GuestLaurie Hardie — Seattle radio personality, author, speaker, certified life and recovery coach, and host of Interrupted: Act II — Reinventing Your Legacy Episode SummaryWhat happens when the things that once kept us safe begin shaping how we move through the world? In this episode of Spiritual Friction: A Space for Deep Feelers, Laurel LeMohn sits down with Laurie Hardie for a deeply personal conversation about trauma, fawning, repressed memories, the inner child, self-trust, and what becomes possible when we finally find safe places to tell our stories. Laurie reflects on the many ways she learned to survive—from fawning and reading the room to staying silent about experiences she didn't yet have language for. She shares what it was like to recognize these patterns not simply as weaknesses, but as responses that helped her survive—and what changed when she began realizing she had choices. Together, Laurel and Laurie explore the deeper layers of healing: acknowledging what's happening, becoming aware of our patterns, getting curious about what our bodies are telling us, and finding connection where we feel safe enough to be seen and understood. They also talk about the reality that healing doesn't always happen in one transformative moment. Laurie remembers hearing other people say, “God healed me from all my abuse,” and wondering why that hadn't happened for her. Why did she have to go from A to Z, slowly moving through one layer after another? Looking back, she recognizes that the process itself became part of her healing. At the heart of the conversation is a message Laurie would give the little girl she once was: “Hold on. It's not you, and someday somebody's gonna believe you.” What We ExploreWhy what we need is reconnection, not separationFight, flight, freeze, and the fawn responseFawning and people-pleasing as ways we learn to stay safeThe inner child and what changes when we stop abandoning ourselvesRepressed memories and experiences we may not initially have language forWhat happens when our experiences and stories have been silencedAcknowledgment, awareness, and curiosity as first steps toward healingWhy healing can happen slowly and in layersOur nervous system's need for safety, belonging, and connectionFinding people and places where we feel safe enough to tell our storyWhy healing doesn't always require retelling every detail of what happenedLearning to listen to the body's signalsSelf-trust, boundaries, and knowing what you bring to the tableWhy we don't have to heal aloneSpeaking from our scars rather than our wounds Key Quotes“What we need in this world right now is reconnection, not separation.” “So many things in my life, in circles I was in, silenced me, and so I didn't speak about it.” “Hold on. It's not you, and someday somebody's gonna believe you.” “I want women to speak from their scars, not their wounds.” Why This Conversation Matters Many of us learned how to survive long before we had language for what was happening. Maybe you learned to read the room. Keep the peace. Make sure everyone else was okay. Stay quiet. Do what was expected of you. Or become whoever you needed to be in order to feel safe, connected, or loved. Those patterns can follow us long after the original experience has passed. But healing doesn't necessarily begin by trying to get rid of them. When Laurie asks, “What are first steps of doing this?”, Laurel talks about starting with acknowledgment, awareness, and curiosity. We may not know exactly what we want or where we're going yet. Sometimes we simply begin by recognizing what we don't want anymore and finding people and places where we feel safe enough to be seen and understood. From there, something begins to shift. We can notice when an old survival response is taking over. We can listen to what our bodies are communicating. We can begin making different choices. And we can start recognizing that the very responses we once judged may have helped us survive. For Laurie, that shift changed the way she understood fawning. Instead of seeing it only as something she wished she hadn't done, she could recognize what an extraordinary adaptation it had been: “What an awesome gift it was that I could do that to survive my world.” Healing also happens in relationship. As Laurel reflects later in the conversation, some of what we come to understand isn't learned from a textbook or classroom. It's learned through life experience. And when those experiences are shared, someone else may finally recognize: You don't have to be alone. You're not the only one. Perhaps that's part of why telling our stories matters. Not because what happened has to define us. But because eventually we may be able to speak from our scars rather than our wounds—to say: I learned how to stand up for myself. I learned it was okay to leave. And somewhere, someone who has spent years wondering whether they're the only one may finally hear: It's not you. And someday somebody's gonna believe you. About Laurie HardieLaurie Hardie is a Seattle radio personality with more than 35 years of experience, author of Did Not See That Coming: Hope for the Single Parent, public speaker, certified life and recovery coach, and host of Interrupted: Act II — Reinventing Your Legacy. Through her coaching, podcasting, speaking, and work in radio, Laurie helps women find their voice, tell their stories, and recognize that it is never too late to begin again. Her work is shaped by both professional experience and her own journey through childhood trauma, single motherhood, recovery, counseling, and learning to understand the survival responses that helped her navigate her life. Website: coachlaurie.com Facebook: Laurie Hardie Podcast: Interrupted: Act II — Reinventing Your Legacy About the HostLaurel LeMohn, MA, LMHC, is an integrative trauma therapist, spiritual intuitive, and medium. She is the founder of Redwood Coast Psychotherapy and SoulBody Wellness and host of Spiritual Friction: A Space for Deep Feelers. Through heartfelt conversations about healing, personal growth, spirituality, and transformation, Laurel explores the experiences that shape us, the stories we carry, and what it means to be human. Explore more episodes of Spiritual Friction: https://www.soulbodywellness.health Redwood Coast PsychotherapyLaurel offers virtual trauma-informed psychotherapy for adults throughout California and Washington through Redwood Coast Psychotherapy. Her approach integrates somatic awareness, nervous system regulation, depth-oriented psychotherapy, and spirituality, creating space for greater self-understanding, connection, and self-trust. Learn more or schedule a consultation: https://www.redwoodcoastpsychotherapy.com Stories held with care. Disclaimer Spiritual Friction: A Space for Deep Feelers is an educational and storytelling podcast and is not a substitute for psychotherapy, medical care, or mental health treatment. The experiences and perspectives shared by guests are their own. Listening to this podcast does not establish a therapeutic relationship. If you are experiencing emotional distress or are in crisis, please contact a qualified mental health professional or your local emergency services.
