When Terry Tateossian hit her late 30s, she was running a successful marketing agency, raising two kids, and running herself into the ground. Two hospital visits later, she realized her body was sending a message she could no longer ignore. In this conversation, Terry shares her journey from overwork and denial to deep self-awareness and healing. She opens up about escaping communism as a child, building a career from scratch, and finally learning how to slow down and reconnect with herself. Her story is raw, insightful, and a powerful reminder that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is stop running and start listening.

Guest Bio 

Terry Tateossian—a midlife health coach, certified trainer, nutritionist, and host of How Good Can It Get.Terry’s story of how she lost over 80 pounds in her mid-40s and transformed every area of her life — while running a business and raising a family — speaks directly to women going through midlife transitions. Her message is clear: your most impactful chapter may still be ahead.

Turning 40 and healing the workaholic

Terry Tateossian’s story begins in communist Bulgaria and stretches all the way to the boardrooms of Fortune 100 companies. By her late 30s, she achieved what many would call “success,” a booming marketing agency, two children, and a tireless work ethic. But that relentless drive came with a cost: two hospitalizations, burnout, and a total disconnection from herself. Her midlife transformation began not with another business plan, but with a reckoning with her body. Through deep inner work, Terry learned to stop running on survival mode and instead reconnect with the parts of herself she’d long silenced. 

Episode Highlights

• From refugee to entrepreneur: Terry’s early life in a Bulgarian refugee camp taught her survival, grit, and resourcefulness, skills that would later fuel her success.
• Workaholism disguised as strength: As she built her business empire, Terry’s need for control and constant motion masked deeper wounds from childhood loss and trauma.
• The wake-up call: Two terrifying hospital visits in her 30s finally made her listen to her body after decades of ignoring it.
• The bull and the baby: Terry shares a powerful metaphor for healing the “bull” that once protected her and the “baby” within who needed love and attention to heal.
• Learning stillness: After walking away from her company, Terry began to rebuild her life slowly, learning to sit with discomfort and rediscover joy.
• Healing through feeling: Allowing herself to grieve her father’s death years after learning of it became the turning point that confirmed she was truly healing.
• A new kind of success: Today, Terry finds fulfillment not in hustle but in helping others rediscover wholeness through retreats and holistic coaching.

In this deeply human conversation, Terry Tateossian opens up about the cost of constant striving and the grace that comes with slowing down. From escaping communism to building a thriving agency to walking away from it all, her story is a testament to resilience and rebirth. Midlife didn’t just ask her to change her ways; it invited her to finally feel her feelings. Terry’s insights about self-compassion, emotional honesty, and healing the “bull and baby” within will resonate with anyone who’s ever worked themselves to exhaustion trying to prove their worth.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, follow, and share The Big Four Oh so more people can discover stories like Terry’s.

Guest Resources

Connect with Terry on Instagram

Terry’s website, THOR

Do you have the Midlife Ick? 

Download Stephanie’s guide to the Ick to diagnose whether you or someone you love is suffering from this insidious midlife malaise. www.thebigfouroh.com/ick

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The Big Four Oh Podcast is produced and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications

Stephanie: Hi, Terry. Welcome to the show.

Terry: Hi, Stephanie. I'm so happy to see you.

Stephanie: I am so happy to have you here with me today. You have such an interesting story, and it starts someplace we don't hear a lot about in these stories, and then we're gonna get into menopause and perimenopause, which interestingly, I don't touch on that often in these stories, although I'm starting to see it more.

So there's a lot of really good stuff we're gonna talk about today. I'm excited.

Terry: I'm excited too. Good,

Stephanie: Good. Then let's jump in. Let's go all the way back to the beginning and tell me a little bit about the forces that shaped you into who you were when our story begins in your mid thirties. How did you become that person?

Terry: My goodness.

So I, I unconsciously really is the short answer. Mm-hmm. But I was born in a communist country in eastern Europe in the seventies, and my ancestors actually escaped a Holocaust that is not talked about often, which is the Armenian, uh, Holocaust. So technically I am Armenian and I was born in Bulgaria, under Soviet rule at that time.

And so I, I grew up not knowing any differently. I had no clue what the economy and the politics were. I just knew how, how we lived. Right. And it was better than, than most people. My grandfather was an artisan. He actually, uh, created one of the, uh, innovative ways of model making in jewelry. And he had a lot of apprentices.

He was really well known and respected. And, uh, that's how I grew up. That's what I knew. He was a workaholic. And unfortunately, he passed away after his fourth heart attack. Oh. And, uh, yeah. So by the time I was 11 years old, my mother had decided at the time that she was going to defect communism. And prior to that, my father, uh, and her had gotten a divorce.

Stephanie: And you were how old? At that time?

Terry: I was three. Hmm. And so by four years old, I had not seen him. And so between four and 11, I hadn't seen him. He disappeared. Yeah. He had an issue with alcohol. It's hereditary. Uh, I have the same thing. And so yeah. By 11 we defected Bulgaria.

My stepfather drove I think about 40 something hours nonstop from the city of Varner, which is right by the Black Sea all the way to the border of Austria. Wow. And the way that it worked back then, if you were a political refugee, you could only come to, to the United States, Australia or Canada, if you were a political refugee, meaning that there were political reasons why you could not stay, uh, in the communist country.

And so we, uh, got to the Austrian border, had to come out of the car, hands up and say, we are defecting. Then we spent two years in Austria in a refugee camp, um, waiting for our visas to the United States. So I came here at the age of 13. At that time I spoke almost five languages, i, not by choice. Yeah. Um, my first language was Armenian.

Then I obviously learned Bulgarian, which is very much like Russian. I had to learn, uh, Russian 'cause that was a requirement in school. And then Austrian, which is very similar to German and English.

Stephanie: Wow.

Terry: And so, yeah. So here I come, New York. I, uh, entered the school system, into eighth grade. I, they actually had me skip a grade because in Soviet countries the education is actually more advanced apparently than it was here at the time.

Stephanie: Wow. Let's go back and talk about a couple of things.

You said your dad and your mom got divorced and your dad just kind of disappeared from your life, but as a little girl, you didn't understand that, right. Tell me a little bit about your interactions with your mom about that.

Terry: Uh, the, there weren't any. Yeah. Right. The questions really were not voiced. If there ever was a sign that I had questions, I would usually go to my grandmother who took over caring for me at that time, but it wasn't a good reaction.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: So I heard a lot about the alcoholism. I heard a lot about, you know, you're gonna be just like that. There were a lot of triggers, uh, in my childhood and, uh, adolescence, uh, where, you know, if I was walking around with a glass of anything, water or soda, and it had ice and it, you know, made a sound, uh, it was a trigger, uh, while I was growing up that, you know, I would be an alcoholic. Uh, I

Stephanie: A trigger trigger for your mom, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Terry: Yes.

Stephanie: All right. So, uh, so that was, uh, at a very early age, you really learned not to ask questions and to kind of keep things to yourself, kind of bottled up. Yeah.

Terry: Yes. I mean, I, I had to because the reactions were very unpleasant for me as a child. And then it wasn't talked about. When I think back on it, you know, two of our first loves in our lives are our mother and our father.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: And know as life went on and I put things together, you know, I realized my, one of my first loves ever, uh, disappeared. Right. And I was not allowed to voice emotion. I was not allowed to grieve missing that person, um, had to be hidden.

Um, you know, all kinds of really messed up things. Yeah,

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. Very difficult for a tiny, tiny brain to, to make any sense of, for sure. Yeah.

Terry: Yes.

Stephanie: Okay. So the next thing I just wanna understand a little bit more about is you said you spent two years in a refugee camp. Tell me a little bit about what that experience was like for you.

You were 11 when you went in, and 13 when you came out, which again, are extraordinarily formative years for young girls. So, um, talk to me a little bit about that experience.

Mm-hmm. And so the first thing that they do is you enter this camp. Uh, It has um, uh, fences that are maybe about 10, 12 feet tall. It's a huge, uh, structure. It's a huge building. You could still find it actually online. It's called Chen in, in Austrian, and I believe it used to be a site for Holocaust, uh, during the Holocaust.

And so a lot of security, it's basically like a prison. You enter and you stay there for as long as it takes for the Austrian authorities to confirm that either you're not a criminal, don't have the police looking for you, you are not part of KGB and all kinds of other things, right? So they have to run a check on you in this, quarantine type of building.

And during that time, you live in a huge room, so everybody is in the same room. You don't have any private rooms or bathrooms for that matter.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: And the way that they, uh, separate people is, you know, men were in one big room, women were in another big room, and then families, they kept together.

And so we had our three beds, um, because my brother and my sister actually did not defect with us. They stayed back with my grandmother.

Stephanie: Oh, were they older than you?

Terry: They are younger than me by seven years.

Stephanie: Oh.

Terry: So they were three.

Stephanie: Oh, wow. Okay.

Terry: Yes. And, uh, they're twins. And so we, we lived there for about 30 to 40 days.

Then they, and they question you, right? So while you're in this quarantine period, you get called in for interviews with, I don't know, sure. The, the Austrian version of CIA/FBI, I don't know, right? And so they, they question you, you have a translator and you have to answer the questions in a way that, uh, they're satisfied with.

And so for about 30, 40 days, I, what I do remember is my parents would talk about, you know, who got rejected, who got sent back, um, who got through, who still was there four months later. And it, it's a very unknown type of situation. So luckily for us, we made it through, uh, in 30 days and then they relocated, uh, people that were accepted into the refugee program, uh, to a different location.

And it was a, a little bit more, uh, casual. Right. So it was Almost like a hostel.

Stephanie: Okay.

Terry: Uh, about an hour from, uh, Vienna. Uh, the name of the town, the town is called Grein, G-R-E-I-N. And we lived there for the rest of the time, which was about two years. Mm-hmm. So for two years, we did not know whether we would get a Visa or not to the United States.

Stephanie: And during that time though, there was a different Hmm kind of economy in the refugee camp. Is that right?

Terry: Yes. So the Austrian government gives you a stipend. Which, uh, is very small.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: And, uh, people that could find under the table kind of cash pay did that. But that was illegal. It was not allowed. And that's, that's the way everybody worked. So people from all over, uh, Europe were in this hostel.

So at that time, I got to learn Czech. All my friends were Czech . Polish, Serbian, Croatian. This was the former Yugoslavia. Mm-hmm. Romanian. I got to hang out with all the children that were, uh, in this, uh, hostel.

And none of us spoke a common language, so we had to communicate. We all learned each other's languages. We all spoke it pretty fluently. Yeah. We went to school together in Austria, so I don't remember it as a difficult time, but obviously that was not the case for my, uh, father, my stepfather and my mother.

Stephanie: Yeah. You told me when we spoke last time that your mom has, an economics degree in a couple of master's degrees and, and she find found herself during that period of time washing dishes, I think. Is that right?

Terry: That's right. Yeah. So my mother, uh, has a computer science and engineering degree, and then when she came to the United States, she, uh, has a master's in finance and another, uh, bachelor's. A couple of bachelor degrees and a master's, uh, in finance. Yes.

Stephanie: Yeah. But at that, in that kind of situation, you just do whatever you can do to make things work. And so she did, did you also had a job at that point, right? In the, in the refugee camp, is that right?

Terry: I did. I washed dishes with her every night. Yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So you're 13. You come to New York. You've got some English. You start school. You settle in a little bit. Tell me a little bit about the next, like, I don't know, 20 years and, and just briefly just some of the highlights. So like from 15 to 35.

Terry: Woo. Um, yes.

Things were a little patchy, a little rough, uh, not in terms of my adolescence. I don't even remember being a troublemaker really, uh, until much later. I, I started having issues, but my, uh, demeanor, um.

Oh, and my brother and my sister joined us, by the way.

Stephanie: Okay.

Terry: So now there was, right, so when we, uh, came to the United States, they came with a state were granted visas because their mother and father had immigrated. And so it was three of us and my stepfather and my mother. And so things started getting really, really wavy and very rocky at that time. Uh, obviously the stress was not, uh, good for my mother. Mm-hmm. Or my stepfather. They, they were having a lot of, um, things going on, and my attitude was, I, I just wanted to, I just wanted to be quiet. I just wanted to get through. I did not wanna make any waves. I was not acting out in any way. I was just, I just wanted to be invisible, essentially. Mm. Uh, just to get through whatever the heck was going on, 'cause it was rough. Yeah. Lemme tell you. Um,

And then I got into college in Stony Brook University, which is on, uh, Long Island, um, in New York. And I, I studied political science for three and a half years, 'cause I was convinced that, uh, I was gonna go to law school. But, uh, unfortunately at three and a half years into college, my stepfather, lost his job, and he got another job, uh, in Florida. So everybody had to move.

And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm almost finished. I can't move. I decided to stay in New York. So I got myself an apartment. I lived in Queens, New York. I think I was, uh, 20 years old at the time. Uh, I had just gotten into the country seven years prior. And, uh, I decided that I was gonna work full-time and try and finish my college degree. And I did that for a little while and then completely burned out.

I couldn't handle going to work 'cause my job was in New York City. My school was Long Island Stonybrook, which is two and a half hours by train. That's a lot of travel. So, yeah. So I structured my classes so that I had them Tuesday, Thursday I would go to school, Tuesday, Thursday, work the rest of the time.

Uh, I had three jobs, uh, at one point. So I had, uh, my nine to five job Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I had my nighttime job, six to nine. It was in a clothing store in Madison Avenue called Shanghai Tank. And it was a high-end, uh, Chinese, uh, style. Beautiful clothes, all made outta silk, very expensive. Uh, so that was my, uh, job six, nine.

And then I had my third job on the weekends, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM uh, with a catering company, which I was the absolute worst at that, let me tell you. I was just breaking things, dropping hot soup on people's laps, but I didn't quit. Yeah. Shocked they didn't fire me. But, um, so that was my life for, uh, quite a while.

And then, uh, things started heading in a really bad direction. At one point my sister ran away from home, uh, from Florida. She came to live with me. So now I had a 15-year-old, to take care of. I was 21 at that time. I ended up getting her job in the local supermarket, and I will never forget that it paid $4 and 25 cents an hour.

And she paid our electric bill with that.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of responsibility for a couple of young girls. that's a, that's a real heavy, uh, load to be carrying at that age. Wow. So, uh, you make it through your twenties and really with your head down and just kind of like work, work, work.

Tell me a little bit about that next phase.

Terry: Yeah. So this is something I've probably never talked about. Back then, I didn't believe in marriage.

Stephanie: Mm.

Terry: So I never even had a dream about getting married, 'cause in my mind I was like, well, what's the point?

Stephanie: Yeah. Right.

Terry: So my, all of my experiences at that point were, uh, marriage was a catastrophic event. Yeah. 'cause all it does, it, it ends up in extreme heartbreak, grief, constantly missing somebody for the rest of your life.

Yeah. And so, I, I was not interested. Right. I didn't care about the piece of paper. It just didn't mean anything to me. Then the other thing is everybody was spending a hundred thousand dollars getting married. I was like, I'm not doing that, right. That's not happening. I don't give a shit about it.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Terry: So we never got married, but you know, we lived together for 20 years, had children, did all the things that married people do, uh, just never got the paper.

Stephanie: Okay. Okay. How old were you when you had your kids?

Terry: First one was 30, second one was 35.

Stephanie: Okay.

All right. So now that kind of brings us to the beginning of our story, right?

So you're 35 and, uh, you got a couple of little kids and you're still working really hard, really hard. And then you, I think you turned 37 and that's when you started feeling some anxiety and some medical issues. Is that right?

Terry: Yeah. So let me go back a little to fill in a little blank.

Stephanie: Good.

Terry: So, uh, when I decided that I was not gonna go to law school. I was working at a lot of law firms. So, um, in the New York City law firm space is very, for lack of a better word, incestuous. So if you start working at, in the law firm field, they start snagging you left and right. So I was moving around from law firm to law firm.

I went from, uh, basically getting everybody's lunch for $6 a day, uh, as an intern. That was my first job. I was an intern in high school to becoming a paralegal. And, uh, then I decided, okay, I gotta take this to the next step. 'cause I got my sister to support now. Right. Uh, and then at one point my grandmother left Florida as well. She couldn't handle the stress that was going on with my mother and my stepfather. Uh, my brother came to live with me in my, uh, one bedroom, Queens New York apartment. And then eventually my mother also came.

Stephanie: So now it's you, your sister, your grandmother, your brother, and now your mom. Five of you in a one bedroom apartment in Queens.

Terry: That's right.

Stephanie: And you're just in your mid twenties at this point?

Terry: That is correct.

Stephanie: Oh my goodness, Terry.

Terry: Yes. I was like, all right, I gotta make more money.

Stephanie: Yeah. Clearly.

Terry: Right. So the paralegals, salary was not doing it for me. I think back then it was maybe $34,000 a year.

And then I had my other side jobs all over the place. So I was getting by, but it, the.com boom had started.And so everybody was looking for engineers, everybody was looking for, um, people that were good with software, computers, IT, things like that. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. I could go and learn this. So I switched my direction. I said, this law thing is not happening. Uh, let's be smart and get a real skill. And, um, I took a bunch of classes and then I decided I was gonna get a bachelor's in, uh, computer engineering, computer software.

Ironic, because that's what my father and my mother both had. Didn't dawn on me apparently. And so I went back to school. So now I was working on Wall Street full-time, and then I was going to school for a computer engineering degree, six to nine, right?

Stephanie: Yeah,

Terry: And so eventually I moved into a software engineer's position, at work. I got a different job. I stayed there for about seven years. It was one of the best companies. Loved, loved that law firm. I was one out of two women in a 300, person IT department at that time. And, uh, yeah, I loved it. I got raises all the time. By the time I was 24, I was probably making, uh, six figures.

but it was, I was spending it all, I didn't get to keep any of it. Right,

Stephanie: Right, right, right. You've got a family of five living with you.

Terry: Right. And so, because I changed directions and I went into engineering, computer science and software development, things like that, and I was a workaholic, I couldn't stop.

Right. So I was coming up with all these things, all these projects I could start. And at that time, search engine optimization was a really new, and interesting thing. Mm-hmm. And, uh, niche e-commerce had just begun.

So, um, the thing I came up with is, well, what if I create an e-commerce store that only sold this one type of product, meaning when you type it into Google it's gonna pop up number one.

And I had seven of those. Uh, over time I built out seven stores that were selling one niche products and uh, and also had my job on top of that. So that's what I was doing at 25 when I met my children's dad.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Okay. And so now when you're 35 and you've had your second child, do you still have the full-time job and the e-commerce businesses?

Terry: No, I quit my job at 30.

Stephanie: Okay.

Terry: I had built out all of the stores, uh, they were doing really well. And I kept building more and more and more, different stores. So by the time I had my daughter, I went out on maternity leave.

And in my mind, 'cause you know, I'm a little slow, okay? I am a little delusional and I have these ideas of what the heck is going on inside of me and my whole attitude. Up to that point was I'm an independent woman.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: Okay. I, I cannot stop working. Right. I don't wanna get married. I'm not into this mushy, mushy love stuff, whatever.

So I'm not quitting my job. Okay. Like, I'm gonna have that baby. I'm gonna pop that baby out. I'm just, I don't know what the heck I'm gonna do with it when I go back to work. It'll, it'll figure itself out.

Stephanie: Right, right, right.

Terry: And I'm going back to work. And so I did.

Stephanie: Hmm.

Terry: I went back to work. I think it took about a week, and I was like, I'm done. I'm quit. I, I'm staying home with my baby.

Stephanie: Oh, wow. Okay. So now let's get into a little bit more about this mid thirties and, um, tell me where you found yourself when you started having some health issues.

Terry: So, I had a baby. I had multiple e-comm stores. They were doing well, but I was working pretty much 20 hours a day between the baby, the business.

I had, uh, hired my first employee and I will never forget Valencia And she would come to my apartment at that time in New Jersey and she would answer the phones for all the e-commerce calls that were coming in. And I'll never forget how funny that was because people would call and they would say, do you guys have a location where we can come pick up our products?

And I was like, location, I'm working on my apartment.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: Whatcha talking about? But they were that good. The stores were done in a really, um, professional way. And so people thought we were way bigger than what we were.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: Uh, at the time. And so she would answer the phone, she would take the orders, she would do all these things. They were all mostly personalized items that you couldn't get at Walmart or the gas station or wherever. So you, you would go online to order those things like, personalized wedding favors and things like that. She worked for me for almost three years and was an absolute wizard with everything she was doing. I mean, she was a savior for me because I had a, I still had a baby, at that time.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So tell me about the heart attacks.

Terry: Yes. So at some point I transitioned into an agency. Now mind you, I'm working 20 hours, 18 hours nonstop. Everything is about work. I transitioned into a marketing agency. because, people couldn't understand what was I doing, that was making this work. And so I would sit there and I would explain, oh, you gotta do this, this, this, this.

And the people would just look at me like, are you crazy? Like, you are doing all this? I'm like, yeah. And then somebody said, well, you know, can I hire you to do it for me?

You know, stupid me. I was like, oh, well, it, you can't afford that. It's so, like, they're so time consuming. Nobody's ever gonna pay me to do this for them. Right. Well, lo and behold, they, they do.

Stephanie: Right. They sure do.

Terry: They do. And so, ended up working with Fortune 100 companies, actually, uh, maybe even Fortune five.

Stephanie: Wow.

Right. Still have the kids.

Stephanie: Right, right,

Terry: Right. And so that's what was going on when the hospitalizations started happening.

Stephanie: Yeah. This sounds, like, pretty dramatic, uh, workaholism. How did you find time to be a mom during that? Or where did you find time to be a mom during that? Or did you find time to be a mom during that?

Terry: So this is what I did. They went with me everywhere. They came to client meetings. They were in my office constantly. I would take them to the office. If I traveled, they were in a backpack. I have, uh, pictures and, uh, videos of this backpack that I stick them in, and I would go to conferences and just take 'em with me.

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: Wow. Okay. So tell me about being hospitalized.

Terry: Well, if eventually, 'cause I, I don't even know if I'm describing the schedule as well as I probably should be, but there was no time.

Stephanie: It doesn't matter if you're describing it as well as you think you should be, because I am getting the sense, and I think anybody listening is getting the sense that you are pushing so hard and working so hard and so committed that there's just not a moment of free time ever. So you are definitely communicating that.

Terry: Even, uh, right before labor, I was in the hospital bed about to give labor and back then, you know, it was Blackberries. I was on my Blackberry, I was working. I mean, it just, it never stopped. And so when I say I did not have time, I don't, it's not like the way other people don't have time.

It's not because I was watching Netflix, or going on vacation, or putzing around my house. I was working. There was no doubt if I had the time, I had the motivation to do whatever I had to do. Yeah. But I could care less about, um, what was happening to me, uh, health wise, because I would look at myself and I had some kind of a dysmorphia back then, I think, because I would look at myself and I'd be like, oh, you gained another 10 pounds. Oh, whatever. Nobody cares. You are a business person. Mm-hmm. Nobody cares what you look like. Okay. As long as you can deliver the results that you are promising. Mm-hmm. Right. Whatever the contract says, you better deliver that. Because if you're gonna spend an hour in the gym, that's a waste of time.

Stephanie: Yeah. It's not billable.

Terry: Right. Mm-hmm. So that's where I was at. Yeah.

And then I found myself 80 pounds overweight, abusing alcohol. I had severe alcoholism, workaholism, any kind of ism you can think of. I had it.

I was in complete denial and delusion. I had dysmorphia. I would look and say, oh, it's not that bad. It's fine. It's fine. Everything's fine. Just get elastic pants. Mm-hmm. That, you know, are gonna fit you in two weeks when you gain another five pounds. It doesn't matter.

Nobody's looking at you. Nobody cares what you look like. That, that was the narrative in my mind. Mm-hmm. And so it never, it never took priority for me. And so one night I'm pulling, I must have probably been on my second Gray Goose with my lime and a twist and on, on the rocks. I, I come from a communist country, Stephanie.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: I don't drink spritzers.

Stephanie: Mixers are for weaklings.

Terry: I drink that shit straight.

Stephanie: Okay. All right.

Terry: And so. Yeah. So I must have been maybe on my, who knows how many, pulling, opening up the freezer, trying to select my flavor of ice cream for the night. Mm-hmm. Who knows, right. But I do remember I was in front of the fridge and I was contemplating rocky road or cherry vanilla or something like that.

Stephanie: Mm.

Terry: And I started having chest pains and I was like, what the heck is that? Right.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: Completely disconnected from my body. I, yeah. I, I'm surprised I didn't ignore it. Imagine how bad it was that I did not dismiss it. Ignore it. Right. Or be in denial. Yeah. I actually went to ER, yeah. I got scared. Yeah. And so, yeah.

So they said they ran all the tests. They had no idea. What that was, there was no, no stroke, no heart attack, no idea.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: Gave me a Xanax go home. But it happened again. Yeah. 'cause I didn't get the message. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It takes a couple of times. Yeah. You know, when you're in this state Yeah. Of whatever the heck you wanna call, whatever state I was in.

Yeah. That was it. I mean, it, it was an interesting mental state. It, it takes more than a few knockouts

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: to wake you up.

Stephanie: Well, uh, without going into what your mental state might have been, I, I think one of the things we can very safely say is that you were in a state of complete and total disconnection from yourself.

Meaning that feedback that your body was giving you. You weren't even paying attention into it as communication. You were probably seeing it more as annoyance or something that was taking you away from the things that you quote unquote should be doing. Right?

Terry: Exactly.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: Yeah. The motherboard switch and my brain was off.

Stephanie: Yep, yep.

Terry: I was on autopilot. Yeah. And in any kind of interference was immediately firewalled like, I don't, I don't have time for this.

Stephanie: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I did a lot of that in my, in my thirties as well. I remember, I've talked about this before, but I remember, there was a period in time where I was in a bad relationship and in a bad work environment and all kinds of things, just not going quite right, and me not paying attention to any of it.

And, um, for a bunch of months I had gone to bed and every night I would feel like I would have like creepy crawlies running up and down my legs. And I just kind of wanna thrash and like my heart was pounding and I finally mentioned something to my chiropractor and, and she just looked at me like, I don't even know, like, what?

But she's like, Stephanie, those are panic attacks. You, you, you're having them every night. And I was like, well, yeah. She's like, yeah, those are panic attacks. And, and, and it was again, not coming through to me as this is information, this is communication from your body to your brain. It was, uh, it was just coming across as, you know, something I had to, I don't know, get through before I could go to sleep or something that, you know, happened before I went to sleep.

So, yeah, I, I, I can, I can relate to that, that kind of disconnection. I hadn't pushed myself quite as far as as you had. Yeah. So, so what finally got your attention.

Terry: Well, you just taught me something. I had no idea. 'cause I have, I've, I had those too, but I had no clue what they were.

Stephanie: Well, there you go. A little bit of wisdom that I learned from, from my chiropractor that helped me. I'm glad I could help you as well, uh, or at least shed some light on, on some of the things that were going on. But what did finally, uh, get your attention.

Terry: The second time I had to go to ER.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: And I was convinced that this is a part, this can't possibly be nothing. Like I, you know, I walked in and I was like, was packed, er was packed and people had all kinds of things going on and they looked way worse than me.

Stephanie: Right, right.

Terry: I'm 37 ish, 38 maybe at that point. And I'm looking around and everybody's their, in their fifties, sixties, people in their seventies.

And I'm like. Holy cow, I'm gonna drop dead because everybody else looks a lot worse than me. Right. And as soon as they realized, oh, she's having chest pains and she can't breathe, whoop, to the back. In front of the line. Yep. And again, same thing. Same thing, exactly, repeating itself.

Stephanie: How long had it been between them?

Terry: It was probably about eight months.

Stephanie: Okay. All right. So enough for you to have some distance from it and be like, ah, it was just a fluke.

Right. Till it happened the second time?

Terry: That's exactly what I said. Yeah. Oh, whatever. Like they, they couldn't figure it out. There must be nothing wrong. Just keep going.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Terry: Right. It was a fluke. One off. Yeah. You know, maybe you had an allergic reaction to something, like that was basically the thought pattern. And then it happened again. And I was like, uhoh. And, um, I remember laying in the bed in the back of the ER and the nurses were coming over and I'm looking at the heart monitor and it's like one 60 something and I'm laying in bed, right.

And I'm moving, right. And it's 150, 60, whatever the heck. Some crazy number. Right. That was making me panic even more. Right. And I, I, I tapped one of the nurses. I said, why, I couldn't even talk. I was so terrified. Like, why is that so high? Yeah. What is causing that? And she looked at me and she said, you, you are doing that?

Oh. And I was like, what the heck does that mean? And they're like, We don't know. We don't know what's going on. They, you know, when you're in ER, they'll run all the tests. Right. So CAT scans all, all the things that are at their disposal. They couldn't find anything. They said, here's another Xanax.

Yeah. Lose some weight, you are too fat, number one. Mm-hmm. And go see a cardiologist to make sure we didn't miss anything. So I started cardiologist, there was a faint heart murmur that he did here.

Stephanie: Hmm.

Terry: I did have free diabetes. I did have, I think 18, 19 ovarian cysts.

Stephanie: Wow.

Terry: Wow. And at that point I didn't wanna know anymore.

Stephanie: Right,

Terry: right.

Stephanie: That's enough of a worst enough of a list to work on to begin with. And well, and plus, you already knew you were overweight, on top. So then what?

Terry: Yeah. Uh, so then I went to a holistic doctor. We, uh, talked for quite a bit just like this. It was about a two hour conversation at the end.

She said, wow. And, that's when it actually started becoming more clear to me that there's way more to this. I was so unconscious up to that point. Mm-hmm. In my entire life, my, I call it little me. Little me was put in a closet and she just stayed in that closet. She had no fe she wasn't allowed to have feelings. She was not allowed to have needs. What she wanted or needed did not matter.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: There was this monster running the show. Yeah. Yeah. And that's when I realized that almost, you know, 38, 39 years old that I lived like that for a very long time.

Stephanie: Yeah. And, and I think one of the things that you weren't even aware of,if my notes are correct, until we spoke the first time, is that that monster who was running the show was created by some of the bad habits that you picked up as a young child after your dad left, and in that refugee camp where you learned this work ethic and, working to survive.

And, your brain kind of picked up some of these patterns, then turned them into a way of life, or the way that you were gonna run your life, or the, the rules you were gonna live by. And so that I think is one of the big things that happens around this midlife transition. At some point during, or afterwards, we realized that these unconscious patterns that we've picked up 30, 40, 20 years ago are running the show more than we are.

We think we're running the show, but we're actually not. We're running on a tape that's been playing since we picked up these bad habits. Is it is, do you think that's what happened to you?

Terry: A hundred percent.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: A hundred percent. I mean, it, it's almost like my life did not begin until I made that realization.

Yeah. Because that's when I understood. That I have to open the closet where little me is still there. She's still there. Yeah. She still misses her daddy. Yeah. Uh, she still doesn't understand. Where did he go? Why did he leave? What did she do to make him leave? Uh, why was her mother so mean to her? What did she do?

Did she make him leave? Does everybody leave when you love somebody? Do they always leave? There's all of these questions that little me still has.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: And so every time the monster, and I don't wanna call her a monster.

Stephanie: I understand.

Terry: I I call her the bull. The bull has the baby in the circle of safety.

Baby's job is to sit in a circle and the bull's job is to keep the baby safe. And that bull will do anything it needs to do to make sure you don't hurt that baby, 'cause if you hurt that baby, the bull is done as well. Right? And so that bull runs the show, but the baby has no other option. Right? Because if the baby tries to interfere, it might accidentally get stuck in the way of bull as well.

Right? So the baby learns, Hey, I gotta stay here, I gotta be safe. I, I can't scream, I can't cry. Be grateful to the bull. The bull is saving us. We're, we need the bull. 'Cause we did, we did absolutely need the bull. Mm-hmm. No doubt. Mm-hmm. But at some point. We grow up and now we're still in a circle and it's like, okay, well let me pet you.

We're okay now. Thank you. I spent quite a bit of time talking to myself in this way. You know, initially I was very upset that this, you know, monster was running the show. Then I really took a look at the Monster. I, I faced the monster and I had nothing but love for her. Nothing but love.

Stephanie: Well, she had been doing her best. She had been working so hard to take care of that baby.

Terry: You're gonna make me cry. I said second.

Stephanie: Sorry. Sorry.

Terry: Stop it. Okay.

Stephanie: I I'll stop it. I'll stop it.

Terry: No, no. I was talking to myself.

And the more I, uh, work with women, the more this is the case. Yeah. I, I see this with everybody. Yeah. I don't want to, um, classify trauma because there are much more traumatic things, besides or compared to what I just talked about.

Stephanie: Sure.

Terry: That's just my experience, right.

So there's people that have gone through way more than me, way worse things, way more difficult things, and people that have gone through maybe comparatively not as challenging things, but there's still a part of them that's sitting in that circle. Yeah. And that's the real trauma. It's not the thing that got you into the circle, it's the fact that you are still there.

Because one, you are afraid to look at the bull, 'cause it is a scary, scary thing. You are afraid to love the bull. And when you talk like shit to the bull, you get a lot of conflict internally because the bull feels hurt. The bull feels how, how dare you. They, they get resentful and now you're continuing, continuing to live your life in this cycle of constant conflict, internal negative dialogue.

You don't really have compassion for the bull. 'cause they gave up their life to save yours technically. Right? Yeah. And so now it's your job to save the bull. Hmm.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I, I've, through these conversations and through things that I've read and just material that I've come across, having been involved in this podcast for a number of years now, and this topic area, there are things that I've picked up along the way and learned. And, you talked a little bit about trauma and, people having gone through much worse trauma than you. And, and I think lots of us can say that, right? Somebody had it much worse than me. Um, and, and we can also say some people had it much easier than me, but the thing that leaves marks, is, uh, they're called, uh, environmental failures or environmental ruptures, where as a, as a small human without a fully formed brain, or much in the way of higher reasoning, something happened in our environment where our needs weren't met face-to-face. Our needs weren't met in the way that we needed them to be. And that causes something to hiccup inside of us. It causes something, it causes us to, try to make sense of that environmental disruption or that environmental failure.

And our little brains make sense of them in really kind of twisted ways as you were just talking about with the baby. And, it being all her fault. And do people leave and, love must be useless because, it always fails. These are the connections that, that our, our little baby brains make.

And they become, you're a software engineer, they become our operating system. And we don't even know. I mean, most of us, you certainly know the details, but like most of us turn on our computer and we don't really know what happens inside the CPU or the phone or the whatever, right? We just know that it works and, and so a lot of those patterns that we pick up with these environmental failures become the operating system that we run on and that we can't see. And so, so many people that I've talked to have found themselves in their mid thirties, in their early forties saying things like, this isn't what I wanted. Or, I can't seem to get this right. I can never seem to get a relationship right. Or I can never seem to get a career right. Or I can never seem to get whatever it is right.

And they don't understand why, because they have the best of intentions and they have good hearts, and they have, they want good things, but it's that operating system. It's that underlying programming that until we can zoom out and kind of see where that came from. You, you don't even know that there are two versions of you inside the way you are so eloquently talking about, uh, the bull and the baby.

For me, I always, said it was the mean girl and the nice girl. And for much of my life, my teens and twenties and into my thirties, the the mean girl was so loud that you could barely hear the nice girl. And then, a friend and mentor gave me an exercise that helped me rebalance and sort of quiet the mean girl and, and make room for the nice girl. And, and that kind of changed my life. I think you're so wonderfully kind of expressing this idea of, the US that we present to the world and the US that kind of runs our life. And then the internal one that's that's so hidden away and, and so protected. And so you'd said she was in a closet and I was almost gonna say, yeah. And the closet's, plywooded over and, and blocked off and, you know, it's like she's so put away so that she can stay safe, but that also doesn't allow the bull and the baby to get to know each other or become friends or figure out how to work together or any of that stuff.

Terry: Yeah. And the bull has the best intentions.

Stephanie: Of course.

Terry: Right. But when the baby's looking outwards at the bull, it seems like the bull is a scary, negative, mean animal, right? Because the perspective, if you change the perspective, it's like, oh, wait a minute. Is that really true though? I is, is she mean, is she being mean to me? Or, do I need to switch perspectives so I can have open communication channels with all parts of myself?

Because once you get past the bull, gets really interesting. Yeah. Then, then it's like, oh, wait a minute. There's also a teenager over here. And then there's like the funny clown jokester over there. Like, whoa. Like a whole world opens up and you're like, whoa. There there's like parts of me all over the place that I was too scared to even contemplate and to embody them because the only thing I was focused on was the bull, because the bull is such a dominant, prominent energy in your body, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, it gets a lot more fun once you get past the bull.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. So for you, after this second heart attack, you, if I remember correctly, you quit your job. You said, I, I, I got, I gotta get my stuff together here.

Is that right?

Terry: I quit my company. Yeah,

Stephanie: That's right. You're right. I did not say that. Right. As somebody who owns a small business, you're right. You don't, you didn't quit your job. You walked away from the thing that you had built.

Terry: Yes.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. You had a partner was so, it wasn't like you abandoned it. You had a partner that you could that, that you could leave it in that person's hands.

Terry: Yes.

Stephanie: But you needed some space to figure some stuff out.

Terry: I was completely burned out there. There was nothing of me left.

Stephanie: What could there have been after all that work and all that energy you've been investing? Not only outward in the business and outward in your, uh, in your career, but also inward in, in keeping the, the bull, you know, energized and, and going and, and moving forward.

So, yeah. I I can imagine there wasn't much of you left.

How did you re-find yourself?

Terry: I had to relearn everything, uh, basically. So when you operate in that fight or flight state, which is technically, if a therapist was listening to this, that's what they would say. I was in, fight or flight or a fawn, uh, state all the time.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: There was no, nervous system balancing. I had to relearn how not to react to anything. How not to jump into action right away. How not to solve the problems. How, um, to be still. How to just sit there and let everybody else do whatever they're gonna do and not try to control everything. Right?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: And just focus on myself. I had to learn how to sit in my own bullshit, basically.

Stephanie: Yeah. In your own company.

Terry: And Right. And not use other people and situations and events as distractions, right? Mm-hmm. Because that's ultimately what they ended up being. I was addicted to having no boundaries and then blaming everybody else.

Oh, I can't do all these things 'cause everybody needs me. Okay. No, they don't. They don't need you. They're, very much capable of figuring out things on their own. Unless you have an infant, or small child. I'm not talking about that.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: Or a very aging parent. That's completely different conversation.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: but everybody else who's an adult and they can take care of themselves, they don't need you. Okay. That's just a mind game that you're playing with yourself. You don't have to solve every problem. Nothing catastrophic is gonna happen if you don't solve every problem, or you don't say yes to every invitation, or you don't pick up the phone, phone every time somebody calls you.

Nothing catastrophic is going to happen. You are just using these things as distractions for dealing with your own shit. And so that's what I had to learn how to do. And then I started noticing like, oh wow, interesting. So if I don't do this there, everything's fine. Everything is still fine. I'm not that important.

And so I love that. I love that discovery that I'm not that important.

Stephanie: Right, right. That's some serious perspective. From being the most important all the time, everywhere in every situation to shit can go on without me, and pretty well.

Terry: It's so freeing.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe not exactly a hundred percent the way that I would do it, but it's still done and done well and successful or right, whatever.

It's, it's not wrong. It's just not mine.

Terry: Right? Yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: And so when you become less important to the distractions, you start finding yourself and you're like, oh, what, I used to like this thing over here, but I, you know, I totally forgot about that. And then piece by piece by piece, 'cause if we go back to the analogy of that baby being completely enclosed in a cage, a closet, wherever you wanna put the baby.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: Bubble wrap, board it up, whatever. It takes time to pull the pieces apart, right. \ But, and you have to be gentle and you have to be consistent and you have to show up because that baby might be scared of you.

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: Right. And you have to show up on a daily basis, and you have to have conversations and get to know that child, baby, teenager, young adult, whoever is in there, and to reshape your relationship. And it's not gonna happen if you run off one day, come back the next day, you try to violently break into the closet.

Stephanie: It's a slow process.

Terry: Yes. Yes. And you have to have a little bit of empathy because you don't know who's gonna appear once you take all the padding off.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: Right? Because you've lost touch with her, right. You have to kind of sit with her a little bit and get to know her again. Hold her hand, hear what she has to say.

Ooh, that one. Ooh.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Terry: Listen, you know, listen to her, really listen to her the way that maybe she was never listened to before in her life when she needed somebody to listen to her. You are now responsible to listen to her so she can come out of there.

Stephanie: Yeah.

You know what's interesting is another one of the big themes that happens, that, that comes up in these conversations is a theme about identity. And for a lot of people they find that in their twenties and thirties, their identity has been wrapped up in all the things that are external to them, whether it's their job or their role in a family or, or even a pleasing other people and, achieving a life that looks like it's should be the right life.

Right? So we build 10 or 15 years or 20 years of our lives on this identity that's held outside of us. And then there's this big shift towards who am I really? And I don't know whether that piece is part of your story, but what I'm hearing you say is that you were actually building an identity by getting to know yourself and by listening to some of the things that were coming up inside of you, whether they were scary or uncomfortable or wonderful, or no matter what they were, you, you had to actually get to know yourself, who you were.

Terry: Yeah. It's very interesting because my experience is maybe a little different from other people.

Stephanie: Oh, for sure. Based on where you were born and, and your,tween years, your experience is so different from most of the people I talk to. Absolutely.

Terry: I never had any confusion about my identity. I always knew who I was. I did not wanna change who I was. I kinda lost touch with that energy, which is how I'm gonna describe my identity. It's not anything physical. It's not a title. Yes, I am all those things. I am a mom, a sister daughter, et cetera. Right. Um, but the, that energy, that raw energy of the being that embodies this physical realm never changed.

Stephanie: Okay.

Terry: And she was just, you know, imprisoned for a little bit.

So it's interesting because I have friends that I've had my gosh now, I mean, since like freshman year in college. So it's been like 30 something years, right. And we still hang out, you know, we're still friends. We go places, we do things, we talk all the time, and they tell me all the time, I haven't changed, nothing's changed.

The person, the energy, the being that was there from day one is still the same being. She didn't get cynical. She didn't get, um, resentful. She's not bitter. She's actually more, more full of love than ever before. But she always was in the first place. I never wanted to change that. I never wanted to touch that.

I did not need to redefine my titles or how important I was or CEO this. No, I, I could give a shit about all that. Okay. 'Cause it doesn't matter to me anymore. Uh, it did at one point. Yeah. Not anymore. I don't actually wanna have a title. I just wanna be Terry.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.Would you though, all that being said, would you, uh, characterize this period of getting to know yourself as, adding texture and context and more information to the picture of who you were? I know you said it didn't change, right. But as you're getting to know those pieces of yourself that you had locked away for so long that you didn't know, that you wouldn't allow yourself to embody for all those years, would you say that that fleshed out your identity?

Would you say it, it, it turned it from black and white to technicolor?

Terry: Stephanie. You're, you're digging in there. Really dig. Hmm. You know. I mean, on the surface, my initial reaction is, no, no, no. I, I, that, this, that. Right. Like, that's what's coming out.

But now when I think about it again, I mean, I'm sure there's more to go because I mean, I, I have a father and a mother wound and there there is a lot of stuff I did not talk about, 'cause I don't need to make them public.

Stephanie: Of course.

Somebody told me that my biological father had died. And I had no reaction. That was it.

Stephanie: Right? Why would you, you didn't know him. You Yeah. Understand.

Terry: I was like, oh, you know? Yeah. No, I mean, I wasn't happy. I wasn't sad, right? I wasn't thankful. There was nothing. Right. And then 10 years later, COVID happened and I get this and I'm sure he's my brother.

He's my half brother. If you are listening to this, Stephan, I'm talking about you. I get this message on LinkedIn. I am your stepbrother. Your dad, our, our father just died, or like a month ago.

And I was, I'm like, this is fake. This is spam. Somebody's fishing me. This can't be. He died 10 years ago. So I started having this conversation with him, and it ends up, it is true, he sent me pictures of myself as a baby.

And so it was real. So he had just died and I didn't, I didn't even know he was alive for the last 10 years. And when I tell you, I mean, the level of grief that hit me, um, I would literally sit at my kitchen countertop. I mean, the world was ending. The w COVID was happening. People were dying. I was sitting in my kitchen countertop crying all day. Why? I don't know.

Stephanie: Well, it, it's kind of obvious to me. Do you want me to tell you?

Terry: Tell me.

Stephanie: If I have my timing correct, when you first heard about the death of your biological dad, you were still in that place of defensiveness and the bull being in control and, and all of those things. So my guess is what went through your head is, you know, that's too bad, you know, or something, right? As, as glib and, and shallow as that.

But flash forward 10 years after you've been doing this work, after you've been peeling back layers of your own onion, after you've been integrating different parts of yourself, after you've unlocked the baby and let her out of the closet. You hear something that is devastating to her, to that part of you, and you've done enough work and you've allowed yourself to be unguarded and, and not always playing defense, that you could actually feel that even though you hadn't known him for all of those years, you still had that connection from those first three years that were obviously very, very strong.

Otherwise you wouldn't have been missing him all those years. To me that's just a, a such a wonderful illustration of the, the beauty of this work that you were able to actually, take that information in and feel it, which you weren't able to do the first time.

Terry: That's how I knew I was healing.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: That's how I knew I was moving in the right direction. That's how I knew that this is the right thing to do because I could feel that, I could feel it and I could feel the child's grief. It was tremendous. It was intense. It was very deep. And that's how I knew that if I continue to do what I'm doing, that's not a life, that's not how I wanna live.

I, I don't wanna sleep through my entire life not being there. And so, yeah, that, that's, that's how I knew that these, uh, really big emotions is how we heal ourselves, ultimately, right? So people always say, oh, don't cry, or don't be sad, or whatever. I never tell my children not to cry.

Stephanie: Good.

Terry: I never tell them, don't be sad. I never say, oh, that's ridiculous. I mean, yeah. Okay. Sometimes there's some things that are ridiculous.

Stephanie: Yes.

Terry: Like you gotta feel your feelings.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: Or the bull gets bigger. You feed the bull. Every time you don't feel the feeling, you feed it, that energy goes to the bull and the bull gets more and more entitled to need to protect you.

It's not to hurt you, it's to protect you. It's like, oh my gosh, you can't bear this. I will take it. And the more you do that, the bigger and stronger it's getting. Its feeding off of those things that you are not processing. Yeah. And unknowingly you're creating a universe in which you are not running your life.

Stephanie: Right, right. Tell me, Terry, how, uh, how many years into this work are you now? You, you said this started about 37 or 38. How, how long have you been working through this now?

Terry: Uh, well, quote unquote, first heart attack is when I first got the, the ding on the door.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Yep. When the doorbell first rang.

Mm-hmm.

Terry: Mm-hmm. It rang, I, I didn't know exactly what was happening, but it was really a blessing. Um, so I am going to be 49, I would say about 12 years now.

Stephanie: Okay. About 12 years. And it is an ongoing process. Once you open the door to some of this stuff, I've found that, for me, it goes in cycles. Like I'll have something I wanna work on and I'll, I'll work my way through it and maybe that'll take a year or, or two years and, and then I'll, I'll kind of coast and things will be good. And then I'll sort of bump into something else that I'll say, oh, now, now I think that's getting in my way. Or, or that's holding me back, or, or, that doesn't feel good and I'll, I'll work on that.

So it's, it's interesting. I know for me personally, I was not interested in, or open to, personal growth, personal development, looking inward, listening to myself, any of that stuff until I was in my mid to late thirties. And then it's, been a continual process ever since, although not always an active process. But it's the kind of thing that I know that if, if something in my life gets crunchy or hard or, or things start not being as fluid and effortless as they normally are, then, then there's something I probably have to go dig in and, and look at for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

But the, the other thing I think for you, and I just want to sort of bring our story to a close here is that you took, I think it was about a year off of work and got yourself back on your feet.

You opened the door to this. You really started the process, but the life that you rebuilt after that was a much different look, feel, flavor. The way I would like to describe it is as much softer. Tell me a little bit about the, the world you built yourself after.

Terry: Yes. So once a workaholic, always a workaholic, right?

Once you're type A, you're just gonna be like that. You just have to manage it. But it was so life changing for me to understand these concepts, to understand, somatic movement, strength training, how to eat properly so that I never find myself in that situation so I can go do the things that I wanna do.

All of the mind work, the growth mindset, all of the, processing of past traumas, emotions and things, awareness. Oh my gosh, that one was, blew my mind just how unaware I was.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Terry: And, and then, once you turn the lights on, you realize there's a whole lot of other people sitting around with the lights off. And then you're like, well, don't you wanna turn the lights on?

Stephanie: Right.

Terry: Not always.

Stephanie: Right. Not always.

Terry: So I, I became so interested in all of that. I started getting certified as a trainer nutritionist, emotional eating coach. I just finished actually a lifestyle medicine coach from Harvard Medical School, and I started coaching women because people started seeing that were in my environment, in my vicinity, started seeing the changes and they're like, whoa.

Like I wasn't being recognized sometimes. Like I would walk into a family function and they just didn't know, like, who's that. So people just naturally and organically started asking me, and then I, did a, a retreat in Tennessee three years ago, and I loved it so much. It started becoming regular thing.

So now that's all I do. I do retreats. Wellness retreats that include fitness, strength training, yoga, Pilates, nutrition, walking in nature, spa treatment, sleeping, all those kinds of things that we take for granted. And then I coach other women to start the process.

And the process is not always easy to start because the abstract emotional stuff is not that easily accessible. It's very much buried in, in your subconscious mind, and you're not gonna get there in a flick of a light switch. Oh, I'm gonna go do mindset work. No, it, it didn't work like that for me. Okay. Right, right. I had to start with, well, can I not drink for a day? Mm-hmm. Can I do that? Right. Can I not drink for two days and then maybe a week.

And then once I kind of got ahold of that, well, can I go to the gym for a day? Can I do that right? Can I eat my meals without gorging and wolfing down jars and jars of Nutella at the end of the night? Can I do that for one meal? Mm-hmm. And can I maybe do that for two meals for one day? Yep. Okay. That's where it actually began.

There, there was no, grandiose idea in my mind that I was gonna heal myself in 30 days with this whatever magical potion, and I, I was gonna feel all my feelings. No. It, it started very, very basic things. Yeah. The more I showed up, the more the layers were peeled back. Some of them were very unpleasant, some of them required, more attention. And eventually, little by little over a long period of time, I got to see where I was at.

Stephanie: Yeah.

One last question for you today. This life that you've built now with the coaching and the retreats and, really being invested in wellness, not only for yourself but bringing that word to others, you told me that it was very satisfying to you, very fulfilling.

And the work that you had been doing earlier in your career when you were working so hard, building, these websites and then this marketing agency and, and working for Fortune X companies, wasn't quite as fulfilling, is that right? You didn't really know what fulfillment was at that point?

Terry: Nope. There I had no emotional connection

Stephanie: Yeah.

Terry: to anything I ever did in the past. I was just doing it because it was there and it sustained me. Yeah. And I had to support people financially. Mm-hmm. But it didn't actually call me. It didn't call to me. There was no purpose other than financial dollars that, had me stay there. And that was enough. I didn't need more at the time. Yep.

Stephanie: See what I just said? I did. Yes, yes, yes. Because you told me when we first spoke, you weren't raised to ask yourself whether or not you were happy.

Terry: No. Who cared? Happy. What do you mean? Slavic countries? Oh my gosh. I should probably do a skit on, uh, what, what it means to, to have therapy in, in, in a Slavic culture.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like you're unhappy. Good. Right, right.

No, I mean, that wasn't front and center. And, and I mean, quite frankly, it's not really front and center for me either with my children. Mm-hmm. I'm not like, oh, you know, do whatever makes you happy. You know, you, you, you should pay attention to that, in my opinion, but you should also be practical and realistic and be able to withstand the hits that this world is going to throw at you. Because if you break down and you collapse and you, you melt away when the shit hits the fan, then what good is that? Well, we're in the same boat as I was on the other extreme of it, right?

Yeah. So both extremes, I think, are detrimental. The trick is finding the balance where you understand that you have fulfillment and purpose in something, but you can withstand all the shit that's about to come at you because it will eventually, it always does. We always get it right.

So it's like tough and soft at the same time.

Stephanie: What a wonderful, wonderful place to stop.

Terry, thank you so much. You have been so generous with your story and you have shared so much. Um, and I just, I wanna thank you for, for coming to be with me today. It's meant a lot to me.

Terry: Stephanie, you made me cry and this is literally the best conversation I've had in a long time. I think you're an an absolutely fabulous host, human being, woman, and you're doing really, really fantastic work. Thank you.

Stephanie: Thank you.