Triggered To Life: The Journey with Cami Wolff
Cami Wolff helps people get healthy. In 2016, she founded The CANIS Shift, a wellness company that supports organizations and individuals in Washington, D.C. Through holistic nutrition, mindfulness, and self-care products, Cami leads people to connect to their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. She is also the host of the Triggered To Life Podcast.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE DISCUSS:
Growing up with a very sick parent determined to find health via food
Wanting to be “normal” as a kid
Being immersed in alternative health before wellness was sexy
The effects of being exposed to the threat of death as a kid
Breaking free from lifelong brain fog
Collecting learnings and certifications along the way that eventually become your business
“Healthy” routines only get you so far when paired with negative self-talk
Going to the doctor for acne and walking out with diagnoses of parasites, viruses, and bacterial infections
Creating a business around guiding people towards health and inner peace
The importance of a clear mind in Washington DC of all places
Feeling loved by a partner providing the confidence to uplevel
A blindsiding breakup in the first week of the pandemic
A “soulmate” being someone who brings you closer to your soul
The cracking open of your heart being the “triggered to life” moment
Becoming more yourself after a breakup
Growth as a result of sitting in your discomfort and moving through the pain
Putting your self-care toolbox to work
Learning to ask for help in 2020
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Release date: March 18, 2021
Cami: So, welcome, Juliana, back to the podcast this week. We are doing a little role reversal for the pod. Juliana is going to interview me, and we're going to see how that flows for us. It's time to share my triggered-to-life story, I guess, or maybe there's no time, like the present, so we will do that anyways, even though I'm rambling because I'm nervous. So, I will pass it along to you, Juliana.
Juliana: I'm so happy for this episode. I'm so excited. I know everyone wants to know your story. You like to deflect your own story and ask other people lots of questions, but I think getting to know you, I've realized how interesting your story is and how much, hearing what you've gone through, can help people. So, obviously, people on the show know you probably less well than I do, but they likely know that you are very interested in health. And I think having a business where you promote that you help people get healthy can mean a lot of things. And I have a sense of what that means for you, but people might look at you and think that you were always healthy, or that you grew up like that, and life is easy for you, and you look good, and you have this great celery juice routine, and it's easeful, and everything flows naturally. Is that true?
Cami: Yes and no. So, I wasn't always healthy. I think that when you see someone online, you assume a lot of different things about them. But the reason why I am so obsessed with helping people get healthy is because I felt awful for a very long time. And so, I take it very personally. Like, I do all of this so that I can show people how to feel really good, because feeling awful sucks. So, my health was not in a good place, and I had to essentially claw my way back. I used to be super inflamed. I used to have really bad acne and awful digestion, chronic yeast infections, viruses, bacteria, like literally everything you could imagine. When I went to the doctor, they're like, "This, this, this, and this." I'm like, "Huh, I thought I just had some acne." So, yeah. I have not always been healthy, and it's been a long road, a good 10 years of really trying literally everything you can imagine from colonics, coffee enemas, sauna, fasting, paleo, autoimmune paleo, like everything, every diet. Before any of this was popular, I was scouring the web, I was scouring blogs, I was sitting in my college dorm room trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me.
Juliana: What about growing up? What did health look like for you growing up?
Cami: So, growing up, my mom had bone cancer when I was six months old. So, she had her leg amputated above the knee, which is obviously a pretty traumatic event to happen in your childhood. That alone catapulted her into thinking, "Okay. Well, I think we need to change my diet. I think I need to change my family's diet." But she didn't really know what to do. I think she started taking--she added supplements into her routine. But when I was eight years old, she had breast cancer and--she had really bad breast cancer. So, she had Stage 4B breast cancer. She had a pretty bleak prognosis. And so, she had read a book prior, many years prior, about the macrobiotic diet. And the macrobiotic diet is a plant-based, mostly plant-based Japanese diet.
So, essentially, the makeup of the macrobiotic diet, made popular by Madonna, is brown rice, beans, sea vegetables, vegetables, and pickled vegetables. And so, they believe that each food holds an energetic quality. And so, each cancer holds an energetic quality. So, essentially, you're trying to achieve a balance between yin and yang. And depending on what type of cancer you have, you eat for the specific type of cancer. Essentially, what it does is it brings your body fat down so low, and cancer is stored in fat. And so, it brings your body fat super, super low. So, essentially, boost your immune system at the same time. It doesn't work for everyone. Fortunately, it worked really well for my mother. She made a full recovery. She did conventional treatment as well, but that essentially catapulted our family into a plant-based way of life. I think I went vegetarian in the fifth grade. I didn't really know what that meant besides the fact that my mom was reading to me about factory farming and I was horrified, and I was like traumatized, like, "Oh my god, I cannot eat that anymore." And so, I ate very "healthy," but I would also go and eat a ton of shit at my friends' houses. I was addicted to muffins and--I mean, girl, I love muffins, ice cream. Just like kids. And so, as I got older, I ate well and I resented eating healthy because I wanted to be normal. And I will tell you, wellness was not sexy in 1999.
Juliana: There's no goop.
Cami: There was no goop. There was no sexy, blonde, wellness guru. I'm thinking like the Sakara girls. There was none of that. And so, I was like, "Oh, this is so embarrassing. Why do I have to bring this to school? I don't want anyone to see my lunch." And so, I really had a pretty negative relationship with the idea of being healthy because I just wanted to be normal and I wanted like a lunchable.
Juliana: Yeah, 100%. And so, the idea of food being medicine was almost religion to you growing up in your family. And it's almost like you had to rebel against that to come back to how food could be healing in your own way, right?
Cami: Yeah, yeah. I think growing up, it was life or death. It was like, you eat this way, in my mom's case, or you die. Like, this is the only hope. And it was one of those things where people would be like, "Oh, that's really cute that your mom thinks she can heal herself with a diet." There was no rhetoric around food as medicine. It was like a total hippie counterculture type of thing. And so, people used to feel super bad for her because they're like, "Oh, you're going to die," essentially. So, it was a really interesting environment to grow up in. And then, when she survived and she's been cancer-free for over 20 years, it was incredible. And she went on to write--she wrote a cookbook, she wrote a recovery story.
And so, that highly influenced me, and I had the opportunity to be exposed to a plethora of different types of healing. So, she would bring me along to acupuncture. She would bring me to the cancer community cooking classes that she taught. So, I grew up around a lot of people who had different ways of thinking about things. And even though I resented it, I also was gathering and gaining all this information from such an early age that I thought nothing of it, like, it was just part of--it feels like it's part of my DNA. It feels like I just--I don't know. We were talking earlier about how some things are just second nature to you. And from health is just second nature, it's not something I have to think about, it's just been there all along.
Juliana: Yeah, yeah. And I see that in you. What was it like on your psyche growing up with one of your primary caregivers in and out of doctor's offices and on the brink of death for really on and off until adolescence?
Cami: So, it's interesting because my mom, she recovered herself, or as she was recovering, she's also helping a lot of people recover. The thing is is people can change their diet and not everyone is going to survive. Some people may prolong their life by months or years, but some people have such aggressive forms of cancer that they pass away. And all day of their life is better because they've changed their diet, but they don't survive. And so, my mom helped a lot of those people as I was growing up. So, I really was seeing a lot of sick people around me all the time. So, for there was a good four years where we had friends that were dying every couple months, and I think for me, it was a little dark, but I didn't realize it at the time. And it was also inspiring because she was helping so many people. Looking back, I think that it was probably harder than I realized, and I have different attachment issues now. I think that looking back, yeah, that may have something to do with it, but [00:10:43 unin] was just like, "Okay. This is normal."
Juliana: Yeah. It's so much loss for a small child being on the threat of loss of your mother, and then, as you're saying, all the people around you. But also, how interesting that she became a leader in this community and was saving people because in a sense, that may have inspired you to be doing what you're doing now in a different--it looks different, but that kind of leadership around health was modeled for you very young.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: So, did you rebel against your family's strict ideas of what was healthy? How did you find your own sense of what health means to you?
Cami: Yeah. So, before I answer that, I will say one thing. When you are around a lot of things that are activating to their nervous system, it's hard on the nervous system. So, by the time I was 20 years old, I had severe adrenal fatigue and burnout, and I don't think that may have been the case if I hadn't been under so much stress as a child. And so, [00:11:46 unin] back into the story later on, but that was just something that was interesting that popped to mind. So, going to rebelling. Yeah. So, probably around like seventh or eighth grade, eighth grade, or ninth grade, I started to become very aware of my body, and in a lot of ways that were part of adolescence, I think. But because I have a tendency to be obsessive and just self-critical and--
Juliana: I can't relate.
Cami: Yeah. Well, being a tall girl, it's hard already because you're already so much bigger than anyone. So, your whole life, you are described as big. And so, I also love, like I love food. And as a child, I ate a lot and I was like, "Kind of pudgy and round." And as I got older, I was really concerned with body image. So, I took that into my own hands of like, "Okay. Well, I'm going to eat really strictly, this, this, and this." And it was all very healthy, but it was just a little too regimented for a child of like 13, 14, 15. I mean, this lasted for many years, but I think I turned it a little bit differently of, like, I controlled through restrictions. So, I would eat healthy, but I would probably not eat enough, and I was always moving a lot. And then, as I got into college, I was really afraid to gain the Freshman 15, and I was like, "Well, I can control this. I'll just eat less." And so, I was running a lot, I was eating not a ton, but I felt really good. Like, I was in college in Florida. I felt great, but I was also--I didn't get my period for maybe, really, like five years.
Juliana: Wow.
Cami: I didn't get my period until I was 14, which was late anyways. I had it on and off until I was like 22. And then, I was able to gain it back fully. But I was always very active and I didn't eat enough fat, but I didn't realize it. I had no idea. I was just like, "That's normal."
Juliana: Yeah. Was there any part of you looking for attention for your controlled eating in a world, in a family dynamic where you didn't get that much attention?
Cami: I think I was always looking for someone to be like, "Is anything wrong?" I went to a therapist my sophomore year at college and what I really wanted to say was like, "I think I have an eating disorder, but I couldn't even say that." And now looking back, I don't consider it--I consider it disordered eating, I don't consider an eating disorder. But it's just funny how much things have changed because I've been forced to communicate in so many different ways that I was never naturally comfortable at communicating. And so, yeah. It's funny. Yeah. I definitely wanted people to inquire. My parents were a little like, "Hey, what's going on?" But they never said anything, because also, my family--like, my dad's very thin. So, it's not weird that I was very thin. My mom's thin as well. So, yeah. It was not alarming, but it's all set out there.
Juliana: So, you've created this health business from scratch, essentially. Were you a good student growing up? What was school like for you?
Cami: Yeah. So, I really struggled in school. Well, I struggled and I excelled. There were some things like when I was on, I was on. If I liked the teacher, I was going to do really well. If I didn't respect the teacher, I was going to do very poorly. And that is very apparent in all my grades growing up, I think, like, I always loved History and English, so I had really good grades in History and English. Math, I needed a lot more support. And I will say my brain works the best it's ever worked ever now. And that's because I've done a ton of things to optimize my mental cognition. So, growing up, I had extremely, insanely, awful brain fog. It was being stuck in my body. It was like having your head in the clouds, your mind out the window every single day. So, I understood things if they were explained to me, but most of the time, I was just in a fog. So, I couldn't understand things.
So, as I got older, it was really cool to break free from that. Honestly, it's a prison to not be able to think clearly. And so, yeah. I started my business from scratch. Also, from scratch sounds funny. But I was collecting things along the way. I was collecting certifications. I was collecting different learnings. I took a semester off in college and I went to a culinary nutrition program. And I quit my job as a recipe developer and went to yoga teacher training. And I went to silent retreats, and I took like a year of like eat, pray, love, find yourself in 2015 or 2014. And what I realized was that I thought I really had it figured out because I had my nutrition and I had my movement really dialed in, but the thoughts I was thinking were still complete garbage. They were ruminating, they were constantly barraging me just on a loop, right?
Juliana: [00:18:11 unin], like negative self-talk?
Cami: Negative self-talk, so much.
Juliana: Walk us through a self-talk kind of extravaganza in your head at that time.
Cami: Oh god. A lot of like, "Oh, you can have this and you can have this." And then, you're going to run, but also, should you do this? Does he like you?
Juliana: So, food control, obsession about if relationships--I mean, that's--yeah.
Cami: Yeah. But at the same time, I really wasn't suffering. I was pretty happy. So, when people talk about like, "Oh my gosh, I was like a prison in my mind," like, I didn't know anything different. So, I was pretty happy. The prison to me would have been like isolation. I was never one to isolate myself. I was very social. I loved to go around people. And so, that gave me reprieve from my own mind. And also, I loved to party when I was younger. So, for me, that was my outlet. And so, that was like freedom from having to think about all the shit all the time. And I forgot what you're--
Juliana: Okay. So, you've got a job. You're what, like a sophomore in college. You've got it down the aesthetic, you've got down the look, you're eating right, you're controlling your eating, you're working out the right way, you have your group of friends, then what happened? How do you get on the path that you're on now?
Cami: Yeah. So, essentially, at that time, I was taking a lot of Adderall. And so, that essentially burnt out my adrenal system. That essentially combined with the stress I'd already been through, like as a child, made my body just revolt against me. I started essentially breaking out really, really bad at my skin, just like went insanely crazy. And so, I went to the doctor thinking like, "Oh, I have acne." And he was like, "You have Hashimoto's," which is an autoimmune disorder. "You have a parasite, you have Epstein-Barr virus, you have--" at the time, I had like IBS, systematic yeast infection, chronic UTIs, HPV, and something else. And I was like--
Juliana: Wow.
Cami: I thought I had acne.
Juliana: Your skin was screaming at you.
Cami: Yeah. Essentially, my body was just like, "Fuck you." And I still didn't want to stop. I still don't want to change. I thought that I would go on--it was Dr. Mark Hyman. I thought I would go on his plan for three months, and I could go back to doing whatever I wanted, and I would be good to go. And so, I took a semester off, and this is when I went to cooking school, and I essentially--oh, and I had really high mercury levels. So, really high heavy metals in my system. And so, essentially, I was chelating those heavy metals, I was doing all sorts of different things to rid my body of all these ailments and really did not understand at all, did not understand how to detox. My body wasn't prepared to support the level of detox, so I was extremely sick. Looking back, I would have done it totally differently, but that's okay because I learned a lot. And yeah.
So, I took that semester off. I ended up going back to school and finishing my degree. I changed my lifestyle a lot at that point. I still went out and such, but I looked and felt so much better. And I got really into cooking. I started a blog, I started cooking all the time, but it's not like the blog took off and everything went great after that. No. It was like, I still didn't really know what I wanted to do--sorry, my dog is wetting my hair. But I knew I didn't want to go into cooking because I thought cooking was very blue-collar. And I was like, "I can't be a chef."
Juliana: Yeah. Interesting.
Cami: Yeah. I don't know why I had that in my mind, but--
Juliana: It's like a limiting belief from childhood?
Cami: It is, yeah. It's like, "Oh, it's not a good enough job."
Juliana: Also, I think there was the "Top Chef," there weren't these celebrity chefs. There were bougie chefs back then?
Cami: No.
Juliana: [00:22:47 unin].
Cami: No. And so, I ended up moving to Washington, D.C. I thought I was going to do food policy. I was like, "Okay. I'll change food on a systematic level." As I got here, I realized I didn't want to do that. I started working for a food product company and did sales for them for about nine months. I ended up moving to New York and working for Sakara Life, doing recipe development and operations. And I was with them for probably like 10 months. I opened their commercial kitchen in the L.A. I was learning a lot. I was 24 years old. I was doing much more than you would have gotten to do at that age because it was a startup. I was like [00:23:27 unin] employee.
But coming back to like, I've always had a little bit of trouble with authority, and I thought I knew everything at 24, and I was like, "You know what, I did a program one weekend in L.A." I did a Landmark Forum, so for people to know that. And I was like, "You know what, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to do my own thing." And I knew I still didn't have all the tools. So, I ended up quitting my job like an idiot.
Juliana: Like an idiot, it sounds like it was a good thing.
Cami: Well, I was smart, but I just--
Juliana: What did you learn in the Landmark Forum? Landmark's all about the story you tell yourself. What was the story you were telling yourself?
Cami: So, definitely, the story--well, there--yeah. It essentially comes down to like you give everything meaning. And I was under the impression that I wasn't smart enough to do my own thing. I didn't have enough tools to start my own business, which I didn't. I didn't have any of those things, but I definitely had a strong belief in myself. And I always had an inner knowing that I could do anything I wanted to because that was a very privileged viewpoint that my mother instilled in me. Always do what you want to do because you will be happy for the rest of your life if you do something you love. And she owe it to herself. Not everyone has that rhetoric going in their head.
So, the Landmark Forum was definitely interesting. I didn't continue any of the stuff following up, but I did quit my job. I went and started working for a real estate broker and got to go between Shelter Island, The Hamptons, Greenport, which is like the [00:25:36 unin]. And I did that for about six months waiting for my lease to end in New York. So, I was able to make money doing something pretty cool. And she gave me a ton of flexibility. So, at the time, I started really delving into spirituality, which I was already always into, but I had a lot of free time to discover self because I'd gone through a bad breakup and I really had very little identity as to who I was.
And so, going through that experience and having that time, I went to Peru in October of 2015 or 2014. I can't remember which one. I think 2014. And I had an experience that was profound. It made me realize that I wanted to move back to Washington, D.C., that New York City was not for me. So, essentially, three months later, I decided I was going to take a personal training program in Washington, D.C. I decided I was going to go through a nutrition program and get my graduate degree, which I didn't end up doing. But I did go and do the personal training school for six months. And so, I essentially moved back to Washington, D.C., like tucked my tail and came back, and decided after that program in October of 2016, I was going to start my company.
Juliana: So, you've accumulated all of these certifications, personal training, culinary nutrition, what else? I mean, definitely some psychology understanding in your own development, you're just picking up hobbies along the way that you didn't know would turn into a business, which I think is really expansive for people because I've thought about this myself and certainly heard other people say that they think if you're going to start something, you have to have this kind of north star that you know you're working towards and everything is aligned with that. But your story is really not that at all. It's picking up things that worked for you, like, you dropped out, you took that semester off of college to do the culinary nutrition program because you were sick and you needed to take a semester after school. It's like that was necessity fostering something that gave you this amazing skill set.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: Talk a little bit about that, about how things just happened without you having this master plan the whole time.
Cami: Yeah. So, essentially, I got my yoga teacher training. I was well-versed in a lot of alternative modalities. So, I wasn't going to grad school to get my Ph.D. I was essentially immersing myself in different modalities and cultures, and studying essentially how to heal oneself from the inside out while doing a lot of self-experimentation. And I think that for a long time, I had shadow around that of like, "Well, I'm not trained as a registered dietitian. No, I'm not." And if that's what you're looking for, I'm not the person to come to. But if you're looking for someone who has tried it all and has really seen what works and what doesn't from a ton of anecdotal studies and over time working with people for three years, you see all these different things, right, what works and what doesn't work.
I also got to be the best guinea pig in the world trying things on myself. Of course, I am one person everyone should figure out what works for them. But yeah, I definitely have collected tons of tools that essentially have helped to soothe and heal the nervous system. I've done a lot of trauma work and shadow work on myself. I don't take people through that. That's the work of therapists. But I definitely have resources for people and feel very confident helping people with their nutrition, with their mindfulness, and with their movement, right?
Juliana: Mm-hmm. You're a guide. If you can't help them directly, you can guide them to the right person. You had a very curated list of people that can help people.
Cami: I have the ultimate wellness Rolodex.
Juliana: Yeah. So, okay. One more question about your business before we transition to relationships and a little bit deeper transformational things. What do you want to do now? You're helping people, you've done coaching, you've worn a lot of different hats with people. Where do you want to go from here? Where can you make the most impact? What's interesting to you?
Cami: Yeah. So, 2020 was big. I closed down the personal training side of my business. I closed my physical wellness studio. I pivoted all of my programming online. So, I do corporate wellness. And so, I put all of that online, which has been a huge transition. I still do my one-on-one coaching online. And then, my goal overall is to cultivate inner peace so that that reflects outer peace. [00:31:08 unin] like we are the change. It starts with us. If you want to see change, start with changing yourself. So, show up as you want the world to show up to you. And I really, really think that as you work your inner landscape, it reflects all around you.
So, that's my goal with helping people is I want to empower hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, whatever it ends up being, of people to feel really good because when you feel good, you do good, and I 100% believe that. I also know that there's a ton of big decisions being made in Washington, D.C., and I want people to make those decisions with a clear mind. When your body is healthy, when you're eating the right things, when you're moving your body in health-supportive ways, when you're meditating and staying grounded and calm, you make healthier decisions.
Juliana: Powerful. You're in the right place to make all the big changes.
Cami: Right.
Juliana: Okay. Let's transition a little bit.
Cami: Okay.
Juliana: A little bit more leading up to why one would start a podcast about people's deepest darkest moments. What kind of person does that?
Cami: The person who loves to be in pain.
Juliana: What is it about the dark night of these soul moments that speaks to you so deeply?
Cami: Well, I've always been someone that people feel very comfortable sharing things with. I think that being said, I have found a lot of hope in hearing other people's stories, and I want to provide that hope for people. So, when I've gone through hard times in my life looking to people that have moved through it with grace, or maybe not grace, has been really helpful for me. And so, I wanted to provide people with that resource. And also, how do you walk yourself out of these situations? It's helpful to see someone that's done that before.
Juliana: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Definitely. It's expansive. It shows you that it's possible. So, tell me about meeting your ex that you thought was the one. What was that experience like?
Cami: Looking back, I mean, it's still one of an amazing experience. You can break up with someone and still appreciate the love story that was. For us, we were introduced by mutual friends. We were friends for a long time, and then we decided that--I actually started working for him part-time while I was running my business, and we decided to go to Burning Man together. We thought we were going to get a group of people together, and it ended up just being us two. Funny. So, we ended up going to Black Rock City. Now, we went to Burning Man. We fell in love, we came back, we were together. Essentially, we moved in pretty quickly, and just had a whirlwind sort of romance. I had never felt so connected to someone, I had never felt so good around someone, and yeah, it was a really positive experience. We did a lot of what felt like deep healing together. I mean, I think to be held in someone's love allows you the ability to grow in a lot of different ways. One, I was able to run my business out of our home. Financially, I was able to invest a lot in coaches because I was living with him. And so, that's a huge privilege. It's like instead of paying rent, I was paying for coaching. I was working with practitioners who were helping me learn new things. He also taught me a lot about business and what to do, and he gave me the confidence to step into a higher version of myself. I think that was very mutual, but we really built each other up in really beautiful ways.
Juliana: Yeah. It sounds like it. So, you're with this person. You have some kind of deep knowing, deep belief that this is it, this is what the poems are about. This is the epic love story you're imagining yourself, doing all the things, progressing, long-lasting love. And tell me about that kind of belief or future being--what felt like taken from you, but ultimately dissipating.
Cami: That's like--I don't know what's the problem was I truly didn't--I had never felt the feeling that I felt with anyone else around this person. So, I still think this person is my soulmate. What I've come to realize is that your soulmate brings you closer to your soul. And so, this person, in particular, brought me to the deepest depths of my soul. I don't think you have to end up with your soulmate. I think we have multiple soulmates. So, yeah. Essentially, a week before the pandemic, I went to Big Sur. I went to a grief yoga teacher training. We had just started to see a therapist because we were moving the next steps of where our relationship was going. Essentially, I came home. I hosted a wellness retreat that you attended. He had gone away that weekend to go visit his parents, and things were just like weird, it was off, something was on his mind, but I didn't know what. It was like very out of the blue, very unusual. And he came back on a Tuesday morning. I knew something was up, obviously. We went to therapy and we broke up. And that was really painful, and I didn't see it coming, and that's why it was so painful.
Juliana: What about it hurt the most?
Cami: It was a shattering of identity. So, who I thought I was, who I thought we were together was completely shattered. So, I couldn't understand. It's like not being able to cognitively grasp for the reasons. There were no reasons. It was for him like an intuitive feeling that I wasn't his person, and that had shifted. Well, one, I wasn't going to convince him that I was because I also believe that, wow, if he has this feeling that he doesn't know why he feels this way but he feels it, I have to support that even though this is the most painful thing I've ever been through. Also, when something like that happens to you, you're in complete and utter shock.
Juliana: Yeah. And no one wants to be the person that's groveling for the other person to love them again.
Cami: No. And there's been times where I've broken up with people and I've just felt like a need to try to convince them, at least for a couple days. This was so different. It was so shocking that you can't--there's just nothing to even argue. The sounds I was making when he broke this news to me were the sounds I imagine a dying animal makes when they're shot by a hunter. It was awful, and he felt awful. And to see how awful he felt, I knew that this was so painful. It was just as painful for him as it was for me. And so, it was almost like how can we make this the least painful for each other because we were so enmeshed in so many different ways. We lived together, we had a dog together. My studio was in our home. We even shared a car, like my car. We had sold his car. So, we did everything together. It was hard to believe that we weren't going to have that anymore.
Juliana: So, you break up a week before the pandemic. You move out. You have to get your own place. What is that process like?
Cami: I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew that, okay, I can move out. So, I got an apartment. I didn't have any furniture because I had sold everything when I moved in with him. My wellness studio, I was like, "That's on hold anyways." He was like, "You can keep that for as long as you need to." But it didn't matter because the pandemic came and I couldn't use it. So, we put that down. I had just opened that six months prior and invested a lot of money in that, so that's hard. Yeah. So, essentially, I was sitting in a--March 17th, I moved into this apartment. I had no furniture. I had the gym floor from my studio on the ground. The coolest, weirdest thing was like, I'm not someone who spends a lot of money on my aesthetics inside the home. I am now, but I wasn't before. And so, I had spent a considerable amount of money on my studio where I brought people because it was for clients. And so, everything I had in that then became my studio and became my apartment. So, that was cool. You can see the wall. I have a lot of beautiful things in here and it was just really interesting to think that it became my apartment.
Juliana: Yeah. So, one thing I want to ask about is, I've read a lot about when there's betrayal, and betrayal can mean just the sudden ending of a relationship, I'm sure it felt betraying to you at the time, what--usually, the other person has some inkling looking back on, "Yeah, things felt kind of off." Were there moments leading up to it that looking back, though you didn't see in the moment, you realized like, "Yeah, that didn't really feel right," or, "Yeah, I didn't really like this house," or what was happening for you in those months leading up to the breakup?
Cami: Yeah. There's a few. One is I always thought to myself, "I thought I was going to buy myself a house. This house never really felt like mine." Which, I love his face, it's beautiful, but it just felt there was an air of like, "This isn't mine." Even on my trip to California, I kept getting these hits of like, "Something feels off," and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Throughout our relationship, we had gone through so much, just he's business-wise, he's an entrepreneur, he went through a lot of things, he went through a lot of personal things. It was really hard. When I was up, he was down. When I was down, he was up. And we were always just going back and forth. But we loved each other, so we made it work.
And looking back, it doesn't--to go through that much hardship with people, whether it's financial, or business, or whatnot, is really hard, and I don't think I realized how hard that can be on a relationship. But really, I mean, I'm thankful for the fact that, no, it was pretty a good relationship while we were in it. And then, when it ended, it ended. And I think back to like, "Why couldn't I see that this was off and this was off?" It was like, "I wasn't meant to." People live blindly in this oasis in my mind until I wasn't. And I had to do a lot of work around that because I keep saying, "Why didn't I see this coming?" I don't think I was meant to see it coming.
Juliana: Yeah. Maybe it would have been too painful to see it coming.
Cami: I think that's the thing, too. But there was one funny thing, which is his house didn't have a bathtub, and on my manifestation list, I had a bathtub. And there was just no way he was ever going to get a bathtub. He built his house. There was no place for a bathtub. So, the joke was like in March and April was, "Oh, yeah. My manifestation came through. I just had to go through hell to get a bathtub."
Juliana: And if you write down bathtub, you better believe it might come with your relationship as the cost.
Cami: Exactly, exactly.
Juliana: You're powerful. So, how did this rock bottom moment trigger you to life? In the keeping of the theme of this podcast, what happened to you after this?
Cami: So, when your heart is broken, essentially, it's cracked open. And the cracking open of your heart is that triggered to life moment for me. I think what that's given me is all of this new knowledge of how to, one, keep your heart open once it's cracked open. I didn't know how to do that before. And what that's looked like for me is one, finding joy even when I'm in extreme and utter pain. For a long time, I was in so much pain, I was in shock, and I had never been through heartbreak like that. And so, it really changed me, but it also gave me a huge part of my life back. My ex was a really special person and he has his own dharma in this lifetime. I have a very specific dharma in this lifetime, too, and I think that we were going to hold each other back.
So, my triggered-to-life moment was really the moment I was set free when someone realized that we were going to hold each other back. That has just become more and more clear to me. I'm so much more me than I used to be, and that wasn't his fault, but I'm able to step out of his shadow a little bit, and that feels good. So, for me, it's really stepping onto my own path and not being afraid. And he gave me a lot of the tools to realize that I can do anything I want. And seeing him do all the things he wanted to do, or at least really put an effort to do that, was super expansive for me. I didn't know that I could do that. I had no idea. And talk about seeing a White male do his thing and then, [00:48:20 unin] shit. Well, you can do that, I can do that.
Juliana: Yeah. I mean, so showing you that you have the gifts inside of you to have the confidence to go after what you want, and helping each other grow until you no longer do. And there's such a narrative in our society, I was just reading about this yesterday, that if a relationship is not forever, then it's a failure. And we're really doing a disservice to the institution of certainly marriage and long-term committed relationships to devalue what it is to be together, and that's beautiful, and we are not just measured by being in death plots next to each other.
Cami: Totally. One thing when we broke up, I was like, "Well, we had a really good relationship. It's just that it wasn't going to be good for us long term." And I think a lot of people settle a relationship. Like, we could have gotten married and been happy, but that also wouldn't have been the best thing for both of our paths. So, it is so interesting to hear the rhetoric in which people talk to you after a breakup. They're like, "Oh, how could he do that?" I'm like, "Do what?" Like, why are we putting this poor you, poor girl narrative onto people that break up or like [00:49:43 unin] with, right?
Juliana: Yeah.
Cami: Yeah. Actually, it ends up being--like, if someone invites you out of the relationship, fucking go, right, because they obviously know something that you don't know, or can't see something that you see. I was so dedicated to this person that there was no way I was going to not keep trying. I would have never broken up with him myself, even though maybe that was--obviously, that's what the--it's for the best now. But looking back, I wouldn't have done it. Yeah. I wouldn't be half the person I am today. This year, I have grown so much in so many different ways. I've been so freaking uncomfortable. And for a majority of it, in so much pain. And I've also worked through, like, I've never felt so good post a breakup ever in my life, and I was really able to move through it fairly fast compared to a lot of prior breakups. It's like the most profound one, but I think when you know it's over, you can really let it go, even though it's really, really painful.
Juliana: Yeah. And part of that, a testament to that is all the tools that you've developed over the years, as you've picked up, as we talked about before, these various hobbies, meditation, journaling, eating to support your body, moving your body in a great way, nurturing your sleep, how much did all that, having such a rich toolbox, help you process this and move through it?
Cami: It was kind of like a joke with the universe. They were like, "So, you think you know all these things. You think you have this awesome toolbox. So, let's put it to work. Let's see what you have." And the 2020 was the year I learned to ask for help.
Juliana: The teacher becomes the student.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: Like the other way around.
Cami: Yeah. I was like, "I need help. I have no motivation to run this business. What do I do?" I was literally, at one point, meditating like two hours a day, which helped at the time. And looking back, it's like I needed something. I walked a ton. I was moving a lot. I really threw myself into a bunch of different things. I started leading cleanses. I started putting together just more stable long-term goals for my company. Whereas, I was able to rely on my ex for a lot of things, and like, shit, all of a sudden, I had to do everything for myself. Well, I was just going back to what I would have been doing two years prior, so it's not bad, but it's interesting. I paid off a ton of debt during quarantine, right?
Juliana: Yeah.
Cami: It was crazy because I was also paying more rent than I ever had in the past couple years. It's just interesting to see what you can do when you put your mind to it and when you're taken out of your comfort zone.
Juliana: And when you change your mindset, right? I mean, you had so much more financial, so much more money, literally money, available to you when you're in that relationship, yet you felt a sense of scarcity. And then, you break up, you're suddenly paying your full rent on your own, clients are dropping off because of the pandemic, and then you're able to pay off your debt, and that doesn't make sense, but there's a shift in your mindset towards what money and abundance is.
Cami: Yeah, 100%. It was like, "Oh." For some reason, I never had money when I was dating him, even though I was making a lot of money. It really does remind you that scarcity and abundance is, it can be a big part of your mental--well, your beliefs, right?
Juliana: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, since you always ask, and it's your podcast, what song got you through it all, your deepest, darkest days?
Cami: Almost by Hozier.
Juliana: Okay. What about it resonated?
Cami: It was just such a jam. Yeah, such a jam. It made me feel good. I mean, I cried a lot.
Juliana: Yeah. Were you able to see crying as cathartic and--it could be hard when you're crying because you're feeling sad, but I feel like you, at least now, I don't know about when you were really in the pain, are good at just seeing the crying as being movement of the emotions and just letting it flow and move through you. Did you have that perspective when you were in more pain?
Cami: Yeah. I mean, it was uncontrollable back then. It just came through me and would not stop. I mean, my eyes were so puffy for the first month and I kept thinking like my neighbors are going to either, one, think I'm dying, or two, just hate me. But yeah, I really saw it as like, "Okay. I'm letting this go. It's got to move up and out." And I don't think I was crying years of grief. That breakup triggered old grief. So, I was able to process a lot of things I didn't process when I was younger. And I think that's the one thing we forget about as well is when triggered to life moments activate old wounds, you're also healing from those old wounds.
Juliana: And aren't they always activating old wound? I mean, maybe not always, but it seems like most cases, if something's really triggering you to life in adulthood, it's hitting on some older wound.
Cami: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think if you are into the work of your subconscious and re-patterning old belief systems, you're often guided to go back to the first memory you have of feeling that way. And so, that feeling is essentially created in that first, either infant or early childhood memory.
Juliana: Yeah. So, how did you get to a place where you can use your wounding as a superpower? Obviously, we talked about having a challenging childhood in a lot of ways and going through a lot of pain in adulthood, within the spectrum of normalcy, but still, wounding. How do people use their pain as fuel?
Cami: I think when people come to me and they struggle in a variety of different ways, I can so viscerally feel what it feels like to struggle that when I suggest something to them, I'm not just suggesting to them like, "Oh, you should try this." I am like, I feel it so deeply and I so badly want them to be out of that pain because I know exactly how it feels. I think that is what helps move through those dark times. It's like, "Oh, well, if moving through this and learning how to move through this type of grief and pain is helpful to others, and also to know what it's like because you've been there, is a superpower."
Juliana: Yeah. I mean, you're essentially a wounded healer of sorts. You've walked through your own pain, and now, you're helping others. You're the same.
Cami: Yeah. I guess you could say that.
Juliana: So, a great question that you asked me, what advice would you give to your younger self to make it through all this? What would you wish you could have known then that you know now?
Cami: I wish I had known not to be so hard on myself. I don't think I realized how hard I was on myself until I got much older. And so, I would have been lightened up, like, it's okay. And also, you can tell people if you're suffering. You don't just have to suffer in silence. And I definitely suffered a lot in silence when I was younger.
Juliana: It's beautiful. So, asking for help, speaking it, communicating it.
Cami: Totally. And that's still my work today is like asking for help. I know once we get off this podcast, I'm going to be like, "Oh my god, I shared way too much." And I'll just have to tell myself like, "Hopefully, this helps someone. Hopefully, hearing my story is healing for someone and someone can find a little piece of themselves and just know that it gets better." Like, if you're in a lot of pain right now, it gets better. And there's going to be moments of bliss and you're going to be just in awe that you can feel good again, and I hope that this gives people just the comfort that things do get better.
Juliana: What a beautiful way to end. I'm so honored that I got to interview you. We got to flip the switch here a little bit. I love it. And I know that this story will mean a lot to people. And it's also nice to have a glimpse behind the host. People have a relationship with you through your social media, through the podcast. They want to know who you are, and you have a great story, and I'm so glad you got to share that.
Cami: Yeah. It was fun to share. Thank you. You're the best.
Juliana: Thank you.
Cami: You're the person I want to share with. So, thanks, everyone, for tuning in. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and we look forward to hearing how you guys like the show. And if you have any questions, head over to Instagram. I'd love to connect.