Hello there. How I changed my life is the topic today on the Tales of Recovery podcast. Thank you for hopping on and listening. I'm going to record this in Spanish as soon as we're done here, but first, Inglés. Thank you for listening to Tales of Recovery. This is Grease Alves, your host, and I'm telling you, a couple days ago, it was my birthday. I turned 55. I've been hosting this podcast for over, I think, six years now, maybe a little bit longer, on and off. Here we go.
And one of the reasons I started this podcast is I was actually, it might be even seven years. But I remember one of a, I had a business coach back then because that's more or less when I left my corporate job, which is what I'm going to talk about here today. And she told me, you no, you shouldn't start a podcast. And I was like, well, what do you mean? Like, why should I not start a podcast? Like, what's wrong with you?
I want to. And she said, no, it's too many things. You're starting, you know, your coaching business and you need to focus on just, you know, marketing, you're living well program and the podcast. And I of course didn't listen to her because I mean, I listened to some of the stuff she told me, but I wanted to do the podcast. And it's been the most, one of the most fun things that I've experienced in my life, to be honest. Julio calls it mi tribuna.
Tribuna is when you go to a meeting and you, you know, everyone's sitting in a circle and you get to speak and everyone listens, right? It's like a circle. It's like a circle council where when it's your turn to share, people listen. There's no counter talk. There's nobody telling you, no, wait, don't say that. Or here, let me give my opinion about what you're saying it's really like ella habló y fue escuchada you listen you speak.
People listen it's where we learn to listen really and observe how we want to you know have opinions or change what you're saying or but we're just listening and okay that's what the person's saying so i do do this here a lot i i'm able to come and get my tribuna time which is, excuse me, very, very healing for me. I mean, if you know a lot of you guys that listen here, I also have a bunch of guests, which is super fun, having a guest come and share their story and connect.
And we're expanding our community. And we do have this brand new studio where all we're figuring out now is how to connect the audio so that I can send these really cool podcasts onto YouTube with a good sound because I could send them now, but they don't sound that good. So stay patient in that arena. It's coming. Coming soon. To a television or phone or a computer near you.
For now, today's topic is, you know, and I'm choosing the topic today because I have a lot of clients and a lot of friends and a lot of people that are just like, oh, I can't believe it's fucking Thanksgiving and the holidays and I have to go to this party, that party and do this and do this and do that. And yesterday I was having a phone conversation with my cousin and I said, no, actually we don't have to go to anything. Today, you get to choose where you can say yes or no to.
And we think we don't have a choice, but we actually do. Sometimes these choices can have a consequence. I understand that. But, you know, I like this new phrase of choose guilt over resentment anytime. If you say yes to something that you don't want to say yes to, because you don't want to feel guilty about, oh God, I have to do this thing at work. I have to go to this party here. I have to help the neighbors do that.
And then you don't want to do it because you're tired or you have other things to do and you do it anyway. And the whole time you're just super resentful, like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing this shit. I can't say, no, you know, you're in a bad mood. That shit is like toxic for your, for your body. It's, you know, it's, it's affecting you in a way where you think you're being, you know, the servant of the Lord and super nice or whatever.
And it's just like, it's not chemically, you know, good for you. The other person might be getting what they need, but you're over here all fucking resentful. So sometimes it's better to say no, maybe feel a little guilty about it, but realize that your body's calm. You're not up in your head being super resentful about this or that.
That you get to choose and you have to be okay with what you chose and you know like a mentor I had a long long time ago she would say start a fire and burn it in the fire she's from I mean that's probably not the perfect accent she was from Ireland but she just burn that guilt in the fire and then watch it turn into smoke and go all the way up to the sky and notice how your body's very calm because it's not resentful doing the shit you didn't want to do. And I was having coffee yesterday.
Of course, this takes practice because we're very much trained into saying yes and doing what other people want us to do. Unless you're older like me and don't give a fuck anymore. And I was having coffee in this big mug that has a Federal Defenders of San Diego logo on it. the Federal Defenders of San Diego is the Office of Public Defenders here in San Diego for federal crimes. Federal crimes involves anything that's coming across the border.
Like if you come across the border without a passport and you get arrested. If you... Bring anything across the border that's illegal to bring. For example, drugs or parrots or some type of food, whatever. You know, frozen fancy fish that people smuggled to send over to Japan for a lot of money. Anything coming in and anything that's federal really. And so I was working there because I grew up in Tijuana back and forth across the border for 20 years.
I was working there for a time, a long time ago, interpreting. And the chief investigator sort of recruited me to work as an investigator because he saw that I could go into the jails and talk to the people in there and just be chill. And I had a good connection. I was never very judgmental at all. I mean, I don't care what you did. You're still a kid inside, you know, and we always are going to be having this little child inside of us.
So after a few years of me saying no, no, because I was doing a lot of music, I just decided to say yes and jumped into this corporate machine which, you know, has some goodness into it. You're working, helping a lot of people with immigration issues, with mitigating so that they don't get these horrible federal sentencings that are, you know, 8, 10, 15, 20 years.
Yeah, people don't know this about the government, but damn, it's a whole business putting people in jail in the United States, you guys. And for many years, I, you know, fought against the machine with amazing attorneys that really cared about your constitutional rights and what was available for you in this country if you got arrested.
A defense, somebody standing up for you, somebody making sure that they arrested you properly, that there was enough evidence to put you in jail for that long, and not just that you're poor and kind of, oh, because by the way. Public defenders, you get an appointed attorney, which means it's a lawyer that is free, free of charge for you. So most of the cases that we worked on, were not, you know, fancy rich people getting in trouble.
It was just regular run-of-the-mill people that aren't going to be able to pay $75,000, $50,000, $100,000 for an attorney. The court appoints one for you. And in this office in San Diego, which is a training office, there were very, very good attorneys. And they had amazing training. And we had a team of investigators that were all bilingual, bicultural. Everybody, for the most part, grew up at the border.
So we knew what was up with going in and out of Mexico and Tijuana and we would go down there and find witnesses and investigate what was going on, come back here, report it to the attorneys, be in court, testify, you know, interview all the family, the witnesses. It was, I mean, people are like, oh, that sounds so interesting. It was interesting, but I'm not going to lie.
It's very intense and it's very taxing. And I think maybe like 10 years into it, maybe even less than that, I thought, OK, this is a great job, but I got to get the heck out of here. I'm going to have to start planning my escape. And, you know, you have little kids. We had the mortgage. My husband's a general contractor, so he was out there doing his work. And, you know, we he thought we had the American dream, right?
Big house with a pool and fancy cars and back and forth. And it was just very exhausting. I made time to be at the gym at five in the morning or running with my sister-in-law, Minerva. We used to run six miles with a big doberman or go to the gym and work out, meditate, be at work. After, this is all after, making lunch for the kids, getting them dressed, dropping them off at school.
Going to work I had a very very flexible I guess schedule or job when you're investigating you pretty much are out in the field all day so you know you have time to stop at the kids events go back to the office take them to the park go back you know their school was very close to my work so I'd walk over have lunch with them pretty much every day unless I was traveling.
So that was really beautiful but I still really hated having to work to be honest I would have I would have loved to have unschooled them, be in the forest, but I just didn't have the capacity back then to know that it was a, to urge, you know, to do it. And I thought it was a possible thing. Back then I was just overwhelmed by the quote unquote American dream, right, of having children.
So many big things to take care of. And so I began this plan to escape because I knew I had to escape out of there. And it was such a stressful job that even though I was running a ton and doing a bunch of work at the gym, I thought, you know, we have to downsize so that I can make this dream a reality. Like we sold our big, big fancy home in East Lake and moved to a really cool but smaller apartment in Bankers Hill where we could walk the kids to school.
We had at least, you know, four hours extra a day because there was no traffic going back and forth. Literally, the school was right around the corner. I had a lot more time in the morning for CrossFit and yoga. And then all this time in the afternoon, and, you know, I realized, okay, well, okay, now I have a little more time to spend with my family, to be calm.
We'd go for walks in the park i remember the first day we we actually were all installed in this apartment and we picked up the kids you know they didn't have to stay in aftercare because we you know we had time to pick them up and we got home and did homework and bath time and book time and we were like oh my god it's like it's still daytime what do we do with our time let's go for a walk and it just we started to expand this time and i did do a lot of different choices like i decided,
screw this club soccer bullshit they can play ayzo down the street i don't care if it's not super fancy it's important for me not to be in the car five hours or with the kids five hours just because i'm supposed to compete with everybody else and their dog about how my kid is the fastest, and the most talented soccer player basketball player baseball player whatever.
Meanwhile there's so much stress involved that was just my choice you do whatever you want but My choice was I would rather lay on the beach with them or in bed, read a book, hang out, then be rushing into these high performance things that they sell you in the society that you have to have for your kid to be successful, you know, or to get a scholarship for some private high school or some fancy college. I was just not about that. I just realized I think I like slow better, connection better.
So what do I have to do to be able to connect, to be slow, to connect to my body first? Because, of course, I was... Hitting the CrossFit, which I don't know if you know, but it's a very intense, interval training with heavy weights. And I was loving it. But I mean, that's when the whole fucking thyroid issue started with me, like 12 years ago when I was hitting and hitting and hitting. That's when I was like, what is this blood work showing?
I feel great. I have energy, but my thyroid is acting up a little bit because there's so much stress, you know, because it's not you're not just working out and then then i would go to yoga and then go home and take a nap no after that it's like you still have to go home and pack the lunches get the breakfast go to school then go to work and at work you know when you're in trial or i mean the stakes are so high for your clients it's
very it's very demanding it's very intense and one of the things that happened at work is before it used to be sort of like yeah you know part of the people and fight for people and and very much like you know take it out of situation and just, you know suck it to the government because they're arresting these folks that are just not. Didn't have any opportunities so yeah whatever i mean if you get caught you're gonna have to have a consequence.
But maybe you don't need 10 years if you're a first-time grandmother who got, you know, duped by her drug-addicted grandkid to cross a car across the border where you had two kilograms of meth amphetamine. You didn't know what was in there. And now you have to go to jail for four or five years? I mean, there were so many different situations, but... What happened is one day, the people, I mean, before, you know, we would fight these cases, we could get very creative or mitigate.
And as the machine got bigger and bigger and bigger, as time went by, you know, different political parties stepped in, different, the directors of this office started hiring ex-law enforcement to become investigators. And they had a different mindset. And it just, it really, like the politics in the office really shifted. What used to be like, let's fight for the cause and do something, you know, good for the world.
It just turned into another part of the machine of just keep this ball rolling and people in and out of the revolving door of the criminal justice system, which isn't very just. And that's when I decided, okay, okay, how much time do I have before I got to get the fuck out here. I've already slowed down my life. You know, I've said no to all these extracurricular activities that, that are taking time for me to be present with my kids and to them do what they
want to do. Not what I think is good for them. And I decided, okay, I'm going to get my something else that I need to do. Like my, I got a PI license, right? Private investigator license so that you can quit the job and still do some private cases, some private work. I thought, I always thought, you know, people in here have so much experience. Why do they stay here until they die? Like, why is an investigator to stay here until he's 80 years old when in reality you have so much experience?
I remember talking to some of the other investigators and telling them, let's get the heck out of here. Look, I got my PI license. You got to get yours, blah, blah, blah. You don't need a license to work at the Federal Defender's Office because part of working there already kind of gives you a license. You're part of the federal government employee. So, but really I thought if we, all four or five of us leave, we can have a great business outside,
but nobody wanted to leave. So anyway, I decided to leave. I got my PI license. I have, you know, I got yoga teacher training under my belt. I got all this mindfulness and meditation teacher training. I started a coaching business. I worked with a business coach, the one that told me not to start a podcast, but I started it anyway, because this is the most fun thing ever.
And by the way if you're out there and you think you have a really cool story to tell, send me a message because it would be fun to have you on here telling your story this is what tells a recovery is it's just stories about life about being a human and about the journey that it is to grow into these bodies and into this experience because it's intense and it's also quite short but a lot of you know grief needs to be felt in order for the joy to be felt and anyway so So whatever,
if you have a story, send me a message. We can talk, see if it's a good fit for both of us and for all of our listeners here. If it's fun and entertaining and... You know, offering hope, experience, strength, and hope, or possibilities, like I like to call it instead of hope, possibilities of a new life. And let me get back. So I was about to quit my job because I thought, okay, that's it. I have Julio built an Airbnb in the house.
So we had additional, you know, rental income. I had all, I had my business going, I had the podcast going, I started to have clients. I've always done retreats, even when I was at the Federal Defender still. I would host outdoor just retreats to really connect to your body and to your spirit. You know, we do yoga, sit around the fire, play, connect to the magic inside of us because we have so much magic that we don't really tap into because of the busyness of this culture.
And most of the retreats that I've always let have been counter-cultural, like what can you do to slow down and not think that if you're not checking the box of these cultural things that you're not good enough for measuring because that's a lie. And it's baloney, 100% baloney. We all need to pay the bills. I get that. We all need to, you know, you got to pay rent, you have to eat food and there's expenses.
So we do have to figure out how to, how to make a living, But it doesn't mean that you have to keep up with the bologna of what the TV and the media sells to you. That you have to have a Ferrari or this big mansion or live right on front of the ocean in Malibu Beach in order to have any worth or in order for your life to be good. Your life can be good living wherever you're at because it's an inside job. And through so much meditating and yoga, I realized that, you know, this is an inside job.
And yes, I'm going to leave this job with a killer salary, with benefits, with paid vacation, you know, with pension plans, with this and with that. And I remember my dad, my brother, Julio, so many people telling me like, what do you mean you're quitting this job? And I said, that's what I mean, bitches. I'm quitting this job because I'm not going to stay in this job so that five or 10 or 15 years on the line,
I get sick with cancer because I fucking hated it. You know, the new administration, the new...
Thought process there was just you know we grew up in there I grew up in there I had so much experience you know I was 20 something plus years and you get these lawyers that are coming in fresh from law school thinking they're going to tell you what to do and it's just instead of having this new maybe like well how about we become a team you know and everybody considers who's what I remember my old boss Tim Leyva rest in peace Gautamuk would tell me well this office is like a plantation.
And that's what it was. You know, the lawyers thought they were the bosses and we were over here as the slaves. And well, there was only so much of that that I was going to be able to put up with. Considering so many options that you have in life, especially after having done this work for years and years and years, you have enough experience, you have enough training to change, you know, your life.
And anybody listening to this, think about if you went to college, how long you've been working at what you're doing, or if you didn't go to college, whatever experience you have in life, whatever skill that you've been honing in on, or that you want to grow into, with a plan and with time and with determination, you can do whatever you set your mind to. You can.
And maybe it takes time or you need assistance from this or that, but i'm telling you it's doable you can get out of the shit show job that you don't like there's so many ways and honestly so much money out there for you to pay for this course or that course or this certification or that one and really or even ask people for mentorship i mean if you're out there listening to this and you know you need a you need a mentor ask for you You know, there's so many people that will be willing to say,
yeah, just come on and just sit down and you can shadow me. You know, you can see what I do as I grow, you know, my garden or do this podcast or, you know, the host of... You know, a yoga retreat or, or a sound healing, a breathwork healing, you know, a medicine ceremony, you'd be surprised how many people will say, yes, come and help. I might not have, you know, all day long to teach exactly, but you can watch, you can, you know, chop wood, carry water.
But that's how, that's how we learn by observing. I know that I've learned by going to hell of retreats and conferences and sitting underneath the feet of teachers that I completely love and admire and saving up so that I can actually go to this special event or that one and see what they're doing and connect to them and have them come on the podcast. And listen to their experience and, you know, direct, direct what, direct my heart in the direction that it wants to go.
Give me one second. I'm going to take off my hat. Okay. And I think I'm going to take a deep breath here. Sometimes I'm like talking in this podcast and I get so excited and I realize I'm talking, talking and I'm not breathing. So maybe I need to take a deep breath in here real quick and you can do the same. Okay. Breathing is just so good for the body, especially open mouth exhale. It kind of sends a signal to your body that you are able to stop and soften and, you know, relax.
And so, yeah, I quit the job after I'd done some preparing. And I left that office. It was one of the best things I've ever done in my life. I wish I had done it sooner, but whatever. I actually pulled the trigger once. I think my mom got super sick and I just saw her deteriorating, deteriorating, deteriorating. And I thought, you know, shit, man, this is going to go by pretty fast. And what am I waiting for? So the best choice I've made in my life.
And, you know, I had, like most entrepreneurs, a couple of multiple sources of income streams already going, Some rental income from the Airbnb, lots of retreats, yoga and meditation classes, and of course the PI license. I did keep some mitigation things open because, well...
Because I'm a kind and very experienced bilingual and bicultural Mexican woman, and that we don't have very many of those investigators for mitigating cases of Spanish-speaking people that are here in the United States arrested facing the death penalty. Because yes, of course, by the time you hit 20 plus years in this criminal justice world, I was put into the division where you work with people that are facing the death penalty.
So some of the cases that I work with now are kids, and I call them kids because we're all kids. They might be 23, they might be 30. They're pretty young that are facing the death penalty and don't speak English. So I help connect their attorneys in the system to them and their family. And we try at least for the most part that they don't go to the death penalty because I think that's just stupid. And so far so good. You know, it's very seldom once or twice a month, but that's going.
And now, you know, I'm more and more stepping into all this other work that you know of, which is compassionate inquiry and somatic therapy because of all the trauma work and experience that I've had to study through all my years working with the death penalty people, right?
So this trauma experience and soothing the nervous system through sound healing, through breath, through somatic work, through sitting in nature, and all of the things that I had to do for my own body, because I might not be the criminal sitting in jail, but I have to work with them. And that energetic impact comes into the body. I mean, I get out of the jail Oh, and I was just telling this to my friend, Lo, because she's going to go paint some murals inside a woman's prisons.
And I remember, because I also, you know, would go in and teach yoga inside the woman's prisons, the yoga prison project. Every time, either with teaching yoga or going in to see a client, you step in and out. It's like this whole energetic cleansing, protecting to go in and cleansing to come out. Taking off my shoes, stepping on the grass, you know, taking that rosemary.
Essential oil and just cleansing my body and getting in the car and lighting the Palo Santo and taking 25 deep, long breaths to let it go and to reset my nervous system, you know, because the energetics in there are intense. I mean, they're intense everywhere, but even But in there, it's just so sad, depressing, and there's so much tension because, you know, in there, there are people that are just, you have to survive. And, you know, I'm not going to lie, it's horrible in there.
You think the jails in the United States are great? They're not. They're just as horrible as the Guantanamo, Mexico, South. I mean, they're bad. And not... People think, oh, you have rights here, but they're so saturated that if you don't have a good attorney or a good team or somebody in your family member really advocating for you, people get lost in the system all the time and it's horrible. So there's a lot of work to do out there. And I've gotten into it.
I've gotten into it with some of you as attorneys about how they need to stop this bullshit. But the machine is just so big. I realized, okay, I do my little part and then I come home and then I meditate. and I hop on the podcast and fuck it.
I cannot change the world or be scared that I'm not doing enough because we can do whatever we can and then I have to take care of myself, you know, my family and whatever I can put out there in the world to help and to be, you know, the bodhicitta heart, the compassionate heart, the bodhisattva that we all came here to be if we choose it, to do some good in the world.
And so some of you guys are going to go have, you know, your Thanksgiving dinner and you might be, you know, the family, this and that. Remember to take care of yourself by long, deep breaths, you know, by observing what's happening, by connecting to your feet, your body, the present moment awareness. And remembering that most of the triggers that we get aren't really in the present moment. Most of the triggers, if you get triggered, is really something from the past. and I.
To have that awareness. And I'm assuming if you're listening to this podcast that you know some of this, that you've taken some of my classes or gone to my retreats or listened to my meditations or some of the information that is put out here. Which is to really take care of yourself and to notice, is this wanting to cry from right now, this lady's spilling gravy or is this my little seven-year-old self, upset about something that happened 20 years ago or 30 years ago?
How can I tend to myself in this moment and realize that I have a choice right now as an adult to let it go or to get up and go outside for a minute, walk around the block, come back inside or leave or just kind of, you know, laugh at it, about it. There's so many different choices, just like the choice to change your life. So that's how I changed my life. I have been changing my life.
I think we all are changing our lives. You know, it's just we can get stuck in this routine thing of I get up, brush my teeth, go to work, come home, drink a beer, watch Netflix and pass out. And we need to be really aware of the fact that we don't want to be feeling deadened by culture. Do not let this culture kill you. Walk around dead because, you know, you're just so exhausted with something. You know, and when you're doing something you don't like, you're going to get exhausted.
Can you hear that? that's indie ronking I'm snoring, give me one second. You know, this podcast room, the pets come in, Indy starts to snore. The cat just came in with a bird. I don't know what I'm going to do. I rescued it, but I'm not sure if it's going to be okay. Yes, the bird's going to be okay. I suppose that I'm saying all of this to give you hope if you don't like the situation where you're out at work or at the family or where you're living or whatever.
It might seem that you can't do it, but you can. I mean, I just got a tattoo with this girl from Oaxaca who came up, flew in from Oaxaca to Tijuana. She's 24 years old or 25. She's building her own house in her own land in Oaxaca. I think it's an ejido. So maybe she I don't know how she got the land, but she is a tattoo artist who's extremely creative and successful. And she's fabulous. You know, she doesn't she's sober. She doesn't, you know, take any bullshit. She's so fucking smart.
And I see younger kids creating their life. She didn't have to go to fucking Stanford to become a lawyer. You know, she's living a life of sustainable farming, sustainable living in a humble house. And we don't, it's like, there's so many options for us to create a different life and community.
And, you know, and right now, honestly, I'm in a situation where I am also sort of redirecting our life here from city living to farm living, coming up here in the next, I don't know, it could be the next month or the next year, but we're doing this move because I'm, It's a dream we've had for so many years. I'm like, I think it's time, man. Let's just go. Just like at the office, you know. How long was I going to think about quitting before I quit that damn corporate
hamster wheel that is just keeps on going? You know, it's nonstop. And we get sold this idea that as long as you get a check every two weeks. But honestly, it's important to consider what you're putting up with and what this culture is just sucking you down to with, you know. and that you think you need to buy this and buy this and buy that and Black Friday. That's a bunch of bullshit. Like, think about the essentials of what you really need, you know.
And if we have this meditation practice, which, by the way, yes, Mindfulness Magic is starting in February. You know, you get to join a group. This time it's going to be 12 weeks because, of course, six weeks is never enough.
It's a community. It's a shala. It's a place where you learn about trauma and how to soothe your body and how to practice mindfulness so that you can participate in embodying, you know, and incarnate, incarnation, incarnating, incarnation de tu cuerpo, in a practice of calm, in a practice of, of soothing. Oh my gosh, Indy is rocking again. Indy. I don't know if you guys can hear that. It's hilarious. is. So thank you for listening to Tales of Recovery.
Enjoy your life today if you can. And if you're going through the grief, enjoy the grief. Everything is part of the deal here. I do have a lot of, you know, openings coming up in the next year for ceremonies. If you want to come and process grief, if you want to come and process all the work you've been doing and sit in the medicine of psilocybin to expand, to get some clarity, to have some relief and to really see, you know, about what you want to change in your life, how to go about it.
How to, and even if you don't want to do any changes, you know, just how to sit with whatever your life is. Because a lot of times, you guys, the change is going to have to happen inside. Because, you know, wherever you go, there you are. So I'm not saying you're, if you quit your job, you're going to be great. It's like, you have to start on the inside, you know.
And yes, we might need some help here, you know, through some therapy or some good experiences through retreat or good books or whatnot, but stay tuned. Please, if you would like to subscribe to my webpage, because I'm not on Instagram as much as I used to be. Same reason, you know, it's like, oosh, I got to create content and not sit there for five hours, just because it's not good for my body. When I'm on Instagram for five hours a day, my body starts to feel really tense.
And so it's another thing to notice that I've noticed. So go to grisalves.com subscribe to my mailing list and you'll get to know everything that's going on anything that might be helpful or that you need you know you might want to send to someone. And we're in this together right we're in this community thing growing our community here is growing and yes this is fun for me but also i understand that that we're creating a community, and that I'm part of this and this is what we're doing here.
And I'm proud of that and I sense my responsibility in that. And I thank you for being a part of it and listening and sharing and commenting and sending me your ideas and letting me know. What your opinions are and what your felt sense is when you listen to these podcasts. So I hope it was helpful just to see that. And by the way, I want to say that these changes took time. You know, I decided I wanted to leave my job literally when my babies were born
because I wanted to not work. I wanted to stay home with them. I only had about eight months of maternity leave. And then I ended up, excuse me, finally leaving when I think, I mean, my kids were already in high school. So it's a process, you know, it didn't happen overnight.
I did have a very flexible job, so I was able to come and go, but regardless, just to let you know, you know, some things take time and effort and I'm constantly, you know, finishing up two great books, one on grieving for little children. It's called Estrella the Stardust Girl. And the other one on addiction and growing up as a Mexican, Latin American woman. And the issues that you have, you know, with addiction is called On the Border of Addiction.
Estrella the Stardust Girl is going to be released in six months. The other one, I'm not sure. But it's a constant doing and it's a constant being okay with things taking time. You know, that's another thing. Enjoying where I am right now, enjoying where you are right now, you know, wanting to change, but also being okay with the present moment, awareness of that. There's this like little sense of possibility that's going to come up with what you're going to do.
But also like, meanwhile, you don't have to fucking hate your job and think life sucks. I want to end with that because I was, you know, I set up my office before I quit with bright red chairs and fancy art. And I had, you know, I had a good attitude and, and even though sometimes I hated coming in, I was able to see the goodness in it, you know, and, and.
My office turned into, you know, like the therapy people would come in and share and people would come in because there was a therapy office because it was a safe place. So making your body safe, making your space safe, regardless of where you're at right now is one of the most important things that we can do for ourselves and for those around us as we prepare.
So this podcast isn't to tell you that if your life sucks, it's not going to suck once you're over here in your possibility or you want to be, but that it can start today as you prepare, you know, having that possibility on one hand and then tending to yourself on the right, on the other hand, while you're getting there to enjoy life as it is in this moment with a deep breath, you know, and your practices of mindfulness, of yoga, of dancing, of working out, whatever your practice is,
that you be tender to yourself, that you be kind, you know, that you're not pushing yourself to the ground because you think that that's what you need to do. Because we don't, we really don't need to do that. Not anymore. No more violence. You know what I mean? Too much, too much freaking violence in this world already. May we be kind to ourselves. May we be kind to those around us. And set good boundaries, motherfuckers. Good boundaries.
Say no when you need to say no, when you want to say no, and we'll talk soon. Thank you for listening to Tales of Recovery. Please share, subscribe, leave a comment. Come on now, share the love and see you soon.