When we heal ourselves, we heal our lineage.
When we heal ourselves, we heal each other.
You've suppressed this person.
This person has always existed.
This roar has always been there, and yet you never had space or permission to allow it to unleash.
So have you ever felt like you had to hide who you were or were in some way stuck in the past in some trauma that's keeping you from truly living?
If so, today's powerful spotlight conversation is for you.
The person you've been staring at, this person in the mirror, is still you but looks just slightly different and yet so familiar.
I think the world tries to shame us for going backwards.
We're diving into the journeys of two inspiring guides who have walked the path of profound healing and self -reclination.
Alex L. shares how writing became her path to self -love after trauma.
And Arielle Astoria takes us along her unfolding, peeling back limits to fully embrace her multi -talented identity.
It's that return of, oh, there I am.
And there I've always been.
Good Life Project is sponsored by VSL Probiotics.
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So you know those moments when you're just craving something that feeds both your mind and soul?
That's exactly what happened when I started listening to Self -Conscious with Chrissy Teigen on Audible.
It's this just wonderfully fresh take on wellness where Chrissy brings her signature humor and realness to conversations about personal growth.
And what makes this show special is how it really just creates this judgment -free space where we can all explore what it means to grow and evolve.
Each week, she sits down with brilliant minds like Mel Robbins and Adam Grant, turning complex ideas into practical wisdom that we can actually use in our daily lives.
Think of it as having coffee with that friend who just always knows how to make you feel seen and understood, while also teaching you something new about yourself.
The conversations are honest, sometimes vulnerable, and always illuminating.
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Visit audible .com slash Chrissy Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts and start listening today.
New episodes drop each week.
So our first guest is Alex Ella, New York Times bestselling author, breathwork coach, and restorative writing teacher and her journey towards healing it began when she discovered the transformative power of journaling and mindfulness practices like breath work.
Writing became this way for her to process her experiences, to rewrite the negative narratives that she had internalized and develop a sense of radical self -love and through her work teaching writing workshops and courses and retreats Alex now helps others around the world find their voices and cultivate
clarity in their lives and relationships.
In her fantastic book, How We Heal, Uncover Your Power and Set Yourself Free, she shares deeply personal stories and insights into her own healing journey.
And Alex invites readers to approach healing not just as a struggle, but as an act of joy and community and reclaiming one's infinite worth.
So join us as we dive into Alex's empowering perspectives on befriending your fears, resting as a revolutionary act, and writing as a catalyst for personal transformation.
Here's Alex. So mom of three, author, breathwork, coach, restorative writing teacher with a really a deep focus on healing in a very holistic and expansive way.
So part of my curiosity is how does facilitating healing through writing and breath and meditation and community also in no small part, how does that become not just a personal devotion for you, but really, eventually, like your work?
That's a really good question.
Something I've been thinking a lot about lately when it comes to healing is kind of removing the dauntingness of it and centering joy as a healing mechanism.
Because so often, when we're healing, it's because something big has happened, or quite literally maybe we've broken a bone or our heart has been you know broken because of whatever and there's such it's such an undertaking to heal and something that i really want people to get curious about is healing
as an act of not only community service but an act of kind of this like permission to allow yourself to be joyful, to allow yourself to be hurting, but also be healing, to be grateful, but also maybe be grieving, right?
So like really honoring the duality of what healing can look like and in how we heal, the underlying theme there is that when we heal ourselves, we heal our lineage.
When we heal ourselves, we heal each other.
And because healing is so multifaceted, I want people to get excited about it instead of being like dang this is another thing I have to like go through um and don't get me wrong because some things are not fun to heal through but I think where the beauty is like leaning into the possibility of what's
to come on the other side of the thing that's really tender or really bothering us or really hard to even look at.
And so healing for me is this dedication to self -choosing and this honoring of the things that we've walked through and carrying it close with grace, non -judgment, and self -trust.
which sounds beautiful as you share it and then we and then there's the real and then we do it of walking through it right this is a complete and utter mess sometimes right like the word that you were about to say is the exact thing that was just just in my mind so um yeah all of it right like in the mix
um and i know this is personal for you also i know this has become a devotion and this is also like you build a tremendous body of work and you help thousands of people through workshops and books and your prompts and citations and ideas and breathwork.
But this really started in a very personal way for you.
I know I've heard you describe your younger years.
If I'm remembering it properly, I remember hearing you say I was raised to hide, to be fearful.
Yes. I was, I often say that like I learned self -hatred before I learned self -love.
and that really felt hard for me as i started to raise my children because i didn't want to keep the cycles of self -hatred going right and so it had to stop with me like there was no choice i had no choice um or rather the choice was to heal the lineage right to heal myself to heal the lineage.
And I grew up with a mom who did her best with what she knew, and it was really challenging with her.
Thankfully, we're in a really amazing place now as I'm an adult, and I can look at her as an adult, and we have boundaries and all these things.
But it's hard when you grow up feeling like you don't have a voice, feeling like you're unloved, and feeling like you are the reason why everyone is in pain, you know?
And so when you are feeling this way, you, I, wasn't carrying myself, didn't know how to carry myself with dignity and integrity and love, and I wasn't really nurtured.
I didn't come from an affectionate family.
And so there's just so many things I had to learn on my own.
And I became a mom.
I was 18. I was young when I had Charlie, and it was really a wake -up call for me to get it together.
And so I now have three daughters, I'm married, and healing looks different in this stage.
So it looked different when I was 18 to my early 20s.
It looked different when I met my husband at 23.
It looks different now that I'm raising not only Charlie, but two young kids.
And so it's like giving myself the permission to really honor every phase of healing that I am in.
And what I have found is the older I get, the more healing I have to do.
I turned 33 this year.
And it was a really like pivotal awakening for me.
and three years prior to that, I felt like, oh my gosh, why is all my trauma coming to the surface?
I'm 30 years old. I thought I dealt with that, you know?
I thought I had healed from that.
Like, why is this coming up?
And what I realized in therapy and through my writing work and through my meditation practice is that it is okay to have to heal from the same thing more than once.
It is okay to not be healed.
You know, like I think the world tries to shame us for going backwards to a place that maybe is tender and triggered and wounded.
But the beauty in that is, we should go backwards because now we have different tools to nurture and self -soothe during those moments that feel like, oh my gosh, why am I back here again?
yeah i mean that makes so much sense to me writing for you seems like it was like one of the things that dropped down early in the process as like your for some reason it seems like you were drawn to this as a really powerful um early step into whatever path you would end up traveling down where you
end up bringing in different modalities talk to me about how writing especially writing as a modality to process, to reveal, to heal becomes a part of your practice.
Writing has shown me myself.
And that is what draws me to the practice.
I remember being in therapy for the very first time as a young adult.
I think I was 19 or 20.
and I had an amazing therapist and she gave me the idea to put a journal in my imaginary emotional toolbox.
And I had always been a writer.
I wrote short stories.
I wrote sad poems. I was the, I'm the only child.
So I, um, use storytelling to be a sense of like comfort.
And so I had always been a writer, but I never knew I could write to heal.
And when I started writing to heal and to explore and to be kind to myself and to be curious and to unpack and all those things that it can bring to our lives, the game like really changed for me.
and my mom gave me my first journal and I hadn't used it.
I still have it and I think there's like one thing written in there.
It was this red, beautiful red journal with this embroidered flowers on it.
And I remember thinking like, here's a permission slip to tap into my truth.
And then the older I got, the more I started really exploring affirmation writing and notes to self.
Because I had spent so much of my time speaking ill to myself and being in negative self -talk and being mean to myself, I wanted to change that narrative.
And that started around 22, 23.
like let me just write these notes to self be kind to myself and see what happens um and that was really foreign like this doesn't feel natural but it started to feel natural because I was at that place of I want different so I must do different I don't know what different means But I'm going to try.
I'm going to try everything.
And positive self -talk shaped how I saw myself.
And it allowed me to give myself power to explore self -love and what that looked like.
and so affirmations and notes to self really pushed me into this place of writing to heal and I found it in therapy and it's been amazing I mean, it brought me to my career and it also has brought me to my deepest truth which is that I am worthy and I have always been worthy 10 years ago, I did not think
that And now today, I am deeply rooted in that.
Yeah, that's a powerful shift.
One of the things you mentioned pretty early on, actually, I think it's sort of like in the first of four pillars that you offer out of four sort of like major ideas or categorized is the role of rest in this whole process, which so often is not mentioned.
You know, it's sort of like, here are the steps, here are the invitations, here are the things you do.
But so much of the integration, so much the actual growth part of it happens when you just create the space to rest.
And you really made a point of focusing on that, which I thought was interesting.
I mean, resting is replenishing.
It's restorative. It is nourishing.
And we all need it.
I mean, just look at life in general.
Look at plant cycles.
Look at how much babies sleep when they are first born because they are growing and growing so rapidly.
You know, it's like rest is essential.
And we live in like this grind culture.
When we become adults, where it's like grind, go hard, don't sleep till you're dead.
It's like that, don't do that.
Do not do that. Sleep while you're alive and everybody will thank you for it.
Because when we are well -rested, we are clear -minded.
When we are well -rested, we can heal in a way that feels more intentional and less exhausting.
And also, we don't always have to be healing.
That's a big part of the message in how we heal.
You don't have to always be healing.
You don't have to heal today.
You don't have to heal next year.
Take your time with your process and with this practice.
It is a practice. Healing is a work in practice.
And we don't have to have it all figured out.
We are allowed to have fun.
We are allowed to grow.
We're allowed to change.
And we are allowed to be easeful in this life.
And during this, during these monumental changes and shifts, and that requires slowing down, sitting down and taking a step back from everything.
um we don't work 24 hours a day i mean some folks might and like but how's their mental how's their physical right it's like we don't want this healing work to become a task we want it to be deeply embedded into our daily practice in our daily lives in a way that's sustainable not harmful like i am
uninterested in pouring from an empty cup that's not something i'm interested in doing.
I do not want to be depleted in trying to love people at the same time.
That's unhealthy. And that's a big part of rest work for me too.
Like I call it rest work because it is, it has to be, we have to work on it.
We have to work on taking a step back and slowing down, right?
And so when we are empty because we are restless, because we are overworked, because we are hurting deeply and we're not giving ourselves permission to be with the pain, when those things are just all consuming, it is so hard to give with intention to our work, to our spouses, to our children, to ourselves.
And so sometimes my best healing comes from going to take a nap.
Before I got on this call with you, I took a two and a half hour nap, which I don't do often, but I needed to.
I'm, you know, getting over a cold and I'm tired and my kids want to come and get in the bed with me in the middle of the night and be on my back, you know?
It's like, Alex, you are allowed to rest.
And that permission, you are allowed to rest, whatever that means, whether it's going to take a nap or taking a break from the healing work or just going to sit down because you need a moment.
That is so radical.
And there's a woman on Instagram who I love.
Her name is Trisha Hersey of the Nap Ministry.
And she reminds us often to go sit down somewhere and rest and to release the idea that we always have to be performing, always have to be doing something because performance isn't where our value is and we are not any less valuable for taking a beat and refueling and replenishing and nourishing ourselves.
And so rest has to be a part of the equation.
It has to. Yeah. And the notion that resting from the process of healing is also a part of the equation.
Like that counts as the type of rest that actually leads to healing.
Like resting from the process of like what can sometimes be a really intensive labor intensive process.
Resting from that can actually facilitate the healing process itself.
That is it. one of the other things that you talk about also is it's the notion of reframing fear really you know like of saying okay so let's deal with this like let's be up front with this um and if there are things and that you've been through things that have formed you things where there's trauma things
where there are fear responses that are almost dna level deep if you're further into life because they've just been so embedded in the way that you identify and live and behave you know like, let's talk about this and let's like, can we put a different frame on that?
Because until that happens, there's going to be a whole lot of struggle without moving through, moving past, without becoming, without being able to access the ease that I think so many of us want.
I mean, all of that, yes.
The chapter or the section rather that you're talking about is befriending your fear.
And I wanted to put that in the book because I did a whole course on befriending fear.
And people really gravitated to that because they had never been invited to allow their fear to be a part of their life, right?
And there's something really beautiful about saying, fear, you can come in, but you can't run the show.
and also there's something extremely moving about not being scared out of our healing because fear is at our door right um taking the time and making the space to truly be with everything, be with it all, and then move through it.
Fear is not a bad thing.
It doesn't make us weak.
It is a natural response.
When things get hard, it is something that will come up because change is on the horizon, right?
And so fear is a great teacher if we allow it to be.
And I wanted to make sure that I emphasized that in how we heal, because a lot of this healing work that we're doing is scary.
We may be the only people in our family doing it right now, healing, right?
We may be the only ones making the step, and that is scary to do this work alone.
But don't let fear change your trajectory.
It can come with you.
It's okay. It can befriend.
It can be a great friend.
It doesn't have to be the leader in your life, but it can be a friend.
And that's hard and really valuable for us to walk through and learn along the way, which we will, I think.
I'm still learning it.
I want How We Heal to be that open invitation to look at it all and to see the fear, to see that you may have to begin again after you think you've overcome that thing, that you can heal even when no one else around you is healing.
And that you can get curious about yourself.
That's really the biggest invitation of How We Heal is to get curious about yourself.
And writing can be such a powerful modality in there.
Some of the stories, I feel like there were more, you had a whole bunch of examples, and then the Q &A on slowing down from Chriselle Lim, which I think had just, it's like, here are all sort of different ways into this.
Yeah, like what feels good to you.
kind of come full circle um in the book at least you know this is an ongoing conversation the book is a moment in time with some really powerful ideas and exercises and things to do um by saying we're all dealing with unspoken and unseen things some heavier um to carry than others um like this all goes
down to a heart level um and compassion and connection um these things like we need to get down to that level we need to bring the experience not just the conversation but like our felt experience down to that level to really be in the world the way that we want to be yeah i mean that's the community
care right that is the compassion the connection the care that is what our healing does it connects us um in a really powerful way even when we feel lost.
And I love that folks are open to using writing and these tools that I've offered in my courses and at retreat and at conferences to just get to know themselves.
A big question that I often ask is like, who are you?
Outside of your roles to other people, who are you?
What's hurting you?
Where does it hurt?
Why does it hurt? By getting down to those micro level back to basic questions that we often just don't even ask ourselves because we are moving through the world right?
How do we connect with our true self if we are constantly ignoring the journey.
And I think that's something that I've learned along the way, is that even in my own healing process, there was a point where I was ignoring different steps in the journey because I just wanted to be over it.
I just was done. Get me there.
But healing is a forever love.
Healing is something that we're going to be doing until the day we leave this earth, we're going to be growing and changing until the day we transition off this earth.
And so how do we do that in a way that not only supports us, but supports the collective?
And I think that is the question I want people to sit with.
How can your healing support the healing?
When we start healing our inner world, we start healing the world.
And I think that there is something deeply sacred and necessary about that.
Can't agree enough.
It feels a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well.
So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
To live a good life for me means to stand in my power and be my most authentic self no matter the room I walk in.
that's what comes up for me.
Because because when we are rooted in who we are and in the truth of who we are people can see that.
And again, I just want to lead by example.
So I guess that is how I live how I want to live a good life is by leading by example.
Thank you. Thank you.
And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
The Good Life Project is sponsored by Airbnb.
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Good Life Project is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Picture this. You're halfway through a DIY car fix, tools scattered everywhere, and boom.
You realize you're missing a part.
It's okay, because you know whatever it is, it's on eBay.
They've got everything, brakes, headlights, cold air intakes, whatever you need.
And it's guaranteed to fit, which means no more crossing your fingers and hoping you ordered the right thing.
All the parts you need at prices you'll love.
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eBay. Things people love.
So our next guest, Ariel Astoria, is a poet, speaker, author and actor whose work is dedicated to helping people peel back the layers and come home to their most authentic selves.
Through her latest book, The Unfolding, an invitation to come home to yourself, Arielle guides readers on this intimate journey of awakening, eclipsing, mending, illuminating, and ultimately returning to the core of who they truly are.
In her soulful words, they don't just reach the ears, but aim to be felt and experienced.
Arielle has shared this gift through custom -spoken word pieces, workshops, and keynotes with companies like Google, Lululem, and TEDx, and so many others.
And more than just a writer, Arielle really walks her talk, having gone through her own profound unfolding to embrace all facets of her identity as a poet, a speaker, an author, an actor, and an innovator.
So join us as we dive into Arielle's empowering perspectives on befriending your fears, reclaiming your voice and peeling back the layers to reveal your most vibrant unapologetic self here's arielle you you talk about this thing you describe as the unfolding and then offer essentially five phases through
a process of personal individual unfolding i want to explore those different phases before you even get there tell me what you when you use the the word or the phrase unfolding or the unfolding.
What are we actually talking about there?
Yeah. So I had written, um, I had written the unfolding in my notes in probably 2018.
And I didn't know what it was.
I didn't know if it was a book, if it was a song, if it was a spoken word album.
I was like, okay, love this, whatever this is going to be.
And I just left that in my notes and I didn't do anything with it.
Um, and then and about a year, a few months, actually, after that, I received an inquiry about writing a book, and at that time, I still didn't know what the unfolding was, and so I was writing all these proposals and trying to pitch it, and none of it felt right, and so I just left it, and my now literary
agent was the first person to tell me, you don't have to write a book right now, so I said no to everyone, and then a year later, more life happened.
A lot of these combs started to spill out of me.
And a lot of it was growing up in the evangelical culture and watching a lot of that shift for people, especially crying out of COVID and the pandemic.
I'm just, as we're sitting in this space of like, what does it mean to be human, you know?
And what does it mean to be in community, let alone, what does it mean to be a Christian?
What does it mean to go to church, you know?
And so, I watched all these people talk about this conversation of deconstructing we're deconstructing and we're deconstructing things.
And that word felt so harsh to me.
It felt so disconnecting.
And a lot of it as at the same time was this conversation of deconstructing felt so much like you're changing and you're being otherly.
You're being something different.
And for me, as I felt I was changing and unfolding, I really just felt like there were these layers that were just only getting peeled back.
There was this shedding that was happening and I wasn't becoming this, bring a new person.
And I really strongly felt that I'd always been this.
This has always been me, but not having the fullest permission and space to fully be that.
And so I talk about meeting my husband.
And I say very clearly, he was not the reason for my unfolding, but he gave space for all these different seasons in my life to kind of catapult in one space.
And he gave me permission to unfold, to ask these questions, to not know, which was the biggest part of it.
And ultimately helped me to trust myself and trust the decisions I was making, trust that I can still believe in a divine orchestration, and also that I have a wisdom and a discernment as well.
And so when I say the unfolding, I'm talking about all the layers we shed all the pieces of ourselves that we pull back, that we let go of in order to be who we are today, in order to be our fullest and freest.
Yeah, that feels, I love the way that feels.
It reminds me in no small way of in more Eastern traditions, there's a Sanskrit word, Jiva Mukti, or Jivan Mukti, which translates roughly to liberated being, Mukti being liberation.
And the idea is that it's the distinction between transformation and liberation it's this idea of like i'm not necessarily becoming something or someone entirely different i'm all i'm doing is i'm peeling away the layers of obstruction and delusion that don't allow me to simply be um yeah the real me
my truest self the thing that has always been there but has never been um the what i'd lead with or how i show up in the world what i acknowledge and that's a lot of what when your description of unfolding to me feels a lot like that.
And in fact, it makes a lot of sense, right?
Because the process that you lay out, awakening, eclipsing, mending, illuminating, the final piece of that is returning.
It's not saying, okay, so now I'm this other person I want to be.
It's no, now I've actually figured out a way, a path back to myself that was just hidden by all sorts of things.
So let's walk through those different phases a little bit.
And you tee it up with this notion of, okay, so we all start out with this experience of awakening.
What's actually going on in this phase?
Yeah, so kind of describe the awakening as waking up from a mid -afternoon nap and you're like, who am I?
Where am I? What year is it?
You know, like, is it still the same day or a different day?
It's this waking and coming to this fog that kind of happens.
and I say there's two types or two layers to the awakening.
The first one is realizing that the person you've been staring at, this person in the mirror, is still you, but looks just slightly different and yet so familiar at the same time.
And then the other version is you've suppressed this person.
This person has always existed.
This roar has always been there.
And yet you never had space or permission to allow it to unleash.
And so now you're coming to it.
And in the awakening, you're still familiar with your surrounding, but there's a jolt a little bit.
There's a little bit of disorientation that happens.
And for me, it was realizing like, oh, I have always believed these things, but now I'm starting to say them out loud.
Now I'm starting to live it out loud a little bit more.
And that's a little scary for other people.
Therefore, it's starting to become scary to me, even though I'm not afraid of it.
But because it elicited some fear in people where it was unfamiliar who I was, what I was saying and how I was acting and who I was marrying, and there was like, this is not you.
So then I started to be like, oh, this is not me and go through that phase of like, I'm not awakened.
I can fit back in this box.
You know, I can go back to whoever it was, whoever it is I was, even though we don't fit in those anymore.
And so that awakening is I have been shifting, and am I going to keep ignoring it, or am I going to actually start to face it and to allow myself to continue to grow in it?
You write about a mentor asking a question, if you were basically asking if you're going to live a life that was based on not disappointing people or that you felt proud of and called to.
And it seems like that was, it seems like it was almost like a passing question or a moment, but it was pivotal in your own personal awakening.
Definitely. I had to talk to a lot of people in that season because I just, I had a really hard time hearing myself, trusting myself, believing myself, not really sure what I was meant to be guided by and what I wasn't.
and the mentor who said that, she's one of my favorite humans, and she was someone I had interned under at a church that she had left, came out, married her wife.
I actually did a poem for their wedding, and so this is a person who has just guided me and given me so much
