The Kitchen Sink Breaking Point

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's embarrassing to have to say, like, I lost my job. And not only did I lose my job, but as I've been applying for roles throughout this year, I haven't gotten anything. I didn't expect to see myself back, being a stay-at-home mom. All of these things are leading up to this moment of standing there in the kitchen and being like, I have I have something has to give. I'm not here with a package story. I'm like here in this messy middle. And so I knew that I needed to be showing up better for myself, for Quincy, for my kids, instead of wallowing in this why me. I can take the rejections, I can take the loss, I can take the lack. And I can see it all as harmful. Or I can say, this world is so much for me that it gave me back time with my kids. I am and you are mid-renovation. Welcome to a new season of Renovating the Soul. I am your host, Alexandria, and I'm so excited that you have joined me today. In the season three trailer, I mentioned that this season is going to be very personal starting out. I'm gonna go back over the last year of my life and my family's life, and then we'll get into some other topics. But today's episode, What If You're Not Lost at All, really starts with my personal journey of coming back to this podcast and what the last year has looked like. And in different seasons of my life, I've told myself that I was lost, and that would usually be when I lost a job or broke off a relationship or something happened in my life, and I would be like, I'm lost, I don't know where to go, I don't know what to do. And recently I found myself saying it again. I was spiraling, to be honest with y'all. And I was standing at the kitchen sink, I was washing dishes, and I was thinking in my mind, where am I supposed to go from here? What is supposed to be next? What am I supposed to do? And it wasn't just about those questions, it was about the feeling inside, the feeling that being lost gives you. And it's almost like I felt numb. I felt kind of just like a ghost, like a shell of who I was in in those moments. And that a lot of that lostness came from this gap between where I thought I'd be and where I actually am. You get this plan, this vision for your life, and then when things don't start to pan out, it becomes you're lost. And in that moment, when I felt myself spiraling and I felt all of that numbness, and I just felt myself digging a deeper and deeper hole emotionally. Just ask myself, what if you're not lost at all? That question alone kept me from spiraling. It kept me from waking up sad, it kept me from falling into depression because I had to give myself a different way of seeing it. I've been very honest with you all throughout these seasons of the podcast and you know, coming in with these real time like episodes. And I say

When Community Vanishes After Church

SPEAKER_00 3:14

that because in season two, we talked about Predators in the Pulpit. And in that episode, I shared about my church journey and recently like leaving the churches that we left and leaving ministry. And when I was coming to sit down and tell you guys about, you know, the these things that have led up to this feeling of being lost, I was thinking about this idea of like I left ministry, it's this core identity, but really it's bigger than that. It's not about the preaching and the teaching. It's not. It was actually about losing friendships, about the trust that was broken, about losing an entire community. And that was the hard part that I didn't want to admit out loud. For whatever reason, in my mind, sometimes I think if I admit that someone hurt me, that means they have power over me. But that's just not true. It's just not true. It's reality. If someone claims to have been your friend, we're talking about people that sat in my home. We're talking about people whose problems they freely texted or called or brought to me with no care in the world that they were dumping on me while I had kids and marriage and other things going on, rarely asking how I'm doing. You're talking about people that ate dinner in my home, that watched my children, I watched their children. You're talking about people that you expected really got to know you over that time who never called after you left a church, who never called to ask, what is your side? What happened? And I'm talking about never called, never text. That is pain. That's painful. There's no power in that. I don't give them any power over me by admitting that out loud. And yet, keeping that within is all part of leading up to this idea of feeling lost. So more than the ministry, more than just preaching and teaching, it was losing the people, losing a whole community of people.

Job Loss And School Rejection Reality

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Then after that happens, I lose my job. And here you go. These are just the thoughts that keep me trapped in my mind. But it's just like, it's embarrassing to have to say, like, I lost my job. And not only did I lose my job, but as I've been applying for roles throughout this year, I haven't gotten, I haven't gotten anything. I haven't gotten anything with a resume like mine, and as much as I've done in two degrees, I haven't gotten anything, not even an interview. It's kind of embarrassing. And I thought that I was gonna be at this job or have this career for five to 10 years. Again, I've said this. I thought I was gonna get those student loans paid off, and now I have to pay those myself, which is frustrating, right? And so it's like, yeah, so you have, okay, the ministry, you have, okay, the job. Again, things that I've been very honest with you all about. And then in um episode 19 as well, I also mentioned that I was gonna go back to school. So I went all in on school last year. I spent a year plus doing this, still kind of in it, because I still haven't heard from all the schools. And I'm just thinking, like, I have nothing to lose. And then I get rejected everywhere after a year of hard work. And so now I'm back to being a stay-at-home mom. I'm, you know, when I did this and when I was a stay-at-home mom before, I only had one son. I had my oldest son, and I and I didn't like it. Uh it's not something that how can I say this in a kind way? I've always wanted to be a mom. I've always wanted to be a wife. I've just never saw myself being like a stay-at-home mom or a wife. I always wanted to work, I've always wanted to start a nonprofit or do something. Like I'm always going to have a project, hence this podcast, right? Like I'm always going to be doing something. I didn't expect to see myself back being a stay-at-home mom, you know, this time with four boys, right? And so all of these things are leading up to this moment of standing there in the kitchen and being like, I have, I have something has to give. Because if I keep letting all this stuff pile up, because I don't know if you guys have this moment where you're sad about one thing, and then all of a sudden you're sad about everything. You start, I mean you start going back to college, you start going back to mistakes you made, you start going back to past relationships, you know, your mind just starts going, and that's kind of what was happening to me. And not knowing the other side of it is hard. And that's what this episode is about, is that when I'm asking myself, what if you're not lost at all? It's just a starting point to get me to movement because I don't know what's on the other side. I'm not here with a package story. I don't have the friendships that I want. I obviously don't have the job and I didn't get into school. So I'm not here to tell you guys, yeah, I made it on the other side. I'm like here in this messy middle, which is the theme of uh season

Reframing Pain Into Time And Freedom

SPEAKER_00 7:56

three of the podcast. And so there was a couple of turning points for me, one of them being I saw this Instagram video and the guy, I don't know who this gentleman is. He it's, you know, Instagram, they're just throwing things at you. And then he's on a podcast and he says, Nothing bad has ever happened to me. And I'm listening to this and I'm like, what? He's like, nothing bad has ever happened to me. And then he goes on to list like seemingly bad things. He lost a loved one, he got sick, he's lost like contracts and opportunities. I realized through him saying it, he's saying, like, it's about your mentality that everything that happened to him led to something else. So yeah, I lost, you know, this loved one, but I think it was like his grandma. But he's like, but I had all these amazing years with her. Like, yeah, I got sick, but it led to this. Like, yeah, I lost this opportunity, but another door opened. And when I was watching that video, I said out loud, heck yeah. Like that's that's the mentality that I wanted to have because I wanted to stop saying things out loud that were keeping me mentally trapped. And so I knew that I needed to be showing up better for myself, for Quincy, for my kids, instead of wallowing in this, why me? I can take the rejections, I can take the loss, I can take the lack. And I can see it all as harmful, or I can say, this world is so much for me that it gave me back time with my kids. That while I'm at that nine to five that I grumbled about, you know, almost every day because you're dealing with people, right? And, you know, you're, you're, you're having to get up and you're you're working hard for someone else. But it's like this, I can, I can look at all that and say, I didn't get my student loans paid for. These people walked out, right? Or I can look at it and say, if those people walked out, they were clearly meant to do that. Like then those clearly were never friends. It's a hard reality, but that is the reality. And I can say, you know what? I have so much more time now. And it's not a pity party. Like, I don't want it to sound like, oh, yeah, so many time doing what it no, it's it's the reality. I get to spend time with my children, I get to read. I kind of get to be free of even having to be around fake people. How what do you want? To be around a bunch of people who actually really don't care about you and only have their interest at heart, or to be with like, you know, a few people, which is how it is, who you know really care for you. Even if it's just my children, they love me, they don't care, they they they shower me with love. So, anyways, I'm just saying, like, it's it's all about reframing. It's all about reframing and seeing things from a different angle and asking myself different questions. And so as I started doing that, I recognize what I've been overlooking is that I have been working since I was 17 or 18. My first job was at McDonald's. I and when you really think about this, you go from daycare to preschool to elementary school to middle school to high school to working to college to working in the summer to college to working in the summer to like that's been my trajectory. Even though I came out of college and I didn't have the dream job that I wanted, I was still working. When I was in graduate school, I went from undergrad, then I went to graduate school. I went to graduate school, and then I was working when I was finishing graduate school online. So I've never really had a real break. I've and that's by choice too. It's not again, it's not a pity party. This is by choice. I've never had a break. I've never stopped moving. And then in between that, I'm always picking up a project. I had a blog, I had my photography company, I'm trying to create a conference, I'm I'm pulling different friends together. Like I'm, I was, I'm always moving. And the blessing now that I was minimizing, honestly, not even recognizing, was that I'm in a place now where my husband's income covers our household. I'm in a place where I get I got to watch him finish his master's in math and now finish his PhD and being able to support him through the years when he was doing that with my work at GSA, but now he it flips. He gets to support us. And so I was about to send myself from years of nonstop working straight into three years of school with no pause while my my kids are little, seven, five, three, and two. They're little guys. Like they need me kind of the most right now. And if I'm able to be there for them, I don't think that's a bad thing. So this season is rest, it's recalibration, and it's choosing not to call it failure. I can see this season as, you know, why is all of this happening to me? Or I can see it as not being lost. So let's talk a little more about this idea of being lost, because you know, at Renovating the Soul, we are going to confront these ideas, these mentalities that we've hold on to without ever checking

Lost Versus In Between

SPEAKER_00 12:48

them. And so there's a difference between lost versus in between, and they're not the same thing. Lost means no movement at all. But if you're breathing, if you're hurting, if you're trying, if you're questioning, then you're not lost. Being in the middle of something and being lost are two different things. And I've been conflating the two for almost my entire life. Like I said, it's always, oh my gosh, he broke up with me, I'm lost, and I know what to do. When Quincy and I, we which this will have to, you guys will have to get the full story of this later, but when Quincy and I got engaged, I had 40 days left of college when he called off the engagement. And I that was another season where I was like, I'm lost, I don't know what to do. I I had this plan that I was gonna leave Clark Atlanta and I was gonna go back, I was gonna move to Portland. I had everything set. And then when he, I always say he dumped me, so which is true. So he'll have to defend himself when he comes on the pod. But when when he called off the engagement, then it was like I'm lost. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I don't know my next steps. And I'm gonna tell you guys, I did not check in with myself and check that mentality and say, you're not lost. I made decisions out of this lostness because then I felt insecure about not knowing. Then I felt the pressure of like the whole campus knew I got engaged. Now I gotta chin up and act like everything's okay. So then I get in a relationship with someone else who is like cool. And so I'm like, yeah, look at me. You know, I'm not not wanted and all of these things, right? Because I didn't just sit down and have this conversation with myself and be like, girl, you're not, you like it hurts, and that's okay. No, I wanted to put on the armor and say, it's okay. I got dumped, but I'm still that girl and I'm still desirable. And look at me, I'm gonna bounce on to the next thing. But bouncing on to the next thing damaged me emotionally because then I got into a toxic relationship. So then I spent a year plus of my life wasting it on some no-good dude. You see what I'm saying? So it's like we have to start investigating and interrogating, which are my two favorite terms. You guys are gonna hear me say this a lot this season, but I just love this, right? Like investigating and interrogating our emotions. Because when we are doing that, when you are sitting down and you're investigating and you're interrogating your emotions, your motives, your experiences, that is forward movement. It's not about literally picking up and saying, all right, I'm gonna go from just this job to this job, or this man to this man, to this woman to this woman, or this church, this church. No, it's about sitting down, actually making sure you understanding what's happening happening to you. Because there's a difference between noticing what you're feeling and then actually questioning it. And if we can put it back into this idea of renovating, investigating is like the inspection phase. You walk through the house and you document what's there, you acknowledge I feel disoriented, I feel like I don't know what's next. That's real and it matters. This idea of interrogating it goes deeper. It's pulling back the layers, it's asking, is this feeling telling me the truth? Or is it just the first story that came up? And so let's think about it this way. Many of us are afraid of spiders. But if you jump when you see a spider, that fear is real. So that's the part where we're saying, okay, your nervous system had actually fired. There's really something there. That's the investigation part where you're going, okay, there's a there's something here. What is happening? I'm scared. Okay, that's the investigation. We we're acknowledging I'm scared. We see it. It's plain. We can't, we can't almost control it sometimes. You jump, right? And you're like, okay, I got scared. But then when you interrogate it, right? You say, okay, my body drew this conclusion that I'm in danger. Uh-huh. But that's not necessarily accurate. The spider is smaller and most likely not poisonous for many of us, but it's smaller than our hand. You could smash it in a second. You have so many things bigger than this spider. Your shoe, a piece of tissue, you know, you do whatever is closest to you is likely bigger than this spider. So the emotion was real, but the interpretation was not. And that's why you have to interrogate it. It's not saying that we shelter, because you guys know if you've been listening to the episodes, I'm not telling you to hide from your emotions. I'm telling you to lean into them because they're signals, right? But you have to balance the emotions with reason. So you investigate, you see that fear, you feel the fear. That's very real. But you interrogate, you go deeper and say, but was that fear actually valid? And that's what we do with being lost, right? The disorientation is real. How I felt was real. The numbness was real. I'm not taking away the pain. The pain I felt, the sadness I felt, that's very real. The conclusion that I am lost, that I don't know where I'm going, that something is wrong with me, that's the part worth interrogating. Being lost is a verdict you gave yourself, but probably without a full investigation. And when I was having these moments, y'all, like of feeling lost and seeing that video and coming up out of it and just making day-to-day decisions, I really I didn't, I didn't know I was investigating or interrogating. I didn't have these terms to put to it. I just read this in a grief book that I was reading the other day, and it's a philosophical book on grief, and it gave me terms to what I was doing without me fully knowing that I was doing it. But now I'm giving it to you in terms and ideas that you can actually take and understand, investigate and interrogate what's happening to us. And so at the end of our episodes, I'm gonna be given this like blueprint, make given this renovation theme. And so if you think about it this way, a gutted house, it looks like something went wrong. If you walked into a renovation mid-demo with no context, you're gonna think it was a disaster. But the exposure is the process. The mess doesn't mean the project failed, it means real work is underway. So you weren't lost. I wasn't, and I'm not lost. I am and you are mid-renovation. And that's so different than telling yourself that you're lost, you don't know where you're going, you don't understand.

Stop Performing Lostness

SPEAKER_00 19:15

You do understand. You understand that I'll put it back to me, but you can use your own examples. You do understand that humans are humans. They're complicated. People hurt you without knowing they hurt you. Even though they never called and they never text, they trusted the people who were giving them information. You know what I did on my end? I never went out and blasted people because, and let me explain why I'm about to say this. In my mind, I was thinking grace and mercy, grace and mercy. I have to give grace and mercy, right? And then I was beating myself up thinking that by by feeling hurt or pained by the fact that so-called friends never reached out or people again that I prayed for, sat with for hours. My lord, all the dinners, I can't even tell you guys, I'm so happy I don't have to do that anymore. But like all these things that I was doing, right? I could be so hurt and I was like, well, you have to give grace and mercy. But when I was telling myself grace and mercy, it felt like I had to push those feelings aside. And then I realized, oh, I gave grace when I didn't really tell the truth of the things that were done. Oh, I gave mercy and the fact that I'm still kind to you, even though I have every right to not be kind to you. As I started to do this process of like, and again, without the terms, but as I've started to do this process of really investigating and interrogating and being honest, right? Saying these things out loud and not making myself feel small, then I'm realizing I was not the problem. You're spiraling out of control with all these thoughts about you're not a good friend, you must be a bad person, because why would why would people respond to you if you weren't the problem? But I'm not. I can sit here with integrity and say, I'm not, right? But that's that process. Same thing with with my job. Yeah, you got fired, you got laid off, but that was not, it wasn't like the government was looking at Alexandria Robinson and saying, you are not good enough. When you're going into the market, the job market is crazy right now. The school world is competitive right now. Like those are real realities that I started taking on and adding them and making it seem like there's something wrong with me. So I'm lost. I'm I'm uh don't know where to go. This isn't what I wanted. All these emotions and things that I was taking on that were so unnecessary, but that came from one idea, telling myself that I was lost. So I'm inviting you all to stop performing lostness. Stop rehearsing it out loud. Every time you're saying that you're lost, you're almost training yourself to stay there. But instead, you should ask questions. Don't just accept what you're feeling without understanding why you're feeling it. Think about that spider example. Yes, I feel something that is very real, but why I feel it may actually be an illusion. Emotions are data, but they are not verdicts. And we talk about emotions in the roots episode. So if you want more on that and what emotions are and what they're not, check out the roots episode. We are rational beings. I I just again, I love philosophy and I love the fact that we are rational beings. That's what makes us human. And that's not something to take lightly. That means that we can come to good conclusions and we can use the information that we have, use the data that you have about your life, your accomplishments, your decisions, who you are, to make a rational conclusion. And that goes either way. We're not all good. We have done things that have hurt other people. We have done things to sabotage even why we're even feeling lost. That's very real. But that doesn't mean you have to stay where you are. And you'll find a lot in this season that I don't have any tidy endings, and that's the point, right? I'm still in this. I don't have all the answers. I'm just choosing to look at this differently. Honestly, you guys, I'm just choosing to ask different questions because, like I said, I've been saying that I was lost for years. And this time at 34, I decided to ask, what if I'm not lost at all? I wonder if you would think about that same thing and ask yourself that same question.

The Messy Middle And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 23:26

So, next episode, and you guys heard me mention that I got rejected from school. And the next episode, I'm going to talk about that more in depth. So you have to come back and hear that story. It's not, again, it's not a tidy ending. It's not a cute story at all, but it's gonna help you all understand why I just felt so down and why I had to pull myself up out of that hole. But y'all, I hope that you hear my heart as always, and understand that part of me coming to tell these stories in this season was that I didn't want to have to pretend like everything was okay when it wasn't. I wanted to be the person that younger me needed when I needed to hear stories of people when they were in the middle, in the messy middle of what they were going through and not on the beautiful ending. No, I want to know what was it like when you were so sad you barely could pull yourself out of bed. I wanted to know what got you out of that hole. I I want to know when you were put back in a position that you didn't think you were gonna be in, how did you, how did you keep moving forward? And I do not know what the other side looks like, y'all. I just know what I'm doing day to day. So we're gonna talk about that more in the next episode. So I hope you'll join us. But until next time, thank you for being here and let's keep doing the work to renovate the cell.