The Hidden Trauma Behind People-Pleasing, Perfectionism & Self-Sufficiency with Sheila Wise-Rowe
Episode Notes
What if some of the qualities you’ve learned to call “strength” are clues to a wound underneath?
You may be responsible, independent, productive, and good at taking care of everyone else. But when those patterns become extreme, they can sometimes point to wounds you’ve learned to carry alone.
In this week’s episode, Dr. Alison is joined by therapist and author Sheila Wise Rowe for a conversation about the less obvious ways trauma can shape our lives.
Together, they explore how people-pleasing, perfectionism, self-sufficiency, minimizing pain, and avoiding conflict can become protective responses—and why healing begins by getting curious about what those patterns are trying to tell us.
You’ll learn:
*How trauma can show up in ways we may not immediately recognize
*Why people-pleasing, perfectionism, and self-sufficiency can become protective patterns
*How family and community wounds can shape us across generations
*Why minimizing your pain can keep you disconnected from what needs care
*The role of lament in bringing your real emotions before God
*Why healing rarely happens alone
*How small steps, safe people, and God’s presence can help create lasting change
Healing doesn’t require you to minimize what happened or convince yourself that someone else had it worse.
It begins with noticing what is true, allowing God into the places that hurt, and taking one small step toward connection.
More Resources:
Connect with Sheila Wise-Rowe's work here
Purchase Sheila's books, including Seeds of Racial Healing, here
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While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
TRANSCRIPT
Someone's lived experience is their lived experience. And so that was traumatic for them. And even
if I don't understand it, it's really irrelevant that I don't understand it. Sometimes things that
have happened that we have categorized as normal, like we later discover that it actually was
traumatic and it was abusive. Lament is absolutely essential. And that is that this... going before
God, being raw, being real, wrestling. God is not threatened. He's not scared that we were coming
at him with like questions, that things we don't understand. God is patient and working with us.
We may feel ashamed to ask for help because, you know, we somehow believe I should be strong. And
so if I admit that, then I'm communicating weakness when in fact we really need,
we need other people.
Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Allison and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of The Best of You.
Before we get into today's conversation, I have a couple of quick updates for you first as...
most of you know by now the secure soul is officially out in the world which still feels a little
surreal for me to say it seems like it's been such a long time that it was just me writing it over
these last few years and now to be in this season of it being out in your hands is such a different
sort of feeling i'm still processing, but I just want to say thank you to so many of you who've
ordered it, who've shared it, who've sent me notes about it, who've left comments about it, who've
left reviews about it, who've told a friend about it. I just could not be more grateful for your
support. I hope... pray that it is a healing companion for you.
There's also a companion guide, the Secure Soul Companion Guide. This is a workbook that is meant
to accompany the book. It's to help you go deeper into the work that I lay out in the book in your
own life. And it's something you can work through alone. It's also something you can work through
with other people. So I hope you'll check that out. If you enjoy the Secure Soul, that workbook is
a companion guide that correlates with the book and will help you take the work deeper. into your
own life. And then one other update for this week, the best of you every day,
the daily. podcast. We're taking a two-week break after this week.
So this Thursday Deep Dive episode will keep going. So you'll still hear from me every Thursday.
And we've got a great lineup of experts and thought leaders and wise teachers coming on to the Deep
Dive podcast this fall. I could not be more thrilled with the people we have coming on to share
with us the benefit of their hard-earned wisdom and their research and their expertise. So that
Thursday Deep Dive episode will keep going, but we're going to take just a short break. I haven't
done that very often with the podcast, and I'm just aware that my team needs the break. I need the
break. It's how we'll stay fresh. And honestly, I want to practice what I teach, which is that we
all need rhythms of rest and reset. And I want to be making sure that I'm working from that secure
base of love. And so we're going to take a few weeks just to reset and refresh.
I'll miss being with you every day. I love preparing the daily podcast. love hearing from you. It's
been such a rich component of the podcast. We just want to make sure that we're doing it from a
place of love and we're doing it in a way that is sustainable so that we can keep doing it. When I
started it this last new year, I guess I started it in January. I wasn't sure how long I would be
doing it. I just knew I had a lot of extra material from writing these last couple of books. I had
a lot of extra content and I thought it'd be a great way to kind of do a little extra research and
to convert some of that material that didn't make it into some of the books. workbooks and create
those daily episodes. And I've been kind of surprised, honestly, how much it's taken off. How many
of you listen to it every single day? How much I hear from you about it? How much it's meant to me?
personally, to create those episodes. So we just need a couple of weeks to make sure that we're
working in a sustainable way, that I'm practicing what I preach. I'm not over-functioning, but
that I'm figuring out how to do these things. I have the right team in place. I have the right
support in place so that we can do this work together in a sustainable way. So again, these deep
dive episodes on Thursdays, they'll still be here. We've got some great experts coming on, but
those daily episodes will be on a couple of week hiatus. We'll be back in September.
great chance over these next two weeks to go back and listen to some of the episodes you may have
missed. You can find all of those wherever you get podcasts. We also have a webpage over at
dralisoncook.com everyday-podcast where you'll find a list of all the daily episodes and their
topics and the resources. You can go back and pick the ones that you missed or that you want to
listen to again. And on that note of needing rhythms of rest and reset, I actually think today's
conversation is just a great one as we head into that because so many of us are really good at
keeping... going. We're really good at pushing through. We know how to be responsible.
We know how to take care of other people. We know how to tell ourselves it's fine. It's not that
bad. I can handle it. I can do it. But sometimes these very qualities we admire in ourselves,
they're really good qualities. And in many cases, we're strong, we're independent, we're self
-sufficient, we're productive. These qualities can also be clues.
They can also get extreme. And when they get extreme, they can become clues of something else going
on underneath the surface. Maybe instead of working from that secure base of love,
we're starting to work from that over-functioning place. And it can be subtle. It can creep in
very subtly. And today's guest is so great at helping us name that pattern and take steps toward
change. My guest today is Sheila Wise Rose. She's a therapist, an author,
a teacher, and someone whose work I have respected for so long. She's spent decades helping people
understand trauma, not only the kinds of experiences we immediately think of when we hear that
word, but some of these more subtle ways that wounds can shape how we relate to ourselves,
to other people, and even to God. She talks about these subtler signs like perfectionism,
like people-pleasing. like having a hard time asking for help, like maybe minimizing what's
hurting you because someone else always seems to have it worse or maybe your inability to handle
conflict. Maybe you tend to avoid conflict or you're always just working harder or taking more
responsibility. And Sheila has just this knack of kind of unpacking why some of those very
behaviors are actually clues that there's been a trauma story. Sheila approaches this because she
doesn't separate emotional and spiritual health. She brings it all together. We're going to talk
about people pleasing and perfectionism and self-sufficiency today. We're going to talk about
inherited trauma and the patterns that can move through families and even entire communities.
We talk about what happens when something painful becomes so normal that you don't even realize
that it wounded you. And I love how Sheila talks about lament, what it means to bring real
unfiltered emotions to God instead of believing that faith in God means that you should be over it
by now, or maybe not feeling it at all. And we talk about why healing usually doesn't begin with
some huge dramatic breakthrough, but with tiny steps of noticing,
noticing a pattern, noticing something that's happening inside of you, noticing the place where you
learned, I have to take care of this. alone and then learning to allow god and safe people to meet
you in those places sheila is the author of numerous books including healing racial trauma which is
a book i recommend far and wide it's such a great And she and her husband authored a book called
Healing Leadership Trauma. And then her latest book is called Seeds of Racial Healing,
52 Devotions for Navigating Through Trauma. It's just a beautiful devotional.
We talk about it a little bit in today's episode. I think you're going to find so much wisdom in
Sheila's words today. Please enjoy my conversation with Sheila Wise Rowe.
I'm so thrilled, Sheila, to get to connect with you and to learn more from you and for my audience
to learn from you today. Thank you so much for being here and for making the time. Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm excited. Your life's work, as far as I understand it,
in terms of your therapy work and your writing, is really helping people understand trauma.
And how to heal from it. I'd love to start with just a little bit of your own story and what first
led you personally to devote your life to this work. Yeah. I,
you know, as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a medical doctor. And so very early
on, I was determined that's what I was going to do. And so I undergrad, I got into Tufts.
And I that first year was, you know, they weed out. That's the weeding out year where they just
like I overdid it. I took chem. I took bio. I took it was ridiculous.
And at the end of it. And just realizing and having to grapple with, do I actually want to go
forward with this? This is something I always wanted, and no. So at that point, it was one of,
okay, there's something in me that wants to help people. And so what does that look like? And
that's when I changed my major. And it was psychology and sociology. And that kind of was the
turning point for me. And then later on, becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist.
In the mid-'80s, I became a Christian around the same time.
And so that really began to inform how I look at therapy, how I practice it,
and how to marry the two, like the Christian faith and the therapeutic work,
given that my background was from secular institutions. And then started at the same time,
because I became Christian really late, I had friends who were gay and started a Christian AIDS
ministry. And so I worked, I did that in Boston. This is like early,
early stages when people had no idea what that was. In the 80s. Yeah, yeah. It was really hard.
It was a difficult period. A lot of people passed away, but it was an opportunity for the church in
Boston. that I was attending to actually step up and help to start an outreach to AIDS patients in
the hospital. There was nothing at that point. A lot of them abandoned by their families and such.
And that was like a huge, impactful time for me.
And I burnt out. And so I can unpack that a little bit later.
Because it was a really difficult time. And over the course of like three decades, I've been in
ministry, as you said, around trauma, around emotional and spiritual healing. And I've lived in the
U.S., France, South Africa as well. Such a healer's heart. I love that desire to be a physician.
I really agree with you. There are different ways that we participate in the work of healing.
Absolutely. I'm curious, could you share a little bit more about your faith journey to becoming a
Christian while sort of the call, I think about the vocation to healing and then the spiritual
piece. How did that, can you give us a little bit about how that worked for you? When I became a
Christian? Yeah. So I was totally brought up in a...
not in a Christian kind of environment, adjacent environment, in that my parents did not go to
church at that point. My parents were, very early on, were part of the Nation of Islam. And then
when Malcolm X was assassinated, they left. And then they weren't doing anything.
But we were going to church with my aunt. So I would go to the church, and my siblings would go to
the church with my aunt. So I had that in the background, like, okay. And your aunt was Christian.
She is Christian, yes. Gotcha. So I had this sense of, like, who God is, Jesus, the whole thing,
you know. But it didn't really mean much to me in terms of, like, what does that translate into my
normal life? So I fast forward, go through college, et cetera, and then I come out of college.
Um, and it's like a long convoluted story, but I ended up,
um, in relationship with a guy who was a cocaine dealer. I know this just sounds like a big story.
That was another book, Sheila. That was another book. Yes, yes, yes. We got a new book here. We
want to hear this story. Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, um, I was not, I was not addicted at all,
but it was a really. disastrous relationship and so out of that I really came to the end of myself
and it was a place where I always thought like kind of like prior to that like I'm in control and I
can make my own decisions and came to that place where it was just kind of like I don't have
control so if I'm not in control who's in control and that really led me to The place of surrender.
My mom had become a Christian like years before. And so I was having conversations with her and her
really speaking life and truth. And so, yeah,
that's the early 80s became Christian. Rock bottom has a way of.
Oh, yeah. Bringing us literally and figuratively to our knees. Absolutely. I'm not glad that
happened to you. And I'm. I'm always grateful even in my own life for the way God uses those
moments. It's not the moments we want. Absolutely.
Thank you for giving us just a little bit of the more of the background of just the tip of the
iceberg of your own story. But I do think we bring our own stories to the work. So how do you think
about trauma? Because one of the things I really appreciate about your work is that.
you talk about how it's not just an isolated incident from the past, how it's something that we
carry with us. How do you think about trauma? How do you define it?
What does it mean to you? What do you look for when you're talking about it? Right, right. You
know, the notion of like big T trauma and little T trauma. And so trauma can come in different
forms. I think that because trauma is overused in...
some ways, that people can minimize that, like individuals' experiences.
And I think that we have to really be careful about that because we're, you know, someone's lived
experience is their lived experience. And so that was traumatic for them. And even if I don't
understand it, it's really irrelevant that I don't understand it. Like they've experienced some
things and it could be words, could be actions, it could be neglect. And it doesn't matter the type
or intensity, how that person experiences it. Like, you know, God cares so much about that person
and wants to meet that person where they are. And God is not like,
oh, you shouldn't be traumatized by this, you know. And I think that we can easily lose sight of
that. And I think sometimes things that have happened. that we have categorized as normal,
like we later discover that it actually was traumatic and it was abusive. Yeah,
that's so true. And it's so powerful to realize, no, that wasn't okay. There's a reason that that
hurt me. What are some of those less obvious ways that trauma shows up in our lives?
They're sort of the big T categories of abuse or addiction. But you talk about some of these other
ways that trauma shows up through perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-responsibility.
We talk about a lot of these things on the podcast. How are these manifestations of trauma?
How have you seen that in your own life and in the lives of the people that you serve? I think that
there are ways in which you see it, and you might not categorize it as that, but I feel like these
are things that are red flags. And in several of the books,
I've talked about these. issues around or signs, signposts like fleeing,
folding, fawning, fighting, forfeiting. And that when you're starting, you're seeing that there are
ways in which you're denying or minimizing or even laughing off things like, okay, it doesn't
really matter. Like there's something else that's going on there. And for some of us, it's folding
where because of the self-doubt, like. you know, we're silent,
we're stoic, we don't engage. And because we wonder whether what we're thinking is actually right
or accurate, and we're judging it based on that, versus this is, again, this is your felt lived
experience. Fawning, that's one where, you know, these appeasing behaviors where, you know,
on some level, we're really hoping that we're going to get love and acceptance. But oftentimes,
we're left feeling worse. And another one is fighting. And so sometimes, you know,
yes, sometimes we need to fight. We do. But sometimes it's really combative.
And it's the end goal is that it actually causes more harm to us.
And so as I'm mentioning these things, these are things that may be resonating with your audience
of just kind of like, oh, I see that I do this and this is. possibly a trauma response.
Another one is forfeiting, and that's just a person kind of denying what they need or even what
their community needs. And sometimes it's even over-spiritualizing just to kind of avoid the pain.
And so all of these things are things to look out for that is trauma the driver of these kinds of
behaviors. So that's so interesting. So if you notice, yeah, if you notice those behaviors,
it's a cue, it's a signpost. There might be a wound. Yes. Underneath.
Yeah. You talk about inherited trauma, that trauma can be inherited.
What do you mean by that? Talk us through that. Yeah. There's been research that was done,
and I think originally it was done with. with Native Americans and also with the children of
Holocaust survivors, in which they were seeing symptoms, some of those signs that I talked about,
in the lives of these people, and even ways in which they're responding as if they actually did go
through it. And their left, they were confused. Like, okay,
this doesn't make sense. They didn't go through it. But their behaviors are really one of,
really rooted in a lot of fear, anxiety. You know, in some Native communities, the overuse of
alcohol, there's medication. Like, what is going on here? And one thing that they discovered was
that there was a connection. There was a connection between what had happened to their ancestors.
And there are ways in which that happens physiologically, emotionally,
as well as when you think about, like, someone who their parent went through the Holocaust.
Like, it also comes out in family stories. And also folklore and all those things contribute to
this transgenerational trauma being transmitted in a person's life.
That's so interesting. It makes sense. It's sort of the stories we tell about ourselves. Even if,
you know, I think about even in my own context where neither of my parents had a drinking problem,
both very... But my mom's mom, you know, my the maternal side of my family,
there's alcoholism. And so while it didn't touch me personally, there are residual effects of that,
whether it's you know, I think that research is so interesting, whether through the stories,
whether just through the residual wounding. Absolutely. That comes forth. And we talk a lot about
cycle breaking. And in this context, it's interesting, right? Because it does put a lot of burden
on the person trying to sort of shift out of some of these patterns.
I'd be curious to know how you think of that idea of cycle breaking. You know what?
I think that one piece that's really important in recognizing that is to really...
make sure that we're centering the Lord in that conversation and in that exploration. Because I
think there are ways in which, and I often say this with the therapy work that I did, that it
wasn't just the talk therapy part about it, but when there was including the Lord being centered in
it, there was a way in which we could get to the heart of the matter quicker. and a revelation
around what is the source of this. And so a lot of it is like what you talked about,
like down in the family lineage, there was alcoholism. And so the revelation about,
yes, that happened, but also like what, you know, how did that, whether it was a dry drunk or
whatever, how did that get transmitted in terms of how someone was raised? back then and and how
you're raised right now and how you were raised yeah and how do you begin to allow the lord to come
in and reveal that but also to really identify what are the steps for you to walk that out to walk
out of it rather yeah i i love that i i think you're right there's so much power uh that was part
of my story of returning to the work of being a therapist even though i was a christian is it's
it's more than just being a christian who understands the bible there's a power of the holy spirit
that is in the room with you that is helping with the discernment and the truth telling and it um
and i i love that that you raised that because i i agree there's just so much power when when that
dimension and it and it's not it's the opposite of spiritual bypassing it's not that we're glossing
over it's that because the spirit is there we can actually face the truth that we might not be able
to face apart from you know be too hard it might crush us you know to face without without the
power of god i think that's the interesting thing too is that the whole notion of like spiritually
bypassing like if you actually read scripture there's not that's spiritual bypassing is not the
thing so because the thing is really about what's the truth and so the messy horrible like we get
the whole thing we get all of it and and in the same way like we that's our relationship with god
like god wants all of it all of us and that includes what's messy and untidy and what we don't
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Sheila, your work on, I want to touch on a couple of your different pieces of work because you're
just such a helpful teacher in many ways, but especially through your writing. You've done a lot of
work on racial trauma, and I think it's helped a lot of people understand the fact,
the reality that communities can also carry wounds, that these wounds aren't just individual.
We talked a little bit about... but also communities and cultures of people. Talk to us a little
bit more about how maybe churches and communities can think of trauma as a framing for what's
happening in terms of a group of people. Yeah, yeah. I think even as I talked about those kind of
red flags before. Yeah. also apply, not just individually, but also collectively in a community.
Interesting. Just looking at how are we as a community responding in a certain way.
I think that that's an important question right now. I think just given where we are in this
country, around the world, that of looking at why are we behaving in a certain way.
And so when I think about things like the... of empathy,
for instance. Where is that? Is that not a trauma response? When we say that empathy is irrelevant
or somehow it's toxic. When we actually look at Jesus and we look at the level of empathy,
and empathy is not like everything that you did is okay and it's fine, but it's really entering in.
and to where a person is at in the place of pain. And so I think that,
you know, when we start to see certain things that we have historically believed was good and like
the Beatitudes, you know, and we're disparaging those,
that's a problem. That's a sign that something has gone awry and that our, yeah,
there's something. Something is off here. And it's a cultural phenomena. Even if I can see it,
I'm still part of it. You also talk about in your leadership book, you talk about self
-sufficiency. And that one really stood out to me. Most of us here in America are cooked in the
soup of self-sufficiency. Get yourself up by the bootstraps. And we don't even know. We're not
even aware that that isn't necessarily. So I think that's such an interesting that there are
certain things that shape. smaller communities up to like nations that sometimes we if we don't do
the work to kind of differentiate a little bit from that broader soup in which we've been cooked
yeah it it we miss some of those red flags oh yeah you know even if we're not maybe i didn't create
the soup but i am living in it so it's there you know yeah and i think that you know When you think
about the origins of the self-sufficiency, it really comes out of a place of like being lied to,
maybe abused, being disappointed, being betrayed. Yeah. Some promises that weren't kept.
And so then we begin to feel like, you know what, no one can be trusted. Like I really am on my
own. You know, we may feel ashamed to ask for help because, you know,
we somehow believe like, you know, I should be strong. And so if I admit that, then I'm
communicating weakness and that's not good. When, in fact, we really need other people.
We need God. And so the other piece is, can we trust God even with our struggles?
Can we allow him to come and be our helper? Yeah. That's the challenge.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so true that some of that is,
it's so interesting that the overlay that our individual trauma response to a broader thing that
happened around us encourages that sort of almost self-sufficiency individualism because we can't,
there's some things we can't change. I can't change what happened around me, but I am responsible
for figuring out how to I love how you brought that in, how to at least see it and notice it and at
the very least allow God to be part of it. And this leads me,
Sheila, to the devotional. I really want to linger here for a minute. The seeds of racial healing,
which is a devotional, right? Yes. Yeah. And I just thought that was so, you know, after all the
work that you've done kind of communally and with leadership, sort of this devotional concept,
because to this point of what we're talking about,
sometimes these problems outside of us can feel so big.
And, and, and so like, I don't know that I can fix everything outside of me, whether it's my
family, whether it's my community, whether it's my nation, you know, whether, you know, and, and,
and so what can I do? I'm curious, what prompted you to choose the devotional?
for this latest offering and how this sort of daily prayerful reflection can help people in a way
stay present to what's hard without either numbing or without getting overwhelmed at the same time,
but stay present to God through it. Yeah. You know what? I think ultimately with the devotional,
it really is one of like, where do we center our attention? And when we have like a deeper sense of
belovedness, that really shapes how we then go out and engage with the world.
Because if I am looking around me, if I'm doom scrolling, if I'm getting all sorts of input about
who I am or who my people are, all of those questions are being answered.
in other places, we can easily go down a really dangerous rabbit hole.
But when we have that sense of, like, we're centered and we're rooted in Christ,
like from that place of being loved, that then we can then make decisions that are not just rash
decisions, but ones that really are... And so we're really praying, we're listening, we're having
communication with the Lord. And that's what the devotional is encouraging us to do,
is to have these pockets of times to listen. And it also doesn't disregard the fact that not
everybody is privileged to have these quiet places, but that we can find them in the midst of all
the craziness that's going on. Like if we have that sense of that God is with me and he's going to
walk me through it, through the trauma and inform what it is that I need to do.
Maybe I don't need to do it. Maybe I need to sit for a little bit. The Lord is saying, yes, I want
you to do something, but it's tied to that self-sufficiency thing. Like, I don't have to do all
the things. And I had mentioned before about the whole AIDS piece and the AIDS ministry.
Yeah. That was the problem. I felt like I had to do all the things. Oh. And so the burnout
happened. Yeah. And the thing is that that certainly was something I had no control over because at
that point there was no cure. So the vast majority of people died. So the most of what I could do
is be the ministry of presence and pray with people and be there when their families abandon them.
And me and the team of people from my church in terms of ministering to people.
That sounds powerful. That really comes out of your own story of having to learn. I love how you're
saying that, what you're centered on. You have to stay, especially if you're walking into these
hard places. And that's, that's not, again, that's not spear over spiritualizing that staying
centered so that you can enter into what's hard, whether in your own life or in the lives of people
around you. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Cause I don't think that we naturally have the capacity to hold
that much pain. No. Just ours or anybody else's. Yeah.
We need help. We need help from real people, but we need help from God. Yeah. You also,
Sheila, really make room for lament. Yeah. Talk to us about what that is and what that means to you
and how that's also helped you sustain and not burn out. Yeah.
Because it's kind of paradoxical to lament to many of us. Yeah. But you know what?
Lament is absolutely essential. And that is that if you think about, like, the Book of
Lamentations, you look at the Psalms and other places throughout Scripture, but this honest going
before God, being raw, being real, wrestling, this is not spiritual bypassing. This is going up in
God's face. God is not threatened. He's not scared that we were coming at him with,
like, questions, things we don't understand. You read the Psalms and you see that.
It may feel like you're reading this little chapter in Psalms or section and David got over it
quick. I don't think he got over it that quick. I don't think that he said, oh, why are the wicked
prospering? And then he goes on a rant and whatever. And then he's like, and you, oh Lord, are
great. Like that all happened within like 10 minutes. I don't think so. So I think he wrote those
probably over days or even longer. But God is patient and working with us.
And this goes back to the whole thing of like God wants us. The real, real, real deal. That's what
we're really feeling, what we're really thinking. Like he wants a real relationship with us. We're
not robots. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that connection.
And I love that daily reflection, the daily practice of healing, of resisting,
of sustaining.
For the woman who is listening, who sees herself in this conversation, who maybe is burning out,
maybe is hypervigilant, maybe carrying some of these patterns that are from generations before her,
what would you want her to know about where healing begins and about next steps?
Yeah. I think it's important that these are small steps that we take when we start.
And, you know, the scripture talks about not despising the day of small beginnings. Like,
those small steps incrementally create change. And I also want to say that I am really big on not
doing stuff by yourself. So, like, connecting with good therapy,
connecting with a spiritual director if you need to, connecting in community. But it's in the
context of those relationships that we begin to see certain things that we might not see if we're
by ourselves. And so, and in that way, we'll begin to start to recognize some things about what we
talked about, the things people, you get caught up in ignoring, or you're minimizing, you're
laughing things off. You know, all of those things where we,
once we have these, my husband calls it the Jedi Council.
So it's like these are people that are trustworthy that you know you can go to and process what it
is that you're, I actually, it'd be him. He and these three other guys have met regularly for the
past 25 years. Like, and even when we moved to, we were in Paris,
even when we were in South Africa, we lived in South Africa for 10 years, like they had monthly and
every few weeks they would meet online and when they were here in person.
But that level of commitment, like these are people who really know me and go deep and it's not a
surface thing, is something that we can have and can find.
Again, if you're a woman and you're wanting to, please notice.
Notice what's going on internally in you. You know, go before the Lord and ask him for help to name
it. I think that's a big one.
And then what is the small thing that you can do right now, like today?
That's a good word. So much wisdom. And I wish we had so much more time with you.
But thank you for sharing your wisdom. Where can my listeners find more about you, more about your
work and connect with you?
My website is SheilaWiseRowe.com. And I'm on social media,
Instagram, Facebook.
I'm kind of toying around with Substack. I don't know. Okay. All right. We'll see.
And I have some certain things coming down the pike. So my husband and I are doing a curriculum for
healing leadership trauma. Oh, great. That's one. Yeah. Okay. And then the other one is because
I've been doing so much writing and this is like the book. I also really love working with writers.
I really love like I've done conferences and have worked with like writing conferences and have
done some teaching, but also like supporting writers. So that's something down the line.
Well, you're a gem. Your books are fantastic. We will link especially to your latest one,
The Seeds of Racial Healing, The Devotional. I think it's such a powerful. approach for anyone who
is living with hard stuff around them. Again, whether it's in your own life, your family, your
community, your world, which is all of us, we're so grateful for you. I cannot recommend anything
you do highly enough for folks. You are someone we should be listening to,
your hard-earned wisdom and expertise. I've learned so much from you, from your books.
We'll link to everything. And I'm so grateful just for this time with you today. Thank you.
for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to
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