Surviving trauma is not a death sentence, but it requires love and permission to heal, as Martha Gloria Kartaoui passionately shares in this enlightening conversation. Martha, a cult survivor and author of "Going All In," discusses her journey of overcoming unimaginable trauma and the profound awakening that led her to help others navigate their healing journeys. With a focus on understanding the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit, she emphasizes the importance of recognizing and processing trauma rather than trying to categorize it. Throughout the episode, Martha highlights the significance of community support and the necessity of self-compassion in the healing process. Listeners will find inspiration in her story and practical insights into reclaiming their lives and embracing their identities after trauma.

The conversation between Jim Burgoon and Martha Gloria Kartaoui dives deep into the multifaceted realm of trauma recovery, focusing on Martha’s journey from a cult environment to becoming a transformational coach. Martha shares her profound realization that trauma recovery is not simply about moving on; it's about actively engaging with one’s pain and finding ways to heal it. She discusses the importance of community and the various modalities she utilized throughout her healing, including therapy and holistic practices. The episode also tackles common misconceptions surrounding cults, emphasizing that individuals often seek belonging and purpose, which can lead them into harmful environments. Martha’s insights highlight the significance of maintaining one’s autonomy and the red flags to watch out for when engaging with any group or movement. This rich dialogue not only empowers listeners to reflect on their journeys but also provides practical wisdom on navigating the complexities of healing, emphasizing that grace, patience, and self-love are essential components of the recovery process.

Key Takeaways

1. Healing Begins with Choice: Recovery from trauma starts when you decide to stop letting pain define you.
2. The Power of Small Wins: Even the smallest victories in healing can spark massive transformation.
3. Embracing Grace: Learn how extending your grace is essential to overcoming setbacks and staying the course.
4. Red Flags in Leadership: Martha shares insights on spotting controlling, cult-like behaviors in communities.
5. Faith and Reconnection: Rebuilding a personal relationship with God can be a cornerstone of lasting healing.

martha kartaoui

Martha Glory Kartaoui is a resilient and courageous warrior who has transformed her life from being a Cult Survivor to becoming an influential voice and leader in the wellness industry. As the owner of PIC Wellness, LLC, and the President of her non-profit Let Glory Shine, she is dedicated to helping others achieve their best overall holistic health Mind, Body and Spirit. Martha is also an Amazon Best Selling International Author, a dynamic speaker, a life visionary, and a skilled healing workshop facilitator. Her unique blend of professional training, personal experience, and spiritual wisdom enables her to walk alongside survivors and support profound warrior transformations. Martha Kartaoui is a beacon of hope and inspiration, offering invaluable accountability, motivation and support to those seeking to reclaim their lives in order to thrive in their own journey towards self-discovery and divine fulfillment.

martha's Facebook page

martha's Website

Copyright 2024 Jim Burgoon

Welcome to Grace in the Grind, the podcast where we dive deep into the journeys of heart centered and purpose driven leaders and entrepreneurs.

We're here to equip and encourage you on your journey.

So let's get started and find the grace within the grind.

This is Grace in the Grind.

And now your host, Jim Bergoon.

Welcome to Grace in the Grind where we focus on Christian entrepreneurs so we can empower, encourage and to equip you to do all that God has for you in your life.

And I just want to say welcome to you and welcome to a dear friend of mine, Martha.

She is the author of Going All In.

And I'm going to say welcome to the show, Miss Martha.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited to be here, Jim.

So why don't you do us a favor for me in the audience.

Why don't you tell us who you are and what focus do you have in your ministry and your business and things that you do?

Sure.

Like you said, my name is Martha Gloria Kurtowi and I am, yeah, a jack of all trades.

I wear a lot of hats, but I am first and foremost a child of the one true king.

And that is my identity.

And my identity stems from my faith and I'm very excited to share that.

But more than that, or on top of that, I'm also a coach, I'm an author, I have healing retreats and workshops and I'm just really on a mission to help people that have experienced trauma and then they get stuck in it.

And so it's really my passion to tap into that, help them reaffirm, re identify with life after trauma and what that means and what that really means to heal through it and get to the other side.

So with that being said, when you say, what was some of the things that drove you to say, I want to help people with trauma because that seems to be a very messy thing to get into.

What is that thing that drove you to that?

Yeah.

So as you said, I have a book and my book, Glory Going all in is my story of being a cult survivor.

So I was born and raised in a religious culture and spent my first 25 years there.

And in that first 25 years, I experienced unimaginable trauma, physical, spiritual, verbal, sexual, just many different levels of trauma.

And so then I get out at 25 and I have to figure out how to navigate this big crazy world that I know nothing about because I had been isolated from it for that first 25 years.

And so it was a Very daunting task for me to become a working part of this society that I knew so very little about.

And so my healing journey has been over this last 20 years.

And I have found ways to navigate, obviously, and I'm on the other side of it.

The healing journey will continue till the.

But I have tools now, and I'm able to navigate appropriately, and I'm able to help others now to navigate their lives after trauma, because I've gone through a lot in these 45 years.

So what was the awakening point?

Says that you where you said, I've been through this, I've gotten some healing.

Now I want to spend or dedicate my life to helping those that have been through it.

What was that awakening point?

I think the awakening for me was when I realized that there was power in sharing my testimony, that there was power in standing up and being proud of the woman that God has created me to be and given me that purpose and given me that passion and the ability to speak right.

And so I started sharing my story, and I started realizing that people resonated with the pain of my story because we all have a story and we all have experienced pain in one way or another.

And just because my story, the first 25 years, is about a cult, I've gone through a lot of things after I got out of the cult.

I went through divorce, I went through miscarriage, I went through financial devastation.

I've been through a lot of different things that people resonate with.

So it's not just the cult trauma.

I've gone through a lot of life experience.

And so I realized that sharing my story was powerful because other people identified with the pain, and it gave them kind of an.

Like, an outlet of understanding there might be purpose in my pain, right?

So that they could start looking at themselves and looking at how they might be able to start healing.

So you get out of this cult, right?

And there's a couple questions I'm going to have about that in a little bit.

But I really want to follow this line of thinking.

So you get out of the cold, you experience your trauma, you have this awakening thing.

What was step one like?

For those that are listening, who may be in a similar situation in their own trauma, what was step one?

So step one for me was that I needed to understand what my trauma was.

And going through the extreme traumas that I did, I.

It was not very easy to identify because there was so much in understanding, there was so much to unpack, there was so much to understand, and there was so many different levels that affected my physical body, my spiritual body, my emotional body, my nervous system.

I think the biggest step one for me was understanding that everything was connected.

And what I mean by that is like understanding that the trauma that I had experienced in those first 25 years was literally stored on a cellular level in my body.

And I had to find a way to get in order to start healing that part of me.

Right?

And because the trauma was.

Was stored on a cellular level, I had to start.

I had to start within.

And that was the big first step, was just understanding that everything's connected, mind, body and spirit.

I couldn't put my trauma in a box and just walk away from it.

It was stored in the very essence of who I was.

So how did that affect.

So thinking through that is number one.

Thinking on it as a cellular level is, wow.

You don't really think of that like it goes all the way down to that level.

But so then how does it affect.

Or does it affect you as an entrepreneur?

It did, for.

It kept me stuck.

Right.

Like, I.

It took me years to get to this point where I was ready to be an entrepreneur.

But understanding the journey that I have been through in order to get to this place where I'm an entrepreneur, that is where the power lies.

That's where the understanding lies.

Understanding what I had to go through in order to get here, here.

So that's the clarity, right, Is the journey is understanding it's a journey, Understanding.

It's a process.

And understanding that I took that time, I took that energy, I took that focus in order to really look at me and to do the healing, to take the journey in order to get where I am now, an entrepreneur.

So did you do that journey on your own or was it something that was a team sport?

So a little bit of both.

Healing from trauma is, yes, a very lonely journey because it.

A lot of that work has to be done with you and you alone.

But I couldn't have done it without people to help guide that healing.

And that could have been people that helped me with different modalities, like my cranial sacral therapist, my EMDR therapist, my hypnotherapist.

Like, I've met lots of people along the way that taught me modalities or did modalities on me that helped me to navigate this.

So it's both a.

I say that it's both a.

It's both like an obstacle course, and it's also a.

It's also like a team sport where you need, like an escape room where you need people to help you in different phases of the journey in order to get to the other side, but it's both simultaneously.

So with that being said, what do you wish that were, like, more people understood about trauma recovery and getting through?

What do you wish more people understood?

That it's actually a choice to stay stuck in that pain.

And I say that with the utmost empathy and understanding because I have been there, and I feel that in such an intense way of understanding the loneliness that comes with staying stuck in your trauma and understanding that.

We tell ourselves all of these things that aren't true.

We tell ourselves that nobody's going to understand our pain.

We tell ourselves that there's no hope for us after trauma.

We tell ourselves we're not good enough or that we're not smart enough or that we're not strong enough or that we're not brave enough to do the work that's required in order to help us on this healing journey.

But those things are not.

Those things are not true.

So with that, then.

So I think where I'm really want to get down into with this, too, because this is some powerful stuff.

My gosh, not only are you helping people, you have the results of the things that you've gone through, which is so refreshing in the coaching business, like being a coach, because there's so many out there who are, for lack of a better world, charlatans.

They want to give you results they never got themselves.

So, number one, that's super powerful.

What was the level of.

Through this whole thing, the level of frustration that you had to navigate in your healing?

Like you.

I know there's a lot of times where you want to yell, scream, cry, quit.

All those times.

Walk us through some of that.

Wow, Jim, I love, love, love this question because I, first of all, I've done a lot of podcasts, and nobody's ever asked this in this way.

And I think it's really important.

It's really important to understand that this is a journey.

And yes, there was frustration, there was anger, there was nights of crying, there were nightmares.

There were like, this is a journey that I committed to, you know, some 13 years ago where I said, I'm ready to take my life back.

I'm ready to find healing in my physical body, my emotional body, my spiritual body, my nervous system.

I'm ready to do the work required.

And it hasn't all been pretty.

It's been really hard at some times.

But looking back now, in all of the things, the sleepless nights, the crying, the begging, my Husband to just hold space with me as I went through the things that I went through in order to heal through the things.

Because you have to feel it to heal it.

You can't just snap your fingers and heal it.

Like, you have to feel it again and you have to heal through it.

Just understanding that this has been a process, and looking back now, I can hold space for other people because I understand where they're at.

I understand it's not all.

It's not going to be pretty.

It's going to be work.

It's going to be showing up for yourself when you don't want to.

It's a.

It's about not quitting when all you want to do is quit and hibernate.

And it's about understanding that I know those feelings.

I was there.

I felt those things.

I did those things.

But somebody didn't quit on me.

And that somebody was me.

That somebody was me.

And so now I want to be able to share that with others so that they can be their biggest fan, they can be their biggest support system.

And until they're equipped to do that, I'll be that for them, right?

I'll cheer them on, I'll support them.

I'll do those things because I was them.

I was there.

I was stuck.

I was in physical pain.

Like, my physical body had broken down in so many ways, and I had to rebuild that on top of rebuilding my spirituality, rebuilding my emotional stability, rebuild rewiring my nervous system.

Those are real things that I had to do.

Rewiring my brain after all of the trauma that I experienced.

Experienced.

And just understanding that this has been a journey and like this.

But this has taken 13 years of consistent work, and it has not always looked this pretty.

It's like, I.

I love myself and I'm really proud of the woman that I've become.

But I think it's real to say this is not.

That's not what it always looked like.

I was grossly overweight.

I had chronic issues.

And, like, it was a journey.

So how you already hit on it, like you didn't want to quit.

How did you not quit?

Like, when the frustration was so high, how did you just stay the course?

Because I would get a little teeny glimpse of little wins.

And what I mean by that is because what the physical manifestation was the thing that you see from the outside, right?

So I would see these little wins.

Like, okay, I have less of a headache today.

Or, like, my back hurts a little bit less, or I've released a few pounds, whatever it was, you take those little wins and you just hold on tight to them and understand, okay, if I did this and I'm feeling this much better, what if I continue for one more day?

But I also.

I have to be really honest with you, Jim.

I had to give myself grace.

I had to be kind to myself on this, in this process, because there were times what I would have to look at myself and say, what are you doing?

Why are you willing to put yourself back through this pain?

For what?

Because it feels very.

It feels just overwhelming, and it feels very painful having to do the work that's required.

But when you get to the other side and those little wins keep adding up, adding up, you know, then you realize, oh, my gosh, I went a whole day without a headache.

Oh, my gosh, I went a whole day without bloating.

I went a whole day without a migraine, without my back hurting, whatever it was, right?

My gastrointestinal issues, like.

And then that starts building up.

I went a week without a migraine.

And, like, those little winds just keep adding up.

And it's usually for me, it was the physical manifestations that started lessening.

And I was like, wow, okay, I'm releasing weight.

I have less physical pain.

I have less migraines, whatever it was.

And those are the things that you can, like, you can add up.

You can add up and quantify a lot of the other wins.

You can't quantify in the same way.

Just the way that my brain was the.

My brain was able to have more clarity.

That was a huge thing for me where I wasn't feeling constantly anxious and overwhelmed and triggered, like, when those became more and more separated and I wasn't constantly stuck in that kind of overwhelm.

That was huge.

Like, I remember those moments, and I had to give myself grace until that next moment.

So you've used that a couple times.

And about giving yourself grace, what does grace look like?

Because there's a lot of times where I think in.

In.

In this space of healing, we just want to ignore the problem as if it doesn't exist and call it grace.

So what does grace look like for you?

And how did you develop that?

I love that.

That's another great question.

So when I think of grace, I think about God, and I think about, like, how God.

How God looks at me and just loves me so dearly and loves me for exactly who I am in this exact moment, regardless of all of the things.

All the things I've done, all of the things that have been done to Me, but God still loves me.

And every single day says, get up, my daughter, let's do this again.

And is patient with me and is kind with me.

And when I feel that love from God, I can't help but to want to give that back to myself.

And giving that back to myself is the grace that I'm talking about, is the kindness, is the patience, is the love, is the attentiveness.

But it's also, you know what?

I want to cry in my pillow.

And I don't want to get out of bed right now.

Like, giving myself those days, too, because that happened where I could not get out of bed because I was just emotionally overstimulated and couldn't.

I couldn't function some days, right?

And giving myself grace to say, okay, tomorrow's a new day.

We're going to try this again tomorrow and today.

We just can't do this, right?

That's grace is understanding how God would treat me if I asked God what he, what I should do in this moment.

And God would say, I'm just going to love you.

I'm just going to hold you.

I'm just going to be patient and kind to you.

And so then I try to give that back to myself.

So then how did you learn to accept that?

Because being somebody who's also been through trauma, it's hard to accept certain things because you have those other type of other thoughts coming in and other deceptions that you've gotten.

So how did you learn how to accept that?

You have to siphon through the negativity, right?

Very early on, I realized the power of my thoughts.

I realized that the power of my thoughts and the power of our words around the same time as I understood that everything was connected.

And so I understood that I had the power to control my thoughts.

I had the power to understand that my words and thoughts had energy, had power, had meaning.

And so understanding that, I had to stop, stop them.

And so it was siphoning through all the yuck and being like, no, this is what.

This is who God says I am.

This is who I say that I am.

And I, until we got into congruency, I had to fake it, right?

I had to be like, okay, God says that I'm this, so I must be this.

And then eventually you wake up and you're like, no, I finally feel that that is who I am.

Because I wouldn't allow myself to say anything, anything else.

I wouldn't allow myself to say the contrary.

I would stop myself in those dark thoughts, those thoughts that were not true, not who God said I was.

Right.

And I would stop them and say I have control over my thoughts.

I may not be able to create the positivity yet, but I can stop the negativity.

Does that make sense?

Oh, that makes sense.

That's good.

It's good.

It's very hard to do.

Very good.

But I love it.

As a side note, something really interesting, just a side note which I thought was funny.

I say I release weight too.

I don't lose weight.

I release it because I don't want to find it at some point.

So I love that.

Just want to throw that in there because I thought that was great.

Thought that was funny.

So with so big thing in your whole business and life has been is what underlying current is Identity.

Right.

So what did you find?

How did you find that your identity shifted before being entrepreneurial and now that you have an entrepreneur, you have an entrepreneurial coaching business and all that.

Like how was the difference in the two and had in the shift like before and currently and what affected that have.

You have to mean what you say and say what you mean when you're an entrepreneur because people rely on that.

Right.

And I stay stand in who I am.

And so I can't.

I cannot be a coach or a speaker or write books if I'm not authentic and if I'm not honest and if I'm not in integrity and in alignment with who I say I am.

And that was less important before I became an entrepreneur.

Because you were do I was doing a job.

Right.

But when you become an entrepreneur and everything matters and everything counts and everything is your brand and everything comes down to who you are and who you say you are, then you better be able to stay in alignment and stay in integrity or that will all fall apart very quickly.

That's good.

That's really good.

How did you find that?

Through this process, Your relationship with God, how did you find that?

Did that increase?

Did that strengthen?

What was the process in that?

I love telling this story, but I'll give you the acorn version of it.

But when I left the cult or escaped from the cult, I was angry at God.

I wanted nothing to do with God.

I wanted far away from God.

I wanted.

I just wanted to move on with my life and I wanted to just do it my way because I felt like God had abandoned me.

I felt like God had allowed all of these horrible things to happen to me in his name.

And I just didn't understand how God could be real if these things had happened to me in under the perversion of God.

So I didn't want anything to do with God.

I married a Muslim and we built a family and a life together.

And he didn't have a practicing belief either, even though he was Muslim.

He didn't have.

He wasn't a practicing Muslim.

And so it didn't matter what I believed.

We just.

That wasn't a thing that we shared.

And then I started on my healing journey and I realized just how lonely it was.

And so I realized that I needed some.

I needed to believe in something bigger than myself.

And I know that ever since I was a small child, like, I had a connection to God.

I had a connection to who God was to me.

And so I had to re.

Identify with that connection, that childlike innocence of who is God to that child before all of the abuse happened, before all the trauma happened.

And in that questioning, I found God again.

And I realized that I'm never truly alone if I have God and if I have that personal relationship.

And so that allowed me to open my heart again to God and allowed me to open my mind up again with regards to faith, in regards to God.

And my journey became a hell of a lot less lonely once I allowed that to happen.

And I'm really grateful for that because that's been a pinnacle of my.

The shift in my experience is when I found my faith again.

So you mentioned cult a lot because you're obviously, you're from a cult, you healed from a cult.

What is.

What do you feel is like a misunderstanding that people think, when they think the word cult, because it's very thrown around a lot lately, or at least in the last little couple years.

What do you think is a misunderstanding, like a truth that people need to really understand about cults?

Again, great question, Jim.

The.

You're absolutely right.

There's so many misconceptions about cults.

One of the biggest misconceptions that I hear about cults all the time is that only dumb people join cults.

And that is the furthest thing from the truth.

My parents who joined the cult, I was born into the cult.

So I didn't have a decision in joining.

I was born into it.

But my parents are very well educated, are very smart.

But the reason they joined is because they were looking for community.

They were looking for something to belong to, and they got sucked into a movement.

Right.

My parents were hippies.

They were searching.

And so that's the biggest misconception, is that dumb people are the only ones that join cults.

No, people join cults because they want to belong to something.

And the other misconception is that a cult was always bad.

And that's not the truth either.

Our cult started out as being kind of working together to create a community, to help each other live off the land, to help one another grow and thrive in their businesses and in their endeavors.

And then the ego and money and sex went to the head of the leader.

And that's how things turned badly for our group.

Excuse me.

So it's not.

That's a misconception.

Cults don't always start out bad because who would join something that was bad?

There's so many misconceptions about cults, but that's a great question.

It's just understanding that when you are in it, you don't know that you're part of a cult because you're brainwashed, you're controlled, you're isolated.

So also, like people will say, how did you not know?

How would I know?

This was literally all I knew.

I was born into it.

I knew nothing to compare it to.

That's another misconception.

You don't know you're in a cult.

Who would stay in a cult if they knew you were in a cult?

Right.

I love that question.

And I could go on and on about misconceptions, but especially if you're born.

In the one, you would never know.

It would just be like, oh, this is just life on the outside looking in.

What would you say one or two things are that people can say, oh, here's my red flags for as they're joining different things.

What are a couple red flags that would say if you see this, you need to run.

I would say the biggest red flag is if they take away your freedom to think, to ask questions to it.

You know, if you're not allowed to ask questions and you're just told what to believe, run.

Or if you are told that you are not allowed to speak to your friends, your family, your community, and that you, because you are special and that you need to separate yourself, they are trying to isolate you.

They are trying to control you.

Right.

Those are the two big ones.

There's plenty of other ones.

Again, but those are the two biggest ones.

Do you find yourself being able to spot cults pretty easily now since you've been in one?

Fortunately or unfortunately, yes.

But so as we run down and we land the plane of this episode, what is a wisdom?

Because.

And you guys who have been listening, if you've heard any of my other episodes, you know That I do a wisdom bomb.

Follow me on Lead with Jim on Facebook and a few other socials, you'll see a daily wisdom bomb where it's I give you a quick statement that says boom and you can put it, apply it in your life.

So with that being said, Ms.

Martha, what is a wisdom bomb you would leave to the listeners that you they can just take with them as they leave this episode.

So surviving trauma is not a death sentence, but it does take love and giving yourself permission to heal.

And it is a journey that you have to commit to in order to do it or you will allow it to be your death sentence.

That's powerful.

That's powerful.

And you've heard it here, guys.

So with that being said, how do we find you so people can connect with you?

I'm on social media, Martha Gloria Cartowi or Martha Cartowi.

So you can look find me on social media, Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn.

And you can also join our community, which is cult-x.org where I support other Battle Angels.

That's what I call people that have survived extreme trauma is Battle Angels.

So you can join our community as well@cult-x.org and for you guys who are.

Listening, I will put all of that in the show notes that A, you can definitely spell the names correctly, but B, you can also get in and just do the clicks and go follow her.

And I would highly suggest that you would go ahead and follow and join the things and order the book and we'll put that in the show notes as well because they're very powerful.

And Martha, you are an incredibly powerful individual who I really believe is going to create a movement of healing.

So thank you for being on this show and thank you for pouring into our listeners today.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

I feel blessed.

Thank you.

And guys, you have been listening to Grace in the Grind.

And again, this is, this is the podcast where we're just here to equip, encourage, and to empower Christian entrepreneurs to follow and actually do what God's told them to do.

So with that being said, if you haven't checked out some of the other episodes, please go do great review and then I will see you on either a past episode or a future episode.

This has been Grace in the Grind.

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take care of yourself and we'll see you next time on Grace in the Grind.