Forging a New Narrative: Healing from Unprocessed Trauma and Sexual Abuse

Forging a New Narrative: Healing from Unprocessed Trauma and Sexual Abuse

Jeffrey Besecker: This is The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker. Unprocessed trauma. In the aftermath of the unspeakable, our stories unfold, marked by the haunting echoes of anguish and distress. The hurt and torment of sexual abuse reverberate through the corridors of our existence, shaping our narrative in profound ways. For years, we carried the weight of shattered trust and violated boundaries, grappling with the shadowy specters of pain and betrayal. Yet within the depths of our struggle lies the potential to forge a new perspective, to reclaim the ownership of our narrative. For many, that unbearable path remains. You, my friend, are not alone. The tunnel may be dark, each step through overwhelming, but hope is on the horizon, and a compassionate hand is here to guide you. Today we're joined by author and inspirational speaker, Cindy Benezra, exploring the journey of resilience and redemption as we navigate the labyrinth of healing, walking us out of darkness and into a new light through the lens of cognitive reappraisal and reframing as we seek solace amidst the wreckage of our past when we return to the light inside. We'd like to offer a shout out to our affiliate matching partner, Podmatch.com. Podmatch is the revolutionary podcasting matching system driven by AI. As an industry leader in podcast guesting and hosting, they are a go-to solution for creating meaningful podcast interactions. Podmatch.com makes finding the ideal guest or host effortless. Stop by and visit our affiliate link today at www.thelightinside.us. The insufferable desolation of trauma can be debilitating. Concealed behind filters and facades lie the untold truths we silently carry. Regardless of origin, unspeakable events, tragic circumstances, or overwhelming experiences, can each inflict the heavy weight of guilt, shame, anger, and especially among us, fear. More than half of women and almost one in three men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes. Yet the pain and suffering of sexual abuse and trauma are more than a number. For many, an inescapable burden. In the turbulent wake of sexual abuse and the preceding emotional trauma, moving forward can feel impossible. Yet amidst the seemingly unreachable horizon is a glimmer of hope. A place where healing awaits. Trauma shows no bias, touching the lives of all. its impact varying. No one is immune. However, within its grip lies potential for resilience. Breaking through its change is where lives are reclaimed. In the face of trauma, Cindy Benezra stands as a testament that healing is possible, even amidst the darkest storms. Cindy is living proof that you are not your abuse, trauma, or story. It's what happened to you, but it doesn't define you. Cindy, in the wake of sexual abuse and trauma, cognitive reappraisals allow us to empower a more expansive view of our past, allowing us to become more open, available, and vulnerable to fully engage this life, especially in the wake of these events. Cindy, thank you for joining us today.
Cindy Benezra: Thank you. Like I've been listening to your podcast and I love what you do. I like who you speak to. So thank you.

Jeffrey Besecker: Would you be open to sharing your story with us, offering the origins of your journey through sexual assault and trauma?

Cindy Benezra: Yes. So as a child, I was sexually abused by my father and my father is a true pedophile. So he abused other children in the neighborhood and he has his whole history. I mean, we could get into that too, but he was a war baby and in Germany. So he did grow up with some challenges himself, which created the man he is. And With that in mind, he was really a tyrant. So I was physically abused, sexually abused. And most of all, that's the biggest scar that I carried was the emotional abuse. It's kind of interesting. We always think that, you know, it's the big things. You know, but it's it's really those deep layers of the emotional abuse that I had to get over and still struggle with today because they have shaped who I am. So this happened between the age of five and ten. And those are big developmental years. And fortunately, We were able to move out of Phoenix, Arizona, and my dad took a job over in Iran when the Shah was still in existence. And so I was able to recreate myself. But in this process of moving, completely moving, new school, new neighborhood, foreign language, I forgot about my childhood. I completely, as far as I know, my life was about swimming pools and Barbie dolls. That's all I knew. I knew I didn't like my father, but I did not remember any of the abuse. I knew my dad was a violent person. I knew that I didn't like him. We don't always have to like our parents. So I just kind of kept a distance, but I seriously had no idea. It was my mind taking a vacation from my entire life. So I only chose the good memories. And if I look back at that and like, thank God, like seriously, because I don't think I could have handled that, that emotional I just couldn't handle the emotional trauma. So obviously the brain just shut down and I moved from a couple of other countries. So I went to boarding school in Austria and that was the same process as I was moving from Iran to boarding school in Austria. And then I lived my high school years in Spain. I got a chance to recreate myself every single time. Also, it's part of development. You grow and you change. But when I started to have my first sexual experience, I discovered boys and I thought they were fabulous. However, I didn't really know how to behave because I never was Well, I didn't understand this part of me. I didn't understand what my hesitation was. I noticed as I was becoming more interested, I would have flashbacks. My dad would come and visit from Saudi Arabia back into the house, so I really wasn't even living with my dad. In this process of all of these changes going through puberty, I had flashbacks and memories, and they were horrific. They were so traumatizing that I would write down these dreams. I knew it was my life, but I thought it couldn't be my life. It was like a shattered glass. As I was writing the same stories all over, I was able to put the whole piece of glass together. When I realized that this was my life that I dissociated, I had to look the word up in Webster's Dictionary. I thought, oh my God, there it is, dissociation. I couldn't believe it and I became very depressed. I thought my life was a lie and I understood why my mind chose to live that way because it was protection. But at the same time, I hated myself and the reality of my story. And so from 16 on up, and now I'm 60 years old, it has been a process, a healing process to get to where I am now in every stage of my life. So those were my teen years. And then I think going through parenting was a very big process. And then finding a new healthy relationship and reestablishing that. And now I'm a grandma now. So if I look back through that whole history and all the evolution of that process, It's been a journey and, um, yeah, I wish I could trade it with somebody else, but it's my story. It's my reality. And somehow there are still scars there, but I own them. I accept them. I just think I didn't along the journey and now I understand it a lot more.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, it's gotta be challenging still. And understanding this really sheds light on the profound experiences that have shaped you. Cindy, can you share with us how the practice of reappraisal has helped you personally unravel the complexities of the pain and emotional trauma that you suffered as you've traveled your journey through healing from this sexual abuse?

Cindy Benezra: So I'm pretty blunt about it. Is that OK? Because I talk about this all the time. So to me, this is just my life. This is my reality. And so what happened to me in the past, actually, I used to say it doesn't define me, but now I'm talking And I have to say, I have a lot of history with this growing up from a trauma point, knowing when my trauma point was from five to 10. And now here I am at 60 and the evolution of that process and how I've applied it through teen years, through young adult years, through parenthood, because every single one of those steps was a process. And if I look back, I know there were vast differences, but yeah, so definitely.

Jeffrey Besecker: How do we naturally shift people beyond those subconscious scripts in those ingrained parts of our story when our program default pattern is to continually go back and reference that?

Cindy Benezra: I have to say, I just had this conversation with my husband and I tried to put it in football terms. get to this. And so it was like, okay, you've got a game plan. He's like, well, okay, sorry, I'm going on a tangent. But he was just saying, I don't like to go backwards. I don't understand why you have to go backwards. And we were talking about just some difference. That's all it was. I said, If it's a gameplay and you're the coach, don't you have to play that real back where you kind of go, hey, we're kind of off a little bit. How can we learn for this so that we could go forward and make it better? And for some reason, my husband was like, OK, well, OK, if you put in those terms, I get it. I said, I'm not going and bringing up all the history. I'm just taking a few steps here. And so then we start our conversation. all over again. It was interesting. I thought I'd try a money analogy. I go, there's a lot of pennies in the bank. It was really interesting because he thought I was trying to destroy it. He goes, but why do you do this? I go, because I've lived through trauma. I have a tendency to take a few steps backwards so that I could go forward. And I said, it's a trauma loop. And I know that this one works for me. I said, so you have to work with me in this because I have to take a few steps back because I always look at history and what I could do better. And it was really actually an interesting story. But here I was playing all these analogies because my husband's like, why do you always bring that up? So I thought it was pretty crazy how we did. I was trying to use the money and the football analogy, but he actually got it.

Jeffrey Besecker: Most of us are locked into that cycle that we're so used to just turning back to that story, that act in and of itself starts to create that connection. That act in and of itself, in many regards, becomes a subconscious or unconscious form of rumination that we don't often even consider because it is so automatic for us. Let's run with that, so often, just like that emotion in that big game. We get stuck with the perception of what we believe we saw or experienced, and until we hit that pause button, take a moment to regather the troops along the sideline, step back and kind of review that footage, we often get a different picture or different perspective. Rather than accepting that initial perception of it, we're able to reframe it and play it back in a manner that allows us to see the replay from that different age. In that regard, would you share with us some of the tools and techniques that have aided you in creating a reframing of those events and experiences?

Cindy Benezra: Yeah, you can rewrite your history, and I think that has been my evolution in my process of healing is always writing a new script and always changing that script so that it can evolve. And I think that is part of learning a tool to survive through trauma. And I really do believe that that has been like a lifesaver for me.

Jeffrey Besecker: As you kind of reconnected through that journey with those past experiences and you learned that meaning of dissociation, let's look at first How you related to that meaning, dissociation?

Cindy Benezra: Other than looking it up, because I would try to figure out my nickname was Spacey Cindy. And I thought it was cute. I mean, I even got an award in high school for Spacey Cindy, or maybe it was middle school. And I thought it was, I thought it was funny, but I just thought, oh, it's my quirk. And I have to say, that's one of the things where I look back and go where you just kind of say, oh, it's a quirk. It's a quirk of mine, or that's just my personality. When I look back at me, like some of the stuff was just so bold in my face, but we weren't as in touch with a lot of these things as we are now. This is back in the 70s. So when I look at that, that dissociation, how it would just completely space out on subjects that I just didn't care for. And a lot of my trauma happened in elementary. So if it came down to fundamentals, to basic arithmetic, and writing, for some reason, I just thought maybe I had dyscalculia. I remember looking up dyscalculia, maybe that's what I thought. But what happened is those were the developmental years that I just, I blanked out. From what I learned is the wiring was not going back, like it took protection. The wiring was not going back, not even in the educational part of my life. It would just shut down. So I think that was a major part of going, wow, this is dissociation. Like I just spent the whole day in my head and I have no idea what happened. Other times that I wanted to come out and school was most of my time where I had a safe place. But going through this process, there was a lot of self-loathing. And I did go into a depression where I even contemplated suicide. And I would come home from school and sit on the ledge and think like, I hate my life. I hate myself. I loathe myself. And kind of started writing the pros and cons of why I should stay in here because it would be so much easier to jump than go through this incredible pain. of dissociation, of the reality of my life. And through this process, I think it's become an unfolding journey of like, how do I save myself? How do I become present in life? And the scripts that I held through life so that I could coexist to get on through the years, they were things that I did that were simple, inexpensive, weren't in a library that I found within myself because I didn't have access to the library. We didn't have the internet back then. So I took a lot of those tools, which are not fancy, and I kind of carried them on through life. Later on, I was able to get counseling and understand a lot more what I was going through and a lot more finer detail and how to help myself through that. But when it comes to dissociation, I really had to practice staying in my body at all times to really step into our world because my world was so much safer. I would wear textured pants, corduroys to like kind of help me, I'd kick off my shoes and rub my toes inside on the ground. I mean, I was really working hard to stay present, but as soon as something was boring, I'd snap right back into this association. I don't know how, sometimes I look back and go, I probably spent more mental energy trying to stay present than anything else. So it was just survival.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's interesting from your story specifically to look at how deeply, deeply that trauma impacted your entire developmental arc. That has to probably be the first time I've witnessed or observed how that's affected somebody's depth of process.

Cindy Benezra: I was, I think we all have the ability to do that. I was just forced into it sooner. That's really what I do believe. I think it was just, I was forced into it. I think when you recognize that you dissociate, I think there's a lot of, maybe a little obsessive thinking about like, okay, how do I do this? How do, and you're really trying to figure out like, how do I stay present? How do I stay present? and keeping a habit of like, what do you mean by that? You know, just kind of keeping the conversation. And it's interesting, you know, I have a son with special needs and he was born with a rare brain tumor. The only one who survived it in his age and he lost his auditory. So his emotional center was removed and his auditory center was removed. And it was kind of, crazy that I had this life where I was trying to stay present with difficult conversations and present in life with hard things, boring things that I just didn't want to. It was so much easier to associate. But when I looked at my son, I saw him doing the same things. And so it was kind of second nature where I just tap him and go, Hey, Brian, what do you think? And then he was right back into this world. But it was the craziest thing. It was the same things like I gave him corduroys. I gave him knotted shirts where he could, I said, just rubbed your shirt. It'll help you. I didn't have to go into great detail. I said, when you're kind of like going off in your world, just open the window or stand up. You know, it was a lot of self-taught tools. Drink cold water, chew on ice, you know, and then he was, he got it. And when I said, I've, I had this, but in a different way, I wasn't able to describe what I had gone through, but you know, I'm his mom. So he just listened, but it was interesting to see it from my own son's point of view, where he just chose to live in his own world.

Jeffrey Besecker: From that experience of trauma, we're often driven toward that act of depersonalization or that sense of detachment from our sense of self. It's interesting to see how we often discount the value in that somatic interaction with just being able to sense textures again. I know that's a key element of various somatic therapies, just being able to get back that sense of touch and stimulus.

Cindy Benezra: I have to say, if I think about it and I still practice it today, it's sensory and senses. I think senses go straight up and you smell it. So I have a thing about citrus. And living in Arizona, I would run as a kid after being traumatized, whatever it was, physically, sexually, I would run to the orchards. And in these orchards, we lived out in rural Arizona. I would ride my bike there and throw my bike down in kind of like this muddy land and I would hide in these orchards and in that process I would kick the dirt, scream. I felt that the trees were my parents or they were my family because they were there. They never moved. They never hit back. They just stayed consistently in my life. I could smell the earth. I could smell the orange blossoms. I could take a piece of fruit. And I used to look at those trees as a role model and say, if these trees could make it, then I can make it. These things are drowned, like if flooded, they're in the mud, I can make it. And that was something that really saved me was nature. And so I kind of took that piece, that core, where if I felt completely distraught, just go out into nature and try to find that relaxing balance within myself that I found in the orchard. And that's why I called my book Under the Orange Blossoms because that was my teacher, that was my sanctuary, and those were the tools that I took that I still carry to this day. I light a lot of candles or there's a lot of orange, lime, lemon because they're bright and that's something that's a sensory that I go, oh, that's it. And so it's the corduroy's writing notes down. I remember I used to feel that words owned me. Whatever name I gave myself that day or that hour, I would write a lot of those names down. I would go into the shower because I felt like it was cleansing me and I would watch those words in felt with the shower fade away and I would pretend that those words did not own me, those concepts did not own me. And it really became a life practice of that journaling, watch, visualizing. I did a lot of visualizing that those things are what I tell myself and they're not my script. They're somebody else. This is my mind wanting to believe that these are my scripts, but how do I change my scripts? And I don't know, as a 16-year-old, 17-year-old, 18-year-old, I don't know, felt pen on paper and taking it into the shower worked pretty damn well. That was, you know, I had just basics. But as I got older, I realized there was a lot more sophisticated ways to do that and in therapy way more. But those were just some basic things. And I have to say, it's kind of interesting because my son, who went through a lot of this, I gave him the same tools and I found that that was more effective than therapy. And I'm like, Brian, you have these tools inside you. You know how to survive. And I do believe that. I think we all do. We kind of intuitively know it. We really do instinctually know that. But we dismiss them.

Jeffrey Besecker: That rings true. Yet, from my experience in study, There's also a portion of that what we label intuitive that merely just re-engages those subconscious scripts that also just simply reflects some of those default programming. It's a whole nother episode that we're going to tie into soon. So Cindy, as you were going through some of these traumatic experiences and you discovered that power of disconnection with reengaging first with nature and then also being able to express some of those emotions in your private moments, you were often given rather unhealthy conditioning and programming that tells us to suppress the expressions of those emotions. Could you share with us how that act allowed you to kind of open up again and rediscover that connection with yourself?

Cindy Benezra: I have to say, as a child, I was actually really happy. I found that laughter, you know, I know this sounds just so basic, but I found that laughter was not only it worked my voice because my voice was very stifled. It was very stifled. So when I would laugh from my stomach in a good belly laugh, I would find just exercises, just to laugh, just fake laugh. And I remember thinking that it would push whatever grief that I had in my stomach, whatever angst I had in my body that was trapped. And I could feel it trapped in my body that that exercise of just rocking myself was soothing. You can hold on to your feet. And I remember thinking and laughing and laughing so hard that whatever was stuck in my body would come out and it would become hilarious laughter. I felt insane doing it, but it worked. I have to say funny shows, but I felt my humor and my sarcasm and a lot of times kept me real. And I felt that not only nature, but I also felt that journaling and really finding my own voice in journaling, because since I wasn't able to express it without getting art. I would write my journaling and my journaling is really kind of like it sounds so basic again too but that really was when I looked at it I was like you know what I'm a lot more than I give myself credit when I would look through that. I'm I'm way more than I give myself. I have real purpose by looking at this, and I think that was my self-reflection of who I am as a person. I really got to take a soul's view of myself and go, I like who I am. And I think that was a big changing part of like, no, no, I like who I am. And it really kind of made me an individual. I looked at myself always as an individual, individual thinker, but it was really through my, I never thought that, but when I looked at my journal, I was like, yeah, like I am whole. I'm not this broken story. I don't need to own this. And I remember thinking like there was a big part. I went to my dad later on. I'm like, I'm not owning any of this. This is your shame. This is your grief. I'm done with this. And he was just so perplexed because he denied everything that happened. But I just remember feeling almost empowered. empowered. I think I found my power back by looking through my journals and that I spent a lot of time and I thought that I was mad because I spent a lot of time self-reflecting so that I could go forward. So I spent a lot of time, I know before the show we talked about this, we spent a lot of time working backwards to go forward. I had to heal myself to go forward. So I was mad. I would look at my peers and think, like, they're all flying through this. And I hear I am going, you know, 10 years backwards so that I could go one year forward. And I just eventually came to the realization, well, that's the way through. It might just take me a little bit longer. And that was a hard pill for me. I had a lot of anger about that. But that that was I thought, well, if I don't deal with this now, then I might not see the way through. That was a really big part of my growth, and I was very angry and resentful about it. But then once I got over that, I was just like, OK, so how do I excel on this? Where do I go? It was all in my journals. It was still my voice.

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Cindy Benezra: So when I was a kid, and I think this has a lot to do with being overseas, someone introduced me to meditation. It became visualization work, and it was meditation. And I just thought, my mom used to meditate, and I thought, oh, my mom was such a yogi. She was so way ahead of her time. And I just thought it was the weirdest. And she talked about chakras, and I was like, oh, my mom's a witch. So I did have this background and I thought it was kind of crazy, but when I would look at that and when I looked, I thought, Oh my gosh, I really have so much around me. I just didn't know what she was talking about. And she did meditation. I remember her working with me with a candle and doing candle meditation where you look at a light and then you're able to like glimpse at the light a little bit, close your eyes back just to focus. She would do that work with me and I applied it to later on and it was kind of odd. There might be people who may disagree with me here, but because I did dissociate, meditation became very easy for me. It became almost like a second nature. I found it easy to go into a meditative state just because I knew how to quiet my mind and go someplace else. But this was being consciously aware not in a fantasy world, but consciously aware in my body. So that was a new skill, but it it kind of tied in in a very strange way. Does that make sense?

Jeffrey Besecker: Yes. So from that perspective, how do you feel that act of stepping back from your previous perspective of the situation and have that psychological distance of dissociation change how you are able to reframe that experience with trauma?

Cindy Benezra: Think about this. Um, I think doing all of these, I'm going to use a tools that doing all of these, it became kind of slightly obsessive, but doing all of these, I don't think anybody was aware of them, but I was consciously aware that I was doing these things as I was growing up, they became second nature. And in this process, I was able to recognize later that I was constantly recreating self and then later on it wasn't recreating self wasn't good enough. It was like how to cellularly change myself. so that I don't feel the trauma and how I could cellularly change myself, not hold on to this. And it became even more of a process to get through that. And I think through a lot of just ritualistics like meditation, maybe journaling, I mean, writing a journal like it really honestly 10 minutes really just want to just g You know, a lot of workin in your body, out in natu We take for granted, but they're really part of grounding yourself and stabilizing yourself and they just became second nature. And I think with that conscious work of doing them in life. and meditating and trying to work on trying to release a lot of the cellular scripts that I held and really trying to release them. I was able to change a lot of my thinking and I don't think I recognized it but I I think it just kind of fell into that place. Now, looking back as a six-year-old woman, I could say, wow. But as I was really doing it, I think it was just a part of evolution. I don't think I was like, wow, I'm working on cellularly changing my body. I think it was kind of like, how do I release this? this feeling in my body. What's holding me back and going deep into that process? What is this one thing that's holding me back? I didn't need to figure it all out in the day. I come back to it next week. I'm still here. So I think it was just picking one little box, one little tiny box. And that was all the work. You know, sometimes I would go through a whole year where there might only be two boxes I could fill. And then the other things would just come eventually. But do I think I'm healed? No. Do I have scars? Yes. Do I hold things in my body? Yes, all the time. I'm constantly trying to get work on that and I'm constantly trying to move past that. But now I look at it as like everybody does. And this is just the struggle of humanity and how we're all trying to move and improve and evolve and grow and be better than we are. And I recognize that now. I mean, I didn't see it even in my husband. Actually, we're totally opposite. It is so funny when I look at him. I think like I end up with somebody like I know he thinks I'm just Like he goes, I you are just so perplexing, like I just can't believe it. But when I look at him like are just to find a healthy relationship and really kind of embrace that I was talking about it this morning because I was going backwards and he's like, why do you always go backwards? And I said, I have to take a few steps backwards to look at history so that I could take a few steps forward. And he said, I don't understand. I only like to go forward. And I said, well, and then I switched around and I'm like, OK, like, let's talk football. And I said, well, you know, even a coach looks back at the last play and says, well, how can we improve that? And so he was like, well, OK. So it was just, you know, very similar to that. I think life history shows us that we can change a lot of our patterns and it's not always just, where am I going with this? I think it's not always as complex as we think it is. I think it's very simplified. If we really, through me, that's through meditation. When I really get down into myself and I really think about like, I just need to change this one little thing. How do I get it? And I work on it for a long time. Do you meditate? Yes.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's a regular practice in my life and it has been for probably about 10 years now.

Cindy Benezra: Is that right? Yeah. When do you find time to meditate?

Jeffrey Besecker: When do I find time? I don't find time. The time is there every day. I've created and built a life that offers me basically as much meditation time as I choose to afford every day. On average, I have about a three to four hour window in my life every morning before I engage anything more meaningful than personal time or meditation. I deem personal time very broadly there in most regards, not subjectively blaming myself for spending two, three hours. bruising social media, not setting any definitive time frames on expectancy for how long I meditate. You know, some days I feel more inclined to do it. There are days where I say, I'm going to jump right in. You know, I'm going to jump right into the meditation or I'm going to sit here for a while. And as my mind clears and opens, sometimes that energy is drawn in another direction. I don't guilt and shame myself. I follow the flow of it. Sometimes as that perceptual window opens up, some of the more salient connected moments of my experience come to the forefront and I say, I'm running with this. You know, there's, there's an idea or an action here that I'm going to carry through with the wave and just follow. So yes, to, to kind of sum up, I've got that window and I've built it. Yeah. By a large degree, I've built it, but there has been actions alignments that have allowed that to fall into place where that's my normal.

Cindy Benezra: That's your normal. And I think, you know, it's like we have our normal coffee. We have our normal meditation. I think like, Oh, I didn't get my coffee yet. It's the same thing for me where I just, I'm like, I didn't get my five minutes to myself. And it's really just taking time to myself. And sometimes But the kids, when they were really younger, they weren't really, for some reason, I said, this is my time to pray. I think that's kind of like how I like. That was a hard thing to find these things for my kids to understand, because I didn't share my life, what had happened to me until I was until they were a lot older. Some were really young, just based on their personality and some I have four kids. And so I shared later on until they were like early. late teens, maybe early twenties. And, um, you know, I actually just bought a podcast on, on this with my kids or actually I did a video and it was five years later. Like, what do you think about my parenting style and how I shared these traumatic things with you at different times. And it's interesting at the time, my daughter wasn't a therapist. She's a sex therapist. And at the time she was like, oh, it's good. And then five years later, as she's a therapist, she's like, that's stunk, you know, and she's like, I really wanted to capture that. You know, I wanted to capture that because that's real, that's real in families. And my special needs son was just sort of like, oh, you know, like whatever. But actually he's the most blunt and he does talk now and he is very emotional. But since he doesn't speak with, um, He has no filters, so his reality is just more black and white. So I love to listen to his advice because it's more black and white. In fact, he does the best logistics I could think of. But if I give him a scenario, he'll figure it out. But I thought his was just sort of like, you know, like this is normal. You know, like this is You do all these things and he doesn't look at them as quirks. He just looks at them as, this is what we do. And, um, I think my daughter, she still took out of like, I thought this was really different too. She's like, when I look at challenges at life, there's things I don't want to do. I look at you and I just think like, Well, there's probably a lot of things mom didn't want to do and she had to find a way through. So I think there are examples, you know, that it becomes our reality. It's like an evolution of who we are. And so the story is, it's still a story, but it doesn't define me as I am today because it's, it's been a journey, but it doesn't define me who I am. I'm so far, so much more than what happened. And I think that's a big growth period, a big part of not letting what happened in the past define you. I mean, yes, these are the things that I do now because of that, but it doesn't define who I am. And I think there's a difference in there.

Jeffrey Besecker: So I'm going to frame this for us. You and I being a human being of a certain stage or phase of our life cycle. without interjecting ageism into that. Do you feel from our perspective, or your perspective specifically, there might be somewhat of a natural evolution of our circumstances that allows for that? I know I can't compare myself to where my grown adult children are. They're just starting this phase where they're taking on new homes, they're taking on these monumental career changes and shifts. They're now inviting children into their life and their world. At our phase, do you feel we've gained a certain amount of insight that might allow us to shift that perspective that sets that frame apart?

Cindy Benezra: Are you saying R8?

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm trying to find a way to tactfully not downplay the fact that, yes, I've dealt with most of that shit. Now I've just moved through it and not only created a better system of life, but also there's been certain fortunate changes of events that just naturally free you of that if you don't continue to perpetuate. For instance, the kids moving out, do I now reallocate that sense of stress into something else that just becomes additionally stressing? Or do I allow that natural stress to pass and say, I'm approached with another opportunity when I look at what I fill that void with? Am I choosing things that naturally create more stress and burden? Am I putting more unnecessary drama and baggage in? Or do I open that window of opportunity, say, yeah, let's embrace it and find a new way to pack our trunk to China?

Cindy Benezra: I get what you're saying. I have to say this was a fun little journey to go through. I get what you're saying.

Jeffrey Besecker: I tactfully say it without becoming harshly judgmental or too subjectively loaded in my own perspective.

Cindy Benezra: So I think when we're going through this journey in life, and say, for example, I'm not focused on the trauma, I'm focused on completing a project at work, and I'm really trying to make a breakthrough, almost like a discovery in this thing, it becomes sort of it becomes you. It's something that you own. It's something that you think about. It's, you know, your spare moments, a little thoughts that go through your mind most of the time. And then you, somebody says something, you check back in. But I believe that when you get these moments in life and you kind of go, okay, I don't have to do this anymore. You actually kind of give yourself permission to stop, like stop Where can I refocus this energy? And I think you could do it multiple ways. It just depends on where you are. And I think you could kind of say, I'm actually going to not think. I'm not going to solve. I'm not going to process. I'm going to take that down to 50%. I'm just going to be, and then the other half, I'm just going to let, you know, like, are you the driver or are you the passenger? You know, are you the passenger in your mind or are you the driver? And I think that's kind of where you kind of go, no, I'm, I'm going to sit back a little bit and just kind of enjoy it. I have to say it's rich when you get to that moment and you go. I am just going to be the passenger now. I don't have to be the driver as much as I thought I should. And surrendering that process of surrendering that concept. Um, it's powerful. And I think you, you find a new self-discovery in your body where you're like, wow, this, this feels pretty good. You know, I can wear the shoe.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think that is our defining message today. As children, we're going back to where, you know, a lot of that trauma programming begins. We play that game or we might be able to relate to that game. I pack my trunk to China. Maybe I'm showing some of my own ageism here. But basically that concept of whatever you're putting in there is a part of the game. What are we choosing to pack in there that we want to carry through that journey? I'm going to leave that open for our rhetorical question today. Just simply step back no matter where you are in that journey and question what's essential for this journey. What am I willing to be vulnerable to? What am I willing to accept? More importantly, what can I do to lighten that load and what do I need to offload? And I love the big linger. We're going to let the big linger in there because that's that space that so often we feel that discomfort that we think is making us grow, yet is only our familiarity with the discomfort.

Cindy Benezra: Right. I think in letting your the discomfort is is sort of a reflection of what you're feeling inside and having that space and saying, this feels awkward. Like I should be, I should be finding that I like it. Let me find this answer. I should know this right away. I should do this. And I think that is part of our anxiety where we just instinctually think that we have to go, go, go. And that is part of the process is that awkwardness and being okay with that awkwardness and Maybe that is the stage.

Jeffrey Besecker: Stendi, your story is such an inspiration and testament to our empowering ability to reframe those traumas. If you were able to leave us with three tips today, from your experience, how we might start to do that, what would those three tips be? Three tips. Maybe not even three.

Cindy Benezra: I could get to three. We're not going to limit it too much.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're going to keep the baggage light.

Cindy Benezra: The things that are kind of, that just kind of came up just really quickly is just trusting in self. I found personally that I was very dismissive of my instincts and myself, and I wish I didn't obsess about it. I wish I just kind of went, Oh, okay. It's this and just kind of went with it and just let it flow and not feel so much anxiety about I'm gonna use the word awkwardness of this and just trying something different. I just had so much fear in letting myself try something different and when I got to fear I could never feel the love of the process. Does that make sense?

Jeffrey Besecker: Totally, totally. I want to thank you today for sharing such wisdom and insight with us. This truly has been an enlightening and enriching conversation for me today. I know I've taken away so much from your example. Namaste, the light in me acknowledges the light in you. Thank you for sharing with us today.

Cindy Benezra: Love and light to you. Love and light to all. Seriously, ditto. Ditto, ditto, ditto.

Jeffrey Besecker: How we see things often shapes how we experience them, influencing the way in which the energy that surges through us dances, vibrates, and interacts. As embodied responses to our appraisals and reappraisals, they guide the frameworks that form our perspectives and shape our stories, the various systems and processes that support cognition and emotion, providing feedback.

At times, biases, ego filters, emotional filters, and defensive coping mechanisms cloud our reception as we are energetically disrupted or resist our ability to more fluidly flow toward our conscious evolution. Each of these things deeply influenced by past experiences, as well as future predictions or projections that interact with the programming of our subconscious scripts.

Yet here's the thing, as Cindy so bravely and vulnerably illustrated for us today, we each have the power to hold the pen and to write a new song. If you found value and meaning in today's show, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.

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