Finding Self-Love and Acceptance After Abuse with Jeannine Kim

Michael: Hey! What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. Very excited to be back with you with another episode with my guest and friend, Jeannine Kim, who is a certified holistic health practitioner. My friend, how are you today? What is happening in your world?

Jeannine: I'm doing great, thank you. It's a beautiful day here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so we're just gonna go with the flow.

Michael: Yeah, that's life, right? Just being in the energy, allowing what is going to happen to happen which is a big part of why I wanted to bring you on the show, to talk about a lot of these different elements of the human experience that maybe isn't so much right at our forefront but as we progress and get into that, tell me what's something about your past that I would need to know to understand who you are today?

Jeannine: One of the main things I would say is that I am an adoptee from a time of 1967 to be exact. And the context of being an adoptee during that time was definitely different than it is now. And any adoptee would say, you know, that primal wound, whether it's now or back then is definitely sharp within us but it is something that has informed my whole experience. So yeah, that would be something I would tell you first.

Michael: Yeah. I certainly would. And you know, I've mentioned on the show many times at 12 years old, my grandmother adopted me, and that became both a gift and a curse. I think that there is that space in which for many people who go down that path, you feel lost and abandoned and you feel like unloved and unworthy. As you found that out, that information, how did it impact your life as a kid?

Jeannine: It's interesting because I don't remember the moment my parents told me. And so, I've heard in my research and healing on myself that when you don't remember when your parents told you, I guess you could say they did a good job of it, but it was always in my awareness. My parents couldn't have children for about 10 years, so they adopted myself and then a couple years after they adopted my brother, and then they were able to have two children after that as well. And so, I was always wondering and thinking where are my parents? Why did they give me up? The questions that I'm sure most adoptees have. Another interesting thing though is that back in the sixties, there were so many children that I really looked just like my cousins. My cousins all had red hair, I have red hair and then when my parents had two children, they didn't look anything like them or us they had dark hair and so I fit in that way, but there was something inside me that always felt different, and that has been with me my whole life.

Michael: When you say different and that's something I relate to a lot. I spent a long time trying to find like my circle, my people, the community that I fit in, and ultimately what I had come to discover, it was actually this entrepreneurial community, it was this service-based holistic health community that I am luckily a practitioner and like you. When you think about the impact of that, what was the journey into if there was one for you, like self-love because, and the reason I ask that question is because so many people, just that lack of filling, of worth of love, of acceptance is absolutely crippling it and foundationally in a way that you find that it, it ruins their relationships, their friendships, their career, their finances, their health, there's so much weight, shame and guilt that is associated with this idea of like, I didn't matter. And so, like I was out in the world on my own and that self-love journey, the one that I went on particularly was cumbersome like it was like climbing Mount Everest seven times in one day. Right. Like, that's what I equate it to. What has the journey been like for you to get to that place of, of self-love, appreciation, and acceptance?

Jeannine: It was brutal, man. It was brutal. It was a tough go, the family that I was adopted into, they were loving middle class family, great values, grandma and grandpas, holidays, roof over the head, food in the belly, clean clothes, it was by all intent and purpose, a really valuable, wonderful especially my younger years, kind of postcard experience of what a family life was. But during that time as well, the family that I was raised in, they were going through their own struggles, and so I couldn't really get that value reflected back to me, I looked very different than the mother that raised me. And so, there was a big emphasis on what was going on out here, and it started young for me. And you know, even with my brothers, she was always highly critical and the value I wasn't finding it in my home, I couldn't find it in myself, even with that adoption wound. And then as I got older into my teens, it just became incessant, nonstop to the point where I moved into a bulimia. I had an eating disorder and everything I was, whoever I was, how I spoke, how I dressed, how I looked, how I was blossoming, how I wasn't blossoming, everything was on offer for her to be highly critical with. And my father drank as well and went from social to really addiction. And so, the whole house was really charged with we couldn't express our emotions, whatever we thought or however I expressed my creativity, either in how I dressed or how I spoke that wasn't allowed either.

I found first value in myself by becoming who she really needed me to be. And in my bulimia struggle, she found out about this and decided that plastic surgery would be best. And so here I am, a 16-year-old girl in the eighties, she's driving me to get plastic surgery to help make me skinny. And so, I felt, okay, well this is, she loves me if I go along with this and we would have a great relationship that way, and it was something that just drove me even deeper and darker into sadness after that because she kind of went back to her old self, and she was not mentally a stable woman, which I come to find out later, but it was just a real tricky childhood. So, I moved out very young. I moved out when I was 17 years old after that surgery and things didn't change and my father's alcoholism was very strong and I just survived and for those next 20 years, I searched for my biological mother, whom I found, but she couldn't reflect any value back to me. She was so traumatized and I was just, all I could do was survive. And so, I dated whoever would pay attention to me, and I stayed with them far too long, if their family, you know, fed me and gave me a place to sleep and their grandma loved me, or their mother loved me, and I would stay with them too long, and I would do just about anything to survive. And I would hang out with people that, you know, we were drinking and smoking and just ruining my body, ruining myself, it had nothing to do with who I was. And so, during that time, I really found a way to kind of turn my mind around. I remember finding a book called The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peele because I realized at this point that nobody was gonna help me. My mother that I was raised with she was not mentally capable. She was so verbally and mentally and emotionally abusive that she could offer no reflection or that love back. And my father, an alcoholic, he had completely checked out at that point, as best he could he was struggling as well. And even when I met my biological mother, like I had these even though inside of me, I'm like, oh, you know, why did she give me up? She didn't love me. But then when I met her, I was like 20 years old and I remember just bawling as I'm meeting her, it was like one of those cries where the water just doesn't stop, right? It's just I couldn't stop it. And I'm looking at her and she didn't shut a tear and I realized even the years following that, she was so traumatized by giving me up, having to give me up, being put in a home for unwed mothers. You know, her father's saying, you must do this, that she couldn't see me, her daughter, she wanted the baby, she wanted the time back. So, I filled nobody's needs. And in this moment, it informed me, it said, you know what, no one's here for you, but you, you gotta get it together. And so, I started to go with positive thinking and then that really, led me into Dr. Andrew Weil and Gary Zukav and Shirley MaClaine, like one thing after another and yoga was my thing in the nineties. And I found Erich Schiffmann and Ellie McGraws their video, they had just put down the early nineties. And these are things that I would do because I was no longer oriented or calibrated to any kind of external trust. I couldn't trust anything out there, so it all turned here. And so, everything I did just blossomed and I was in the brokerage industry for a while, I was an IPO trader, I was in the financial industry. But secretly I'm like reading, you know, all these healing books in the nineties becoming a vegetarian and doing yoga and everybody just thought it was weird. But I kept at it, especially in Chicago, you know, they're like, what? You don't eat meat and it's not good Friday? Like, it was just they couldn't understand where I was going or what I was doing, but it was hard, and finally I left the industry in 99 and said, that's it. I'm moving into my healing world; it was like my insides were just exploding outward and I never looked back.

Michael: Yeah. I love that I think about this a lot. First, they laugh at you and then they clap for you. And so much of this journey, I mean, you talk about a mind f*ck, I'm sitting here like, yo, that's heavy. There's a lot of sh*t there. There's a lot of sadness, hurt, loss, angst probably a ton of anger, a lot of being dissociated from reality, the social pressure to be something that you're not, there is a heaviness in our journeys and in our stories and the word that I feel like over arcs all of that, that sits above is resilience. What I think is really interesting about resilience is, you know, people always ask me, ‘cuz they know my backstory, they know about being a homeless kid and my mom cutting my finger off and all of the chaos that my childhood was. And so, they use words like resilience, but I don't think people understand it unless they've been in this environment of pure chaos, which you were in. And so, when I hear your story, I go, there's resiliency but what I think is fascinating about that word is it's not chosen, it's not like you had a choice, it's not like you're like, I'm gonna go be resilient. It was like you choose a path, right? There is a direction that you're going to go down as you're on this journey. One part of that is I'm going to go in the way of lack of worth, lack of abundance, lack of love, lack of care, or you're going to go and figure your sh*t out, right? And the hard part about figuring your shit out is like there are signs, right? There are these moments in time that are laid in front of you where if you just pause for five seconds and pay attention can like change your life radically. You have this moment of the power of positive thinking like this book appearing into your ether and I'm very studious, I'm a huge book reader, I'm very avid in it and books change my life. There's no question, that's why I've written them in the hopes of also changing other people's lives. But that moment comes to pass where it's like, at first, the investment in yourself is TIME. Right. It's probably not money, it's not resources and you're like, f*cking 20, you don't have any anyway. And so it's like, what was the deciding factor for you in being like, actually I'm gonna go this other path?

Jeannine: You know, it was a progression of things, it was when I was really struggling with the eating disorder that I had, and then the surgery that I went through that had to be a secret dad and brothers weren't allowed to know and then that fell through and I wasn't receiving the connection I had hoped that that would offer me. When I became very dark suicide, that was it. I remember the moment that like, there was nowhere I could go nothing I could do. It was an emptiness that wasn't just empty. It was like, you know, I was 16 years old, 17 years old where am I gonna get the money? Who am I gonna live with? My neighbors all hate me ‘cuz my mother talks about me. It's like all of this. There was nothing and I was gonna go get sleeping pills at Walgreens. I never forget and just come back but something in me happened that day and it almost like soothed me back into bed and the next morning I woke up, I'm like, you know what? I need help. I need help. I don't know what it was, but it switched and I went ahead and I asked my aunt to say, you know what? I need help here and I went to like, an eating disorder support group. Interesting though, when I was there in that support group, it was in the hospital setting and there were girls coming down that were suffering so badly, they were skeletal, they had their IV things walking with them. And so, a part of me was like, you know, I'm not quite there, maybe I don't deserve this, maybe I need more focus. And so, I said, well, how about a psychotherapist? So, she found me a psychotherapist to talk to, and the guy I think yawn like three times during our session.

Michael: That's how you know her story sucks.

Jeannine: Oh, like, oh my gosh, here I am trying. And so again, when those things happened, they were forming something inside of me that said, you know what? I don't know how I'm gonna find this, but I have to do this on my own. It was just set in me that I had to find my way out because there was nothing else out there that could help me. Even this little glimmer of hope, of my ideal biological mother, she was suffering; suffering, stood between me and everybody that I needed love from. So, the power of positive thinking, again, it led to these other books and these other ways of being. When I got in my yoga practice going in 93, it started to change me.

Michael: I wanna go back real quick. Here's where I'm getting into, I want to know the other side of this, but there's this moment, where this book appears for whatever reason, catches your eye. Why did you decide to read it? Like, what was it in you that was like, you know what? I'm willing to do this. I'm willing to try to bet on me because there's something that I'm hoping to call into this conversation and giving people permission to f*cking bet on themselves for once?

Jeannine: That book was written in the fifties and the only thing I had in me was God. Even when I was younger, like I was bent this way and so, I remember actually how I found this book. It was this girl at work, she was struggling like I was, and she's like, you have to try this book. This book is gonna lift you up and I'm like, all right. I remember it was pink the one that I had. And so I started reading it and I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to do something like I had nothing else that could turn me around. This felt like, you know, he really relates the positive thinking and then biblical things and even though my journey with God, I was raised Catholic, has moved more towards spiritual rather than that God source and Catholicism, that was my inner dialogue was with something that was greater than me always. And so, I banked on that, honestly, it was a draw, it was like I started to read it and I'm like, this gives me more nourishment than anything I've ever gotten before. The words gave me nourishment, it supported. I may not have looked like those skinny girls physically, but my emotional body was like that, my mental body was skeletal, my spirit was that way. I needed anything, anything. And so, these words delivered me to hope and promise of that something else that was in my power I could do to possibly change my life, anything, and that was it.

Michael: Hope is arguably the most powerful word in this journey. And I don't think people understand that. You know, when I look at this pivotal shift in time of my life, it really all started as being a little kid and just believing to some capacity I would be able to make it out, to leverage this piece of hope and be like, I always remember saying to myself, I can't wait to be a grownup like, that's the only thing I ever wanted. I had no childhood, there's zero semblance of childhood in my life. And I was like, I can't wait to be a grownup. And I think that now I look at it and it's like, I can't wait to become this version of me as I keep doing this work and progressing and creating. And there's a hope in that, it's just simply belief. You know, and I think when you have that level of belief, it's like the energy of the world it coincides with you, it commiserates with you, it wants to deliver you all the things. But it's interesting how often we don't pay attention to that, right? Because you go from the book to the yoga, to the this, to the that and especially what's interesting as well is like you are talking about a time in the nineties when it was a very different world. I mean, whatever people think the nineties were, especially if they're young and listening to this, you have no idea, like you really, it was all, f*ck, it was wild West compared to today. And especially in terms of personal development and healing and this kind of conversations. To do yoga in the nineties, you might as well have been smoking crack on the street because people thought you were f*cking crazy.

Jeannine: They totally freaking did. Totally. I'm glad you understand, you get it.

Michael: I do understand ‘cuz I started doing yoga in Indiana in like 2007. And like, nobody did yoga in Indiana. So, like, you know, it's one of those things where my friends would be like, what are you do, what are you talking about? But that played such a pivotal role in my journey because it was like the universe has sat this thing in front of me and it was like, try this. Don't be afraid, but I think people get caught on the fear. What's really at the crux of this, Jeannine, is you started having this identity shift. What started to transpire? How did you start to understand who you were? How did you allow that person to be? How did you handle the moments where you reverted to your old behavior patterns? Like what was that time period like for you as you're becoming this different version and shedding the skin of the person that you used to be?

Jeannine: It continued actually upon this internal journey, it was very private to me, even though I was doing yoga and you know, on my high rise and then going to work in the financial industry in the morning it was brewing, and I just kept it really silent. Every time I tried to share it, every time I tried to bring it up, it was ridiculed, it was made fun of when I wanted to eat organic food, there was one whole foods on the west side of Chicago and I was with my ex-husband at the time and he was fine with it, he was up for it. We would go and we would come back, but I couldn't use the word past lives, like if I read Shirley Maclaine’s book or you know, too much about this natural stuff. But what also called me to that was my body, because I'm really sensitive. My body reacts to medicines in certain ways, and I was starting to get stomach issues. I remember going to the doctor and they're like, oh, here and they hand me a bag of like acid blockers, and I literally said to the guy, just common sense in my mind I'm like, I wasn't born with these. Why you're saying I have to stay on these for the rest of my life and then I ended up with cervical cancer. And they had to remove a good chunk of my cervix and they're like, oh, you may not have children. And I had to go back like every three or four months to make sure it never came back and it never did. But in that moment, I remember taking all of this that was building, building, building and saying, you know what? I'm putting the patterns together and there's a different holistic way to live, and I'm not gonna be afraid of what is going on in my body, why is it changing? And I ended up researching and finding out ways that I could make sure that cancer didn't come back by way of B-vitamins, getting off the pill, like all these different ways, and I've never had a problem since went on to have two kids in my late thirties, early forties, very easily, knock on wood. And it was like my body was asking me to shift into a holistic way of living, my soul needed it and before you knew it, all the information that I was taking in just kind of bursted open and I could no longer show up to work every day and pretend like it was okay for me.

Michael: I remember having this moment where I sat down with my three best friends at the time, this was heading into almost a decade ago now we're very, very close to that window. And I had reached that point, you just used a great terminology, like I had burst it open, I was like, I cannot be this person anymore. And it was really an uprooting of all the things that I had known at the time. But when I made that choice and I made that decision, in a lot of ways, it felt like learning to love myself. Right. This was really the first time I was like, I'm gonna stand up for myself, I'm not gonna be co-dependent, I'm not gonna be a doormat. Most of this language I didn't have, then obviously I was just like, I got to do something differently. Right? And I looked at that time period and I was like, okay, like how do you actually tap into this? Because a lot of people start the journey and they make it a day or a week or six months even, and then it's like, boom, they're ripped right back into that old identity, that old version of themselves. How did you continue to go forward into being you?

Jeannine: You know, it was interesting because I was going on this path quietly, not really knowing where it was gonna take me, probably on some level, hoping everything would stay as it was, there were massive things that happened along the way that told me otherwise. There was my ex-husband at the time wasn't showing up for me mentally, emotionally, you know, just kind of like a revisiting of my childhood right there we were having problems and it wasn't until my father died and he decided he needed to go on a golfing journey with his friends and bike riding journey and not show up that I finally said, you know, I am always there for his family. My father was such a sweet man, I mean, he was an alcoholic, but he had his struggles and to not show up for him, and he died very, very quickly of cancer. And I said, you know, you could do that to me, but you can't do that to him. And something in me again switches so I needed something like that, harsh to do it. And then on top of it, I was just, then at that point we had moved to California and that shifted me hugely ‘cuz I land in California. I'm like, what? Organic fast-food restaurants. Like, I'm like, oh my gosh, these are my people. Like things like this that were little parts of my life just started to feed me and call me even more.

So, I began to go to school in the evening for massage therapy and I became a Reiki practitioner all while I was doing IPO trading for Salomon Smith Barney in the middle of the day, you know, in the daytime. And then I decided, you know what? I've gotta leave. I've gotta leave this financial industry, I'm going to do it in October. And it was like February. I'm like, I was sensing that shifts were happening at work as well. So sure enough, like I bought the plane tickets, I paid for my schooling in Beijing and for traditional Chinese medicine, Fortuna. And I'm like, I just have to tell 'em between now and then and within a month they called me into the office and said, we have to let you go, they left my computer off because I could have made trades that would've totally messed up. So, they said, we have to let you go and there is no reason, we're going to give you a check. We are going to pay for your insurance for the next year and that was it. So, it was almost like I had to build the life and I just really had to not look back. I had to almost like, if you build it, they will come type of a thing and I built it and then all of a sudden these things started to fall into place for me. And I'm not saying that happens to anybody all the time, but after my father died, I was getting at a point in my life where I was like, you know what? What am I doing? I was so unhappy where I was at, the marriage was off, the work was off, all of it was off.

Michael: Yeah. So much of it I think is like just the pursuit into the new version of you is gonna be supported by the energy of the universe. Right? I share this story a lot, probably too much so, but when I think about a lot of the things that I've been able to accomplish, they really all started with being like an eight-year-old boy stealing water to survive and being like, when I'm a grownup, my life won't be like this. And these moments, it's so strange because until you tap, energy is a word that when I want to go into this because this is what I keep hearing and I keep filling in this conversation with you. Energy is this word that I used to be like, that is the dumbest f*cking thing I've ever heard of. Right? What is wrong? What are you talk? Get your hippie ass away from me. Like this is like in my head, the conversations I'm having, right? When people are bringing this up. And then what I started to do was I started tapping deeper into the reality of the world that we're in. And I remember one day, I was probably like 26 or 27, I had just kind of started dabbling into becoming this version of myself and I was standing on the back deck of the house I used to have. And I remember looking up at the moon and it was like one of those super full bright moons and you can see all the star. And I was just like, there's something here that doesn't make sense and I kept thinking to myself like, what is this? Like why do we exist? Why are we here? I still do not have an answer, but what I did realize in that moment was that there is energy in the world that surrounds everything, every living creature being animal, fruit, vegetable plant, whatever, and you have to be willing to tap into it and touch it, and it's weird. Especially at the beginning. But I know that you talk about this concept that everything is energy first, you will probably be far more articulate in explaining what I feel around energy. And so, what does that mean and what role has that played in your life? Because obviously there's all this supporting energy movement, momentum in the universe being like, oh yeah, you want to go to Beijing and get the ticket and go in October? Well, guess what? You're fired. Let us help you.

Jeannine: Well, I am an HSP, have you ever heard of what that is? Highly Sensitive Person, Dr. Lane Aaron's work?

Michael: Yep. But please explain it for those who haven't.

Jeannine: Oh, yes. Okay. So, I wasn't aware of this, you know, growing up at all, you know, this is just something that came into my understanding over the past few years. But an HSP Highly Sensitive Person is somebody you're in born with these specific traits, like they're measurable in your brain as for how you function in the world, basically how you take information in and process it, it's very different. And typically, you know, the way that we could see this in ancient times, like the tribes people, it was somebody who was, you could call him an oracle, you could call him a medicine man, you could call him somebody that could say, you know what, maybe we want to do our crops over here, or we send somethings coming maybe it's time that we leave. You know, storms are coming, somebody who could tell the tribe what's going on. And every man, woman creature has this capacity within them and so, it really means that essentially that we sense things on a very different level. So, when I grew up in that childhood, again, you know, it wasn't maybe that type of physical, too much of the physical I mean, there was that. But there were all these energetic threads, you know, that I read, that I interpreted, that I understood, that just weren't spoken. And on top of it, when I was younger, I would have dreams, all the time. And I remember telling my mother, who raised me, oh my gosh, I remember going to this house and I told her what it looked like, and we pulled up and she just sat there and froze. And as I got older, these things would still happen and so, I would say, what is this? And so now we look at energy, kind of like you said, that hippie dippy thing like what is that all about? But it's really quantum physics. Everything is energy first. And so, when I am in a room, I sense people, I hear people, I don't just hear the words that they say, I feel them. And so, no doubt as a child who knows, you could have been sensing what was going on at that time in the neighborhood in your life, the people you're connected to, that's called non-local entanglement as well, it's a measurable thing now, but before we just all called it energy.

Michael: Makes me think of the research study, the guy's name literally just went out of my brain. It was right there where they put people in separate rooms, meditating and sending each other energy. And I remember, the first time I heard about this, I was like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, there's no way, like, this doesn't make sense. And then what you come to realize is like, wait a second. Like you, I have had, for the entirety of my life, the most intense dreams where I will feel like, in the moment, and then it comes to pass, I've had deja vu probably 200 times in my life, like not even joking like this happened so many times where some of it is like literally through the practice of visualization and controlling outcome and sitting in things. This isn't the secret. Take action if you want to change your life, you're not just gonna manifest sh*t like you gotta do stuff too. But like, I'll sit here and I'll visualize and then it will happen or if I feel this dark. I remember I lived in this house and I had this dark energy all around me like I felt it like a shadow sitting over me and. And you know, the more I think about the reality of the world that we live in, it's like there is place and time for all levels of energy, of matter of being, and, this is probably about as woo-woo as I get, but I love this sh*t because it just makes sense to me. There is something quantum in the nature of our ability to connect and interconnect with people. A lot of this, I think, ties into your gut, right? Your gut feeling. Are you listening to yourself? Are you paying attention? Because we are, it's the same as you're on the highway and there's some guy four cars over, and you look at him and he looks back at you. It's improbable. It doesn't make sense, but it happens. I think that we do a really, really good job of ignoring reality, of ignoring the energy that is around us with the people. Sometimes it's our family, it's our friends, it might be our husband, it's the employer, right? Like how do you tap into actually paying attention to what your body is telling you about the intersection of the energy between you and other human beings?

Jeannine: So, I'm an intuitive born this way also, HSP. And I look at it as our body is our instrument and so, I call it a spiritual sommelier. So, for instance, you notice Somalia is right, like they're the wine tasters, they drink the wine and they're like, Ooh, little bunnies hopping on a field in France in 72 and there's oak trees, and I drink. And I'm like, it's red like I have no idea. I'm not refined enough in any of that wisdom so I don't know. But this is the way that I sense life and so how do I do that? Our bodies are our instruments, and I may be this way, but I also fully believe that I am just the canary in the coal mine. I'm the one that everybody can do this and the more we go into ourself and we get into our space of empty, which for many people is really scary ‘cuz all the stuff is in there we haven't dealt with yet. But when we get into that space of empty and we sit in there, then we could start to delineate. Is this somebody else's energy or is it my own? But only once we've really gotten to know and made relationship with our spiritual body, our mental body, our emotional body, and our physical body. I call those the big four. And we have to make room for those every day, we have to really come to know them and go inward otherwise we're not practicing inward understanding, we don't have a relationship with that. How are we going to trust what comes from in here when we don't have a relationship with it?

Michael: How do you begin that relationship? Because if you think about it, especially like though people who are listening to this show who are like you and I, who had massive traumatic experiences, a child are often completely dissociated, I know so far removed from their bodies that, might as well be, you might as well be talking, you know, in a whole another language. If you laid out, call it three steps, how does somebody actually begin that process of like being able to connect probably for the first time even into their body?

 Jeannine: So, I have a little game that I play and this is a fun suggestion and invitation for people ‘cuz I understand that completely. I oriented myself to the outer world, to the nth degree, to be accepted by anybody being adopted, you know, not being accepted and all that good stuff. So, I say those four bodies, they are your babies, those bodies are your babies. Do you have a favorite baby? Do you have a black sheep spiritual? The mental, the emotional, and then the physical. The physical is just the end result of the other three, it's like the holograph version of it. It's an easy way to say the mind-body connection, somatic experience, but those three etheric bodies they need and want as much attention as the physical. Now, some people may not even pay attention to the physical, and I know this is what you and I are talking about here.

So, every day when you wake up, say, okay, I'm going to create space for each one of those bodies. I'm going to introduce myself, I'm gonna have them introduce themselves to me. Seems like a silly game, but I always, this is the moment that I psyched Beyonce, she had Sasha Fierce, I don't know if you guys know about that. She was afraid to get up and go out there, so she gave it a name. Give them a name and start inviting them into your space. And once you do, I mean, just get them a seat at the table, ask them what they want and imagine that they are like a little child, you mean at the park or a little animal that's maybe shy, doesn't want to come by and you don't have to demand it, but just be there. Give it space to show up. And then if you do hear something like, gosh, my physical body is telling me it doesn't want to do this today very slowly check in with yourself. Well, am I like being a dictator? Saying, no, you've gotta go. You're going, whether I say so or not, or you're saying, okay, well let's consider that. What would you like to do? So just very simply, begin to create space for each of these bodies as if they are your babies.

Michael: Yeah. And I think doing so without judgment, right? But also, I think sometimes you do have to force it, right? And the reason that I say that is because if you look at your life and you're in a transition, sometimes it truly is about doing the opposite. And so many of us spend a lot of time allowing ourselves to not show up for ourselves, that's also a form of dissociation, right? Just totally not showing up, not doing the right foods, the right regimens, leaving the relationship, quitting the job, and part of, I think getting into that spiritual, mental, emotional and physical body is sometimes just being like, I have to actually go against what my mind is saying right now and do what I know is right.

Jeannine: Yeah, and I love that you bring that point up. And I love, yes. Sometimes you need to nudge it, right? You need to nudge it. But usually when you're nudging in a situation like this, you're not hurting yourself. It may look scary, you may say, oh my gosh, hell might break loose. Change is gonna happen, but it is ultimately not going to hurt you. This is actually something that is going to give you life. For instance, you may say, well, you know, I have to go to work today. I have to do it even though I hate the job, they're bad things are happening at the job. And say, okay, well if you can't listen to the call of that, just show up, just do what you can to actually show up, but decide you're going to make some sort of change that might soothe what you are hearing. Decide to maybe start looking for new job. Find somebody that you could tell bad things are happening to you at the office. So, it's not really about hurting yourself when you make these actions, but quite the opposite. Nudging yourself, pushing yourself to say, Hey, let's move somewhere different with this.

Michael: And that's the intersection of self-discovery, I think because if you only ever know what you know, and you never explore the unknown, you will never be different. And I think that's the hardest part of this journey because if you grow up in the capacity of not enoughness, of shame, of guilt, of the social pressures, of being the wounded child, the abandoned child, like whatever that thing is, that's a hard identity to shift. And the only thing I'm going to tell people is I believe that it's possible. You and I are here having this conversation not to be like, hey, look at us, look how great our f*cking lives are now. But instead, it'd just be like, hey, look, there's a path here, if you want it, but you have to want it. And Jeannine, I think this is the hardest thing, and I'm sure you, I won't put words in your mouth, but I would imagine you would agree with me as a practitioner in this space as well. We can't want it for other people. I want it so desperately for me, I can't give you any of my energy, but I can show you the path. If people feel like they want to step onto the path and they want to have an identity shift and they want to go through this healing and build the daily relationships and get calibrated and step into allowing the energy of the world in the universe to guide them, what do you think is the most important thing that they need to know?

Jeannine: Basically, what you just said, I honestly say this, it should be in the healer 101 training. You could be a healer, but you can heal nobody. That doesn't mean that what you bring, who you are, can't affect. But if you really go in and say, why am I doing this? Am I doing this to distract from my own healing work? That you have to look at, because people will only go as deeply as you've gone with yourself. So, go deep with yourself and there is no finish line. There's no finish line. That's the finish line. There is no finish line, and it's a daily alignment. Sometimes, I question the word heal only because it denotes a finish line and sometimes when you sense into that word that really feels like, you know, well, once I heal, and even if you just think that, and so instead I use the word align, and so what if every day you just find one-way, little way to align with the truth within you, it could be the smallest whisper of a truth. But something that feels better or looks better or feels relieving or aligns with that little voice that you have inside a line - a line – a line. Because then there's no finish line out there, there's no shame, you know, that we're not crossing this finish line ‘cuz I feel like our whole culture is really oriented to, once I get the certification, once they get the money, once they get the likes, once they get all this, it's like, a line, you could do that right here, right now. And then healing is the byproduct of that. Anybody, anybody could align their spiritual body, the mental, the emotional, the physical right now in some way and then you just build upon that every day.

Michael: And I'll add to that also, ‘cause I think this is very important, and I found this in my own journey, you're not going to trust yourself at first, you're just not, because you've only been told to never do that. And so being able to get to that place of trusting the alignment, like honestly just comes through a lot of failure, a lot of mistakes, a lot of like doing the wrong thing. But that's the data that you need to be able to support whether or not you're heading in the right direction. And I feel like very strongly that had I not had the willingness to acknowledge the reality that I don't actually trust that I'm doing the right thing. I don't know that I'd be here today because there were so many moments where it's like, all right, I'm packing up the car and I'm leaving this relationship, I'm driving to the other side of the country. I'm leaving my then best friends because I don't believe they support me and nourish me in the way that I need. But is that a huge mistake because I'm leaving the only thing that I know. I'm selling all of my stuff and I'm going to travel the world for a couple of years and write my first book. Right. I'm gonna start a podcast when, I don't know if anyone's going to listen to it. And that space of the back and forth of the chaos of yourself is like, yeah, it's cool. Don't trust yourself, but at least go in a different direction. And so, my hope is that people will find a little bit of willingness to do that and I agree with you, I have never healed anyone one time ever except me. That's it. Jeannine, this has been an awesome, awesome conversation, my friend, before I ask you my last question, if somebody wants to work with you, learn more about you, take a step with you, where can they find you?

Jeannine: My website, jeanninekim.com and Instagram, themystic.jeanninekim

Michael: And of course, guys, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com We will put all those links in the show notes plus more thinkunbrokenpodcasts.com. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Jeannine: To me, it means to be completely aligned with your soul, ‘cuz that soul piece is what is watching the spirit and the mind, and the emotion and the physical, and it is the eternal, it is the God source and it is the part that is actually trying to break down all the other pieces of you so you could turn to it and get your greatest truth.

Michael: Hmm. Yeah. Beautifully said my friend. Thank you so much for being here.

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