Episode 35: Strong Like Water - Aundi Kolber
Oh my goodness, to say I am thrilled to introduce you all to Aundi Kolber is a major understatement.
I love this woman, and if you have followed her work at all, I'm sure you do too! I'm so grateful we had the chance to sit down and talk about her amazing, brand-new book, Strong Like Water. It was such a beautiful, enriching conversation in which Aundi shared some of her own story of healing and how she got into this work, as well as so much of the healing that has happened over the past several years and what it has taught her.
I loved hearing her talk about her relationship with being "the strong one" for most of her life, as I think so many of us can relate to this. What is good about it? What is difficult about it? What is tender about it, and how can we show ourselves compassion and gratitude for the strength we have had to build because we've endured hard things?
She also explained her "flow of strength" concept, which I found to be so enlightening and liberating...basically how there's this flow from situational strength to transitional strength to integrated strength that happens as we heal through and process through different things. And there is a reason and honor for each kind of strength, which allows us to both show ourselves compassion and be able to recognize and move along the spectrum, utilizing compassionate resourcing (another wonderful term in the book) along the way.
One of my favorite parts of this conversation was when Aundi explained that our bodies and brains have a natural bent toward healing, and empowering people to access this natural part of themselves and to be able to listen to the cues their bodies are giving them as they move toward healing is so very important. We talked about how threatening it is for trauma survivors to be told to just listen to someone else and learn how to do life instead of being able to tune into themselves, and Aundi's heart to speak to this and offer healing to this dynamic is so so beautiful.
Oh yeah, and we talked about co-regulating with Lorelai Gilmore. You'll have to listen to find out why. ;)
Enjoy this wonderful conversation, friends! And as always, if you could leave a rating and review on this podcast, it would help so much!
More about Aundi:
Aundi Kolber is a licensed professional counselor (MA, LPC) and author of the critically acclaimed Try Softer. She has received additional training in her specialization of trauma- and body-centered therapies and is passionate about the integration of faith and psychology. Aundi regularly speaks at local and national events, and she has appeared on podcasts such as The Lazy Genius with Kendra Adachi, Typology, Go and Tell Gals, and The Next Right Thing with Emily P. Freeman. As a survivor of trauma, Aundi brings hard-won knowledge about the work of change, the power of redemption, and the beauty of experiencing God with us in our pain.
Purchase Strong Like Water here! aundikolber.com/strong-like-water
Connect with Aundi:
Instagram - @aundikolber
Twitter - @aundikolber
Website - aundikolber.com
Connect with Gabi:
Instagram - @gabiruth
TikTok - @gabiruth84
Facebook - facebook.com/gabiruth84
Website - gabiruth.com
Coach with Gabi - gabiruth.com/book-a-1on1-call
Invite Gabi to Speak - gabiruth.com/speaking
(TRANSCRIPT) Ep. 35: Strong Like Water - Aundi Kolber
Note: Transcript is created by AI. Please excuse any errors.
Gabi: Hey friends. Welcome back to Pain to Passion Live, guys. I am so excited today because I get to talk with Aundi Kolber. If you do not know her, you are going to love her. If you do know her already, you're going to be thrilled to hear this episode, but I'm so, so grateful that I get to speak with you today.
Aundi, thank you so much for being here.
Aundi: Yes, it is such an honor to be with you and yeah, I'm really looking forward to our time.
Gabi: I think we're gonna have a great conversation. I've really been looking forward to it. I did wanna read a little bit of your bio for those of us who maybe are not as familiar. And then I'm gonna ask you some fun questions and we're gonna have a great conversation.
So Aundi Kolber, this beautiful woman right here, is a licensed professional counselor and author of the critically acclaimed Try Softer. She has received additional training in her specialization of trauma and body-centered therapies, and is passionate about the integration of faith and psychology. Aundi regularly speaks at local and national events, and she has appeared on podcasts such as The Lazy Genius with Kendra Adachi, Typology, Go and tell Gals, and The Next Right Thing with Emily P. Freeman. As a survivor of trauma, Aundi brings hard-won knowledge about the work of change, the power of redemption, and the beauty of experiencing God with us in our pain.
I love all of it. I love your integration of faith and psychology and just how, um, just diving right in, I noticed in your book like how compassionately you even go towards that because a lot of people have been hurt in the faith community as well, but just remembering like no matter where we are, that God is for us and he loves us and all of those things. But I would love for you to kind of give us a little more insight into who you are, where you are, what you do beyond what's said here in your bio.
Aundi: Yeah. Well, so I, so like it said in the bio, I, um, I am a therapist, I'm a licensed professional counselor, have been for, um, nearly 15 years, and that's been a huge, you know, part of my own journey. Um, but alongside that, you know, I, I am a survivor of complex trauma and so I…there's just been this sort of interwoven sort of inside-out experience where as I have healed and learned, um, it's been fun to, um, be able to offer more spaces of healing for others, too. Um, another huge part of my life is that I am married and I have two kiddos and that has just been such a gift in my life.
And I know that's not everybody's experience, but there's been a lot of really beautiful repair because so much of my, um, trauma occurred in childhood development. Um, not ex, you know, a lot of my trauma, um, has attachment trauma, um, interwoven. And so that has just been a way of learning and living, um, the healing.
You know, because I think sometimes I joke with my clients, it's like, if you could go to, uh, like a desert island by, or not a desert island, but like a, a tropical island by yourself, um, you perceive, like you're like, yeah, overall I'm doing pretty good, right? Like there's the sense, but when we bring in other folks, it tends to rub up against our pain.
And I think that that can be hard, but also good because it points us towards, um, Our continued growth path and healing path and um, and so yeah, that's another really big part of my life. Um, lastly, our family made a huge move from Colorado this last summer to now western Michigan. And so, you know, right now, um, we, it's, it's January and it is very gray here.
Um, and I'm coming from Colorado that used to have like 280 days of sun a year. And so, It has been a big transition, but it's actually been a really cool adventure for our family.
Gabi: Yeah, I love all of that. I mean, I definitely agree. It's my children who actually introduced me to the fact that I am a complex trauma survivor, and I'm so grateful for all the ways that we've learned and grown together, so I love that you mentioned that. I'm also a Colorado girl. I was born and raised in Colorado. I live in Spokane, Washington now. . So . Yes, yes. We have those things in common, but yeah, I absolutely love, it's very true when you rub up against other people, like that's your opportunity for some pain and also your opportunity for a ton of growth, right? So I would love to hear, because your new book, Strong Like Water, is actually coming out the day this podcast is releasing, so that's very exciting. Guys. Go get it. Today the link is in the show notes.
Um, it's, I have a copy right here. For any of you watching the video Strong Like Water, I have devoured the book. It is wonderful. Um, but your first book was Try Softer. I'd love to hear like what was that journey from Try Softer to Strong Like Water. What happened in the interim that made you think like, I need to write this book as well?
Aundi: Hmm. Yeah. Such a good question. Um, in so many ways. There are a lot of parallels, um, for Try Softer. One of the things I would say and have said is it's sort of, I wrote that book in many ways for my younger self. Like that's actually where it began. Before it was ever really a thought of who would read else, would read it.
Um, I think that's who I had in mind with my younger self. Like what do I wish I could have? Mm. My younger self, and so, so try Softer was birthed out of that. And I sometimes have said, um, it's, it's sort of like I've been writing Try Softer my whole life. Well, similarly what I would say is that I have actually, I feel like I've also been writing maybe like a slightly different, like, it's like maybe in a different box or a different category, but Strong Like Water is also that, like it is something that, what I have, have come to say a lot is I have long had an ambivalent relationship with my own strength. Mm-hmm. and one of the things I talk about in Try Softer, but I, I really expand on in Strong Like Water is, um, what it has been like. And, and, and my lived experience is that I have been the strong one in lots of areas of my life and what I, you know, there's been a lot of grief around that part, partly because in my own story, the way I coped with trauma in many ways happened to be the ways that, so like society really liked. Totally how I coped. Yeah. Like I became an achiever. I became really good at reading other people and giving them what they wanted from me.
Um, I became good at pushing myself beyond my capacity. Mm-hmm. and other people didn't know what that cost me, and I didn't even name what it cost me, but I for sure was always living beyond my capacity, and so in, as I've healed in my own journey of Try Softer, it's almost like I feel like Try Softer could not help but birth Strong Like Water.
It's like the natural, it has been the natural journey that, I mean, even as, I mean much of what I write about in Strong Like Water was happening even during Try Softer, it's almost just like a different focus, but it's like there is a sense in which that internal softness produces something in us that is deeply strong.
And, and that I think is the thing that, you know, our culture does not get like, like people, you know, I mean, people so want to be so binary about this. Like, if you're soft, you're weak. And if you push yourself really hard, then you're strong and I think what I hope to do in this book in Strong Like Water is to say strength is so much more expansive than how we've talked about it. And this is not like a set, like a, like a time to just, you know, rip on all the ways we've survived. I think of, particularly for trauma survivors, for folks who've experienced marginalization and oppression, I'm like, you know what? Survival is a gift. Mm-hmm. the way God designed us to survive.
Thank goodness that's the grace of God that we could survive. Yeah. And we can honor that. And so really Strong Like Water is my attempt to put language and to put conceptualization to, um, this, this spectrum we live on in which we can move from and move out of only survival towards a deeper integrated type of strength.
But never to shame how we survived, but rather to repair, to repair and sort of wrap around, um, with care and compassion, all the ways we weren't safe. To call them home so they feel safe enough, like those parts of us feel safe enough that we can fully live. Mm.
Gabi: That is so beautiful.
I mean, I'm connecting so much in my mind as you're speaking to this because I know as a trauma survivor myself, like we can often see the world in such black and white like spectrum where we can start to feel like that as we heal. We can feel like that strength in us was maybe not something that we liked so much.
And you even said in the book, Something along the lines of you feared the warrior, your warrior self. Can you talk about like what you meant by that and why that might be?
Aundi: Yeah. Great question. Yeah. I mean, when I, even going back to what I said earlier about like the ambivalence towards the strength, how I perceived the strength. You know, it was sometimes I'll refer to it as a certain kind of strength. But it, you know, so one of the parts of my story that I do talk about a lot more in Strong Lake Water is that I, um, I played a lot of basketball. Basketball was my favorite sport. And I mean, I played in college, I, I spent hours and hours of my life practicing perfecting my crossover and my, you know, my free throws. And I mean, so I, I devoted a lot of time to this sport and this, you know, was a resource to me in the sense that it really wasn't safe for me to be fierce at home. Mm. Yeah. Um, I was experiencing. Psychological, verbal, emotional abuse and you know, for a lot of kiddos, I mean, I also, you know, part of the way I coped with that at times was through things like dissociation, or it might have been anxiety, like walking on eggshells, eggshells.
But I feel super grateful for the resource of, for example, basketball because it was like some of the anger, some of that fierceness, some of that sense of like, you don't get to do that. To me, I was able to bring to that sport. And so, you know, I not, I know not everyone has that, those resources even when they're growing up.
But I look back. I mean that is, even now, you know, I don't play a lot of basketball, but I have what I would call basketball Aundi, in me. And this is just this part of myself that is like, you know what if the game's on the line pass me the ball. Yeah. And she has this like tenacity and I'm so grateful for that part of myself.
But what happened is, is that as I, and I wasn't playing basketball as much anymore, I didn't know what to do with that part of myself. Um, because, you know, sometimes in faith spaces, sometimes in other, you know, relational settings, people didn't know, also didn't know what to do maybe. Yeah. You know, like I, I didn't quite know how to separate the trauma that that part of myself had experienced from the beauty and the sort of the gold of that part. Yes. Because that part of myself, I am so grateful for. Um, but it was, she was so wrapped up also in sort of survival energy that sometimes if I felt like I had to access that part of myself, it could send me into a, a full or partial trauma response.
And that was scary for me. Yeah, that was scary because it felt like it felt similar to being back in the trauma, so it made me want to sort of avoid it. It made me feel like if I go there, like I'm gonna go there and this is gonna take a lot of energy. Yeah. And when I talk about in the book is that as I have learned to listen to that part and what she's afraid of and what she needs to say, and as she has been resourced, sort of like helping her to understand here's where I am, and I'm an adult now. I am no longer a 16 year old girl who's trapped in a house where she has no other choices. Now I have choices as that part of myself comes to believe that what I have found is that she can join me. With my adult self to, to live into the fullness of not only my softness and my tenderness, because that's very much a part of what I've developed, especially through my work of the work of Try Softer, but it's like this, this warrior part was like, I have things to say too. Yes. And so she is also at the table. Mm-hmm. . And that has been just a profoundly, at times difficult, at times a little bit scary, but also satisfying. Yeah. To know that we are made for the fullness of our God-given selves.
Gabi: Hmm. Yeah. Which I mean really speaks to the title of the book, right?
Strong like water. Like maybe you could just tell us right now, what does that mean?
Aundi: Yeah. I mean, I. . How I envision that is that it is Strong Like Water is a way of existing in the world in which we have an expansive, um, ability to access different parts of ourselves mm-hmm. . And so it allows us to not only move through hard, but also care for the wounds that we still carry.
Gabi: Mm-hmm. . Yeah, I love that. And just talking about like that word expansiveness. I love that word. And as we heal and grow into all of these different aspects of ourselves, and none of them have the shame attached to them that they did before. I just think that that is so powerful and I, I kind of like get a little bit teary-eyed thinking about little Aundi, you know, and that fierceness of her and just like how God knew how to wire you for the search, the situations that you were going to live through, and how now that way that you're wired, that fierceness and the softness, like they're both parts of you and they continue to serve you and serve others as well. And so as we learn as your book so beautifully, helps us walk through with practical steps and everything. As we learned to embrace all of those different nuanced aspects of ourselves without shame, like the power and the healing that can come to us and through us is just pretty incredible.
Hmm. So I love that. Which I would love for you to explain a little bit more. You talk a lot throughout the book about the flow of strength, which I had heard of a lot of the different things that you spoke on in the book before, just because of, you know, so much of the work that I've done, but this flow of strength isn't something that I had actually heard before.
So I'd love to get your take on that and what is that? And um, just explain all of that for us. That'd be awesome.
Aundi: Yeah. Yeah. So the flow of strength is actually a term that I coined. Um, To help us to like to put a little bit more practical words towards this idea. You know, we've been talking about expansiveness and so, you know, one, the thing, my editors, they're, they've been wonderful, but they're always pushing me to be like, you know, sometimes it's easy to talk about things in the abstract.
It's like, go out and be expansive. And then people are like, well, what does that mean? Sure. You know, like, I mean, we can enjoy how those words land for us. But I also think this, my hope to this was to put more language to, so what would it look like to value different types of strength? And not only to value it, but then to begin to build on it, to leverage it, to sort of have more choice about how we, when we are, um, connecting to different types and so on. One side of the flow of strength, um, is situational strength. And with that, I mean there's essentially what I, I did as I thought about this, is there's a lot of overlap with the window of tolerance. So I'll, I'll connect that too in case folks are familiar with that, but, Situational strength is essentially survival strength.
So when we are outside of our window of tolerance, and you know, that means that the, our prefrontal cortex at top of our brain, um, is either partially or fully offline. Um, we are living from truly the survival part of our brain, and our body and our brain is, are making decisions essentially just to make sure that we...
There's no like, ooh, what are the pros and cons? Is this a good idea? Like, it's just like, it literally feels like life or death. And I say it like that because it, it, it shines light on, you know, sometimes for some reason, I've been using this example a lot, but if going to the grocery store is bringing up life or death energy in your body, it's something that's important to get curious about, right? Because if we can step back and see, you know, once we're a little more grounded, we might be able to recognize, even if it feels that way, like, like you, this is not a life or death situation, but for folks, you know, with un, like for example, unresolved trauma. There's two elements of this. One might be, um, you really are in a life or death situation, you know, like, again, like going back to, to my story, I had a lot of situations that, um, as a, as a kiddo, there was a sense in which that was survival. The choices I made that was based on survival and. When the trauma doesn't have a, a chance to complete itself when it's not resolved.that lives in our body and if it gets activated, it can bring us right back to the situational strength.
So I share it like that partly to understand that anyone can have situational strength, but folks who have unresolved trauma there sometimes might be a mismatch of if the situation is actually, truly unsafe, or we may be perceiving it as unsafe now. There's no shame in that. It's just, we just name that, that might be where we are beginning.
Right? So with the flow of strength, the way that I am, um, sort of conceptualize that, is that as our body has the resourcing and the safety that it needs to begin to process the sort of that survival energy, what happens is, is we move along that flow towards what I call transitional strength. And transitional strength is really this space in which our, our prefrontal cortex is beginning to come back online.
Our body is maybe beginning to settle now. It's important to understand, and this is something I dive into much more than I did in Try Softer, that this is really kind of our growth edge. I talk about it like almost like we have one foot in the trauma response and one foot sort of in our window of tolerance. That place where we sort of feel like ourselves. And this is the place where we can sort of observe ourselves. We can begin to think about thinking. We might have more capacity to be like, you know, I'm noticing that going to the grocery store is really making me anxious, um, makes me feel like someone's chasing me.
You know, things like that. This is the place where, where we really have more choice. And in a way, this is where a lot of Try Softer is happening, um, is within the transitional strength and it's a really beautiful, important space. And then as we continue to offer those cues of safety and resources to ourselves, our body naturally and sort of almost intuitively moves that energy through and we begin to move towards integrated strength.
And integrated strength is more like, I describe it like there is a sense of completion to what you have experienced. Um, it doesn't mean that everything in your life is perfect. It doesn't mean that you are perfect. It doesn't even mean that there aren't other areas of your life that may activate situational strength in the future, but it means for that sort of thread, that thread that you have been sort of observing or working with.
Your body has moved it all the way through to the point that you might have ins a lot more insight about it. You might be able to, um, learn from it in ways that you couldn't really learn from it when you were still sort of more in it. Mm-hmm. . Um, and I think there's, there's two important points here. One is that sometimes we will move the through the flow of strength really, like, like it could be as quickly as you almost get hit by a car, your situational strength goes, boom. Move out of the way. You move out of the way. You notice you didn't get hit. That's a cue of safety. You're noticing that. You're like, I'm okay. You're back into transitional strength. Like, whoa, that was a lot.
Your body metabolizes it and 20 minutes later you're like, Ooh. Maybe next time I should, I need to look both ways, really look both ways before I do that, right? It could be pretty quick, or there are certain threads that could be the work of a lifetime. There could be times when you're like, oh, I keep coming back into transitional strength, and then, and then I get kicked back to, to sit to situational.
And then I'm mm-hmm. And I just wanna normalize that. Yeah. You know, that our bodies, this is not a finish line, it's not a checklist. It's our bodies are doing the work that they can do as they have the safety and resources to do it. And, you know, this is maybe to bring in a faith element, um, our inherent dignity, our inherent, our belovedness, God's posture to us that has not changed by where we are on that flow that exists apart from, yeah, any of those things.
Gabi: Yeah. Which is such an amazing thing to be able to recognize and remember. I know that we can struggle to remember that sometimes when we're living in like shame mode, but I love like, cuz you, you weave this theme of the flow of strength through the whole book and talk about how to implement it in all of those things.
But I think there's just so much in it because you can feel like, oh, I keep getting stuck in this place. But there is a way to move through and to bring res resolution and to get into that, you know, ventral vagal space and you can do the same thing over and over again, which I know this brings up probably for some of the listeners, the question of like, okay, but how, you know, so, one of the, one of the terms that you use a lot in the book is compassionate resourcing. And so I'd love for you to kind of explain like what compassionate resourcing is and how that helps us move through this flow of strength.
Aundi: Yeah. Yeah. So compassionate resourcing, um, Is I, I really, a lot of my work around that is influenced, um, especially by Dr. Ariel Schwartz. Um, she defines resourcing as anything that communicates safety to our body in the present. Um, and then a lot of my understanding of it as really influenced by my training in things like EMDR, um, the work of Dr. Laurel, uh, Lauren Parnell. Um, she's done some great work and so sort of for me, and then really integrating polyvagal theory, right?
Mm-hmm. , which is understanding that, uh, Steven Porges, Dr. Steven Porges has this quote and he says, um, safety is the treatment, creating safety is the work. Mm-hmm. . And that was a really, um, inspiring quote for me as I was doing this work of thinking about like, how do we solve for this if safety. Is the treatment, what does that look like in this kind of work?
Mm-hmm. , and I think there's, you know, there's great, there's lots of great resources that are beginning to happen, but within this flow of strength, how I imagine compassionate resourcing is that our body moves intuitively towards healing as it, uh, perceives safety. Mm-hmm. . And so the compassionate resourcing is this very intentionally broad sort of mechanism that I imagine moves us in ways that allows us to, um, tap into our natural God-given propensity to heal. Hmm. Um, a lot of EMDR, which is something I'm trained in, eye movement desensitization reprocessing, which is a, is a type of trauma therapy. Um, although that can be, you know, used for other types of, uh, sort of nervous system work.
There's this presupposition within EMDR that the body has the natural ability to heal. Mm-hmm. . And when I learned that, I mean, this has been, gosh, eight years, I think that I've, you know, done this work and this training and it's like things began to fall in place for me around some of my own healing, but also like working with clients of this is less about telling someone, here's every single thing you will ever need to know how to heal. And I would say it's more. How can we make sure and come around folks to make sure that they have what they need to live to their own, to listen to their own God-given wisdom. Mm. I love that the wisdom that God placed in their bodies to move. To, to walk that healing path. Now, this doesn't mean we don't need other people.
That doesn't mean we don't need and aren't, um, also influenced by the spirit of God. It doesn't mean we don't sometimes need therapists. All of that is true, but unfortunately in some faith spaces and oftentimes in our culture, there is this very, like this is the. And you are the learner, right? And do not question that ever. And this I think, is a very harmful dynamic, um, to honestly everyone, but particularly trauma survivors. Mm-hmm. , because what it does is that it causes people to ignore their own bodies. Yeah. In their own lived experience and. This journey of compassionate resourcing. I mean, there are, there are lots of things we could talk about, like in the book, um, I was like, I wanna resource people as much as I can.
So I try to give lots of ideas about ways to build safety in your own life, both externally, internally, to leverage that. But part of it requires a listening. . Mm-hmm. , it will always require an internal listening to ask your own system and what do you need? Yeah. And what would help you feel safe and for all the times when you were treated, um, inappropriately, abusively, dramatically chaotically.
And what would you need? Yeah. So that there can be. Yeah.
Gabi: Absolutely. It's so powerful and learning that we can listen to our own bodies, I think is so liberating for trauma survivors. . I know it has been for me to be like, oh, like I actually can make these choices, and I do love that you give so many different options to just start thinking about in the book from, you know, like, what's your experience with a safe person? How did that feel? Or, um, what's an object that makes you feel safe? Or like, you, you reiterated something that other coaches and um, therapists have said to me before as well about even characters like in a TV show, like, okay, Lorelai Gilmore, she always makes me feel happy, you know? Yeah. I love that. Like that kinda thing. So, um, yeah, I agree. I think that getting into this space of understanding, like you can listen into yourself and find those resources that work for you is really powerful. Um, and you also talk about like finding the, it's kind of related, but that internal safe place to land.
You talk about safety a lot, which is my thing. Okay. Giving people safe spaces is like the goal of my entire life, you know, but realizing that you can find that internal safe space to land. Can you talk about what that means? Like internally?
Aundi: Yeah, yeah. Yep. I'm so glad you really picked up on that. So, with the flow of strength, part of, I think, in a bigger tra trajectory of the flow of strength, like I think really what leads us towards a more consistent ability to move towards integrated strength is the ability to internalize safety.
I mean, in a, in a way that is really what it means to be in transitional strength. That in some way your body has, there is enough safety to come out of full survival mode, and so the goal, and, and I spend a lot of time at various points in the book, helping people sort of imagine what might it be like for you to have things maybe someone has in a way offered to you as safety, you know? Mm-hmm, like even with your example of like, Lorelai Gilmore. You know, it's like, that is a great example of lots of people with like, for example, attachment trauma, did not have safe caregivers. Um, or you know, if they were to have. Think about their caregiver as that person, that would actually not be helpful.
Right. That would like really activate them. Mm-hmm. . And so that's not who we wanna bring in, in that space, you know? And so the ability to begin to remember like, oh, here's a time that my body felt settled when I watched that show. And I, um, and I thought about, you know, like I, I, I was sort of with Lorelai Gilmore, to then bring, you know, so one of the, some of the practices in the book are like, we actually work to visualize and integrate into sort of like a practice for you that we can anchor into your body. And what we're doing is we're actually working with the attachment template. I mean, that's essentially what we're doing is we, you know, a lot of what should happen as kiddo is that, is that we ideally in when parents or caregivers are good enough, is that we internalize their care so that as we grow and become an adult, that's the template that lives in your body. So when you're an adult and you're like, man, I'm sick, we recall the times we were cared for when we were sick, right?
And we activate that and it helps us take care of our. . Mm-hmm. . But for some of us, we didn't have that. Right? Right. I mean, that's essentially what we are talking about with attachment, different types of attachment trauma or wounding. And so just in this really specific way, we're literally working with the templates, the, the neural pathways that inform those experiences.
And we are actively participating. Like, yes, I didn't get to choose then, but I get to choose. And how can I sort of build that in? So that is a compassionate resource. That compassionate resource is then leveraged. Mm-hmm. by, you know, like, so you're having a hard, sad day and you're thinking about, oh man, how does Lorelai talk to her daughter, you know, when she's having a hard day? Could I practice, could I borrow even a little bit of that, you know? And so I think that's just a great example of just one. That's just one thing that we can choose to do from a place of compassion for ourselves. And certainly as we go, we wanna build in as we're able, um, folks, you know, it could be a therapist, it could be, could be a coach, it could be a friend, it could be, you know, these other things that we continue to build the safety. Yeah. And our body will continue to intuitively tell us what, what they need to keep healing. Yeah.
Gabi: And knowing we have the choice to over and over again, choose those safe spaces and how choosing over and over again gives our body and our minds more resources to draw from, like,
Aundi: You're okay.
Gabi: You're safe and healing like all of it. I just love all of this so very, very much. And I know we're running out of time. I absolutely love this conversation. Like I said, before we push record, I could probably talk to you about your book for like three hours, there's so much goodness in it. Um, I would like to just touch on a little bit cuz I'm like the biggest Bible girl, okay? The Bible has been a compassionate resource for me for most of my life, and I know that's not the same for a lot of people, but I hope that through my work I can help more people see the compassion that resides in the Bible.
But you bring up Romans five in the book about, We glory in our sufferings, which you know, can be a little bit off-putting when you just put it like that, but I'd love to just hear your take on that because it really resonated with me and how it just ends with that hope.
Aundi: Mm mm-hmm. . Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that was important to me as I was writing that particular piece, Was to say, you know, I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to remember exactly how I said it, but essentially like, um, we can glory in our sufferings, not because we're happy about the sufferings, um, but essentially because God is with us and I, again, I don't have it in front of me, but it's like I go on to say, and this hope doesn't put us to shame. Right. And I think I, one of the things that was important to me is, again that in like in the suffering, but not because of the suffering. Right, right. That there's that shift and it might seem like a very small shift to some people, but I think when you've been through trauma, when you've had people weaponize your pain, when you've had people sort of present God through, in my opinion, in ways that can seem abusive as ways to sort of like explain away, right? Maybe why you even, and I'm putting this in quotes for people who can't see me. Um, you deserve what you, whatever you experience. Um, to me, more than anything, I see that as almost like a picture of Strong Like Water. Like we glory in our sufferings. That there's almost a sense in which that is observant, not, not in the same way as like, here's the reason you glory. Right, right. Yeah. And so that is just, I, I don't know if that's how that landed for you when you read it, but I try to be really careful, um, because of exactly what you say, there are many folks that I have worked with and talked to who unfortunately, They've had to do trauma work around their literal faith, cause it's been weaponized. Mm-hmm. . Um, but as my friend Steve Carter says, I think the thing under the thing is that is the profound posture of goodness and kindness and compassion of God.
Right. And that there are so many, there are so many nuggets. I think that when we have eyes to see, I think that they're there. Yeah. Um, and sometimes unfortunately, folks who perhaps haven't done their own work mm-hmm. May sometimes take some of those and sort of weaponize that, um, that at times can further hurt people.
Gabi: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. So I do think that you explained it very well and just that underlying fact of the compassion of God, not like the vengeance of God or the I told you so of God or anything like that, but that he's with us compassionately through all of. That's right in the moment that it happened through it.
And like I said earlier, um, talking about like little Aundi and the resources that you were given to survive the situation that you were in, and now seeing how that has benefited you now and is helping so many other people. Like to me, like that's what God does, you know? Mm-hmm. , he recycles things so that there's always beauty at the end, and I think that that is really where that landed for me.
So thank you for your incredible wisdom. Your wonderful work again, everybody go get Strong Like Water, get Try Softer too while you're at it. Um, but if there's anything else that you would like to share in closing, and also if you could tell us the best ways to connect with you on Instagram and stuff like that, I'll put it all in the show notes, but feel free to just share whatever you have left on your heart right now.
Aundi: Yeah. Well thank you so much just for opening up this space and I hope, um, yeah, I hope folks feel Here and that they can find a space In the words that I've written, I, um, just love, I love equipping people. I love helping folks to see things maybe differently than they had had been shown something before.
And so that's my deep hope that you would feel God's love, um, through the work that I do. Um, you can find me if you're interested in my work, aundikolber.com. I've got some different resources on my website. You can find, um, the books, anywhere books are sold. Um, and you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at aundikolber.
Gabi: awesome. Well, wonderful. Thank you again for this time. I know it's going to be really impactful for the listeners. You are much appreciated and God bless. Hopefully we'll chat soon.
Aundi: Thank you. Bye.