00:00 Preview

00:39 Opening

01:14 Introduction

02:56 Interview Begins with Kris Ferraro

04:48 From Misfit to Trailblazer

07:33 How Can People Accept Themselves No Matter What?

12:35 How Do We Deal With People Who Trigger Us?

17:16 Why Do You Not Recommend Burning a Letter?

19:36 How Would You Use the Elements in Alchemy?

23:04 What are Some of Your Favorite Rituals?

26:09 What Are Some Signs to Seek Out That Isolation or Solitude?

30:17 AD – Download the Mystic Mondays App https://www.mysticmondays.com/pages/app

30:42 Has Religion Played a Part in Your Spirituality?

40:08 Shedding the Beliefs That We Had to Become Our True Selves

41:59 Who Are Some of Your Favorite Trailblazers?

43:38 How Does One Know That They Have Stepped Into a Role?

48:52 How Does One Deal With Negative Attention?

53:47 A Matter of Feeling Safe

54:56 What Advice Would You Give to Your Younger Self?

55:10 What are Your Sun, Moon, and Rising Signs?

55:49 Closing Statements

56:32 End of Episode – Make Sure to Leave a Podcast Review!

Welcome to the GRACED Podcast! A space for everyday magic for your everyday life. We do this through rituals, aligning yourself to your soul’s purpose, and creating Alchemy to heal our mind, body, and spirits so that you can bring in more love and joy, manifest your desires, and believe in your dreams. Listen and watch over at grace.com/podcast and on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Instagram, TikTok and all the places you can find me on social media. Now let’s dive into today’s episode.

💖 Introduction

Grace: Welcome to The GRACED Podcast, a space where we talk about everyday magic for your everyday life.

Today’s guest is Chris Ferraro, an energy healer and teacher for over 20 years on practical healing, manifestation, and spirituality. She is also the author of Your Difference Is Your Strength. A guide to accepting yourself for anyone who has ever felt out of place, which we talk more about in this episode, and what she describes as a love letter and call to rise for anyone who has ever felt like a misfit.

So if you’ve ever felt like an outsider, instead of looking at that as a weakness, this episode talks about how we can turn that into a superpower.

And if you’d like to dive deeper into getting to know yourself, Discover your tarot birth cards as a way to understand the central themes of your life. We have a free calculator to get your tarot birth card pairing on mysticmondays.com, along with extensive and in depth reports on your tarot birth card pairing, available to order on our website.

Tarot, as you know, is such a great way to get to know yourself, especially understanding your tarot birth card pairing. Not just the general meaning, but your shadow cards, your lesson cards, and so on so forth.

And we’re doing a giveaway of Kris’s book, Your Difference Is Your Strength, along with a $200 one on one energy healing session with Kris over on Instagram. More details on how to enter this giveaway on the @grace.duong and @mysticmondays Instagram channels.

Now let’s dive into this episode.

✨ Interview Begins with Kris Ferraro

Grace: Hi, Kris. Thanks for being here.

Kris: Thank you so much for having me.

Grace: Yeah, definitely. So your book, Your Difference is Your Strength, is something I really resonate with as a creative person growing up and not really feeling like I was understood. And my parents were refugees. So, they didn’t really speak the language and so there was always this feeling of just not belonging and having that being a great source of pain. And so I was wondering for you, what was your inspiration behind writing your book and what was the process like?

Kris: Well, from the moment of my earliest memories, I just felt different. So I felt different than everyone around me. I had mystical experiences as a young child that I knew were not okay to talk about, let’s put it that way.

I was a highly sensitive child born into a highly insensitive environment and so I was constantly in survival mode. And then, as I got into kindergarten first grade, I was a chubby kid, I had several undiagnosed learning disabilities that they just didn’t know about at that time, and a lot of coordination problems.

I had a lot of physical awkwardness going on, so there were a lot of externals that showed the differences that were inside of me to other people.

Grace: Yeah, I can totally resonate being grown up in an environment that doesn’t necessarily support your growth. Having emotionally immature parents and kind of feeling like the adult in the household really takes a toll, especially as a child when you don’t really have a way to express yourself.

✨ From Misfit to Trailblazer

Grace: And in your book, you talk about labels like a Misfit and becoming a Trailblazer. And where did you come up with those terms and what does that mean to you to have those be on the same sides of the same coin or same sides of the same spectrum as you put it?

Kris: it was about six or seven years ago and I was speaking at a conference that I participate in every year. It’s for energy healers. It’s called the Spring Energy Event. And as with doing, being a speaker and doing talks, I always create a unique talk for each audience. I don’t do canned speeches because every audience is different and what is needed, I’m not really quite sure.

And the Misfit to Trailblazer concept really came through in a meditation. It was just a divine download that came through and I really like the word Misfit because it’s pretty direct. It’s about not fitting in, right? There’s lots of different words: outcast, pariah, I have lots of different terminology in the book. But I love the word Misfit, and also I’m a punk rocker, there’s the punk rock band The Misfits, I liked it for that reason also, but the image that was shown to me was that Misfits and Trailblazers are the opposite side of the same coin. That the archetype comes with these light and dark sides, and it was already clear to me that I was going to be a Trailblazer within my own fields of choice, and it was also clear to me that I had always discovered when I was interested in how other people got to where they were, and asked them, I often found that people that were Highly successful, people that were outside of the norm, who blazed trails in different fields, often had a history that was identical to mine, where they didn’t fit in, where they felt different than everyone else, they looked at the world in a different way, and when that became clear to me, I realized, oh, it’s not just an anomaly, it’s actually the way that it is. That behind every success story, behind every Trailblazer, behind every innovator, is someone who felt like they didn’t fit in and out of that, allow their true essence to emerge and we’re able to offer something to the world that hadn’t been there before.

Grace: That’s amazing. Yeah, I would say challenge and struggle is almost a necessary ingredient for someone’s triumph.

Kris: Absolutely. It’s part of growth, right?

Grace: Yeah. But sometimes that can be quite painful, the not fitting in and wanting to belong in certain groups and even shaming in certain groups when you don’t fit into the norm.

✨ How Can People Accept Themselves No Matter What?

Grace: So how does one deal with that if they feel like they’re different? How can they learn to accept themselves no matter what?

Kris: Well, that is really the journey that is before them. What I share in the book is that most often when we experience early adversity, we can have a lot of pain, we can have a lot of anger or bitterness, like, this isn’t right, I shouldn’t have had to go through this.

And of course I felt like that very much myself. Yet, what I found is that it’s out of that adversity. It’s how we grow, it’s how we expand, it’s how we learn who we really are. It’s too easy when we fit into a crowd to become like everyone else that’s all around us. But in isolation, where do we have to turn to?

We have to turn to our own selves and for spiritual people, the higher power of their own understanding, whatever that is or whatever that looks like. And that’s part of it. Because you develop an ability to stand apart and to be someone who’s a Trailblazer, you need to be able to stand apart. You need to be able to say the difficult things. You need to be able to make the suggestion that no one else has made.

And yeah, it is absolutely very, very painful. Those are traumatic experiences. We carry those in our energy field. And so there’s a lot of different ways that we can neutralize the triggers. We can really soften the fear of rejection and putting ourselves out there, which comes out of those experiences.

One of the main tools that I use is called EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, it’s otherwise known as tapping, and I’ve been tapping for 20 years, it’s not anything new, it’s been out for a while, but it’s a way of tapping on the meridian points, that are used in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.

And that is a way of changing how you feel and it’s a way of breaking up energetic patterns. It’s a way of clearing trauma. It’s a practice that has been used in the Veterans Administration to help with PTSD. So this is evidence based studies behind it that show that it actually works. This isn’t some airy-fairy kind of thing. It’s actually very real that it works.

So that’s something that I use throughout the book. I do a lot of journaling exercises because it’s important to be able to get to know ourselves and to unearth those things. Most often, people, we avoid pain. That’s human nature. Every single one of us, and we can come up with very creative ways to avoid our pain.

An addiction to busyness, along with all of the other addictions that we familiarize ourselves with, that we all are, know so much about anyway. And so, It’s really easy to do that, yet we can bury and bury and bury those experiences. They do not go away. As I often share with people, time doesn’t heal much.

Yes, we have some minor skirmishes in life, and as time goes on, they just kind of slough off. But really traumatic experiences, which being excluded, being isolated, being rejected, being bullied, or shamed, or humiliated, those do not just go away. We carry them around with us and they can have a great influence on us.

And so journaling is one of the safest, gentlest ways of taking those things that are uncomfortable, Bringing them out onto the page to begin to process that old pain.

Grace: Yeah, I often say the body is a portal because you could walk down a hallway, hear some music, and suddenly be transported to when you were 10. Or you could smell apple pie and be transported back to that memory of a cozy moment with your grandmother or something like that. There’s so many memories living inside us in all of these moments.

Kris: Oh, I just want to say, and triggers are so individual because it’s the energy imprint of an experience.

We know from the world of trauma that we carry trauma in the body through sensory information. And so it is very specific to each and every person. And so, It’s important then, when we get activated and we get triggered, which we all do, because the system, the energy system, the energy field that we are, is always seeking wholeness.

So that means that anything that is not in alignment with that wholeness is going to be drawing something to it that allows it to be processed. And normally what happens is, That trigger is activated. We have a reaction, including a deep physiological reaction, and we immediately try to stuff it back down or avoid it.

And so there’s lots of ways that we can go about processing those triggers so we don’t have to keep getting activated and living out those same patterns over and over again.

✨ How Do We Deal With People Who Trigger Us?

Grace: How do we deal with people who trigger us? That could be like my mom, or that could be coworker or people who remind you of these people that trigger you. How do you deal with those people and get through it in a way where you can step on to the other side?

Kris: One of my favorite ways of doing that is to write a letter to the person that you’re not going to send. Because normally we avoid confrontation because it’s scary, it’s uncomfortable, nobody teaches us how to have healthy confrontation where there’s conflict resolution.

We just don’t, we aren’t educated in that. And if we’ve been rejected or shamed or bullied before, it’s very hard. To have a healthy confrontation with someone, plus if you’re triggered, you would bring a lot of that intense energy into the conflict resolution and nothing is going to get resolved. People will get defensive and they’ll immediately back up and put their defenses up.

So what I like to do is I tell people to get toxic. So that means you get out your journal and you write a letter to the person. And you are as toxic as can be. You fully express the anger, the shame, the sadness. You don’t beat around the bush because they’re not going to see this. You want to actually get it out.

And I tell people to write in the letter. why they’re upset and how they want that person to change. So I’m really angry every time you bring up my weight, mom, it’s so frustrating. And then I feel bad about myself and you just kind of let it all hang out. And how you want them to change, because when we’re being triggered by another person, we’re not accepting them as they are, right?

So I want you to be more sensitive, Mom, and why don’t you have a clue? And how come you don’t have any self awareness? I thought you could go to therapy already. And you just Blah. You just get it all out onto the page, and I tell people to keep writing and to do stream of consciousness writing.

That’s writing without ceasing. I also say, write with a pen and paper. It uses a different part of your brain than typing, so this is something that you should handwrite. And write, write, write, write, write, write, write until you’ve said all of the things that you’ve wanted to say, you’ve gotten it all out onto the page.

And then you can take that page and you can do a ritual around it. You can crumble it up and throw it into a river and symbolize letting it go. You can put it in the freezer, and that’s a symbol of you’re freezing that energy out. It’s, you can do all kinds of creative things. Lots of people like to rip them up.

I do not recommend burning. A lot of people like to burn things like that. I don’t recommend that from a shamanic perspective, so I’m just going to say that. But you can tear it up! You can tear it up, and sometimes we have to do that once. In the case of our mothers, we might have to do that a number of times, but it takes that broiling up of the trigger and all the thoughts and all the feelings and all the ruminating, and we all have an inner lawyer in our head who’s mounting our case, right?

Who’s saying, I’m right and you’re wrong. And here’s all the reasons why I’m right. And here’s all the reasons why you’re wrong. But having that ruminating in our mind and our body is really, really unhealthy. And so we have to give that stuff a place to go. And so that’s what I recommend that people do to get it out.

And then I recommend people do anger release exercises. So one of my favorite is an energy medicine exercise called Blowing Out the Venom. And you stand with your feet hip width apart. Nice bouncy knees. You breathe in and you rise your arms up about your head and you make nice tight fists and as you blow out through the mouth, you throw your arms down and you open your fists.

So it’s like you’re pulling up that toxicity and you’re blowing it out towards the earth and letting it go. It’s really healthy for our livers and gallbladders that get greatly affected by anger, resentment, bitterness, and guilt.

Grace: I love that. I love those rituals. Especially the different ways that you can write a letter to the other person and how you would like to, I guess, diffuse that energy so it’s no longer within your system.

But also the whole energetic body way of releasing something. I feel like those are different ways of releasing, but very helpful and easy to do in your everyday life.

✨ Why Do You Not Recommend Burning a Letter?

Grace: So, you mentioned not burning the letter and I’m really curious about that because that’s something that I actually like to do. I like to burn letters, I like to burn intentions and things like that, but I’m a fire sign so I like the fire.

Why do you not recommend burning a letter?

Kris: Well, positive things, like intentions, things you’re working on manifesting, blessings, prayers, those are fine to burn. I don’t believe in taking fire to something that you’ve been using to vent to, because fire is, it’s alchemy, it’s transforming of energy.

And so, I like to use that for what we would label positive. Rather than negative stuff, because, let’s just be real here, we all have trouble sometimes managing our energy, and the thoughts and the feelings that we have about other people, we’re putting that energy out into the world, and often directing it towards that person, which is why it’s really important to clear it up, because frankly, we’re all doing that way too much in the planet right now. There’s a lot of projecting and a lot of sending of negative energy out to other people. And while it’s human, it’s also our responsibility as spiritual beings to manage that energy and clear that energy. 

When we add fire to intensely negative emotions, it can actually amplify them. And it can be harmful to the person that’s doing the ritual, and it also can be harmful to the person that you are writing the letter to.

Grace: That makes sense. Yeah. I get the feeling that fire, if untamed, can burn down a forest. So, you gotta be careful with all that energy, you know?

Kris: Yeah, fire is powerful. I love it.

I mean, I really do. And I’m Earth sign, I’m a Capricorn, but I love the alchemical process that happens with fire and using it for your positive things, your dreams, even your vision boards. you may work with a vision board for a particular amount of time and feel like I’m ready to kind of like, this is the energy is set in motion and I’m ready to let it go and allow that to manifest in my life.

Then fire is a great thing to do for that.

✨ How Would You Use the Elements in Alchemy?

Grace: Yeah, so how else would you use the elements in alchemy or to create alchemy?

Kris: Well, it’s a really interesting question.

Water is very powerful for clearing our energy fields. So a very simple thing that you can do to work with water is when you take a shower, really be present in the shower.

And as you feel the water coming down over you, be in your body, so you’re feeling the sensations of the water coming down over your face and your hair and your body, and imagine that it’s clearing unneeded energy that’s not for your highest good out of your body. And you can see that like, gray sand or smoke, and see that coming down off of your body and being washed down the drain.

So that’s a powerful little simple thing that you could do every day to clear your energy field while you’re in the shower anyway, right? You’re going to be in there anyway, might as well turn it into a healing ritual. So that’s a good way of working with that. With Earth, I often tell people When they’re manifesting or creating something new and for people moving from the Misfit to the Trailblazer journey, plant seeds.

Now, I live 12 miles west of New York City in an apartment building. I don’t have a yard. I do have a fire escape. I will germinate seeds and put them in the earth and care for those seeds as I’m imagining my manifestation coming to fruition. And watch as that plant grows as a symbol of that and sometimes I’ll give it to someone in a yard and they can plant it in their yard and it can continue to grow or I’ll just keep it as a house plant.

But taking then as that grows out of the small pot and putting it into the bigger pot, often it goes in alignment with the growth of my business or the growth of something else that’s happening in my life.

With metal, jewelry is really great to represent the metal element, which is about clarity of thinking. And so, putting on, wearing metals and adorning yourself with silver or gold jewelry can be a really powerful way of putting it on with intention. And saying, this is representing my mental power, it’s representing my clarity in the world. So there’s lots of different things that we can do that are very simple.

I’m a pragmatist. I’m a left brained person. I’m also a mystic. My editor calls me a Type A mystic, which is probably the greatest summarization of me in the fewest amount of letters than I’ve ever seen before. And I like things that are practical and very, very effective, and I love integrating things into my daily practices because it makes them habits and anything you make a habit is easy to do.

Grace: Yeah, and I feel like creating that intention for this habit to be sacred really creates that ritual for you to want to do because I find that sometimes when I try to integrate new habits and it feels like it’s dragging, it’s not really becoming a part of What I want to do because I’m resisting it or, it’s just not fun. But when you set that intention that, oh, this is sacred time for me to connect with my true self, my higher self.

✨ What are Some of Your Favorite Rituals?

Grace: And so what are some of your favorite rituals that you like to do for yourself?

Kris: First thing in the morning, I tap on my collarbone points, which are just below the collarbones. in acupuncture, they’re called K27, and they’re associated with the kidneys.

Kidneys, in traditional Chinese medicine, are associated with life force. So, before I get out of bed, I’m tapping on My collarbone points to kick up my inner furnace or my inner fire to get my life force ready for the day. I also use a metal spoon, which I rub against the bottom of my feet. It’s a grounding exercise that I do first thing in the morning.

I also do it before I go to bed. I do Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, she wrote The Artist’s Way, very famous, and that’s three pages of Stream of Consciousness writing first thing in the morning, so I do do those. It’s a way of unloading, often I’m writing about dreams I’ve had, or making complaints about something, so again, it’s a safe place for those, thoughts and feelings to go first thing in the morning, so that’s a ritual that I do.

I do a type of prayer called Affirmative Prayer. and I’m doing affirmative prayer throughout the day, but I have longer prayer sessions in the morning and at night, and I get prayer requests in sometimes from other parts of the world. So, I have two check in times where I go into that affirmative prayer and bring in the highest and best for the people that have given me prayer requests, my own friends and family, and also for prayers for things that are happening in the world.

So, prayer is a very, very big, important part of my life, it’s made huge changes. I do something called the Daily Energy Routine, and anybody could do a Google search and look up the Daily Energy Routine from Donna Eden. It’s a fantastic way of balancing the systems and the energy of the body to get ready for the day.

I do affirmations sometimes when I’m driving or sometimes when, something comes up that I may start, that I may think that I’m going to ruminate about, I’ll go into affirmation to move into a place of surrender. So I’m handing that off to my higher power, giving me a place of peace. and I do energy exercises whenever I have, intense feelings.

So I’m tapping or I’m doing emotion code and body code are two of the practices that I do for myself and others.

Grace: Amazing. Wow. You do so much. That’s incredible.

Kris: Well, you know, this is my life now. So it’s my career, my books, my work with clients can only go as far as I am. And so it’s imperative that I walk my walk instead of just talking the talk. So it’s important that I be in integrity. And in that way, things in my life really work.

Grace: Amazing.

✨ What Are Some Signs to Seek Out That Isolation or Solitude?

Grace: So earlier in the conversation, you mentioned that there is an isolation period when the Misfit becomes the Trailblazer. And that really reminds me of the Hermit card in the Tarot deck. And that’s very much about going within, finding your inner light, having this solitude for yourself so that you can really find who you really are.

And I’m wondering, what are some signs for anyone to really seek out that isolation or solitude? And Is that a necessary part of the process for anyone going through their spiritual awakening?

Kris: I do think that alone time and silence are important for any spiritual person. We live in a world where it’s so easy to be distracted and engaged and overstimulated by just about everything, myself included. I’m on my phone a lot more than I wish I was. That’s just the truth. It’s the world that we’re living in. And there’s a part of me that loves our modern conveniences and the creativity and connection that can happen through social media. I mean, it’s amazing, right? What we can do with this little device we carry in our hands.

And at the same time, our primal selves, our bodies, our nervous systems, it’s are not designed for the technological, fast paced lives that most of us are leading. And also, for people that are maybe in partnership, or maybe they have children, and they’re always surrounded by other people, it’s really easy to just lose sight of yourself, and to lose sight of your path.

And if you’re empathic, If you’re highly sensitive, if you’re someone that picks up on other people’s emotions, if you’re the person that everybody turns to when they’re having a bad day, it’s very easy to get lost because you can take on so much of what’s happening all around you, you lose sight of who you are.

And so it’s absolutely essential to carve out alone time. I was talking to somebody last week. And I said, listen, they live close to the Gulf of Mexico. And I said, listen, before you go home from work, bring your bathing suit. And 15 minutes before work is over, put your bathing suit on, put your scrubs on over it.

And when you leave work, drive directly to the beach, which is 5 minutes from work. This person’s house and jump into the water because, of course, you’re not gonna have your phone on you, right? When you’re doing that and just be in that salt water, be in that baptism of shedding the day, the work day before you go home to all of the responsibilities that you’re gonna have and just make it worth it.

A daily ritual, even if it’s just 15 minutes. And so there’s all kinds of ways that we can find that. Maybe if you’re riding a subway or if you’re taking a bus or train for public transportation for work, rather than listening to a book on tape or a podcast, maybe you spend 15 minutes in silence. Maybe you put on noise cancelling headphones and go within, because everything that we need really, truly is within us and the intuition, the insights, the clarity that you’re looking for, it’s right there, but you gotta slow down and be in your body and be inside of yourself and be present long enough to hear that still small voice that each and every one of us has that still small voice that said I need to do a talk called From Misfit to Trailblazer, that seven years later is now a book called Your Differences Your Strength.

It came from slowing down long enough to receive that download and look at the things that it’s created for me ever since.

Grace: That’s awesome.

✨ Has Religion Played a Part in Your Spirituality?

Grace: So there are certain words that you’ve used, and I’m just curious, like prayer and baptism. Has religion played a part in your spirituality? And what would you say to people who have grown up in religious institutions or, In religion, where they felt like they had to adhere to certain beliefs to be accepted, and when they grow up, they might not believe those things anymore, but may carry some guilt around that.

A question I get a lot since I’ve made a tarot deck is, is the tarot evil? I’m in this religion, and my parents don’t approve of tarot, and they ask me these questions, is the devil present in the tarot deck, and there is a Devil card. But I would love to hear what you think about this. I have my thoughts.

Kris: Well, I’d love for us to share the thoughts, because I certainly have my own. I was raised Catholic. We went to church on Sundays. Around the time that I went through puberty, I started questioning a lot of what I was being taught. Like, Women not being able to have leadership roles in the church, things like that started feeling like red flags to me.

There are parts of Catholicism that I have retained, and saints that I pray to, talk to that have been beneficial for me in incredible ways. But at the same time, from the age of 16 on, I started a deep spiritual exploration and went on journeys in many different areas. And so I studied in ashrams and I went to Buddhist temples and I studied meditation and breath work from all over the world. And I would go to Christian churches and Jewish synagogues and what I found is that when I was tuned in to my own spirit and my own personal connection with Spirit, which I also call God, and I also call Universe, and I also call Divine Love. It is that which has all names and no names.

When I’m in touch with that, I have had deep spiritual experiences in all of those places. And I’ve also had those experiences at Rock concerts, and I’ve had them in movie theaters, and I’ve had them in crowded plazas, and I’ve had them in nature. I firmly believe that there is one energy out of which all of us are created, and that we have individual souls, and those souls are like fingerprints. They’re completely unique to us. But I believe the body and life is finite and that our spiritual selves are infinite.

And so I really believe in a very universal life force that I call God in many other names. And it just came out of my own curiosity, my own exploration, my own searching. I basically sort of scrapped everything that I had been told and decided, well, I’m just going to go to all these different places, go to all these different experiences, read all these different books, take all these different kind of workshops, and I’m going to see what feels true for me. And then eventually circled back around and even reclaimed some of the spiritual tools that I was raised with.

What was so incredible for me was to realize that we’re made out of love. And that love is everywhere, and that so much of the human experience comes out of being like a fish looking for water, but the water is all around the fish, and inside of the fish. The love is within us, and the love is all around us.

And that comes out of a very long, I don’t know how many decades, long time path of being on a deep spiritual path for a very, very long time. So it wasn’t something I thought was going to happen or tried to make happen. It just organically came out of my curiosity and my searching.

I am concerned we are, living in a time where I believe there’s a lot of superstition around God and a lot of needing to please God and a lot of looking for darkness where there isn’t. The Tarot is an oracle but you know what the biggest oracle is? Our lives.

Life is always showing us what we need to see. Always. We’re often not paying attention or looking, or we miss it, and then life just keeps bringing it around. We see messages in the people we pass on the streets. We see it in an email in our spam folder that the title just grabs us and suddenly it’s an answer to a question that we may have had.

So life is our oracle, so we cannot stop having an oracle because we’re all in oneness. We are all pieces of this big, giant, magnificent, mysterious puzzle. And so we can try to isolate ourselves, but it doesn’t work because we’re connected to life. And so I totally understand the people that question that or feel that way are coming from a place of fear because There’s a lot of fear that’s being taught and a lot of control that’s being taught to people, not just in traditional religions, but also in a lot of spiritual teachings too.

There’s also a lot of superstition. And so what I tell people when I get those questions, because of course I do, I say to them, check in with yourself. Does this feel evil? Does this feel bad? Our energy fields tell us what’s good for us and what’s not good for us, okay? That’s very much true. Whether it’s a food that we’re consuming or a movie that we’re going to see, our energy field is expanding to things that are in alignment with us and contracting to things that are not in alignment with us, that are not good for us. And something that may not be good for you at this moment in time, five years from now, may be the answer to your prayer. And I think that the word prayer has become also filled with superstition or people there’ll be a, say, a big tragedy.

And there will be people will say, I’m putting it in my thoughts and prayers. And then there’s people on the other side of that who say, that’s just a bunch of nonsense. We need to make changes. Yeah, we need to do both though. We need to do both. Prayer absolutely does change things. It really truly does. The answered prayers I’ve had in my life, makes my mind almost explode if I brought them all in at one time and tried to contemplate it. And really, it’s just communion. It’s communion with the God of your own understanding. Sometimes it may be conversation or sometimes it may be asking for something.

I do those type of prayers too, with affirmative prayer. I’m using a method of affirming what I want to have experienced in my life and what I would love other people to experience. And so I say to everyone out there who may be listening, if you’re in a lot of fear and if what you believe is making you feel bad, it’s probably not in alignment with the God of your own spirit.

And so, I also want to say, every person out there that is in between you and your God is an interpreter. You need to have a direct relationship with the universe and with the higher power of your own understanding. It’s imperative that we have a one on one relationship, and then those people can be inspirations, or influences, or guides on our path, but the relationship is between you and that.

Grace: Wow, that’s beautiful, and there’s so many nuggets in there. I totally agree that love, I feel like, is at the core of it all, and if it doesn’t feel loving, then it’s probably, a man made thing.

Kris: If it makes you feel shame in any way, it’s probably not really good for you then, because I will say this, we are loved unconditionally. We truly, truly are loved unconditionally. We’re not being judged. So if something is making us judge ourselves, not love ourselves, feel bad about ourselves, it’s probably not in alignment with that higher power.

Grace: Right. And it’s also about intention of where that comes from. Like, is it an intention of control of power and religion has evolved to have ties with government, and that played a role in keeping people in check, keeping track of commerce, there are a lot of things tied in with religion, which is why it feels so complicated, but at the core of it.

✨ Shedding the Beliefs That We Had to Become Our True Selves

Grace: I feel like when people come to me and ask me, is tarot evil, I say a very similar thing. Why don’t you explore and see how you feel, because I feel like a lot of what we’re taught is to deny our feelings, and to deny our innate instincts to feel into, is this situation right for me, or is it wrong for me? And then we go into this analysis paralysis of whether, oh, but this situation should be right for me because of what I was told and what I believe.

And I feel like part of the spiritual awakening or becoming Trailblazer from a Misfit is really shedding these beliefs that we thought we had to become our true selves.

Kris: Oh, 100%. That’s really what the whole process is. It’s about shedding conditioning. The conditioning that doesn’t work. The conditioning that benefits from us not liking and accepting ourselves.

The conditioning that benefits from us being, forced into conformity. To go along with the program. There’s a lot of pressure all around from the corporations, to businesses, to families, to cultures, to governments, to religions that are telling us who we’re supposed to be. And none of them know what our soul came here to be.

And so, yes, so much of it is shedding the conditioning that does not serve so that the true self can emerge out. And once that true self emerges out, life works. You will be supported, money shows up, opportunities show up, doors are opened because you’re now in alignment with who you came here to be.

Grace: Hmm. I love that.

✨ Who Are Some of Your Favorite Trailblazers?

Grace: Who are some of your favorite Trailblazers?

Kris: Well, I write about some of them in the book. Shirley MacLaine was one, and the reason why I picked her is because when I was growing up, she was definitely Criticized and publicly humiliated for being a weirdo, and this was someone that was a very, very, very famous Actress.

So she didn’t have to go out on a limb, which is the name of one of her books, and talk about her weird spiritual mystical experiences, but she introduced a lot of things to Western culture that we previously didn’t have knowledge of, including the chakras, which we all talk about now. And so it’s amazing what she was able to do as a Trailblazer.

One of my favorites that I didn’t write about is Joey Ramone, who was the lead singer of The Ramones. I, he’s no longer with us. I had met him several times, and I remember thinking this is the oddest, odd person I have ever met in my entire life. Everything about him was odd. The way he spoke, the way he walked, the way he moved.

He was like a person from another planet. Yet, he became a rock star, and not only that, a real Trailblazer within music. And now I hear the Ramones music on TV commercials and I just cannot actually believe it. So, he was definitely one of those people that found a way to And allowed his true essence to come forth and he blazed a real trail and then burned out at a young age because I think he probably finished what his role was.

✨ How Does One Know That They Have Stepped Into a Role?

Grace: So you mentioned finishing your role. How does one know that they have stepped into their role? And if they have actually finished the role.

Kris: Well, I don’t think we’re finished until we’re no longer on the planet. So, and that’s the simple answer for that. If you’re still alive and you’re walking around in a body, your mission is not done.

You just have to keep going. But how you know that you’re with it is, it sort of refers back to what I just mentioned, which is that opportunities show up. Synchronicities happen. Doors are opened. With my second book, Manifesting, this is a great example. My book came out, and five days later, my brother in law passed away from COVID, and he had been in my life since I was 12 years old.

So I basically gave the book over to Spirit. I said, Spirit, you’re gonna have to take this book and get it into the hands of people that it needs to go to, because I need to be there for my niece and nephew, and my sister, and my mom, and my family, and my own grief, I have to be in that process, I can’t take myself out of that process.

And the most incredible things happened with this book that I did very little to promote. And it came out in August of 2021. So we are in full COVID. There’s no live book signings. There’s no live events that I can do. Within a month and a half, my editor called me and said, something really strange is happening with Manifesting.

It’s selling really well at Barnes & Noble stores. And I said, okay, that’s great. And he said, no, you don’t understand. Every author that puts a book out, their number one seller is Amazon and all the other sellers fall underneath. So once Barnes & Noble became number one, he reached out to the marketing people and the marketing people reached out to Barnes & Noble.

And what we found out was that they did a display for Halloween on the book tables. Like when you go in and you see the book tables or you see the books on the end caps. Those books are there because the publishers have paid for the books to be there. Which I didn’t know, until this happened, my publisher did not pay for my book to be there.

But it ended up on a display with books from witches. They decided to do displays on books from witches for Halloween, and decided to include Manifesting, and Manifesting ended up on this display that it should have been many thousands of dollars for my book to be there. Okay? I had nothing to do with that.

Everyone in the company was like, oh my God, she manifested a free spot on a book table at Barnes & Noble. Okay? The next month, the stores, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, and HomeGoods, that are all owned by the same company, decided that they were going to purchase some books from my publisher to have for the holiday season, which they had never done before.

And they picked up Manifesting and another book that I contributed to, which is called Ultimate Energy, and it was a huge sale. So, that’s when I know that I’m in alignment with what I’m supposed to be doing, because here I did very little promo, I wasn’t talking about the book a lot, I was dealing with my own healing and being in service to my family, and there was not a lot of promoting that I could do in person.

And all of these incredible miracles allowed that book to now be in its sixth printing. In less than two years, it went into its sixth printing, which is extremely unusual. And not because anybody paid, not because I had a publicist who was trying to get me in magazines. It was because I was in alignment with what I came here to do and what I came here to teach.

And doors opened up and opportunities showed up that no one expected. Not even the people in my publishing house could believe that it happened.

Grace: Well, congratulations. That’s a truly incredible endeavor from Spirit.

Kris: It really was. And it made me just feel so loved. The sales were wonderful in that people were buying the book and getting something from it was great.

But what I felt most of all was how supported and loved I am. And every time one of those miracles happened, it was just a deepening of my faith and a reminder how loved I am and how when I am standing up for what I really believe in, there’s nothing that can get in my way.

Grace: Yeah, that reminds me of my own journey when I created the Mystic Mondays Tarot deck, which started off as a Kickstarter, and most of my stock ended up getting damaged because the cards would scratch when they shipped out, but I believe everything happens for a reason, so that led me to cold email the publisher that published Mystic Mondays Tarot, And within three weeks, I had a publishing deal and a literary agent, and they published it the same year.

Which is pretty unusual for publishing in general, because publishing can take a while, you know? And that, to me, was like, this deck really wants to be out there in the world, and a sign of alignment that this is what I’m supposed to be doing.

✨ How Does One Deal With Negative Attention?

Grace: So, in your book, You mentioned that being different can sometimes make you a target, and I’ve experienced this even with that very first Kickstarter that I did.

How does one deal with that negative attention and just keep showing up for themselves unapologetically?

Kris: Well, I think it’s good to be self protective. I think it is good to manage our energy. In a way that uplifts us physically and emotionally, there are times when I ask people to be a shield between me and the rest of the world, and that’s really protective for me.

And I also want to say, at the same time though, is that often my fear of criticism, my fear of being targeted, is actually worse than what happens when I’m actually targeted. So for me, the real healing comes from managing the fear that I have that says I’m going to be a target and then makes me feel really afraid and makes me want to retreat or become invisible.

So once I clear that fear, when I’m actually criticized or targeted in some kind of way, it’s actually not as bad as I anticipated. our monkey minds are really good with trying to catastrophize and make things really, really bad. And it’s just a self protective mechanism that’s built into each and every one of us.

It’s really important that we learn that that monkey mind and its messages of catastrophe are most of the time totally wrong. And so we can put ourselves out there. We have to strengthen our courage. One of the things that I suggest that people do is do something that really, really scares them that’s not going to have any really major effect.

So, I’ll tell them to dress up in some ridiculous outfit, not on Halloween, some other time of the year, and go out and just walk around in something so outrageous that people are going to be looking at you and staring at you and to just have fun with it. To recognize, oh, okay, everyone’s looking at me, that fear that we all have as kids, right? Everybody’s staring at me, and you actually create that experience, and what happens is, you actually can have fun with it, and it can make you laugh, and you can play along with it, and really make it a fun experience.

Those things can really strengthen our courage muscles, and the more we practice being courageous, the stronger they get.

Grace: Absolutely. It reminds me of this moment where I had a speaking engagement, and I froze on stage. And I remember afterwards, I was like, oh my god, I completely messed up, and it was just like this whole thing.

And then later on in that week, I realized it had shattered something for me. It had shattered this fear of not appearing to be perfect, of not being human, of not being a person that has flaws. And in some ways, it was really freeing to have that public embarrassing moment for me, of just like, oh wow, I can mess up and be fine.

Kris: I 100% agree with you. When I was writing my first book, Energy Healing, I, get this book contract out of nowhere, and I needed to write the book in six weeks, which is no time at all, and I didn’t do anything for two weeks because I was paralyzed with fear, and then I started writing it, and then the last ten days, something clicked in, and the voice of the inner critic, it was like, people were standing around me with megaphones.

Everyone’s going to hate it. Your colleagues aren’t going to like it. No one’s going to like it. You’re going to lose respect. No one’s going to buy the book. It’s going to be a total failure. And it was like this cacophony of the inner critic, but I felt it outside of me. And what happened was I didn’t have the luxury to even tap on it or do anything.

I had to write. I was writing from nine in the morning till nine at night every day. And so I just kept writing. And as I kept writing, there was a moment where that inner critic voice that was all around me shattered like a window, like a windshield shatters. And I felt the energy fall all around me.

And after that, I was in absolute bliss, and I wrote most of the book in the last few days, and I made my deadline. I wrote 30 almost 39,000 words, and had almost no edits from that book. When my editor sent it back, he goes, yeah, there’s a couple words here and there, but otherwise, it’s perfect. So it really, it was a real, test for me of moving through the fire and you keep going and eventually those systems just crumble.

✨ A Matter of Feeling Safe

Grace: Yeah, and I also think it’s a matter of feeling safe. safe to fail, safe to try new things, safe to be different, safe to be a Misfit, and through that journey of being different and allowing yourself to be different, allowing yourself to shine, too, in your difference, in what makes you unique.

Kris: Well, all of us are the artists and the architects of our lives. We don’t know that but we’re creating our lives all the time. And so being an artist involves experimentation, mistakes, taking an idea and going in one direction and then realizing, oh, wait a second, this isn’t working at all. Now I got to regroup.

It’s part of the creative process. So it is good to develop a resiliency that even when we fail, can we still be compassionate to ourselves? Can we still be tender and merciful with ourselves? Can we love ourselves through those moments? Because when we can, then even the mistakes and the failures become part of our healing.

Grace: I love that. So let’s wrap up this interview with some rapid fire questions.

✨ What Advice Would You Give to Your Younger Self?

Grace: What advice would you give to your younger self?

Kris: I would tell her that everything is going to be okay and life is going to be more magnificent than she could ever possibly know.

Grace: Oh, I’m getting chills. I love that.

✨ What are Your Sun, Moon, and Rising Signs?

Grace: What are your sun, moon, and rising signs?

Kris: I am a Capricorn Sun, Sagittarius Moon, and Gemini Rising.

Grace: Does that resonate with you?

Kris: I didn’t resonate with Capricorn as a young age because I was such a radical rebel, but I’m becoming more Capricorny as I get older, for sure. And I, and Capricorns tend to find success later in life, and that has certainly been the case for me.

Grace: What is one affirmation that you’d like to leave the Mystic Mondays/GRACED Podcast audience with?

Kris: The universe is conspiring in my favor.

✨ Closing Statements

Grace: Oh, I love that. Thank you so much, Kris, for your wisdom and your encouragement for us to be our Misfit selves. I love that we can shine in our differences and I think there’s just a feeling of acceptance for when we accept ourselves, we also can accept others and be really present in our lives.

So thank you for sharing your wisdom today.

Kris: Thank you so much for having me on. It’s wonderful that spirit can connect us right across miles and platforms and ages. And it’s that thing that brings us together where we can really connect. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate you having me on.

Grace: Absolutely. Amazing, thank you!

✨ End of Episode – Remember to Leave a Podcast Review on Apple Podcasts!

Grace: So much for tuning in to today’s episode with Kris Ferraro. From misfit to trailblazer, I’m so grateful to Kris for coming onto the podcast and dropping these gems today. In what ways do you feel like you are different? And is there a way for you to recognize that your difference can also be your strength?

I would love to hear in the comments, on YouTube, Spotify, wherever you’re listening to this podcast. And as a reminder, we will be doing a giveaway of Kris’s book, Your Difference is Your Strength, over on Instagram. Until next time, my dear mystics and misfits, stand out and be proud of what makes you different, as that is also what makes you unique.

Sending you grace today and every day.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode. Remember to subscribe and check out more GRACED Podcast episodes for how to apply everyday magic to your everyday life.

See you next time!

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