Those harsh emotions that we feel sometimes if I can shorten the gap between what happens and the S the lesson that I'm here to learn. I'm not sprinting to the top. But I get to take big. Deep leaps up the stairs. I get to take empowered steps up the stairs. Welcome to You First, a Journey to Self podcast, where we empower women to rediscover their true, authentic selves and regain personal power. If you are ready for a major shift, you've come to the right place.
I am your host, Maria Fuentes, an expert in women's emotional mastery and self discovery. With a degree in psychology and nearly two decades of experience, I am passionate about addressing the challenges women face most. Self love, healthy relationships, and emotional awareness. I've had the privilege of coaching so many incredible women and witnessing their transformation through the methods we'll discuss on this podcast.
This show is your weekly space to shift your perspective, find inspiration within and heal in ways that feel true to you. I'm so grateful you're here. Let's dive into this week's episode. Hello, my beautiful muses. And welcome back to another week's episode. This week's going to be a little bit different. I usually get on here when I'm feeling super elevated. When my energy super high, when I have this message.
It's just flowing through me in these big aha moments and this message that I know needs to be relayed and. Yes. All the energies here right now with me. But I'm also processing some really heavy emotions. I'm currently on my cycle. And I had like, Our long crying session this morning. And I was like, you know what? The way I just led myself and guided myself through all these emotions. This is a topic, and this is a conversation that needs to be had. Because looking back.
To when I started my healing journey. I am a completely different person now, um, in many ways and, and my growth and my evolution and how I think, how I perceive things, how I'm able to shift my perspectives, all those things. But mostly I'm different in the way I view healing. And how. I have a lot more tenderness, empathy and compassion for my healing and what that means now and, and how I view it as differently. And because I've been able to shift that.
I feel like I'm able to actually dig deeper within myself and, and find those triggers on pain points and process. Of the things that I need. To be processed without the extra added pain of. Why am I here again? Why am I doing this again? I thought I learned my lesson. Why am I being triggered by this? All that judgment. And so if you're listening to this and in any way you've opened up your mind, you said I'm going to change. I'm going to grow. I want to evolve.
I'm going to start listening to stuff. I'm going to go to therapy. I'm going to sit with plant medicine. I'm going, there's something I'm not happy with. I'm going to grow that's that's healing, right. And any. Modality that you've chosen. I've chosen way too many in a short amount of time, but it's helped me. Fast forward in a way, a lot of things. But I have also. Missed a lot of lessons and a lot of points that in my journey, I've had to go back to.
And relearn the right way, the slow way, the calm way. And right before I ended self-mastery with Maria and I took the three month sabbatical to really. Hone into what you first was going to be about. My last episode was healing has no finish line and that's, that was one, one of those moments where I finally was able to realize that and really hone into what healing means to me now. And I want us to dig deep on this because I'm going to tell you a little story.
Of what pain kind of came through for me, actually in the middle of the, of the night, last night I had already started my menstrual cycle and I will pre-phase with this. If you have a menstrual cycle, That's a beautiful time to dig deep into yourself and release things. Right? When we shed our uterus, it's literally a death every month. There's a mini death in our lives.
And as we get to release everything from the past, you know, for me, For 34 years, but also the past month, the last week, the last few days. Any pain that comes up, any trigger that comes up like this is a really good time to just dial in inwards. Have compassion for yourself. Calm yourself down. Feel. The slow down is your period is your menstrual cycle. And if you don't get one, that's still okay. We know in our bodies 'cause I didn't get one for few months, actually. Looking back.
That's probably why I didn't get one is because I had to learn these lessons and, and help women that maybe don't get a menstrual cycle anymore. Either as we in my body, even though I wasn't getting the physical cycle, I would feel my emotions heightened get super emotional, but then there was no release. I wasn't allowing myself a release. And I was able to start journaling and just doing more breath work and really sitting with things.
And so now on my period on my cycle, what came up for me and this doesn't happen every month, some months I'm like, oh, okay. I can, I feel a little more emotional, but it's not deep and heavy. Uh, this one's been deep and heavy and it's been deep and heavy. For a couple of reasons, right? I'll walk you through what the emotion was first and how I was able to kind of dismantle it. And how I lead myself through, through my own healing so that you can see that not only do I struggle with. Things.
I have triggers. I have pain. I have paths and things come up for me, but also by you hearing me lead myself through something, I hope that initiates your leadership, your emotional intelligence, your compassion, your nurturance, your feminine energy. Towards yourself, right? Giving yourself that moment, allowing yourself to really just be held by yourself. And so last night, In the middle of the night, obviously I think this has been sitting in my subconscious.
I wake up and I, and I started thinking of all the times when I was younger. That I didn't have people show up for me. My mom, it was only me and my mom. She kept me away from mostly everyone. My friends weren't that close to me. They were never allowed to come over. My mom had a lot of mental illness. If you don't know my story, she was very controlling. She, she lied a lot. She was very manipulative. She was, you know what people call nowadays narcissistic type of behavior.
And. That's what I grew up around. So that's all I knew, but I also knew that it didn't feel right. That I was so separated from everyone that I had to grow up fast, that I had to learn things fast. My mom didn't speak English, so I had to. Be an adult's really young. And we were in and out of houses and getting evicted and there was a lot of inconsistency pain. And in a way I always felt like I had to show up for her because she was so mentally unstable, but nobody showed up for me.
And because I grew up fast and I became very independent. I didn't have people in my life asking me, how are you doing? Are you okay? Like, I was never even able to really truly ask people for anything. And when I did, I felt guilty. I remember like, Even praying to God. And I might get emotional during this episode and I love it because I want you guys to feel the rawness of this. It's like, I remember asking God for things when I was younger.
When we were getting evicted when we were struggling with money, when, when things felt so uncertain, what I didn't know We're a next meal would come from. And I remember asking God and feeling so guilty. Like, God, I'm sorry. I know other people have it worse, but please can you help us? And I'm sorry. And I. And I will. I always felt like I had to give or not. I was like, I'll give up chocolate. It's kind of funny because I love chocolate, but I was like, I'll give them chocolate or whatever.
I felt like I really loved at the time. I was like, I'll give it up for a month. I'll give it up for two months. I'll give it up for, for awhile. I promise I'll give it up. I always felt like I had to give an order to receive. I never felt worthy of people showing up for me, not even God, I didn't even feel like God was, I was worthy enough for God to be like, you know what? You deserve a hand you deserve to not feel as stressed out at 10, 11, 12, 13 years old. I didn't feel. Worthy. Period.
And so middle of the night, last night, those feelings came up. It's around my mom's birthday and I don't speak to my mom. And so when those feelings came up for me, I started really, I started looking for validation of all the other ways that other people never showed up for me. And. I had to like walk myself through it at night. I'm like, Maria, this is your mind just playing tricks. I tapped a little bit and I went back to sleep.
But like we know emotions are there and the subconscious is there and the triggers are there. So you can ignore them forever. So the moment I wake up. I felt the heaviness. I felt the emotion. So I did some more EFT tapping and I, I recognize my emotions. I was like, okay, I'm feeling someone worthiness. I'm feeling the pain. I'm feeling all these things. And then I was like, okay, where's this coming from? I started getting curious, why is this here right now?
Obviously, as a part of me, it's always lived there and I've done a lot of healing through it. And old me would have judged me in and be like, why are we here again, Marie? I thought we just healed this last March. You know, last year, March, when we went to the retreat, we did a lot of the mother wound healing. Why is this coming up again? And so I started getting curious and I was like, oh right. I went to dinner with today's mom a few days ago.
And she is like the epitome of what I've always wanted a mother to be like of what I wanted a mom to feel like she gives to her child. She cooks, she's nurturing, she's loving she's soft-spoken she's caring. She never gives up on any her kids. She. She shows up. And. She was struggling through some things. And I remember. As she was speaking, thinking, wow, like how beautiful is it that now, even though she's not my mom, she gets to be my mother-in-law.
I get to have this, a little portion of what a mother should be like in my life. So add that to. My mom's birthday, just being, you know, in the last, the last day or so. When you're listening to this, her birthday, would've passed by now, but. Her birthday was end of July, July 30th. And so at that together, my stepdad and I had a conversation about her the other day. And. I was like, oh, okay. That's where it's coming from.
So then I started thinking, wow, I really do still struggle currently with asking for what I need. And. I felt some shame. So now I feel, I felt the pain. The initial pain. And then. I saw the event, what happened? I saw the story. I was like, okay, this is what's happening. This is what just happened. And then I started feeling the struggle of pain and I felt shame. Now I felt shame and pain. And no judgment. Thankfully, I was like, I'm not judging myself for feeling this.
I'm going to let it feel. I'm just going to feel it. I'm going to feel it out. I started crying. I started crying. I started crying. Teachers in Iceland at this point. And he's he texts me. How's your morning. I told him I'm super emotional. I feel really, really emotional as I'm sending that message. I'm in the midst of it. And I'm like, oh my God, like he's on vacation. You know, I started doing what I do when I was younger.
Oh, I'm not worthy of him giving me 10 minutes of his time and attention on a text message because he's probably busy on vacation. And I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy of his time. I'm not worthy of him listening to me. I should just not say anything. I'll just say, yeah, everything's fine. I'm great. And I was like, no. I was like, I'm feeling heavy emotions.
And this man is obviously an angel in my life and I love him to death and I can't wait for him to be my husband because in my tone, I think even in the text messages, he could see that there was more and he's like, what can I do to support you? And I just started bawling even more and I'm going to cry now, even talking about it because. When we choose to be vulnerable. And choose different than what we think we deserve when we can see the trauma where we can see wow.
I really struggle with feeling worthy of people. Showing up for me. We get to change the narrative of her life. And that was a big aha moment for me. And I cried even more, but I cried, happy tears in the sense, because I was like, wow, I was able to really. Be vulnerable with my partner and tell him how I felt. Without making him responsible without saying. Well, why did you do this three months ago? Because now I'm looking for evidence, right? As women, we do this a lot.
Well, Well, get really mad about something our partners did or relive a pain or something because we want to look for evidence, I'm sure that there's been some point that subconsciously teacher has made me feel maybe not worthy of his time. He was maybe short with me one day he was busy or. He said something the wrong way. So I could have, I could have made that morning about him not being there for me. And how can you not show up for me? Like everyone else? How dare you be.
Another example of, of that. And I didn't choose that an old me would have chose that a hundred percent old me. And in other relationships, I would have done that because I was easy. When your partner is a close person to you, we put so much of our emotional responsibility on them. We put so much of our emotional feelings on them and we expect them to just know and get it. But instead what I did, I was like, Hey, I stroke, I literally set this. I said, I struggle with this.
And this is new news to him. He knows this. But I was like, I'm really struggling with it today and it feels really heavy and very deep. And he was like, how can I support you? What can I do for you? And I was like, honestly, you show up for me. And all the ways, and I love the way that you show up for me. And thank you. And so my big aha moment at the time was. While I got to actually to show up for myself again. And I'm worthy of it and I didn't. And I didn't feel unworthy of it.
And showing up for myself was I recognize my emotion. I didn't judge it. I didn't say, why the fuck is this hearing? We're in the past, I would have, because I wanted to fast forward my healing. I wanted to just like, when I first started healing, I was like, perfect. I'm going to go to therapy for like a good year and then I'll be perfect. Then I'll be great. Everything will feel great afterwards. And then a year happened and I was like, wait a minute. I'm not great. I'm still.
I feel broken still. I feel like I have so far to go. I don't feel good about myself. Okay. Well, I know what's next. I could do something deeper. I'll go to hypnotherapy. I'll do that. And then after him, no therapy, for sure. I'm going to dig so deep. That I'll be perfect after that. I'll be good. I'll be healed. I'll be everything I've always wanted to be perfect. I'll do that. That didn't happen. Okay. I was with a partner at the time. I'll go to, I'll go to couples therapy with him.
Then I'll find out more about myself and how I show up in relationships. I'll be able to heal that I'll have a happy relationship. And then my relationship with myself will be happy. And. I will be good. And then that didn't happen and it felt so heavy and I felt so ashamed and I felt so judged by myself and I felt. Like every single time I thought, okay, well this is it. And it wasn't it. I wasn't going anywhere. I felt stuck. I felt like I took five steps forward.
I hit a wall and then I just would stay there. And my mentor explained this beautifully, and I hope this makes sense to you and it translates. And I'm able to say what she said in translates to you the way it translated to me. She said she sees. Growth and personal development as a big glass building with stairs, but everything's absolutely glass. And then there was no end to it. Right? It's infinite. It goes all the way up to the sky by the cloud, and then it just keeps going. And every time.
You're going up the stairs, your. You're growing, you're learning. You're evolving. Your journey is getting bigger and better. And then. There's a lesson you have to learn. And you're looking out the window and you're like, wait a minute. I've seen this before. I've been here before. Why am I struggling with this again? But you're not seeing it from the same angle or anymore. Now you're on the second level.
And then you're going to walk up to the third level and you're going to live life and life is going to feel great and amazing. And bam, you're going to hit another struggle. Maybe the same, maybe a different one. You're going to say, why am I feeling pain again? But now you're on the third level and you're looking down. You're looking down, all the lessons, you're looking down, all the struggles. And then it's going to keep happening. Fourth level fifth level, 20th level, a hundred level.
We all seem to think that people around us have it more figured out than us. And I'm here to tell you. And I hope that from my story this morning, just, just this morning, you realize that we don't all have it figured out, but we all are choosing the people that you think. Have it better than you or the people that you think are more evolved than you all were doing. And all I've shifted was realizing that. I am not seeing like, my lens is different now.
I'm not seeing what the same vision anymore. I'm not learning the lessons without any growth. I have wisdom now I've experienced, I've gone through things. I can talk about divorce because I've been through divorce. I've talked about pain and heartbreak because I've been through heartbreak and pain. I can talk about healing, a mother wound because I have a mother wound. I can talk about not having a father around because I didn't have a father around.
I can talk about losing myself in relationships because I've lost myself in relationships. And so it doesn't mean that none of that's ever going to not happen again or I'm not going to feel that pain again, or it's never going to happen, but now I get to see it from a different lens. I've spoke about this before, but when you, you get to go, you go to the eye doctor, they say, oh, does this one look better? Or does this one look better? And you're like, oh, well that's the second one.
Oh, we're the first one. We get to choose. We get to go, go, go cook. Nope. The second one, not the first one. The more you grow in you learning, you evolve you'll see things differently. And so when we want to just rush our growth that we want to rush to the finish line. I think of all the things we would miss and then we would get there and something will happen to us. So it hasn't happened to us before. And then, oh bruh, I'll bring our whole world crashing down.
That's what, that's why we as humans, especially as women, we shouldn't put our value into money and things because I know plenty of women that are rich and have all the things, and they're not happy with themselves. So why would you want to get to the finish line and say, well, I'm, I'm completely healed. I've made it. I'm here. And then one small thing happens in your life and it tumbles you down from the hundredth floor that you rushed up to.
You rushed up to that a thousand floor and the one thing happened to you and it took you down to the first floor. Because instead of walking the stairs, you sprinted up the stairs, he didn't learn the lessons. You didn't enjoy the journey. You first, a journey to self, a journey to self it's. A journey. There's no finish line. And as I'm telling you these stories, and I'm telling you all these things, I really want you to take a moment to look and view your life.
As a movie, as a story, as a book. Whatever it is that you enjoy. I don't enjoy movies as much, but if you enjoy movies, great. I enjoy books more. I enjoy stories. I enjoy hearing S. Pete great storytellers, people telling me things that really resonate. And in every story, there's an event that happens. There's a struggle. There's a summit and there's a lesson. So think of each chapter, having all four of these for you. Each staircase having each four of these.
And every time you're going through it, you realize, wow. Okay. Something happened and it can be great. And then there's a struggle. And then there's a submit, there's this big aha moment. And then it feels like you're walking on. On water. You're wow. You're in, everything's infinite. Now I learned so much. This is amazing.
And then there's a lesson that you feel even more on top of the world and then bam, there's another scene that happens and it doesn't have to be good and it doesn't have to be great. It could be whatever you want it to be. But what I've learned the most in, in creating my story, writing my chapters is that. If I can find a way. To shorten that time between this, the scene, the event that happens right. The scene like something happened. And I didn't like it. I got triggered at her.
I fell on the floor. I felt embarrassed. I felt. I felt dumb. I can't believe I did this again. I felt judged by myself. I felt whatever it is, right. Those harsh emotions that we feel sometimes if I can shorten the gap between what happens and the S the lesson that I'm here to learn. I'm not sprinting to the top. But I get to take big. Deep leaps up the stairs. I get to take empowered steps up the stairs. And now when I hit the hundredth floor. Or the thousand floor or the hut Twan.
200,000 for however life is limitless. It doesn't matter. Right? Whatever floor hit. Now when something happens to me, I'm not going to come tumbling down. cause I'm like I could see for what it is now. I'm like, okay, well, something happened. An event happened yesterday. The event had to happen for me was that pain that I felt in it translated into this morning. That was the pain that I felt, you know, the, the scene was the thing that came up for me, the trigger, then the pain happened.
Then the, the big aha moment. I got to be vulnerable. I get to just love more parts of myself. I could see this for what it is and I get to heal it. And the lesson is. I am worthy. I've always been more than him. I'm going to continue showing to myself that I'm worthy. And what I did in between that, that aha moment and the lesson is that to get to that right. To fill. Cause I'm sure you're listening to this and you're like, well, how do I get from the pain to like the lesson?
How do I, how do I shorten that gap? How do I. How do I get from the event to the lesson? Sit with yourself. Be curious, right? Journal. Don't put it on anyone. Else's no one's responsibility and it's no, one's. Issue, even if somebody triggers you. I mentioned this before, too, but when someone triggers you. It's like you have an open wound on your arm, pretending that there's like an open wound. You've had that for your whole life. There's an open wound in your arm that, that no one created.
Right. Because even your parents, they did stuff the best that they could. They didn't purposely like craft this like wound on you. And so you have this big wound on your arm and people around you could come and bump into and you're like, oh, that hurt. Why did you do that? Why would you hurt me like that? The other person's like, well, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that I hurt you. I've had no intention of hurting you. I'm so sorry. That's a trigger. We all carry triggers on our bodies.
We all carry emotional triggers. We have emotional pain. But we can't get mad at somebody for triggering it for bumping into that pain, especially when they didn't cause it, especially when they had no idea, it was even there. And so when I work through my pain, I journal and I view it for what it is. I don't try to blame other people. I don't even blame my mother. I don't blame anyone. I try to give to myself exactly what I needed when I was seven, eight years old.
When I was praying to God and giving him. You know, offers for, for help. When I was offering him chocolates now I'm like, God, I think you. Thank you for everything you've helped me with and I need help with this. Can you please show up for me? I don't feel like I need to give him something in order for him to show up for me. I am worthy. And so it's cultivating them practicing that every single day. It wasn't overnight. I'm 34. I started my journey at 27. End of my 27th year.
That's a lot of years. And it's been a journey. It's, it's been a journey of me actually loving and having enough self-compassion for myself to understand this. And I hope that this is just me scratching the surface, and then there's still so much more that I could still develop into because I'm here. Uh, to help thousands of women, I'm here to help millions of women. How many, however many women are to be in my path. I want to help you.
And if you don't have the same vision or the passion to help as many women or people that's great. Guess what? You still help the people around you. If you're a mother you're helping the, the women around you, the kids around you, the boys around you. If you're not a mother, your friends, your sisters, your siblings, your, your cousins, the people around you make an impact. You make a difference. You are here. God put you on this earth for a reason.
And so whatever you want to be, be the best of it. Become the best of it because you deserve it because you are worthy. And I will leave you guys with that because I can continue talking. I am in such a deep state, as you can tell if a feeling. My myself and my emotions. And I know that this is a message that needed to be translated to you guys. I hope that in my pain. And my struggle. You could see your struggle and see how beautiful you are. Through your pain and through your struggle.
I hope you have a beautiful week and I will talk to you guys next week. As we come to the close of this episode, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude and admiration for you. Taking the time to show up for yourself is an act of self love. And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might benefit. And also, if you love this episode, please rate and review us. When you do, screenshot your review and email it to us for a special gift.
Our Rediscover Yourself Worksheet. This worksheet includes exercises to help you uncover your authentic self, and assess the areas of your life that are misaligned with the true you. Email it to info at maria fuentes dot net. Also stay connected with us on social media for updates and more inspiration. You can find all this information in the show notes. Again, thank you for being here and I cannot wait to continue this journey together.