Transforming Pain into Purpose

Imagine facing the darkest moments of your life and emerging not just as a survivor, but as an advocate for others. That’s exactly what Debbie Debonair has done. In our heartfelt conversation, Debbie shares her tumultuous journey through three suicide attempts and the crushing weight of negative self-talk during motherhood. Debbie opens up about the profound impact of an inappropriate counselor-patient relationship that initially set back her progress but eventually fueled her determination and strength.

Do you have a "letting go moment" or story of change you would like to share? Or perhaps a mental health question? Feel free to message us at mentalhealthish.podcast@gmail.com if you would like to share your mental health story, something you've overcome in life. You can be our next guest! You may also be anonymous if you wish.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

All right. So, hi, demi, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. I was really excited for you to come on, because a lot of the focus of the podcast is around mental health, different topics on mental health and just pretty much just whatever the guest wants to share with the audience, and so thank you for being here with me today, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:36

It's a real pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Thank you. To start off, can you introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about what you do currently?

Speaker 2: 0:47

Yep, I'm Debbie Debonair and I currently guide, inspire and empower caregivers so that's nurses, teachers, parents, carers to take back control of their out of control emotions, as well as guiding them on getting through those repeating life patterns that tends to be the trigger to a lot of the stress and anxiety that we're going through. And I do that in several ways, but the main way that I do that is by marrying together my holistic strategies with the essence and inspiration of the theatrical world, all clipped together in Mother Nature, the greatest resource of all the greatest resource of all.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Yeah, yes, thank you. Okay, so you work a lot with caregivers, like you said, nurses, so they don't necessarily have to be like a professional right, it could be any type of caregiver.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Absolutely, you know. I mean caregivers is quite a large umbrella, which I appreciate, you know. But there are so many people out there who are caregivers and don't realize they're caregivers, such, as, you know, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, because they just see it as well. That's my life, you know. But it can take quite a toll on people, you know, on people dependent on the kind of care that they have to give.

Speaker 1: 2:18

Definitely OK. So what? What made you or inspired you to want to work with the caregiver population?

Speaker 2: 2:29

The main inspiration was I did used to work for our NHS over here in the UK and I saw, you know, how the long hours, the double shifts were often worked, and especially dare I mention COVID. But there were, you know, there were really, really, really taxed over here. I mean taxed physically and mentally in the work that they did. You know it really took a lot out of nurses. But also I'm a mum. My own story kind of took me down a proverbial rabbit hole where I ended up surviving three attempts at suicide, and that was purely coming from a lot of the negative language that was used around me, like you're not good enough and you know who do you think you are, you're not a fit mum, um. So I kind of cut myself into this toxic bubble, meaning I was the toxic person and this was why I believed my son would be better off if I wasn't on this earth because I was the toxicity in his life and um. So I understand when you're a parent and it doesn't have to, you know it's not necessarily mums, because dads can feel the pressures as well but what it can do is bring up past traumas for people, Things that are going on like today for them as parents can trigger something that happened to them in their past. So they're dealing with being a parent and also dealing with what happened to them in the past.

Speaker 2: 4:25

So, yeah, so the caregiving community was something that I was really drawn to, mainly because of my own experience, but also seeing you know what was going on around a teacher, because I also worked in the education realm as well and I saw how drained teachers were.

Speaker 2: 4:45

And you know, quite a few of my clients have been teachers or are teachers as well as nurses. You know teachers um as well as nurses, you know. So that's why I didn't just want to have it as somebody who gave care in a kind of medical format, because it's so much deeper than that and so much wider than that, you know, and and they all deserve um to live the life they want to live, but can't kind of see through the fog of what they're the work that they're doing, because they kind of come quite far down on the priority list because, being a caregiver, they want to care for other people, where if they care for themselves first, then they will be there to care for other people. And I also really stress to people that caring for yourself. Loving yourself is not selfish. It's actually selfless, because by looking after yourself, you can then be there to look after other people.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Thank you for sharing that. And just a little bit about your past, and I love this topic because I can relate to you so much. I'm actually a social worker here in California and so in a way, it's like a caregiver role as well, right, taking care of other people, helping them through their problems, things like that, and so I completely understand like there's such a high burnout rate in these. Yeah, and I agree with you, like you you work, you know your whole shift, right, helping other people, and so you really have to find that balance of, like, taking care of yourself. Yeah, if you're a parent, I'm a mom, a seven-year-old, and so I completely get it right. So, yeah, were you a nurse before? Is that what I'm kind of?

Speaker 2: 6:42

getting. I wasn't a nurse. I was actually, um, what we call a um support assistant. So I was supporting nurses, but I worked with children with complex disabilities. So I used to go into the homes and work through the night so that mum and dad could have rest and respite, so basically they could have a full night's sleep. I would go in and look after them. But I also did that in the hospital environment as well, rather than kind of being on the nurse side of it. But through that I actually did train to become my degree's in disability studies. And then I kind of went further into that because of my own experiences and became a holistic counsellor and I'm just about to qualify as a wilderness therapist.

Speaker 2: 7:42

Hey yeah, I'm so excited about.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Awesome and I'm excited for you. And yeah, that sounds like a very even working with kids with disabilities. It could be a lot. It takes a lot on a person and so it was very rewarding, very rewarding yeah, for sure. So, um, you mentioned that you kind of experienced your own um mental health struggles, right, you mentioned the suicide attempts, things like that. Yeah, so did that all happen during, like around covid, or was that something you were going through already before, and then it just kind of like exploded.

Speaker 2: 8:25

It was for me. Yeah, for me it was prior to covid. So, and and because of what I went through, I was actually there for people who needed the support through COVID. So I was very fortunate in that respect that I'd kind of come out of the other side of all of my own mental health challenges. Don't get me wrong. You know we all have mental health. You know, and it's just how we kind of prepare ourselves to deal with what life sends.

Speaker 2: 9:00

You know what life brings our way, and in the past I wasn't able to do that when now? You know, if anything comes up, I can work through it, I can ask the questions, I can challenge it through it, I can ask the questions, I can challenge it. You know I won't allow it to control me, which everything controlled me in the past. You know I was bullied from the age of eight right the way through to the age of 40. You know, but basically I that I had an addiction and my addiction was that I was addicted to victimhood mentality and it was very difficult to come out of that until I realized I had something what I call my oh shit moment, which happened when my little boy was six, six, seven years old, which was two weeks, two, three weeks after I failed my uh or should I say survived my third attempted suicide and, um, would you like me to share that oh shit moment? Yeah, it's definitely yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:15

So what happened was I woke up, um, in the early hours of the morning it was around about two o'clock in the morning and I was lay on top of the bed, very disheveled, and I felt something in my hand and it was an empty wine bottle, which was really scary because, um, I still don't drink very often. And what kind of really startled me was that my little boy was asleep next door, in the bedroom next door, and at any point in time through the night he could have come in and seen the state of his moment. My ex-husband had gone by then, so there was just me and my son. So I kind of sat upright in the bed, swung my legs round to face the bedroom door, and what happened next? I can't put my finger on what it is. It wasn't a dream, because I was awake, so it was a vision, an apparition, I don't know, but within seconds of me facing the bedroom door, my little boy's face was here. He wasn't physically there, but he may as well have been. It was so clear and I still find this quite emotional and it was just the look in my little boy's eyes and the tears streaming down his face that made me realize that my little boy needed me. My little boy needed his mummy, and that was the pivot for me to go on a journey that brought me back from the brink, basically because I knew my little boy needed me in his life and I wasn't the toxic person that people led me to believe I was.

Speaker 2: 11:55

So I went on my own transformational journey and through that it's why I do what I do now, because it took me six years to come out of the other side and I don't want anybody to have to take that long.

Speaker 2: 12:09

You know from being diagnosed with clinical depression, which I didn't know what clinical depression was and no one could explain to me what clinical depression was. So I went on a research quest to find out what clinical depression was and it was kind of you know it's an imbalanced of chemicals in your brain which then kind of added or give strength to all the. You know you're sick, you're not amounting much and all of that. So it kind of proved these people wrong because I had a dysfunctional brain, you know, and that's kind of where I started from. And then you know, because of my son's image, that I had all of the time I was able to push through all the push through the negative things that used to haunt me. You know and I'm not saying it was easy because it wasn't you know, I had the proverbial one step forward and a hundred steps back, you know, but I was determined to be there for my little boy.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Yeah, thank you for sharing that story with us, debbie. Yeah, I can only imagine, because I have a mom too. So I can imagine like the emotion, the impact you know that that had. Can you imagine like the emotion, the impact you know that that had? And prior to that, what had you tried that didn't work, or what were you kind of doing before that to help with the clinical depression?

Speaker 2: 13:30

Was there anything that you did that didn't work? They gave me medication and I refused to take the medication and then realized that, you know, I started to take it and then I thought, well, all this is doing is actually masking what's going on. I want to face what's going on so that I can get through the other end. I don't want to be reliant on the tablets. You know, and this is just my personal experience, you know, I'm not there's no judgment here for anyone who, you know, takes medication for any mental health challenges that they may be going through. This is just, you know, my experience. So I did stop them. I actually went cold turkey, as they say. I didn't wean myself off them, I just went cold turkey.

Speaker 2: 14:27

And then I was sent to well, I was referred to a counsellor who happened to be the priest of the church that I was at at the time. I was at at the time and unfortunately he overstepped the boundaries of patient and counsellor and it knocked me back several stages because basically just repeated what had happened before and it really knocked me for six. But I was stronger then, even though I was still in a bad place. I was stronger than I had been prior to, you know, to having the tablets and prior to having the counselling. And I did learn a lot from him and you know some of the techniques that he used did work for me.

Speaker 2: 15:18

But that stage of it just completely knocked me back. But I was determined and I said one side. Once I was getting stronger and stronger and I got to the point where I'd come out of the other end, I actually said nobody, no one in the world, will ever get me back to that place again, ever. And two years ago I actually walked away from a 16-year toxic relationship because I could just see where it was going and where it was taking me and I wasn't prepared to go there again. I wouldn't have been able to do that if that had happened way back then, you know.

Speaker 1: 16:01

Well, kudos to you on leaving the toxic relationship Okay.

Speaker 2: 16:06

It wasn't easy. It took me a good three, four years to actually pluck up the courage to do that. Four years to to actually pluck up the courage to do that, you know, um, but it just it got to that point where it was either walk away or crumble and spiral back down and I wasn't prepared to do that for anybody. And nobody should, nobody should be, you know, prepared to allow anybody to trample on them like that. I know it's hard when you're in it, you know, but there is a way to walk out.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Yeah, definitely, yeah, Okay. So let's go back to the moment that you realized, okay, like you had that vision, right, that's your son and you want it. You're like ready. What came for you after that? What happened?

Speaker 2: 17:00

And when I had the vision and I thought right, what do I need to do to make a better life for me and my son? So I researched. A lot of things came across, some information about the relationship between the brain and the heart and the fact that the heart sends more messages to the brain than the brain does to the heart. So I then studied the heart math principles. I don't know whether you've heard of heart math. It is an American academy.

Speaker 1: 17:41

No, it's not. I'd say yeah, it is an American Institute. Sounds very interesting.

Speaker 2: 17:47

Yeah, so I, you know I researched them and I actually studied with them and I became a heart math coach. So part of what I do is I teach people how to build and strengthen emotional resilience and resilience all told and through that, I do a lot of heart brain coherence and it's all about helping them to get their heart rate variable balanced and finding coherence in their thoughts, their actions, their words, their emotions, and I take them through a process that you know helps them to be resilient by the end of it, so that you know when life challenges come, they can. You know they have the tools and the techniques to potentially overcome it.

Speaker 1: 18:42

Yeah, that sounds interesting. So balancing the heart is what you say, right? Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2: 18:55

I mean, yeah, when a person is stressed, their heart beats a lot faster. So if you can imagine, you know the machines you have in a hospital and it's going beep, beep, beep, beep, beep and somebody kind of gets stressed and it'll go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. So the heart rate variable is the time it takes between the breaths. So when you are stressed, your heart beating really fast and you are breathing really fast as well, so you're not taking enough oxygen in. So this is why your heart's going kind of like this.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Um, so it's a way of of bringing that heart rate variable down so that it's not putting the stress on your heart, because, um, when we are are stressed, it's not just um, something that has an effect on our physio, on our psychology, but it also has an effect on our physiology.

Speaker 2: 19:55

And one of the um, one of the things that I use when I'm talking to people, um, I often ask them if they have a bad back and if they're stressed or anxious or even depression, because you hold yourself exactly the same, in exactly the same way.

Speaker 2: 20:11

So people who are very stressed, I mean, don't get me wrong, there is healthy stress and you know we, we do need stress sometimes and but I'm talking about the, you know the the real, real hard stress. That's hard to deal with. That then people, you know it kind of gets out of control and when I ask them about do, they have a bad back. The reason for that is when we are stressed or anxious or depressed, it's like we're carrying a weight on our shoulder so we automatically lean forward and hunch over because we are carrying that weight and what that does is it puts stress on the base of the spine, because the spine wasn't made that way. The spine was made for you to be straight. So a lot of people who are stressed and anxious and depressed have lower back problems and it's because of how you are carrying yourself in a physiological sense oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 21:08

Thank you for sharing that, because I I didn't realize now that you mentioned that I'm like oh my gosh, that's so true. Like just thinking about times when I've been stressed and things like that, I'm like, okay, I just thought I had that posture but yes, that's what I put mine down to until I did.

Speaker 2: 21:26

you know, a lot of like research and doing the heart math process really showed me how it has that effect on your physiology, because you know when you're stressed, your heart rate, you know your heart rate rises, your breathing is very erratic.

Speaker 1: 21:58

And you know. So all of that, all of those, should I say, are physiological effects on your body. Well, let me sit up straight. No, but that makes complete sense. And I think also, when we're stressed, like you said, our heart racing, we're in that like survival mode, right, and so a lot of the times, people don't make the best decisions if you're in survival mode, right.

Speaker 2: 22:17

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:19

And so that that just balancing that heart, like you said, I can imagine can be super helpful with even making better choices and being relaxed.

Speaker 2: 22:31

Well, secondly, you know, with stress and anxiety as well, the way I explain it with people, you know, because they say I don't know why I'm so stressed, I don't know why I'm anxious, I don't know what's causing my anxiety. And a lot of it with anxiety, with stress, is that you're stressing about the past, about what happened in the past, and a lot of people live today with the emotions of the past. They don't belong today, they belong in the past. They don't belong today, they belong in the past. And once I've kind of had that conversation with people and we've worked on the triggers of the stress. Um, we can leave those emotions where they belong, you know, because we can't live our life in this moment with emotions from what happened to us in the past, because they don't belong here. We're not in that life in this moment with emotions from what happened to us in the past, because they don't belong here. We're not in that life in this moment anymore. And people with anxiety, a lot of anxiety, is worrying about what might happen in the future. We don't know what's going to happen in the future and what we're doing is we're actually stilting our growth because we are worried about what might happen in the future. So our present life, in this present moment, is being overshadowed by what might happen in the future and nine times out of 10, it doesn't. You know, you get those butterflies in your stomach because you panic about whatever. You know, a hospital appointment or an interview or something like that, and all of those thoughts that you're having very rarely come true. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that, you know, some of them don't. But it's having those techniques to be able to balance yourself before you go for the interview or before you go for the hospital appointment, or or even just go outside.

Speaker 2: 24:27

You know, I have worked with a lot of people who have social anxiety. You know, for example, one young man that I had. He was only um 16 and the only time he ever went out of the house was to take his granddad shopping because he could drive. He passed he must be about 17 actually because he passed his test, uh, his driving test. He must have been at least 17, 18 and he would drive his granddad to the supermarket and stay in the car and his granddad would go and do the shopping, bring it back, put it in the boot, get back in the car and do the shopping, bring it back, put it in the boot, get back in the car and then the boy would drive, the young man would drive home. So, going through the work that I did with him, he not only got in the car and went to the supermarket and went in the supermarket with his granddad, he actually ended up taking his uncle's dog for a walk every day and that was huge. From where he'd come from, you know, he couldn't go out with his granddad without being physically sick before he went out.

Speaker 2: 25:31

So this, you know, these techniques are really really powerful. You know when, when, the when, when I can, when I take people through them, they're really really powerful. And you know that's a standalone thing. But I also intersperse that with my other um, my holistic um, therapies and the wilderness. You know they can all interlock with each other because everybody's different and not everything works for everybody, you know. So I have quite a toolkit that I call upon, depending on the individual.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Yeah, yeah, I was looking at that. You have a lot of different things that you do to help other people, yeah, and can you talk a little bit more about the wilderness stuff that you do?

Speaker 2: 26:19

Yeah, my wilderness therapy it's not like forest bathing, ok, even though forest bathing is therapeutic, you know, it's more about using the wilderness as a metaphor for specific mental health issues. So it, you know, using using things, um, to help with behavior, using things to be more sociable. So it's, we can do it on a one-to-one, but it's actually more powerful done in a group, because it's all about building trust, know, and so we use the trees a lot because the trees actually trust each other. And what trees do that people don't realize is their roots under the ground, create a kind of worldwide web, and they're all interlocked. They share chemicals with each other, so they basically look after each other. So bringing people together in a woodland, in amongst the trees, it's kind of like a win-win, because trees give off carbon dioxide Sorry, trees give off oxygen, which is what we need. We give off carbon dioxide, which the trees need. So I build that as a kind of a relationship and between us and the trees, but also that then um moves forward to building that trust and relationship within the group.

Speaker 2: 27:56

Um, and there's there's just so many different ways of of using the wilderness. You know, things like something as simple as a fur cone. If you think about having six fur cones in front of you, or even three fur cones in front of you, one may be closed, one may be slightly open and one may be open completely, and I use that as an emotional guidance. So do you feel closed in, you know? Do you feel kind of somewhere in the middle or are you, you know, quite kind of open and feel relaxed? Or you know, or are you Because sometimes that can also show kind of anxiety, because in some ways, when people are anxious, they're using a lot of adrenaline, you know.

Speaker 2: 28:47

So they are quite euphoric. So to them this open fur cone represents them because they're euphoric as opposed to, you know, just not just being happy. But if we are euphoric constantly, that has a detriment on our physical and mental health. Again, if we are closed and in that depressed state all of the time, that has a detrimental effect on our physical and mental health as well. So that's kind of just giving you an example of how I use the wilderness, but there's so many other ways we use the wilderness. But it's a metaphor to support people with different and challenging mental health issues.

Speaker 1: 29:37

Yeah, I love that because a lot of people have a hard time putting into words, like how they're feeling, or they just don't know how to describe it, and just having that visual visual to help them right yeah, kind of absolutely what they're feeling or how they're feeling.

Speaker 2: 29:55

It sounds really helpful yeah, and one of the things I also do is, um, I go, um I send them out into the woodland and ask them to bring a leaf back, and most leaves that I've well, the leaf. What I've said to them is go and find a leaf that has like fingers, shall we say, where there's gaps in between, you know. So it's not a solid leaf, it's a leaf that's open, a bit like a sycamore leaf. Um, because what that does is they know all about these bits, because that's the things that they're dealing with every day. What they're not so sure of is what's happening in the spaces in between, and they're the bits that we work on, because the things that that they're dealing with every single day, could you know, may not necessarily be the triggers for their stress and anxiety. Those triggers, potentially, could be in the spaces. So it's what they believe is going on in the spaces. When we're talking about leads, and this is how we use things as metaphors.

Speaker 1: 31:15

Yeah, that sounds really helpful and just amazing and also fun.

Speaker 2: 31:22

Right, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what I tend I've kind of got a bit of a quirky bit on the end of my wilderness therapy and that is because I bring in the marriage of the essence and inspiration of a theatrical world. So when we are stood in the open clearing in the woodland, that is actually a stage, but it represents their life. So it's their own life stage that they're stepping onto. And I talk about going, you know, stage, left, stage, right, upstage, downstage, boring off the stage, and the power is it actually getting back up in? You know, back up on the stage, and the power is it actually getting back up in? You know, back up on the stage. And I talk a lot about, you know, um, the people that they meet every day are the characters in their life. Every day is a scene in their life and at any given moment they can rewrite their life script.

Speaker 2: 32:20

Now, when we use the wilderness and the woodland to create that, they find it a lot easier to express themselves, because a lot of people who are dealing with mental health challenges, like you said, find it difficult to express themselves themselves.

Speaker 2: 32:46

So using the essence and inspiration of the theatrical world means they can use other genres to express how they're feeling. For example, you know, they could go out into the woodland and find a twig, for example, and that twig might be still alive and all its leaves are dripping down. But that is how they are feeling and they can express that by. This is how I'm feeling, and then I just, you know, ask the questions. You know what does that mean to you? You know, and that's how they can then express themselves a little further with words, by talking about the twig of leaves that they've got in their hand, because it detaches them a little bit from themselves. So they're really describing the leaf that, you know, the twig with the leaves on it, rather than, um, describing themselves, even though they are describing themselves, but for then they've kind of like, separated themselves from it, you know. And then what I do is I kind of bring the two together and they can see how that represents them even more.

Speaker 1: 33:56

Oh, that's the hard guy. That's like so clever and so smart.

Speaker 2: 34:03

To be honest, it was something that my own safe space was for me. To go out into the woodlands, out into the wilderness. I felt safer out in the wilderness than I did in my own house around, you know, the people who loved me. I actually felt safer on my own in amongst the trees, you know, and I just get so much out of it every single day. Every single day. I make sure at some point in the day I go out and just kind of get replenished by the wilderness and Mother Nature and what she can offer me. You know, and I do talk to trees, Don't just hug them, I talk to them as well.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Yeah, just being outside is like so good for your mental health. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:52

And you know and it's talking about things like you know especially if you could find a woodland that has a stream. You know, I actually put a post out on Facebook the other day about you know, how do you feel? Are you the rushing river where you know your life's all over the place and you can't stop it, it's out of control? Or are you the waterfall where it washes down and then just sails away and you just let it go? Or are you flowing at quite a nice pace? You know what? What stream would you like to be? You know what stream are you now and what stream would you like to be? You know we are all.

Speaker 2: 35:32

You know I talk about the ocean and being on the ocean. You know what kind of ocean? Where would you like the waves to to ride? You know riding the waves, where would you like to ride to, and things like that. So you know, it's not just woods and trees, because mother nature encompasses quite a lot, including, you know, the clouds and the stars and the earth. We do do a lot of grounding with the earth, with the physical earth, with people awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:58

So it sounds like that you do like such great work and you're helping so many people and, um, yeah, like thank you for being here and doing. Thank you, if there's any any takeaway that the listeners could take away from listening to this episode. What is one of the things or takeaways that you would want listeners to take with them?

Speaker 2: 36:23

There is quite a few actually, but the one where you know is realizing that you know you are able to stand in your own spotlight on your own life stage. You know we are like I said earlier. You know you step out every day onto your own life stage stage right, stage left, upstage, downstage. You know you can fall off, just get back up again. You know you can change the scenes in your life. You know it's all about choice, and one of the things I'd like to leave them with is to do with choice, and it is choose life, choose freedom, but most of all choose you.

Speaker 1: 37:08

Awesome. Thank you so much for those words, those words of inspiration, and once again, I appreciate this conversation with you. I feel like I learned so much. There's never enough learning, there's always something to learn, and I appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2: 37:29

Thank you so much. And through what I went through myself, thank you so much. And you know through what I went through myself. I actually just to share this with you. I had a dream about nine years ago that I curated, called Alive to Thrive Life After Failing Suicide Our Stories, and it was so. I mean it was quite a rollercoaster journey, but for a lot of the women who were in the book the book, myself included it was a very healing process as well. Um, so, yeah, so the book's out there for for anyone, um, over the age of 18 who you know would like to to to purchase it. It's on amazon. I was going to ask where can we? Yeah, it's on Amazon and it's on all of the online bookstores, but I always kind of say Amazon because everybody recognizes Amazon and so it's in. You know Waterstones and all of the, you know Bairns and Noble and all of them. They can get them online. Awesome, thank you, I'll definitely be checking that them online.

Speaker 1: 38:54

Awesome, thank you. I'll definitely be checking that book out. It sounds really interesting.

Speaker 2: 38:59

It's a very, very powerful book. It's not an easy read, as you can imagine, but it is a very powerful book because it's about being alive to thrive and you know, had we all not been here, we wouldn't be thriving today. And that's the important thing you know, to express to people that suicide isn't the answer.

Speaker 1: 39:20

Well, debbie, and thank you for being here and sharing your story with us, and just all the resources, everything that you do.

Speaker 2: 39:28

It sounds like amazing work and everyone please make sure to go check out her book, available on Amazon, and then also your podcast, well, yeah, I have a podcast that I launched in january called wild heart wisdom and um, it's a lot of um, you know, teaching about how nature helps, but also meditation, because I'm a trained meditation teacher, so there's meditations on there. There's tips and techniques for self-love and self-care on there, um, yeah, and there's there's episodes go on every week um, because I just, like you know, I just give as much as I possibly can, but um, also, my website is actually it's not under construction, it's actually evolving. So you may not be able to get on my website just yet, but have patience because what's coming is absolutely beautiful, because I'm creating something called Wild Heart Haven, which is going to be a community where people can access a lot of the work that I do for a very, very reasonable membership.

Speaker 1: 40:47

Oh, thank you, Debbie, it was a pleasure speaking with you.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Thank you so much. You know, I just really want to iterate to people out there, to you know, really do choose life, choose freedom and, most of all, choose yourself. You are the most important thing.