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www.coachingwithjanel.com
Transform Your Story Podcast - Episode 4: Blue Curtains and Safety - January 2025
Janel: We're sorry to interrupt your podcast for an unscheduled telephone call.
Ariana: If it was scheduled you wouldn’t be apologizing
Janel: I guess if it was, yeah.
Janel voiceover: [music] Welcome to Transform Your Story. I’m Janel Guevara. My clients call me their fairy godmother, but actually, I’m a life coach with a love of words and the women who use them.
Janel voiceover: Join me and my daughters as we have honest conversations about writing, life, and redeeming Happily Ever After in the shadows of the stories we never expected to tell. We recount our experiences as a way to help you see yours in a new light.
Janel voiceover: From content creation to defining your audience and niche, we break down the process into simple steps with practical application. That allows us to nurture hope from ashes, so you can too. Let’s transform your story. [music ends]
Janel: Hey there, It’s Janel Guevara. This podcast is actually a continuation of last week’s. We were going so great. We were almost finished, and then we got a phone call that disrupted everything. We just kept going. It sounds disjointed, but there definitely is relevant content. Again, this episode was recorded in January of 2024. I hope you enjoy the next part.
Janel: Welcome to transform your story. We're transforming something. Our insanity.
Melinda: I mean I think that's technically the goal.
Janel: Transforming our insanity? Our crazy into—
Ariana: —Happy little trees
Janel: —something useable—
Melinda: Oh I thought you said sanity.
Ariana: No.
Janel: [laugh]
Ariana: We are transforming our sanity.
Janel: Into something more stable
Ariana: ehhh. [laughter] Sorry.
Janel: We were talking about Melinda but Ana is very nervous.
Melinda: Ana knows she’s next. She’s got hot seat ants in her pants.
Janel: I know, in the podcast it’s going to be like 30 seconds difference but here it's been like 10. And the squirrels are like totally having a rave.
Melinda: There's nuts everywhere.
Janel: Yeah. You know, for me, like, I guess that’s where I was at, is that I have spent the last year not going, “oh my God, there's something more, there's something more, there's something more!” But more like, “Oh, this memory? That goes there.This memory? That goes there.” And then just following the trails and learning how to face the difficult things, feel the things—feel the feelings that I felt back then that I repressed for survival. And then just feeling them, and acknowledging them, and letting them go. And you know, doing the somatic trauma work to find that level of grounding, and healing, and being, you know, after doing this for 20 more years than Melinda, 30 more years than Ana. Melinda’s still in the, “oh my God, what is this? I don't know what this is?” phase. And I mean I still have some of that in my life but it's for things that are like, I don't want to say they're not—
Ariana: Like what’s for dinner?
Janel: No, deeper than that. You know there’s still things in my personality that I do that are quirky, and it’s like well, why do I do that? Is that just me? Is that my autism? It's like, is this a need that I've not acknowledged? Is this just a personality quirk? Because what happens when you’ve been in a traumatic situation and traumatized as an autistic or neurodivergent—I like that Ana always points out that, you know, the symptoms of the diagnostic criteria for autism are like the trauma surrounding it when you didn’t get your support needs met.
Janel: That’s kind of how I feel where I'm at in my life. It's not that I have these big pieces that I don't understand, it's like, “Oh these are the little details that go with what we were talking about and this story, and that story, and where does it all fit?” And Melinda’s still in—Melinda’s still putting big rocks in. Trying to figure out the big rocks, and I mean, she knows of, you know, just understanding that she survived covert abuse, and she's autistic, and she's rebuilding her life, there's a whole lot more to her story than that, but we're not going to go into it right now. There's stuff that she's still working on that's unresolved that she's not ready to talk about, and that's okay too. But she's got the big pieces and she's putting it together and she's making that stride forward and Ana has less trauma than both—well no, Ana has—
Ariana: —Less trauma? Less life experience.
Janel: [laugh] Ana’s trauma is different. You know, she’s not ready to talk about that either. But we all understand what it's like to not know who you are. To be shamed for who you are. To be chastised for doing the right thing by people who didn't want to do the right thing. And I think that really resonates with the understanding and the telling the story. You get that. There's that something that you've been chewing on forever, and sometimes that something? That something isn't what we thought it was. Now I thought all I needed was somebody like the woman that I asked in the car, who patted my hand and said just keep praying. I thought if I had had somebody who actually took me under their wing and showed me how to get enough rest, or do my dishes, or just even take me out to coffee and just talk, I thought that that would change my life when in reality honestly that moment, while it drives me to help other women who are where I was, the actual real depth of my story has nothing to do with that experience. I think that's where content creators and writers struggle the most sometimes when they're trying to tell their own story. The details that stand out most in their mind aren't actually the details that drive their story.
Ariana: [humming]
Janel: [laugh] I think that’s awesome. I don’t know if they heard it. You need to do that—
Ariana: [humming] Dun dun duuun!
Janel: I mean it really is. I think one of the things that’s really helped me look at storytelling is listening to Ana and Melinda talk about fiction. ‘Cause like I said, my background has always been nonfiction, because my life and story have been so strange that I'm like “really?” You know, truth is often stranger than fiction, and in my case, 137% absolutely. So we're going to take a moment, and I’d like to talk about—actually, I’d like you two to carry the conversation so you can get all paralyzed and traumatized and get it out of your system now, ‘cause I’m gonna keep talking, but I actually would love for you, probably more Melinda than Ana, but ping pong each other and share how a good story is driven by the theme, not the actual details and events. Can you do that in fiction? And give maybe a couple examples?
Ariana: Of all the things you could have said, that’s the one I can’t help with. [laugh] I don’t understand how a theme drives a story. I’ve got to figure this out. I didn’t do my homework quick enough.
Janel: How about you Melinda?
Melinda: I couldn’t understand everything Ana said. I’m trying to think, oh, I—
Janel: This is the don’t cheat your happy ending stuff.
Melinda: oh it is? ‘Cause I’m sitting here like, well what is the theme of a book, versus this, versus that, versus that. ‘cause I'm not very good with the technical name. I can do it by feeling and gut instinct but I don't have a name for it and I feel like that is such a neurodivergent experience, where we're like, “oh, no, I know the pattern for that, but like we don't actually know what it is we just can see the pattern.”
Janel: Yeah, we catch the vibe.
Melinda: Yeah, I definitely catch the vibe. I catch a vibe. Not socially but like, other ways.
Janel: That’s fine. I’m trying to catch up with you guys so we can have the brainstorming sessions like we do for your novels and whatnot. One of the things that's really helped me is a book is called Save the Cat Writes a Novel. If you're a fiction writer and you haven't looked at it, Save The Cat is the bomb. I love it because she basically says all stories break down into like 10 or 12 different categories and these are what drive the story. And you can have crossover, and you can have this, and you can have that, but to actually have a good story, it's got one underlying theme. For those of you who have read Save the Cat, you'll know what I'm talking about. Basically the premise is you have about 10 or 12 different ways to tell story, and all good novels follow a pattern. There are things in The Story Grid they talk about there's some elements that you can skip, but you have to know where to play with them and insert them in a different place so they're not traditional but they're kind of still there even if they're not there.
Janel: But life is like that too, that was gonna be my point but I guess I'll just talk to myself again.
Ariana: Theme is the one thing I do not have a good grasp on.
Melinda: I know! I don't have a grasp on theme either. I was like what does that mean? Like what is the theme? I was like romance is a genre. What is, like, I couldn't even come up with the list of themes in my head. I was like is that a Trope? Is that the same thing as a Trope? What is—I don't know what's happening.
Ariana: What went on in my head, I'm like what is a theme? I can't even think of a list.
Melinda: Yeah, right?
Ariana: Abuse and power and, that's what I'm thinking like in Shadow and Bone. I'm like, well there's themes of abuse and power and manipulation, but I'm like, what does that even mean as like a theme? So yeah. I guess—
Melinda: It’s so annoying. I try to track my books on like, there's an app where you track what you read, and it lets you hashtag it with different themes or like things that—I don't understand them at all. There's like dark romance and there's this description and that description I'm like I don't even know what that means. Like what is happening. I love this book, I've read this book 20 times, I can almost quote it, but I don't know what any of those are. And that’s—yeah. That's totally my entire life is like, I know what this is. I've read it. I'm very familiar with the material, but I don't know how to quantify it the way you're quantifying it. That makes no sense to me.
Ariana: Not understanding the deeper meaning is—this is like English teachers. The curtains are just freaking blue guys.
Melinda: Oh my god! When I was in high school you guys, I was in English class and it was they wanted us to read, oh God what was it, The Great Gatsby I think it was. And my brain, it just could not make sense of a single page because it's so descriptive and I am not a visual thinker or a visual person. So it just kept building this description, and my brain must be like this is useless information and then I couldn't read the page because it was just so descriptive that my brain was like “Yeah no, we don't know what to do with that.” Like if you told me to picture a mouse, like I can picture a mouse. Because I've seen a mouse before but I cannot build from scratch. Okay? I don't need that much detail.
Melinda: And we had this whole argument in high school before, like before we were even writing. Like Ana wasn't really writing, I wasn't writing, Janel was still like mid-brain injury and wasn't writing or anything like that. We had this whole debate about no the curtains are just blue. The author means the curtains are just blue. It does not have to symbolize something deeper. And we went round and round and it just has never died. This conversation has come up for the past 15 years of like, no maybe the curtains are just blue. Because that is like, look at that now in the context of like, Oh hey, by the way, we're autistic which is why we think the curtains are just blue. Because [laugh] we don't know that they're not. Like you know, we just—the curtains are blue and that's the extent of our knowledge.
Janel: Right, well and that right there, that's kind of like the whole point that I’m trying to make with this, is the things that drive our story may actually be the blue curtains.
Ariana: Oh no [laugh]
Janel: And we simply—
Ariana: We’re doomed
Janel: We simply didn't understand how important the blue curtains were. And that's, I know that sounds—
Melinda: I feel like I talked about this the other day. When you're writing and you have a fiction like me and Ana are writing fiction, you have to remember to put—like, there are rules. You can't just drop in a big detail later, you have to hint at it three times, and you have to have these underlying elements, and subcategories and like, there's so much more depth in it that you have to remember to put in there. And then you think about it in life where you're like, “oh yeah, I have to put that there, and tie it back in this.” Life works the same way you just don't recognize it yet. Like you haven't—and sometimes there’s just this big moment and like Janel right now is having that big moment that ties back into those other details. She's at that part of the book. I am just collecting all these random details and have no, like occasionally I've gotten like a little bit of, I kind of have my own few big moments of like, oh that connects to that, but I'm still reading and there's still more connecting back and life is the same way.
Janel: Two days ago Melinda sent me this huge long text message, “Is this what this is?!” And she goes—
Melinda: Yes, all the time. I’m constantly sending “Is this this?”
Janel: Yes that is exactly what I've been trying to tell you for the last year. Yes, that. You know when you have somebody who is in the trauma besides you and can't get out of it, they're going to see the same things you do because you know, it doesn't make sense, and you're stuck there together. But when someone is on the outside who sees life differently because their experiences are different, unless the person who has been in the situation is able to get on the other side of it, you are lost in it. My husband, he made me feel safe up until I met him, or I should say when I met him, my entire world shifted. When I met him in person for the first time, the thing that struck me, that blew my mind is for the first time in my life I felt safe. And the contrast blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind. Because until that time where somebody who actually made me feel safe, made me feel safe, I didn't realize how unsafe I had felt my entire life previous to that. I was 42 years old before I understood what it meant to feel safe. That just blows my mind. Because the first one ended so bad I doubted myself. I’m like, can I pick a good man? And my relationship with my current husband started through a friendship that was completely accidental. You know, shortly after my first one ended and I wasn't looking for anything and it was just this whole—
Melinda: Stranger than fiction.
Janel: Yeah! It was funny, and it’s another story for another day, but I kept it on the down low because I knew I had gotten so much flak for getting a divorce in the first place, even though I had tried to explain the situation. And people in my life had watched for 20 years the dynamics and the destruction, and were still like “no, you need to stay.” You know, so I didn't really say anything. But I did question myself. Is this insane? I'm getting into another relationship after this. The defining factor is that I realized how safe my husband makes me feel. Even today. It took me 2 years of being with him before I actually stopped having to remind myself that I was safe. I'm safe. I'm safe. I'm safe. I looked up about two, two and a half years and I'm like, oh my God, I haven't had to remind myself I'm safe. I stopped reminding myself I was safe, and I just finally felt safe. There are aspects in Melinda's life that I have tried to explain this idea of safety that she still doesn't understand because she hasn’t experienced it.
Janel: Part of the reason we can't tell our story is we struggle to see these basic things that we don't understand what actual safety is because we've never experienced it.
Melinda: It's funny that you use contrast because that has been a very popular word in my current relationship. We use contrast all the time. It's almost like—when something is about to happen that we get nervous about because of a PTSD, like an ex thing, we're like, oh they're going to flip out, and then we say it, and then the other person doesn't flip out and they just give an actual normal reaction and you're like oh, okay. And it's shocking. It's like a cold bucket of water over your head even though everything went right because it's the stark contrast of, I should be getting screamed at right now. You should be mad at me, you should be storming out of the house, you should be XYZ, and they're not. They're fine. And it's equally as disturbing and I think that's like—contrast is a huge huge thing going through this. It's the stark change is just, it's mind-blowing and it hurts like getting sand blasted.
Janel: And it does because you have the ingrain of the pattern that you've been living for. The rub of the pattern that has created a groove and a crease all these years. And when you try to get out of it, it's like mind-blowing because it feels so foreign because you're in the situation you feel safe and safe doesn't feel safe because—
Melinda: Oh, safe does not feel safe you guys. Safe not feel safe. This is where like, Mel is right now is safe does not feel safe. That's where I am. Janel is at the point where she just actually feels safe and I'm trying to like get acquainted with safe because it is a whole deal. It's a whole deal. That's yeah. That's a whole other.
Janel: And when you don't understand and you've lived for so many years not knowing your story, when you try to readjust it's mind-blowing at how unhealthy actual healthy behavior feels. And it's just like, wow, like have we digressed and regress it's just, it's mind-blowing, because it's so disturbing.
Ariana: Because you put the fish—
Melinda: It’s so disturbing.
Janel: Yeah. You need to speak up kid.
Ariana: [louder] Because you put the fish in clean water. Yeah, anyways.
Janel: Yeah, I mean that changing, that, you know, not knowing what was going on and then finally understanding what was going on and then getting to safety? Man, that stuff is just unreal. Unreal.
Melinda: That’s a journey. And there's a difference between—I know we’re saying like, knowing your story, but there’s a big difference between being able to look at stuff and go like,that happened, and that happened, and that happened, but like it goes so much deeper. It really does. Janel's been explaining to me and I kind of started to have it happen in my own consciousness of like this happened, and that was traumatic, but it happened because of three other like minor traumatic things that like, put you in the position to have that happen to you to begin with. It’s like grooming. Your trauma was groomed into you most of the time before it happened to you. You are remembering big events but there's so many other smaller pieces that go into it that if you don't follow the whole rabbit trail, you're not going to get as far as you think you will. You're looking at a surface level—
Janel: Yes—
Melinda: And you need to go deeper.
Janel: Yes
Melinda: I think it's so much deeper and that's the hard scary part is you have to go into the dark deep dark cave and follow the trail and it's terrifying.
*Janel: Yeah, you know and I started working with a somatically trained therapist with starting with music therapy, the Safe and Sound Protocol, about a year ago and I've been working with my therapist for about a year. If I hadn't been able to take understanding of my story into the therapy room, I wouldn't have made the progress with her that I have. You know, just in the last few weeks, I realize that there is a piece of my story that had a profound, I mean ripple effect through my entire life, my absolute entire life, that I didn't even see as an issue because it was just like at the tail end of a series of events that happen when I was 7 years old and I never never put them together until I realized all the big things and how all the big things fed in. The things that I was looking at and found the underpinning for them and now I'm to the point where I'm finding the little things that were those pivotal moments. And I mean it's stupid stupid things that I haven't thought about in like 35 years. And these little details that if you look at them you're like “really that caused you all that trouble?” Yes, yes, that was profoundly changing for me. That profoundly shifted the entire direction of my life.
Melinda: Yes. I feel like a lot of people hear trauma and they think it has to be this like, you know they're picturing blood and gore and like, horrible horrible nightmare scenarios, and it can really be something simplistic that for some reason you just internalize it just hurts. It's a deeper cut than—it looks like you know it's like when there's a paper cut then there's like a really deep paper cut on your knuckle you know what I mean, it looks like a paper cut but it's not, it's so much deeper and then it gets infected and then it festers and your thumb turns gangrene and it falls off. Like—
Janel: Really. And it is. And it sounds so ridiculous. But it’s these moments that shape us. People look for the Big T traumas. Physical violence and—
Ariana: Shootings or war.
Melinda: Starvation.
Janel: But for someone who is on the neurodivergence scale, I really feel like some of these profound moments where we didn't get our support needs met are actually more devastating for us because it sets us up, it's like if I can't get this tiny little need met why would I be able to get this big need, or why would I be able to pursue this big dream, when it's the little things that we can't make sense of. I think that's the rub. It's one thing to have a traumatic event like my auto accident that changed the pivot of my life but the only reason my auto accident was so gutting is because I had had all these other little things happen in the past that I didn't get my support needs met or my emotional needs and my need for basic safety and some of these other things, then there was no way that this catastrophic brain injury that left me with 15% permanent brain damage was gonna turn out okay. And I think that's kind of where we are with our stories and it's like the big things are driven by the little things nobody notices.
Janel: Now I can’t speak to neurotypical people who don't have autism if it's the same way for them but for us, it's the little things. It is the little things that end up devastating us the most.
Ariana: I think that's just what CPTSD is. It's just you know all the little things. So like neurotypical it, but, yeah.
Janel: Is that profound prolonged lack of—
Ariana: It’s small traumas over the course of time lead to big big issues.
Janel: Yeah.
Melinda: I mean, it’s like being hungry your whole life. No one ever feeds you but it's not a physical hunger, it's like an emotional mental one. You can feel it but you don't know how to fix it and you're just hungry your whole life. Like that's just what that is.
Janel: If someone comes along and actually gives you a meal,
Melinda: Yeah!
Janel: [inaudible] it's so disturbing because that's not the experience—
Ariana: You feel sick because you’re like what?
Janel: Yeah, you feel sick because you've actually had what your body needed all this time and but it had no point of—
Melinda: Now your body doesn’t know what to do with it.
Janel: Yes.
Ariana: ‘Cause in the past, you know everybody's always said you just ate, you're fine, but you're like, I don't feel like I just ate.
Janel: And I sure as hell don't feel fine.
Ariana and Melinda: Yeah.
Janel: But then, well this “don’t feel fine” feeling becomes “I guess this is normal.” And so you live in the lack.
Melinda: As you grow up everyone gets miserable, and they're all like, yeah, nobody really knows what they're doing or who they are and you're like oh, okay. Maybe everyone was just pretending to have it all together and I'm just normal but no. No it's not that either, because then more stuff pops up and Tiktok starts personal attacking you with videos and you're like aw man.
Ariana: Tiktok diagnosis you. [laughter]
Janel: But then you take it to your doctor or your therapist and they're like yep that tracks and you're like son of a biscuit. Holy smokes.
Melinda: Yep.
Janel: I feel like we have talked through this and I guess the moral of the story and where I'm going to wrap it up is the things that most profoundly affect us aren't the things that we can point to.
Ariana: Right off the bat.
Janel: Right off the bat. Right, exactly. If your story doesn't make sense and you can't look and go “my story is that of a neurodivergent woman who experienced covert abuse and generational trauma and then got a brain injury on top of it and it feels crazy because it was crazy,” then you need to pause. If you can't define your story in just a few words, I would hazard to guess that you don't actually know your story. And that's where you need to dive deep and start listing those details and going where's the connection? Where's the pattern? Particularly if all those events don't make sense.
Janel: I still have the original list that I wrote in 2020 when I did that first exercise. I'm telling you, I've gone back and looked at it several times, particularly when I was creating my Five Steps to Share Hope from Your Story. Every time I go back and revisit it I'm like it's no wonder that I didn't understand what was going on in my life because these events in and of themselves are so disjointed. Now that I understand I'm neurodivergent, now that I understand how the generational trauma impacted me, now that I understand how the covert abuse played out in my life, it's like oh, yeah, that all makes sense. There’s my Golden Thread.
Janel: We'll talk more about Golden Threads later or you can sign up for my freebie and download it take a peek for yourself.
Ariana: Read all her wonderful emails.
Janel: Read all my wonderful emails. [laugh] Yeah, you wanna know my story? People have asked me “what's your story?” I'm like I can't tell it in less than 60,000 words so I have actually put together parts of my story that apply to you guys in an email series that I go through, tell my story, share a relevant lesson, and give you a takeaway that you can contemplate how it might overlap or look in your story. So you can do that or not and just keep tuning in. But if you can't look at your story and know where all of these crazy disjointed pieces connect, I would encourage you to dig deeper because you might not actually know your story. For today let's transform your story.
Ariana: See ya.
Melinda: [inaudble] wave at me?
Ariana: You’ve gotta say bye!
Melinda: Bye
Janel voiceover: [music] Thanks so much for joining us today! I’m Janel Guevara. I hope you caught a glimmer of hope, a glimpse of possibility, and a sprinkle of fairy dust. Join us next time when we take another step towards Transforming Your Story.
