Erica Bonham

In this episode of Just Like Nana, host Amie (Elizabeth) Penny Sayler is joined by Erica Bonham, a licensed counselor and embodied leadership coach, where they explore a “badass nervous system”, emotional alchemy, and tips for listening to your body.

About Erica

Erica Bonham is a licensed professional counselor, speaker, best selling author and embodied leadership coach. Her work bridges individual transformation and collective healing. She leads trainings on EMDR, ancestral trauma, and embodied, heart-led leadership.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• The difference between fake resiliency, a high-functioning trauma response rooted in fear, and true capacity.
• How to stay present with difficult emotions. Instead of avoiding the hard things, learn to use them as fuel for your growth and leadership.
• Moving beyond repeating affirmations like "I am worthy." Shift into an embodied practice where your value is something you feel in your cells, not just something you think in your head.
• Explore the intersection of the body, the heart, and the mind. When you unwind the patterns in all three areas, you stop playing small and start trusting your own intuition and impact.
• Why setting boundaries isn't just a social skill, but a physiological requirement for your nervous system. Strengthening your capacity to say "no" increases your capacity.

Resources Mentioned

• Kim Krans The Wild Archetypes Deck
• Kasia Urbaniack’s Book, Unbound

Connect with Erica Bonham

Website: https://www.avoscounseling.com

Embodied and Unstoppable Workshop

Nervous System Reset Toolkit

Erica’s Book: Always Enough, Never Done

Connect with the Show

• Website: justlikenana.com
• Share Your Story: If you have a family story or trauma you’re exploring, reach out via our website for a chance to be interviewed.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Theme music by Carter Penny.

Transcript

Embodied Leadership & Ancestral Trauma: Reclaiming Your Internal Medicine with Erica Bonham

Amie Penny Sayler 0:21

Welcome to Just Like Nana. So excited to be here with you today. We have an amazing guest. Her energy, y'all. There's not a word. The words are Erica Bonham. It's her name are the only words that can describe her. So Erica is a licensed professional counselor, speaker, best-selling author, and embodied leadership coach. Her work bridges individual transformation and collective healing. She leads trainings on EMDR, ancestral trauma, embodied heart-led leadership. Erica has a free upcoming workshop called Embodied and Unstoppable: Badass Activation for the Fully Expressed Leader. It will come out on June 5 in 2026, depending on when you're listening to this. We will put the link in the show notes. Erica aspires to be a catalyst for pulling this human art closer to the values of beauty, equity, reciprocity, community, and joy. Well, welcome, Erica. We're so excited to have you on Just Like Nana today. I am so excited to be here. Thanks for reaching out.

Erica Bonham 1:33

Yeah.

Amie Penny Sayler 1:33

Absolutely. I I mean, we're gonna get to this a couple questions in, but you had me at, you know, the badass nervous system.

Erica Bonham 1:42

Oh, thanks. That's sort of my brand. I just let people know from the get that I am a curser, not Puritan style lady. Yeah.

Amie Penny Sayler 1:53

Love it. Well, we like to start each episode if you have a story you'd like to share about an ancestor or any sort of familial story that you feel called

Erica’s Adoption Story and Ancestral Threads

Amie Penny Sayler 2:04

to share.

Erica Bonham 2:05

Yeah. I'll try to tell you the short version. I am adopted, and my birth father drowned like the day after I was conceived. And his family never knew I existed until I found them like probably five or six years ago. My birth mom was kind of a party girl. And then I was the impetus for her becoming a born-again Christian. And I am a queer identified wild woman. So I find that universally hilarious that I was the impetus for that. And then I was adopted into a lovely family. I was very close with my mom who raised me, but she was the adult survivor of childhood sexual trauma. And, you know, I think she did a pretty good job for being a born in the 40s, coming of age in the 60s, raising children in the 80s and 90s. She tried to do her best, but I don't think we had the modalities to really look at the trauma that she had. So she was pretty self-medicating with her, she loved her white wine, you know, and she was notoriously people pleasing and died of breast cancer. And I really don't think that's a coincidence that she was always sort of self-sacrificing and people pleasing and got a disease. I mean, I don't think it's like direct cause and effect, but you know, stored emotions, right, manifest in the body. And so as I got older, my own relationship with alcohol became pretty complicated. I was never whatever. I was never missing work or driving drunk or anything like that. But it just felt like it was overdeveloped and it felt very old. Like it felt like there was part of it that wasn't really even mine, but it did feel like I don't know how I'm gonna live without this thing in a way. And then I actually did some ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. And in that work, one, it felt like my adopted mom. So I'm not genetically related to her. So that trauma wasn't being passed down genetically to me, but I knew about it from a very young age. It still felt like I was carrying some of it, even though it wasn't genetically mine. And it felt within ketamine work, it felt like she had passed. She passed in 2014. It felt like she was able to do EMDR, which is a like PTSD trauma protocol that I also practice as a therapist. But we were doing EMDR while I was a little bit altered in ketamine still. And it

Alcohol, Ancestral Trauma & Ketamine-Assisted Healing

Erica Bonham 4:40

felt like her spirit was doing EMDR through my body about her trauma. And ever since then, I really haven't had a drink. Pretty much since then, I've been sober from alcohol for almost six years. And it just has felt like it's not mine anymore. And then the whole like adoption stuff, too, it just feels, I mean, that's a little bit more. I don't have content for that, right? But there's just this felt sense of I reconnected with my birth mom enough. And she would say, I gave all my shame to Jesus and I don't have it anymore. But she died from endometrial cancer, had a lot of reproductive trauma. And I know that she had shame that she never really dealt with. I mean, it's not for me to say, right? It's her life, it's her body. But I experience her in terms of an ancestor as having a lot of undigested shame. And so that has been the process for me around letting my body release that, letting my body digest what has landed in me from that. And then with my birth father, he just feels like this sweet, funny, trickstery, but in a good way, just like playful energy. And I've always sort of experienced him as whatever, a guardian angel, if you will, or or what have you. But he kind of shows up for me as white feathers. And there was this whole story when I was hemming and hawing about alcohol. I kind of got this like spiritual shot while I was doing drunk laundry at midnight. I was like, if you don't knock this shit off, something really bad is gonna happen. And then I woke up the next day and I was like, fine, God, or whatever you are. If you want me to be sober, I want to see an S next to a white feather. And the S was for sobriety. And I hope it's okay if I cuss, because this is how I this is how I talk to the divine, apparently. I was like, do that, motherfucker. And then within an hour, I saw it twice. My kids had spilled a spelling puzzle, and the S was right next to a feather from an Elton John costume that my son had been like literally the white feather was directly over the S. I was wild. And then my son had like on a child's restaurant menu, colored, it was the south side walnut cafe, and he had circled the S and colored in just the S with yellow, and he had put it on my jewelry stand so that it was right across from this big white feather that I have. So I was like, okay. Message received. Message received, got it. All right. So I I kind of credit my birth father's spirit with like, yes, sweetie, this is the right decision for you. This is what's gonna help you heal some ancestral shit. Like, like, this is your task in this world. And it, you know, not not or being sober from alcohol really is what I feel like has allowed me to step into a whole different level of capacity, being the grounded presence, being the grounded presence to be able to do ancestral work with other people. I just don't think I could have done that had that instability of alcohol been around still. So anyway, that's a long story. I did not

Sobriety, Motherhood, and Energetic Presence

Erica Bonham 8:04

do a very good job of shortening that.

Amie Penny Sayler 8:05

Oh my gosh, there is so much in there. So, first of all, your story about alcohol really resonates with me. We're sort of on about the same timeline. So, yeah, I mean, was I an alcoholic? I don't know. But the fact that I have to think about whether I was says that there was abuse there. Right. And then it was right around the time of the pandemic.

Erica Bonham 8:28

Yeah.

Amie Penny Sayler 8:30

Where I just, you know, I don't want to do this. And I would say what I realized about it, and look, I'm not trying to say some universal truth for every single person. I'm talking about my experience. I realized it was a disconnector. It was disconnecting me from myself totally.

Erica Bonham 8:46

And my kids were young enough that they didn't have words for it, but I know that they could just feel my energy leaving them, right? And both of them have said, Mom, you're so much more fun and funny. And I just like it so much better that you're not drinking. I was like, Can you tell me more? I was like, they're like, not really, right? Because they just don't have words, but I know that they could feel my energy going away from them. So yes, disconnect from myself, but also this sort of dissociative film that it put between me and others and me and the world. And I get it. Like this world is dense, it is harsh, it's hard. And I understand wanting to escape from it now and then.

Amie Penny Sayler 9:32

So yeah, all the compassion and yeah, everyone makes different choices and things affect people differently. But yeah, I just wanted to to kind of add an exclamation mark to your experience. And then what I love so much about your story is just this weaving, and it just shows the beauty of our lives here on earth and the complexity of them. And that trauma is, you know, as you point out, both yes, it's ancestral and whether that's energetic or epigenetic or how that comes through the line, but also there's a relational component there, which is plain from what you experienced with your mom.

Erica Bonham 10:09

Totally.

Amie Penny Sayler 10:10

And so, yeah, just really appreciating how how complicated that all gets. It is.

Erica Bonham 10:16

And I always want to hold right the both and of yes, there is dark water and wounding and trauma that is a long, long, long way down the line. And there is resiliency and beauty and connection to the land. You know, like I think a lot of white-bodied folks, for example, might feel a lot of shame if their ancestry, you know, if they are committed to justice or equity or whatever, and they're like, I don't have any good ancestors, or I'm kind of ashamed of my ancestors. And I would just like to invite, like, we were all at once connected to the land at some point. And if you want to go back far enough, uh all of our ancestors are water and earth. And so, you know, so I get that. And I do think there's some time and some collective asking for us to look at the ancestral wounding that collectively is I see what's happening in the world right now as this like collective reckoning with unhealed ancestral wounding that never got dealt with. And it's a lot. We are being asked to rise to this moment in a way that I don't think previous generations have. And even just talk, I mean, the ethos that ancestral trauma is like in the ether on Instagram. People are talking about it on, you know, like I've never had so many white people in my office talking about ancestral trauma before. Even though this wisdom has been in indigenous practice and in black wisdom for a really long time, and we want to be mindful of not extracting or whatever, but like I've got lots of people talking about ancestral trauma in a way that has never happened. So that gives me actually a lot of hope. And I I always want to return people back to yes, like clearing and digesting and doing the descending path work of acknowledging the wounding and also acknowledging the resiliency. And you're still here, babe. Like you're here. And you're so, you know, my belief is like our soul chose to come here. And if you are a high conscious, heart-led person, we're the ones we've been waiting for, you know. Like we are the ones that are gonna guide this turning. And even though it's really hard and it's really ugly, I also hold the long arc that I do think more beautiful things are ahead for us.

Amie Penny Sayler 12:52

That

Collective Ancestral Wounding, Hope, and Resilience

Amie Penny Sayler 12:53

is so hope-filled. Thank you for that. Because it can get so easy to kind of see what's right in front of us and focus on that, sort of, you know, engage in some sort of downward spiral related to all of that. So thank you.

Erica Bonham 13:08

Oh, totally. Yeah, and I'm I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig here. It's it's a rough. And that harshness and that brutality need to be honored and held and you know, fought against. And we want to keep our eye on not only are we what are we fighting against, but what are we wanting to create here? What are we wanting to align to? We're the ancestors for future generations. And so what are we gonna leave? Are we just gonna leave rage and fight and fighting against energy? Or are we gonna leave creativity and art and music and dancing together and reclaiming some things that we're gonna leave a little bit better for them?

Amie Penny Sayler 13:51

Yeah, maybe even some joy. Exactly. Talking about honoring ancestors and kind of that if you're in a white body, which I am, there might be shame, you know, that sort of thing. I really try to, and I'm sure I don't always succeed, but not look at my ancestors going back one, two, three, ten generations and thinking, well, here's a moral code that I think in the year 2026. So what were you doing? You know, instead just really understanding that things were different. I wasn't there. I don't know. And that's not what needs to be the connection. The connection needs to look at how we can continue to move forward together. And I know you talk about like ancestral strengths and so looking toward that as well. Yeah.

Erica Bonham 14:50

I think it's both and, right? I mean, I think it is because on the flip side, I also understand the collective rage that people of color are feeling right now. And I think it's really important for white-bodied folks not to dismiss the harm that, you know, even if our ancestors just came over from Denmark two generations ago or something, like we still collectively live in bodies that move through the world differently, right? And so to hold, you know, I I always I don't know if you have, do you have this archetypes deck by Kim Kranz? No, by any chance? It's really good. And there's one called the Crone, like the old crone energy, and it's just all about paradox, and it's like birth and death and pain and joy, and like holding all of it. So not being able to be like, oh well, it was it was just how it was back then and sort of minimizing it in a way, but really holding and being steady in the horrific things that happened, and being able to hold the resiliency and the joy in the same breath. And that is a big ask. And sometimes we have to go to those dark, shadowy places that don't feel so pretty in order to be able to have the capacity to hold the joy and the relationship and the love that can still be there, you know, to get in the same space. That's a life's work, you know, and probably multiple, even fair enough. I don't know that we're gonna clear all that out in our lifetime, but point our feet in the direction of and just a simple question is like, is this the path of wisdom and love? And in what direction would wisdom and love have me point my feet?

Amie Penny Sayler 16:48

I feel like that could be a journal prompt for about a year. You just go deeper and deeper.

Erica Bonham 16:54

Yeah.

What Is Ancestral Trauma? Epigenetics, Energy & the Body

Amie Penny Sayler 17:04

But how do you define it in your work? What does it mean to you when you say that?

Erica Bonham 17:09

Oh man, it's so it's just so ineffable in a way. It's so, it's like, come on into the abyss, the water's fine, right? And, you know, now we have some sort of Western scientific evidence, right, of epigenetics and seeing that trauma responses can genetically be passed down through generations. So, right, Holocaust survivor studies that the same sort of trauma response in grandparents and great-grandparents can show up in future generations, right? So, of course, we have that piece of it, but there's so much more, right? That it almost in my mind requires some level of bringing in an energetic or a quote unquote spiritual practice because it's just so esoteric and ineffable. And so for me, I mean, I talk about that when I have a lot of women in my office, right, that are like, I'm just pissed. I'm like, yeah, I hear you. I wonder if there is an ancestral piece of that that we are collectively reckoning with generations and generations of really not being able to use our voices, sexual assault, culture, whatever it is, right? And so that might lead to, yeah, my grandmother was a child abuse survivor, or my, you know, my whatever the stories that they know. But even the stories that they don't know, like what are the images that come up? What's the body sensation? What's just the felt sense? Do you feel nauseous? Do you feel clenching in your chest? Because we might not ever know the content. And that's actually true even for our individual personal lives, right? A lot of trauma survivors don't remember the content. But we can trust what's happening in the present moment right now in the body. We might not ever know exactly what happened or what the content is, but the body remembers, and the body might be working in metaphor or working in images or working in themes. And we can help process that with things like EMDR or parts work or somatic practice and just trusting that whatever's here is processing something for a reason. So things like addiction, like depression that just feels old, right? Like anything could have an ancestral component. And is there a downloadable quiz or a blood test that you can take? Nope. Like we don't know. You know, we don't, we just don't know. But at least opening the possibility of that to me, just it deepens the work and it allows people to take some of the pathology off of themselves a little bit to say, you know, maybe this isn't all mine. Maybe this this is older than me. And a lot of times people just get that felt sense, right? That those negative stories, those negative beliefs of I'm not enough or whatever it is is older than you.

Amie Penny Sayler 20:17

How do you help people? So I'm thinking of my very Western existence and kind of mindset and that sort of thing. And it's sometimes it can feel like a struggle, right? My brain wants to be, well, I'm the one in charge, and here are the words, and here's what I'm gonna tell you from a logical perspective. How do you help people really sort of ground and understand and listen to their body, respect what their body is telling them? What are some tips you have for listeners along those

Listening to the Body vs. Western Mindset & People-Pleasing

Amie Penny Sayler 20:48

lines?

Erica Bonham 20:48

Yeah, I mean, we don't want to discount science. We we don't want to discount also personal empowerment and personal, like, we want you to step into your own power. And so, even from a secular perspective, from a scientific perspective, we know that generational trauma is a thing. This is not just your woo-woo, Sedona, Boulder, hippie therapist speculating on the matter. Right. So if there's a need for grounding in science, we can do that part of it, right? And so just noticing that we also have a lot of evidence that undigested trauma, undigested grief, undigested emotion will lead to physical problems if it is not addressed. And I'm not saying that all cancer is caused by trauma or the causation piece is complicated, but we know that autoimmune, that digestive issues, all of those, that trauma can be and often is a factor in flare ups, whatever, right? So the science is coming up with it, and we want to be Mindful of not blaming people for their physical stuff, right? So the tips that I would have is if you're feeling something right now in your body, as you're just talking about it, as you're just noticing the story of your grandmother, as you're noticing the story of your mom, or as you notice the stories that you know about your ancestral line, or even as you just notice the collective piece of all of this, what's coming up for you? Is there a part of you that's like, ugh, no? Or is there a part of you that is rageful about my even suggesting such a thing? Is there a part of you that feels like it's constricted and it wants to shrink and it wants to collapse? That's information for you. And usually, if those protective mechanisms of collapse or rage or flight or whatever are kicking in, you can probably bet that there's something undigested there, that there is something that is unprocessed and stuck. And if none of that resonates for you, do your thing, you know, go merrily on your way. I'm not your person. But generally speaking, people who want to work with me trust that if something's here in the present moment, it's worth exploring.

Amie Penny Sayler 23:20

You tell me if I have this wrong, but I think there is a lot of power in that moment of when you notice it, yeah, to just instead of an immediate dismissal or, you know, I mean, and I will fully use myself as an example. I mean, I am constantly shut up, body, you're fine, you know. Yes, totally. Right. Instead of that, just taking that one beat, that one pause to just sit there and and hear it and acknowledge it. I personally think that is a really powerful first step forward.

Erica Bonham 23:55

Oh, totally, yeah. So one, I would even catch whatever the protective mechanism is. If you're like, shut up, body, right? I would try to greet even that with compassion because that was a protective and an adaptive part that we all are swimming in the soup of, right? We do not live in a culture that collectively honors body wisdom, especially if you're socialized as women, right? We are constantly navigating the smush of too much and not enough. Don't be too loud, too needy, too whatever, fill in the blank, but also not enough, not skinny enough, not pretty enough, not brave enough, not smart enough, whatever, right? Like, so we're we're constantly in this smush. And so having compassion for like, of course, there's a part of you that tells your body to shut up. And it's like, hey, I love you, and you've had to learn this, and I'm gonna ask you to soften, and we're gonna actually start practicing listening to what our body is saying, even though it's really hard and it goes against that procedural protective, adaptive mechanism that we have just been organized around for so long.

Amie Penny Sayler 25:10

Thank you for saying that. I think I personally can have contempt for the protective mechanism of, but I know you've done this, but now I'm trying to do this, you know, leave me alone. And just to really take that moment to also honor, you've helped me. Thank you for that. And and I loved your word of soften, like not go away. Let's just soften and let's hear what others have to say.

Erica Bonham 25:34

And there can also be an invitation for that part to evolve, to alchemize, right? Like you could actually become the coach here. You could actually become the, oh, hey, I I know my procedural is to like tell it to shut up, but what if I could help instead go toward it, go toward what the emotion is telling me I need or go toward the hard thing. And that, you know, sometimes we need to be like stern but loving grandmother with our critics or with our, you know, like mean parts. It's like, hey, I love you, but you need to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. You know what I mean? Like sometimes there's parts of us that need not so, you know, nurturing. Right, right. Sometimes we need to set stern boundaries with our critics and with our perfectionists and such. But there can also be that invitation, like, hey, you could actually be part of this team in a different way. Right. I mean, you have powerful protector skills. Let's use them. Yeah. I wanted to circle back to about, you know, shut up, body, you're fine. And and I just heard this really interesting talk on emotions. It was just about like how the subconscious and the body can can process like eight billion pieces of information per minute, right? And the conscious can only process about 10. So emotions are actually the subconscious bid to the conscious mind to help resolve a problem. And I think Western practice of mindfulness is misguided when it is used as a way of dissociating or just like breathing through our feelings, right? So if we're just breathing through guilt and dissociating from that, we actually become much less ethical. And if we're just breathing through fear, we actually become much less productive. Fear and anxiety is like we want to take a step towards reaching our goal. It's an unmet psychological need for connection, for esteem, for respect, right? Anger tells us your boundaries. You're just compressing that energy and your resentment is gonna leak out somewhere, I promise you. Right. And I think there's a deep ancestral component, especially for maybe women, that we have generationally learned to be people pleasers, to be over-responsibility, to be the emotional labor. And I kind of see community mental health and nursing and teaching as systems that were built on the collective ancestral trauma response of predominantly women saying yes, being in that martyr role, over-rescuing. And those systems rely on that, and they are crumbling right now. Teachers are leaving in droves, burnout city, right? With nursing and community mental health. I'm sure there's other professions that I'm, but those are the three that I kind of think about as that ancestral collective trauma and how it is go to another way that it's really coming into a reckoning right now.

Amie Penny Sayler 28:54

Your words are inspiring in me this vision of a world where women just sit in their own power and don't try to squeeze the metal.

Erica Bonham 29:05

Let's do it. I love it. That is all about what I'm trying to create here. Yeah. And so I will drop, like, we're gonna, I'm gonna talk about a workshop at the end, but I have an embodied and unstoppable workshop coming up, and it is all about, it's predominantly for women, but I'm I welcome all genders, you know, and it really is if you are a high conscious leader that knows that you're here for a reason, that knows that you want to have impact, but your nervous system is like doing the smush and the compression thing. Let's work on ways that you can actually alchemize that and help collectively step into what this moment is is really asking of us. That lights me up. I mean, I think there's so much beauty that we could create. And all of the rage that we're feeling, there's love at the center of that, right? Like we want to move beyond just fighting against the perpetrators. We want to create a world where the perpetrators are also healed so that they don't freaking perpetrate anymore.

Amie Penny Sayler 30:08

Right.

Erica Bonham 30:09

We want to create a world where everybody feels like there's a place for them, that we can be enjoy, that we don't have to be organized around protection. And that might be an unattainable goal, but I will never stop pointing my feet in that direction.

Amie Penny Sayler 30:26

Absolutely.

Erica Bonham 30:27

Because we see that it's possible.

Amie Penny Sayler 30:28

Yeah. I also, and it's complicated. As you said, you hold a lot at the same time. I'm not excusing anything. Sometimes with perpetrators, there is some compassion there too for what has gone awry that that's the response that makes sense to you.

Erica Bonham 30:49

Oh, absolutely. But I think where people get conflated is like compassion means no boundaries. And that is not true. I actually think, you know, and I hate to be another white lady therapist quoting Brene Brown, but she's got some stuff to say. She's got some wisdom, you know? I love me some Brene. But boundaries are directly related to compassion. So if you can hold whoever has caused you harm out far enough in your orbit, energetically, physically, time spent boundaries, whatever, then you can actually get them into a place of compassion. You can actually get into an authentic place of may you be safe, happy, healthy, and free from suffering. I know that you're in a lot of pain and that this behavior is probably the result of pain. And that harm needs to be held to account. And I hope that part of that accountability actually means you looking at the wound that's underneath the perpetrator role because I know that you have been victimized somewhere along the way, but that's not excusing or justifying the perpetration, but it's we can have accountability and context at the same time. And there's a difference between like pretending, you know, and like I don't know, there's this thing I think that a lot of especially women do is is a fawning or like a pretending, like a boundary setting, but it's sort of this nice girl thing, like, hey, um, could you just turn the music down or whatever, you know, and really what your body is communicating is rage, right? And so learning to be congruent in your energy, learning to be congruent in your nervous system, to be able to hold context, compassion, and accountability and boundaries all together. I mean, I don't think there's an arriving to that. That's that's a lifelong becoming. But the more that you can alchemize, the more that you can break free from that smush of too much and not enough. And I will credit there's a book called Unbound by Kajir Baniak, kind of coined that smush term. She's awesome. She used to be a dominatrix in New York City, but also was studying to be a Taoist nun. So she's this wild combination of, yeah, she's she's cool. I like her a lot. But anyway, if we can alchemize the rage, alchemize the smush, and really move into what is it that we want to create? How do we hold the boundaries and the joy and the compassion all together? And that's some potent, magical shit right there.

Amie Penny Sayler 33:39

I do want to, in just a moment, kind of pivot to the nervous system because you've sort of touched on a few times, and I know you have a lot to say. I just want to take a moment, you mentioned the crone as you're talking about this. So I will tell you, I have loved getting older. Um, and I'll just give one example. The other day I was out in the sun and I was looking at my hand and I went running over to my husband. I said, Is this an age spot? I think it's an age spot. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I mean, I just, and part of it is because of like I feel it sort of is the natural growth pattern for a human. Like when you're little, things are one way or another. You know, it's it's this way or that way. There's a hero or there's a villain, name opposites. And I feel like the lifelong journey is starting to, oh, and those are the two outliers. And then everyone else is in between. And really appreciating, understanding, holding that in between is part of, I think it just comes with with hopefully, if things are going well and you're, you know, you're you're pointing your feet in the right direction, you're sort of going there in whatever way you do, however, slowly or quickly or whatever. But that is just one of the things that I want to call out about. I love aging for that reason. Totally.

Erica Bonham 35:03

I love that so much. I I'm not quite there yet in terms of transcending ego, I will tell you. And it it, but I I have had that same thought. Like, I don't get to have the wisdom that I have and the capacity for paradox is what you're talking, you know, and that non-binary beauty that comes with being able to hold multiple truths. And, you know, it's I I've talked about this with a couple of women in their 40s and 50s. I'm like, do you really want to even have the compliment that's like, you're such a pretty girl? Like that just feels kind of gross and weird at this point, right? Like, there's such potent magic in this time in our lives. And I think you're inspiring me to just embody that even more. That, yeah, we have some lines and some saggy boobs, but we got magic and medicine in us that you don't get to have when you have no wrinkles on your face, you know. Not to say that there's not wisdom in 20-year-olds, but this medicine and magic is well earned and potent. Well, well said. And that's actually a great segue to nervous system because I will talk a little bit about the neuroscience of binary thinking. So unhealed trauma-organized brains and nervous systems are really operating predominantly from the survival part of the brain, right? What you might call the lizard brain. And the lizard brain really is organized around good, bad, safe, not safe, right, wrong, go. Collectively, we can see how certainty, right, wrong, good, bad, that, you know, is showing up. And the the brain, the animal brain loves certainty and it loves dichotomy and binary. And if you're being hijacked on a or you know, by a Mac truck T-boned, you don't want nuanced thinking online. You don't want to be like wondering if the truck driver's having a bad day as you get smushed, right? You want good, bad, safe, not safe at all. But generally speaking, the nuance, the frontal lobes, the most evolved part of our brain is where we want to be operating from most of the time. If we are not gonna die in the next two minutes, we wanna be operating from this part of our brain. But if we are organized around trauma, if we are organized around ancestral wounding, if there's old patterns that are really stuck in flight, fight, freeze, collapse, fawn, however that looks, we are not gonna be making decisions that are rooted in wisdom. We are gonna be making decisions that are rooted in protection. And that's not to say that we don't need healthy boundaries. There is some necessary guardianship that we have to practice. But a lot of times it's unnecessary armor, and we're leading with porcupine quills or we're leading with good girl, nice, fawning, people-pleasing, you know, behavior. And it's not going to serve us.

Amie Penny Sayler 38:20

I will say one of my challenges has been in the move from the people pleasing, because yes, full-on recovering people pleaser, still do probably, but working on it. Yeah, it definitely, you know, it's a pendulum, right? So it is more kind of, and for a while I was okay with my porcupine quills, you know. And I I'm sure you won't be surprised a lot of this was happening at the same time I stopped drinking, you know, and and really like feeling into those boundaries and holding those boundaries. But yeah, kind of that sort of coming back a little bit too and finding the balance.

Erica Bonham 38:53

Oh, totally. Yeah, I think sometimes we have to swing the pendulum really far because we're finding the other edge. And I kind of almost call it like putting your nervous system in a cast. It's like the boundaries have to be very, very strict, right? Like if you've broken your arm, you're gonna be in a cast and it the you're not gonna have any movement. There's no flexibility, there's no nuance there. You have to be very still and like it's a no all around. And then as you heal, you might be able to take the cast off and the boundaries get a little bit more flexible. And we're never gonna put up with abuse or shitty behavior. We don't want to break the arm again, but the flexibilities and the grace, and you know, we all need that dance that we do between accountability and grace and boundaries and allowing people to be imperfect and human. Again, there's not a downloadable handout or a quiz or a blood test that you can take that's like, hmm, is this healthy boundaries or is this unnecessary trauma response? Is this my intuition, or is this fear and undigested wounding? You know? And I think just asking the question and checking in with your soul, checking in with your body, checking in with your heart. Just asking the question, you're gonna get better answers, you know? Yeah. And there's not gonna be this cognitive thing, it's gonna be a felt sense, and sometimes we just have to trust it, even if our rational mind is talking us into saying yes to that bank sale again or something, you know.

Amie Penny Sayler 40:42

So I would love for you to address two more things before we wrap up here. One is if you can just talk a little bit about badass nervous system, and then two, and they might be directly related, talk about the workshop that you'll be offering.

Erica Bonham 40:56

So, what I consider badass nervous system is the ability to stay home in your energy and anchored. And I have learned this from my coach. It's like this still point in your belly that you kind of practice coming home to over and over and over again. You

The “Badass Nervous System” and Erica’s Embodied & Unstoppable Workshop

Erica Bonham 41:16

are anchored, you are yours first. And from that stability, it's like this badass tree roots all the way down into the ground. You are trusting yourself, you are stable, and then that cord connects to your heart so that you can be open-hearted, right? And then it connects to your mind so that you can be in your wisdom, and then you have sort of an energetic boundary, right? Like our energy is expanded, but it is also like contained, and you're moving from this place, from an anchored place, from a heart-centered place, embodied, but you know, reciprocity and a playfulness and openness, but also a don't fuck with me energy. You know? Yeah, I love this. I just asked my clients, I'm like, do you get that sense from me that like most of the time I show up regulated-ish, you know, like I'm human too, living in this world, regulated-ish, grounded and anchored-ish, as much as possible. I'm still open-hearted. And maybe you can get this sense too. Like, I care deeply, and I've got a sense of, and don't fuck with me. Not in a over-protective way, but in a like, oh only I'm available for only certain kinds of energy in my system here. Yeah. It's just a, it's not, I think there's a colonized version of nervous system regulation, quote unquote, that is like sitting in lotus position and oming and never upset about anything and always calm. And I think that that is dissociative and that that type of emotion regulation, quote unquote, that's really just breathing through and dissociating through your what your emotions and what your nervous system is telling you. But to actually learn how to feel and pay attention to those emotions, what is the unmet psychological need, and to be able to go toward the hard thing, to be able to go toward what you avoid, to be able to go toward the courageous conversations. That is actually what is gonna increase your capacity more and more and more. And to really be able to have this embodied sense of like, I fucking got this. I have medicine in my in me that only I can offer the world, and I'm not gonna play small. And so that's what my workshop, I you know, I'm building it. I'm an emergent lady. And so we're gonna do somatic work, we're gonna do some ancestral work, we're gonna do some collective championing of each other's dreams and visions, you know, learning emotional alchemy, and just really getting at the The trifecta of body, heart, emotion, psychology, as well as the spiritual stuff of all of this. And when we can unwind all three of those that of patterns that no longer serve, the game changes. You step into leadership that changes the room, your capacity for love, for wealth, for impact, for trusting yourself. All of that becomes not just mindset and neurotically repeating self-affirmations, right? Like, I am worthy. I am worthy. It's an embodied practice that you know on a bones deep level.

Amie Penny Sayler 44:42

That is incredible. I'm just gonna fully say right now, I will be signing up and oh, good, yeah. And we will have the link in the show notes. And so excited for that. It was just wonderful to talk with you today, Erica. Thank you so much.