Jackie Mirkopoulos

Transcript

If you move me, I will kill you. That's what I said. Lying on a cold bathroom floor, cheek pressed against the tile, my body contracting in ways that I couldn't control. 11 weeks pregnant. And just days earlier, I was sitting in a quiet, dim ultrasound room, staring at a screen that should have been flickering with life, but it wasn't. And in that moment, everything dropped. And not just the baby, but the future that I had already started imagining. The cute baby names.

The thought of watching my parents play with their grandchild. Gone. In a single moment. And before I could even process it, the doctor says, "We'll just schedule you for a D&C." Like it was nothing, like that was obvious what we do. And my head locked in. Yeah, that's what the doctor says, that's what we'll do. But my body, my body said no. You will not insert foreign objects inside my body, scrape my uterine wall. That's not the only path here. How could my head be so sure and my body so clear, but in the opposite directions?

Then came the shame. What's wrong with me? Is my body broken? A few days later, it began. Sharp, deep, unmistakable. I was out with friends pretending like everything was fine when the wave hit me. We left immediately. "Hospital?" my partner asked. I said, "No. Take me home." You see, I was so confident in that answer because on the way home from that ultrasound, I called my doula. And she said something to me that had my body saying, "Yes." She said, "Your body knows exactly what to do.

Create a safe space and let your body lead." So, I listened. There was no safer place than home, even if it meant driving up a bumpy-ass mountain road for 20 minutes. By the time I got there, I barely made it inside. I dropped to the bathroom floor and my body took over. The pain was primal. I was grieving and releasing at the exact same time. I looked to my partner, the poor guy looked terrified. "You're scaring me," he says. "I want to take you to the hospital."

And that's when primal turned Hulk. "If you move me, I will kill you." Because in the middle of all that chaos, that confident voice inside spoke up. "Let your body lead." Crying, shaking, grunting, breathing through waves of pain I thought were going to break me. And in the middle of all that pain, I realized something. My body wasn't broken. It was working. Have you ever received a message from your body that you ignored? We're not taught to listen to ourselves, to trust ourselves.

We're told to take the road most traveled, trust the experts, take the pill, book the procedure, follow the plan. And hey, those things have their place. But somewhere along the lines, we forgot to listen to ourselves. We silence the inner voice, and we follow what's trending over what's true. And what's true is the road less traveled. And not the one on the map, but the one inside. What I learned is that the best decision you will ever make is to trust yourself when everyone around you is telling you not to.

I moved through a miscarriage without medical intervention. Naturally, safely, and powerfully because I listened. So the next time that you find yourself on your version of that bathroom floor, in pain, in doubt, in fear, your body trying to communicate something to you that it knows to be true, I want you to remember this. That your body is your most intelligent, honest, and loving ally. Your literal ride or die. The question is, are you listening? Thank you.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.

Transcript

Have you ever had that moment when you were convinced you have life figured out? And then the universe looked at your plan and said, "Oh, that's cute." Yeah, that moment. A few years back I thought I had cracked the code. I bought my first retreat property in Costa Rica, a lush tropical dream I called Care Bear Mountain. I invested a ton of money, closed my clinical practice, sold my condo. Deuces, I'm out. I didn't just burn the boats, I blew that up.

And then hit the fan. Borders closed, retreats canceled, the world stopped. There I was in the middle of paradise with no clients, no income, no backup plan. And a very expensive piece of land I had no idea how to take care of. Let me also mention I was living with five of my friends and an 8-year-old. At first, it was all fun. It felt like a real life episode of Friends. But here's the truth. That fun quietly turned into panic. Because when the world stopped, it wasn't just my business plan that collapsed.

It was me. All of me. I would walk the land every morning pretending I was fine like, "Look at me, living the dream." But inside, I was spiraling. I tried to contain and control it. And in doing that, I turned into a penny-pinching, dominant dictator. Let me tell you how. I forced the seven of us in a three-bedroom home when another five-bedroom home sat empty to save electricity. I started forcing weekly family meetings. I was like Oprah giving away cars. You get a rule.

You get a rule. Everybody gets a rule. I started hoarding my favorite snacks. At one point, we were treating food like we were living in a survival bunker. And I'm pretty sure I slightly traumatized my friend's daughter teaching her how to cook. In fairness, she left with life skills. But one day I asked her how the experience was. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, "Intense." Apparently, I run culinary boot camps. All these experiences had me thinking to myself one night, "Who am I?"

You see, I wanted to be this Care Bear goddess who created luxurious experiences for people who needed healing. Turns out, I was the one who needed healing. My dream didn't die. I destroyed it. And then, one day, scrolling on Instagram because obviously that's where all life-altering breakthroughs happen, and this course magically appears in my feed. Online permaculture design. Basically, how to collaborate with nature instead of controlling it. I thought to myself, "Well, I have all this free time on my hands now.

Let me walk away from YouTube Zumba for the fifth time today and figure out how to not mess up this land or my friendships." What I thought was collapsing my life's purpose wasn't the end. It was life telling me, "I've got something better." The first week, the first assignment in this course was one word, observation. We were told to go outside, sit, and watch nature. Just observe her. And wow, did I observe. I observed how nature organizes itself without force, how nothing is wasted, how breakdowns become nutrients, and how systems don't rush, they respond.

And I remember thinking to myself, "Why am I not living like this? And should I make this course a new house rule?" But [snorts] seriously, why aren't our lives designed this way? Our relationships, our businesses. Why are we so obsessed with production, pressure, and power when nature has been showing us a better blueprint all along? That assignment, sitting on the land, observing, changed everything. What began as one broken plan became an entire new way of being. I stopped dominating life and started listening.

I stopped making decisions based in fear and started making them based in trust. I stopped controlling and I started collaborating. And when I changed, everything around me changed. So, this is the breakthrough I want to leave you all with today. The next time the hits the fan in your life, you all have a choice. You can control and contain, but I'm going to invite you to do something radical instead. I want you to sit in it. Yes, sit in it as the career hits the crossroads, as the relationship is crumbling, as the path forward seems so unclear.

I want you to sit in all that Nature shows us it helps things grow. Because if you can sit in it and observe it, then you will begin to see that what feels like a breakdown just might be life preparing you for your next greatest breakthrough. Thank you.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.