, soul, whichever doorway they wanted to walk through. And I kept hearing this really interesting voice in my system being like.

hey Michelle, what's your connection to your soul? And I was just like, I was like, what? I'm doing my life's mission, and that's what I had made it. This mission, I had woken up, I had gone through all this, I was gonna use it for a purpose. And as a result, even though I had my family at that point, I had my new partner and my beautiful girls, I was just pushing. I was marching through life on this.

mission. I feel like you know what I'm talking about. I do. I do very much so. And I was convincing myself that was me living my life. when that, what I realize now, when it was inviting me is my soul wasn't asking me just to be down here to be a foot soldier. It was asking me to like live this full, beautiful life of joyful service. And my life is more than just the service that I do with my work. It's like,

the recreation, like all the whole things of all that life was. And I didn't have any bandwidth for that. And so I just kept pushing this thing away every time it would come in. And finally I was sitting in one of my meditations and I saw this image of this just beaten up battered ship coming in and it had been like through war. had holes in the side, like this tattered sail, you know, like it was limping in and it was like, this is your body.

this is what you're doing. You have all these holes that you're not, you're just duct taping yourself together. You really need to, to like take a sidebar and realize that you can't keep going the way you're going. And you know what I did with that little ship mission? I just said, no, thank you. And I blew it back out. Yup. Like I literally like took my hand and I pushed it away and I said, here we go. And I went in and just kept working and

I had a series of three heart attacks in a row, a relapse of encephalitis, and then finally it took a diagnosis of cancer to get me to say, Michelle, maybe you need to slow down and look at what your life, that trauma, all that trauma that you were talking about before you decided to maybe decide to live life differently. And I just didn't want to do it before that point.

You know, it takes our bodies and our minds to tell us now, right now. And it happened the same way with me. know, the brain fog, the, you know, inability to, you know, be in relationships, you know, the body just not being able to work. And it tells us when it's had to. the only way to slow us down, right? Like, cause like.

Otherwise, what I was doing was I was like, I'm a med, so I was a Reiki master at this point. I was a meditation teacher, even energy medicine practitioner. I had the holistic toolbox that could look at my body and say, and do you know what? I was using that toolbox to keep me pushing so that I could stay on mission. And well, why was I so holding onto that mission is because

I thought that was my worth. Ultimately, had woven together, it was a little shock to me because I didn't realize it, but all the abuse, all the pain and suffering, all the disease was so I could show up in that arena or in that treatment room with a beautiful healing presence that I was. wasn't like, these experience happened in your life, how incredible is it that you survived it? Now, live life. That concept

was not even like it didn't even exist to me. And so yeah, the brain fog, the other areas like that as our body signal that says, hey, there's something really not okay that we are running around, figuring out a way to move around these different boulders with inside of ourselves, but it's expensive. It's very expensive to keep moving around that trapped trauma in our system. It's very expensive to keep moving around

these belief systems that we say, we really don't believe it, but yet we do. Like, so when somebody says, Hey Michelle, do you mind talking to me about my son? He's struggling with whatever. It didn't matter if my whole body said, I just want to be a parent on the side of my kid's soccer field. All of a sudden, like here I was. And it's not that I didn't have ethics or boundaries. It's like my system thought that was its only purpose. Yeah. You were also in people pleaser mode. Yeah.

the way you were taught from the beginning. it was really hard for me to pull myself away from my own feelings of I need to be there for everyone else and not myself. I had had that feeling in me since I was a child, always taking care of others. And when you fall into that mode, it's really hard to pull away.

It is, and especially when that mode is reinforced. So if I had to guess and you you don't have to go there if you don't want to, sorry, this is kind of what happens in any interview that I'm in. like in that chaos that was your early world, one of your desires to that beautiful heart of yours to like tend to, to try to make things better, to pull things back together, even though

you were confused and hurting and you needed somebody to do that for you. You were just naturally offering that to that space. And, and it probably was rewarded as in like, thank you. Like you're always my light. You're always the one that I can find this solid. So it's like a double whammy. Not only does your environment tell you, Hey Jen, you don't have any needs and they're going to be somebody else's. You need to figure out how to like lick your wounds by yourself. It also probably taught you that

Your job is also to tend to somebody else's wounds and not even lick your own wound. No, Michelle, you're absolutely right in that. You know, and it kept going through relationships throughout my life that even if I would date someone and they'd be like, I understand your background and I'm going to be there for you. It always turned to me being that person who always was taking care of that other person.

Yeah, because that's that was your cellular memory, right? And so I kind of understand why I had this huge toolbox, right? And I could teach other people. But when it came down to it, that choice that just says, sure, here's my card, book a session. And then going back to cheering for my you know what I mean? Like that choice was not even a clickable option is what one of my clients called it. And I thought that was brilliant. She was like, I can actually click on the gray thing that I just stopped trying to click on. I was like, yeah.

It's like, we don't know that we can click on this other option because we don't truly believe it belongs to us. We believe it's there for other people, but it's not there for us because it's not part of our cellular makeup. And to be able to make that button clickable, we do have to go back a little bit and look at how that programming got in there and lovingly tell it, it no longer needs to keep doing it that way.

your whole system is going to scream at you, danger, danger, ghost rider, don't undo this programming because it was the only thing, that kept us safe in that world. It's the only thing that did. you said, I don't know, just try this one on. mean, if you had said to the people around you, hey, I think this is your problem, not mine, and tried to, well, I mean. That's unacceptable. Yeah.

Your life would have gotten so much worse, so much. So appeasement, just like I learned to appease, appeasement is the way when there is no ability to flee and there is no ability to fight the, the fawning, the folding and the complete dissociation and people pleasing. That's the only option. Right. ideally you're buying your time to be able to make a different choice to fight or flee. Like when schedule died, I was like, well, screw it.

But like, I'm going to fight, flee. But then I was in this mixed bag. So people pleasing one minute. And people are like, Michelle, you just said you were fine with that. And I'm like, I'm not fine. They're like, which one? But I would wobble, right? Like, I could only hold it so long before they could get me to go back to the appeasement. Well, we had no boundaries. We weren't taught to have boundaries. So there were none set up for us. Yeah.

And so I think it takes our body being the messenger. I call it the sacred messenger because we can't hear any other message because we were never taught to pay attention to our wounds. so like it has to get big enough that we no longer can function in order to slow us down enough to hear what our body wants us to work with so that it no longer has to have it. know, it's like, it doesn't want to stay.

with this burden, this weight, this lead sitting in it and wants us to learn how to transmute it and pull out those beautiful nuggets that you can create this space like and be in this beautiful way that you operate and be of joyful service, but with health and wellness and boundaries, like all the things we had no idea were clickable, but now we can pick like our soul, I truly believe.

wants us to be in that. It doesn't want to just use us like a tissue for the universe. It wants us to have love and joy and happiness and connections in which we feel safe in. Yes. Yeah. And so it took cancer for this to happen. Yeah. The three heart attacks in a row, that was not enough. You would have thought that would have done it. Like having a relapse of encephalitis on... I founded a nonprofit called Unbridled Change and it was our big fundraiser for the year.

And I was sitting in the hospital because I had been working so hard trying to do everything, stay the perfect mom, stay the perfect, you know, like all the things. And my body was like, yeah, you can't. And so it knocked me out with a relapse of encephalitis. And I remember as I was going to the hospital that time, I kissed my girls goodbye. And I was like, what if I don't remember them again? Like, and it was like this huge moment. You would think, you would think that would be enough.

to get it and maybe it lasted about a year. And then people started coming to me and asking me to start my certification program and to teach them the method that I had developed. And I fell right back into that, like, here's a new mission, you know, here's, and so I was getting ready to roll out this huge certification program back in 2016 and I was out of balance and I heard it going into it like,

It was very clear. said, Michelle, are only living 50 % of what you're teaching. And I was like, 50%, that's good. no. Push it aside again. And I was like, have rolling. And part of it was too, I wasn't letting people know about the energetic side of me. I was keeping it all in the science shield and kinesiology and like things that.

instead of just embracing like, because I had this illness, my senses did what everybody else's could do. You know, I wasn't saying it. So there was that piece that was in there too. But ultimately I was back in a mission mode and I was off and driving and my body did not want to go backwards. It didn't want to go back to that mission mode. And in the middle of that training, you know, I people from all over the world sitting in the thing, you know, I'm teaching.

I'm launching this whole program, started to lose my voice by day three, it was completely gone. I knew it, that I knew what was happening and I was like, I'm just gonna keep pushing. I ended up with bronchitis, it dominoed into pneumonia and it's pneumonia that wouldn't go away for three months. And guess what I kept doing for three months. You kept pushing. I kept pushing. Yep.

And so I was like, it's okay. You know, I just really can't talk, but like I can type and you know, I can sit there and I like wrote a little sheet of paper. I mean, I look back and I'm like, Michelle. You were putting a lot on yourself. Yeah. And, and again, it had slipped into that. This is why I was here, you know, was to, help bring this into the therapeutic space and into the coaching space and into the wellness space.

which is all true. I'm getting ready to launch the certification program again now finally, but much more balance, much more at all. good. Yes. Much more. feel so good about it and everything like that. But at the time it wasn't so after three months I heard in another meditation, your body has lost balance. You have cancer. Go tell your doctor. I was like, no, that's not true. And then I heard it again and I was like,

and I kind of felt into it. I could feel the truth of that. And so I reached out to one of the docs that I worked with on that side of the program. And I was like, so here's what I got in my meditation. Can you check? She's like, Michelle, you're pretty healthy. And I was like, think it turns out it was neuroendocrine sarcoma. And so it's a cancer that was on the endocrine mist within my body. And the endocrine mist is like the fight, or freeze.

And so it literally was the fact that I had been living since 13 and probably prior to that in just a soup of toxic hormones and neuroepinephrine and cortisol. And I had burned out the literal lining of all the organs of my body. And that was what that cancer was. And so it's also a cancer that doesn't respond to traditional treatment.

And so I had to kind of put my money where my mouth was with the holistic side and really dive in. But the work truly was looking at why was my system still running in trauma? Why was it running with every request that came to my field was a fire breathing dragon. It was trying to assault me or take advantage of me or I was going to assault and take advantage of myself. Like all of that needed to come together. And so

2017 and 18, what I call the healing journey 2.0. really where I went in the retreat, you know, I'm such a Capricorn person because I have Capricorn rising. And so for those of you who don't know, that's a sign and the astrological, I'm also an astrologer. And so just work is kind of part of me. So I did keep my toe kind of in the water because it is my organization. But for

Mostly just went into that retreat, started healing that work, was tried to be as present as I could for my girls during that time as I was working with my body and really making a promise to myself that as I begin to walk back out into life that this balance, this rhythm, this checking in to my soul and hearing it say that would be great, but say no.

you know, like click the button or hey, there's a whole nother way to help that person that's not taking on all their responsibilities and doing this and doing that. Like all of that started to come forward. And I realized that I have so much more freedom running this way that I truly can connect in with people around me so much more. I can connect into my life, to my children's lives, to my work and work with clients.

because I actually have a healthy connection to boundaries that never existed before. It actually allowed me to be in healthy connection in a way that I never thought was possible. So the bridge of connection method kind of came out of that whole journey. And now that's what I help people learn how to do is have trust in themselves to say what they're gonna mean and mean what they're gonna say and respect theirself.

give themselves the right to be human, to say yes, no, or maybe, you know, the right to also check into willingness. Do I want to do this? Even though I can do it, do I want to do it? And then having that connection then be genuine, right? Connected to my why and my purpose. And so that's what I love, but it was a it was a little bit of trek to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's amazing how we can.

truly heal ourselves when we give ourselves a chance.

So tell us a little bit more about you founded the Unbridled Change, which I am assuming is part of the equine. Yeah, so it started off in 2008 is when I founded that. And that was when I was in that mission drive. So I made it through the bubble of 2008, you know, like, and everyone's like, you're starting the nonprofit now. And I was like, yeah, I am. So again, some beautiful traits came from that, but they needed to have some balance to it.

but it did start off heavily on the Equine Partner Psychotherapy and Coaching side. I still have that side of that arm of a program. I love it. I probably will always have it. I just realized that not everybody has the affiliation and affection for horses that I do. And sometimes it's actually quite intimidating to people. So I started offering services of the same type of, mean,

I think it's all the same stuff, you know? And so coming in through that spiritual and transformational coaching side, or coming in through the body, working with like the energy work and stuff like that, and really truly building out that holistic wellness organization. And so now it has like those four main areas where...

We have that for our in-person people, but we have for online and available because I can work with anybody anywhere. I'm no longer just here because the energy work works over the distance and helping people really step into this from somebody who kind of got stuck in some traps along the way. So I can give them a little heads up of like, Hey, there's a caution sign over here. And if you fall in it, no worries. all do. Let's just help your way out of that through that coaching. so, and then

the And so I've had where I've worked with other places, especially kids in the foster care system, people who are caregivers and working with that, training them on the unbridled change method. And now the Bridget connection is really what I'm out there starting to train people who are in the helping and healing and wellness field, whether that's in therapy or in like the coaching spaces or some of the energy workspaces, how they can help their clients.

build that bridge to being able to click that button, know, like neurologically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually in their system. Wow. That's wonderful. so you have people who are working with foster kids and how does that work? Yeah, I absolutely love that side of our program. I think because I felt so orphaned without being orphaned, you know what I mean? It was this weird situation.

And the horses were kind of my foster parents, like how they worked with me. It's a niche that I really love working with because I understand them. I understand that they have been through this world where nothing made sense. And then they go to a world where they think it should make sense. And sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't. They don't have a lot of voice. And...

Sometimes the most well-meaning foster parents in the world think, I just have to give love to this kiddo. Well, that kiddo doesn't trust love. It doesn't trust anything about it. And so like, then how do you work with that? And the acting out and the bucking and the rearing and all the things, know, like that's actually their nervous system coming out of freeze. So like when we get all the way down to that people pleasing and that fawning, we have to go through that rebel stage.

We have to come up to that fight stage. Now mine wasn't super balanced. So we try to help people come through it in a, but it doesn't come in in a balanced way. You know, we could say, they have the right to say yes. But when the first time that kid says no, it's going to come out with some veracity. It's going to come out with a heck no. And I call it the hoodie and the like the thing and the, know,

But when you start to see that, you know that that kid's trying to work their way out of their nervous system, right? They're like, they're trying to find a different way of interacting. They just literally don't have it. Like we didn't have it. It's not, it wasn't a pathway. We didn't know it was supposed to be a pathway. It's not that we just chose not to use that pathway. It wasn't there. And so that's literally their brain trying to figure it out with their body.

and changing the way they perceive the world, being willing to see it, not as danger, danger, ghost rider, but there is a attuned safe connection. What does that even look like? And their system thinks attuned safe connections are fiction and painful if they believe in them and they're taken away. So we help foster parents learn how to work through those stages of

the rebel without a cause, the screaming of the no. And then how to bring in some yeses and some maybes. And are we just looking for compliance? And then you're gonna get appeasement. Or are we looking for consent? Then you're gonna get connection. And that's why I say it's all the same thing because whether I'm working with a kid in foster care or helping a parent learn how to do that with a kiddo or I'm teaching them how to do that with themselves,

It's all the same thing. Yeah. You know? Wow. Michelle, you are a force, an absolute force. Can you tell the listeners where we can find you? Yeah, absolutely. So I have a podcast, is more like a weekly, like, come in, here's a topic, here's a

practice that goes with it. So it's called Soulful Practices Podcast. And it's just the way you can come in, like they're topic based, they're a little nugget of a quote from different teachers that are out there or spiritual things, healing things. And then I kind of break it down and I get real about it. Like, this sounds great. One of my favorite quotes is by Osho. And it's like, move the way he says it, don't move the way fear makes you move, move the way love makes you move.

I love that quote. Isn't that beautiful? it's beautiful. And what the heck? What's that mean? How do you do that? Well, how does that look like? Well, I have to get to know the way fear is making me move first. I have to get to know that that's me rereading the text five times, seeing if someone's going to read it the wrong way, or maybe I need to find the exact right words that the person doesn't get mad at me. That's moving from fear. Moving from love says I'm going to take a moment.

look at that, say, there anything in here I need to fix? And then hit send. It doesn't have to be perfect. And so that's just like a snippet of what that is. And I love that offering because it's on YouTube and Spotify. It's like brings it to what I call like boots on the ground. What do these big, beautiful quotes look like in motion? That is one of my mantras. Like I, that's my motto, move the way love wants to make me move, fear, you know? And.

So that one you can find me on social media. It's usually under unbridled change, the name of my organization. But I think if you type in Michelle Hollingbrooks, it should get you close enough. My website's getting ready to do a refresh. I'm super excited about it. So it'll look much more user friendly, kind of dusting off, you know, giving it that good thing. So depending on when this comes out, it might look beautiful. And if it does, then you know the refresh is there.

And I will be sure to get that all into the show notes so that people can reach you and to listen to those podcasts. sure those are, I can't wait to start listening to them. Yeah, absolutely. And I have tons of free resources again on my website too of like free mini courses that you can do and on demand ones. And so, yeah, I just want to help people realize that there are other options and that there is a way to move from love and that's possible and we can figure it out.

And that's beautiful. it's such a beautiful thought. And I can feel the beauty coming from you. And it's that energy that you talked about. I can feel that energy. So thank you so much. You're welcome. It was my first language. So that's the way I talk to you first. And then I bring in some words with it afterwards. Well, it's wonderful.

I definitely can feel it. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. Thank you for your offering and being you. And I appreciate it. Thanks.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (58:39)
What a force Michelle is in this world. I truly can't imagine having to completely rebuild your life. This is life that she had to build. She had to relearn everything from movement and sight and hearing. And it's a beautiful story and she shares everything.

she went on to do all of these amazing things and nonprofit and helping others through the gifts that she received from this life that she had to endure. I hope that this was a helpful story and episode and please check out Michelle's website, her podcast.

She has so much to give and I'm so happy that she's been on our show.