April is Sexual Abuse Awareness Month- a time to raise awareness about sexual violence and educate communities on how to prevent it, honor survivors, and show those who have been impacted by sexual violence that they are not alone. Please share this story.

Violated by the adults she looked up to, emotionally abandoned by her parents, and failed by the institutions designed to keep her safe, trauma seeped into every corner of Janelle Hill’s existence.

Yet, Janelle embarked on an extraordinary journey, defying the odds and committing herself to healing with unwavering determination. Through therapy, extensive study, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge, she transformed her pain into power, becoming a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and the owner of Refuge Mental Health Services.

But Janelle's mission is more than personal triumph. As a board member of The Army of Survivors, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness and promoting accountability for sexual violence against athletes, she is a signal of hope for others. She proves that even when healing seems impossible, we can come out stronger on the other side.

Please join us on this uplifting journey through pain to healing. I hope Janelle’s story ignites a spark of courage and resilience that emboldens us all to keep growing.

5 Key Uplifting Lessons:

1. Embrace vulnerability: Confronting our deepest wounds requires immense courage and vulnerability. By sharing our stories, we not only heal ourselves but also inspire others to embrace their own journeys of transformation.

2. Challenge limiting beliefs: Our beliefs shape our reality. Examine the thoughts and narratives that hold you back, and consciously rewire your neural pathways to align with your authentic self.

3. Seek support: Healing is a complex process, and seeking professional help and guidance from trauma specialists can provide invaluable support and resources on your journey.

4. Practice patience and self-compassion: Transformation takes time and self-reflection. Embrace the process with patience and self-compassion, acknowledging that healing happens at its own unique pace.

5. Ignite a ripple effect: Your personal growth and transformation have the power to positively impact future generations. Embrace change not only for yourself but also for those you love.

After you listen, grab your ticket 🎟️ for Uplifters Live on May 17, where you’ll meet the inspiring Uplifters Ambassadors you’ve heard on our podcast, including Janelle, who will speak in our mastering meaning and purpose panel discussion! Learn about this one-day in-person gathering for creative growth and collaboration HERE.

Welcome to the Uplifters podcast. I'm your host, Aranzas Savas, and today I'm joined by Janelle Hill. Janelle is a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, and she's the owner of Refuge Mental Health Services. She's on the board of an organization that I just admire so deeply called the Army of Survivors. And what they do is bring awareness, accountability, and transparency

to sexual violence against athletes at all levels. And Janelle is really passionate about helping survivors find their own voices and live healthy, meaningful lives. And a big part of that is raising awareness regarding the prevalence of sexual abuse. if that's a trigger for you or.

something that you're not in a good place to hear about, maybe this isn't the right time to listen. But if you are ready and you are able, I hope you will listen carefully as Janelle shares her story and what she has learned, both about this unfortunately large scale abuse that is happening but unspoken of.

and how she helps her clients manage through the long lasting and far reaching effects of this abuse. Janelle, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here and very excited to share with you and just get a chance to open this conversation.

where does your story begin Janelle?

I was...

on my way home from my sophomore year of college and had just experienced sexual assault by my coach and really felt like a deer in the headlights, had no idea what to do, didn't know who to turn to. So I found myself in my former youth pastor's office and he picked up the phone.

and called the police dispatcher and I just froze. I didn't know what to do or what to say. I wasn't necessarily sure that I wanted to report it to the police. So being in that situation where all of a sudden I was on the phone with the police was definitely something that impacted me. And they told me to.

speak to my parents and anyone else that I felt would be a support system to me during that time. And I really tried to convince them that even though I was, a young adult, that I didn't want to tell my parents that my parents would not be supportive through that process. But I think there's this perception that family will be a support in times of trauma. So I was

really strongly encouraged to do that. And I think really my parents' response to that assault was in all honesty, more traumatizing than the actual experience. I remember sitting across the room from my dad and my mom was right next to me on the couch and I just blurted out, I was raped by my coach and.

My mom just stared at the carpet, you know, for what felt like forever, and she was shaking her head. And she finally said, "'Why on earth would you tell the police? "'That's gonna be so much work.'" And they really didn't mention anything about the assault for several weeks until one day I was in the kitchen, actually, making some eggs, and my dad walked behind me and noticed that I was crying.

and asked what was wrong. And I told him that the investigator had said that they didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest. And as he was walking away, he said, why would you let something so small ruin your day?, it took six months of really going back and forth with the detective and just seeing how broken the system was. And...

My god.

as a young adult, not realizing that I could have got an attorney at that time, and I could have placed a private charge and not had to just go through the mercy of whatever the detectives were willing to invest in my case. I think that would have made a big difference in how I perceived the situation. But ultimately, they...

Mm-hmm.

ruled that there wasn't enough evidence. my coach had specifically said that he knew I wouldn't be stupid enough to share what had happened because he was coaching a team of middle school girls and he needed them to trust him. So.

Um, I think that really lit a fire in me to not be silent about it, even if there was nothing I could do legally. Um, cause, in a way, even if it wasn't rational, I did feel responsible for the individuals that he was going to continue coaching. Um, and through that experience, um, I started therapy, which was

Mm-hmm.

amazing and I realized through the course of trauma therapy that I had actually experienced sexual abuse by my father since I was a toddler or younger and all of those pieces started to come together and the way that they responded to the sexual abuse by my coach and

their hesitancy for me to go to therapy, and just basically my whole life came into clear view. if I look back on that time as a young adult continuing my college career and finishing my nursing degree, I was really struggling. And it was just a very...

dark time for me. And I think if you've lived a life of dissociation, which I had, where I had no recollection of, 20 years of my life, that it was very disorienting to start to realize that this picture perfect life that you created in your mind for yourself actually didn't exist. And understanding my mom's role in it.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that was the most impactful thing to me as an adult, was that this woman that I'd considered my hero really hadn't protected me my whole life. So therapy was a huge, just a huge tool that I cannot stress enough that if you commit to the healing process.

and do the work that you can get to the other side of trauma. I was at one point diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and that was traumatizing to just then feel, question your own reality and realize.

Yeah.

I don't trust myself. I was referred on to a specialist at that point, and that's the therapist that I've been with for about eight years, and she was able to kind of decode and everything and helped me realize that I didn't have multiple personalities, I just had very distinct dissociative barriers.

that were causing me to really not have recollection when I was discussing different parts of my trauma. she really has played a huge role in my life and just helped me come to a place of stability and owning my own business and having two amazing children and being able to look back on my life and.

not feel bitterness or any hatred or unforgiveness, but recognize that like I have healed and I'm able to let go of the people that have wronged me and see that I can use those experiences for good.it's definitely a process that you should allow yourself to go through to feel that anger and feel the grief and the loss. So as one of my mentors has said about her own life, that it's not a beautiful story, and it's not easy to tell, but it's definitely made me into who I am today. And I'm grateful for what I've learned.

along the way.

Yeah, and I think there's such a distinction between being grateful for what has happened and grateful for what we've been able to learn. One of the things that comes up so often on this podcast is that the power of sharing these stories is so that other people don't feel alone everyone around you

Yeah, absolutely.

was telling you to hide your story and hide your truth and to suppress that. And I just can't imagine just the effects of that alone. Everyone around you was like, it's not happening, it's not real. And that shame causes us to go into hiding and it causes us to end up more disconnected from other people who can, even if they can't heal our pain, at least support and understand. And so to me, that part of the value of sharing your story is so huge.

that it lets others not feel so alone.

Absolutely. And I remember when I went to the army or with the army of survivors to Capitol Hill in 2022, but standing in that building and just realizing that, it's kind of that moment of, oh my gosh, like I'm not allowing.

what happened to me to silence me. I'm literally standing in Capitol Hill and it's a surreal moment even today and any opportunity that I get to share, it feels surreal because you realize I'm doing it. I'm not allowing my trauma to define me. And I think that

Mm-mm.

is such a beautiful thing for anyone who is brave enough to share.

. How far reaching were the effects of the series of experiences for you personally?

I think every aspect of your life, you know, mentally, physically, spiritually, is affected by sexual trauma. I am a person of faith and my own view of God and His role and His ability to protect and His desire to protect me. Because my father also used...

spiritual tactics to kind of manipulate and create this sense that if you know you didn't go along with the abuse then God hated you and was angry at you and I think unlearning that and then trying to teach my children how to have a loving spiritual experience is very challenging and frustrating.

Mm-hmm.

the impact that it has on your ability to create healthy relationships with others and have healthy boundaries with others, the effects on your physical health. I think the impact is endless almost, and that can feel really overwhelming at times. But what I've come to...

realizing my own life that's given me kind of a sense of excitement and curiosity is That if my body is responding in a certain way It's in an effort to notify me or alert me that there's something that I need to release rather than be scared of my body and scared of my anxiety or Irritability. I just noticed. Okay. This is something that maybe I need to look into something that's obviously

Mm.

bringing up my past experience. And I think that has helped to not view everything as a loss and to kind of come back to my body and feel one with my body again. I think so much with my patients, I see that people talk about their body as if it's their enemy. And I think with abuse, we can really start to feel in the aftermath of abuse, like our bodies are against us.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Tell me what that sounds like, either in your head or in the minds of your clients. So I think to say, My Body is My Enemy is sort of one script for it, but what are some of the other scripts that it might sound like to help us really understand?

I think what I see the most is people talking third person about their symptoms. So, like I'm so angry that my body developed diabetes or, yeah, my anxiety is just against me today or depression just doesn't want me to succeed,, as if these life experiences are really happening outside of ourself. And I think to some degree...

Hmm.

our society created this language of, you're not bipolar, you're a person with bipolar, which our intention with that was good, I think, but truly it kind of has created this sense of, there is an outside force that is taking power over me, and I think it's actually disempowering for patients. So to recognize, like I have ADHD and PTSD, but I recognize that...

Mm-hmm.

my brain is responding in a particular way because of my experience. And in that way, I can heal myself and I can heal my brain. But if I think that PTSD or ADHD or anxiety is imposed on me, then there's really nothing that I can do to stop it. So I think it's all in the language that's around us, that's even taught to us in school, in medical school.

Mmmm

nursing school. So it's an internal shift and I think a societal shift that needs to happen to recognize that, yeah, we've had particular alterations maybe in our brain and our body because of our trauma experience, but the body has an incredible innate sense of healing and it's capable of healing and helping patients to shift out of that mindset of

I'm broken and I'll always be broken. What I like to refer to as like a state of perpetual brokenness. It's just accepted in the trauma community where I really like to communicate that you're capable of healing and you have the power to heal and your body is waiting and ready to heal. It's just waiting on you.

Mm-hmm.

that makes so much sense to, especially in these circumstances where people's bodies were taken from them without their consent. And so to further take the control from them and their ability to heal is only going to deepen that sense of trauma. And rather, I think what you're saying is let's give ourselves back control by saying...

Yes, there were things out of your control that happened. And how you move through them and how you heal through them, that is something that you have agency and You get to influence at least.

Absolutely. And I think you can start to develop that language for yourself, even when you don't have any control over it. You know, I mean, I've experienced years and years of severe anxiety, and I can absolutely say in those moments, I did not have any control over that anxiety. But by changing my language, I started to change the way that my brain interpreted.

Mm-hmm.

my body response. And so often with trauma, we develop a phobic response to negative emotions. And anger and anxiety feel so horrible to us that we'd rather just either suppress it or medicate it or pretend like it doesn't exist or completely fear it. And I think even just allowing our body to have an emotional response.

and notice it with curiosity and questioning what is my body trying to tell me and what can I learn from this so I can shift and what skills can I apply? It takes the fear out of it. I think just like a child, if you approach something as a problem that has a solution, then there's less fear there.

Mm-hmm.

And so many of us are operating out of a child state and not really engaging our cognitive mind. And so I'm definitely passionate about people understanding that our brain is capable of changing. It's experienced trauma and it's changed because of the trauma, but I believe it can change and heal as a result of our actions following trauma.

Mm.

And is that really, it's creating new neural pathways, right, that we reprogram through those internal messages. One of the things I always think about is the voice we hear most often is our own. And so that's the one to pay the most attention to. And yet, it's other people's voices that we're largely echoing,.

Yeah, and I think we don't honor the fact that our thoughts are so powerful, but also that we're capable of changing them. You know, I think people can latch on to, I'm having all these catastrophic thoughts and they're so powerful, they're overwhelming me. But they don't realize in that same way that they have the power to create

very strong positive thoughts that can also be powerful. So negativity bias and our effort to protect ourselves, we tend to stop dreaming and stop imagining good things for ourselves. And I think that's a huge loss that I really try and remind.

Mm... Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

patience that you can dream again, you can hope again, and you can believe good for yourself

Beyond telling them that, which I'm sure is very helpful, how do you help them begin that practice?it's different for every person and just recognizing where the person is at But what I start with s when people tell me about their catastrophic thoughts to really ask them, like describe that to me. What do you see? What do you hear? What are you feeling when you're having these catastrophic thoughts?

and I help them to identify that they're actually in a form of visualization. It's just the opposite type of visualization than what we are attempting to achieve because people tend to think, I can't visualize, I can't do that, I can't take the time to do that. I don't think I can focus my mind for that long, but just helping them to shift to, what do you want for your life? What do you want for this moment? And...

Hmm.

and just helping them throughout their day to just take a moment to replace the thought with what you want. And I think that that's easy and simple enough for people to start to recognize that, wow, I am having hundreds of thoughts a day that are not what I want. This is not where I want my life to go. Yeah, and it's amazing, I think, how just...

. Yeah.

creating a sense of awareness around that can start to shift people's belief patterns.

But when it's our habit to turn to those thoughts, and I think so much of it is a sense of self-protection, if I think it maybe it won't happen, or I'll be prepared for it, and I can protect myself in the moment. So when that is our habit to turn to those thoughts, what helps you come back to the story of what you want to create and to...

realign with what's real and true for you now, not as this little girl who is trying so desperately against so many odds to just stay safe and protected.

the easiest place for me to kind of backtrack is when it comes to my kids and fear of them experiencing any type of trauma that I've experienced. And that is a very easy place for me to go. even if it's not easy for me to redirect my brain, I will put in 110% effort because I know and I believe that energy grows where energy goes and that I want them to sense from me a sense of safety and a sense of calm and a sense of connection. And if I parent from a place of fear,

Mm-hmm.

that ultimately is also going to impact them. my children are a huge motivator to just stay in the moment and just manage where I'm at. But again, it's years upon years of EMDR therapy and emotion code therapy and putting in a lot of work Because the more that we fill our brain with information that we want, the less effort it'll take to apply it. So I'm very intentional about really not listening to anything that's not benefiting me, if I have this much time to invest on a daily basis in my healing process, I want it to matter. over time you will change. I think we have this perception of healing that it's going to happen.

at a rapid rate. And I think it happens as quickly as will allow it to happen.

. What do you mean by that?

I think there's resistance to healing. I see it in myself and I see it in patients as well. If I even ask them to imagine being anxiety free, they have a hard time even imagining it for themselves. And again, I think it goes back to that negativity bias and that effort to protect ourselves.

An exercise that I like to do is a what-if exercise and there's two aspects to it. You can do the what-if and imagine every positive incredible thing that you possibly could achieve in your life and that you could possibly dream of and want and allow that to fill your system with hope and anticipation. But if you're dealing with a particular fear.

like say financial stress, to just take it to the bottom of the fear. So, okay, if I'm stressed about my finances, I don't know if I'm going to make rent this month. Okay, well, what happens if you don't make rent?, then I'll be behind, okay? What happens if you're behind? Well, then they'll probably kick me out. What happens if they kick you out? I might have to move in with a friend. Okay, then what happens then? And finally, we get to, okay, maybe you're homeless.

whatever the end of it, and then what's after that? What's after homelessness? And we get to the belief of, well, I'll die alone. No one will love me. I'll never amount to anything. I don't have any worth. And that is where we can make adjustments and we can face that these everyday fears that are driving our life are actually coming from developmental trauma and attachment trauma. And it's not about...

your bank account necessarily. And you can kind of face every single problem with that understanding that, okay, if I'm struggling or stuck in this area, let me get to the root of that. And let me face that and be able to then challenge that. do I truly feel that I'm going to die alone and am unlovable? Okay.

Mm-hmm.

let's address this and let's have conversations around it and seek therapy on it because that's driving how I'm viewing everyday life stressors.

Right. Everything. And I think that's what I'm really taking from this is that belief as an example of I'm going to die alone, I'm unlovable is influencing how we see our interaction with the handyman and with our colleagues and our partners and children and everything. It's how we, I think, are responding to the weather even.

Mm-hmm.

It's influencing every aspect of life, not just the very specific one that

Absolutely.

And I think that's so wise to just to follow that path there, one step at a time to see where it leads and to understand that. And that's something I think we can even start to do alone in journaling and in self-reflection to see what's there. Because even if we haven't experienced massive or profound trauma, we all have limiting beliefs.

Absolutely.

if you want to really get to the core of limiting beliefs, I would look up epigenetics and Gabor Mate and just how deeply rooted we are in familial limiting beliefs. And that even, like you're saying, even if you haven't experienced significant trauma in your life.

if your mother has or your grandmother or you know anyone prior to you that that's imprinted your genetic makeup and it's playing into the way that you're experiencing the world. So and in some time in some ways I find well in a lot of ways I find significant comfort in knowing that if I feel triggered or off about something that I can't quite explain

that I don't need to minimize it or dismiss it, but I can recognize that this might be something that subconsciously I'm aware of that isn't in my conscious knowing, but I'm gonna honor it and recognize it and pay attention to it and not really allow anything to go beyond my conscious awareness because I think in so many ways we're living this unconscious life.

Hmm.

out of just fear of acknowledging where we are and who we are. And that is what, when we go back to healing, as fast as we choose to heal, I think it comes down to just not acknowledging where we're at, not acknowledging that we are accepting relationships that aren't serving us, or even putting ourselves in relationships that we know are toxic and not serving us and feeding into our limiting beliefs. If we can stay in a state of denial,

then we don't ever have to heal that wound. And some people choose.

Wow, so that's an even bigger threat than the alternative.

for me, I am OK with feeling uncomfortable, and I can feel happy and content and very uncomfortable at the same time and know that I'm very happy in the fact that I'm healing and growing and changing. But for some individuals, being uncomfortable.

means there's something wrong with them, or being uncomfortable means they're not happy. And I think we forget that we can exist in two different states and be okay.

So if you go to that example you used earlier about, well, I notice I feel agitated or irritated. You said, I stopped to get curious about it. And you talk about doing that, I think, with both your mind and your body. What does that process look like for you?

I think irritability is a big one for me. And it takes me really stepping back. And I would say I mostly feel it in my body. It takes me a little bit for my mind to catch up. But for me, it is just recognizing sometimes, maybe my children are being really loud and chaotic and I'll just feel this rage starts to build.

Mm-hmm.

And for me, for a moment, I'll think, well, this is ridiculous. I shouldn't be feeling angry. You know, they're yeah, they're just kids. I think most parents probably.

They're just being kids. I mean, I sang this because I've had this exact scenario play out. So just jumping in with my own experience.

Yeah, and you can get into this state of guilt and shame because you know like emotional response isn't necessary. Exactly. But if I just stop and acknowledge that, okay, being loud and obnoxious was not safe for me. So to my system right now, it's setting off all the warning flags that you're in danger.

Mm-hmm.

I'm a terrible person because I'm getting mad at children for having fun and being children. Yeah.

something bad's gonna happen,. And that's what my system is basing this irritability off is a sense of we need to regulate the situation as fast as we can to keep everyone safe. acknowledging that can help me to, okay, it's 2024, I'm safe, my children are safe, we're okay, our system just needs to remember that we're in present day because our nervous system really has no concept of time. So it doesn't know that some trauma isn't happening in real time.

So again, I think just giving your body the recognition that it's not doing something unnecessarily. It's not doing something at random or because you're just a horrible parent. You know, there's something behind it. And when we acknowledge it, then we can shift it. But if we're just like, well, they just must be really freaking annoying children.

and they're too loud and I don't even want to stop and think about it. I don't want to think about my own trauma, so I'm just going to project it onto them and they're the problem. Then we won't learn from those experiences and that doesn't make it any easier.

Or the alternative, I never would blame my children. I would blame myself. The story of I'm a bad person, I'm a bad parent, I'm doing something wrong, I should be better is way louder than...

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

actually blaming other people for their things or seeing that other people play a role. That was a huge piece of my own healing and my own mental health. Because until then, I was just like, I will carry it all. And I don't think that's uncommon among uplifters, especially.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, and recognizing that we have a really hard time identifying with healthy anger and healthy boundaries setting when we've experienced extreme forms of anger. And I think absolutely that is true. So as a parent, you know, we're sitting here questioning ourselves on any emotional response because we don't know if it's unhealthy or if it's normal or good boundary setting.

Mm-hmm.

So I absolutely agree with you. I think that switching over to that side of the pendulum is very common.

Yeah, like, yeah, it is annoying when kids are really loud. Doesn't make them bad people. It doesn't make me a bad person that I find that annoying. It's just, it is. And that's OK, too. And I think, too, the loud noise factor in this is important. this is something we navigated in our marriage because my father was a yeller and it was not a good thing. It was a very scary,, dangerous thing. My husband's family is Greek. They're just loud by default. And it took me years to really understand that volume was energy and communication and self-expression and it.

absolutely had nothing to do with anger in their household. And it was amazing on his part that he was able to understand that I was processing it in a very different way. And I think what you said to me that just now that was so powerful and that I don't know that I've ever heard anyone say before is that our nervous systems don't understand timelines.

Mm-hmm.

that they're just responding in that default patterned way. Is that what that is?

Yeah, scientifically they have shown that our nervous system has no concept of time. So, you know, trauma that happened to me when I was six, you know, if I get triggered in that similar way, it's as if it's happening in current time. understanding that can,, help us to have such a sense of compassion. Because I think with PTSD, it's so easy to think.

now.

it's been 10 years, why am I still reacting in this way? but to our body, it's an extreme effort to protect. And I like to think of it as like a special operations team. if you bring data to the surface, they're like, let me pull up everything that could possibly apply to the situation so that we're prepared,

Yeah. What a loving way to perceive this though. To say we are resourceful and we are trying our best and these are the best tools we had available to us then and they were appropriate then. But now you have more tools and more resources. So for those women who are listening to this.

on it.

And I think maybe we should ask this in two ways, but for those women who know someone who is in the early part of a journey of understanding their own trauma or for listeners who are in the early days of understanding their own trauma, where do you suggest people begin to get support?

In a very practical way, I would say to seek out a trauma specialist. I think all therapists are great, but having that additional EMDR or somatic experience certification is really important if you have a history of trauma, because sometimes, like for instance with myself going into it, I thought I had one life experience that was

Mm-hmm.

And now when I look over the course of my life, I hardly even consider that experience compared to other things that I've gone through. So having someone who was able to navigate through my trauma when I was not even aware that it even existed, I think was the most life-changing thing for me. And I would not be where I was

friends are great andand TikToks and everything that we have available are great. But having a professional that knows what they're doing and has done the work and is certified to help you process through it. The healing process is really important because once you start, it can often get harder and more difficult and you can have experiences where...

Mm.

You don't want to continue healing. I think it's important to have that attachment and connection to help you navigate through those triggers and those ups and downs that other people in your life might not be equipped to handle. I really-

appreciate neuroscientists and psychologists that focus on brain health, because their perception of healing is so different than Western medicine and our view of mental illness versus mental health and brain health So if you can't afford a therapist, then. Start with allowing your brain to have information that can oppose the negative limiting beliefs that you have. Like, let's stop feeding those beliefs when they're not serving us.

Mm-hmm.

Well said. And I think, too, just to give a plug for all the community health centers out in the world, there are places where people can get low-cost support. And I live in New York, and certainly there are a number here. But I think around the country,, there are ways to seek out low-cost help for those who need and want and feel ready to get some support, but maybe feel like they can't afford it. I'm not sure this is true for everyone. My insurance does so much more for mental health support than I ever realized. And I can go to an in-network provider at very low cost, but I can also get ERPs or something like that are completely free for everyone in their family. And so it's worth a check if you have insurance to see what's out there. Not a lot of providers accept it, but.

Yeah.

Yeah. And nowadays, I think they've really come a long way in terms of mental health coverage compared to a couple years ago. And on a practical sense, Psychology Today is a nationwide website that you can go on, you can put your zip code, and you can find any therapist or psychiatrist on there and see what they specialize in, see what insurance they take.

There are those who do.

getting better.

and see their picture and read their bio. And it sounds silly, but I think you can tell a lot from someone's face on whether you feel that you'll have a sense of connection with them. So instead of just, cold calling people, you can connect yourself with people that you feel you might be comfortable with and then understand that if it's not a good fit, you have the right to go somewhere else. I think it's important for people that have experienced trauma to know too.

Mmm.

Yeah.

it's important to go to someone that you feel safe with and that is helping you. And it's okay to leave if they're not helping you.

Mm-hmm.

you went through multiple people to find the person that was really able to support you. And yay, you. That takes, I think, a lot of guts and a lot of work to keep looking to find the right person.

And so I'm really glad that we have that example for all of us to remember that like, if at first you don't find the right fit, keep going till you find your person.

and you are worth doing the work.

Yeah. Oh, Janelle. What a story. What a life. And you're just 35. Ha ha ha.

Just?

I know it doesn't feel that way. But it's true. we have so much life left to live. And I guess, you know, we talk about doing things because we don't want to look back on our lives and say, oh, wow, I wish I'd done that. And I think it's so true for the type of work that we're talking about here, that wherever we are, no matter how...

old the wounds may be or how heavy they may feel that we can begin the change by bravely taking the first steps. if I listen to what you said, so much of it is hearing other people's stories and giving ourselves the gift of hope that change can happen. And then

becoming aware of our thoughts and our voices and understanding if those are in alignment with our current truth and beliefs or if maybe there are some old stories that are driving the bus. I really appreciate the practical and honest ways that you have given us today to explore our own stories and

to be of support to one another.

something that I remind myself of every day is all the work that I'm doing is not only for myself, but it's for the next generation. It's for my children and their children and their children and especially knowing, and if you can't hold on to the fact that you're worth it yet, then hold on to it for your your family members and just how much you shifting yourself and your beliefs can impact, your entire family.

Thank you. Uplifters, thank you for listening to Janelle's story. Thank you for hearing each other. It is so rare that we get to sit in our truth and our stories and really see one another. And Janelle, I appreciate your courage in doing so, but I also appreciate all those who listened to the end of this story.

and stayed tuned in to what it might mean for them and for others and for the work that they do in the world.