Rising Beyond Limits: From Trauma to Triumph with Marcy Langlois

In this empowering episode of Empowered Within, we welcome the inspirational Marcy Langlois. Born with a cleft lip and palate, Marcy underwent 20 surgeries and battled bullying, identity struggles, addiction, and chronic health challenges. Hitting multiple rock bottoms, she transformed her life, embracing sobriety, healing, and self-love. Today, Marcy owns a thriving business, shares her journey to inspire others, and proves that healing and living beyond your limits is absolutely possible.

Join us as Marcy shares her incredible story, her rock-bottom moments, the power of resilience, and how she reconnected with her inner wisdom to create a life of fulfillment and purpose. Whether you're facing addiction, anxiety, or life's toughest challenges, this conversation will leave you inspired to rise above and embrace your limitless potential.

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Transcript

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Welcome to Empowered Within, a soul quenching, transformational podcast that will set your soul on fire. Through candid and inspiring conversations, leading experts, celebrities, healers, and I share our journeys of how we've overcome challenges to living an empowered life from within. I'm your host, Jennifer Pilates. Welcome to another episode of Empowered Within. Hi there and welcome to the show. I am honored to have with us today's guest, Marci Lange Lewis. She was born with a cleft lip and palate. Marci underwent 20 surgeries and faced years of bullying, battling issues of identity, The darkness of addiction and chronicle, physical and mental health challenges. Marcy spiraled into a life of chaos and self destruction. However, when her life hit rock bottom, she chose to rise using the lessons from her tumultuous past. She transformed her life, embracing sobriety, self realization and personal strength. Marcy has learned to love herself and built a fulfilling life with her partner of 20 years. Marcy owns a successful business and uses her journey to inspire and to guide those facing life's adversities. Marcy is here to remind you that trauma does not define you. Whatever challenges have held you back in life, addiction, anxiety, family issues, chronic health challenges, Marcy is here to help you understand that healing and wholeness is not only possible, it's fully within your grasp. Though Marcy got off to a rough start in life, she has discovered one thing, that no matter what obstacles are in your path, living beyond your limits is not just a dream, it's infinitely possible. Welcome to the show, Marcy. Oh, thank you so much for having me here today. I'm so excited. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Me too. I'm just so excited because like myself, you're someone who has, you've been through it. And I would love for you to take us back on your journey. And when you overlook life, how you went from really one challenge to another, to another and kept persevering and kept moving forward. Yeah, that's a great question. I think, honestly that I was just built for it. Like, I was born into the world with a cleft lip and palate. So I came into the world just needing to fight for my life from the moment that I was born. And so that sense of resiliency was instilled from me really from that moment forward. I, and then as I got older and I can name things and see things a little bit more clearly, it's been more about, really making meaning out of what's happened, so that everything in life feels like it has a purpose rather than just this, you know, gauntlet of trauma and suffering and whatnot. Right? Like it's that purpose and meaning that continues to drive me sort of regardless of whatever it is I'm facing. And that's so amazing. You talk about your rock bottom moment. in life. And I'm wondering, do you really think you had one or do you think you had a couple in there? And when you had those moments, you know, cause I think it's important for people to realize like what triggered you to go, I need to change now. And then what pulled you out of that? Yeah, that's a great question also. So yes, I've had multiple rock bottom moments in my life. I think that's probably pretty normal for a lot of people. And, for me, The first one was, I plummeted into addiction and after a multi fatality car accident that I was in, and I stayed in that really addictive, destructive cycle for 10 years after the car accident. And when I was 27, I decided. It was like the light came on for me that I was doing to my daughter exactly what was done to me and I refused to Raise her in a home with active addiction. And so that was the first rock bottom moment and then Really the most profound rock bottom moment that I've had just came three and a half years ago I've been doing all the things all the work all the modalities I could find, to heal myself, to stay sober, to face my trauma and heal my past. But I had switched addictions into work and I didn't really realize it in the moment. Lots of people would point at that, but no one ever really said, Hey, you're doing this. And, anyway, I hit rock bottom and my body completely, said no more. You know, the body has that way, right? Like it'll keep whispering until we, we listen and it'll start yelling. And, that's what happened in February of 2021. And I almost died and I was diagnosed with two, mass cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance, which are life threatening conditions. And I got it in that moment. I was bedridden for 40 days and, it came, it became so evident to me that I had not healed, that I had spent a lot of time intellectualizing a lot of the things that I had been through, and that, I could process things mentally and reframe and name things differently, but the trauma was still living in my body, and, So for the last three and a half years, I have devoted my life to changing my entire life. Literally, there is nothing in my life that looks the same as it used to at all. And it was the most profound experience I've ever had was spending 40 days in bed thinking that my life was over and the doctor saying that likely it was, you know, as I had known it before. That is so incredible. And I want to touch on two pieces. So I want to go back to the addiction piece first, because there's so many people that do self anesthetize and would be like, but I'm fine. Like, I'm totally got like, I'm glass of wine a night is no big deal. What triggered you to understand that you had an addiction problem? Because I think that's something that's so overlooked in our society because For some reason, you know, alcohol, prescription drugs, whatever it is, it becomes such a norm. Yeah, totally. I would agree wholeheartedly. I think a common misconception about addiction is that it's, um, you have to look a certain way to be an addict, right? Like my, in my mind, it was like, I had to be homeless living under a bridge. I had to lose my job, my car, my family, right? Like all of these things. But wait. What we're failing to recognize actually is that addiction is on the spectrum, right? Like it is a spectrum disorder. And so you don't have to lose everything. You can simply just be drinking three glasses of wine every night, and you feel terrible every day you wake up. But the thought of not having those three glasses of wine is like, I could never not have these three glasses of wine at night. Like, it takes the edge off for me, right? And so for me, I knew, I, I knew really probably when I was in, in my teenage years that I had a problem with drugs and alcohol because the hallmark sign for me was I never wanted to have just one of anything. Right. I always, my whole goal was always to get completely loaded, just, you know, I was doing it specifically to check out. Right. And I think that especially after the last how many years now, that's really become very prominent again, just like checking out, numbing out, not wanting to know. And it's important that we recognize that, yeah, even if you're getting up and even if you do feel great having three. Two glasses of wine, whatever it is, whiskey, whatever you're doing at night. It's not necessarily, like, you kind of want to go, why? Why am I doing this? Right. If you can get to that place, do you have suggestions for someone since you've been there? How do they get to that place to go? Because someone's going to be listening and be like, oh please ladies, like, you know, I have the glass of wine, I have the whiskey, it's not a big deal. But yet, is it? Yeah, I just always encourage people, you know, I've sat in thousands of AA meetings at this point, you know, I've been clean and sober for 21 years. And so the common things that I hear and from the people that I work with directly, right, is, no matter how much I wanted to stop drinking, regardless of the amount, I could not stop when I wanted to stop. And I couldn't choose. How much I was going to drink, like you can't control it, right? So you can just do an experiment with yourself. Right? If you are having two glasses of wine, set that down, right? Set it down for 30 days and see how your life changes. See, do you crave it when you're not drinking it? How does your behavior change? Do you notice that you become more anxious? Do you notice that you, Become more angry, like what surfaces when you take the alcohol away and notice all of that and then ask these questions like, then why am I drinking, right? I think that's great. That's excellent advice. Because it really does take 30 days to really develop that new habit, develop a new lifestyle, so to speak. And that would be a really great example for someone to taste test that situation for sure. What do we. And now when we, I want to go back and talk about being in bed for 40 days is significant and especially with what you were diagnosed with and to overcome that when you were lying in bed, what were you doing? Were you working on yourself? Were we praying? Were we, what was getting you through day to day moment to moment there? Yeah, so that's really a great question. No one's ever asked me that question before. So that's a really good question. And, So here's the thing. when you have mass cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance, that's when you're immune and your nervous system collide, essentially. And the immune system becomes highly reactive and the nervous system starts thinking that everything in the environment is an invader, which then causes anaphylaxis. That's why it becomes life threatening. Thankfully, I stayed below the radar with anaphylaxis. I just had every symptom, but, and, so what I learned in those 40 days is how intricately connected our mind and body truly is. I've read about this for years. I've been fascinated by the idea. I've thought. Wouldn't that be really awesome if that were true? You know, well, lo and behold, in those 40 days, I full hand got to experience it. And so what I, what I was experiencing, the most uncomfortable symptom that I had, and I had a lot of symptoms, was tremors. And I had tremors from head to toe and I had them in my brain. And having tremors in my brain was just literally terrifying. because you don't know, like. What does that mean? Where is this going to end? You know, what, what's the body working up to tell me? You know what I mean? Like, it's just very scary to be in that unknown place. And so, the first like week I was in bed, all I could think about was my business is that. I had, I had worked until I couldn't work anymore. The last day I worked, I couldn't tell if my desk was moving, if the computer was moving, or if I was moving. That's how bad the neurological symptoms were. And I finally just had to say like, I, I literally can't do this another day. And so I was just supposed to take a long weekend. So everything I had in my head, all the things like I'll get to that Tuesday, whatever, right. As soon as I said, I'm done. And my company stepped in to help me out. my body completely shut down, like completely shut down this symptoms increased tenfold. So the first week I was obsessed, like, well, I'm just out of work. You know, what is my team going to do? What about all my clients, all this stuff, right? I still didn't get it. I still didn't understand to the extent of where I had gotten myself. And so after that, though, it was so painful to be in my body with everything that was going on that. I started noticing like if my wife would bring my phone in the bedroom, the tremors in my body would increase literally tenfold because I would start thinking about work. Right. And who, and what, am I ever going to have a career again? Right. All this stuff. And if she'd take the phone out of the bedroom and I could just watch, you know, some silly show on Netflix and really just calm myself down, then the tremors would come right back down. So, I was like, this is crazy, right? Like I thought I was making it up at first and I did several of these test episodes and lo and behold, I wasn't. So I was like, That's when I knew that there was hope. That's when I knew that I had the capacity to heal my own body. Is in those moments when I started understanding that if I have the power to make myself sicker and more reactive, then I absolutely have the power to calm myself, to reverse what's occurring, and to change what's going on in my physical being. And that's what I started doing. That is so Powerful. So two things I want to hit upon, but I want to just keep on this. We'll go back to how you got there. Like as far as how did you know you were addicted to work and switched that? Yeah, because I know that you dove so deep into tapping into your inner wisdom. So I want to stick on this for a minute because I really want to know how much further you dove and where you dove. And who you dove with. Yeah. So this is like my favorite stuff to talk about, right? Like this is the best, right? So because this is the stuff I was so fascinated by and still am, like I still study and read and listen, you know, all the things, but, for me, I, had been meditating with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Do you know him? Are you familiar with his work? Yeah. Okay. So I had chronic insomnia as part of the ongoing chronic illness. I was suffering before I got really sick and I would sleep maybe a couple of hours a night. And I found his work, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. And this was a long time ago, like 10, 12, 14 years ago. And before he had the meditations online, all that, right? So I read the book and I'm like, Oh my goodness, this is me. This is my life. And this is what I need to do to help myself. So I started meditating to him for insomnia originally, but I never did any of his other work. So the Meditation came natural to me and I was meditating 30 minutes a day at a minimum every day since I found his work. Amazingly, as soon as I started meditating to his work, I started sleeping every single night and really I've never had a problem with insomnia since then, except when this whole thing happened with my body, right? But in normal conditions. I didn't have insomnia anymore. So I went deeper in that work and then, and I also was doing Qigong. They're just like sort of Joe Dispenza and Qigong are sort of like two feathers of the same cloth. I also love Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul, all of that, all of that work that talks about, it is within you, right? Like stop, stop making the mistake of searching outside of you, right? Everything you need to know is right here. And if you can access that, then that's great. You'll find the answer, right? And so I started meditating like three and four hours a day. I was doing Qigong. I mean, when I say devoted my life to healing, I devoted my life to healing. Literally, that's all I did. And when I wasn't doing a specific practice, then what I was doing was working on my thoughts. Is what am I thinking, right? And why am I thinking that? Like, what do I believe? What is, where does that thought originate from, right? And so I was doing all this work, my body started healing in profound, amazing ways. My doctor is like, Oh my God, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. Right. And then all of a sudden, My nervous system said, no more, no more. You can't meditate like this anymore. Literally, I'd put the headphones on to meditate and I'd start having an allergic reaction to the meditation. I was having allergic reactions to my thoughts. I would literally, that is next level when you start having allergic reactions to your own thoughts. And so, it was like a sort of like a black belt training and training my mind. And so I couldn't meditate anymore, but I thought about the whole concept of if I can keep my frequency and my vibration elevated. then my body is healing. And if I can keep my nervous system in the parasympathetic state, then my body's healing. So I took those concepts and I just kept going with that. And I started writing letters to my body. And my body started talking to me through the pen and paper, and I started uncovering these parts of myself that weren't healed. And I started going back and healing those parts of myself that weren't healed, and letting and inviting my body to release the trauma that it was holding. And I have to tell you. Three and a half years later, here I am and I don't have histamine intolerance and I don't have mast cell activation syndrome and all my blood work is normal and all of my tests show that pretty much I'm healthy. That is so astonishing how deep and what an amazing example you are to you absolutely can heal yourself if you're willing to go there. Yes, I believe it. I believe it's accessible for everybody. But like you said, if you're willing to go there, right? Right. If you're willing to go there. Oh my goodness. So I do want to touch on that spot though of how you transitioned from an addiction to addiction. to addiction to work because I feel like that's really big these days. I feel, and it has been for a long time, people throwing themselves in there. Do you have any telltale signs or any advice you would like to give for people? For red flags of, Hey, this could be happening to you. You may not go where I went, but you should at least be aware of what's going on. Yeah. So here's the sneaky one that I knew, but I don't know that a lot of people see it as clearly as I could see it is, as I said, right, is I wanted to know where the thoughts were coming from. So the beliefs lead to the thoughts, right? These long held beliefs that we have all the way back to childhood, right? And for me, my value and worth was tied up in that, right? I wasn't valuable because of the way that I looked and the way that I spoke and who I loved, right? All these things, all of those things, all incorporated. And because of that, Then I was always seeking external validation, right? My worthiness, my belonging from exterior sources. So for me, I was in a sales position. I'm, I was a mortgage banker. So In sales, no one's like, Oh, go home, Marcy. It's five o'clock at night. We'll take your phone when you leave, right? No, it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And I wanted to be the best, right? I wanted to be at the top of the food chain and all of these things. So when people are looking at their own experience around work, it's like, why are you working the way you're working? Right? How are you working? right? Are you, not having boundaries with your work? Are you prioritizing your work over your family? I did that a lot for many, many years, unfortunately. And when is enough enough, right? For me, I always wanted more. I would be, I'd be at The number one person in my company, but then it's like, well, can I be number one in the national level? Can we're like how, right. And all of that is just based on all the beliefs that I held. That is, you know, I just think that's so important because I feel like that's so many people's day to day life. Well, if I can just get there, like that carrot, this dangling, right, it's always going to be dangling there when you get caught into the system versus, and it sounds like you're there now versus hustling for everything. How about aligning so that things come to you naturally and in that flow versus feeling like you have to keep going with the grind. And I think that was a falsehood that was fed to so many of us. For so long. I would agree wholeheartedly. Yes. Wow. What advice would you give to others who are struggling right now? Be that with addiction to substance, addiction to work, numbing out. The world and not being in tune within. Yeah. That's such a loaded question, right? We could talk about that for like seven days straight, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's such a loaded question. I think the advice that I could give people is sort of what I said earlier is like all of the teachers that I studied with all of the things that I read. When things like that resonate with you and they're, you to go deeper within yourself, heed the call, right? Like, you know, they're, we all know, We all have our own answers. We all have our own innate wisdom. It's part of who we are. It's how we're wired. It's not that I got it and you didn't. It's that somehow it's gotten buried within you and you need to uncover whatever you've buried it with so that you can hear it again, right? Like for me, it was the addiction, the work, the, all the things. And it's like, as soon as I could take that stuff away, it's like, Oh, Right. There it is. And here I go, follow the road, right? And the path becomes clear. It just lays itself out in front of you. It's so amazing. How have you taken everything that you've been through, everything that you've learned and propelled this into a successful business? I think it's because I think at the end of the day, We, regardless of what your story is per se, right? We all have a story. We all have the same emotions. We all know what it feels like to feel grief, to feel like you don't belong, to feel like you're an imposter. All of these things, we all can relate. It doesn't matter necessarily what caused us to be able to feel that way. And so it's the similarities that we all have that I really focus on. Right? Like that's how I coach my clients forward in life is we all have to go back. to the beginning to heal that it's you're not going forward unless you do you so we all have to go back to the beginning to heal whatever needs to be healed and figure that out and we all process emotion the exact same way in terms of how it feels to each person it's devastating it's difficult it feels like it's going to take you out right and then we just work through that little by little And then you learn how to raise your frequency and you learn how to change your thoughts and you learn how to talk to yourself correctly and appropriately like you deserve, right? And you learn how to love yourself and through self compassion and self love, you're able to translate and transcend some of these experiences to find purpose in your life. I mean, can we just have a mic drop right there? And we just have Marcy's love out into the entire world and heal us all. Ha! You know, see the angels descend. I mean truly, oh my goodness. So when you look at your work and you're working with clients, what is truly your favorite part thus far in the business that you have built since everything has gone on? Which is amazing that here you are, everything that you've gone through and you're running such an incredible, successful coaching program. Yeah, thank you. My favorite part of all of it is when, this is perfect example. I was on a call with one of my clients last week and, I've been working with her for four weeks and she said to me, Marcy, like, I can't believe this. My whole life is different in four weeks. And I'm like, well, tell me more about that. And she started crying. And she's like, I'm just so grateful. I've stopped trolling dating websites for men that can't show up for me in the ways that I need and deserve. I've changed my eating habits. I'm facing all my financial issues head on, and I'm just going to take care of them. You know, I'm walking every day. I'm in my body instead of checking out and I sleep better and I just feel better. She's like literally Marcy, every part of my life is different, and I'm just like that's it. That's it There's nothing else for me to do right like yes, we'll keep working together, but you know that's the joy I, that's, yeah, that's everything to me. That is beautiful. I love that. So if you were to pan out five years from now, what's Marcy doing? Well, um, I feel like you've got some things in the mix. Yeah, I don't even know what I'll be doing. You know, I have a book that I started writing that I put on the back burner because it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. I'm doing a filming with a woman up in Washington state. later this fall because she wants to tell the world my story. She's a filmmaker. You know, I don't know. I just know, I don't know what's going on with my phone. So I apologize. Can't hear it. Don't hear a thing. Oh, good. So I don't know where all of this is gonna lead to, you know, but I'm just so certain that I didn't go through all the things that I went through to not share how I overcame it with other people. My mission is to help as many people as I can possibly help. And what I ask, you know, spirit consciousness. energy source, whatever you refer to that as. I just ask every day that whatever circumstances need to come my way for me to do that, then I trust that's going to happen. And that's such an incredible way to live. And to help your clients live that way, that brings the light into so many more people around the world. I definitely see a book, I definitely see a movie, and you left out a TEDx talk. I definitely see you doing a lot of speaking, for sure. Without a doubt. Easy peasy. Thank you. Lots of speaking. Mm hmm. Coming your way. For sure. Which is so exciting. And you have your own podcast too. So tell me how your podcast was born. My podcast was born because I wanted to start getting my message out to the world. Mm hmm. And, um, as I said, writing was so, it's stressful for me. And so, I started podcasting because I like to talk like that's my medium, right? I feel like I'm more impactful with words. Spoken rather than written. And so I started podcasting in that way and I just do a solo cast. So I've published like 37 or 38 episodes and they're all like 10 or 12 minutes. And I just pick a topic. I talk about that topic and I give you three actionable tools literally to walk away with and that should help you. If you're willing to start today, you know what I mean? So that's, that was the idea is like, how can I help people quickly? And now I've really transferred over into like social media so that I can do like, you know, 30, 60, 90 second clips of like, if you're struggling with this, here's a solution, which is even faster than doing podcast. Absolutely. And, you know, and through both venues, you're reaching so many people and get, again, getting your story out there and getting your incredible energies out there to help so many people. Yeah. It's such a pleasure and honor, honestly. It truly is. I love it. Well, Marci, we're getting to this time in the show where I ask this one question. Are you ready? Lay it on me. All right. What is one thing that no one knows about Marci? I'm ready. Oh, goodness. That my whole entire life has been run by fear. My entire existence was based on fear and, people look at my life. And if they knew that they would never believe it because of what I've been able to accomplish. And so, you know, like if former business partners heard this, they'd be like, no way. No way. Right? I don't see fear anywhere within you, but it's, yeah, it's been the bane of my existence, but it is, one of those things that I refuse to let win daily. Just got to keep going. I'm afraid every day, but I show up every day regardless. That's the key, right? Constantly pushing through, leaning into the fear. Always, right? What part of myself is afraid right now? Right? Oh, I'm here for you. I'm right here with you. Right? I see you and it's okay, but we're going to do this. It's going to be great. That is really a priceless statement right there for so many people to be able to take away and use on so many different levels in their life right now. Yeah, it's been a life changing statement for myself. I love how much love you just showed for yourself in that moment and I want everyone else to really. embrace that and work on getting there because that's where we really want everyone to get to that place of self love and self value and self worth. And the more you have it within, the more you have to share. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Oh my goodness. So much fun. Well, Marci, please tell our community, where can they go to get podcasting, all the things. Yeah, really? I believe you're going to put everything in the show notes. My website's a little bit complicated for coaching. Like to name it off and somebody remember it. But you'll have that in the show notes, but really if people just like follow me on Instagram, Tik TOK, YouTube, Facebook, I'm on there and I post content every single day about how you can change your life. What, whatever. And my topics are varied. So if you just, Reach out, follow me there. And if you're interested in having like a one to one consultation about whether or not we're a good fit for coaching, you can find my website in the show notes. Absolutely. All the show notes in the show notes over will be over on Jenniferplottings. com. It will have her website. We'll have all of her, do we call them call names for social media? I don't know what we call them. Profile names, handles. Handles. There we go. Handles. See, I'm, I'm like aging myself by the minute. I love it. I get it. Me too. Handles. We're so cool. All of her details will be over there. So you can just click over and click through and get in touch with her. Well, as we close out the show, Marci, what is one last piece of inspiration or advice that you'd like to leave with us today? Yeah, it's super simple and you've probably heard it a thousand and one times, but it is, just don't ever give up. Right? The, the thing is that life is meant to help us evolve, right? Things are meant to be difficult for a reason so that we can evolve and grow into the person we're intended to be here. And so know that as the good comes, it will pass. And as the difficult stuff comes, that will also pass. But if you give up in between, then you never make it to the good stuff again. You know, and that, that kept me hanging on and still does today. It's something I use all the time is that I just refuse to give up no matter what, no matter what it is. That is so beautiful. And it's true. We've got so much to live for and so much to embrace in our world every moment of every day if we can just take that moment to take the breath. And see the light. Yes. Marci, this has been so much fun. I feel like you and I, we could talk for days, days and days and days. I would love it. Yes. I would love it too. So as things change in your world and the TEDx talks, I'm just putting that out there for you for the universe. All that stuff comes up. I would love to help have you come back and share. Through your journey, because this is an incredible journey, and I'm honored that you're a part of it here with our community. Oh, thank you so much. I mean, really, thank you so much. I'm so grateful and so appreciative. Me too. Thank you so much. Well, again, everything from today, all the contact information for Marci will be over in JenniferPilates. com. So you can head over there and connect with her. Again, thank you, Marci, so much for being here today, for sharing all Your incredible journey, all of your compassion and love and light. I'm just, I'm blessed. Thank you. Likewise. Thank you. You are so welcome. Well, as we say everyone until next time, may you live an empowered life from within.

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