Episode 227: Blooming - Interview Carrington Smith

Episode 227: Blooming - Interview Carrington Smith Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. The most beautiful flowers and plants bloom with fertilizer, water, and light. Today’s guest, Carrington Smith, says in her book, “I had been told to shut up and not tell my story. It makes people feel uncomfortable. But the truth is that my power, my secret weapons, my gifts are IN my stories. That is where I discovered the authentic me - where I discovered the gifts, the buried treasure - in all the shit (which turns out to be fertilizer). It is in the debris of life, in the fire, that I found out who I was and what I was made of. Tune in for my interview with Carrington to hear her story and the process of blooming. Carrington Smith is the author of Blooming: Finding Gifts in the Shit of Life. Despite being born into a legacy of wealth, life was not so kind to her. Carrington has survived childhood abuse, sexual assault, two divorces, mountains of debt, religious manipulation, and the loss of close friends. In her bestselling, debut memoir, she combines her wit with wisdom to share her journey from trauma to triumph. Today, with a shift in mindset, she lives a life filled with joy, opportunity, and purpose. We talk about her story at home - Everyone’s story starts at home. You spend a number of chapters giving your background with your family, the incident with you father and the bike ride, the toilet incident at church, your mother’s response to your rape - these stories set a scene of a childhood that was traumatic and unsupportive. Can you share some of these most pivotal stories with us and then let’s talk about what gifts these held for you. Let’s talk about the importance of owning our stories. In your experience, how did you do this? What was the power behind owning your whole messy story?     CONNECT WITH CARRINGTON Carrie@CarringtonLegal.com Carrington-Smith.com +1(512)627-7467 in/CarrieSmithTrabue @CarringtonATX   In each of the interviews on the love your story show, our purpose is to share the stories of our lives and learn from one another how we got through them - that’s what stories do, they inspire and teach. Carrington’s book more or less sums up what we are doing here on every show - listening and learning how to bloom despite the hard stuff. But I think we’re far enough along here to note that in the end, we can really thrive BECAUSE of the hard stuff we go through. We learn who we are as our character unfolds and we learn and grow. We become strong because we had to. We become empathetic because we now understand things we didn’t know before the fertilizer got shoveled our way. We become resilient because we learned to bounce back and regroup. We bloom BECAUSE of the fertilizer. It’s a rough game, and it’s one we often want to tap out of, but understanding how it’s played, can help a lot when the growth spurts happen. Your challenge this week is to choose one of your past challenges - something really tough you went through, and to journal at least 1 page about what you gained from that experience. Just let it free flow as you write, and by the end you’ll be able to dig through and find the gifts. Have a beautiful week and share this, right now, with someone in your life who is struggling. We’ll let the show remind them that there are gifts to be found in the hard stuff. See you in two weeks.