The Strength of a Wounded Warrior

Healing from deep emotional wounds is never easy, especially when you're trapped in a storm of pain, betrayal, and isolation. In this episode, I open up about my spiritual healing journey—one that unfolded while I was still in the midst of daily emotional torment. I share the powerful lessons I learned about resilience, self-care, and finding my strength when I had no one to lean on but myself. From the quiet moments of prayer and meditation in my sacred space to the painful realizations of how deeply I was being manipulated, I take you through the transformation that ultimately led me to self-love, inner peace, and unshakable faith.

If you've ever felt lost, abandoned, or broken, know that you are not alone. I discuss the importance of self-care, breaking generational curses, and trusting divine timing to guide you toward healing. This episode is for every wounded warrior out there—those who have faced unbearable darkness but still found their way back to the light. If you're in the thick of it right now, I promise you: there are brighter days ahead.

Episode Highlights:

[0:02] – Welcome and introduction to my healing journey.
[2:15] – Living in an abusive environment while trying to heal.
[5:32] – The pivotal moment when I realized I was truly on my own.
[8:48] – Recognizing the power of prayer, meditation, and my sacred space.
[12:10] – How I started seeing the purpose behind my pain.
[15:45] – The moment I refused to let my ex-husband break me.
[19:30] – The importance of trusting intuition and recognizing manipulation.
[22:57] – Breaking free from toxic narratives and reclaiming my identity.
[26:40] – Finding self-love, embracing my own company, and following my truth.

Links & Resources:

Be sure to follow, share, and leave a comment if this show resonates with you! Send me a message at podpage.com/themusicoflife to share your experiences, or to leave a comment. I'd love to feature it in a future episode.

Transcript

Caryn Portnoy: 0:02

Hi everyone, and welcome to the music of Life. I'm your host. Karen Portnoy, before I get into this episode, please comment, ask questions, share some of your experiences, and don't forget to subscribe. You I wanted to talk a little bit about my spiritual healing journey, which I had made reference to in previous episodes. It was kind of hard to identify exactly what was going on at the time that I was embarking on this healing journey, primarily because it was happening at the same time that I was still living in the house and still being abused daily by my ex husband, and it was, it was an enormous amount of pain that was thrust upon me every Day for three years, and I didn't have anybody to save me. I didn't have anybody to pull me out of hell, whatever friends I thought I had turned against me. And you know, my ex husband worked hard at making sure everyone in our friend group and our community and his family, and worst of all, my daughter, all jumped on his bandwagon and bought whatever he sold them. So I was really on my own in every sense of the word. And I know that I spoke a bit about my weekly baths that I took, and you know that was my sacred space to pray and to meditate and to cry, and it was really the one thing that saved me the most, because it was the only outlet I had that was a safe space for me that was very cleansing spiritually. I didn't really feel how healing it was until time had passed. So think it was about six months in or so. It could have been a little bit longer, but it took quite some time before I really started to feel the fruits of my labor, so to speak. You know, I would eventually walk a little lighter and feel a little bit lighter and just kind of notice that the weight of the world was not as heavy on my shoulders at some point, and while I'm using this platform to hopefully be the life raft for other people who are also going through something as as as toxic and painful as I did, I didn't have a life raft. I had to pull myself out of all of what was happening myself. And as I was thinking about this episode and what I wanted to say, there was an image that popped into my head. I don't remember how far into the divorce. It was, I'm going to say it was somewhere around a year and a half. I remember I was making dinner for my daughter one night. So maybe it was like less than a year in, because he took over making dinner for my daughter at some point. And so this was probably one of the last times that I made dinner for her, before he pushed me aside and decided that he was going to make her dinner every night. So I was making her mac and cheese, and the water was boiling for the pasta, and I was standing over the stove just kind of like mixing everything in. And He came up to me, and I'll never forget the sound of his voice and the way that he spoke to me, but he he got right up in my face and he said, What do you do? Nothing, nothing in this like evil, evil energy that I just I didn't recognize him. He was like an another being, you know, like something took over him. It was just, it was so scary because, you know, you think you know someone for 27 years, and then they exhibit behavior like that, and it's nothing you ever saw or recognized, and it's scary anyway, so it was that kind of thing that was just, it just pierced me to my core, you know, like, what are you supposed to do with something like that? But that was the hatred and the venom coming out of him. And, you know the fact that I was a stay at home mom for the first 12 years of my daughter her life. I mean, she's 15, it was like there was no regard for the fact that I was raising our daughter, that I was home and available to her, and I was in charge of everything in her life. And this was the thanks I got for that. But you know, so anyway, I, you know, it's hard to talk so much about what was happening in the moment regarding my healing, because it was the kind of thing that I didn't necessarily recognize until I could look back at it. And, you know, hindsight is 2020, so I was able to understand things that happened once, you know, once I was far enough away from it and could make sense of it, but I considered myself a wounded warrior, you know, the fact that I survived, the fact that I pulled myself out of hell, the fact that I was, you know, still standing at the end of this. I mean, I definitely felt like a wounded warrior. And the more I connected to God and the universe, you know, through prayer and meditation, the more I realized that there was a purpose to all of this. And it was hard to see at the time because it was so murky and so blinding with pain that I couldn't see what all the lessons were, you know, at that time, but looking back, it was very apparent to me that there was a reason, that there was no one there to save me. And I look back now and I say, you know, God was testing my strength and my resiliency and my courage and my bravery, one of the driving forces through my divorce was that I was not going to allow him to break me. So I needed to prove this to myself, maybe prove it to God too, although I truly believe that he knew what I was made up, and that I would get myself out of this in one piece. So I I believe that I had to prove this to myself, because maybe I didn't believe that. I sure do now. But what I also discovered was that as I was learning how to help myself and save myself and stay true to myself. You know, I was becoming more authentically me as time went on, and it was really, really hard to to stay there when my ex husband and daughter kept trying to keep the person that they created me to be through the divorce, and it was really hard, because I was evolving, I was growing, I was changing, I was healing, and I was becoming a better version of myself As we were getting closer to the end, and it was hard to keep being pulled down to a level of, I can't even explain it. It was just whatever lies he told my daughter and she believed was not who I was. But, you know, look, he had to, he had to force a narrative on her to keep her loyal to him, and I could not stay in that character that they both portrayed me in. You know, he would come at me and at me and at me. He would just say things and do things to cause a reaction, and as hard as I could to not react, he would keep picking at that scab until he finally got a reaction out of me. And then he could turn around and say, look at her. Look how crazy she is. Never once taking accountability for causing that reaction to begin with. And then he would get my daughter to side with him, and it was two against one, and it was a shit storm every single time. But this is what narcissists do, and this kind of behavior, I mean, it's torturous. It's absolutely torturous and evil, and why he would want to cause the mother of his child that much pain. I mean, clearly I wanted the divorce. He wanted to hurt me, and what better way to hurt me than to use our daughter to weaponize against me? It was very, very difficult to remain close to my daughter at this time, because I knew that she was reporting every single thing I did back to him, every time I looked a certain way, every time I blinked, every time I breathed. It didn't matter. I knew that she was going back to report things to him. It was very, very obvious. It wasn't even like, Well, how do you know? Because I knew my intuition is spot on. It's very strong. I trust it. And I I could tell that she was going back to him certain things, you know. I could tell that she was texting him. I could, you know, like you could tell you. I spoke about my ex husband taking our dog out for walks every night with my daughter. And I used to call them their strategy walks, because I knew that that was the time and place that they spent strategizing against me. So you know, I know him well enough and I know her well enough to know that he'd be asking and she'd be telling so, you know, look, I was very aware and on to them, so I behaved accordingly. But the truth was, I couldn't share things with her that I used to be able to share with her. I couldn't talk to her the way I used to talk to her, because I knew that he was setting her up to report back to him, and the less he knew about me and and what I was thinking and what I was doing, the better off it was for everyone. But as I got further and further into my healing journey, I realized how important it was for me to be truthful in myself, to follow my own truth, my own authenticity. And as time went on, it became very clear to me that I was no longer going to wear the mask that I felt I needed to wear for, you know, being in my community and with our friends, and that wasn't who I was. You know, when you move to suburbia and you you make friends and your kids are all the same age, and you kind of like, spend time together and lunches and dinners and vacations and all kinds of stuff. It's like you conform to a certain lifestyle that everybody somehow agrees to, not outwardly, but, you know, everyone kind of follows the same path, you know, outwardly, socially. And that was, you know, what we signed up for when we decided to get married and have a child and move into our house and and, you know, you live a certain way, which would have been fine if we had a strong foundation and a good marriage and all of that. But, you know, clearly, as I've spoken about all this time, we didn't have that. So the shell of our lifestyle became that much more unwanted for me because we didn't have a solid life together inwardly. So by the time I cut everybody out of my life and embarked on a path by myself, you know, I was definitely alone on an island, but this island was becoming my my safety, my security. I knew at that point that there was nobody that I could rely on except myself, and that was like at the hardest time of my life. So it was very eye opening to me to see this, because you never know how strong you are until you're put to a test like this. You know, I've said it before. Maybe it's an illness, maybe it's, you know, the the declining health of a parent, or an addiction, or, you know, anything like that. It's something drastic and devastating happens in your life to bring you to your knees, and who else are you going to reach out to for help? For me, it was a power greater than me, which I call God. So you know, there was a very apparent indication that God was looking out for me. He allowed me to go through it, because I needed to go on this journey, and I needed to find myself, and I needed to come back to myself, to love myself, to find my worth, to see my value. And those were all things that I couldn't have done otherwise. So it's easy for me to look back now and be grateful for the journey, because I'm at a place now where I like the love I have for myself is off the charts. Now, I know my worth, I know my value. I know what I bring to anybody's life, and I'm proud. I'm so proud and so grateful for where I am now. I mean, I'm out of the house for 10 months now, and my whole life is transformed, and I'm at a point now where I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about me. I'm not looking to get anybody's approval. I don't need to ask for anyone's advice. I don't need to ask for anyone's opinions. If people are in my life, it's because I choose to have them in my life now, because they add value to my life and I add value to theirs, I'm not begging for anyone to be in my life. I'm not settling for anything less than I know I deserve. I mean, I've got boundaries now. I've got standards now that, I mean, I don't recognize the old me. Anymore, and I've taken all this time to prove to myself that, you know what? I love being alone. I love being with people, too, and I balance that time out very, very nicely, but I love my own company. There was a time I used to look down at that, and I'm sure a lot of people do. I am so secure in who I am, and I'm so proud of who I've become, and this is just the beginning, and I have a direct connection to God now where I don't make decisions without consulting him. Like I said, My intuition is spot on, and I know when something is right for me and when something is not right for me, and so far, he's guiding me beautifully. And I'm so grateful for all of it. And even when there are days that I feel like I have setbacks or slip ups, and you know, however you define a slip up or some some regression of some sort, all it takes is going within and talking to God, and by the time I'm done, I feel so much better, and I don't have to carry those burdens anymore. I give them all over to God and let him handle it. So, you know, the entire three years of living together, I never retaliated against my ex, I never stooped to his level. And I the way that I looked at it was, it's not my job to offer up his karma. I held my head high as much as I could. I did the best I could as a human being who was, you know, who was the target of somebody trying to destroy me, but I rose out of the ashes every single time. And I kept saying to myself, it's not my job to judge, that's God's job, and God will take care of his karma in divine timing, and I truly believe that. And in all of the Facebook groups that I'm in, the divorce groups that I'm in, and all the people I'm reaching with my posts and comments, and all of the posts and comments that I read from everybody else, that's the same thing that I keep reiterating to everyone else, it's not our job to judge people, and God will take care of karma, bad karma and good karma in divine timing. And that's a very consistent message I keep saying, because, you know, who are we to judge other people? Is really what it comes down to for you know, for us to judge others means that others are judging us too. And even though we can't help when other people judge us, we can help how much we judge others. And there is a boomerang effect. We reap what we sow that's just what it is, and it can be in a good way, or it could be in a bad way. Personally, I choose to follow a good way, a good path. Not everybody thinks about it, not everybody cares about it. So, you know, it'll be what it'll be. I'm very aware of it now, and therefore I follow a path of truth and love and light and authenticity. I'm not for everyone. I don't expect everyone to like me, love me, whatever, and I'm okay with that. Sometimes, you know, 10 months out of moving out of the house, it's hard to look back and remember how bad it was, because when you're in it and you're a total victim, like not just playing a victim, but being an actual victim, every day, you know what you're in but when enough time passes and things get better and you're looking forward and your life is moving forward, it's sometimes hard to reflect back and recount just how bad it was, but I still remember, you know, it's it's only been 10 months. Sometimes it feels like yesterday, and sometimes it feels like, you know, years and years ago. But that's just a reminder of how far I've come and how far I've healed and and it's very rewarding and very confirming. And I don't need anybody else's validation. I get my validation from God and the universe and, and that's enough for me. So I encourage anybody who's still in the thick of it, who's still in the midst of pain and suffering and the awful experience of being in an awful, toxic divorce, there are brighter days ahead. I promise, promise you that whatever you can do to help yourself get stronger, get wiser. It's very easy to just sit in your emotions and wallow, and as much as I understand that it's not helpful, I'm not saying you're wrong for being there. I'm just saying that, you know, at some point it would be more helpful to kind of put that hurt and pain in a box. You know. In your mind, at least, put it in a box, put the box on a shelf, and put your logic hat on, you know, put your thinking brain on and think about how you're going to make your way through this. I'm not saying it's so easy to just think your way out of it, for sure, not. But, you know, to think of a strategy, to think of a way, a plan, something that you can do for yourself, to move yourself forward, emotionally and logistically, so that you can find yourself a path forward. What I really discovered was that self care was so important. Self love was so important. I mean, those two things together were just like mind blowing. I mean, nobody handed me a handbook to say how you do that, and the only way that I could come up with was to think of different ways. You know, what does self care look like to me? Sometimes it meant getting my nails done, getting my hair done, getting a massage. Sometimes it meant, I don't know, listening to my favorite music, or walking on the beach, or meeting a friend for lunch, or, you know, anything. It could be anything that makes you feel good about yourself. I mean, it could be anything. Some people like to go to the gym for self care. Some people like to, you know, sit and hug a tree, or, you know, who knows, maybe you stand and hug a tree and self love. I mean, there can be so many different ways of of showing that to yourself, but for me, self love was, you know, literally sitting there and hugging myself. It, you know, look, I spent most of my life in therapy, so I'm very psychologically minded. And, you know, even up until recently, I I've done a lot of inner child healing. I I had a vision recently when I was doing some inner child work where I was at the beach in my, you know, in my vision, I was, I was at the beach. I was sitting on the rocks, overlooking the horizon and the sun, and I had my three year old child sitting in my lap, and we were both looking out at the at the horizon, and I was just hugging her, and we were just sitting, you know, her in my lap, and me hugging her, and just being at one with each other. And it was such a beautiful vision for me, and so healing that, of course, I started crying, but it was that recognition of her, and, you know, she just needed love, and I was able to give it to her. And you know, I've spent a lot of time with my inner child lately, and whatever, but that's part of healing, too. It's like, you know, where do your wounds come from? Where does your trauma come from? Most of the time, it comes from childhood and parents and whatever their issues were in parenting. I mean, it all gets passed down and what their parents were like and grandparents and great grandparents. I mean, it goes through the generations, and it gets passed on to you, and then what are you supposed to do with it? So as I've been going through all this healing, I've really kind of broken a lot of generational curses along the way, things that my ancestors weren't strong enough to do, and so those wounds kept getting passed down through my lineage. I know that this is kind of like out there, what I'm talking about. A lot of people don't think this way, and I acknowledge that, but like I said, I I'm very psychologically minded and now more spiritually attuned and articulate that, you know, I get that this is not something that most people think about, and it's okay. I'm doing enough thinking for everyone, but these are the things that I'm discovering and healing from, and I'm really proud of all this work that I'm doing, but, you know, it's interesting, because I've been thinking, you know, I don't look like what I've been through, and I'm aware of that because I hide it. Well, it's not something I wear on my face. And anybody meeting me for the first time, or somebody who's known me for a long time would never really get how much I've been through. I've been through a lot. I mean, everybody has. I'm not saying that I'm special in that way. I'm just saying that the first 50, I guess almost 55 years of my life has been challenge after challenge after. A challenge. I mean, you know, when I look back at all of the things that were difficulties and challenges in my life, I mean, they were relentless, all meant to challenge me and make me grow. And you know, I would say for the bulk of those years, I wasn't really awake for it, like I wasn't paying attention. I wasn't attuned to it. I am now more than ever, but now I kind of feel like my life is so much more peaceful, so much more aligned, so much more at ease, and I'm really proud of of who I am now. So I look forward to talking more about these kinds of things with you guys, and sharing more lessons I've learned and insights I've had and all of that. So that was another thing. In high school, I discovered that I had a gift of insight, and maybe it was because of all the therapy that I was in or whatever. But I remember sitting around the dinner table with my family, and we would be talking about certain issues. I don't know if it was like within our family or just about somebody else, but there would be issues about someone, and I remember being able to piece together and maybe coming up with, like, the back story of why something happened the way it happened. And I remember I was kind of, like, impressed with the fact that I had this ability to see the bigger picture and to piece things together. And I I discovered I had this gift of insight. And it's only been something that has grown ever since, but I've always been able to see things that other people haven't really been able to see, and it's kind of cool. Anyway, we'll talk more in future episodes, but I just had all of this on my mind and wanted to share it with you guys. So thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. Please join me every Thursday for a new episode. You can reach my website@podpage.com slash the music of life. Feel free to leave your email address. You can also leave a voicemail and share any kinds of stories or experiences or anything that you'd like to talk about. I promise I will keep you anonymous, but I assure you that whatever experiences or stories you leave for me, you are not alone, and I would love to share that with other people who are also going through similar things. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you in the next episode you.