Alex Elle
Appearances
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Hmm. Yes, that is what my mom was doing. She was a single mom for a while, a long time before she met my stepdad. She was trying to climb her way up the corporate ladder and all those things. And so she was trying to survive. She was trying to raise me. She was trying to do the best she could with what she knew. And she didn't know much about love and parenting before. She was leading by example.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
She was leading by example, which was not a great example. We all are. Right? And I think there is healing that can happen in survival mode, but that has to come with self-awareness. That has to come with understanding that you're hurting and taking a step back from trying to survive. but trying to hold yourself during that survival. I often say that adults also need self-soothing.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
We don't normally take ourselves up on that, but we need that too. I mean, slowing down in order to see ourselves is important.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I would say. And I think that that's what healing is. It's a love offering to the world. When we heal our world, we start to heal the world. When we see ourselves, we start to see other people.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
For so long, especially if you grew up not feeling seen, not feeling safe or supported, it is really, really, really challenging to be in relationships that are healthy, that are rooted in healthy communication, that aren't rooted in codependency.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
It's all these things that you just have to learn on your own, which makes the healing even harder because you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing or where to start or how to even... how to even begin to see myself. And so a lot of my work when I'm teaching and coaching people is like, what do you want? And what do you see? Who are you? What do you need?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Like those basic questions, those back to basic questions has helped so many people kickstart their healing because no one has ever asked them, what do you want? Right.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
You are absolutely saying that right. You are absolutely saying that right. I think passing the baton, like you said, is absolutely what it is. It is backwards and forwards. Cause my mom will say now, like I inspire her and that can be heavy too.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Cause it's like, I wish I had someone who inspired me, you know, but I know that the healing that I'm doing is not just for myself and a big part of grace and compassion is is acceptance for who people are, where they are, and not trying to change the outcome. Because things sometimes are what they are.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Well, for years, I didn't have that reciprocity. And I would get really, really frustrated. So boundaries were really important. And talks with my husband were really important. Talks with my close sister friends, really important. So community again, extremely important to be able to be like, wow, they are just not getting it. They don't get it. And a big part of that again is acceptance.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
We may not ever get what we need from the people who raised us. Like ever. And that is a tough pill to swallow, but we can't force people and we shouldn't want to force people to change and be who we want them to be because it'll make us feel better. I don't want any disingenuous behavior in my sphere. Interesting. Right? And so that doesn't make it easier. It's still really hard and hurtful.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And there's a deep grieving that we go through when our parents, the people who brought us into this world, are incapable of seeing us and meeting us. But we have to remember what our work is. Our work isn't to change people by over-talking things and forcing and trying to get them to understand. Our work is to lead by example. Everything else is a bonus. Focusing on our healing is...
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
all we can do. We live in a world that tells us that we have to like control everything and that we have to know what we're doing and where we're going. And we don't, we may get lost along the way. We may feel lost more times than we feel found. And I think that that's a big part of the healing too, is like accepting when the journey takes us to a place where we're kind of disoriented.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Like, how do we come back home to ourselves? And accept that, you know, my mom just can't meet me. And I'm going to have to walk this path alone.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
We must be healed separate from the person who hurt us. Mm-hmm. Because if we are not, we are going to continuously be in these cycles of external validation and wanting the person to say sorry and wanting the person to... We can want those things. I'm not saying don't want those things, but there has to be acceptance when you don't get those things. That's the hard part. That's the healing work.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
It's like, how do I accept this? This is fricking terrible. They were awful to me. They hurt me. They didn't validate me. They didn't raise me how I think I deserve to be raised. So a big part of my healing was accepting that hard work, still working through it, but changing my behavior with how I raise my children. and how I raise myself. Because as I parent my children, I am reparenting myself.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
What is healing? What is healing? Healing is a vulnerable act of self-advocacy. Self-advocacy. Healing is the choice to choose yourself.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I think realizing that you are a self and that you matter just as much as anybody else in this world. is reason enough to do some healing work. People get scared by the word healing because it's like, that's a big thing, right? But healing, healing is not just tackling the trauma. Healing is also celebrating joy. It's a celebration of joy.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Because when you see someone who's quote unquote unhealed or who is in their hurting state, you can tell. You can tell, you can feel it, how they interact, how they speak, all those things. And so when we are able to be like, I don't just have to be healing to heal that thing that hurt me, to fix that thing that hurt me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I can be healing and have that be this deep celebration of I am still here today. Getting up out of bed is healing. When depression is hard and anxiety is hard, I walk through the world with both. I take Zoloft for both. It's finally working for me and it feels amazing. That is healing. Going to therapy is healing. Going for my morning walks, I just celebrated a year of walking every day.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
That is healing. That's a celebration of joy, right? So it's like, how do we get people, especially women, to understand that our aliveness is enough to start the process? Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Hey, y'all. Thank y'all for having me. I'm thrilled. I can't wait to dive in with y'all. This is going to be fun.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Oh my gosh, I don't know what it's about, but all of us go through it. I know that when I met my husband, he comes from a big family and they are like really lovey-dovey, super supportive, like very different from how I was raised. And I remember being like, I don't want to be a part of this family. Too much love happening over here. It felt so foreign to me that I was willing to leave.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And I told him, I don't want a family with you. This was before we were married. And I was looking for a way out because I was like, this is too good. His mom loves me. His family loves me. They're kind to me. I'm not worthy of this joy. And Ryan said to me, all I want to do is love you. Why won't you let me love you?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And that question for me was really, really hard to reckon with because love for me meant conditional. Love for me meant I love you when you are pleasing me and when you are shutting up and sitting down and when you are doing what I say. And if you aren't, I'm taking my love away from you. So love for me always felt like this carrot dangling. And so I never thought I was really worthy of
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
of the love and the joy and the ease, the easefulness that I was receiving. I was so used to chaos and dysfunction that it felt really foreign to have peace in my life. Suspicious even. Like, oh, what you up to? Like literally suspicion, suspicion. And here's something that I've grown into. One, I tell my students and my clients often, give yourself permission to be in the middle of your healing.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
You don't have to be at the ground up. You don't have to be sky high, you know, thinking that, oh my gosh, I've arrived. First of all, there's no arrival in healing. We're going to be healing to the day we die.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I'm just telling y'all now. I know some of y'all might not like to hear that, but Thich Nhat Hanh taught me that there is healing always. Okay. Being in the middle, easefulness is in the middle. Sweetness, tenderness. Patience is in the middle.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so when I started looking at my healing and the love and joy and all those good feelings that were happening as ease and being in the middle, it felt more comforting. It felt more accessible. It didn't feel like someone was just going to snatch it from me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I feel that 100%. And when you were speaking, what was coming up for me was it's this constant unlearning to relearn. It's a cycle. It's a cycle. Because there's always going to be things that scare us in life. There's always going to be things that trigger us and make us go back to our old self. It's like, how do we redirect? How do we unlearn that Okay, I was not safe then, but I am safe now.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so it is. It's that constant replacement. And not even constant, but it's that intentional replacement. It's that intentional redirection of I was not safe then, but I am safe now. How? How? Why? So something I teach in my writing courses is like, okay, if you're saying I am safe now, I want you to then go and write down why am I safe? Where am I safe? How am I safe? Who am I safe with?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Prove it to yourself. That brings us back. That brings us back to that moment. And not even prove it, but like remind yourself. of where you are today, you know? And so it's hard. I don't want to say healing is hard, but being intentional about our wellbeing, about our self-care, about our healing work, about our joy, it's not easy. I don't think it's hard, but it's not easy.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
We need deeply rooted intention. For sure.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Great question. I do self check-ins a lot. Hey girl, what's up with us today? How you feeling today? How you feeling today? Something else I ask myself is who are you? Outside of my roles, who am I today? Am I creative today? Am I lighthearted today? Am I cranky? What is going on? Figure it out.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And that really helps me because not only does it remind me that I am my own greatest teacher, it also reminds me to tune in and tap in To my truth of the day. That's right. Of the day. Can we talk about that?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Okay, anyway, here's your fries. But also, here's something, too, that I've learned from my dear husband, who can be very cranky, okay? Cranky guy. I'll be like, hey, babe, how'd you sleep? How you doing? He'll be like, I'm just waking up, babe. Okay. I'm like, you're right. I'll check in with you in about, give me, I'll give you an hour.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I'll give you about an hour, you know, especially with the kids we have. So we have the 14 year old, we have a four year old and we have a newly three year old. She just turned three and he gets very flustered. So I, so I, I'm just like, okay, let babe wake up, let him brush his teeth.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Like I don't even talk to him in the morning anymore. I wait for him to talk to me. I'll look at him and just be like, that's good Alex like we know each other and for those at home I just did a head nod yeah that's loving and I know that when he's like Hey babe. I'm like, Oh, he's ready. He's done his check-in.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Breathe correctly. Breathe intentionally. I call my work intentional breathing. Talk to us about it, please. Breathwork. So how I found breathwork, I had a complete meltdown, an anxiety attack at the end of last year. And I had no idea, like, what life was. I was back at a really, really dark place. And what I realized after I came out of my fog of depression was I was holding my breath.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
So hell yes, it's true. Okay. I am 33. And I feel like when I turned 30, all of my childhood stuff just came to the surface. And I think that's because I was doing... some really challenging, deep healing work on my own. I look at healing as like layers. So I was peeling back these layers of my emotional onion thinking, oh yeah, I got this. I'm fine. I'm growing. I'm changing.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I had literally, not only was I holding my breath, but I had completely deprioritized myself in my life. During the height of the pandemic, I was teaching online. I taught 15,000 people in 18 months. And I loved it. It was wonderful. It was invigorating. It was community care. It was the, you know, leave yourself at the door and serve these people. I was taking care of kids.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
All five of us were home. It was a madhouse. It was ridiculous. And I literally would forget to eat. I would forget to drink water. I wouldn't even get out of the And I had a conversation with Ryan and I was like, I don't want to be here anymore. I wasn't sure what I meant by that, but I was very disoriented and I was just sobbing.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And what I realized was that I had been ignoring myself for two years. And that I was caretaking and caretaking for not only my outside community, but my inside at home community. And I was really devastated by getting so out of touch with myself. So then I was doing the whole beating myself up thing. You know better, you do this work and now you're here, you know? And so I was like, okay.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Let's find a new therapist. Let's get back on medication because I can't cure this with CBD oil. I have tried that too. Everybody freaking telling me CBD. I'm like, that shit is not working. Alex. That's right. You're going to need six gallons a day.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
just bathe in it. And so found a new practitioner, got on some meds, new meds that worked, blah, whatever. Great. And then I came out of my fog and I was like, wow, girl, you have been one, deprioritizing yourself and two, you've been holding your breath. So then I started looking at breathwork coaching certifications because that's just how my mind works.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
It's like, I don't know how to breathe clearly. So I need someone to teach me. Love it. And I learned and it was Like, oh, wow, you haven't been breathing. You have not been breathing. How am I alive? I have not been breathing. And so I was able to figure out how to breathe better.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And when I was having my anxiety attacks, because just because you're on meds and in therapy doesn't mean you're not going to be overwhelmed with anxiety at some point. I can go to my breath. The box breath is my absolute favorite breath. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four. You can do it anywhere. On the subway, while you're driving, on a walk.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Locked in your room so your kids don't bust in on you when you need to recalibrate, you know, like truly finding ways to recenter and get back into your body. And that is what I needed to do was get back into my body. So breathing the right way and with intention, number one. Writing, of course. Outside of being an author, I also really love being able to talk to myself.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so I like those check-ins. I keep a gratitude list. Simple. One thing a day or night that I'm grateful for. And it can be, okay, I made it through the day. You know, getting back to basics in life, not necessarily having all these big things to unpack, but like what are the basic tiny micro moments of joy that I can explore? And then walking.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I've been walking for a year every single day, rain or shine, cold or hot. And I've never missed a day. And that is where I get back to my body.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And then it's like, oh. That can be true, and I can still have so much work to do. And I have three children. I have daughters. And so I found that with every birth of a kid, I had even more stuff to work through from my own...
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
So I discovered walking through this awesome woman who I'm now dear friends with. Her name is Libby Delaina. And she wrote the book, Do Walk. And she's my absolute favorite person. We are thick as thieves now. We are family now. I found her in Magnolia Journal. two years, a year ago. And I was like, who is this six foot tall, long white haired lady? She's so bad-ass.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
They had a whole like feature on her. So I read her article. I looked her up and I bought her book immediately. And I went on Instagram. I saw she was following me. Oh, isn't that the best? I was like, I'm in, I'm in. I love her. I love her. I love her. Yes. So I DM'd her and said, you know, your book is changing me. And I wasn't ready to start walking yet, but I was just like, I'm listening.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I hear you. And then I decided after my youngest turned two, I was like, I need to get back into my body in another way. I had really gotten... outside of myself. So I was like, I'm just going to, I'm going to try this walking thing. I don't know what this is about, but I'm going to try this walking thing. And I committed to 30 days.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And then I said, at the end of the 30 days, if I'm still feeling good, I'm going to go every day. And I have been going every day since. Me and Libby have a podcast called This Morning Walk, where we talk about the lessons from walking through the world. She's 60. I'm 33. She's a white lady. I'm a black lady. It's like, we're so different, but we are so the same.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I go to Massachusetts where she lives with my oldest and we go for walks on the beach and we stay with Libby and we have tea. And it's like walking has shown me who I am. It has shown me that I don't have to know where I'm going. It has shown me, like Libby says, to put motion to emotion. So when I'm pissed, I go for a walk. When I'm happy, I go for a walk.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And it's the promise to myself to move my body every day. And I did it. And I'm going to keep doing it because I deserve to keep the promises to myself.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
mother wounds to really trying to be the best woman I could be for myself so that I could lead by example for my girls and then mourning the fact that nobody considered me in that way so it really just started to hit me like damn the older I get the more healing I have to do yes what the hell but also okay I have the tools that I didn't have back then Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I think there are healthy ways to self-soothe and unhealthy ways to self-soothe. I think that just comes down to it. I think people who struggle with addiction are self-soothing in their own way. It's not healthy. How do we shift the unhealthiness into something that's healthy, into something that's supportive, into something that is life-giving? Because that's really what self-soothing is for me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
It replenishes me. It fills me up. It's this nourishing act of self-care. Yeah. And so finding healthy ways to self-soothe has been big for me, too, because when I was younger, I didn't have those things. I looked for love in places that there was none. I dated really terrible people because I was self-soothing or trying to, right? I... didn't eat.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I struggled with an eating disorder because I was, as you said, self-soothing, right? But that wasn't healthy. It wasn't life-giving. And so when we think about self-soothing, we need to be thinking about filling our cup, replenishing, nourishing. That's the word that really kind of like makes me feel things inside, like self-soothing equals nourishment.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
How are we nourishing ourselves in a way that is healthy and sustainable?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
So they don't default to the others. I actually see this with my 14 year old. So she has anxiety as well. And a part of her anxiety is skin picking. And that she doesn't skin pick or self harm to end her life, but she does it because it feels good to her. Or because she's trying to punish herself for something, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so something that we've been working with her psychiatrist on and therapist on is like redirection of that. Okay, so if you're picking because you're nervous, what can we do instead of picking? Or if you're picking because you are excited, what can we do with our hands, right? Instead of that, right? So it is the redirection, the intentional redirection.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
So when I see her picking, I'll say, hey, don't pick. I have Band-Aids. And you want to put a Band-Aid on? Because that'll redirect her to, oh, okay, let me not do that and let me cover. And then we can move on to finding something else, right? And as someone who... Part of my anxiety is I pull my hair out, which is why I've been keeping my hair short lately.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I have, it's called trick and I literally will pull my hair out. And so what I do when I get highly anxious and I feel myself tooling with my hair, I start snapping. So there's another self-soothing thing like, oh, I can't pick and snap at the same time. It's impossible. Right. So like even if even starting small, I'm mentioning those things because our kids deal with it.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
We deal with it starting small. Maybe it's not going for a walk every day, but maybe it's snapping. Maybe it's not, you know, writing in your gratitude journal as self-soothing tool. Perhaps it's going to make a cup of tea with intention. Bringing your mind back to the moment and slowing down is really what self-soothing is. That's the nourishing act, the slowing down and the redirection.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
My mom's favorite phrase growing up is tears don't fix anything or crying doesn't solve problems. And Charlie, who is my oldest daughter, is a crier. And something that I have committed to not doing is telling her to stop crying. Yeah. I will say, it's okay for you to cry. If you want to excuse yourself, go ahead, get yourself together, and you can rejoin us when you're ready to talk.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Something that I will say is I can't understand you when you're crying. And so I love you. Go ahead and get yourself together. And it's no rush. But I'm never going to tell her, stop crying. Tears don't solve anything. Because for her, crying is a self-soothing mechanism. And I didn't cry for a long time. Or I would cry in private because I didn't want my mom to see me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Um, and something that I do too, as a parent is I cry in front of my kids.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I don't hide my tears from my kids. And my mom never did that. Like she was like, not going to cry in front of you. She cries now, which is really interesting to see her soften in that way. But it's, um, it's so crying is so, so, so important. And even for my littles You can cry. Go ahead and cry. You want to go sit on the steps and cry? You can cry. Can I give you a hug?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Sometimes they're like, don't touch me. Okay, I love you. I don't have to hug you. I'm here when you're ready. And so inviting people to feel safe enough to shed their tears is such a sacred act. It's wild how sacred that is.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
It's both. Water is life-giving. Our tears are life-giving. And they also is a release, right? And I think that that's really important for us to realize like crying doesn't make us weak. It makes us really strong and vulnerable and really like amazing. And I have a friend who she lost her dad and her sister within the same year. We were having a conversation on FaceTime and
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And when we were talking on FaceTime, she started crying. And she was talking and crying. And I just was holding space and listening. And at the end, she goes, thank you for not telling me not to cry. And that's a part of like our humanity wants to be seen in our most vulnerable states.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And that's really important to give ourselves the permission to release, to receive, and also to give our feelings life. If that comes in the form of tears, that comes in the form of tears. It's not wrong.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Wow. I want my girls to release the idea that they need to be validated. by outside forces, including me and my husband, to receive their power.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I think it's a beautiful thing. It's a pain in the ass thing, but it's a beautiful thing because as I write in my new book, when we heal ourselves, we heal our lineage. When we heal ourselves, we heal each other, right? So we really have to start looking at looking at our stuff as this act of community service.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Because when we don't know what we have to tackle, when we don't know what we have to heal, or we know, but when we don't address, it continuously perpetuates this cycle of ignoring things and hoping that they're going to go away, but they're not. And then we pass that on to our children. We pass that on to our spouses. We pass that on to our relationships in our workplace, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
So if we continue to ignore ourselves, we're never going to be able to see other people. Damn.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
Maybe. I know for me, I wanted to start sooner than later because I saw my mother suffering. I saw my grandmother suffering. I mean, and how I was raised. I'm surprised I'm not suffering. I'm a big believer in the power of choice and choosing to do something different. Choosing to be self-aware, I think, is...
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
essential to being able to be in relationship, not only with ourselves, but with other people. And so I didn't want to wait till I was in my fifties or sixties or seventies. I mean, I talked to my grandmother, she's nearing the end of her life and she has a lot of stuff that is just now coming to the surface for her because she sees the work that I'm doing.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so again, when we heal ourselves, we heal each other. We're leading by example. I would encourage folks to start looking at your wounds and And to start celebrating your joy as soon as you can. Because when we're able to do that, it just starts the cycle of healing a little bit sooner.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I knew what I didn't want. I knew that I wanted to be the best woman I could be for myself and that baby that I had at 18. I had no idea what I was doing. None. I wish it didn't take teen motherhood to kind of like, get me to where I am, but that's the part of the journey and the story for me, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so I think knowing that I didn't want my children to fear me, knowing that I didn't want to pass down my pain to them knowing that I wanted to be different from how I was raised. I just, it just clicked. I don't know. I don't know if it was God. I don't know if it was the universe's energy, but I was just like, I, this stops with me. And my oldest, my oldest, oh my God, she'll be 15.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
She just started high school and she is the sweetest soul. She is the sweetest soul. And I often look at her like, wow, wow. Look what healing does. When you love yourself, when you are choosing to do differently, look what can happen. Our children are our mirrors. I truly believe that. I was young, Black, unwed, all the things stacked against me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And I refused to be who people said I was going to be because there was no way I was going to let anyone continue to tell me who I could and couldn't be.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
I grew up in a very abusive home. My mom was filled with rage and anger. And I got the brunt of that physically and verbally. And I was terrified of her. I grew up feeling like I was hated. I grew up feeling like I was unwanted and a mistake. And I'd never wanted my children to feel like that. And I didn't want to feel like that anymore. So I had to make the choice to like, okay, if...
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
If my mother couldn't love me in the way that I think I deserve to be loved, I have to find a way to love myself. I mean, a big part of me getting pregnant at 18 because I was searching for love in all the wrong places. I didn't value myself. I didn't value my body.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so that had to change because I was having this kid, another Black girl, you know, and I didn't want her to grow up hating herself, right? I learned self-hatred before I learned self-love. Wow. And it's interesting. My mom and I had a conversation when I was 30. This is probably why all this shit hit the fan. Conversations will do that, won't they? Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
When my book After the Rain came out, which is like part memoir, part guide. And I talk a lot about me and my mom's relationship in that book. And I am a big believer in that my stories are not just my stories. And so I gave her the book and I wrote her a letter and I said, I bookmarked the pages that were about us. And I said, whenever you're ready to talk, I would love to talk to you about this.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And my mom and I had started repairing our relationship. We were able to relate to one another as women and not just mother and daughter. And we sat down and we talked on my 30th birthday. She apologized to me for the first time. And she said, I am sorry for not being able to show up for you. I had so much going on. I was so angry and so enraged.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And years ago, I probably would have been like, that's a cop out. That's an excuse. But being in the healing that I was in and that I am in, I was like, I see you. I see you. I understand where you were in your life and I understand what self-hatred does, you know?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
And so it was interesting to have that, to start having those conversations with her as she was willing to tap into the work that she has to do and the healing that she has to do and had to do. And I think that that's, I know that there's a deep privilege in having a parent who can look at their stuff, even if it's 30 years later and be like, I'm sorry. And I really screwed up.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Heal with Alex Elle (Best of)
It's unusual. Yeah. Super proud of her for that. And also there's a lot of grieving that happens because then I see her with my children. And she's an amazing grandmother. And in the beginning, I was like, oh, so you do know how to act. I used to laugh about that, you know. But like now it feels a lot lighter. But there was a point where I was like, whoa, that's hard to see.