Finding Your Best Self Podcast Tracey Lewis Stoeckel

In Episode 7 Tracey talks about her inner mean girl and the value of positive self talk.  She issues you a challenge to talk nice to yourself and see what happens!
To learn more about Tracey and the podcast visit the Finding Your Best Self website.  Once there you can opt in for access to special episodes and updates, and join the Finding Your Best Self Facebook page, a special community just for women who are striving to find the best versions of themselves. 
You can also support the podcast by shopping with one of our many affiliates.  Each time you make a purchase through an affiliate partner, they make a contribution to Finding Your Best Self which helps us to keep producing podcasts for you.
Do you love what you are hearing so far?  Leave us a review on iTunes!  It is the best way for you to help others find the podcast.  Also, Tracey loves to hear your feedback.  Just click here to leave feedback, ideas for future episodes, or to share your personal story.
Show Notes: 
 
I talk to myself.  Don’t you?  I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.  I talk to my dogs as if they are going to respond, so I certainly should be able to pull off talking to myself…I mean, at least I answer, right?  Oh wait, is it not good when you answer yourself? Well, anyway, I know that I am not alone.  I have heard plenty of people talking to themselves, and that doesn’t even count the many years I spent as a bartender.
What Are You Saying?
We aren’t so different, you and me.  And even if you don’t talk to yourself out loud, you talk to yourself inside that beautiful head of yours all day.  Every day.  So what are you saying?  More often than not, that internal chatter is negative.  I do it myself. Every time I forget something, drop something or smack my elbow (what? I have really bony elbows!) on something, I say the word stupid to,and about myself.  When I ran my daycare stupid was as bad as any swear word, my kids couldn’t use it.  So why do I feel so eager to use it on myself.  It has become an involuntary reaction to whatever stimuli brings it on.  I don’t actually believe that I am stupid, but when I tell myself I am stupid, it makes me feel bad anyway.  And what does that do to my subconscious mind?  No, seriously, I am asking, I am not a neuroscientist, what does it do?
So What’s the Deal?
Why do we feel like we can get away with talking poorly about ourselves?  We likely wouldn’t let our friends or family members do it to us, but we happily do it to ourselves?  Yep!  If it is what we have always done, it probably feels pretty natural to us by now.  But here’s the thing…  Your self-talk changes the way you think.  It changes the way you feel about things.  It changes what you will achieve!  Don’t believe me?  When was the last time that you started a diet, and maybe the first day, maybe the next day, maybe a few days in you decided to “treat yourself” and have a donut.  I bet it was delicious!  But then you realized that you “cheated” on your diet plan.  You “blew it”.  And then you decided that you had already messed it up so you might as well quit.  Am I right?  It was one donut, and you let it, and the way you talked to yourself about your perceived failure, convince you that you didn’t deserve to fit into those jeans on your closet shelf. That you didn’t deserve to feel sexy in that new dress for that big occasion.  You let yourself talk to you like that…over a one donut.  Rather than tell yourself the truth, it was just a donut, it doesn’t really matter that much, I will do 10 extra minutes of cardio or an extra thousand steps to make up for it.  Nope, we tell ourselves that donut brought about our epic and complete failure!  Does that make any sense?  I am not just talking about diet and weight loss.  That negative self-talk has beaten you down about lots of other things too.  You have likely told yourself th

In Episode 8 Tracey talks about her initial attempts at coparenting with Gary and how things didn't really go as planned at all.
To learn more about Tracey and the podcast visit the Finding Your Best Self website.  Once there you can opt in for access to special episodes and updates, and join the Finding Your Best Self Facebook page, a special community just for women who are striving to find the best versions of themselves. 
You can also support the podcast by shopping with one of our many affiliates.  Each time you make a purchase through an affiliate partner, they make a contribution to Finding Your Best Self which helps us to keep producing podcasts for you.
Do you love what you are hearing so far?  Leave us a review on iTunes!  It is the best way for you to help others find the podcast.  Also, Tracey loves to hear your feedback.  Just click here to leave feedback, ideas for future episodes, or to share your personal story.
Show Notes: 
 
Co-Parenting
I was recently interviewed on a podcast about loss and grief Check it out here!.  During the interview, the lovely podcast host asked me if it helped to write about what happened to me all of those years ago when I went through the terrible loss of my marriage and the way of life that I thought would always be mine.  And the truth is, it really does help, but all of that stuff that I have talked about, all the stuff that has happened between Gary and I is really so long ago that I am over it.  Sure I get riled up telling the stories, and it churns me up a bit when I have a friend or one of my besties from my Facebook group contacts me and are going through the same thing, but overall, I have come out the other side.  I’m good.  Really.
There is one exception to that rule though.  The part that isn’t behind me yet is the part that pertains to my kids.  Although my marriage was dissolved in a courtroom after two and a half years of battle almost six years ago now, I am still the mother of these two amazing people, and he is still their father.  And co-parenting with Gary, well it has never been easy.  I have been putting off talking about this, because it is still really real, and really raw.  And while talking about everything else is easy, it’s old news, talking about my kids and what they are currently going through is fresh, and it’s painful.  I can be somewhat impartial with the rest, but with this stuff, this is not something I feel magnanimous about…I will do the best that I can.
Custody situations can vary.  I was lucky enough to be awarded sole physical custody of my kids and only joint legal custody.  Legal custody relates to decisions surrounding healthcare, religion, and schooling.  So a few years ago when my son was being brutally bullied in school and I wanted to pull him out and let him do school online, I was vetoed and there was nothing that I could really do about that.  But the sole custody part was a huge bonus for me.  And a real life saver, which I will explain here in a moment.
But first let’s go back to 2009.  The very first weekend after we moved over the river and through the woods to the poopy brown house, the kids had their first “visitation” weekend with Dad.  I was kind of a wreck and couldn’t wait to get them back.  And before I even went to pick them up I got a call from my then best friend, who lived across the street and had spent some time with my daughter when she had come over to play that day.  She warned me that I was going to hear some news from the kids that I wasn’t going to like.  While the two little girls were chatting and playing, my daughter, Samantha, had told hers that she had “had a sleepover “ at daycare.  Which, if you will recall, means that she spent the night at Carol’s house.  I didn’t think too much about it because Carol, if you will also recall, was married.  My friend, we will call her Janet, wanted me to know, and I thanked her.
So when I pi

When relationships end and the two people have been living together, it's an obvious fact that someone is going to have to move out.  I know that here in Minnesota the courts like to see the mother remain in the home with the children whenever it is possible, which I admit is not always fair.  I am not sure what it is like in other parts of the world.  Initially, in my case, my husband, despite wanting to be with a different woman than the one he was married to (although I was still in complete denial about that at the time) and supposedly hating my stinking guts and telling anyone who would listen that I was a terrible mother...no my husband wanted me to stay in the house with him.  From the moment he declared his hatred of me, he had been relegated to the mattress in the basement.  My kids were small, and we bought our house because of the proximity of the master bedroom to the kids' rooms.  I was not going to sleep two floors away from them.  Gary liked this arrangement just fine.  I paid the bills every month.  He gave me a set amount of money, which left him some cash left over for fun.  I was working full time and making a good income, and he liked that too.  Gary likes money.  And, I think his primary focus in wanting us to "live in the house as friends" was that we could remain a dual income household, and also, perhaps, more importantly, he would not have to pay any additional money for the support of our children.
But Gary had trouble lying.  He would disappear for hours on end and come home with the can of tuna he went to the store to get, and when I tried to talk to him at all, he yelled.  My kids had heard enough yelling in that month to last them a lifetime, and it was time for someone to go.  He refused to leave.  He suggested not so kindly that I leave, even going to the point of putting my clothes in trash bags and throwing them into the front yard one evening while I was at work.  When I started looking for a place to go, I really wanted to move back to Wisconsin near my family.  That was a no go for Gary stating that the primary reason is that he wanted to be able to coach Sam's baseball team someday and be there for all of the things.  I kind of understood that but also knew that a home to rent in Wisconsin would cost me a third of what one would cost in Minneapolis.  Gary tried to help by circling trailers for rent in the paper for me.  Now, don't get me wrong...a couple of my best friends have beautiful homes in trailer parks, it's not that I am opposed to a trailer...but when the man who is forcing you and your kids out of your 2800 square foot brand new home suggests this 1994 single wide trailer might make a nice residence...well, it gets you a little fired up.  Eventually, I found a shitty old house to rent that I could afford...we called it the poopy brown house, and we lived there until the crazy landlord pushed me over the edge.  Next came a big gorgeous house we couldn't afford and then my parents bought a house and allowed me to pay the mortgage to build my own equity and a future.
Although we did our best to make homes in each of those houses, there was always something missing for us.  The house my parents bought, we lived in for nearly 7 years, and it was home for sure.  But it had a strange layout with both kids' rooms a floor below mine, a small living area that we didn't really all fit in, and even dining together was uncomfortable and cramped.  I wanted to find a different place, maybe something with a little land for a pony or a goat, and my then boyfriend and I started to look.  When it became really apparent that our priorities were not aligned and that relationship ended, I started looking more seriously on my own.  Then I lost my job.  So I stopped looking.
Because of my many streams of income from self-employment and my part time job that I love, I wasn't too worried about finding a new full-time gig.  In fact, if it were not for the health insuran

My name is Tracey Lewis-Stoeckel and things haven't always gone my way.  I have gone through some crazy obstacles on my road to finding happiness.  Every obstacle has taught me something about myself and I want to share my story with you, and share the stories of other women who are going through or have taken themselves from crappy to happy. By sharing our struggles and our victories, I hope that we can lift up and support one another, so we can each find the positive and find our own best selves in the process.

In this first episode of the Finding Your Best Self podcast Tracey shares the beginning of her personal story of divorce and the obstacles she faced starting over as a single Mom.  To learn more about Tracey and the podcast visit the Finding Your Best Self website.  Once there you can opt in for access to special episodes and updates, and join the Finding Your Best Self Facebook page, a special community just for women who are striving to find the best versions of themselves.  You can also support the podcast by shopping with one of our many affiliates.  Each time you make a purchase through an affiliate partner, they make a contribution to Finding Your Best Self which helps us to keep producing podcasts for you.
Do you love what you are hearing so far?  Leave us a review on iTunes!  It is the best way for you to help others find the podcast.  Also, Tracey loves to hear your feedback.  Just click here to leave feedback, ideas for future episodes, or to share your personal story.
Episode 1
Hello and welcome to the Finding Your Best Self blog/podcast. If you have not done so already please go back and read/listen to the preview episode for my disclaimer about how I am not a licensed professional and I am speaking to you because I have been through some shit and not because I have a degree in something important or some credential as the authority of anything.  Now that we got that out of the way, let me tell you who I am, why I started this blog/podcast, and why I feel like I have a right to talk about this stuff.  Oh, but first, this is a podcast about adult subject matter, and there may be adult language.
The Beginning of the Story
When I was 21 years old I married my best friend. We had dated for three years at that point  but we were friends in high school before that.  He was in the Navy so I did the military wife thing and moved across the country to start a life with the man I loved.  I married my Prince Charming and I expected my fairy tale to unfold before me.  There were bumps in the road, marriage is hard.  It isn’t 50-50 like I expected, it’s 100-100 and my husband was selfish as was I back then, and I was insecure and maybe had some issues with control as a result.  Living halfway across the country from my family and every one of my friends was harder than I ever imagined.  We survived those first three years (well, I will talk more about how mistaken I was about that another time).  Things got easier after the Navy and seven years after we married we welcomed a baby boy, we moved into our own home in a smallish town, I was running a business full time so I could quit my corporate job and be home with my son and life was good.  A couple of years later we welcomed a beautiful baby girl.  My business was thriving, my heart was full, and if you asked me, my life was pure perfection.
The fairy “tail”.
Being a Mom to these two cutie pies was more than I could have ever imagined, and I loved working for myself and making a home for the love of my life. We moved into a bigger better house in a new town, and I thought that I had achieved the fairy tale.  Seriously…the dream home, the good life.  The economy took a bit of a digger and I started doing daycare in our new home and I loved spending my day with clients who doled out hugs and kisses all day.  Then I injured my back and started living a life with chronic pain. I had to scale back my business.  I eventually had to close my daycare and watch the babies, that I had raised, go to other daycares.   I could no longer do the things I wanted to do with my own kids.  I was in constant pain unless I was medicated, and popping narcotics is just not something you can do with two small children.  And I was sooo depressed!!
Eventually, I worked through it, and I got stronger…but there was always something different after that.  My husband  had grown distant and moody—our sex life was nonexistent.  But he was still my

In Episode 2, the First 30 Days, Tracey (while suffering from a cold) talks about the first few weeks after her separation from her husband of 15 years.  In this episode she talks about dealing with the "realization" that he is seeing someone else, battling the urge to stay in bed, redefining her future, and the dreaded first date.   To learn more about Tracey and the podcast visit the Finding Your Best Self website.  Once there you can opt in for access to special episodes and updates, and join the Finding Your Best Self Facebook page, a special community just for women who are striving to find the best versions of themselves.  You can also support the podcast by shopping with one of our many affiliates.  Each time you make a purchase through an affiliate partner, they make a contribution to Finding Your Best Self which helps us to keep producing podcasts for you.
Do you love what you are hearing so far?  Leave us a review on iTunes!  It is the best way for you to help others find the podcast.  Also, Tracey loves to hear your feedback.  Just click here to leave feedback, ideas for future episodes, or to share your personal story.
 
Welcome back to the Finding Your Best Self podcast.
So, the last time we “spoke” I had just left my husband of 15 years on a gray snowing December day. It was December 30th, 2008.  The kids and I moved into a cold crappy rental house that would never feel like home…we would only stay there for six months because the landlord was a drunk who liked to call me and try to extort money from me at all hours of the night.
The meeting
I had quit my job right before Christmas.  An attorney I had scheduled a free consultation with had told me that I would lose my kids because of the crazy hours that I worked (4 am to 11 pm and up to 55 hours per week).  My parents, who are the best any girl could ever ask for, had put up the deposit on what we called the “poopy brown house” as well as a retainer for a lawyer and had promised to help me out if I agreed to go back to school.
I love college!
Now, I already had a college degree. I had earned my bachelor’s degree back in 1999.  In fact, the day that I graduated from college was the day that I found out I was pregnant with my baby boy—he is almost 17 now, and I like to talk about what a cute baby he was in front of him just to bug him.  Now if you do the math on that from Episode one, you will figure out that I didn’t do college in four years, but rather my college career spanned the better part of 9 years.  I do love college!
Buh-bye law school.
After graduation, I had applied to law school which was always my goal and  I was accepted.  By then I was very pregnant, working full time and also had a business with a direct selling company that was bringing in almost as much as my corporate job. Gary liked that we were financially secure and that I was able to put up most of the down payment for the house we were buying from my side gig. He did not like the idea of me stopping all of that to go back to school or the concept of leaving him with a baby most nights to go to class.  He said no to law school.  And I probably cried about it for a minute but I let go of that dream because my focus was my family and building this life together.
Yeah! Screw him!
So, sitting with my parents in a bar after signing the lease on the poopy brown house my Mom asks me what I want to do since my degree in Sociology and Social Work had never translated to anything more than a line on my resume. Paralegal, I said.  Yeah, the next best thing to being a lawyer…but I was so disgusted by the lawyers I was talking to who wanted to help me “screw him over”.   I just wanted to be nice!  I figured maybe I would get over that and find my legal career after all.
Thanks Brian!
Late one night shortly after we had moved, while I procrastinated going to sleep in an empty bed, a commercial came on TV for a college nearby.  I called