Hayley Curtis: [00:00:00] That's that horrible pressure that we have as people journey in chronic illness. This belief that this illness is stopping me from living in my higher purpose. This illness is stopping me from being in my destiny.
I'm a very driven person. I'm a person that craves to have an impact. I'm a person that loves to be with people and to teach. And I felt like my illness was blocking me from being that person. And that's why I was trying to fix myself. And the Gene Keys came into my life and just turned me upside down with this perspective and started having me question, hang on a second.
What if it wasn't that this was blocking me from my higher purpose? What if this is actually my portal into my higher purpose? What if this is actually the birthplace of my magnificence? And it started to show me that it had been.
If it wasn't for this, I wouldn't have [00:01:00] realized that I was putting my worth in all these external things. If it wasn't for this, I never would've found who I truly am. I would never have learned these things if it wasn't for this suffering.[00:02:00]
Dr. Erin Hayford: Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Sacred Illness Podcast. I am Dr. Erin and I'm so excited to have Hayley Curtis with me today. Hayley is hailing from the other side of the planet, from me, which is Western Australia and. We were just talking about, she's in tomorrow. And good news everyone, tomorrow is a wonderful day.
So we are excited to be there. And Hayley is a Gene Keys guide who is really in line with a lot of the work that I do and how she guides people through their journey and their relationship with self. So it's a really beautiful perspective in way that she supports folks as well. So we're gonna start our conversation today by getting to know Hayley, understanding her story and her dance with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, a lot of gut health symptoms, and this beautiful conversation about how she has learned to navigate these symptoms and, diagnoses in ways where, she still loves her life.
Hayley was on her Instagram stories talking about this the other day, [00:03:00] and I was like, I want to talk to you about this on the podcast. How would you feel about coming on? This dance we do between suffering and joy. And how her symptoms have really brought her into a new relationship with suffering.
From her experience, she gets the biggest healing by her changed relationship with suffering. She sees that in her clients. This outcome of how suffering is here to help us learn how to navigate it and to learn from it and be in relationship with it in this different way in order to transform and heal versus get rid of it, suppress it,
which is a lot of the mindset I talk about on here where leaning into the things that we typically lean away from or try to suppress is the mindset that keeps us stuck. So we're gonna really talk about that dynamic and that new paradigm, that kind of mentality shift throughout Hayley's story today.
So, welcome Hayley. So excited to have you here today and to be having this conversation. Thank you so much for being here.
Hayley Curtis: Thank you for having me, Erin. I'm so excited to be here. I was just so excited to even be face to face with you on Zoom [00:04:00] 'cause we've had lots of Instagram chats, but to actually be here with you in person feels absolutely amazing.
So thank you so much.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Agreed. Absolutely. Yeah, so I'd love to just hop right into it wherever you wanna start. I like people to just tell their story and see what comes out and we'll kind of go from there. Yeah.
Hayley Curtis: Amazing. And, and like I said to you, every, I feel like every time I tell my story, it comes out a little different because there's so many facets to it that whatever wants to come through now is going to be perfect.
Yeah. So I have been on my chronic illness journey for, uh, 15 years now, which is, I'm like, what, 15 years and. I'm 30, I'm about to turn 35, and I started noticing that I wasn't feeling too good, um, when I was about 19 years old and I'd gotten my first job. Back then, I was a personal trainer and I was in the gym, you know, doing my thing.
I started noticing that after [00:05:00] I ate my lunch, I was getting this weird pain, up in the top of my back and thinking, what the heck is that? I was traditionally always a very high energy, could eat whatever I wanted, kind of gal, and never experienced anything like it.
And I just thought, oh, you know, just some weird thing. It'll go away. But it didn't go away, Erin. It actually just slowly got worse and worse over a couple of years to the point where then I started really questioning, okay, clearly there's something that I can't eat. And so as most journeys, especially when it comes to gut health type things, begin with cutting out some things.
So, I cut out gluten when I was 20 years old. I haven't had a drop of gluten in 15 years. And then, you get a little bit of relief from that, but then you go, If my symptoms are still there and they're still getting worse, and so then you go, maybe I need to cut out dairy. And the same thing happens and then you get a little bit worse.
Okay, maybe I need to cut out [00:06:00] grains. Maybe I need to cut out this. And over the first five years of this pain, that started off as just a little pain in my back, it escalated over time to the point where it wasn't just my gut anymore, it was my entire gut from, literally from my tongue. My tongue was covered in ulcers and so much pain all the way through to my butt.
Yeah, that was constantly itchy or flaring up like, psoriasis up through the cheeks of my butt, like literally the whole way through my digestive system. It wasn't just that, but it had gotten to the point where I couldn't stand up anymore because my feet were so swollen and aching. My legs felt like they were in constant.
Um, like growing pains from when you're like five or six years old. The back of my head was leaking lymph fluid all the time. I had rashes on my face. I could hardly touch my skin because it was so sore. over those five years, this was a point where I was about [00:07:00] 25, 26 years old. It had just progressively gotten so worse to the point where my whole body felt like it was shutting down.
at this point I was eating about five different foods. I had cut down to the point where I was eating, a little bit of sweet potato and was living off of vegan protein shakes because I could only have liquids. One of the biggest things that was happening at that time was I could not go to the bathroom.
It felt like my peristalsis had completely stopped. I'd eat something in the morning and the next morning I would lay down and feel like it was coming up my throat. It just wasn't moving. I would do a little pebble poo maybe once every 10 days.
And it was like a big celebration. I was chronically constipated. by the time I got to this point, I had been through all of the traditional medical things you start off at your GP and think they're gonna save you.
You think that they know what's going on, and then you sit down, you explain your symptoms, and over [00:08:00] time as they send you to specialist, to specialist to test, to test, and then you come back to hear the results and they say. You're perfect health. Yep. Your blood work's amazing. We've done the scans, we've done the ultrasounds, we've done the CT scans, we've done the MRIs.
There's nothing there. Maybe it's in your head. No. Maybe you know, all of those things. I went through all of those things throughout this time. Yeah. And had gone to gastroenterologists and had the colonoscopies and the endoscopies and all of the things, and was just being told at every turn, we dunno what's wrong with you.
And bless my GP at the time, he actually sat me down and said, look, he goes. the traditional medical system is failing you. And he said, I'm so sorry, but you've reached the end of the road. And I, I, you know, looking back, I feel so grateful for him to let go of his ego and say, you know what, we're just not there yet with being able to navigate what's going on.
And he really encouraged me into the natural health realms, which I had been [00:09:00] dabbling in, like I've always been quite interested in health and wellbeing. But after that I really delved into the natural health realms, yet did not get any better. I kept getting worse. so even when I went to naturopaths and homeopaths and all of the paths, um, I just seemed to be getting worse and nothing could give me relief.
At this point I was having a two colonoscopies, not colonoscopies, two, um, what are they called, where they put the water up your bums so that you can get the like cord. Colonics. Yes. I'm having two. I was having two colonics a week just to kind of keep myself in a state of living. Because I was so chronically backed up that it was poisoning my whole body.
Yeah. And, you know, just constant brain fog. Couldn't get a clear thought. And, of course at this point, it's where the mental health stuff really started to kick in. So I, at this point, I was a [00:10:00] full-time primary school teacher, I'd gone to uni, I'd become a teacher, and I entered the workforce and I'd gotten married and, you know, I, I was teaching full time and.
Throughout with, with the symptoms getting this bad, I got to the point where I just couldn't keep going. I was kind of wheeling myself around the classroom on my wheelie chair because I couldn't stand up anymore. And I was coming home and self-medicating with alcohol because I just needed something to give me relief.
Like I was just in a really bad place. it got me to that point where I was like, Hayley, you can't keep going. I couldn't keep going to work. I couldn't keep pushing myself. Sort of like what you shared with me in your story before we hit record, Erin, of you just go, well
I can just push through Until you cannot physically keep pushing through anymore. life brought me to my knees, my symptoms got so bad that I just couldn't. And so I left my job teaching and spent the next eight months chronically unwell in [00:11:00] bed I couldn't do anything. and that's when my mental health really fell apart because I'd never been someone that had ever had anxiety or depression.
Always a very happy, bubbly gal, you know? And when this happened and I had to stop working and my whole body just wasn't working, I was having anxiety attacks. I came to recognize pretty quickly that I had based my entire identity off of external things. this was Hayley, pre inner work. I mean, now I am like a teacher, a master of the inner work.
this was the beginning of, the real journey for me. I recognized holy shit, I was basing my happiness. My joy, my identity on my achievements, my career, my looks, my energy, what I could do for other people, how bubbly I [00:12:00] was. now that all of that felt like it had been ripped away from me, I had no idea who I was.
And that sent me into a whirlwind of anxiety. it was really, the anxiety was the key piece that actually made me finally stop working. I thought I could keep pushing through with the physical symptoms, but once the anxiety took a grip of me, I could not keep going.
Yeah. I was an absolute mess. And so I had a real pivotal moment in this time. So I would've been about 26 at this stage. I can already, we can see tears are coming up behind my eyes. It's just such a pivotal moment in my life where. I had really, I'd almost given up, you know, it had been years of this and I was exhausted and I was done, and I was so lost and I was so deeply depressed and so anxious that I [00:13:00] really didn't wanna keep going.
And I thought, I just don't wanna live if it's like this and this one day, my husband is such an incredible man. He really got me through this time. He loved me unconditionally through all of this. Never once was like, oh, when are you gonna go back to work? we're under such financial pressure at this point.
We were in about $120,000 of credit card and personal loan debt, just through all of the medical stuff and me not being able to work, like the pressure was just coming from all places. And I was laying on the bed this one day with my face flat down. And I just wanted to give up because I'd tried all of the things and I'd done all of, at this point, I'd done all of, the diets, you know, I'd done like the inflammation diets and the this and the that.
I tried everything and all it seemed to do was make me worse. And Bevin said to me, 'cause I was saying, I can't do it. I can't keep going. And he said to me, my love, if you right now woke up and you were in the middle of the desert and there was no one [00:14:00] around, would you just lie down and give up?
Or would you get up and keep walking? would you get up and keep walking until you found something or someone? And I said, I just, I, I sat up at that moment, I like, just had tears rolling down my face. And I said, I'd get up, I'd keep walking. I wouldn't just lay down in the desert. I wouldn't just give up.
That's not who I am. And he goes, well, you gotta get up now. You gotta keep going. That was a huge moment for me. I really recognized in that moment how caught up in victimhood I was, where I had felt like I was giving up, but he reminded me that I did have a flicker of a flame left in me that was just getting me to put one foot in front of the other.
I asked myself, okay Hayley, if you are going to make it, what does that look like? Like what do you need to make it? Because if you're gonna keep walking, what does that mean? And I just instantly got, I had this inner voice say to me like, [00:15:00] well, you need to find out who the heck you are.
You need to know yourself because you're not gonna make it if you don't know yourself. And then I thought to myself, well, how am I gonna know myself? And just this deep inner voice said journaling. you need to put pen to paper. You need to start writing. You need to write your way out of this.
You need to write your way back home to yourself. Right? And I'd never journaled before. I was not a writer. I didn't enjoy writing at school or anything like that. And I thought, oh God, we'll see. but I'm gonna do it because I need to do something. And I knew I was in such a bad place and I'm, you know, a recovering high achiever.
And at first I thought, okay, well what can I do? All right? Maybe I'll write for 45 minutes every morning or something like that. And I stopped myself and I was so impressed with the wisdom that came through me right at the beginning of my journey where I stopped myself and I said, well, Hayley. You feel like an epic failure already, let's not [00:16:00] set you up for more.
Let's not set you up to feel like more of a failure. And so I made a really small, attainable commitment to myself where I said, well, I'm gonna show up every morning for five minutes and write two sentences. That was my commitment and I've kept all of my journals over time. What started off as this really small commitment, my first entry was like, "I have no idea what I'm doing,
but I know I have to be here" type thing. Yep. And I just, I started off at that point, um, I was leaning quite heavily into Christianity just for support. It's not part of my journey anymore, but it was at that point and I was, you know, I was doing like a morning devotional and then just being like, okay, and what does that make me think about myself?
And what started as a small five minute practice each morning very quickly turned into something much deeper and much bigger. Once I started cracking open those layers of writing about who maybe I might be floodgates opened, [00:17:00] and I started recognizing, oh my God, look at all of these layers.
Look at all of these lies I've been believing about myself. Look at all of the places I've been believing my worth. Was look at how my mind was so messed up about time, which was making me anxious. In that beginning moment where my anxiety was so massive, I imagined myself
like I was in my own brain with a little bug catcher just flicking, catching a thought and putting it on the page, catching a thought and putting it on the page where I started sifting through all of this noise that was up here. 'cause I needed to release the pressure. And so that started happening in my journal.
And once I had captured and released all of this noise, it gave me the spaciousness to start digging into the real stuff where I was like, okay. I really started asking myself the questions that were leading me into deeper and deeper elements of who I truly was and recognizing these very, very deep things that were going on with me and like [00:18:00] chronic body image issues that I had at this point in time where.
I was, you know, getting undressed and hiding myself from the mirror so I could get in the shower, because if I caught a glimpse of myself, I was breaking down and I started working through all of this stuff with pen and paper. No one was guiding me. I wasn't looking up any way to be told how I should do it.
I just, as soon as I started writing, it all started flowing out. And so for the next couple of years, I filled journal upon journal upon journal, and I really started coming back home to myself Wow. Where I was reclaiming this worthiness and this love, which I found was going to be the foundation that my healing would be built upon.
It wasn't that, okay, I am gonna heal myself, and then I'll be able to love myself again. I came to the very early realization that, no, I've gotta love myself so I can [00:19:00] heal. And so as I was peeling back the layers and, and really the, the anxiety and the depression was lifting, I found new motivation, I guess you'd say, and to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other in terms of my physical health journey.
Because when you're just so down and you're so caught in the throngs of it, and your mental health is just non-existent, that's when you do give up. Mm-hmm. And so I really started to build a very, very solid foundation of knowing who I was. Um, and back then I thought that I had really, I knew it. I felt like I had found myself.
I hadn't yet, but I was really getting there. But it was enough to keep me going. And so, you know, at this point I started trying a few other things in terms of my health and my wellbeing. But even just, even just the journaling. Was alleviating ever so slightly some of my symptoms. Even just the journaling [00:20:00] was helping my digestion to just move a little bit more.
I. Like I even noticed it started to be like, oh my gosh, when I journaled some morning as it, I'd even go to the toilet because it was calming me in a way. So I knew that there was a somatic connection here with my symptoms. It wasn't just some outward thing. I was being punished. My body's not working.
I need to find a magic pill that's gonna fix me. I knew that that wasn't the thing anymore. I started to realize, okay, there, it's not like there's this one thing wrong with me and if I can just find the right doctor, they'll be able to diagnose me. I'll be able to take something. I'm gonna be better.
Throughout this journaling journey I was taking over the first few years, I came, into acceptance with the fact that this is going to be a very multifaceted thing. This isn't one thing I'm dealing with here. It's multiple things And it's not gonna be about the one change I make, but the thousands little changes that I make over time.
Yes. [00:21:00] And I started to come to peace with the fact that my healing journey wasn't going to be, I find a thing and I'm healed. It was going to be a commitment possibly for the rest of my life of learning to navigate this. And that was really the start of my real healing. So like I had to, I had to really dig in for a couple of years, started to shift my worldviews, started to realize my worth again, understand what love was again, to then really start to go, okay, and maybe there is so much more to this.
So then I, um. I then found a new person to work with in terms of my health that really aligned with a lot of your principles, Erin. And he was very similar to your story. He had had very terrible Crohn's. He'd lost his whole large intestine. And he had managed to navigate incredible healing. And so I worked with him for about six months and. he put me onto protocols that I'd never tried before. [00:22:00] Um, very high fruit kind of eating, um, lots of different herbal tinctures and this kind of thing. And, um, I had gone back to teaching at this point, but I'd gotten a bit sick again and I'd, I stopped again and I took a solid, like three months off to really nurture myself.
And this was the point in time where I started shitting again. Yay. It was all of the herbs and the fruit in conjunction with where I'd gotten myself to with my inner work. I was just, I was ready for that depth of healing 'cause my body had to go through a lot of healing crisis. I was purging stuff.
I was getting boils coming outta my skin. I was. It was insane. I was having, you know, for the first seven weeks of this, I was pooing maybe six times a day every day. And it looked like a hundred year old vines from the jungle. Like I was purging. I, I went into like an [00:23:00] extreme cold and flu symptom. I ended up coughing up black rocks.
It was insane. Like there was stuff coming out of me from everywhere. Um, and then from that time, this was when I was 29 years old, so this was five years ago. And that's then when after that and I started to recognize, all right, there really is a lot more to this healing journey and I was bringing in more of the somatic practices.
This is when I started doing things like breath work and yin yoga and meditation. And I started, dabbling in the Dr. Joe Dispenza stuff and really starting to ground a lot deeper Committing myself, devoting myself to this healing journey and to myself. And then the Gene Keys came into my life, and this is where my journey like really ramps up.
So at this point, I was still, you know, in the depths of that healing journey, still experiencing a lot of these [00:24:00] symptoms, but I was getting better and I would learn to trust in the journey. And at this point we moved to New Zealand, because we thought, well, if I'm in this deep healing journey and I can't work anyway, my husband may as well be with his family who live in New Zealand, and I may as well be in the most beautiful country in the world healing amongst greenery and beautiful oceans.
And it just felt, I felt called to go there to heal. we were living on a 750 acre bull farm. it was just beautiful and I was just deep in my healing. And, um, I had been looking into human design a little bit and that was helping me understand a little bit more about myself. It was going along beautifully with my healing journey, and that led me to the Gene Keys.
And I ordered Gene Keys book and it arrived on my doorstep. And I remember I opened it up and I'd been doing deep inner work on my own for about six years at this point. I opened up the book and started reading the introduction and the tears just started flowing. And I [00:25:00] felt this recognition, like a cellular recognition.
My soul recognized that these were the truths that I had been uncovering in myself and that this was going to take me the rest of the way. Wow. And so I started working deeply with my own Gene Keys for a couple of years before I ended up, this is what I do for a living now, because it has been so radically life changing.
But the Gene Keys really showed me the pieces of the puzzle that I couldn't find on my own around really. Not just getting through the suffering. 'cause up to this point I was, even though I was bringing a lot more gentleness and love to myself throughout this journey, and I was finding my worth and all of this, I was still trying to fix myself.
You know? I was still thinking, all right, I need to heal myself so that I can be who I'm meant to be. And that's that horrible pressure that we have as people [00:26:00] journey in chronic illness. This belief that this illness is stopping me from living in my higher purpose. This illness is stopping me from being in my destiny.
I'm a very driven person. I'm a very, um, I'm a person that craves to have an impact. I'm a person that loves to be with people and to teach and all of these things. And I felt like my illness was blocking me from being that person. And that's why I was trying to fix myself. And the Gene Keys came into my life and just turned me upside down with this perspective and started having me question, hang on a second.
What if it wasn't that this was blocking me from my higher purpose? What if this is actually my portal into my higher purpose? Mm-hmm. I'm getting goosebump. I'm like, what? I was like, what if this is actually the birthplace of [00:27:00] my magnificence? And it started to show me that it had been,
If it wasn't for this, I wouldn't have realized that I was putting my worth in all these external things. If it wasn't for this, I never would've found who I truly am. If it wasn't for this, I never would've understood these things about myself. I would never have understood these things about actually what it looks like to take care of your human body.
I wouldn't have learned all of these things about how fucked up the medical system is and how fucked up our diets are, and how we're bloody killing ourselves with the way that we are living. I would never have learned these things if it wasn't for this suffering.
And just to let everyone know, the Gene Keys are the 64 spectrums of human consciousness and they're 64 shadows, gifts and Siddhis that give us portals into understanding, suffering in a different way to open up gifts within us.
And I started to recognize through my particular Gene Keys, 'cause you have a profile of 13 Gene Keys that make up your journey. That my Gene Keys were just spot onto this journey. And they would, they were trying to tell me something. [00:28:00] And all of this pressure that I had been feeling, that I thought was pressure holding me down, I realized was actually pressure ushering me ever upward.
It was evolution and I was in resistance to my own transformation. I was trying to fix it, I was trying to get rid of it. And the Gene Keys took me into my next level of healing where I started to. Surrender into it. I started to let the suffering in, like really let it in. I stopped fearing it and started coming into relationship with it, started communing with it and started listening to what it wanted to show me and what happened over those next years.
You know, so this is kind of the next four years. It just radically transformed me from the inside out. And I'm at a place now [00:29:00] in my journey where I still navigate symptoms, right? However, where I was, you know, eight, nine years ago where I couldn't, shit, couldn't stand, couldn't get a thought. I mean, I am 70% better than I was then.
Yet still, every single day I navigate chronic fatigue. I get a few okay hours in the day, and then it gets pretty hard and I get extremely fatigued. I still navigate, um, you know, bad gut health problems. You know, it's really been put down to SIBO and SIFO. Um, so like I've got severe bacterial and fungal overgrowth in my small intestine, which I've actually had since I was about two years old.
I got put on a candida diet when I was two, so this is something that I've had for decades. So it takes time to gentle this into remission, I guess you'd say. So I, you know, everything that I eat, [00:30:00] it hurts and everything that I eat makes me tired and, you know, I've had to create a lifestyle for myself that accommodates for the energy that I have.
I've created a lifestyle for myself that allows me to love my life. Yet not overextend myself to the point where I end up straight back in that burnout. 'cause it can be a very, very fine line for me. However, due to the way that I have learned to commune with suffering and understand it as being so much purpose in my pain, man, even though I navigate symptoms every day, I feel purpose flowing through my veins every day.
I love my life so much that it brings me to tears almost every single day. I've built a business where I [00:31:00] get to witness the most epic transformation in people every day. That brings me to tears watching people navigate their lives. You know, I work with some people with chronic illness, but a lot of people I work with don't have chronic illness, but everyone suffers.
And this is what I have learned. Chronic illness has been my flavor of suffering in this lifetime. And it's a spicy flavor to have, right? And I used to think that people that didn't suffer chronic illness, that they just had it easy. But they don't, you know, they don't, some people's suffering comes in the flavor of domestic violence.
Some people's suffering comes in the flavor of, losing their parents in childhood or abuse or relationship issues, work issues, the is financial issues. nobody escapes suffering in this lifetime and letting [00:32:00] life bring me to my knees and going through this beautiful journey of peeling back all of the layers and getting to the core of myself and coming to understand the beauty in my suffering has helped me to see the beauty in everyone's suffering.
To be able to help other people find the purpose in their pain too. Where all of our flavors of suffering in this life is our portal into our highest purpose and into our highest potential. And as we start taking that invitation, navigating suffering becomes very different. You know? So I still suffer every day, but I don't struggle in my suffering.
I'm not anxious in my suffering. I'm not afraid in my suffering. I've come to trust it. I've come to trust in the low energy states. I've actually come to see that it's the birthplace of this incredible creativity that I have. And I found that the reason why I'd gotten myself so [00:33:00] unwell was because I was resisting life.
Yeah. I was resisting the invitations. I was avoiding the pain, I was avoiding the fears. And you can do that to a point within life. It's just at every turn, you know you, there's nowhere to turn anymore where it doesn't exist. And then you have to take the journey. And unfortunately, that's usually what it's like for most of us, where life has to bring us to our knees before we take this journey.
But I think that that's actually a beautiful part of the human archetypal journey. It's, and this is reflected in every movie and every story that you'll ever watch or read It's the journey home. You know, and that's the journey that I've been on, and now that I've found home, the navigation of the suffering and the pain takes on a completely different tone.
It's one that opens you up to higher and higher and higher states more and more love, more and more joy. And you actually [00:34:00] find your peace in the collective healing here, because it's not just about us. You know, I used to think that I needed to heal myself so that I could feel better, but it's so much more than that.
I needed to take this journey so that I could play my piece in the collective and show up in my deepest passions and who I came here to be, because that's how we heal the world. It's through the individual. When I look back at, my journey that continues I have my moments and I have my flare ups.
Last week was one of them. I wouldn't change a thing It feels crazy to say that, but without it, I wouldn't have accessed all of this magnificence inside of myself, you know? And so I wouldn't wanna be anyone but who I am now, because the core stability and the groundedness and the
inner knowing and the wisdom that I hold, it all came from the pain.
Dr. Erin Hayford: I don't wanna change [00:35:00] it. That's kind of a nutshell of my story. Oh my gosh. Giant nutshell. Wow. I don't often cry on podcasts, but like, yeah. This, this has been, you are such an inspiration. I wrote down in caps lock, like she exudes authenticity. being in your presence and hearing you talk and seeing your energy. I mean, I saw it already through Instagram, but how you show up is a testament to the work you have done because there's just nothing but Hayley here,
I can feel your energy and your realness and your youness. And I think that it speaks to your journey, the fact that you show up in this way. And it's so interesting 'cause you had said like you identified my worth is my bubbliness and all that. And it's this beautiful example of how so much of what we pin our worth to can still be us, but it's just how we're in relationship with it, right? Because obviously you're still a bubbly person, but there's a different way in which it comes through you now, which is [00:36:00] just this core, authentic, bubbly nature you allow it to ebb and flow, right?
When you're tired, you're tired, and when you're grumpy, you're grumpy but that core self is still there it's beautiful to sit in the presence of that and see the medicine that this journey has been for you. Thank you for sharing that.
Really what we're talking about is a paradigm shift, right? Are there days where it's hard for you to have that mindset or because you've been doing this for so long, do you feel like you can see it for what it is?
For people who are really in that suffering and are not yet, they haven't had enough of that lived experience or evidence of like, this suffering is leading me to my best self and my best life. Where would you say start here or, this was pivotal for me, or, here's how I sit with that on a daily basis.
Do you have any thoughts around that?
Hayley Curtis: Yeah, I guess it was a real gentle unfolding for me in this way where I can see over time how I came to understand it more and more. You know, for the first couple of [00:37:00] years in my journal, it used to be these tear stained pages of me writing things like, this has to be for something because if this is for nothing, I can't do it.
But even that was a little bit, you know, it was even me saying like, God, I hope this is for something. You know? It was me saying like, well, it's gotta be, you know, this has to be for something more because if it's not, I can't do it. And so I guess even just starting with questioning, well what if it might be for something higher?
And this is really what I in the way that I guide people starting with those "might" questions, not just trying to slap on a new belief over the top. Like, okay, this is for something higher but you don't really believe it, that's not gonna help. Just starting to ask like, what if, what if maybe it was, what if maybe this wanted to open me up in a way, like what might that possibly look [00:38:00] like?
And so gentling yourself into this state of curiosity. Curiosity can just start to cut through the very, very thick cloud of essentially what is victimhood. And that can be a very hard word for people suffering chronic illness. I know it was hard for me in the beginning but I am a victim.
Look at what's happened to me. Look at what I'm going through. But we have to come to realize that way of seeing it of like, oh, woe is me, is the very thing keeping us trapped there. Curiosity starts to chip away at victimhood because when you just slightly crack open to say, what if it was for like even the way I'm saying that, I'm kind of like opening my hands up around my heart, just slightly cracks your heart open and just a little speck of light will get in.
And every time you get curious, a little bit [00:39:00] more comes in and I can see how over time so much came in throughout my own curiosity that I actually started to properly open up. And this takes time.
And this is where the Gene Keys radically helped me because they show you the shadow state, which is obviously the suffering, the hard thing. And you have particular shadow states of your own. So like for me, one of my major ones is entropy, which is like the loss of energy in a system, which is the biggest thing that I deal with. So it shows you that shadow state, but then it says, and this is the gift that's in it. The gift in entropy is creative freshness. And so it showed me, before I believed it for myself, the Gene Key showed me, the purpose of this entropy is to open you up to creative freshness.
Which then kind of allowed me to relax even more where I said, okay, well what if this has to be about creative freshness. So what would it look like for the cycles of creativity to live here? Which really fully cracked me open, which is where I see the Gene Keys work very well for [00:40:00] people journeying in chronic illness. 'cause it, it doesn't just say, well maybe there's more for you. It tells you the specific more that it's talking about. When it comes to chronic illness and when we are in that mindset of wanting to fix ourselves, "I've gotta do it and I've gotta do it now.
I need to be fixed as soon as possible because I can't be myself until it's done," that blocks you from the patient path, which is the only path. Because you think, well, it's either I open fully today or I need to try something else. Chronic illness journeys can be very resistant to just the little bit because they're so afraid and they're so terrified of their suffering that they only wanna do things that end it straight away.
But we have to come to peace with the fact that it's going to be little piece by little piece and when you're okay with it taking time, when you trust in it taking time, and you actually go patiently... It goes faster. It's paradoxical. that plays a role as well.
Dr. Erin Hayford: It's so [00:41:00] fascinating everyone I interview on here. the steps we all take to end up where we end up, looking at this kind of healing, alternative healing that eventually turns us back to ourselves.
We follow almost identical steps, like you said, you go to the GP and then you do this, then you do that. And I think there's that critical point where and bless your practitioner, like you said, for being honest with you versus putting you on an antidepressant and saying this is your only hope. I so wish that we had more structure for when you reach the end of that line that doesn't mean nothing is going to help you. That's where you have to open your mind to the next thing, right? Versus fall into that victim mindset of, nothing's gonna help me. I'm doomed, I'm lost, I'm stuck.
And again, I just, I wish we had a precedent set for that because most people, I feel like it's that fork in the road where so many people can fall into that place of stuckness and fear. but it's like, the doors are closing because something else is trying to open for you, and how can we learn how to trust in that?
I have this analogy that I had used about that pivotal moment for [00:42:00] me where, you know, it was like I was in a dark cave and, it was darkness, and I was petrified. And I'm like, I need to find the light. And this is what most people do in their suffering. Okay, I am in this, like, I've gotta get out, I've gotta get out.
Hayley Curtis: I spent all those years scraping away at the rocks at the top. I could imagine nail marks along the rocks, me trying to chip away trying to get out, need to find the light. Need to find the light. And then I got so exhausted trying to find the light that I finally sat down on the ground in that cave.
And then my hands went on the soil. And I realized, hang on a second. Maybe I'm in this cave because there's something in here I'm meant to find. Instead of trying to get out, I started digging down. And as I dug down, I started finding diamonds. And these diamonds were the magic in me.
And as I found and collected more and more diamonds, I started to [00:43:00] become the light. So I was searching for the light outside to get out, but I found as I dug, I turned into pure light, and then I became the light that brought me out of the cave. And I think that that describes like what you were just saying, that moment where it needs to become that spiritual journey. This was the digging down moment for me.
I went, okay, what if it wasn't about getting rid of the healing so that I could be happy? So I could be myself? What if it was about me finding happiness right here? What if it was about me finding purpose and love and myself and joy? Right fucking here. And I think that is the biggest turning point in anyone's journey.
No matter what it is that you're facing, and this is what I'm most passionate about in life, is whenever I hear anyone preaching, come and do this, and you'll be completely healed, symptom free, healed, you know, like all of your symptoms will be [00:44:00] gone, and then you'll be able to live a happy life. That is what 99% of marketing and consumerism is, no matter what it is.
Even if they're selling bloody Cheetos on the tv, they're telling you you'll be happy if you eat these. But a lot of like the healing out there is come and do this and you'll be able to be happy again. You'll get your life back. And I'm like, that's not it. We're all missing the point. The point is, what if you could find it in the suffering?
Because even if you become symptom free. Your life isn't going to be suffering free, right? We are always facing challenge. like part of my story was also at 21, my dad suddenly died of a heart attack and that ripped me apart. There's always going to be things on your journey that are intense suffering, whether they be physical, financial, relational, and so, once you learn to find happiness and joy and core stability and groundedness and connection and God in the suffering, [00:45:00] that sets you up to navigate fucking life.
'cause the human life is one of navigating suffering because that is where purpose and evolution is born from. Our purpose here is to evolve. Animals don't evolve because it's like, oh, you know, my life was so easy. I grew an extra fucking fin. Like that's not evolution. It's pressure. Their environment was intense, so they had to grow a fin.
Evolution makes life easier, but you don't evolve because of ease. We have to learn to navigate our evolution and our transformation in a way that we stay intact with our hearts and we can actually love others and connect with us. And we're not just moving in constant cycles of reaction.
'cause that's what we're doing and that's then what the body ends up doing. It's just in this physical reaction to things. And so it's about, yeah, as we deconstruct all of that. It becomes about, okay, what if I didn't need to get rid of my suffering? What if I just needed to learn to [00:46:00] love myself right bloody here?
And that's where life gets pretty fucking amazing. And this is why I love my life so much, even though there is still suffering here, is because I've learn to navigate the suffering in a way that it opens me up to more and deeper connection. I've not only helped my symptoms, my marriage is on fricking fire.
You know, my relationships with my family are beautiful. My friendships are incredible. My work and my business is thriving. And that is all a result of this paradigm shift. I used to think I needed those things to be happy. It was that I had to find the happiness in the shit and those things with the harvest, you know?
Dr. Erin Hayford: I love that. Yes, yes. Exactly. It's, it's backwards, right? It think it's all backwards where kind of in this way of thinking about things. That's why this podcast is called Sacred Illness because it's trying to put that spark in someone's mind of like, wait, what?
How is illness sacred? How could you ever put a good word with a bad word? And it's trying to shift [00:47:00] that thought process. Instead of seeing the dead ends as a bad thing, it's like you're being pushed to something else. Same with the suffering.
We have this mindset of pain means get away certainly yes. Like if there's a poisonous snake, move away from it. But internal pain is, it's trying to put, it's trying to call us in. Right. It's, it's the opposite of how we are typically in relationship with it. We're like, oh, I, I'm in pain.
Make it go away, suppress it, cut it out, do whatever you gotta do to make it go away. But like you were saying with your journey, some things helped a little bit, but that pain was still there because there was still this calling in that was trying to happen.
And so that is something that I think is so hard to talk to folks about because it's not what we want, right? We want the pain to just go away. We want that one thing, we want it to work and we wanna get back to life. And I will say in various ways the life that we have, whatever life we have, when the suffering arrives, there's, there's things in that life that have to die or go away or change because they're part of why [00:48:00] that suffering has arrived in our world, right? And so we are constantly like, I have to get rid of my pain so I can go back to this life.
And it's like, that's not gonna work. And it's so hard for us to accept that. And I get it, we are resistant to change. We're resistant to suffering. But this is the journey of being human, right? This is evolution. And, for folks who do somehow find their way into this, we both had that aha.
Like when you read the Gene Keys and you just started crying, it's just like, oh my God, this is it. And I had that same experience when I first started studying mind body medicine in school. It was like, I don't know what it is. I don't know why I feel this way, but I just know there's something to this.
And, you know, I think folks have that in them and I'm sure you've heard this too, of like, oh my god, Gene Keys, like, I've been looking for something like this, or like somatic work or whatever it is, people just have this soul recognition of this is what I've been searching for.
I don't even know what it is yet. I just know somehow this is gonna be the thing. And that is what our suffering is pushing us toward, is trying to ultimately, like you said, it's always about trying to guide us home. That is [00:49:00] always the goal.
How we get there, like the tools we use, you know, you started with journaling. It can just be that simple. The medicine is in us. You didn't have anyone at first. It was just you and your journal and your pen
That was enough to start guiding you toward the healing and then you found, your teachers from there. But I think that's a big thing we all need to recognize is we have it in us. We all have that capacity in us to just start to reconnect, but obviously having guidance or some structure can be really helpful to get us even deeper into those layers.
Mm-hmm. I love how you talked about that, these phases of your journey where it was like, this is the first layer that had to be peeled off and then this, and then this. It's like you keep thinking okay, that's it. Great. But it's like, no, that was just preparing you for the next phase.
So in terms of where you're at now, it sounds like you love your life, you have joy, you have a wonderful relationship with your partner. You have your work is so expansive. Like I can see that too, just through what you are posting [00:50:00] about and talking about.
And one of the things I wanted to ask about is this idea of the journey never ending. I agree. That's life, right? We're constantly in this dance, but how do you talk about that? Or how are you in relationship to it
'cause I feel like people get burnt out of like, constantly having to do the work and it becomes almost this unhealthy mindset where it's like, I'm trying to get to this place. I'm trying to heal so I can arrive at this place and be done with healing.
So I don't know if this is something you can describe, but what does that feel like to be in this relationship with healing, so to speak, where it's just who you are. So it's not this constant efforting to get somewhere, but it's just this constant feeling of having arrived somewhere. How would you describe that?
Hayley Curtis: Absolutely. So, yeah, because if there was this mindset of, okay, I gotta keep going, I gotta keep healing, I can never think about that. You know, like, because it's like I've come into deep peace with the fact that this is the nature of life and all I need to do is live totally in the life that I've been [00:51:00] given.
When you were describing before that feeling how people have, oh, I just need to get back to how I was before. I see that as, so Gene Key 58, which goes from dissatisfaction to vitality to bliss. And I describe it as dissatisfaction is where you're in, you've got a river of life and it's your destiny and that thing, it's flowing, right?
But people that are trying to get back to past happiness, they've got their bloody swimming cap and their goggles on, they're in that river and they're swimming the opposite way and they're going nowhere and they're like, fuck. Well, I just wanna get back to where I was. When you can actually turn around, get a bloody, you know, flamingo out with a cocktail in hand, lay on there and float down that bloody river because it's going.
You may as well go with it. And I guess for me, it's not like I'm thinking, oh my God, why is there always more healing to do? When is this ever gonna be over? I don't think that, I think, well, there's always more pain to navigate because there's always more purpose. There's always more suffering because there's always more [00:52:00] love.
And I've still got symptoms because I've got more fucking magnificence to unveil. I'm in such a glorious relationship with that where, don't get me wrong, some days it brings me to tears. And I have those moments where I'm like why does life have to be like, I have my moments? Yes.
But they always crack me open into into more. And so I see it like that. there is always more purpose.
We were talking about this before we hit record. I've come to find a beautiful balance between contentment and ambition. And I think this is so important because if we are just either one it hits suffering. So like the Gene Keys and a lot of things talk about the middle way. 'cause you've got three paths. You've got one path that goes too far towards the yang, which is the ambition, which is, I need to heal, I need to do more, whatever that looks like.
And if you go too far in that direction, you hit suffering, [00:53:00] right? Because you hit burnout and then you've got the other path, which is like the yin path, or it's the contentment path. It's the do nothing path. It's the sit and receive path. It's the path of, well, I'll just stay this way forever.
Like I'm not gonna try. And if you go too far that way, you hit suffering as well. And so it's about the middle path between those of a healthy balance between contentment and ambition. So on one hand, if I was to be this level of health for the rest of my days and nothing ever changed, I will be okay and I will be happy and I will love my life and I will find joy.
So I've got contentment, but on the other hand, I also believe there's more. I also believe that I, I'm going to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I keep trying new things. I've only, I just saw a new gut microbiome specialist naturopath last week, and it's not like I do that all the time.
I haven't seen anyone new in years, but I felt the call came, I'm gonna go down this path, [00:54:00] but I'm not so strongly on the ambition path that there can't be any joy until, you know, I didn't walk into that doctor's office being like, oh my God, will this be the person that fixed me? Yeah. I just waltzed in like, okay, you know, if you, if this might bring me maybe 10% more healing and teach me some new things on my journey, awesome.
If it doesn't, that's okay too. It still gets me moving forward whilst enjoying who I am in this moment. So I would encourage everyone to think about that balance. Like what does it look like to, weave ambition and contentment together? 'cause we think that we can only have one or the other, right?
You know, and it's just not true. You can have both, just like you can experience pain and suffering and sorrow simultaneously as bliss and joy. You can have both. You get to claim that for yourself. And I think that's also one of the big recognitions on that journey too, which helps you from not, oh, [00:55:00] do I have to keep healing? It's not that. Life thinks you are so magnificent that it's gonna keep drawing stuff out of you. So like get on board. You know? The faster we come to accept that, the faster life starts to get pretty amazing.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Agreed. I love that. It's just something we have to learn to embody and recognize that it's possible to hold seemingly polarizing things at the same time because we are such extreme people, right? It's like either this or that, all or nothing, black or white. And it's that dance or that balance of how can I be happy with what is and grateful for what is and learn to make peace with it.
Because if it may not shift, in a way that we think or want, other things are gonna come in, but maybe certain things are just permanent, Who knows? We know we don't know. how can we find that peace and contend with what is while also keeping our mind open and moving in that direction of intuition and trusting that, even what you're talking about with the naturopath, right?
It's like you don't have this plan of, okay, I'm gonna try this doctor and that doctor It's [00:56:00] getting into that, place of authentic flow. Yeah. Where there's authentic contentment with who you are and the life that you have pulled in because of who you are, not the other way around.
Right. Like your life didn't make you happy. You were happy and it pulled in this beautiful life. Yeah. And then being in that space and then intuitively going, okay, so what's the next ambitious step I take from that place? That feels natural and right, and not forced and not whatever.
Right? I think that's really that beautiful balance that we start to strike when we are in that space of operating from the inside out versus outside in. I think that's just another thing you had said a few times too that embodying that person you want to become, and like, that's what brings up the blocks that you need to heal and release in order to fully move into that person. It's not like I'm gonna wait until I find the perfect husband and then I will heal my relationship stuff doing the work first and then you get the result, not waiting for the result and then taking action. Yeah. Yeah. It's like switching the way we think [00:57:00] about things or changing how we're in relationship with all of those things.
Which changes the way you see all of life, you know? I think that's a part of this journey that maybe isn't spoken of enough, that it isn't even about the physical healing. It's about who you become on the path of physical healing. It never had anything to do with your body.
Hayley Curtis: It had everything to do with your soul and your spirit coming back to life, It's so much more than healing just our relationship with ourselves. It's really about healing our relationship with each other. Because through understanding, suffering deeply, we understand everyone because everyone's facing suffering.
And when we can have that love and compassion for our own suffering and love ourselves in it, we can start loving others in it. And that's where some of the real healing is. It's like the unity, the unifying, we utilize our suffering to push us further apart from each other when in actual fact it's here to bring us closer together. You just start to see all of life in a different [00:58:00] way. And like you said, everything starts to shift in your life, not because it changed and now you can be happy, but because you shifted and so life magnetizes different experiences
everything just gets so much better.
Dr. Erin Hayford: And it's, it's scary 'cause it's unknown and it's different and it's a different way of being in relationship and it requires a lot of trust at first. Especially if this is brand new, right. It takes a lot of trust of like, trusting my suffering.
Are you insane? You know, like it takes a lot of that kind of, even considering it, I think is a huge act or a huge step for us. Yeah. and then yes, like that's, I see that as well where it's like this is a journey for us first to embody what this can feel like and what this can look like. And then us showing up in that way starts to ripple out and starts to empower others and make space for others and allow that suffering to, yeah.
Like you said, to see it as our gift, our opportunity to evolve. why are we suffering? What do we do about it? How do we, listen to it and understand what it's trying to push us toward individually and collectively. Yeah. [00:59:00] It would be such a changed world if we could.
Hayley Curtis: No wonder there's so much chronic illness in the world because as a collective, we lost our way. Generationally how all of this stuff is passed down, you know, we, we now, our generation, we're still carrying the trauma and the chronic illness from like World War II and World War I, we've lost our way with agriculture and what we feed ourselves, what we put in our bodies, and no wonder how could we ever expect to not be in this place.
So there's also this acceptance around. not being a victim of that, of like the agriculture's fucked and all of this food. And then we get hyper obsessed over organic food and all that. It's not about that either. It's about, okay, oh, no wonder I'm suffering. look at everything.
It's a pandemic of chronic illness. things are starting to [01:00:00] shift. Yes, there is enough that's like, and we're changing. But yes, there is the collective changes and the agricultural changes and all of that that needs to happen.
But we've gotta remember that none of that happens without the shift on the individual level. Yes. You know, like the culture has to change and there's actually a Gene Key called the culture and there's six lines of the culture . Line one is individual. So first the individual must change.
Line two is partnership. So when the individual changes the marriage shifts. Line three is the unit, which is the family. When the marriage shifts, the family is healthy. Line four is network or business. When the family is healthy, the network's healthy. Line five is society, healthy networks and businesses create a healthy society.
And line six is system. So healthy societies creates healthy systems. I see a lot of the time people fall victim to this stuff because they're like, well, the system has to change. We're in a broken system, so I'm broken. And so we become a victim of a broken system, but we've gotta remember, [01:01:00] well, the system is healed through the individual.
You get to reclaim your power from a broken system and say, the only thing that's ever gonna heal that system is me, the individual healing from the inside out anyway. And so many of us, can trust that other people are on that individual journey, the partnership shifts the units we will shift the system eventually, probably not in our lifetime, but it'll get there.
But we gotta do the individual work. Yeah. And so you just gotta take that power back. You're not a victim to the system, you're not a victim to the medical system, you're not a victim to agricultural systems. Yes, it impacts our lives a lot, but we have to reclaim that power. You have a purpose.
Every single one of us plays a vital piece in the collective healing, and we've gotta take responsibility for it. this is something else that Gene Keys teaches. It's like we come into this life already with trauma in our DNA. Like literally it's, it's stored in our ancestral DNA. And even though it isn't ours, [01:02:00] we do have to take ownership over it, right? And so, like, even though maybe you didn't cause this suffering in your body, this is part of your mission in your life, and you must take ownership over it and you must take responsibility for it. And even just that shift, like a mature shift into, okay, I'm not just a victim of this, I have to own this without, not the ownership of like, okay, I'm someone with chronic illness, so my life sucks.
It's not that kind of ownership. It's like, alright, life. Like I was destined for this to be part of my life. So what is this inviting me into and what am I gonna do about it? Not in a, okay, how do I fix it, right? But what am I gonna do? The individual, we shift the culture.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Yes. Yes. I wanna like shout this from the rooftops because it is again like. Yeah. You see that systemic change. We have to change the system. The system is broken. How do we change this? And we're like yelling at the people at the top to change the system. And it's not gonna do anything.[01:03:00]
It hasn't worked ever, ever has it worked. It's like giving birth, right? Like there's a reason why it has grown and been born into this thing in the first place. it's because of how we are in relationship with ourselves our partner and our family
It's that outward ripple effect. It is, I think it's hard for us to, it feels like a small change, right? Like, 'cause we're all about these big, grandiose, whatever. Yeah. But it's also the reality on an individual level and a systemic level, that if everything was suddenly to change, we wouldn't be able to hold it
We wouldn't know how to be in relationship with it. I was just talking to someone this morning, a patient that we were doing some work around. It was like, if you could wave a magic wand and have your perfect life now, your nervous system would not be able to hold it because of the relationship you have with yourself, like the self hatred or the lack of self worth or self love.
If you suddenly had so much worthiness and love in your life, you would reject it because your system would not know what it was and would not know how to hold it. it really is this expanding capacity to hold the goodness and the expanded way of being in relationship with self.
The changes we wish to [01:04:00] see, we have to be able to hold it in our own system, our individual system before the big system can have that change. Those little micro tweaks that happen, we expand our capacity and then that expansion moves outward. But if it were to all just suddenly change,
We would go back quickly to the old way. I don't know how this new system works. I don't feel good in it. It's confusing, it's scary. It's weird. Let's just go back to the familiar. We have to change internally to make it familiar inside first and then we can hold that space outside.
Hayley Curtis: Mm. Reach Erin.
Dr. Erin Hayford: So, oh my gosh, we have touched on such key points. It really is starting with that individual shift, finding that purpose in the pain, trusting there's purpose in the pain. Taking those micro steps, those little tweaks, allowing things to slowly shift and not putting that pressure on someone to just immediately be in that mindset.
Anything else that you wanna leave folks with maybe an insight from the Gene Keys around this? Anything that we haven't touched on, before we wrap up our session? [01:05:00]
Hayley Curtis: Yeah, I guess I think the key piece through everything that we've been saying is for people to question what might it look like if I was to love myself even here?
In the midst of that pain or the deep exhaustion, what does love look like there? Because that's really the piece of all of these pieces. That's the one, that's the one that is the portal into the healing. 'cause that cracks everything open. You know it, it cracks through that belief that you cannot be loved here.
I cannot love myself here. I cannot love my life here. Everything is shit here. And that's what keeps you stuck there. What if you could love your life and yourself even here? What inspirational person have you ever read a book from or listened to on stage that didn't go through some shit?
You don't hear someone making a speech on stage at a TED Talk [01:06:00] being like, this is how I had happiness because I had a trust fund and my health is perfect, and this is so amazing. It's like we have to accept, that's not the path of greatness. Pain is a path toward greatness.
Greatness. You know? And I believe that anyone that is going through intense suffering with chronic illness, you are on a path of greatness and you're on a path of love and you're on a path of healing, but maybe not in the way that your mind thinks that that needs to look. Ask your heart what it might look like, and you might start cracking open some layers that just take your breath away.
You know, my healing journey through what my pain has brought me, it takes my breath away. I stand in absolute awe of what comes out of me [01:07:00] creatively, wisdom, the things that I've been able to do in this lifetime. And I'm, you know, there's still so much more, I, I'm believe that I'm gonna be peaking at like 65, you know, like there's so much pressure.
I 75 at the minimum. Oh yeah. I'm gonna be like, you know, white hair, Hayley speaking on stages, like, oh, she's gonna be magnificent. But I have these moments where I'm in awe of myself. Not in an egotistical way, but in a way of, whoa, look at the beauty that has come out of your pain, Hayley. And I just deeply believe that forever, and I've worked with enough damn people now to know that this is not just a Hayley thing, this is a human thing.
You know, and it's just, it's the most magnificent path in the world. And I believe that all of us will be there at the end saying, I wouldn't change it for anything. 'cause it brought me [01:08:00] everything. You know?
Dr. Erin Hayford: That's so beautiful. You are such a gift, Hayley. I'm so grateful to know you and for the internet, for connecting us where we never would've met otherwise, probably.
Hayley Curtis: Bless the Instagram, gods.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Yes, thank you to Instagram gods.. I'm so grateful that you stood up in that desert and kept walking because I'm so grateful for your gift and I'm so grateful for your story and your medicine, thank you for sharing it here with us today.
I so appreciate you.
Hayley Curtis: Oh, right back at you, Erin. And it's amazing, you know, life will magnetize us towards one another. These are the partnerships that build you know, like we'll find each other. Yes. And we will have our ripples in our little corner of the world doing our thing.
Thank you so much for everything that you do and these conversations that you bring to people and the incredible healing that you invite people into. We need more, we need more Dr. Erins in the world.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Yes. The more of us, the merrier.
Right. And it, this is everyone's path, right [01:09:00] where we're all the the ripple, we're all that ripple effect moving outward and we're gonna spread it around the world one person at a time.
Hayley Curtis: Amazing.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Thanks Hayley.
Hayley Curtis: Thank you.
