TRANSCRIPT
Carole and Britton Part 1
Britton: [00:00:00]
Gissele: Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content.
Today we’re talking about, dealing with infidelity, with compassion. And my guests are Britton and Carolee Beckham raised in the strict dogma of the Mormon church. and with infidelity threatening their marriage and family, they found themselves at a cliff’s edge Through a deep commitment to heal these two left everything they knew to find themselves.
Over a period of five years, they rebooted their relationship and traveled the world seeking their truth with their four children in tow. They have emerged on the other side as an embodied and awakened couple with a powerful message to share. Please join me in welcoming Britton and Carolee.
Hello. Hi.
Thank you for having us.
Gissele: Oh, no. Thank you for being [00:01:00] on the show. I’m so excited to be talking about this topic because I think it’s a challenging one, especially around how you manage infidelity. Can you start by telling the audience a little bit about how you met and got together and then how kind of the relationship evolved to the point where there was some infidelity?
Carolee: Yeah, so, as you mentioned in the introduction, we were raised Mormon and in the culture of Mormonism there’s a pretty like common pathway of meeting your significant other. And so we met as like most Mormons tend to at a at church. And in the Mormon faith they have something called a singles word where only young single adults attend church together.
And the the main purpose is so that like they can foster the opportunity for young single people to meet and find who they’re gonna marry. So I had graduated from university already when Britton he was a [00:02:00] missionary for the church. And had just gotten back from that mission.
And we went to the same church in Orm, Utah. And we literally met in the, that the first meeting, it’s called Sacrament Meeting. And right after the meeting was over, he came up and introduced himself to me. Do you wanna add anything to that, that first meet?
Britton: There was a little sparkle in her eye when I saw her and the moment that I first saw her there was this like, connection.
I didn’t understand it. I didn’t even know what it meant. It just seemed intriguing. And and so for the first time and the only time I went up and introduced myself immediately to a woman and asked for her her number. So that was, that was how we met at church. That was how we became friends.
Gissele: That’s lovely.
So let’s fast forward a little bit. ’cause you have like four kids now, right? Because Is, yeah. Which is [00:03:00] amazing. Must be a very busy.
I’d like to get to the point where the infidelity happened. Was it that you guys were struggling in the relationship for a while or was it a situation where there was really no signs that, you know, like the relationship seemed to be going okay and then this sort of just happened?
Britton: I wanna actually, let me jump in on that. Yeah, you answered. So I believe the infidelity could be best described as the lack of total commitment from the beginning. part of our healing journey was we came to this point in 2022 where we realized we weren’t all in on each other and we had never been neither one of us.
Carolee: And we were married in 2009. Wow. So that
Gissele: I love that you guys are saying this because I think there’s many people in the relationships that have one foot out and one foot in, and I think this is, this is very important. Please go on.
Britton: Yeah. looking back with the eyes that I have now, [00:04:00] I can see that when IF first dropped in to this relationship and this wedding, this marriage and this whole thing, that there was a part of me that didn’t want to do it.
And it wasn’t a big part. It wasn’t like a huge part. It wasn’t like even a, maybe more than 10%. It was, it was small, but it was there. And that amount of lack of commitment, lack of, to total desire to be in it did leave something open. You know, it, it left my energy open. It left a a way for me to leak my energy out.
It left a way for ingress of others to come in. And so it began from the beginning for me. It wasn’t like a decision happened and then, you know, but it was, it was unconscious, it was subconscious. It was nothing that I was actively like noticing or pursuing at the time. But I know looking back now, and we’ve had lots of conversations about this and, and this is all part [00:05:00] of how people heal and become aware, become conscious.
So yeah, it’s kind of a wild thing. But definitely from the beginning and the initial so I, you could say that the hardest parts of the infidelity, ’cause it was a pattern. And the way that it was like exercised was through emotional connection with other women and sexting and just having conversations that were out of the realm of appropriateness for a married man or a married woman in the case of the people that I was connecting with.
And so, so yeah, that happened a lot during the pregnancies. And the reason why is that was the time, that was when the connection between us hit the lowest.
Gissele: Hmm. Every
Britton: time that she was pregnant, she felt out of her body. She felt less connected to me, and I’ll let her talk about this, but this is how I felt, right?
Like, I didn’t feel her attention, I didn’t feel her desire, I didn’t feel her [00:06:00] as someone other, any other than just this person carrying a baby. And so we didn’t have a strong connection during those moments. And that’s when it became much more difficult for me to like, maintain my energy in a,zipped up way.
So I, I let it out and I let it leak out. I let it I would find opportunities to connect and flirt and do different things like that.
Carolee: I’ll, I’ll jump in and add, you know, for me, it, it was actually not something that I was even aware of, right? Like, deep in the program of my own psyche, I had been from a very little girl, you know, standpoint.
So excited about the time I’d grow up and I’d get married and I’d have a family. how to convey how often as a young woman growing up in Mormonism, the conversation wasn’t around, what are you going to be when you grow up? What are you going to do? It was like, you will be a mother, you know, and so you’ll be a wife.
And so I have [00:07:00] this little saying that I use often where I was like, I was really deeply programmed to be a wife and a mother, and not a lover, but I like really wanted that lover ship. You know, I like, so, so we were checking the boxes, you know, I had found this in, to me, this incredibly attractive man that wanted to marry me.
And I loved him. And we really did love each other. There was so much, there was such a spark and a connection. When I first met him, going back to that little moment at church that I mentioned, I actually was hesitant about him from the very beginning simply because I knew his brothers. I had already like, made out with one of his brothers and.
Yeah, I know that’s kind of a funny story. That’s funny. But it wasn’t like I was in a relationship with his brother. I just, I had had this other relationship, this, that I was engaged to my ex-fiancee and I was going through stuff and I just knew I needed to kiss somebody. And his brother was the easiest person for that at that moment before I even knew him.
Right. And so, like, [00:08:00] you know, I, I was interested. I really wanted intimacy. We had beautiful open, very clear conversations about our desires. Before we got married, we had not had sex with each other before we got married. ’cause we were Mormon and we were, we got married in the Salt Lake temple, so there wasn’t like a lot of intimate exploration.
It was all like really guarded and shielded before we got married. And then we dove into the marriage and I went on birth control. I had never had sex before him, you know, before marrying him. And so I didn’t have an education about fertility planning and awareness and how to, like, understand the cycles of my body.
And so birth control seemed like the best way to prevent pregnancy and then that really wrecked havoc on my emotional health. Like, I had struggled in my twenties with my own emotional health and I had some depression and had some things. So like to me, I was [00:09:00] so in the dark, I had no idea that he was connecting with other women.
I had no idea. Like, I knew that he, he would say things to me like, oh, I really want. Deeper connection, but even then, we didn’t actually have the language or the emotional intelligence to really understand the depth of what we both needed and how to communicate that and how to not expect it from the other in like a really codependent way, you know?
And so the first disclosure of the infidelity occurred, like you said, during our first pregnancy. And he disclosed it actually after I’d given birth. When our oldest, who’s now 13, was just a little infant in my arms. I remember him telling me that he had met this woman and they had kissed. And, you know, that that was really devastating, heartbreaking.
But also even in that moment, we didn’t really know, we didn’t have the tools of how to properly handle [00:10:00] that and navigate that. It was just almost like, oh, that’s a thing. Let’s brush it under the rug and like move on. And you know, and so it’s an interesting time because now in our present state of awareness and understanding and the somatic and the healing and the journey of like the trauma informed healing that we’ve done, we’re completely different people.
So we see these agreements of partnership in a, in a totally like enlightened, really embodied way now. But we lacked all of that in the beginning. And it took until, well, until we began our healing for us to really start. But then even that, it was a couple of years into our healing before we really understood and were able to make the right kind of agreements that we’re both in alignment with ourselves, right?
So yeah, it, it was a, it was a hard journey, right? Like super, super hard. That in, in the beginning years, we kind of almost tried to ignore and then move through [00:11:00] and continue on. You know, I, I thought. Making really good food and taking care of the home would be how I would show my love. Hmm. And I, I did all that really well, you know and so it was devastating to me that it wasn’t enough, but I see now why it wasn’t enough.
But I don’t wanna like paint the picture that he cheated because I wasn’t enough. Like it’s not that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Like there was different energy of what he needed and what I needed. And all of this was the catalyst that really helped us see what needed to shift and who we are as individuals and who we are as a couple.
Gissele: Yeah. And thank you so much for raising like, the whole programming around marriage. ’cause I think that’s sort of a starting point for our conversation. What I mean is that what you said Carollee, which is women are programmed to want to have that fairytale happily of after you look at the old Disney movies and so on, that you probably grew up with, that I grew up with.
They never tell you what happens after [00:12:00] the girl goes to the castle and gets married. They don’t talk about like Right. Living the dirty clothing and all of those things. And you know, it’s so funny. I’m happily married and at the same time I also reflect on the fact in my marriage journey.
And I think to myself, that’s so interesting that a decision I made when I was 27 was expected to last me the rest of my life, right? Mm-hmm. And I am very grateful that I have gone on this journey and that I have grown and expanded and so has my husband. And we have grown and expanded together because there was times when we might not have made that choice of growing and expanding together.
But the whole concept of marriage, that you make a decision at one point in your life based on the awareness and and experiences you have at that time and expect that to last the rest of your life. It seems, it seems paradoxical, does it not Just from that, that. Perspective? Well,
Britton: it’s, it’s immature at, at the very least, and it’s, [00:13:00] it’s detrimental at the worst because we are human beings.
We’re growing, we’re evolving all the time. We’re gaining more experience and wisdom. And to think that we can make such a monumental life decision around and something so solid, it’s just gonna be whatever way and not have that be confronted with new information. Well, it just shows our immaturity. It also, I think, paints the immaturity we have as a culture around marriage.
Mm-hmm. And this idea of the princess and the fairy tale and, and all of that because, you know, our reality tells us so much more. You know, when we look at the statistics of marriage, for example, I think in the United States, 40% of divorces are around infidelity. In Europe it’s around 50%. So this is a, this is a worldwide pandemic problem of people like epidemic is probably the best word for it.
It’s, it’s an epidemic that everybody is, is dealing with, or [00:14:00] at least someone you know is dealing with it. And so we’re here to talk about it in a real way because we understand we’ve walked its past. We know the darkness of it, we know the ins and outs, the sneakiness of the leaky energy, of the unconsciousness.
And yeah, we have a lot to share.
Carolee: And I wanna add too. Just on that program kind of conversation, right? Like even like talking about Disney princesses is a perfect example of one way in which as women we’re programmed to think that a relationship’s gonna, you know be this thing. In my healing, there was a point actually in the spring of 22, April, 2022, and remember we were married in 2009, so in April of 2022, we now had four children and we had already been deeply like we left the church in 2019.
So we’d been out of the church now for a couple of years and we had really been giving everything to our healing. I actually had this [00:15:00] really powerful awareness come over me about the program that I had been a part of. My ideas around what I expected a relationship to look like in marriage to look like.
And I realized as I sat in deep reflection, and it’s hard to sit in deep reflection about the programs and be like, where did this come from? And do I even want it anymore? And to admit that, you know, there’s a great amount of courage that comes when you’re willing to like, look at yourself that deeply.
And I looked at it and I looked at everybody around me and I was like, most of the women that I know we’re all married, we’re all in this same thing. Young children moving through. And even like the older women that I knew at church the older women my mom’s age, or even between, I like started thinking about everybody and I said to myself, do I know anyone whose relationship is something that I’m like, boom, that’s it.
That’s the relationship. That’s, that’s the marriage that I really admire. And [00:16:00] I realized that I didn’t know anybody whose marriage. I was like, oh, wow, they really made it. I instead, I was like, well, when I’m with this person, she just complains all the time about her husband. And I complain about mine too.
And when I’m with this woman, we get all nitpicky about this and that, and we’re, and when I’m with this woman, we’re not free. You know, like I just realized that we were all, and then we were all like in our own misery all together. And what I identified was, oh, this is because of these core beliefs, this programming that says marriage is supposed to be this certain way.
We all drank the Kool-Aid and didn’t actually determine for ourselves what a partnership for ourselves individually. Was supposed to be like, so what did I do in that moment of realization that I, at seven years old was attached to somebody else’s idea of the perfect relationship. I, at 12, at 14, at 16, you know, all of these different [00:17:00] points in my life that I was absorbing this program, I decided to cut it off.
I decided to let go of it. And I did it in kind of a dramatic way. But, you know, sometimes we need that drama in our life to really say, I’m serious. I mean it, I’m gonna do it different now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what did I do? I took a poem he had written for me and had given to me on our wedding day, and we, he had made it really beautiful.
It was gold embossed on black paper and framed. I shattered the frame, I tore up the dress I wore to marry him in when, in the Mormon temple. And I went with other women and we had this full moon fire. It was very witchy. And I burned my wedding dress and I burned the poem. And I literally said, I am. I declared that I was saying goodbye to my hopes and dreams from my childhood, realizing that they were attached to a false idea of what partnership could be.
And what I was doing is that I was disconnecting from everybody [00:18:00] else’s idea of a perfect relationship because everyone that was connected to those ideas, nobody had the perfect relationship. Mm-hmm. And I knew that I needed to clear that energy out to allow myself the freedom to discover what a perfect relationship would look like for me.
Mm-hmm. And this wasn’t necessarily something that I, you know, I realized Britton needed to come to his own conclusions of what a perfect relationship for him looked like too. So this was something I was hopeful that he would be on the journey with me in. But I also knew I needed to heal this idea for myself.
Fundamentally, like with or without him, I had to do this healing. I had to disconnect from all the old stories that told me I had to be a certain way and show up a certain way and perform in a certain way that this was now my opportunity to discover what it could look like for me. So that was a really liberating moment that then opened me up to a pathway of [00:19:00] discovery of like how could I, like what would a perfect relationship look like for myself personally?
And I didn’t have the answer when I did that clearing. We don’t usually have the answers right away. It’s a process of surrender and trusting what’s gonna come to us as individuals. But that, that was a really profound awareness that I was like, I’m not gonna subscribe to these programs anymore.
Gissele: And I think what you’ve said is so powerful because I think a lot of times it’s much easier for us to say, victim perpetrator, I’m a victim.
This person sucks. I’m just gonna get, like gonna divorce them and that’s okay. Like stay or go, it doesn’t matter. And then people then go and find and they find themselves in a very similar situation. So from my perspective, what you’re doing is making sure that you are no longer in alignment to what you don’t want.
Right, exactly. Yeah. Written. I was, I was wondering if you could share maybe some of the expectations that you were taught about marriage as men. Like what were some of the [00:20:00] expectations and how might that have played or impacted your willingness to be in it?
Britton: I don’t recall any direct expectations that were sort of taught to me. So a lot of it’s all just from the culture from my parents and then, you know, from the church. And I think the church. Would’ve been primarily what I would see and educate myself and program myself from my parents’ relationship is actually a really good example of what I didn’t want.
They, okay. Yeah. They struggled and didn’t get along. And then, and then of course, just the culture of marriage, you know, that we get from media and from everyone else around us. So in a way I feel like I was average in that I don’t, I didn’t have any preconceived notions of how Carol should be. I didn’t I think I struggled a little bit with financial joining of the finances early on, but like Carol actually helped me see that, and we, we resolved [00:21:00] that early on.
Yeah, it’s like, I, I even through the infidelity, I knew like she was totally fine leaving this relationship. And in the marriage of the Mormon paradigm, which is through their temple and a ceiling ceremony, which basically binds you for eternity to this person. It’s a very magical ritual that, but the problem is you don’t know that you are actually engaging in real, true energetic binding.
And so in a way it’s like, it’s like black magic in that way.
Gissele: Wow.
Britton: So, I don’t know. Like, I don’t really have, I don’t, I didn’t have expectations on her. Part of me wanted, he, part of me wanted, just in my own personality of freedom and sovereignty, I wanted her to be more free than she was. She was a little bit what’s the word?
Well, codependent we went through a lot of codependence and there was this needy part of me. I think the one thing that I always was bothered by her was how she would be like begging for me to give her compliments from time to [00:22:00] time. in her life at the time.
It was like really important for her to hear me say things to her even when, even when it wasn’t fully genuine or authentic. And I found that very interesting. So interesting stuff that we discovered as we went through our healing journey. But yeah, I don’t know. I was just kind of an average dude. Mm-hmm.
Gissele: So thank you for that. Thank you for also mentioning the whole compliment thing as a person who used to be very insecure, very insecure in relationships, I would look for that sort of like positive affirmation to confirm that I was worthy and good enough to stay in their relationship and that the person wasn’t losing interest.
’cause God knows there might be a better looking, more interesting person out there. So I found myself needing that constant affirmation,
And would get very threatened if the person was looking at someone else or making comments about someone else. And so it was really when I found my own self-love and self-compassion once I actually felt my own bucket and knew that I was enough, [00:23:00] that I really didn’t need it anymore.
But, but Carol, I, I relate. I wanted to go back to ’cause at some point there must have been like some level of ambivalence, right? Like stay, go, stay, go, stay, go. I mean, purely you’re doing, you’re both doing the brave thing and looking at your relationship, but you have four kids, right? And so kudos to you for handling that and, and being honest with yourself at a time when it’s so easy to go, okay, well I have four kids.
I’m gonna turn a blind eye and just white knuckle it through until they grow out, and then I can start looking at my relationship. So it takes a lot of courage to do what you did. I wanted to talk about ambivalence though, because there’s so many people that are ambivalent in terms of stay, go, stay, go, stay, go.
And so if they’re in the relationship and they wanna leave. They don’t, they, cause they’re suffering and if they wanna stay, but then they wanna punish the person that causes everyone else suffering. were you ambivalent in? What [00:24:00] sort of helped you get beyond that ambivalence?
Carolee: Well, you know, in the early years of like the, for example, that very first incident of betrayal that he disclosed, we brush it under the rug, right?
And just kind of then proceeded forward not realizing the energetic hole and weight that it actually was creating for both of us emotionally. And then we had our second child and then our third child. And after our third child there was an even more significant incident of betrayal to the point where it was like, if you, if you, I said to him, if you’re not going with me to therapy right now, I’m done.
Right? Like, it was kind of that threshold of like, I’m, this is so intense, this is so wrong. This is so hard for me that if you’re not even willing to meet me in a place of like moving towards a direction of healing and I just don’t even want any part of it. But I will say that’s what I felt. And so we did start going [00:25:00] to therapy.
We found a, a couple’s therapist and then I found individual therapy and then I found yoga, a trauma informed yoga therapy for women that had also been through betrayal. And I found all these different avenues for myself personally. But you know, in those early phases, I don’t know if ambivalence is the right word to describe what I was really feeling, there was fear.
It was like, what would my life look like without the masculine, without the provider. I was. An adjunct faculty at a university in Utah teaching photography. But it, it was like just a supplementary kind of fun, additional income. It wasn’t an income that would actually hold me, you know? And we had just built this house, or we were, no, we hadn’t built a house yet.
We, we were in a home that we owned at this point. We ended up building a house later. And there was fear. There was fear of the unknown. You know, deep, deep [00:26:00] wo women who are in cultures like Mormonism aren’t really supported in discovering how they could provide for themselves.
Mm-hmm. You know, like
my parents didn’t really, they wanted me to go to university, but they wanted me to go to a Mormon university because the whole purpose of me going to college was so that I could be in the space where I could be the man that I would then marry and the man would need to be Mormon and he would’ve needed to have served a mission and then we would’ve needed to have gotten married in Temple.
Right. And so, like I did go to university. I actually graduated with a degree before I got married, which I was actually upset about. I felt like I failed my college experience because I didn’t get married during it. I met Britton after that. Like, this is how deep the programming re So when it came to this point in our relationship of do I stay, do I go, what do I do?
How do I feel? There was so much fear around, well, how do I even provide for myself? And be a mom. And, you [00:27:00] know, so there was, in, in that early phase, there was a lot of more just stuck energy. We both kind of felt stuck and we would sort of come to the conversation to talk about could we separate? And then we just both couldn’t even have the conversation.
And so we just sort of were in this point of this place of suffering. And the therapy was helping a little bit. It was giving some voice to the anger. It was giving some voice to the pain. But yet we were still kind of stuck, you know? And that’s when some, some plant medicine ceremonies and like MDMA actually really came in clutch to like save us because, you know, we realized that we.
We were willing to like, look at ourselves, you know? And he, it might’ve been different had Brit been like, oh, I actually really wanna be in a relationship with this woman that I’m entertaining. Right? But he never wanted that, even though he was entertaining the women. And some of these women, this one in particular, had said things [00:28:00] to him like, oh, I could totally take care of your kids.
You know? And that made him go, I guess I could let you speak to that. But it was kind of, he would tell me that, that made him kind of pull back and go, wait, no. Like, I’m not, you know? And so there was this dance, there was this dance that we were doing. It was very private. I was so scared to own my truth.
nobody knew. I had only a few friends I had disclosed, and that I was going through this. And their advice was awful. It, it really didn’t feel supportive. And so I realized pretty early on that the truth of my story wasn’t safe with anybody. And so I had to kind of hold it within myself and just discover, just like move slowly through it.
And, you know, I realized in that, in the heat of those moments, it, those aren’t wise times to make a, a drastic decision that could change your life. Like, we kind of just needed to sit in the fire for a minute and see what emerged. But it, it really wasn’t easy. And it was rooted a lot [00:29:00] more in the fear of what life would look like as a solo woman more than anything.
And how can I navigate that? How could I provide for myself, how could I tend to my children? And, and yeah, like it, I don’t, does it, did that answer
Gissele: your question? Yeah, of course. Yes. Thank you very much. What about you, Bri? Did you have any moments of ambivalence? Like stay, go, stay, go, like having a hard time making a decision?
And then what helped you land in the decision that you made?
Britton: Yeah, this is, this is actually like an important part of our healing journey. So throughout all of it, I actually never, ever desired to leave Carol Lee. And it was so, it was this weird energy of like, trying to just feel fulfilled, trying to feel desire from the opposite sex, trying to feel connected to the opposite sex in sexually, and not getting that in my relationship.
So seeking it outside. And and, you know, as we began our healing journey the, the triggering was too much for her. It was [00:30:00] just, she was living in PTSD and I understood, and I, I was feeling very sorrow, so, so much sorrow for her. We had, we, we were already healing and everything, but it was just so deep, right?
And she was, she was trying to uncover the layers. But Carol sometimes needs just that little push to like, push her into the dark so that she can just truly look at it. And I was doing that with her because I was doing it with myself, and she was doing it well, actually, we were both moving through our, our shadows really well.
But I could see her suffering and I, I approached her. I, I thought a lot about it. I was like, man, I, you know, I’m scared to leave her. I don’t wanna leave her. I love her. I wanna see her healed. I did this to her. Like, there was a lot of things going on in my mind. And I just remember thinking, and, and like finally getting to the conclusion that it’s like I may need to leave her so that she [00:31:00] can heal and, you know, like I may need to step away so that she’s not in full trigger mode all the time.
And when I got the courage to finally come and confront her about that, I did. And I said, you know, do we need to do this so that you can heal? And, and she, she was like, maybe, so, so I think like a week after that, I basically said, you know, it was just boiling over. I said, well, let’s just do some MDMA together.
Because I’d, I’d learned about the process that MDMA was going through with the FDA and undergoing trials. It was on a third clinical trials setting. And it was like just about to undergo full FDA approval, which by the way, it didn’t get it. And I’m really annoyed with that because I don’t feel that that’s genuine.
It has, it has so many incredible benefits. So, we’ll sidestep that. But the thing is, is that I, I had some friends that had had it and I off, I asked them, I said, Hey, I need to do this with my wife. Like, can I, can I get some and can we go do it, [00:32:00] you know, to, to one of your homes for the day?
And so anyway, they arranged for us and we went in and had this session and it was gonna be like a conscious, like, what would it look like if we consciously uncoupled? What would it look like if we separated? Not like to actually begin the talks of like, okay, I wanna go and da da, but let’s open up the doorway and what would that look like?
And and it was a really, you know, coming from that ambivalent perspective and, and we actually just realized that we just loved each other so much in that session. And so instead of like having this deep conversation about like separation and what would it might look like, we actually just reconnected and, and loved each other deeply and found that that bliss that’s always been in our relationship, it’s actually just been very unaccessible since the worst wounding.
And so we, we actually came back together deeper in an MDMA session, and the, it gave us the charge and the energy we needed to just keep pressing forward.
Carolee: I, I wanna add to just hearing [00:33:00] him share that actually brought a full circle moment and of memory into my mind that I feel is important to also just plug in here with this, this point of the conversation.
You know when we were traveling the world, we had sold everything. And at this point, this was now fall of 2023, we were living in Egypt. And in Egypt I had felt called to an 11 day container for women. It, it’s called ancient o or or orgasmic Bean. And it was held by this beautiful Polish woman named Aana in Siwa, the Oasis in, in the Sahara.
And I went to this container for women and I was alone with just women for this 11 days. And this very fear of being alone of divorce came back up in this healing container for myself. And actually I had to confront the energy fully and heal this idea that I couldn’t be alone. ’cause [00:34:00] the idea that I couldn’t be alone, that I couldn’t care for myself was part of what actually kept me in the marriage.
Right? And so. Yes, the MDMA helped, yes, him actually not wanting to be in a relationship in a marriage partnership with anyone other than me. All of that really supported us in to like stay when it was so painful to stay when it was so difficult. But I had to come to a place of so much love for myself that I knew that I would be okay with or without a man taking care of me.
And I was so confused a little bit when that energy emerged. You know, I’m in this container for women. I’m healing it. It was like this priestess Rac where, where at the temple of the, of the oracle we’re in the Sahara, we’re in these salt pools. Like it was so magical. And I was thinking, you know, this was towards the end of our journey of traveling the world together, that this wasn’t the time that I [00:35:00] thought I’d be looking at divorce.
But all of a sudden I’m in this container and all of a sudden this pulse of like, you just need to divorce him. You need to divorce him, you need to divorce him, was come mean force. And it was pouring through me and I was like crying. ’cause I was like, no, I liked it. All of this, I’ve made this decision so many times to stay.
Why now? Why now am I being confronted with that, with that energy of it’s time to leave? And I realized it was because I had been so afraid of the energy up until that point that I hadn’t actually really sat with the possibility. And it really was rooted in my fear of being alone. And once I realized that I wasn’t, I didn’t need to be afraid of being alone, that as a woman I could provide for myself as a woman, I could take care of myself, that I had skills and tools to be free.
Abundantly provided for, like, that was so monumental in my healing. I came back to him from that, from that journey, basically telling [00:36:00] him I had to like face divorce in the, you know, I had to like stand with that idea. And he was shocked by that because again, I was shocked by it. But I realized through that, that I just really needed to allow that timeline to have been a reality.
I had wasn’t even really, really willing for it to be a reality, but once I allowed it to be a reality, I had the freedom of choice to say, no, I’m still here.
Gissele: Yeah. And you’re making a conscious choice right? Then making a choice outta fear and regret and whatever. Like if you are making a conscious choice to stay, that also helps you stay from a more compassionate and loving place.
Exactly. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the shadow feelings you were talking about, because it must have been difficult if you cared at all about Carol Lee to watch her suffer and understand that you were, your behavior was the cost of that suffering. How did you deal with that kind of the, the shame and guilt and maybe [00:37:00] some of the other difficult feelings you might have felt?
Britton: Yeah, that was, that was difficult to feel very responsible about everything that was happening in her body. And, you know, it was putting so much discomfort in the relationship and distrust and the, the trust took so many years to rebuild. And you know, it KI kept asking myself like, why, why am I even doing it?
It, it, it didn’t really make sense to me, Gissele, like, why I was actually seeking, because I didn’t un at that point in time, I didn’t fully understand why I hadn’t, you know, confronted the shadows and looked at ’em and, and everything. And so I carried that with me for a long time. as a man in Mormonism, like with the programming, I was horrified at what I had done.
And I felt almost unforgivable in the eyes of God. You know, like I, I didn’t know. I didn’t [00:38:00] really know if I could be forgiven. And you know, in that paradigm I felt like I could do my best. But I think the thing that really was, that continually was at the forefront of my experience through all of this was I why even through the early part of our healing journey and when I wanted to be just absolutely committed to her, my energy was still not zipped up.
My energy was still leaky. I could still feel temptation from other women. I could still feel it, and I didn’t understand like, am I just gonna have to live like this? And there was this conflict of like, why, why do I, why as a married man can I just feel like I’m fully devoted to this woman? And again, I still did not see the shadow.
And this is really important. I think anybody in this situation, and I bet you there’s a lot of men or women that are in marriages that still feel [00:39:00] temptations of other people, that they don’t know how to deal with it, and they suppress it. And they may not even go out and cheat, but they still feel it. I can tell you right now, as a healed man, I do not feel that.
And I understood fully why now I do. So knowing that I was still dealing with that, like my, the turmoil within me was so I just couldn’t trust myself. I didn’t know if I would make a mistake again. There was just a lot of that. And so, yeah, like. It just took, it took so much to finally confront those shadows.
You know, like, and when Carol Carleigh and I talk about this all the time when we share podcasts or when we’re coaching and stuff, but like we had, we hit, we hit these thresholds of truth where we had to confront the thing within us and realize, oh, actually this is what I want. And for me it was, I needed sexual exploration.
I needed more my, my body, my [00:40:00] desire was deeper sexual exploration. She wasn’t giving it even during her healing when we were trying to be closer and stuff, she, she wasn’t fully embodied yet. And so, so I still needed it. And like I had to have that conversation with her and I thought it was gonna be the end of the relationship.
How could I go to her after everything that’s been done and then say, Hey, how can we look at opening our marriage so that I can sexually explore more? Wow, that was a difficult conversation, but it was actually through those thresholds of truth where we became closer, where actually we fell deeper in love.
We fell deeper into each other. And because we, we finally began to see each other fully unfiltered, you know, like, this is the beauty of relationship is if you can come to, to another and you can be completely unfiltered. There’s, I don’t, there’s like literally nothing that we keep from each other.
There’s no secrets. We just, we just speak and, and act and be, [00:41:00] and we are totally in love with the other person for that beingness. And so there’s this new level of relationship. It’s not a tolerance, it’s not a, like an acquiescence or a compromise or a compromise. It’s a total acceptance and actually an enjoyment of the other person.
So, i, you know, I’m kind of going a little bit everywhere, but I think that hopefully will bring the whole energy of what your question was to the audience here, is that like, there’s a lot in that question. And and I can tell you that we had to go through the deepest, darkest shadows, and I hopefully healed that for many generations of people.
But it, it’s not an easy thing. And, and for men or women to confront the deep shadow of like why they want to seek others or like, what’s that shadow energy really about? You have to be willing to be so courageous within your own self and to speak your truth or else you will never get through it.
Gissele: Hmm.
Yeah. I love what you said I think what I’m hearing you say is basically the importance of really being honest with [00:42:00] ourselves about what we need, right? Like you’re going outside of yourselves to look for all of these things and even outside of the relationship, but what helped you is to be really honest with yourself first and then with each other about what their real needs are.
And that sort of goes to what I was gonna ask about men in particular. And it could be that I have my own misconceptions. ’cause I do feel that we have been programmed to believe certain things about men in, in certain things about women, and the need for men to have that sexual connection that, I mean, women have it too.
Like this is not a, a thing that women don’t want to explore. But I’m curious because again, I don’t know if this is my own limiting belief I don’t know if men are always socialized to express the fullness of their needs, especially emotional and nurturing need, that may go to the heart of why that comes across as a sexual thing.
And so [00:43:00] sometimes men don’t. Necessarily seek out sex sometimes it may look like it’s a sexual connection, but sometimes maybe there’s a need to connect in a nurturing way. What are your thoughts around how like men might have been conditioned to really focus on the sex part of it instead of perhaps the other needs?
Britton: Yeah. Love this question. I absolutely love it. Because it’s so important and it’s so real and there’s a ton of programming in there, but I also feel men are just, you know, men and women are hardwired different, and that’s
Carolee: an important
Britton: part, but I’m not, I’m not thinking that hardwiring differences about is around not being sexual or being sexual.
Men probably are my in in intuition’s kind of saying like, what you said, you know, I want a deeper connection with her. It didn’t have to necessarily be about sex, although that was important.
Gissele: Mm-hmm.
Britton: And, and so, you know, like a man [00:44:00] maybe seeking outward or just trying to connect with lots of women, maybe in his single years they may be seeking deeper emotional connection, but just not knowing how to go about it because of the programming.
Because the programming of, of our nature has been around like the playboy and around, you know, like when we just think about movies and music and entertainment and all of that, that just feeds into our subconscious. And and so I truly believe, like, I remember, I’ll just say this, like I remember when we were in the North Shores of Bali and I was riding with her our dream relationship.
And I realized in that moment I was like, all I wanna do is get to know her deeply. I just wanna know every part of her, what’s her wild side look like? What’s her most. Soft feminine side look like, what is, you know, what, what is her boss, babe, CEO side look like? What is all of, what is, who is this this entity over here?[00:45:00]
And it was very spiritual, right? Like it was, it was this deep desire of gnosis. And and so like, I, I do think that, you know, I was seeking emotional connection. A lot of my, my, my outward energy was just trying to get attention and that was enough. And you know, sometimes I would talk about my relationship.
Sometimes I would, I would hear another woman talk about their relationship and like we would just confide in each other and that felt really good. But the sexual connection for men I think is real. Like, we do want, like, we have a stronger urge to procreate. We have a stronger urge. Those, those sort of base urges to do those sorts of things.
And I don’t think that’s any, there’s anything wrong with that. Like this is the journey of humanity and we’re trying to figure out, we’re actually trying to figure out like how to express these energies. But we’ve laid a cultural veil over all of it and say, Nope, it has to be through monogamy. Nope. It has to be through marriage.
Nope. It has to be through these very intricate particular [00:46:00] ways and it, we’ve developed it all and it’s all fucking bullshit to be honest. And so Carollee and I confronted that paradigm and we realized actually we can rewrite our complete agreement of what if you were to come to an alien and be like, Hey, we do this thing called marriage.
And they’re like, what’s that? And it’s like, oh, you have to explain it. What’s the purpose? Like all of this stuff, like if you, if you get to just rewrite it how you want it to be, that’s what Carolee and I did. And we came to our own terms, our own agreement, our own understanding of our unique individual selves and that energy within us.
And that’s how we navigated this paradigm, this very, very complex thing. So yeah, I think, men do. want sex. Like there’s nothing wrong. Women actually do want sex too. I think there’s actually a deep desire for women to be embodied, but because they’ve been told their whole life that you must, you must be pure, you must be chased, you must do all the, you know, like they’ve, that’s been turned off for millennia, right?
Millennia. And so, like, if you could [00:47:00] shed all of those layers and programming, what would em, embodied woman look like today? What would an embodied man look like today? And Carol and I really trying to be the example of that in our relationship. And that’s how we coach is like, you know, finding embodiment and, and the sex life.
It just explodes after that. So anyway, hopefully I nailed it. I,
Carolee: I would add too, that there was a moment in his healing that like really opened my eyes and I was like, whoa, I wasn’t even expecting that, but like, I’m excited. And it was when he had his, he had this beautiful Kundalini experience. And then as we were integrating, he realized, he, he like said, oh my goodness, emotion is the language of the spirit.
And up until this point, he had been this very linear, logical like provider.
Britton: It’s a left, left brain, you know,
Carolee: he had been really, like, in fact, when we would get in in arguments or, you know, I’d come at it from the very, it was a very feminine, masculine dance, but like unhealed the, I was the unhealed [00:48:00] feminine.
That’d be like, listen to me, I wanna, you know, and I’d talk and I wouldn’t let him go. And I’d really just drill home to whatever issue I was having. And I’d get irrational and I’d be loud and emotional and he’d pull back. ’cause he had wounds from his own mother and her irrational crazy behavior. And when I would get loud and big and female, he’d get, oh, a masculine pull away.
And he’d say, I don’t wanna talk to you right now. And that’d make me want even more. Like, we had this dance that we did with how we communicated to where it was like emotion was bad. Emotion was wrong, emotion was a bad way to communicate. And that activated my emotion even more because I was like, hear me.
You know? Mm-hmm. But when he was like, wow, emotion is the language of the spirit, and he understood that he had been closed off, his heart had been closed off. It like took him into this descent. Into the emotional body. Descent into the feminine. I really feel like the masculine, he has healed so [00:49:00] greatly because he’s not been afraid to feel that energetic emotional flow that’s usually attributed to the feminine.
Right. And like what he’s speaking to of like, what would an embodied woman really look like? That is a lot of like that inner masculine fire penetrating a desire. Let me ask and claim what I want. Like as women, we were programmed to not do any of that. Right. And one of the main things that I realized is I had a deep generational pattern that I saw playing out in my mother, in my grandmothers, and on and on and on, yeah.
Was this idea that as women, we weren’t even allowed to actually have desire. My desire was to make a really lovely meal for my husband. That’s where my desire rooted. My desire was to like put together this perfect little house with a white picket fence and have really cute kids that are dressed perfect for church.
And it looks really good, you know? And like I did all of that, but it was so it didn’t fulfill me. Right. And [00:50:00] I couldn’t express my sexual desire because it was so turned off. It was inaccessible to me. And it was through my own conditioning, through my own programming, through trauma for my childhood, through trauma from my marriage.
Right. And so him claiming, oh, that, that awareness, that realization, that beautiful, like change that shift where he’s like, wow, I can, I can live from my heart. I don’t have to be afraid of emotion. You know, there, there were still moments, several where my fire would come out and I’d be really like, oh, you must listen.
And he’d pull back and we’d still do that dance, but we don’t do that anymore. Like, it’s really like filtered out of our system to where we’re both really present with the emotional sense of who we are, and then the penetrative like masculine sense of who we are. And we can like really communicate in a way where I don’t feel him shame me or get mad at me for my emotions at all.
But that was something that was [00:51:00] a part of this earlier part of our relationship. So that was really powerful and beautiful to witness, you know, a masculine really dive into like, oh, I, I can cry. I can be held. I, I
Britton: think men need to, to heal the feminine, and women need to heal the masculine that the imbalance is so ob I mean, they, they need to balance both, but mm-hmm.
There’s a deeper wound within men about the feminine energy, the intuitive energy, the emotional energy for, for women, most women, they struggle with em embodiment around. Like what does it mean to be proactive and to have that masculine energy and go-getting, and when we do and we balance it, man, it is just a beautiful thing that can exist between the two.
Because then I can embody the feminine, she can embody the masculine, and we can bring that into the bedroom. And, and in a way I can receive her and she can, she can really, yeah. Anyway, I don’t need to get too detailed, but the point is, is it’s, it’s real and it’s, and it’s lovely. Mm-hmm.
Carolee: Well, and one of the things that, like natural behaviors that I just couldn’t [00:52:00] access, I wanted to, but they were so blocked naturally, was I never initiated, I never initiated sex.
Mm-hmm. I, I would be in this receptive mood. He, he would be like, oh, I want it. And even then I’d kind of be like, oh, okay, well, okay. You know, now it’s a very, I initiate all the time. It’s so natural. It’s so natural and it flows from me. And I’m just like, and I just penetrate his energy with my own desire.
And he feels that for me constantly. But I had to go on a deep healing journey. I couldn’t just all of a sudden flip a switch and be like, I’m now this thing that I never was. I had to like dive into the depths of my own psyche, heal generational patterns, like really do conscious healing work so that my natural state of penetrative desire just comes forth.
Like, it’s just part of who I am now. Which is a, a lot of the reason why I call that lifetime, like, it’s almost like my past life in this life, you know? It’s so, the contrast is so significant. It feels so [00:53:00]
Gissele: far away that
it, yeah.
Carolee: Mm-hmm.
Gissele: Yeah. So thank you for that. I mean, that, that was amazing. You know, it goes to show you how much by healing ourselves, we can really heal within our relationships and we can come so much closer together.
But we’re not really taught to focus on our healing for ourselves first before we get into a relationship. Again, we’re conditioned to seek outside of ourselves, find that perfect partner, find that date. Like even from when we’re very little, right? Like you have to have a date for prom and all of those things.
And so we don’t really Yeah. You know, even teach our kids to. Really find who they really are and what they really desire. First, we make desires wrong and that can be challenging. How did your travel really help you kind of heal those aspects of yourself? Like how did you make the decision to, sell everything?
’cause that’s also another courageous move. Most people are like, no, I gotta have a home. I have to have all of these [00:54:00] things. Because did you know where you were gonna end up at the end of that travel? Like, so, so talk to me a little bit about that and how that helped you with your healing.
Britton: Oh, so it’s another, it’s actually another answer around sexuality.
Our story is about sex. You know, I was looking outside for sex. She wasn’t embodied for sex. I wasn’t healed around sex. And our whole journey has been around sex. So that’s why it’s such an important, like, it’s just such a core part of our, like, coaching and like what we do and ritual shadow work, which we teach is the, the intersection of sexuality and spirituality.
So how did, how did we decide to sell everything and then just leave? Well around the same time that Carleigh was talking about all these things that were going on where she did that ritual of like you know, burning her wedding dress and ripping up the poem that I wrote her for a wedding day.
I had also burned our marriage certificate the month before. There was a lot of like this energy of just dying to the old relationship, [00:55:00] dying to the old way of lot of living. We decided early in that year, and this is why we were doing so many like deaths, is we decided we were gonna live the full fuck.
Yes. So there’s a book called Becoming by Ben and Ria, and we read that and it was like, ah, the living the full Fuck Yes is like, sounds so cool, just full embodiment everything you’re doing. Just like, yeah, man. You know? And so we had to get in on our marriage and our relationship and our commitment to each other, and that was part of it.
And we called in a sexual reeducation because of our, we knew, we were aware enough that our upbringing was horribly you know, shame and trauma ridden around sexuality. So we called in a healing experience for that, essentially. And we were guided to a place called Ista, which is the International School of Temple Arts.
Mm-hmm. And it is a week long container and it, the level one of that is called spiritual sexual shamonic experience. And we did that together as a couple, which most people attended. Not very much. Very many [00:56:00] people are like going there as just single people. It’s not like a place that a lot of couples attend, but we did that.
And there is a whole podcast we could do and talk about that whole thing. It was amazing, absolutely remarkable magic that happened there, including for her, she had a full body orgasm which she’d never experienced before, where her body was just absolutely shaking and moving through a convulsive muscle movements and crying and laughing and crying.
And it was like such the massive release. And it was so beautiful witness. We came back from that week long experience, that container, and we had a, we had understood, I think the principles of sexual liberation enough that we were like, wow. Oh my gosh. Our whole vibration shifted. We understood who we were more, and like, we actually began to understand in a deeper way, like why religion and even society, government and everything.
Tries to shove that energy down because when a person is sexually liberated, they are free [00:57:00] and they do not need authority figures in their life to guide them. I’m not anti-government, but I, they don’t need government to tell them how to live their life. They don’t need religion and a prophets and priests and stuff, or police to tell them how to live their life.
They don’t need these figures and patriarchy and hierarchy just dissolve in that liberation. So we immediately were like, we felt out of the nor like we were out of out of our place. Like we’re in this Mormon culture that’s so repressed. And we were like, dude, this is so not us anymore. So we, we actually turned to our divination practice and we were kind of guided into an opportunity to like say, let’s, you know, you guys can offer it all up now.
And, and just take, you know, like almost the words of Yeshua, like what should I do? And, and he, this, this disciple goes to him and says, what should I do? And he says, sell everything and follow me. And in a way we did that. You know, we weren’t, we weren’t trying to be Christian in that, but we were, we were seeking a deeper spiritual connection.
And so it was that week what [00:58:00] returned, and we were like, we’re gonna sell it all and, and we’re gonna tr we’re gonna go to Bali. ’cause we, we had no, we had no idea what actually we were gonna do. And so we did within, within within three months of returning from that, or, yeah, two and a half months we had sold everything and decided to move to Bali with our four kids.
Gissele: Did your family think you were crazy? Yeah. Or were they like all, like who doesn’t Oh yeah, go ahead.
Carolee: Yeah. Well, you know, it’s, it’s funny ’cause we were back in Utah for spring break, just this last spring. Just this spring. And while we were there, we connected with a, a friend of ours who we’ve known for years, and she.
Is acquainted with some people from our neighborhood where this house was that we had sold. And she said that even to this day, this person that she knows that used to be a neighbor of ours refers to us as people who totally are off their rocker. So, you know, there’s a lot of people like in that which,
Britton: which we like.
Carolee: I laugh about it. There’s a lot of people in that neighborhood, you know, that, that didn’t understand us. [00:59:00] just to kind of also put this into context and perspective, I had been so afraid we had been so afraid to admit the depths of our woundings and the what we were truly going through and healing, and understanding about ourselves to where I was in this neighborhood.
And there were people that I knew, but like, I wasn’t actually really known by them. And I didn’t feel safe enough for them to like truly know me. And then we dropped in for this week long container in the mountains of Colorado, outside of Denver. Which now we live in the mountains of Colorado, north of Denver, a little bit different direction, but we’re here in Colorado.
But we had dropped in for this week long experience for healing. And when we showed up because of the nature of inner child work, shamanic healing, shadow work and sexual liberation, we showed up and we fully owned our story high where Brandon and Carol Lee were ex-Mormon. We’ve been through [01:00:00] betrayal.
We have four kids. Like all of the things I couldn’t even tell my next door neighbor. I was now admitting to like this room of perfect strangers. Mm-hmm. And that week felt like we were together for almost a month. It was a very different time space when we, you know, and, and those friendships that we formed, everybody who knew my truth did nothing but celebrate it.
Here. I was so afraid of all the judgments that I was actually constantly receiving, consciously and subconsciously from my community, from family members, from friends. Like the judgments that were projected on us were so severe that it was starting to traumatize our children. Before we went to the healing in Colorado, people, there were certain people that our kids really loved playing with their kids, but then they were pulling back and trying to be controlling of our children and like saying they didn’t want their kids playing with our kids.
Like we got that because we were no longer [01:01:00] Mormon. And that’s a threat to that culture. You know, we are ex-Mormon, we’re apostates, we’re this and that. Like there’s a lot of fear around the liberation of the soul when you’re in a controlled paradigm. And so, yeah, you know, to, to have that contrast of people being like, you guys are amazing.
We love you. Like your story is powerful. Wow. You’re together and you’re here. Like, we were celebrated in a way that we had never been. And then we dropped back into Utah the next day after arriving back from this week long experience that was so liberating to two more text messages from other parents saying, yeah, we’re not gonna have our kids play with yours anymore.
We just were like, okay, we don’t belong here. And I couldn’t almost sell my possessions that I loved. I loved my home, I loved all of our furniture. Like I’d really. I really love a beautiful space, and I put a lot of heart into building it, and I was like, it can all [01:02:00] go, it can all burn, essentially. Like I can’t sell it fast enough to get out of here and show my children that there’s a completely different way of living and loving and connecting with the world and with community.
So yeah, when we first got back, we, we were like, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? And like Briton said, we dove into some divination and had this like, like six different sessions where they all said the same thing. And we’re like, this is crazy. This is wild. What are we, you know? And so then we were like, where are we even gonna move?
We put our house on the market before we even knew exactly where we were gonna go. And then we were like, well, I guess we need to sell all for all of our furniture. We don’t wanna like put this in a storage unit. You. And so we started just moving, we started moving with that flow and putting everything up.
And people did totally think that we lost our minds. And I will add in the Mormon context, there’s so much like the, it’s called like the prosperity gospel. You live the [01:03:00] gospel and then you prosper. And so the fact that we came back and we sold our house and everything was lining up, not only did we sell our house for like, at the right point in the market with the, to a person that was really excited about it, this individual also bought all of our furniture in our house.
Like it was so seamless and so much what a Mormon would call a blessing, that they were confused. Mm-hmm. You know, we literally had, they were
Britton: breaking minds.
Carolee: Yeah. They were like you are living a way that you actually aren’t supposed to be blessed. Why is everything working out for you? This is, you know, they, they didn’t understand.
Britton: Yeah, it, it felt wild. I would say in a way, I, I love that my life is a testament to the fact that you can live however you want and have, because we were so much in fear, like our whole life, you have to live this way. But our life is a testament to those in religion. Seeking better way. Like you can live however you want and you will be blessed all the time.
But [01:04:00] if you, the more you follow your heart, the more you’re in sync with your actual self. So that’s where the true blessings are.
Carolee: we went to Bali and we didn’t know, we were there for five months and even in that journey we thought we were moving there, right?
There was so much unknown of the future and it was just a constant surrender to the, the unfolding.
Gissele: And I think to live boldly like that is a threat to institutions. to be your biggest, brightest light, and to live your boldest life. With that surrender, with that level of trust can feel threatening to institutions and individuals who’s, who rely on the fear and control I’ve been reflecting a lot about this.
You know, the whole concept of misery loves company. When you see somebody shining their bright light, the immediate response from the majority of people is to try to bring that person down. And why is that? Because there’s a fear associated with it. I probably can’t [01:05:00] get there, so it’s better for me to pull you down than to try to work my way and say, I can be that too.
Britton: Crabs in a bucket. And so
Gissele: bright, shining your brightest light and living from that place is the biggest threat, which is why society in general that we’ve created, because we’re, as human beings, we tend to be very fear based. We need that conformity,
Like anything that seems aberrant to that, that box that we have deemed is acceptable seems like a threat. But I think the real living is outside of that box. Right. How did your children take to you traveling so much? Did they enjoy it?
Britton: Well, each child took it differently. The oldest struggled, you know, he, he had to give up.
He was living like a pretty normal life, right? So he’s got, he was in soccer and he is got tons of friends. And, and it was really hard for him to realize that he wasn’t gonna be with those people anymore. And so as we approached him around, Hey, we’re selling everything and we’re gonna [01:06:00] travel, we’re gonna Bali, we don’t know if we’re coming back.
Mm-hmm. It was hard, this particular child fought us the entire journey. And it was so difficult with him. We were, at one point we were like in Bali and we’re like, dude, we’re sending you back to grandma. Like, you need to either get on board with this or you’re going back, you know?
And
Carolee: when
Britton: we did that, like we put it in his, we put, we gave the decision to him, like, you can go back and be in U Utah and be with your friends. Like, we’re not gonna stop you. ’cause like, we really believe in that choice, that agency of, of every person. And you know, when you see that liberation in your own self, you can only give it to others because there’s no point in trying to control.
So it was like, yeah, we were just ready to hand it to him. And he said, no, I’ll stay. You know, like, but it was still really hard. And I just wanna say full circle. He absolutely, totally respects us now around that whole thing. And like he, he’s like so grateful that we took him on that journey and you know, he’s come full circle to it and seen just the, the beauty of it all and like how, [01:07:00] how much it changed him and helped him evolve and grow and like, he’s like so grateful for it.
So yeah, it was, in a way he kind of caused hell for us a lot of the time. But we struggled through it with him and we managed to get through it. Now he’s on the other side of it. It’s really good.
Well, and I’ll add too, he was the one that was getting the most pushback in the community. Yeah,
Britton: that’s true.
Carolee: He was the one that was like the, that friends weren’t allowed to be with him. There was so much tension and conflict that he, and, and truly what I identified, because I was really deep in the, the shadow work and like looking at myself and seeing things for what they were, I was like, oh, these parents that are now trying to control this child that are trying to limit him, it’s really because they have a problem with me and they can’t control me.
So they can, and so they’re going through, they’re, they’re trying to control him. So what what we identified was he was the recipient of behavior that was actually starting to traumatize him. And it wasn’t a [01:08:00] safe, Utah was not a safe place anymore for our children. And so we needed to extract them.
Right. But like, he, he couldn’t really see, see that he was only, he was 11 when we left. Hmm. Right. So it’s still quite a young child. Right. So he is 11. He turned 12 living in Ireland. Even while we were living in Ireland, Because he just needed, he needed to just get away from us for a minute.
We put him the first ever experience he had like this where he was two weeks, two solid weeks away from us at age 11, almost 12, for a filmmaking and acting camp that was there in Ireland. And he’s, since he’s, he went back last summer to the same camp he’s going this summer to the same camp. Yeah. And he is this fire fiery kid with so much determination and desire and drive.
And, you know, we felt a lot of that throughout this journey. Like Britain said, it, it was not necessarily [01:09:00] easy. Some of the other kids flowed with it a little bit better, like, you know, all of our children actually really love to travel and they really deep down I think that they knew that this was gonna be their human experience too.
And at the very beginning, before we even left Utah to like move to Bali and embark on what we didn’t even know we were doing we actually sat in a, in a beautiful ceremony together where we called in the higher selves of our children and we knew that we couldn’t involve our kids at their present state of consciousness in the decisions that we were making.
So knew that like we needed them to be on board in a way. And so we invoked their highest embodiment selves, their spirit guides, their angels, their guardians to be really present with us as we made these decisions. Mm-hmm. I love that. You know, we really wanted it to be [01:10:00] something that would serve their unfolding and their becoming and really be something that would be a guiding force for them for the rest of their life.
And so we asked their higher selves to guide us too, so that whatever emerge was gonna be in their best interest. And on this side of it, you know, like our kids are actually all really, really grateful, especially our 13-year-old who was the most difficult during the journey that they had this experience.
And kids say you’re the best mom in the world. And sometimes when they say that to me, I kind of laugh and I’m like, I am so not, I’m so imperfect. But I ask them, why do you say that? And they’re like, what Mom would take their kids all around the world? You know, like it’s something that’s a really core mm-hmm.
Foundational piece of who they are and what they’ve got to, what they’ve been able to experience. You know, they’ve been to Bali, Vietnam, France, Ireland, England, Scotland, Egypt, you know, they’ve been to these places, they’ve stood with us in the great pyramid and like, [01:11:00] it was so magical for them to, you know, while we were in the great pyramid going down the stairs with our little 4-year-old, she wasn’t four then she was a.
Two, almost three. Almost three. Almost three. Mm-hmm. There’s this beautiful angel of a woman that we obviously didn’t know beforehand going up towards the chamber who happened to have a little bubble like wand thing in her purse, and she pulled it out and she saw her little Eva and she blew her bubbles in that little stairway in the grand stairway, in the great, in the grand stair to the pyramid.
I was like, wide-eyed wonder. There’s, there’s bubbles in the pyramid for me. Beautiful. Like it was beautiful, magical, beautiful, you know, in those, those moments. Beautiful. Yeah. It, we had such beautiful moments with our kids. Yeah. People often asked me like, oh, is it hard traveling with four kids? And I was like, four kids is just hard.
It doesn’t matter where you are. It doesn’t matter whether you struggle traveling or not. Yeah,
yeah.
For sure. The struggles are the same. And the way that we traveled, we, we slow traveled. We, [01:12:00] we lived places and it’s like, I’d rather live in this beautiful ancient oasis in the Sahara then be like in this crusty like suburban Utah community.
I had the same problems with my kids. They’re there. Like, I would rather a beautiful backdrop. Mm-hmm. You know? And so yeah. I’m a bit of a, gypsy.
Britton: Yeah.
Gissele: So, you know, yeah. We’ve programed to want those things, right. To want the house and the picket fence and the car and all of those things. So living outside the box, I’m sure must have felt so magical.
Carolee: Yeah. Really, really was.
Britton: And it was a detox from Western society too. Mm-hmm. The kids really gotten an understanding of like developing countries mm-hmm. And societies that just don’t have the same things as us. It was like a, it was like kind of being in the multiverse, you know, like going from place to place and having us experience so many different cultures.
It was cool.
Gissele: Hmm. That’s amazing. So just wanna sort of conclude the whole [01:13:00] infidelity part I was wondering if you could share the importance of compassion for your partner, whether you choose to stay or go after an infidelity.
Britton: I’m so glad you brought it back to the love and compassion topic because it, God, that was such an important part of like, what we had to really embody in the healing journey. And you know, through that, as I gave my truths and she gave her truths, and we recognized that this was seemingly incompatible, we just held compassion.
We held that, that deep honoring of the others’ truth. And you know, and also like I stepped deeper and deeper into like, just holding her in her own pain, and she’s stepped deeper and deeper into like holding me and my, my pain, which w you know, which we’ve talked about several times on the show here.
compassion is all of these emotions, they’re infinitely deep. And I’m beginning to learn that they have infinite like, depth, [01:14:00] the inner dimensions can continue to go. So, you know, we learned, we’ve learned compassion all along the way, but we’ve learned it to hold it for each person in our family deeper and through the infidelity.
Like she, I think she, she finally understood my pain and I finally understood her trauma. And, through that we stepped into love, which is, in my definition of love, is acceptance. You know, we accept the way things are. Love is not a changing energy. Love has no desire to change the world.
Carolee: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Love simply
Britton: wants to embrace things. It will offer, it will offer, it will offer, but it does not force, it does not coerce, it does not extort. It is all about the guiding presence of agency. And so we, offered both of those emotions deeply to each other, and we found each other in those depths. We found this beautiful connection in those depths.
And I really, truly believe Carol and I’s connection is multi lifetime. Like [01:15:00] cosmic, perhaps twin flame, perhaps, you know, the same soul. I don’t know. But it is, it is deep. And we, we, we love each other with such great compassion and love.
Carolee: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I would add that, you know we’re afraid of the truth, but really the truth is what sets you free.
Mm-hmm. And I realized that when, what, what I was more afraid of what made it hard for me to trust Britton was the deception, the dishonesty, the parts of him that I couldn’t see.
Yeah.
And even though there were things that would, that came out throughout our healing where I was like, Ooh, that’s a heavy one.
That’s a hard truth. I dunno. And I found that in myself too, that when, you know, there are moments where I was like, oh, oh, I know what my truth is here. And I’m really terrified that if I tell him my actual truth, he’ll say, no, that’s too much for me. I’m gonna walk, I’m gonna go this. That’s gonna be the end.
You know? But we, we kept doing this dance [01:16:00] where we got to that threshold of courageous enough to say what it really was that came forth the truth, that we were scared. And through telling the truth, we became. Even more connected in trust because we realized, oh, if you’re so confident in yourself that you can tell me something that might shock me, that might surprise me, that you might think would be the end.
I am now able to sit with my own energy and decide for myself. You know? And that level of presence for another brings that level of presence for yourself. And you can’t receive somebody else’s truths with the ego, You have to like surrender into this compassionate place of understanding, even if it doesn’t make sense for you personally.
Right. And we’ve had tools. especially like even astrology and then like the ritual shadow work that we do. Those tools hold us in discovery of our own truths and make sense of things that, like the unique [01:17:00] blueprint of who I am is so uniquely me. And the unique blueprint of who he is is so uniquely him.
And in some ways we did feel like, oh, you are so different. It’s, we’re truly not even compatible. But what we realized is actually there’s a harmony that can exist for everyone, but it requires that truth telling. And you can’t tell truth to somebody who’s gonna push you. You gotta tell you, you’ve gotta become the person that can hold that grace and that love.
And I think compassion is a core vibration to be able to receive somebody else’s truth in. And then when you receive that truth and then you see, oh, you were brave. You were brave and you told me what you were scared to tell me, and now I love you even more. That’s so curious that my love for you and you admitting your truths to me has expanded not what I was expecting.
Right. But that was what we realized. [01:18:00] That’s what happened time and time again as we allowed ourselves to come to these places of like, okay, I’m just gonna open my heart and, and I just wanna know you. I just wanna know who you are. Stop hiding from me. That was my big thing. Just stop hiding. Stop hiding.
Tell me who you are and allow me to make the choice of whether or not that works for me or not. Right? Mm-hmm. And that, like, to come to that place, like required a, a high level of just even self-compassion.
Gissele: I love everything that you said. I love Britain also that you mentioned like when you truly are in the space of love for yourself and other people, there is no desire to change.
There is no desire to force, there is no desire because your cup is filled from within. You don’t need somebody else to be different so that they can then fulfill whatever it is that you want from them. And so what you’re raising is also an important point, which is truth is [01:19:00] love being authentic, being vulnerable.
And you could have easily just parted and still it would’ve been a positive experience if you were both in your truth. So it’s not about staying or leaving, it’s about being authentically yourself and choosing from that point, which I think from my perspective, is super powerful. I think people are so afraid to be seen because they’ve been told it’s, you’re too much, or, you know, their lights might have been extinguished by other people who were extinguishers ’cause they were extinguished and so on.
And that’s, it’s okay. It’s part of the, the human experience. And the other thing that I, I get really from this conversation, which I really love. Is to embrace all of the different challenges. We are taught to run away from the difficult feelings and the difficult emotions and all of those things, but the way is through, right?
And so you guys had to get really honest and you had to be so brave. I’m so proud of you guys like this. It’s, it’s difficult, like people are [01:20:00] so afraid to go as deep and to be brave and to be vulnerable and to be exposed and, and to choose from that choice. But this is the only way we’re gonna create a different life and different societies and different worlds,
Can I just wanna say something
Britton: about that right there? I’ve been feeling like I just wanna say this, and then you just started talking about it and I’m like, okay. The, what’s on the precipice of, for humanity is a new state of being, a new world, a new Earth. And that earth looks a lot different in community than what it does right now.
And the big part of that is harmony. Like we’re, we’re so much in disharmony. We have so many different ideas. I think a lot of us are actually trying to say the same thing, but we don’t listen very well. The truth is, is that if a harmonious society is possible, then it’s not about changing people. It’s the diversity of creation that actually makes it beautiful.
It’s the integration of everything. [01:21:00] And the only way you can integrate the differences of everyone is through compassion and love. So your podcast is like a perfect anecdote, if you will, of like how we have to come together through compassion and love to build the true society of, of harmonious people.
And it can be hard to believe, it can sound farfetch or idealistic, but the truth is that a third alternative exists. A harmonious energy wave exists for all of us. So I’m on the quest to find that I found it within my relationship. I’m finding it within my relationship of my children and many of my friends, new friends that I’ve developed in this journey.
And I find, I do find that throughout the world that there are people seeking that same society. So we can all come together and start to build that, that then there’s, a great potential to be seen.