Becoming Is Messy, with Meghann Dawson: Episode 392

Your past can feel like a weight you’ll carry forever, until the day it becomes a clue. We sit down with writer, speaker, and podcast host Meghann Dawson to talk about her book series Becoming Is Messy and the real life healing journey underneath it: chronic trauma, living in a body shaped by pain, and the quiet ways perfectionism and “being chosen” can masquerade as love. Meghann shares how survival strategies that once kept her safe later kept her small and how she began rewriting the pattern. 

We walk through the moment that changed everything: holding her newborn daughter and hearing an inner voice that cut through years of inner critic noise. From there, Meghann gets practical, laying out the LEVEL UP framework she’s built from experience and therapy work: learning to trust yourself, examining childhood with compassion, valuing the lessons inside messy memories, exploring spirituality in language that fits, and building a toolbox that supports nervous system regulation over time. If you’ve ever asked why healing isn’t linear, why you keep circling back, or how to stop repeating family trauma, you’ll find clear, relatable answers here. 

We also dig into what happens after you start to heal: quitting compartmentalizing, choosing rooms that can hold the real you, parenting teens with more grace, and learning “wholeness first” so you can show up with a full cup. Meghann previews the bigger arc of her series, including Choosing Is Courageous and Being Is Enough, and why receiving and weaving community might be the next stage for many of us. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the one line you want to remember from Meghann’s story.

To reach Meghann - https://www.meghanndawson.com

©2022-2026 Soul Healer17:77, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Any copying of this poetry and audio in whole or part is prohibited. *I do not own the rights to the royalty free music*

Have a lovely day and stay blessed

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Megan

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back, listeners. I'm Robin Black, and this is It's All About Healing Podcast. Today we have a special guest, Miss Megan Dawson. She is a writer, speaker, and podcast host. And we're going to be speaking about her book series Becoming Messy. Megan, tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Yes, Robin, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I have been looking forward to this conversation all week. So thank you for having me. And I am here calling in today from Madison, Wisconsin, where I live with my blended family, my husband Kelly. We are parents to teenagers. Our oldest just finished his first year in college. We have a uh a senior in high school that just graduated. So she'll be heading off to Boston this uh August. Exciting. Yes. And then we have our youngest uh who will be a senior. So we are we're in that kind of empty nest. We're like in closer and closer to that. And for me, I've had a lifetime of chronic trauma that I have kind of learned over these years to really transmute and move my own healing forward. And I'm just at a season now, or I'm so ready to live my purpose and share my story with other people and help really kind of turn my healing journey into something that I hope uh will help other people as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

I love that. I love hearing that, especially so and then you said a blended family. So how is how are you guys blended?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yes. And so my husband, Kelly, we've been together, we've been married for 10 years now. And so when we met years ago, we had recently divorced. And at the time the kids were four, five, and seven. And so now, you know, now I yeah, I just share, we're about to be empty nesters, and so they've grown up together, and we've grown up uh as a family. My husband, so Kelly had two kids from his previous marriage. So he had the oldest and the youngest, a boy and a girl. And then my biological daughter, Mara, sits right in the middle. So she's our uh our senior that's heading off to Boston this August. And wow, just a lot of seasons of life for all of us that are kind of culminating, which also I'm excited to talk about today because it's really hitting me how powerful it is to be telling my life story at the same season that I'm sending my girl off to college. It feels very interwoven, very interwoven.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yes. So I'm excited to get into

Why She Wrote Becoming Is Messy

SPEAKER_00 2:28

this. So becoming is messy. So tell us a little bit about this book series that you started.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yes. And so it started out, you know, I I always knew my story was so crazy that if I would have believed that I just was supposed to go through all that hardship for nothing, there were many times it would have broken me. I very much knew at a young age, I right out of the gate, I was when I was born, I caught an infection at birth. I was born to a teenage mom. And my life was very hard to say the least. I grew up in a volatile household where I was the oldest uh child, I was the oldest daughter. So very much in the midst of all of my medical challenges, I also had a dad that was an abusive alcoholic, and I very much felt like this motherly figure in the house and never really learned how to attend to my own needs. It very much felt like I learned early how to take care of the needs of others and keep my needs pushed down and hidden, which led to years of destructive behavior and a lifetime really of kind of recreating the trauma in many different ways, keeping myself small. And I could have continued that pattern, which a lot of people do, you know, family trauma carries on from generation to generation. But for me, becoming a mom and holding my daughter in my arms really was kind of the turning point years ago. So here she is at 17. So 17 years ago when I held her as a newborn, nursing her in the nursery late at night, I had this inner knowing come through loud and clear. And up until then, I think I only knew my inner critic. But in this moment, I heard this deep knowing say, you need to do better, or you're gonna pass the same wounds onto her. And I didn't know what that calling was. I just knew it to be true. And that voice really carried me forward into what's now become a framework that I have at the grounding of all of my work, which is essentially a framework to learning to love yourself, learning how to release that shame, learning how to hear that inner voice and follow it, and really a path to learn to love yourself, which I believe is how we unlock our purpose. And so, with that foundation, I knew I wanted to tell that story. That became the foundation for my podcast, which is also called Becoming is Messy. And then I always had this aspiration to share it in a book form. I had all of this written word, all of these stories kind of jumbled around. And I eventually figured out over the last two years how to craft it into my book, which is not my baby. And I'm still excited because a publisher has picked it up and is going to be sharing that story with the world later this year, which is uh super exciting for me. It essentially is my origin, origin story, which is book one in the series.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yes, I love hearing that. So, but I love what you said, where you said our past sometimes will unlock, unlock our purpose. Yeah. I love that because I believe our adversity definitely does give birth to our purpose. So, as far as you stating that you had a destructive

Perfectionism Pain And Being Chosen

SPEAKER_00 5:45

past, like with your adversity, what exactly do you mean by that? And when did that start?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Yeah, I mean, it started very young. I would say my coping mechanisms for survival very much grew into perfectionism and needing to be choosed. You know, I think it's probably very tied to the abandonment feeling with my father and, you know, and my my body issues. I grew up with severe body issues. The medical stuff in my life was very debilitating. So I don't know a body without physical pain. And I also have a lot of limitations. I mean, one of the craziest surgeries I had when I was 19, I had to have my arms surgically lengthened. So my arms used to be like a bunch of inches shorter, and I have very limited mobility. And so, you know, if you think of a young girl in the world who already, you know, think of any girl in the world, yourself, you know, as a woman in this world, and how much your looks are judged, and how much, you know, we carry in ourselves because of that. Well, here I was in a body that looked very different than anybody's. I had a very serious limp and you know, my shorter arms, plus the pain. And so for me, it really led into a lifetime of believing I had to achieve to be loved. And so that was me really like training myself to become a straight A student and working so hard at that because I thought that was how love came. But then on the other side was a part of me that wanted to be loved by the boys, like wanted to be chosen and picked for dances, just like everybody else. And I learned early on that I could get attention from boys in all of the wrong places. And that started for me in uh sixth grade, is when I really just discovered the power that comes with, you know, kind of sexualizing yourself and um and doing things way too young that I didn't fully understand. But in those moments, I was chosen and that filled something up inside of me, you know. But then it would come the next day at school and those same boys wouldn't talk to me. It was like they didn't know me. And that that cycle kind of repeated itself well into adulthood, you know, ended up marrying my first husband, who was very similar to the dad I grew up with, also drank too much, also verbally abusive, was a narcissist. Um, and so I found myself out in the world cheating on him, drinking too much, like feeling very stuck in my life. And then when my daughter came, it very much was my my call to action to realize I never I just never learned the power of loving myself. Yeah, it's essentially what I have found was missing.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah. So giving birth to your daughter is kind of what helped reel all of that, all of that in. It just you kind of had that moment of I gotta do better for myself.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

I gotta do better. I gotta, I gotta figure this out because I can't give her this same challenge in her life of searching for love in everybody else. And you know, looking back, I I have the words in the moment, you know, if you look at me in a nursery a million years ago, I just got that calling. And then I followed the next calling, and I thought, you know, and it took me through some messy places. That's why the name of the book is Becoming is Messy. And I want to share my full story, which takes us through the twists and turns because it's not that I got that call and all of a sudden I became a very loving, clear version of myself. You know, it took trial and error, it took more messy to get back to who I am and remembering that. And so essentially book one is that story. It's that it starts off, you know, so you're getting a preview because the very first part of the book starts off in that nursery, and then it kind of walks us and weaves us back and forth between my childhood and then me really learning to love myself. And I thought book one was gonna be it. I thought that was that was kind of the story. But then what's happened is since then, I continue to learn that becoming myself and learning to love myself was kind of unlocking a superpower in me that led to so I feel like I'm writing in real time and learning in real time. And so book two, which will come out next year, kind of continues where book one ends up because my life didn't stop throwing hard, hard stuff at me. And so I thought, you know, hey, I love myself. Now I've arrived. Well, then the universe is like, oh yeah. Well, guess what? Guess what, you know? And so book two is titled Choosing is Courageous. And choosing is courageous is where I kind of show a little bit of like proving out once you learn to love yourself, life is gonna keep coming at you, and you're gonna keep having a choice. Do I go back and revert to who I was? Or keep carrying this loving feeling forward. And then what happens? You get to book three. And book three is being is enough.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

And being is enough is actually, I'm writing it right now in real time. It's unfolding on Substack as we talk, and it's so cool because I'm actually sharing the lessons that I'm learning right now, having gone through that journey before the origin story even hits the shelves. And so that's just a free publication people can follow along with in Substack and see book three, get the lessons before you get the origin story, because I think the lessons are important enough where I don't want anybody to have to wait for them. You know, if you're ready to start your own healing journey, you don't need to wait for my story to get started on it.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Right. And the thing is, is the healing journey is so difficult. So I'm glad that you kind of are making a series about it because it is very hard because I hear what you say. And it's just like healing is so far from linear. And you can take a few steps forward, but then it's like like you stated earlier, it's hard not to go back because the back, the past is always gonna call you. It's gonna it's gonna be drawn to you to come out, come back to what you used to be, and it just tell tell the listeners like what you did to keep moving forward, even when the past kept calling you.

The LEVEL UP Healing Framework

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Yes, you know, so if you know, so the the first part, so the whole becoming is messy. There was like really a framework that's come out of it. And I have that framework, it's out on my website. People could go listen to my podcast and hear the first like eight episodes are essentially me telling kind of the origins of that framework. But essentially what it was was one, really getting clear on trusting that inner voice and realizing, hey, I have been listening to an inner critic this whole time. I need to know my inner voice over it, and I need to trust it no matter what. And so that really, so to do that, I learned a couple of other tools. And so I learned, so basically, we're spelling the letter, the level up is the so it's the unperfect level up. Listen to your inner voice, let it lead. The second one, the second E is examine your childhood as an observer. And so I did this with a therapist, and I recommend people doing this themselves. It's such a powerful exercise, but starting to look back at those cringy parts of your past that you just wish nobody would ever know about you.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

And start thinking, what if the child in your life that you loved most had that same experience? What guidance would you offer them? And when you go through that exercise, it comes up. And then so the next letter in my framework is V, value the lessons, even the messy ones. Because what happens when you are able to look at your past through a lens of compassion, you're then able to distill the lessons. You're you're then able to see the pattern that unfolded in your life, and you can stop saying, gosh, why did I do this? You know, why did this happen to me? And instead, you can say, What is this pattern teaching me? That is huge. And then the next one is just so fun. So the next E is embrace the magic of the universe. When you start treating yourself with this compassion, and when you start looking for those lessons, the universe rises up to meet you. I can't really explain it, but it's like all of a sudden, I call it hugs from the universe. And all of a sudden you start seeing patterns, you start seeing numbers that just feel like, oh, that makes me feel like I'm on the right path. And so my suggestion for people is to learn about spirituality, learn about religion, learn about just research these topics and find what speaks to you. Not everything is going to be the same language. I've come across a lot of people that for me, they would put the lens that I'm saying is my inner voice. They would say that's God. They would say that's source energy, you know, and so find what works for you in a language that works for you, but at least learn about it and have an openness to something being bigger than you, and trusting in that. And then the next one is lean into your unique tools, like lean into your unique needs and identify tools that match it. So for me, what that looked like over the years was initially therapy, talk therapy was a huge one because of my chronic trauma background, but that's evolved all these years later. You know, here we are 17 years after my daughter was born, and my tools change, but my need for tools will remain. And so I'm constantly feeling my toolbox. So lately it's been more massages, more nervous work, more body work to release the trauma within me has been huge as part of that. And then the next two are all about passing it on. So you is for up, is you is unapologetically love yourself. And this is where you know the path guided me. And what I mean by that is you love yourself so much that you own every single decision you've ever made. You own everything that's happening to you or happened to you, and you own it all as one because you can't have been you without all of it. I'm not saying you deserved it, but it you are that. And so once you own it, you can start talking about it. And when you start talking about it, here we are, we pass it on. And I think that it's contagious, I think that it makes work fun because all you have to do is be yourself, shine your bright self, and you become this lighthouse for people and they want to know your secret, and then you just pass it on.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yeah, I love that. And then the fact that just being a woman already is just so empowering because the fact that you have gone through this not only as a mother, but as a woman who's had, you know, trouble in the past, you had the old your own things that you had to overcome.

Stop Compartmentalizing And Be Enough

SPEAKER_00 16:40

But how did you kind of compartmentalize the starting of the book, being there for your daughter, still trying to heal from your past? Like what how did how did that look for your journey?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Gosh, you know, I've spent my whole life very compartmentalized. You know, I spent many seasons of my life thinking, oh my gosh, if this community knew that version of me, right? Or if this community, I knew very much how to walk into a room and be who the room needed me to be. And I will tell you, this journey has led me to this season, which is being is enough. In this season of my life, I am done compartmentalizing.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

I am me, and being me is enough. And I, if the room can't contain me, if the conversation doesn't fit me as me, then that's a wrong room for me. Yeah. You know, and so I very much in this season have shed, I've shed a lot of people in my life, a lot of situations in my life where I very much felt only the performing me could fit.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

And so, and that's what I'm trying to pass on to my daughter. You know, it's so crazy. I this just hit me last night, but I'm actually looking at I have this book on my desk right now. It's called From Mom with Love, right? And this is a book you can write for your child as they're heading off to college. And so my daughter had doesn't know this yet, like, but it's like I never knew when I bought this that I would be writing this to her. It's a it's essentially a journal. And I thought it was gonna be like check marks and like fun little stickers and stuff. No, this is like this is like 80 pages of like just open space to write my lessons for her, like for something for her to read when she's sad, something for her to read when she's scared, something for her to read when she needs a laugh. And so what I'm finding is this is after book three. You know, book three is unfolding on Substack. That's being is enough. That's me showing you how I'm living today. This is now me passing it on to my next generation. And to me, how how beautiful doesn't that kind of feel like it closes this like wound among my mom, myself, and my daughter? Like I think, wow, like the universe like is so good to have given me this divine timing.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah, yeah. I I love hearing that, I really do. That is just so amazing. And then as far as your other children, you know, I know you said it's a blended family. Yeah, what's it like being there for them as well?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah, you know, some our our oldest is a son, and that has been so fitting for me personally because I grew up with brothers and I just that energy in our household has been just a stabilizing. I I'm a very big lately. I do talk a lot about feminine power and feminine rising because I think we have a very tipped world where we've given way too much power to masculine. However, I very much believe in the balance of feminine and masculine. And so from a world level, we need the women, we need that feminine energy to rise.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

But in my household, I feel like we had such a beautiful balance of that feminine and masculine energy. And really, I feel like each of us as individuals, my other kids included, it's like we've all helped each other learn to let people just be themselves, you know, and I feel like that's been my little experimenting ground. And they've helped me learn, you know, the times where I'm putting what I want for my day on them.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

I've come, I've had to kind of eat my words over the years. As I learn more, I do better. And I look back at the times where I've kind of lost it with them, and I can see the times that I've kind of losed them, lost my cool on vacations. They have lots of stories where it's like I put these vacations together, and then by the end of the vacation, there's always a time where I've just had it. You know, it's like I've had it, I've had of like nobody feeling grateful, nobody, you know, like people just kind of on me. Or like, I'm like, you know, I planned this whole trip, but I really, when I look back at it through this lens, I realize all of the times I planned vacations through my perspective.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Right. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

And so I feel like as they've grown, really learning and being curious and giving grace to who they are. Yes. And trusting that and knowing that they know best for themselves. And if they don't like something that I've chosen, you know, for our family, then they're allowed to feel that. And uh so they they definitely have helped me grown as a person over the years just by loving them and learning that hey, if I love myself and I want me to be able to be myself, I have to want that for the people I love.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Right. That that's that's so funny because the because my kids are 14 and 17. My daughter's about to turn 18. And normally every year for the 4th of July, we always celebrate, and this year they are not interested. And I was just like, why? Like you should still be interested. But it's like realization, also like it's okay that they're not, it's okay that things change, their minds are changing, what they're into is changing, and that I had to really kind of take the take a minute and take that. In because it was hard for me to accept that for a while.

Parenting Balance Receiving And Weaving

SPEAKER_01 22:03

You know, I feel like for me we're at spiritually, because I've part of my book series, like it's like I feel very plugged in right now to something spiritual that I cannot explain. You know, it's just like pouring through me. And part of what I feel in this season is that I've gone through this phase, being is enough. You know, and I thought that, so that is going to be probably the end of the book series, but there has been something already coming after being. And what it is is receiving. So I need to learn how to receive love from people in the way they want to give it. But then there's also what I also am working on now is is weaving. And I feel like so many of us that have gone through these kind of spiritual journeys and you learn to love yourself, I can very much see the draw of wanting to remove yourself from the noise and just go live like off in a van by like a beautiful beach community and just be. However, I feel like if you really want to unlock that purpose with the world, it's figuring out how can I be me, how can you be you, and how can we weave something beautiful together. And I feel like doing that with my kids and my husband is a way to start kind of learning that side of this, which is to me equally important as important as learning to love yourself.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Absolutely. And then how do you balance your time with that as well?

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Yes. Oh my gosh. I mean, that part of it is, and I'm still learning how to do that for myself. I don't have the magic answer for that. You know, a phrase I come back to a lot is wholeness first, which means me first. And I know for many people that sounds so selfish, but I think we've been conditioned wrong. Yeah. For me, I can't give of my purpose if I am not myself whole. You cannot have an overflowing cup if the cup is not yet full.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Absolutely. And so, and so I'm I've learned and very much I I view myself as an experiment every day. How can I fill up my cup? How can I design my life? So my cup is full. Therefore, when I'm coming to my children, it's from that place. And it's a learning progress for sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yeah, I agree. I definitely agree. Thank you so, so much.

Curiosity As The Core Practice

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Oh my gosh, that was just like a lot to cover on that. Um if there is any piece of advice that you can give the listeners, yeah, what would that number one advice be?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yes, be the most curious about yourself. You know, it's like when you do this work, you just realize that we have a chance to be playing here on earth. You know, I don't know why we're here, but there's something about us that's just meant to experiment like with life in a way that's big and alive and full. We're not meant to be sad all the time. We're not meant to stay small. We're we're meant to feel everything that we feel, experience everything we're meant to experience. And then we're meant to have fun along the way figuring out what our gift to the world is. And so have fun with that and just be curious about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

I agree. I love that because I do feel that we all have that purpose to fulfill in our lives, and that's the reason why we kind of go through our trials and tribulations and then how we come out thriving the way that you are.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

So definitely I agree, and I'm just so excited because I think we're in a special season right now. So you the work you're doing, I think is critical sharing stories because I think there's a lot of women out there that are getting that little nud and ready for a path like this. And to see the women rising because it's a special time.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yeah, I like that so much. And then as far as your book and your website, what are the can you tell the listeners

Where To Find The Books

SPEAKER_00 25:56

what those are? And I'll also tag those in the show notes as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yes. And so my author website is megandawson.com. And and so you can go there, you can sign up to be notified of the book progress and stay on on top of kind of the series, and as that rolls out. I also have a broader company that's called the Unperfect Life Collective. And so I believe my mission in life is to help design a new way of living, a new way of doing business. And it's what I call the unperfect life. And it's all about my work is just trying to help people realize that we've been sold a vision of success that is somebody else's version. We have the power to define what perfect is for us, and I call that you're on a perfect life. And so uh you can visit kind of my framework and learn more about that at either of those websites.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Okay, and that also is Megan with two N's. Yeah, Megan is.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

So yeah, you'll hear if you read book one, uh, you'll read you'll you'll just hear the story. My mom was a teenager when she had me, and she was reading the book The Thornbirds, and the character in that was named Megan, and it was M-E-G-H-A-N-N, was the start. And so yeah, a little bit of an extra N there, which I hear I'm a little bit extra. So maybe that extra N was just a nod to that.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Well, thank you so much. It has definitely been a pleasure having you on. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Oh my gosh, we covered so much, I feel like, in such a short time, but I feel like, you know, I'll just leave listeners with the same thing, kind of just curious curiosity about yourself. And loving yourself is really the most important job that you could do for yourself. And so just keep figuring out how to love hard on yourself and love yourself fully. It'll change your life.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

I agree. And again, thank you so, so much, Megan. And thank you so much, listeners, for listening. Again, I'm Robin Black. This is It's All About Healing Podcast. Everyone, stay blessed. Thank you.