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Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small, and I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast as everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place from empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now let’s begin.

Turning your mess into your message

Hello and welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Day 1 of a 5-day challenge. I hope you guys are here for some fun and some education and a little bit of a challenge. So, this challenge is turning your mess into your message and over the next 5 days, I’ll jump on live, give you guys a little bit of a chat video lesson and then give you a challenge to partake in.

This challenge is one that really resonates with me because it is one that I see myself in and I go back 5, 6 years of my life, and I just remember what I was feeling, what was going on at that point in my life. It feels to this day still kind of dark and heavy, and there was so much of the pain. What we’re going to talk about today is turning that pain into your purpose and allowing you to tell this story of triumph, of growth, of healing. So, let me know if you’re joining live or listening to the recording. I also have some fun, potential to win some stuff at the end here. If you can’t join the whole time, make sure you come back later and listen to the whole recording cause I’m going to be giving away some things for free. Yay!! Everyone likes free stuff. I’d like to also hear from each of you. Pop in the comments if you were thinking about kind of your own pain to triumph story and just to be clear, triumph does not mean that you’re perfect. None of us are fucking perfect, so we’re not going to talk about perfection today. We’re talking about growth. We’re talking about breakthroughs.

Pain into purpose

We’re talking about transformations, so I want you to go back in time and just close your eyes for a second. You can bring your hands to your heart. Just take a couple deep breaths. And if you went into a little time-traveling spaceship right now and you stepped inside and you closed the door, how far back in time would this time traveling machine take you to what you would say is maybe your darkest moment with chronic illness or emotional trauma or turmoil in your life? How far back would you go in this spaceship? I just want you to think about what was happening at that point in your life. If you were looking at your life like a movie screen playing out, seeing this version of you go about her day, what was she doing? What was she experiencing? What was she feeling on an emotional level? What was going on in her mind? What was she saying to herself? What was she surrounding herself with? What were her habits, her patterns? How did her physical body feel or the things that caused her the most pain or she was complaining about, or what were the things that were challenging her most in her life?

I just want you to kind of take a snapshot of this image of you, of where you’ve come, how far you’ve come, and what that looked like in the past. Just let your time traveling spaceship bring you right back into today, right here, right now, tuning in with your full presence, your full attention to really get the most out of this. You can let your hands down and open your eyes.

We all have a moment of pain and we all have a varying degree of what that pain looks like and what that story is. But I want you to know and know for sure today that your story is unique and it has its magic and it has its wisdom and its growth. And that by sharing your story, not only do you help heal the world, you also help heal yourself, and so we’re going to talk about that story today. I’d love for you to put into the comments, how far back did your time traveling machine spaceship, how far did it take you? What year was it or what age were you or about how many years ago was it? Can write this in many different ways and I want you to pop that in the comments. And then I want you to tell me what were at least a few adjectives, descriptive words that were happening during that time.

So, you might say, this took me back to 2006 and I was age – what was I? I think I was 18 in 2006. And what are some of the descriptive words that were happening if I’m going back to 18? Personally, I’d probably say something like graduating high school and stress and perfectionism and lots and lots of back pain. Those are some of the things that were kind of standing out in that moment of my life. So that’s going to be part of your story. This is part of our healing is sharing this with the world and letting our light shine and not holding back our voice anymore. Do any of you have any sort of thyroid issues, thyroid imbalance, Hashimoto’s, Graves’ disease, hypo- or hyperthyroidism? Oftentimes when we have an imbalance in our throat chakra, it shows up in the physical form, shows up in our life and the way, not only our physical body functions and our metabolism, that control center of your body and communication pathways, but it also shows up in how you speak and share and express yourself.

So potentially, especially my ladies out there with thyroid issues, you’ve been blocking or dimming your light, blocking off that story. That’s so potent and so powerful. And who knows? Maybe some of your healing actually lies in that story, so what if we started to take off the covers and the layers of the dirt that we’ve buried it, and maybe we don’t want to remember it or something, or we’re ashamed of it, or we’re afraid of what people are going to think, or we just don’t want to go there. Or we think that we’re so different from everybody else, no one will relate. Whatever reason we put dirt over that story for in the beginning, we’re going to start to excavate that today because that story does not deserve to be covered with dirt. It deserves to be shared with the world and you deserve to be liberated from it and also just allow yourself to open up to the deep healing that’s come from it. So that’s not obvious to you yet? That’s okay. We can work on that.

I can help you work through that, but I want to start by also sharing a little bit of my own pain to triumph story, that turning your pain into your purpose story. And I have two main ones that have really started to surface in my life. The first is my struggle with chronic illness. So many of you know this story, you follow me along and you’ve heard this story, but this is something that I utilize in my business, especially when I’m talking to people that are new to this community to show them not only that healing is possible, but look how far I’ve come. And if I’ve come this far, you can too.

I take them back to seventh grade and I start talking about what seventh grade was like for me. My parents got divorced. I was experiencing perfectionism, a boatload of stress and puberty, and I was diagnosed with stomach migraines, and I was living in this constant kind of bloat type of pain. I describe what was going on in my life during that time, and then I take them to, okay, that started to relieve itself, but then it kind of moved around in my body. And in high school, I saw 17 doctors by the time I was 17. Over the period of about two years, 17 doctors and I was prescribed narcotics. I had overdosed on narcotics on accident, the homecoming parade, and I puked and I was in pain and I had nowhere to reach because no answers were given to me. I just kept taking pain pills, pain pills, pain pills, because I didn’t know what else to do as a 16-year-old girl. I was lost, I was confused, I was extremely self-conscious. I did not know how to express myself and I was internalizing all this stress because I also didn’t have healthy stress coping mechanisms.

Finally, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and I had an answer, but that answer felt so much like a death sentence, because there wasn’t a treatment to fibromyalgia other than taking antidepressants and muscle relaxants and anti-seizure drugs for the rest of my life. And that moment, it was so unaligned. I didn’t want to live that life anymore, so I took myself off of the medications within a year of being on them, and I was off at college and I was finding myself and figuring out who the fuck is Sarah Small? Who do I want to be in this world? And I started to learn. To learn about food and educate myself. And I thought the best thing I could do for my body is become a vegetarian, and so I became a vegetarian and that lasted for six years as a vegetarian, but I realized after six years of restricting myself to not eating the foods that might’ve actually helped me heal faster, that it was finally time to reintroduce meat.

And around that time, I also realized that there were a bazillion foods that I could not eat, and it felt so restrictive. I felt so constrained by the foods that my body was accepting versus the foods my body was rejecting, and so I decided to reintroduce meat and I went to go see a holistic doctor because yoga had turned me on to this mind-body connection. I went to go see the holistic doctor, and I ended up becoming diagnosed with celiac disease, my first real auto-immune diagnosis. At that point, I had this label that I thought would define me for the rest of my life. I thought that that became who I was and that was a restriction that would never ease up and it would never loosen its reins over me. And so I started to navigate what the fuck can I eat? I started to really, really educate myself on food labels and what was in my food, and where my food was coming from. And through that process, a whole other world opened up to me of food sensitivities, and I found the autoimmune protocol and I started to eat according to the AIP diet, but what happened? And I didn’t have this as an intended effect, right? But I ended up eating about 15 foods and I was in the deepest, darkest place of lack that I had ever been because I felt so restricted, and this had been years of feeling this way.

I put myself in emotional situations and relationships and friendships that I didn’t see until later were toxic. I was still holding onto the limiting beliefs that I had when I was in seventh grade, that I had to be a perfectionist and I was responsible for everyone. I had to take care of everyone and that I wasn’t worthy of love or success or abundance. And so here I was, utterly lost and confused in my life. And that was the moment that I thought was my breaking point, my deepest, darkest, darkest moment. But what I came to realize was that June 28th, 2015 was actually my darkest moment, and that was the day that my brother Jordan committed suicide. That was the day that my whole fucking world cracked open and came apart.

And when that happened, my grief came to the surface, but not just my grief. It brought with it to the surface, all, all, all of the other emotions that I had been avoiding, burying, and not releasing for 27 years. They came to the surface and I fell apart. But now I realize as I look back, that falling apart was the biggest, biggest gift I ever received and it was the catalyst to my actual healing because all the food changes and dietary changes I had made up to that point had only taken me so far. I was at a plateau and I did not know what to do next. And then I finally faced my emotions. I felt them because I had no choice, but to feel them and through seeking out the support, working with an energy healer and a coach, and finally investing in myself, my mindset, my well-being, the longevity of my life and my vitality, through that investment I was actually able to heal on an emotional energetic level. And that was a moment that my life actually turned around, that I had changed. And from that point forward, I’ve continued to evolve and transform and to get to where I am today.

And so here I am energized, healed, not feeling defined or constricted by food or my illness. And that is part of my pain to triumph story, so I want you guys to feel into that. How did that feel for you as I told you that story? Do you see yourself in that story at all? Were you relating to the story? What’s the story captivating for you? That’s version one of my pain to triumph story is my healing journey.

The story of building Autoimmune Tribe

I also tell a story of building this business, this brand Autoimmune Tribe, and I talk about three years ago where I was in a job that I thought was the best job ever, that I would be there forever until the day I died or I retired. I thought I would be there and I thought it was a line for me, and it was an industry that I was very passionate about. But it was like one day I woke up and I was like, how the fuck did I get here? This is not fulfilling me. I’m underpaid, undervalued, underappreciated and I am stuck. There’s no forward movement in this company. I am waking up every single day, doing the same fucking thing over and over and over again. And I live for the weekends, but I can’t do anything on the weekends because I’m just fucking exhausted, so I sleep on the weekends and I do it all over again from Monday to Friday. It’s a grind and it’s draining and I’m getting paid $25,000 a year to work 60 to 70 hours a week. Why? Why am I doing this? Why am I still here? Why am I settling for this and allowing this to be my life?

So, I woke up and I decided I was going to finally stand up for myself and create boundaries around my life. I went and I called my boss and I said, Hey, this is why I deserve a raise. This is the work that I put in. This is the potential that I have, and I really think that I’m deserving of this. I hung up the phone and I cried because it was so scary to ask for that raise. Took so much courage to ask for that raise. And she said, I’ll call you back. I’ll think about it. She called me back and they said, no. No, we don’t have the money to pay you anymore. Sorry. This is just going to be what it is. And I said, okay, I’m done. And that was even scarier. I fell on the floor and I really cried, and I allowed myself to feel into that emotion of letting go of something that I thought was going to be the rest of my life, that I was very attached to emotionally and financially, because I didn’t know what I was going to do next because when they said, no, I said, I’m done. I quit. I’m moving on with my life. This is not how I want to live out my life. When I am 80 years old, I do not want to look back on the past 40 years and go, why the fuck did I do that? And why am I still there? I did not want to regret the career that I was in or my passion and purpose in life. I wanted this to be aligned and I wanted to feel good about it.

I knew that I was worthy of more, so I quit and I took the biggest leap of faith that I’ve ever taken in my entire life. Because that day I was getting paid around $3000, maybe less dollars a month that I said no to, and then I had $25,000 of credit card debt. Not the healthy debt, the bad debt, the $25,000 of credit card debt, because I wasn’t being paid a salary that I could support myself and live on in the first place. And then there I was, and I didn’t know what was going to come next. All I did was create an Instagram account and started posting every single effing day. And then I made a Facebook group and I started going live and I started showing up and I started facing my fears. And you know what? Two years – only two years – two years later, I am here today on January 28th, 2019 making $10,000 a month with Pinterest, monthly viewership of over 600,000 people, a Facebook group of over 1400 beautiful fucking souls, an Instagram account of over 26,000 people. And I show up every day and I get to live my dream. I get to live my purpose. I bought a house this year. I got engaged this past year and I love my life. I love my life. And that is what I wanted.

And that day I said no was the day that I started to create this. If I had not said no to something that I thought was good in order to create space for something that was aligned and great, amazing even, I would still be there today. I would be settling, but I said no, I decided this is where the buck stops here and this is the moment that I change my life and I create my reality and I manifest my desires because I am a powerful creator set on this universe for a reason, for a purpose. So here I am living my dreams, building a brand called Autoimmune Tribe. I want you to let me know, do you see yourself in that story at all? Or maybe that story inspires you and it’s a place that you want to be. It’s a place that you want to go.

Going from Point A to Point B

If you’re new here, welcome by the way. My name is Sarah Small. I am the founder of Autoimmune Tribe, and what I want you guys to do today for this challenge, turning your mess into your message is I want you to get clear on your pain to triumph story. I want you to write out – I was at point A and now I’m at point B – and that is going to look so different for all of us. Your point A might be one step ago. Your point A might be 10 steps ago, so we’re all going to have a different width and amount of growth and transformation we’ve been through. But I promise you, you’ve been through at least one step of transformation, so you all have a point A and a point B. And the other thing is your point A might look like on a scale of 1 to 10 a 4, and your point B might be an 8, but in between you went down to a 1 and then a 2 and then a 6 and a 7 and then a 10, and then back to an 8. And that’s okay, too. You all know, because you’re here, you’ve had pain. You’ve had struggle that oftentimes there is a roller coaster and that it’s not all linear. It’s very, very rarely linear. So just know too, that your point A and your point B can have ups and downs and dips and peaks and valleys within it. I want you to think about where did I start? When you put your hands on your heart to start today and you hopped into your time traveling machine and you went back, where did that take you? That’s likely your point A. Describe it. And then I want you to describe a little bit of the journey with just the main kind of points. You don’t have to go in. This does not need to be a book that you’re writing, because it could be a book someday, but that’s not the point to today here in reality and this present moment. Instead, you’re going to highlight some of the main things that happened and shifted for you, and then I want you to show me where your point B is. So point A to point B, that is going to be your pain to triumph story. There’s lots of room to create and meld and mold this to your unique story and how you want to do it. That’s part one of your challenge today.

Part two of your challenge is also to declare and define your why? Your why is what’s going to keep you going when shit gets hard. When either in your healing journey, you feel like you want to give up, or you feel like you’ve exhausted all of your options, finances, and support, what’s going to keep you going? That is your why. If you want to launch your own business someday, you also need a why, and that why is going to be your anchor for the days that you don’t feel like showing up. The days you feel like throwing in the towel, the days you go, oh my gosh, what did I get myself into? Is this even working? Is anyone even listening to me? This why is going to anchor you and ground you and keep you sturdy, steady, and rooted.

 

Some of my whys for why I do what I do, my why for the reason I show up and I help other sacred souls heal on an emotional, energetic, spiritual level is that I do not want… I would like to prevent anyone from experiencing the depth of pain that I experienced, the amount of confusion around my body and my emotions that I experienced, and I want for all of you to experience that same cracking open of your soul so you can have the breakthrough and you can have the a-ha moments and your life can change, and you can truly believe that it will change. It is changing in this moment. My why for building a framework for women to also grow their spiritually, energetically aligned businesses is that I don’t want it to take you five years to get your message out into the world, that I want you to shine your light today. Not only for the people, the souls that you are going to impact, and you are going to change their lives, but also for yourself and your own healing. Because when you shine your light brighter, you give other people permission to do so as well.

 

So, my why is so that you can save your time because every minute that you are on this earth is precious. We only get this one life, and I want you to feel abundance so you can reach your goals and your dreams in your business, but also the ones outside of your business for your life, for your wellbeing, and you can invest in your health in a way that feels really good and free.

 

My deeper whys, beyond why I just show up and I serve, are personal and those whys are allowing myself to purchase a home that feels like a sanctuary. A place that I can heal, that I have the space and the clarity to heal myself and be an inner healer. My deeper whys are allowing myself creating the opportunity and ability for myself to feel abundant, to live in a place of abundance, because I lived in a place of lack for so long. To be able to create freedom in my life. Freedom is so precious and so important to me to know that I have the financial freedom, the health freedom, the love freedom, the creative freedom, the spiritual freedom to be who I want to be and express myself authentically. My deeper why is my family – my fiancé and my two babies, Bo and Bella, our dogs. They light me up. They allow me to feel loved and to express love, and I want the best fucking life with them and I want to share that with them. And so I want to be able to support my dog’s health. I want to be able to support my fiancé’s health, and I want to be able to support my own health so that we can all go on adventures together and that nothing is holding us back in our life. Those whys root me in what I do. They are the foundation of why I show up every single day for all of you, because I have a why, and that why keeps me going and it tells me don’t give up, Sarah. Don’t give up. Don’t even think about giving up because you got this. You got this, no matter how hard that day is, you’re going to get through this.

 

So, your challenge today is to share with me in the Autoimmune Tribe Facebook group, step 1, part 1, your pain to triumph story in as clear, concise way as you can possibly share it. You do not have to be totally healed to do this. You just have to be one step ahead of where you once were in your life. Part two, I want you to share your why or whys. I have many whys as you saw for wanting to do this. Why do you want to be here? Why do you want to turn your mess into your message, or start your own business? Why? Why do you want to do that? I want you to get crystal, crystal clear on why. That’s your part 2. You’ll put those into a post in the Autoimmune Tribe group using #messtomessage. I think I put it in the description of this video as well. #messtomessage.

 

Here’s what I want to tell you, and if you’re still here, thank you so much for listening and still being here. If you comment and you participate in this challenge every day for the next five days, and you put your post in there with #messtomessage – I’ll ask you to do something different each day – then you’re going to receive a second bonus for a course that I’m opening the doors to right now. The course launches today, and everyone who signs up over the next five days gets a bonus. But if you win this challenge, you get a second bonus. The course is called Launch your wellness biz. It is as it says. It’s simple but it’s impactful. The content in here is potent, and it’s so clear and it’s going to make you feel so confident in finally launching the business. It is a 30-day course for Lightworkers to turn their pain into their purpose, and everyone who signs up over the next five days will get their choice of a bonus.

 

The first is a 30-minute strategy session with me. We’re going to chat over video over Zoom, 30 minutes for free when you sign up for this course, Monday through Friday this week. The second option that you have, you can choose the 30-minute call, or you can also choose a 30-minute Instagram or social media audit. I’ll go live and I will audit the way that you’re showing up in the world, getting clear on your message and we’ll go through how to improve that in a very, very specific way, so you get to choose one of those bonuses, and if you participate in the challenge all five days this week, you have the opportunity to win both of those bonuses when you enroll in the course. So, you’ll get a strategy session and you’ll get an Instagram audit. That’s over $300 extra value and the course is $333 so you’re basically getting as much value as the course is in bonuses when you participate in the challenge and when you sign up this week. I’m going to drop the link below.

 

I cannot wait to see you guys tomorrow for Day 2 of this challenge. If you have any questions, please come to me. Share with me what’s going on in your mind, what’s going on in your head around this? What fears do you have? What objections you have around finally taking the step to put your message out into the world and turn what you thought was your darkest moment into your soul’s purpose? Drop those comments below. I’ll drop the link below, and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.

 

That’s what Sarah sounds like what she’s really, really fired up. This episode has been brought to you by the lovely Autoimmune Tribe Facebook group. My friends, I show up there every day and Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays are especially fun in this group. On Mondays, I do free coaching with Sarah. I put a post into the group that you can add to that thread and let me know what’s going on in your life. Where do you need help? And then I don’t just write you back where to buy something or a resource or a book to read. I go live, girl. I go live and I answer your question in real time and you can join live, and you can ask more questions. So Mondays are all about coaching, free coaching.

 

Wednesdays, we do the soul work. This community is about going deeper. It’s about the deep shit so on Wednesdays, I give you some journal prompts or a little exercise to do on your own, and this allows you to take your healing to the next level. Just some free guidance. Fridays in the Autoimmune Tribe Facebook group, we share our magic. I know I’m not the only health coach/energy healer practitioner in this group. You guys all have so much magic to share as well, so it’s an opportunity for you to share that. What are you working on? Do you have a freebie? Do you have something coming up that you want us to know about? Maybe an event you want to invite us to, maybe we’ll be there. And it’s also an opportunity for you to share authentically and let us know, okay, maybe this week was really hard for you. Maybe you’re having a challenge and you’re looking for support. You’re looking for some sisterhood. You’re looking for the people who get you. And so, it’s an opportunity for you to share that as well.

 

So, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, extra special in the Facebook group, but every day is a celebration and a healing party. I’d love to see you in that group. I will pop a link in the show notes. Thanks so much for tuning into Day 1 of this challenge. I’ll be back for 4 more days, and I’d love to see you guys there in the group or listening on the podcast and I’ll see you next time.