Hi there. I'm Jill Allen and this is Find Your Fierce, the show designed for women to discover your fierce, unlock an unstoppable mindset, build unbreakable courage, and completely transform how you show up every single day. Each week, I will bring ideas, methods, and strategies that will inspire you to step into your greatness and live life on purpose. Let's be fit, fierce, and unstoppable.
(00:35): Hey there, gang, welcome to Find Your Fierce. So glad that you are here with me as we dive into a brand new episode. As always, I am super excited about these next few minutes of day, but even more so because we have a special guest with us and she has a story and a powerful journey she is on and she's gonna share it with you here. But before we go any further, I have to ask, are you needing a speaker for an upcoming event or conference? If so, I am your person. I would love to bring the find your Fierce message to your next function to book your event. Message me at jill@jillallencoaching.com. And I love that you are here listening in and spending time with us. So honored that we get to be a part of your day. You guys are just absolutely amazing and I thank you for your love and your support and I appreciate your feedback, your reviews, and I love that you share this podcast and the set free message with your friends and family.
(01:18): So if you could keep on doing that, that would be incredible because you are helping this movement as it helps reach more women and it impacts more lives, and that is certainly what life is all about. So I can't thank you enough. So my friend Cheryl is with us today. She has a lot going on and she does it all with such grace, so much positivity and walks with so much faith. And I love it. It's so inspiring and I'm excited to introduce you to her. Cheryl, how are you? I'm good. Yeah, I'm just so glad that you're, Here we go way back. Yes, we do. I know. Well, I think it's been what, 2009, right? Yes, 2009. So what is that, 12, 13 years maybe? 12. Yes. And it's been awesome. It's crazy how God places people in your lives and the way that paths cross.
(02:06): And it was almost kind of like a fluke of how Yeah you started training. There were pushups. I was all about pushups. I know. Training in the cold, dark, damp greenhouse back in the day where it all started and here you are. I tell you what guys, she can rock out. I remember we would be doing tests and fitness challenges and things like that. I mean, come on, we have to brag on you. You did like a 10 minute plank. Yeah. Well, in my fifties , I know, but still a 10 minute plank. I am shaking at five seconds. So we're talking to a beast guys. And she has, she's just strong, just not physically, but she is so strong, just mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And I know that light shines with our retreats. We just got back from St. Thomas. How was that?
(03:02): It was wonderful. I know, I think we've been all over the place, haven't we? Zion? Sedona. It's been a busy year. Yeah. Yes. We did a mission trip in Alaska this year, so we traveled a lot. It's good. So tell the gang a little bit about yourself. I mean, you have an amazing husband, Mike. Yes. Your hair stylist, all that good stuff. But tell us a little bit about you and where you come from and just, Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, let me dive right in. I come from a large family, a blended family. There's eight of us. So I have seven siblings. I love my father. He's been a rock in my life, . I've shared a lot of things with him. I grew up together and we're very close and very loving as a blended family goes. And we've been through a lot together over the years. All of us, very supportive of each other. So About family.
(04:01): And to start with my story years ago, my six year old son, Ricky he was born with a heart defect and we knew from six weeks old took him to children. Soon we knew that the cardiologist with everything they testing and everything, they said he would have to have open heart surgery by five or six years old. Back then, they needed the heart to be large enough because they did skin grafting from the heart. He had a hole in his heart. And pulmonary, his pulmonary artery was thin in one area, so there would be two patches done to his heart. This became very real to us. I mean, he was very active, never blew around the mouth, never tired, didn't need to take a lot of, He just put a lot into his six years of life, very active little guy. And at five we did the heart cath and I knew then it was gonna get really getting real because they were really closing in on when they wanted to do the surgery.
(04:58): I was pregnant with Jenny, my daughter at the time. And so she was born before that and she was nine months old when they had nine months together. I wanna say that was probably as a mother the most blessed time of my life to have to see interaction between my little baby girl and her brother. The way he loved her baby sissy and the way he made her giggle, that belly giggle. And just that time was just so sweet in my life. And then when Ricky's surgery was scheduled, we went very positive. We did all the right things. I felt like we were in church. Ricky grew up knowing Jesus . He loved it. He would come home one day, come home from church and said, Mommy, Jesus is visiting our house today. Because he was paying attention to the sermon. Oh gosh. From the sermon Childlike faith.
(05:55): Yes, exactly. And so with that, we knew that we called on the church with the scheduling of a surgery to have a circle of people praying and anointed him with oil. And we did so many things that we felt real positive going in that God was with us the whole time. and Ricky lived through the first 24 hours. We got to see him after surgery and talk with him and looked very positive. He said he was getting hungry from watching the commercials on the TV screen and so that it was all looking up to us. But through the middle of the night and we knew that there was always possibility of heart failure. We were right outside the waiting area. And I heard a stack call or the ICU unit, and I just leaped to my feet and ran to the door and opened it up and they were all around his bed and they were working on him and they came out and talked to us.
(06:55): At least one person did. And they tried everything, but he went on to be with Jesus. And that was the most devastating thing to live through to we expected to have. We were hopeful that we'd have more time with him, that he would be healed of this heart and not have to have surgery, any future surgeries, and that he could live a normal life with a good heart. So going home and going through what we did with that, the loss of our son, having Jenny, my baby girl, nine months old was a gift, was such a blessing to help me because I wanted to stay in bed. My bed was my best friend. I wanted to curl up in bed and just cry. And she got me outta bed every day and hold her in my arms. She would pat my face. She was the sweetest baby ever.
(07:45): Pat my face and she was drying my tears on my face and just lean into me with such love and so sweet. And all I could think about was a lot of different emotions. Bless it. To have her being a mommy, still being a mommy and caring for her and protective. Oh, I just wanted to be so protective of her. But I also, Were you angry? Angry? Were you ever angry? The word that's coming outta my mouth, I was angry because I've, when you feel like you're trusted, God, that you put everything into feeling, you get all the right things and then it didn't work out to be the prayers that you wanted answered. I did go through anger and I wanted just go out in the woods and just scream to the top and just empty out. Just empty everything out and say, God, how could you let that happen?
(08:36): How could this be? But it took, I've read a lot of books. I was in the scriptures a lot and trying to get some hope to hold onto just to survive, to feel survived, to survive this and still want to invest back emotionally in life again. And I realized that it wasn't God that I was angry at because how could I be angry at God? He sent his only son to die for our eternal life. And Ricky had eternal life in heaven. He was more alive in heaven than he ever was here. He's more alive now than he ever was here. And when I realized that, I realized I was angry at death. I wasn't angry at God, I was just angry at death. I wanted more time, as we all do as parents, we feel like we are the protector. We are the one that looks after our child every day.
(09:32): So I went through a lot of different ranges of emotions, just was I good enough? Did I do a good enough job? And as a parent did I check on everything that needed? Everything that needed checked on with what we were going facing with his surgery was did he need it earlier? Could we put it off later? But that doesn't change what happened. So to I needed to get back in church, I kind of just knew that God was calling me, the spirit was calling me back to get comfort, to have that comfort to move on in life that I needed I God and I needed to be back in church. And I was gonna say, that's what I love about because at that moment, we all have choices To Choose prosperity and the love and the grace and all of that. Or we can choose the death aspect of it and in part ways. And I just love that you chose to go toward him versus going down a path that would not do any service to anybody yourself moving forward. So where are you now? Because how many years ago was that? Well, I mean, don't mean to say that because I'm asking to help. Your age is or years . Well,
(10:58): Yeah, it was in my twenties, so I was a young mom and so I was in my twenties and I was just learning about life, but I was growing up very fast and to define myself in that agony and pain. And I mean, it's a raw clawing pain that is just very difficult to deal with. I got to down to 92 pounds. But I gotta tell you, physical fitness meant so much to me. I poured myself into everything. I got into a gym with my little wrecked 92 pound, 92 pound body. So there was other aspects there too. I knew I needed to take care of myself, not just mentally, spiritually, but physically I needed to get back. So with moving on, I felt like I was doing, I went on to establish that I wanted to be a hairdresser, become a hairdresser, and then worked with great people.
(12:05): And then I decided I wanted to be a shop owner and moved on to that, just doing some good things for myself. And then with my daughter, if I can talk a little bit about that, we are here, we are raising Jenny in church and I love the Lord. And she gave her life to Jesus when she was a young girl. She was baptized, she was in church all the time with youth groups and all of that great student great, very outgoing personality, had lots of friends. And at 16, between 15 and 16 years old, we started seeing some different behaviors that was very unusual for her. And we were noticing some sleep deprivation some she was like between her freshman and sophomore year, noticed some grandi in her personality, euphoria in her personality. And right away I was like, Okay, we address this. So I got her some counseling and they pretty much those felt like she had some things going on there, but she was pretty well rounded and I really didn't need to worry about her so much.
(13:17): But I knew my daughter and I knew that something really wrong. So I just kept pushing a little further and kept watching and serving things a lot closer myself. And I finally noticed such an outrageous behavior in her that I said, I'm going taking her to the emergency room. So we went to the emergency room and a good friend of mine, which I do her hair, her husband was the doctor at the emergency room at the time. And so made this great connection with him and he said Cheryl I'm going to recommend Harding Hospital for your daughter and I'm gonna call and see if there's available a room for her, and we're gonna send her up there for an evaluation. So we took her there. She ended up spending two months there. And basically they gave us a diagnosis that she was bipolar disorder and that this had chemical imbalance had changed through her teen years and her brain, and made myself very familiar with that.
(14:19): Read everything I could. I kept thinking, Okay, they're talking about some medication, she'll be fine. We'll get her on the right medications and life will go on. She'll live a fulfilled life. And I had a nurse there on staff that kind of just sat with me by myself and she looked right at me and she said, Gently, I am going to tell you that your daughter is never going to be the same daughter that you once knew. She's going to be different for the rest of her life because of this chemical imbalance in her brain. So that set me back to those times of, oh, another loss. I kept thinking about what potential she had is now going to be gone from her life. And this Is a time mental health was it really discussed, talked about, it was hidden. I'm going to assume that you felt alone, didn't know what to do, how to move forward from here. I mean, walk us through that.
(15:21): That was really difficult because even the professionals when I took her for counseling said, Wow, we missed it. Because I was like, What could I have done sooner? But they said we missed it. We missed it too. So I always wanna pile on everything on myself, guilt, or what did I do or what did I miss? How could I have prevented this from happening? And it doesn't work that way. So I'm So good at trying to fix things. We're trying to fix things. Oh, I do control things, blame things, find a reason solution.
(15:59): Here was the thing with me too. I wanted control of it. I was like, I, I've gotta get control of this. And what happens is that when we go into the flesh about how we're going to do this on our own, we're not gonna talk about it to everybody. We're not gonna burden people with this. We're gonna carry this all on our own. My God is so big that I can tell him how bad I feel , how bad this is, and I can go to him and pray and draw on the strength of the Holy Spirit. And I realize when I walk in the flesh with this and I am embarrassed or I'm afraid to talk to people, because we were just scratching the surface of mental health at that time. And you do keep it to yourself but you cannot hide this either. It's pride. You've gotta get humble. You gotta let go of that pride. And you gotta be humble enough to say, God, I need to draw on your strength. I can do all things through the strength of Jesus Christ on his strength, with his strength. I can do all things. And so Jenny did very well in school. We had control of medications.
(17:19): We got an early diagnosis, which was really good because she never wanted to do drugs or alcohol to do any kind of self-medicating, which might have happened later in life if she hadn't had a diagnosis young enough. So she finished high school with National Honors Society and she was a good athlete. Not that we didn't have some problems along the way. And then she enrolled in college and she went for a drug and alcohol counseling degree so that she taught herself a lot about avoiding those, that road with drug and alcohol. And she always has. But then she's been through some hard things. She had a marriage that failed. She's lost two pregnancies early on in the marriage and that was some setbacks for her. She was in a 10 year relationship. And I realized that in 2011, cuz she was hospitalized again for an extensive stay, that with talking with a lot of professionals, God led me to some really good people that I needed legal guardianship of her because she could not do this as an adult on her own.
(18:35): She was not holding down a job. She never fit. Followed through with her clinicals that she needed to follow through with to get after her degree to work in her field. She just could not function without help every day daily. So she filed for disability and yet she was missing everything that was there because she was not in the bright state of mind most of the time to carry through. So when I found out there was a hearing, I went in her place because I did have her legal guardianship at that point. And when I went in and spoke with the judge and they looked at all the paperwork with her case and everything, typically what they do is say, Come back in a few months and we're gonna make a decision. Well, the judge said, Is there anything else you want me to know?
(19:21): And I was tearful and I handed her some paperwork and one of 'em had a photo of my daughter when she was hospitalized. And she took a look at that photo and she looked at me and she said, Your daughter is lucky to have you and I'm gonna award her this disability today. You don't have to come back. She's so fortunate to have you. And that was a God thing, , because now she has an income to support herself. It's very limited, but it's there. I apply for a lot of different benefits for her. She lives in a mobile home. She's not on the streets, but at what we have found in the last three years without having a relationship in her life, that gives her a little more stability. She's alone, very much so alone outside of myself, my husband, a couple friends still from school years all the way through school cousins or whatever.
(20:20): She doesn't have a lot of contacts, so she doesn't have a lot of structure in her life. And then we had Covid in the last three years. We had Covid, which really isolated her kept I don't know, there's just been a lot of changes in mental health. good and bad because there's a shortage of psychiatrists, there's a shortage of anybody that wants to work in that field. It's a heart. You gotta have the heart for it. And there's a turnover, a lot of turnover. And we can get her, it's been up and down. We can get her stable through. She gets two injections. And I had a wonderful social worker that reached out to me and said, I think we need for her to be in part of this a o t program, which is assistant outpatient therapy. And it's through the court. So we meet once a month with a team.
(21:17): And so she gets two injections a month and just has to take a sleeping aid. So she doesn't have to say if she's delusional. I mean she has delusion, she has psych psychosis. Every time there's psychosis, I lose a little bit more of her. That brain does not come back from it as fully as it was. So we are trying to avoid that at all costs. And it's really, it's difficult because the doctors have to get to know that patient. And there's such a turnover of staff. So we're with a new person now. And in the last three years it's been very hard for me with anxiety. I've faced a lot of, I was just Gonna, How do you Started? Oh, it was terrible.
(22:08): No, do I mean, we're all faced with something. And I know you and I've had many talks of, we all have been faced with a story or a challenge or a mountain that we have to climb or if we're like in this rut, we all face something. Pain is pain, trauma is trauma, hurt is hurt, all of that. How has it impacted you and how do you flip the script to show up every day with that amazing smile, that sweetness and just that love mean, Has that helped you have a heart even more so for others or Yeah, just tell us about that because yeah, you're walking through a lot and I know there's someone on here listening that they are going through their own challenge. What can you share? What can you say?
(22:54): Well, I have really poured myself into God's word. I've really every day I've grown spiritually. And that has helped me with my anxiety tremendously. I've grown spiritually to where get up and I start my day with God's word and prayer. And when God says prayer without ceasing, I believe it. I have to be that every day and my anchor that I wear, he's the anchor in the hope and assurance of my soul. And I'm not going to let anxiety get the batter of my health. He's our comforter. When I read God's word and I realize that he comforts us in all of our affliction. So we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction through comfort we receive from God. And I have had clients that I have been able to share with that have gone through grief of with death, the passing of a loved one and just reach out to them and touch their hand and shed a tear and witness to them about what I have gone through.
(24:10): And God gives us that platform to share our testimony of any hardships. We go through life because this life will, we will have suffering, we will have pain, we'll have hardships. And if we turn to God and walk in the spirit and not just in our flesh. And it's really, there's a trueness of the greatness of the truth of what God can do to help others. Just to help others. Definitely not just think of ourself inward, but to be able to help others that are going through the same things, then that gets you through it. I see. I believe we're here for each other to help each other to get through. And so yeah, He
(24:56): Turns, He does turn it all into good. And I know sometimes when you're in the midst of it, we don't see it at that moment, at that time, but he is turning your story into so much good because there's like this ripple effect. And when you were talking about the anxiety, I kept hearing, it's funny, I can get my piece of paper out. We had this church assignment this week and they actually broke down the Lord's Prayer. And the whole time when you were listing all of how God is so awesome, how he was the comforter and all of that, just someone had mentioned the Prince of peace. And I'm just like, oh gosh. I mean it's this unexplainable peace and comfort that you find when there's so much noise and so much chaos all around you that if we can just slow down enough and just be with him. So yeah, I'm glad that he, I'm blessed that you Find Him as your peace.
(25:56): I don't want to dwell on ever, well on, I'm feeling picked on here, God, with the things that I've been facing in my life. But I put on the armor and I become a warrior. I'm gonna be a warrior and I'm gonna fight for my daughter and I'm gonna fight for me to be able to get up every day and get in God's Word and put the armor on and call on that Holy Spirit to help me go to battle. And within that I will find there will be peace . I will have peace and I will find every little joy when my daughter's good and feeling. I see those pieces of her my Jenny, my arms are around her constantly. We are like the Huggies mom, mom and daughter, and kiss and hug and love you, love you, love you. Sometimes she'll say, Hey woman, she calls me the woman . Yeah,Yeah.
(27:06): That's so good. She'll say, Hey mom. But she'll be like, she likes to say, Hey woman, how are you today? Okay. If you're good today, I'm good today. But yeah, we both have our faith, which if I have done anything that as a mother, I'm just so thankful and so blessed that she's a believer she loves the Lord and she's in her Bible and her scriptures too. And just following Your lead woman, following your lead, A woman. Yeah, it's funny. I cannot thank you enough for you to share this. I think it's gonna hit someone's heartstrings and hopefully inspire them to have that faith and know that God's gonna flip It. Well, if I could say anything else, it would be get yourself a prayer box. It's your toolbox. Get a prayer box and put your prayer in there every morning. And to me, it's my toolbox.
(28:17): Oh, so good. Yeah. I need to be able to fix me with my toolbox so I can help with whatever God is going to have and that's gonna be there that I'm going to take on for that day. I can't look. So that Is, That's my toolbox. Well, and the fun part would be to go back and see all the prayers that's been answered or, Oh, that's good guys, that's your assignment this week is to find yourself a toolbox prayer box. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much Cheryl. I love you. No, I love you.
(28:56): If you're wanting more fire in your day, there's so much for you to do. So you can follow me on Instagram, snag a copy of my book set free on Amazon. Join us in the fit and fear. So the flip the script, one on one nutrition coaching, and the next retreat, 2023 destinations have dropped. Join us for the Moab mission in March or the Be Unstoppable Retreat in Yosemite next October. Or if you're wanting to do your own road trip, you can hop in our sprinter van that sleeps up to five and hit the open road. Be sure to go to jill allen coaching.com for all updates and join the Just Breathe Facebook group. We would love to connect with you. Come back next week as we will be talking about the girl inside of you showing up with purpose and fire. So be sure to come back and Thank you so much for joining us today, and I pray that we fold your heart with joy. If you could let us know before hopping off here, that would be incredible. Subscribe, Share this episode link on your social media if you felt encouraged or inspired as we all know someone that can benefit. And I would love it if you would give some feedback in a review as well. Talk with you next time. Be fit, be fierce, be unstoppable. See ya.
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