Welcome amazing human!!
In Episode 01 of Systems of Transformation, you will learn the What, When, Where Why, Who and How of generational healing and global transformation.
Let's heal generational and transform global !!!
Connect with me:
Leave a rating or review. Share the podcast with someone you know.
My book, But Jesus is available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and WestBow Press.
Welcome amazing human!!
In Episode 01 of Systems of Transformation, you will learn the What, When, Where Why, Who and How of generational healing and global transformation.
Let's heal generational and transform global !!!
Connect with me:
Leave a rating or review. Share the podcast with someone you know.
My book, But Jesus is available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and WestBow Press.
We are going to do a quick check, check. I could hear myself. My phone's on silent. I did vocal warmups and I have water if I need some. So let's get this thing going. All right. Hello, amazing humans. Thank you so much for being here today. Welcome to the Systems of Transformation Podcast, a podcast dedicated to discussing the dynamics of generational healing and global transformation through a trauma-informed lens and a Christian perspective. I know Those are a lot of different words put together in one sentence, but I promise that I will take my time over the next few episodes to really explain what each of those terms mean to me and why I am passionate about them. I am your host, Anu Hernandez, a fellow human being who also happens to be an author, a trauma informed social worker, and a Christian. Why Anu? Do you wanna start this podcast right now in 2023? Well, let me tell you. For years and years, and when I say years, I mean decades. I have had this growing desire to combine my academic knowledge in psychology, my professional experience as a social worker, I've even been a teacher, my personal faith as a Christian and see how I could use all that to be a voice of healing and hope in this world. I just felt that, God, if you have given me these opportunities and you have blessed me with this exposure, there has to be a greater purpose than me acquiring all of this and applying it in a way that benefits me. So here we are today and this is what we're doing. I think this is the perfect time for me to do this because I am smack dab in the middle of several generations right now on either side of that spectrum, I am close to 40 years old and I'm not a teenager or a 20 something. I have lived some life. I have learned a lot of lessons and. I think those intentional investments that I have made in myself with the Lord along the way has really helped me open myself up, one, not only to Him, but to myself and to other people. There is nothing that I love more than being able to connect with people who are older than me and also younger than me. I have learned so much from being able to spend time with people of different cultures, races, ages, stages, oh my goodness, I could go on. Just the diversity that this life has blessed me with. So taking all of that and with this mindset of there has to be a greater purpose for this, we find ourselves here today. Systems of Transformation was originally supposed to be my second book. I had planned it all out and I will tell you a little story. Almost 15 years ago, I was maybe 21 or 22 at that time. I don't remember exactly the age, but I remember at that time wanting to write something called The Culture of Convenience, and it would be a reflection or a processing of my exposure and experiences at that time in my life, or adding up to when I had lived about 20 something years and just the different things I observed in the world and the world around me, my culture, and I had a lot of thoughts, a lot of emotions. I was a fiery idealist, right? Who hung onto these ideals, but I hadn't walked enough life to process a lot of that stuff on a deeper level and, find the healthier, what's the word I'm looking for? The healthier perspective. Let's use that word. Okay. I'm glad that God did not let me write that book at that time. And, He walked me through all these years in between to teach me some more lessons, some more depth, and also the ability to learn vocabulary in order to be able to deliver it in a way that is loving and transformative and not something that vindictive or reactive. So anyways, towards the end of 2022, I was still very much trying to decide whether I was going to do this as a book series or set it aside and move on to other things. And I definitely felt a strong sense from God that I'm supposed to do this as a podcast for a few reasons. One, because I think it's a fun way for me to explore another type of creative expression. And two, I know that we are in a time and a season where there are so many voices in the world, and while I'm not saying that my voice is the voice, I definitely feel more empowered to be one of the voices that exist in this world. I made that decision to take that leap into the podcasting world, which by the way, I am figuring out as I go. I have been in a very concentrated intense period of about two or three weeks trying to learn things, trying to understand software, listening to other podcasts about how to start a podcast and really invest in this and enjoy the process because I think so many times we put this pressure on ourselves for our creative expressions to hit these certain markers, right? And sure, I believe in producing good quality content, however, my coach had told me,"done is better than perfect". And for a healing perfectionist that is very liberating and also terrifying. I really want this podcast to be a descriptive journey between us and not a prescriptive lecture. I'm not here to tell you what you should and shouldn't do. This is a blessing for me. I don't take this lightly, and I have learned that just sharing without an agenda is more impactful than sitting someone down and lecturing them and telling them what to do and what not to do. And so I'm here to share. Hopefully through me opening myself up and just letting you into my world and sharing with you some of the things that I have learned through all these different places, we can be on this journey of healing and transformation together. I really want this podcast to also feel like a time of attuned connection and when I say attuned, I mean that we are present, that we are listening. And this is something I have learned as well for myself over the last couple of decades, is the things that heal are so simple for the most part and they're free. They don't cost you money. Attunement, just being present and focused and truly engaging in this time of connection is so transformative to the process of wanting to evolve as a person. And that is my hope that we feel connected and we process, we discover, we heal, we grow together. Because while this is me sitting and talking today, I know that over time this is going to become an interactive space. I am again learning how to do that and I don't want to be just a voice going off into the distance, right? I want to hear from you. I want to be included in your world and your process in whatever way we're able to do that. And if you throw in some coffee, I promise you I will cancel all my plans for my day. And I will be there with you, I wish hanging out could be an official profession, like I would quit my job and do that for a living. But anyways, connection, whether verbal or nonverbal, are some of the most healing, powerful, potent agents in the world. And I firmly believe that God has called us as human beings to create spaces to hold the presence of one another, just like we do with Him, He wants us to do that for one another. So why should I listen to this podcast Anu? Let me tell you, these are my thoughts. These are just my thoughts, but I'm sharing them with you. I think this podcast might be a great place for you to be if you are somebody who is already in a position of influence and you already lead others in some capacity, and I will definitely go into this in further detail in future episodes. If you are someone who is ready to invest in your own personal healing journey, because you know there are some things that you need to work through, you sense that you are carrying some things that weigh you down or hold you back from who you truly see yourself being, I think this is a great place for you. Again, not that I have all the answers for you, but maybe something that I share or something that somebody else says will be that little spark for you to say, you know what? I'm gonna try this. I don't know where to start, but maybe I'll start with this. If you are curious or interested in a faith-based trauma informed perspective. That is also something that we are definitely going to be digging into a lot and using as a framework of how we approach this whole thing. I do wanna say you do not have to be a Christian to be welcome here. I am not going into this with a, religious or a Christian agenda. As a Christian, I am not going to walk this journey with the notion or the pride that somehow I have figured this all out and you need to listen to me because you don't know what you're doing. I have learned some of my most valuable lessons from people who don't practice my faith. I know because of my own journey how personal faith is. Nobody could have convinced me to believe what I believe. Nobody could have lectured me into practicing this faith the way I do. And so I am deeply respectful of different perspectives and people who come from different walks of life. And so I just wanna say that you are welcome no matter what. Also, if you were someone who would like to see how my creative journey as a podcaster evolves because I am doing this in real time with you, this might be a great place for you because again, I think a lot of us have so much within us, but we're so scared to take that first step because it is scary. It is out of our comfort zone. It is unfamiliar and it will question every core belief that you carry about yourself, whether it is conscious, subconscious, unconscious. So I just want to invite you to be a part of this to see the mistakes that I make to give me feedback if you want to, to pour into my journey and take from my whole process. That's the best way I could put it. It's just if you want to be a part of this and see that, hey, I could do this too. If she's doing it with all these mistakes and all these little glitches and she's learning and doing her thing, I can do it too. And that's what I want. I want people to walk away from this with that sense of I can do this. So anyways, there are plenty of reasons why I think this podcast would be a cool place for you to hang out, but again, I want you to trust your intuition and your sense of knowing about whether this feels like a good place for you to invest your time and energy, because those are precious commodities and I do not want to take them for granted. While this podcast might be therapeutic, while it might be fun and healing and beneficial, it is definitely not therapy and it is not a substitute for therapy. I am not a therapist. I am trained in different things, but I am here to just share as a human. And so if things come up, you know what? I'm not even gonna say If, when things begin to come up for you as you are part of this process, I highly encourage you to reach out to an actual trained mental health professional or a spiritual mentor, or a faith-based leader who is doing this as a professional, for more personalized ongoing care. There are some things that you are going to need to have that one-on-one time with somebody to help you process and navigate. So I'm just telling you that upfront again because I know if this is going to be an effective podcast, things are going to come up. And I remember reading this in a book a while ago and it was so beautifully put,'that in the presence of safety, all our struggles bubble to the surface'. I'm not going to be that person that says, I am a safe person and trust me on day one. No, take your time. Take your time. It is wise to take your time to build your trust in someone. However, do not be surprised if you start to feel things come up for you because that means that this space is holding you well enough for you to start addressing some of those things, which is only going to lead, to you becoming a healthier person, a more healed person, and for you to begin witnessing your own transformation, which is going to be so encouraging and so joyful, and hopefully you will turn that around and pass it on to someone else. And that is the essence of transformation. So what are we gonna talk about today? I feel like I've said a lot already. However, there's a couple of things I wanted to answer, a couple of questions. So question number one, you may be thinking how is generational healing connected to global transformation? When we say the word generation, the first thing we think about or lean towards is a more familial definition of it. We think of generations in terms of the family system. However, I have come to realize that there are so many different places in our lives where we are partaking of this generational exchange. Some of those placesare, yes, within the family, but I see that within the faith community or any type of belief system, so much of our professional development, organizational development, everything flows in generations, right? Our education systems. So many different systems in the world follow that pattern of generational exchange. Macro level, global change is only successful and sustainable if it begins on some type of a micro personal level. It is easier to replicate. It's like saying, it's easier for a hundred people to do 1% of the job than one person trying to do a hundred percent of the job. So if each of us recognize and identify these different systems that we are in this generational dynamic of exchanging, of giving and receiving, of, sowing and reaping, of being a part of, and then leaving, or things like that. And, if we are able to recognize that, the people and the things that we are connected to are the ones that we are supposed to utilize as catalysts for transformation, the more effective, more successful and sustainable is the transformation of this world. We are in a time where the Lord's heart is really for the healing of the masses and the crowds. And for that, it requires each of us to do our generational work so that we can share in a descriptive way with other people to encourage them and spread that message of hope, healing and transformation around the world. I have a quote here from Leo Tolstoy, everybody wants to change the world, but nobody thinks about changing themselves". The secret sauce of transformation is how willing am I to transform myself? Not talk about transformation as a concept to everybody else first, before I practice it for myself because who you become, who you evolve to be, the process that you walk through, speaks volumes, speaks way more loudly to people than you sitting them down and telling them the equation of how to go from here to there. The temptation has been and is even for me to think that transformation is out there when really it has to begin in here. We may think that, well, if I could just speak to 150 people, isn't that more impactful than me changing in private, when no one's watching, doing the unglamorous work. And yes, sometimes, for some people, at some points in your journey, you are going to have that, but those are your highlight reels. There's so much groundwork that needs to be done behind the scenes, and a lot of people are not willing to do that. And so one of the big reasons why I want to talk about systems of transformation is to hold us accountable, myself included, that at the end of the day, the bulk of the work is what I'm doing within me. It is a descriptive journey that I am taking with myself before I go out there and share with other people. My next question; why a trauma informed lens and a Christian perspective? We all have origins that have shaped us. all of us come from somewhere. We all have origin stories, and one thing I have recognized is that we all carry some type of pain, some type of trauma, things that have happened to us. We carry good and bad, the hard stuff, the easy stuff, the joyful stuff, the painful stuff. The place that I see most people hesitant to investigate are those places of pain in our origin stories. A lot of us had to use those coping mechanisms to survive. And so we find ourselves today in a space and a place of our lives where some of those things don't serve us well right now but we don't know any other way to operate. We don't know any other way to be. And pain I have found is the unifying human factor. Everybody has gone through something. I think of pain as a leveling factor for humanity, and so no matter the differences, and I have spent a lot of my life talking to people, listening to people's stories, and I have come to recognize that everybody carries some type of wounding, some type of pain that they went through that life has thrown at them, or someone did to them, or sometimes even that they did to themselves, all in this attempt to survive, to make it to where we are today. But to transform, to go from survival to thriving, there are some things that need to be untangled, investigated, healed, and set aside so that we can take on new things, new forms of being, new ways of operating, so that we can step into this new place. It is such a great blessing to live in this day and age because even though as human beings we are complex, we are, within ourselves a complex, interactive multisystemic system. We have also been blessed with knowledge, skill, awareness. People have really studied human beings and to a great extent, we have been understood and dissected. And so we are complex, but we also have predictable patterns of behavior and expression that come to fruition or life based on the underlying factors of our lives. One of the greatest longings we have is to be understood. So let's lean into that, all this hard work that other people have put in, into researching and understanding and studying and, creating language and expression for, is at our disposal and benefit to become transformed people. And so that is why I think it is important for us to understand trauma, to understand how it works, to understand its effects on us, and also bring that message of hope that you don't have to live under the grip of trauma. There are some concepts that we will be talking about in maybe episode two or three where I will talk about systems of origin, systems of compensation, and systems of transformation. Why a Christian perspective? There is no way I can do this podcast or talk to you about my transformation without talking to you about the God that I believe in. Faith has not only provided me a higher power, but it has given me a person who is stronger than me, wiser than me, more loving than I will ever be. And when I talk about faith, I'm talking about Christianity. I'm talking about Jesus. I am a Christian who believes in Jesus, and I believe in him as a person. We always walk around, I think, as Christians saying that the experience of Jesus needs to be a personal relationship, and I am very, very aware of the fact that a lot of times Christianity is practiced, like there's nothing personal. It doesn't feel personal at all. It feels monotonous, it feels very rigid, it feels very crystallized with no room for personal expression and relationship, and I am hoping to just, again, welcome you into my journey because for me, I am fully aware of the fact that I would not be who I am today and be able to do any of these things without the consistent investment of God pouring into my life, of Him showing up for me as this perfect template and blueprint, for me to practice and work myself out, while He was just there. Even this morning, when I prayed, I told the Lord, there is nobody in this world who has shown up for me day in and day out for the past 37, 38 years other than Him. I am so respectful of the faith journey and I know everybody's on their different paths, but I cannot go without presenting to you this amazing person that I know and that I believe in, and that shows up for me every day and pours into me and loves me and any good thing that you see, any transformation that you see in me, cuz a lot of people see me today. Some of you know me for a couple years. Some of you know me for a couple of decades. Some of you are just meeting me and hearing me for the first time. But I think the people. that were a part of my origin, are the ones that can testify to the transformation of me. I was not this person, and I'll say that right now. I was not this person who dared to sit in front of a microphone and share my thoughts and feelings and opinions and you know, that was not me. I know the insecurities that I struggle with. I know the pain that I have endured. I know the things that I had to do and say to survive, and I'm also aware that God knows all of that and He is still chosen to stay with me, speak to me, love me and walk this journey with me. A lot of what I do, a lot of good that you might see in me, a lot of ways that I interact with people are simply me taking how God has been with me and then me replicating it with human beings. To be honest, for the most part, I am amazed that it is so simple and so profound at the same time, God is and will be a n integral part of this for me, and I hope that I can present this in a loving, respectful manner that represents Him well. I'm at a loss of words. I just want Him to be represented well, and if I can do that and if I can be an expression of His love in this world, then I am going to do that. Am I nervous and scared? Yes. But this is where His commitment and His loyalty and love for me outweighs my fears. The Bible says perfect love casts out fear. And if there's anybody that has experienced that in this lifetime, it is me. I think this is a good place to stop today. Thank you so much for listening, for wanting to be a part of this. I love you and respect you, and I can't wait to walk more of this journey with you. If you want to connect with me, there are a few places you can find me. I am on Instagram at@thereal AnuHernandez I am also on Facebook at AnuHernandez My book, But Jesus is available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and WestBow Press. So these are some places that you can connect with me, connection is prime for me. I am still trying to figure out how frequent and often I could put out episodes. I'm hoping to do one in a couple of weeks. So we'll start there and we will see how this goes. All right, everyone. Have a wonderful blessed day, week. Until then, let's heal generational and transform global. Bye.