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Transform Your Story Podcast - Episode 7: Transforming Theories into Clarity - February 2025
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: Hello it's Janel Guevara. Welcome to transform your story. Today I'm going to record a solocast. Melinda is in the midst of moving. It's been a little chaotic trying to catch up with her. That said, we just finished recording next week's episode with the three of us. I'm excited to share it with you.
Janel: The context of the podcast for next week is what is the thing that you have learned in the last year. So I thought since I'm the one actively digging into all of this, I thought you might find it interesting to hear about some of the things that I learned from my experiences. What I've taken away from the last year. The girls surprised Mama, but I was like “wow, yeah, I can see that.” I feel like some of the concepts that I have learned in the past year have been more about going from the theoretical concept to how something became active, or actively presents in my life, or has presented. What it feels like how it connects and how it affects me. I really paused a long time to think about what did I learn in the last year? And I think for me, if I had to declare the one thing about the thing that—the thing, the thing, the thing, that hit me most in the last year is Clarity. I have always been a reader, always been a studier. I have so many hours of continuing education, and trying to figure out my story and where it was, and what I was experiencing, and how to fix it, and just this gaaah of frustration of going, “Okay, well, I know this, but what do I do about it?”
Janel: A lot of times I have to pause and remind myself like 80% of the content online, especially in the coaching spaces, all the content is talking about the what and the why, the what and the why, the what and the why, and when you're marketing your content, that's what you do. You offer the what and the why, and then you sell the how. And I've talked about this before. I've read so many books and taken so many courses, and you know, I’ve purchased coaching for myself, and working with my therapist, and all of that. But there's just been, like okay, I understand the theories, how do I fix it? And I think the thing that I walked away with this year is the clarity of how things have affected me, how do I fix them, how do I overcome them, and how do I get over the trauma of something.
Janel: And for me, it has been identifying the nuanced difference between understanding the concept of something like say, vulnerability, and what it feels like in my body. What is Clarity? Clarity is understanding a concept and idea. A principle. But how does clarity present in my body? And being able to go Clarity for me is a lack of confusion. Something clicks and makes me go “[gasp] aha. That's what that is. That is that, and this is this.” Being able to take a concept or a theory or an idea and identify actually how that concept, theory, or idea presents itself in my life and allows me to go “Oh that's what that is.” It was fascinating. If I hadn't been doing the work of actually creating lists of experiences in my life I would not have begun seeing the patterns. And for many many years, you know, the last probably—I mean I've always done that as a writer to some degree, but the awareness. The awareness that I now know is Clarity for me, that's been the most powerful tool. So [I] write about a concept. Understand the theory. Can explain it. But I never figured out what that felt like in my life. Being able to assign and go “Clarity feels like a lack of confusion” and just pausing and going “am I confused about something?” I have a situation, or circumstance, or an experience that comes up, it feels like something's missing. Leaves me kind of, “Hmm, I don't understand.” That not understanding is confusion. And that confusion comes from a lack of clarity. Being able to connect that “Oh that's what that feeling is?” and then thinking “Oh, how many times have I felt that? And when? And in what other situation?” It's like, “Oh wow.” There are pieces of my life that now make sense. And I've done this around multiple significant behaviors and ideas like vulnerability, and creativity, and authenticity. A lot of these core values that people hold to, but are actually not so much core values as they are basic human needs and desires. And being able to sort out which is which, and how all that plays together, and who I am, and what I really want, and what I was like convinced that I wanted but it really wasn't, and just having the clarity to understand all those times I was confused? It was a lack of clarity and that's where the disconnect happened.
Janel: So I think I've spent the last year really going, Hey, I have this feeling. I don't know what it is. I have this experience. I don't know what it is. And then following the pattern. I've spent a lot of this last year looking back at the stories that I've recorded and the details in The Last 5 Years, and going “Oh, is that what that was?” And having these big chunks of my life, I feel like they were given back to me because I finally understand what went on, what happened, how I got there, why I made a certain choice or didn't make a certain choice. And it's just, it's been fascinating for me to finally understand some of these things that I've only known in theory. One of the things that I've done is adapted some of my coaching resources to be more encompassing of how to create awareness. It's been exciting, and you know, on one hand, I'm like “Oh, I have this new coaching resource!” But on the other hand, it's like, “Oh God I finally have the answer to this question that I didn't understand.”
Janel: And then it's so neat because I will be chewing on a concept or whatever, and go to my therapist and we'll have this conversation over it and she’ll get so excited ‘cause she's like “yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” [laugh] And it’s so funny. Because my first therapist was so exasperated because I was trying to explain these concepts. She's like “You understand this.” I'm like “No, no I don't.” And I couldn't explain to her. So she was great, but we went back and forth for almost two years, and at the end of our time together, she finally looked at me and she said “I think you need an autistic therapist.” I found that hysterical and I was like “Yeah I'm thinking maybe I do.” It was funny because within like the week [laugh] she had found me an autistic therapist who specialized in religious trauma recovery, and it is been the best thing. She and I clicked and we just have this rapport. I don't have to explain myself. She understands the concept I’m explaining. Always has questions to make me think, and I'm like, “No, I'm tired of questions, I have all the questions. Can we talk about this?” And she's great.
Janel: That's a heads up that if you do not have a good rapport with your therapist and you feel like you have to explain yourself, you don't have the right therapist. This doesn't make my original therapist bad, it just means she was not for me. That's one of the reasons that we cultivate and we tell our story is because there are people out there right now—they're currently experiencing the things that we have lived through and gotten out of, and we have the language. We understand. Whereas, you know, there's people out, there's therapists who are trained that don't really understand. And it's not that we have to have the answers, it’s not that we're supposed to have the answers, but we can have solutions to support others while they’re living their experiences. And sometimes that is a wake-up call. It depends on what your story is, and where you're at, and what you have.
Janel: But I laugh because I love the analogy of, all these years I thought I'm a weird horse when in reality I'm a normal zebra. And I know people have shared that. But we have the power in our story to find all the normal zebras and to stop thinking that we're weird horses. That power of clarity is so important. Uncle Ben in Spider-Man said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” We can understand things in theory but if we don't put them into practice, either ‘cause we don't understand how, or we don't understand what we're experiencing. That becomes a whole other layer of places that we need to work and transform. And we go around in circles and for me, I've played hide and go seek with myself for many many years. Not because I wasn't trying to understand, or didn't want to know, or was ignoring some things. It was simply because I didn't know what to do with what I saw. And that's why the exercises in my Five Steps to Share Hope from Your Story are so powerful. Because it helps you begin curating your experiences to realize how we've been affected or where we've been affected. And when we step back and take a look at our experiences it becomes easier to see a thread because we didn't realize that certain things connect. Finding the golden thread in our story is really powerful.
Janel: I was going back through one of the episodes of the podcast. I was having a conversation with one of the girls. I don't remember. But listening to—I think it was last week's podcast. I don't know where it was, but listening to myself tell the story about the church lady that I asked for help back in 1995 when I was overwhelmed with motherhood. And listening to that, and thinking that was like the pivotal defining moment in my story, and then realizing that didn't even have anything to do with my story, it was merely a symptom of a much deeper problem. It was beautiful to finally have some of those realizations. And then sitting here later, you know not being able to communicate what was going on. Not understanding that what I was experiencing was not okay. It really is powerful to tell our story because you've got things in your life that others have experienced but don't have the words to explain. And telling your story is one thing but then knowing what you did to walk from point A to point B to get out of it, to get away from it, to heal, that's significant. It is very important and very significant.
Janel: I don't know how many women are sitting out there with my story. It's one thing to be sucked into a high-control religion, or find a narcissistic partner, or be neurodivergent, but the combination of the three seems severe. And part of the time it's like, is it even fair? Did I draw the lottery ticket of “Congratulations you get all the suck.” But on the other hand, it's like no. This is my story. And I see the patterns that set me up for the situations and the experiences that I had. And now that I see them I can’t unsee them. But it's a good thing because now I do, and now I can explain that. And the people who know know. If you know you know. And if you don't—
Janel: I love that my first therapist, she had two master's degrees. And she said, “My experience only takes me so far.” She said, “I can listen, I can engage with you, but,” she's like, “I don't have those experiences.” So when I talk about my confusion or how crazy some of the stuff made me feel, my new therapist gets it because she is a religious trauma survivor as well. So the rapport is there because we speak the same language. I think it's a big deal when you find someone whose story you resonate with, because some aspect of their story that they have to share and what they use, if you resonate with it so deeply it's because you have also experienced that. For some people, our stories are train wrecks. And it's like slowing down on the highway and backing up traffic because you're curious about what happened. But there are others who you know see what's going on, pull over, stop, because they know. They've been there. So it is about curating an audience that gets it. That understands. That we can be ourselves with. And using the language that we know, and that we use, and then understanding why we use it. It's a very powerful thing. For the last year, I have been basking in the clarity and each step of clarity brought me closer and closer to, I don't know, redeeming all the chaos.
Janel: When I wrote my Fairy Godmother Manifesto back in 2020, I understood the concept. But now I know what they mean. And I guess part of it is do it scared, but when dealing with things as heavy as I have, you really need to understand what it is and and be healing. Because sometimes doing it scared is great when it's making a new recipe, or learning to ride your bicycle, or taking up a new sport, but doing it scared when it's something important like trauma recovery or encouraging someone to make different health choices. You need to know what you're doing. You need to understand what you're doing, and you need to know where your limitations are. And the only way we can learn where our limitations are is to dive deeply into our stories and gain Clarity.
Janel: And I think that has been the best lesson for me is gaining the clarity to know where the boundaries, are where the borders are, where something is too difficult, where there needs to be accountability, where there needs to be responsibility, where I need to make those changes. And leaning into that, and making different choices when things didn't feel right. So that has been powerful but I didn't get that until I started looking at my story, and really embracing what I saw, and learning to use that to heal. So that has been my lesson for the year. And the lessons I have learned are definitely not a stroll through the Sunday Morning Comics, that's for sure. But every time I’m able to put one more piece into the puzzle that has been my life, a picture emerges in a beautiful beautiful way. I encourage you to keep going, to keep looking, to keep digging, diving deeper into your story so you can transform it.
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.
Janel voiceover: Content for educational purposes only. Our stories are not your stories Please be cautious and contact your local domestic violence hotline if you need support. [music ends]
