Waking Up Not Knowing Who I am....

Shandra Shultz: 00:03

Welcome to the Mystical Alchemy podcast where we voyage into all things woo spirituality and psychology to inspire action and growth. I am your host, Shandra Shultz, a Spiritual Midwife, Alchemist, Mystic Shaman and Best Selling Author with over a decade in experience through a trauma informed lens. We will journey into self-discovery, healing our shadow self and reconnecting with our inner child by diving deeply into the parts of our soul that remain unseen, we'll shine a light to allow them to find their way home. Have you dealt with trauma, abuse or addiction? Are you curious about the Woo and are you searching for tools to live the life you've always desired? Then join me on an adventure, and let's dive in. Hello and welcome, happy Halloween and thank you for joining me. Shandra Shultz on this inaugural episode of mystical alchemy, I am so grateful to be here with all of you and to get the opportunity to share my knowledge and stories and the stories of others. It is a dream that I have had for a very long time, even though at one point in time I didn't remember that dream, and as the title of this episode is waking up not knowing who I am, states, there was a time in my life when I did not know who I was, and it was not in my childhood, and it wasn't in the philosophical sense of, like, I don't know who I am. It was in the literal sense of, I had a brain injury 10 years ago, June 5, 2014, and I woke up not knowing who I was. I had been in a car accident and been knocked unconscious, and I came to looking around, not knowing what was going on or what had happened. I couldn't remember the moments in time before waking up, I found myself looking in the rear view mirror, and at that moment in time, I felt like I was 16 years old and I didn't know what had happened. And I remember the first thing I did was to reach down and grab my phone, which I had, like, this instinctual sense of what it was. So I knew that, however, I did not know who I was. I remember looking in the phone and coming across the name mom and deciding, you know what, I think I'm gonna that that word sounds familiar. I'm gonna call this person, and I was very monotone. I was very much without emotion, because I didn't really know the person who was answering the call. And I simply said to her, "Hi, I've been in an accident. Can you come help me?" And I remember her telling me or saying, "are you okay?" And I said, "I don't know". And she said, "Have you called the police?" And I said, "No". And she says, "Well, get off the phone with me and call 911", if she hadn't told me to call 911 I wouldn't have known what number to call. And everything that happened after that, I still remember so clearly going on 10 and a half years later, I remember the ambulance showing up and checking me out and saying, I looked normal. I seemed normal. There was no broken bones, there was nothing that they could tell was wrong with me. And it was like, Okay, I don't feel very normal, but you're the you're the professionals, I guess. So I'll trust you. And when I called my mom back after everything I you know, told her to where I was, like, cross streets. I looked around, and I was like, I'm on here and here. And I imagine that she probably knew where I was, and she had told me to take pictures of the scene, and so I did. It was a little confusing at first, because I was like, I don't have a camera, and she's like, and you know, she was like, make sure you take pictures on your phone. And so I was like, oh, okay, cool. I guess that's what I'll do. And I can't remember exactly how much longer after I got off the phone with her, it was probably about 1520 minutes, maybe a little longer, that she showed up. And I had looked at myself in the mirror, and I saw I had short hair and glasses and like facial features that I had seen, and when I was standing on the side of the road waiting for her and for the people who would come and take up my car and tow it away, I just kind of was in a daze. I really didn't know what was going on. I was so confused at the time, I didn't realize I had a concussion or a traumatic brain injury, because I actually ended up having a grade two traumatic brain injury that I found out that I had later, even after the ambulance let me go, and so I was just waiting there, kind of just in a daze, and I see this woman start to walk up towards me, and she was calling me by the name Nicole. And she's like, Nicole, and I, when she said my name, I was like, there's no one else around, so she must be talking to me. And from behind her came this little kid running and screaming, mommy, you're okay. And just put their arms around me and just hug me really tight around my legs. And I just kind of froze, and I stood there, and I was like, oh my god, I have a child. Like, when I had looked at myself in the rear view mirror, I didn't feel like I was old enough to have a child, and this child was nine years old at this time, and I was just like, How old am I? And it was so it was a really intense time, because I didn't know these people, and what I later came to find out is that I had dissociative amnesia or memory loss of everything before my accident, and I was 31 years old at the time, and you know, even even now, as many times as I've told this story, it's I still get a little choked up to remember that I didn't know who I was. And in that moment, I was like, I have to trust this person, like they looked similar enough to me that I thought, okay, I guess they know who I am. Like I looked at my driver's license and saw that my name was Nicole, and it just it felt surreal, and I ended up going home with them, scared out of my mind, like I didn't know these people in the sense that I was supposed to. They didn't seem familiar to me, and I was just like, I've it was a lesson in trust and faith that I was accepting that this was who had been called and was there to see me. I did not tell my mom and my kiddo that I didn't recognize them or I didn't know them, because it was just so I felt so crazy in that moment of like, I should know these people. Why don't I know these people? And I can't tell them, like, how much would it hurt them? So I went home with them, and I saw pictures of myself as I walked in the house, and I recognized the person. Well, I recognized, in a sense, I saw that I looked like the person in the pictures. That doesn't mean I recognized myself. In fact, I didn't like I looked in the mirror and I was just like I don't know who this woman is, and it was a time in which I had to accept that things were not normal, and I didn't know if they were ever going to be normal again. And at the time, I didn't know how I was going to move forward, how I was going to tell these people, I don't know them, how I was going to do anything. And I remember feeling so scared and depressed and and yet I didn't have anyone I could tell that to. It was the next day my mom and I found a way to get to who I now know is my chiropractor that I had known for 25 years, who was also a sports medicine doctor and had dealt with many concussions victims and had seen other people go through similar situations, and he was the one who was able to diagnose me with my concussion. He was the one who started me getting to go see different doctors, and so along the way, after those, in those first few days, you know, it was about about two weeks, give or take, I was super depressed. I locked myself in my room. I was trying to figure out who I was. I could not read, I could not write, I couldn't speak properly. I was having trouble with speaking. So I didn't speak very much. In fact, I would sing songs. And I would respond to music however. It felt so weird being around my mom and my kiddo when they would be saying something and I was supposed to laugh at or I was supposed to know what they were talking about, and I just kind of looked at them like, yeah, I don't really know what you're talking about, and yet I played along. And it was, it was beyond challenging. I truly don't know how I got through those first couple of weeks, and then I started to have this sense of there had to be something that had sort of kept me here, there had to have been something that I could remember, and so I spent a lot of time just being and I remember my kiddo doing everything possible to make me smile, to keep me happy. And it absolutely killed me that I couldn't remember my kid, and I had no connection to this kiddo, like I literally was so standoffish, and I I know that they would like try to give me hugs. And I was like, um, like, I don't want to be hugged, I don't know you, like you're the strange kid. And yet I couldn't say anything to them because I didn't know how. And I found myself in a space of somehow, at some point, having memory, like, not memories of life, but like knowledge, like knowing of things that I didn't know how I knew. For instance, I could drive, I could drive anywhere, and I remembered getting to these places. I remembered song lyrics. I remembered that I was pegging, that I celebrated the the Sabbats and Esbats, or like the holidays of the Pagan calendar, which included the new and full moons. And I remembered that I had been practicing witchcraft for a while, and that I was believing in goddesses. And I remembered that there was a the summer solstice coming up, and I knew that it was imperative for me to do something. And so what I did was I ended up doing a summer solstice ritual where I dedicated myself to the Goddess Brigid, and I just said to her in a space of really not even thinking about what I was saying, just send me what is meant for me, please. I didn't say in my highest good or greater. I didn't say any of that. I just said, Send me what has meant for me, and I sent it out to the universe. Something in me told me that if I just did that, that I would find my way back home, and that was on June 20, 2014 And on June 25 I met the man that I would come to marry, and meeting him changed the trajectory of my life. I remember the day that I met him. It was like the sky opened up and this beautiful light just shone down, and it was like everything is going to be okay. And I remember the way that I knew that was I have two tattoos that are of the Celtic Trinity called triquetra. And when I had been sitting outside because my kiddo had been like, Hey, Mommy, can you please come outside and watch watch me play on my bike. You haven't been out in a while, I'd really like to see it. Unbeknownst to me, this was actually my kid pulling a "Parent Trap" on me, and so I was like, Okay, I'll come sit outside. And my kid had, the day before, met the man I was going to marry end up marrying, and had seen something in him, and been like, Mommy would be so happy with this person. I'm going to set him up. And of course, didn't tell me. So when I went outside, my kid ended up putting their bike in the spot where my husband to be would park. Now we did not know each other at this time, he had lived across the street from me for six months. I remember seeing his car in the spot in the garage, spot next to ours. However, I did not actually ever see him. My kid parked their bike there and then decided to run off. And so when, when he came home and he was pulling into the driveway, my kid's bike was there and he proceeded to look over and see me, and asked me if I could move the bike by making a hand gesture. So I got up, I moved the bike. He got out, and I saw he was wearing PT gear from the military. And so I had said to him, "Oh, are you in the military?" He said, "Yes". I said, "Thank you for your service". He was like, "oh, that must be your little kiddo that said that to me yesterday". And I was like, "Oh yeah, that is". And he was like, "thank you". And then looked down at my wrists and said, "I love your triquetra". And I just in that moment, I was like, it was like a lightning hit me. And I was like, "Excuse me". And he said to me that my tattoos, "he loved my triquetra". And I said, "Oh, well, thank you". And I'm like, bells going off in my head, going, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, this is like, this is it. And I looked at him and I said, "Thank you. But how do you know how to say that?" And I will never forget the next words out of his mouth was "they're a symbol of my goddess Brigid". And it was like the world stopped in that moment, and everything felt right. And I looked to the sky and I said, "I'm listening. I hear you. Thank you". And I knew in that moment that my prayers from the solstice had been answered, that what was meant for me had shown up now as the woman I am today. I know that it wasn't exactly the way that I perceived it. Then I have done a lot of work and a lot of growth, and see that there are always lessons and experiences that will show up for us. And that was what was meant in that moment. The next six months were the most magical and amazing, and meeting this man really allowed me to fall back in love with my child, because I was a single mom and I had lived with my own mom. However, I had been raising my my kiddo since they were born without their biological father, and I didn't fully understand the depth of why that was at that time, and I did eventually learn. However, during those six months after I met my my spouse, which right now we're separated, so it's it's challenging sometimes to to figure out the best way to to explain who he is, but at this point in time, we're taking space to grow and figure out If we are meant to be still, or if our time was for a season. And so when I just speak of him, I will call him my spouse for just to make it easy. During those six months, he was still active duty, and he was so supportive, and he was really amazing with my kiddo and the two of them came to have at that point in time, a really amazing relationship, because my kid had the dad they had always wanted, and they had someone else there that was showing up for them in ways that they had never had anyone else in that kind of way, show up, and by my spouse being there and loving my kiddo and choosing to love my kiddo, it really helped me to learn how to love my kid again too. Because the truth of it is, I didn't have my memory back for almost six full years, and during those six years, I did come to love my my kiddo again, and I also still didn't remember them. I couldn't remember giving birth to them, to carrying them in my belly, to to all of the things I all the things they had lived through in their first nine years. I couldn't remember of that. And there was so much grief that I felt at that point in time, and I do remember that before I met my spouse, that in those weeks preceding the accident, but before I met him, I did feel like maybe I wasn't meant to be here, and I considered suicide and taking my own life and and no longer being alive. And the thing that kept me here was the fact that I had this kid that loved me so fiercely, like even though they knew, because all kids do that something wasn't quite right, they still loved me, and they still would do everything in their power to get me to smile and to be happy. And of course, you know that's no little kid's job to do that for their parents. And at the same time, a lot of little kids do find themselves in that space of mommy and daddy need me to be happy. I need to make them happy. And I mean, I learned that for sure. I know that now and at the same time it was, it was really hard on me, because I would I still didn't tell them that I didn't remember them like it took me almost two years before I was able to tell my kid that I didn't really know who they were. And I did tell my mom, after about six months that I didn't know who she was, and I told my chiropractor, and I told my doctors, eventually, when I started seeing doctors, when I actually accepted that I needed help, and that's when I came to find out that I had been a drug addict prior to the accident, and while I had been sober for almost two and a half years, at that point, they were worried that I might fall back into addiction because of everything I had gone through, and because of the way I was acting and How strange I was acting. They thought that I had actually started using in some way or doing something like that, and they never would have even considered that it was memory loss that I just didn't know who they were. They a part of them felt as if I was just ignoring them, and I can only imagine the trauma that that caused my mom and my kiddo to see me connecting with this new person in my life, and all of a sudden it was like they didn't exist. And the thing of it was that it wasn't that they didn't exist, it was that I just didn't know who they were, and the only person that I felt attached to was my husband to be and we it was a challenging time. I've dealt with a lot of feelings of shame around that time, and I'm really grateful that I've had the opportunity to move through a lot of that. And occasionally it still comes up. And yet, one of the things that I also came to find out, besides the fact that I had been a drug addict and an alcoholic for Well, I wasn't really an alcoholic. I abused alcohol and misused it, however, I did, so to the point of, like, Blackout, and so while I didn't need it to function or to, like, get through the week, I would go out on the weekends prior to getting sober, and I would get blackout drunk, and it was so it could be intimate with people, because it was the only way that it felt safe, you know. And so I had also found out that I had about eight weeks before the car accident, had had a surgery where I almost died. I actually had found out that I was fatally allergic to the anesthesia propofol, which is actually used for surgeries and to put patients into medically induced comas. And the combination of that and the brain injury and all of it probably is what led to my dissociative amnesia, and it was really, there was so much that I learned about myself after the accident that has led me to the places I am now, which is like doing deep, deep shadow work and trauma work and somatic work, which is The, you know, moving things through the body. And so I found myself on a journey of self discovery all over again. And in the six months after my car accident, I created this family unit with my kiddo and my mom and my spouse to be and I remember that things had start started to slowly, piece by piece, like little things had started to come back to me. And also, I had to have another surgery six months after my car accident. And in doing so, they had to confirm that I had this, this allergy to propofol. And so they did so by doing a test on my skin, they said, "Oh, yep, it's you're you're having a physical reaction, so you're allergic". And what they didn't realize is that I was going to go into surgery, starting to remember who I was in my family. And then I woke up from surgery yet again, not remembering anybody except the six months prior to that I had been going through. I remembered that six months, but I didn't remember anything else. And so I knew my my my spouse to be, and I knew my kiddo from the six months, and my mom from the six months, but all the stuff that I had started to remember in those six months was gone like the time period existed the memories, were not there. And that really led me to understand that, like it wasn't just a physical thing that I was dealing with with from the propofol when I had had it, which was that my body shut down, like my organs started to fail. I was unable to keep food and water down. I was unable to even stay awake like I was sleeping 20 to 22 hours a day for almost a full week after the surgery. And I anytime I would try to eat or drink while I didn't try eating, I was anytime I would even try to have water, I'd be I'd start vomiting. And so it was just one of those things where my body had started to shut down, and they were able to figure out and reverse it, and we didn't really think much of it after that, that week. And then, you know, seven weeks after that, my brain injury happened through the car accident, and all of a sudden I couldn't remember my life. And so the two really played a part together, but we didn't understand the part that they played until I had to go in for an additional surgery six months after my car accident. And so yet again, I woke up not knowing who I was, because all that I had started to remember was gone again, and I didn't even realize I had remembered all of that because, like, it just wasn't in my, my sphere of awareness. And that was when I really started to I think that was around the time that I mentioned to my mom, you know, I I don't know who you are, and I know that was something really challenging for her to believe we've been able to work through that. It'll be 10 years in January when I told her that I didn't remember her. One thing that I then came to realize is that I had written something in a journal that I didn't write much after my my brain injury, because it was very challenging for me to read and write and speak like I had mentioned. However, there was one thing that I was able to get down as I had started to remember some things before the second surgery, and I the quote that I'm going to read actually comes from that that journal entry. Since the accident, I have had a rough time of things. The injuries I sustained from the crash have impacted my mind the most, and I've had a hard time explaining how it has made me feel because of what it has done to me. Today, I found this quote from an upcoming movie starring Julianne Moore and Kristen Stewart called "Still Alice", which, while I'm not dealing with Alzheimer's, is how I feel, because it fits exactly everything I have felt since my concussion. And it goes like this. "On my bad days, I feel like I can't find myself. Says, Alice, I've always been defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation, and now sometimes I see the words hanging in front of me and I can't reach them, and I don't know who I am, and I don't know what I'm going to lose next"... When I found that journal entry some years later. Because, like I said, it took me over a year and a half, 18 months before I could really learn to before I was able to relearn speaking fully better, because I had something they call aphasia, which affects the brain. I had the trouble with reading, and I definitely couldn't write anymore, and so when I came out of surgery, and I told my mom I didn't remember her, and I told my spouse to be that I needed more help, that's when I was able to get into speech therapy. And I spent months doing that, and it really helped, and I learned all I needed to learn, and yet I had this void in my life again because I was, I was just despondent in the fact that I could not remember prior, 31 years of my mom and my kiddo, like I said, there was some things I could remember. I actually could remember the tail end of before I got sober, when I was deep inside the rave culture, and I had people in my life at that point in time, and I was able to kind of remember them, but not fully. And then I would have things that would trigger, like something, like I would see a picture, because I had a ton of them, and I it would remind me of something, and then it would just as quickly be gone as the time is the moment that I remembered it, and think that's how it was for me for a really long time, is that I just couldn't remember even if I had flashes. And that really started me on this journey of self discovery and finding the parts of myself that were hidden, what I now know as my shadow self, and really learning to love them, some of them for the first time, some of them again, and I remember making a vow that I would find a way to remember who I was. It's really important to understand that I was saying who I was, not who I was becoming, or who I am. I was wanting to remember who I had been prior to the accident, because I felt like I had this gaping hole in this space that just was supposed to be filled with these people that meant the world to me, and yet I couldn't remember them. I couldn't even remember loving them, and that just hurt so bad. And I also remember that it wasn't long after I had my brain injury that my spouse and I were talking about kids and the potential of like having our own child, and how we had to be careful, and my mom had overheard the conversation, or I had said something to her, I again, part of that time is still very fuzzy and yet eventually It did. All the prior 31 years came back, and I'll touch on that in a few minutes, because it's really important that I my mom had said to me, I went to her and we were talking about kids, and she was like, "Well, you can't have kids, so it's a good thing you don't have to worry about that". And I was just like, devastated in that moment. I'm like, "What are you talking about? I can't have kids". And she was like, "Well, you had to have a full hysterectomy when you were 28" I was like, "I'm sorry, say what?" And she was like, "Yeah, you you had a cancer scare, and you had to have a full hysterectomy. You can't have kids". And that was so challenging for me, because here I was almost 32, had finally met someone that felt right, like I could spend my life with, and that I could grow and have a future with. And we had, you know, wanted to have a kid, potentially at some point. And yet, here I was being told, you can't ever have it. And I couldn't remember my own child or going through childbirth, or any part of that. And so there was this deep sense of grief that just hit me in those moments of like, how much more am I going to lose? What else Don't I know about myself? Like I need to know who I am. I need to know who I was, who am I?

32:29

And so as I started to be able to read again, I found I had journals that I had kept for over 12 years, and there was a stack over a dozen journals, and piece by piece, I started reading each journal, and sometimes I would read them over and over and over again, trying to just glimpse something, anything trying to trigger a memory. And it just never happened, at least not around my kid and my mom. There were moments of things that I read about traumatic situations with abusers prior to my accident, and the more I read those which I did read them more than once, the more traumatized I retriggered myself to become. And I thought that if I just kept doing it enough, I would remember.

Shandra Shultz: 33:25

And while I couldn't remember in my mind, my body certainly could, and it did not help. It didn't help. It made things so much worse. And yet, I had the words that I had written as a way to quote, remember, so I like, I literally read these things over and over, and I probably read those, those 12 years worth of journals, the 12 plus years worth of journals, at least half a dozen plus times. And it was like it became the story that I started to tell myself over and over again, and that's how I remembered. It wasn't like I actually remembered. It was that I, like, programmed my mind, kind of like reading being an actor and reading a script and just memorizing it. And it was, it was a really dark time for me, because even though I had family, and even though I had this man that I had met and was planning on marrying and all of those things it I was harboring this deep, dark secret about not being able to remember my kid and my mom, and it ate away at me. And so I was like, I've got to find a way to remember. And so I started on the journey of self discovery, and I started doing everything I possibly could imagine to remember. And I I remember my doctors at about a year saying, if you haven't remembered now, then you're probably not gonna remember, you know. And I just couldn't accept that. I was like, You're wrong, I will not accept you telling me I'm never going to know who I was, and then I'm going to have all these years of memories gone forever. I cannot accept this. I will not accept this. And it became the thing that drove me to where I am now, which is over the last was really from like 2018 on, I started doing alternative healing modalities. I started with Reiki, I did hypnosis, I started doing therapy, and I just started searching out ways in which to remember. I started I did something called craniosacral therapy, which I feel was really helpful, because it did help with the brain. It also helps with like other traumas. And I found myself over the next six years, from after I had my my accident, trying everything to remember and a lot of different things happened in those six years, my life was a complete chaotic mess at times, because so much happened. However, in 2020, in the height of COVID during lockdown, I had decided to look into plant medicines because they had been decriminalized in Colorado, which is where I lived at the time, and I started to learn to grow psilocybin mushrooms because they were decriminalized. I had done a lot of research. I had found out I had a history in psychology, and along the way, realized through doing research of other things, landed on the psilocybin mushrooms, of like, how the different types of therapies that were being seen as psychoactive facilitators for therapeutic modalities like were actually They were having some real positive outcomes that were allowing people to heal parts of themselves that had previously thought were never going to heal. And so I started doing research, and I started to grow at that point in time, and it was the first time that I really was able to feel a sense of pride in birthing something, because I was so disconnected from being a mom, even though I had come to love my kiddo and really like reconnect with them and have a halfway decent, you know, relationship for what It was, I still had this part of me, this longing to bring something forth and to birth something. And so during the process of COVID, I learned to grow, like I said, mushrooms, and I was able to watch them, and they became my babies, much like my animals were as well. And so in March of 2020, I started to micro dose psilocybin mushrooms, and I within about two months of starting that my entire memory came back to me. Everything before the day of the accident was there. And what I didn't realize in that moment was while that all came back, I lost the previous six years that I had been dealing with amnesia, like they were just gone. And it didn't mean that I didn't remember, like my spouse or my kid or all of the things that it like I remembered things that happened in, you know, in that time, to some extent, however, I didn't really remember all, like, I couldn't remember the first, like, six months specifically, it was as if, like, it was behind this, like, veil, and so I didn't really think much of it at that point in time, because it didn't really fit, like, I it didn't, it wasn't there in my act of awareness, because I had some recollection of those six years, but like, it wasn't, we had been just living our life. And so it was just, it wasn't like, actively every day remembering that, oh, I don't remember this time. It was more of a like, oh, that time existed. I just cannot recall specifics of it. So, okay, didn't think anything of it. And it was, it was really miraculous that I did remember everything from the 31 years that I had forgotten. And that's why we've come to see it as dissociative amnesia. Because that dissociative factor of that I could not remember those 31 years for six years, and then I once I did finally remember them and activate them again, I struggled to remember the years in which I had actually been dealing with it. And that was, like I said, 2020, and it really had come full circle when I realized I knew who I had been, but I didn't know who I was. And that was more in the philosophical sense of I was, like, I could not I was not to the woman that I had been going into the car accident at that point, I actually had come to know myself as Shandra through a series of spiritual journeys and events. I was a shaman. I was a business owner. I was trained in Reiki to the master teacher level. I was trained in Akashic Record reading. I was trained in something called the Adult Chair, which is a coaching modality. I was actually in the middle of, like getting ready, like doing the coaching. And it really was, it was surreal that I had finally figured out who I was in the past, and yet it now meant I didn't know who I was in that moment in time and that journey. It was almost like I had been in this dark space. And finally the light was there. And then once, that once, I remembered everything about those 31 years, including all the trauma, like I had read it and I had had memorized it, however, I didn't actually remember the memories, at least not on a cognitive level, like consciously I didn't know, but subconsciously, they were still there, and they were trapped in my body. And during those six years, it created a ton of chaos for me. And I realized once I remember, remembered who I had been, I was like, Okay, now I've got to figure out who I'm going to be. I've got to find a way to integrate all that I know about who I was before the accident with all that I have learned since the accident and all the things that I have grown and ways I have grown and in the modalities I had come to learn. I was like, I've got to figure out who I'm becoming. And so I've spent the last four years doing that, and today I am Shandra. I'm a Mystic Shaman. I am an Alchemist, I say that because I have completely taken something that was a different form, and I have transformed it into who I am now. I am a spiritual midwife. I have helped myself and others birth a part of themselves that had been ready to come out of the darkness and find its way home, and I have been able to usher in who I am today. I learned to love myself, because that was a big piece that showed up in those six years, is I did not love myself. And it got even worse in the last four until I had started to really do some deep work of like processing all of the memories and all the traumas that were showing up for me. Because it was a lot. I dealt with a lot of childhood trauma on multiple levels, and it was something that it was beautiful and at the same time devastating. And I am so grateful that I survived the car accident. I am so grateful for those six years. I am so grateful for the last 40 almost two and really being able to come to this space of learning who I am today, and that I am ever growing, ever evolving, that I had stories and beliefs and that they deserve to be brought home to by growing them up, by helping them to see the light by shining my light in the spaces that felt really scary to go to. And because of all that, I have become the woman I am today, which is Shandra. I am a phoenix. And along the way, I struggled, just like everyone else does, and I I had some really dark times that I came to know as dark nights of the soul. And I also learned that I wasn't always in soil that was helping me to grow, that sometimes all the nutrients that I had been seeking or that I had gotten from the soil I was in had dried up, and it was now time to go somewhere else. And so that's what this Mystical Alchemy podcast is going to be all about, is that journey of discovery and how learning to find out who I truly am, my highest self at a soul level, has allowed me to be able to hold space for others to do the same. And so while my life today is nothing what I expected it to be 10 years ago, I am so grateful for where I am and the woman I've become, and I look forward to sharing more about my journey and others journeys and the tools and the techniques and the modalities that I've learned along the way with All of you so that you, too can be able to live the life that you desire in alignment with your highest self. And so thank you for listening today. I know it was a little bit of a heavy topic, and some of these will be, others will be more light hearted, and I just wanted to be able to share a little bit about myself so that you can know that we're not all that different. I may have had one type of trauma. I may have had one set of circumstances show up for me. However, we're all dealing with something, and we're all just doing the best we can with what we've got. And so I look forward to diving deeply with all of you over the next episodes and getting to share all that I know I was saved in order to be able to share, because the one thing that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt in the moments after I came to in my car out in that accident, was that some thing higher than me, some purpose greater than me had saved me, because I was meant to be here. I had something greater in store for me that I didn't know what it was. It took me a long time to figure out, and yet, the one thing I can say is I found faith something I hadn't had in the previous least decade plus maybe two prior to the accident, because as a young girl, I, you know, I had believed in Gods and Goddesses, I had believed in witchcraft and woo and spirituality, not on the level that I do now, because I didn't understand it. However, I did believe in it. And so that is the journey I'm here to share, and I thank you for listening. And next week, I will be diving into a little bit about my story of addiction and recovery. And I really hope that you all have a wonderful Halloween and that you have grace with yourself and know that it's eventually all going to be okay, and I love you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me this week to view the complete show notes and any links mentioned in today's episode, visit mystical alchemy podcast.com you can download your chakra clearing meditation for free at www.igotthewoo/com/meditation or find a link in the show notes. Oh and before you go, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you never miss out on an episode of diving deeply into our shadow self. You can subscribe right now in the app you listening on or check out the sign up link in the show notes, thank you again for joining me on this episode of mystical alchemy. I'm Shandra Shultz, sending you blessings of light and love until next time you.