Welcome to the Follow Your Gut Podcast. I'm Juniper. I am so happy to have you here.
I'm so excited for today's conversation. We are going to be talking about the number one most important part of your healing, of your child's healing, of your expansion of the next version of who you are becoming. Without this, all of the other work that you are doing is not as effective as it could be. And it's both the hardest thing and the easiest thing when we get the hell out of our way.
So right now I am sitting on a fallen down tree on the side of a trail. I want to share this story with you because it so perfectly mirrors exactly what you are likely not doing that by the end of the episode you will make the decision to start prioritizing because it's going to make your healing, your child's healing, your expansion, so much more enjoyable and so much more useful. So I have been craving change in the podcast for a really long time. I even played around with the idea of retiring the podcast because it had become so draining for me. I had created a process where I would make a list of all of the topics, all of the conversations that I'm seeing come up in my DMs or in comments on my Instagram, emails that we're receiving, and I would create a list of symptoms that I needed to talk about, conversations that needed to be addressed. And I would either create a script if I had something that I really I that I wanted to make sure I was going into great detail and not getting distracted. Or I'd create an outline. As a woman with ADHD, I appreciate something that helps keep me on task. But in this process, I would have to be sitting in my office with my podcast microphone, all by myself, no distractions, and I would record. These episodes felt dead in my body. And after doing a hundred, I think I did a hundred and ninety two of them, I don't want to do it anymore.
I don't want to do it like that anymore. It doesn't feel easeful to me anymore. There was a time where it worked and it felt good, but if I'm being honest, it's at least the last fifty episodes that don't feel life-giving to me. And if they don't feel life-giving to me, they're not being received on your side with the energy that I would consider to be worth your time. I'm not doing it anymore. I have finally allowed myself permission to break free from those bonds, to break free from how I was taught podcasting needed to look. I'm doing it my way. So I'm using headphones that plug into my iPhone and I'm sitting on the side of a trail in my happy place. This is exactly what we all do. We all put ourselves in these rule boxes, even if we are not cognizant of it.
We create rules, we create expectations of what healing should look like, what our role in motherhood should look like, how we should record a podcast. We do this in every area of our life. And we forget to pause and ask ourselves, does this feel right? Am I enjoying this? If you are not enjoying it, I can guarantee you it's not the best way of doing it for you. It may work for someone else. It may light someone else to do it exactly how you're doing it, but if it's not lighting you up, if you are not feeling alive in your body, there is a different version. There's a different way of doing it. That only you know how. So when it comes to your healing or your child's healing, healing doesn't always feel good. It's not a simple choice of, okay, well I'm gonna go for a hike and or I'm gonna go for a run and I'm gonna record a podcast on the side of the trail. When you are consumed with symptoms, when you are experiencing recurring yeast infections or UTIs or you're covered in cystic acne and it's so painful and you are embarrassed to leave the house or your child is covered head to toe with eczema or they're experiencing topical steroid withdrawal or they're not sleeping, which means you haven't slept in months, it's that's a different situation and I have so much compassion to where you are. But the same was true in my son's healing. Had I continued to stay in the box of going from professional to professional to professional and performing the next test and the next best test and the next best test and nothing making sense, nothing adding up, nothing actually working.
Every single professional we went to they had a treatment for one specific symptom. Each symptom was being looked at separately. His rash, here's a steroid cream. His allergies, well he's severely allergic to these nine different foods, just avoid them. He'll probably get better. you know, behavioral issues, I'm gonna refer you to a specialist, his speech delays, let's get you into a speech therapist. Right? Nothing was being looked at as a whole. And it took me Stepping outside the box of what healing, I'm saying this in quotes, should look like to actually find the healing that healed every single one of his symptoms, that healed his body as a whole. And when we don't allow ourselves to get honest with ourselves about what's not feeling right and how do we actually want it to look, we're gonna keep spinning our wheels. We're gonna keep showing up.
Over and over and over in ways that feel dead because they don't belong to us. They are ideas that have been conditioned into us. They don't belong to us and it's not going to work for us. So the same is true. If you have found your way here, maybe you have listened to every single episode and you've st you still have not decided to rebalance. It's okay. I invite you to listen to yourself.
Every single thing is not meant for every single person, and that is okay. I want you to give yourself full permission right now. Whether you are experiencing symptoms or you are expanding yourself or you are looking to heal your child or you are looking to simply help your family thrive in a way that you know is possible, but you just haven't quite figured out yet how.
I want you to close your eyes right now and I want you to visualize.
The dreamiest version of yourself. What are you doing? Where are you? What are you wearing? I want you to see her. And it's the first image of her that comes. But it's not you as a mother. It's not you as a wife. It's not you assigned to any role that you have. It's not you as a business owner. This is you as you. This is me right now, as Juni, as Juniper, sitting on the side of the trail.
I have had this vision in my head for the longest time when I close my eyes and I visualize who am I in my most joyful state of existing. The vision that comes to my mind every single time is me running on a trail in the mountains, all by myself, surrounded by nature. That is me. Guess what? I haven't gone on a trail run by myself in over fifteen years.
But this is the vision of me that I have when I close my eyes. And so this weekend I made the decision I'm not going to let that be the vision that just lives in my mind anymore. I'm going to put this compression wrap on my knee because I know that I naturally hypere expend extend my knee.
I'm gonna go for me. I'm gonna go without expectation and I don't care how long I go. That's not part of my vision. My vision isn't I am a trail runner that runs marathons in the woods. No, I don't care if I run a mile. I don't care how far I go today. I am showing up for that version of me that is alive when I close my eyes and I visualize myself in my happiest, most joyful place for me. So that's where I am right now. I wanted to record this for you because this is the new era of the podcast. It's the unleashing of the bonds that we have created for ourselves. It's giving ourselves full body permission to do things our way, to do things the way that they feel good to us. Because guess what? When we show up so fully, so alive for ourselves, it radiates out of us. So whatever part of this message, whoever this message is intended for, I know that it has a far greater impact than if I were sitting in my office with my podcast podcast microphone and maybe the audio, of course the audio would be would sound better. I don't care. I am not showing up as that version of me anymore. I am committed to showing up as the alive version of me. If it reaches more people, beautiful. If it reaches fewer people, beautiful. It's not for the result. It's for the process of showing up fully. And in your journey, in your healing, in your child's healing, I encourage you to do the same.
Your body knows if what you are currently doing is working for you. And it knows if it's not. It knows if it's time to try something different. It knows if it's time to go all in and trust the process. But you can't make that decision from within the box that you're living in. You have to give yourself time and space, showing up as that person that is alive in your vision.
Your answers will come to you with so much ease, but it can't be forced.
This episode is me voicing my commitment to self, to show up authentic, to who I want to be, to how I want to live.
It's an invitation for you to do the same. But I want you to go about this very gently with very loving expectations of self because this version of me that's showing up right here.
I couldn't have imagined this version of me ten years ago, fifteen years ago, gosh, even six months ago. We are all always evolving. We are all always expanding. And I want you to meet yourself in the season that you are in right now, without comparing yourself to anyone around you. This journey for me of self-awareness and self-expansion, it really started when I rebalanced my gut because when you have overgrowths in your body, when you have too much bad bacteria, yeast, mold fungus, parasites, heavy metals, and toxins, it creates inflammation. That inflammation makes your gut brain connection very blurry. And it can be really, really hard to even close your eyes and see a clear vision of who you want to be, where you want to be.
If you're experiencing that, I invite you to come and take my brand new starting place quiz. It will ask you a few questions and it will guide you to your perfect starting place of how you can start healing your gut so that your gut brain connection can become clear. I am proud of you. I am proud of you for showing up here. I'm proud of you for listening to an episode that might be triggering because it's not always easy showing up to face ourselves to listen.
When our inner knowing knows that how we've been doing things, it isn't right for us. It isn't how we are meant to do things.
I'm excited for where the podcast is going. I don't know what the next episode will be about.
Which the old version of me that was trapped in a box, that would have brought me so much anxiety. It feels liberating, it feels exciting. Because now I get to share messages with you that are brought to me for you.
I know you know exactly what I'm talking about. We receive messages, whether it's in our sleep or when we're on a run or we're on a walk or we're on a mountain bike or maybe we're just having dinner with our families and a conversation happens or a thought comes and it's like, my gosh, this feels so alive. I need to share this. I can't wait to bring all of those to you.
