26 - A New Year, a New Name

TRANSCRIPT

Happy New Year, and thanks for joining us on the very first-ever episode of Like Driving in Fog. This is an emotional healing podcast, related to all things dealing with emotional healing, and the emotional healing journey that you might be on. my name’s Mary Young and I am so glad you came to listen today, while this is episode number one of Like Driving in Fog, it is actually episode number 26 of my podcast. The podcast has been around since last August, originally called Lessons from Life.

 I figured the new year was a great time to have a new name since, I had decided to change the name. And I wanted to take this off cycle episode to talk a little bit about why I was changing the name; what you can expect from this podcast; and why you might be interested in listening to this podcast. It seemed to me that the best way to do that would be to simply bring up what I thought were the pertinent questions that other people might have, and tackle those questions.

So we’ll start with the obvious one: why change the name? What was wrong with Lessons from Life? To begin with, the purpose of the podcast has changed since I started it last August. When I started Lessons from Life podcast, it was to be just a hodgepodge of topics; things that I’ve experienced over the years, lessons I’ve learned from that. but as I worked on it, and as I created episodes, I found the episodes that I cared most about -- the episodes where I had the most passion, were the ones where I talked about things I had learned on my emotional healing journey. So roundabout October, I repurposed the podcast to be an emotional healing podcast, and let that be the primary focus rather than just a hodgepodge. Once I had done that, and as I started looking at other podcast names out there, Lessons from Life was too hard for people to find. There are so many other podcasts and blogs and Facebook pages out there that have life and lessons in the name.

On top of which, I have said for years that the best description for me, the best allegory of an emotional healing journey, is driving in fog. You can’t see where you’re going, you’re not sure where the road’s going, if you’re even on the road. You don’t even know if anybody else is on the road with you. No choice looks good. I can choose to stop, but I might get hit by somebody else who’s driving in fog. I can choose to continue; it’s not gonna be a very fun trip, but I gotta make some kind of choice. I can just sit there behind the wheel going I don’t know what to do. So to me, the emotional healing journey is a lot Like Driving in Fog.

when I was running podcast names by other friends, trying to decide should I change the name, and what should I change the name to, somebody said: why don’t you just call it the emotional healing podcast, since that’s what it’s about. And I thought about it. There’s pros and cons to both names. Logically speaking, the emotional healing podcast makes all kinds of sense, because people will immediately know what I’m talking about when they’re searching. Even if they don’t know exactly what kind of podcast it is, they can find it with no problem. But emotionally speaking, that name does nothing for me.

Whereas Like Driving in Fog puts a picture in my brain as soon as I hear it, and reminds me of all the times I’ve driven on foggy roads. You know, sometimes the fog was light just a bare haze. Other times, it was so dense that I wasn’t even sure I was on the road. That then reminded me of the immense relief that I felt when I got out of the fog, or when the fog lifted. On top of that, I love the concept of fog as a metaphor or an allegory. Because when you are on an emotional healing journey, as I’ve been on for over 20 years now, it is so easy to beat yourself up.

• Oh my gosh! I just did something codependent again. I thought I was done being codependent.
• Oh my gosh! I just made another bad decision.
• Oh darn, that bad decision I made five years ago is still having consequences.

And we beat ourselves up about that instead of celebrating our victories. But here’s the thing. When you’re out driving, when you’re going somewhere and you run into a foggy patch, you don’t beat yourself up for running into a foggy patch. You don’t go oh my God, it’s foggy! I must’ve done something wrong! You know you can’t control the fog -- it just is. All you can do is figure out the best way to get through the fog, and that precisely... precisely illustrates the process of emotional healing. When you are on that emotional healing journey, the best thing you can do... the only thing you can do, is figure out what is the best way to get through that emotional healing journey. What is the best way to handle this incident, this emotional trigger, this memory, this setback. Don’t beat yourself up about it, just figure out what’s the best way to get through it. Just like when you’re driving and hit a fog bank.

So that’s the biggest reason that I changed the name. interestingly enough, I was talking to a friend of mine recently comparing the two names, and she said if she was on an emotional healing journey (which is on her plans for 2019) and she was looking for a podcast to listen to, she would take the one called Like Driving in Fog because with a name like that you know that the podcaster knows what you’re talking about - what you’ve been through. And folks, I am here to tell you: I do know.

Which leads right into the next question that I had written down that people would probably wonder about, which is: why am I the person to be doing this podcast? Why should anybody listen to this podcast, or listen to me? And I will start by saying that I am not the same person I was 20 years ago. In fact on December 31, 1998, I went out driving at 10 o’clock at night, 930/10 o’clock at night. New Year’s Eve out on the back roads around San Antonio, thinking and trying to deal with everything that was going on in my life that I didn’t feel like I could deal with. And yelling at God, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. And there was a point, as I was driving around thinking on those back roads, that I started toying with the idea of failing to negotiate a curve. Well, I have a very strong survival instinct, so when I hit that point I turned around and came home. I got home maybe about 1130/12 o’clock at night. I don’t know what time it was, maybe 1130. I was renting a room from friends at the time, but they had gone to bed. And I went into the shower and got into the shower, turned the water on because when you cry in the shower nobody can hear it, because the water, the cascading water keeps people from hearing it. And folks I cried in that shower until the hot water ran cold, until my arms, fingers, feet, legs were cramping. Somebody told me once that has to do with some chemical reaction when you’ve cried that many tears. Somebody said recently: oh, so you cried until you were cried out, and I was like no, I couldn’t stop crying even after I started cramping. And I turned the water off because it was cold, and I gave it time to get warm, for the hot water heater to work, and then I cried in the shower some more.

And I promised myself that whatever the heck was going on, I was not going to carry it into the new millennium. And the day after New Year’s I started calling therapists and I found the perfect therapist for me down there in San Antonio. We had a very productive relationship until I moved out of Texas.

I moved out of Texas in 2001, and in 2011, after 10 years of absolute peace, I started seeing some of those old behaviors again. And feeling some of those old feelings again like things are going to spiral out of control, so I found a therapist in Georgia, and we continued the work that my Texas therapist and I had started.

I am not the same person today that I was 20 years ago. I would not have started a podcast 20 years ago. I would not have thought that I had anything to offer. Back in 2011, when I started seeing Tracy, my Georgia therapist, she asked me why was I there and I said I want to be a better me. I want to be a healthier me. And she said okay, what does that look like? I was like: I don’t know. I’ve never been a healthier me. I don’t know what it looks like. And so I pondered that. I thought about it for a week or so. I made a list, and I took that list with me to my next Tracy appointment, read it to her she’s like: okay, and we talked about it.

I came home and threw it on a pile of paper and forgot all about it. I was cleaning out the office in 2014, and stumbled across that list .I had written down 18 things that I thought would describe a healthier me, and I could check 16 of those things off on that list. I was working on the other two.

So why am I the person to do this? Because I’ve done it. I know how hard it is. I know how painful it is. And I know how important it is. And I also know how easy it is to feel like you’re the only person in the world going through it, and I want you to know you are not alone. Even when the fog is all around you, and you cannot see another car on the road, you’re not alone. So that’s why am doing a podcast, and that’s why the podcast is called Like Driving in Fog.

 That’s what we want to talk about, and you can get a feel for that if you look at the last 20 episodes. Start in like October, or definitely by November, I had converted to focusing on emotional healing.

So I do an episode every week. They’ll be released on Monday mornings at 6 AM Eastern. It’s just me talking, and it’s usually 10 minutes or less. Sometimes it may be 12 or 13 but is usually 10 minutes or less, you can find the podcast by going to my Facebook page. Go to Facebook and search for Like Driving in Fog podcast. It will have a link to the podcast. We will be on iTunes. when that happens depends on when iTunes makes it happen, but we’ve done what we need to do on our end to make it happen, so it’s just a matter of waiting on them to approve the submission. I will make an announcement at the beginning of an episode when the iTunes approval has come through, to let you know that you can find us on iTunes.

That’s pretty much it. I can promise you truth, candor, vulnerability, authenticity, honesty, caring, compassion... every episode has a transcript.

 And I think that’s it.

I’ll see you again on Monday the seventh for the next episode of Like Driving in Fog. Until then, thanks for listening.  Go make it a great week.