How Can I be Different than my parents?
Transcript:
Corinne: Hello and welcome to Empowered to Thrive. As always, I am thrilled you've joined me today! And I am also excited because my friend, and fellow business owner, Natalie Burns has joined me as well. She was here about a year and a half ago on the show, you might remember. And we talked about things regarding our children and changing the patterns for our children. Because she is a educator who helps support other home educators, she is in the thick of it being surrounded by children all the time.
I am so happy to have you here again with me, Natalie, and excited for what we're going to talk about today. Because like you and I were just saying, the conversation is for now. As I've been pivoting and not letting go of what I previously talked about… continuing to talk about the inner healing work and the ways that we can change what we were conditioned for in childhood… I'm also including this idea, what do we do for the people who are in a Christian community and actually don't always feel like they belong but know they're supposed to be there? How do we allow ourselves to show up as we are, knowing who we are is just fine and yet being different sometimes in the midst of that culture? Looking forward to what you have to share with us!
Natalie: Corinne, I just love your community and the values that you are all coming together on. I really, really appreciate that. And like you said, yes, I work with children through Homeschool Teaching Simplified. I support families with how they show up for their children and how they go about their teaching approach with their children. Because what we see is that we get these generational patterns passed down and then we're just reenacting them on automatic. Sometimes we're going, why did I do it like that? Why am I thinking this like this? Why am I triggered in such a way? It's because of these patterns, and we are the change makers. We are the generation that is breaking those unhealthy patterns so that our children can actually thrive in their education and thrive in their legacy that we pass down to them, right?
What I actually found, I talked about this a little bit before with you, was that in the classroom… when I taught high school classes and biology and dance and all those fun things… I was not triggered by the problems that those teenagers came to me with. They would have an issue where they were learning something really challenging and they were struggling and I could come alongside and support them. However, when it was with my own children, all of a sudden, their triggers and their challenges were pushing my buttons. I was realizing - hold up - their issues are my issues, and I'm passing down my issues to them, and I'm seeing it come out in them in their learning. You might find this even with homework time, that any time your child is challenged and they have this explosion, you feel it at the same time. This is a chance to do some of that inner child work and see what has not healed for us. What do we need to unpack and how can we make that change in ourselves so that our children can automatically benefit? Because when we make the change and we are finally empowered to thrive, they resonate with us and they pick that up, and then they are now also empowered to thrive. That's one thing I noticed that's very different in the homeschool teaching world and something that I work with families on. I know that you work with families on the same concept, just not like homeschool.
Corinne: Yes. Yes, for sure. We actually made a decision recently that looks like we'll be homeschooling one of our three this coming school year. And, you know, it's one of the most challenging of my children for me to sometimes allow the expression of emotions to be … and to co-regulate for her so that she can move through her emotions. I heard it said somewhere recently, and it hit me, that sometimes what we weren't allowed to express, we struggle with seeing our children express. Because she's not the child I would say is most like me. She isn't. She definitely reminds me of other family members of mine from the family I grew up with. But I often look and think, how I allow her to be and what her organic expression is, I was not allowed to express. And knowing this also helps me to take a deep breath and to stand back and witness her and to do my best to be a safe co-regulating space for her. Because inside of me, there is a conflict where I'm like, “I just want it to stop!!”
Natalie: 100 %. Because as those that are looking to change our legacy and break generational patterns, you have to just step forward scared at first. You just need to start somewhere. And so we start and we say, okay, my child is allowed to burst into tears here and I'm not going to tell them to be quiet (in a nice or mean way.) I'm not going to make them just “do it anyways” in this moment. We're going to walk through this process together. But what that does is it signals humongous alarm bells from your own upbringing, right? Because you weren't allowed. So that means that you are about to embark on an unsafe process that has unknown possibilities of what's going to next. But you know in your heart that this is the right thing to do and you know that “this is the change I want to make” but it is terrifying to actually go through and walk that process - which is why it's so important that we have support systems in place! We have mentorship, coaches, counseling … we have all of these good things, and we're we're researching for ourselves how to support our bodies through that. Because we need to give our parasympathetic nervous system a chance here and give it some time in the spotlight as well, because this is a very stressful process. It does definitely trigger fight or flight or fawn or freeze. And it does do that in our bodies. So we need to learn how to take a minute and calm that down, which might not take a minute. And it might take a full process to really finally remove the psychological aspects of that stressor.
Corinne: Right. Totally. So I'd love to hear… and you can take it either direction… either a little bit of your own journey in this, in what we were talking about, and some of the tools you found that have supported you. And as all my listeners know, I like to remove all the veils and the masks, where we just get to show up, right? Because everybody has their specialty, and who they are, our titles and our job. But when it comes down to it, when we sit with a safe person in our living room, then we get to really hear the background stories. So, as much as you feel comfortable, you're invited to share as much of that with us.
Natalie: I appreciate you, Corinne. You are definitely a safe place. And I really love that. And as you know, I'm an Enneagram 8. So that vulnerable side is a constant where it can progress. So I'll start with a little bit of an example from the homeschooling or teaching world and then I'll get into a little bit more of how I came to understand that perspective.
On Instagram, I saw this teacher saying, why are all these children content to just take a zero for their work rather than getting, you know, partial marks for it? Don't you know how much a zero brings down your average? If you get 30 % here and there, it's going to be so much better. You can pass the class. So what's everyone's problem? Why are all these children lazy? No one's enforcing discipline on them anymore. What's wrong with people now?
I looked at the comments on this - a very popular homeschooling expert - and the first thought that I had, I didn't see anywhere in these comments. And I thought, this is because of my experience. People have not realized this. I have been seeing teenagers especially, and now even younger children, super happy to just take the zero; fail the class; whatever, ever since I was a teacher in the classroom 10 years ago. And it's still happening today. It's not a new story. It's old news. It was probably happening when we were in high school too, maybe by us.
And the reason is not because they're lazy. It's not because they're lacking discipline. It's because they are afraid. And this is a psychology fear-based issue where if I try and I fail, How do I live with myself? If I don't try, I didn't fail. And so, “oh, well, yeah, of course I failed the class, but I didn't hand in half the work. So obviously I would have been fine if I just did it, but I didn't do it because I was scared that I would fail.”
We have to teach our children how to sit with themselves, how to become resilient in the face of challenge and failure and this is how it shows up now. But the way that I knew this was because of my own journey, which you alluded to. I grew up with judgment being a really big deal, shame and blame being very key points. And these were things that I think shaped me into an Enneagram eight. Judgment is really big. Justice is huge for the Enneagram eight. Justice is because, you know, like the gavel drops, right and wrong is a judgment issue. And growing up in the church, there were a lot of great things and there are also a lot of harmful things. Think that part of, you need to be right with God or else the wrong is eternal damnation. That's a big deal. We've got dire consequences for being wrong now. This definitely shaped a belief system and a worldview that I held around right and wrong, justice and all of these big things.
I had a huge journey with judgment when a few years ago, our youngest son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was just turned two at the time. And I was really battling that this was a justice issue and a spiritual justice issue. And I realized as I walked through - actually a storytelling course with my friend, Dawn Bowers -and she walked me through this course and I realized just how much of a theme judgment was in my life, especially at that time. I was the protagonist in my testimony, my little life story. Who was my enemy? Who was my antagonist? Well, my enemy ended up being the first oncologist we have, but that's a whole different story. But they were not the antagonist, the true antagonist in my life. It was God. God was the one who never, ever changed his mind. Here I was, as the hero of the story who goes through a perspective change, to go from thinking one thing to undergoing the transformation process and thinking something new. Typically the villain is the one who never changes their mind. But in this case, the antagonist isn't a villain. It's just the one who's steady and stable through it all. And I learned at that time not to twist the Bible to line up with my own understanding of reality, but instead to look at my own life and view that in light of what the Bible was saying. That really helped me with this journey through this idea of judgment and changing my mind.
I wish that I could say that I'm not a non-judgmental person now. I think I made some pretty big leaps and bounds, but it might be a forever thing. But another thing that this journey has really taught me is that healing is also not a flick of the switch. It's not an event. It's a lifelong process. That shaped how I created my programs with the Homeschool Teaching Simplified umbrella, where we have a whole lesson, a whole hour on non-judgmental listening and how we model that and teach that to our children. We had this whole concept… I kind of forget the second thing already because my brain just went … but there is the idea here that as we walk through this process, we see it in our children, right? We're supporting them through that and how we show up for them is going to be very impactful in the way that they're going to make future decisions. So how can we change our minds about what we've long held as our belief system so that they don't need to just carry that and pass it down, but now they can actually make a change.
Corinne: Yes. And what a gift we're giving them by doing that work, by doing our own work so that they don't have to live the same experiences. Because I actually believe that my parents did the best they knew how. And I look at people in general and believe like we're all … everybody is doing the best they know how. We don't see what we need to change. We don't know what's available. And yet for any of us that create changes and shifts, new patterns, and offer new atmospheres at home and otherwise… when we allow our kids to make mistakes and we're not coming at them with judgment because we're not actually looking at it through that perfectionistic lens anymore… what a gift we give them. What a gift.
Even today, I was feeling in what I've gone through in the last 12 hours and I realized, this feeling I have is so similar to how the little girl I was felt. She felt alone in her heartache. She didn't have a safe place to land with it. And in that moment, I did what I can do for myself and just offered the compassion of a loving parent where I felt those feelings. I paused in the middle of cleaning my kitchen, let those tears fall, and I visualized that little girl. I was just there with her. Yes, I feel what you're feeling. I see you. I didn't even say all those words. Sometimes I think it helps too, but I felt all of that with her. And so, we're doing this for ourselves alongside doing it for our children.
Natalie: I had a similar experience where I felt the need to… you know… comfort little Natalie, the 12 year old Natalie who had nobody to turn to at that time. And I mean, this is common. A lot of people say, I met my younger self for coffee. It's the same idea where you look back and you can just be with that younger version of yourself and say, I'm here for you. I know better than anyone what you are going through right now, and there is wisdom ahead and change can happen - and that's a big thing change can happen!! We have this this funny idea - time is so strange right? - we have our own little personal bubble of our reality, but outside of this time is eternal at the same time. “At the same time!” we can hold space for ourselves now and from our past and look at that.
One of the ways that I found to be really helpful in my own journey, and our family's journey, because walking through humongous medical needs is no small feat. And we have been able to do that! I joke about… we've been able to do that while staying married, which is like very, very, very uncommon in these days because of the support systems that we've put in place and the generous gifts of support from so many, especially one person who's really funded a lot of our sessions with something called natural bioenergetics. And I'd love to share this with you for a moment. I love it so much!
I actually became a student practitioner. I'm in level four out of nine, and it's a full certification to become a natural bioenergetics practitioner. It employs a combination of biology, like how your nervous system runs into your muscles. It has muscle response monitoring, which people may know, where you can ask like “yes” or “no” questions and see if the muscle gives out or not because your cognitive part of your thinking and your subconscious part of your brain know everything about your body. It knows the toxins; it knows what substances are causing issues, what chemicals; It knows what injuries there are; and it knows the psychological issues and emotional issues that are causing your body stress. So you can tap into all of those different aspects of stress this way. And it employs physics, especially quantum physics principles, which I was really scared of quantum physics when they told me that it was coming into the grade nine science curriculum and I had to teach it. And I was like, no way. But since then (that was a long time ago) I have explored into quantum physics further and it is astounding how it changes the game.
Then it takes the best of the Eastern practices as well, meridians, your energetic flow and being in balance. And so, we've used this as a modality for how to go about a lot of these changes. It's almost like, if there was a silver bullet for a quick change, this is it. Doesn't mean it's easy. You're still facing those deep and dark recesses and the caves that you buried you never wanted to see again, but if they are causing you stress and impacting your relationships now, then it is a healthy thing to go ahead and deal with those and move through to the other side. So that you can actually move forward and show up for your children where, it was such a beautiful moment where what used to trigger me for my children, I can look at them and say, you're going through this right now. And I notice you're going through that. And I don't need to participate with you. I can actually come alongside you and support you like I did in the classroom.
I'm no longer triggered by my children. Then they are able to actually heal in that moment! I'm not passing this down any longer. And that's the kicker. We want to change our legacy, right? We want to change what is actually passing down because this is automatic. I'm gonna just monologue for a second longer. You mentioned about your parents doing the best they could with the information that they had. We all are doing that. Well, most of us are doing the best we can with what we have in front of us. And when you have a brand new baby and that baby is crying, what do you do? You put them against your chest and you allow them to resonate with you. You calm yourself down and then the baby calms down. Another word for this would be entrainment. They're in training to that pattern that you're giving them, that energetic pattern, that calmness, they're resonating with you. But the thing is that we actually have learned that babies do this quite a bit up until their first year of life or so. But they don't just pick and choose the best parts of us to entrain with. They entrain with everything. And so if we have belief systems that are being passed down, like I can't get through this alone and that leads to substance abuse in grandpa, dad, then yourself. You can see how it passes down, but it's not the substance abuse. It's that I can't do this on my own. I can't cope with this. That is what our babies, our children, are also resonating with. So we accidentally pass down the worst parts of ourselves at the same time.
That's why if we can do this healing for ourselves, it is impacting generations to come. They are free from that way of thinking. And now that they're free from that way of thinking or you can make those changes, you're free from that way of thinking, you actually have the capacity to make a decision with clarity and discernment rather than feeling like you're forced to, you're drawn to, or there's something that you just can't get away from.
Corinne: Yeah, it's good. The one thing I want to bring out for anybody that may be feeling like, this is so good, but I'm just not up for it all. That this is - like you mentioned, Natalie - a journey. And we, you and I, we have our own journeys, our own stories, right? What's led us to this point. And the older I get… I’ve been thinking about this recently…. you know, I hear it and I'm like, no, I’m not just saying it because you know, people say the older they get the less I know… that's not what I mean… But the more I live, the less I worry about knowing it all. So I love what you're saying, and I'm in agreement with it.
I also feel this energy of… so I just want everybody listening to know… the pressure's off, right? If it's time for this type of modality or another, we will be ready for it. And if it's not time, it's just not time yet. So each of us sitting and knowing, okay, we said, we're doing the best we can, right? So what does that look like right now? And because the pressure's not on (I lived with that belief a lot of my life) and if I'm not careful, I can… not careful, that's not it… there are times when I am living in emotional flashbacks. So I'm living in the reality that I used to have to live in. I don't have to live in that reality anymore, right? But I might forget, ooh, and feel the pressure's on. And then my shoulder blades… I start to feel it. I start to feel that ache in my shoulder. I was feeling like I had to carry it all up. No, no.
So, each one of us blazes our path in the way that we're supposed to blaze it. It means we might do things later than we thought we should or earlier than it was time. And I guess just to really like embody this point that we've been talking about, it's okay. We're literally sitting here saying, it's okay. We don't need to look at ourselves with judgment. We don't need to get super analytical about, my gosh, is it time for this right now? You're gonna know when it's time. You're gonna know when it's time. And then you can reach out to Natalie and you can say, “hey, I loved what I heard you talking about. I can hear that it's transformed your life, transforming your family's life. I wanna learn more,” right? You're gonna know when it's time. And if it's not time, just put it in the back of your mind. Then it's going to come to mind when it's time.
This is really a space to just lean back and get to experience the fact that in this moment, you're not being criticized, you're not being judged. We're not looking at you saying, here's where we at and here's where you can get - so you should get there. I feel that super strongly. So we're just gonna crash through any of that right now and just lay it out there. So yeah, feel free to share any more.
Natalie: That's right. I 100 % agree. And that makes me think, okay, what am I putting out there that's still resonating with that a little bit. I'm going to be doing that digging for myself because I do agree with you. There are different ways that work for different people. This way has worked really well for us. There are slow and steady aspects. Then I don't know… do you know much about Gabor Mate? He is local to me in the Vancouver area. Isn't he lovely? But he talks a lot about using like mushrooms, say, for example, to really get deep into those dark pits. And that is an experience. You are digging down really deep past what I believe your body might be ready for. And so that can be a very intensive process and it can be hard and fast and very, very difficult to cope with versus natural biogenetics is one layer at a time, like an onion. Your body will only allow you to bring up what it's ready, for in the order that it's ready for. So it's not so much somebody telling you, “I've assessed this about you and now this is what you're gonna work on next is.” Your body brings up, I want to do this, and now I want to do this and I want to do it in this way.
It's I believe like been such a gentle way of navigating life because I used to have Lyme disease and I went hard and fast with Lyme and I realized that you can't go hard and fast with Lyme, because if you go hard and fast with Lyme, it swings back and you have a huge detox reaction. You can't deal with it. So you have to go low and slow and it is a grace to do that for your body. It is a grace to do that for your mind and your soul to say, life is a journey. This isn't a one and done thing. Like I mentioned, healing is not an event. It's a process.
Corinne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. I am intrigued because you said you used to have Lyme and I know some people live with Lyme. So was this a byproduct of the modality, the work you did?
Natalie: Yes and no. So back in 2018, I actually had a full deliverance event from lupus and Lyme disease. I had heart failure when I was 25 years old. And then they told me I couldn't have any children. I got off all of those drugs, was able to have two beautiful children. I was in a car accident, flared up, found out that I had Lyme disease, figured that Lyme was actually the driver of the lupus, that having this chronic infection was causing my body to drop bombs all over the place and attack itself. And then I went through a year of holistic, naturopathic, mostly modalities, and that was beautiful. Now that brought me to a place where I had clarity to think. I went through spiritual aspects around healing and followed a lot of healing ministries, hooked up with a street healer in the Vancouver area. He came to our home. I grilled him for an hour. Tell me everything you believe. And he laid hands on me and I had a huge deliverance event of all sorts of oppressive energy… or intrusive energy… or demonic, whatever you want to call it - not possession, but more oppression. And I don't see them as like characters anymore, like these demonic characters, like bad guys in a cartoon, but more so like these unhealthy patterns. Because God's spoken, everything is wavelengths, everything is frequencies, everything is energy. And so these are things that are not helpful to us. They're coming in and we don't have these boundaries in place to stop this from impacting us. So I had this huge physical healing event.
But what happened after Emmett was diagnosed with a brain tumor? First of all, I said, what the heck? I thought we already got through this. I thought I already figured out healing. I thought we had our deliverance. I thought we were on the other side of this. And now we're doing it again with our son. Generational patterns, right? And with that, I realized, well… I also had another… I had an autoimmune flare up. And I realized, just because I had a full physical healing event… and I attribute all of this to our Heavenly Father and Jesus, and I'm so grateful. I also realized that there were still emotional, psychological, and other aspects that are underlying.
And actually another fun thing that you might want to look into is German new medicine. And that connects the chaotic events that happen in our lives with the emotional response and how that shows up in our bodies. And so you can see if something shows up in your neck, it's probably like an intellectual self-devaluation conflict that you're going to. And it gives you a clue for, this is how I can dig into this and look at healing for myself. And so that was how we dealt with it then, and now I've been dealing with the emotional, psychological, and even new physical flare-ups because that can happen again with these. Now finally, because of the work that we've done with MB, I can experience forever freedom from these aspects!
Corinne: That's so great. Yeah, and definitely, the body responds to what we're experiencing emotionally. And I mean, you're driving that point home, but that's obviously a big passion of mine to like connect all the pieces and help us collectively to realize, we're all connected, you know, this isn't… it's not…. we have our emotions and then we have our diseases and you know, we have our thought patterns. Everything is interwoven, and I find that really hopeful. Like to me, that is like, okay, so it's not just random and out of the blue when my body's responding in a certain way. And it's very important to give it ear, to give it attention, to respond to it. You know, I grew up with this, yeah, put the body through the wringer and it can endure… And yes, yes it can! But it deserves our attention, our love and our compassion and the support we can offer it.
I would love to keep going. I'm gonna wrap up at this point because I have a babysitter and that's just how it goes as a business owner and a mom at the same time. But it has been a pleasure to be with you! I appreciate you sharing your own story, sharing your knowledge with us. For anybody who wasn't familiar with you already, what are the best ways they can get in contact with you?
Natalie: Yes, if you're interested in anything about the NB stuff, can email me, natalie@homeschoolteachingsimplified.com and I'm sure, Corinne, you'll leave some links below if anybody would like to check out some of the things that I do. I would, if you don't mind, I would love to just bless everybody. There is hope. We don't need to sit in what we've been born with, the thought patterns that we've been born with. Like Lyme disease, I pass that through the placenta to my children. They just showed up in this world with that already, something that they were dealing with in life. And yet they don't need to just carry that and like you said, push through like a steam train and suffer internally when in our minds and torture ourselves through this process of just having to slog through life. There is hope you can change, and there are plenty of ways that you could go about doing that. And so I just want to bless everybody that you find the way that works for you.
Corinne: Yes. Wonderful! All right. Thank you so much, Natalie. And thank you to each one of you that are here with me, with us. I hope that you know whenever you pillow your head, how much you matter, that in the universe, the energy that you carry - the person that you are - is something that we all need. To any moment you've been told the opposite, I just want you to know that there are arms open to you. There's a safe set of arms open to you. To let you know that you are wanted, you are loved, and you deserve to live. You deserve to live a long life, a long life, a life that you enjoy, where you feel like you're thriving. So that's my hope. That is my prayer for you. So much love, my friends, and I'll see you again soon.
To connect with Natalie Burns outside of this space, here are some ways.
Get your hands on The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Your Homeschooler Critical Thinking to help your child unlock self-awareness, responsibility, and initiative in their learning and for their life… in 5 simple steps. https://homeschoolteachingsimplified.com/ultimate-guide
To learn more about Natural Bioenergetics and the support Natalie can offer you go to
https://naturalbioenergetics.ca/about/what-is-natural-bioenergetics/
