Cara: Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of The Hormonal Mama Podcast. In this episode, our season three premiere, I am talking with Laura Patricia Martin, founder of Healing to Happy. Laura is an IBS, anxiety and trauma specialist, and she herself has an incredible, beautiful journey that she’s sharing with me today. What brought her to this new incredible… well, journey that she’s on. She has overcome an eating disorder, anxiety, trauma, depression and IBS. So we’re having an incredible conversation about her story, I hope you’ll stick with us.
Cara: Hi Laura, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you here. So welcome, thank you for being here with me today.
Laura: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.
Cara: I am too. I was just saying to you before we started recording, how excited I am to talk gut health, because this is a topic, that we just don’t talk about enough as women. And it’s a topic that is so incredibly important to our health. And I’m just thrilled that talking about this particular topic is happening more and more and getting more and more attention, so I’m psyched, I’m just so excited that we’re talking about this because I know it needs to be talked about…
Laura: Oh, 100%.
Cara: Right? Oh my gosh, it’s so completely absurd. So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about gut health. I think a really good place for us to start here is to talk a little bit about what you… What journey of yours brought you to really focusing on good health and you focus primarily on IBS, which is an issue so many of us deal with, but tell me more about you, tell me what in your life brought you to this point, you know.
Laura: You know, I just definitely grew up and told my parents, I wanna talk about poop my whole life. Hahah! Next question! No, I was 24 years old, and at the time I was living in Asia, and I remember this moment to my core, I was sitting on a balcony contemplating my life going through these motions… I was in a very abusive relationship. And it was that rock bottom moment where it was like, What the heck am I doing? And I’m sitting there journaling feverishly, just being like, What is the next right move here? I know I need to take control. I know I don’t wanna continue living this way, but it’s like… What is that for me? At the time I had… I was 40 pounds underweight. I had IBS, I had hyperthyroidism. I don’t think I went more than three days without having a panic attack, I was pooping like once a week, if that… My hair was falling out so much in chunks, my landlord thought I had a dog. It was this whole scenario happening. And so in that moment on that balcony was like, okay, so there’s two choices when we hit rock bottom. One, we continue on the path that we’re in, and that doesn’t end so well. Or we choose to take radical responsibility for our life, and I chose the latter.
Laura: And so I went to a cafe the next day with my friend, I explained to her what was going on in my mind, explained what was going on behind closed doors, and on my way forward with that, she said, “You know you have a lot to clean up here, and you have a really disordered relationship with food, why don’t you go learn about it, why don’t you go just get into health coaching, just study, do these things… ’cause at the time I was teaching English and in Thailand, and I’m like, What are you doing here right now in my life? And so I went on and I started studying nutrition and learning all these different theories and things, and when you come from a broken soul… So I had unexpectedly lost my mom at 22, which led me to Thailand, which led me to this abusive relationship, on and on… None of my foundations were sturdy, so I was trying all these theories, but then I became so obsessed with them, and this is something I see a lot in the IBS world. We get very attached to our diet, our routines are eliminations, things like that.
Laura: I did that. But nothing was healing. Nothing was working. And so I remember specifically after I about like two years on this journey of trying things, I had eliminated 13 different food groups, I was drinking smoothies and soups, and that’s all I could take in. I was horribly underweight, I had all these rashes and weird things going on, and I was sitting in my naturopath’s office being like, I’m literally a specialist in gut health. I went back to school, and got specialized… And I’m like, What the heck am I doing? What it wrong with me and sobbing, I didn’t say it in that joke kind of voice, but I was sitting there sobbing like, “What am I doing wrong? What’s my blind spot here?” She’s like, “If you want to talk about how your depression and your trauma has to do with all of your IBS, all of your health symptoms, you wanna talk about that?” And I was like, No, no, I don’t, actually. And so I went on and I did a whole bunch of cleanses for a year, and then it was like that little bird sitting on your shoulder that you can’t forget.
Laura: And so I then started going on the self-discovery journey, diving into the whole gut-brain connection. M background in my undergrad is from psychology, so it’s this whole universal alignment had been leading down this path unintentionally, and what I came to learn is just as is a nervous system issue… It really has nothing to do with food. We get food sensitivities because of our vagal tone. How our different organs are working in our body, and science was my way out of all of this confusion I felt in my body. Whereas when I was first diagnosed with IBS and this whole thing, it was like, Okay, so I’m broken for my life. What do you mean? I have to do these things, and I have a background of an eating disorder, so it’s like an alcoholic walking to a bar. It’s like, “You can’t eat all this food” and I’m like “Fantastic! Let’s have a party!” And in my subconscious, I’m like, “That’s not right. This is not right. I don’t feel right.” And so I started to build these practices, and that’s why Healing to Happy came to be, ’cause it’s so much more than just IBS. It’s so much more than just “Let’s learn about what foods not to eat. It’s like, what food makes us feel empowered? How do we connect back with our body? How do we get our nervous system back into regulation so our body can actually decompress and ultimately digest goods again? Which I don’t really see on the market nowadays. It’s all about the four Rs about women will re-inoculate repair, reset, whatever it is, it’s so fear-based. And so I really was searching for something else and that’s ultimately how I ended up here.
Cara: You know, you said a couple of things in there that are just sticking in my brain and it’s like, Wow, fear-based… I mean, that last thing you said it’s true! This really complicated… um, I can’t think of the word, I’m trying to say. relationship, if you will, not just the relationship with so many women have with food, because I think so many women have these complicated relationships, disordered eating so many different things, and every so often you’re like, Okay, enough with the diets. You see all this stuff about how to get your body thinner and how to lose weight, and with IBS… it’s always the elimination diet and all these things, and it does become this fear and that, i mean, at least as someone who has had is since I was like 19, fear makes it worse. Does nothing to help your IBS, it triggers all of anxiety and all of that. like you said, it is a nervous system problem, and when you… This, again, this is just me from my personal experience with IBS, is there a correlation between anxiety and IBS? Yes! Is there a correlation between depression and IBS? Yes! You know, there is such a huge correlation between these things, and when you add fear into this soup for lack of better word, it makes it that much more complicated, how can you heal from something that so much of is triggered by fear? you know what I’m saying? So that’s just very touching to me, I think is what I’m trying to say, that you really emphasize that. because that is a huge problem and there’s
Cara: Not much information out there when it comes to treating IBS, in my opinion, in the right way. So you can be healthy. And like you said, if you have with history of disordered eating and you’re dealing with IBS, the traditional approach, again, lack of better word there, is not going to help you ’cause I mean, you just said it. You said it here as all is food, and you can’t have any of it. Okay, thank you, thank you for your time and thank you for not helping me get out of this trauma, you know what I mean, or heal, should say, from this trauma.
Laura: Exactly! And that’s a huge thing I see when I have my consultations or in the programs and stuff. It’s women that… they want to heal, but at the same time… when I go, “Great! So how about we experiment with carbs?” And they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no” And it’s like… Because we are stuck in our disordered thinking, and that’s literally like when I was posting right before, that’s the post that I was making, ’cause I was just cooking dinner, I was making pasta, and I was like in the midst of dying my hair and also shredding some cheese on top of my pasta… and giving myself a pat on the back being like, “Holy pickles! You would have never put cheese on this… You would have never – 1. Been making pasta. 2. Put cheese on your pasta. Who is this woman in my kitchen right now? It’s these kind of steps- That’s what brought me to the moment being like, this is a lesson. Because we then heal or IBS or we put it into… we’re managing it. And for me, what really, really spiked up my being curious and wanting to study and all this kind of stuff, was that in my studies, I was learning about how the microbiome can change within four days, and then there’s things like epigenetics that we get to turn things off and on based on our lifestyle choices.
Laura: And then there’s things like Neuroplasticity, where we get to change the brain’s firing… Then why the heck are you telling me I’m stuck with this for a lifetime, but we don’t do that, we said… They were like, “Oh, it’s just the way it is!” And then we pass it by being like, Oh, old me is sitting there like, Yeah, I healed my IBS, but is that dairy free, gluten free, soy free, nitrate free, etc. It’s like, it’s not healed if you’re so afraid to put a fork in the food and put it into your mouth. It’s just you’ve been put into this box and so how do we actually safely let go of that lock? ‘Cause it’s not my position to have people get scared and eat food. That’s not it. It’s just for those people that are looking for that next step, because we get to a point in our healing where we get curious for more, where we’re like, There’s gotta… This Laura Martin. I hear her talking like, what is that? And we start to get a little curious and teachable and things. But if you’re still in that phase where you’re like, “This is my saving grace, and if I don’t stick to this, I’m gonna poop my pants…”
Laura: That’s fine, it’s just we’re all at different spectrums, but we gotta realize it’s a management tool, it is not an actual solution to the root problem.
Cara: I love it. Man, you just worded that so well. and so… And by the way, I made… well, a little note to myself. Just completely unrelated to our conversation, but you said something that made me laugh. You said Holy pickles, and that’s totally something I would say, and I wrote it down with a big exclamation point because that was awesome. Start, go off topic. I had to… I love that. Made my day, Everything you’re saying is so incredibly accurate and it’s just so… I hate to say outside the box because it’s not… To me, it’s logical, but it seems outside the box because it’s not the approach that we’re told. You know, we’re told… And again, this is all from my personal experience, we are told, Okay, try cutting out dairy, try cutting out gluten, try carrying out eggs, eggs, and soy, and nitrates. All these things that you mentioned. And it’s kind of like you get to a point… where you’re like, Okay, so I’ve got my gluten free bread and I can’t put any butter on it, so I’m going to have to do this and I can’t have that, and then it’s just… It’s kind of like, what’s left for me and that’s frustrating for someone…
Cara: I’m gonna use myself as an example. I don’t have a history of disordered eating. I have a history of major body image issues. But that’s different. Yeah they’re related, but these are very different issues. I know how hard it is to have to go on this elimination diet and figure out what can I eat, what can’t I eat? I can’t imagine the frustration with a different type of trauma related to food, and then having this additional trauma really sitting on top of you kind of like, Alright, lo, I’m gonna hold your hand and walk you back to that trauma and help you go through it all over again. I mean there’s no logic there. It’s even worse than that, so I just… That’s very… I don’t wanna use the word intriguing, it’s not what I’m looking for, is it coming into my brain at the moment, I’m very moved by that. And that’s not your approach because it’s an approach that ends up not working in a lot of cases, sometimes it works for people, but something that I think isn’t talked about enough is trauma. And trauma, whatever that trauma is affects IBS. And again, I keep going back to the disordered eating like you’re talking about, because that’s a huge trauma to go through and to have this limitation put on your eating habits, it just follows you kind of back to where you started, and that’s just not okay.
Cara: I keep saying the same thing over and over again, ’cause I’m just so moved by it.
Laura: The one thing that… Which is why my company and my brand and what we’re moving into now is the mental health side of recovery from this. Because it’s not so much about eliminating foods. You need more food. You need to figure out how to get that back in. And that comes from a psychological standpoint. That comes from… for me, science. Science always calms me down, but in a practical science. Not talking about frigging lactobacillus. Like, no one cares. Let me talk about the vagal tone and understand how to actually repair things. I don’t need to be reading the back of my probiotic bottle. That’s just not the jam anymore. It’s really like, what about this neuroinflammation that’s actually causing my vagal tone to slow down and decrease? And how that’s actually the root cause of why I can’t digest food. So it doesn’t matter how many forkfuls of fermented vegetables, I’m taking. What is this mental health side, because we’ve gotten so spun up in this, because if you’re like, I had had digestive issues since I literally popped out of the womb and had colic. I have always had issues with my food, which is what led me to an eating disorder, plus trauma at home, that…
Laura: That was my sense of masking it and just using food. But over the time period, it was one of these things of- we gotta be able to talk about the mental health stuff and heal our relationship to food around that stuff, so that we can get back to eating normally, again. It’s easy- I can tell you to go eat root vegetables and organ meats and bone broth and all the kind of unsexy foods that I talk about very often that people are like, “Ummmmmm! PASS!” But you’re gonna realize that you’re gonna have the belief systems that we’ve built up over time, because if you’ve had IBS since you were so young, your body is stuck in fight or flight. You could eat the most perfect dairy free, gluten-free, soy-free nitrate free, etc., you can eat it perfectly. Your body is still gonna be throwing up at you and barking at you, because you’re not actually addressing the root cause of inflammation that has nothing to do with food! It has to do with the fact that we’re not getting enough of the right minerals and vitamins, and the rest of our organs are like, “Excuse me, I very hungry here, and I know you’re eating a salad, but I really…
Laura: need to breathe!”
Cara: You are wording it so well! ‘Cause it’s true! Your body talks to you and your body is like, “Hello!”, but… And you know what you need a lot of the time. You can feel it like, Gosh, I didn’t word that well. The way I worded it sounds so simple, but you know… I know a lot of the time like, okay, this is what I want. I’m craving it. There’s a reason my organs aren’t getting it. When you have your period and you’re losing a lot of nutrients and your body’s like, Hey, okay, we need some protein, we need some iron.
Laura: Oh my god, yeah. Have you ever looked at a burger when you have your period and you’re like, “Oh, come to mama!”
Cara: Yes!!!!! How many times when I have my period, do I turn to my husband and I say, “you know what I want?” And he says, “A big juicy steak, right?” And like, “Yes!” And he’s like, “Let’s do it!” And I’m like, “If you could get me like, a baked potato… I want some cheese on it, I want some sour cream..” Because it’s all those things… and that’s kind of what I mean. It’s like, at least for me, my body talks to me and it tells me what it wants. And I listen to it. And I think people don’t always do that, and you were talking- just the way you were talking about it was just so like… Yes!
Laura: I remember specifically… So I was a vegan, right, because… Well, you need… Plants! Blah blah blah. This whole thing. But I remember I kept walking in the grocery store being like, I’m gonna eat that steak, and I had to… And I still lived in Thailand at this time, and you could call and there’s this fancy market that I would like the grocery shop at, and they can cook your steak for you. ‘Cause I had to call my friends, Facetime them and go, “Which one? I don’t… I haven’t eaten meat eight years. I have no idea.” And then I’m like, “But I don’t even know how to cook it.” And they’re just like, “Oh, you can just go and they’ll cook it for you. Go and do it!” And what did I do? I had like 2 bites of it and then I finished all the vegetables ’cause my brain is still in this disordered eating thing, but my body literally barked at me and was like, “You’re gonna eat that steak today. You need it.” But a lot of times in my world, and this is why I created the Labyrinth program and things like that, is we don’t know how to talk to our body.
Laura: At this time, I had been on a spiritual journey of doing Reiki and going to Bali and doing all this kind of stuff. And so I had a little bit more communication, but that’s a little next-level thing, ’cause oftentimes it’s like we have no even idea of our bodies. We just usually go to sleep, or we get hit with anxiety, so we overwork or we fast because we’re anxious. And there’s these cycles that now have fun diet term names to them that are “healthy” and we get trapped inside of these bubbles, when really our body… she’s always– if you have IBS, if you have anxiety, if you have hormonal issues, if you’re fatigued, if you have mood swings, your body is trying to tell you something. That’s not the root cause of what’s going on, you’re not… You’re not fatigued ’cause you have gut issues, you’re not fatigued, ’cause you have hormonal issues. You have hormonal issues because a large spectrum of things that maybe are leading to the fatigue, but I bet you the fatigue is also leading to those things. So where do you go? You know, the chicken or the egg? It’s like, we gotta look at the whole body. Gotta stop chasing these fad diets and really just be like…
Laura: What do I need right now? Like, is it– is it a nap? Is it a hug? Is it like sunlight? What is it right now that I need? And then trust whatever she says. We are women. We are so intuitive when we allow it to come through and we get all this gunk that’s been instilled in our brains since we were like 10.
Cara: So true, and you’re right, we are by nature, we are intuitive creatures. How many of us do not listen to our intuition, we just don’t… And you’re totally right about listening, listen to your body. What do I need right now? And trust that. Gosh, you’re just touching my soul here. I do want to ask you something else that you were talking about before, and that is the gut brain connection. I know. You’re excited. Let’s talk about that. Tell me exactly what that means.
Laura: So, this is my nerdy part.
Cara: I love that. I love the nerdiness.
Laura: Not too expansive, but it’s… So our gut and our brain, we’ve usually called it our second brain, we’ve heard it often, and there’s multiple reasons, because of this, and I will address them currently. Can you you tell my teacher voice is on right now? Our gut and our brain are in constant communication with each other through this thing called the gut-brain axis. Kind of case in point there. It’s through this thing called the vagus nerve, which is our longest cranial nerve. I spoke a lot earlier about the vagal tone and that has to do with, 1. Our gut. It controls our enteric nervous system. So our enteric nervous system is different from the one that controls all the things like our muscles and things like that. It controls our organs, so we don’t have to tell our heart to be our lungs to breathe, our food to digest. It does it entirely on its own. Reason one, it’s called the Second Brain. And our gut is also connected to that so that’s why… ’cause it runs entirely on its own. The other reason is our gut is home to neurotransmitters like serotonin, GABA, and norepinephrine, dopamine, things like that. The thing this internet world has confused, that doesn’t actually go to your brain. Like, we gotta stop being like, “Whoa, If I eat tryptophan, my serotonin is going to spike!” That’s not how that works. They’re 2 separate things. It does not break the blood-brain barrier. But the food you eat impacts how your vagal tone goes because our vagus nerve, most communication goes through our gut to our brain.
Laura: So if we have metabolic issues, if we have blood sugar issues, things like that, that’s gonna spike off things like our brain going into neuroinflammation, anxiety, depression, things of that nature, which is then correlated to our gut. And the thing about the vagus nerve is that it gives off these things called Action Potential. So like I said earlier, it’s connected to all of our survival organs. So what this means is if you are undernourished, so you’re not eating enough of the right foods… Hello, low FODMAP diet and elimination diet, low carb, all kinds of things. If you’re over-exercising, under sleeping, if you are stuck in a trauma response, like I was, your blood flow is gonna go to your survival organs. It’s gonna be chronically inflamed inside of your body, which shuts down your vagal tone, which is the highway to that gut-brain connection that will help anxiety, depression, mental fatigue, mood swings, things like that, and also help you digest your food. So if you’re stuck in fight or flight, your blood flow is gonna go to your survival organs, you don’t need to be pooping when there’s a saber tooth tiger or famine happening in your life, you need to be running or holding it in.
Laura: And so another thing that happens when it comes to the gut-brain connection is that in my world, if you have high neurotransmitters in your brain, that’s anxiety. That’s correlated through this thing called the vagus nerve, and we feel that in our gut, like cramping & diarrhea. This is why you get the anxious poops or the anxious farts. And then depression is a low neurotransmitters in our brain, so it’s a little bit slower, and so this is when we get… this is what I struggle with. That’s when you get constipation, ’cause there’s no motility, there’s no more communication going on, it’s not like exit, exit, it’s like hold and use this. But really you’re just recycling toxins back into your body. I know that was a lot. I tend to do that very quickly, so… I’m sorry, you guys…
Cara: No it’s okay! You’re excited about it! I can speak to that. I know what it’s like to be super excited and passionate about it.
Laura: Anytime my partner’s home and he hears me on an interview, talking about it… He’s like, “You always go, so fast, you do it like you’re anxious to talk about it, but you’re saying, the right words. Why do you do that so fast?” I’m like, I don’t know, I just… I find one
Cara: I can relate to that, and I love that!
Laura: Yeah. Moral of the story is you can’t heal one without the other. We have to address mental health, especially now, especially with women that are struggling with IBS ’cause it’s often we’re ashamed of it, we often isolate ourselves, we keep it a secret, we don’t date because we’re so embarrassed by it, it’s this whole human connection thing, it keeps us from and it messes with our relationship to food. And so that’s really my arena. You can find a whole bunch of stuff about lactobacillus, and l-glutamine and all the kind of things you need to repair your gut. And that’s fine, but we also have to be talking about what is our brain doing and how do we slow that down? So even though we’re taking all these supplements and eating the right foods, the body is actually taking it in, ’cause if you don’t deal with the stuff that’s going on in your head, all of that stuff is absolutely useless.
Cara: Exactly, it’s pointless. So excited. That actually brings me to a question about treating IBS from your perspective. So we’re talking about how we can’t… It’s kind of like that band-aid solution where rather than getting to the root cause of something, you’re just treating the symptoms, and that’s not gonna do much, except the symptoms are gonna keep coming back if you stop treating them, but if you treat the root cause maybe you won’t have the symptoms anymore. So, tell me, what are some first steps that women can take to get on the road to recovery from IBS, what are kind of the first steps that you would say… Here’s the first thing you should do.
Laura: Go get tested, you wanna make sure it’s not SIBO, overgrowth, parasites, anything like that because you’re just gonna keep getting stuck in a cycle. But if you’ve already gotten a diagnosis of IBS– IBS, it’s a running joke in my line of work, that IBS, is just BS. They just don’t know what’s wrong with you. So they’re just like, “Here you go!”. So the best thing that I’ve noticed because it runs everything, is to figure out how to restore your metabolism. That’s what the problem is. The reason we can’t digest food, is because our stomach acid weakened and our digestive fire weakened, so all of a sudden now foods are coming in and our body is like, “Excuse me… No, I can’t compute this.” And this is why we get reactions to food, and then the rest of our body is undernourished and we start to see a pyramid of other health issues arise. And then we have to nurture the gut-brain connection. And so the first thing would be 1. Go get tested 2. Track. So I walk people through an acronym called FREE. So the first one is Foundations, and I’m gonna leave you with this ’cause when I get on a tangent about this and then I say the other 3 it gets very confusing. We can have a chat if anyone’s curious about it. Just the foundations is: what the heck are you doing every day for a week?
Laura: What are you eating? How are you feeling about what you’re eating before and after, do you eat… Sitting up, standing down, how frequently are you eating? I know that sounds like a lot. It is, but you have to do the work before you jump on any diet, before you jump on any supplement regime, any of that kind of stuff, because more often than not, IBS a lifestyle thing. That’s it. And so if we can narrow that down, perfect, you might be able to do that yourself, or if you come to someone like me or your GI specialist or whomever you’re working with, you can actually get the proper help you deserve because otherwise, they’re gonna tell you that either depending on what you’re struggling with, you’re gonna take laxatives or Immodium, and then they’re gonna go on the low fodmap diet that because you didn’t take that one week to go, here is what I’m doing every day. What do you suggest based off of this information? And then you can move forward. You’ve got to be your own advocate, in this stuff. I could tell you “Go eat organ meats and make sure you are eating root vegetables, & bone broth and do this whole thing.” And that stuff is all hunky-dory, but what good is that if we’re building on an unstable foundation?
Cara: Mmmm-hmmm. Heck yeah. You’re so right. Oh my gosh, I’m so excited like I’m getting all excited over here and I’m like– because it’s something I can relate to so much. It’s something I’ve struggled with for so many years now. You’re just… Oh, you’re speaking my language, today. This is so great. I’m someone who has a history of depression, I have a history of severe anxiety, and I have a history of stomach issues! My whole digestive system is like, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, but I want all the food in the world, so I’m gonna hate you even more. And so it’s just very powerful to me to hear a woman preaching this because it’s so important. And it’s just like, you’re just speaking to my soul and I’m so excited about it! And you’re clearly so passionate about this work, and that is so touching to me, so tell me a little bit… Why are you so passionate? You’ve talked about your own personal history here, we’ve talked about what brought you to this amazing journey that you’re on now, so I feel like we kinda have a good idea, but the way you talk about… not just, “This is what I do and I’m so excited about it!” which is awesome, but every aspect, everything. You said it a minute ago that you’re just talking so much, saying so much stuff, and you’re talking so fast, that your partner even says something to you. And that to me is a sign of passion for this work that you do, and so…
Cara: Tell me in your own words, why are you so passionate about it?
Laura: No one has ever asked me that question. Thank you.
Cara: Really? It’s such an important question! To me, passion is so important in life, but especially when you are an entrepreneur. I mean, that’s just a side note, but when you start a business, and this is coming to another entrepreneur and you’re passionate about that work and it just gets into your soul. I keep using that word, but it is, it does, and you can see it in certain people and I see it in you because you are passionate the way I’m passionate about my work, and it’s so important to me to hear what drives this passion… It’s such a big part of life that I feel like I guess… I don’t know why people don’t… I can’t believe no one’s ever asked you that!… Oh my gosh, I’m sorry.
Laura: Yeah, it is my passion. It saved my life. You know, not in a spectrum of, “Oh, I can eat chicken wings without pooping my pants, kind of life, but it’s… literlaly in my post coming out, and I think it’s tomorrow it’s coming, where it’s like, “This is gonna be a con– or maybe came out today, where it’s like, “It’s a controversial thing, but IBS and anxiety is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It has forced me to slow down, look at my life and my habits, it’s forced me to take control and radical responsibility for the way that I nourish myself, because I was never taught that beyond putting a fork in my mouth and calorie counting and obsessive thoughts that I had. It’s taught me how to communicate with my body by listening to her and being like, “Oh, so you didn’t like that food did ya?” Being able to communicate and really learn and take the time where often people don’t get that. Like my family, for example, like my dad, I love him to bits, he’s my best friend. But he doesn’t have a communication– and maybe it’s the male thing as well– but doesn’t have a communication with his body, so it’s one of these things where it’s a very extreme thing, he lets go, he loves food, he loves the whole stuff, but then he quickly goes on Prolan and then he goes back and he like it’s this back and forth kind of thing.
Laura: Right. And I witnessed people that… And my brother is the same way, and my brother doesn’t go on Prolan., but he does… we just need very dynamically ’cause that’s how we… you know, family traits– but I noticed that with people that don’t have IBS, and I speak about food in the way that I do, or I have this great communication with my body or… I do certain things at certain times because of– this makes me feel good… that is such a treat and once we switch into… I have a masterclass coming out called “Kintsugi”, where it’s like this whole Japanese culture where a bowl breaks and they glue it together with gold and it’s even more beautiful. That’s how I view this. That is how I view mental health. That is how I view illness. That is how I view recovery from addictions and all the kind of things, like It is something if we use it in the right way, how are you gonna tell the story in hindsight, and so I chose in my recovery that I was like, What if I speak on stages one day or write books or something. How do I actually wanna tell this journey? And so it’s gotten me out of suicide addictions, it’s gotten me out of these kind of things, and it walked me to a place that I will literally sit down and just be like, “How the heck did I get here?” This is the coolest thing, and it all came from that, and just kind of continue to grow from there, and I really like…
Laura: And I see the women in my community and I see the conversations I get to have like this, where it’s like… it just plants a seed somewhere and once it plants the seed… it makes better women. And when we have better women in this world, there’s no more competition. Or she looks like this, or she doesn’t get me, and it’s this bitterness. It’s like we actually create this sisterhood, we create this growth and it’s a– it’s know I’m getting carried away now, but it it’s so much more than nutrition and food sensitivities. It is so much more than that. It’s women– I used to be so angry, like violence with my temper, that’s my kind of arena, where now it’s like, I don’t remember last time I raised my voice, and that’s the same thing with the women that I work with, it’s like we actually learn what’s going on so we become better wives, daughters, partners, mothers, friends, co-workers. It’s just this trifecta thing that is so beyond us and it’s like… I don’t know, I’m so excited about the future of it, but how did i get to be the bread and butter in there?
Cara: I love it. Oh, I’m so excited! And ahhh! It’s just, it’s just And I just… Oh, it’s… See? Bleh. I have no words coming to mind because I’m so excited because… It’s just so touching to me. One of the reasons I started this podcast in the first place was to help other women to kinda figure out what they need… You know what I mean? What would help you? And I was super passionate about that, just wanting to give women this opportunity to find the right person to help them with whatever was going on, and I’m passionate about that among many other things, and a very passionate person, and so it’s very exciting to me to have these kinds of conversations and here, we’re talking face-to-face here, so I can see your excitement, I don’t just hear it, I see it. And that to me, that get’s me all like, “Yes! Yes! You’re amazing!” It’s just exciting to me. So that’s why I had to know… Tell me why you’re passionate! So now, my friends, this is where we switch gears in my interview, and now I get to ask you some of my fun questions, and these are my get to you know kind of questions, so I ask all of my guests these same questions…
Cara: I’ll give you the first one. The first one is, Who are three people who have had the most influence on you, and this doesn’t have to be business-related, it can be… It doesn’t have to be. This is a very broad question, so I always ask 3 because that’s my favorite number, and weird thing with the number three, I like it a lot. So it doesn’t have to be 3 if you can’t think of three, or if they’re 50 or if there’s one, 3 is just my favorite number.
Laura: Yeah. So, it’s gonna be a weird one… One of them. That crazy ex abusive boyfriend that I had because it catapulted who I am today. My mother, and my brother or my dad.
Laura: It’s both of them. It’s both of them because they’ve taught me unconditional love, which has led me to one of the most beautiful loves that currently have right now.
Cara: That’s amazing. I wanna cry. Happy tears, of course. But, you know, I’m an emotional person, I cry all day, every day, so don’t mind me. Awesome. I love asking that question. I love this next question even more because it’s a weird one, and I’ve gotten some very interesting answers, and I think it’s a really fun way for you to sort of get to know yourself, it’s very introspective and… I don’t know, it’s cool. So here it is, if you could have your dream.. I’m gonna go with the word dinner party. Not everybody likes dinner parties, so if dinner parties aren’t your thing– I love dinner parties, I love to eat, I could eat all day. Dinner party, walk on the beach, whatever your thing is, you can invite 3 people… Or not people, I get to that in a minute. These people can be fictional, they can be real, they can be people you know, they can be people you don’t know relatives, they can be deceased. They can be alive. They don’t have to be people. I specify this because, listen, they can be animals, they can be animated characters, they can be spirits, they can be insects, I say that because I invited a dragonfly to my dinner party.
Cara: It could be anything you want, it could be an inanimate object if you want… You know, that’s fine. Everybody has their thing. So I pose you this question, Who are those three beings be… and why? I know. I make people think.
Laura: So, I think– no I know it would be, obviously my mom. I want her to see– she passed before she got to see this new version of me, so I really… I wish we could. With my current boyfriend. He is my forever person. You know, so she could meet him. And the the last person, if they were all together and just kind of spice up the mix. I don’t know, I’m curious about Ghandi. I don’t know, I’ve always been fascinated. I would just love to sit down and I don’t have any quest– I could come up with questions for him, but my mom would be weirded out by him being there, but…
Cara: Haha! It’s your dinner party! You say, “Mom, I’m so happy you’re here. This is my dinner party. You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to”.
Laura: “This is my dinner party… here is Ghandi & Elvis.” Elvis is my boyfriend’s name. Not the actual Elvis.
Cara: That’s so funny! That’s what I was going to say, “That’s an interesting guest!” I love it. Gotta make a note of that! Elvis, not Presley. I’m going to make a note to myself and say… ’cause I’ll forget that later. I’ll look at that and go, “Hmm, so she likes Elvis.” Elvis was cool, don’t get me wrong. He had some good music. But you know, that would be interesting. That’s awesome. I love asking that question. I interviewed myself– yes, I interviewed myself a few months ago, and I asked myself that question. I didn’t prepare myself, I just sort of threw it at myself and I was like, “Huh, I’d probably invite a dragonfly.” And I listened to that episode and I was like, “Huh, people probably think I’m weird.” Okay, that’s fine. But that’s really cool.
Laura: Let that freak flag fly!
Cara: That’s right! That’s what I do all day every day. That’s my life. My children think I’m a crazy person, but that’s okay. They’re related to me so they’re probably a little bit weird themselves. They’re only 2 though, so we don’t know yet, but we’ll see. So, Laura that is awesome. Tell me, last question here, and it’s an easy one, where can our listeners find you… How can they connect with you, learn about you, learn about Healing to Happy and all the wonderful things that you can do for them.
Laura: So, over on Instagram is where I’m most active. So that is @itslaurapatriciamartin. So, It’s Laura Patricia Martin. And then our company page is @healingtohappy. And from there, we have Facebook communities, and you always know about our free masterclasses ’cause we do one a month. You always know what’s going on if you just pop over there.
Cara: Awesome, awesome awesome, man. I love Instagram. Instagram is so much fun. It’s such a crazy place, but it’s so awesome at the same time… Laura, I wanna thank you for taking the time out of your day to talk with me. I’ve been looking forward to talking with you. I know we’ve had to reschedule a few times, so I’m really excited that we had this opportunity. You do so much amazing work. You’ve taken such a beautiful life journey and really taken it to a place to be so helpful, beneficial none of those are really the words that I think can describe the work that you do. I think you do some amazing things and educating people on how to heal and be happy essentially, so thank you so much for sharing all of this with me today, I can’t tell you how excited I am to have talked you…
Laura: Thank you, me too. Thank you for having me, and thank you for what you’re doing and bringing people together and just… I love it. I love it so much.
