Inner Work and Outer Boundaries: Why Healing Requires Both

What if healing isn’t just about changing your circumstances—but also tending what’s been growing inside of you?

Last week, we explored the metaphor of seed and soil: the way your nature and your nurture shape who you become. This week, we’re going deeper. Because your inner world isn’t just one plant—it’s more like a whole garden.

In this episode, we’ll explore the difference between tending your inner garden and tending the outer soil around you. You’ll learn why old patterns can still show up even after you’ve changed your life, why boundaries are not punishment, and how real healing involves both compassion for what grew inside of you and courage to change what surrounds you now.

Here’s what we cover:

*How to recognize the tender, resilient, overgrown, and buried parts of your inner world
*Why changing your outer environment helps—but doesn’t automatically heal the inner one
*The difference between boundaries as punishment and boundaries as self-stewardship
*How differentiation helps you stay connected to yourself, even in difficult relationships
*Why real change is possible, even if the soil around you has been hard

Real healing is rarely a single breakthrough moment. It's the slow, faithful work of tending what has been entrusted to you, one step at a time.

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More Resources:

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You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!

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Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram

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Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.

Want to hear more like this? Start here:

Episode 212: Why You Feel Everything So Deeply (and Other People Don’t): Childhood, Sensitivity & the Nervous System

Episode 20: Making Peace with Yourself (& Facing Your Fear of Disappointing Other People)

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

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TRANSCRIPT

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Last week I shared a metaphor with you that my daughter brought home from medical school. 

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So today we're gonna move into part two. How do you steward this plant? And what does healing actually look like? Not just theoretically, but in practice. So I wanna organize this episode around two themes. We're gonna adjust the metaphor just a little bit. I love that. Metaphor of thinking of your brain as a plant, and we're gonna keep going with it. We're gonna adjust it just a little bit to this idea that your brain is actually a little bit more like a garden of related plants than one plant. The first theme we're gonna dig into today when it comes to healing, when it comes to stewarding that brain of yours, that beautiful brain of yours that you've arrived at adulthood with is thinking of it like a garden. And the first part of healing and stewarding is to tend to the inner workings. Of that garden, the unseen parts. And the second theme we're gonna dig into today is tending to the outer garden, the soil you find yourself in today, because that's what you have control over today. You have control over that inner life of the plant, over the root systems, and the different pieces of the inner workings of that inner garden you've inherited today. And you also have some control over the outer. Soil. You didn't get to pick your family of origin, but now you have agency to adjust the nutrients in the outer soil that is shaping you today. And these two things that inner work and the outer work go together. You need to tend to both components in order to fully thrive. So last week we talked about this research on dandelion children and orchid children, and I heard from a lot of you, and I really appreciated your feedback that resonated. And a few of you wrote back to me and said, I think I'm a little bit of both dandelion and orchid. And I loved that you said that because that is exactly where we're going today. Just to refresh your memory, those dandelion children, these are the ones who by nature. Are a little more hearty. They can grow almost in any kind of soil, and we likened it to dandelions In real life, they can grow anywhere. They don't need a lot of special nutrients or a certain kind of temperature or climate around them. I also likened it to a wildflower. I wrote about it in my email that I sent out to you last week. I was hiking in the mountains and we saw all these different kinds of wildflowers, and there are just some wildflowers that grow. They go through snow, they grow through drought. They just. Grow. And then there are the other kinds of flowers. These are like the orchids or in wildflower language, more like forget me, knots or other kinds of flowers that are really sensitive. They need a specific kind of soil, a specific kind of environment. They wilt if they get too much sun or they don't. Thrive. If they don't get enough sun, they need a certain kind of humidity, a certain kind of temperature, a certain kind of climate around them to thrive. And we talked about last week how these flowers don't do well in certain types of soil, but when given the right kind of soil, they can almost do better and surpass the dandelions. And this is where the science gets even more interesting. 'cause I wanna add to the metaphor, I wanna build it out a little bit this week because your brain is complex. In fact, I ran across some really interesting recent research out of Harvard that uses this phrase called brain architecture to describe how the brain is built over time. This research talks about how simple neural connections form first and then more complex circuitry and skills develop over time. The brain also prunes. Refines those connections, making certain pathways stronger and more efficient. The brain is constantly growing and changing and adapting. In other words, what grows inside of us. This plant that we arrive at adulthood with isn't one single thing. It's evolving. It's adaptable. It's able to be changed. Another word for this is what we call neuroplasticity. So for today's purposes, I want you to think about this inner world, this inner architecture that you've arrived at adulthood with as more like a whole garden of plants. There may be parts of you that are tender and sensitive, like that orchid that have been buried. Or hidden because they weren't in the right soil. And there also are very likely parts of you that are hearty and persistent, like a dandelion. These parts of you may be more natural, or these might be parts of you that you've had to develop to survive. But the point is your soul is more like an ecosystem, a garden than it is one plant. There are likely patterns within your soul that grew strong because you needed them. You may have learned to please others as a form of survival, and this pleasing part of you is hearty like that. Dandelion, no matter what context you find yourself in now, you do not stop pleasing other people even when it no longer serves you. Or there may be pathways inside your soul that became efficient because they helped you survive. You learned to focus on tasks, to get things done, to make things work, and you're still doing that now, even when it comes at a cost. There may be those tender places inside your soul that never got the care and the nutrients that you needed that need to be brought out of hiding and into the light of the sun so that you can finally lean into that sensitivity, that receptivity, that is a beautiful God made part of you. And so the question I want us to sit with today is what is growing inside of me? Now I wanna get curious about this inner garden. What's beautiful, what's buried, what's covered over with weeds, and how can I now tend it? Because the beautiful part of this journey that's ahead of us now as adults is that we can. Tend this garden, we contend it inwardly and we contend it by shifting the soil we put ourselves in, including tending the relationships we put around us. This is the hopeful part. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you've heard me talk about how healing isn't just about what happens inside of us. Our nervous systems are constantly responding to the world around us, and sometimes what feels like stress, brain fog, poor sleep, or just feeling off, can be influenced by factors we don't immediately think about. One of those factors is the air. In our homes, if you notice waking up congested or dusting constantly, or basically things feel heavier than they should, then you might look into investing in Air Doctor. It's the only air purifier we use in our home. What I appreciate most is the peace of mind. I've noticed fewer odors, less congestion, and overall better sleep. But what really impressed me was learning how it works. Air Doctor uses a powerful three stage filtration system that captures particles about 100 times. Smaller than what many standard air purifiers can remove. It helps filter out things like dust, pollen, mold spores, pet dander, wildfire, smoke, bacteria, viruses, odors, smoke, ozone, and VOCs that can affect the quality of air We're breathing every day, and I'm not the only one who's noticed a difference. Over 93% of Air Doctor customers report fewer allergy symptoms and air Doctor recently won Newsweek's Reader's Choice Award for best air purifier. If cleaner air is one small way you can support your wellbeing and create a healthier environment for yourself and the people you love, I'd encourage you to check it out. Head to air doctor pro.com and use promo code. Best of you to get $250 off select Air Doctor Air purifiers, including the 30 504,055 500 models. We're so confident you'll love Air Doctor that every purchase is backed by a 30 day money back guarantee. This is an exclusive podcast only offer. Available now@airdoctorpro.com. That's A-I-R-D-O-C-T-O-R-P-R o.com using promo code B-E-S-T-O-F-Y-O-U. So let's focus first on that inner garden. What's going on inside of you? For example, there may be a part of you that's sensitive, attuned part of you that picks up on the emotional temperature in a room. Maybe you feel things. Deeply. Maybe you notice what's going on in other people, and maybe you even notice things that they tend to miss. It might be your own kids, it might be in friends. It might be that the wild flowers in your life come to you because you have an insight into them that they don't have into themselves. And part of nurturing that inner garden is really honoring. That gift and protecting it because that is your gift to steward, and it also is a gift that can grow weary if overused. The goal intending these more sensitive parts of you is to understand the rhythms that help this part of you thrive. It's understanding that you get to choose, right? You don't always have to extend that gift of empathy. That's your gift to steward. You get to pull back and say, I need to take some space for myself because I've been pouring out a lot, and that's not. Selfish part of stewarding, tending those sensitive attuned parts of you is learning when those parts of you need. Rest. I tell the story in my new book, the Secure Soul of a Breakdown, essentially, that I had in my early thirties, and one story that I don't tell but is pertinent here to this conversation is I went to see a therapist for the first time in my life. Now, that in and of itself is a little problematic because I was. Almost finished with my own doctoral work in psychology, but for the first time, I finally set the help of a therapist and he said something that I just thought was so beautiful to me. I had this gift of being a healer. And I think a lot of you who listen have this gift too. It's what I'm talking about when I'm describing this process of being attuned to the movements of others. You have a high empathy, you have an ability to read emotional subtext. You have a sense of what's going on in the people around you, and that gift is beautiful. But if you don't A, know that it's your gift, and B, know how to pull it back. So that you don't get depleted. It can also lead to burnout. And that's what had happened to me. And I remember this man, this psychologist, he was Argentinian, and I remember he said Jesus couldn't help but heal if people touched his garments. Healing came out of him, and this is why it was so important for Jesus to step away by himself. To rest. And when he said that to me, it gave me permission that my soul is a soul that needs spaciousness. I don't like thinking of it so much as taking space. 'cause that sounds like we're taking space from other people, which can sound negative. I like thinking of it in the positive that my soul is one that thrives. With spaciousness, and what that means is because I absorb a lot of data from people around me and I almost can't help that, it just happens. I need periods of time where I'm away from other people and that's how my soul thrives. Now practically what that means is I sometimes have to say to people, you may not hear from me for a couple of weeks. It's not because I don't love you, it's because I'm taking time to pray and rest and receive, or I have to gently remind a friend if you don't hear back from me for a few days. It's not because I don't care, it's because I don't do well with instant. Communication. Right? I have to translate that reality that mine is a soul that needs spaciousness into communication with others whose souls are wired differently. But that therapist was the first time, and again, I was in my thirties, that. I felt like I had permission to do that, and when I looked at the life of Jesus, I saw that he often stepped away from the demands and the crowds and the people around him. Not because he did not love them or did not care, it's because he needed to receive something himself. Now, different people have different. Needs. One of the most well-researched traits is the introversion extroversion scale. This is one of the big five personality traits, often named by the acronym ocean, and the E is the extroversion scale. This is something that is somewhat hardwired into us. Certain types of people by nature need more spaciousness, more solitude, more quiet to recharge. You probably know who these people are if you're not one. They're the folks who turn their phone off or who don't go on social media or who take a while to reply. They tend to run deep, not broad. Too much social stimulation might deplete them. And if that's you, the tending here is to learn how to communicate on behalf of that part of yourself. Because if you don't learn to take that spaciousness, you do run the risk of depletion and burnout. And resentment. And. And sometimes the wildflowers in your life are higher on that E scale. They are energized by constant connection. They wanna respond immediately to every text, to every social event. They show up all the time. And again, this is a beautiful quality. There's no right or wrong here, but it's so important to know your nature so that you contended. Well, if you're an OrCAD living with a dandelion on this dimension, you have to have conversations about how to navigate rhythms of togetherness and a apartness of spaciousness and of speed. The dandelion in this case has to learn that someone else's need for solitude is real, and they have to learn to honor that and not see that as rejection. That's not a diminishment on their own self. And the reality is if you have that sensitive side of you, you may have learned to adapt based on the soil in which you were raised, whether it was your own family that tended to be more extroverted or more. Emotionally charged, and because that was overwhelming to you, you may have developed a part of you that figured out how to adapt to that and survive that. You've never known how to give yourself permission to actually honor that need for more. Quiet. Now, you don't wanna do away with that. Part of you that learned how to survive, that part of you that learned how to show up in a room full of extroverts, right? That can really serve you in certain situations, right? You've learned how to masquerade as a dandelion in some ways, and that's not all bad, but when it becomes a problem is when it's not you choosing, right? The goal here is. Agency. The goal here is you leading you. You having the self-awareness to know the sensitive part of me needs some quiet. I need to log off. I need to not be reading other people's subtext in this moment, and that's okay, right? This other part of me that's gonna come in and try to criticize me and tell me I'm being selfish. That part of you needs that reframe to step back and give you space to refresh yourself so that you can show up for other people in healthier, more sustainable ways. The bottom line here is that the work of healing, the work of stewarding this plant you've been given, you've arrived at adulthood with isn't to shame any one part of the garden. This is the way the garden grew. If you don't wanna rip out the dandelion part of you that learned to survive because it looks too tough or it's overgrown, right? You wanna help it find healthy boundary lines within your soul, and you don't wanna criticize the more sensitive parts of you, the orchid part of you, because it needs more care. The work of soul tending is to become a wise. Compassionate gardener of your own soul to notice what is growing inside of you, to understand why it grew the way it did, and to offer each part of you what it actually needs. Some parts of you need to be drawn out into the light to be made more visible, and some parts of you need healthy boundary lines, healthy containment. Maybe you grew up in a home where the emotional atmosphere was unpredictable. Maybe a parent was loving one day and then withdrawn, or guilt tripping the next. Or maybe you grew up in a home where conflict was always simmering just below the surface, and nobody ever talked about it directly, and that kind of soil is sensitive, emotionally aware, attuned part of you, the orchid part of you learned. Something maybe you learned that you needed to be vigilant. You had to read the room constantly. You could never shut it down. You had to be ready and prepared, reading everybody's verbal and nonverbal cues to the point where you never learned to read your own exhaustion. Maybe that part of you got really, really good at scanning for danger at anticipating other people's needs at making sure nothing escalated into conflict. And over time that part of you got overburdened. It's been working so hard for so long that it doesn't know how to rest. Or maybe you grew up in a home where achievement was what got celebrated, where love felt connected to performance, where the message around you, whether spoken or unspoken, was that you were valuable, when you were useful, when you were successful, when you had it together, when you didn't have needs or weakness in that kind of soil. The hearty, capable, dandelion part of you got a lot of sunlight. It thrived. It got really good at producing. But the more vulnerable parts of you that are still there in all of us, these are the parts of you that just needed to be held at times that needed to be taught. That it's okay to have moments of tenderness of weakness. Vulnerability and those parts without that learned to go underground. They learned that they weren't welcome and you may have spent years, maybe decades shaming any sensitive part of you for even existing. And because you shame that part of yourself, you sometimes shame the sensitivity in other people. Some of you may have navigated real pain in relationships in a marriage that was hard. A friendship that ended in betrayal in a faith community that was more wounding than healing. And somewhere in that pain, a part of you closed off, decided it was safer not to need people, decided that vulnerability was the problem, not the solution. And so now there's this walled off place within your soul, and you're not entirely sure how it got so thick or how to get to the other. Side of it. These are the kinds of narratives that the soil writes inside of us and the work of healing. Real healing starts with being willing to look at those inner narratives to notice them, to name them. In the framework I use in the Secure Soul, I talk about recognizing these inner bids. For connection, a flash of anxiety, a moment of loneliness, a longing that surfaces seemingly out of nowhere. These are inner bids for connection. Some part of you saying, I need you to recognize what's happening within. And so tending your inner garden starts with something that seems rather simple, but is a practice you have to develop. It means recognizing those inner movements and notice where you feel self-critical. Instead of compassion, where are you rolling your eyes at yourself? Where are you shaming yourself? Where are you telling yourself to just get over it, to toughen up, to stop caring so much? Because that self-criticism, that self contempt, these are weeds that cannot be allowed to crowd out your inner garden. So how do you begin to pull the weeds and prune that inner garden landscape? First, it starts with getting curious. The next time you find yourself reacting in a way you don't like shutting down in a conversation or snapping at someone you love or spiraling into anxiety or resentment, instead of trying to fix that feeling or shame yourself, get. Curious. Ask yourself what part of me is showing up right now? What part of me is longing for connection? Second, it means bringing compassion to these parts of you instead of beating yourself up again. And curiosity and compassion are closely linked, right? Getting curious is often an easier first step to just notice with curiosity why you're feeling the way you're feeling. Compassion takes it one step further to say, I get it. I understand why being around that person brings out the guilt, the anxiety, the big emotions. That part of you has been cultivated in that soil and it needs care, not contempt. And then lastly, this moves into the outer world around us. It means letting yourself be seen. These different parts of us learned to hide and healing asks us to bring these different parts of us back into relationship with yourself, with God, and with trusted other people. Initially, that might mean a therapist. It might mean a spiritual director, but over time it also means the people that you put around you that reflect soil, your soul actually needs tending. Your inner garden isn't a one-time event, it's a practice. It's ongoing and as some of the most important work you will do. If it's really true that we are what we eat, I'm always on the lookout for snacks that actually fuel my body instead of filling me up with sugar and processed foods. That's why I love mosh protein bars. 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Start building Brain Health into every day with Mosh Bars. Thanks to Mosh for sponsoring this episode. Now let's talk about the outer garden because as you well know, the soil you were planted in as a child is not the only soil you're living in now. You've been making choices consciously or not about the soil you surround yourself with as an adult. And some of you have done real hard, courageous work to change. That soil, you changed the kind of people you put around you. Maybe some of you left a family system that wasn't healthy. Maybe you drew a boundary with a parent or a sibling who was harming you. Maybe you ended a friendship that was draining the life out of you. Maybe you found a church community that actually sees you and nourishes you. Feeds you. Maybe you married someone who is genuinely safe. You built a life that looks different from the one you came from, and that was brave. It took a lot out of you, but you've done it. And even as you've changed that outer soil, you still have to do the inner work. I also know that some of you have used this framework in your own families. Right now I've heard from a few of you have already been talking about seeds and soil at your dinner table with your own kids, with your spouse, noticing which of your children are more like orchids, which one are more like wildflowers, adjusting how you tend to each other accordingly, and this is so beautiful. This is the outer garden work in action. You're creating healthier soil for your own family. And here's what I wanna say to those of you who've worked really hard to change that outer soil, who've found healthier relationships, a better environment for your soul, a safer community, you may have noticed that even in that good healthy news, soil, old patterns still show up. Maybe you're in a safe marriage now, but you still brace for criticism. That never comes. Maybe you found a community that genuinely welcomes you, but you still hold back. You still find it hard to trust. You still maybe perform or please or perfect still trying to manage their perceptions. Maybe you know, intellectually that you are safe now, but something in you keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is simply a cue of the earlier soil that still has lasting effects. The outer soil changed, but the inner garden still carries the memory of the old one. This is why the inner work and the outer work have to happen together. New soil creates great conditions for healing, but you still have to tend what's growing on the inside. And some of those roots go deep and it can take a while to change their patterns. Now, some of you listening today still find yourself in difficult soil. Some of you are in a marriage that is really hard. You're not just going through a rough season, but something has been depleting and withering for a long time. You're committed. Maybe there's not infidelity or some other clear cut reasons that would make you feel like you can leave, but something is really hard, whether because of you or because of them, or because of the soil you've tilled together. Some of you are still enmeshed with parents, with siblings in ways that are costing you. You're still getting pulled back into old dynamics, still playing the same role, still shrinking yourself to manage other people. And I want you to know that the fact that you're still here, still listening, still asking questions, still wanting to grow, this is so beautiful. It's actually this seed of healing. You haven't given up on yourself even when the soil around you has made that really. Hard, and there are a couple of things I wanna share with you in particular because I find that when people are in difficult soil, they often see two choices. Stick it out. Or leave, and I talk about this a little bit in my book. I shouldn't feel this way, where there's this third category about moving slowly with wisdom. Because the reality is there's often a lot of territory between those two things. And that territory is where two key terms, differentiation, and boundaries. Tend to live differentiation. This is a concept from family systems. It's the ability to remain in relationship with someone else while staying connected to yourself. Maybe you don't feel like you can leave altogether. Maybe a parent who's been toxic or still is toxic needs your care. As they age, or maybe it's a spouse who's really hard to live with, who isn't doing their own work, but you don't feel like you can leave for whatever reason. You learn how to stay present to the other person without being swept away by their soil. Research on couples and family systems consistently shows that even when one person in a stuck system begins to differentiate, begins to respond differently. That's all that means to make different choices in small, nuanced ways to hold your ground calmly without withdrawing, but without escalating the entire system has the opportunity to shift. You don't have to wait for the other person to change to start making changes yourself. It might mean simply that you stop over explaining yourself. To a family member who is never going to validate you. You're not doing it to be cold or to be punitive, or to be retaliatory. You simply choose to stop outsourcing your sense of reality to someone who cannot see you. And when you make this choice out of agency, out of the own health of your inner garden, the other person will pick up on that. They may not like it at first. You don't need them to like it because you know the truth of what you're doing. It might simply mean you stop participating with certain activities with a spouse or with a friend. You just say, I'm not doing that anymore. You're free to do it. I'm not gonna do it. It's not healthy. For me, this can be so hard to do, especially in a marriage. It's hard to start drawing boundary lines in a marriage, but I just want you to hear me say that drawing boundary lines is not punishment. It's not harsh. It's not about trying to get the other person to change. It's about tending your own inner garden. It's saying, this is what I need to thrive. This is what I need to be a healthy human in this relationship. I can't control you, but I can control me. And then you let them have whatever reaction they might have. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it doesn't feel very good, but over time, they have an opportunity to change. Boundaries in this context are not walls. They're not ultimatums, they're not all or nothing. They're small, consistent acts of self stewardship. Research on boundary setting and close relationships shows that clear, calm, consistent limits. Even tiny ones, reduce anxiety over time for both people in the relationship. It takes time, it takes work. Get some support as you do this, but you can create new soil. What I most want you to hear is that your healing is not contingent on someone else changing. First, you can begin to tend your own inner garden regardless of what the soil around you is doing, and sometimes, not always, but sometimes when one person in a system begins to grow, heal, and change the system around you begins to shift to. Finally, some of you need to hear that it is okay to create more distance from a soil that is harming you, not because you don't care about the people in it, but because you cannot grow in depleted soil indefinitely. And your growth, your healing matters not just for you, but for your children and for the people you lead and love and care for. Then there's a last group I wanna speak to directly. Some of you didn't inherit your difficult soil, you chose it out of love. I hear from many of you in my email, maybe you're parenting a child who is bringing real turbulence into your home. Maybe it's an adult child whose choices are creating chaos that keeps spilling into your life. Maybe you're a grandparent who stepped in when the original soil was. Two Toxic who said, not on my watch, and brought a child into your home to give them a fighting chance. Maybe you're a foster parent or an adoptive parent or a stepparent who walked eyes open into hard soil because you believed that healthy love could prevail over toxic history. I want you to know that it can, the research on what's called earned security, the idea that a child who didn't receive safe, consistent attachment early on can develop it later through a reliable, attuned relationship. That research is real and hopeful. You are doing something so powerful and so beautiful, and it's also. Really hard. I want you to hear me say, the courage it takes to do this work is real, and it can be incredibly depleting. And I think sometimes people in your position feel like you're not allowed to say how hard it is because you chose it, because you love this child, because you know their history. But knowing why someone carries toxic soil doesn't mean that soil stops affecting you. You are still a plant. You still have a seed with its own needs and you are trying to grow while also neutralizing poison that was never yours to begin with. I think of Isaiah 43 when I think about some of these tricky situations. God says, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. God doesn't promise that faithful presence will always be easy, but he promises he will be with you. In it. We have really incredible research on compassion fatigue that tells us the most important thing you can do for the difficult soil you've chosen to tend is to make sure you are being replenished. Somewhere you need at least one regulated, nourishing relationship. It could be a spouse, it could be a friend, it could be a therapist, someone who functions as what researchers call a co-regulatory anchor. This is someone who can sit with you through the turbulence. They don't necessarily take away the hard soil, but they can keep you from becoming consumed by it. Often the boundaries that you may most need in these situations is the internal one. You have to work on setting limits with the part of you that is tied to outcomes or timing, or how well or how quickly they improve. The bottom line for all of us is that you can be a faithful. Present loving gardener to others and still tend your own garden. In fact, the research is clear that the caregivers whose presence most effectively creates conditions for change in others are the ones doing their own inner work. Your wholeness, the health of your own soul isn't a luxury. It's part of what spills over to them. Here's where I wanna land today. Number one, the inner work and the outer work are not separate. They're in relationship with each other, just like the seed and the soil. As you do the inner work, as you turn toward the parts of yourself with compassion instead of contempt, when you start to name the narratives the old soil wrote inside of you, you become more capable of making healthy. Choices about your outer soil. You stop unconsciously recreating the environments you came from. You develop the self-awareness to make different choices. And two, when you do the outer work, when you change the soil around you, when you differentiate, when you create healthier relationships and healthier environments. It creates the conditions for the inner work to take root. Good outer soil isn't necessary to change the inner soil, and it also won't do that work for you. Changing your outer soil is only half of the equation. Both matter. Both are essential. Healing is rarely a single breakthrough moment. It's the slow. Patient faithful work tending both your inner garden and that outer garden that surrounds you together. Over time, and here's what I believe with everything in me, both from the research and from what I've seen these past few decades, real change is possible no matter where you are today. Real lasting, meaningful change. Is possible. You can become healthier, not by changing your seed, your DNA, the way God made you. That's not the goal. And you wouldn't want to, but you can learn how to steward how God made you to be. Well, you can tend to the garden you're growing now with the awareness and the agency you didn't have as a child. You're not stuck where you are. You can create richer soil boths inside your soul and outside your soul. One brave step. At a time. If what we talked about today resonates with you, if you're starting to see the connection between the soil you came from and the patterns you're living now, I wanna invite you to go deeper with my new book, the Secure Soul. It also has a secure Soul companion guide. Workbook. It's the heart of everything we've been talking about in these two episodes. You can find a link to it at the secure soul book.com, and you can get the first three chapters of the book as well as the first few chapters of the workbook. Now, when you pre-order, thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to apples. Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts, and click the plus or follow button that'll ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others while you're there. I'd love it if you leave a five star review and be sure to join us each weekday for the best of you every day, a brief daily reflection to help you start your mornings with a steady dose of wisdom. Remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God. You heal others and you stay true to your God-given self. I.

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