How Religious Trauma Shaped an Ethical Leader | with Shana Francesca

Michael: Shana Francesca. My friend, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Shana: I'm good, Michael. How are you?

Michael: Amazing. I'm super excited to have you on. Your story is harrowing to have grown up in a cult and a lot of chaos in life to now be a person who is changing the world through talking about leadership. Doing the things that are hard and ultimately I'm sure in there finding a bit of self love obviously I think that everyone's journeys are so particular to them and with yours what I think is so fascinating is you made a decision at such a young age because you were like, wait a second something here's not right I've got to go a different path and you were able to break free so many people aren't And so what I really want to start this because I think it's an important conversation obviously is talk about childhood and what it was like growing up for you.

Shana: Yeah, so I was born into an abusive household and raised inside of an evangelical christian cult. My parents joined that evangelical christianity when I was about four and then joined the cult and they started me in the school Of a different church, but the church we eventually ended up attending when I was five and it was hard when you live in a world as a child where you're meant to embrace your curiosity, you're meant to learn everything you can from the world around you. And the environment around you in particular is one in which your curiosity is not allowed. You're not allowed to question the system, you're not allowed to ask why. You're not allowed to show up as yourself or even understand what it is to show up as yourself. You're not empowered to or even capable of trusting your own intuition because your own intuition is telling you all the time you're not safe. And so you just have to shut it down. You just have to tell it to be quiet because you know you're not safe. You know you're not safe all of the time. So when you're growing up in that kind of environment, you are always protecting yourself. You cannot consistently protect yourself and learn consistently about the world around you at the same time. And also you cannot learn about the world around you in the ways you're meant to when the information provided is provided. For you is so limited. The things that you're allowed to learn about are purposely limited so that you draw the same conclusions about the world around you that the adults who are in charge of you want you to draw, right? It's a very coercive, controlling environment. And in that environment, I learned very quickly my curiosity had to stay inside. I couldn't share it with the world around me. I could still be curious, but I just couldn't tell people I was curious. I couldn't tell people what I was learning. I couldn't tell people how observant I was. I had to keep it inside because whenever I let it out, I was punished. I was told I was bad and wrong. And that's the lightest, the least harmful things that were done to me.

Michael: One of the things that I think about, I think this is, I want to lead this into something real quick. And come back because we're not done here, obviously, but you mentioned something so important like curiosity wasn't allowed and I have said for years that childhood trauma isn't necessarily the cuts and scars and the bruises and the pain. It's more the impact of the theft of our identity and if you're. Having that negatively reinforced. You go look at something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the safety of the physical body is first and foremost, predominant as you go up that scale to get to this place of ultimate, self actualization. And if you don't feel safe within yourself, you can never go into the world with autonomy.

Shana: And also I think that really, truly discovering ourselves happens in true community. And when we're trying to control other people, that's not community, that's control. That's an abusive environment. That's not real community. Real community is understanding what relationship is and understanding what it requires and showing up in ethical relationship with the people around us. That's what's meant to, that's what's meant to support us as we grow and learn as children, but that's not what showed up for me and that's not what showed up for you either. So I think, for me, I had to like, in my self discovery. Also figure out what relationship is and what it requires and find people who were safe for me to be around and be my, not even be myself yet, just to discover what that meant, what questions I could ask, what I, who I could become, what was possible for me, because curiosity is connected to all possibility, right? Because it's connected to all learning. And then, as we learn, we discover what actually aligns with who, with us, right? And then we're able to discover how we want to contribute to the world and our talents and our purpose and all of these things. But when your education and your understanding of the world is narrowed purposely, you're less likely to find your purpose. You're less likely to find that thing that ignites your soul. You don't even know it exists, right? And so there's like the killing off of your soul that happens. Because You're being forced to show up in the world in such narrow definitions and it's excruciatingly harmful And I think a lot of my trauma really solidified as trauma because I didn't have the support to experience the pain I didn't have the support around me to say yes, this thing was painful. You have a right to be you know, hurt by it, and I'm here to support you in healing from it. That's when it solidified as trauma for me, is not having the support I needed when I was harmed to actually work through it.

Michael: Yeah, and I think that's true for probably anyone in those environments. And, as I've mentioned on the show before, I grew up in the Mormon church, which in its own right, is a cult. And anyone who dares says otherwise, I'm more than happy to have an in depth conversation with you. But the truth is like growing up in that culture, while the parlay of growing up in the hood with drug addict, alcoholic, abusive parents, you really questioned everything. And I questioned God, religion, leadership at such a young age. And I found myself often being the kid who was getting kicked out of Bible study and Sunday school, because I was questioning and asking why. And the answer was never Anything other than this is what we say. And so this is what it is. And as I think my contrarian nature probably came through that because I just contrarian I've always wanted to understand for the sake of understanding, not just for the sake of asking the question. And then you end up in this place where, like you said, it kills your soul. And what's so devastating about that is some people don't have the ability to recover that, not only because they don't have community, but because forever they are indoctrinated into the idea like this is what life is and here's the truth and you know this propaganda and indoctrination is the American way don't ever be confused about that and you have to be open to the idea That at any given moment you're being propositioned into a certain alignment of thinking And whatever it is that you believe about the world, if you don't challenge it, and this is my opinion, if you do not challenge what the world is telling you the world is, you will forever be trapped.

Shana: Yeah, it's about approaching. It's about recognizing that there's a broader context that isn't necessarily being presented to you because the person presenting you information, whatever that information may be, has a very specific reason for presenting the information. They are the way they are. Even if they're telling you the story of the lived experience, they're telling you because they want you to draw certain conclusions. And that doesn't mean that everybody speaking to you has sinister intentions, that's not what I mean, but what I do mean is when we approach the world around us with curiosity, we're going to ask one or two questions deeper, and we're going to find way more information, and we're going to find that broader context, and it's going to provide us a way of understanding all of the all of our interconnectedness, our impact on the world around us, it's going to provide the information necessary for us to truly be able to step out of propaganda, step out of the specific narrative and understand the world in a more broad context.

Michael: When I was like 12, I made a decision, and this is a very young age to do this, to walk away from the church forever. And I know and there was tremendous repercussions for it like literal beatings. Or, not being willing to get in the car, but at 12 years old, I was starting to grow and it became, a bit more in my advantage, becoming a young boy size wise. But anyway, it was a constant drudgery of, I felt like beatings will continue until morale improves. If you've ever heard that old adage and that's what it was like. And yeah, and then I made the decision no matter what I'm about to suffer, I'm never stepping foot back in that place. And I'm curious for you, what was your journey in exiting? What did that process look like? And more importantly, where did the courage come to be able to do so?

Shana: Yeah. So for me here's a trigger warning for anybody. This is this conversation, this aspect of the conversation is going to involve sexual assault. The first time I experienced rape, I was three. It was my babysitter's son. The next time I experienced sexual assault was 15, and it was at the hands of my father. I ran away. He did not get as far as he wanted to go. However, at that time, I became acutely aware that I was not safe. And I also became acutely aware that my father, draw your conclusions. I'm not gonna say it out loud, right? I was a child. He was an adult man, and I had a sister. who looked exactly like me, who at the time was five years old. And I knew in that moment that I could not leave. I knew that I was the line of defense. For my siblings. Not just in that aspect, but in protecting them from physical beatings, protecting my mother from those things. That was not my role, and yet I took it. I was still a child. I had taken on that role for some time, but now it was really amped up. Now I knew I couldn't leave. Before then I thought I could leave, and I could figure out a life, and then maybe they'll leave too. But in that moment I knew I couldn't leave. And, I didn't tell anyone for three years. What he had done, but I stayed to protect them and then he left when I was 24. He finally left and it was like, Oh my goodness, I thought that would never happen. And he did. And it was maybe one of the best things that ever happened to any of us. And then I could breathe. When you've grown up in a deeply traumatic and abusive environment, none of you have this interpersonal skills to navigate. Anything successfully air in any healthy way. So we were still used to traumatizing each other, right? We had no way of learning how to regulate ourselves. No, no way of understanding how to properly talk through conflict. So we were constantly still things weren't going well. But at least that that level of control and abuse over us was gone. And at 25, my grandfather got sick, my mom's dad, and and he needed someone to help take care of him. And I was like, I may pick me. And it was the first time I lived in a place where I felt safe and secure and cared for and had a man treat me with respect. And there'd be reciprocity in that relationship. And that was it. That's what. That's what really gave me the sense of okay. I not only can I leave but I have to leave because I am for the first time being able to feel into who I might be able to show up in the world as I heal this trauma. And, I moved out and once he passed away, I moved out on my own and, started a decade worth of, more than a decade worth of, intense healing.

It's healing for me, but along the way I found community and that's what really helped me to heal. So when I left those environments, I had no community. I had no friends, no nothing outside of the abusive household, outside of the cult I grew up in. And so I found the salsa dancing community and not only is dance extremely beneficial when it comes to healing trauma and learning how to move emotions and process them through your body. But, It's just such a beautiful way of expressing yourself in the world and just coming into your own body and feeling your feelings and feeling safe to do and that was like a critical step. It was like, I get to move my body the way I decide. No one gets to tell me it's sin or it's bad or it's wrong. I get to experience joy and pleasure inside of my own body on my own terms. And it was such an incredible. Experience that really kick started, the last, 13 years of my own healing journey.

Michael: And it sounds very like a somatic healing experience, there's a huge part of that I mean that for me has always been martial arts and doing Muay Thai and Fighting and things of that nature a little bit more aggressive, but same result I think Something came to mind as you were talking as I just can't help but wonder You know, what were your relationships like with other people during this time because when I was growing up it was I don't think there was any depth to any relationship I had with anyone. My first girlfriend and I got together when I think we were 16. I don't think I ever told her anything about my past, about my childhood. I don't think I, I know I did not tell any woman anything about my childhood until I was like 29. You've learned. This is what I don't think people truly understand, is this theft of identity is in part is you learn to turn yourself off, you learn to not speak the truth, more so speaking the truth is often one of the most dangerous things that you can do, and so we learn to for safety, right? It becomes a defensive mechanism to be silent. And what's so interesting is, we live in this society where it's like, if there's something wrong, go tell someone. And it's that is bullshit. That's the biggest lie. That's exactly right.

Shana: What is their response going to be? And are they going to tell you to be quiet and sit down and take it? Like you don't know.

Michael: Yeah. Or worse. Or are they going to And this is what happened to me. Like we would tell and someone would come to our house and then the consequence for that would be so ungodly. Like it was, it's not even, I don't even talk about those things and I'm not going to today, but like that's the reality of what it is. And so how do you, in that phase as a child, as a teen, in your early twenties, like what did relationships like with other human beings look like?

Shana: Messy. I was essentially learning how to navigate relationships, and I should have been learning that. As a child, as a toddler, as a young person, I should have been being taught the tools, but I was learning things I should have learned as a child now in my early 20s. And there was a lot of dysregulation. There was a lot of defensiveness on my part. I had to learn what my intuition was. And for me, this is just my own journey and where I am today. In my own journey, but I have come to recognize that my confidence started to build the minute. I realized that God wasn't something exterior. He isn't this puppet. God isn't a puppet master in the sky, controlling our entire lives for me. God is in everything and in, in that recognition. I no longer had to seek external validation. I could know that I was valuable and worthy of existence and worthy of joy and all of the good things just because I am. And, that was an incredibly intense journey, but it was super messy, right? And it was beneficial that I was in the salsa community because anyone who's been in a salsa dance or been in that community it's a wild place. And there's all kinds of people there processing all kinds of things, drawn to it because of all their own mess. And, it got messy sometimes, difficult, I had to learn how to trust myself. I had to learn that I was bait for narcissistic people because I had been taught to default to someone else's authority, always to default to someone exterior and seek their validation and so on and so forth. And so this was a process of me finding my voice. learning what my intuition was and listening to it, finding courage and compassion for myself and finding confidence, all of these things that I wasn't allowed to learn or develop inside of a high control environment. So they. They, there was also like a lot of trauma dumping involved, when I did meet somebody who I felt connected to and safe with, it was like all came out of me all at once because I just needed to get it out. So it was messy. It was very messy for a really long time. I think it took me a good three or four years, probably till I turned 30 before I felt safe regulated in any way, shape or form, like really inside of my own body and like I belonged there and like I was safe there in any capacity.

Michael: Yeah, I resonate with that a lot and the trauma dumping thing for sure because it's like you inadvertently open up Pandora's box and that becomes this like floodgate where because you haven't been listened to or because you've been so fearful of talking that the moment that you find someone that you're connected with in any capacity it's like I will tell you all of the everything that's ever happened to me and then if you're paying attention you realize well that's one way. Ticket to a disastrous relationship almost unequivocally.

Shana: Yeah, because narcissists will use that against you.

Michael: Not even just narcissists, but like the people who care about you will be like, dude, you're fucking crazy. Get away from me. All right, and that's not for any other reason than that people who are close to you. They're not meant to be your coach. They're not meant to be your therapist. And unfortunately, I think that in the healing journey. This is a This is an unfortunate step that we all must take because it's a part of what you said, like leaning in towards the path of regulation and I recall many times, late twenties, early thirties of leveraging anyone and everyone to share and not understanding the negative ramification of that. And then it wasn't until. Community again, like men's group coaching, trauma group coaching, AA, NA, SA, all the A's, doing all these things that I start to get okay, regulation isn't in the storytelling as much as it is in the presence. And so, I'm curious for you, like when you started to get into this space of regulation what did that look like? What were your steps? What was the work? What were you actually doing? And also, how did you know that you were starting to be regulated?

Shana: I think I only really started to know that I was beginning to be regulated about five years ago. It was that recent. I think, because there were still moments where I would be triggered, and I wouldn't know how to regulate myself, specifically with family members. So, I had learned how to regulate myself with everyone else in the world, except people who were being abusive towards me. I didn't know how to regulate myself that way yet. I didn't know how to create how to set boundaries and hold them like I, I didn't know how to navigate that yet. And it took more therapy. It took, working with a coach and really trying to understand what's actually happening and, recognizing that I didn't feel safe and I didn't know. I was disempowering myself. I was the only person who could give me permission to simply walk away from someone's life. I had no responsibility to support someone who insisted on harming me. And that was something I hadn't confronted yet. I hadn't recognized that was indoctrination. I hadn't recognized I didn't owe someone that. I did not owe someone my life. I did not need to be a sacrificial lamb. And that's not just programming from inside the church. That's our society at large. Women are supposed to sacrifice themselves, to regulate everyone around them, to care for other people at their own detriment. So this was many layers of programming and many layers of messages that I needed to sort through. And so like it wasn't until five years ago that I was like, if somebody's yelling at me, I can just walk away. I can just block them. I don't even have to engage. I do not have to explain to them why I've disengaged. They know. They know. And if they don't, it's still not my responsibility to educate them. That's their journey. If they're violating my boundaries, I'm I'd, I can just walk away. That's what a boundary really is. It's you set it, but it's for you to enforce. It's for you to walk away. You cannot put your boundaries on someone else. You can't say if you don't do this, then I'm going to do that. No. The boundary exists, people understand boundaries. If they don't, that's not your responsibility. And you get to just walk away and disengage. So, for me, it was when I really understood boundaries that I could really actually begin to regulate myself because then I knew I could trust myself and then I knew you that I didn't have to say in dysregulating moments. I could take the space I needed to actually regulate myself.

Michael: And that only comes through trusting yourself, which it's like this weird Russian doll situation where you're like, I have to trust myself to trust myself to trust myself right and it's and people have such a hard time getting started and I think the getting started process is It's actually more simple than you might think, and it begins with standing up for yourself, and this is the thing that is the hardest part of the journey, but it's really about this is what I always teach my clients whenever they're in coaching with me, whether we're doing one on one or small groups or I'm on stage or whatever. This is again, my opinion and my expertise is healing trauma is doing what you want to do because you want to do it and not doing what you don't want to do because you don't want to do it and that is ultimately agency and serenity and standing up for yourself and trusting yourself begins. With the little like gut feeling and being like, I know I need to do this and not second guessing it, not questioning it. But what's so hard about it. As you've been led, and I think you're a case example of this. I would put myself in this boat. Many of the people listening to this, obviously decision making was not part of our protocol growing up. You don't make decisions same. We weren't ever. And then and here's what's crazy is I don't know if this was your experience, but on the backside of never being able to make decisions to beginning to step into agency. My life became the wild West where it was like I was doing like my life was like what is that movie called? Boogie nights. And so my life is my life is like that tied with I don't know, American gangster. It was just insane where it was just.

Shana: Also world.

Michael: Yeah. Oh, I'm sure.

Shana: I know that you don't know what that means, but anybody.

Michael: I actually know what it means. But if you want to. My best friends on the salsa world, but if you would like to elaborate, I think people have a better understanding.

Shana: At 26, I jumped into a polyamorous relationship. An openly polyamorous relationship. It was this scandalous thing inside of the enclave the Northeast, enclave. But we were very open about it. We went everywhere together. We were, it was two of us women together with the same man, but her and I were not together. But we would go out on dates together, so on and so forth. I was, but it was not, I was ethically non monogamous, so that polyamorous relationship was not monogamous. I did. What I wanted when I wanted. I enjoyed my body the way I wanted to enjoy my body with no one else's permission or input. There was, lots of alcohol, lots of late nights. At a salsa congress, the really good dancing doesn't even start till 1 a. m. And so sometimes you're dancing from 1 to 6 a. m. And you're not dancing that whole time. You're like taking breaks like once or twice an hour. Everybody's grabbing a drink back in the room. So on and so forth. Shenanigans is happening. Then you go back to the dance floor. So on and so forth. Like it's this cycle. So it's a lot of fun. And I don't regret a single second of it. But it was definitely the Wild West in my life. It was experimentation. It was all the things that I needed to be able to do to understand what are my boundaries? What do I actually want in this world? What do I want to experience? What does love look like for me when no one else is telling me how I have to show up in the world that my whole soul purpose as a woman is to get married to a man and have his children and belong to him? What if I belong to myself and what does that look like? And what does that mean? And so that was it was deep experimentation, but it was wild.

Michael: Yeah. And as strange as it may sound, and for the people who will rebuke this, that experimentation for me was so unbelievably necessary. And because I went down the same path, and I lived in the Pacific Northwest for a while, and it I won't get into details, but it was a lot of very similar experiences. And what I took from it was actually realizing actually, that's not for me, but I needed that to realize it. And I think that everyone should walk their own path and figure out what is best suited for them. But I think a part of the experimentation is really about getting that place of trusting yourself. ‘Cause even within that experimentation, I will speak for myself. There were moments where I was like, I don't know if I should be doing this right now. And then on the backside of it, you go, Oh, wow. Okay. I definitely don't like this, or I definitely do like this, whatever the, this is, which could be a multitude of things. And then it was like, even experimentation, I'm going to get on a plane and go travel the world, or I'm going to go eat at these restaurants, or I'm going to wear this style of clothes, or I'm going to get my neck tattooed, right? Whatever that thing is, it's so much of it is about self discovery. And what I think is very interesting is now you're playing this game. Where the pendulum can swing so far in the other direction that now instead of seeking identity you're actually seeking chaos because chaos becomes your emotional home because everything that you knew growing up was chaos. And so you're like, I need more chaos. So I feel normal. And now you're real dysregulated while you think that chaos is actually what's normal.

Shana: Yeah, which is why I think right around, it was like 30, 31 that I started stepping back profoundly from the Salsa community. It was like four or five years. I learned what I needed to learn, understood what I needed to understand about myself. I realized at that point in time, I don't actually want to get married or have kids. I remain an ethically non monogamous human. That doesn't mean I it just means I'm honest about what, how I'm showing up in the world. And it's a very vulnerable and honest level of communication that I never received in any aspect of my life, romantic or otherwise. And so I'm dedicated to having those uncomfortable conversations with people and being open and honest and setting intentions, right? That's intentionality is such an important part of my work. It's why relationship is at the foundation of my work. When we're talking about ethical leadership, we're talking about ethical relationship, because leadership is a relationship with those you lead, right? And so it's all what kind of led me to my work, but I needed that chaotic moment to understand what my boundaries were, right? So that I can, and then also experience the world from a vast array of perspectives and understand all kinds of different people's lived experience and really understand, like, How I truly wanted to connect to the people around me and truly understand why they made the choices they made. Right? Because, and just hear the stories of their lived experience that I had no access to any of these things. So it was an immense amount of learning packed into five years. And then I was like, I think I learned everything I need to learn here. Doesn't mean I still don't go dancing. Dancing is great somatic therapy. But I'm not inside of that world anymore. I don't operate there. And then we came the next phase of my healing that was like, all right, now I want to research, what is healthy relationship? What is leadership? What is leadership that drives creativity and innovation? What are these things? How do I want to show up in an ethical way in the world and find those models for myself and then be able to share them with the world?

Michael: Yeah. And that's so important because, and for me, similarly, what happened is I went on this journey and traveled the world and wrote my books and do all these things. And just over the years, I've just sat in it and on a daily basis, I'm just asking myself who do I want to be? Because one of the amazing things about just the experience of life, and even though the pendulum may swing, And you get into this chaos for a while, if you're paying attention, you pick the pieces that really fit in alignment because whether it's this sexual exploration or adventure of travel or food or career or kickball league, I don't know whatever that thing is, there's something about you innately that has curiosity towards it. And I think honoring that curiosity, is about the search of identity and if childhood trauma is the theft of identity the thing that you have to understand is now in adulthood. You're building and creating your identity You are deciding this is what's so difficult because people are like I'm not confident because I had trauma and I'm like, you're not confident because you haven't decided who you want to be and move towards that with authority.

Shana: Learning to know what's even possible for you to become.

Michael: That's exactly right. And so then what happens is now you're in a quandary, right? Because everything you've understood about who you are has been informed by other people. And today you're trying to figure out that on your own, figure that out on your own. And then you're in conflict about your morality and your ethics, because especially if it's religious indoctrination, I didn't have a soda for the first time until I was like 13, 12 or13 years old, right? Because we were Mormon, right? And now I'm addicted to coffee. I openly admit this. I love it. I'm drink. And you look at this and you go, okay but I also did a copious amount of drugs and alcohol and hooking up and a lot of that was unhealthy. By the way, I'm not saying that all of that was adventurous in the sake of identity. And then what happened is I slowly started to unravel the mind fuck that it is, that is growing up in trauma. And I realized I had to be the one to choose my morality and my ethics based on my lived experiences. That is self-leadership.

Shana: Yes. And be willing to take responsibility for the impact of your actions. That's the other part of that. But did you find, for me, I also find, because travel became a really important thing for me as well, and I'm listening to you and I'm like, I really think that part of that self-exploration is also needing recognizing that you grew up in a world where homogeneity was the only thing that was acceptable and the exploration of the world around you is in a way necessary because to kind of counterbalance that homogeneity that you grew up in, right? It's a way of providing that broader context. It's a way of connecting to the whole world around you in broader context. And actually understanding what culture is. What real culture is. Not You know, and it's vast array of ways that it shows up in different places in the world and so on and so forth. So, it's like a, I don't know, for me, it was like a traveling became this soul journey of trying to find out what, how other people in the world showed up and what that looks like. I don't know.

Michael: No, I agree. And I think, I grew up in a, I grew up in the hood and nobody had a path. I don't even know anybody who had been on an airplane except me by the time I was 18. And I'm on a second passport just completely packed full of pages because of the willingness to be like, I'm going to go on the adventure. And at one point packing everything I owned into two bags and just One way ticket to Thailand, right? And through that was a lot of martial arts, amazing amount of friendships, great food poisoning a few times, but like the adventure of it all came through the willingness to like question the dichotomy of what it meant to be. A human being and living in the time and culture that we live in, but then the other side of it to what is considered acceptable, because the thing that I think people have to, and I'm going to step this into leadership because I have a really important question, but one of the things that I think. I think happens is in the programmatic approach to what it means to be a citizen in the United States, especially it's raise your hand to go to the bathroom, walk on the right side of the hall.

Shana: Praise the flag prison pipeline.

Michael: And that's exactly what it is. It's institutionalization at its best.

And so if you're. Forming these understandings of what it means to be a model citizen. And look, I love America. I think it was the greatest country in the world. That's why I keep coming back.

Shana: Also be willing to question it. Relationship is to hold that person, that relationship accountable.

Michael: Yes. A hundred percent. I agree. And that's the thing that's so hard because even I know people are listening to this now and they're like, how can I listen to these two people when they have all these things that they've tried? And we've been told be single monogamous relationships and don't ever do anything but go to church, but make sure you drink your beer and watch football all day on Sunday. And so it's that's the game that we're constantly playing is questioning Everything. And so how do you as an individual figure out your morality, your ethics and what you're responsible for in leadership in your life, knowing that you're impacting other people just because you have a voice because you're in this space with me right now, because you're on stages. Like, how do you figure out morality, ethics and responsibility?

Shana: For me, it's grounded in the fact that I see life, I see God in all things. I see God in the entire living world. When God isn't something external, again, this is for me, this is my belief system, and I will spend the rest of my life staying curious about what I actually believe, so I reserve the right to change my mind. But for me, once I recognized for myself that God wasn't this external thing that was controlling everything, I could no longer pretend he would fix it. That he would rescue someone else, that the impact of my actions was something that he could help mitigate. There became total recognition of the impact of my actions. I became fully accountable and had to sit with the accountability of the impact of my actions. I had to recognize that everything I do has an equal and opposite reaction. We know that. We know that from math. We know that from science, right? Everything we do impacts the people around us, right? Down to, and I tell people, we don't have to make this really woo. We can think about the fact that we've all been somewhere in a room and known the minute that somebody we love or care for or somebody we didn't like walked into the room, even if we couldn't see them, we could feel their energy. We have that same impact on everything around us, right? We have an electromagnetic field that extends from our bodies for several feet, right? We can, we truly, definitely, absolutely have an impact on the world around us and we take ownership of that, right? That becomes my guiding force, right? That is the thing that that I begin to recognize is that my intentions can be good and the impact of my actions can cause harm, right? And that there's no real such thing. There's no finite thing as good and bad. It's whether or not I'm willing to show up in the world and take responsibility for the impact of my actions. Stay curious. Be respectful. And take resp That's my morality code. That's my That's what grounds me and the foundation of how I show up in the world is. Am I staying curious? Am I balancing it out by respect? Because curiosity without respect is intrusive. And respect without curiosity is uneducated. And am I taking accountability? That's it.

Michael: Yeah. And what's so interesting is you get to choose that. And my code sits within it's very, four, very simple pillars, courage, love, strength, and honor. And those things all have. A part of my life because for so long I was the opposite of all those things because when you're not courageous God damn being a coward is like such a painful existence, right? If you're not living with love and you're intentionally causing harm and pain and suffering It's like that takes a toll on your soul Strength is, when I look at being a weak man and being a weak man means not standing up for yourself doesn't mean physically weak. I'm 6 ft 4 to 25. Like I've done martial arts almost my entire life being weak. It felt not doing the things I said I was going to do, which is, how at 25 I was 350 smoking two packs a day, right?

Shana: And you're true. Authenticity and your true accountability. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: Totally. And then honor is over everything, right? Because if you cannot sit in truth with people, you cannot sit in truth with yourself. You will never live. You will never be alive and people reject the notion of the idea of sharing their truth because they fear rejection and so it's so fascinating to watch people reject who they are because of fear of the unknown and one of the things that I encourage people to do, which I'm sure in leadership, you see this all the time, you've got to be willing to be rejected and stand on your own two feet and say, this is the way that I see the world. And as someone who has been through such traumatic experiences, sexual assault, figuring out life, going through God knows what in the process, it's yeah, big part of all of that is being rejected about self-worth, about validation, about your place in the world, and ultimately, if you're, if you like really do this work and you really show up, What I've come to realize is that you become the person who is the person that is supposed to love you first and the rejection from other people doesn't necessarily matter.

Shana: It doesn't. If it's, it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, especially in somebody. A hundred percent. Yes, you come to recognize. Oftentimes when someone else is rejecting you, it literally has nothing to do with you. 99. 9 percent of the time it has to do with whatever narrative is going on in their head at the moment, unless you've actually done something to harm them, unless you've done something to hurt them and you haven't taken accountability. That's different. That's not rejection. That's them setting a boundary and enforcing it right. But when someone rejects you, That's not about you, that's about them. And then you recognize, then when you come to that place and you recognize that all of, everybody's reaction to you is based on their own narrative, again, you're not looking for validation in other people. Confidence is standing in your own self, knowing your worth and your value simply because you exist. Ego requires constant maintenance exterior from external validation, right? Confidence does not. Confidence comes from within. And when you make that switch because I think there was a lot of ego, When I first stepped out of those environments there couldn't be confidence yet. There was a lot of ego There was definitely a lot of bravado and I showed up in the world very loudly and oh my god, I'm here right now. I'm still myself. I still show up in the world boldly, but it's coming from a different place. It's not me looking for external validation. I'm coming with boldness because I know who I am.

Michael: Yeah. And the ego, what's so interesting about it, like I, I don't believe in the idea of becoming ego lists. I, like even, I would even argue monks are the most egotistical people in the world because they're trying to escape themselves. And I'm like, okay, but like my I say that in jest, but like interesting thought. But like really what I think is like in the beginning Especially as you're trying to find Who you are there's an overcorrection of self and your ego speaks so incredibly loud because you've never had the space to speak before and then it like just starts consuming everything. And I think like everything like, okay, great example. It's like you've been chiseling. At this rock to create this statue and you finally start to form some of it, you're chiseling away and it's starting to form and you're looking at it and you're like, okay, this is starting to create and represent something, but it's still sharp on the edges and gritty and grimy and you keep chiseling away at it and then it looks a little bit more like you and a little bit more like you and then you get to this really solid place, but And you realize now you have to polish it and the polishing takes 10 times as long as the chiseling And that becomes the process.

Shana: Yeah, and that's the process you stay in for the rest of your life Yeah is identifying those places that need refinement and need softening for sure.

Michael: How do you so here's an interesting question like looking at this idea about Understanding just transformation and curiosity and trying to live in this world ethically and have intention about who you are. How do you start to really navigate the process in this deeply intricate way? If I'm sitting here, I'm listening to this and I'm like, man, I grew up in this church or I grew up in this cold, or I was sexually assaulted, or I went through this experimentation phase. And now I'm really starting to understand who I am, but I'm struggling with worth and value, and I don't see myself entirely. And I still have all these outbursts and chaos, and I'm not taking responsibility, but I hear these guys saying all these things about this is possible. Like, how do I navigate all of this?

Shana: I would say just like you and I did instinctively, you need to find a way to regulate yourself, and you need to find more than one. For me, it's like singing and dancing deeply regulate me. You need to find a way to regulate yourself every day. There's a lot going on in the world. The world is extraordinarily stressful for us to pretend we don't need to regulate ourselves every day. I do so with meditation, with singing, with dancing, I move my body every single day, right? I go for long walks. These are all things you can go jump on a trampoline. You could, go and take a boxing class, whatever it is, you can take a sewing class, you can learn to knit, whatever it is, you need to find a way to regulate yourself because this process is deeply dysregulating. You are going to be dismantling. Your complex PTSD really is, it causes you to form very deep-rooted self-protection mechanisms. And they're going to show up all over the place in your life. You've got to learn how to regulate yourself so that you can So that you can actually tap into your curiosity, so you can feel safe in your own body, so that you can start to explore relationship. Like that to me is the very first step. Find a community, a place where you have other people around you and you can participate in an activity with a group of people. Because that's where true healing happens. That's where true healing begins and happens is in community. We cannot again, I think most trauma is actually solidified because we're forced to experience deeply harmful things without the support of community that we need. And so you cannot Heal something by yourself when it was the trauma was caused because you were forced to face it by yourself you need more information. You need deeper input, you need people around you to function as mirrors that can help show you the beautiful parts of yourself so you can focus on those because quite frankly and I don't know if you've experienced this in your life when I focused on the Negative when I focused on the things I didn't like about myself and I was trying to fix they only got bigger and they only seemed harder when I focused on the beautiful parts of myself and who I wanted to become and how I wanted to show up in the world, and I aimed my energy in that direction. Expanding on the beautiful parts of myself and the ways I wanted to show up. That's when things really became transformational. That's when I truly found healing and found confidence. So that's what you really need to do. You need to redirect your energy to expanding the positive inside of yourself.

Michael: Yeah. I think for me, it was a little bit of both because on, on one hand, I wanted to have a very clear and foundational understanding of the aspects of myself. I do not enjoy so that I could understand how to navigate them. ‘Cause there's still shit I do. I'm like, why the fuck did I just do that? And, but that's such a minority of my day to day existence now, whereas before it was overwhelming. And I've always told people the first four years of my healing journey from 26 to 30, we're. a damn near impossible because it was one step forward and a million steps backwards. And now it's I don't even recognize myself now 14 years removed from that. And that became because I made a decision to focus on really with intention about where I high, where I shine, where I feel the most in my agency where I lead as a man, where I feel like I'm connected to myself, to source, to the universe, to the people in my life. And that just took fucking clarity and intention, like it takes. So much of just sitting down and being like, who do I want to be? If somebody has no idea who they want to be, knowing that, like really we are leaders, whether you like it or not, someone right now is watching you and you have no idea. And leading your own life is the most dip. It's way easier to lead people than it is to lead yourself. Believe it or not, if somebody is having struggle with intention of creating the life that they want, what's one thing that they could do today?

Shana: I would say, there's two books I would recommend to start with. I would start with learning. I would always start with learning. Just expanding your perspective in the world. Start with curiosity. There's two books that I recommend to people who've been through extreme amounts of trauma. Judith L. Herman's Trauma and Recovery. But be careful, it can be triggering because it's going to be revealing to you. A lot of things about yourself, and so you want to make sure that you have, you're working with a therapist and then also Res Momenicum's My Grandmother's Hands. That's a book that specifically talks about racialized trauma, trauma that we experience based on how we show up in the world, but it is relevant for everyone, literally everyone. Whether you think you've experienced racialized trauma or not, please, this is America. And what's really powerful about that book is that he, at the beginning of each chapter, talks about somatic therapies that you can engage with before he takes you through the material of the chapter. And I think that right there is something that's extremely beautiful and incredible. And it, now that starts to trigger intentionality and how you show up in the world and how you learn to show up for yourself. And that's when you learn to trust yourself, when you are caring for yourself and meeting your own needs and recognizing how you can meet your own needs. It's a really important step.

Michael: Yeah, I absolutely love that. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for your authenticity, vulnerability, and courage. Before I ask you the last question, where can everybody find you?

Shana: Sure. The easiest way is through my website. It's www.concinnate.world. I'm sure it'll be tagged in the show notes. You can also email me directly at Shana@concinnate.world and Concinnate is spelled C O N C I N N A T E. That's the name of my company.

Michael: Amazing. And yes, of course, guys go to think unbroken podcast where you can find this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend. What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Shana: To stand in my knowing. To stand in my knowing and at the same time hold space for curiosity and change.

Michael: Can't agree more and one of the things I think about every single day of my life is just because I think this today does not mean I have to think this tomorrow.

Shana: Or even the next second.

Michael: That's right. Thank you so much for being here. My friend Unbroken Nation. Thank you for listening. Please remember when you share this, you're helping other people transform their trauma to triumph breakdowns to breakthroughs and become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.