Sure, we love to look like we’ve got it together. But what if it takes being broken to truly know how to be brave? Author, podcaster, and all-around amazing personality Toni Collier joins Julie Lyles Carr an honest conversation about what holds us back and what makes us brave.
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Transcription:
Purposely your life, God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Today on the AllMomDoes podcast. I’m so excited because I have the most glorious, gorgeous human being. She has just busted up the staircase to the studio and changed the entire vibe up here. Tony Collier, thank you so much for driving through the rainstorm and coming to see me.
Toni Collier:
I had to drive through the rainstorm. I had to get on a plane, drive through the rainstorm and come and be on this podcast. It’s going to be a good day.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Well, I love that you’re here and tell us a little bit about yourself . I mean, of course I am all kind of gob smacked and fangirling on you, but tell my listeners who you are, where you live, all the stuff.
Toni Collier:
All the things. Well, the most important thing about me is that I’m from Houston, Texas. Okay. I just want to put that out there right now. All right, Texas. All right. Now, unfortunately, I have been living in Atlanta for 13 years, so I need to claim it, but I’m not because Texas all day. But I live there with my cutie little husband, Sam, who’s a major part of my redemption story and we have an eight year old. I call her my strong will blessing. We talked about that. She, it’s a lot. She’s just got some fire in her. She’s got some fire. And then we just had a little baby named Sam Jr. He is four months and he is the most precious, the cutest little thing. But I get to stand alongside my husband as he pastors our church Story Church in Atlanta. I founded a women’s ministry called Broken Crayons, Still Color. We’re helping women heal. That’s just essentially what it is. Well, through courses, devotionals, community, all the things. And then now I’m a brand new smackin’ new author.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Yes, you are.
Toni Collier:
A new book, brave Enough to Be Broken and a podcast host. Wow. What am I not doing? Okay. All right. Well, it’s all.
Julie Lyles Carr:
That, I mean, maybe if your life’s like mine, you’re probably not cleaning a lot or cooking.
Toni Collier:
A lot. Yeah, cleaning, cooking, for sure. Not on the to-do list. Let me just be honest about that. Yeah, so just
Julie Lyles Carr:
Happens intermittently. It’s okay. It’s
Toni Collier:
Okay. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Well, I love this ministry that you have to women and this way that you have positioned it that, yeah, broken crayons do still color. It’s one of the things that in my tenure in women’s ministry was really a challenge, was trying to provide what are considered sort of traditional offerings in women’s ministry. Okay, we’ve got our Bible study and we’ve got our mom’s group, and we’ve got these different things. But Toni, I tell you, the amount of challenge and trauma and life situations come on that were also popping up, that didn’t really seem to fit well within the common church narrative. Wow. It really was a struggle to try to serve and serve well to people who were having very different sometimes life experiences. What has your experience been with trying to lead and serve in that way?
Toni Collier:
Yeah. Well, I would say the first thing is that it’s been extremely redemptive for me. Oftentimes, we lean into the places that have been broken in our past, and so with me, I’ve got sexual trauma and abuse in my past, manipulation from family members in sexual ways, losing my virginity at 13, drugs at 14 and 15 and alcohol, leaving my parents’ house at 16 an eating disorder in college. I mean, all the things. Divorce, toxic marriage, transitioning out of a really spiritually abusive church. I mean, I’ve got my fair share of pain and drama, and there was a moment in my life at 24 where I was not upset with God, but I was definitely pleading with him, Hey, brother, you got to do something. And I think that when I hit that point, I really felt like all this pain should not have been a part of my story.
Fast forward six years now, and I’m like, I’m really grateful that I went through all that because now I get to serve women in all these different ways. Women with eating disorders, women with addictions, women with that have gone through divorce, and now I get to look women in the eye and say, no, really, I know from personal experience, your brokenness actually does not discount you. As a matter of fact, it is where redemption is found. I mean, hope rises from the dirt. And so I’ve been doing that and it’s been so great and redemptive.
Julie Lyles Carr:
And be able to speak from it to it from a place of really knowing. What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes we make in our church communities when we are saying, everyone’s welcome here and your story matters and all the things that we say, and yet then we start having people show up who really aren’t coming from a clean and tidy experience?
Toni Collier:
I think it’s it. Bishop Jake says this. He says, if I don’t see me, it’s not for me. Oftentimes, I think what’s happened is we maybe sometimes we don’t outwardly express that people aren’t welcome or that it’s, there’s no spaces for them to grieve and to process through pain and abuse and all the things, but maybe we just don’t have the leaders that have been through it for them to see, for them to say, oh my goodness, if that leader, this crazy girl, Toni, if she can stand on stages, if she can still color with her life and heal and do great things, then if she can do it, I can too. And I think one of the mistakes is simply just not having people that have been through really hard things in places of leadership within our church systems, people that actually have power and influence that have actually been granted the ability to lead and healed and whole places. And I think the second thing is I think that churches try to be the expert in everything, and I just don’t think we have to do that. I think that we can be the expert in pointing people to Jesus, the source, and then we can be really, really great at resourcing people, connecting and locking arms with other organizations and helping people by connecting them to resources even outside of the church and not having to be the end all be all for resources.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Yeah, right. Talk to me about what you think in your experience, deep, true healing really looks like. Because Toni, I got to tell you friend, in my tenure in pastoring, one of the things that started to make me cringe was we would do cardboard testimonies. You know what I’m talking about?
Toni Collier:
Oh, yeah. I do know that cardboard. That’s what you flip them over.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Oh my goodness. I know, and some of my listeners have heard me talk about this before, but we would, and our intentions were so great, it was to say, Hey, look about at the redemptive power of God, here’s someone who went through this in their marriage, and then they flip the cardboard over and now the marriage has been fixed, or here’s the addiction cycle or whatever. But I got to tell you, there were times that for all the best reasons, but I think we were preemptive. Everybody loves a great redemption story, but we like it to be sort of fast. And one of the things that I feel like I learned through watching that through the years that’s good is that healing takes a while, and true healing can take a while to stick, and sometimes we get so in love with a redemption story, I once was lost, but now I’m found and we forget about the and now part. There’s a space there. So what have you found as you have watched yourself through healing as you are walking other people through healing, what does that process, what rhythm look like and where do we get it wrong?
Toni Collier:
That’s so good. Well, I think first and foremost, I think that we all have to be okay with the fact that we live in a fallen, broken world, and we have never arrived on our healing journey. We’re always going to face something. There’s always going to be something that pops up. And healing isn’t about vanishing the parts of our story that we don’t like or that are extremely painful. It is about looking them in the eye, embracing the pain of those stories and coming out on the other side with more hope. I think healing is not necessarily about being whole because I don’t think we’ll ever be whole until we meet our father in heaven, but it’s about being able to come from a hope-filled place. I mean, we’ve all seen the woman on the Instagram live that’s like, oh my gosh, I hate everything.
And she’s just pouring out from a bitter place trying to tell her testimony, trying to have her cardboard moment, and it’s like, ooh sweet girl? I just don’t think you’re there yet. And I think what’s missing in that is that she’s just not hope filled. She’s actually not hopeful that things can actually get better yet. And so I think healing looks like trying to bring ourselves on a journey to becoming a little bit more hopeful about our stories. For me, that’s looked like embracing pain. I mean, I’m talking about it in my new book. I think the only way for us to really get on these healing journeys and find actual wholeness is for us to look pain in the eyes and say, you don’t have a strong hold on me anymore. You can be present in my story, but you don’t have to overrule it or overtake it.
And in order for us to actually heal some things, we’ve got to be able to name some things. And some of those things are really painful and really, really hard. And so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been looking hard stuff in the eyes for years. I mean, even now I’ve been processing some things that I haven’t shared publicly yet because I’m not hopeful about it just yet. But people ask me all the time, Toni, you’re still in counseling. What do you mean? I’m like, oh, I’ve still got work to do. I, I’ve still got to look some things in the eye, and I don’t ever want to just arrive in my healing journey. I want to keep going back when I have the strength to say, okay, well, what else in my past is there? What else is keeping me from being a whole mom? Because we don’t just, our healing doesn’t just isolate itself. We’re not just unhealthy daughters. We’re also unhealthy moms and unhealthy wives and unhealthy friends and coworkers. And so we got to heal those things so we don’t leak.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I love that phrase leak because <laugh> a friend of mine, and we laugh a lot about you’re leaking. We’re accountability partners with each other. We’ll say you’re leaking, <laugh>. Stuff that showing up. That’s that whole place of being able to look pain in the eye. I love that wording. I’ve had people say to me before, because you know, and I were talking about this, having eight kids, one of the things that people will say to me is, how did you birth that many kids? And I don’t know actually, is the short answer. But I can remember many times in those experiences, there was the trying to run away from the pain of birthing something, trying to back up from it and trying to put it away. And then there was that moment where I learned through the years, if I would just lean into it and let the pain do what it was supposed to be doing, sometimes it could accelerate and make that whole process, I’m not saying easier <laugh>, okay?
But at least I was working with it at that point. I wasn’t fighting myself. And so that place where, yeah, we’re going to have pain and God’s trying to birth something new in us, if we can stop running from that pain, however we’re running from it, sometimes it can get us through that transitional piece that we really need to come out into the other side. Now you’ve written about, and I think this is so powerful about healing in private. And I know that we want to have faith communities where we can be open about our stuff and we can talk about the reality of what sin has done in our lives, either our own or people’s sins against us. I know we want all of that, and I don’t want us to return to a time where we’re closeting all this stuff and we’re not talking about it. However, <laugh>,
Toni Collier:
Okay,
Julie Lyles Carr:
<laugh> these moments and these times where we are so public about some of the processes that we’re walking through. Talk me through the difference between hiding from something that’s going on and really going in that place where God can work with us and he can help guide the telling of that story before we start telling that story, and it gets concreted as part of our biography.
Toni Collier:
That’s so good. Well, I think first and foremost, there’s a difference between authenticity and vulnerability. Over the years, vulnerability has been this sexy word. Everyone’s, I’m so vulnerable. And the truth is, there are spaces where we should not be vulnerable, where we can be authentic, show up as our authentic selves. You’re going to get all of me right now on this podcast. I’m going to be all of loud, crazy ratchet, a little bit Toni that loves Jesus and shows up and is excited about hope. But I’m not about to tell all my business. I’m not about to vulnerably tell all my business here on this podcast. And I think once we start to realize that we can be authentic without having to tell all of our business, I think what it frees us, what it does is it frees us because then we begin to show up authentically in all the different spaces, even in the secret places with God.
The truth is, I think part of the reason, at least for me and my story, the reason why it was so hard to heal in private is because I didn’t actually trust that God could hold it. I needed to put it on full display and tell everybody else because I didn’t trust that he could hold it. I didn’t trust that he could make me safe e for, make me feel protected because there was so much darkness in my past. And I was like, well, God, where were you then? You can’t hold it now. Well, when I became a follower of God and not a fan, and not just showing up on a Sunday morning, lifting my little hands, acting like I knew all the worship songs, but didn’t have any type of relationship with God, Monday through Saturday, when I started to really get to know him and trust him, I felt more safe to go to him.
And so then my secret places with him and my quiet time with him looked totally different. I was able to show up and express some things to my husband from a little bit more of a hopeful place because before I had made my husband, my God, I’d made in my Holy Spirit, and so I would bring him things that he couldn’t carry, only God could carry. And so I think what we just have to do is set ourselves up in a way that says, number one, I can be alone because, or I can feel lonely, but I don’t have to be alone because God’s always, always with me. And from that place, I think we can muster up the strength to be able to bring things to our safe communities, not our full on public platform communities, but our safe communities, our intimate circles, our two or three that know as deeply and say, I’ve been processing this and I just want to bring this to a safe space and then go from that point. But I think we’ve just got to work backwards in it,
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right? I know that we’re in an interesting season in our faith communities in the church, and there are challenges in all of that without getting down too far a rabbit hole in terms of all the different things that are going on and the experiences that people are having and trying to determine how they’re going to be engaged in their faith communities, if they should be engaged in faith communities, on and on and on. You did have an experience with a toxic faith community that you had to break free from. How do we do that check to make sure we’re with a healthy group of people, that there is still accountability, but there is support, that there is challenge and iron sharpening iron, but there’s not manipulation. How do we do that? Because honestly, Tony, in many ways, the ways our faith communities are set up our breeding grounds for some of the things that have become very problematic. And at the same time, if we close ourselves off to everything, then we can miss a lot of the good that God wants us to get out of a faith community. So guide us in that, because it’s tricky these days.
Toni Collier:
Yeah. Well, I’m glad you asked the question. I feel like I only have the authority to speak into this because I’ve done it wrong and I’ve experienced a really bad environment, and I’ve experienced really healthy environment, and now we’re actually pastors. People are like, okay, you had a really horrific experience with church. How the world are you one back in church? And then now as a church planner, I’m like, well, surprise guys. God redeems. But I think boundaries have been very important, boundaries that are strong enough to keep the bad stuff out, permeable enough to let the good stuff in. I’m an all in or nothing type of girl. I’m like, go big or go home, baby. I’m like, I’m all in. I will die for you or you’re dead to me. That that’s kind of where I’m at. Well, what’s happened is that I’ve kind of found that life really is about the messy middle.
It’s about the complex view of the world, the gray areas where you’ve got these boundaries that are strong and that keep you and fend off harm from really bad things. But then also you’ve got a little bit of softness so that when good things do come, you’re able to receive them and to bring them into your life. So I think boundaries is a huge thing. I also think awareness of yourself helps with awareness outside of yourself. So I always questioned myself because I mean, my dad, I grew up with a dad who is really verbally abusive. We have since healed our relationship. But then I ended up with a really verbally abusive husband, and then I ended up at a church with a very spiritually abusive pastor. And I’m like, okay, now what’s the pattern here? What’s going on? Well, the truth is you take you with you.
And while we have to hold people accountable to their abuse, we also get to kind of look inward and be a little bit aware of what we are positioning ourselves in. And for me, I’d positioned myself in a way where I was worshiping a pastor, not a savior. And when I started to realize that I had put man in the place of God, what had happened was I started to, for some odd reason, drift into healthier environments because I was positioning myself in healthy environments that I could clearly see this pastor doesn’t want me to worship him. He’s pointing me to God. Well, when I got into a new church environment, North Point Community Church, under the leadership of Andy Stanley, no one was trying to claim God, play God get close to you. Everybody was like, no, no, no. This isn’t about us at all. They were pushing everything off of them. And that was a new thing for me. I come from an environment that was like, we serve the pastor. Our purpose is connected to the pastor. We do all these things. It was so, man, I think one of the telltale signs of a healthy church is that it’s less about what happens in the room and more about what happens in your heart.
I think that’s a good foundational start. And I think the second thing is, and this is maybe common in the African American church, I think when pastors say things like life change, true life change happens in circles, not rows, meaning it happens outside of the church and in your home with your community, with the people you love and know, I think that’s a healthy telltale as well. It’s saying, go find your people. You don’t need to run to a pastor or a worship leader to go get healed. Your next door neighbor could be the person that looks you in the eye and say, I see you and I know you and I’m with you. They can be Jesus with skin on for you as Anne Voskamp says. I think more churches, including ours, need to point people outside of the church. We only come to the church as a source, but we need to be resourced. We need to be refueled in other ways. And so I think those are some of the things that I looked for. Some of the things that I did, I have just the best group of girls ever and some of them go to my church and some of them do not. And it’s been beautiful.
Julie Lyles Carr:
To expand that community because of course, absolutely the church environment is so great for us. The rhythm of it, the discipline of it, the teaching so great, but you’re so right, because we can get really insular. We can be just in this little bubble, sometimes silo, if everything, and the only input we have is from those immediately sitting next to us on the row. I think it’s fantastic to have a group that encompasses a broader perspective than that. And can be really, really powerful for a lot of people. Tony, they listen to the wild <laugh> background you have, and they go, I haven’t experienced those things. I haven’t been through that. I haven’t been through the abuse. I haven’t been through the disastrous first marriage. I haven’t been through those. And they sometimes might recuse themselves from thinking that they have wounding, that they have pain that counts.
I think sometimes we tend to just, if you go to the ER and they say, where is your pain on this scale? Well, it’s somewhere between <laugh>, a sprained ankle and a toothache. But when it comes down to the residual effect of any pain in our life, we are getting better, I think, as a faith community about understanding trauma and how it impacts us. And yet, I still encounter people and I still do it to myself where I try to minimize some of the trauma that’s there. Because again, when I look at what other people have been through, sometimes some of my stuff can feel kind of, oh, what are you whining about? Oh yeah, what are you talking about? So how do we make room? Because all of us, if we’ve lived on the planet, we got trauma somewhere. How do we make room for that and give ourselves permission to heal from some things that may in perspective not seem as big as some of the stuff that we hear talked about from the platform or from some of our spiritual leaders? How do we do that?
Toni Collier:
So I want to come at this practical and then spiritual. I think on the spiritual side, at the end of the day, God does not want us to fall into the pain comparison trap because that’s really what it is. It’s like, yeah, it’s looking to our left and right saying, oh gosh. And we do it either way too. We’re like, oh gosh, they’ve been through so much. I just need to be quiet. Or it’s like, Ooh, that person’s been through Whoa so much. They’re really messed up. I’m fine. I’m fine. We kind of play both sides of the coin there. But I think when Paul wrote to the church in Corinth that God’s grace is efficient for us, he made it super personal. If you really dive into that scripture, Paul could’ve said to the church of Corinth, Hey, by the way, God’s grace is sufficient for all y’all up in here.
But what he said instead was, when I go to God about my weakness, when I Paul go to God about my weakness, here’s what he says directly to me. He says, Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. And I think the reason why Paul wrote it that way is because I think he and God working in him knew that we would compare ourselves to other people’s story, that we would look to our left and belittle ourselves or put ourselves on pedestals. And so I think God needed us to know that he’s got a grace, and it’s sufficient for you, listener. It’s your story, your low ratchetness, everything that you’ve been through and the things that you haven’t experienced that God’s got a grace, and it is specifically designed for your life. And then I think on the practical side, I think that we have to get to the point where we understand that trauma, which I love that you said that so much.
It’s like, yeah, trauma is in all of our stories. Trauma really is the result of being in pain or isolated and not having a way out. I mean, that’s it. You ever been stuck in one of those ball pits and Burger King? You know what I’m saying? You remember that? Okay, <laugh>, remember that trauma we all went through when there was darn ball pits, and it was like it’s a snake in there and you’re like, mom, come get me. But you can’t get out because you’re just clawing your way through all those little balls. That’s trauma. You ever been stuck on an elevator trauma? You ever been in a chokehold, I don’t know, maybe wrestling with your brother or something like that, or one you trauma? It is when we feel like we have no way out of the pain. And I got the chills right now, just thinking about the person that’s like, yeah, maybe that job that I hate so much,
Julie Lyles Carr:
I can’t find a way out,
Toni Collier:
But I got to stay.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Yeah.
Toni Collier:
I mean, when we start to release the pain comparison trap from our grips, I just think we become more kind to ourselves. We’re reminded that God is with us in our tears, whether it be from stubbing our toe, to looking back at our failed marriage matters to God. And I think that’s when the good stuff comes out, right?
Julie Lyles Carr:
Yeah. It’s one of the great lies that we often believe, which is that there is some kind of gradient system to trauma. There’s some kind of comparison basis for what we’ve been through, how that correlates to who can speak into our lives and who can’t, and all of that kind of stuff. You’ve got a really unique way of looking at truth and lies and how to overcome those lies. So unpack that for me. Tell me about this, because I’m really fascinated with the process of walking through and identifying where lies creep in and how truth can combat it.
Toni Collier:
Yeah. We have this lies against, or truth against lies worksheet that we do in our women’s course. And so then I just popped it in the book. So I was like, people need to read this. They need to know it. Essentially what’s happening is there’s a combination of recognizing your own core lies that come from experiences, story abandonment, betrayal, whatever that is, whatever your core lie is. And then it’s applying truth to it. But on the other side, it’s also accessing the lies that the enemy uses to agitate our core lies. So my core lies that I’m unprotected, unsafe. When you’re eight years old and your mom has a massive stroke and she’s got seizures and she’s paralyzed, and then your dad kind of goes and works and your brothers go to drugs, I mean, you’re alone and you’re unsafe and you’re eight years old and you’re taking care of your mom. And that’s my story. It’s literally being a parent at eight years old and driving my mom to doctor’s appointments at 12 and putting the little medicine in her medicine buckets. And what happens is you become a really vulnerable child, and then sexual abuse comes because no one’s there to protect you. And then you just apply that part of your story to who God is. It’s like, oh, well, where were you?
Julie Lyles Carr:
Toni Collier:
Well, from that place, got to know that the enemy is going to try to use that core lie to take me out in every other area. What does that mean? Well, helicopter mom, hello somebody. Because if no one was there to protect me, then surely I need to protect my daughter goes into overdrive, and now I’m crazy out here. Well, what you have to do is access your lie, and then you have to apply God’s truth to it. One of the ways that I applied God’s truth to this, I’m not protected lie, was to find scripture that spoke against that. And for a long time, I really couldn’t find something that really hit, and I went to this random prophetic service. Cause I was like, I want to try something different. And this man tells me, prophesize over me and says, you should read the psalm of your birth year. Psalm 91. I was born in 1991. I go and read the Psalm and it’s literally all about
Julie Lyles Carr:
God’s protection, protection.
Toni Collier:
And I was like, oh, snap. The truth of who God is and the fact that he’s been protecting me since I was a little girl. I just didn’t see. It only came when I started to pursue the truth. The truth didn’t come alive through God’s word until I started looking for it. And so my eyes were opened. But then also we’ve got to know that we have an unseen enemy. And I love James four seven, the message version. It just says, yell aloud, no to the enemy, and he’ll flee, whisper quiet to Jesus, and he’ll be there in no time. I got to know that the enemy really uses a few only ways. Cause he is not that creative. He’s ratchet and he’s dumb to attack us. One of the ways, and I talk about in the book is that we’re unworthy. We’re not worthy of protection. We’re not worthy of healing and hope. And another way is that we can do this by ourselves. It goes back to community. It’s like, oh yeah, I’m fine. I can do it. I can heal myself. I’m good to go. And so I think when we start to recognize our lies, we apply truth to it. And then we also start to identify the enemy’s lies and we look out for it. Then I think we protect our little hearts, our fragile tender hearts from all those lies and how they set in.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right. How do you see the correlation between pain, trauma and what we would call triggers? Because I think for a lot of us, there are a lot of phrases that are getting thrown around now, and I’m so glad we’re opening up some of this vernacular. But it can all mean such different things. And you’ll hear everything Toni said and I know, but you’ll hear everything from, well, you got to deal with your triggers all the way to, well, you poor baby. That’s a trigger for you. You should avoid any at any cost, but this is going to go off. How do you work with that within the women who are under your ministry and under your shepherding, how do you handle the triggers conversation?
Toni Collier:
It’s really good. I had a woman I’m so glad you said this. I had a woman who had some really bad hurt with her parents. So there was just some pain there. It was cultural pain. It was like, you need to be doing this. You should be a doctor, et cetera, et cetera. And so she started striving essentially in everything like, well, I’ve got to do this to make my dad proud and I’ve got to do this. And every time, so there was this moment where she was sitting down for dinner with her parents, and she was so excited because she had all these great things that she wanted to tell her parents in middle school. She wanted to come home and tell her dad all these things. And she’s telling ’em and telling ’em, telling ’em, and he’s not responding at all. And she’s like, I mean, dad, did you hear what I said? I did this in school. I did this. I got this grade. And I mean, I’m just awesome. And he goes, yeah, well, you didn’t do the dishes.
So I’m not listening because you didn’t do the dishes. So she gets up and she goes and does the dishes, and her back’s turned to her family, and she’s just weeping because the one thing that she wanted was for her dad to just listen to her and say, wow, what a great day you had at school. But she had to do something to access his love. Well, now she would say around the holidays, she gets triggered. She’s not sure how to act around her dad. So does she just leave her dad? Does she just not go home? The way that we would deal with that is by number one, pressing into the healing that she needs, that only she can give herself. The truth is, her dad may never change, right? People don’t have my story. They don’t have my story of, I sat down with my dad, we had this conversation, he changed our relationships, rebuilt. Awesome. I’m so grateful. That’s a privilege that I get to have that story. Not everybody has that, right? Still to this day, that’s her dad. Well, what does she do? Does she just avoid her father? No. She goes and heals what she can control, and then she puts boundaries up boundaries that are strong enough to keep the bad stuff out and per have to let the good stuff in. And that’s okay. And I just don’t think we have to look at our triggers in pain from a victim place. We have power and dominion,
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right?
Toni Collier:
We can set ourselves up in ways and we can be vulnerable and honest and brave enough to be broken to say, okay, there’s some boundaries that I need to put up here, right? Because I can’t just be all triggered all the time, and that’s okay,
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right? I think that’s the delicate dance, right To acknowledge what is going to set you off, but not to get stuck there, to not decide that’s the destination. What a beautiful story with your friend. That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Well, the book is Brave Enough to Be Broken, and I am just so delighted that you’ve been able to join me here today. Where can listeners go to find out more, find the book, all the good stuff?
Toni Collier:
All the things. Everything is Tony j Collier, t o n i j c o l l i e r, the website Insta Greasy. The books on the website’s called Brave Enough to Be Broken, and it’s been cool. It’s been cool watching women read it already, early copies, all the things because they’re like, oh, this is a powerful story. But what’s really more powerful about the book is that there’s actual strategy in there. How do I actually go on a healing journey? And that’s what I’m really excited about.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I love that. I love phenomenal stories combined with, and here’s a way to do it. That’s fantastic. And well, Toni, I can’t thank you enough for being here. It’s so fun to get to have you in the studio in person. That’s just a delight, and just all the best as you continue this journey to helping women identify and heal from the things that have broken them, and to learn that they absolutely still can have creativity and color and beauty in their lives as a result. So thank you so much for all that you do. Hey, here at AllMomDoes, we love it. I know that this episode is going to mean so much to you. So would you just grab, I don’t know, maybe a screenshot of this episode or grab the link and send it to somebody who you think would be really helped by what Toni has to say and her message today? And of course, I love to see you over on the Instagrams. I’m Julie Lyles Carr, all the places. You can also check out allmomdoes.com, where you will find all kinds of fun and informational kinds of stuff. Rebecca puts our show notes together each and every week, so be sure and check those out as well. And I’ll see you the next time on the AllMomDoes Podcast.
