Welcome to the Get Upsets Podcast. I'm so excited I'm your host, Mika Altador. And I am Joan by the amazing, the angelic, one of the missing Charlie's angels Simone D'Assande. She is a breath of fresh air. You're gonna fall in love with her just like I fell in love with her when I met her. Simone, thank you for being on our show. Simone is a guest. She is a host, not a guest, but I'm probably saying that because I will be a guest on her podcast. She is, yes. She is the host of Health Confidential Podcast. And I'll put that information in the show notes. Simone, welcome. My goodness, Mika, you're gonna make me cry. We're gonna start this show off with me crying. Thank you so much for such kind words. I am so honored to be on your show and I cannot wait to have the conversation with you on the other side of the mic on my show. I'm excited. We were talking before we started recording and then something in me said, we need to record because you have a story. You're asking me a moment ago about what's going on with me and I was sharing with you before we started recording. Just I've had, I've come into new awareness relates to my nervous system and things that I'm literally tracing back, including today, I traced it back to my childhood and how I learned without knowing my nervous system learned how to create safety in an unsafe environment. You know, I grew up in a emotionally physically verbally abusive environment and so my nervous system related to that being pretty wasn't safe. There's physical abuse and my nervous system just adapted because at a child, you can't run, you can't fight. You're literally forced. You can't even freeze because you're having to adapt there. That's where the people pleasing for me came up. Just things that I adapted to and it just traced back there and I just became aware of it now. Then you started to share your story with me and I was like, oh my gosh, this is a recording moment. Yeah, totally. It's funny because we shape so much of who we are and the way we're going to eventually address anything that comes at us. We do that early on in life and it's shaped by some of the programs that we install just by watching our parents. The idea of safety or threat is shaped in those environments and I know exactly what you mean. That's what we owe our connection to because I too grew up in a highly threatening environment. There was so much. We had beaten on a regular and that was actually just the way it was back in Europe. Men were just the stewards of their families and the children and the wife were things that they owned. It was on them to guide them. Most of the guidance wasn't done from a place of supporting them but rather through beating obedience out of them and coercion. So yes, I actually learned about safety in exactly the same way that you did. I hadn't established a relationship with my body. A lot of the things we have to address and the way our nervous system internalizes our current environment is very much shaped by the relationship we have with our body because our body gives us a lot of information and that's actually where our nervous system resides. It is. Now remember you sharing a few days ago in our group. We have a private group that's among created. You shared with us that you grew up in Romania. That's where you're born. The commonest country. You shared some really if you could reshare that story with my audience so that they gain more insight into what your nervous system experience as a child. Yeah, so I don't want to trigger anybody but I'll say this. My dad beat us. I remember him beating me one time. I remember seeing my blood splatter on the walls because the walls were white. Oh my gosh. Yeah, which was pretty horrible and then afterwards I couldn't go to school because I couldn't sit. He used to hit me a lot on my butt and on my back not exclusively but mostly. To make matters worse, it was actually like take down your pants so that whatever he was using would be directly on the skin so there was no protective anything. My head was shaking right now. And I'm not trying to make it like as if what I've endured was the worst of the worst because there are people who have endured much worse than I did. So there was that and of course the regime in the country was such that there was a scarcity of money because food was rationed. I would wake up with my mom or my grandmother my aunt and we would go and we would stand in line at around three, four in the morning to get food to be able to get like milk which was rationed oil was rationed vegetables were rationed bread was rationed milk was rationed and when you were in these line-ups you had to be very careful how you spoke because people from the communist party were infiltrating these line-ups so you had to be careful because otherwise you'd be at risk. My grandmother, my mom used to always say don't say nothing nothing would be said outside of how are you, how zones so electricity would be turned off for extended periods throughout the day so I used to do my homework by candlelight. Let me tell you a story, makeup. I remember how terrified I was. The government used to assign our housing at one point my family and I my mom, my dad and my brother lived in an apartment building and we used to live on the fourth floor so that was like we were kind of like the happy lucky ones because we got the top floor right we had a view. One day I was coming from school my mom would give me a candle and matches so that I could light the candle and go upstairs by candlelight now would have the key and hold the candle to the key holds like a seat put the key in the lock to unlock the door. One day I'm going up and in my head I'm just like counting the steps because I had to count the steps I was trying to keep the candle up as much as I could so that I could see what's in front of me and then I would also have to look down at my feet. I was counting the stairs and then one day I come to second floor and there's a man standing there in the dark. It was the most terrifying thing because this guy was just standing there he wasn't doing anything but he was just standing there so imagine how you just see a person. So yeah we had bath time maybe three times a week my mom would have okay you're taking a bath today and we would go through the bath process and then my brother would take a bath and so on because we had to ration like the water that we would get to our tap was the water you would get to drink it was the water you'd get to bathe it was the water you'd get to cook it was the water for your toilet so you could flush the toilet if you were to go and do your business in there so you had to be very strategic and how you used and about what year what year was this so that the audience listening gets an idea this was like about 1985 86 80 1980 yeah 1980s very early 80s because and the country was under the Russian communism at that time just for context the palace that the president of the country lived and was televised when the revolution happened the faucets were made out of pure gold and the palace that this meant moved so I want people to understand the power of that most of the time the abundance in the world is not so much that scarcity it's just how it's distributed and of course that plays such a role on your psyche because it shapes your relationship to the body me obviously had little food so we would ignore our hunger cues because there just wasn't enough food especially when you had families yeah I just to pitch your children because it's you your brother and was there a sister it was just me and my brother you and your brother so your mom is a caregiver you and your brother and she is doing her best to take care of her children during a time in moments there she has very very little control this woman has zero control over her husband hitting her children she has no control over the communist government rationing the food that her children gets to eat yeah and that she and then the care for herself yeah she is doing her best under unimaginable circumstances but zero control trying to control a little bit she can't control like let's go into line is time to wake up be quiet be still and she worked and she worked and here and here's your back time yeah wow yeah it was only now can I see looking back on it because obviously at the time I was so young but just the amount of the emotional labor that she had to do for the family the immense ability to just keep going was you know it's an aside so in between myself and my brother my mom was pregnant with another and my father beat her so bad that the baby died and she almost died because he beat her so bad at eight months pregnant that the baby came out of the placenta and she had to go and have emergency surgery to take the baby out and he died within I believe three hours I was just horrendous unimaginable please continue I just wanted to acknowledge your mother in this moment and I know that your grandmother was there with you all too I think the immense I really want to be able to acknowledge women man I keep saying every year especially when it's international women's day and I think that a big tide is turning right now and pendulum is swinging in the other direction because now that women have economical freedom and the ability to make their own decisions even though it's not too long ago that we still didn't have rights I know even here in Canada women were not able to buy property on their own until very recently and the women weren't able to vote and the more I went down the rabbit hole especially I've had to go through my own health issues as a result of all of this trauma that gets stored in the body a lot of work that is out there credited to men is actually the work of women I know that a lot of the philosophers even during the Roman times in Greek mythology were actually women teaching men a lot of women penned books that were credited to their husbands because women weren't allowed health was studied on the male body so women's health has been sort of elaborate if you will they just don't have enough data to help us women I just want to acknowledge that women are such incredibly resilient beautiful strong beings and they are the portal of life our womb is the portal through which life comes we feed an entire human being with our bodies and ladies just know that all of this is in the face of what the body is holding all the traumas all the pain all the sorrow all the grief everything that we've all gone through and I know Mika that you've also been on that side of things especially in your childhood and I know a lot of women have yeah and so you as a little girl experiencing a controlling restrictive system that is yeah imbalanced definitely not loving and normalized because this is the government this is law and then how did you get from there to canada so my dad went through this that's a story in an of itself this extraordinary kind of adventure if you will where he had to escape back in Romania people were not allowed in and we were not allowed out that's just the way that it worked imagine I had never seen anybody other than Romanian people and I had never traveled anywhere my dad had to literally escape he hid himself on a ship got out of the country jumped into the water swam to shore and then he applied to immigrate to canada and the united states canada answered first and then he accepted that came to canada and then we had to join him to get the family to united when we left I remember being at the airport in Romania they confiscated all of our documents there were certain cultural things my mom was trying to take as momentals of our life in Romania they confiscated those and then yeah then having to come to canada and integrate into a new society into a new culture without knowing the language another part of the communism in Romania was that our second language was Russian by virtue of the fact that we were under communist regime imported from Russia English was not something that I knew so I had to learn a new language of course my dad was busy working to be able to put food on the table for us and a roof of our heads so there was no guidance would have you integrate into this new society we're here North America but the most touching thing was that it was just such a beautiful I remember one of the most important memories of me immigrating was when we landed we landed in New York it was a layover because we were on the west coast of the country so we landed in New York at JFK you know we looked so out of place because we were not American we were just walking around and we were looking at these convenient stores that you see in every airport and they had like all of these things we had never laid eyes on I'm talking like packets of peanuts trail mix fruits chewing gum candy chocolates things we'd never had access to in Romania we were just looking because we didn't have money dollars were not allowed in Romania nothing from the west was it allowed in Romania and this beautiful lady gave my mom 20 bucks this black lady she was just a freaking angel it's like literally an angel from the heavens to this day makes me so emotional to know because it was just it kind of validated why my dad came to North America it reminded me that America is the land of dreams and people are beautiful and generous so this lady gave my mom 20 dollars and we walked into this thing and my mom's like oh hey guys go buy us go but you want so we got peanuts and it was just an explosion of the best tasting anything in my mouth when I had peanuts for the first time and then that lady gave my mom change we had no idea how much that cost and whether the 20 dollars was enough then we went to the next one my mom bought us gum there she gave all the change including the coins to that cashier she gave us all the change back then we went to the next one and my mom bought us candy my brother and I were sharing it these are all memories of me as an immigrant my mom was just such a such a goat because she was you know foreign country yeah she is and your story is beautiful beyond words your nervous system and what it was conditioned to believe and how to adapt from childhood shaped you in such a way you're the host of your podcast health confidential what all these experiences like the abuse and all this that you experience with the regime with communism and the impact in your family and then now there's another blow to your nervous system being a child and being an unknown country and being a I don't want to say outcast but don't be fit in yeah yeah outcast so then how did your nervous system impact you health wise just as an adult as a woman and you know how it led to health confidential yeah man it was like I'll tell you it was difficult because I had that beautiful experience at JFK and and I thought and like as an aside I just want to tell people like don't believe the hype that you see on TV man like I mean America and back in Romania was just demonized America's doors and and my own experience was very different because this woman was literally an angel that just came in so that we can have the first taste of what it is like in the West but then don't forget that there are bad people out there I was bullied in school here I am I don't speak a word of English at home my dad was still my dad he was this tyrant you just carry an accumulate that your nervous system is constantly trying to calibrate and it's holding for you and your body is holding for you and you know I had to learn the language and integrate myself and then my dad decided that we're going to move from the west coast to the east coast so we did that I had to leave my friends behind I had just made connections that I had to leave behind and moved out here and the same kind of thing went to school got into university and I felt so out of place because let me tell you it got so bad the terror of what my dad had done that I remember many nights I would lay awake because I was afraid that my dad was going to eventually kill my mom I was terrified when you were in the university I was in high school at the time when I got into university they finally split up split up when I was 19 and I felt relief my mom was very financially dependent on him because he had been the first to immigrate here so he had already established himself he closed all the joint bank accounts shut up her credit cards and just left my brother and I would look for change in the parking lot around where we lived to find money and there were many times we would eat bread with jam and tea so we could eat that's how bad it was so of course when you're in those kind of states I'll tell you your brain does not think of studying and getting good grades it's thinking of survival you basically lived in survival mode literally your entire childhood life your entire teenage life yeah and then yeah it was quite a bit it but I never thought because I never I never thought like I said we grew up in was such the norm that men were doing what they were doing back in Romania that it was just like I'm sure everybody lives like that here and then but as your body is storing all of this yes you know so for some of you that are listening yes that may not be aware of this when you fill these emotions of grief sadness anger shame worry and all the other spectrum of emotions terror when you feel them and you don't release them you don't have a healthy outlet to release these lower amount energy that you're feeling these emotions that you're feeling you store them in your body and then that's where this ease happens only now do we see that there's a lot of somatic work because back then even if I wanted to I wouldn't have known I had events that were happening shortly after my parents split up I remember I was in university I was on the bus and I had this out of body experience like my my I just came out of my body and I was on on top of the bus like at the like on the ceiling watching myself it scared the living daylight set of me so I went to the doctor and they put me on these anti-psychosis drugs which were just horrific and I was trying to make a sense of that fast forward I ended up meeting the man that I eventually ended up marrying and that he ended up betraying me and of course because I watched my mom in my upbringing be sort of the people pleaser she stayed with my dad through all the horrific things he did to her and to us myself and my brother I fell into that same kind of role where I was and make mistakes and you take a year a woman you're depending love like I have a family you pretty much married what your mom exemplified for you absolutely and whether it was unconscious it was just normalized for me but at 35 I had a major stroke that's young yeah the funny thing is that I was like I had tried to you know I started going to the gym and I was trying to exercise in the name of health but I was an internal mess I really want to emphasize that no matter what you do on the outside there's just such an inextricable connection between the mind and the body the body was holding so much that it eventually just snapped at a major stroke in 2011 and I was in the hospital and that's when I actually kind of come to realize because I was like forced in silence I was hospitalized and I was forced to just stay here to heal because it was a physiological thing especially of the brain I kind of had to establish a relationship with my body and I got to thinking like my body took so much not just the beatings in the sense that the body had been harmed physically but despite the fact that my blood work was good and I was very thin I was never overweight I had never been and the immense amount of what my body held and it's only now one thing I could tell you is that as you get older and your body reaches capacity there's going to have to be an outlet and the outlet is always going to be disease or illness always bar none so I started doing research and that's where I came across I want people to feel empowered to do that typically a lot of women end up being very you see a lot of diseases autoimmune and illnesses and things that women go through. Even the allergies like gluten allergies there's people I know go to the doctor men and women and the doctors like I can't find anything wrong with you everything looks normal on your charts everything all your tests come back normal yeah and it's emotions and you will see that a lot of women when I went down the rabbit holes that I went a lot of women could probably agree with this because they probably have seen it your gas lit man you they say it's in your head they're just stressed but they never once asked you how are you feeling emotionally what happened in your childhood is there anything that you are suppressing is there anything you need to talk about there's never an outlet for all those things so I started doing the work that I'm doing after the stroke I went back to school and I went very deep I spent enormous amounts of money trying to study how exactly do you heal I mean the physiological aspect the body the physical body is the last frontier but there's so much leading up to that nervous system for example a lot of people don't even understand the idea of a regulated nervous system and even if you do understand the work that it takes is enormous let me tell you it is definitely a journey the work on regulating your nervous system yeah I am on this journey and I'm so grateful to be on this journey of regulating my nervous system yeah it is 100% possible and you're so worth it if you're listening you are worth the exploration into regulating your nervous system because it lives in your body yeah and I think that women also need to understand that we're so conditioned to look at the final destination it's like we want the checkered flag like I've arrived I'm healed but trust me that never ever ends because we accumulate stressors and trauma as we go through life number two it's important for us to know that the journey is fun if you make it so I know that on my journey of healing and that includes you meika I have female friends that are like literally sisters from another life from another dimension from another realm and so it's like those things are so worth the price you gain wisdom that is absolutely priceless so just the sisterhood and the wisdom and the knowledge that you gain on this journey makes it all worth it and I think it's also worth mentioning that relationships are actually the absolute number one thing that is the most damaging to our health as women you're absolutely right the relationships that we choose actually mirror what's inside of us already one of the wisest things and I know it's going to sound simplistic that I ever learned was that the partner you choose in life is a reflection of yourself worth every time you walk around with a significant other you are signaling to the world this is what I think I'm worth if you feel like the person you are with is not a reflection of your worth or if you do think that that's a reflection of your worth it's maybe time to stop and think to say is the way this person is treating me appropriate to what I think I'm worth that's a beautiful question yeah and we can go on and I would love to go on we're gonna invite you back on our show Simone thank you thank you for being on our show thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing a part of your life with us and for you to relive some of that I know it's not easy because we're not talking about rainbows and butterflies and kittens we're talking about communist Romania and those hard knocks experiences that's right but you handle it with grace and if you're listening what Simone has shared with you I hope this topic resonates with you I hope you're able to take away some new pros of wisdom that you can integrate in your life and maybe get curious like what Simone is mentioning about the partner having your life is that a reflection of how do you feel about that that being a reflection of yourself or think about yourself's worth for a moment because it's not just self-care that we're talking about we're talking about your nervous system so it's beyond the pedicure to manicure it's about yeah those unprocessing emotions like Simone mentioned they will turn into this ease and before they even turn to disease they have a major impact on your nervous system in such a way that is unloving so explore that and that is beyond self-care that is self-love thank you for tuning in to get obsessed if you like the show please take a moment to rate review and subscribe it really does help the show to grow thank you for listening
