Season 2 Begins: A New Season of Trust

Welcome to Season 2 of Untamed Voices.

Over the past year, we’ve explored trauma, attachment, boundaries, nervous system healing, parts work, rest, relationships, and what it means to reclaim ourselves. Looking back, I realize all of those conversations were leading here.

In this episode, I share one of the biggest shifts in my own healing journey: discovering that self-trust isn’t built through certainty—it’s built through learning that whatever comes next, we can meet it.

We’ll explore:

• Why letting go is often harder than we expect
• How our protective parts hold on out of love, not sabotage
• Why the nervous system chooses what’s familiar over what’s free
• The grief that comes with outgrowing survival identities
• How trust is created through lived experience rather than insight alone
• Why healing may be less about forcing answers and more about allowing life to unfold

If you’ve been exhausted from carrying responsibilities that no longer belong to you, searching for certainty before taking the next step, or wondering why you can’t simply “let go,” this conversation is for you.

Season 2 is an invitation to loosen your grip, honor the parts of you that helped you survive, and begin trusting yourself more deeply than ever before.

Because the next chapter doesn’t need to be forced.

It only needs to be trusted enough to unfold.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Untamed Voices. Today feels a little bit different, and this is not because I have all the answers, as we know, and it's not because I've arrived somewhere new. It's not because I've figured life out. By all means, I have not. Actually, quite the opposite. Today feels like the beginning of a new season. Not just for this podcast, for me, and maybe for some of you too. I've been reflecting on the conversations we've had over the past year. We've been talking about trauma, attachment, relationships, meaning making, control, boundaries, rest, the nervous system, parts work, receiving trust. And if I'm being honest, I think all of those conversations have been leading to this one realization. Sometimes healing isn't about learning something new. Sometimes is about loosening our grip on what we've been carrying. Over the past several months, I've noticed something changing inside of me. Not dramatically or overnight, not in one big breakthrough. More like a slow unfolding of life, maybe. A slow realization that I don't have to force every answer. I don't have to solve every problem immediately. I don't have to carry every single outcome. I don't have to know exactly what's going to happen before I allow myself to breathe. And maybe the biggest realization of all is that I don't need certainty in order to trust myself. That has been a profound shift for me. Because for much of my life I thought trust came from knowing, knowing what was going to happen, knowing what people were thinking, knowing where things were headed, how things would work out. But what I've been discovering is that self-trust isn't built on certainty. It's built on something much deeper. It's built on the belief that whatever comes next, I can meet. And the realization of this has changed how I move throughout the world. It has changed how I show up in relationships, how I parent, how I work, how I rest, how I make decisions. And honestly, it's changed how I heal. So today, as we begin a new season together, I want to talk about something that sits at the center of all of it. The power of giving yourself permission to let go. And what happens when a part of you desperately wants to let go, but your body doesn't trust what comes next. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions about healing is that when we're ready to let something go, we simply let it go. We imagine that once we've gained enough insight, enough awareness, enough understanding, the re release really should just happen naturally, right? Yeah, no, that doesn't happen. But if you've ever tried to let go of a relationship, an identity, a dream, an outcome, a role, or even a coping strategy, you know that actually rarely works, right? Okay, let's say it does work every so often, every once in a while, right? But super rare. Sometimes the body, or some sorry, sometimes the mind is ready long, long, long before the body is. Sometimes the heart is ready way longer before the nervous system is. And sometimes our protectors are the very last ones to get the memo. So I want you to imagine for a moment that you're hanging from a rope. Your hands are tired, your arms are exhausted, you've been holding this rope for years, maybe decades, and someone walks up and says, You know you can let go now. The logical response might be, great, I would love to let go. But then you look down and you can't see what's beneath you. Maybe it's soft grass, maybe it's a trampoline, maybe it's a six-inch drop, or maybe it's a canyon. You don't know. And suddenly the rope feels safer than the unknown. Even though it's exhausting you, even though it's hurting you, even though part of you desperately wants relief. This is what so many healing journeys feel like. The suffering becomes familiar, the coping strategy becomes familiar, the role becomes familiar, and our nervous systems that will almost always choose familiar over unknown. Not because familiar is better, but because familiar feels safer. One of the things that has helped me understand this most deeply is parts work. Because parts work completely changes the question. Instead of asking, why can't I let this go? We begin asking, what part of me is afraid to let this go? And that's a very, very different question. And often a much kinder one. Because what if the part that's holding on isn't trying to sabotage you? What if it's actually trying to protect you? Think about the controlling part, the overthinking part, the people-pleasing part, the caretaker, the fixer, the hyper-independent part, the perfectionist, the anxious planner, right? The one who wants all of the answers before taking a step. Most of us spend years trying to get rid of these parts, trying to silence them, to overcome them, to outgrow them. But what if these parts are not the problem? What if they're actually loyal protectors who have been carrying burdens for a very, very, very long time? I imagine these protectors a lot of times like members of a security team. Imagine someone hired a security guard when you were five years old. Maybe because life felt chaotic, maybe because people weren't predictable, maybe because love felt uncertain. Maybe because there wasn't enough protection around you. So the security guard starts watching everything, scanning for danger, monitoring every situation, preparing for every possible outcome. And for 30 years, nobody tells them the danger has changed. Nobody tells them you've grown up. Nobody tells them that you have resources now. Nobody tells them you have choices now. So they keep doing their job. Because from their perspective, they're keeping you alive. Now imagine walking up to the security guard and saying, you're fired. Of course they're gonna panic and they're gonna resist and they're gonna double down. Not because they're bad at their job, but because they believe you are in danger. And honestly, many of our protectors are doing exactly that. That's why letting go can feel so uncomfortable. Because consciously we may want freedom. But unconsciously, a protector is saying, if I stop controlling, something bad will happen. If I stop anticipating, I will be blindsided. If I stop fixing, everything will fall apart. If I stop chasing, I'll lose connection. If I stop carrying this, nobody else will. And here's the fascinating thing about this. The protector isn't fighting freedom. It's fighting what it perceives as danger. That distinction changes everything because now the goal isn't to defeat the protector. The goal is to understand it. So one of the things I see over and over again in therapy is people trying to force themselves into trust. And trust doesn't usually work that way. Trust isn't something we think ourselves into. It's not something we experience ourselves into. The nervous system learns through experience, not lectures, not affirmations, not insight alone, experience. If a protector believes uncertainty is dangerous, it won't be convinced because you wrote a beautiful journal entry, right? It learns through small moments of lived evidence. You wait instead of forcing an answer, and nothing terrible happens. You stop rescuing someone and they figure it out. You set a boundary and you survive. You rest. And the world keeps turning. You don't immediately solve a problem. And somehow life continues. Little by little the nervous system gathers new information and trust begins to emerge. I think one of the hardest things about letting go is that it often involves grief. Grief can feel pretty brutal. It's not necessarily grief for what we're releasing, but grief for who we had to become. Maybe just sit with that for a moment. Many of us became versions of ourselves in order to survive. Maybe you became the strong one or the responsible one or the peacemaker or the caretaker. Maybe you became the one who never needed anything. Maybe you became the one who always knew what to do. Those identities helped us. They got us here. But eventually some of them became too heavy to carry. And letting go can feel like losing a piece of yourself, even when it's the right thing to do. That's why healing can feel bittersweet. You're gaining freedom. But you're also saying goodbye to strategies that once protected you. Something I've been realizing lately is that self-trust and certainty are not the same thing. For most of my life, I actually thought they were. I thought if I could just gather enough information, enough certainty, enough reassurance, enough evidence, then I would feel safe. But certainty is quite an impossible goal. Life doesn't offer certainty. Relationships don't offer certainty. Parenting doesn't offer certainty. Careers don't offer certainty. Healing certainly does not offer certainty. And so maybe the goal was never certainty. Maybe the goal was trust. Trust that I can handle what comes. Trust that I can respond. Trust that I can adapt. Trust that I can survive discomfort. Trust that I can make decisions when the time comes. Trust that I don't need to know everything today. That shift has felt incredibly freeing for me. Because it means I no longer have to force answers before they are ready. And I wonder how many of us are exhausting ourselves trying to solve tomorrow's problems today, trying to force clarity, trying to force certainty, trying to force decisions, trying to force outcomes. When maybe the next step isn't action, maybe it's permission, permission to wait, to not know, to trust the unfolding of life, right? Permission to allow life to reveal itself one step at a time. There's a quote often attributed to various wisdom traditions that says, the obstacle is not the path. The obstacle is the belief that you need to see the whole path before you begin. That's deep, right? I'm going to read it again. The obstacle is not the path. The obstacle is the belief that you need to see the whole path before you begin. And honestly, I mean, that's what so many of us are really wrestling with. We want the whole map, we want guarantees, we want certainty. But healing often asks for something different. It asks us to trust the next step and the next one and the next one. So if you're listening today and you find yourself holding on to something, a role, a relationship, an outcome, a dream, a fear, a responsibility that isn't yours, a version of yourself that you've outgrown, I want to invite you into a different conversation. Instead of asking, why can't I let go? Maybe try asking, what part of me is afraid? What burden has it been carrying? What does it believe will happen if it releases its grip? And maybe most importantly, what would help it trust a little more? Because healing isn't about overpowering our protectors. It's about building a relationship with them, helping them realize that the person standing here today is not the same person they were trying to protect years ago. You have more resources now, more awareness, more choices, more wisdom, more support, more capacity. You are not who you were. And eventually your protectors can learn that too. As we start this new season together, I don't know exactly where all of these conversations will lead us. Maybe that's fitting. Because if this season is about anything, I think it's about learning how to trust the unfolding. Learning how to trust ourselves, learning how to loosen our grip on certainty, learning how to receive and how to rest, how to flow with life instead of wrestling it into submission. Learning how to honor the protectors that got us here while also helping them discover they don't have to carry everything anymore. So wherever you find yourself today, standing at that threshold, grieving an old identity, holding a burden you're tired of carrying, or simply trying to trust the next step. Not from a place of having all the answers, but from a place of curiosity, compassion, and trust. Again, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for walking this journey with me. And welcome to season two, a new season of untamed voices. Until next time, be gentle with yourselves. The next chapter doesn't need to be forced, it only needs to be trusted enough to unfold.