Feeling Whole With Candace Cahill

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thrive New Dot Tease Podcast.

[00:00:05] So today I'd like to be joined by Candice Canez-Cale.

[00:00:09] Welcome to this show, Candice.

[00:00:10] I'm really looking forward to our conversation together.

[00:00:12] Yes, me too.

[00:00:14] Thank you.

[00:00:15] So Listeners, Candice is a birth mother and I had another look at the website, links

[00:00:25] in the show notes as always. So it goes on to say the first time to adoption and the second not long after their their reunion 20 years later. So As you know listeners We're talking about healing, but how on earth do you? Heal from that one not once but twice it's got to be a tough journey, right?

[00:01:44] Yeah, it's it continues to be a tough journey

[00:02:47] people based on their life experiences and the tools they've been provided or learned to use.

[00:02:54] But for me, it has really come down to the ability to integrate

[00:03:05] all of the shit that has happened in my life definitions of helium. I love it. So what's the difference between, if there is one, is there any difference between integrating and accepting for you? Yes, I think there is for me.

[00:05:23] because I still didn't really want to integrate it. I didn't want to accept that to be a part of who I am.

[00:05:28] It took me a while to really bring it inside my body

[00:05:35] and let it be there and accept it.

[00:05:38] I don't quite know how to explain it,

[00:05:42] but I just know that I was so, I was fought against responsibility for that. So it took me a long time to be like, I can both take responsibility for the things I've done, particularly specifically when it comes to relinquishing my son, I can take responsibility for that. And I can still come back from that,

[00:07:01] as long as I give myself grace

[00:07:04] and understand that that young woman

[00:07:06] who did those things back then is that the whole self, right, trying to like eject the yellow cheese, the yellow cheese is the dis other part of that is that there is a cheese wedge a wreath that was also the authoritarian or the person. You know, yes, we talk about these people in control, right? That

[00:11:02] that manipulated me, coerced me, you know, all represents the voicing. That represents our inecritic, that represents our our brainwashed, the brainwashed part of ourselves. The, so I'm jumping around with metaphors,

[00:12:22] but kids, brains are like sponges.

[00:13:27] the most uncivil civil war that's going on in our head. And that just prolongs the battle between the two cheeses.

[00:13:35] And what it sounds like that's happened for you is one got nearer to get her on the lead, she wouldn't come out. So I had a sense of humour failure, complete sense of humour failure,

[00:15:03] whilst this was happening, I think the conversation with Cand I spent, you know, once I relinquished my son, I pretty much spent the next, well, the next 13 years, or actually 23 years, really, 23 years,

[00:16:23] berating myself, right?

[00:16:25] So there was a part of me this and look at it not from from kind of my perspective but kind of step out of it. That's the best way that I can explain it. And because that was when when I did that, that was when I was able to look at it and like the way that I did it was was writing. So writing my book was the

[00:17:41] important part in all of this because I wrote everything let that happen. So the diss process has given you that clarity, it sounds like to me. So if you're a listener and you're thinking, I can't describe,

[00:20:23] can this maybe be able to describe healing like that?

[00:21:25] couple of moments that are very clear in my mind.

[00:21:29] And the first one is when, as I was rereading my, basically my first draft of my memoir.

[00:21:35] And I believe at that time it was chapter 13.

[00:21:38] 13 is an important number to me for some reason,

[00:21:41] I have no idea why I'm not a numerologist,

[00:21:43] but 13 is important to me.

[00:22:47] seen it since we got together. But you haven't been able to see it for whatever reason. So that was a very important and it was so, it's classic to my husband. He's just like, yeah, I know. He

[00:22:53] did that to me all the time when I've had this profound awakening, right? Now the second time.

[00:22:59] Sorry, can I just tell you. So? Would you call that an insight, a perspective shift? What would you call it? Yeah, a piphony, pumstah mind. Yeah. Yeah. A paradigm shift. You know, go out and make this happen. Go out. We can go out and make stuff happen in the external world. Sometimes there's no way I could make

[00:25:41] Indy come back to me. I tried four or five different things. I tried walking to

[00:26:45] ourselves kind of open to the opportunities here. And that was one of the things that you, that as another big theme, when you described healing, you talked about continuing to learn,

[00:26:52] and, you know, taking on new things and growing, and tools. And, you know, this, this idea,

[00:27:03] I don't know where it came from there, US think a lot changed when I was able to recognize that I can set myself up to have epiphanies to heal. I can set myself up for success by learning new things, learning tools, learning techniques. You know, so like for some people,

[00:29:27] addressing that issue that I mentioned from a mentor of mine. It's hard to see the picture when we're in the frame, right? So the therapist helps us see the picture when we're in the frame,

[00:29:36] offers that third party perspective. But whether it's yoga, whether it's

[00:30:47] is healing. The thing that comes before that is, as you say, as a piffany thing that comes before that is an action or a series of actions or serine of strategies. And it's not clearly

[00:30:57] not once and done.

[00:30:58] No, and at the very first step, in my opinion, to all agency in this particular woman. This came to you in a discussion with your husband after sharing.

[00:33:41] Chapter 13. Do you there were physiological changes, I closest analogy I can get to is

[00:36:07] tracking the associated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a great tool.

[00:36:13] And his one. So just an aside.

[00:36:19] Yeah, I started so I finished.

[00:36:23] So she told me that she was thinking of slowing down birthday last week. And then on the day before I got a text, I got a text from saying I've enjoyed of the second epiphany or you came to your mind. So rather than be would like to go to. Well, I went to the mixed group because I want to, I want, I wanted and continue to want to hear the adoptee experience

[00:40:21] because that's going to help me most learn things about my epiphany was, I mean, I had I had a different father, I was, first of all, I was happy because my stepfather was an abusive asshole.

[00:43:02] But my second feeling was I was furious.

[00:43:05] I was so angry at and adopted. So that was a huge epiphany for me. And coming out of that. So now when I talk about that experience, there that, I don't get it. Whenever I hear somebody else talking about it, I was about 10 and I ran over a road and I didn't see this car. Little van thing coming and it hit me. It was only doing like five miles an hour, about three miles an hour. And knocked me down and I had a bit of a bruise. I got up. I walked

[00:47:04] down to the bus station half an hour. I'm half an hour. I think, and I do believe, and I am learning ways to go beyond that, that it's, there are times where I don't automatically go into that dissociating anymore. I'm becoming more capable of recognizing it when it happens.

[00:48:24] But, you know,. It isn't voluntary, it's involuntary. So, yeah. The segment. So it's an internal trauma shaming going on. Yeah. Wow. Oh, yeah. Now, then, so that sounds like something that you've you've so that's new for me. Okay, yeah. So that's new for me. So it sounds

[00:51:02] like it's not new for you. So it is new. It's not new for me.

[00:51:06] Okay. is that are connected, it helps me to see where I can make strides and try to be better and give myself a break. Yeah. I went off in a totally different tangent. No, no, you didn think, oh, this is just so dumb. But it was it was really important. I'm going to think I'm going to think exactly like that. Okay. So I know, I know, I know, but but but but I want to share it because it was such

[00:53:40] an important piece of of learning to give myself grace and being compassionate to myself. all the shit she'd done wrong and it was it was so so painful. It was so painful and 13 years later I can finally say just this last year I can do this I can look myself in the mirror

[00:56:05] Yeah, yeah, isn't that nice? I mean that I feel like it's a win. I

[00:56:10] Feel like it's just a really big win and it just made you know, it's like making me want to cry now That's like I'm I'm getting there. I still know I have a long way to go, but

[00:56:17] That's it's a big it's a big thing for me

[00:56:20] And I actually if one person what listens to this and goes to their mouth real work goes to and looks a mirror

[00:56:27] And they try it and we hear how other people do it, that's when we can be like, oh, I should try that. Or that's probably not going to work, but I'll try. I mean, we just have to be willing to put ourselves out there and see if, see what works for us. And this is the best way to do it, to find out how other people are doing it. Yeah. Great.