Why Your Partner Triggers Your Deepest Childhood Wounds (And How to Heal Them)

Amy Stone [00:00:06]:
Melanie Bonk. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. I’m so happy you’re here. Are you ready for a chat today?

Melanie Bonk [00:00:13]:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Yay. All right, so first question I ask everybody, what part of the world do you call home?

Melanie Bonk [00:00:21]:
I am in Southern Oregon, so we are the first town right above California. So you think of Oregon and it’s like, rainy, but we are actually a very arid, dry climate.

Amy Stone [00:00:31]:
Fantastic. Are you on the coast or are you inland?

Melanie Bonk [00:00:35]:
We’re inland.

Amy Stone [00:00:36]:
Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Actually, I’ll be spending more time in Oregon coming up. I’m actually headed out there in July, so I’m very excited to get to know it more. So in a second, we’re going to talk about the topic of the day, which is not my love affair with Oregon, where you call home, but I ask one more warm up question, which is laughter is what we call the best medicine. And so what is something that you can count on to make you smile and laugh?

Melanie Bonk [00:01:06]:
You know, I’m gonna say my partner, he has this way of just being silly and fun. And, you know, it’s that special side of him that he shows just me, usually. So those. Those little moments where he’s just super goofy just crack me up. And together, when we play as a couple, those just can come up into my head and just change my whole day.

Amy Stone [00:01:27]:
Fantastic. All right, very good. Okay, so the topic of the day, you shared on your intake form that once upon a time you were on vacation with your partner. It makes you laugh and brings you joy. And your partner, you were on vacation. Your partner left to grab a drink, and you say that you unraveled in his absence, spiraling into a storm of abandonment and blame. My first question is, how long ago was it? Do you remember when this happened?

Melanie Bonk [00:01:58]:
This was about six years ago, so about 20 years into our relationship.

Amy Stone [00:02:04]:
Okay, very interesting. All right, very good. Next question. A little bit more background about you and what things are like in your house just to get build some rapport so that we’re all on the same page. Do you share as much or as little as you want to about your relationship and the construction of your family? Are you married? Which I only ask because you’re using the word partner. Do you have kids, pets, any of that fun stuff that you want to or don’t want to share?

Melanie Bonk [00:02:32]:
Yeah. So our family unit right now looks like four teenage boys in a house. So I am in a household of six humans, two dogs, and two cats. All right, and you’re all Male, even the animals. I don’t know how this happened, but I am obviously the alpha female in this group. So my house growing up was a house full of divorce. And so I was. I was definitely getting those roots of abandonment in early as a child. And so when I did come to my. With my partner 20, 26 years ago, if you can do the math.

Amy Stone [00:03:14]:
Okay.

Melanie Bonk [00:03:16]:
I really started diving into what it took to create a relationship that would thrive throughout time. And I wasn’t willing to sacrifice love or passion. And I had seen my parents go through all of these turmoils. I had been stuck in the middle of it. And I watched every one of them sacrifice something along the way. They couldn’t figure out how to have all of it together. So. So that’s really where my passion for. For this relationship started, because I knew I didn’t want to do that, especially if we had children. So it was a very, very long way to get to where I am now. And a lot of. A lot of yelling, a lot of tears, a lot of slam doors as we, as we got to the place where we’re at now.

Amy Stone [00:04:03]:
I can, I can. I’m interested to learn more about that, but that it is a piece that makes sense. Okay, so before we dig, thank you for sharing about your family. I have one really, really old friend who has a similar construct as you. She’s outnumbered heavily by the gender difference, but she very early on made a rule that all the pets had to be women. And I remember when I met her decades ago, and she’s like, I don’t know how this happened. Like, she was. She’d gone to an all women’s college. It was a piece of her life. And she didn’t. Now I’m just. There’s men everywhere, like all of it.

Melanie Bonk [00:04:39]:
So.

Amy Stone [00:04:39]:
But she. So she made a rule, which I always thought was very funny. Any pets had to be girls.

Melanie Bonk [00:04:44]:
I mean, I make up for it with like vulva art everywhere and goddess imagery. So, like it. I am surrounded by the images of my female sisters working.

Amy Stone [00:04:55]:
All right, so before we dig into the transformation, I do I want to tell you a little bit more about younger you. So when you were like in middle school. So say so what were you? Like, what were your hobbies? Do you remember what you wanted to do and become when you grew up? Stuff like that. Tell us about, like, that version.

Melanie Bonk [00:05:14]:
Yeah, I love that question. And I’ve never been asked that. That’s great. So middle school self was. I was always definitely out there. Loud, playful, outgoing, and I was in all the sports. I loved doing the sports. And later on, I’m like, I don’t know if I like that, because I was really trying to get the attention of my father, who was. Who had left. But I was very sporty. But I was also obsessed with relationships. I was obsessed with boyfriends and who’s dating who. And even that carried on to high school, where I was the girl at the lunch table who would, like, pull. I’d pull everybody together and be like, okay, what did you experience this weekend? What happened to you? What did you feel like? Like, what was. I was always gathering this information about. About other people, what they, you know, like, what they’re going through. And so I was always with that relationship lens, whether it was, like, who’d you make out with? What was it like, did you grab your boob? Like, I gave people the assignment of, like, go home and, like, you know, with your fingers, measure how big and how wide. Like, I was obsessed with gathering information.

Amy Stone [00:06:21]:
Oh, my gosh. And so how old. Do you mind sharing? How old were you when your parents separated?

Melanie Bonk [00:06:26]:
I believe I was 4 or 5. Like, right on that.

Amy Stone [00:06:28]:
Really young.

Melanie Bonk [00:06:29]:
So.

Amy Stone [00:06:29]:
So you don’t have any memory of them really being together? Very little.

Melanie Bonk [00:06:33]:
Very little. Like a couple little pocket memories and could just be made up. I don’t know.

Amy Stone [00:06:38]:
Right. It’s hard to tell at that point if those are real stories or stuff that people’s told you. I was five when my parents. When my parents split, and it’s a very similar thing. I have no construct of my parents being together. And that definitely is a part of my story with building my family and the choices I made. So I’m sensitive. I’m sensitive or aware of that reality. All right, so that is a very good piece of this. Let’s get back to the. The topic of the. The bread. The resort.

Melanie Bonk [00:07:10]:
Yeah.

Amy Stone [00:07:11]:
So you’re at the resort, you say you begin to spiral. Was that something that you had experienced before? Like, did you pick up on it? Or. This was a new thing at that point?

Melanie Bonk [00:07:21]:
This was pretty. Is pretty new. You know, the early. I would say 15 years of our relationship, my husband was actually dealing with a lot of his deep trauma, and I was there with him in that process. And so this was kind of almost one of the first, like, scab wounds of my inner child trauma coming out in our relationship, because I kind of had felt the safety to do that. I think it was at the point where he could actually hold space for it. But it was. It was definitely quite interesting where he just like went to. We. This was our. It was a 10 day vacation, just the two of us. And I think this was on like day seven. And we were making love every day. We were romantic every day. Like it was just this whole thing and just him being gone, like going to get a drink. And I think he was gone for not even a half hour. But in that half hour, granted, alcohol was involved and now we don’t drink anymore. But you know, those, those things happen at perimenopause. You just said, start to see, like, this isn’t serving me. So he went to go get a drink and was just gone. And in that half hour, I just started to really crumble and come up with a story of how could he just be ditching me? How could he just not come back and leave me all alone? And when he did re. Enter our little hut in like Mexico, in this romantic resort, I just, like, it just started pouring out of me, all these accusations. And. And actually as it was happening, I had this moment where I sort of floated above myself and I was witnessing what was happening while I was like spewing all this out and crying and I couldn’t stop that. But I was also witnessing like, girl, you. What is happening here? What is going on? This is, this is outside of the normal. This is something that like, is. Is so much deeper than your husband making a friend at a bar and sitting there chatting for 20 minutes.

Amy Stone [00:09:19]:
Yeah. So I want to click on that a little bit. I want to push on that a teeny tiny bit to get more because it’s something you experienced. But I want to sort of go through it and talk about what, what actually happened in that, like 30 minutes and like, what was, what was your experience and what would other people have seen? So it’s like, you know, were you. So you were in like a cabana, it sounds like. Right. So were you. Were you crying? Were you yelling? Were you guys fighting? Would somebody outside of the hut have known that anything was going on? Kind of thing. Like, what did it actually look like? And I would feel like, well, when I was.

Melanie Bonk [00:09:55]:
When I was waiting, I could feel my heart rate elevating. I was getting hot. I was on that. Like, I could see the tears, but they weren’t coming out of my face yet. So I just kind of look like a girl on vacation, I think. But then when he came back, then there was definitely crying, there was definitely raised. I was raising my voice and I think he was kind of like deer in headlights, a little bit shocked as to what was happening. And you know, it didn’t last for more than five or six minutes, but I just. How could, you know, just a lot of. How could you do this to me? And, and you know, it was just. I could, I can hear even now the victim in it. I could hear the sadness in it. I could hear the deep, deep wounds in my heart in the, in the story. And I think that’s what I was really witnessing when I of pulled out of it. And so we, we continued to sit actually in the cabana and just kind of deconstruct and talk about it because at that point we did have the skills to hold space. We did have the skills to understand that if a partner is going through something like that, it’s not a I statement. Like so often we turn, turn an I statement into a me statement. And so he already has. We had grown those tools together in our relationship, in our partnership. And he was using those tools in a very like, empathetic way. And he said he was sorry and he didn’t mean for this to happen. And so he was, you know, he didn’t get into that defensive mode which probably de. Escalated it so much faster. And within an hour of us just talking and crying, you know, at that point I was just like letting the tears come because they had, they had. I think I was holding on to them for decades and it just, it just slowly, slowly started to unwind and I was like, you know, I’m. After about an hour, I’m like, I’m really sorry. I don’t think that had anything to do with you, but thank you for holding space. Like, I think this is deep, deep wounds from being abandoned as a child, from, from waiting and having, you know, a parent not show up for me. And you know, it’s, it’s obviously some work I need to do.

Amy Stone [00:12:00]:
And so pretty, yeah, that’s pretty, pretty self aware. One of the things. I share this story all the time. So early on in my marriage we were in couples counseling because of a calendar disagree agreements and, and they were teaching us about the I statements. And I always share with you, I misunderstood and I was, I was using I statements. But my I statements were like, I think that this is not the way this should be. I think you’re doing this wrong. And I, we had. And so I, in my mind I was using I statements. And then at some point somebody’s like, no, no, that’s not actually what we mean, Amy. That’s not, it’s not what the I statement means. Let’s go back to the drawing board. So. So that’s that, you know, it’s a very, very good tool. But you know, like all tools, if you don’t employ it. Right. It doesn’t work as well. So. Absolutely. So. All right, so this seems like a really good time for me to take a second and speak directly to the audience and invite them into the conversation. So for the people who are listening and watching when this is live and you’re enjoying the conversation about relationships and the impact of our younger selves and how we show up in our marriages, come over to YouTube and Instagram and Facebook where there are discussion questions that are. And you can interact in the comments with me, with Melanie, with other people in the community. And that’ll be super fun if you’re not already following us on social media. The links will be in the show notes. And now back to the topic. All right, so you already had a lot of skills here and it sounds like you already were aware of the concept of abandonment and that it would show up. So that’s a pretty big deal in how this unfolds. So how did you. Do you have like a little bit of history of how you became aware of those things earlier in your relationship? Like had you. Did you know, like from therapy with as a kid, from your parents relationship, or how did you become aware of those topics? Not to judge what you did, but for people who are listening, who are like, well, how did you know?

Melanie Bonk [00:13:59]:
Yeah, well, like I said, we have 20 years of experience at that point with each other, healing with each other, understanding, breaking down what our arguments were really the root of them. That was always really important to me. So if we had a big blow up or argument, which especially in our 20s and 30s we had, it was always really important for me to circle around and figure out what was really going on, what was underneath the actual disagreement, what was underneath the screaming. And to fast forward to where we are now, I have a certification in love, sex and relationship coaching that’s based on somatic and somatic healing. And I’m also a somatic trauma therapist. So at that point, actually on that trip, I hadn’t got my therapist certification yet. And so I was just out of the sex, love and relationship coaching program. So I had some of those tools and I had that added layer of consciousness that I wouldn’t have had before that training.

Amy Stone [00:15:03]:
Okay.

Melanie Bonk [00:15:03]:
So that, that was on board. So when I say like I pulled back and witnessed, that’s, that’s some of the things I help my clients with and That I got that I learned from that training in particular. So this trauma informed approach is like, okay, there’s always something bubbling underneath the surface. And one of the not so funny universal jokes out there is that only our intimate partners really trigger our inner child deepest wounds. Our friends don’t, our siblings don’t, our co workers don’t. It’s our romantic partners, the ones that we’re really wanting to be the most vulnerable with. So with all of that information in the back of my mind, that’s how I was able to actually diffuse the situation within probably 30 minutes and wrap it around to like understanding what happened in an hour. These are with these tools on board in my body already. So I did want to preface that, that this is like some magical.

Amy Stone [00:15:55]:
Right. No, and so like one of the, one of the signs that you’ve pushed. Pushed on something that is from childhood that you’re. Is the overreaction. And but like you said, most people are not aware when it’s happening and we really need somebody to check in and be like, so this is a slightly outsized reaction. You know, could there be anything else going on? You know, it takes a lot of self awareness to. It’s not that it doesn’t happen, but it takes a lot of self awareness to experience what you were experiencing, which is like, wow, I am slightly overreacting. And, and I think you, I think you mentioned there were some cocktails involved.

Melanie Bonk [00:16:34]:
So all inclusive Mexico resort.

Amy Stone [00:16:37]:
You know, alcohol can add lots of things, but it doesn’t usually add good judgment and under reacting to a situation. So the. Okay, so you, so you shared that you realized, which I think is. Is amazing to be able to do in the moment, that it wasn’t about him, that it was about your old wounds. You described this as it was time to stop letting the wounded little girl sit in the driver’s seat in your relationship. So my question is, and I think you’ve already answered this actually, but let’s talk about like that you came to this conclusion literally sitting in the lounge chair in the cabana. And so what did. In that moment in the resort, in the cabana was what did that mean to you that you came to this realization not about him, it’s about me? Like did it change what you did that afternoon or what did that look like just in that day, not today, but back then?

Melanie Bonk [00:17:33]:
Yeah. A lot of tenderness I met myself with. So in the process of that awareness, in the process of understanding our inner child, it’s actually our gift and responsibility to start reparenting and caring for the inner child. So it was a really tender afternoon as I just wrapped myself in love and compassion and understanding. So it’s probably, it’s quick to go into judgment, like, oh, how could I do that? I’m a crazy bitch. Like, you know all these things. But instead I chose that route of compassion where I really started to see her and listen to that little girl on a deeper level and create that connection and start to. And I say start because it’s, you know, six years later and I’m still sometimes wrapping her up and saying, it’s okay, sweetie, I’m here with you. So I started to really understand on a deeper level how much care I needed to give her, how much support and reassurance that I wouldn’t abandon her anymore, that I would be there for her. And that’s. And then I went home and I scheduled some therapy.

Amy Stone [00:18:39]:
Okay. All right. So yeah, so because like, like, like the, to get, like I’m going to ask a follow up question which is like, because you guys were in a cab, you had activities, what did compassion look like? Like literally. And what did you do? Did you like schedule a massage? Did you cancel your snorkel trip? Like, what did, what did that look like while you’re on vacation?

Melanie Bonk [00:18:57]:
Like, yeah, I, I sat on the beach, actually, I, I left the cabana. I left like the loud noise and I just went to the beach. We had a very quiet evening that evening. We didn’t, we didn’t go out to like the shows. We had a nice quiet dinner and basically kind of went in to our hotel and just kind of hunkered down in and a little bit slower pace. Like that was like a six day, six day on a 10 day vacation. And that was the day we like went to bed early, we snuggled. It wasn’t like rowdy, it was just very tender in, in that whole experience. Really.

Amy Stone [00:19:29]:
Yeah. So that it’s allowing yourself to do whatever needs to be done. Giving yourself permission to bedrot or to cocoon under the covers is what it sounds like. Yeah. So. All right, so now the next question I’m going to ask again is not. I’m asking you to share a little bit of your experience. But as I was writing out the question, I felt like I needed to like preface it with like this is not to judge what happened to you, but to give you an opportunity to describe it for other people to, so that they can see themselves maybe or not see themselves in the situation. So when this was happening and when you were going through this at the resort and when you came home, why did you feel or sense that this was something that needed to be worked on and changed in the relationship? Like, what was, what was the drive to do the work?

Melanie Bonk [00:20:18]:
The drive. Was that what you just said? The little girl in the driver’s seat and she’s driving right towards drama town. And I do not want to experience drama, especially in my sacred sanctuary of my partnership. So it, it’s like, no, I had to take her out of the seat. I didn’t want her to have the power in, in my partnership. So I like to, I like to connect to my queendom, my goddess, like that higher, some kind of higher version of myself. And that’s who I want to be in, in the driver’s seat. And so I wanted to carefully care for her and put her like back where she belongs, in the backseat with a seatbelt on.

Amy Stone [00:20:57]:
Okay. Yeah. So you didn’t want to repeat more of the drama feel filled environment and in your relationship. All right, so, yeah, so I think that’s, I think that’s good and I think so being intentional about how you show up in your relationship, I think that’s beautiful. So now share with us a little bit. This is the work that you walk other people through, some of it at least today, but share with us a little bit about what the work of the transformation is. Because you’ve got the inner child, which some people are familiar with and re parenting, which some people might be familiar with or maybe not. Was it instant? Like, okay, awareness, clarity, tools, poof, everything’s great, moving on. Or what was it like to go through work of this?

Melanie Bonk [00:21:47]:
The work of it was definitely not instant.

Amy Stone [00:21:51]:
I suspected.

Melanie Bonk [00:21:53]:
Yeah. You know, and I, I mentioned it before in my teenage years, like, I’m just happy and outgoing and like naturally kind of courageous and. And so it takes a lot of work for me to actually tap into the sadness and the anger. So that’s actually the part that took the longest was like I could feel sad, but to actually embody the sadness, to allow the tears to, to like even crumble down onto the floor, that takes a lot of work for me. It’s like, it’s harder than any CrossFit workout I’ve ever done. Like, so it’s, it’s, it definitely took time and learning that it’s okay to, to feel this full expression. And especially as women, we’re trained to not be angry, to not be loud in our sadness. We are supposed to just be there to pick up, pick everything up with a smile. On our faces. So that. That type of healing, which is so powerful to. To fully, like, beat up a pillow and say that this isn’t right and I deserve better. That definitely took some time, but once. Once those pieces started to fall into place with my allowance, that the transformation really took this deeper route. But I have to tell you, it’s still. Every day, every day I still wake up and I have to say, oh, wait, I’m. My mind is racing in story of how could this happen and how did this happen to me and I deserve better and. And get myself out of that victim pattern, out of that little girl pattern. And that’s where I have to again, pick her up and ask her what she needs, what she wants to express, and then again care for her and send her to her little play area.

Amy Stone [00:23:35]:
So, yeah, it’s so. All right. So do you have siblings?

Melanie Bonk [00:23:39]:
Well, I had two older step siblings, so when the divorce happened, they went in a different route. So I didn’t really grow up with siblings in the house.

Amy Stone [00:23:49]:
Oh, interesting. Okay. Because, you know, there’s not. There’s no, like, one. This is how divorce shows up in every single person, every single child. This is how abandonment shows up in every single. But one of. One of the things that. That can show up a lot is what you’re describing, which is that you. You become very resilient and independent and, you know, show a very strong personality, never show weakness kind of thing. That’s. That’s one of the. One of the things that can show up in adults. And then sometimes to the point where it’s like, actually almost a joke that is like, magnified to like, an exponential level if you’re the oldest kid in the house, because it’s like you like, become adultified earlier. You take on this responsibility and then it’s like. So that’s the reason I asked if you had siblings, like, because. But you did. You were not the oldest at least. So this is an example of it not always being an A plus B equals C every single time. So that’s great. All right, so you’re doing the work, leaning into the emotions, allowing the emotions, doing those things. So now tell us about what the relationship looks like today. Let’s start with, like, repeating hypothetically the same situation. You’re away on a glorious vacation. You leave the teenagers at home. You’re rest, you’re. They’re not throwing parties in your house while you’re gone. Your partner gets up and goes to the bar. And what’s different? What’s different about how you handle that situation today.

Melanie Bonk [00:25:28]:
Oh, I sit back and enjoy my book. Enjoy my half hour.

Amy Stone [00:25:33]:
Yeah. And no. And no shame. No blame spiral, no fear, no sense of abandonment.

Melanie Bonk [00:25:39]:
No. Instead, it’s like this sense of gratitude, like, oh, yes, I’ll take this. I’ll take this alone time where I think, you know, even six years ago, alone time would almost freak me out. What do I do with myself when I’m alone? So now it’s like, yeah, I want that alone time. I will take that.

Amy Stone [00:25:54]:
That’s a pretty big change in how you interact with yourself during the day that you have been able to embrace, like, being your own best company and enjoy it. That’s a. That’s. That’s pretty big change. All right, so in a minute, we’re going to do the final questions, but I want to give you a chance. You’ve talked a little bit about it, but I do want to give you a chance to tell people about what you do and how you want them to connect with you after the show.

Melanie Bonk [00:26:19]:
Yes. So, like I mentioned before, I am a certified love, sex and relationship coach and a somatic trauma therapist. And I use my life experience, which you’ve heard a little bit about today, to help busy couples reconnect on a deeper, playful level. I help couples who are experiencing similar trauma stories, similar patterns that are ready to break free. So the love is there, the connection is there, the commitment is there, but there’s pieces that aren’t quite in line. And so we go through a beautiful journey where we get to meet these pieces of ourselves. And I take all my couples through three different. Three different key areas. And the first one is soulful communication. So, like that situation on the beach where my husband held space, he mirrored back and reflected. Learning how to communicate in a soulful, deep, sensitive way is like life changing in partnerships. Then we go into emotional intelligence, and that’s meeting the parts of ourselves that are running the subconscious mind, that are showing up and dictating how we really show up in the bedroom, in our relationships, and then even into everyday life. And when those soulful communication and emotional intelligence tools are in place, then we get into sexual rediscovery, where we rediscover what sex is, what pleasure is, what you want it to look like. And it’s like this empowering act of creating your own world, your own relationship, and you get to make the rules nobody else does. It’s your space. So it’s a really beautiful process. And so that’s where I take my couples on. I also work with Individuals and I am. When this airs, I should be in the process of launching a date night membership. So it’s a membership where couples can come together once a month, be guided through communication practices, through arrows activation, by me and sometimes my partner. So when we’re demoing together, we’ll both be there. And it’s just going to be a beautiful way to connect. And that date night membership also includes weekly prompt prompts that spark communication, spark invitations to go deeper in your communication and give you some of those tools weekly to apply in your relationship. It’s going to be super yummy.

Amy Stone [00:28:41]:
That’s amazing. I said you those are some really good things. So I have some follow up questions. One is I think, like, I think that it’s worth noting I talk to people about this all the time. It’s really interesting that how poorly prepared we can be as adults to have communication with our partners and then also with our children. But it’s like it’s, you know, it seems like most of us go into adulthood thinking like, I know how to do this, I know how to talk to people. It’s totally good. But there are specific skills for having conversations with people in your family. It’s not exactly the same as how we talk to our friends or our teachers or our own parents. So I want to give that a nod because I do think that’s important.

Melanie Bonk [00:29:28]:
Yeah. And when we don’t have those tools in place, the communication just lacks. You don’t have the deep communication. I just did a post yesterday. The average couple spends less than three minutes a day communicating about deep feelings, about emotions. It’s all logistics, which I understand. I have four kids.

Amy Stone [00:29:46]:
Right.

Melanie Bonk [00:29:46]:
We need to get done and take this kid to there and the other one’s going that way. And you like high five each other in the middle of the day. So it’s understanding that that communication is actually the gateway into deeper intimacy. So when we create that communication, when we even pull and say, let’s just check in with each other for five minutes, that’s actually your invitation to creating deeper, more sensual, intimate moments together.

Amy Stone [00:30:11]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. The other thing I want to give you a chance to explain a little bit for the people who are listening, who may not know is I would love to give you a chance to talk a little bit about what the word somatic means because it shows up in a lot of conversations in support and coaching communities. But I’m not sure that everybody listening will know what that means. So go ahead and talk about what that actually means.

Melanie Bonk [00:30:33]:
Yeah, I love that, so somatic is based on the word soma. So that’s our body. So a really easy way for me to describe it is to do a comparison. So cognitive therapy is talk therapy, talking about your past and things that happened to you in the past. My somatic coaching is guiding you actually into your body in the present moment to find the blocks that your body’s holding that’s preventing you from getting you what you want. Okay, so the past is involved, but it’s more what is your body and your nervous system holding onto right now that’s actually physically stopping you from getting what you want? So that could look like anything from tightness in my right shoulder to I have uncomfortable stomach, I have, I feel numb and frozen. Those are all nervous system responses. And so when we begin to befriend those patterns in the nervous system, then they become your ally. Then you get to choose what you want to do with that power. So it’s like this, this, this body of ours is alive. It’s communicating with us all the time, but we have to pause and learn how to listen to the actual body, not just the busy brain. And the busy brain is judging and criticizing and shooting all over us. Yeah, so it’s, it’s a real, it’s a beautiful process. And so it involves a little bit of. My sessions always start out with a little bit of meditation, a little bit of breath work. And then when we’re in this process of, of listening to your body, of connecting with it, you know, eyes are shut down, you’re really in the moment. You’re in, in your body feeling. And for some of my clients, it’s the first time they’re safe enough to actually feel their body because this, you know, the trauma is so high, they don’t let themselves feel from the forehead and below.

Amy Stone [00:32:19]:
Interesting. Okay, very good. No, so you do have a special offer for the audience which I’m going to share, which is a pop up pod offer. And the pod in that sentence is for podcast, I think. So you sign up, there’s a link in the show notes. And the easiest way to get this is always by being a subscriber to the imperfect adulting community, because then I just email it to you. But you get a secret. You sign up at the link below and you get a secret link to three small bite sized somatic practices that you can explore over three weeks. So that is a very generous offer and I want to say thank you very much. Sounds like a great way to introduce people to the work that you’re doing so they can try it out and see if it’s a fit for what they’re looking for. So thank you very much for that. All right, Melannie, are you ready for the rapid fire questions?

Melanie Bonk [00:33:07]:
Okay, let me take this. My coffee.

Amy Stone [00:33:10]:
I was like, I mean, these are, they’re not serious, but I always get like, drop that little like dramatic pause just for fun, because it entertains me. It’s a funny thing for me to do. All right, very good. If money and time are not obstacles, what’s one dream that you still want to pursue in your future?

Melanie Bonk [00:33:28]:
We have a small off grid cabin in Costa Rica, and It’s on a 50 acre or 65 acre nature preserve. But we only, our little block is like two acres. And eventually we want to like just have all of it. We want to like create the sanctuary for the. Where the jungle can’t be touched and then invite people like a retreat center into that space. But it’s just like, it’s this piece of pristine Costa Rican jungle that’s, that’s just, that’s sacred in our hearts.

Amy Stone [00:33:59]:
That’s an amazing, that’s an amazing project. All right, that’s very, very cool. It’s already in motion. I look forward to hearing more about that coming into existence. All right, so now this next question. I’m interested to see what you say now, now that I have that little bit of information. If you had to pick one single place on our beautiful planet Earth as the place that you consider to be the most beautiful to you, where is it?

Melanie Bonk [00:34:22]:
It’s right there. It’s right in that. Right, that’s. We’re in the north tip of the OSA Peninsula, so it’s the most biodiverse spot on the planet. And it’s amazing. You, we have no tv, no Internet. You are just like reconnecting to your primal nature with nature all around you. So it’s. You may. Sometimes the jungle gets up at 4 in the morning and you get up there and you take your coffee and you witness the jungle come to life with birds and monkeys and sloths and iguanas and it’s just like, it’s, it’s like primal. It’s like it gets into my soul. And I love it so much because it’s just, this is. We’re supposed to be in tune with nature. And when you remove the false light, when you remove all the machines and the noise, it’s just like, you can feel that nervous system just like set and root into the ground there. Oh, it’s so Good.

Amy Stone [00:35:11]:
Fantastic. I did. So in Costa Rica, when I was in Costa Rica, there are little howler monkeys, is the ones that I saw. And they’re loud. They. They’re. They are allowed. They let you know that you are there. I like, they’re. They’re. They’re vocal.

Melanie Bonk [00:35:25]:
It’s usually. Usually the. Some kind of bird wakes up the howler monkeys, and I can. I can sleep through the bird because our whole house is screened in. So I can sleep through the birds or just be like, I hear you. Like, open one eye and be like, I hear you. But once those howler monkeys wake up.

Amy Stone [00:35:39]:
Okay, it’s time to get up because, I mean, it’s like they’re yelling and it’s like, oh, I feel like I should pay attention to this, you know, And. But no, they’re just talking to each other. They’re not talking to you, so. Or at least in my experience, it wasn’t. But I was fascinated by the monkeys while I was there. All right, so last one. If you are on, like a long trip, like a long road trip, and you are hungry, what is a Go To Favorites travel snack that you will reach for to enjoy?

Melanie Bonk [00:36:03]:
I am thinking we did RV with our kids for two years. So what was the snack that I would go to? Dried fruit and jerky.

Amy Stone [00:36:13]:
Okay, so that’s like a truck stop stop. That’s like. It’s like a stop. And it’s like you go and you’re like, all right, jerky. That was when. When I used to. I’ve asked that question before, and sometimes I’ll say when you stop at the truck stop and people are like, no, I would never. And I’m like, okay, so maybe it’s not a great question, but that is actually, like, when I was thinking about it, it’s like there’s that point in a long trip where you’re like, all right, this is where. This is where. This is the jerky stop. You know, this is where we do. All right, that’s it. Melody Bong, thank you so much for being an amazing guest on the show today.

Melanie Bonk [00:36:42]:
Yes, yes. Thank you for creating space to be absolutely real and authentic and raw. I really appreciate it.