Key Takeaways

• You don't heal first and then live. You heal while you're living.
• Bad days are not failures. They are proof of humanity.
• Unprocessed trauma and chronic stress can manifest as physical illness, including autoimmune conditions.
• Healing is layered, non-linear, and changes your relationship with your past rather than erasing it.
• Connection is essential. Isolation feels safe but keeps you stuck.
• Gratitude and prayer are powerful tools for anchoring your healing journey.
• The healed version of you already exists. Give yourself permission to picture her.

Memorable Quotes

"You don't heal first and then live. You heal while you're living."

"Healing isn't the finish line. It's something that you carry with you as you become."

"You're not stuck. You're becoming."

"What's meant for you, the healed version of yourself, is not gonna require you to abandon who you are."

Themes Covered

• Messy healing and releasing the pressure to be "fixed"
• The link between emotional trauma and physical health (Hashimoto's, adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism)
• Healing while parenting as a single mom
• Recognizing domestic violence and accessing support
• Faith, prayer, and gratitude as healing practices
• Visualizing your healed self as a spiritual and motivational tool
• Reconnecting with your identity, joy, and personality after loss

Call to Action

Need help finding support resources for your healing journey? Reach out to Kimm directly. She is happy to help connect you with therapy, advocacy programs, support groups, or whatever fits your season. Message her through the podcast.

Episode 009 Preview: Specific healing modalities and tools that actually work, including practices Kimm uses personally.

Short SEO Description

Healing doesn't wait until life slows down, and you don't have to be "fixed" to keep moving forward. Kimm gets honest about healing in the messy middle, the physical toll of chronic stress, and how to root into who you already are while you become who you're meant to be.

Long SEO Description

What if healing wasn't something you had to finish before your life could really begin? In Episode 008 of Rooted to Rise, Kimm Rash is dismantling the myth that you need to be fully healed before you're allowed to move forward. Because the truth is, most of us are doing it all at the same time: healing, parenting, working, surviving, and somehow still showing up.

Kimm shares openly about her own experience of walking through toxic relationships, financial stress, and the threat of job loss, all while raising four children and trying to hold herself together. She talks candidly about how years of living in fight-or-flight mode broke her body and contributed to adrenal crashes, Hashimoto's disease, and hypothyroidism. And she names what no one told her at the time: your emotional wounds will eventually show up in your physical body.

But this episode isn't just about what breaks you. It's about what becomes possible when you stop waiting for perfect conditions and start healing right where you are. Kimm walks through the importance of community and connection, the danger of prolonged isolation, and why the people cheering you on in your anger aren't always the same people who can help you grow. She points to therapy, advocacy organizations, and the power of finding your niche, because healing looks different for everyone.

She closes with a faith-filled invitation: picture the woman you're becoming. Thank God for her. Root into what is already good and true about you. Release the pressure to have it all figured out. You are not stuck. You are becoming.

If this episode speaks to you and you need help finding support resources, Kimm invites you to reach out directly. And stay tuned for Episode 009, where she'll dive into specific healing practices and modalities that have made a real difference in her own life.

Episode Topic Ideas

Faith and Spiritual Growth

• The power of gratitude practice when you have nothing left
• What it means to pray for discernment in a season of chaos
• How to trust God with the version of yourself you haven't become yet
• Faith as an anchor when healing feels too slow

Healing Modalities and Tools

• Specific healing practices and what worked for Kimm (teased for Ep 009)
• Somatic healing and releasing trauma from the body
• Journaling as a healing tool for women in transition
• Movement, nature, and physical outlets for emotional release

Identity and Self-Worth

• Recognizing yourself again after someone has chiseled away at who you are
• What self-love actually looks like in real life, not Instagram
• Getting dressed for the woman you're becoming, not the one in survival mode
• Rebuilding confidence after a toxic relationship

Relationships and Community

• The difference between friends who have your back and friends who help you grow
• Why isolation feels safe but keeps you stuck
• Navigating domestic violence: when you don't even know it's happening to you
• How to find your people in a season of healing

Emotional and Physical Health

• The connection between unprocessed trauma and autoimmune disease
• Healing Hashimoto's and thyroid issues naturally
• What chronic fight-or-flight does to your body over time
• Anger, unforgiveness, and what they're actually doing to your health (future episode teased)

Motherhood and Healing

• Healing while parenting: how your kids can be part of your restoration
• Single mom survival mode and what grace actually looks like
• What your children teach you about love when everything else falls apart

Episode 008_ what it looks like to heal while you’re still living your life

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Hi, thanks for joining me today. heard a quote before, "You can be healing and still have hard days. Both can exist at the same time." Not quite sure who said it. It was not me. but isn't that so true, right? I think people think you have to have it one way or the other, right? So today, I think we're gonna talk about healing while you're still actually living your life and what that looks like, how hard that is, or how easy it could be

let's just normalize messy healing. And we're gonna remove the pressure a little bit of having to be healed in quotation marks. Like, "Look at me, I'm healed." and guess what? You can be healed, and you should be proud when you do heal parts of yourself that need to be healed. But it is okay to be exactly where you are right now, no matter what level of healing you're in, wherever you're at.

But how'd you get there? We all walked through it, right? We all walked through the muck I think a lot of people believe that healing is just something that you do, right? Before you get to live your life. Like you need to fix everything, figure everything out, become fully healed version of yourself, and then you can finally move forward.

And that's just not the case. And actually, that's just literally not how life works. it just is not. You don't heal first and then live. You heal while you're living. You can still struggle and grow because bad days don't mean failure. They don't. They just mean you're a human being. You're a human doing.

And trying to give yourself some grace.

Because it's a process, it's layered, and it happens over time. It doesn't erase your past, it just changes your relationship with it. And little by little, you have to

have peace and let things go. I know healing can be messy. I know it can be. And we're gonna probably dive more into that in the next episode, like ways that you can start walking through some of your healing, some modalities that actually work. every person's different. What's gonna work for them is different.

But I do know being in the mess and trying to survive, and the worst part of that, folks, is if you get yourself into a place where you're healing or y- you know what? Sometimes you're not even trying to heal, you're just in the mess

I had adrenal storms. They crashed me. And I went from being this tiny little 100-pound chick to having a broken thyroid all of a sudden because my adrenal storms just broke it, and I got Hashimoto's, and I have hypothyroidism. And now instead of eating 20 slices of pizza and never gaining a pound, I literally think about pizza, and I was gaining weight And I was always inflamed.

My body was just always poofy. My face was poofy. And I still go through bouts of that. I'm still, I'm walking through healing my body as naturally as I can. I'm trying

But I definitely have done the work to calm down my immune system. I have definitely done the work and found practices that work for me, and we'll talk about that in the next episode.

Meanwhile, you are having really not good issues with the father of your children. You're having stresses of barely being able to put food on the table

You're healing from a very toxic relationship, so much so that it affected your job. Now you go to your job and your job is telling you basically, "You're gonna get fired if you don't go to this domestic violence counseling." You didn't even know you were a victim of domestic violence.

You thought that was just your relationship, and that's just how you guys were. You're just oil and water. You're just fire So now you're dealing with that. You don't know if you're gonna have a job, and you're actually really good at your job, which is the worst part.

And part of my healing was knowing at the end of the day that I had my kids with me. They were on my bed, and literally we all just laid almost like a little pack of cubs in a cave. I had one on one arm, one on the other, one laid on my belly, the other one laid on my legs, and this is how we slept

And that was part of my healing. They calmed my system. Just their love, just knowing that they're there

But I did know what it was like to wake up every day and go, "How the frig am I gonna get through this again today?" Where is the hope? Where is the joy? My children were always a hope and a joy. That's not what I'm saying.

I was trying to fill leaking holes and plug my finger in all these holes, and it was not working because I refused to take a look at myself and say, " What did I contribute to this?

And that is the amazing thing about the internet these days, right? Like you can find connection, and I encourage you, and I am not one who likes to go out a lot and connect with people, so this is coming from that.

But you do need to connect with people, and whether... Whatever you're walking through, there's AA, there's NA, there's domestic violence advocacy, there's therapy.

You can find a niche that works for you, because at the end of the day, it's not about the titles, it's about you getting the help that you need and the love that you need to support you through what you're going through. And you know what? That's not always gonna be your friends, because sometimes you can't be honest with your friends 100%.

Just message me and let's get you some support. That way you can go on your healing journey too, and you can become the best version of you that loves herself

It's okay And what's meant for you, the healed version of yourself, is not gonna require you to abandon who you are It's not gonna require you to forget the things that made you, that you loved about you before people and situations literally tore apart and chiseled out every part of you that you recognized as yourself

Because I remember not recognizing myself. I remember looking and going, " God, I used to be funny. I used to be I lit up rooms," and I know I did. And I don't mean that in a vain way. I loved being happy, and it showed

Trust me, I could be a Negative Nelly God, that version of Kim was so ugly. not on the outside. I actually was better looking then than I am now. but my insides were way uglier and way more broken and way more sad So sad and angry and defeated, and I don't want you to live there. I don't want you to have to walk through that alone

So in the next episode, we're gonna walk over, a bunch of different ways and suggestions that might work for you till you find your niche. Heck, it could be digging holes in your yard and that's your therapy. I don't know. It's gonna look different for everybody, and that is okay. And it's okay to block everyone out of your life for a while, while you work on yourself, but you can't stay alone.

And I just highly encourage you, to just pray for discernment, pray for healing just say thank you. you do that gratitude. Thank you, Father, for the amazing life that I already have. Thank you for the wonderful people I'm about to meet that you're bringing into my life and you're gonna help lift me up, Father

I pray that I get the chance to pour into people and give back what you have given to me

These kinds of things. Gratitude. Be thankful and get it in your mind about the life and the person that you are already gonna be, that fully healed person that you see. just picture her in your mind. What does she look like? What does she laugh like? What does she smile like? What is she wearing?

I mean, come on now. Does she even dress the way you dress now? No, because if you had more confidence and you were fully healed and you really loved yourself, you would feel comfortable dressing however you wanted to dress, and the heart of you knows exactly what that looks like and what your hair would look like.

because you felt the urge and you were healed, that you had the motivation to go out and become who you're going to be. Picture her. Picture her and say, "Thank you, Father, for her, because that is who I'm going to be. Thank you

So as usual, what am I gonna tell you to do? Me, I'm gonna tell you, to root into the things that you know are good about you, the things that you bring to the table. What is it I bring to the table that is solidly who I am? I love that about me, and I don't care if no one else likes that about me. I truly love that about me.

That might be more than one episode because it's so very important

And we're gonna rise up every day. I want you to just picture that girl that you wanna be. And heck, honestly, if there's guys listening to this, picture who you want to be. Just picture who you wanna be. I know a couple of friends of mine that, that are guys that I know are gonna listen into this podcast to support it, and I appreciate it it doesn't-- You don't have to be a female to do these things.

You But as a woman who has walked through the muck, as a woman who has changed and morphed, hated herself and loved herself, I am here for you

So you don't have to be fully healed to keep moving forward. You do not have to have it all figured out to live your life. You're allowed to be growing and learning and still in the middle of it because healing isn't the finish line

It's something that you carry with you as you become. You're not stuck. You're becoming Thank you as always for listening to me today

I hope that there's something in here that touched you, that is gonna motivate you, that is gonna move you and help heal you And I'll see you in the next episode