Emotion does not equal crazy. Emotion doesn't equal weakness. I feel really strongly about that now. I mean, it kinda makes me wanna cry talking to you about it because I get emotional because it makes me tingly to talk about it because it's so important that I show this to my daughters. Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute, and it's stories and anecdotes and people we interview about their life post process and how it lives in the world radiating love. Hey, everybody. Welcome. Miranda, welcome. Hi, Drew. Glad to have you. Yeah. I'm I'm so glad to be here. Well, thank you for agreeing to be here. Tell us a little bit about who you are and, some of the stuff you do in the world. Before we sort of drop into Hoffman, how would you describe yourself? I'm a mom, two girls.
I work in software sales. It's a very, male dominated industry, just technology in general. So navigating my way through that for most of my adult life definitely helped bring me to Hoffman, I think, and has Hoffman has helped me after that. My two girls, I've got a high schooler and a third grader. So they're in two very different places in their life right now, but being a mom to them, I'm most proud of. So if you ask me to identify myself, it's first as a mom. Beautiful.
I have a high school girl as well. What a time period for them in their lives. Right? So powerful. So powerful to watch them learn so much. All not from us, but from the life they're living. No. No. No. So there you are, mom. It's 02/2019, and something happens acutely or admin building up. You sign up for the process and take it in February. What happened? What led you there? How'd you get to this place?
There's so much that led me to it, but it was really one major impetus that threw me off a cliff. I had been in a relationship for about two and a half years, a romantic relationship, which with who I thought was the love of my life, who I thought was my forever, and he broke up with me. I literally went off the deep end. I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating. I was barely functional for my kids. I was showing up to work, getting through the day, and then crying all night,
blaming myself. I was just blaming myself for all of it. I didn't know how to express any of it. I didn't know how to get through any of it. And I made a phone call to one of my friends. I basically said I can't I can't do this anymore. I'm on the precipice of not wanting to be here anymore. I have to do something. It's interesting, this friend.
Him and I had gotten close over the years, and he had talked to me about the Hoffman process in the past, about how it helped him to really just get in tune with who he was. And he saw something in me even before this happened. So he saw something in me enough to know that there was more inside of me than I even realized. So when this happened, he, you know, said immediately, it's time, Miranda. If you can do this, it's time for you to go and do the Hoffman process.
I had no idea how deep this all went. I thought it was a breakup. So you're going to Hoffman to essentially heal from the breakup is what you're thinking. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. I had no concept until I started doing the homework, the pre work of holy cow. There are so many more things that brought me here to this state in my life going all the way back. I was just living. I was just living a life. I was almost 40 years old
when I went to the Hoffman process. And for that many years, I had just been living my life. No concept of the choices that I could be making to act differently. I didn't I just didn't understand. I also wasn't in tune with any of my own fears. I wasn't in tune with any of my vulnerability. I was doing things that I had no idea I was doing them. And we can go back before this relationship. I said I have two daughters. They are from a marriage. They are not this relationship.
I shouldn't have married this man, but I can't say that. I can't live with regrets now because I have two really fabulous girls, and I'm here today because I was married to him. And I'm here today with this clarity from Hoffman because I was married to him, so I don't have a regrets to that. But really, honestly, we shouldn't have gotten married. We weren't meant to be married. It was a very abusive relationship that I stayed in way too long.
I stayed in it because I had to think back further, and that's what Hoffman really opened up for me. I could blame everything on this boyfriend, then I could blame everything on this bad marriage that I was in, but why did I get into this boyfriend situation? Why did I get into the bad marriage?
Hoffman taught me that it goes so much further back, that I really need to examine my relationship with everyone else around me, primarily my core parents, as we talked about, and understand why I act the way that I act and why I respond the way that I respond. Be able to then make some choices based on that. So take us into your process. You do the paperwork. You begin to see the through line of your present to the past. What happens when you first show up and in those early days?
Typical ultra independent Miranda. I was gonna control the situation. I was gonna be all over it. I knew what was gonna happen. I knew how it was gonna happen. And boy, did I get my socks knocked off when I first showed up to the process? This concept of the quadrenity, I really had no concept of it. I was living my entire life through my physical being and through my intellect. I was not in touch anything with anything emotionally or spiritually at all.
Ultra independent Miranda with her brain on, got told that she wasn't allowed to work out while she was there, was like, you want a bet? So the first morning, I woke up and I worked out in my room. Well, I very quickly realized I didn't need to work out because I was gonna be working so many other things that would just exhaust me. That by the end of the day, I could barely keep my eyes open. I could barely sit, stand without trying to fall asleep.
Also, I was, like, so connected and calm with myself at the end of every day that sleep was very easy, which I was surprised at. So I get to the process and I learn about these things and I throw myself in. I threw myself in a % into all of the visualizations, into all of the writing, into all of the journaling. So much so that it would became difficult for me to actually even speak to other people around me because I was so inward.
So there was one night we were allowed to go out at the end of the day and go be in the hot tubs and the pools. We were in hot Sulphur Springs at the time and I just remember barely being able to drag myself out of my room, but something called me to the other people around me. I was so stuck inside. Then I went out. I walked into the hot tub. I didn't get in the hot tub because I wasn't quite ready for that yet, but I walked out to towards the hot tub, and people started calling my name.
Like, how does everyone else know who I am? I was so inward and so narcissistically stuck in my own stuff trying to fix it. Didn't even realize there were all these other people here going through the same thing, yet they knew who I was. They knew what I was going through. And they started patting me on the back and commending me for how hard I was pushing myself into this process and how committed I was. I think it was Bashing Day. I was hardcore.
Oh, I was so hardcore, and I didn't even realize that I had this effect on other people. And that opened my eyes up to, oh my gosh, I can have these connections with other people. I can have these actually open communications with other people, and I don't need to be just inward. That was a major epiphany for me that changed then my whole process moving forward because
it wasn't then just about me. It was also about how I accept other people in this world and how I accept and see what they're going through and what they're dealing with and how they shine their light and how they have darkness too. So it changed the way that I have conversations with everyone now. How does that experience of being so intimately involved in your own work and then surprisingly connected to those around you, how does that relate to your everyday life post process even
today? Well, it certainly changed my relationship with my girls. Because now I'm not just a mom to them. I'm a mom with them. And I think that's really the strongest, most powerful thing that I can feel from this. I mean, it's also changed my romantic relationships.
I'm no longer afraid to be vulnerable because I know that the person on the other side of the table or holding my hand on the other side or whatever, whether it's, you know, a work thing or it's personal, they're going through some crap too. Everybody has their own fears and needs, so why should I be afraid of showing mine? And when you phrase it that way, it's like, yeah. That makes sense. Why should you given we all have it? Right?
We all have it. And a pattern of mine before was to attack or to wall off. I would get dismissive because I'd be afraid of rejection. It's just like, why? We all have this. We're all in this. We're all on this universe together. So that in my everyday life has completely changed how I talk and relate and connect to people. Can I ask? Because as a woman in a male dominated sales world and a tech world and those two combined, you're one of, what, maybe 10% of women.
So some might say, well, you do need to wall off. You do have to protect yourself. You don't wanna get hurt. You're like, this is the culture you're in, so you better show up that way. What what do you say to that? I mean, I I mean, it's hard to say I need to protect myself. What do I need to protect myself from if someone isn't willing to be vulnerable with me back? So what?
Something to protect there. Now if they attack me, someone at work or, you know, says no, I don't want what you're selling, okay. Don't have to want what I'm selling, but I don't have to take that personally. I mean, that's the that's the difference with Hoffman. I would have taken it very personally. Now I can stop and ask questions around, you know, what is it that you're trying to achieve? It doesn't become an attack on me.
And I still feel like if I can just show up and be vulnerable with the people in my life, whether they're my customers or my coworkers or my kids, that I set the stage and set the tone for everything. And just because someone else can't show up in that same way, kind of have to say, okay, that's on them. Let them be that way. It's more about how do I accept what they're bringing to me. You know, I went into Hoffman thinking I needed to get in touch with my feminine
side. There was this whole idea of I needed to get in touch with my feminine side because it was too masculine. Vulnerability, is it feminine or masculine? Has nothing to do with that. Like, I thought, oh, I'm too you know, I'm emasculating to men, and I'm too masculine in my approach. And so in whatever context or another, had nothing to do with that. It had to do with me just putting up these walls and then not being necessary. You know, and a lot of that I learned in Hoffman came from
my child relationship. I was raised by my dad. My parents divorced when I was three, and I was raised by my dad with two brothers in the house. So guess what? When Miranda cried, Miranda got upset. You know, I was being too emotional. They didn't know how to deal with it. It got to the point where my mother, I only saw her about once a year, but when my parents divorced, my dad actually had her deemed as unfit. She was the crazy one.
So when Miranda cried, Miranda showed emotion, Miranda got upset. Miranda, stop being like your mom. Now guess who you sound like, Miranda? You sound like your mom. That's what I got. So I learned through the process that this these walls and this independence had nothing to do with that boyfriend, nothing to do with the abusive marriage that I was in, all stem back so much further.
And there's this little girl inside there just dying to get out, but she can't because she's been told she's crazy. What's I'd like to talk about now? You know, it's not as triggering as it was. You know, when I think about what are resolved, I think that's something that I've resolved in myself. Emotion does not equal crazy. Emotion doesn't equal weakness. I feel really strongly about that now.
I mean, it kinda makes me wanna cry talking to you about it because I get emotional, but it's not because I don't believe it. You're getting emotional about the importance of emotions. Because it makes me tingly to talk about it because it's so important that I show this to my daughters. It's so important that I live this so fully. And so, you know, now when I get into relationships and I'm told, you're intense, Miranda. You're so intense. Okay? Yeah. If it's too much, then don't be here.
If it's too much and I'm too intense, I can't change that. Because guess what? That's who I am. And, Drew, that doesn't mean that I'm hateful or ultra independent or strong willed or walling anybody off or crazy. Just means I have feelings. And guess what? I can talk about them. I can feel them. And darn it, I'm pretty proud of it. Because for forty years of my life, I just lived in my head. You know? I just lived in my intellect, took over everything.
And guess what? There is a little girl inside of me who wants to twirl, who has a little dress on and puts her arms out and just twirls because it feels good. And sometimes I'm twirling and I'm crying, and sometimes I'm twirling and I'm angry. I really, really, really love it when I'm twirling and I'm happy, but it's all in there. Like, it's all in there. I just can't hide it. That's what Hoffman gave to me. It found me that little girl.
I imagine she really gets a chance to to be present when you're parenting your daughters. Yeah. We have a lot of dance parties in the kitchen, so you can imagine, Drew. We also have a lot of late nights just sitting up talking because I wanna hear how they feel. It used to be nope. Time for bed. 09:00. Lights off. Lights off. Guess what? I wanna hear it now in the dark, and they're comfortable and safe in talking to me. You can tell me everything.
I wanna know all of it because I want them to feel okay with feeling it. I want them to cry if they wanna cry. I want them to be angry if they have to be angry. Miranda, earlier, you talked about this idea of this is who I am. Yeah. I'm intense. I can't change it. It's who I am. And so I wanna ask about that because at Hoffman, we're about naming patterns and talking about I am not my patterns, and we're also about claiming who we are authentically.
How do you discern? How have you figured out what are the things of me that I'm not willing to change because that's authentically who I am? And what are the things that I am willing to change because those are patterns? How do you tell the difference between the two? You know, first, I would think about what impact does this potentially have on someone else? What impact is this gonna have on those people around me starting with my children? But I think back to that night at the hot tub.
And that's where my visualization goes is there are there are people around me who are affected by what I do. If I am being in tune with my fears and my needs and my emotions, that's one thing. But taking that and walling off is different. It's what do I do with that then? Right road or left road? Am I gonna wall off or am I gonna sit and remain open? Really, it comes down to that. What do I then do with it? What choice do I then have to make? And that's right road, left road.
That's how I discern that. Because who I am is what I feel and how I feel. It doesn't mean that's what I'm gonna do with it. I still to this day, I said that I thought, you know, my emotion does not equal crazy. I think that's resolved because I feel very strongly about that, but I still to this day, things come up around abandonment with my mom because she wasn't around. Still, to this day, I feel times where I've put myself out there too far, too hard,
because that's what the little girl does. She's intense and she puts herself out there. When she feels something, she says it, she goes for it. And sometimes I feel rejected because of that. Because I didn't get the response that I might thought I wanted. The difference post Hoffman though is now I see that. I see that I'm feeling that. I realize I need to go recycle on some things when those things come up, obviously. But I think the abandonment wound for me
with my mother will always equal rejection. And when I put myself out there too hard, too intense, I start to question, is that why this person didn't call me back? Didn't return my text? Is that why this person didn't come to whatever? And I have to just think about no has nothing to do with any of that. That person is making choices on their own. And as long as I'm putting myself out there and giving in a positive way. If I'm ever too much for someone, I'm I'm too much. That's fine.
You're talking about another great tension here, and that is that what is my responsibility to own and work with, And what is not mine at all? What has nothing to do with me? I'm no longer willing to personalize everything like I used to, and some things aren't about me. They're about what's happening in the other person's life and world and internal space.
That's one of the hardest lessons to teach kids, to help them realize that they can only own the way they feel and the way they present themselves to the world and the way that they are. They cannot own how other people respond to them or feel about them or take them. And so that was the beginning of the week. So, Miranda, take us now to other parts of your week. What else do you remember that was powerful?
I think going back to how others perceived me and how I was so worried about rejection from others and so worried about my place in this world based on the way others thought about me, the day of compassion, I would say, was incredibly critical in getting me through that.
Spending time realizing what my parents actually went through, reliving what they went through to bring them to their place as my parents gave me that compassion for them and gave me a real appreciation for their place and what they've done for me.
Not just to look at it in a positive light and just say, Okay, I got all these positive things for my dad and these other positive traits for my mom, but to really have compassion for them and how they got them and where they came from and the way that they were acting. And then to go and put that all to bed. To just say, Okay, none of that even matters anymore because that's their stuff. That's my parents' stuff. My dad didn't reject me. He didn't call me crazy because he was
rejecting me. My mom didn't abandon me. Do I feel abandoned? Did I feel rejected? Yes. But that's on me to change. That process of compassion and really understanding what they had been through allowed me to also now see that in everyone else around me. You know, people take the process to create a different future
going forward. They wanna be happier, healthier, more successful, you know, navigate relationships compassion, you found a deeper understanding and a rewriting of the narrative of your past and your parents' past. Yes. I most certainly did. I found that there is power in my pain. I cannot resent anything because there's so much power in feeling bad or bad experiences or good experiences and really being able to see how they were good.
Really being able to see how my parents were just reacting with everything that they knew how to react in the best way that they knew how to react, and they didn't know how to do any different. And having that understanding and that appreciation really brought me to they loved me. So can I see the actual positive in this rather than sit in resentment and stewing of the past? To a fault now, maybe? I see the positive in almost everything. I have almost no regrets. In fact, I could say
I don't have regrets. You know, not even that I all have almost no regrets. I have no regrets because it all brought me here today. It all brought me to this one single point. I do see the positive in relationships when people don't, in people when people don't. I see the positive in the bully at school because you know what? There's somebody inside there. And the bully at my work because there's somebody inside there. Somebody inside there who came from somewhere.
Bad things happen to me. Don't get me wrong. All kinds of bad things happen to me. No. My daughter hurt her arm last week at skiing, took us out of skiing. It wasn't great. That's negative. Guess what? There's a positive side of this. There's always a positive side. And so that compassion journey is what brought me to that understanding and this, like, growth mindset of it can always be better. We're gonna learn from this. There's power in our pain.
You know, a lot of people subscribe to this kind of mindset, mind shift, and yet it's not always easy to achieve. I'm imagining that the cellular journey of Hoffman was the thing that helped. It's not just as if you can adopt it. Think about it this way. Hold this perspective. But, actually, doing the experiences really helped you do that.
Yeah. It's crazy. In a week's time in one week's time, you can literally rewire these neurons in your brain to think differently because it takes into account writing, physical thinking, visualization, all of this meditation and the connections with other people. I thought about this a bunch of times. Like, how if the process was different, would I have gotten this much out of it if I had gone and done this as a one on one retreat? No. I needed those connections.
I needed the physical attributes of it. I needed all of the mental and emotional stimulation. I can't just need every single bit of it after one week. I'm I'm not telling you I'm fixed. It wasn't fixed after one week. There's so much work still to do, but my eyes are opened. That's it. If your eyes are open and your perspective can change, everything else can follow along right with it. You can do anything. How do you talk about Hoffman with your kids describing your experience there,
sharing the concepts? What's that look like? Well, my oldest daughter is just now old enough to understand. My younger one is not quite. They were much younger when I first went. So now when they ask me about Hoffman, because they see the calendar on my fridge and they see the magnets on my fridge and they know that I go to the monthly meetups couple times a year. So they know about it.
So I've explained it to them as this was a journey for me to get back to the core of who I was by reevaluating my relationship with my parents. That's really all all I've explained to them. You can't go much deeper than that for a kid. I mean, there are definitely little lessons here and there where I've talked to them about being in tune with what they're feeling and making choices on how it will impact themselves and people based on that.
And really understanding how they're feeling in the core of their emotions, in their brain as they wanna logic through things, through their physical being. I can talk to them about that as little lessons come up through life. I just want my youngest daughter to take the recycling out. She piles it in a pile on the counter. And it sits in a pile on the counter, and I, you know, I say, well, you know, you've got this LaCroix can, and you have this water bottle, and there's this box.
If you just take it out, you wouldn't have to have it sitting on the counter when you just take it out. She has a different perspective on that. She's like, well, if we gather it all up at once, it just gets out much easier. I don't know. The old me probably would have yelled at her and told her how ridiculous her ideas were. My it was my way or the highway. This is my house. We're gonna get the recycling out into the garage as you use it.
But now, actually, I told her the other day, I was like, you know what? Hoffman taught me this. Hoffman taught me to realize that you have feelings and perspective too. And you know what? If you don't wanna take the recycling out and you have a good reason for not doing it, and I can teach you to calmly tell me what that is without you freaking out, yelling at me about mom's always nagging me to take the recycling out, then I won.
Like, we can all just have a calm conversation about the recycling. I feel like I've won. So that's what I hope I'm teaching my kids. We're winding down, but I just have to ask about this mom you never saw much growing up because you thought she was crazy, and these two brothers and your dad. How have things changed with these characters that were in your life so early in such a formative stage where all this stuff was being wired in?
Well, my relationship with my dad, and I'm back to being daddy's girl and back to just really just loving him for who he is. I will tell you that he didn't know how to express his emotions or accept mine because he didn't grow up with that. So it has definitely made me much closer to my dad because of my understanding for that. He has dementia, so the changes in him have become basically his emotions that he felt before, which was apathy, lack of emotion,
brush it all off. It's gotten even more so. So it's amplified. His apathy has amplified. But I still just feel like there's a such a deep connection there because I understand where he's coming from. Hoffman has really helped me get through this dementia diagnosis and like seeing him degrade over the last couple of years. So I'm ever grateful for Hoffman in that because I know I would have approached him being sick very differently.
I probably would have walled off. I probably would have just become even more independent from him. So I'm very glad for Hoffman so I could see him for who he really is. My mom, I actually haven't spoken to my mother in twelve years. She's she's very sick. There's bipolar disorder that's untreated there that I have tried multiple times before that to work things out with her and have a relationship with her, and it's It's not safe.
I have to deal with my abandonment issues without correcting it with her. I have to do it through my current relationships, friends, family, otherwise, boyfriends. I have to work my abandoned issues out without resolving things directly. I think that's why it keeps coming up. A good friend of mine made this comment. He's like, Miranda, the guys you date, you're literally dating a book with a picture of your mother on it. You're, like, gonna have to work through this.
You need to do this in a different way. He's not wrong. That's why these things keep coming up. Miranda, when abandonment issues with your mom over and over again personified in these men, it just reminds me that so many of us in life and so many grads post process hold things in one of two ways, which is either, damn it. I failed the process because I still haven't dealt with this issue, and therefore, it didn't work. I can't do it, and it's all a fail. Or this idea that it's never gonna happen
because I'm perfect. I'm cured. I've resolved everything, and I can magical thinking kind of escape it, but neither of those are true. And your example shows that, yes, you resolved some things and still some things are work that still needs to be done. Oh, yeah. And I think, like, I talk about the abandonment issue with my mom, fear of rejection, giving, and then just assuming that that's going to equal in rejection sometimes. But there's also gonna be other things that are gonna come up.
I mean, I hope I have another forty five or fifty years on this planet. I guarantee you, I didn't uncover everything at Hoffman nor in the last four or five years. Right? There's gonna be so many other things that have come up. And I just gotta believe that I have the tools now to deal with them and to see them. So first, you guys see them. I gotta recognize it in myself. So I spend a lot of time in self reflection. I spend a lot of time scribbling in my journal, just
writing. How do I feel? And sometimes they're not even complete sentences. The end of the night, I always do a check-in. Believe me, I don't always do a full quad check-in. Pretty bad about doing those, but I do it in my journal in such that I talk about how am I feeling emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. I just don't go through the whole visualization of the quad check-in, but I use the journal as my tool to see within myself. I feel like I really have the tools
to see as it comes up. And then how am I gonna do something with it, and how am I gonna repair it? The tool of recycling is still so powerful. This is idea of thinking of a common object and converting the feeling of it. It actually works. So the next time that I actually feel or get triggered in that exact way for that abandonment issue,
it won't happen again. Like, the trigger just won't happen again because I'll see something positive or something different or something bright and beautiful out of it. Am I going to know all of the different triggers? Am I no. Like we can't. We can't just know, like nobody is has a crystal ball to know all different ways that you're gonna get triggered. But guess what? When you get triggered, you can now do something with it.
And that gives me this incredible sense of peace and positive attitude towards the future. I don't know how else to say that other than I just know that I can get through anything. It's gonna suck. There's stuff that sucks, Drew. Honestly, like, I spent a couple of days this weekend really sad. But I also knew that it was okay. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to have a loss because I know it's not the end of the world.
I know that it's not that spot back in 2019 where I just didn't wanna be here anymore. I won't ever be there again. That much, I know. Miranda, what's it like to talk about your life like this, your process experience, that feeling of not wanting to be here and reflecting on your daughters and your your dad, your brothers, your mom, your whole dating world, what's what's that like for you to reflect on so openly? I mean, honestly, there's still some shame there. I still feel
shameful. Like, how could I have felt that way? I don't know if that'll ever completely go away. But what I have now is compassion for myself, and I have a path forward. Brene Brown calls that shame resiliency. Yes. We're gonna feel it again, but we have the resiliency within that to not let it be our full story. Yeah. That's powerful. Shame resiliency. So grateful for you, Miranda. Thanks for sharing so much of who you are. I appreciate it. Thanks, Drew, for having me on.
I hope we can be an impact to people who are concerned about going through the process or coming out of the process. You know, not everybody comes out of it with the same power that I felt. I know that. I've talked to plenty of people who've been through the process and immediately after may not feel this power brightness lightness. Maybe very different experience for you, but what I can do is assure everyone that it's within them. You just have to keep seeing it and find it. It never ends.
It never ends. They have to be willing to just keep seeing it. Beautiful. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Razz Ingrassi, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other and in the world. To find out more, please go to hampmaninstitute.org.