The Messy Middle: Grief, Postpartum, and the Journey Back to Self (with Ali Levine)

Renae: well, hello, Ali. I am so glad that you are here to join us for our second TraumaWise ministry Summit. Thank you for being here. Thank

Ali: you for having me. I'm honored to be here. Excellent.

Renae: I am so excited to introduce you to our summit audience and let let them hear about your your story and your experience and everything that's come from that. And so if you could just briefly introduce yourself to those who haven't already picked you Sure.

Ali: Alright. So Hi everyone. I'm Ali Levine. I am a certified and trauma informed Holy Spirit breath coach. The coaching is breath of life coaching. I like to always start out with that, because I love to share that God has put on my heart, that our breath is our sacred connection. It is not work. A lot of people in this case will say a breath work coach. I like to really put myself apart and say, No, I am in the Holy Spirit breath. This is the breath of life, because God breathes life into us. So I hope you receive that breath of life in this conversation, I am a mom of three and a wife, and I love God. I love to speak about this topic, because I'm like as you mentioned, Renae, I went through my own healing journey, and I look forward to sharing you know about my story in hopes to inspire someone else to realize that healing is possible when we do the work and we realize that healing isn't linear and is a process and takes time, but it is very possible, and I'm very passionate about helping others, you know, find that light at the other side of the tunnel and that deeper faith. So yeah, that's really about me. I take faith based practices and teach you how to have centered prayer and deep Holy Spirit breath to really move you through, along with subconscious rewiring to be able to begin and allow that healing process and to release your trauma.

Renae: Awesome. Well, it every it's such a there's so many things to unpack from your story, and so why don't we just start a little bit, not all the way at the beginning, but close enough. Let's, let's just start into the question of, How did you find yourself in this type of coaching and support for the community? Yeah,

Ali: absolutely. Well, keeping it brief, I was a, I feel like I live many lives, which I feel like a lot of people can relate to. That I was a celebrity ward of saleist in Hollywood, so quite the opposite of wellness, a lot of fast paced hustle, toxicity, never checking in with myself. And went through that for almost 15 plus years, very successfully, but really just burned out. And at the end of that burnout, I became pregnant with my first daughter, I had a very long labor that went from a birth center to a C section at 42 hours. That trauma from the actual birth and experience and the actual C section both really unearthed so much that I was holding from the styling space, as well as even from my grandmother passing in 2013 who was like my very best friend growing up. And I felt like when she physically left the earth, she took a piece of me with her, and I lost my faith, I lost my grounding, and then I went in full speed into my career. And I feel like I never took the time to grieve or to realize that there was something to process there, and then fast forward to then going full into the industry, where you really don't process anything, and you just go, go, go into people pleasing and all the things, and then becoming a mother. It was quite the experience, to say the least. And that is really when the trauma all unearthed from that birth slowly, after I had that traumatic experience, I did go through heavy postpartum depression and anxiety and even a bit of mom rage, and that was what really brought me to this surrender, deep, needing healing space, needing God, needing to find surrender, because I was honestly a mess, and that's Putting it nicely,

Renae: I appreciate that. You know, what a firm for everyone who's participating, we're all messy. If we're telling we are not machines, we are not we don't have a checklist, we don't have a perfection setting. None of those things exist. And so we are in process, and we're on a journey that has ebbs and flows, and so I know that you've experienced those ebbs and flows as well. And one of those, those moments that I would love to hear even a little bit more about is this, this, this moment when you were talking about the the grief piece of this. I know that sometimes in ministry settings, there can be this, this rush to triumph, this rush to Easter. You know, where we we we can't we miss the the beauty of God 's presence with us through the suffering, because we're so quick to try to push to the resurrection. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about that liminal space for you, where it was, the that that hard place, and what were some things that kept that, these little sparks of light that provided hope for you along your way, that you then now get to share with others?

Ali: Yeah, such a powerful question. And it's true, we don't sit in the grief. We don't sit in the the sorrow. We just want to get to the other side, right? And there's so much gold, and there's so much to learn in the darkness and in the heaviness, even though it is hard. And and so I guess I would say first for me, you know, with the postpartum depression and anxiety, honestly, being in that heaviness and that darkness as a new mom and feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing as this new mom, and now I can't even take care of myself, because my mind is spinning out of control, and I'm looking at my body and truly shaming my body and hating my body for not doing what I was supposed to do when I was giving birth, and then looking down at my C section scar and the sun 's terrible, but it's just so real, like I was just cursing my scar and being like, Oh, that looks disgusting. And you know, why do I have that? And you didn't bounce back the way you thought you were going to bounce back right, especially now in the Hollywood space and all these things I was really sitting with and struggling with in the daily that was just dark for me, because I would get up out of bed, I remember, and I would go to the mirror, and I would truly curse the way I looked. I would just, it was just horrible. I would look at the mirror and I would just go, what is wrong with you, you know, why are you so inflamed? Why are, you know, covered? I was covered in cystic acne. Like a teenager, I was like, why am I covered in the cystic acne? You know, why didn't you give birth the way you were supposed to give birth? You know? What is the matter with you? Why are you crying all the time, as soon as you get up, and every time the baby is down, you're crying again. You're hiding in a corner, like, literally hiding in a corner. What is what is wrong with you? Like, why can't you keep Get yourself together. And so in those really dark moments, I'm not gonna lie, at first, it was just really hard to even pick my head off the pillow or even go for a walk, because it was all the time, the shame and judgment of like, What is wrong with you? Like, seriously, you're a celebrity ward of stylist, not only a few months ago, and you can't get dressed now. You can't get out of your pajamas to get a bed, you know, like it was a very humbling but also excruciating, like, painful experience of going from this, like perfect, perfectly put together, if it in quotes, but perfectly put together woman, when I was styling people and going to red carpets and doing all the things to then becoming a new mom and going through this traumatic experience, and I can't even get myself dressed into just a t shirt and leggings to get out the door or to go for a walk. That was impossible for me for the first month, at least. So what were some of the things I did when I first started needing to get myself out of that space? First I started doing affirmations. And instead of cursing myself in the mirror, I would affirm in the mirror, and I'll be real with you guys, like I did not believe my affirmations. I would look in the mirror and I'd be like, You are beautiful, you know. Or I am beautiful. And I'd be like, okay, you know? And I would just not feel it, but I would say it anyways with a smile on my face, you know, it felt fake. And I, you know I am healthy. You know, I you know I am, you know, I am healing, like all these things that I was trying to believe, even though it didn't feel that way looking in the mirror. I started there. Then came meditation. I feel like meditation was the next really big shift. To be honest, it didn't feel that way in the first, you know, few days, even few months, to be really transparent. But all of a sudden, I just remember when you were speaking about Renae, about that little bit of light, I remember laying in bed, and I was always dreading getting out of bed every morning. I remember laying in bed and hearing the birds chirping one morning, and all of a sudden, I looked outside and I could see the sun beaming, and that was that glimpse of light for me, of like, Whoa, that just felt so powerful, like it's just birds chirping, but I hear them. I hear them singing. I hear this melody for the first time in a long time. I see the sunshine in a different way, and I feel it's shining on me, into my bedroom, into the bed, and so those little glimpse of hope, you know, and then hearing my daughter laughing and cooing the other room and actually being like, Oh, she sounds so cute. Like, I want to go see her, not a basket case of, like, what am I going to do once I'm in there and she starts crying again? Like, actually being excited for those moments. And I would still, of course, have hard moments in between, but that's really where those little glimpses began, and then moving into my breath was the next thing from the meditation was learning how to take those deep, regulated breaths, and when I will get caught up in anxiety and stress, letting myself sit there and start to say an affirmation, and then breathe into that affirmation and start to really just bring myself down and back to center, and then step outside and put my feet on The ground and just ground in the earth, and start to feel gratitude that like I can walk. I might be in a little bit of pain for my C section, but I can walk, and I can put my feet on the earth, and I can sit out here with my baby girl, and we can enjoy these little moments. And all those little glimpses just started to add up, you know, and all of a sudden, here I was a year after having her celebrating her first birthday, and I was able to get dressed and put on a pretty pink, black skirt and glittery top, and put on, you know, bright pink lipstick and heels, and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like a major glimpse of light, like I feel like a new version of me, and I can actually Breathe and feel centered. And so it was. It was a small trickling that kind of led to that bright light moment. Yeah, well,

Renae: there's a so many things in that story that are incredibly rich. And I want to start with the last thing you said that really piqued my interest is, I don't know if you caught yourself saying this, but you said all of a sudden a year later, and I there's such a right. There's a truth in it, where it is. It's this process, and the all of a sudden is the realization moment of like, Oh, look how far I've come, and the seller Indian celebrating that and celebrating being able to not only see yourself, but to be seen. We really talk in the foster and adoption world of kids who have had complex developmental trauma that we can see when that shift happens, when, when they start to work colors that let them be noticed. Because often black and white is where it's at, like, very covered up, very armor on, as I call it, and and then when you start to see something that would actually draw attention, you know that they're you, that's that's a reflection of their developing self worth, because it's not coming from a shine

Ali: they want to it's

Renae: not an image. It's the in outward expression of what's happened inside.

Ali: Yes, yeah, right. It's a transformation from the inside out, absolutely,

Renae: which is a little different than perhaps some of the work that you had been doing in the image building for people in an industry, right? It's the that that whole piece of I was wondering even, how many of those echoes of the words that you were saying to yourself were things that you might have even heard your clients say about themselves

Ali: as I was going through my healing journey, that I had several clients speaking that way to themselves, and I watched them do it and corrected them in that space, and held space for them, right? But here I was now on the other side, and I couldn't see that so absolutely right?

Renae: And so that that piece of the seeing the scars and recognizing that the what, what felt like a brokenness, became the the mark, the milestone, the scar that pointed toward life, yes, at the at the end of it, it was that scar was there because there was life,

Ali: right, yeah. And my husband said to me, he's like, that was the door that brought Amelia to us, you know, and, and, and when he would say that to me, I would cry. And it was, it was true, right? But there was a part of me that was struggling so deeply with the way it had all gone, right when it first I think that alone, that trauma of like, planning your birth, and you know all that, and for moms, you know it, you get so consumed, like it has to go this way, and when it doesn't, you're shattered. And then on top of the actual trauma of what you experience in labor, in birth, is a whole nother unearthing, right? And so for me, it was like just staring at that was such a reminder of all that trauma that I did not want to experience. Yeah,

Renae: absolutely. And I like how you're referring to this again, we're coming back to this, this image of of how it should have been, because you've mentioned that actually a couple of different times of the part of our development as humans is that, is that recognizing that what we're grieving is not just the event of the thing, not the the impact of the trauma and how that is affecting us, spiritually, mentally, relationally, emotionally, how, physically, whatever it but it's also the the loss of the potential of how things were going to go and and sometimes that's a reflection of we feel safe when we have a road map, because we think that we can kind of control how things are going to go,

Ali: yeah? We think,

Renae: right. And so the grieving is also the realization of that our safety can't be in our plans of how things are going to go, yeah,

Ali: absolutely. And there is, there is such a grieving I remember saying to my husband, we were laying in bed one night when I was really processing that I was going to put her depression and anxiety, and was not baby blues, and it was actual depression. And I looked at my husband and bed, and I looked at him, I said, you know, Justin, I just feel like I'm mourning the death of me. He looked at me with these, like, big, wide eyes, like, holy moly, what did she just say to me? And I said I felt seen in that moment, saying that, like I needed to release that. Because, to your point, with that grief, it was like I was grieving not only the birth that hadn't happened, but the old Ali right, like I was no longer the Justice celebrity stylist and woman who was just running around doing whatever. I was a new mom. I was a whole new version. I had no idea how much my life was going to shift and change in motherhood, right? So there was a deep grief of, like, layers of what was changing and not just the event. So absolutely, and I realized that when I said that to him in bed that night, yeah. So

Renae: it's so rich, and I think when we're thinking about the like trauma in in all of its forums, there is a piece of injustice and betrayal in every single trauma. So there's been some kind of relational disruption, whether it's a person and another person, a person and an entity, a person and circumstances, person and hopes and dreams, whatever it is there's there was this expectation that things were going to be a certain way, and trust that was placed in that and that it when it didn't go that way. There was that break in trust Absolutely. So how do we? How when, when you are talking about this, these, these, these steps, these moments of of small actions over this for that year that then became a way of life for you and that you share with others. What would you point to as those times that you realized that you were regaining trust with yourself, and I would even probably say maybe even your relationship with God and with others? Yeah,

Ali: absolutely. I think for me, it was really when I started to surrender, right? Ali, people really can't stand that word, because it's like, it's the lack of control, right? And I also just being so vulnerable and real, like, I also couldn't stand that word, but God would say it to me over and over again when I was going through my process, you have to surrender it, right? He says, Cast your burdens or cares to me, but we as humans want to hold everything right and try to hold it and control it and figure it out. But that's not actually reality or possible, and I think that's part of our suffering, is that we don't want to allow that surrender. It was certainly mine, and so I think the trust came when I surrendered. It wasn't before, you know, it was like, when I actually truly surrendered. And was like, this, motherhood is messy, this post traumatic, depression, anxiety. Like, there are some days where I feel like I've got it together and I can get dressed and I'm doing great, and then there's some days I still have a hard moment. It's like, okay, check in. Did we do our practices today? Did we like, center? Are we talking to God, like, where are we today? Ali, and then moving forward from that place, right? But it's that deeper surrender of like, allowing him to walk with you and show you that he is the healer, right? We can do all these different work, and this is all process. And healing isn't linear, but the end of the day, he is the healer. So if we don't surrender that to him, we're kind of stuck in this between of I'm half getting there, but I'm still not getting exactly what I need. ____________________________________ And that was definitely my story until 2020 hit like the rest of us, and the world went upside down. Talk about a dramatic event. And I was pregnant with my second daughter, Ali, and I felt like, oh my gosh, I finally got a little bit to the other side, and I've surrendered quite a bit to you, Lord, but here we are. I'm going backwards. I feel like I'm in a car, and reverse is just on speed right now. And everything I learned, everything I practice, is not working, and you're literally telling me to surrender deeper. And I'm like, how, how the world is upside down. I'm pregnant, my second daughter. I have a toddler, and I thought I had motherhood somewhat figured out, and now we're back to square one, if that.