I'm Natalie Lou and you're listening to the baggage reclaim sessions.

Hello hello. How are you doing?

Do you know what?

On the last episode, so episode 195,

I totally forgot to mention the baggage reclaim was turning 15 on like the 12th of September and so I just wanted to do a shout

out about its birthday I did do that on Instagram anyway and also in the email newsletter that went out this

week if you're not subscribe to that then I'll make sure I include a link in

the show notes but yeah it turned 15 so of course the podcast is not 15 years old because I don't think

podcasts existed back then, certainly not in the form that they are today. But baggage reclaims started as a blog.

And I did it after I had experienced an epiphany

that summer of 2005.

It was very unwell at the time. I've been told that if I didn't start taking steroids for life that I would basically keel over by age 40 from pulmonary heart failure. And I'd also realize that I was yet again involved with another

emotionally unavailable man who suddenly remembered that he wasn't ready for a relationship and that he wasn't over his ex

yet even though we've been equates seeing each other for five months and I had

a personal blog at that time and I have been sharing episodes from my life on there and I spoke out loud about some of the realizations I was having about the patterns in my life and

realizing that okay like yeah like I've been in a lot of circuit relationships and yeah some of them were damn right shady and

abusive but I'm the common denominator and that doesn't mean I'm responsible for

their stuff but what happens if I start looking at what I bring in to each situation?

Which version of me is showing up regardless of whoever I'm involved with? And that's what I realized that I'm involved with and that's when I realized that I always thought of myself as

mis monogamous I you know I wanted to commit I wanted a relationship I was down for

love yeah turns out I was also emotionally unavailable, scared of commitments, and actually that I hated myself.

And when I was making these realizations, I was speaking out loud on my blog blog and I genuinely thought I was a weirdo I

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