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In this episode of Wellbeing Interrupted, I sit down with Michelle Holling-Brooks to explore her profound journey of healing and resilience. Michelle's story is not one of simply living through health challenges but of discovering the transformative power within wounds, labels, and life’s unexpected turns. 

 

Through her insights, Michelle invites us to redefine healing, challenge conventional beliefs about perfection, and find hope even in the midst of uncertainty. 

 

Embracing Healing Beyond Labels 

 

Michelle's life has been shaped by a series of health labels—from traumatic brain injury and PTSD to autoimmune conditions and chronic illness. Yet, she chooses not to let these define her. 

 

For Michelle, healing began when she shifted her perspective, seeing these labels not as limitations but as experiences shaping her path. This mindset allowed her to release the weight of societal expectations and explore her journey as an opportunity for growth and transformation. 

 

Redefining Healing: Wholeness, Not Perfection 

 

In the wellness world, healing is often equated with achieving physical perfection. Michelle passionately debunks this myth, emphasizing that healing is about wholeness. 

 

Michelle’s turning point came when she learned to bless her life, embracing her body and experiences as they were. Her story highlights the freedom that comes from letting go of unattainable standards and focusing on what truly matters: connection, authenticity, and self-compassion. 

 

The Archetype of the Wounded Healer 

 

 

Central to Michelle's philosophy is the archetype of the Wounded Healer. Drawing from shamanic teachings, she explains how our wounds hold the medicine we need to heal and grow. 

 

Rather than seeking to “fix” herself, Michelle embraced her wounds, discovering the wisdom they offered. Her journey is a powerful reminder that healing can involve finding purpose and strength in what once seemed broken. 

 

How Horses Became Partners in Healing 

 

 

 

A pivotal moment in Michelle’s healing journey came through her relationship with a horse. After a life-changing illness left her physically and emotionally isolated, it was a horse named Schedule A who reignited her will to engage with life. 

 

Michelle describes the profound connection between human and horse as a soul-to-soul relationship, one that transcends traditional therapies. Through equine-assisted therapy, she not only regained physical abilities but also discovered a deep sense of belonging and purpose. 

 

Living Authentically Through Life’s Challenges 

 

Michelle has faced unimaginable challenges, from grappling with memory loss to navigating the emotional aftermath of illness. Her journey to living authentically involved reclaiming her voice, reconnecting with her body, and embracing her identity as it evolved. 

 

For Michelle, authenticity is about showing up as you are, without shame or fear. She encourages others to honor their journeys, trust their inner wisdom, and seek joy despite life's obstacles. 

 

Final Thoughts 

Michelle Holling-Brooks’ story is a testament to the transformative power of healing. Her journey challenges us to rethink what it means to be whole and to find hope even in life’s messiest moments. Let her story inspire you to embrace your own healing path and the unique wisdom your experiences hold. 

 

Show Resources 

 

• Website: Visit Michelle’s website at unbridledchange.org, including a free resources section filled with tools like meditation guides and healing practices. 

• Podcast: Check out Michelle’s Soulful Practices Podcast, available on Spotify and YouTube, for weekly insights and somatic practices. 

• More Stories: For more Hurdle2Hope® stories, visit hurdle2hope.com/stories or scroll through your podcast feed for episodes that start with “Hurdle2Hope Stories.” 

 

Episode 52: Hurdle2Hope® Stories: Meet Michelle Holling-Brooks  Transcript

 

[00:00:00] Teisha Rose: Hey there, Tisha here, and welcome to episode 52 of Wellbeing Interrupted. Since the last episode, I've had a significant milestone. I've turned 50, and it's been such a beautiful week of celebrating that with Andrew. We went away for a few days to a bit of luxury, a beautiful suite in a resort close to home. 

[00:00:26] So, That was good because we could go back and forth to Daisy Hill and actually check on our dogs and check everything was right, but also just to have a bit of an escape and a bit of luxury, which is good when you're living in a caravan. Also, I've caught up with family and friends and it's just been such a beautiful time celebrating something years ago I dreaded. 

[00:00:52] Turning 50 sounded so old, um, but now after my cancer diagnosis, I'm celebrating, celebrating that I've reached this milestone and getting excited about what the next 10 years has in hold for me. Today, I'm joined by Michelle Hollingbrooks. Michelle, I interviewed before Christmas, but I wanted to hold on to her story. 

[00:01:21] So it's our first Hurdle to Hope story of 2025. It's an amazing story. I wouldn't do it justice by summarizing it here. So instead, I invite you to listen to Michelle's extraordinary story. Learn from her profound insights and be motivated to challenge your own thinking about healing. So enjoy this episode. 

[00:01:54] Welcome to Wellbeing Interrupted, the podcast dedicated to exploring the transformative power of a healing mindset. I'm Tisha Rose, your host. And the founder of Hurdle to Hope. If you're on a quest to not just survive, but thrive after a life changing diagnosis, then you're definitely in the right place. 

[00:02:17] Living with MS, and now stage 4 breast cancer, has taught me a vital lesson. In the face of a life changing illness, our mindset is everything. Each week, I'll share insights, tips and strategies to help you build a happier, healthier, More balanced life. So let's begin your journey from Hurdle to hope starting right now. 

[00:02:46] Well, welcome Michelle. Thank you so much for being a guest on Wellbeing Interrupted.  

[00:02:53] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Well, thank you so much Tisha for having me and I am so excited. I love the theme of your podcast and just the warmth and the breath and the how it really helps meet people where they are. And so I'm glad to, to be a part of this and to share in this conversation with you. 

[00:03:09] Teisha Rose: Excellent. And I think we do in the little bit we've had in contact with each other, we definitely 

[00:03:18] So that's really important for me, as you said, to have really authentic and open conversations because those conversations are the ones that help. Um, so to give our listeners a bit of a, um, update in terms of our accents are different. So I'm sitting here in my caravan in Australia and you are over the other side of the world. 

[00:03:41] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah. So I'm over in the U. S. and I'm on the East Coast in Virginia. And so, but I'm in like the mountainous part of Virginia. And so, but I did grow up in Northern Virginia, just outside of D. C. because my whole family is like military. Um, and so that's where I grew up. But then eventually I was just like the, the energies and the, the pace of up there just really didn't coincide with Not my, my ideal place. 

[00:04:07] And so off to the mountains I went and so I am over in the, the Appalachian mountains and I absolutely love it.  

[00:04:14] Teisha Rose: I guess to give us a bit of a background as to, you know, this is a health and wellness podcast. And when I looked at your website, um, you mentioned you've had a range of health conditions. Um, and what are. 

[00:04:29] Loved and was sort of piqued my interest, I guess, is you talk about the labels of different conditions you have. So can we just give us a bit of background on what those conditions are, what the labels are, and why you use that term?  

[00:04:43] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah, I use the term labels because I, I try not to identify, um, it as me because that was the first part of my journey. 

[00:04:54] I kind of felt like I was burdened by those labels. And then once I realized that I could just. Like, say, okay, this is, this is an experience that I'm working with or through whatever duration of time that is, then it allowed me to really shift how I was holding that. Um, but yes, like you said, I've been unfortunately dancing with some form of illness, um, throughout my whole life. 

[00:05:17] Um, Traumatic birth story that was like, had a lot of issues wrong with it. Um, I had an incredible amount of hearing issues and different things were going on within my ears. And so starting at just the young age of like six months old, I had my first surgery on my ears, um, and putting tubes in and 13 sets of surgeries, um, all the way through those early childhood years. 

[00:05:45] Um, and having to. Deal with, you know, having plugs in my ears and not being able to do what other kids do. I don't remember all of that because when I was 13, I was, um, bit by a mosquito that had, um, eastern equine encephalitis, and that ended up creating a big issue in my brain. Um, where my, the lining of my brain was swelling inward with that virus, and then I dominoed into spinal meningitis, um, viral spinal meningitis at the same time. 

[00:06:17] So, my brain was swelling, my brain stem was swelling, the lining of my brain was swelling, it equaled, um, a very unhappy brain, and I ended up, like, slipping into a coma for seven days. And during that time, you know, they were trying, it was 1990, they were trying to prepare my family for, Um, you know, we don't know what will happen. 

[00:06:39] It's just up to her. They had cut the back of my skull. They were trying to just alleviate as much of the pressure as possible, but they didn't really know what would happen with that amount of, um, swelling and infection and, um, constriction that's, that was happening all across the back of the brain. And the result was when I did wake up, obviously, I woke up, hello, I was, I was deaf, um, because of all the swelling and the fluid that was stuck in my ears, um, I was blind, uh, but not from like darkness, but because the light, the apertures of the visual cortex were so incredibly damaged from the swelling that my eyes were like white blind. 

[00:07:19] So the, the light outside just absolutely killed. And it was like. Have you ever been outside where it's really, really bright and then you walk into a dark room? Yeah. And it's like, you can't quite orient yourself. That's what it was like for me when I woke up. Um, I was paralyzed.  

[00:07:37] Teisha Rose: Yeah, the petrifying 13 year old, did you say? 

[00:07:41] Michelle Holling-Brooks: 13. Yeah. And I was paralyzed from the middle. So yeah, four things. So those are two. The third one was I was paralyzed from the middle of my back down. Um, and so I didn't have any ability to move the lower half of my body. I could move my arms, but I had no catch. So if I reached, um, and went too far, you know, like over, I went like a little weeble wobble. 

[00:08:03] And then the fourth thing that was the big, Problem. Um, that took quite a bit of time to wrap around was that I was completely blank slate. I had no memory of being human, being Michelle, who other people were. I woke up completely unaware of anything. And so that created a big problem because I didn't know I should be trying to communicate. 

[00:08:30] I didn't know that I should be trying to communicate. Do anything. All I knew was that I was still in a body with an incredible amount of pain that was happening to it. My body trying to heal itself started to grow. Um, and in the 3 months that I was in the hospital, after I woke up from that coma, I grew almost like 3 to 4 inches. 

[00:08:49] So I went in like 5'8 and I came out 6'1. So my body, yeah, it was kind of crazy, but that hurts, you know, like you talk about growing pains and so my. I'm putting language on something that had no language, but what I felt in those first few months post coma was just absolute isolation, absolute confusion, just like terror and pain. 

[00:09:15] And that's what I thought life was. That illness. Gave me a couple labels. So before that, I had already had like some hearing labels and I had severe ADHD and dyslexia and all these wonderful things, but that one gave me traumatic brain injury, post traumatic stress complex disorder, you know what I mean? 

[00:09:36] And it just kind of kept putting the labels on. And I, I didn't understand or know what it was that people wanted from me because I had no point of reference, so I knew that people would come in and move my body and I would try to fight it because it would scare me, but then I never won because they could always move my body and they could always make it do whatever they wanted to do, and it would hurt. 

[00:10:00] They were taking blood. They were putting me in and out of machines, um, yeah. I was fighting. So they were strapping me down, you know, like they were doing all the different things to try to keep me as healthy as possible. But all those things were also, I didn't know what they were and I had no point of reference for it. 

[00:10:18] So that was a whole situation right there. And, um, it's, it's a, it's a thing. And so what I ended up doing is blowing into the other parts of my senses. So when our five senses are not available to us, we start working with the other senses that we have. And so I became very adept, um, to sensing people's energy, to figuring out, oh, this person feels really agitated in their field. 

[00:10:47] Well, I would know to go just really quiet. And not make that nurse mad or that person, you know what I mean? Or if somebody felt more open, then I would maybe like, look a little bit like more willing to see what they were going to ask my body to do and try to meet them in that space. But again, I didn't have any awareness of what was happening, what they wanted from me. 

[00:11:09] And I didn't even have a desire to want to figure it out because I didn't know what that was supposed to be.  

[00:11:16] Teisha Rose: Yeah. Yeah.  

[00:11:17] Michelle Holling-Brooks: So it's, it was a very isolating A hard place for me. I'm very much alone when they sent me home from the hospital. Um, I went from a place that I had felt comfortable with to a place. I felt completely uncomfortable with, um, because it was unpredictable. 

[00:11:33] You know, my family had to do their own schedule. They just kind of take care of this little. Blah thing, you know, that can't communicate, can't talk, can't, can't do anything, can't move. Um, and that was happening. Um, my dad was active duty at the time, and so he was in Desert Storm, so he was there and back again. 

[00:11:54] Um, they were trying to get him stationed back, but it was still, you know, kind of hit or miss. My sister had just started. Her freshman year of high school and trying to do her thing and then my mom was dealing with her own health issues. And so that were being exasperated from my sickness. Um, and that told that it was taking on her. 

[00:12:14] So it was a kind of a hot mess. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Unbelievable. Of a moment. Yeah. And, um, luckily, though, my mom somehow knew about therapeutic writing, um, and she knew that I was a barn rat beforehand, and she thought, well, maybe this will pique her interest or maybe this will be something she's willing to do. 

[00:12:36] They were taking me to PT and OT. But I had at that point, I had completely shut down. I was just a body. If people moved it, they moved it. I didn't fight. I didn't push back. I didn't try to talk. I didn't try to do anything. They were trying to teach me to sign and moving my hands up and down and then like putting them on things. 

[00:12:57] And I could hear like garbled words like I was underwater that they were trying to engage me with, but I wasn't, there was nothing there to do it with. Yeah. Um, And so they took me out to the barn. And this is where I just, I smelled the barn. And for those of you who don't know, the, the neural network pathway of, of smells is on a completely different pathway. 

[00:13:22] And so it brought me into a sense of familiarity, a sense of memory, a sense of, um, curiosity, because when that smell of the barn came in, it was something that I was like, I know that, and nothing had triggered that before in me, for whatever reason. But that barn, I knew that barn, I didn't know how I knew that barn, I didn't even know what the word barn was, but I just knew that I wanted to finally pick up my head and to look around. 

[00:13:53] And so that's where a very unlikely, um, healer comes in and who happens to be, his name was schedule A. And so he was a horse and about four stalls down on the left, there he was. And to me, he looked like a gorgeous yellow sparkly highlighter with my energy eyes. As my eyesight came back online, it turns out he was a dark Bay horse. 

[00:14:18] So they're a little different the way that works. But yeah, You know, I knew him, and I didn't know how I knew him, but I wanted to, and so I did the thing that they had been wanting me to do this whole time, which was to wheel myself down, and I was willing to do that, and for some reason, my wheelchair and me did not freak him out. 

[00:14:39] It should have, because this was not a therapeutic ridey barn, and this was a big inventor jumper barn, you know, and so I loved it. The horses are kind of high strung and he did not care and he put his head over the back of me. And it was the first touch just that I was willing to like reach out and touch him back and just hold him and I reached as far as I could from my wheelchair to just breathe him in. 

[00:15:06] And that's where I wanted to be so. He kind of pulled me back from the void that I had, and then I was interested in how do I get back to him? Well, the humans were very smart, and they were like, oh, let's use the horse as a carrot to get her to, and so they did something that's totally not safe, they tied me to the saddle, don't ever, that's not okay. 

[00:15:32] If anybody tries to do that out of there, we like run away. But they didn't know any better. You know, it didn't exist in the area when I was, um, going through this and the theory is people say, Oh, well, you regain the use of your legs and your willingness to be there because the horse rhythmically moved your body. 

[00:15:54] But that's not what gave me back the use of my legs. It was. Schedules and minds relationship. That is what was the key to creating that healing presence. And yes, through writing him and my willingness to be there, my body wanted to be with him in every way it could. And so it tried to keep up. It was like shining a flashlight of like, Oh, what is over here? 

[00:16:20] What is over there? Um, can you sit up a little bit straighter so they don't have to keep stopping you to push you back up on the horse? And, you know, little by little, my body tried to work around the damage pathways that were happening there. But what was creating it wasn't just a rhythmic motion because they were doing that in PT, they were doing that in OT. 

[00:16:41] It wasn't just the asking me to sit on something and. And have it move. All of that was happening. It was the relationship that I had with schedule. So people kind of take it into Oh, it was the horse that did this, but it was the soul of the horse and my soul connecting together. That's what created that healing presence. 

[00:17:03] It could have very well been another person, another person. Um, type of an animal, it could have been a tree, it could have been anything that I felt that soul to soul connection with, it just happened to be. And in the body of a horse. So through working with him, though, I did regain use of my legs. I was walking with a walker after about six months. 

[00:17:26] And then a year after that, I was off and running and trying out for my basketball team. Um, so gold star body. It did really well. The hearing and the eyesight took about two years. So I was Learning how to sign. I was working with speech, um, pathologists, and I know you have a story with that too. Um, and so if you really listen to me, you will hear a little bit of a guttural talk because I learned to project versus, um, the other way. 

[00:17:55] So  

[00:17:56] Teisha Rose: you don't know what that is. I do, the vibration in your head. I've got a steel bass and yeah.  

[00:18:02] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Like bringing that up and using your voice and your breath to like create that, um, because some of those pathways were just damaged, um, and, and working with that, but it took a little bit of time for that to come on board. 

[00:18:18] And so there was just. Awkwardness that happened with being the girl with the wheelchair at school. She left fine one day when she comes back, you know, she's she's this and that awkwardness, you know, and all of that goes with that. Plus the memory loss of not knowing what who I was or how I was or anybody could say, well, Michelle, you did this and I didn't know. 

[00:18:43] Any different, um, and I just wanted to belong. And so I call it the years of abuse of mission because it was like I was willing to just puppet myself into anything and everything that people wanted or asked me to do, because I didn't have any ability to to sort that, um, and to understand that and to work with that. 

[00:19:06] And so that created just, the human world to me felt incredibly abusive, um, and the, the, the barn with the horses, not necessarily the barn, because the barn still had humans, but the horses,  

[00:19:19] Teisha Rose: that  

[00:19:21] Michelle Holling-Brooks: became my oasis and kind of my safe place. But because of that illness at 13 that really taxed my body, it, it kind of left me at this place where my body was playing catch up. 

[00:19:33] From there. Um, so at 21, it got really sick again. I had horrible debilitating migraines, um, that interrupted my college career. You know, I would come out and then go back in and then come back in. Um, at 21, got diagnosed with systemic lupus. And, you know, they were like, Hey, this is going to just keep attacking your organs and working its way through. 

[00:19:56] Um, and I made the choice not to do the medications that were available at the time because I wanted to have options to be able to potentially have kids someday. And they were like, this really does create problems with that. And so I chose not to do that. And I just kept pushing my body over and over. 

[00:20:17] Um, and the, and in my twenties, it just was that mindset of, oh, I'm just going to push my body. It's, it's just going to like, I just want to get it done. I want to have my career. I want to finish school. I want to do this. I want to do that. Um, and as a result, I pushed my body way too far and it brought in more, you know, like where I would see saw back and forth. 

[00:20:44] I would get like. the lupus stuff under control and then it would flare over here with like an encephalitis relapse and then that would kind of calm down and then the lupus symptoms would go back up and, and I'd go back and forth with them and then I got Lyme in the middle of that and then that just was a whole. 

[00:21:03] Teisha Rose: Yeah, my goodness, from what, a mosquito to start it all and then, yeah, Lyme, it's like a tickle.  

[00:21:11] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah, that's a tick. And, you know, and I had taken like the prescription like thing of what they say to take, um, but because my body was so compromised already, it, it didn't do what it needed to do, but I checked the box and I said, Oh, it's fine. 

[00:21:26] And I just kept pushing. Um, and then they labeled it chronic fatigue cause they didn't know. And then they were trying to like put the, the fibromyalgia label. And I was like, this does not feel right.  

[00:21:38] Teisha Rose: Yeah.  

[00:21:39] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Um, and so eventually it was through the, I had a series of miscarriages, um, when AF with my, um, second. 

[00:21:49] Relationship and marriage and it was through that trying to figure out how to heal like what is that? What does my body need to not have a hostel room? I'm sure you know, like how can I help that be there? and that's when I started to peel back the different layers and really understand that the trauma from the first part of my life of from the illness at 13 All the different surgeries that I had had up to that and what that felt like to my body were assaults. 

[00:22:20] And then. The abuse years afterwards, for lack of a better words from like 13 to like 26, you know, in that time frame, that was why my body was so porous. That's why it was really struggling to find any balance. And if I wanted to truly work with quote healing. I had to get a bigger aperture. I couldn't just look at it through the physical lens. 

[00:22:46] I couldn't just look at it through like a mindset of, okay, I'm not going to put this down. You know, like, I had to be willing to look at myself holistically and recognize what my system was doing to try to keep me safe and try to also work with things that had never healed. So it was like a walking wound  

[00:23:07] Teisha Rose: and  

[00:23:07] Michelle Holling-Brooks: just didn't know. 

[00:23:08] So that's the short answer to, uh, yeah. Amazing.  

[00:23:14] Teisha Rose: I, I love it when I'm doing these podcasts and I get lost thinking, Oh, I've got to ask another question because, you know, there's so much there, but wow, um, and what, not just a story, but I just can't still get my head around being a 13 year old and waking up and thinking, I've got no idea where I am. 

[00:23:33] I can't communicate or, you know, feeling detached from your body. See, look, that's, no wonder there's. Wraith and trauma in relation to that event.  

[00:23:45] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah, it's, it was significant. And, and then the lack of connection or feeling a safe attuned connection because everywhere I went, people told me who Michelle was. 

[00:23:56] Everywhere and the word remember and I became like a four letter word and it was like you better duck and cover if you ask me that question because it was just such a triggering word to me because everyone expected me to be somebody and I had no idea who that was. And it just felt so like constricting and in suffocating and eventually I truly began to believe that the Michelle that woke up was wrong because she kept getting that over and over. 

[00:24:31] In fact, people said to me. Within the family unit, the moment you woke up was the moment that the person that we love died and we've healed a lot over the years. That first part, you know, I, I always have to honor my story because I can't even imagine what the story of my family is, but that's their job to tell and their job to be there. 

[00:24:54] This was my story was every time somebody said you've changed, that's not who you are. That meant that I was wrong. Thank you. And that this other Michelle was who they loved, not this Michelle over here. And so That that horse that brought me back trigger kind of warning when he when I was in a senior in high school that summer beforehand, he suddenly collided and died. 

[00:25:20] And when he died that the tether that I had figured out in that four years went away. And then I had zero reason to. Try to figure it out. Like, I just really, it went from like a little bit of abusing of myself to just like, I don't care about this shell at all, because there's no reason for me to want to engage and to be with the world around me. 

[00:25:46] Um, and to the point where at 23, I finally was like, that's it. I'm done. But luckily it didn't work. But, you know, that understanding of feeling like you're so under the pain and what, what is the point? You know, I was living with chronic migraines. I was, um, working with lupus that I didn't know how to work with at the time. 

[00:26:10] You know, like, it just all was so overwhelming. That I didn't see any hope of a way to live in a life. It just felt like Earth was torture. Why be in torture? Um, until I figured out that it doesn't have to be torture.  

[00:26:25] Teisha Rose: Good. But it's true. And I talk about, We all need hope in our lives because without that, it's just, it's, you're right. 

[00:26:36] What's the point, you know? And, but what I love and the unique insight you have is about the labels. Like, I love how you've explained that. Because I talk about hope is when you're not defined by your illness. And I think, you know, fortunately for me, I reached that place when I got cancer, because I thought, well, if I was defined by MS, then what happens when you get another disease or illness? 

[00:27:02] It's like, well, which one am I defined by? Or, you know, and I just think so many people are defined by those labels and it's not, not acknowledging them, but it's saying, well, they're there, but. I don't know what my experience of them will be. So I think that's really important, um, to be able to sort of step back and look objectively about that. 

[00:27:27] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Oh, and when we attach ourselves to the labels, Then we attach ourselves to all the weight that comes with those labels archetypally. We hand ourselves over to this is what you have. This is what you can and cannot do now. And this is what your life will look like now based on statistics. And so we agree when we really hold that we some part of us agrees to that. 

[00:27:52] And that becomes the program in our system. And then our body just marches down that road because it says, well, that's what we plugged into. If we can unplug from it and say, okay, this is what's happening. It has these clusters of symptoms with it. Now, how do I want to meet that now? All of a sudden we're not as bound up in the expectations. 

[00:28:16] I think one of the beautiful things that once I got on the other side of. Deciding it was worth being here and I embrace the medicine that was in the wound is a shamanic teaching because I at 23 when I failed attempt to kill myself, um, I had this beautiful, um, dog that licked into my mouth. His name was Baron. 

[00:28:37] He was a German shepherd and triggered a vomiting response. And, and he showed me this beautiful, like when he was looking at me, I could see this vision of like, why don't you see the person I see? You know, why don't you love yourself the way that I love you and it really kind of launched me on that seekers journey, you know, it launched me to find that person that he was desperately loved that I did not feel attached to at all. 

[00:29:06] Like, it, it almost was like, I remember swiping the mirror down after that and looking in there and just seeing this hollow. You know,  

[00:29:15] Teisha Rose: in  

[00:29:16] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Shell looking back and I remember thinking, okay, I've got to go find her because she's got to exist because animals don't lie. Um, and it took me into all these different classrooms and all these different modalities. 

[00:29:28] And one of the teachings that I found was the concept from shamanic teaching, which is the medicine is in the wound. And if we can go into the wound itself and we can befriend that wound and sit with it and be with it, the medicine of how to work with it the best way possible, maybe not make it perfect, but to free ourselves from the weight of it or hold the weight differently. 

[00:29:54] So it doesn't feel so isolating and alone. That is what it is. There is the beauty in that. And so it really awakened that ability for me to look back and be like, wow, because of these experiences, I know what it's like to not be able to have a voice. Um, and maybe people literally go through that, but people metaphorically go through that all the time. 

[00:30:18] Right? And I know what it's like to keep hitting the walls of these expectations that people want you to be. But you don't know how to be that because you don't know what that is, or that's not who you feel you are now. And somebody's not letting you adjust and grow and shift and change.  

[00:30:36] Teisha Rose: Yeah.  

[00:30:36] Michelle Holling-Brooks: And I know what it's like to feel completely wobbly, like there's no stability underneath you. 

[00:30:42] And so taking those. Moments and and feeling what that feels like to get ahead of steam and then feel like some illness just comes and takes you out. Then you try to like regroup again and then it's just like a whack a mole, you know, it's that is that medicine that comes from being able to say and there's something more than that. 

[00:31:05] You know,  

[00:31:06] Teisha Rose: yeah, and I think that's so important if we are to heal, um, that it is thinking there is something more than because I think, how do you rationally make sense of why a healthy, you know, a 13 year old gets bitten by a mosquito and this happens, or like I was 22 diagnosed with MS was healthy, never anything wrong. 

[00:31:28] And then your life changes. So you think there's got to be yeah. more explanation than what just medically we have. Um, and a couple of things that it'd be good for us to drill down a little bit about. I know you talk about the, um, misconception, I guess, of perfectionism in healing. And I think I love this. 

[00:31:52] And this is why I really wanted to chat to you as well, because I talk about healing is beyond the physical. For a lot of times I thought, How can I do my work if people see me with a walker? And I think they'll think, well, she hasn't healed. And I think, well, no, healing's not the absence of that symptom necessarily. 

[00:32:11] You know, I've done so much healing. So when you were talking about that, I was like, oh, we're going to get you on because I'm very much in line with that. So I love that you are as well. So yes, talk to us about that.  

[00:32:24] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah. So this funny thing happened when I was on this road of exploring healing. And I had already, um, at this point I was. 

[00:32:33] Actually in my master's, um, for social work. So we, we do have comments and I was, you know, walking through the doorway of the mental health. I was starting to put the pieces together, but on the side, on my own personal journey, you know, I had this great science shield in the front where, you know, it was like attachment theory and blah, blah, blah, and all, like all these things. 

[00:32:53] But on the side, I was diving into all these other different healing modalities. Um, and for myself and just seeing how they were and what started to happen. Is I started to get a very real belief system that was taught, which is healing is perfection. It is beginning to the place where your body doesn't have a sickness. 

[00:33:16] It's getting to the place where it doesn't have an illness or an ailment or you don't get sick with the flu or, you know, like if you are quote a higher enough vibration and you've done your healing work and you found that one thought that created this thing, you know, then you know, Oh, you know, like you are no longer going to be, quote, burdened by that expression of that illness. 

[00:33:42] Um, and I was marching down this road and as a result, I was very resentful and militaristic to my body when it didn't balance itself or it balanced itself here, but not over here. And I started to really chase this idea of, um, Perfection. And if I'm going to be a quote. Healer, um, which I don't agree with that term, by the way, because we don't heal other people, we are that, but if I was going to like say that I'm in a healing profession and I can help support you on your healing wellness journey, then I needed to be, you know, all that in a bag of chips and not have anything wrong with me, um, and the universe helped me realize that this was not the goal and the, um, I had my own cancer healing journey, um, which is, which really brought it forward to me because I was actually the most healthiest that I'd been. 

[00:34:44] I'd worked through a bunch of the trauma. Um, I had gotten the encephalitis slingshot into the lupus under control as far as they work. This was in my thirties, my mid thirties. Um, the doctors couldn't find any of the markers of lupus anymore. They were like, we don't know what to call you. So we'll say it's radical remission and just, Do keep doing whatever you're doing and I was like, okay, I've, you know, I've cracked the code. 

[00:35:08] I figured it out And I was getting ready to roll out this certification program To help other people on how to hold this healing space and blah blah blah all this stuff. It was 2016 and I heard really clearly in one of my meditations. It was like you are only Allowing people to see 50 percent of what it is That you actually know and I, I didn't want to risk the exposure and what it was is on my side. 

[00:35:40] I had really kind of released that healing meant perfection and it meant that everything just came into normal and I had redefined healing for myself as that. It was just a remembering that I'm whole no matter what is happening within me. Like, I am always whole, worthy, amazing. I'm not sick because, and that's the theory that needed to come down. 

[00:36:10] And I ended up, um, really getting sick in the middle of that training. Um, I was showing up in a way that wasn't a hundred percent authentic to who I was. I lost my voice halfway through. And it just dominoed into, um, pneumonia and that pneumonia just didn't go away. And I was sitting in a meditation and I heard you have cancer and I was like. 

[00:36:36] What? I'm the healthiest I've ever been with, minus the pneumonia. Yeah, he made the decision to do this, and I was like, that's not true. And I fought it and then I heard it again and kind of sat with it. I could feel the truth of that. And so I went to my doctor who kind of knew about this side of me and I was like, look, I don't know how you want to like put this in there. 

[00:36:58] But she's like, Michelle, you know, I have cancer. And I was like, just do the test. And she, we did the test and she's like, Oh, actually. I  

[00:37:05] Teisha Rose: don't know.  

[00:37:06] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Wow, you do. And I really struggled with that too, because I was like, Okay, why? Like, if I'm doing the work, if I'm struggling, like, what is this? And what did I miss? 

[00:37:17] And I just really went into this darkness. And then I kind of woke up one day, and I realized that The cancer had been there since I was 13. This is a result because it was a neuroendocrine sarcoma. So it's like the cancer, it was over all the mist of the endocrine mist that's in all the organs. And that's your fight, fight or free system. 

[00:37:38] And so. You know, like, and you can't cut it out because it's like 80 percent of your body, you know,  

[00:37:43] Teisha Rose: yes, yes,  

[00:37:44] Michelle Holling-Brooks: we've kind of brought me into working with my healing modalities, but with compassion, with kindness, with love, like, truly working with my body and saying, okay, body. What what is in here for us to work with and how can and I kept healing hearing to just heal behind it Don't try to stop it. 

[00:38:05] It's just doing what it's doing Just heal behind it and you'll you'll be able to get there for me that was my path and I also very much know and it took two years to heal it through my doorway, but I also very much am aware when I share, as I have beautiful clients who still did beautiful healing and cancer did not go the way that they wanted to, and I really would feel their shame. 

[00:38:34] They'd be like, I don't understand. I'm doing everything. And I'm like, you got to let it go. You got to let go this idea that your healing means your body will do this. You've got to uncouple that. And that's such a hard thing to do. Because what we want it to look a certain way. Of course, we do. We want as much health and wellness and abundance as possible. 

[00:38:57] And that's not always for whatever reason in our cards. And if we keep fighting that, then we're missing the opportunity to allow ourselves to have as much health and wellness and well being as possible. Irregardless of what's happening in our system, and I really want to help shed the myth, if you have an illness, that's because you haven't healed something in you. 

[00:39:23] I just want to, like, take that myth out of the healing world, because it's really gotten pretty strong with the healing world. Um, and it's just not true. It's just not in there at all.  

[00:39:40] Teisha Rose: No, I love your take on that, and I think Yeah, hopefully people listening really take that on board because you're right. 

[00:39:49] I was all of a sudden the same thing. I hadn't had a relapse with MS since 2012. I was doing really well, even though my legs weren't great. That was damage done, you know, from years before. So it's like, well, that's okay. You know, I can cope with that and all. But when I got cancer, I'm like the same thing, what? 

[00:40:07] I've been doing so well, but now I look at it differently and think, well, everything now I've learned from MS, I get to apply that to cancer and it's in remission. And I think, I don't think there's a coincidence there that I knew what to do straight away. So I say, yeah, it's like so many people straight away said, how unlucky, that's so unfair you've got two diseases. 

[00:40:29] But I said, the silver lining is MS because I've been able to bring to the table straight away what I've learned.  

[00:40:37] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah, and that medicine from the M. S. So the medicine that was in that wound of that M. S. for you that you cultivated over all those years of the up and that down, you know, it didn't just randomly pop into you. 

[00:40:50] You had to keep choosing to lean into that quote wound in a different way. And and to open to what is it what is in here that wants to be seen felt and heard what is in here that wants to be brought forward for me to help with another, you know, like everything like this podcast that you do the book that you wrote. 

[00:41:13] All of the different things you've been able to take that I use the word contract. You can use whatever word you want in there and allow yourself to really thrive with that versus be restricted and and diminished by it. And that's that is that teaching of being able to activate that that wounded healer, you know, and to be able to bring that forward. 

[00:41:43] And I think that's that archetypal pattern is also why I understand and love that it's not about perfection. It's about how beautiful, how much of your beautiful soul can you bring forward, no matter what the weather is internally or externally. And if I believe that my body has, I've done something wrong and I'm getting slapped on the hand with the illness, then I'm no longer worthy of, I've got to go earn my worth to heal. 

[00:42:14] Yeah.  

[00:42:15] Teisha Rose: Yeah.  

[00:42:16] Michelle Holling-Brooks: And just like, I just like invite people to feel that, like, if we, if we believe that myth and then I've been slapped on my wrist. When I was 13, then that means I was slapped on my wrist by a mosquito, but I was 13. And what about when I was six months old? And having to go through surgery, how was I slapped on my wrist and we can go outside of this timeline and everything else, but I personally believe that our timelines are sovereign like this, you in this lifetime matter, you know,  

[00:42:50] Teisha Rose: absolutely. 

[00:42:51] And I think it's a that change of thinking and that's what I keep saying. We heal when we open our minds and challenge our thinking. So, we've got to stop thinking like that, like somehow it's my fault, somehow I'm being punished. Um, because then you do, you feel guilty and you're right. I hadn't thought of that like that, but you're like trying to right the wrong somehow and you're not being open to healing or learning or evolving because you're feeling bad. 

[00:43:22] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah, you're indefensive. You're like, what did I do wrong? Like, and it's easy to think why we have brought this mentality to healing because I mean, this is like what happens. You do something wrong as a little kid and you get your toy taken away from you or you get put in timeout. You know, like, so I get why we collectively have done this because this is kind of like the unfortunate way that we correct ourselves. 

[00:43:46] But, If sometimes, I mean, we're in an incredibly complicated system and things sometimes go askew and sometimes we are, quote unquote, burdened with the quote genetics of our ancestry or generational trauma that has lodged itself in certain clusters and done certain different changes, you know, like the markers that they're looking for, for us, for autoimmune, you know, that. 

[00:44:17] That's just sitting in our DNA, and we can also bring a different environment to that.  

[00:44:24] Teisha Rose: Yeah, and that's what gives us hope too, because I think we do have this, but our story doesn't have to be the statistics. So that's why I've never said how long do, you know, stage four cancer, how long do I have? I've never asked that. 

[00:44:38] Because it's like, the other person might be totally different to me. So how can we use statistics from five years ago to work out how long we've both got to live?  

[00:44:48] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah, and it then it locks you in and it plugs you in and the first thing I say to clients when they come to me and they've got a scary diagnosis is I was like, we got to unplug you from that diagnosis. 

[00:44:59] Um, we've got to unplug you from it so that you can plug yourself into. Okay, this is what I'm working with. How do I, how does my body want to go through this? It might have some of the pieces. I'm, I'm. A complete believer. The type of cancer I had, I went to the best ones in the world and they said, we got nothing. 

[00:45:18] Nothing works. The thing that we would give you, we'd give you two years tops, but it's going to kill you in the process. And so what do you want to do? So it kind of forced me into the alternative side, but I wasn't just going there because that's where I already was. I was willing to look at it truly holistically, which I think is the balanced approach, right? 

[00:45:38] Because it's like, Take the best of all worlds and put them together and come up with a plan that works for you, you know, bring in the Western and the allopathic and then bring in the spiritual traditions and the energy, whatever works for you. You know, bring that in, but if you lock yourself into, if I don't do this, then dot, dot, dot, now we're in tricky territory. 

[00:46:05] Teisha Rose: Yeah, I agree. And I think too, if you're working on yourself and you're open, you'll attract the right medical people. So I've got, when I had my mastectomies, the most beautiful surgeon, she just had such an angelic way. And I thought there's no coincidence. It went so well because I. Attracted and vice versa, you know, she was in my world for a reason to protect me during this, you know, emotional process. 

[00:46:32] So I just think we do, we bring the right people if we're open to that way of thinking.  

[00:46:39] Michelle Holling-Brooks: And that's because, like, in the grit of our school, if you want to call it that, in these places that were like, WTF universe, like, really, I can't do this, you know, or whatever you would say that to, um, you know, like, in those moments, there are tons of threads of grace. 

[00:47:00] Trying to come in and help us. You know, you can call it Ricky light. You can call it great. You can call it whatever you want to but there is light trying to come together to help us weather that with as much ease and grace as possible, you know, like to take the edge off just a little bit to to bring in that one little. 

[00:47:22] Packet of light, you know, that just brings a little bit of lightness. It doesn't change what you're holding. It doesn't change what you're working with. But yet, like you said, you had that angelic angel there to hold you in a very raw moment of working through a surgery that was changing your body.  

[00:47:42] Teisha Rose: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:47:43] And you want to be someone that. Is the right energy and, and we've got to trust the more work we do on ourselves, the more we can trust our intuition, our feelings of who gets to be part of this journey with us. And if they, you know, if you don't have that feeling of connection, don't go down that path. 

[00:48:05] Well,  

[00:48:05] Michelle Holling-Brooks: I think that that's something that to me, anybody who's working with a chronic condition, um, it is about reclaiming your voice. Yeah, you know, it's, it's about allowing yourself to say, you know what, you have a wise one healer within you and, and, and she or he, it knows what they know what to go towards and they know what to say no thank you to, and they know what to say, I'll take a piece of this, but not this, you know, and as if we, the more we can it. 

[00:48:37] Empower our ability to say that my body has that innate wisdom, but if I believe my body is bad, if I believe my body is wrong, if I believe that it's betrayed me. Which I felt all those things, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'd never felt those, because I definitely felt those. And once, and when I was feeling those things, I was at the mercy of whatever somebody told me, because I could not tap into my own guidance. 

[00:49:08] Because my guidance comes through our body, and if we hate it, now we got a problem, right? And it's just, it's so huge because then when you're sitting in there, you can advocate for yourself, you can bring in those people, you can call in those people. And so empowering that voice to remember that you have that innate wisdom within you, that's like step one for really helping give. 

[00:49:37] I was just on a call the other day with a client, and I said, do you realize that you have the right to say don't touch my body to anybody, including medical providers? And it was like, yeah, a mind blowing moment, you know, she was like, I was like, yes, you can ask the person who's taking your, you can be kind and compassionate with it. 

[00:49:58] You could say, can you give me a moment just to kind of breathe and I'll let you know when my arm is ready because she had had so much, you know, of just the fear of the chemo and the veins and the, you know what I mean? And I was like, you could tell them, hey, I need you to heat up my veins, you know, and you could tell, and she was just like, Well, I don't want to be rude. 

[00:50:18] And I was like, this is not rude. This is advocating for you. This is your body. You have a right to your body. It, you know, it's just simple things like  

[00:50:26] Teisha Rose: that make all the difference. It does. And that's when the two worlds come together. I just, I find it when people like is one way or the other. It's like, no. 

[00:50:35] We can then protect ourselves through the medical world by something like that. Because if you've been in oncology, day stays or whatever, you know, the whole stress of getting your veins and all is awful. So something that seems little like that is huge. I'm not surprised by that at all. So, oh gosh, we could talk for ages. 

[00:50:58] We'll definitely have, I'll definitely have you back on the show because I think, yeah, just to. Yeah, tap, go further into some of the things that you've touched upon, because, you know, you've touched upon from not just your own experience, but I hadn't, um, like, I'm just, Learning as I go as well. So the whole wounded healer archetype, is that how that's what you're referring to? 

[00:51:25] Is that right? Yeah. So the  

[00:51:27] Michelle Holling-Brooks: quick version of it. And then  

[00:51:29] Teisha Rose: I'd love to  

[00:51:29] Michelle Holling-Brooks: come back for a part two because it's hard to do it justice with the quick version. And I think we will  

[00:51:34] Teisha Rose: definitely do a show on that because I think then when people have, I don't want to just introduce people onto this show and say, I'll see you because I think then if people connect with you, then we can learn more from you. 

[00:51:47] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Sorry. Well, thank you. I'd love to come back. I like I said, I love your energy and so many similar different paths in there and and just your spirit to. To try to help other people. So that is the wounded archetypal pattern. You are it. So it is the pattern that says, look, you are being asked to work with something that's not easily healed. 

[00:52:12] And it comes from a myth. And I will hear more about that. It comes from the myth of Chiron, but it's like he was wounded with a arrow that was tipped in hydro blood that wouldn't heal, but he was wounded. And that's the myth of the centaur. Um, and it was wounded in his mortal part. And so there is that idea that we have in this lifetime, um, those who walk closely with this pattern or this soul contract, I'm a Carolyn Mace certified archetypal consultant. 

[00:52:43] And so like, as you walk closely with this, you have a lifetime where illness in you, and it could be physical, but it also could be, um, emotional. It could be, you know, spirit. It doesn't have to, you and I kind of. Do the physical route, but it could come in different ways that you've had some type of a wounding that has significantly altered the way in which you can work with the world and you have a couple choices you can kind of withdraw and restrict your world and become smaller, which is part of the first part of the pattern of that. 

[00:53:19] Um, and then in that there comes and usually somebody who says, can we bring some more compassion to that? Right. And, and as you're, can we start to see, instead of trying to just heal it and, and get back to life, can we figure out how do we help support ourselves so that we can be in life? Um, and it's a very different shift. 

[00:53:42] And when the, the archetypal pattern comes to that place, that's when you can find the medicine within. And the idea is that then you become Not perfect, but you become very much able to support yourself to, um, work with that in a way that lessens the impact of it so you're not having to restrict yourself. 

[00:54:05] And then that medicine is then something that you can offer to the world.  

[00:54:10] Teisha Rose: Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah, I think we can, that's the pattern. Yeah. Okay. No, let's definitely have another, a chat. This can be a 2025 chat because I think it's really, um, important and I just love what you're doing. So can you let listeners know how can people connect with you, um, and yeah, what's the best place for people and what services do you offer? 

[00:54:37] Michelle Holling-Brooks: Yeah, so the quick one is you can go to my website, um, which is unbridledchange. org is the name of the organization that I founded. Um, we work with people, both local and then we work with people all over the world. So I've got a couple of clients in Australia. Um, and, you know, it's the idea is that we're helping to be a sole companion with you on your journey, um, whether that's through the spiritual coaching and transformational coaching, the energy work side, um, coming through that physical side. 

[00:55:08] Whichever doorway it is that serves best for you and then meeting you where you're at in that journey and then helping you find that way to free up as much as you can, as much health and wealth and abundance and all that good stuff. Um, but also working with the parts that maybe aren't ready to shift as of yet, um, and how then do you work with those parts? 

[00:55:30] Um, so you can find that information on my website. I also have a podcast, um, Soulful Practices. Um, which I just take a different healing quote, give you kind of my thoughts on it. Um, and you can tell my thoughts are a little sometimes different and invite you into like a reflection, a somatic reflection around it and kind of set that up for a practice for that week. 

[00:55:53] So it's, it's designed more like for, um, accessibility for people who can't always join me in some of those other spaces. that they have a somatic based kind of reflection, contemplation practice available to them if they feel called for it. So that's what that one is. That's great.  

[00:56:09] Teisha Rose: And sorry, I didn't catch, what's the name of the podcast? 

[00:56:11] It's called? Um, Soulful Practices Podcast. Yep. Okay. I'll put all the links. Um, on, um, the show, um, on the show notes and also I'll share on social media and all as well, because yeah, I'm so happy we've connected and I think that's what I love about doing this is you are, you're attracted to the right people, um, to share their stories, but also learn from as well. 

[00:56:38] And that's what I, yeah, I'm love doing, loving doing this podcast. So thank you so much for making the time, um, to share your story because I'm sure. It's hard sometimes sharing and being vulnerable in that, but then showing us that there is always hope. So thank you so much. Well,  

[00:56:56] Michelle Holling-Brooks: thank you so much and thank you for the work that you do in the world and your beautiful smile and the hope that you bring. 

[00:57:02] Teisha Rose: Thank you. Bye. 

[00:57:09] So I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. I couldn't stop thinking about what that experience would be like as a 13 year old. If you want to Learn more from Rochelle. I really encourage you to visit her website unbridledchange. org Visit her free resources section. There's so much value there from healing your inner critic to 21 days of meditation. 

[00:57:41] So yeah, hop on there the free resources Also, have a look at and listen to Michelle's podcast, Soulful Practices Podcast. So it's a, as she mentioned, it's a weekly video podcast on YouTube or Spotify. So have a listen to that. If you're wanting to binge some more Hurdle to Hope stories, either just scroll down on the app you're listening to this podcast. 

[00:58:11] On all the episodes, which start with Hurdle to Hope stories, they're the ones where I interview people living with a health condition. There's also, you can visit my website, hurdle to hope.com. If you put. forward slash stories, then all of the stories are there as well. So hopefully you have a great week coming up. 

[00:58:35] I'm looking forward to getting into 2025 and working on my business. And yeah, there's lots ahead, which I'll share with you another time. But for now, enjoy your week and look forward to chatting soon.