I feel most free in a car with the windows down. I feel free when I'm with people who are working together as a team. I feel free when I'm laughing.

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5 years ago
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1 Diane Guerrero: I'm Diane Guerrero, and this is How It Is, the show where you hear women tell their own stories in their own words. We are unfiltered, real and totally ourselves. Today's episode is all about freedom, getting to the point where we're not just surviving, but flourishing. What do you think when you hear the word "freedom?" Flags? Fireworks? Okay, that's one kind of freedom, but you know how we do on How It is. We get personal, real personal, so maybe the better question is when do you feel really free? Anna Holmes: I feel most free in a car with the windows down. Monica Ramirez: When I'm in nature. Ellen Pao: I feel free when I'm with people who are working together as a team. Tarana Burke: I feel free when I'm laughing. Glennon Doyle: On the Gulf of Mexico with my wife on our boat. Rebecca Traister: I feel free when I am at home cooking. Gabrielle Union: At home in Miami, outside, on my rocking chair with no schedule. 1

2 Diane Guerrero: I think I feel freest when I'm laughing so hard my belly hurts and I snort, feeling so much joy that I lose all sense of being proper or remembering that there are rules that we're supposed to follow. I love feeling free. I love feeling like nobody's watching me. What about you Reese? Reese Witherspoon: I'm a mother of three children, so I don't really feel free very often. I usually leave my full-time job and go to my other full-time job, which is parenting, but I feel free when all my children are in one place. Mothers will understand this. Like if all my kids are in the same room and I have nothing in front of me, like I have no scripts to read, no what I call homework at night and I just get to relax with them and maybe watch a movie, that is total freedom for me. I also feel really free in my hometown, Nashville, Tennessee. For some reason, the minute the plane lands, I just... I feel free and I don't... I think maybe it's just the comfort of being home or being known or that everybody who knew before I was anything in the world and they loved me, they loved me anyway. They loved me for me for who I was as little Reesie Witherspoon. Diane Guerrero: Oh, little Reesie Witherspoon, so cute. We all have moments where we feel free, but what kind of work does it take to get us there, to get to a point where we really feel free and relaxed with ourselves because, honestly, a lot of us have a lot of things that we're trying to be free from, free from our guilt, free from our fear and, some of us, free from our trauma? The Me Too movement has taught us that being honest about our experiences and our trauma is so transformative. It's transformative for us as individuals and also for our whole culture, and it's our first step to healing and becoming free from it, so, now that we've shed a light on some of the darkness, let's map a path out of it. 2

3 Today on the show, we have Nichole Bowen-Crawford, an Army veteran who has so many lessons to teach us about how to heal and flourish despite our pain, and Krista Tippett, the host of the On Being Podcast and a spiritual guide for so many people. These two women have figured out something important. Finding freedom from the things that hold us back is a process. When you say a word a million times in a row and it stops even sounding like a real word, self-care is so buzzwordy right now, but self-care is real. Self-care can save your life. Military veteran Nichole Bowen-Crawford knows how it is. Nichole was in her 20's when she was first deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her unit was one of the first to go into combat, but she didn't just experience combat, she was also sexually assaulted by a fellow service member. Nichole Bowen-C: I came to join the military in college. I was a junior in college at Arizona State University. My partner or my lab partner was in the Reserves and she was dating her recruiter, and it just sounded like a great way to find adventure, and I think part of me was scared to live a conventional life, the kind of life that my parents had planned out for me where you finish college and you get married and you buy a tract home in the suburbs and have a few kids. I couldn't see myself doing that. I was in a relationship that was heading in that direction, and I wasn't happy. It took the Army to have me end the relationship. Going through the basic training was really hard for me. I am a really sensitive person, and I was just constantly crying. I remember being in the line to eat and we'd have to yell out the last four of our Social Security number. I had to hold the frog in my throat to keep... to not let anyone know that I... I would cry in that line because we had a moment of silence, or we waited before we said our Social Security number, and I had to say it in a confident way. I didn't let anyone know that I was completely weak, but I somehow managed to get through basic training. I kind of triumphed over feeling like I couldn't do any of it to know what the hell am I doing here, and I went from failing at being like the worst marksman ever to just like passing and failing my run to passing my run. Getting through it, I had a few other women who were in my bunk area that really encouraged me. It was kind of those connections that kept me sane, so I did it. 3

4 I got the orders to go to Iraq in December We initially went and took a wait because we hadn't yet invaded Iraq. It was a team of about seven of us that needed to move forward with Operation Iraqi Freedom. I was the only female of the group chosen to go. I was actually asked by the first sergeant maybe because I was a women, "Do you, do you want to go?" I answered right away. It wasn't even something that I thought about. I said, "Yes." After we got to Iraq, I was working the night shift. One of the sergeants came in, it was later, everyone was asleep, and closed the door and sexually assaulted me. Afterwards, I shared the information with my supervisor, and I was advised to not report it just because of retaliation and the consequences that would come from reporting it, and I chose not to report it. I guess just being in that kind of environment, being one of the few women in Iraq at that time, I definitely experienced a lot of sexual harassment. I would get propositioned for sex almost on a daily basis. We weren't allowed to go anywhere without someone else. We weren't allowed to walk alone at night. The women weren't allowed. I got offered money for sex. These were the people I was serving in Iraq with, other service members who were supposed to be like family. I was worried about whether I was going to live or die. I didn't know. I was driving back and forth from Iraq to Kuwait, and bombs were going off, and IEDs, and people weren't making it, and another whole other layer to it was I was being harassed and I was assaulted. It definitely broke me eventually. After that, I signed out of the Army, and I thought I was free. I thought I was free of it all. It took me about five years before I moved to Seattle where I took a job as a veterans outreach coordinator, where I was helping other veterans access their benefits, take PTSD assessments. Doing those assessments with the veterans and hearing their stories, the stories reminded me of my story, and I started to discover I've got PTSD. I do these things. It just came on like a floodgate. They call it delayed-onset PTSD, where it's not there and then, suddenly, it's completely there. 4

5 I went from being able to function to not, to not being able to get out of bed for work. I started just being completely depressed, thinking about suicide every day. I was frozen and just debilitated and surprised and taken off guard. Thankfully, the short-term disability got approved, and I was able to start the process of healing. I've done everything. I got Reiki treatment. I also paint. Art has been really healing for me. If you name it, I've done it. Craniosacral treatments, I've had those. I've had an Energy Healer. I started doing hot yoga. Once a week, even now, I go into the sensory deprivation chamber and float. I've done hypnotherapy, psychotherapy. Pretty much any type of therapy, I've done it. Karen, my therapist in Seattle is an HBLU practitioner, and that stands for Healing from the Body Level Up. It's a type of therapy where it really gets you in touch with the feelings, where you're housing the trauma in your body, and they use muscle testing and tapping to help you release the trauma, and it's pretty amazing because you don't really have to go through and talk about your trauma so much as talking about the beliefs that you've created because of the trauma or as a result of the trauma about yourself and the world. The HBLU was what I really needed to let go of the past and to find self-acceptance in all the parts of myself that I completely wanted to disown as soon as the PTSD showed up because it's hard to love that. It's been years and years of work. We had the original goal of getting rid of my PTSD, not having it anymore, and with all of this work that I do and have done and continue to do, PTSD hasn't gone, but my thoughts are so much better. Every day, I keep a gratitude list and I write down what's wonderful about my life, at least five things, and then I have an affirmation app I use. It's called Mind Movies. It's where you can add pictures and affirmations and music, and you can watch it, which is just like a few minutes a day. It's helped me. I went from wanting to kill myself to actually liking my life. 5

6 The whole process of learning to like myself with all my flaws created the space for me to start believing that if I could start to like my life, then maybe... I mean, at the time, it seemed impossible... maybe I could have some things in my life that I really want beyond just not wanting to kill myself, and so I started to dream a little bigger, and I wanted to find love and I wanted to have kids. I was 34 when I met Bill. He loved me the way that I was, and we became friends. We fell in love, and we've got two kids. I've started believing in dreams again. Yeah, I still have PTSD and I still have to take really good care of myself. Switching over to gratitude has created an open door for me to love my life, love who I am, accept who I am and start dreaming a little bit bigger every day and that I matter. There's always hope. Diane Guerrero: Wow, that's really difficult to listen to. It's tough that this woman who is already doing something that's extraordinary... I hope Nichole knows that she's not alone and that it's a significant thing that she's doing by sharing her story, because the more we share our stories and the more we talk about these traumas and struggles openly, the freer we can become from them, and it's such an important thing to remember. There is always hope. Sometimes, it may not feel like it, but it's there. Okay, now, we're going to hear from the great Krista Tippett. You might know her as the host of On Being, a radio show and podcast that tries to figure out what it means to be human today, simple stuff. She is so wise. She is an author, a theologian, a journalist and even worked as a diplomat in Cold War Berlin. In 2014, President Obama awarded Krista the National Humanities Medal at the White House. I mean, that's pretty badass. Krista has devoted her life to helping others find meaning in their lives, but she's also struggled to get there for years. As Krista says, she got free by staying focused on the joyous work of being alive, and she's ready to do anything she can to help our culture do it, too. Krista Tippett: We all have these traumas. We have our things, right? We have our neuroses. We have our inner drama. 6

7 On a personal level, I had some episodes of really serious depression in my 30's, and I think one feature of depression is that it's not just that you can't figure out how to get through to the other side, it's that you can't imagine that another side exists, right? Like your imagination completely closes in on itself. It's a long, long process beyond that, and I don't think you ever... You never stop living with it, and I think also you can't even talk about what you got out of it until years later, right? Like that's not even a reasonable discussion to have with someone, but my depression has definitely formed me and, in fact, I would say that I couldn't be the person I am today if that experience weren't part of my experience and that it opens me to darkness in the world and to others in a way that I would not have if this weren't like in the fabric of who I am even now as I am flourishing. What I learned from wise people is that you don't become yourself, you don't become whole, you don't flourish because you overcome that or in spite of it. You become whole and you become bigger because you integrate that thing into your sense of self, and that becomes a gift you bring to the world. It's healing as opposed to fixing. I think Me Too and so many other things that are emerging now are about progress we thought we made, and, again, there's something natural in this because human change takes time. We did make a lot of progress, but we didn't pull it all the way through, and a lot of inconsistencies and damaging behaviors and norms remained, and so now we enter this moment where we see, where suddenly things become... where we can't un-see them. We're at the moment where we see what is broken, and we have to create those new forms, and we don't necessarily have the models in front of us as for what that will look like. When I look at this Me Too moment we're in, I'm... I've been spending a lot of time and energy thinking about how we walked into this moment, and I think that's really an important reflection for us to understand how we walk out of it. There's beauty in a moment like this. It's a moment of awakening. 7

8 In Buddhism, waking up is the language. It's the metaphor for spiritual growth. As well, there's incredible promise, and I think it's important that we are fierce about seeing both, like seeing what has to be healed and what has... and who has to be protected, also seeing the vulnerability that's there and the trauma that's there, being fierce about the opportunity to create new realities, and I think part of not repeating the mistake of the past is that we do this with great intentionality this time. I want us to be really audacious in this moment on our frontlines of gender and on our frontlines of race and say that what we want to do is create loving structures and and figure out what love can look like in public because, you know what, what we have actually honored now is what hate looks like in... like not honored, but acknowledged. We have acknowledged the power of hate, right? We have acknowledged the power of... a power exercise in a way that is demeaning and hateful in fact in effect. It's messy, but the best things in life are messy. They are worth like getting in the muck. Diane Guerrero: Honestly, just listening to Krista's voice makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. I'm putting listen to Krista Tippett talk about anything on my own self-care list. Check. Check. Check. If you haven't yet, check out her podcast at onbeing.org. You won't regret it. I've learned so much from the Nichole and Krista about how to face down darkness and what we can all do to fight our way out of it as individuals and as a culture. It's not about pretending everything is fixed. It's about learning how to carry the truth with grace and humor and taking care of ourselves along the way. That's how we get free, not by running from our struggles, but by facing them so that we can all truly feel free. That, my friends, is how it is. That's a wrap for this episode. Next week is our season finale. Can you believe it? It's a good one. We'll be talking about power, having it, getting it and using it. You'll hear from Glennon Doyle, Ellen Powell and Lena Waithe. 8

9 Lena Waithe: The power that I have to own and give myself, I have the power to be a good boss. I have the power to be a good collaborator. I have the power to be out and say, hey, other gay black celebrities who are not out, this is ridiculous. We all need to be out and be ourselves and be free and stop trying to fit into the mold and all this other bullshit. I think there's a power that the world gives us with the power that we have, and that is one that we have to always find and search and figure out the best way to use our power for good. Diane Guerrero: This is going to be so good. In the meantime, I want to hear from you. What makes you feel free? Hit us up on Twitter or Instagram. We're at Hello Sunshine. To get more info and ideas about the stories you heard today, visit our website, hello-sunshine.com. On this episode of How It Is, you heard from Nichole Bowen-Crawford, Krista Tippett, and me. I'm Diane Guerrero. I am a Latina. I am an author, an actress, an activist. I am a human being, a citizen of this universe, and this is How It Is. How It Is is a production of Hello Sunshine. It is executive produced by Amy S. Choi, Rebecca Lehrer and Reese Witherspoon. Our senior producers are Gillian Ferguson and Michelle Lanz, and our producer is Charlotte Koh, sound design by Jocelyn Gonzales. Our theme song, Queen, is written and performed by Victoria Canal. 9

Diane Guerrero: Reese Witherspoon:

Diane Guerrero: Reese Witherspoon: Diane I'm Diane Guerrero, and this is How It Is, the show where you hear women tell their own stories in their own words. We're unfiltered, real, and ready to tell you the truth. This is our season finale,