Madam Save a Ho

On today’s cast, we chat with Charmaine Houck. She’s a wild woman, soul Warrior, author, healer, and a spiritual wellness rebel. Curious as to who Charmaine is and all her wild woman ways? Find out all this and so much more on today’s Misfit Mondays.

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Mx Zephy 0:00
Hello beautiful people. Welcome back to Misfit Mondays, the show for all the intuitive misfits out there wondering how to turn the light out on spirituality and get comfortable with the shadows. On today's cast, we chat with Charmaine Houck. She's a wild woman, soul warrior, author, healer and a spiritual wellness rebel. Curious as to who Charmaine is and all her wild woman ways? Find out all this and so much more on today's Misfit Mondays.

Charmaine Houck 0:34
Hey everyone, it is Charmaine here. My pronouns are she | hers and today we're going to talk all about me. Yay. And my past Madam Save a Ho ways

Mx Zephy 0:49
Oh, I love that. And so this is Mx Zephy pronouns xe | xem. And I'm glad that we are saving a ho tonight. That just sounds so sex positive.

Charmaine Houck 0:57
Oh, I am I am sex positive. Let me tell you. Positively need it every day. No. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Do what you gotta do. So today I am going to talk about my journey through Shadow Work, which has been uhh. It has been a deep, dark, cavernous, cavernous dive into some nasty cesspool waters that not even a lifestraw could save you.

Mx Zephy 1:44
So we go from a tiered wedding cake to a cesspool, okay.

Charmaine Houck 1:49
Yes, yes, this one it got deep. When I, when I decided I was going to start doing my my shadow work. Um, I never thought it was going to get me the way it got me. But so I have dealt in many ways with uhh. Where do I start? What do I say? Okay, let's go back. Let's go back to the very beginning, it's a very good place to start back to Madame Save a Ho. Ah, I for many years was a people pleaser. And it was all about making other people feel good and repressing my emotions, I cared more about what other people thought about me than I cared about myself. And I would have, I would bend over backwards for people to make their lives more convenient while making mine, a roller coaster from hell.

Charmaine Houck 2:57
And I did that forever. And as I started digging into that, more, it wasn't just about wanting other people to like me, which was a big part of it. But it was also about staying busy. And busyness is a drug, like any other drug you can be addicted to. Because when you're busy, you don't have to deal with your emotions. You don't have to, you don't allow yourself time to pause. And I lived that way for years. And when someone says, Oh my gosh, you're so busy all the time. And I don't know how you make it all come together, but it's always wonderful. And you eat that shit up with gold plated spoons, and it just fuels you for the next month of busyness. And saying yes to everything all over again. Because you want to feel recognized for what you've done. And you don't want to deal with yourself.

Mx Zephy 4:23
Truth.

Charmaine Houck 4:24
If you are doing things to make everyone else happy and and staying busy. You are not taking time for self care. I never did. You are not taking time to pause and understand how you truly feel about anything. And you're not giving yourself space to grow. You're not. You're staying in the same fucking hamster wheel and you're just going as you go and go and go and go and go until you can't go anymore. And then if you're like me, you lay in bed for two or three days, I'm depressed and down and crying and eating all this shit you can get your hands on. Hello Taco Bell, you can sponsor us too. Just whatever it's, it's awful, or, you know I had a real umm struggle with alcohol. And while I might not be an alcoholic in the sense that I have to have a drink every day or I crave to drink, I actually don't crave drinking every day. But I know my pattern. And my pattern is if I allow myself to have one drink today, I will have two drinks tomorrow. And by three days, four days, for now, I will be having five or six drinks. And before you know it, I'm going to drink to the point where I think I'm okay. But I'm going to drive home and I'm not. And then I'm going to be on like a Friday, Saturday bender by the end of the month. So that was part of my busyness, I would go until I couldn't go anymore. And then I would drink until I couldn't drink anymore. And then I'd be in bed depressed and guilty and shameful. And all of these things, and then the cycle would repeat. And I lived that for so long. It was just normal life. And I didn't really think about it until I guess it was about a year ago now. I had quit drinking for a year at one time, just to prove to myself that I could. I was back to drinking again. And things were pretty good. And I was busy. And I said why do I say yes to everybody? I just got to this point where it's like, I don't want to do this shit. I don't. I don't want to be on that board. I don't want to bake cupcakes for PTA. I just didn't want to do it anymore. And I had to sit with that because it was so scary to say no. Because when people know that you'll always say yes. And then the minute they hear no, it's automatically, What's wrong with you? What.. What happened? Something? Something must be wrong. Nothing is wrong. I just don't I just don't want to make any more cupcakes, Betty.

Mx Zephy 7:38
Cookies. Yeah, a Buffy reference, the very last season finale, she goes on cookies. And I'm not done baking yet. And then there's like this whole like allegory about eating. And they're just like into that real quick. Anyways, back to your story. Sorry to interrupt.

Charmaine Houck 7:55
So it's this little thing. So I will say that, you know, in January of this year, I quit drinking. And so I've been sober for almost nine months now. And I've lost like 30 pounds, which that's pretty awesome. And I've dug a lot deeper into this and started setting real boundaries for myself and living by the I get to have I deserve and get and schedule self care every week. And that could be a massage. It could be just taking a half hour bath or our bath with nobody in my family touching the bathroom door. It could be going for a long walk in the nature park on a warm Saturday afternoon. But I make time for that. And I don't say yes to things that don't align with me. There's no more of this. Oh yeah, sure. No, if it doesn't fit into my schedule, I'm not breaking my back to do it. If it doesn't align with what I want to be doing, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it just to be nice anymore. Now when I bake cupcakes, it means something it's because I chose to bake them I I wanted to do this and it shows in the way I present myself the way I the way I bake. The biggest ingredient in baking is love and you know when you're just throwing shit together, and you know and praying and spraying and shit's all over your kitchen and cookies are burnin and you're crying and you don't want like it's chaos. It's chaos. You don't want it.

Mx Zephy 9:40
That's Shadow Work. 

Charmaine Houck 9:41
That is Shadow Work. And so it digging into that, you know I've also had to look at the triggers of jealousy and how I deal with being overwhelmed by anxiety depression things and then I got real deep into relationships and this, like, the sexual and emotional attention that I crave, from people. And I know for a lot of a lot of people, especially young people, if dealt with any type of sexual abuse, or sexual assault, a lot of times, you're either completely cut off, you cut yourself off from being a sexual being, or you go the other side, and you become very promiscuous, because that is this innate way of you finding or feeling love, which is not love at all, it's your immature mind, believing that it's love. And so I had to sit in that in that, you know, coming down to issues in my own marriage of, you know, why are these things such a big deal to me? Why do I, you know, I need these things? And is it something that is that in me, because I feel like I need these things. As I've worked through it, it's not, because I'm human, and I'm going to have emotions. And in a healthy relationship, a partner will be there, to listen and help you through these emotions. And you have the choice of seeing a professional, you can always see a therapist, I've seen a therapist for things that are too heavy, because while your partner is your partner, it is not your partner's job to fix you. And it is not your partner's job to take on more than they can handle. So if you know me talking about past sexual assault is a little heavy for my partner to deal with. And in that, I respect that. And I take that to a licensed professional. But it's knowing that it's knowing that about yourself, and you know, why do I get jealous? Is it because my partner is sexy as hell to me? Well, that's part of it. But it also comes down to things of my past of not being okay with myself, and continuously putting myself up against others and comparing. That's jealousy, because I want to know what someone else has that's better than me, or that's my issue. That's not my partner's issue, because I might die of jealousy issues, something I need to work through. But yeah, it in the end, it all came down to the only so, ho. So Ho, the only Ho I needed to be saving was myself. And I didn't even realize that until I stopped trying to save everybody else.

Mx Zephy 13:20
I think this is beautiful. This is like and I know we're about to close out the episode. But I also want to hold space for this, like raw vulnerability, like this is the Shadow Work pieces that we don't see very often. And here you are, like, basically exposing yourself to well for right now, it's probably just gonna be about 30 to 40 people, but still, that's 30 to 40 people like this will sit at like in their directory for a while. But this is giving you a realness. And you know, and really, I think this is the beauty of Shadow Work is it's allowing you to sit with all those difficult emotions. So I want to honor that. And I also want to thank you for this like I have I have immense gratitude and like just being open like this and saying, This is my truth. This is who I am. Like, all of that is beautiful. Even those pieces that you might still feel are shameful or you might still hold some guilt over or you know, be feeling some not so great emotions over it. Um, yeah, I think this is just, it's wonderful.

Charmaine Houck 14:20
Well, thank you. Thank you and I you know, I appreciate being here with you. I think Misfit Mondays is great. I wish that you know somebody had spoken some truth and some realness into my life much earlier. And my real goal is to give back to everyone to give back to the collective. Whether you're young or middle aged or old. If there's stuff that you are still working on, I want you to be able to find your way to it and through it. by whatever means is best for you. For you, and so I really hope that we can empower our youth, this next generation with ideas for health and wellness and, and coping skills that are better than what we were given, really is what it comes down to.

Mx Zephy 15:21
Misfit Mondays is created by Lady Charmaine and, me, Mx Zephy. You can find us on social media at Misfit Mondays. Be sure to check out our Patreon for a deeper dive into this week's Shadow Work. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you right here, next week, on Misfit Mondays, namaslay beautiful people.