If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to heal your life – not the curated version, but the real, full-body, on-your-knees version – this episode is where I lay it all out.

I’ve been asked this question more times than I can count. How did you heal your body, Lauren? How did you heal your relationship with yourself? How did you heal your boundaries, your self-love, your relationship with money?

And for a long time, I wasn’t sure how to answer that in a way that felt honest. Because the truth is, my healing didn’t come from a morning routine. It didn’t come from a book list or a vision board or a new set of habits. It came from a full unraveling. A complete dismantling of the life I thought I was supposed to be living.

And that’s what I’m sharing in this episode. The real timeline. The whole thing.

Before the healing, there was the falling apart

When I was 22, my grandfather looked at me and said four simple words that I still think about all the time… take care of yourself. Those were the last words he ever said to me. And they landed like something holy. Like a prayer I didn’t know how to answer yet.

Because at that point, I had no idea what taking care of myself even meant. I was in an abusive marriage to a man 15 years older than me. I was on multiple mental health medications. I was working 12-plus hours a day in television news, barely eating, drinking too much, and white-knuckling my way through a life that looked successful on paper and felt like suffocation in my body.

I had the job I was told I was supposed to have to feel good. I had the marriage I was told was the form of achievement I should prioritize as a woman. And I was miserable… if I’m real, real, real with myself.

The choice that broke the pattern

There’s a moment in every woman’s life where she has to decide whether she’s going to keep living inside someone else’s version of her… or finally choose herself.

For me, that was getting divorced.

And I firmly believe now, looking back, that adulthood and personal independence as a woman only really happens the moment you intentionally choose to disappoint your parents to do what’s right for you.

I had disappointed my parents plenty before that – with unhealthy coping, being reckless, being wild. But choosing divorce? In my Italian immigrant, religious family? As the firstborn? That was different. That broke a pattern. And it was really taxing to my nervous system to make that choice.

But it cracked something open.

I found myself in a Barnes and Noble, and I discovered the self-help section like it had never existed before. Tony Robbins. Eckhart Tolle. Michael Singer. A whole new language started forming. And one of the first things I read stopped me in my tracks… nobody is going to create your life except for you. Now I hear that and I think, duh. But back then? It felt like the most profound thing anyone had ever said to me.

The body always tells the truth first

So I built a new life. Left television news. Started a blog. Started a business. Manifested my partner, Matt. And all of this felt like movement, like growth, like forward.

But here’s what I didn’t realize… I was still carrying everything.

I was overworking and over-functioning as a trauma response. Coping with smoking, drinking, binge-watching TV… trying to soothe a nervous system that was constantly activated because in my history of trauma, uncertain environments are unsafe environments. And everything I was building was brand new.

By 2018, my body couldn’t hold it anymore. My hair was falling out. I had skin-on-fire rashes constantly. My brain was malfunctioning. I was having panic attacks regularly. I was maxed out on coffee and tortilla chips at my desk every day, overworking.

Something needed to change. I couldn’t keep living like this.

When the prayer is bigger than you

That was when a friend casually mentioned that mushrooms might help. And that led me to Ayahuasca. And that led me to everything.

What I know now is that when you have a soul’s calling in your heart – to change your reality, to become the version of you that you really want to be, to break free from the oppression and the dysfunction that’s been put on you – that prayer is not something you choose. It’s a soul’s knowing. It is a frequency bigger than you.

And when you’re ready, the universe starts to re-orchestrate your field. Everything gets shaken up. Things fall apart. And it feels chaotic, but what’s actually happening is that all the sludge at the bottom of the jar is finally rising to the surface so it can be cleaned out.

That’s what was happening for me. My body breaking down, my mental health crisis, my parents going through their separation – it was all beyond my control. And that was the point.

Nine months of surrendering everything

I packed up my life and moved to Sedona for nine months.

I let my business crash and burn. I let everything about my life disappear. And I just focused on myself.

I found a teacher at the bottom of Cathedral Rock. I sat with plant medicine multiple times a month for nine months. I went into visions that showed me my father’s wound living in my right shoulder. I sat in a ceremony and was taken back to the very same room I’d been placed in after attempting suicide as a teenager… and something in me transformed in that moment.

I was becoming more peaceful. Feeling more confident. Having more clarity. A deeper sense of trust. And none of it was because I was going after it with steps and structure. It was because I was surrendering.

The version of you that still exists

Here’s what changed everything for me on this path, and what I teach inside the Heal program now…

I realized that every version of me that I have ever been still exists.

The five-year-old in the bathtub with her sister, getting yelled at for being too loud and too playful – the version of me who rejected her play and her expression and shrunk down… she still exists.

The teenager who was shamed and bullied and left without real friends or connection… she still exists.

The twenty-year-old who chose an abusive relationship because she didn’t feel worthy of a healthy one… she still exists.

And my healing is about living in her honor.

I am the karmic reciprocity for all of the versions that came before me. I will do different. I will be different. I will repair. I will say, hey, five-year-old me… look what we can do now together.

What healing actually is beneath the noise

I’m going to be honest about something. A lot of what we see in the personal development space right now misses the mark entirely. Heal your life and cut out processed foods. Heal your life and read these six books. Heal your life and purge your closet.

Those are activities. Those are action steps. And they can be helpful.

But healing is the study of your identity. It’s the study of relationship of you to you and what’s in the way of that.

You can’t just say, I’m going to form all these new habits, and then I’ll feel changed. That only feels good with a little dopamine hit. It doesn’t sustain a transformation. We have to go back and look at our identity. We have to trace the beliefs we’re still holding, find where they came from, and connect with the old versions of ourselves that are still separated.

And proper healing always moves in two phases… immersion and integration. You go deep. You feel it. You see it. You process it. And then you come home and you bring those realizations into your actual life. Without both, you’re either constantly working on yourself with no results, or having big experiences you never actually land.

What changed when I stopped fighting

My financial reality transformed because my worth was no longer attached to things outside of myself.

My chronic illness disappeared because I was no longer in a constant fight-or-flight response, feeling separated from who I actually was.

My relationships softened. My purpose became clear. My body started to feel like home again.

And none of it came from pushing harder or adding more to my plate. It came from going back… finding the parts of me that were severed… and bringing them home.

Your soul already knows

If you’re in the middle of your own unraveling right now – if your body is telling you something, if your old life is falling apart, if nothing you’ve tried seems to stick – I want you to hear this…

If your soul is calling you and you have a knowing that you’re meant to heal and become a better version of yourself… that’s not a desire, that’s a destiny. Trust that.

Ultimately, you have the power to create change in your life. If I can transform all of the things I thought I would have to carry for the rest of my life, anybody can.

This episode airs on March 31st, you wont want to miss it.

Xoxo, Lauren