Everything Fell Apart… Now What? How to Find Yourself Again

Welcome back to the Love-Inspired Leadership Podcast. We are so grateful that you are here, and we have an exceedingly meaningful conversation for you to extract some potent truths, and I believe some incredible insights that can support you on your journey as a love-inspired leader. So today's episode theme is called When Life Hits, Business Stalls: How to Restore Momentum. So I'd like to introduce you to our incredible guest today, and her name is Debbie Lynn. She is a business resilience strategist and certified grief educator with over 20 years of experience walking alongside women entrepreneurs in the hardest seasons of their life. So through her work, Debbie helps women turn life's toughest moments—grief, burnout, and loss of identity—into a renewed, rejuvenated, purposeful power that is deeper and more sustainable, and with profit. So she supports and loves her clients through the pain to the purpose, from the power to the profit. So this is up my lane of joy. So if you're a woman business owner who's felt your sales momentum stalling, or your decisions feel absolutely stagnant or paralyzed, or your income is shaken after life has knocked you down, this episode will open a new doorway, will bring you keys of incredible potent possibility, and remind you that your story is not over. So, Debbie, this is going to be good, girl. I already feel your conviction and your your just dedication to women, which sizzles my soul, and I know it does the audience. So let's just start at the beginning here. So what drew you into this specific, purposeful work of supporting women founders, entrepreneurs, and leaders through grief, burnout, and this loss of their own personal identity?

Well, you know, for me, it started by life, to be honest. It wasn't something that I thought I would ever do, or even, you know, have to go through, but to give you just a brief glimpse of my story and why I'm so passionate, in one week, I lost a 4-month-old son, my job, and nearly my identity, because number one, I was young, I did not have support, did not have the questions to ask, nor did I know where to go. And being young and in that situation, the first thing that we turn to or that we think of is to go to our parents. And so I did. I turned to my parents, and I literally picked up and moved 1,000 miles away, $100 in a suitcase, came to Texas, and when I got to my parents, they said, You know, Debbie, you made your bed, now lie in it. And so talk about, whoa, a knockdown slap in the face. It's like I'm sitting there going, Hmm, what do I do? And I was raised in the church, So we were raised to honor our husbands, right, and to be a servant to them. So I had no skills. So that's just a glimpse of my story of where I started and why I'm so passionate.

Okay. All right already. That is very powerful, and it is a position of complete surrender. When you are in that position and realize and your ability to receive support is not there, that is a big wake-up call. That is the time where, what am I going to do? And I'm We're going to find out during this interview for the audience who's listening. I know you want to know, too, so do I. So, we will get there, but let's just pause for a moment. I just want the audience to reflect on when have you felt lost? When have you felt that moment where you knew that everything was going to change after that moment because it was a critical time in life that you needed answers and you needed solutions and you were not going to get them from where you originally knew that you were going to get them. So, so thank you for being so incredibly honest, and I can feel the fuel of your purpose and your passion percolating here. So, was there a a time in that where you thought to yourself, Well, I know that something has to change in the way I'm leading myself. So, how did that defining story, that moment in time, that breakthrough, that breakdown shape your passion for helping other women, too, to go from that pain because you had intimate, intrinsic, innate understanding of what that is emotionally, mentally, physically? So, what was it that shaped this this next chapter that you made a decision to pursue?

Yeah, so unfortunately, it wasn't right away. As I was going through it, I was married at the time, and he could not deal with the loss of the child, and so that's why I went to Texas to begin with. And as I'm trying to figure out how to navigate who I am now, I kept asking myself, Who am I? And so many times for women, and especially when we've been in business or we are the protector, we're the one who does everything, we fall into a pattern which I call survival mode. Yes. And what happens is when we're in survival mode, we feel foggy. We cannot make decisions. We stall, we're tired, we're we just are like existing. And that's pretty much where I was until one night that I was laying there in the apartment, and the kids were already in bed, and I'm laying there asking myself who I am, crying my eyes out, just feeling like I'm at the my wits end. You know, I don't have the support that I thought I would, and I turned to a bottle of wine and a bottle of pills. And I took it all.

You did.

And at one moment, I had it was a God moment. I know invariably it was a God moment. And at that moment, it was like I had enough sense to call Miriam, one of my very deepest best friends. And I called her and I said, I just took a bottle of pills. I need help. And got to the hospital, they pumped my stomach, and they had said if I had waited 10 more minutes, I wouldn't be here today. So that was the gist of my turning point, realizing, I had two kids! What am I doing? So that was my turning point. It's not a happy place.

Nope.

Uh-huh. But Nope. I woke up. Yep. And I realized that I am better than that, and I am meant for more. I am meant

Can we pause for this?

deliver.

And anybody who's listening here who may be in that place, honestly, I've been there too. I have thought about it, I didn't do anything, but I've been there too, and I think everyone has at one stage in their life or not. Is I want the audience to realize this phrase, this mantra, and I want you to repeat it three times, Debbie. And it's And I'm going to repeat it too, because I want to say it to myself right now, and that is, I am meant for more. So would you just repeat it for the audience three times so they can hear it and it can land for them too?

Yeah, I am meant for more. I I am meant for more. I am meant for more.

It brings tears to my eyes. Oh, my goodness. You know, it's tears of joy because every woman on the planet is here for more. We are the love bringers. We are the loving light of the world. And Debbie, you are so brave, you are so bold, I respect you so much, and you have taken this extraordinary challenge, issue, obstacle—I just journal journaled about this this morning—and you turned it into your living legacy, your life purpose. And I'm so proud of you. I honor you. And I believe that every woman has this opportunity, too. I'm with you on that. So what happened during that time? And I'll just breathe when I say this.

So, you know, during the time, luckily I had two or three women from the church who supported me and loved me and allowed me to cry, to vent, to just realize that what I was going through obviously wasn't—I didn't ask for it, right? And we don't, we don't ask for when life hits. And the one thing that I I remember now, and this is part of my mantra, is to realize that I'm not broken. I'm just buried. I buried all of these things within my heart because my heart was breaking, and it was in a million pieces because I didn't know. I mean, a loss of a child is something that no one should ever have to go through. And when life hits you like that, your brain goes into protection mode. And what it's meant to do is it's meant to slow you down so that your system can relax and let you grow. It makes things feel heavy so that you won't make the wrong decisions, but it's not because you're failing. And that's what we tend to go to. We tend to think, okay, I'm failing. But you have to realize, no, you're in survival mode, and that works great in a crisis, but in business, it slows you down. It slows your momentum, which and, you know, eventually stops the profit. And so, when we're in business, we have to get into a a different way. And so I have the heart framework that I'd like to share in a bit. But I'll just

I I'm dying to see that, but can we circle back onto a couple of things you said? Because, I mean, this is profound information. Audience, honestly, this is the truth, and and I want the audience to realize that that survival mode. And I want to go back: you are not broken. You are buried. You are not broken. You are buried. And I want to circle back to the place, how we navigate out of being buried or stuck is receiving the support and love from other women. So you had set up what I call your dream team, who knows you, who loves you, and supported you through this. You see, we are not meant to do life alone, and that's personally or professionally. And they supported you along the next step and the next decision, and knew it was truth, and it built in momentum, and and your authentic identity started to be born, which is who you are, right? And I mean, I just, you know, I've seen a lot of women suffer in my day being alone, and it's just not on my watch either, Debbie, and it's wrong, and it doesn't need to be. So I just want to develop just one action step for the audience, and that is this: please set up your dream team, even if it's just one person, and be vulnerable. Be authentic. Tell them what your struggles are. Tell them what your your pains are. Tell them what's hard, what's difficult, and be there for them. So you build up this beautiful, love-inspired leadership with a relationship with another woman, and then when those times hit, you can call in a lifeline. That's what I recommend, and that is the truth. And that's what you did, Debbie. So I acknowledge you. I honestly, I pop my eyes down to you because that was the turning point for you. Is feeling safe enough that you can be vulnerable and tell your truth, and also receive and and this beautiful information that supported you to take your next step, to take action, to start moving forward from being buried to to crawl out of that buried place. Am I correct?

Yes, most definitely. And you know, I will say that if it hadn't been for Miriam, you know, I don't know how I would have moved on. And you know, to this day it's been 45 years, and you know, we have shared laughs and cries, and you know, but she's been there through the the tough, and it is it is so critical, and it's so important to have somebody in your life like that. And honestly, I would tell every woman to find somebody that you can fall back on, because we all need it. We all need it.

We do. So thank you for that. I knew this conversation was going to be good, and I knew we had, so our lives are very parallel, which I just feel blessed at this moment. So I just want to share with the audience that Debbie's story really reminds us that, you know, transformation often begins in the very places that we feel broke. And when you stop pretending that you're fine and start honoring both your own grief and your own bravery and grit, something sacred starts to move within you. And so let's explore how that truth now shapes the way you restore momentum for women in business. So can we go into your framework, because I'd love the audience to understand the context of what that represents.

Yeah, so I have two methods that I use, and the first one is what we call business CPR. It's resuscitating your business, and it's passion, power, and profit. And the way that works is with the HEART framework, and my HEART framework stands for heal, embrace, awaken, transform, or reclaim and transform. So let's start with the heart, because that is where we have to begin. The first thing we do is we have to heal from within, and what that means is to ask ourselves questions. And one of the first questions that we have to ask is how am I feeling? And feeling is a very critical word that we need to understand and really get inside of our heart. Are we feeling sad? Are we feeling angry? Are we feeling guilt? I had all of those feelings at once, and I blamed God, like, why me? Right? And until we honor our feelings and our true heart, we can't even begin to heal. So we can't even move forward until we start by healing, and that's why the heart is so critical. Now, once we get into the feeling and thinking about now, what should I do? Am I feeling good? What brought me joy today? One thing that brings you joy today, that begins the healing process, because until you can truly think about that, you cannot move on to embracing, because you haven't healed.

So, can we stick with the heart just for a sec here? I just relate so much to what you're saying, and my experience of women is they can resist the opportunity to feel at all costs because they think if they're going to cry, they're not going to stop. And I want to let the audience know this fact, and when I learned this, my entire life changed, is that to honor my sadness, to embrace, which is where you're going next, my sadness, and it is I want to let you know this fact: it is a 90-second loop. So when I'm willing to surrender just to the sadness by releasing all judgment, blame, criticism, and fear, but just feel it in my body and let it move through me, we always feel better after we cry. So I love your analogy of connecting with the heart, and that's the place to heal first, before we take action. And what I've been experiencing in my life of recent in the last five years too is this position to learn I still feel like a student to honor oneself, and by making that decision to feel sadness and allow it to move through my body is honoring who I am, and I'm astounded at the healing, at the transformation, at the movement forward with calm confidence. Would you say that as well?

Oh yeah, most definitely.

Right. So your framework, the center core is the heart. So let's go to the next step, which is embrace. I call it align. I've got my own framework too, the Aim High Method, which is truth, alignment, and radiance. And mine's simple, but tell me about embrace, because let's dive into that one next step, and then we'll we'll transition to invite people to connect with you.

So embrace is after you've felt and you've started the joy, then basically, like you stated, you're in line now with who you are and who you want to be. You're not living with the world's expectations anymore. You are living with you through your heart. So at that point, you can embrace you completely, and then you can help others, because you know who you are.

And I want to let the audience know that woman inside you, your authentic identity, your authentic self, is calling you forward. It's when you slow down. It's when you listen. It's when you ask those questions that Debbie mentioned earlier, and listen and wait for the answer. Wait for the answer, and when you hear that answer, step-by-step, inch-by-inch, yard-by-yard, mile-by-mile, you learn to fall in love with yourself in a way that's sacred, honoring, and I know that's how you live, too, Debbie. And I I just want this what we're talking about right now for every single woman on the planet because we are here to make a difference, too, but we got to be strong within ourselves. So I want to acknowledge you for your resilience as a woman. I want to acknowledge you for your purpose and passion cuz it's there, girl. I can feel it. And, you know, each of us need to step up right now, and that's what you're doing here on my podcast. You're sharing your message of truth and to transform women, that they can turn that pain to purpose to profit. So I acknowledge you, and I think you are really making a difference in the world, and I want to invite the audience to realize that they can connect with you, and they can also give themselves permission to replay this this podcast and take the bits out. So how can people get ahold of you and connect with you following hearing this podcast?

You can go to heartledawakening.com. I'm also at debbielynntx. com, and I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook, and also I have a free gift if anyone is interested. I have the Heart Led Bounce Back Reset, and you go to empowerherbonus.com.

Perfect. Thank you for that gift. Okay, so anybody who's listening, get the gift, sign up for the gift, and I want to just thank you, Debbie, for for your courage, for your bravery, for how bold you are, for your heart, for your hard-earned wisdom, and also the practical tools of rebuilding momentum as a woman in her life as well as her business. So I also want let let the audience know once again that I am contributing my gift, The 21-Day Above-the-Line Living, which is your sacred insight journey to think above the line and live a purposeful, passionate, peaceful, results-driven life. So thank you, Debbie, and I appreciate you coming on my podcast.

Thank you, Carolyn, so much. This was amazing, and I treasure the time with you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.