Hey y'all, this is the Authentic Heart Podcast, and I am your host, Amber Westerman. Thank you so much for being here with me today. It really means the world, and I really hope that you enjoy what I have to say coming up in this episode. Before we get started, I just want to start with an affirmation. Something that I like to do every day is start my day with an affirmation and let it help guide me. Sometimes, if I'm going through a challenge, I will draw an affirmation or write my own in my journal and create it to help me just kind of frame my mindset for the day. And so we're gonna start today. I have an affirmation card deck that I created myself based on affirmations that I've used over the years that have helped me navigate my life. And so I'm gonna do a little shuffle and then we're gonna we're gonna draw one. And I want this affirmation to just be something maybe to think of as you start your week ahead and maybe let it kind of create a theme to navigate your week and the things that you have coming. All right, here we go. I honor my emotions and feel them fully so I can release what no longer serves me. Ugh, that's such a powerful one. Because sometimes I feel like we can we can get a little chaotic in our emotions, right? Especially us as women monthly. But one thing I really love about the cycle that we have as women is I think that we can uh we have the blessing of letting of of a moment in the month causing our emotions to be louder than other times in the month because we can tend to just like shove them down. And then when it becomes our our cycle time, it's so loud that we can't uh we can't help but to face it. And I don't think that they would be as loud sometimes if we chose to honor our emotions, every single one that comes in the each moment. And so I just want you to take your week on and just notice the emotions that come up and feel them, allow yourself to feel them so that you can honor them and happy or sad, mad, whatever, and put your hand on your heart and just say, I hear you and I honor you. And what is it that you need from me right now? I feel like that's such a powerful thing because we never really take the time to slow down and just like listen to our own guidance. And really, I don't feel like there's anybody else other than God, which is the internal guidance, right? That we tune into is whispers from God. And so I hope that you take some time this week to slow down a little bit and just honor all of your emotions that show up in uh whatever scenarios life throws your way. All right, so let's go ahead and get started with today's episode. I am just chatting on here solo today, and I just kind of want to share a bit about myself on this episode and my journey and I guess why I'm here doing this podcast. Ever since I really became an adult, I have had this crazy fascination with health and wellness. It started out more so with uh food, the food side of it, because I my entire life from the time that I was born, actually, I had dealt with some pretty serious gut issues. And for most of my childhood, I hid it and lied to my parents because I had a traumatic doctor's experience and didn't want to go back. And so I just kind of kept this to myself and silenced myself growing up, and that played into a big role of not knowing myself as a kid. I also was infused with the kids that I surrounded myself with growing up, the same group of girls from kindergarten through high school, and I would be called slow a lot and uh just kind of was bullied in various ways that shut me down even more. And so I really had no sense of who I was, and I just thought that honestly I was this unlucky girl who l just lived in this body in pain constantly, and it was a really challenging thing to reel or to go through. And in my early adulthood, my late teens, I guess, I my eyes were opened to what health actually meant. My mom was a personal trainer growing up, and she would often in my teenage years like try to influence me to work out, but I I resented it because I just thought she was trying to, I don't know, get me to to be something that I didn't that I didn't feel like I was. And I was just always influenced by other people's thoughts and choices. And I this naturopathic doctor, Lindsay Duncan, opened my eyes to the fact that I had the choice to actually learn about how food is impacting my body. And I later also learned the mind is no less powerful than the food that we're consuming. I went on this journey after I graduated high school of self-discovery, really. And I went to school, studied uh at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and became a health coach. Uh I ran a health coaching practice for a little while and partnered with my mom and worked with her clients and other clients and would host online group detox programs. It was an incredible experience. All the while I was honestly also still going through my own battles. And I mean, there's always battles going on. I'm still working on things, right? But I just like kept having this growing fascination with food. And I decided to go to school again. And I went to, at the time it was called Maharishi University of Management, and I went to study Ayurveda. If you're familiar, it's like an ancient Indian practice of preventing uh health problems. And it's it's a lifestyle way of living in balance in yourself and in life. And I went there to study that, to incorporate it into my health coaching practice. And then while I was there, I stumbled upon, I stumbled upon sustainable living and agriculture. And I was like, ooh, food is the core to our health. I need to learn how to grow it and how to be good to our planet because obviously, if food is so important to our well-being, taking care of the planet is no less important. So I ended up deciding to kind of let go of health coaching and become a farmer and learn about sustainable living and uh permaculture and off-griding. And it was really fascinating to me. And so I studied that and I went to a study abroad program, doing quotes to Hawaii and uh with that, with that university, and was out there for a few months and learned so much and was embedded in just the Hawaiian culture, and I fell in love with it. It is such a culture of like love, care for the planet, care for each other. It's just, it's just such an incredible culture there. And I fell in love with it and I met a local farmer and connected with him and ended up deciding to drop out of school because I was like, you know, honestly, I think it makes more sense to get paid and learn how to grow food than to pay and get in thousands of dollars in debt and uh learning how to grow food. So I dropped out and stayed in Hawaii and um I lived on that farm for about a year and a half, and it was really fun. And I'm not saying to drop out of school if you know your heart is telling you to go there, but uh this whole podcast is about authenticity and following your heart. And I think that there's something to say that like taking action in moments like that where your heart is like fully going towards something, even though it seems scary and unpredictable and you don't know what's ahead. I think that it's that's like my favorite thing to do because it's when the magic really truly unfolds. And at least in my life, that's when it has been. After I went to Hawaii, I I became a farmer and then I just stumbled upon this incredible music community out there. I had up to this point, I learned guitar in my senior year of high school, just kind of self-taught. And it was kind of just therapy for me in my bedroom and for my friends. I'd play covers and stuff and wasn't really even writing songs yet. And I just was meeting this amazing music community that I would start jamming with. We'd do like campfire jams and jams on the beach multiple times a week. And I started to get inspired to write whenever I was out there and pursue it more professionally. I kept getting the nudge to like get up on an open mic, or my first show was at this little bistro in the town that I lived in. And so I just started pursuing music professionally. And while I was out there, also I met my husband, who is oddly enough from Austin, Texas. And I am from a small town just outside of Austin. It's about an hour outside of Austin called Marble Falls. And we met out there on the farm, or not on the farm, we actually met on a beach. And so he was on vacation for he was on vacation and was staying with some friends who lived on a permaculture farm out there, and he was there for a couple weeks and then was going to go to Maui for another week and before he headed back home to Austin. And I didn't even know these people he was with. I my uh co-worker on the farm did, and she didn't have a car, and she asked me to give her a ride to this birthday party. So I gave her a ride to the birthday party, and she was like, You should stick around, they're all really cool people. And so I did, and that's where we met, was at that birthday party on the beach. So crazy. And we went on a couple dates throughout the time that he was there, and then he ended up going to the airport to go to Maui and then to go back home a week later. And we're like, well, maybe we'll touch back, touch base back whenever um we'll touch base back whenever I'm in Austin for the holidays. And he was high. And he told me that he like sat there at the airport and was just like praying for some sort of a sign on whether he should stay or go. And he looked down, and in between his legs, when he opened his eyes on the ground, it was a feather that was half black, half white. It's a minor bird feather. And he just like instantly was like, ooh, yin and yang, I've got to stay. And so he ended up hitchhiking an hour back to North Kohala, where I lived at the time, and called me and was like, hey, I'm coming back. I want to just like give the island a little bit more time and try this out. Long story sort of short, he ended up uh skipping his second flight. I lent him my tent and he lived in my tent on a friend's property for about a month before he ended up moving in with me to the farmhouse. And now, eight and a half years later, we're married, living back in Austin together. And it's just, it's wild. And like, if I would have never, first off, whenever I was at that university studying agriculture, I actually had no interest in going to Hawaii. My friends were like submitting for this program to go, and I was like, you know, I don't really know about it. And my friends are like, you should totally go. It's gonna be so much fun. And I was just like, I don't know how I'm gonna make the money. And you know what we did? We actually ended up baking a whole bunch of cookies and selling them outside of these meditation domes that are on campus. It's a wild university. And selling all these treats outside of these domes when people were done meditating and raised money to go. And I ended up, they only accepted, I think, 10 people into the program. And I ended up getting accepted in uh after I applied from peer pressure and went out there. And man, if my friends would have never peer pressured me, I would have uh I would have never met my husband Phil. And uh as soon as like the thought of it sounded really fun and cool, but I was just like, there's no way I can afford to do it. There's just not a way. And whenever I was able to make it happen, it just blew my mind. It I felt like I was living in a dream. And I still feel like I'm living in a dream with my husband, and the just the life that we are creating together and the amount of support that he gives me in life is wild. And we actually got married on the island almost a year and a half ago already. It's crazy. In the town that we met in and started our life together, and it just like felt like a sweet full circle. And we've always wanted to move back there at some point, but we're actually really happy here in Austin right now. So we're just kind of living life here, and it's it's really beautiful. But I just wanted to share that because I feel like there's been and and I'm pursuing music now too. Now that I'm in like we actually went to Nashville whenever I was in Hawaii, I should finish my story. Whenever I was in Hawaii, I started playing more and more shows. I was farming full-time on the weekdays and barefoot in the soil, listening to music and creating ideas and stuff. And that was when I started writing music. And then I started gigging on the weekends, and I just like was falling in love with pursuing music. And I went to this music festival out there called the Hawaii Songwriting Festival, and it helps teach songwriters and independent artists how to make a living in music. And it was the first time that my eyes were opened to the fact that, like, oh, you can actually make a living in music. And so I was like, well, I think this sounds a lot more fun than farming. I love gardening as a passion, but it is a backbreaking job and does not pay well. It is definitely a job of passion. So I ended up dragging my husband to not really dragging, he was fully there for support. Uh, but we went to Nashville afterwards. I researched all these different universities because I was like, you know, maybe it's time to get back into school, but for music this time. So I was researching the best like songwriting schools and that had like the music business classes I wanted and whatnot. And there was one in, I believe, Seattle that I was looking at, and then it was Berkeley I was looking at, and I was also looking at Belmont and Nashville. And I applied to Belmont. This is another wild story. I applied to Belmont to their songwriting program, which is really hard to get into. And I applied and I never heard anything back. We were, meanwhile, we were packing everything up and getting ready to leave the island. And I had been exposed to black mold out there and was going through um some really intense health stuff, sinus stuff. And so that was another pool to leave the island. So we were packing our things, and I was like, man, I I'm surprised that I haven't heard anything. So I called them and was able to get in touch with the head of the songwriting department. And whenever I talked to him on the phone, he was like, I'm so sorry. I don't know how you didn't receive, I don't know how you didn't receive your letter in the mail, but we've denied your entrance. We just don't think you're a good fit right now. And there were so many qualifying songwriters. But just so you know, you can actually apply again in a month, or not in a month. I think he was like, there's a new enrollment period that opens in a week. And so you can try to apply again and maybe get in the second time. And I was like, hmm, this is crazy. Because what are the odds that I didn't get my letter? What are the odds that I like it took me calling to get a hold of the songwriting head to know that I could apply again? Because I didn't even know. If I would have gotten that letter and it said that I was denied, I would have just been like, oh, okay, I've got to figure something else out. But I didn't I I had this conversation with him instead where I got to try again. And so I wrote a new song and I tried again. And Bill and I were like, you know what? Let's just go to Nashville. We're just moving. So we sold most of our stuff, got rid of all of our stuff, and shipped my car to the island, sold his truck or shipped my car from the island to California, sold his truck, did a three-week road trip from California to Texas for the holidays to be with family. And then we our plans were to immediately go to Nashville. We didn't even have a home yet. It was wild. And after we were in Texas, while we were there, we I went to this Facebook group and was like searching for houses. And we found a girl who had a space in her home that she was wanting to rent out, and we vibed really well. So we decided to go with that in like a week. It was it was like a week away from moving there. It was crazy. And around that same time, I think it was after we had already like decided what our lease was. I ended up getting a letter from Belmont saying that I was accepted. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Like, just what are the odds of all of that? It was just really wild. And so we went to Tennessee and I started at the beginning of the new year. I started classes and it was ridiculous tuition. And I definitely cried my way into uh some of the classes that I really wanted because they are a Christian university, and I have so many friends who are Christians. I am not, but I um I'm not a very religious person, but I'm a very spiritual person, and I feel like I relate to many different things in many different religions, including Christianity. But one of their main courses is a course on religion, and for the amount of money that I was spending there, I was like, I do not want to take this course. I am likely only going to be here for a semester because of how expensive it is. And so I'm gonna cry my way into all of the classes that I want to take in music. So I did, and I got all the classes that I wanted, and it was beautiful, and I Freaking studied hard, came out with a 4.0, but I in the meanwhile, I was like so snotty and gross and didn't make any friends because I was still battling this mold exposure from Hawaii and this year and a half long sinus infection that I went through. And it was crazy. And the wild thing is, is while I was at Belmont, I was like working on, of course, ever since I had been exposed to the black mold, I was working on my health and trying to like do all these detoxes that some made it worse and trying to eat really clean and like I couldn't, I couldn't drink any alcohol, any little sip would make my sinuses go so crazy it would blow my eardrum. And I couldn't hear for three days and I'd have like a three-day migraine. It was so miserable. But despite that, I was still gonna pursue my dreams. And while I was in Nashville studying at Belmont, when spring break came, I decided to raise some money to go to this songwriting retreat. And I was so excited for it, but I was so nervous because it was like a weekend long. You stay there and you're rooming with other people. And I was rooming with this girl that I didn't know, and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna keep her up all night because my freaking sinuses. I would like I would have so many sleepless nights with Phil. I'm I cannot believe he's still with me after going through a year and a half of that with me because I would run through a roll of toilet paper a night, blowing my nose. It was so, so miserable. And I was just like, how like I I was so nervous that I was gonna keep this girl up all night with me. And so I get to this songwriting retreat, my sinuses stopped everything that happened. Like my my sinuses just stopped flooding, and I got full nights of sleep. And you know why I realized that weekend, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm in my element and I'm not stressed. And that's why my biggest trigger with my sinuses is stress, and I need to reduce my stress if I want to heal this thing happening to me. And so whenever I went back to uh I realized that after I went back to school after spring break, because I did the songwriting retreat and then went back and it all came back right when I started classes. My sinuses just started flooding again. And so I was like, you know what? At the end of the semester, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna quit school and I'm gonna take a break, get a little part-time job. I got a part-time job at a garden nursery and just start doing the music thing on my own. And as soon as classes ended, I started to get better. Uh, it took some time, but it was a drastic difference from whenever I was going to school and I was just trying to manage my stress. And I feel like that goes to show that there's something to listening to your heart and to your energy and to the way that you're feeling. The mind is so powerful. It is so powerful. It can be more powerful than food, and it's so powerful whenever we really tune in and try to figure out what our heart and what our body's trying to tell us. I feel like our our body is constantly speaking to us and we're constantly trying to understand it, but like at the same time, band-aid it and just be like, I've got to, I've got to be doing all these things. I've got to, I've got to live my life. And we don't take the time to slow down and stop and listen to what our body has to say and to what our energy is trying to tell us. And so I just wanted to share a little bit about my story and my journey. And I thought it was interesting how back when I was younger, starting my health coaching business, I was fully all in on that. I was like, I'm gonna be a health coach. This is my purpose, this is what I'm meant to do. And then, like two years later, I find about out about farming, and I'm like, this is my purpose. I'm meant to be a farmer, and this is what my life, this is what I'm here for. And then after that, I fell into music and I was like, this is my purpose. Like, I've always wanted to help people with my work. Like, I want to feel like I'm living a life on purpose and I'm contributing to the greater collective in some way or form into other people's lives. And health coaching, I felt like I was just a little too sensitive to other people's energy and issues to do that sort of like intimate work. I was like, oh, that's why I went to farming and I was like, you know what? I can do it through food, just be with myself. But then music, I was like, ooh, I can do it through my words still, and also have that like boundary of like the stage or like listening, streaming, you know. And then also I think the really powerful thing for me about pursuing music is that I've been starting to really find my own voice because from what you heard of my childhood, I really silenced myself in many different ways, and I didn't understand what it meant to have your own voice, and I didn't really truly know who I was because who I was was defined by everybody around me. And so music has been such an incredible healing tool for me to at first find my help my voice be expressed through other people's songs. I was covering music for the longest time and then and then now writing songs. I feel like I love, love, love writing, especially co-writing, because I think there's some sort of like magic that happens in the room. But I will tell you, I feel like writing is one of the most challenging things I have ever done in my life. And it is still so, so challenging for me. And I really think that it's because I've never truly accepted my own voice. And so lately I am just writing, writing, writing. Just uh I'm doing the artist way right now. Actually, I'm on week three. This is the third time I've done it. I've never fully completed it, but it is a powerful, powerful course, powerful tool. It's a book, the artist way, for helping you get through creative block. And this is the first time I've taken it where it actually like feels so good to be writing so much. In the past, I've always just been like, uh, I don't want to be writing anymore. This is hurting my hand. It still hurts my hand. But it's like I get excited to sit down every day and write. And I feel like this is gonna be a really big creative breakthrough for me this time. And I think a lot of that is just just songwriting is really helping me find my voice. And I think this podcast is gonna be a big part of that for me, too, of just being okay to be authentically me out loud, not just in my own little private life, but out loud. And I am, I just want to say that like I am so grateful that you're here with me right now. Listening to this, it means the world to me. And I really hope that through listening to this podcast, you take away any little nuggets that you can relate to or feel inspired by. And I hope that it helps you find your own authenticity and your own life and really pursue your own heart and your own heart streams and find your own inner voice in your own life because there really truly is just so much noise all around us. Our friends and family, the news, social media. Oh my gosh, social media. I just deleted social media on my phones about a month and a half ago now. And I I download Instagram and Facebook sometimes once a day, only for work purposes if I have to get on there for something. And then I delete it as soon as I'm done. And I cannot tell you how freeing that's been. It's incredible. Anyways, I've got to run, but I am grateful for you being here and listening to my story, and I hope that in some way, shape, or form it was helpful for you navigating things in your own life. And I am so excited for what else is to come on this new journey of my podcast. This is the Authentic Heart Podcast, and I am Amber Westerman, and thank you so much for joining us.