RUNNIN' VEGAS - The John McNamara Podcast

Aimee Stephens Author of Turning Pain into Purpose

John McNamara
Speaker 1:

Hey guys, john McNamara host Running Vegas. We're talking local sports, business, real estate. If you guys like what you see today, please subscribe. Follow us on Running Vegas podcast, Instagram. And today we got a special guest all the way from St George Amy Stevens, author of Turning Peen into Purpose in the House.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me so excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thanks for coming on Super excited. I guess it's not a local show today. Nope, this is gonna be more of a regional show, if that's okay with our audience out there.

Speaker 2:

But actually it's kind of local. I grew up here.

Speaker 1:

Oh, you did. Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2:

You've told me this I grew up here. Okay, I'm back home. Back home, all right. We're staying local.

Speaker 1:

Staying true to our roots. So I appreciate you making the drive down today. It means a lot to us, super excited to hear about your new book. And before we get into that though, just for the audience out there, kind of get you know your story, your little background, where you're from, from Vegas, yep absolutely.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, I grew up here in Las Vegas and I actually loved growing up in Vegas. It was actually hard to leave, but I left and ended up in Utah and still in Utah, but still close to Vegas. So I love that um grew up in a big family. My book is actually a lot about my childhood, so we'll talk more about that when we talk about the book.

Speaker 2:

But okay um, yeah, moved up to Utah, ended up having a family up there, staying up there. Um, and just now, I love my life where I'm at. I love St George. I'm a very outdoors um person, so St George is such a great place to live if you love the outdoors hiking, biking, running, all those things. So I love it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, st George is a great town. Oh, it's great. Yeah, yeah, I go to the Zion all the time. So St George is like my spot to kind of go to restaurants, maybe bar hop a little bit. I don't know about bar hopping in St George. Hey, I've watched some good hockey games in St George. There you go Cool, that's fun, so let's dive in. I mean, what was the catalyst of writing this book?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. This book is about something that happened in my childhood. So when I was younger, about 12 years old, I was sexually molested by my older brother and it had a big impact on my life, to be honest. But the thing about it is is I didn't know that it had an impact for a lot of years, and so I guess, to answer your question, the catalyst of the book is when I was about 32 years old, I went through a very painful healing process and this event that had happened when I was a child I had actually forgotten about. I had suppressed it and went through a major life crisis which kind of brought it to the surface and just went through a very beautiful, painful, long healing journey. And when I got through that, I decided one day I'm going to write a book about this. One day I'm going to share a story that I feel like will help a lot of people. So, 15 years later, this book came out impressive.

Speaker 1:

I love that you said beautiful healing process something to use that. I've never heard that before. That's super powerful, yeah it is so what did that process look like?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so, um.

Speaker 2:

So let me talk a little bit about the the background of the book so like I had said, I had gone through this experience as a child and grew up in a beautiful family, wonderful home, but my parents just didn't quite know how to handle this when it came to the surface. So this went on for about a year 12 to 13-ish and by the time they found out about it they really just wanted to forget it had ever happened. And you know, my parents did the very best that they could, but what they didn't know how to do was how to handle this little 12-year-old girl that had been sexually molested by her brother. So they told me to forget about it. They said God has forgiven your brother, so you need to forgive your brother and we're going to pretend that this never happened. And so my 12-year-old little self said OK and tried to forget about it. And that's what I did. I forgot about it.

Speaker 2:

But what didn't end was the ripple effect from being sexually molested at the age of 12, and so I basically had 20 years of male men trauma. I was in one toxic relationship after another, could never understand it. I basically chalked it up to I just have bad luck with men. That's just my life. I have bad luck with men and ended up in a very toxic marriage for about 12 and a half years and something pretty traumatic happened. To end that marriage, I made a very painful mistake, but that mistake led me into a therapist office and that's when it all began.

Speaker 2:

And I sat with this therapist and she said why are you here? And I said well, I'm here for two reasons I'm here because I don't know if I should end my marriage and two, I'm really scared about these feelings I'm having for this other man and I'm this married woman. And she said well, let's talk about your marriage. And so I spent 45 minutes telling her all about this really just toxic marriage I was in and she said, amy, she said you need to get out, Not like in a month, not in a year, like tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

She goes. It is so bad and so she goes. We'll deal with that later, but you need to get out of your marriage. She goes. What I want to understand is why have you stayed in this relationship for 13 years? Because she goes. I've done this work long enough to know that there's a reason you're still here. So she goes. Let's rewind the clock a little bit. And what was really neat about that experience for me is I had worked with multiple therapists over the years and nobody had quite put the pieces together.

Speaker 2:

It was like they were always trying to like put a bandaid on. Oh okay, your, your marriage isn't good or you're not happy or you're going through something difficult. They never actually sat down with me and traced back my life a little bit, and that's what she did. She goes I want to kind of understand just your childhood a little bit. So tell me, like how did you date men and like what were your relationships like? So she's like just tell me about all your relationships. And so I'm just kind of I and I had never thought about it, I had never done the math, and so I was like, oh, when I was 16, I dated this guy anyway, and I got already told her about my 13 year marriage. And she hears all this and she says, okay, and she goes have you ever been in a healthy relationship with a man before? And I was like, huh, nobody has ever asked me that question. And as I thought about it I was like, nope, I haven't.

Speaker 2:

Actually, it's a great question. Healing always starts with a good question.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm reading a book on that right now, but I want to hear more about your story.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I just said no, I've never been in a healthy relationship with a man. And she said okay. She said so, what happened to you when you were a child? And I said nothing, could not remember. I was like nothing happened to me. She goes did you have a good relationship with your dad? I said nothing, could not remember. I was like nothing happened to me. She goes did you have a good relationship with your dad? I said yeah, I love my dad. He's a good man. And she's asking me all these things. And anyway, she says she's probing. She's like oh, no, no, no, we're not, like we're not leaving here.

Speaker 2:

This 45 minute therapy appointment turned into like a two hour session because now we're she's just probing. And finally, after like 20 minutes of this and I was like oh, I said actually there was this one thing that happened with my brother, but it was like I said I already dealt with it. It was a really long time ago. She was like well, tell me about it. So I tell her about it. And she was like and we have a winner. So it was like a very quick assessment of okay, wow, so that's where it all began.

Speaker 2:

She said Amy, you were sexually abused by your brother. Your beginning, your, your first experience with a man was you were being molested, and it impacted every relationship you ever had, and so that's where the healing journey began. Is me truly understanding this thing? That happened to me for a year as a child that I had no awareness about, no help no understanding of, impacted every relationship with every man I was in, and that is why, at 32 years old, I was sitting in the most toxic marriage I could be in and had no awareness around. Could I get out? How do I get out? What do I do? Why am I suddenly attracted to another married man which was so out of alignment with me as a human? And the crazy thing is as painful of a mistake as that was. It's what woke me up.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

It's what woke me up to realize, like what is wrong with me, that I would do this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's what got me healed. So I spent nine months in her office, twice a week, almost just working through a lot of pain, understanding my patterns, understanding why I was attracted to these men, understanding why I was attracting these men, why I'd had no voice because at 12 years old I had no voice and it taught me to never speak up for myself. And that's one thing I've learned through my healing journey is, if someone's struggling to know how to really speak up for themselves, they've probably gone through something. It doesn't have to be abuse, but they've probably gone through something where they lost their voice and they never got it back.

Speaker 1:

Wow, well, tell us, and I really appreciate, you're just so vulnerable. So that's that is so brave on so many levels, cause I don't think most people would be as vulnerable as you. So that had to take a lot, and you're you are using your voice, so kudos to you.

Speaker 2:

So that is I'm very impressed, thank you.

Speaker 1:

So tell us more. What were like the tools or skill sets that you learned through the therapy, to kind of get you on the other side? You know, after everything you went through, I'm sure that was a lot, of, a lot of hard work my childhood and my past and really truly understanding what had happened to me and, at the same time, I'm trying to end this toxic thing that I started.

Speaker 2:

I'm trying to end this incredibly toxic marriage that was very difficult to end. I had kids at the time. I mean, it was just. There was so much going on.

Speaker 2:

But I would say what really started this healing process was my therapist saying to me this is all your fault and you get to own all of it. And that's why, like the title of my book is called Turning Pain Into Purpose, but underneath it it says my story of going from victim to victor, because I had been living my entire life as a victim. Wow, which is why I could never fix it. Like when you're living, when you're living as a victim which is why I could never fix it. Like when you're living, when you're living as a victim, you feel like you can't fix anything, and that was me. And so she said you get to own all of this. You get to own why you are still in this marriage. You get to own why you have allowed your husband to treat you this way, where I'd always looked at it like. Why is he treating me like this? Why am I going through this?

Speaker 2:

When she said no, no, no, we get to look at this a different way, and so what was beautiful for me was having someone basically give me a new lens to look at life through, Right and I think this is always like a message I love sharing is we need help, right, Like we only have the lens that we're given, and I was given this lens to look at life through and that's the only lens I could see it through, and so when I finally got to see it from a different lens, I was it just opened my eyes. It opened my eyes to me how I was showing up, how I was experiencing my own life, what was showing up for me in my life, the people I was attracting into my life. I mean it just wide open, opened my eyes, and that started my healing journey in the most incredible, painful way.

Speaker 2:

Cause I mean when you have to own everything that you're going through it's, it's pretty painful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and what a huge um aha right To take full responsibility in your life and um, yeah. So what did that look like? I mean, I've imagined it was a lot of fierce conversations you had to have with a lot of people. I mean, that takes a lot of guts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a lot of conversations with a lot of people, a lot of radical ownership for myself and the choices I was making getting out of my marriage. That took a lot of painful stuff experiences conversations. Painful stuff, experiences conversations. But also having some healing conversations with, like my parents, um which I am, I am forever grateful for that my therapist, I mean she. I mean it probably took her six months to get me to sit my parents down and say this is what happened to me and, because of the way you handled it, this is also what happened.

Speaker 2:

and those are not easy conversations to have with people that you love yeah but the reason I'm so grateful for it is because three years after that, both of my parents passed away and so being able to talk to them and to feel like I had healed that wound with them was a big deal because, yes, my brother did this thing to me, but it was an event. Right Like it's it's. It's an event. We all have events that happen in our lives and as painful as that event was, it was actually how the event was handled that had the longest ripple effect on my life, wow. But again, my parents did the best they could. You know, back in the 80s and 90s it's a lot different than it is today. Sexual abuse wasn't talked about back then. Many things were brushed under the carpet and you know, you take my very strict religious upbringing all sorts of factors, you know, that go into that. But I mean they did the best that they could.

Speaker 2:

You know, I mean, I'm a parent and I think about, like what if I had one child who was the perpetrator and one child who was the victim?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's hard.

Speaker 2:

How do you, how do you love them both and support and help them both? And I just think they didn't know how to help us both. They probably thought I was OK, because I was just like I'm OK, I'm OK. I mean, what else am I going to say at 12? And here he was, and who knows what he was going through in his own world. But I just don't think they knew how to support us both until they didn't.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm not a parent, but I imagine being in that situation. I would have no idea what to do either.

Speaker 2:

So I give them a lot of grace in that, and this is what my therapist taught me you can love them and you can give them grace and forgive them, and you can still acknowledge that the way they handled it was incredibly impactful on your life, and so I think that's what healing is about. Right, you acknowledge the pain, you acknowledge how people maybe handled certain things. You forgive them so that you can heal and move on. But then you take a different path and that's what I had and move on. But then you, you take a different path and that's what I had to do back then. It's just take a different path yeah.

Speaker 1:

So after you had all these conversations and you're kind of other on the other side of it, so to speak, how did that look for your life? Because I think most of us out there we typically don't want to have these conversations, don't have it. Whatever it is, whatever the pain is right, yeah, we don't have these conversations, we stay in victim mentality. What was kind of the other side of that for you after doing the work, having these stuff, conversations, tell me, tell me a little bit more about that yeah, I think I mean looking back on it then.

Speaker 2:

I mean my life even today is so different than it was back then. I almost felt like I was like a brand new adult, experiencing like adulthood and freedom for the first time, you know, it's like I was out of this toxic marriage. So I mean I got married at 20. So at 32, for the first time as an adult woman, I felt free. I felt like I didn't have someone who was being mean to me. I felt like I had control of my life. I was. I started dating again after a long time with her. She's like okay, let's start dating, let's teach you how to date in a healthy way, because I never had done that.

Speaker 2:

I'd only dated toxic men, and so that was actually very healing for me was to go on dates and be like, nope, he's not the right person, or just to be more intuitive with that, versus how I was raised to date, which was listen to other people's opinions and trust other people and not myself. So there was a lot that went into that work with her in terms of listening to my own intuition and trusting myself and healing from this trauma. And, okay, now what do I want for myself in my life? Um, and that was really rewarding and that's um. It was about a year and a half after that that I met my second husband and, uh, we had a beautiful marriage and that was wonderful and he, you know, to be in a relationship for the first time in my life with a man who was good and kind and loving and treated me so beautifully like, yeah, it was. It was incredible. I'd never experienced that with a man before.

Speaker 1:

That's great, yeah well, it's so good that you, you took the time to heal before you did all of that, because I think a lot of us we date and we just move on to the next person versus.

Speaker 2:

But you, I, you did the work, I did the work and that's always what I tell people, like if you're, if you're going through a breakup and there's something that you need to heal from which, let's be honest, chances are high that you need to heal from something.

Speaker 1:

We all do. We all have to heal from something.

Speaker 2:

Like it's really hard to heal when you're meeting new people, and I truly believe this. We are going to attract who we are today, not who we want to be. So it's like if I'm working through a trauma and I'm trying to heal, I'm going to attract the level of consciousness that I'm at in that moment, and so for me to take time alone and to heal, it just was an incredible part of my journey.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really good advice. Yeah, you attract what you are, yeah For sure. So, yeah for sure. So it's interesting. So, to dial back a little bit you talked about when you're going through it, you're like I'm going to write about a book one day, so when did? When did we start with the pen to the paper? Cause?

Speaker 2:

it's a good question.

Speaker 1:

Cause it's one thing to have those conversations with your friends and family, which is very, very hard and very difficult, but now to open this up to everyone, that's another level of vulnerability, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I'll say this, I'll kind of start the book story, so to speak. So it was like it was an awareness for me as I'm going through this healing process and this was much further in in the healing process. But realizing like this is really powerful, like what I'm learning. I am learning something that what if somebody were to learn this 20 years earlier? Like if my story could give someone 20 years back, how rewarding would that be.

Speaker 2:

So, even though I couldn't comprehend it at the time I'm not a writer I mean, now I'm a writer, I wrote a book, but back then I had no comprehension of how I would even write a book. I think I even failed English at one point. I am not an author, so to speak and so it was just almost like a pipe dream. It was like, man, one day I'm going to write a book about this. This is such a beautiful thing. Like one day I'm going to write a book about this. Well, you know that was a 32 and I didn't know when that would happen. And anyway, fast forward. So this was in 2009,. Well, 2018. And I don't know what happened that year, but I remember, at the beginning of 2018, I was like it's time. It's time for me to write this book. So, the very beginning of 2018, I start putting pen to paper, so to speak.

Speaker 1:

Okay, great.

Speaker 2:

And I thought, okay, I'm going to write this book, and so a lot of it was a lot of like memory stuff. Like, okay, I did really like kind of dig back into like the childhood archives, like okay, kind of like remember a lot of stuff from what had happened and from my therapy, which at this point, was nine years, you know in the background and so I started writing this book in 2018 and I'm writing and I'm writing and, again, no writing experience over here and I'll be honest, it wasn't really very good. It was not very good, but what was most interesting about it was I didn't know how to end it. So I write this whole book, I write all the chapters, everything I wanted to get in there, all the stuff that I thought was important, and I get to like, okay, now I'm going to end the story. I could not, for the life of me, come up with an ending.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I'm talking. I spent months trying to figure out how to end this book and I was just like I it was almost like this incomplete story that I couldn't understand. I'm like, why can't I finish this book? So, after months of just I kept coming back to it. Nothing was coming to me. I was like, maybe I'm not supposed to write a book, maybe this was just meant to be a really good journal entry. So I literally put it on the shelf, like I saved that Google Doc in my Google Drive and I did not look at it for two and a half years. Oh, wow, I didn't know how to end it. Well, fast forward to 2020 and it was around the end of 2020.

Speaker 2:

I found myself again healing from something very painful. So my second marriage to the man that I met after my first husband, who was just he's such a great, wonderful man, but we raised our five kids well, seven kids, but two of them were already raised when we got married. So we raised five kids together and we, just after that last one was kind of getting to her high school years. Just some stuff happened and we just realized like we need some time apart. So, very unexpectedly, we went through a divorce and it was, I, incredibly painful because it wasn't a divorce from we don't love each other anymore or one of us did anything wrong, it was just no, this needs to end. And we both knew that it needed to end. And so I found myself in a very painful place in my life. That's actually what brought me to st george. So I was living up in northern utah at the time, um, and when we made the final decision to get divorced, I decided to move down to st george to be with my two older daughters, who were living down there, going to college.

Speaker 2:

Well, during this process of our marriage ending and just both of us and I'm in a lot of pain, I was laying in bed one night, couldn't sleep. I knew this marriage was coming to an end and I mean, I would have a lot of nights where I would just kind of lay there and just realize like, wow, this is happening, my marriage is ending, and I never thought this marriage would end. And anyway, I was laying there one night and I had these words come into my mind you couldn't finish your book because this was the ending of your story and I, just I sat there and I thought, okay, one day, when I am healed from this, I'm going to start writing my book again and fast forward six months. Now it's July of 2021. And a lot of healing happened in those six months.

Speaker 2:

Our divorce was final in February. I moved down to St George, spent a lot of time alone healing from that divorce and a lot of healing, a lot of beautiful healing. And I woke up one morning and I thought it's time I'm ready to pick up my book again, and so I started writing it again on July 21st of 2021, and I finished it on December 21st that year and this is the book. And it was great because I was like, okay, let's see where I left off two years ago and I go to read my book. I was like, oh, wow, this is bad.

Speaker 1:

This is really bad. Yeah, so interesting to write this all out. I mean, I have so many questions, so, like you said, kind of like journaling. Was it really hard to write this book or was it really healing for you, or a little bit of both?

Speaker 2:

It's actually both, both.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, so okay.

Speaker 2:

So what was hard about it was and I'm sure maybe if you've ever talked to other people who have written a book, like you get like into, like, like a zone, like a writing zone. That is absolutely what happened here. So it's like the minute I consciously decided I'm writing this book, I kind of cut out everything in my life. I mean I was, I was still raising my youngest daughter. She had about a year and a half left of school. It was me and her in our little home in St George and I literally I would wake up, I would write, I would work, I would write and I would go to bed and it was. That was literally my life for six months. So I would say the hardest thing about writing this book was it was a very solo journey, but that was very intentional as well. But also that was the most beautiful part about it is I will have to say that writing this book was probably one of the most spiritual experiences of my life.

Speaker 2:

I just was so in tune.

Speaker 2:

I mean I would like I'd be out running and I would have all these thoughts come to me and I'd literally stop on a run, pull over to the side of the road, get my phone and I would just like like voice memo myself all these like ideas for a chapter.

Speaker 2:

I was like, oh, I've got to talk about this or I've got to do that. I had inspiration coming to me all hours of the day. I would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and I would journal all night, and then what I ended up doing to write this book is I put all these journals like the note app on your phone. That's what I used to write my book. I had hundreds of notes, and then I would start to organize them and be like, oh, this needs to go here and okay, this chapter is going to be about this and this chapter is going to be about this, cause I basically had scrapped the whole first book. The only thing I kept from the first book was the facts, which was actually very helpful for me because I had all this actual stuff in there.

Speaker 1:

So I was like okay so.

Speaker 2:

So when I went back and reread it and thought, wow, this is real bad. But then I was like this is actually really good that I have all these facts that I had really spent a lot of time in 2018 kind of remembering. So the writing in 2021 was actually able to be very much about the emotional aspect of it, cause I had all the factual stuff already written out. So that was actually very beneficial. Um, but that was the hardest part and the most beautiful part of writing this book is it was very much a solo journey, like I had no social life during those six months, like none.

Speaker 2:

And sometimes that was hard, you know sometimes I felt very alone.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I was still healing from my husband, you know, from losing that marriage, and so I was still working through some of that pain. But then writing this book was very healing for me in that regard as well, because I realized, if it wasn't, you know and this is probably one of my most incredible messages I love sharing is and this is hence the title of the book like the pain I went through in that divorce is what turned into this book.

Speaker 2:

And I realized as I was writing it. I was like I never would have written this book if it wasn't for my marriage ending this was the ending of that story that's crazy so it was beautiful yeah, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you could tell you you've worked a lot on yourself, because I'm not you and I have in georgia. We've only known each other every year, but you can just tell whether you just have great energy. I'm a very much an energy person same thing you know, and yeah, we're always like can't wait to see amy give her a big hug every time we go to the seminars.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, oh, I love that, thank you you definitely.

Speaker 1:

You can tell when somebody has really worked on themselves, so I appreciate that about you a lot, thank you that means a lot yeah, so if somebody's reading this book, what, what is? What's the one thing you hope they could get out of it?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a great question. I think probably the biggest thing I would love people to get out of this is there are things in our life we cannot control, and when we say, stay stuck on the things we can't control, that is when we stay a victim until we let go of the things we can't control and just focus on the things that we can. And it was like what my therapist said to me when I started working with her. She said, amy, you were in a bad marriage for 12 years because you stayed in it. You can't control how he treated you. That's him, that's his journey, that's his healing. He needs to do right. What you can control is whether or not you stay and you stayed.

Speaker 2:

So your little narrative in your head about I was in this abusive marriage for 12 and a half years, that's your fault, you stayed. You could have been in an abusive marriage for a day, but you chose to stay. So that's the message is it's like we all have trauma, like this abuse that happened to me. It was a year of my life. We all have it. We all have trauma, we all have pain. We all go through difficult things. I could go through something incredibly painful tomorrow. But it's my choice whether or not I stay a victim and I stay in this mentality of the things I can't control, or I flip the script and I focus on the things I can control, which is me, my life. My choice is how I choose to wake up, if I do the work on myself, if I heal from my pain. That's the most beautiful part of the healing journey.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's powerful, great advice. I love it. So what's next for you?

Speaker 2:

Well, I have so much I still want to do with this book. I actually do want to write another book, and I think that's been one of the most beautiful things of this book, because I'd never written anything before, and every time I tell people I'm writing a book, they're like, oh, are you a writer? I'm like, no, I'm writing a book, though, but I've had such good feedback from this book and and I love this book I'm so proud of it, and so I do want to write another one, but before I do, I'm very much not done with what I want to do with this book, because it's it's been a process, right? I mean, I'm very busy with what I do with my career. I love it, and so it's not like I'm out there just talking about my book all day long.

Speaker 2:

So I want to do more podcasts. I want to share my book with more people. I want to get it into as many hands as I can. Last year I recorded the audio book, so having it on Audible has been a big deal to me, and so, if you're more of a listener or a reader, but it is on Audible, so that's great. But that's what's next is I just want to keep doing what I'm doing, keep sharing this message of don't be a victim. Yeah, be a victor of your own life, and then we'll see where it goes awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, I'm excited to. We definitely could shine the pot again because this was amazing.

Speaker 2:

I got a lot out of this.

Speaker 1:

I really appreciate you, coming all the way down from St George, got so much out of this. Thank, I really appreciate you coming all the way down from St George Got so much out of this. Thank you for being on. Absolutely, guys. If you guys want to read a good book, work on some healing with that childhood trauma, read this book. Order it today. Guys, this is Run in Vegas. Take care of yourselves today.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Outro Music