That's how we kind of approach community in the church. Sometimes, like, we're afraid, and what we need to do is we need to keep like, you need to step out of the boat. We need to keep like, we just need to keep stepping out of the boat. And we need to keep trying, because community is so, so important. Sometimes, like, you just have to do it afraid. You just have to, like, call
your pastor afraid. You just have to keep showing up to church afraid, and keep pushing into those relationships, because the people you're you're meant to be around will stick with you. The people who love you will stick with you through those hard conversations and through that tension you Tory,
hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. Our guest is Tori hope Peterson, and she has a story to tell, one that gets to the heart of how we find our way through trauma and self doubt to a place of self
acceptance and purpose. As someone who grew up in the foster care system, emancipating at 18 without a forever family, Tori had to navigate a lot of uncertainty and pain, but through that journey, she's learned invaluable lessons about the power of community, the necessity of vulnerability and the freedom that comes from embracing your own worth. In our conversation, Tori unpacks the lies she used to believe that self love was selfish, that she
wasn't worthy. These were patterns that were passed down, not just in her own life, but across generations, and unraveling them required immense courage. Tori discovered that even the act of sharing her own story the good and the bad was integral to her own healing. It was a way of breaking cycles, of finding belonging, of using her voice to speak life into others facing similar struggles. Tori's story is a testament to resilience, to the transformative power of
vulnerability. It's a reminder that we're not alone in our battles. This is a conversation that gets to the heart of how we overcome the lies we've internalized, how we learn to love ourselves, and how we step into the fullness of who we're called to be. So join us as we figure out how to break the patterns that break you. Here is my conversation with Tori hope. Peterson, Tori, welcome back to shifting culture. Excited to have you on thanks for joining me again.
Thank you so much for having me again. It means you liked me enough the first time, I
sure did, and a lot of people like you, one of the things that you had to, I think, figure out in your own life is figure out how to how to love yourself, even if there's validation from other people or there's distractive thoughts from other people, you figured out you are worthy enough to be loved for who you actually are, what what has been your Journey to figure out, how do you love yourself?
You know, so first, I'm a Christian, I'm a believer, and I think we're often told, if we love ourselves, we're haughty, we're selfish, maybe we're conceited, prideful. And so I think initially I didn't think I was allowed to love who God has created me to be. I did, you know, and you hear like self love is a worldly thing. And so I think at first it just didn't feel like that was something I
was given permission to do. And my full time work is that I get to go and I get to tell people that they are worthy, that they are loved. And oftentimes the people that I'm telling that to are people who came from really hard places, people who were not told that when they were kids. And sometimes it is kids, it is youth, foster youth, former foster youth, who have went through the hardest of things, and life has almost proven to them, you know, that they aren't
worthy. That's how they feel, that life has proven that to them. And so I tell them like, No, you are worthy. God loves you. You're worthy of love, you're worthy of a family. And I think it was just that one point, like I had said that so many times and but, but yet, I was like laying in bed thinking I do not like who I am, and almost like being ashamed of who I am. And it was like, How can I speak this over so many other people? How can I tell this to so many other people, but not
even believe it for myself. And I think that was a big mind shift. And like it's it's nearly impossible to believe this for everyone else and for you know, like you hear someone communicate a message, and it feels. It feels ingenuine, and we're like, why does this feel ingenuit Like, why am I kind of put off by this person? And it's oftentimes because it's not a heart message. It haven't permeated them. And I was, I was the person that that message had
never permeated. And so I think I just decided, like, it's okay to love who God has created me to be. And even from a biblical stance, when we look at Scripture, you know God, God made me and wanted good,
yeah, and definitely made you good. And Jesus does say to love your neighbor as yourself. And I don't think we could love our neighbors Well, unless we love ourselves, right, exactly,
and it's like, and we often forget that I talk about, I use that exact scripture in my book, when talking about that we can love who God has created us to be, and that scripture says, Love your neighbor as yourself. In that scripture, it's assumed that we love ourselves. And for so many of us, it's easy to care for other people. It's easy to love them, to show up for them, but when we think about doing that for ourselves, it's questionable your new book breaking
the patterns that break you is fantastic and is helpful to recognize some of these lies that we believe and then the truth of what God says we are, so that we can move into truth. And I think that that dichotomy is really important, of lie to truth and let truth permeate you. Sometimes we don't recognize that we're believing a lie, and this is just a normal pattern in our life, and it's just a default that we have.
What are some some ways that you have found in your journey to figure out how to recognize this is actually a lie that I've been believing, and I need to receive the truth from God.
Yeah, oftentimes the lies that we function from, they are so subtle, right, like we they're hard to recognize. It's not that I think people are trying to directly, not take accountability or not take responsibility or not heal, but oftentimes the lies that we're functioning from are subtle. They're quiet, they just linger in the dark. And so I think one of the ways I'll tell you a story so as you know, as I shared on the last podcast, I grew up in foster care system
and I emancipated. I aged out in the foster care system the day I turned 18, without a forever family, without a home, and that was that was a huge part of my identity, of my story, that like I didn't have a family, I didn't have a home, it just was so hard for me, and eventually, praise God, my My track coach ended up bringing me into his family. He ended up adopting me, and I did
have a family. And then there was this, also, this woman named Tanya in my community who loved me, and she was like a mother figure in my life. And so between the two of them, I had like two families. I didn't just have one family, I had two, and I had father figure and I had a mother figure, and they loved me so much. And then I got married. Got married, and my husband and I, we were kind of sorting all these presents for Christmas.
And I was actually just doing this yesterday, sorting all these presents for Christmas and trying to decide who, what goes to who. And there was this woman. She was like a mother figure in our community. I moved away from where Tanya in Scotland. I moved away from my community because my husband's job took us somewhere else. And there was this mother figure. She was a woman at the church. And anyway, we'll say that her name was Kimberly, and I really wanted this item on her figure
to love me. I wanted her to accept me, and I felt like I was like functioning from the story, like I need her to be this mother figure in my life, because I don't have a mother figure. And we were sorting through all the presents, and one of the best gifts in there was a leather bag, and I put it in Kimberly's pile, and my husband stopped me, and he was like, you are giving, like, a lot of the best gifts to Kimberly, and we haven't given like, the best gifts to my
family or your family. And I was, I was most offended because I was like, No, I give good gifts to my family, like, What are you talking about? And he was just like, Okay, look around. Do you really think, like these gifts that you're giving Tanya, your mother figure, is better than the gifts that you're giving Kimberly? And I was like, oh, no, you're right. And he's like, we're gonna give this leather bag to your mother figure, your actual mother figure, because she would
actually use it. My mother figure is very frugal. She would never buy it for an Excel. And I would say that that was like, you know, I call that, that was my Christmas miracle that year, because it was such an epiphany that I was functioning from a lie. I was functioning from this lie that, like, I didn't have a family, and I needed a family, and I needed. Do the mother figure and I was functioning like it wasn't a total lie, because it was true at one point, but I hadn't recognized
that my story had changed. So I would say that that answer to like, how do we recognize these lies? The first thing is, we have to have people around us who are willing to not just call us out, but call us up out of the lies that we are in. And I think we we then when we have those people around us, it's really important that we're able to receive criticism and to receive feedback throughout my life. I truly do think that's been one of the things that has
helped me a lot. I have always had to take feedback from authority figures, from people ahead of me, and as I talk about in the book, you know, because I I receive a lot of the things that people say, words have a great impact on me. Sometimes that's how the lies come in, but at the same time, sometimes that's how the truth comes in. So we have to surround ourselves by good people who are bearing fruit, who can speak the truth into our lives. Yes,
and they are these good people, but sometimes we have these attachments to people that we want approval from, and they may be destructive in our lives. You've seen that in your own life. I've seen that in my life, where I'm just trying so hard to get approval, I get nothing from them. And so I internalize the belief that I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I got to do more. I got to got to work harder. Where does the this place of now, hey, you're receiving something from a
person. How do we receive something from God of knowing that there is truth. Because, yes, we could receive it from good people in our lives, but sometimes they're gonna say something that we take the wrong way. Or what does it look like to receive truth from God?
Yeah, and I think, though this is and we hear all the time as Christians, such, gotta be new word. You gotta read your Bible, but it is actually so true, like it feels like a cliche, but everyone's like cliches are often cliches
because they're so true. And so I really think that receiving God's truth began to transform for me when I actually opened up scripture for myself, and didn't just have someone else telling me what it meant or how I should perceive it, but actually opened it up myself, and a year and a half ago, I started going to
seminary. And like, not everyone's going to have the opportunity to go to seminary, but the thing that seminary taught me that was really pivotal in reading scripture, and I try to do this practice in my own book, when I point to Scripture, and when I point to biblical references, is actually talk about it in the context that it was written, because it really does change, like how we read it, in how we understand, like the truth of what God speaks over us, in what He has
for us. We have to look at scripture for ourselves and the other thing, and I just want to emphasize it again, even though I already said it is just having people around you who are willing to speak truth over you, who are not, you know, competitive, but who are there to lift you up, who do not have a scarcity mindset, but are willing to give you all that they have so you know the truth of who you are, and so that you can walk out the calling in your
life. There have been times in my life when I've had leaders, you know, speak over me, and they're just like, you're not ready to do what you're doing, and they try to kind of pull back the reins. And then I've had leaders in my life who have platformed me, who have given the opportunities because they have seen what God has said in
my life. And I think there is just such a big difference when we are surrounded by people who want to limit limit us, versus people who want to elevate us, because the more that we are empowered to be, who God has called us to be, to love, who God has called us to be, the more that we feel like we have permission to walk in that
identity. But at the same time, we also we have to, we have to come to the point and like, I don't know if this is like radical, but we have to come to the point at the same time, we have to not care what people think, because at the end of the day, like when we get to heaven, we're not eyes to eyes with these leaders, with these people who wanted us to be what God didn't want us to be. You know, we're going to become eyes to
eyes with Christ. And the hope and prayer is that we hear like Well done, my good and faithful servant. We want to be eyes to eyes with God, and we want to hear you know that we did what pleased him, not what please ma'am.
And that's so difficult when you're in in this situation, and especially as as you're saying a people are saying you're not ready. Other people say, I'm going to give you a platform. We're going to let you be able to go out and speak. Oftentimes, we start to wait for. Permission to do something that God has put on our heart and called us into. I know I do that sometimes I'm like, I'm just waiting for somebody to say, okay, you can do this, even though I've heard
you need to go do this. But I'm waiting for somebody, how do we take those leaps of faith to be able to step into what God has called us when we're we're still in this place of I really care about what other people see of me, think of me, say about me, but God is calling us to step out and have some faith.
Well, I have the gift, the honor and privilege of being able to, oftentimes, share my story, and I started to do that in really small ways. So I think sometimes whatever you're called to do start small. You know, sometimes we are like, we're looking at the people who are on big stages, or we're looking at people who have big opportunities with these big job titles, and that's kind of what
we aim for. But I started to share my story, you know, initially, just in spaces like in small groups in my community, or I started to share on social media, just in post when I didn't have any kind of following or audience, that and encouraged. I just was like, if this, if this can meet one person, if it can help one person, then it's absolutely
worth it. And from there, that's when I, I started to see, like, wow, this story of adversity and being able to overcome and understand my identity wise, it really resonates with people, because at the end, at the end of the day, we have all experienced some level of adversity, some level of pain and hurt, and so often we feel alone in it, and so I started to share that, and I mean, just to see the responses of people, that's what really kept me, kept
me going. And when I was 17, my church gave me my first ever speaking engagement, which some people would say was pretty irresponsible. My pastor actually asked me to speak for what is referred to as a belong
Sunday. So that's where you raise awareness around issues of foster care and adoption, to get your congregants and your community involved in foster care, and I shared and when I was 22 so I shared that when I was 17, and then when I was 22 I received a message from a woman on social media, and she just said, Hey, I'm so encouraged by
what you're doing. And I had to tell you tomorrow, we are adopting a sibling group of three, and we got involved in foster care the day that you spoke at your church when you were 17. Me and my husband got in the car, and we decided that day after we heard your story, that we're going to get involved. And so sometimes, you know, I very well, I look back on that, and I was like, I was not ready. I was not ready by
any means. But we do have to believe and trust that God is going to fill the gaps of our inadequacies. God is going to show up. And he's also like, even if he doesn't prepare, like, even if our he tries, he does prepare our heart, but oftentimes we don't receive it, and even if we're not there, like the people who can hear from us, the people we're serving, like he can make their hearts ready. He can soften their hearts. It's not just about us, and to make everything about us, like going back to
self love. And can we love who God has created me to be like? That's actually when we become conceited, when we think, Oh, I have to come to this certain pinnacle point, and then I can do what God has called me to do, rather than believe my weakness is going to allow God's strength to show itself.
Yes, and I love that that is patterned throughout the Gospels, that Jesus encounters somebody and they go share their story right away, and things shift and change. The garrison demoniac, he's healed of a legion of demons. He says, Jesus, let me come with you so I can actually be a disciple and learn and grow. And said. Jesus said, No, go and share with the 10 cities, the Decapolis, everything that the Lord has done for you to
share your story. And I love that story, because the the farmers and everybody runs Jesus out of town, because all the pigs are gone and their livelihood is done, they don't want anything to do with Jesus. And then the demoniac shares the story the next time Jesus comes to that place, everybody brings their sick to Jesus like they are. Everybody's coming to find Jesus, to come near him, and Jesus heals everybody. And it's because that the guy shared his story and he didn't have any.
Training. He wasn't ready. All he was able to share is his experience, and that transformed a whole community. Yes,
amen. I love another piece that I love about that story is that Jesus said, You know, he compels him. He says, You go and tell your story, although earlier in Scripture, we see it says that all of the people from the town fled and went to go tell what Jesus had done. So they were already people telling the story, but Jesus said, No, I want you to go and tell the story. And for me, telling my story has been so healing. People always ask like, how have
you healed? How have you come so far from the trauma that you've experienced? And I think people expect me to say, like, therapy, friendships, the my adoption, my family, the people who love me, but like, one of the most underrated aspects of my healing journey, has completely been telling my story. And research actually shows, I think, like Jesus was like, No, you have to go tell your story so that the healing, I almost wonder if, like, it's because that's what allows the healing to continue.
Because research shows that when we tell our stories, our sad, hard stories, to empathetic listeners. It actually changes our brain, and it changes the way that we see our stories, in the way that we see ourselves. So we can go to seeing ourselves in this really shameful way, to seeing ourselves in a way of
like, Oh, I love my story. I love the story that God's written for my life, and I love who God's created me to be, and I don't have to change it, because I can see that he's doing good with it.
How do you share your story and continue to share your story of pain and abuse and trauma and difficult things in your life, and not get stuck there and define yourself from all of the trauma that you have experienced that now it doesn't define you. It is something different. But some people tell their story and they stay in that space and they don't move on from it. So what is that role of moving on from that trauma into a place of healing and telling your story continually?
You know, there is this idea of healing our inner child. You've probably heard of it. People who are listening to this have probably heard I feel like everyone has heard about that. And I think that that can be a bit dangerous, because what we are being asked to do, when we are invited to do that is we're really at being asked to go back and, like, sit there for long
periods of time. And we're going people say, you know, therapists psychologists who are encouraging us to do this practice, they're encouraging us to go back and sit with our child selves and repair it ourselves, and be there for ourselves in ways that other people should have been there for us, to protect ourselves in other ways that people should have protected us. And the reality is like, it's kind of like make believe. And I don't mean to be harsh, but the reality is like, we cannot go
back and fix the past. So I think it's really important to remember that the past is for reference. It can teach us. We absolutely should reflect on it and ask ourselves, How has this affected me in my adult life? Why am I the way I am? And usually it is because of something in our childhood, because of trauma we've experienced because of something that we went through that was
hard. But I think when we sit there, the dangers of that is getting stuck there and asking, why did it have to be this way, getting bitter, getting angry, and then when we get stuck there, and we can only see our lack of what we didn't have, we don't see the present. We don't see what we're being given now, what God is offering us now. And instead of re parenting ourselves like that's not healing, like we should, like when I look at my childhood like I should, I shouldn't have to
repair it myself. I should have been parented rightly. And so rather, to go in my adulthood and say, Now I am being parented by my heavenly Father. He is paving way for me, protecting me, loving me in the way that a father and mother should have.
That is what has brought me so much healing to see what I am offered today and see that my childhood has been redeemed in my adulthood, but I think oftentimes people don't see that, and people don't get to walk in that because they're so bitter and angry about the past.
Is there a way to do that within community and communal structures? I think it's easy for us, especially in the West, to see this through an individual lens. Yes, but there are communal patterns and things that we have done that are broken patterns in our culture and our community today that needs healing and fixing and actually then receiving truth from God that we are a new creation, that we're called into something new and better than we
have in the past. So how do we not get stuck in the past as a community of saying this has always been the way it's been, and then going into a new space and saying we can actually set a new way and a new pattern that is true and beautiful and good?
Yeah? Well, there's always a pattern breaker. There's always someone who kind of seems like a disrupter. And I think when things are a little shaky, when things feel like they're being disrupted or like they're being uplifted from the ground, uprooted from the ground, we have to ask ourselves sometimes, that can feel like just like an earthquake, like it feels unsettling. We're not comfortable with it, and so we push it away as a community. We're like this, these feelings,
this isn't welcome here. And I think what we need to do is we need to be better at asking ourselves, is this a good disruption? There are good disruptions. There are good patterns, there are bad patterns that need to be broken to create something good. And when things are uncomfortable or when things are shaky, we need to not just assume that it's always bad and community, community as a whole,
has been everything to me. I feel like community, friendships, the people who love me and who are around me are truly everything. It's my I say it's my survival mechanism. If I didn't have good people around me who were able to to walk with me, there's just no way I would
be where I am today. And so I think, you know, for those people who are searching, I just, I know that there are so many people who are distancing themselves from the church, especially people in my generation and in my age group, I would just say to those people to just keep trying. You know, just keep trying to show up, have hard conversations. And the other day, my actually, I asked my pastor if we could talk about my book, like at church, if we could do any kind of if we could
share about it in any way. And he was like, Well, I have to read it first. And I was like, Okay. Like, I understand that. But then as I sat on ground, I was like, Wait, like, does he not trust me? Am I not good enough? And so I FaceTimed him, and I called him, and I was like, I just feel like, you don't think I'm good enough. And he was like, I would never think that. Like, I would never say that. And I was like, Yeah, you're right. I think I just actually think that about
myself. And like, that has been, that has been a constant lie. That's been a constant lie that I have felt is like, I'm not good enough. And he's like, Yeah, I think that's true, because I think what you're doing is awesome, and I love you. And I was like, Okay, I was like, I think I really needed to hear that. And I was like, Okay, fine. He was like, love you kiddo, bye. And like, we hung
up. And I just think that's such a beautiful example of, like, again, needing to have that community around you that doesn't like blow things up or draw things out, but just like, reassures you of who you are and speaks that truth over you. And when I think about that story, I think about, you know, the time that Jesus is walking out on
water. He calls one of his disciples out, and when they initially see him like they're afraid, and that's how we kind of approach community in the church, sometimes like we're afraid. And what we need to do is we need to keep like, we need to step out of the boat. We need to keep like. We just need to keep stepping out of the boat, and we need to keep trying, because community is so, so important sometimes, like, you just have to do it. Afraid. You just have to, like, call your
pastor, afraid. You just have to keep showing up to church, afraid and keep pushing into those relationships. Because the people you're you're meant to be around will stick with you. The people who love you will stick with you through those hard conversations and through that tension, Jesus
and God, throughout Scripture constantly says, Do not be afraid. It must be the the most common experience that we all have as people is fear. We're afraid, and God is reassuring us, and he's going to actually give us peace, to move us forward. I've just noticed in my own life, if I am not afraid to do something and it's like too comfortable, it may not be the place where I'm called to go to. I should have a little bit of hesitancy,
but I need. To rely on God so that he could actually give me that peace to move into the direction that he's calling me into. And I think we all get caught up in safety and security of saying I'm just going to do the comfortable thing and not step out of the boat. And so even for you, as you look back on your life and these lies that you have believed in the patterns that you had in your life and then receiving the truth. I know you just read your
audio book. So you just read your book, so it's very fresh. So if you look through and your book goes through 13 different lies that are pretty common to all of us. So which one like really resonated with you yesterday as you read read it out, which said, Oh, this is something. I actually need God to continue to speak truth about that in my life right now.
So my husband and I are foster parents, and when you become foster parents, you have to go through foster care training. And Foster Care Training is so incredibly worried. I always it's like, so boring, and I'm always like, am I learning anything here? But, um, in one training, I actually did learn something, something new. And we talk about it a lot in spaces of trauma, foster care and adoption. But it's attachment
style. And there's four different attachment styles, and the one that I identified i I don't want I could talk deeply about all of them, but I will say the one that I identified the most with is insecure attachment. And so I think the attachment style that we're most familiar with in terms of people who've experienced trauma, it's actually called avoidant
attachment style. And avoidant attachment style is when you try to enter into relationships, where people try to enter into relationships with you, and you push them away, and you can't be vulnerable. You can't open up honestly. When things start to get vulnerable, you become avoidant. And so I people had always asked me, like people had always assumed that that's the that's the attachment style I had, or that's the way that I
function. I should say, not a lot of people know necessarily about attachment styles, but they assume that that's the way I function. But actually, I functioned through and in an insecure attachment style, which is, you latch onto people and you you like, are terrified of letting them go. You're terrified of leaving. You're
terrified of them leaving. And that comes from right, a deep fear of abandonment, which I absolutely had from my childhood and learning about my attachment style and reading about it again yesterday, I would say that has been one of the most transformational aspects of my healing journey, because it's just when you real. So for me, I would, like latch onto people. And I would, to be honest, I would just drain them. I would have too high of expectations of them. I would put too much
weight on them to carry. And so I think the truth that is just always encouraging to me is that, like God is big enough for us to come to and actually put all our weight on we can bang on his chest. We can trauma dump to him. We can, like, cry. We can scream at him and like he can just receive it all. And we can, like, the attachment that we want to move towards is securely attached. And ultimately, we want to be securely attached to
God. And I think when we like see that secure attachment in God that we like depend on Him above all else, then our dependencies on people become less and less and less, and our relationships become healthy because we're not putting too much on people. We're not depending on them for our who to tell us our identity, to define who we are. We're looking at God for that, and we're trusting in
God for that. And so for me, yeah, that has just been like the most transformational aspect of learning about my own healing and the truth, just that, like God is big enough to receive all of me, because there's a lot, you know, I I just feel like, like I have a big personality, and I feel things very deeply, but to remember that, like I can go to God with all of that, and he will hold it, is so, so comforting. Yes,
he's gonna hold it. And I think, you know, with insecure attachment, I think it's, it's rooted and based in fear, right, that we, we fear people are going to leave, we fear that we're not enough, and so we get attached to unhealthy things. And so some people with insecure attachment become, say, maybe alcoholics or drug addicts, or they're people addicts. Like it doesn't matter they're addicts of some sort drug. And to get the the security through other people,
and then, so that's fear. And then the secure attachment that you're saying that that this is where I'm moving to you, and God is saying calling me into you is a as a an attachment of love, right? Because love is the one that that reflects back to us who we actually are, and that we get to attach to that love, and that feels like a totally different operating space, to be able to be moved by love instead of by fear, yes, and trying to hold on to other people. How has
love moved you? What is love doing for you and through you?
So my husband and I, we were living in Minnesota, I think that's where we did our last interview, and we are still living there. And then we moved to Ohio about two years ago, which is my hometown, and I started to reconnect with my mother figure, Tanya, and almost every night I would just show up at her house like I wasn't invited. I would just show up at her house, and I would walk through the door, and she would be sitting on her couch, and we would just talk
for hours. And I remember it was probably after a couple months of like coming every single night. I was like, you have to be so tired of me. And she's like, never. And then I was like, yeah, she's just saying that, like, to be nice, you know, she's just saying that because she's a really, really
kind person. And then like, oh, but then I would like, not come for a few days, or, like, a week or two, and she'd be like, because I had a speaking engagement, because, like, I was traveling for work, or because I just, like, needed to be home with my kids. And she would be like, Where have you been I miss you so much. And I was just like, wow, like that. I think again, like, there are these relationships in my life. I have very much mirrored God, and how, like, God just doesn't get tired
of us. And I think I needed to see some of that in people, to in God's people to trust that it was true of the character of
God. And so, like, now, I don't go to Tanya's as much, but that that was to receive that kind of love, you know, every night for I mean, it was probably like eight months to 10 months, where I would come to her house, you know, every day, and it was just talk, and she was just helping me process through things, and she was just listening to me to receive that kind of love has really healed, because a lot of times we think about daddy issues, like people, These these
girls have daddy issues, like I had mother wounds, my I had mommy issues, and so to sit across from a mom that was just present with me, that is how love has met me in the past couple years, and how love has just softened and opened my heart back up to and in what that's helped me do, I am a mom, and I think you know my first one, I think that my first book fostered I talked a lot about my biological mom and the struggles
that she faced. And I think being able to my heart to be healed by a mother figure has now given me more compassion and understanding for even the moms that have failed me and hurt me in ways that I don't quite understand. It's just made me realize, like, you know, motherhood is really hard, and my mom gave me the absolute best with the resources that she had. And so I think that that's what love does. You know, love. Love softens our hearts. Love makes us, you know, move from critic
to compassionate. You know, in
all these patterns, it seems like they move us towards right relationships with both God and with people and ourselves, right? They move us. If we receive the truth, we have a right relationship. Think through some leaders, what happens if we don't break these patterns of lies? Because what either if you're a mother or if you're a leader of an organization, or if you're a pastor of a church, or whatever type of of leader you are. I think we are all leaders in some
capacity. How much harm can that do to other people if we're not doing the work of breaking the patterns of lies that we have in our own lives?
So this book, I do, you know, there's a lot of biblical insights, like why, how we've been talking, but I actually also use a lot of psychology theory and some psychology research in the book, a lot of times it feels like mental health and church don't go hand in hand, like mental health or mental illness is not allowed in the church, or mental struggles are not allowed in the church. And so I asked, I did,
like just a. Little survey. I put it out there, and I put on my social media, and then I put it, gave it to some people in my home church to take, and I asked people why they felt like they couldn't bring their mental illnesses or their mental health struggles to leadership of the church, why they felt like they couldn't reach out to help, for help. And there were so many answers, I literally put quotes in the book that people can
read. But the gist of it was that people did some some people did, and they were told that, that it was just a matter of faith, that their faith wasn't good enough, that they needed to pray more. They just needed to trust God. And you know, when we look at Jesus, Jesus, his whole life, was riddled by suffering. He was defined by like suffering and hardship and people. There's a verse in Isaiah that say people hid his face from Jesus. People hid his face from him.
And, you know, I think the dangers is that, like as a as a church, we can do that, and that's not what the church is supposed to be. The church is supposed to be a safe place for people to come as they are, no matter what their struggles are. And so, you know, again, I think that we we need to. It's very it's so important that we recognize the harmful patterns, the harmful beliefs that we have, the bad theology that we
have. Because if we don't, then the church, then the body of Christ, is not what it's supposed to be, and that is a safe place for God's people
to break patterns that we've just been caught in a rut, and we're just going through the motions and we're believing these lies. It takes a lot of unlearning, and it takes a lot of courage to be able to step in and say, maybe this isn't the right thing for me, and I'm going to then try to move into a different direction. So if you're talking to the audience, here is when people are listening, they're like,
Okay, how do I start? How do I start to recognize which lies I'm believing and how to receive the truth? What are the first steps people can take besides reading your book, which? Yeah, fantastic. Yes,
please pre order my new book breaking the patterns that break you releases. February 4 be the first to get it. But other than that, other than that, I do think that when we're laying in bed at night, when we're in the shower, those silent moments so we don't have our phones when we're driving in the car. There are those thoughts that come up like everybody hates me or I
don't belong. I actually had an event that I was going to, and it was an event of about 80 moms that I was going to go speak to and encourage who they're, all foster moms, adopted moms, and then at the same time, there was this women's conference of about 8000 women. And a lot of my when you're in the speaker circuit, you have friends who are speakers. And a lot of my friends were there, and they were talking of they were speaking there. They were talking about how amazing it
was. I wasn't invited to speak there, and instantly My mind goes, You don't belong here. You're too rough around the edges. You'll never belong in this space. You're not good enough. And I think you know. And we all have those thoughts in some capacity, maybe worded in different ways. Maybe they come about for different reasons, but we need to first understand that what is, what is
the enemy come to do? And I don't want to blame a lot on the enemy, because I really like to believe like the enemy is not that powerful Our God is, but like the reality is, like the enemy does come. What does he come to do? Deal, kill and destroy. So if those three things, or one of those three things is going through your mind, if you can recognize and be like, Okay, this actually isn't even me. Like, this is the enemy, and now I have to combat
him. And so sometimes I think we were like, we're fighting against ourselves, and sometimes we are. There are times, many times in my book, where I talk about how I am just fighting against myself. But there are other times too, where we need to recognize that we are not fighting against flush and we need to fight against what we're actually fighting against. And so I think for me, being able to recognize, like, Okay, what's happening, killing, stealing, destroying, I need to fight this
back. Gosh, true. I think that's just a really easy way for me. It's been easy just to be like, what is happening? Why are these thoughts coming? What are they doing? And to recognize them, if they're doing one of those three things, then they're just not true. And then being trying to. Find the truth that you can speak over that. So now what do I do is I call these scripts. And so my lie scripts, right are, you're not good enough, you're not worthy, you're not
loved. And so I just have to, I have to get scripts that can cover those. I have to get scripts that can combat those and kick those out. And so literally, like those will come and I will be like, You are loved, you are safe, safety. Safety is a big thing for me. So I often tell myself You are loved, you are safe, you are soft, like and I think when you can just those quick, those quick like scripts that you can bring into your mind, to help
push out the other ones. Then when that settles you, when you get to like equilibrium. Because another thing that those scripts do, that I'm not good enough, I'm not is you can put us in a survival mode, so we need, like these quick scripts to then get us to just this equilibrium, and then when we get to that equal equilibrium, out of that survival mode, then we can ask ourselves, okay, why do I think that about myself? And is that
actually true? And I think a lot of tearing these lies down is asking ourselves good questions, which the book has a lot of those good questions that we can ask ourselves to start to decipher. You know, what things do I need to do to break these patterns.
We just did a little creative exercise the other day. I'm in a little creative group, and one of the exercises was this, this why they called it a y circle. So you have something, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy. Why do you think that? And then, why is that? And you just keep going deeper and deeper and just
asking why and why and why. And really, then you could get to the root of what it is, and then then you could counteract with the truth of saying, now I can step into the truth of what God says I am instead. And I realized that, man, maybe it was when I was four years old, and this one thing happened to me, and it attached to me, right?
This lie attached to me, and I haven't been able to get rid of it for all this time, all these many years later, I think one of the lies that women often feel, and I'm not a woman, I'm a man, so I'm speaking as somebody who's heard from women, and I've tried to, I try to listen, but is saying that I can't use my voice because I don't know everything about what I am
called to speak to. And you know, for for men, I can know half of the thing, and I could fake the other half, and I feel comfortable and confident in it. And women like the lie is, my voice isn't worthy unless I know everything. What would you say to women, to say your voice is powerful, it is needed, it should be used, and God wants you to use your voice, and so you can actually step into that. What would you say? Yeah,
well, first I just think that a lot of women are they care so deeply like they they want to know at all because they don't want to say it wrong. They don't want to hurt people by saying it the wrong way. And so though, for those women who just like are clothed in humility, is I'm a not me, it's not me. But, you
know, I met a lot of them. I'm not saying that's me, but I've met a lot of women who are just like, I just, I just want to make sure I say it right, because they've been hurt, and so they they don't want to hurt others. And so to have a microphone and to, you know, be saying it to an audience, or to, you know, really put something out there that's vulnerable, they're like, is it going to hurt someone? And I just think that that's such a beautiful
heart posture. I just first want to encourage the women who feel that way, like God wants us to have that kind of reverence, where we do approach like a platform or a stage or our voices with fear and trembling, because he wants us to steward these things well. So hold hold on to that, but let it compel you, not in fear, but in love.
And then what I would say those women is, you know, if you're a mom, you'll understand this analogy when, when we we've become moms, we don't say, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, kind of hold off on becoming a mom until I'm better at it until I'm ready. You know, like we become moms and we continue to parent our children, we continue to surround ourselves with good moms, and that's how we become
good moms, or good parents. And so the same is true for any thing else that God has called us to, whether that's, you know, communicating with our voice and telling our story or whatever, like loving our neighbor, like whatever it is, in whatever capacity, we become who God wants us to be. We become more refined by stepping into it and just walking in it faithfully and like it's so much better to walk in God's will for our lives and to stumble a little. Bit than to not do God's will at
all. Fantastic.
Tori, if you could talk to your readers, the people who pick up your book, what hope do you have for your readers?
I would tell them to be compassionate, to be gentle with themselves. Breaking patterns is so hard, and oftentimes they come, you know, handed down in generations, generations and generations, generations of dysfunction and of hardship is what is being handed down to us. And then there's this pattern breaker who doesn't just have the behavioral patterns to fix and to remedy, but also you have to deal with the thought patterns of the things that were spoken over you, of the things that you saw
growing up. And so I would say, be gentle with yourself. I read this article at one point, and it said, If you avoid your triggers, you're not healed. And like, that's just so that's not gentle. That's not true. You know, if there's a drug addict, we don't like a recovering drug addict. We don't tell them to go to their local dispensary. If there's an alcoholic. We don't put them in their like their
local bar. And so sometimes in us as people who maybe struggle with insecure attachment, or as people who struggle with codependent tendencies, and codependent tendencies and insecure attachment look very similar, you know, and it's that addiction to relationship, if addiction to people, that dependence on people more than that dependence on God. And so sometimes, like we need to avoid the triggers that are the people
as well. And so I would just encourage those people if, if you have to avoid some things to heal. That doesn't mean that you're not healing. Oftentimes you cannot heal in the places that we've been hurt. And you know, there was this woman who came up to me recently, and she was like, I just wish I was as healed as you. And she was probably 30 years older than me, and I told her, I said, you cannot look at other people and determine how healed you are, because we just all have
different stories. We've all had different levels of hardship and adversity, and we all have different resources that have been handed to us after that. And so it's better to look at your past self, if you're an adult now, look at your teen self, look at your your young adult self, look at your child's self. And I think when you do that, you will truly see how far you have come.
That's so good, that's so helpful, and I hope that people get that and they continue to move in and break those patterns in their lives. I have a couple quick questions I want to ask here at the end. Yeah. Number one, I want to know, what are you loving right now?
What am I loving right now? So I just read this book called unclean by a he's a theologian and psychologist, which are both of the things that I love so much. And the author is Richard Beck. And I just I receive, when you're an author, you receive a lot of books. And this was actually a book that I didn't receive it. I went out of my way to read it because the subject was on hospitality, which is a very, very big value of mine.
And I am not kidding you, I have not read a book that has blown my mind like in the past maybe four or five years as much as this book did. I just loved it. So I hope that readers will listen to it. It'll compel you to want to love people more and more.
Yes, Richard Beck is an amazing part of him. Yeah, I just had him on my podcast. I never heard of him before. Yeah, he wrote a book just recently, the shape of joy. And so, how, what is the shape of joy? It was fantastic. And so, yeah, interview to him about that is good hunting magic eels is also fantastic. Yeah, he's just a fantastic author, and he's a professor, and he's great. I love Richard Beck. So great, great thing. Well, he's who I'm loving right now. Awesome. I love it. He's
fantastic. Tori, how can people go out and get your book breaking the patterns that break you? I have it right here. Is fantastic. I love your stories, and I love what you write in here. It's a great I love the way that you write because it's very relational and it's very open, honest. It just feels like we're having a conversation. So it felt like, as I'm reading this book, now I'm coming into this conversation, it feels like, oh, it's Tori, so your voice actually comes out in this
book. Thank you. That means so much. It was really rude. That was actually really, really important to me. So that means a lot. I did not want to sound like I was standing on the stage pointing at people, telling them how they need to be better. We have too many people who are already doing that. I just really wanted it to be relational, like we're walking through this together. Because I really, literally, I really still am walking through
it. And so I wanted people to feel that, but people can get it. Amazon target burns a noble books, a million. Anywhere, anywhere you get your books, please pre order. It. Pre orders are so important for authors. Yeah, I would so appreciate that.
Great. Anywhere else you would like to point
people to hang out with me on social media, you'll get to see the real life of Tori. There. It's Tori hope, Peterson is most active on Instagram. I do some stuff on Tiktok and Facebook, but yeah, Tory, hope Peterson, and Peterson is s e n, not S O N,
perfect. Sounds good. Well. Tori, thank you for this conversation. Thank you that you could help us break the patterns that we have in our lives, so that we receive the truth of of who we are, and that we could walk in a different way and a new way, in a way that actually looks healthy and whole and what we were created for, because we were created to live a flourishing life with God and with each other and with others.
And so thank you for bringing us into this place where we could have right relationships with other people, that we don't have to hold on to the trauma of our past and the pain of our past, but we could actually live into a new hope and a new future, because we are new creations. We are made in God's image, and he calls us into wonderful things, and he's actually giving us beauty and truth and goodness all along the way in the
journey. And it's for all of us, each and every one of us, that we could grab a hold of it and move in a different direction. So thank you for this. It was fantastic. I love talking to you. Thank
you so much for having me. You