Welcome. This is episode 184. How do I trust myself again on the smooth stones podcast? I’m Amy Watson. I’m a life and grief coach. I’m the mom of two angel babies, and I love helping other parents who know this pain to continue to live their life because you got to continue living. That’s what we’re all doing.

And we want to do it in the best way possible. So today I want to start by. Shouting out my little girl, Lauren, it’s her birthday today, and she would be 12 years old. And I wanted to talk just for a second about what that feels like, because I think maybe a lot of you listening are not as far along. It hasn’t been 12 years for you and you might wonder, what is it even like?

So first I got to say that this episode is being brought to you by. Ruby Red Squirt. If you’re watching on YouTube, I see it. I don’t know if you like the, um, what’s it called? New Heights podcast, the Kelces or Kylie Kelce”s podcast, but I love how they always just like have their product placement right there.

I’m not sponsored by Squirt. That would be awesome. But I drank so much Ruby Red Squirt when I was pregnant with Lauren. I don’t even know why. I don’t know. It was one of my cravings and I was just drinking and drinking it. And I grew up in my church. We try not to do coffee or tea, which kind of extends to like caffeine.

So I try not to drink like Coke and whatever. Anyways, I chose not to, not everyone else does it. Everyone can do what they want. But, um, I didn’t realize that Ruby red squirt had caffeine in it until like, I don’t even know how long, probably into my pregnancy. And. It doesn’t, I don’t think it has a ton. I’m not going to look it up right now, but I remember being like, Oh crap.

Like this is probably why I’ve been craving having a Ruby red squirt every day. So I would eat an egg sandwich, like piece of bread, cheese. Um, ham, which I warmed up, made sure it was safe, like cooked it hot and then, um, yeah, an egg on top. And I would eat that every day and I would probably have a ruby red squirt nearly every day.

I don’t know. I don’t even drink a ton of soda, but that’s what it is. So, um, I’ve got that here is some ice and so cheers to Lauren and ruby red squirt. Um, yeah. Yeah. What has year 12 been like? It’s been a wild year personally for so many reasons, but I did notice. In January, we, again, in our church, um, we have, so when we meet the first hour is like a sacrament meeting where we have bread and water and, um, there’s speakers and we’re kind of all together.

So there’s kids, adults, everybody’s together. And then the second hour we go into classes. So there are. The kids go to what we call primary, but it’s just like Sunday school. They go sing, learn songs, learn about the scriptures, all of that. Um, and then there’s a youth program where if you’re 12 to 18, you go in a group with that.

And then of course the adults have their classes and. In January, everyone who’s turning 12 that year moves into the new class and they also get to go to the temple. Um, and so a lot of people were posting about this. A lot of my friends, a lot of people around. We kind of saw like in church that like recognize the new kids coming in and to this like youth program.

And I remember just thinking, Oh. She would be turning 12, like she would be in the young women’s program. She would be doing all these cute things. She would get to go to the temple. And I looked around and I saw, you know, it was just a reminder. I think as time goes on, that’s something I’ve observed is that the milestones are farther apart.

The closer you are to your baby’s death, the more milestones it’s like, oh, it’s been a week, it’s been two weeks, it’s been a month, two months, just like when you have a newborn. You’re going to be counting those little intervals, those little milestones, like, oh, they got a tooth or, oh, they’re crawling or they’re doing whatever.

There’s a lot of little milestones, but as time goes on, there’s fewer. So I remember one of my biggest ones was the year she would have gone into kindergarten. It was also about January when we started getting flyers for kindergarten registration. I was like, oh yeah, she would be going into kindergarten.

That was a big one that kind of Hit me harder. And then this year in January, yeah, I definitely felt some feelings. I had some moments, but a beautiful little tender mercy or a miracle that happened was, um, I helped plan the women’s activities at church. that we do and we do like a monthly get together.

And we had planned to do a service project. And since I love doing angel baby service projects, I volunteered and they decided to do it in January. And that was probably like way, way back in the fall, like August or September, they decided that I would do this project in January. And I. Needed that. And I remember that night I was planning to share my story.

I’m very open. I’ve spoken at many activities and events. And I remember thinking I’ll share my story and I’ll share why this service project, which is called Teeny Tears, why it means so much to me and how much I love it. And that night I just. Was emotional and I just was like, I’m not feeling it So thankfully I just turned the time over to my friend Megan who’s in charge of teeny tears and she was there to help with the project and she shared about her son who had died and Shared the project and how much it helps and so I just spent that night really like quietly cutting out flannel making these little tiny blankets And, you know, interacting, being friendly and whatever, but really just taking that time and feeling the feelings and like, I was close to tears quite a bit and that was okay.

I think that’s what happens with, I guess, maturing in grief and working in your grief. Like you are here, like being here, what happens is you’re just not afraid of the grief. You recognize it, you acknowledge it. You love it. You, you allow it, you don’t fight it. And that’s what I did. So I spent that night just quietly, almost crying and cutting out fabric.

And that was really therapeutic. It always is. I love doing service. And I just kept on going, and now, today I, I don’t know exactly how I feel. Um, I’ve been kind of tired. Daylight savings just happen. I feel like everything’s off and funnily enough, and I’ll share this here and I haven’t even told, like, I haven’t really said this, but the other night, so two nights ago, I.

I stayed up really late cause there was some like personal stuff and I just couldn’t sleep. And sometimes when you can’t sleep, it’s best to just get up out of bed and go do something else. I go, I made like some chamomile tea and, um, just was chilling quietly downstairs. And I realized just today, as I was thinking, I was like, I stayed up till three in the morning.

Lauren was born at three in the morning, so we found out she had passed in the afternoon of the 13th of March and they immediately started in induction of labor. I was 39 and a half weeks, and she ended up being born in that like deep quiet of the night at three in the morning, and I didn’t even realize that I stayed up till three in the morning and then I was like, okay, I’m gonna go to bed.

And especially because like. There still was like life. There still was the, you know, personal stuff. So I didn’t recognize it immediately, but I really thought about it. And so, so funny how these little signs, these little things like, yeah. And I remember, I think the year after like her first birthday, I remember just waking up.

I think it was 307. I’d have to look, um, honestly, I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure that it was 307 that she was born.

So yeah, January was more emotional today. I don’t have much of a plan. I. I don’t know. I think I’m just going to find a yummy cake. That’s going to be my mission after I finish recording. This is go find a little bakery or cupcake. Sometimes we’ve gone to like a fancy cupcake shop and I’ll just let the kids pick out a cupcake and sometimes we’ll go to the cemetery and sing.

We haven’t always lived near where she’s buried, but we are pretty close, but the weather is yucky. So I’m thinking. We’re just gonna make some soup, and I’m gonna get some sort of treat, and we will just think about her, and I might, um, pull out her box. She has little hand and footprints that I haven’t, like, seen, and I was thinking, I don’t know if the kids have, like, touched them or looked at them.

I have one set in a shadow box, and I have one set that I, um, Yeah, they’re like in a box in another box in the Lauren’s tote where we have some of her things So check out Instagram. I might share some of that over there. I might show you guys maybe That’s the thing. It’s like I don’t feel like I have to share.

I’m not sure most of the time when I feel like more

Not vulnerable. I don’t want to say vulnerable, but when I’m just Yeah, I just know that for me, sometimes sharing is really helpful. Sometimes sharing is really easy. Most of the time sharing is really easy and sometimes it’s like, no, I just want to keep it for myself. So 12 years on, I love my daughter. I think about her every day.

I do my work and so many things in her honor and I am okay. I am okay. I have my struggles. I have my wins. I have grown a ton. I, I can’t believe it’s been 12 years and. It’s just awesome. Like, life is good. Life is good, even when it’s hard. And so I want to give you hope. That’s my message, always, is let’s just keep on keepin on and trust that you’re gonna be okay and you are okay now.

You don’t have to wait till your baby’s 12 to be able to say, I’m okay. Whenever you’re ready, you get to be okay. You get to be good, even if you still break down sometimes. Even if every Tuesday is hard for you. Even if You know, you have tons of reminders everywhere, even if you feel like you’re not doing this grief thing right or life you are.

So that is my message. That’s my update on Lauren’s 12th birthday that is crazy to say Um, she’s awesome. You guys she had the cutest darkest so much hair the chubbiest cheeks Um, her little ears were smushed sometimes, you know just given that they’ve died their ears stay a little smushed and but they were so cute and she had the best little fingernails and she was just like a perfect perfect baby and Um, you can go I was gonna look it up.

I didn’t I have Lauren’s birth story. Maybe just Google Lauren’s birth story, smooth stones podcasts. Uh, but I talked all about when she was born, so I have shared that. I’ve shared it on lots of other like podcasts, so if you wanna hear about her, go to that. But shout out to Lauren. Happy birthday. Let’s talk about our topic today.

How do I trust myself? Again, I, I really wanted to talk about this because I think it’s one of the keys to our healing because like I said, a lot of times we are judging. Our process and our progress and our experience like that, we’re doing something wrong and we don’t even know what to trust. So let me jump into this.

I’ve got three really actionable tips that you are going to love and be able to use right away. So here it is. Let’s talk about what is trust. So what, what do we, what do you think it is if we trust ourselves, if we have self trust? Like, you think you’re always going to make the right choices, you think you’re going to be perfect, you think you can handle anything.

What is it? But a lot of times it’s this illusion. It’s a delusion. We don’t like saying delusion because it has kind of a negative connotation, but really it just means we’re imagining something that isn’t true, which isn’t a bad thing. That as we look into our future and we think about ourselves, our brain likes certainty.

It likes creating a picture of what’s coming next because this really soothes and quiets our mind and helps us feel grounded. But we actually can’t know, like we, we can’t know what’s going to happen. We can’t really know what we’re going to do, how we’re going to react, but we just have to kind of believe.

Right. So we have these beliefs. A lot of them are unconscious. Trust is a choice. That we make a, like I said, a lot of times it’s unconscious. We, we just take what we have and we project it forward. And so we have, when we have self trust, when it’s easy, when we’re just going through life, like imagine, I always kind of imagine like college students, you know, they’re just at this peak where like, they think they know.

Everything and they’re, you know, young and beautiful and generally like healthy and they’re able to do all kinds of things and they’re learning and they, they have this idea of what their future is going to be like, I think. Although a lot of people have anxieties, a lot of people have doubts and, you know, are working on becoming more confident.

I, I feel like it’s that energy, right? Of just like this young person that feels like they’re going to grab the world by the tail and they’ve, they’ve got this. Um, then why do we lose trust? Why do we lose trust in ourselves? Why do we kind of lose trust in our life and what’s happening? Because once life reveals.

The reality that we thought. isn’t actually guaranteed, right? It’s almost like you just get body slammed into reality. And now we have to wrestle with what used to be so easy. For example, a lot of people of faith, you have this faith and you’re like, of course, I’m like 100 percent I’m totally all good, you know, I’m very confident in my testimony, and then your baby dies, and then your partner cheats on you, and then like something awful happens, um, somebody does something, somebody says something, and it shakes your faith, and you have to wrestle with it, and you have to figure out, oh, I really thought like this one way, And now what the heck?

I, I really have to figure this out. So I want, as always, I don’t want me to just talk to you. You got to participate a little bit, but I promise it’s easy. I want you to ask yourself what broke your trust? Where in your life do you not trust yourself? What happened? Like, why do you not trust yourself?

What brought this new reality into your mind? It could be something that happened. It could be something that someone said it could be something you learned. What is it? So just take a pause. If you need to pause the podcast and just think maybe where some spots where I need to work on my self, trust. And for some of you, you might be like, no, I think I’m awesome.

I’m good. Like my relationship with myself is great. I still want you to keep listening because you might. You know, something might ring true to you. Um, but for a lot of us, it’s pretty easy to identify where we’re not trusting ourselves, where we’re not believing in ourselves. It could be with your goals.

It could be with your grief. It could be with relationships, whatever it is. So when we get new information, when things happen, when things change, we have to adjust, but it’s not easy. Adjusting is super uncomfortable and we do not. Like it. It feels like everything we believed is now broken, right? The things we believed about ourself, the things we believed about our relation to the world, the world, we’re lost and confused and like there’s no ground beneath us.

Have you ever felt like that? I know I did when I thought I was going to be a mom of five, and all of a sudden I was back to being a mom of four. Even though the fifth one existed, she wasn’t there. And so that was a real thing I had to work through was this identity, right? I was going to be a mom of five daughters, like how cool is that?

And all of a sudden I wasn’t. My family looked the same, but my family was forever changed and it didn’t make any sense. Like people couldn’t see it. I’d walk around the world and be like, they think I have four daughters. They, you know, trust me when you have four daughters, you go anywhere with them.

People say things. And I wanted to be like, I have five daughters. Um, so yeah, no ground beneath me. It did. It was just so confusing. So what I usually see is people want to go. backwards and kind of find that same safe imagined reality, which is exactly what I was just saying, which was, I want people to know that I have five daughters, right?

Like they have to know, I have to tell them, or like, I wish I could go back and, and change some, like the choices I made and like when I went to the doctor and if I would have noticed sooner and all these things. Right. So we want to go back to the world where I just got to believe I’m going to be a mom of five daughters.

Um, we want to remove this new information. Like, we want to remove the fact that babies die. Or, we want to remove the fact that our life could change in an instant. And like I said, we want to just go back, go back. But that isn’t an option. Like, it is not. I try to be really chill here, but sometimes I gotta be blunt.

That is not. Going to happen. So stop using all your energy to fight for it. Cause you’re just not going to make it. You’re never going to get there. Right. And I think you can like frame it in a different way if you want to, and just say, I used to be my own best cheerleader. I used to like totally trust myself and I want that again.

So maybe you want who you were. Like some of those values and attributes and things you had cultivated. Like you want to get, get it, um, something similar, right? It’s not going to be exactly the same, but it’s okay to have those goals, but the, the difference is you’re not fighting reality,

you’re actually using your past self as, um, an example of what’s possible for you.

So instead of fighting, trying to crawl backwards, What I want you to do is start right where you are, okay? Life threw you a curveball, a really big one. It gave you a black eye, and it knocked you on your butt, and you had no idea what to do, and there were a whole bunch of people watching, right? Your pants are dirty, you’re just like, now what do I do?

Uh, it’s definitely possible it will throw you more. So what do you want to do about that? Do you want to hide? Do you want to quit? That is an option. It doesn’t sound very fun to me, though. I don’t think it’s what we’re here to do. Maybe for a little bit, we can do that. Pull those covers over your head, snuggle back in bed, try to stay where it’s warm and safe and quiet and dark.

But then you have to start with what you have. So here are my tips. First, celebrate you. You’re still breathing? Amazing. You’re listening to a podcast to help you figure this out? What? You are a rock star. If you’re still being you in even the tiniest of ways, I love it. Actually, I wonder, and I was thinking as I was writing this, I wonder if we all just looked at ourselves and looked at how we grieve as kind of a mirror to who we are and how incredible we are and how unique we all are.

So some people want to fight and they want to make change and oh my goodness, I know some ladies like this who just have that fire. Some people want to comfort others. Some people want to focus on making their world better. The most beautiful for their family. Some people want to try again, right? They are locked in on their identity as a parent.

Some cope with dark humor, right? We’re so quick to judge how we grieve, but it is a window into truly who we are. So I want you to listen. I want you to learn. I want you to observe. instead of judging yourself. That’s the coolest thing about being a human. We can watch ourselves. We can think about our thinking.

So use that power. Use it for good. Love all the parts of you. Second, self trust is built in moments like this. I want you to know this. When it’s easy, Well, it’s easy. You’re not put to the test at all. So think about a muscle. When you don’t use it, it withers away. But when you start lifting weights, when you start lifting more weights, you get stronger.

And I know that there are people out there who get upset when we’re told that hard stuff makes us stronger. But it does. It does if we choose to let it. I’m not saying your baby died so you can have more self trust, but I’m saying that this can be a great opportunity to really dig deep and to learn how to trust yourself in a way that you never could have before,

just because we didn’t have this opportunity, just like so many people that don’t know what to say to grievers because they don’t understand. You do, you know what it’s like to have your world be shattered. So again, now what,

the most important part of this is choice. You can choose to let the hard stuff be an opportunity instead of fighting reality, criticizing yourself, and generally thinking that you are lost. You can literally say “this is the part where…” Let this be part of the process. It helps it not feel so overwhelming.

It helps you be compassionate with yourself. It helps you be Open up to the fact that it won’t always feel like this You won’t always doubt yourself like this. You will rebuild that self trust and it will be awesomer than ever. This is just so, so important. Honestly, this is where the magic happens. Let it happen.

Let this be the part where you feel lost, but it’s a bigger journey. It’s a journey of a lifetime and none of us know how long we have. So don’t get bogged down. Don’t start beating yourself up. Let it just be part of your story. And third, love yourself right where you are. I feel like this is basically a tip for every single thing.

It’s the most important step in all of this work that we’re doing. You don’t have to hate yourself to improve. That’s what so many of us have been taught. We have to fix ourselves. But you are not broken. You never were. You aren’t now. Your relationship with you is literally just the thoughts you think about yourself.

When you tell yourself unkind things, it’s hard to trust yourself. When you judge your behavior and why you’re doing it, it’s hard to trust yourself. And that being said, I’ve got a tiny little tangent. I notice a lot of clients and people who will use the self improvement things they know, or things from therapy, or theories they’ve heard, or like social media is big.

I don’t know about your algorithm, but mine is very much, you know, like. Relationship advice and attachment theory. And there’s just like, um, there’s somebody that’s, I follow who talks about kind of being this oldest perfectionist daughter, which is kind of what, where I am, you know, like the good kid, the A student who’s like now is hitting her forties and, and, and it’s just like, it’s too much, you know, just trying to figure out who you are.

Right. So we have this stuff coming at us from all angles. If you’re like me, I love reading self help books, but, and podcasts, of course, favorite, um, But what happens is we use these things to continue to blame yourself for not being “better,” right? Air quotes, “better”, whatever that means, right? Someone will come to me and they’ll be like, I got invited to a baby shower and I’ve been crying all day and I’ve tried doing breathing techniques and, and I know that I get to choose my emotions and create them.

And, and so I just don’t know why I can’t stop crying. Never use coaching or any tools I teach you against yourself. Never try to push any emotions or even nervous system reactions away. I think this is another big one. As people are becoming more aware of our nervous system and like fight, flight, freeze, and being activated.

There’s almost this whole thing around. Not being activated, right? Like we have to always keep our nervous system regulated. It’s not meant to be regulated It’s meant to go up and down just like our hormones are meant to go up and down or like our weight is supposed to go up and down and our moods are supposed to go up and down like we’re not meant to be flatline in anything Right.

Flatlines are not good. We know in a heartbeat. Um, we’ve all experienced that, but like we still believe this and, and we’re actively told this, right? Some people are selling this. They’re selling it that you should be a hundred percent happy and peaceful all the time. And like, they have the secret, but The truth is we are supposed to let ourselves be human.

We’re supposed to feel all our emotions. We’re supposed to make tons of mistakes and we’re going to love and trust ourselves anyway! So I wrote that with a big exclamation point, love and trust yourself anyway in the humanness. Yes. Use all these tools to support yourself, but love yourself right where you are.

So in a nutshell, we’re going to wrap it up. If you want to start on the path of trusting yourself again, If you want to take that first step again, you don’t have to like 100 percent trust yourself now, you maybe never will, but let’s just take a first step. Let’s just try to be 1 percent better. 1 percent more self trust.

Which to me just means letting go of the judgment and the doubt and the mean things we say to ourselves, because if you can drop some of that stuff the self trust just comes in I think naturally like if you look at a little like four year old They are just loving themselves.

They’re having a good time and We learn not to love ourselves. So let’s peel it back. We learn not to trust ourselves because we’re told time and time again, not to trust ourselves. I could go on and on about that. Maybe that’s another episode, like all the messages we get to not trust ourselves, but you think about it.

You think about how it happens in society, in families, in the doctor’s office, like, um, in grief. Even in grief, I had people come and tell me how I should feel and why aren’t they just awesome. Thank you for that. But yeah, think about what you want, what your relationship with yourself is going to look like, how much you’re going to trust yourself and what that will feel like.

So first we want to celebrate ourselves always just keep winning like you are always doing amazing. Second, remember self trust is built in moments like this. So don’t tell yourself otherwise. I don’t let don’t kick yourself while you’re down. I think that’s what we do, right? We’re like struggling to survive some days and then we’re like, oh my gosh, you’re such a piece of crap.

No, you’re not. You’re not third. Love yourself right where you are. So again, happy birthday to my girl, Lauren, and big hugs to all of you. Thank you for being here. If you’re listening on the podcast and if you don’t know, I’m on YouTube now, I’ve got all my episodes on YouTube, but I’ve recently started adding video.

So. If you like to watch me talk and see my ruby red squirt, um, come on over subscribe. If you love this episode, will you leave a review? Uh, it means a lot. It only takes a minute and I read everyone and I just want this podcast to go out and help everyone who needs it. So lots of love to you and I will see you next time.