How My Sister's Life Choices Taught Me To Rise Above (Manifesting through extreme hardship) Episode 67

[00:00:00] Everything was out of control, except my thoughts, my beliefs, and my attitude.

[00:00:06] When I was in fourth grade, I had a baby blue bedroom upstairs,

[00:00:10] and across the hall for me was my older sister Cindy, and hers was purple.

[00:00:14] She was in eighth grade at the time, and she was the definition of cool.

[00:00:20] I wanted to be just like her, as many younger siblings often do.

[00:00:24] I admired everything about her, but most especially her clothes and her record albums,

[00:00:30] because she and her cool friends would hang out in the attic listening to Black Sabbath

[00:00:36] and The Rolling Stones smoking cigarettes underneath a black light.

[00:00:41] It was mysterious. This story is about the power of manifestation.

[00:00:47] While she was popular, she had that effortlessly cool vibe.

[00:00:51] I was the complete opposite. One night, I found her sneaking out of the window

[00:00:56] using a sheet tied to the bed post. When I threatened to tell her dad,

[00:01:01] she bribed me with her clothes. Another night, she snuck out again, this time through the

[00:01:07] front door only to be caught by my dad. By 14, she was deep into drugs,

[00:01:12] constantly sneaking out and running away, and her behavior escalated.

[00:01:17] My parents simply couldn't control her. They didn't know what to do.

[00:01:22] By the time I was 17, Cindy had then become my legal guardian,

[00:01:26] as she and I had both moved back to the city suburbs of Detroit,

[00:01:30] and I had six months to graduate high school. I had to work three jobs and go to day school

[00:01:35] and night school in order to pay rent and start surviving.

[00:01:38] But this was a drug house, and Cindy had a two-year-old boy.

[00:01:42] I would work until midnight waitressing and then have to do homework until two or three in the morning.

[00:01:49] When I would wake up the next morning, my car would be gone for days, and so was she.

[00:01:56] Leaving the child and no vehicle for me to get to all my jobs, to get to my classes.

[00:02:03] Eventually, the school principal had called me to tell me if I missed one more day of school

[00:02:07] that I was going to fail, that was not going to happen. It was too important to me.

[00:02:11] I had decided I'm going to college, I'm getting a career. I don't know how I'm going to do it,

[00:02:15] but I'm going to do it somehow. I became more and more furious at my sister.

[00:02:20] But that was just the beginning of the real nightmares to come relating to

[00:02:27] her drug addiction and scary people and her antics.

[00:02:31] For about the next 20 years of my life, I was continually on this perpetual land of

[00:02:37] getting back up again somehow and changing my attitude to keep going.

[00:02:42] I had to fight for a better life. I knew that somehow I was going to have to harness

[00:02:47] the power of my thoughts and positive thinking because I was so depressed and so negative and

[00:02:53] so fearful and so doubtful. My beliefs were just a mess. I didn't believe I could do anything.

[00:03:01] I was consumed by depression and I had nothing except prayer and what came to be manifesting

[00:03:08] and positive thinking where I wrote in journals to change my beliefs, to tell myself better things

[00:03:16] about myself in my life and what things would be common, what things would be.

[00:03:22] It was like brainwashing myself out of depression and PTSD even because remember then there

[00:03:31] was no talk of this. There just weren't any educational pieces around this. So manifesting

[00:03:39] became my way to survive. That is why I have this channel in a nutshell because in spite of

[00:03:49] years of multiple trauma at the same time while I was brainwashing my subconscious mind,

[00:03:57] I began creating and taking risks and I started a tech company at 26 and I sold it at 31. I had

[00:04:04] had a home in a boat and sold out all of my material possessions and bought a bit of motor

[00:04:09] home and traveled in my 30s by myself for almost four years across the country starting

[00:04:13] a second business now by that point doing manifesting retreats and workshops all over the

[00:04:19] country by creating it as I went on the road through my belief system and so even though my

[00:04:27] sister's antics were still happening, I was convincing myself that I could do it. My sister

[00:04:34] did a lot of bad things to affect my life and she's gone now. I can say she was actually

[00:04:43] my greatest motivator in this life. I am actually grateful for my sister because I thank her for

[00:04:52] coming to this earth and living out her mission to be a free spirit, living on her own terms without

[00:05:01] any apologies. That's the biggest lesson I learned from her. In some ways it gave me permission

[00:05:09] to live my life unconventionally as I have as well, throwing caution to the wind and taking risks

[00:05:16] and not doing what other people were doing, having jobs in companies, having children. I did in my

[00:05:23] 30s what I didn't want to wait to do in my 60s. I count on manifesting the power of the

[00:05:32] subconscious mind is really the only thing you have control over in life. The moral

[00:05:38] of these stories is it's never too late to reframe your perspective about those who harmed you.

[00:05:45] Relationships are our greatest teachers and the most painful ones especially are the greatest

[00:05:51] teachers and individuals on the planet who are the most messed up are even the greater teachers

[00:06:00] because most of us learn through pain. I'm Kate Wilder. I want to thank you for being here

[00:06:07] and watch the next episode.