[00:00:00] Ruthie: Hi, welcome 

[00:00:01] Kate: to plenty. I am so excited to introduce you today to Ruthie Lindsay, who is the author of the bestselling memoir. There I am the journey from hopelessness. to healing. She’s a Nashville based speaker and incredible coach and she is a midwife of souls. So Ruthie survived a really intense accident as a teenager where she had only a 5 percent chance of living and the surgery that both Brought her back to life, but also set her up for a very intense journey with chronic pain followed.

She spent seven years in bed and today she’s sharing with us the story of letting go of the pain story and why and how she married her body. How she has opened up to receiving the biggest romantic love of her life. How she’s healed her relationship with money, how she created a career getting paid to be herself and so much more.

So I know you’re just going to absolutely love Ruthie. She’s an incredible storyteller. She’s a beautiful loving soul. The way we met is also really magical and our stories have been intertwined in a certain way in the last six months. So enjoy the episode. Hi Ruthie.

Hi sister. Thank you for being here. Oh my gosh. I’m so grateful. This is such a pleasure. What a treat. 

[00:01:32] Ruthie: I am thrilled and so with you in real life. I mean, it’s happened. I’m so excited. I’ve just 

[00:01:38] Kate: been getting to know you via the internet for what six months or so and like it’s been such a gift. Oh, you know your virtual friendship, so I’m just happy to have it in real life 

[00:01:48] Ruthie: now.

Well getting to know you through the internet changed my whole world. So I am so grateful to be here. So honored to get to know you and to experience you in person. Thank you. Okay, 

[00:01:58] Kate: so I want to start off with Okay, so. The difference you’re currently experiencing now in terms of your business. We’re gonna talk about a lot of things.

However we’re just going to start here. Perfect. So what you’re experiencing now in your business. Relative to when. When would you say you like started your business, which I understand in a business like yours may be hard to nail. Yeah, the date. Yeah, 

[00:02:24] Ruthie: it is tough. I was I mean, I started working for myself in probably 2014, 2015, but that looked totally different.

I had started speaking, but I also did like a lot of stuff through Instagram, and I worked with a lot of brands, and I actually started with doing design work. 

[00:02:42] Kate: I know, and I’m actually really excited to talk to you about that, because I, that is not an area of strength for me. But it’s an area I really want to grow in, so I have some design questions for you, if that’s okay.

Amazing! 

[00:02:53] Ruthie: I don’t know that I can help you, but I will do my best. We’re going there. 

[00:02:56] Kate: Okay, so you started off in a different capacity, but certainly self employed. Yes, self employed. 2015 ish. Okay, 2015 ish. At that time, did it happen by 

[00:03:08] Ruthie: accident? Yes. I mean, kind of. I had been living in a bed for seven years of my life from a lot of health problems.

Went through a divorce. Had to figure out how to pay my bills. I mean, that’s really how it began. And at the time, all I had done is I had decorated two of our homes that we had lived in together. Taylor Swift had shot her Red album at my home and so from there, and they had been in a lot of like apartment therapy and design sponge, and so people thought that’s what I did for a living, and I had styled the house that she designed.

You know, they didn’t change anything that when she did that photo shoot, so I just automatically had people kind of thinking that’s what I did, and I knew nothing. I just was like, this is just what I like. This is what feels good to me. This is what makes, like, I have a lot of Libra, you know, like, I just love beauty.

I love creating spaces that feel really intentional and beautiful. So when we, you know, weren’t together anymore, I had to figure out how to pay my bills. I had started an Instagram account. I started like just showcasing our home and I’ve been doing a little bit more than just my home and creating spaces and like dinner parties and things like that.

And people started inviting me and asking me to help them with theirs because I loved florals and I love creating beautiful, intentional spaces. You know, everything in my house has a story, everything. I don’t love shopping, but I love intentional, thoughtful, beautiful pieces. And so that’s kind of how I fell into that and then I started styling like photo shoots and doing a lot of random things like I was hired by Lincoln to like drive cross country and like style all these photo shoots for six months I did.

I got to style a cross country train trip for Amtrak and do this whole, I mean just random stuff. But I, I would always joke, I’m like, I feel like they just invite me because I’m kind of a fun hang. Because I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m totally making this shit up. But I can kind of make it look really beautiful or what I think is beautiful and feel really good.

And so I was just kind of faking it because I knew, I didn’t know. What I was doing, you know, and so 

[00:05:12] Kate: some people start a business and like have a big vision and are like I’m gonna Take over the world and you were like, okay I gotta figure out how to pay the bills and people just kept inviting you to do stuff So what are you 

in human design?

I

[00:05:26] Ruthie: don’t know. Wait, is that the one where it’s like generator? I’m a generator You’re a generator. I don’t know anything about it. Oh interesting. Okay, 

[00:05:33] Kate: but I want to that’s sort of neither here nor there But I’m not I don’t know much other than my own type, so I’m, I’m no help for you. 

[00:05:40] Ruthie: It’s like when I ask people what high school they went to, why would I ask?

I’m like, I don’t know anything in that town. I don’t know why I 

[00:05:47] Kate: just asked you that. Like why did I just ask you that? Well, anyway, there’s a whole other thing about that, but it’s not important. Okay. So now you are running your retreats. You have a full coaching. I don’t know if you would call it that people come for these like exquisite tea ceremonies.

I mean, you have a best selling book. You’re traveling the world, you know, speaking and all right. So like what happened from the time? I mean, just share whatever kind of key moments might be useful of this sort of like accidental styling. 

[00:06:25] Ruthie: Yeah, this is totally accidental to now like. 

[00:06:30] Kate: Thought leader, creative coach, you know, memoir writer, like you’re such a beautiful writer and Such a beautiful human and space holder and you know teaching people how to feel their feelings and so many other things So yeah Like what were some of those key moments of making that transition and really allowing you to get paid to be you Which is pretty fucking cool.

[00:06:52] Ruthie: Which you were doing before and now it’s just a different aspect of you. But it was also like a version of me that was still very conditioned and in the box and knowing what to say and what to do to get people to like me. Right. I learned that very young. And very 

[00:07:04] Kate: based on the visual. Oh. Like make it look 

[00:07:06] Ruthie: good.

Totally. I mean every day when I’d walk in my front door as a little girl I’d hear, What did they say about you today? Did they say how pretty you were? What did they say about your outfit? Like I learned my value, my worth is what everyone outside of me thinking I’m great. That was like my M. O. What do I need to do?

I remember being literally in second grade and be like, if I smile really big and just ask people questions about themselves, they’re going to really like you. Like having a conscious choice of doing that at seven years old. And 

[00:07:32] Kate: also like, that’s true. I mean, like, let’s be honest. I have such high emotional intelligence.

That’s actually 

[00:07:38] Ruthie: still tracks 

[00:07:40] Kate: as a strategy. 

[00:07:42] Ruthie: Still lands. 

[00:07:43] Kate: Bummer for a seven year old to be thinking a second grader. Yeah, my daughter’s second grade right now. So I can really feel that 

[00:07:49] Ruthie: one viscerally. Yes, I just that is what drove me. So, you know, a lot of the versions of me that was really into design and I mean, I was in there, I was in there, but a lot of it was, you know, I was also very much in like the Hollywood world and I had a lot of friends that it made me feel really special like I matter and these people think I’m special and so I must be doing something right.

I must be okay, you know, and from there I remember so I’d been in a bed for seven years. My husband had left. I had to figure out how to pay my bills. That was really just kind of where I landed because I didn’t know I mean, the job I had before I lived in my bed didn’t fit anymore because I worked at a church and I did youth ministry and I had already deconstructed that didn’t fit for me even a little bit anymore.

And at the time, to be really honest, I had thrown the baby out with the bathwater, which is very. So it was like, no, Christianity and like, no God, no spirituality. I had just was like, cause you know, all those years I was so miserable and I had wanted to die for so long because I did die in a car accident.

But then from lots of repercussions from that, you know, I was just, I still live with a very high level of chronic pain and I was in a bed. I was on the highest level of fentanyl, morphine, hydrocodone, Ambien, Cymbalta, Luna. I mean, just name it. So I wanted to die all the time. That’s all I could think about, honestly.

So I was like, if there is a God, fuck you, because this is hell. My dad died in the midst of it. I lost a marriage. I lost my best friend to that marriage. You know, like, there were just so many painful, traumatic things, and I was in so much physical, emotional, and spiritual pain that I had no tools for. So I just was like, if there is one, I’m, I’m, don’t want anything to do with you.

And so, I wasn’t going back to work at a church. Yeah. That’s the moral of that story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m like, what? That’s all I had done before. Pain, you know, really moved in and took over my life. And so I started doing design, but then what was so interesting, I had started social media, because while I was in the bed, I wasn’t doing a lot of that.

And I started having new people following along who didn’t know me, and it grew pretty, and this was before the algorithm, it grew pretty fast. And I started having people that would be like, You live this dream life, oh my god, where, how do I get your life? And getting these kind of comments on social media because it became this thing.

And this is while you were living in bed. This was right after when I started doing like design stuff and I started trying to live again after I’d been in a bed for all these years and it almost, what I was telling myself is this is my little joy journal. I want to show everyone all the beautiful things because all I thought about was the suffering and pain and loss and trauma.

And I was like, I’ve been in parked. And that story for so long, and I’ve been miserable. So I just started starting like showing a beautiful home and friends and dinner parties and going on walks and you know, whatever it was. And so getting those comments, I just remember thinking, Oh my God, what a disservice to like humans.

Cause when I lived in my bed, all I had at the time was Facebook and I would look at other people’s lives and all I wanted was to be a mom. All I wanted to be out. Playing with my husband on vacations and doing all these beautiful things. And I’m in bed for seven years. And the idea that I could conjure up any of those sort of feelings of envy or whatever, without people having a full context of what I was coming from, that made me feel really sick.

And so I ended up back in the day, I had a blog, you know, and I ended up writing out my whole story that I was conscious of at the time. Sure. And I know the story keeps evolving, but I like don’t remember that girl hardly at all and I adore her, you know But I started sharing and that kind of it’s a crazy story I’m like the only human in the world that’s had a wire pierced their brainstem and like all these crazy I have all these crazy things, you know, and so the story kind of took on a life of its own And people started hiring, not hiring me.

People started asking me to like speak on podcasts and things like that. Cause the story had been shared online. And then I was asked to speak at like my first thing. I mean, I had not taken a speech class growing up. I had literally never even spoken at my brother’s weddings. Cause I just didn’t think I had anything to say, you know, and definitely had a very blocked chakra and I remember saying yes.

And I spoke at this women’s conference called yellow conference in LA. She had heard me. I don’t know on a podcast, and I remember she asked me, I’m like, I’m going to say yes. This could be horrible, but I’m going to say yes. And I ended up getting a standing ovation and getting voted like the best speaker of the conference.

And I just remember being like, you know, okay, obviously this is something, this must be a thing. And I loved it. And I felt so enlivened by it. And I’m like, well, maybe, you know, maybe this makes my pain feel purposeful if I can like do this thing and be really helpful. So I started. So I started getting asked to speak more and more, and the more I got asked to speak, the less and less I started doing design things, because I didn’t really care about design, I just was kind of good at it, and people would hire me, and I made money, but I don’t care about shopping, people think that I love shopping, I could give two shits, it is not enjoyable to me, my closet is not very big, I’m like, I just want sustainable, a few things that will last, I just, that doesn’t, I don’t judge anyone for it, I just don’t care, it’s not fun to me.

I want. To spend my money on like experiences and delicious meals and like vacations and retreats like that’s what I love the most So the second I need to do that anymore. I just kind of shipped it out And at the time, I was just telling my story. Like that was the story that I was aware of at the time, right?

And it was very much pretty parked in the pain story, you know? Like I thought that this is just what it is and, but there’s also hope at the end of the tunnel and this, you don’t have to live in a bed your whole life. Like there’s beauty on the other side. Beauty and suffering. That was like a big theme.

I would talk about beauty and suffering because I just thought I had to suffer forever and I really believed that, you know, and so that was really what I built a career off of. It’s what I got a book deal out of, and I got a lot of attention for this pain story. A lot of attention, which as an Enneagram for we love feeling special love only one that’s had this wire in a break, you know, and And I’ll tell one other little thing and then it, what really started shifting, I mean, I was having I was still in so much pain.

I would like go out and do a thing and then I have to get in bed for like a week because I was so disassociated from my body. It was kind of white knuckling life. I’d started drinking and I never abused it, but like I drank a lot more when I was out and social. Cause I was like, well, if I have a third glass of wine.

then I can still be here and not just want to like white knuckle it because I’m in so much pain. And so, it just wasn’t working. It just wasn’t working. And writing the book was the biggest shifting of everything. And you know, I had this whole idea, I said no to writing a book for three years for so many people.

And then finally, I, it’s crazy kismet how this landed in my lap. Like I was not trying to write a book. I did not want to write a book at the time I was doing a podcast. I was not trying to do that. It kind of landed in, I was very passive about so much of my life. It was just like, things were just like, I don’t know, I think the divine was like kind of pushing me in ways that I had not really considered or thought of.

And finally I ended up getting like at the time my favorite author was Glennon Doyle and her agent reached out about writing a book and I’m like, This is crazy. And literally the day I met her was on November 2nd. It was the 20th anniversary of dying in my car accident and my dad’s birthday. And I was like, I feel like this would be giving the bird to whatever is out there.

And I’d already come back to believing in God and having a very different experience of what I thought life was. Came through a different avenue, which I’m happy to talk about, but I wrote in my head when I said yes, I was like, okay, I’m going to help all these people and this will be my pain. The most purposeful I’m going to be able.

And you know, my little condition brain, all these people are going to think I’m so amazing and so wonderful. And I’m going to get this big story out. And that was a big motivator for me at the time. And I love that version of it to fit. I mean, it’s in me, but nothing like that was what this book experience was.

I had a massive nervous breakdown. Writing that book, during the writing or after it came out? At the very end. No, right before, like right when I turned it in, I had a massive nervous breakdown. And it was actually seven years to the week from when I’d had my nervous breakdown and weaned myself off of all the drugs and stopped living in a bed.

Seven years to the week, which I knew nothing about seven year cycles. I’d never heard of any of that. To the week, I stopped sleeping. I stopped being able to function. I was like losing my mind. aNd to treatment. Mm hmm. And the shame spiral was. Off the charts because I had done so much work. Yeah. At that point, I had done so much work.

Oh, my God. It was so traumatizing. I had organized my friend owns this place called one site, and he and I used to have a podcast together and. He and I. This was like second or third year. We had organized this big retreat and brought in all these amazing humans doing crazy, amazing things in the world, and I had like.

And I was like, Oh, my God, this is like truly like organized like I had done all the inviting. I brought it all together, helped with like all the details and I’m losing my mind. And I check in to the residential thing down at the bottom of the hill for three weeks or a month. And all my friends and all these people I am invited are up at the top of the hill having this incredible experience and the shame and the devastation, the stories that I told myself that were the meanest You know, I just turned in a book called From Hopelessness to Healing, and I was supposed to like do this massive book tour that spring, and I am losing my mind and didn’t sleep for literally like 36 days or something, like crazy.

It was, I barely slept for two months, but for like the first, I didn’t sleep at all. You lose freaking mind. And I didn’t understand any of it at the time, which it sent me on a whole other journey, but it’s just been a journey. 

[00:18:01] Kate: Oh my goodness. Okay. We need to back up and I’m sure at this point that you’re, you, you, well, whatever.

I’m not sure of anything. So I will just ask you Yes. What is the version of the story of your accident? Yeah. And the seven years living in bed Yeah. That you feel like you wanna tell 

[00:18:20] Ruthie: today. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I, it’s so interesting. So the first time I went to onsite. You can’t tell anyone what you do for a living, and you have to give up your phone.

And I remember, because I was, I had just started writing the book and it was bringing up all this childhood trauma and stuff that I wasn’t aware of. I was like, why do I feel paralyzed? And, I remember it was such a mind fuck, because I couldn’t tell people what I did. And up to that point, people were like, what do you do?

I’m a speaker. What do you speak about? Oh, I share my story. Well, what’s your story? And I could give a five minute elevator pitch, and people would be like, what’s your story? Wow. You’re amazing. Wow. You’re standing here with a smile on your face. You are, whatever. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t tell anyone.

And I, it was such a mind fuck for me. Cause I’m like, who am I if I’m not this story? Who am I? And I didn’t know. Cause all I’d known was my conditioning to believe. What did they say about you today? Do they think you’re special? Did they think you’re wonderful? You don’t have this crazy story to share.

You just have you. And does that matter? Are you valuable? Do you deserve a seat at the table? And I just didn’t know if I did. And so that sent me on its own journey, but what I realized through a lot of inner work was I had been completely defined by a pain story while I lived in a bed, but didn’t realize when I stopped that I was still completely defined by a pain story.

And that sent me on such deep, like, I’m learning and remembering of like my innate worth because I just exist, you know, which I still forget all the time and then get to remember again. But I would say now today, you know, I got to write a whole book about it and there’s parts of that that I’m like, that didn’t fit anymore.

Even a little bit. I thought, and even in writing the book, that my pain really started with my rec. I would have told you I had like the perfect childhood. I thought it was just, and my brother still would say the same thing, you know. And I started learning so much about attachment and attunement and inner childhood wounds and pre verbal trauma.

You know, my sweet mama was really not okay while she was pregnant with me. Had so much pain and so much just trauma and childhood trauma that hadn’t been dealt with. My little body experienced all of that, and I was the scaredest kid that ever existed. Of course. Makes so much sense, but that also kind of wasn’t okay.

I learned how at a very young age, there were certain emotions that were okay in my home, being sweet, kind, pretty, gentle, you know, lovely. Precious. But everything else was pretty not okay. And so I learned very young how to swallow emotions, how to push them down, how to not feel them how to numb them.

I mean, my earliest memories were in front of a TV with junk food. You know, that’s how I spent most of my That was what I did. So it makes sense to me now. That’s still the first thing I want to go to when I feel dysregulated. Just give me a screen and give me some chocolate. You know? And then disordered eating started very, very, very, very, very young.

I just learned how to cut myself off. And fit into the tiniest little box. For belonging. Which is textbook. It’s what we do. We’re hardwired for love and belonging. And so I learned how to cut. So many parts of myself off and then when this wreck happened, I was hit by an ambulance and died in this car accident and broke 

[00:21:39] Kate: the irony of being hit by an ambulance.

I mean, it’s just like, come on, 

[00:21:43] Ruthie: like what in the world? God, I know the universe is funny. And you were 17. I was said, I just turned 17. I had like just been homecoming queen two weeks before, you know, and that was actually really interesting. So I remember waking up the next day and being like, that’s what everyone thinks is like the end all be all.

And I’m still miserable. I never could talk about that because sweet Ruthie just had the biggest smile and just know what to do to get people to like her. You know, and what I now know is that wreck, I mean, I was so So disassociated, and I came out of it after being in the hospital and life support and the whole thing with a big ol neck brace and with a big ol smile on my face.

And I didn’t really have pain at the time, so all of, you know, I just stuffed it down, never did therapy. I didn’t cry for seven years after that wreck. I became a massive bulimic. Stuffed, stuffed, stuffed, stuffed, but would just show up with the biggest smile and made friends everywhere I went. And then would go home and just eat until I was sick every day.

And Now, so, I, I, I met my first boyfriend, married ten months later, because we felt shame for fucking. We’re good little Christians, and we’re like, oh, okay, I guess we have to get married, because that’s what you do. We were sweet little earnest idiots, and about a year, oh. How old were you when you got married?

23. I think he was 21. Yeah, we were just a very first boyfriend. I’d never slept in a bed with another man. I’d like kissed a few people in high school. That’s it. But we were good little Christians and just wanting to be good and earnest and you know, and about a year into that I started having really debilitating pain.

And what we realized later is one of the wires from my fusion broke and pierced my brain. But I thought that’s when everything got bad. Yeah. Like I, I truly thought that was the turning point when everything got painful, but understanding so much more now about the mind body connection and trauma and.

You know, ancestral epigenetics and all the things. I’m like, oh That’s just when I actually slowed down enough to like really start feeling all that Which I did everything in my power not to feel it Which makes sense to me like I started living my bed not long at all after that and it’s not because the pain was so Extra just off the charts.

I was frozen Right. I was totally frozen, and it makes complete sense. And then they put me on tons of narcotics, which just made me more of a shell. Of course. I mean, literally, highest level of fentanyl, morphine, hydrocodone, just name it. I was on So you were also just drugged. Oh, oh. I was just a shadow of a human, and you could not have convinced me that my pain had more to do than physical.

You know, 

[00:24:26] Kate: what was it and you may have spoken about it in the book But I also know that you’ll answer differently than what you wrote about it because we evolve so fast Well, I mean if you’re you Not everyone does but like yeah, you’re you know, you’re noodling on stuff. You’re like tinkering You know, we were talking about that before we started to record.

You’re a deep thinker and a deep feeler. At what point? In your journey, was it while you were in bed for the seven years or was it in the writing process or something else? Did it occur to you that the pain might be an additional layer to Simply 

[00:25:08] Ruthie: the physical. Yeah, it wasn’t until many years later.

Okay. Oh I had When people would hint at that there could be an emotional reason for the level of pain I was in, I would smile, but want to punt them to the effin moon. I’m like, bitch, you get a wire in your brain and have your neck look more like a toaster oven. I mean, and also, like Fair. 100%. Right? You try to be the only one that’s, you know, I shouldn’t be walking, breathing, speaking, talking, and I’d already died once.

You know, like, this is like And so, you could not. Have convinced me otherwise and it wasn’t until I went to milestones. Excuse me I went to on site when I started learning about the mind body connection and read the body keeps the score and I was like, oh Okay, there’s more to this I don’t know how to feel those feelings yeah, I know how to talk about them Okay, I can talk about them all day long, but I didn’t know how to actually Feel them yet.

I remember and I’m a storyteller, right? I probably notice I’m already talking so much and I can just get talking and I would go to therapy. I had two therapists tell me I didn’t need to come back because I was good. Like I knew, I knew so much about trauma. I could talk, they would start talking to me like a peer and it would like get a little weird, right?

And two different ones told me I didn’t need to come back. And I was like. I am not okay. I am not okay. I want to be in the bed all the time. It’s so fucking hard to get up in the morning. I hate getting up. I just want to lay here and eat my feelings and watch TV. You know? And finally, thank goodness, through a lot of different things.

I mean, plants were a part of it, but I started working with a somatic worker. And I remember I was like, the first time, I’m like telling this big, grand story, and she was like, can you just stop for a second? Like, so how did that make you feel? And I’m like, well, right now I’m just annoyed because you interrupted me to tell my story.

She was like, no, no, but like, and I had no clue how to do it. No clue. I’d done all kinds of work. And I remember hearing years later from this shaman, he was like, knowledge is just a rumor until it moves into the muscle. And I’m like, my whole life has been a rumor. I don’t know how to move anything into the muscle yet.

I just have so much head knowledge. But I was so completely disembodied and disassociated, I didn’t know how to feel it yet. So that’s been the journey, for sure. 

[00:27:33] Kate: Huh. And is that something that you work with your clients on now? Oh 

[00:27:39] Ruthie: yeah, totally. I mean, I say my whole foundation of work is parts work, shadow work.

It’s getting, it’s embodiment. It’s the divine and feminine way of getting back into our body and pleasure and our senses. And it’s everything that I’ve desperately needed. It’s the only thing I offer and mirror and share because I was so It was such a nightmare and I love her, but so unwell, like, I believe that version of me invited me in to this, you know, and I’m obsessed with that.

I love the girl that wrote that book, even though I’m like, I don’t really remember you because like, who’s that? Did you finish the book in 2019? I finished it in 2018 finished it originally in 2018, editing went to 2019. 

[00:28:19] Kate: And it came out in 2020, right during the, 

[00:28:23] Ruthie: three weeks into 

[00:28:23] Kate: COVID. Three weeks into COVID.

So okay, spring of 2020. Yeah. At what point was it that you started believing in God again? 

[00:28:33] Ruthie: Plant medicine. Yeah, and I know that, I do not believe that is something everyone needs or is for everyone by any means. It called me on a level I can’t even describe to you. I didn’t know any, no one in my world did it.

I was actually with my best friend Jed in L. A. I saw a TV show with Chelsea Handler and she had done ayahuasca. And I was like, I looked at him, I go, I’m gonna do that. And he literally looked at me and goes, Have you lost your fucking mind? I was like, maybe, I don’t know. But I know that I’m supposed to do that.

And now I’ve learned a lot. Like, it calls you. It truly calls you. And I think because for me, I needed something that extreme. Because I was so parked in a pain story. I was so unwell at the time. And again, I’d never heard that word. No one in my world or in my life did plants. Not one person that I knew of, at least, you know, maybe some had done as drugs like as a party younger.

And about 10 months later, I was doing a job in Alaska. And this wonderful girl, like, I just, I feel like everyone kind of missed her. She was like the head of PR for this job. And I’m like, there is something about this girl. And I just kind of. She stood apart to me, you know, and I would just kind of we chatted a lot.

I remember one night sitting around the fire. This is when I used to drink and I was probably wasted. We had had a lot of wine, and if I traveled, I drank a lot. to be there. You know, that’s what I thought I had to do. And I’m telling her this story about a breathwork experience. And she’s like, that sounds a lot like plant medicine.

Have you done plants? I’m like, vegan? Is that, you know, I’m like, no, I have a meat tooth. I’m like, no, she’s like, no, like psychedelics, like ayahuasca. And I was like, Oh, it’s the second time I’d ever heard the word. 

[00:30:14] Kate: Literally only the 

[00:30:15] Ruthie: second second time ever. I never Googled it after that. I just made the comment.

Never thought I was just like, I’m going to do it, I don’t know how, but it’s going to happen. And stuff like that does happen to me, so I just trusted that it would. And she brings it up and I go, no, but I’m gonna. And she goes, where are you going to do? I was like, Oh, I have no idea. I don’t know anyone that does it, but I’m going to do it.

And she just giggled. She’s like, well, I actually work with these Peruvian shamans and I’m going to be doing it next spring. So that was like 10 months later. And I’d have to sponsor you. You’d have to come with me, but do you want to come with me? And I’m like. Great, I’ll be there. I did not Google it. I did not look it up.

I truly, the next time I saw her was driving to the Redwoods going to do ayahuasca. I never even opened the emails. I did not do a diet. I did not. I just showed up, which was quite the journey. I had no clue. And also, 

[00:31:05] Kate: yeah, for like as far as a plant medicine journey goes, that’s about 

[00:31:09] Ruthie: as extreme. Yeah, that’s a big one.

Huh, huh. And I did two nights in a row for my very first experience ever of any psychedelic of any type was ayahuasca with Peruvian shamans in the Redwoods. It was no joke. And it was a massive shifting point. Like I would say my world shifted. Like a before and after. It is. It was a before and after.

And I’m really, I don’t go out like talking about it all the time because I never feel like That has to be the thing for someone. It was just my journey. But also, like, being in bed 

[00:31:40] Kate: for seven years doesn’t have to, that was your thing, right? 

[00:31:42] Ruthie: That was my soul. And my soul obviously likes extremes. Yeah, you’re, yeah.

A hundred percent. Because, holy shit. Like, no. Joke. And that experience, I just remember there were a lot of things. It shifted things for my relationship with my mom. I remember having this vision of sitting across my ex husband and having this vision of like, even him leaving. And having all of that on mic.

His soul did that for me. Even if he unconsciously, like, he left for a good friend of mine. You know, it was very painful and it hit every abandonment wound that ever was. And I had this very clear vision of his soul being like, I’ll play that role for you. Because it’s going to be a part of your awakening.

And I could not have expanded in that marriage in the way that I am meant to be on this planet today. And it was loving. And I just started crying thanking him for playing that perfect role of my awakening. And thanking the woman that was my good friend. And having these experiences and feeling the divine and whatever you want to call, whatever is out there.

I felt I felt so loved. I felt love for myself. I felt compassion for myself. And I felt like God has been a part of every part of this. And listen, I am, we were talking about this before, I am just so down to be wrong about everything. Everything. The more I know, the more I’m like, I don’t have a fucking clue about this.

I’m just like, this is how I feel about most of life because it’s such a mystery and I’m so good with that. And I. If it helps me to love myself and others more, I don’t care. And I left that feeling so much compassion for myself, so much love for whatever’s out there that has been guiding this journey of mine with me and my soul all along.

I felt so much care for my mom, which had been a big, deep wound. I felt so much care for my Ex husband, which had been a big deep wound. And you know, there was still so much work to do on the other side of that. But it was a massive shifting story from my victim hood to I felt a lot of agency after that.

And I felt a lot of you know, I had really hated myself and a lot of my parts and identified with those parts. It’s a lot of shame and a lot of pain and it was a big, big, big shifting point. Yeah. How long ago was that? That was 2018. 

[00:34:06] Kate: 2018. So it was before the book came out. Mm hmm. Huh. It’s so interesting, like, with a memoir, which I have not written, but I love reading more than anything.

Yes. These versions of the truth that we can tell because of Other people because of where we are in the world and there are such moments in time and as someone like you who Was conditioned in a very outwardly referenced household I’m curious. What’s it been like for you to have a particular Snapshot moment in time version of truth, which is so beautiful.

I loved this book So much and what’s it like for you to know that like a lot of folks? Well as I say this question, this is just truth true of every single human It’s just not that every single human has a book about it But like how do you navigate knowing that like this is out there and it is one True and beautiful version and then there’s also the updated and also the different.

Yeah, true and beautiful version Yeah, what do you 

[00:35:15] Ruthie: think about that? I mean I actually did a podcast with a girl recently about writing your story and I’m like I recommend it for everyone even Who cares if it gets published it will send you on the deepest soul journey. I am so grateful for that book I am so grateful for that version of me that wrote that because I couldn’t be If I wrote a book today, I would be shocked if in five years I wasn’t like, who the hell was that?

Who? Cause the amount of change that, I mean, my girlfriends, I just had a birthday and we were laughing so hard at dinner. They’re like, this, this game is getting old because every year we come together and talk about all the ways Ruthie has changed this year. And now it’s just like a joke because everything shifts and Oh, that’s so cool.

I actually had a family member who I love. Not too long ago, probably in two or three years ago, it was younger and precious and earnest call me one or text me one day really concerned about me, something she had seen online and she was like, it was so earnest. And she was like, we are so worried about you.

I’m just gonna say it because no one else is gonna say it to you. But we are all so worried, like, do you need my help? I can help you. Like, I can help you escape. Like I’m in like a cult or something. And then literally when she’s like, we’re so worried. Cause you have changed so much. And I just wrote her back and I’m like, angel, you are so right.

I have changed so much and I hope you say that about me every year for the rest of my life. We are hardwired for shifting and evolving and changing and unlearning and remembering and she just said, yes ma’am. She literally responded with yes ma’am. But like, I, it was her loving me so deeply. I was her, right?

I’m not in the box of like Christianity and I had just in this beautiful ceremony where I had married my own body. My body had literally asked me. I had been at war with my body my whole life, and me and my friends went out to the woods and did this ceremony. I’d been single for eight years at that point, and I was like, what a radical You know, act of resistance for a woman to choose her and to do this ceremony of honoring herself in her own body.

I literally have a wedding ring that I wear. My friends bought me a wedding gift. Sorry, it’s this. I had wanted this Mother Mary necklace for like two years and they all went in together and bought this very, very nice gift because we’re all freaking weirdos. And I was like, it was the most profound It felt like You know, I felt like I was doing it for women.

Yeah. It felt so much bigger than just me of like owning and honoring myself in the divine feminine and masculine within me and claiming that and like honoring my beautiful body and but like I also get where that would feel really fucking weird if you saw that, you know? I guess, you know, 

[00:38:03] Kate: it depends on your 

[00:38:04] Ruthie: world view.

Exactly. I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the whole world. I do too. When I was her age and I saw someone do that, I’ve been, we made fun of people that did way less than me in my house every night growing up. Like I made fun of people like me. Anything outside the box, we mock or we feed, you know, it makes sense.

It’s textbook. But the boxes 

[00:38:23] Kate: are just invented too. I know. Right? Like I went to my first and only actually Catholic funeral. And I mean, only so far we’ll see and I, I don’t know if I had been to a mass before and maybe I had, but it had been a really long time ago. And I was so as someone who’s really into ceremony and ritual, I was watching all the things with the flinging of the.

You know, in the swinging those incense things and the chanting and the robes and the items and all the stuff and I was like, wow, these are rituals that someone also just made up and have been repeated for thousands and thousands of years and are taken as the truth, but like the rituals that my friends and I do in the woods are seen as like weird and bizarre, but we too are Oh.

[00:39:19] Ruthie: God. God. 

[00:39:20] Kate: Hello. Hello. But we, too, are You know, all of this stuff just comes from humans, and it’s all pretend and it’s all just what feels true to us. So it’s just that one version has been held up as the version, but when you back out, and it’s all, like someone just made it up at some point, and just kept repeating it, and a whole bunch of other millions of people just got on board, and was like, this one is the way.

But I’m like, if you were not raised Catholic, and you go to a Catholic Mass. And they’re like spraying the congregation with water. I’m like, well, oh, that priest just like flung water in my face. And I was like, Wow. Yeah. Okay. I didn’t know that they do that here. It was amazing. Anyway, 

[00:40:06] Ruthie: yeah, 

[00:40:06] Kate: so that what 

[00:40:07] Ruthie: a beautiful ceremony that you did.

Oh, it was one of the most profound, most healing. I have to send you some photos. It touched me. And actually that actually came up through a plant medicine journey. I don’t actually do much anymore, but I had taken myself through one. And while I was doing it, I had written my body a letter. I was still really struggling with binging.

I had so much shame about it, and I was like apologizing to my body and my body wrote me a letter back that I don’t remember writing at all. I don’t remember. I, the next day I journaled and I was like, I just started crying so hard and in it my body was saying how um, That we had planned all of this.

That this was a part of me coming back into her because it would have been so easy for me to stay. I’m all air. I am like, my god, I am like the most bata, you know? And it was my way, our way of getting me to come back into my body and that it was always so loving and that she is like my companion in earth school this round and that she loved me so much and she forgave me for all the ways I’d hated because I was like, you forgive me.

I’ve just hated you and I’ve abused you and I’ve stuffed you and I’ve lied about you and I’ve listened to lies about you. And this letter back, it was the most loving, compassionate, tender. And at the end she was like, I was so, I’m so excited to be on this earth school journey with you. I want to be in a committed relationship with you to the rest of our days or something.

Yeah, I don’t remember the exact details. And the very last line was like, and will you marry me? I want to marry you. And I. You know, again, I don’t care what it was. If that was my higher self, if that was my psyche, who cares? I was so touched and I felt so much endearment from my body and for this beautiful body who has been through hell and back times.

[00:10:00] And I hated, from the earliest memories, I hated my body. You know, my mom’s hated her body her whole life. And so I was taught, I was mirrored that. Of course I did. Of course I had crazy dysfunctional eating. I was modeled these things. And, you know, I just went to war so early with my body. And realizing this beautiful body has been holding me.

Calling me home and loving me so incredibly. This is the only actual home I’ll ever have in this life. Right? She is housing my eternal being. This is my only, the only thing I own, like nothing else. I’m just a steward of everything else. It’s just passing through, you know? And I want to be, and I still forget all the time.

And then I get to remember again. But just the most. Best lover, friend, sister, mother, daughter to this body as I can. And so I literally went to some of my other weirdo friends because we, we all are and I love it. And we went away for a weekend and went to the woods and had the most gorgeous, I did it like a tea ceremony.

It was also this like. Healing, you know, instead of doing communion and not everyone’s invited, I did a tea ceremony because that’s what I do. And it was between me and God and my body. And then every person would come up one at a time and I would pour us both tea and we would eye gaze and just cry and honor this journey that I’ve been on with my body all these years that again, I was convinced hated me.

But instead is realized like I am housing divinity. Right here. I am an extension of the God of God living in this body that is just the most loving. Container, you know, and how can I be in honoring of that and in ceremony with that and in ritual with that and it just, it felt like, I mean, the amount of stories I could tell you that felt so holy and sacred, like my dad’s sign is the dove.

And right when I was saying the vows, these two doves, which mate for life, flew above my head and just so many things that you’re just like, you can’t make this shit up, you know, and just the Sweetest, but I also like honor that I would have been so weirded out if I’d seen someone doing that a decade ago Oh, I don’t like this weirdo, you know I would have been so like mocked her made fun of her send it to other people to make fun of her with me I would have done all of that.

I did do that kind of stuff. So I really like my It was from the most earnest, loving, who wants me to not go to hell, you know, believes there’s a hell and she’s perfect. Yeah. 

[00:44:37] Kate: No, there are really multiple versions of reality happening layered over one another. Speaking of the body. I’m curious. How did you.

And where are you now in terms of your living in the pain story and identifying because I know that you know, it’s an ongoing journey, taking care of your beautiful body and which it is for all of us, and it’s different for all of us and I know that, you know, you require some pouring into in a beautiful way to stay healthy and well or, or, 

[00:45:16] Ruthie: Just here.

Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:45:18] Kate: Where are you with your pain 

[00:45:20] Ruthie: these days? Yeah. And I like to, you know, I do a lot of internal family systems and shadow work and all that. So I like to even, I don’t even like to call it my pain anymore. And I still, I like to say the pain that’s visiting me and maybe it’s been there 20 something years, but it’s just, I want to give it actual freeway to also leave at any point.

Yeah. But I think it’s like one of my greatest teachers and I honor it for being here right now. The more I learned about the mind body connection and started learning about emotional release. I do a lot of emotional release techniques. A lot of trauma work and a lot of child work. It’s not the extreme that it used to be.

And it’s still, my pain tolerance is kind of psychotic. It’s also still very, very, very high. And that looks like me, you know, one thing that that looks like is I have consciously chosen not to have children. I know, I feel like my work, my dharma on this planet is to do the work that I’m getting to do today, which like,

It is such a gift to me. And I know that I, even though I’m obsessed with Children and animals on a level, you really are. I don’t even have words like if there’s a child or an animal in the room, I can’t see adults. I am like when I was a kid, they say, What do you want to be? And you grow up a mom unapologetic.

I just knew I have so much mothering. And actually that first ayahuasca ceremony I got so sick when I started thinking about not being able to be a mother. And I had this really clear, it was the first time I felt like I heard from something bigger than me. And I heard Ruthie, you are a mother, you’ve been learning to mother yourself in the most profound ways.

You’ve been mothering everyone in this room since you got here. You’ve been mothering these people that you have the privilege of working with, your family, your friends. Friends and you’re going to get to be a mother in the world. And I, I did not hear it as the mother, like nothing about that. Ah, mother amongst so many others who have that calling.

And I don’t feel like that’s like me settling, right? I feel like this is my dharma. I know that my body is not able to do both. I, I, it, it takes a lot for me to get through a day. It’s painful and it’s you know, it can be really exhausting to live at a very high level of chronic pain. It’s just going to be so exhausting at times and I also trust that it’s like, this is, this is it.

Like I couldn’t be this version of me. It is invited me into the deepest soul embodied work that I didn’t know was a possibility. I did not grow up with any of this, you know, I speak a very pretty different language than what I was raised in. And. I can hold both dual polarities at the same time, like two weekends ago we went away with my best friends for my birthday to a cabin and I’m in nature, which is my, all I want.

You know, trees. There’s so many animals at this place. We swam in swimming holes. We’re like sitting around every meal eating delicious food, having these heart to heart, just pouring out emotions. And I was in so much pain. Both get to be true. I don’t like one does not have to negate the other I don’t have to pretend that that’s not happening because that’s a part of like chronic pain sits at my table Yeah, it is not my defining moment.

It is not who I am. I don’t like lead with that anymore people forget that’s a part of my journey all the time and I love that and It’s very much a part of my journey and it’s a part of my daily reality up to this point I am so down for that shifting tomorrow. I believe in the wellness and healing and embodiment and right now, that’s my reality.

You know? So like, it’s, it’s a both and. It’s invited me into the richest, most full, beautiful depths of love that I didn’t know was possible in this life. And it’s so fucking hard. Yeah. It’s both. It’s absolutely both. I wouldn’t, the woman that I get to sit here and be today, 

[00:49:42] Kate: I would 

[00:49:42] Ruthie: not change for anything because it’s who I actually am, right?

I’m sure I have still so much conditioning and all, but what it’s invited me into remembering and the woman that gets to sit across from these clients and mirror to them and watch their breakthroughs. I’m like, fuck, I would not change one. Because of everything that’s invited me into remembering. Thank you, God.

Thank you, God. And 

[00:50:08] Kate: for someone who is right now struggling with chronic pain, or someone who is with someone struggling with chronic pain, is there anything that you would want to share, just based on the wisdom that you’ve gathered over the 

[00:50:25] Ruthie: years? Oh, yes. First off, you precious humans. Wow. That is no joke.

And I’m so sorry. You know, like, I don’t want anyone on this team and I trust, like, it’s all, you know, everyone’s soul journey is their soul journey. I think it’s such beautiful, holy work. To start doing parts work so that you don’t over identify with it. That has been one of the biggest shifting foundationally for me is learning how to see it as a part of me and not, and learning how to like recognize it’s here, allowing it to be here, feeling it in my body, speaking really lovingly to those parts of me that I’ve just wanted to hate, shame, disgust, numb, avoid.

Get the fuck out of here kind of thing, you know and learning how to talk to it as though It was like a little version of me a little girl because usually when I’m really parked in that place It is my little girl version of me, you know and learning how To have so much compassion and care and love for her and that came through getting support I think somatic work is probably one of the most powerful things that anyone with chronic pain can do because the story is, I got to get out of this body, right?

I’m all alone. No one understands abort mission. And that is textbook. Of course you do. Of course I did. That is, why wouldn’t we, right? Especially in the stories we’ve been taught about our body. I mean, I was a part of a church that said my body was sinful. My heart was deceitful. My flesh was deceitful. I was broken and depraved.

And those were the hymns I sang, you know, I believed my body. We’re just waiting for heaven. This is just, you know, just get back to your soul. Cause the body is sinful and broken. And I believed that I. And how I. Grasped that message and so learning through somatic practitioners and learning how to actually feel my emotions has shifted more than any plant medicine ceremony.

Any breath work any like anything was somatic work. So I would say finding someone that can help you get back into your body slowly, gently learning how to find pleasure and sensations and things has been. Crucial and support because again, I think pain in any form, emotional, physical, or spiritual, it’s so easy to want to isolate and to check out and leave life.

And the helpers need it just as much as anyone else. Holy hell. Like they need support and care and love for the parts of them that feel resentment and feel anger or feel like they have to sacrifice all of themselves. You know, that’s such a loaded. to be the caretaker whole. I have so much compassion for my ex husband.

I have so much empathy for how painful that must have been as a child to come in and a year into our marriage for that to be the version of me that he experienced, like, of course he left. Of course, my God, you know, but like support somatics, I mean and again, I did so much therapy and I’m so grateful.

I think there’s a place for talk therapy, but until I started doing somatic therapy, 

[00:53:42] Kate: nothing, it couldn’t unlock. It couldn’t unlock. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this show is called plenty. You and I connected actually during the workshop that I taught that I ended up naming this podcast sort of based on called plenty.

Which was unexpected and super fun and I had known of your work and I was so excited that you were reaching out and and it’s been so fun to just get to know you in that venue and I look forward to all the venues. Yes. Including this one. Yes. It’s been so great. So I’m curious I know that we were chatting a little bit before we started recording about your experience.

So growing up and what it was like with money then, and so can you talk about what it was like, what was the vibe around money in your household growing up, and what is the vibe in your household around money 

[00:54:36] Ruthie: now? Well, I could literally scream this from the rooftops until the day I die, which you know I have been for six months.

So, it, so growing up, my mom was a child of alcoholics and Money was a really terrifying thing and her daddy would. It’s over and to be able to take care of things and then fall off the wagon They’d lose everything and so her little nervous system was wrecked. Absolutely wrecked. Her mom died really young There’s just a lot of lack and fear and so when it was time to pay the bills in my home Not just that day of the month, but in general.

Yeah, I Really inherited a lot of my mom’s nervous system. It was terror fear I would feel like we were gonna be homeless any second like it was You know, I remember the feeling Which I was probably also very disassociated of being rolled back to get the wire removed from my brainstem at the Mayo Clinic.

And I’m, they don’t, I’m the only human, so no one had done the surgery. And nothing about that experience compares to the terror I had felt about money in this life. Wow. Terror on a level, which made me Completely avoidant. I mean, I swung the other way in the sense that my parents had a lot of debt and I’m like, I’ll never have it.

This was my stories. I will never have a credit card because I’m never going to spend money I don’t have because I don’t want to live like that. But I still was like, completely avoidant, terrified, had a lot of lax stories about what my body could handle, you know, which kind of kept me playing it smaller and a lot of ways and just avoid it.

Like I had a business manager for five or six years and he’d send me a monthly report, probably open 20 percent of them because I would feel shame, terror and fear when I would see how much came in and how much I spent. And I didn’t want to see it because it made me feel shame and terror and fear. So I just avoided it at all costs.

And then I started learning about you know, the five D world, learning about how he thought about it, but because I 

[00:00:00] Ruthie: Worked with you, yet my body still felt terror and fear. And I did every mantra under the sun, like I am wealth, I am abundance. But then my body was like, fuck, you’re . I’m scared. I’m fucking terrified. I’m gonna die. Oh my God. You know? And that’s what my body believed. Yeah. Obviously I couldn’t convince my body otherwise at the time, and so I had studied, I’d read so many books.

I had just, I knew that I was, I mean. I’m not shaming myself, but I knew that I was the problem, but I didn’t know how to make anything different because it just terrorized me and I would feel shame seeing other friends. I’d feel jealous. I’d feel envious of like friends that were figuring it out and doing really beautiful work.

And I’m just like, what’s wrong with me? And there was an unconscious belief also that I’ll just marry someone or partner with someone that’s really good at it. And then I don’t have to worry about it. They’ll take care of it. Completely giving away all agency, not having to look at it and stay avoidant.

That was my plan. And then I meet my life partner and he was actually worse than me. And I was like, Bye! I don’t know! And I remember telling him one day, I’m like, I will not, and I wasn’t at the point, but he was. I was like, I will not live paycheck to paycheck. I won’t marry you living paycheck. That feels so terrifying to me.

I cannot and will not. live like that. And I remember like not long into dating him telling me like he was terrible with money. And I was like, oh no. I’m like, well, yeah, if you believe that you are right. Like of course, you know. So. I was really terrified and someone, my girlfriend Katie, told me about your work and then I saw that you were offering the free thing and I was like, this is so, I just remember, it’s interesting because we speak really similar languages.

Like it’s actually, wow. Like I remember when Eric and I took the course, he would be like. I was the first person he was hearing a lot of these things from, which when it’s your partner, like you believe them, but also and the amount of times he would just look at me with like these big bulging eyes, because you would almost say verbatim things that I just, for me, just feel like truth.

[00:02:06] Kate: Well, we must be right. We’re both saying them and we didn’t learn them. I mean, I 

[00:02:10] Ruthie: just like this feels like, but I had never learned how to put it towards money. You know, like there was so many things that I’m like coaching my clients about and doing in my talks and reading and writing about it, but I never applied it to money and I just I watched those three days.

It felt like the most aligned thing ever reached out was like, this is so important and I am in like, where do I sign up? This is just in Eric and I took this course together and at the beginning, like, That first week when we had to like, fill out where we were, I lost my fucking mind. Like, I was so terrified and so scared and just was like, I don’t think I can do it.

I’m gonna, and within, I would say within three weeks from learning your like nervous system tools and practices, and you do it so lovingly and gently in a way that feels so accessible. It felt so accessible. You know, and I think because I had always been missing the nervous system piece, I’d never heard anything about, I studied nervous system work, I’d practiced nervous system work, but I’d never thought of it in terms of money, right?

Ever. 

[00:03:20] Kate: Yeah. I mean, I don’t, I’m sure other people talk about the nervous system and money. I’m not aware of them yet. Yes. So it made, I’m 

[00:03:31] Ruthie: glad it’s been helpful. Well, it made, it made so much freaking sense to me. And I think it’s just. I love to say that the universe is obsessed with me, which I think the universe is obsessed with all of us.

The best affirmation. Right? And I think in the mixture of having Eric and learning these tools from you, it’s like I had this container for this masculine container, this glass to hold my flowy, all the things in the way I felt so cared for by him, feel loved, held, because again, I had the money’s the story around my body not being able to handle expanding.

Yeah, because my body can’t take it. That’s what the story was, right? And like getting through a normal day feels like it’s going to kick my ass. So like, how am I going to have more clients or do more expanding? So having him and then finding your work, these two, it was like the magic sauce, like something shifted.

So quickly and so I mean, you are a 

[00:04:28] Kate: total like rock star student. I mean, 

[00:04:31] Ruthie: it was fast, like truly. You were obviously so ready. I was so. And I’ve been prepping for it. I feel like I’ve been like prepping and ready, but it wasn’t clicking yet. And it was like that last little click into place. And it just felt like this is the truest thing I’ve ever heard.

And because I learned nervous system practice is to start looking at it and start paying attention to it. I was just was watching it expand and grow so quickly. And then having Eric do it with me, my nervous system. Like I remember one night, I think I messaged you this. Cause we, we have our weekly money meetings, which now I’m obsessed with, and he does this thing where he acts like we’re in court.

He’s like here you, here you, I would like to call in Eric Wilkins and Ruthie Lindsey to order. He’s like, is there anyone else that he like goes through the whole thing? I’m not kidding at the beginning and the end, every time. And I’m always laughing my ass off every single time. He’s like, would anyone like to second to close?

Okay, let the record show, Ruthie Lindsey also would like to close every time. We like have so much fun with it. It’s the most precious. It’s exciting. Yeah. Right. It feels exciting. I’m like, Oh, look at how abundant we are. Look at what we’ve been able to give. Look what we’ve been able to save. Look how we’ve been able to serve.

Look, it just feels like the funnest game, the most fun game. Ever. So we just started. I mean, I remember laying. So I was, I take a bath every night and he’ll come in and like visit with me. We’re doing our money meeting while I was like relaxing, living my best life with like candles and flowers. Oh, so good mailing life.

This is my nightly experience. And we’re just talking. And at one point he comes over because we’ll like, we’re also cheesy. We like pray before and like all this, which I love. And he came over and he was like, I finally understand. He was like, This is calming. He’s like, you feel so much safer with me now because of what you’ve lived through and how you were raised.

He’s like, doing this work. He’s like, I’m so committed and I’m so in. He’s like, I see what this is doing for your body. He’s like, it feels like, and he, and this is all new language for him. He’s like, it feels like we’re doing the deepest inner child work ever. And I was just like, I just was like crying because I was like, there was a part of me that couldn’t fully trust him yet because of that story with money and that, you know, that he wasn’t good with it and all this.

And, and I had told him, I mean, we’re so honest. I’m like, we will say the story I’m making up because it doesn’t mean it’s true. But I told him like the story I’m making up is I can’t trust you fully yet because of this. And. It shifted. This man for the first time ever has like a pretty decent savings account, has started doing investing.

We like have a weekly money meeting, like we’re making really big dreams and plans for our future and my, it’s changed my world. Like my business has grown and expanded in the last six months, like in ways that I just didn’t know that I was able to do yet. I didn’t know. And I am like charging more, doing more events, like doing things on my own.

I had spoken at a ton of things and led a lot of retreats, but I always was either hired to do it or was doing it with someone else. And now I’m like leading so many things by myself because I just didn’t think I could do it before. There was a lot of limiting stories around my body and what I was capable of, or would people even want to come?

That was another. limiting story that I would not have said out loud, but it was true. And that has shifted like so drastically. It’s just wild. And like, we just, I don’t know, I just pinch myself because I’m like, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface and it’s already so expansive and so beautiful and feels so holy.

And even like, I will not go chasing any client ever. It’s just like, I’ve become so much more magnetic. Not that I was chasing anyone. 

[00:08:33] Kate: I know it’s honestly with your stories, like you really sort of have the egg wisdom thing down and we’ll talk about that later at the retreat, but you seem like you have been really in a beautiful dance of receiving what’s next for you from a prosperity perspective.

It’s so beautiful. And I think also like, I think about somebody like you and. How much of the the work that you do in the impact that you’ve had and how much that willingness to lean into your financial foundation just is able to amplify because when you have that strong foundation, you do feel safe to then expand and you know, of course, everybody’s journey with their body is different.

But when we can wire in that sense of safety and security, it can really help us physically as 

[00:09:21] Ruthie: well. Oh, I so believe that. I feel more safety in my body than I ever have up to date. I mean, no doubt. That’s not even a hint of a thought of a question, you know. And I feel so much safety with my partner because we’re doing this journey together.

[00:09:38] Kate: It’s so great that he’s all in like that. How beautiful. Oh, what’s it taken for you? To be able to be available to receive his level of adoration because it’s from the very little that I’ve seen online. It’s pretty extra like how he loves you. And I just am curious, what does that feel like to you? Do you ever get full?

Do you ever freak out? Are you just like, yeah, bring it 

[00:10:06] Ruthie: on? Yeah, that has been, our journey is so beautiful because I would not be with him if I had not started doing embodiment work. I would not be with him. Three years ago I could not have seen this man. I know that for a fact, but I have learned to trust my body’s wisdom over the lies my mind tells me.

On a level that’s pretty incredible now. Not always, but way more often than not. And he, on paper, did not look like the type of person I thought I’d be with. He did not make the kind of money. He did not have the type of job. He did not, he had I’m the first person he’s dated sober. And so he, it was awkward at first.

He’s really shy. And he had on clothes from 100 ago. He lost 100 when he got sober. So he showed up in my house in like a dramatic 100 pounds. He had a beard that was like down his chest. He has hair to his belly bone. It just, it wasn’t what my mind thought was what I, Ruthie Lindsey, is gonna end up with, right?

And he showed up on my front porch and I was like, oh no. Like, what the fuck? This is not. And then, and it was awkward. It wasn’t like it was this amazing date. It was awkward. And I remember him dropping me off and he was like, Dropping me off, and asked me if I’d hang out again, and I heard yes come out of my body.

And I remember getting in the house, and I’m like, what the actual, why did I, I don’t do things I don’t want to do anymore. Why did I say yes? But my body said yes. It was wild. And it kept happening. And I was seeing, the things I was seeing, he’s, he’s one of the kindest. most generous, most tender. I mean, I was already getting these stories and he’s hilarious.

Like, he makes me laugh, which for me covers a multitude of set. Humor is up there with like loving people and loving the divine. Like, Do you make me laugh? Yeah, because if you don’t it won’t work, you know, and so I kept like we had another date awkward So awkward if I didn’t ask questions it got quiet, but it wasn’t like a comfortable quiet and I’m like Heard myself say yes again.

I’m like dear God it wasn’t it took him like four dates to even kiss me Which I would have probably already like been having sex with someone. And he kisses me, and I’m not kidding, I will remember it till the day I die. I remember being like, Oh, this is what people talk about. This is the feeling. I’ve never, I’ve never been in love.

This is the feeling that people talk about. And I remember having a full on conversation with God while I’m making out and I’m like, really God? This is the one that I’m going to feel. Crazy like, no, this can’t be the one. And I was like. My body felt so much care, so much love, so much safety and enlivened.

Like it was like the wildest and I was dating a lot of people at the time. I was casually going, I was living. And after that I like ended things with other people but still had a lot of stories in my head because like. He was horrible with money and like all these things. And I was like, he was really shy.

Even this was all about me. Like we’d go meet new friends and he wouldn’t really talk. And I’m like, show them why I’m choosing you. You look crazy. Show them why I’m choosing you. Like show them why you’re so amazing. But he was what an opportunity for you. Oh, it was 

[00:13:39] Kate: to be in that place of like, Oh wow. It matters how it feels, not how it looks.

[00:13:44] Ruthie: Exactly. And literally. As I chose him and stopped dating other people, I’m watching him unfurl and coming, because at first, I’m being sarcastic and I’m being kind of snarky, but I also, my story was like, what are you hiding under all of this? Like, what are you hiding? There’s something, you know, and Oh, Kate?

Well, here’s the funniest, Jed, who we both love. One day he Eric just showed up on my front porch, shaved. And I sent a photo. He’s so handsome. He is handsome. It’s insane. I had, but he has an excellent. Oh, oh, Jed goes, God said, you got to fall in love with that man’s heart before you get to see that jawline.

And I’m like, you are not wrong. He’s So I’m so attracted to him. I don’t even know what to do. I think he’s one of the most handsome men I’ve ever seen. And I did not. God is funny. I had no idea. And it was like all my conditioning that I was like, what do people think? How does it look? What matters the most?

You know, I used to be very much in this like Hollywood world before I walked away from this whole world. And I’m like, I chose the most beautiful, loving, generous, kindest, Most abundant in love and all the things you could ever imagine and my like bullshit could have like missed that even three years ago I would have missed it and I almost missed it this round But and that had everything to do with me and nothing to do with he is I have never the way he shows up I think such a huge litmus test for me is how does your person love your people?

Mm hmm, and the way he shows up and not even just my people the way like I’ve been dating him two or three months and we’re in the I look in the backseat and I never looked on the floorboard. It’s like, babe, what’s that box? And I like lift up and there’s water bottles, there’s hats, there’s gloves. He was like, Oh, I just, I make sandwiches during the week and I just pass these out to homeless folk.

Like when I’m coming home or when I’m going into work and I’m like, I have been together with you for three, I, he would have gotten in my car and we’ve been dating no time. I’ve been like. Don’t mind that box there, you know, I would have made sure he would have known that that is like what I’m doing You know, my little shadowy ego would have just made sure he’d realized how generous and how loving he is the most like I got a message.

My girlfriend went through something and about a week later. She was like Eric struck again He just sent us flowers and he sent their two year old a teddy bear like it’s stuff like this He is constantly on a level I can’t even, I could give you 9 million stories like that. He is just the most thoughtful, and I think, to get back to your original question, here we go.

I’m coming. We’re circling. I have done enough embodiment and attunement to myself. I married my own freaking body to know what I am worthy and deserving of. There are women that it would be too much for them. The way that he shows up and loves. 100%. And I am like, Oh, I will receive. Yes, you can run my water from my bath every night and light candles and put flowers and he and I get to do things for him that he allows me to like serve him and love him and honor him.

And it’s, would it work for everyone? No. And I am so great. It feels like the most abundant. I, I experienced God’s love through that man every day of my life. The way he looks at me. I mean, I never thought someone, Eye Gazing is my favorite game on planet Earth. He will sit there and he’s like, Hey, you wanna play that game?

And literally he’ll say, This is one of the things he’ll do. He’ll be like, Hey babe, I have an idea. And he’ll act like it’s all things that he’s obsessed with. He’s like, what is? I cook you a really nice meal and then while I’m cleaning up I’ll run your bath and I’ll like light candles and maybe like some flowers or like rose petals in there and then we can go out and you can ask me nine million questions and I will answer them from the bottom of my soul and then what if.

Do you think it’d be fun if maybe we just like stared into each other’s eyes for a little while, and just like, eye gaze? What, what do you think? Wouldn’t that be fun? And I’m like, I’m like, Yes! Ha ha ha ha ha! And he’d love it! You know, it’s like all the sh But he’s so It is hilarious. Just How precious.

It’s it works for us and it’s really glad 

[00:18:01] Kate: you are available and you didn’t miss him. I’m really Oh, 

[00:18:05] Ruthie: I’m so happy. I’m just I feel like the richest human 

[00:18:09] Kate: Ruthie what a pleasure. Thank you. You are you are an incredible storyteller a beautiful human Such an incredible healer Thank you. Funny. So loving. I just, I adore you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for 

[00:18:25] Ruthie: coming. Thank you for being just one of the greatest way showers and just light bears and mirrors and gifts. You have changed my world. Like I don’t say that lightly, like learning from you and getting to know you has been a up leveling on a level that I’ve not experienced before.

And I’m just so in awe and thankful and appreciative. And just thank you for doing this work for yourself, first and foremost, so that you can mirror to us, which is all of ours, you know, means so much. I appreciate 

[00:18:59] Kate: that. So if people want to connect with you, where should they go? Where should they come find out about your work?

[00:19:05] Ruthie: Yeah. So I do have an Instagram account. It’s RuthieLindsey. com. L I N D S E Y. And I, I really use that as like a way to get people into my newsletter because that’s where like the really juicy meaty stuff is and it’s not rented space and I love it so much more. And so I have a really beautiful newsletter you can find on my website, which is RuthieLindsay.

com and it’s called Love’s Invitation. It’s beautiful. I highly recommend it. Thank you. And there’s also, it’s free and there’s a paid version too. I do events. each month. Really beautiful offerings. And then I also lead women’s circles. We do them virtually and in person. I have a lot of retreats and workshops and things.

And then I do coaching containers. And all you can find all of that on my website, readthelindsay. com. And the coaching container is one of my there’s just different tiers for anything you want. There’s free things, there’s this, then there’s like circles, which, but then the six month container is like probably the juiciest where you really get to dig in.

And I, I just fall in love. With these women. I do have a trans man that I’m getting to work with right now, but it’s mostly women. It’s very much through the divine feminine lens and embodiment and parts work and shadow work and learning to love the parts of us that we were taught were dirty or bad or sinful or broken or whatever the fuck conditioning we were handed and learning to have so much radical compassion for those parts of us.

It’s just the sweetest, most beautiful, It’s like the honor of my life. I don’t know. I’m so grateful. Thank you for what you do. Oh, I love you. I love you. Thank you so much

[00:20:47] Kate: Wow, thank you so much for listening to this episode of plenty with Ruthie Lindsay I hope that you are as filled up as I am and of course go follow Ruthie get her book there. I am Find her in all the places, the newsletter, the coaching, and if you enjoyed this, go ahead and text the link to a friend. You know, just send them a note and say, I, I listened to this, I thought of you, I think you’re going to love it too.

Of course, subscribe, leave a review, take a screenshot, tell us what you thought. I adore you. Thank you for being here and I will see you for the next episode of Plenty.