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The more we embrace this journey of transformation, the more easily those things will come.

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Hello and welcome. This is Darla LeDoux, host of Retreat and Grow Rich, the podcast, and your guide for this episode today. This episode is part of our Transforming Out Loud series.

The Transforming Out Loud series was something I developed in alignment with my mission to normalize transformation on the planet. And my mission within my business is to normalize transformation on the planet one intimate retreat at a time. I believe small retreats are the best way to heal, and shift, and grow. That being said, my mission is broader than that. It’s really about helping people to understand and feel empowered to know how we work as humans and how we work in partnership with Spirit, or the universe, or God, or energy, however you like to think about it, but how we actually operate so that we are feeling empowered to create the results we really want in life.

If you’ve ever seen someone go from having one life circumstance one day to something completely different the next, it’s likely because they transformed something within them, within their thinking, within their energy field that made them available for a completely different result.

And that’s the core of transformation. We are never stuck. We are never victims. We are always at source of our experience and we are kind of doing this dance in partnership with spirit to open up whole new levels of awareness or whole new levels of consciousness, which ultimately changes how we interact with the world and our experience of feeling connected, feeling alive, feeling peaceful, feeling joyful, feeling truly fulfilled. All of those things that we seek as humans.

The more we embrace this journey of transformation, the more easily those things will come.

And one of the issues that I’ve seen is that we don’t actually embrace the experiences that ultimately could be for our greatest good, because it’s not, like, normal to do this.

And I spoke in the first episode in this series about the time I got divorced and I went through this experience of leaving my marriage, knowing that I could go through the experience being really angry and upset at what had happened to me, or I could go through the experience really with this perspective of “this is happening for me” and what can I learn from this? How can I take this as healing medicine so I can grow? Now, in reality, there were times I experienced it both ways, but most of the time I really saw the growth opportunity and the healing available in my experience.

So today’s episode is no different, but it’s more recent and maybe even a little more dramatic. This episode I’ve entitled “And then I got arrested.” Ah, let’s just breathe that in for a moment, shall we? And then I got arrested.

So I’d like to share with you today the most divine, spiritual experience that I’ve had to date, and you wouldn’t believe it, but it happened in a jail cell. So I wanted to take you back and share this experience. It’s not that long ago, when I was at a wedding, and we attended this family wedding, and we knew we were going to be kind of out of town traveling for this wedding out of town. It was about 90 minutes away. And so, knowing we would be traveling and knowing how weddings are, we booked an Airbnb so we would have a place to stay, you know, local at the wedding. The thing that we didn’t do is stop and consider the fact that the Airbnb wasn’t actually on site at the wedding. It was about a mile away. So fast forward, wedding ends, we kind of draw straws for who’s going to drive now.

I had had some drinks at this wedding and I, you know, over a long period of time, etc. I felt fine to drive, and so I got in the car and I drove. The issue is the whole family was gathering at this other venue, so I decided to stop there and say hello. And so I just stopped there and was chatting with the family and they poured me a glass of wine, which I don’t even drink wine, but for whatever reason I wanted to be part of the family. This is my in laws actually. And so I had another glass of wine, got in the car, driving literally around the corner to our Airbnb and I got pulled over. And needless to say, you got this in the title, I got arrested.

So I won’t go into the whole story about this, but I was arrested. I was brought to jail. My wife was actually asleep in the backseat of the car, which thankfully meant they did not impounded my car, which would have been a next step, but instead they woke her up and she woke up to me in handcuffs on the side of the road. Certainly terrifying.

And so they woke her up and they drove my car to the Airbnb and I kid you not, no joke, not that this matters, they say most accidents, you know, occur within a mile of the home, etc., but the drive was literally like to the next light and take a right and there was the house. So we almost made it.

Anyway, I’m going to get to the interesting part of this story. So, they handcuffed me. They put me in the back of the car, they dropped Kimmi off at the Airbnb, they took the car keys so she wouldn’t drive, and they brought me to jail.

They took my blood. While they were taking my blood, funny story, I had the wherewithal to say a prayer to my blood cells for only the sober blood cells to go into the needle. Yes, I said this. And it turned out my blood actually was contaminated. So, you know, perhaps my prayer did something, but it didn’t actually help my case. And then they put me in the cell.

So here I am in this kind of large cell, actually, with just a concrete floor and a toilet in the corner. Filthy, filthy. They took my shoes and they took my hoodie, so I was left in just a small sun dress on this cold concrete floor for, like, hours, about seven hours actually. And from there I got very excited because after that they moved me into another cell to be discharged.

And in the other cell I thought, okay, it’s time. It’s like I’m almost ready to get outta here. It’s miserable. And they actually gave me back my hoodie, thankfully, and my shoes. So I’m in the other cell for discharge for a good additional six hours.

Now, the reason I’m sharing these details is this is part of my spiritual experience, because what I haven’t shared yet is that literally 24 hours before this experience, I was on a call with my coach, and in this call with my coach, we talked about my relationship to time. This was something that had been coming up for me in my work and in my business around my relationship to time, and this feeling that I always had- like I just had to hurry up and survive this next thing and get on to the next thing, which then that was going to be enjoyable.

Only, I’ve been in business nine years now, and that idea of “hurry up and survive this thing so you get onto the next thing that will somehow be better” had been happening the entire time. To the point where it was really making me crazy you, which is why it came up in my coaching call.

So here’s what had surfaced in my coaching call. I got present to this memory, or this experience that I’d had as a kid, of what I would call, you know, surviving time. And what happened was, my parents divorced when I was young, and for a long time my mom was a single mom and she, you know, was kind of managing life the best she could, I’m imagining, and was figuring out what to do with me. And my dad was given some sort of partial custody, so sometimes I would be spending time with him, only he wasn’t reliable. and honestly not safe. That’s for a whole other episode, but he had no business raising a little girl.

That said, sometimes I would be with him, but sometimes I would be with one of his sisters, or one of his other sisters, or my mom’s sister. And I spent a lot of time with different aunts, with my grandma, and I went to, just a lot of different places, and I really had this feeling of being shuffled around a lot. But the thing was, for whatever reason, you know, the attitude and my family about kids was not that they needed to be communicated with. In other words, no one told me what was happening or what to expect, and probably they didn’t know. So that meant I would be dropped off at my aunt’s house and I would never know how long I would be there before someone would pick me up and take me somewhere else.

So there was this constant sense of disempowerment around my own time, and my expectations, and my ability to feel comfortable, and ease into and be present with whatever was going on. It was like whenever I was present with whatever was going on or enjoying something, it would be time to leave. It would be taken away.

And often I was put in situations, like I said, that weren’t safe and weren’t comfortable. And in that time frame especially, I really felt in survival, like, whether it was being with family members that I really didn’t know very well, you know, they all knew each other, the cousins and I was kind of dropped in every now and then or it was, yeah, just being somewhere that literally I felt physically unsafe because people weren’t sober, for example. So I developed in this cellular memory of surviving time and it just became a habit, right?

As, like, if I can just kind of white knuckle it and get through this until the next thing happens, maybe the next thing will be somehow better than this thing. But I never really knew and I never really had a sense of control. So I would kind of make up ways to be in control, as much as possible, of the thing I was doing, but I would never really relax into it. And if you’re watching this on video you know I have “Enjoy the Journey” in my background, I would never really relax into it and let myself enjoy the journey, because it just was too emotionally challenging if I would relax and experience something and then have it ripped away. So all of these memories had come rushing back to me in this coaching call and I really set the intention of healing this.

I got very present to the impact of being constantly on to the next thing in my mind and not present to what was currently happening.

And it was like a visceral feeling in my stomach. “Hurry up, hurry up and get this over with. Hurry up and get this over with.” And I could see how it was happening my whole life.

And I’m curious, I just want you to think about this. Maybe you relate to this exact example, but perhaps there’s something else for you that you relate to, this visceral experience that you’ve experienced over and over your whole life- kind of like groundhog day.

So in this call with my coach, I discerned this and I really saw the house surviving time was something I wanted to heal. It was something I wanted to release. It was something I just honestly didn’t want to keep recreating in my life.

24 hours later I wind up in a jail cell. Now, you know, it’s not funny. It was horrible in terms of like the physical discomfort that I experienced and honestly, this whole process of going through being arrested, going to court, all of that has been a whole other eye-opening challenge, which honestly I’m like super proud of how I’ve been going through it. And I’ll share a little bit about that in a minute.

But the immediate experience was exactly the feeling inside that I’d had as a kid surviving time. I didn’t know, I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t planning for it. I was literally ripped out of my experience of life and taken to jail. I had no- they did not communicate with me whatsoever about what was happening. I had no idea how long I would stay there. It felt really painful like I could only survive, there was nothing to distract me.

And even when I moved to the new cell, and in that new cell feeling like, okay, now I’m going to get out, but then continuing to not get out, and really not be able to get the accurate information about my status, and in addition, Kimmi had actually lost her cell phone in an Uber. So when I even got a phone call from the cell, it just kept going to voicemail. So there was literally no communication. I didn’t know if I was going to be picked up or anything. I had pretty good faith in that, but I really didn’t know.

So literally took me back to this experience as a kid. And what was so amazing about it is I could see it while it was happening. Like I could recognize the spiritual nature of this experience while it was happening and I could pause, and observe, and rather than get upset and angry, which happened from time to time, I was able to practice being present, practice, you know, being in the experience for what it was without, you know, stressing about it.

And, first of all, I could see my own spiritual growth and development in those moments.

But I also got to experience surviving time in a whole different way where, yes, it did feel like survival at times, but I could really bring this level of peace and presence to the experience that I didn’t even know was possible.

I was drinking and my blood test did come back to show I was just over the legal limit, which honestly, even though at the time I didn’t feel like I was, and when I first got in the car, I believed I was fine, which it doesn’t really matter, but, as I sat in the jail cell, I could kind of tell I was starting to sober up. So I actually got, you know, it was probably right that I was there.

So I could really let go of the anger and frustration at the injustice, which still, you know, to a certain degree feels true, given all of the facts of the case. But from a spiritual standpoint, and also from a standpoint of really wanting people to be safe and drive safely, I totally get it. I totally get it.

So with that, I want to share a little bit more about the lessons for me. So it really shifted this idea around my relationship with time. And I have a retreat called The Lazy Bee retreat, which is really about working really effectively and efficiently because we’re trusting spirit to guide us. And in order to be an effective leader for that retreat, this was part of my healing, is to release this, you know, surviving time feeling, right? It’s totally inconsistent with The Lazy Bee.

So I have allowed that time to really infiltrate my cells in my cellular memory so that when I have downtime and free time I can actually breathe, and relax, and rest, and enjoy without feeling like I should be doing something else, which has been amazing.

Another thing that has happened, and this is really part of what’s inspiring this Transforming Out Loud series as well, is two things. Good girls don’t go to jail. Good girls don’t go to jail. So one of my gifts, and also struggles in life, has been being a good girl. Right? I got good grades. I, you know, was a good student. Like the teacher, you know, teacher’s pet. I did all the right things in life. I got the good degree, and the good job, and, you know, I was a good employee. And, I don’t know if I would still be a good employee after being in business for some time, but I really was good.

Right? And in my family, there are three of us siblings, I’m the good one. I’m the responsible one. I’m the oldest, I’m the one who takes care of things, all of that. And so for me, you know, going to jail is bad. And clearly, I had to embrace another side of myself. Like I made these choices and this is what happened.

So there was also some healing available around this good girl persona that has honestly freed me to do the Transforming Out Loud series to- we’re in the middle of a campaign right now that’s all about retreat fails and talking people out of hosting retreats, because if you’re not prepared to do this kind of work, you shouldn’t go there. And I know it’s just the tip of the iceberg, the beginning of me unleashing the part of me that would have shut herself down in order to be perceived as the good girl.

So really, you know, having a DUI on my record frees me. I don’t love it, but it frees me in a certain way. And I remember really clearly this conversation I had with Kimmi after she picked me up from jail and we were eating at Mcdonald’s, which lets you know the desperation, desperate times. And we’re having this conversation and Kimmi said to me, she said, “it should have been me. I’m the one who belongs in jail, not you.”

And I think this is really interesting. My mother in law was mortified to think about, you know, poor me in jail. And while on the one hand, I feel like lovely that they think I’m above, you know, bad behavior and think I’m this amazing human, which I am by the way, I am a fucking amazing human, but there’s also a way in which that whole idea of being mortified that, oh, Darla would have to go through this experience, actually shows me the box that I’ve been put in, that I’ve put myself in of being a good girl.

And, you know, quite honestly, is it really that fun? I don’t think so. So it really made me conscious of breaking out of that box. And honestly, it’s not a new box for me. Like I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen before the way in which my wanting to be liked, and look good, and, you know, make sure I’m beyond reproach, like totally freaking gets in the way of doing business. So guess what, now I am a criminal. So, fabulous, we get into is let that one go.

The other thing that that conversation opened up for me was actually to see how Kimmi sees herself, right? And this idea that she’s the one that would belong there gave me a lot of information about some part of her inner world that was screaming for some transformation in terms of thinking of herself that way. Now that’s not my job. We shouldn’t coach our partners, but it really brought it forward for her, you know, to be aware of.

The other thing that I want to bring forward is this idea of shame. This idea of shame. When I walked out of the front door of the jail, I took a few breaths and I was so grateful Kimmi was there to greet me, and I had this, you know, conversation with her about, “oh, it should’ve been me and all of that.” But I had this feeling and it came and went- and tell me if you can relate to this, because there may be, probably you haven’t had my experience, though some of you I’m sure to have, because I now know from my experience since last year that many more people have DUIs than you ever would be aware of, so it could be some of you also- I had this weird kind of almost, like schizophrenic feeling, because on the one hand I felt so happy, and free, and emboldened.

Like I just went through this experience of surviving time at a whole other energy level and I feel proud and amazing. And then, on the other hand, there’s this tight, like my stomach in a tight ball, and know of total shame. Like, oh my God, I am a horrible person. I can’t believe this happened. I’m so embarrassed. What will people think of me? No one can know. I just need to go hide in a cave for the next 10 years until this is over with because it stays on your record for 10 years actually. I didn’t know that at the time.

But that was the feeling of like, oh my gosh, there’s this amazing spiritual breakthrough and I, like, want to shout it from the rooftops. And on the other hand, deep dread and total shame. And I went back and forth, like I said, between those two experiences.

And I could feel viscerally in my body the distinction energetically. And I knew I had a choice. I knew I could give myself over to the shame and have this totally derail my life, or I could claim the victory and have it totally expand and explode my life in an amazing way.

And I went back and forth and I went back and forth. And quite honestly, if you’ve ever had the experience of sitting on a concrete floor, my physical being right, my physical cells, were feeling the effects of that. Not to mention our environment is so important, right? We pick up energy from our environment. So I had spent all this time with, you know, people screaming down the hall. One guy was taking his clothes off over and over again. Another guy was preaching to all the other people in his cell about how to live life and every other word was the f-bomb, for example.

So all of this energy, right, is being absorbed into my body and into my system that I needed to release and detox.

And I did a pretty good job of keeping myself in my energy bubble and keeping my energy clean while this was happening. But I had to purge that and I had to make a choice to know what my truth was, which was this was the most amazing and beautiful way to heal this surviving time pattern that I had literally just discovered the day before.

Now, would it have been great if the universe had delivered it in a different way? Perhaps, perhaps there would have been another way, but I couldn’t actually imagine another way where I could have that same experience and reinvent my relationship to time in the same way as I did in that scenario, because it literally felt the same as it felt to me as a kid. Totally out of my control and not knowing when the situation would end.

So it was a beautiful and I made a choice to claim that it was beautiful. And even in sharing here on this podcast, and continuing to make that choice to claim that it was beautiful, because transformation doesn’t always come in a nice little bow, and it doesn’t always look easeful and pretty from the outside. And only we know the truth of what the experiences were moving through our calling us to be.

And it’s very easy for people from the outside to make a judgment. You know, my dad has an issue with alcohol. He lots of times couldn’t pick me up because he didn’t have a driver’s license. So I had a lot of judgment about people with DUIs and, you know, so I assume everybody’s going to project that judgment onto me, because I was holding that judgment also. But now I can give that up, right?

So it’s a choice. Whatever you’re experiencing, whether it’s ending a relationship, you know, losing a job, something happening in your relationship that looks bad from the outside, financial stuff, whatever it is. You can choose the transformation in the experience and you don’t need anybody’s approval for that. You get to decide what your truth is.

A couple of other benefits that have come from this experience: One, I’ve been exposed to a whole different part of life. So I don’t know if anybody else relates to this, but since I’ve been growing my business and growing my consciousness and expanding my life, I’ve really limited my circle of people I spend time with to, you know, really hold a higher vibration. And this experience has thrust me into a whole other, a realm of society, like different departments, you know, in the police force, for example. And- I won’t go into all the details- but I’ve been exposed to people, and things, and experiences that I otherwise wouldn’t be. That’s actually been fueling my passion for my business, because I can see how much this conversation is needed in the world.

And then finally, I actually stopped drinking after this happened. So, interestingly, and this is why I think this is the perfect experience to have happened for me because- prior to this I had also read, like, a Facebook post from a friend of mine, I had read in a book I was reading that I really love that the person talked about, you know, just not drinking because it makes you more tuned in to source. And, you know, I never have drank a ton, maybe in college, but it’s never really been like a defining characteristic of mine. Like I’m always, you know, grounded and focused on what matters to me and maybe I happened to have some drinks. And so I decided to stop drinking, because I decided that this was part of, like, my three series message of the universe inviting me not to drink.

Because when I’d read those couple other things, I had had the thought of, oh, that sounds like a good idea. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I would like to be more of a clean vessel for spirit. And I mean this was like a matter of a couple of weeks that this had happened, and I’d had this thought, and then I had this experience, so I literally took it as an invitation to stop drinking.

And I think, you know, in the last almost year, I’ve toasted champagne with people a couple of times, but I literally, you know, cut it out of my life and I actually had to look at how it didn’t take long or it wasn’t hard. But there was a moment of “who am I” if I don’t meet someone for a drink? Right.

Even though it wasn’t a big part of my life, it was a very integral part of my life at a low level that I was able to just let go of. And, you know, I’m not here to preach about that or anything. I am here to preach- get an Uber, like literally don’t drive, make a plan. You know, had we stopped to make a plan, we would have been in an Uber, so I’ll preach that.

But I do feel that those of us who are leaders in this journey of transformation are being called to keep our vessel clean and whether that looks like clean eating, not drinking, etc. So I’ve been enjoying that process. I don’t know if it will be forever. I’m not making some grand declaration, but I do know it felt really good on this end.

So then I got arrested. It’s still kind of weird to think about and weird to say aloud. And yet the beauty, one of the things I’ve noticed, and I think, you know, this is part of what it is to be a leader of transformation, at least in the form it comes through me, is I live it first. Spirit gives me the opportunity to live through it and kind of grow my own muscle, and my own faith, my own knowing of my truth, and of the truth of how the universe works. And then I share it. And often when you are that person, which I’m guessing a lot of you are, it can look, it can be kind of a pain there, right? Because sometimes it comes through us in this way that lets us be a vessel for it, but it’s not pleasant all the time.

So that’s what I feel about this experience of being arrested. That’s what I feel about it being, like, the most profound spiritual experience to date, and I invite you, whatever it is you’ve got going on, do not allow it to get entrenched as shame, but choose to find the healing and the journey, and choose to see the invitation spirit has brought forward for you to become more of who you truly are and more of who you’re meant to be.

This is Darla LeDoux of Retreat and Grow Rich, and I look forward to being with you again in the next conversation in this series, Transforming Out loud. Please, please share your comments over on social media. Please let me know that my experience has been in service of someone somewhere to connect with your truth and choose love over shame and fear. Bye everyone.

“People won’t pay for transformation,” they told me when I started my business.

Thankfully, I didn’t listen, or at least I didn’t listen for very long.

This is Darla and I have been offering transformational retreat as a part of my business model for years. I’ve earned millions of dollars through hosting retreats and here’s what I want you to know. It just may be that overtly adding the transformational component of your work into the way you offer your services is the most powerful and profitable choice you can make right now.

I’m talking about not sneaking transformation in the back door, but actually designing your business around this work you hold so dear.

If you’re intrigued, I invite you to check out our brand new live retreat experience just for leaders like you over at https://RetreatAndGrowRich.com/retreat.

Extraordinary retreats require exceptional leaders and we can’t keep sneaking our magic in the back door a minute longer. The world needs your genius. https://RetreatAndGrowRich.com/retreat. Head on over there today.