The Fall Is Not The Story

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Most of us have been taught quietly, persistently, that our mistakes are the truest things about us. That the fall is the story. And what if it isn't? What if the fall is just the setup and the way you get back up slowly, hyperfectly, but on your own terms is where your real life begins.

Survival To Thriving With Tammy

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Welcome to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I am Rajita and this is the show where we have real conversations about what it takes to genuinely look after your mental and emotional well-being. Not just get through the day, but actually live with. Today I'm joined by Tammy Corwin, a speaker and advocate whose work centers on one of the most human questions any of us will face. How to move from survival to Quiet Civil? We are talking about resilience identity and what it really means to rise after our hearts. Satanu, welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to have you today.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I'm so glad you're here. I'm Tammy Foodie Star. There is just a gentle disclaimer to our listeners. Some sequence reflect personal belief and experiences and are presenters as individual views, not medical advice. So listeners should consult qualified professionals for medical conditions. And now that we have this out of the way, we can dive into the conversation without wasting any more time. So Tamik, before we get into the bigger titles, I would love to start somewhere. So uh the phrase you brought into today's conversation Thriving, not just surviving, that language really lived. So, Tamik, where did it come from for you? Was there a season in your own life where that distinction became very real?

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yes, there was a very big season that that taught me that lesson that you can learn to thrive anywhere that you are, not just survive. And I learned that lesson when I was serving a 60-year sentence in prison for a murder I did not commit. I learned that lesson there inside the prison that it was possible to learn to thrive even inside a horrible prison, living in horrible conditions. But to learn to thrive, you just had to learn how to rise. And that's kind of my message that in order to thrive, you have to rise. You have to rise above your circumstances and rise above your environment and your current conditions. So it was inside that prison where I didn't know if I was gonna survive that I learned how to thrive.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

That pretty much explains, you know, this this phase that you just introduced us to, and it already feels so much more powerful, and it also sets the tone for this conversation. So thank you for starting with that, Tammy. And I can already feel how life-changing this conversation is going to be for a lot of our listeners.

Toughness Versus Emotional Control

SPEAKER_01 3:31

So moving on, Tammy, there's a version of resilience that gets talked about a lot, and it sounds like toughness. Push through, stay strong, don't let it break you. But I wonder if that's actually what thriving looks like, or if it's just a more socially acceptable way of surviving. So, what do you think most people misunderstand about what it really means to thrive after going through something hard?

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Well, you know, I think if I go back to the prison environment, people we have this misconception, and even inmates, when they first enter the environment, they are taught you have to be tough, you've got to be strong, you've got to, you know, just don't show any weakness, don't show any emotions. And, you know, I saw people when I first arrived, I saw people that that's how they lived in there and that's how they survived. And they were cold hard people. And I didn't want to be that. I just refused to let the prison environment change who I was, my character and my personality. But it was hard. It was hard to not show emotions, it was hard to not lock away your feelings and respond in an emotional way to horrible things that were happening around you every day. And I learned that in order to thrive in that situation emotionally, you had to have control of your emotions. You had to be able to control them rather than just lock them away. You had to have those moments where you were soft and tender and real and kept your heart open, not just locked away behind another fence that you built for yourself. So that is a part of emotionally thriving in that kind of environment. It's all about taking control of your emotions. And I think people can do that today, no matter what you're facing, no matter where you are, you have the power and the ability, the capacity to control your emotions until you're in a place. In prison, the place was a shower. I could go in the shower and that's where I would cry. I could go in the shower and that's where I would just be frustrated at or be, you know, kind of upset about something that happened. It was in the shower. That was the only moment I ever had alone. And that was my place where my emotions could just I could live in my emotions. And, you know, then, but when I went out, I just had to be me. I had to be soft, compassionate, caring, loving, and and smiling.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

That's that's a really important distinction, um, Tammy. And I I think uh this distinction between coping and moving forward is something a lot of people feel but haven't quite uh found the words for yet. And naming it like that opens up a very different kind of conversation with yourself. So I'm really glad that you brought that up. And that also brings me to another point, Tammy.

You Are Not Your Mistake

SPEAKER_01 6:32

When someone is stuck in a pattern of letting their mistakes define them, there's usually something deeper underneath it. It's really just about the mistake itself. So, what are the root patterns or beliefs you have seen in yourself or in the people around you that make it so hard to separate who you are from what you've done or what's happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 6:56

That's a great question. Absolutely great question. You know, I think you have to. My my situation was a little bit strange. It was bizarre because I was a law-abiding citizen. Um, the only thing that had ever happened to me before I was arrested for murder, and the prosecutor wanted to put me on death row was I had speeding tickets. I just drove a little bit too fast. Uh and I was only 22 years old. So, you know, that that's common in America. Anyway, so that's the only thing that had happened to me. I'd never been arrested for anything. I didn't know the criminal laws system. But what I did know was that I couldn't let it define me. This one incident in my life just couldn't define me. My father came to visit me when I was in the prison and he said, What are you going to have to show for 30 years of your life? You don't get to waste 30 years of your life. When you get out of here, what are you going to have to show for it? And I began going to college by correspondence school. And I was the first woman in an Illinois prison to earn a master's degree while in prison. And I earned two bachelor's degrees also in there and began publishing books. But what that did was it helped me create the mindset. And mindset is just about everything. You know, it I had to learn that my mistake by being connected to some people that got me caught up into this crime and in prison that that didn't define me. That was just a bad choice I made at that moment. But that wasn't who I was. That wasn't my identity. That wasn't my heart, and that wasn't my character. And it took a lot of years to not be defined by that mistake to say, hey, there's still some good in me, and I can do good things and I can help people in this world. And it's it's just a mindset. You have to fight that that thought every day, especially when you have prison authorities and people around you, you know, saying negative things about you at all times. You have to decide who you are at that given point, and you have to take steps towards who you are, not what society thinks of you or not your mistake.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that's such a great perspective on life because it's important that people know, it's important that they know that whatever they have done uh becomes a part of their life, but it doesn't become their entire life itself. It doesn't define who they are. It's very important to understand how to separate who you are from what you've done. And what you're pointing to is that this isn't a willpower problem, it's a story problem. The story we inherited about what our mistakes mean. And changing the story is a completely different kind of work than just trying harder. So that is really important to point out. Now

Rising In Quiet Daily Moments

SPEAKER_01 9:55

moving on, let's now bring this into everyday life for a moment. So for someone in the middle of a hard stretch stretch, uh maybe they've made a mistake, they are ashamed of, or they are rebuilding after a loss, or they just feel like they've fallen too far behind to come back. What does the shift from surviving to thriving actually look like in the small daily moments? Not the big turning points, but the quiet ones.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

You know, when I was a child growing up, my father was a pilot. We had a little small plane and we would fly. And not a big commercial plane or anything, just a little small four-seater plane and we would fly. And there would be times when the weather was kind of bad. And we had to, and my dad would just always, you know, comfort me as a small child in the backseat of the plane, and he would say, We just got to get on top of it where the sun's always shining. And he would rise, he would take that plane up through the dark, stormy clouds and through the the, you know, the lightning and the thunder and the rain or the snow or the sleet, and we would just rise and rise until we got high enough to where we were on top of it. And the sun was always shining there. And, you know, there was times in that prison where that's that was the way I had to live day by day. Down in inside the environment of the prison, it was always stormy. There was always a fight taking place, or guards, or arguments, or shakedowns, or horrible things happening. I had to learn every day to rise, rise above it, to get in the place in my mind where the sun is always shining, where life is good. And so, on it for a daily, daily life, no matter what you're going through, whether it's you've just lost a loved one in your life, maybe it's a divorce, maybe it's something going wrong with your child, or you've lost a job or a home or something. You know, you have to get to that place in your mind where everything's okay. And that's where you thrive at. You just have to rise above it in order to thrive. And you can mentally do that. And if you practice it, you can mentally do that moment by moment. And there will be times like I was, you know, kind of dragged back down from my little mental place of peace where I could be productive and thrive inside that prison, down into the activities of the prison. That will happen to you on a daily basis when you're trying to rise above something and live in the realm where you can thrive. But you just have to go back to that place as quickly as you can. You get back there until you're walking through each and every day in that in that zone, that altitude that's up above what's going on down beneath you.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah, yeah, and I think there is something so honest in in what you've shared, Tammy, because I I think we romanticize the turning point a lot. We we want the dramatic moment of clarity. But if you're describing something much more ordinary and much more sustainable, which is actually more hopeful, and I think it's all about taking the small steps, so I think that that's that's what really matters. I'm really glad that you mentioned it, Tammy. And you know, you you also mentioned that how you rise defines you more than the fall itself. I think that's a powerful point. But

Small Steps And The Middle Stretch

SPEAKER_01 13:19

but for someone genuinely doesn't know how to start rising, who is still in the thick of it. What's a real and grounded starting point for them? Not a motivational push, but something they can actually do when everything's 10 feet is heavy.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Sure. Well, I have written a book and it's called Dragonfly, where change takes flight, and that's walking you through the process step by step of, you know, right where you're at, where you've lost something or where, you know, you have to start your life over again. And that that walks you through it step by step. I'm sure there's plenty of other materials out there that you can find. Somebody that's had to overcome something. When I was in prison, I used to watch movies that were overcomer stories. They were stories of people who had gone through something. I would watch old war movies, I would watch movies of people that overcame great obstacles and great challenges in their life, and that motivated me. So you have to start right where you are. Find a motivational book, find a little bit of a training, follow somebody who's on the journey and the path that you're on. I I'm a Christian, I read my Bible, and that helped me. I started, you know, inside there and I read my Bible every day. And, you know, it was just a little small steps. Learned how to pray, learned how to connect with my my spiritual side. And, you know, it's just starting right where you're at. Don't don't expect to take a big leap. Just expect to take a little small, a little small, small leap. One small step every day. My dad used to tell me if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

That that makes a lot of sense, honestly, Tammy. I think that's such a compassionate way to hold it because it's not about rushing through the grief to get to the growth, it's about letting both exist at the same time. I think that permission alone can be really releasing for a lot of people. So thank you for sharing that. But as we all know, that rising is rarely a straight line. Most people will take steps forward and then slide back. And that slide can feel like a proof that they were never going to make it. So, how do you stay in the process when it stops looking at progress? What has helped you and what do you share with others who are in that frustrating middle stretch?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

You know, it's about sometimes you just have to turn around and look behind you and see how far you've already come. You have to take a step forward. Years and years and years ago, I when I was a smoker and I smoked cigarettes. And I, when I was quitting smoking, there was times I just had to, I had the urge for it so bad. And I would look at my calendar and I would see how many days I'd gone without smoking. And that was always an encouragement. And you can do that in anything. You know, you just have to see how far you've already come. Well, I've already taken this step forward and I've already taken that step forward. And sometimes when you turn around and look at see how far you've already come, you can figure out that it's harder to go back than it is to just keep going forward. It would take you too long to go back than to keep going forward. I use the metaphor of the dragonfly a lot because most people they understand the caterpillar and you know the butterfly metamorphosis, but a dragonfly begins its life in the dark, muddy waters and it's there for a very, very long period of time. But once it leaves the water, it never goes back to it. It never goes back under the water to survive. So that would be my best advice is never go back to the darkness or that dark, muddy place in your life where you've fallen or you've made the mistake or you've had to start over. Just keep going forward, take that next step forward, take a deep breath, realize how strong you are, realize that the strength is within you to take that step forward and take the step.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Exactly. Exactly. I think I think uh you couldn't have put it in a better way, Tammy. Because I I believe that a lot of people focus on changing everything overnight, but that's not usually how it works. You have to keep taking the small steps first, and the most important part is taking that first step. So, yeah, I mean that makes complete sense. And uh, Tammy, what would you say to someone who has tried to rise before, who did all the work and still ended up back in a hard place? What do you want them to know about what that means and what it doesn't mean?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

What it what it means is so simple is you just have to take a step forward again. It doesn't mean you failed, it just means that you have to rise from the new position you find yourself in. You know, you you're stronger now, you're wiser now, you have a little bit more experience now. So utilize those skills at that experience, utilize that that wisdom that that comes with age, utilize everything you have. Take a look at what's in your hand right now. You will find that under your power and under your control, you have something that can help you do it better the next time. As long as you're not giving up, you can get up and you can start over.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

That's a great advice.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

And I think that reframe is something people genuinely need to hear over and over again because uh the inner critic is loud and it has a long memory. What you're offering is a gentler and more honest sense, and that matters.

Self-Forgiveness And Support Options

SPEAKER_01 19:19

So, Dami, thank you so much for everything that you've shared today, all the meaningful insights and the wisdom that you've brought into this conversation today. And lastly, I want to ask you this for someone listening today who is carrying a mistake or a chapter they haven't been able to forgive themselves for, someone who is still waiting to feel like they have earned the right to move forward. What would you want them to hear right now?

SPEAKER_00 19:47

I would want you to take a look in the mirror and see how beautiful you are. You are beautiful, you have meaning and purpose in life, and there is something and someone you are meant to help in this life. And if you need help doing that, you can connect with me uh on my website, imdragonfly.net. And there's a contact page on there, and I will be the one to respond to you and get back with you. And let's take this next step forward together.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Amazing. And if there's one thing that I can take from this conversation today, is that you are not the hardest thing that ever happened to you, you are what you choose to do next, and that reframe is really important. So, Tami, for anyone listening who wants to stay connected to your work, hear more from you, or just follow along on your journey, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 20:45

You can find me on the website i am dragonfly.net. At the bottom, you'll see my social media hooked up. There is a contact form on the page. I'd love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that, Tammy. And also thank you for this conversation as well. I think this has shifted something in all of us listening today. That's really important. Thank you to everyone listening today as

Final Reframe And Next Step

SPEAKER_01 21:13

well. If somebody here touches something tender in you, that's okay. That's actually the point. You don't have to have it all figured out, you just have to be willing to take the next small step. I'm Archita, and this is Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, part of the Healthy Mind by Avik Network. We'll see you next style. Take good care of yourself.