Welcome to another solo episode of Vitally You®. On today’s episode, I’m talking all about what it means to live authentically. True authenticity is about focusing your energy on what’s really going on in your heart instead of trying to control your life and external circumstances. This process requires an extraordinary amount of courage, and on today’s episode, I pose some questions and give tips on how to dive in. Plus, I share more about my family’s deep connection to Brazil, what helped save my marriage during a difficult time, and how my car breaking down ties into all of that.
One of my favorite sayings is “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” and I live my life by that. Now, that’s not to say that it’s easy or simple, but I think it’s one of the keys to feeling younger while growing older. In today’s episode, I share a few personal examples of times when I seemed happy and poised on the outside, but in my heart, I couldn’t have felt farther from that.
I’ve talked about bits and pieces of my family’s connection to Brazil on the podcast before, but today I share how things were more complicated than tropical beaches and waterfalls. For many families who relocate for work, there can be cultural and language barriers, isolation, and loss of identity for the partner who isn’t working. Luckily, I felt like I thrived with the challenges, but it wasn’t always easy.
Coming back to the US with two adopted children posed all new hurdles for my family and my marriage. Through therapeutic support and showing up to do the hard work, we made it past those difficult times. Even if things looked status quo from the outside, I was able to open up with people in my intimate circle about what was really going on. Setting boundaries and having people in your life who you can trust to be honest with you is essential to living authentically.
Listen in to hear more about how I’ve been able to live a more authentic life by making peace with my past and rewriting troubling emotional and thought patterns. I also share questions to ponder about how you want to feel as you grow older and the benefits of living honestly.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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Congratulations to the winner of this month's giveaway for rating and reviewing, Andie Roeder! Andie is listening from Nosara, Costa Rica, and is the owner of Club Marina, a luxury vacation rental. Check out her "feeling younger while growing older" story on her Instagram account. Andie won a sleeve of LifeWave's Aeon, anti-inflammatory patch, and Dame Sandra Biskind's book,"The Code Breaker."
To be entered to win, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, screenshot your review, and send it to dana@danafrost.com, or pop it into a direct message on Instagram, @danafrostvitallyfree.
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[00:00:00] Dana Frost: Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host, Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach, and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect: conversations about vitality from the inside out with guests experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality. And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you.
[00:00:52] Welcome everybody to this week's solo episode of the Vitally You® podcast. I have to be honest and let you know, I'm down to the wire of recording this episode, so I've got no times for nerves this second solo episode. Thank you to everyone who reached out after my first solo episode nerves, you were all so very gracious with your atta gal.
[00:01:13] So let's dive into today's episode. Did you ever watch the British TV show, Keeping Up Appearances with hyacinth bucket or better known as The Bouquet residents, the lady of the house speaking. If not, you've got to find it. It's just classic British comedy at its best. Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about appearances.
[00:01:35] Does what you see on the outside match what's on the inside, or what's also there, but maybe not so obvious or what's hidden? I feel like I need to provide a little personal history because some of the listeners, you don't know anything about my personal life. I'm a Midwesterner at heart. I'm proudly, born and raised in the Show Me state. For those of you who may not know state slogans, I'm from Missouri known as the Show Me state, or don't tell me what to do state.
[00:02:05] My middle school French class teacher sparked a fire in me to see the world, and I set out to accomplish that dream, and I did. Kudos to me. My husband and I have five grown children. We've lived on three continents. We consider Brazil is our heart home. We had the privilege of bringing Brazil into our home when we adopted two children while living there in 2003.
[00:02:30] On paper, hm wow, sounds like a perfect family. And I do believe what we have is pretty darn special, but isn't there always a but? After we adopted, all eyes turned towards this American family who had three daughters and adopted two more. Who knows what people thought behind our backs, but we received loads of attention and admiration, which made the introvert in me feel really uncomfortable.
[00:02:58] It looked like all kittens and puppies appearances, but few saw the heavy lifting as we transitioned a five and three-year-old into a well-oiled family machine. Brother and sister by the mother, both had early childhood trauma. And I naively believed that our family was full of love. That love would magically heal that deep crevice of pain.
[00:03:22] I was mistaken. Yes, partly love does heal. But it's not the only necessary ingredient. Well, I need to tell you that I'm not going to air the dirty laundry of what happened behind the walls of our home. I know in today's world, people love the juicy bits. It garners audiences and book deals and all sorts of attention.
[00:03:45] The more like tragic, it seems the greater the following. But I've just always held this personal boundary. What is my unique story to share is mine to share. My feelings, my experience, but when it comes to my individual kids and my husband, their stories are theirs to tell. So this isn't going to be a tell all episode.
[00:04:09] What I can share is that I can share how I appeared poised and strong was not always how I felt. And it's probably not how my kids perceived me. Our adoption was a heavy lift for all of us, even the adopted children. Imagine being swept away and plopped into a foreign family, even if they did live in your home country and city. Well, that would feel really scary. We were all strangers. In hindsight, it's really nothing short of a miracle that we are all here still together.
[00:04:45] You know, in addition to our adoption story, any expatriated family will tell you that it looks ever so glamorous and in some ways it is, but it's also incredibly challenging. The working spouse is always working way harder than they ever would have worked in their home country. They're working so many hours in a day. The family is balancing language and cultural barriers and many times lost employment or purpose for the trailing spouce.
[00:05:13] Personally, I thrived under those challenges. I actually really, really loved it, but it wasn't always easy. And it does break many families. As you can imagine, raising five teenagers, we were like seared in the fire I guess. We learned to deal with all the situations parents face. Although I don't know to my knowledge minus drugs, but honestly who knows in modern culture, I feel like all families face just tremendous pressure. So I knew we were never unique and I was keenly aware of that. Listen, we need more tender care for all of our families. If what I read about the pandemic is true that more families were simply having family meals together, I will take that damn pandemic.
[00:06:00] Okay. So late 2008, we repatriated and landed in Chicago where we've lived since. Having lived in a tropical paradise for eight years, the windy city weather never agreed with me. My friends can attest that I go nowhere without this very large cashmere wrap. And I promise all these things are going to like come together and you're going to understand why am I giving you all this background. In the context of the complexities of life and our unique personal histories, our marriage also faced tremendous pressure and ultimately a rupture.
[00:06:33] We're still married and we're happily married, but to suffice it, to say, we both showed up and we did our work. We dug into our histories. We made peace with our past. We leaned into the powerful practice of forgiveness. And let me reiterate, people may be tempted to say, wow, look at them. They've been married for 31 years. They're still together. They're doing all these fun things. Look at that family. Five kids, all thriving. But people, we've worked so hard. We've worked all the muscles to be where we are today. Mental muscles, spiritual muscles, emotional muscles.
[00:07:07] We embraced therapeutic support and we would not be together today if we had not. I truly believe that. If you remember my episode, well, two episodes, one with Mary Beth Goodrich and the other with Dame Sandra Biskind. Those two episodes you'll remember that feeling younger while growing older requires a look at all of our past patterning. It requires a deep dive into all the things, all the painful things, all the things that still come up in the middle of the night. All the things where we still feel emotionally triggered.
[00:07:40] All of our thinking patterns where we are tempted to believe that we should do this, we should have done that. Or I'm not good enough, or I'm not smart enough or projecting onto our partners. It's because of this person, if this person wouldn't have done that and this person makes me happy or it makes me sad or it makes me angry. Well, my husband and I faced and rewrote our patterns, and I've got to say, that's a hell of a lot of heavy lifting to get to where I'm here talking to you today.
[00:08:10] I don't mean to sound prideful, but the pandemic was child's play for us. We had already faced our personal pandemic of life before and after. So here we are pandemic, August 2020. Chicago was lit that summer with riots and mandates. I literally watched a building on the iconic Michigan avenue go up in flames from my condo. This building in between like connected to other buildings, went up in flames. The city was under siege with complexities that were not easily solved because they were woven into the fabric of the city that is both beautiful. Truly appearances, a Wonderland stroll, flowers, Lake Michigan, trees, architecture, murals, parks, fountains, the Riverwalk, all of the beautiful appearances.
[00:08:59] And it's all so... It's all so ugly. Because racism and corruption are not pretty. They are rotten. So here we are in August 2020. Our condo, we live in a condo, a building, a high rise decided that they will attempt. I say attempt because I think this is hard to mandate six people per unit at any one time per the mayor's office. That was the regulation for the city of Chicago. I didn't go up and I didn't check that. I'm just assuming the condo wouldn't have put that out there for us if the mayor hadn't requested that there only be six people in any private unit at a time.
[00:09:36] But I'm looking around mom to five with a son-in-law. And I'm thinking about the holidays. I'm projecting and our brood of nine people plus maybe my mother-in-law or my mother and realizing I got to get the hell outta here post-haste come December. So I found a house to rent in Florida, and we gathered where we could be together. After spending three months in the sunshine state, we decided to pounce on our long-held desire to return to a warmer climate.
[00:10:07] And we bought a condo in Miami. So that's not really the point of appearances. That also looks like, oh, wow, that's so glamorous and cool. But it actually brings me to why my 2008 Land Rover LR3, what is inMiami, was in Miami two weeks ago. And what happened. Cause it brings me to this whole idea of appearance.
[00:10:28] Well, unlike Chicago, you need wheels in Miami. So in August, this year, we drove our Land Rover to Miami. And if you follow me on my Instagram stories, you might remember that the AC went out on that long, hot 20 plus hour, summer drive. So as soon as we landed in Miami, we found a Land Rover mechanic, and he looked at the AC and said, it's going to cost you a lot of money to replace, but let me clean the compressor, get this all clean. And then it actually did it work. $500 later, it at least cooled the car. So in September, I drove the Land Rover to the Biohacking Conference in Orlando, and I noticed the transmission was slipping just a little bit. But I made it back to Miami. So all was good. When I returned to Miami, the end of October, the transmission was really slipping.
[00:11:17] So we took it back to the mechanic. Well, my husband and I keep cars forever. We detail them twice a year. We take really good care of them. So that 2008 Land Rover actually looked pretty damn good. So anyway, we drop it off at the mechanic in the morning, we follow up with the mechanic late in the afternoon and he says, oh, let me send you a video.
[00:11:37] So we're waiting. Actually, we're sitting, eating gelato, we're waiting. We went, we had gone for this long walk. The video lands in my texts and I quickly play. Oh, my gosh, we were astounded. Our beloved Land Rover was completely rusted underneath, and there was nothing pretty about it. It was just so striking. We hopped in an Uber and the mechanic looked at us and said, I'm not going to touch this car. If I do this, I've got to do this. And then I've got to do this. And the fuel tank is rusted and basically the whole underneath of your car is just going to fall out, and you're not going to know when it's going to happen.
[00:12:20] You really should not be driving this car. If you just saw that car driving down the road, you would think it looked awesome. It looks like an older car, but it was like, the paint was still shining everybody. You know, the appearance just did not match what was under the hood. It didn't match the true capacity of the car. Pretty on the outside, but it really needed to be parceled out for parts and sent to the junk yard. Le sigh. I started remembering all the parts of my own life through the years that looked great on the outside, but felt rusty on the inside. And that's how I came to our conversation today, everybody.
[00:12:59] Number one, the everybody's out there, the everybody's out there in your life and my life. They may not be deserving of knowing what's going on in your insides. It's just because we have social media, it doesn't mean that everybody gets to know everything that's going on in your life. No, that's really for trusted friends. It's for friends. If your family is trusted family members and your trusted guides and advisors. At least that's true in my life.
[00:13:27] And number two, we talk about, you know, being authentic. True authenticity is allowing your intimate circle to see what's under your hood. It doesn't mean that you're authentic, just because you're showing everybody all of the drama that's happening in your life. But true authenticity means you really are allowing the people you trust and love to see what's really happening under your hood. Because we're not meant to do life alone.
[00:13:56] Each challenge in my own life, just all the way through our family history, and the personal things that have gone on in my life, I would not be here without my trusted inner circle. They were my saving grace. They were my mechanic who would be honest with me and see what was truly there. They would see the truth and they wouldn't judge me for it. They would just reflect what was possible or not possible. They were honest.
[00:14:22] And number three, I believe most things are salvageable, but not all things are. My marriage was my car wasn't. Those aren't too great comparisons, but I'll say not all marriages are solvable. Not all marriages are not all relationships are not all jobs are. You've got to get underneath the thing and determine what the truth is. You've got to lift up the hood or you got to get under the car, and you got to get your video and you've got to shine a light on what's going on. Feeling younger while growing older requires courage.
[00:14:56] The root word of courage is core or heart in Latin. To speak one's mind by telling all of one's heart. If you ever wonder why people become gritty, grumpy, dogged, and stubborn and old age. Well, they haven't told themselves the truth all along the way, or they've been keeping truths from their inner circle. They're tightly guarding the door to their hearts, and that takes so much energy. The only way to cope is to control themselves and others. To control all the external circumstances. And that, that just feels gritty and rusty as I talk about it.
[00:15:39] I want to leave you with this. How do you want to grow older? How do you want to feel as you age? What's underneath your hood? What's the truth about what's underneath your hood? I have always told myself and my clients, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. It might hurt. And I have felt the sting of truth, learning earth shattering things that are happening in my life that I didn't know about. That hurt deeply. It felt like a grand canyon. My life, just, my heart just opened up. But I felt the freedom from it.
[00:16:17] If you're willing to see the truth and act on what you see, you will feel younger growing older because you won't be extending energy controlling your life, controlling others, and controlling external circumstances. You'll be spending energy finding a safe haven or your own version of Florida. I really want to thank you for being with me on the Vitally You® podcast. I value your time and presence. We have so many podcasts out there. I'm so grateful that you're here with me listening to my podcast.
[00:16:47] And I'm so excited to announce, drum roll, this month's winner of the Life Waves AEON anti-inflammatory patch for one rater and reviewer. This month goes to Andy Raider. She is coming to us from Nosara, Costa Rica. She gave the Vitally You® podcast five stars, and she says loving and insightful. Dana's years of education, practice, and personal experience bring so much insight and wisdom to the health and wellness space. I can feel her loving energy in each episode. I always learned something and consider her an expert and guide in caring for myself, body, and soul.
[00:17:30] Andy, thank you so much. Andy and I met at The Wing in Chicago a couple of years ago, and we were at an intimate gathering and we really connected. And thank you so much, Andy, for listening to the podcast. I'm so excited to send you your sleeve of AEON patches and you also, this month's winner also wins Dame sandra Biskind book, The Code Breaker. If you missed Sandra's episode, you'll want to go back and learn more about how to feel younger growing older. Actually, she just says growing younger by upgrading your beliefs with quantum code breaking shifts.
[00:18:06] And I also want you to check out Andy's amazing feeling younger while growing older story on Instagram. It is beyond inspiring. I will pop her Instagram pages into the show notes. Andy opened a retreat boutique container hotel that I can't wait to visit called Club Marina in Nasara, Costa Rica. It's just such an inspiring story. And so, everybody, thank you. Until next week's Thanksgiving episode, I am streaming love from my heart to yours.
[00:18:44] Thank you for joining me on the Vitally You® podcast. If you like it, please spread the love with a review and share it with your friends. As a thank you, for the first three months of my podcast, one reviewer each month will be selected to win a sleeve of Lifewave X39 Stem Cell Activation patches. Lifewave's X39 patch is the only product on the market that resets the body's own stem cells so they behave like younger, healthier cells without injections, chemicals, or pharmaceuticals. Experience the power of the patch on your journey of feeling younger while growing older. To be entered to win, leave a review, screenshot your review and send it to dana@danafrost.com. Or pop it into a direct message on Instagram @danafrost, vitally free.
[00:19:35] Don't miss a Vitally You® episode drop. Sign up for my newsletter on my website or Instagram Linktree. Until next time, streaming love from my heart to yours.