March 5, 2025 • 25 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm Allison from Abundance Practice Building.
I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping
therapists build sustainable, joy-filled private practices, just
like I've done for tens of thousands of
therapists across the world.
I'm excited to help you too.
If you want to fill your practice with
ideal clients, we have loads of free resources
(00:29):
and paid support.
Go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links.
All right, on to the show.
Some of y'all aren't sending HIPAA-compliant
email and it's a problem.
Even if you're paying for a business Google
Workspace account and have a signed BAA, your
emails still aren't 100% compliant.
That's where Powerbox comes in.
(00:50):
You can connect Powerbox to your Google Workspace
or Microsoft 365 email one time and you're
completely covered.
No one has to sign into portals.
It sends and it shows up like any
other email.
Behind the scenes, Powerbox software checks the security
settings of the recipient and ensures that the
email is sent properly so you're not violating
HIPAA in the ways you may accidentally be
(01:10):
now.
I know, HIPAA isn't sexy, but we don't
avoid compliance in an abundant practice.
We check the boxes we need to check
and this is the easiest way to do
that with email.
Check out my friends at powerbox.com.
That's P-A-U-B-O-X.
Use code abundant to get $250 off your
first year of Powerbox.
That makes it less than $100 for your
(01:31):
first year.
Again, that's P-A-U-B-O-X
.com.
Use code abundant.
So I've talked about therapy notes on here
for years.
I could talk about the features and the
benefits in my sleep, but there are a
couple things I want you to know about
therapy notes that doesn't typically make it into
an ad script.
First is that they actually care if you'd
like their platform.
(01:52):
They don't only make themselves available on the
phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your
hair out when you get stuck.
They also take member suggestions and implement those
that there's client demand for, like therapy search
and included listing service that helps clients find
you, internal and external secure messaging, clinical outcome
measures to keep an eye on how your
clients are progressing, a super smooth super bill
(02:13):
process, real-time eligibility to check your client's
insurance.
In my conversations with the employees there at
all levels, they all really believe in their
product and they want you to love it
too.
Second, they are proudly independently owned.
Why should you care about that?
Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved,
the focus shifts from making customers happy to
(02:34):
making investors happy.
Prices go way up, innovation plateaus, making more
money with as little output as possible becomes
the number one focus.
With over 100,000 therapists using their platform,
they've been able to stay incredibly successful and
they don't have to sacrifice your experience to
stay there.
You can try two months free at therapynotes
(02:54):
.com with the coupon code ABUNDANT.
Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm your host, Allison Pereer, and I'm here
with Julia Colangelo.
Julia and I have a long and storied
history.
She was in one of my practice building
groups and built her practice beautifully and then
shifted over to coaching and helps people with
(03:15):
flow.
Then she became my coach.
I got to go out to Hawaii and
learn from her and be with her and
work with her in a number of capacities.
Julia has been both a student and a
mentor of mine and was somebody that I
reached out to a good bit after Helene
because as you will hear, Julia has been
(03:36):
through hell with her own natural disaster.
But thank you for being here, Julia.
Thanks for coming.
Thanks for having me.
I think this is such an important topic
to discuss as practice owners and as clinicians
and as disaster survivors.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(03:56):
Can you do a description of what happened
in your disaster?
Yeah.
Over 18 months ago, it felt like before
that I had some other issues that were
just lingering from some chronic health stuff that
became more acute.
We survived the Maui wildfires, specifically in Lahaina.
(04:18):
There were three wildfires that day, Olinda, Kula,
and Lahaina.
Lahaina was the largest one.
The fires were caused by the neglect of
the electrical in the whole town.
Because of that and wind, this fire took
out the entire town.
And neighborhoods surrounding Lahaina town specifically.
(04:40):
So overnight, I went from small business owner
with a successful steady business to losing almost
all of my IP on electrical devices and
different hard drives that I had and podcast
equipment.
Everything, losing everything in an instant, very abruptly
(05:03):
and unexpectedly with no real preparation time.
And needing to have this short term, I
would say midterm.
And then now, I would say I'm just
entering the longer term recovery of what it
looks like to try to build something differently
after needing to face very abrupt, unexpected trauma,
(05:29):
danger, and loss.
Yeah.
And it wasn't just your business affected.
You lost your home.
You lost your car.
You and your two kids and your partner
fled in a car.
Oh, yes.
We lost our home.
We lost the schools.
We fled in a car.
We made it out.
The New York Times stamp said that we
were two minutes away from it.
(05:51):
It was already the fire was on our
street, but the wind was blowing down our
street another direction.
But it was on our street.
And it took us four hours to flee
what would have taken about 30 minutes to
get to safety.
And I actually saw our home in flames
(06:12):
from a rooftop in the neighborhood.
But I still thought in what we do
throughout trauma, oh, I'll just come back tomorrow.
This can't be real.
And they were not even one, 11 months
old and four years old at the time,
our daughters.
And of course, I was the parent who
promised and reassured that nothing would happen.
(06:35):
So one of the long term things is
building back the trust of thinking some everything's
going to be okay.
And then not because of what I did
or didn't do.
Things are still not okay.
And that's something that I just never expected
to have to deal with, with children at
such a young age, and with owning a
(06:57):
business and not having any real playbook for
how much and how severely this would impact
my ability to run a business.
Yeah.
I'm in the, I guess, late early or
early mid stage.
So, oh, I'm going to cry because that's
what you do in the state.
(07:18):
This can be part one of us feeling
our feelings.
Yeah.
And we're five months out, five months in
two days of when we're recording this, we're
five months out from Helene and the destruction
is still everywhere.
It's driving past the destruction every day has
(07:39):
been kind of exposure therapy over time.
I'm like, oh yeah, there's a shell of
those buildings and the buildings that are completely
gone and that kind of thing.
But everybody I know lost someone, lost a
job or lost a business they owned.
Everybody knows somebody I should say.
Of course.
So, it's this ongoing, interesting trauma that as
(08:01):
a business owner and as somebody whose house
had, we've got tens of thousands of dollars
of damage, but it's like nothing compared to
other people.
There's the survivor's guilt.
I was going to say you have that
added layer where it was almost, it wasn't
easier, but it was to know that it
was a complete loss, gave the closure and
(08:24):
shortened my sentences, which when I was communicating,
I could just say, yep, we lost it
all.
It wasn't, well, we lost this, but not
that, but this, not that.
It was, we got out with one of
the cars and the beach umbrellas that were
in the car by chance.
(08:44):
Close on your back.
Yeah.
I reached out to you to do this
podcast when the LA fires were still raging
and probably by the time this airs, it
will be another disaster somewhere.
Of course.
So, I think it's good for therapists to
hear you're not alone.
I reached out to some Katrina therapists back
(09:06):
when I was like, I don't even know
how do I sit with people when I
can barely talk about it without crying.
Yeah.
And I had to make the decision to
stop sitting with people.
Yeah.
Or in some ways it felt like the
decision was made for me that it was
shocking as someone who has learned from you
(09:27):
for many, many years, you've instilled this vision
of an ideal client of having a niche
of focus.
And I've done that successfully in multiple businesses
and through different programs and approaches and roadmaps.
And to still have the cold shoulder happen
from a few clients, you know, the week
(09:50):
of the fires, I refunded on my own
accord, probably $20,000 worth of retreats, deposits
that were folks planning to come to Maui.
But then other people straight up requested a
refund for other services that I was probably
pretty well equipped to still deliver.
And that was very dysregulating.
(10:11):
And my confidence shrunk so much afterwards because
it felt like I had set things up
as well as possible and yet nothing could
have prepared me for what the, again, short,
midterm, long-term, and then very long-term
effects would be on my sense of self
(10:35):
as a business owner, surviving a public disaster
that I literally couldn't hide or escape from.
And then there were other clients who were
saying things like, Oh, keep the money.
Don't deliver the service.
Let's put a pin in it, you know,
or here, I don't need any service.
Can I, how can I support you?
So I think that as you've probably seen
(10:58):
the five months, six month to eight month
mark is when things get real.
The world forgets, the world moves on.
You cannot move on because physically and emotionally
you are impacted on a daily basis.
And there isn't really a playbook that outlines
what it does, again, to those of us
(11:21):
that are public faces or the creators or
the owners of the business.
We're used to showing up.
We're used to showing up and being real.
And when the real is so unbearably painful,
you know, we, we have to take that
step back.
And that's what, again, I had to just
remove myself to self-preserve and to take
(11:41):
care of my basic needs and my family.
But you can imagine, I mean, it shrunk
my business so quickly that it made me
question how successful was that business ever to
begin with, right?
Just changed how I viewed myself.
And that was one of the impacts I
really didn't expect or to have to say
the truth, which was, I'm not okay.
(12:02):
Things are still bad for such a long
amount of time.
I keep thinking about the folks in LA
that happened.
I was actually right outside of LA when
it started.
So that was January.
Yeah.
And so there's this sweet period after any
disaster where everybody comes together and supports each
(12:24):
other.
There was so much giving.
There's like, I mean, my, my heart broke
open, right?
But that fades.
People forget.
And the cohesion fades because people have to
leave when they no longer have jobs and
no longer have homes.
They have to go elsewhere.
And I know in places like where you
and I live, it's certainly more expensive in
(12:44):
Maui, but it's pretty expensive to live in
Nashville.
So many people who lost their jobs, but
still had their apartment that they were renting
or whatever, couldn't afford it because nobody was
hiring.
Nobody's open.
So even the businesses that the building survived,
a lot of the businesses inside of it
didn't.
Because when you don't have water for months,
(13:04):
you can't really run your restaurant very easily.
So we lost a lot of good businesses
in addition to a lot of really beautiful
places.
And so having clients who were just fine
financially, it was not a problem, but they
lost everything.
And now, you know, so we're doing pro
bono with those folks in the group practice,
(13:26):
but it feels very similar to COVID, but
like the volume turned way up.
You're going through the same thing as your
clients.
And a lot of people, unfortunately, can't step
away from one-on-one because it's their
whole business model and they can't pay their
bills without it.
I watched a lot of actual therapists be
(13:47):
like, I'll do pro bono work with people
like week one.
And I was like, you can't, you really
can't.
You really can't do that.
Yeah.
And what I want to plant the seed
is that you can do it down the
road.
And this disaster recovery is so long-term
that now, and even six months ago, I
(14:07):
was able to come back to life and
say, now I can give, now things have
restabilized in some ways, finally, not always, but
in some ways, but I'll never forget right
after the fire going to, you know, with
the kids and with Chris, we went to
volunteer, it was like three days after, but
(14:28):
we also needed the clothing that they were
handing out, right?
It was such, and I just froze and
said, this actually isn't the time that for
me to be the volunteer.
This is in my nature.
This is in my strength set that I
can show up and I can help other
people.
And this is not the time right now.
I need to focus inward and with my
(14:50):
inner circle and with our actual community.
And I need to let myself heal.
And from a business perspective, it meant having
a lot of very hard and abrupt conversations
with my team saying, this is never what
I would expect.
I'd have to make these decisions and changes,
(15:10):
but I have to.
And although I think it's noble to say,
I'll pay them before me, or I'll do
this.
When you're in a disaster recovery phase, that's
not how it works.
That's not practical.
You literally can't get by.
We couldn't pay our bills if we weren't
(15:31):
carving out some of any revenue for ourselves.
I don't know if you had this experience,
but with the LA fires, I had this
aha moment where it pained me so much
because for over a year at that point,
I had thought, is this just because we're
on an isolated island in a neighborhood that
(15:53):
had 17 firemen and women fighting this?
If this had happened in California, this never
would have happened.
And to see it happen and happen worse,
I was so shocked because this fantasy that
my mind had created of if only I
had chosen somewhere else with more resources available
(16:15):
on the mainland, it would have been easier
or different.
But it also seeing the pain and the
just tragedy reminded me that I also actually
had recovered and healed more than I gave
myself credit because I was jarred.
I was distraught.
I was disoriented, but I was also able
(16:36):
to function, able to be in my business.
I was able to instill hope in friends
and clients who lost everything and say, it
is going to be really painful for at
least a year.
It will be great for about six weeks.
It will be really tough as things set
in from the three to six and nine
(16:56):
month mark, and you cannot drive away or
avoid seeing the visuals of destruction.
And then now at the year and a
half mark, there's gravel instead of the remnants
of destruction.
And honestly, I can speak from that place
of every time we drive to Lahaina twice
(17:17):
a week for baseball, we coach T-ball
and there's hope.
Every week, every two days, every few days
we were there, there's another layer of a
house built up.
There's another gravel lot that now has foundation
laid, but it is a year and a
half.
And that's a long time to think about
(17:38):
when you're a business owner, when you are
someone in the helping profession, when you are
of service to others, that it really took
seeing a mirror example to say, wow, I
see the way forward.
I wish I had known this and now
I get to be of service.
I've been on so many consultation calls being
able to say, wish I would have done
(17:59):
this, should have done that, was too proud
at the time to do this.
I think having been successful, I was too
proud to ask for help.
We never made a GoFundMe.
We never made any of these things that
probably we should have, but I was just
so used to having steady recurring income based
on my skill set and business model.
(18:21):
Even though at that point it had been
already half not service-oriented, more product-based,
I wasn't prepared for the amount of money
we would be spending to help ourselves, our
community, and others so abruptly.
And it's sort of like, I would tell
people when they were spending money on their
wedding, I'm like, it's going to feel like
(18:42):
a lot.
And then everything sort of levels out a
year later.
I remember telling that and talking about that
with clients in therapy, like there would just
be this financial stress.
It's similar to that in that it will
eventually level out, but a disaster just derails
things for much longer.
Yeah.
And I did not want to work.
I was traumatized.
(19:03):
Totally traumatized.
Absolutely.
I wanted to do manual labor.
That's all I wanted to do.
And that's what I did.
I did a lot of hauling stuff and
it felt so good.
And I would bring my kids to the
distribution centers and my little eight-year-old
would be handing me these 25-pound waters,
like in the fireman chain or to move
things.
(19:24):
But moving my body helped so much.
And we didn't have communication for a few
days after it happened.
So it's like, we didn't know if anybody
knew, which was even scarier because there was
no way in or out for a few
days.
And as you started to see the destruction,
because it took us two days just to
get off our street, because there were about
a hundred trees that came down on our
(19:46):
street, which only has like 30 houses, that
my identity as a business owner was so
divorced from my experience.
I couldn't think about it.
And I had the staff who's, all my
administrative staff is Asheville based.
And so I had the staff who for
a while I couldn't get in touch with,
and then everybody deals with disaster differently.
(20:09):
Yeah.
And normally in the past, I would say
I'd been like, okay, well, let's just get
going.
What's the next step?
What do we do in this business to
get it back?
But I couldn't.
I just- Yeah.
The motivation and discipline- Is gone.
Because you don't even know what day of
the week it is.
You don't even know what's happening.
And that's actually, I don't know if you
feel this long-term now with what all
(20:31):
of the other world events, it's hard to
be in touch with it all when we're
still in the middle of our disaster recovery
and the trauma of that.
And so my motivation went completely, I mean,
it just disappeared.
And then I reminded myself that having anything
that activated a flow state, manual labor is
(20:52):
a great thing, a craft or something for
me and you work related was an aid
and it just had to be different.
And so I really look at, they talk
about before the fire and after the fire,
before the disaster, after the disaster.
And I look at my business as literally
two different experiences and pathways because I had
(21:16):
to do things radically different.
And it's not that I'm building everything in
a way that just in case it all
burns down again, but I am doing it
in a more disciplined way where I'm aware
of what could potentially derail things and how
tender I have to be with myself.
And it's made me a better teacher and
(21:36):
coach probably because I'm really tuned into how
many variables and how abruptly they could disrupt
or change someone's experience in day-to-day
life even.
Yeah.
It's interesting because when our storm happened, I
thought of you immediately because you had been
fairly open about your experience.
And I remember when everything burned down, I
(22:00):
was like, God, poor Julia, here's some cash
on Venmo.
Like I did not get it.
I didn't get it at all.
I felt awful for you, but I didn't
get it.
Oh, no, but that helped.
That made the difference.
It was the asking.
I don't know if you felt this.
I could not ask.
I could not ask.
Someone said to me straight up, what's your
(22:21):
Venmo?
I didn't even think to ask why because
I don't even know if I had a
Venmo.
I'm an older millennial.
But I sent it and then she started
posting it and then other people started posting
it and sharing it.
And then I was like, oh, this is
what's happening.
I'm refunding massive amounts of money.
(22:41):
I think we spent like $25,000 in
two weeks because we didn't have slippers.
We didn't have shoes.
We didn't have underwear or anything.
We had to buy plane tickets because we
couldn't find housing.
We were staying with strangers who opened their
door.
It was so chaotic that I was like,
oh, cash direct to the people is actually
(23:03):
super helpful.
I was still too proud to do a
GoFundMe.
If you are surviving a disaster, please make
one.
If your friends survive, do one for them.
Just do one for them.
All the time.
Exactly.
And know that you will build something.
It will just be different.
That's my main takeaway.
You will build a different community.
(23:26):
It will be different and there will be
grief and layers in it, but you'll be
able to build something.
I think I had to remove the rebuilding
and now I'm like, I'm revitalizing my life
with these different builds in my business, in
our community, in our friendship groups.
It's just like revitalizing it because unfortunately what
(23:47):
was lost is lost.
And I had to have that radical acceptance
and that practice within myself.
Allison, thank you for inviting me on.
Yeah.
I feel like we could talk about this
for hours.
I feel like there's so much that I
didn't know, I didn't know until I went
through it that could be helpful for other
people.
But I guess just for anybody surviving a
(24:07):
disaster right now or who has survived one,
we get it.
We get it and reach out.
Allison and I get it.
Message us.
We're open books and the resources that we
can share that we wish we would have
done differently or instead are available to you.
It's not too late.
(24:27):
Thanks for having me.
Awesome.
Thank you so much, Julia.
Make sure your email is actually HIPAA compliant
with Powebox.
Use code ABUNDANT to get Powebox for less
than a hundred dollars your first year at
paubox.com.
If you're ready for a much easier practice,
(24:50):
TherapyNotes is the way to go.
Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo
code ABUNDANT for two months free.
If you're listening, you probably need some support
building your practice.
If you're a super newbie, grab our free
checklist using the link in the show notes.
I'd love for you to follow, rate and
review, but I really want you to share
this episode with a therapist friend.
(25:12):
Let's help all our colleagues build what they
want.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm Allison from Abundance Practice Building.
I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping
therapists build sustainable, joy-filled private practices, just
like I've done for tens of thousands of
therapists across the world.
I'm excited to help you too.
If you want to fill your practice with
ideal clients, we have loads of free resources
(00:29):
and paid support.
Go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links.
All right, on to the show.
Some of y'all aren't sending HIPAA-compliant
email and it's a problem.
Even if you're paying for a business Google
Workspace account and have a signed BAA, your
emails still aren't 100% compliant.
That's where Powerbox comes in.
(00:50):
You can connect Powerbox to your Google Workspace
or Microsoft 365 email one time and you're
completely covered.
No one has to sign into portals.
It sends and it shows up like any
other email.
Behind the scenes, Powerbox software checks the security
settings of the recipient and ensures that the
email is sent properly so you're not violating
HIPAA in the ways you may accidentally be
(01:10):
now.
I know, HIPAA isn't sexy, but we don't
avoid compliance in an abundant practice.
We check the boxes we need to check
and this is the easiest way to do
that with email.
Check out my friends at powerbox.com.
That's P-A-U-B-O-X.
Use code abundant to get $250 off your
first year of Powerbox.
That makes it less than $100 for your
(01:31):
first year.
Again, that's P-A-U-B-O-X
.com.
Use code abundant.
So I've talked about therapy notes on here
for years.
I could talk about the features and the
benefits in my sleep, but there are a
couple things I want you to know about
therapy notes that doesn't typically make it into
an ad script.
First is that they actually care if you'd
like their platform.
(01:52):
They don't only make themselves available on the
phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your
hair out when you get stuck.
They also take member suggestions and implement those
that there's client demand for, like therapy search
and included listing service that helps clients find
you, internal and external secure messaging, clinical outcome
measures to keep an eye on how your
clients are progressing, a super smooth super bill
(02:13):
process, real-time eligibility to check your client's
insurance.
In my conversations with the employees there at
all levels, they all really believe in their
product and they want you to love it
too.
Second, they are proudly independently owned.
Why should you care about that?
Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved,
the focus shifts from making customers happy to
(02:34):
making investors happy.
Prices go way up, innovation plateaus, making more
money with as little output as possible becomes
the number one focus.
With over 100,000 therapists using their platform,
they've been able to stay incredibly successful and
they don't have to sacrifice your experience to
stay there.
You can try two months free at therapynotes
(02:54):
.com with the coupon code ABUNDANT.
Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm your host, Allison Pereer, and I'm here
with Julia Colangelo.
Julia and I have a long and storied
history.
She was in one of my practice building
groups and built her practice beautifully and then
shifted over to coaching and helps people with
(03:15):
flow.
Then she became my coach.
I got to go out to Hawaii and
learn from her and be with her and
work with her in a number of capacities.
Julia has been both a student and a
mentor of mine and was somebody that I
reached out to a good bit after Helene
because as you will hear, Julia has been
(03:36):
through hell with her own natural disaster.
But thank you for being here, Julia.
Thanks for coming.
Thanks for having me.
I think this is such an important topic
to discuss as practice owners and as clinicians
and as disaster survivors.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(03:56):
Can you do a description of what happened
in your disaster?
Yeah.
Over 18 months ago, it felt like before
that I had some other issues that were
just lingering from some chronic health stuff that
became more acute.
We survived the Maui wildfires, specifically in Lahaina.
(04:18):
There were three wildfires that day, Olinda, Kula,
and Lahaina.
Lahaina was the largest one.
The fires were caused by the neglect of
the electrical in the whole town.
Because of that and wind, this fire took
out the entire town.
And neighborhoods surrounding Lahaina town specifically.
(04:40):
So overnight, I went from small business owner
with a successful steady business to losing almost
all of my IP on electrical devices and
different hard drives that I had and podcast
equipment.
Everything, losing everything in an instant, very abruptly
(05:03):
and unexpectedly with no real preparation time.
And needing to have this short term, I
would say midterm.
And then now, I would say I'm just
entering the longer term recovery of what it
looks like to try to build something differently
after needing to face very abrupt, unexpected trauma,
(05:29):
danger, and loss.
Yeah.
And it wasn't just your business affected.
You lost your home.
You lost your car.
You and your two kids and your partner
fled in a car.
Oh, yes.
We lost our home.
We lost the schools.
We fled in a car.
We made it out.
The New York Times stamp said that we
were two minutes away from it.
(05:51):
It was already the fire was on our
street, but the wind was blowing down our
street another direction.
But it was on our street.
And it took us four hours to flee
what would have taken about 30 minutes to
get to safety.
And I actually saw our home in flames
(06:12):
from a rooftop in the neighborhood.
But I still thought in what we do
throughout trauma, oh, I'll just come back tomorrow.
This can't be real.
And they were not even one, 11 months
old and four years old at the time,
our daughters.
And of course, I was the parent who
promised and reassured that nothing would happen.
(06:35):
So one of the long term things is
building back the trust of thinking some everything's
going to be okay.
And then not because of what I did
or didn't do.
Things are still not okay.
And that's something that I just never expected
to have to deal with, with children at
such a young age, and with owning a
(06:57):
business and not having any real playbook for
how much and how severely this would impact
my ability to run a business.
Yeah.
I'm in the, I guess, late early or
early mid stage.
So, oh, I'm going to cry because that's
what you do in the state.
(07:18):
This can be part one of us feeling
our feelings.
Yeah.
And we're five months out, five months in
two days of when we're recording this, we're
five months out from Helene and the destruction
is still everywhere.
It's driving past the destruction every day has
(07:39):
been kind of exposure therapy over time.
I'm like, oh yeah, there's a shell of
those buildings and the buildings that are completely
gone and that kind of thing.
But everybody I know lost someone, lost a
job or lost a business they owned.
Everybody knows somebody I should say.
Of course.
So, it's this ongoing, interesting trauma that as
(08:01):
a business owner and as somebody whose house
had, we've got tens of thousands of dollars
of damage, but it's like nothing compared to
other people.
There's the survivor's guilt.
I was going to say you have that
added layer where it was almost, it wasn't
easier, but it was to know that it
was a complete loss, gave the closure and
(08:24):
shortened my sentences, which when I was communicating,
I could just say, yep, we lost it
all.
It wasn't, well, we lost this, but not
that, but this, not that.
It was, we got out with one of
the cars and the beach umbrellas that were
in the car by chance.
(08:44):
Close on your back.
Yeah.
I reached out to you to do this
podcast when the LA fires were still raging
and probably by the time this airs, it
will be another disaster somewhere.
Of course.
So, I think it's good for therapists to
hear you're not alone.
I reached out to some Katrina therapists back
(09:06):
when I was like, I don't even know
how do I sit with people when I
can barely talk about it without crying.
Yeah.
And I had to make the decision to
stop sitting with people.
Yeah.
Or in some ways it felt like the
decision was made for me that it was
shocking as someone who has learned from you
(09:27):
for many, many years, you've instilled this vision
of an ideal client of having a niche
of focus.
And I've done that successfully in multiple businesses
and through different programs and approaches and roadmaps.
And to still have the cold shoulder happen
from a few clients, you know, the week
(09:50):
of the fires, I refunded on my own
accord, probably $20,000 worth of retreats, deposits
that were folks planning to come to Maui.
But then other people straight up requested a
refund for other services that I was probably
pretty well equipped to still deliver.
And that was very dysregulating.
(10:11):
And my confidence shrunk so much afterwards because
it felt like I had set things up
as well as possible and yet nothing could
have prepared me for what the, again, short,
midterm, long-term, and then very long-term
effects would be on my sense of self
(10:35):
as a business owner, surviving a public disaster
that I literally couldn't hide or escape from.
And then there were other clients who were
saying things like, Oh, keep the money.
Don't deliver the service.
Let's put a pin in it, you know,
or here, I don't need any service.
Can I, how can I support you?
So I think that as you've probably seen
(10:58):
the five months, six month to eight month
mark is when things get real.
The world forgets, the world moves on.
You cannot move on because physically and emotionally
you are impacted on a daily basis.
And there isn't really a playbook that outlines
what it does, again, to those of us
(11:21):
that are public faces or the creators or
the owners of the business.
We're used to showing up.
We're used to showing up and being real.
And when the real is so unbearably painful,
you know, we, we have to take that
step back.
And that's what, again, I had to just
remove myself to self-preserve and to take
(11:41):
care of my basic needs and my family.
But you can imagine, I mean, it shrunk
my business so quickly that it made me
question how successful was that business ever to
begin with, right?
Just changed how I viewed myself.
And that was one of the impacts I
really didn't expect or to have to say
the truth, which was, I'm not okay.
(12:02):
Things are still bad for such a long
amount of time.
I keep thinking about the folks in LA
that happened.
I was actually right outside of LA when
it started.
So that was January.
Yeah.
And so there's this sweet period after any
disaster where everybody comes together and supports each
(12:24):
other.
There was so much giving.
There's like, I mean, my, my heart broke
open, right?
But that fades.
People forget.
And the cohesion fades because people have to
leave when they no longer have jobs and
no longer have homes.
They have to go elsewhere.
And I know in places like where you
and I live, it's certainly more expensive in
(12:44):
Maui, but it's pretty expensive to live in
Nashville.
So many people who lost their jobs, but
still had their apartment that they were renting
or whatever, couldn't afford it because nobody was
hiring.
Nobody's open.
So even the businesses that the building survived,
a lot of the businesses inside of it
didn't.
Because when you don't have water for months,
(13:04):
you can't really run your restaurant very easily.
So we lost a lot of good businesses
in addition to a lot of really beautiful
places.
And so having clients who were just fine
financially, it was not a problem, but they
lost everything.
And now, you know, so we're doing pro
bono with those folks in the group practice,
(13:26):
but it feels very similar to COVID, but
like the volume turned way up.
You're going through the same thing as your
clients.
And a lot of people, unfortunately, can't step
away from one-on-one because it's their
whole business model and they can't pay their
bills without it.
I watched a lot of actual therapists be
(13:47):
like, I'll do pro bono work with people
like week one.
And I was like, you can't, you really
can't.
You really can't do that.
Yeah.
And what I want to plant the seed
is that you can do it down the
road.
And this disaster recovery is so long-term
that now, and even six months ago, I
(14:07):
was able to come back to life and
say, now I can give, now things have
restabilized in some ways, finally, not always, but
in some ways, but I'll never forget right
after the fire going to, you know, with
the kids and with Chris, we went to
volunteer, it was like three days after, but
(14:28):
we also needed the clothing that they were
handing out, right?
It was such, and I just froze and
said, this actually isn't the time that for
me to be the volunteer.
This is in my nature.
This is in my strength set that I
can show up and I can help other
people.
And this is not the time right now.
I need to focus inward and with my
(14:50):
inner circle and with our actual community.
And I need to let myself heal.
And from a business perspective, it meant having
a lot of very hard and abrupt conversations
with my team saying, this is never what
I would expect.
I'd have to make these decisions and changes,
(15:10):
but I have to.
And although I think it's noble to say,
I'll pay them before me, or I'll do
this.
When you're in a disaster recovery phase, that's
not how it works.
That's not practical.
You literally can't get by.
We couldn't pay our bills if we weren't
(15:31):
carving out some of any revenue for ourselves.
I don't know if you had this experience,
but with the LA fires, I had this
aha moment where it pained me so much
because for over a year at that point,
I had thought, is this just because we're
on an isolated island in a neighborhood that
(15:53):
had 17 firemen and women fighting this?
If this had happened in California, this never
would have happened.
And to see it happen and happen worse,
I was so shocked because this fantasy that
my mind had created of if only I
had chosen somewhere else with more resources available
(16:15):
on the mainland, it would have been easier
or different.
But it also seeing the pain and the
just tragedy reminded me that I also actually
had recovered and healed more than I gave
myself credit because I was jarred.
I was distraught.
I was disoriented, but I was also able
(16:36):
to function, able to be in my business.
I was able to instill hope in friends
and clients who lost everything and say, it
is going to be really painful for at
least a year.
It will be great for about six weeks.
It will be really tough as things set
in from the three to six and nine
(16:56):
month mark, and you cannot drive away or
avoid seeing the visuals of destruction.
And then now at the year and a
half mark, there's gravel instead of the remnants
of destruction.
And honestly, I can speak from that place
of every time we drive to Lahaina twice
(17:17):
a week for baseball, we coach T-ball
and there's hope.
Every week, every two days, every few days
we were there, there's another layer of a
house built up.
There's another gravel lot that now has foundation
laid, but it is a year and a
half.
And that's a long time to think about
(17:38):
when you're a business owner, when you are
someone in the helping profession, when you are
of service to others, that it really took
seeing a mirror example to say, wow, I
see the way forward.
I wish I had known this and now
I get to be of service.
I've been on so many consultation calls being
able to say, wish I would have done
(17:59):
this, should have done that, was too proud
at the time to do this.
I think having been successful, I was too
proud to ask for help.
We never made a GoFundMe.
We never made any of these things that
probably we should have, but I was just
so used to having steady recurring income based
on my skill set and business model.
(18:21):
Even though at that point it had been
already half not service-oriented, more product-based,
I wasn't prepared for the amount of money
we would be spending to help ourselves, our
community, and others so abruptly.
And it's sort of like, I would tell
people when they were spending money on their
wedding, I'm like, it's going to feel like
(18:42):
a lot.
And then everything sort of levels out a
year later.
I remember telling that and talking about that
with clients in therapy, like there would just
be this financial stress.
It's similar to that in that it will
eventually level out, but a disaster just derails
things for much longer.
Yeah.
And I did not want to work.
I was traumatized.
(19:03):
Totally traumatized.
Absolutely.
I wanted to do manual labor.
That's all I wanted to do.
And that's what I did.
I did a lot of hauling stuff and
it felt so good.
And I would bring my kids to the
distribution centers and my little eight-year-old
would be handing me these 25-pound waters,
like in the fireman chain or to move
things.
(19:24):
But moving my body helped so much.
And we didn't have communication for a few
days after it happened.
So it's like, we didn't know if anybody
knew, which was even scarier because there was
no way in or out for a few
days.
And as you started to see the destruction,
because it took us two days just to
get off our street, because there were about
a hundred trees that came down on our
(19:46):
street, which only has like 30 houses, that
my identity as a business owner was so
divorced from my experience.
I couldn't think about it.
And I had the staff who's, all my
administrative staff is Asheville based.
And so I had the staff who for
a while I couldn't get in touch with,
and then everybody deals with disaster differently.
(20:09):
Yeah.
And normally in the past, I would say
I'd been like, okay, well, let's just get
going.
What's the next step?
What do we do in this business to
get it back?
But I couldn't.
I just- Yeah.
The motivation and discipline- Is gone.
Because you don't even know what day of
the week it is.
You don't even know what's happening.
And that's actually, I don't know if you
feel this long-term now with what all
(20:31):
of the other world events, it's hard to
be in touch with it all when we're
still in the middle of our disaster recovery
and the trauma of that.
And so my motivation went completely, I mean,
it just disappeared.
And then I reminded myself that having anything
that activated a flow state, manual labor is
(20:52):
a great thing, a craft or something for
me and you work related was an aid
and it just had to be different.
And so I really look at, they talk
about before the fire and after the fire,
before the disaster, after the disaster.
And I look at my business as literally
two different experiences and pathways because I had
(21:16):
to do things radically different.
And it's not that I'm building everything in
a way that just in case it all
burns down again, but I am doing it
in a more disciplined way where I'm aware
of what could potentially derail things and how
tender I have to be with myself.
And it's made me a better teacher and
(21:36):
coach probably because I'm really tuned into how
many variables and how abruptly they could disrupt
or change someone's experience in day-to-day
life even.
Yeah.
It's interesting because when our storm happened, I
thought of you immediately because you had been
fairly open about your experience.
And I remember when everything burned down, I
(22:00):
was like, God, poor Julia, here's some cash
on Venmo.
Like I did not get it.
I didn't get it at all.
I felt awful for you, but I didn't
get it.
Oh, no, but that helped.
That made the difference.
It was the asking.
I don't know if you felt this.
I could not ask.
I could not ask.
Someone said to me straight up, what's your
(22:21):
Venmo?
I didn't even think to ask why because
I don't even know if I had a
Venmo.
I'm an older millennial.
But I sent it and then she started
posting it and then other people started posting
it and sharing it.
And then I was like, oh, this is
what's happening.
I'm refunding massive amounts of money.
(22:41):
I think we spent like $25,000 in
two weeks because we didn't have slippers.
We didn't have shoes.
We didn't have underwear or anything.
We had to buy plane tickets because we
couldn't find housing.
We were staying with strangers who opened their
door.
It was so chaotic that I was like,
oh, cash direct to the people is actually
(23:03):
super helpful.
I was still too proud to do a
GoFundMe.
If you are surviving a disaster, please make
one.
If your friends survive, do one for them.
Just do one for them.
All the time.
Exactly.
And know that you will build something.
It will just be different.
That's my main takeaway.
You will build a different community.
(23:26):
It will be different and there will be
grief and layers in it, but you'll be
able to build something.
I think I had to remove the rebuilding
and now I'm like, I'm revitalizing my life
with these different builds in my business, in
our community, in our friendship groups.
It's just like revitalizing it because unfortunately what
(23:47):
was lost is lost.
And I had to have that radical acceptance
and that practice within myself.
Allison, thank you for inviting me on.
Yeah.
I feel like we could talk about this
for hours.
I feel like there's so much that I
didn't know, I didn't know until I went
through it that could be helpful for other
people.
But I guess just for anybody surviving a
(24:07):
disaster right now or who has survived one,
we get it.
We get it and reach out.
Allison and I get it.
Message us.
We're open books and the resources that we
can share that we wish we would have
done differently or instead are available to you.
It's not too late.
(24:27):
Thanks for having me.
Awesome.
Thank you so much, Julia.
Make sure your email is actually HIPAA compliant
with Powebox.
Use code ABUNDANT to get Powebox for less
than a hundred dollars your first year at
paubox.com.
If you're ready for a much easier practice,
(24:50):
TherapyNotes is the way to go.
Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo
code ABUNDANT for two months free.
If you're listening, you probably need some support
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If you're a super newbie, grab our free
checklist using the link in the show notes.
I'd love for you to follow, rate and
review, but I really want you to share
this episode with a therapist friend.
(25:12):
Let's help all our colleagues build what they
want.
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