#7 Janet Fernandez, It is OK to say no
I met Janet last year at an Ayahuasca retreat in the Sacred Valley in Peru. The changes that have happened in the past year are amazing. You’ll have to listen to the episode to understand the depths of pain she was dealing with prior to coming to the retreat in August 2018. She confided in me before the interview that now she wakes up happy every day! Her transformation is a testament to the power of these entheogenic plants we have available to us. Today, Janet is a lovely young woman who I am honored to call a friend. Thank you, Janet, for sharing your story. LESSONS: It is OK to say no Solitude is not the same as loneliness NOTABLE QUOTES FROM THE EPISODE: He would kind of put me back into my place. It's just like, “What are you doing? You're showing vulnerability. People take advantage of people who are vulnerable.” And I started to believe that and that made me believe that the world was very evil. My biggest getaway was adrenaline. Anything that gave me adrenaline, and a lot of that was risky behavior, like risky sex, a lot of substances. I would put myself in danger with the police doing crazy stuff just to see how far I can get away with things. That would give me the best feeling, especially if I was under a substance and doing risky stuff. It's just like I was on top of the world! And at 15 was my first overdose and a lot of my family found out. It was a big shocker to them because they didn't even know I smoked (weed) at that time. They found out because I was in the hospital and this was on Thanksgiving. Anytime a holiday comes, I just picture that day where they were together at a family house and then them having to find out Janet is not going to be here because she's in the hospital. She just tried to kill herself. So I started to really hate holidays after that. So 15 was my first overdose, and then 16 was my second, and third 17 and then I had another one… That was my fourth. At 18, I was fine. 19 I had my fifth and my sixth and seventh... I started taking large doses of mushrooms by myself. The first large dose I took was 5 and ½ grams, and it was absolutely the most horrifying thing I've ever done at that point. The last thing I remember was waking up 18 hours later and instead of me being this very scared, very depressed girl, after I woke up, I told myself there's a deeper meaning behind this. There's a reason why I keep on waking up. I had to do the tough decision and tell my dad that I was going to stop school. Hey, it's okay to say no. But a lot of the times, I thought that I was very selfish for saying no to people, I thought it was selfish. I thought it was a form of an unhealthy boundary. If I am so easily influenced by people whenever I don't want to do something and they kind of pressure me into it, they are disrespecting me. They're not respecting my boundaries. I need to choose what's right for me and you know. Anything else I need to just say no to it. My biggest challenge from this lesson was to not feel guilty, not to feel guilty for looking after myself. Not to feel guilty for doing things that are beneficial for myself and omitting everything that's not doing me any justice, not doing me any good. It's okay to think for yourself and decide for yourself. Time and energy are yours. So be responsible. No one else is responsible for how happy I am. No one else is responsible for how successful I'm going to be in life, whether it's, you know, physically, spiritually, mentally, anything. No one is responsible for that, but myself. I started realizing by spending time by myself that I didn't like doing a lot of the things that I was doing pretty much my whole life. It's such an empowering feeling. Learning how to be in solitude, be with yourself, know yourself, exactly what to be comfortable with yourself.
