Life-Changing Challengers
Dive into the heart of transformation with "Life-Changing Challengers," a podcast that inspires listeners to turn their challenges into opportunities for growth. Hosted by Brad Minus, a seasoned endurance coach with over 13 years of experience, this show brings you compelling stories of resilience, ambition, and personal triumph.
Brad and his guests share their journeys of overcoming obstacles through endurance sports, personal development, and pursuing passions. From completing Ironman triathlons to conquering personal and professional hurdles, "Life-Changing Challengers" is your guide to breaking barriers and achieving your dreams.
Whether you're looking to incinerate your limits, find inspiration to chase your big passion or enjoy motivational stories of people who've transformed their lives, this podcast is for you. Join us to explore how embracing challenges can lead to a happier, more fulfilled life.
Subscribe, review, and share to be part of a community dedicated to making every challenge a stepping stone to success. Follow "Life-Changing Challengers" to ignite your desire, push your boundaries, and embark on your journey to the extraordinary.
Life-Changing Challengers
From Surviving to Thriving: Marcy Langlois' Path
In this powerful episode of Life Changing Challenges, host Brad Minus interviews Marcy Langlois, a coach and podcaster living a life beyond limits. Marcy shares her inspiring journey from being born with a cleft lip and palate in a small town in Vermont to overcoming numerous surgeries, family hardships, and alcoholism. Despite facing relentless physical and emotional challenges, Marcy found strength through resilience and introspection. Her life took a turn for the better after an epiphany inspired her to seek sobriety and pursue a more fulfilling life. This episode delves into her experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder, her battle with health issues, and how meditation and therapy became pivotal in her transformative journey. Marcy now dedicates her life to helping others as a coach, sharing her insights on how to overcome personal limitations and live a balanced, fulfilling life.
Key takeaways include:
- The importance of resilience
- The power of surrender and acceptance
- The profound connection between mental and physical health
Listen to Marcy's Podcast: Living Beyond Limits
Contact Marcy
Instagram: @marcylangloisofficial
Facebook: @speakermarcylanglois
TikTok: @marcylanglois
YouTube: @MarcyLangloisSpeaker
MarcyLanglois.com
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Contact Brad @ Life Changing Challengers
Instagram: @bradaminus
Facebook: @bradaminus
X(Twitter): @bradaminus
YouTube: @lifechangingchallengers
LifeChangingChallengers.com
And welcome back to another episode of Life Changing Challengers, as she has been through a lot and overcome more than the average and is here to tell us about it and has a great view on life, and I'm just so proud to have her on. So, marci, welcome to Life Changing Challenges. Thank you so much for being here.
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, Brad, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and have a conversation with you and hopefully provide some valuable insights to your audience.
Brad Minus:Oh, I am sure you will. But as I ask every single one of my guests, Marcy, can you tell us a little about your childhood, a compliment to your family, where you grew up and what it was like to be Marcy as a kid?
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, absolutely. I was born and raised in a little town in northwestern Vermont. I grew up in a town of about 250 people on the Canadian New York border, and so that was just interesting all within itself, where I grew up. And I'm 48 years old. And I just say that because when I was born with a cleft lip and palate and at that time there was no technology that indicated that to my parents so I came into the world in a very rural area, needing a lot of medical attention right out of the gate, and so that started my life. And just for people who don't know what a cleft lip and palate is, basically your lip does not form all the way across and you have a gap in your lip or a hole in your lip, usually underneath the nose, and then you have no palate in your mouth, so you have no roof to your mouth and oftentimes this facial deformity is an indication that there's more going on in the body that's wrong. It can be your heart, your digestive system, your major organs. So the first seven days of my life I was sent to the university hospital from the rural hospital I was born in and that became a battery of tests to just figure out, like what else could be going wrong with me at that time, and I found out or my parents found out that there was nothing more. Everything for me was in my face, my ears, my face, my nose, my mouth, my palate, and so that began that sort of paved the way, though, for the rest of my childhood and my life, where I am today, honestly.
Marcy Langlois:And so from there, what happened is, my parents were young. My mom was only 19 when I was born, and I had an older brother at the time and he was 19 months older than me, so my mom's hands were full. My father was an alcoholic and actively drinking at the time, and we didn't have much. We didn't have really very little means. At times in my childhood, we had no running water, no electricity, and so things were always interesting in my house between my medical needs, my father's active addiction and really very little resources. Things were tenuous, to say the least.
Marcy Langlois:I had my first surgery when I was three months old and my last surgery when I was 18 years old, and over the course of that time I had nine major surgeries, which consisted of 23 surgical procedures, and because it's in your face, it's as you grow right as your body changes, then the surgeries occur to keep up with the changes, and so, in addition to all of that, I needed huge dental work done. I had braces from the time I was in kindergarten until my senior year in high school and I required speech lessons and doctor's appointments and orthodontist, dentist, the ear, nose, throat specialist, you name it. I was there, and then I was also sick all of the time. I just I was never well. So I had a lot going on, without even considering all the dynamics of my family, and so my mom was my number one advocate and supporter for, being 19 years old, she was amazing. She made sure that I got every bit of medical care and resource and support that I needed, and she just made it happen, really against all the odds. My mom made it happen, and I'm so grateful for everything that I received in terms of care, surgeries, the doctors that I got to work with, all of it, and so, moving along, I always knew something was different about me.
Marcy Langlois:Of course, I wasn't like the other kids, but I was really insulated. As I said, I grew up in a small town and everybody was wonderful and supportive and kind and I had a huge family and my mom comes from a family of eight, my dad comes from a family of seven, so I have 26 first cousins and they were all my best friends growing up and so I was really cocooned and insulated and felt really protected. And then when I went to school, I knew that I was different because the kids let me know and that they didn't know who I was right. And I went to a Catholic school in New York state which was just across the lake, and when I showed up at school, kids really made it apparent that I was very different and they called me names and they taunted and teased me and bullied me. And my mom got on top of that immediately and came in and we did a whole thing about what is a cleft lip and palate and tried to educate the kids so that they wouldn't be making fun of me, and that was helpful to a certain extent with the kids in my class and I was able to make really good friends in my class. It was the kids that were above and below me that didn't get that education, that didn't know what was going on with me, and so that was difficult and created a tremendous amount of shame.
Marcy Langlois:But I learned really early on that if I could just overachieve and I could be anything that anybody else wanted me to be and you would like me then it took the heat off from the way that I looked. And so I loved school, I loved learning and I loved sports, and so that was like the breeding ground for me to just overachieve and excel. Excel at everything that I did, and I had a really great sense of humor. So when I started to feel like the pressure was mounting, I could just crack a joke and take the pressure off from the way that I looked. So I found all these coping mechanisms to deal with what I had going on. Right, I just did the best that I could.
Marcy Langlois:But that followed me into my adulthood and the rest of my life, and you'll hear more about that in a minute. But you know so, through grade school, as I was sitting in this Catholic school, I also uncovered that I definitely was not attracted to girls. I was attracted to boys, or not attracted to boys. I was attracted to girls. And I mean, sitting at Catholic school, that wasn't really a great place to have this discovery. So I just thought like, hey, maybe if I ignore all of this. Don't give it any attention. I say my prayers every night. Do what I've been taught at school, like this will go away, like this won't be a thing. So that's what I did and I acted like I liked boys, and I was so full of shame about the way that I look, the way that I spoke, and now I was attracted to like something is wrong with me. What is wrong with me? Right, always feeling like something is wrong with me and always feeling like I needed to over compensate for that. And so we went through that.
Marcy Langlois:And then in middle school I went into the public school system because the Catholic school opportunity ended and that was a jolt to my entire way of being. I went from this really structured, disciplined way of learning to like chaos and a free for all type from what I you know from where I had come from, what I knew and so, and I had to make new friends and the whole nine yards. But I ended up getting a great peer group. Also, I'm so grateful. I hear kids that just are taunted, teased and bullied forever and it never ends, and that's true for me too. But I had enough friends that offset that I feel so grateful for that in so many ways, and so, in middle school, though, again I wanted to fit in, but also I was battling this shame, this unrelenting shame, and what felt good was drinking alcohol, and that had been modeled for me right in my home. Wait a second.
Brad Minus:All right, hold on, we're going middle school. Middle school, you've been drinking.
Marcy Langlois:Oh yeah.
Brad Minus:That's crazy. Just a couple of quick questions listening to you is one is you said that you had, basically the resources were very low because your mom was full taking care of you and your brother and your dad was an alcoholic and you but you had all these surgeries and orthodontists and dentists and all that stuff. Who, how were you able, how was your family able, to take care of the bills?
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, so that's a really fantastic question I had a feeling you're going to ask me. So in Vermont there is this program that's called Handicapped Children and it's funded by the state and you have to meet certain criteria or whatever, and I met the criteria, so 100% of my medical bills were covered by the state of Vermont.
Brad Minus:So I yeah, I wish more states had something like that.
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, I literally had like world-renowned surgeons. Dr Peter Linton was my plastic surgeon. He did my first surgery and he did my last. I had the top of the line care. When I say my mom went all out to make sure that I was so well taken care of, really it was amazing.
Brad Minus:So basically you're saying that sort of the cleft palate and I'm just curious about this. I've got a little bit of a healthcare background so it makes me curious so not having a roof of your mouth. So I got a pretty good idea of how they can take care of the lip and the front right and the plastics there. That I understand. But how do they replace? Because isn't that like almost actually part of the skull is?
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, so they use tissue that's within the mouth.
Brad Minus:Oh, and they just replace it. Yes, create it. That's crazy. And when were they actually able to create that, that roof of the mouse? Was that earlier in your, at 18? So you didn't have it? Oh, 18 months, okay, yeah, and did they keep having to? Did it grow or did you have it? Was that part of it that you had to keep getting surgery on in order to add to it?
Marcy Langlois:yeah, yeah, no, so that was fine. So what happens is, when I was growing, it's as your face is changing and all your features are developing. So my nose was really flat to my face and so the way that you see my nose today, this is actually cartilage at the end of my nose or, excuse me, bone. So my nose doesn't push in. Like most people have flexibility in their nose, mine doesn't move. And then, like I had my jaws broke twice and wired shut twice because I had such a severe underbite it was 11 millimeters. That resonates for you.
Brad Minus:Yeah.
Marcy Langlois:That's so significant and so it affects your breathing, your teeth alignment. I had a severe crossbite so they had to break it twice because the movement was so significant that naturally my jaws moved back. After they did the first surgery so they did it again and then I had plates and screws put in and taken out. I had bone taken from my hip and put in my jaw to make one full top jaw, because the bone doesn't connect in the upper jaw.
Brad Minus:That okay. So on one half it's interesting, right, it's just interesting that they're able to do this, that the medical side. But on the other hand, the pain that you must have suffered going through all this, especially as a young adult well, not even a young adult as a child, and then a young adult, and you had to keep going through high school until you're finally. You said your final one was at 19,. Right, 18,. Yeah, keep going through high school until you're finally you're. You said your final one was at 19, right, 18? Yeah, at 18. So what? How do you still go to school after, after a couple of days after surgery? Are you still? Are basically, where do you get? You have to be homeschooled as part of it. How did that whole work with all these different surgeries?
Marcy Langlois:yeah, I just went back to school as soon as I could. Luckily, my grandparents lived in the same little town, and so it was a combination of all my grandparents that would take care of me when my mom and dad had to go to work, and so they would just keep me home from school for as long as necessary, and then, once I was recovered and able to go back to school, I was dying to go back to school, of course. So, yeah, I just would go back to school as soon as I could. Yeah, it was really painful. It was yes.
Brad Minus:I can't even imagine. So, yeah, so I just wanted to step back and I wanted to grab some of that, because I think it's important to know that this wasn't a one and done. This wasn't a teeth pull, this wasn't a pull of the twos or something like that, where you all right, you get it done and then you go on. This is major surgery and there's pain allowed to it, yet you still were just dying to get back to school and learn and achieve. Now we can come back into the point where you've gotten this example of your father, that is, an alcoholic, and middle school you started drinking, and I'm imagining that you started just getting it out of the house, right?
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, wherever I could find it, but usually it wasn't too hard to find because everybody around us drank. In a really small rural community that's not uncommon, so a lot of my friends' parents were drinkers, so alcohol was easy to find for us and so I would drink with my other friends and we didn't really cause trouble per se, but we did drink. But I learned quickly. I understood why my father drank, like I got it right and it made me feel like I was escaping all of the things that were so painful for me to look at and it just made me carefree in a way that I had never been able to experience before, because I was always worried about not belonging, not fitting in, not being enough, not being good enough, right, all of those things. And when I would drink I didn't have those experiences. And so I did that and I would drink as often as I could.
Marcy Langlois:And then when I got to high school, because I was an athlete God, I loved sports. I just loved sports, and I still love sports today. And so I competed. I was really committed because I'm an overachiever. I was super committed and trained all summer long for my freshman year and I made the varsity basketball team and then I didn't like the coach and we got into it and whatever, and I picked drugs and alcohol over basketball, yeah, and I kept playing softball. And I was and I love softball, that was my passion and I kept playing softball. But then my sophomore year I couldn't play anymore because I had to have my jaws broke and couldn't be around the softball and what was going?
Brad Minus:on More damage. Yeah, Reducing that risk right.
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, it just became too dangerous. And so then I really started being able to drink and party and do all the things, because I didn't have an allegiance to a team. And so, as this was all winding down and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, the last thing that I got done was my nose reconstructed and the plates and screws taken out of my jaws. And so I thought, okay, I'm like on the, I'm on the up and up right, like I've made it, and we're going to turn the page here. And so my senior year I had an afterschool job and I was on my way to my afterschool job and I got in a horrific car accident that day and there was a man that pulled out in front of me. He never saw me coming and I hit his car and he had three passengers in his car and all three of those people passed away. And yeah, and that's still tender for me to talk about that- I, yeah, I can't imagine.
Brad Minus:And what about you, though? Or did you end up being okay, you were just getting over surgeries and the whole bit.
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, I was okay. All of my problems were soft tissue, so my neck, my back, my shoulders, my hips, my knees, literally from head to toe, from the impact, the seatbelt and whatever. But really the most impacted was my mental state, my emotional and mental state, and so I, my whole life, changed in that moment and my life was never, ever the same again, and I never looked at life the same way again. Everything about me changed and I really assigned blame to myself. I felt like I was responsible for the accident, even though the other person had pulled out in front of me. It was the story that I adopted, it was the story that I told myself.
Marcy Langlois:Survivor's guilt is very real and I thought that I should have died in the accident with these people and I definitely did not think that I deserved to be alive. And so every day I woke up and I told myself I really you deserve nothing. Every day I woke up and I told myself I really you deserve nothing and you've killed three people and this is your life, and I used that. I weaponized that against myself and the only way I could combat that or deal with that was to drink and drug, and so I just poured the alcohol and the drugs on me and trying to just survive, and things got ugly and I was supposed to go to college and I went for eight weeks and I never went to one class and I called my mom and I said you have to come and get me and if you don't, I'm going to take my life Like I can't. I can't be here. That was only eight months after the car accident. Seven months after the car accident, I felt like I had a billboard above my head that said I've killed three people, and so I felt like people knew that this had been my experience and the amount of shame and guilt that I had on a daily basis is I cannot quantify it. It was debilitating, beyond debilitating. And so my mom came and got me, but she said I'm only coming to get you. If you promise to leave, you'll have to leave this area, like you're going to drink yourself to death or drug yourself to death. Like you have to go create a new life for yourself somewhere else or you're going to die. And I said I'll do anything as long as you come and get me. And she came and got me and I got three jobs and six months later I left. I picked a spot by blindfolding myself and pointing on the map and I picked Central Florida and I left.
Marcy Langlois:I left with a friend that I graduated with and we moved to Florida and, unfortunately, because of the car accident and the because of the car accident and the nature of the car accident, with all these lives lost, there was tons of insurance companies and attorneys, and so there was an ongoing saga for four years and that just fueled the need to drink and drug. I couldn't shake it. I couldn't get away from it. I had severe PTSD. The movie was playing in my mind constantly in the events of that day and they would not go away. It never stopped. Whether I was awake, sleeping, talking to you, it was constantly playing, which is a hallmark symptom of PTSD. And so, anyway, I moved on and after the accident, I, or after the litigation was ended, I decided to relocate and I was on my way to Alaska and I stopped in Colorado and I never left and I've been in Colorado since 1998.
Marcy Langlois:And I met a woman here and we got together in 2001. Daughter named Brianna and she was eight years old at the time and I raised her because her father was pretty absent in her life. So I became the other parent and one day I had been drinking at the bar and Brianna needed a ride home from school, so I went to go pick her up, and when I was on my way back to the bar with her which is what my dad did with me it became really clear to me that I was doing exactly the same thing to Brianna that was done to me, and I in that moment vowed that I was not going to do this to her or anyone else, that I was going to stop the cycle and I was going to change. And sometime within the next 10 days I don't know exactly when that was, but on March 25th 2003, I walked into my first 12-step meeting and I've never taken a drug or a drink since that day.
Brad Minus:Wow, Since 2003?.
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, so it's been 21 years. I've been clean and sober.
Brad Minus:That's fantastic, that's absolutely incredible, especially since you're not even talking about someone who picks it up, for obviously you picked it up as a pure escapism as well. But you talk about middle school, not to mention you were around it all the time. Everybody around you was big drinkers, so it just was the example. So middle school, high school, college, then for a little bit of college, and then and it just kept following you because you had this other, this constant reminder what was going on. So you can under, obviously it's, it's an addiction and it's it's something, but you can.
Brad Minus:When you talk about your life and everything that you've gone through, you understand it. You know what I mean. I'm not saying it's the right thing, and what I'm saying is that you understand it. But the idea that you're able to look at it and go and the light bulb goes off and says, whoa, this is the way this happened to me. I can't do this to this child. I know what it felt like for me and I just can't do it. And you just cut sober and decide, going into your 12 step and you're done. And that was the when you walked in that first meeting. From that point on, nothing, zilch, you didn't fall off the wagon once. Nothing that's outstanding.
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It was, I thought, because I drank all day, every day, and I drugged all day every day. That was I had to. I was in so much pain emotionally I couldn't face the world sober. And so I thought when I got like well, when I got 24 hours and I had not drank or drugged, I was like, oh my gosh. And by day five I thought for sure I should be giving like a state of the union address or something like like I really felt like I had arrived. And that's how it works A lot of times with people, when they get clean and sober, is that they think like, oh, I've got a few days and so now I've arrived.
Marcy Langlois:Well, that's not how recovery works. Right, the reason that people are drinking and using is because they're suffering, just like I was Right, it stops being fun long before you actually stop, if you're lucky enough to stop. I wanted to quit for years. Every day I'd wake up and I'd say, ok, today I'm not going to drink, no matter what happens, I'm not going to drink. And if I can make it to like five days without drinking, then I'm going to give myself this sort of reward. Right, and inevitably within hours I would be drinking again. That's literally how my life looked. So I wanted to stop drinking long before I actually was brave enough to stop. And some people just don't ever get there and for that I have tremendous amount of compassion for them and zero judgment. And the thing is that I thought again right, like I had arrived and that, like my life was going to be amazing now that I had quit drinking. And there were a lot of things about my life that did get a lot easier, of course, right, but all the things it reversed on me. And what ended up happening is that when I quit drinking, all the other stuff that I had not dealt with showed up. Right, I kept saying, oh, the past is the past. Time heals all wounds. My parents did the best they could, all the things, all the platitudes that people say, and what I know and Bessel van der Kolk wrote a book about it is that the body keeps score, and that means that the body never forgets, and I can tell you that I am a living, walking, breathing testament of that.
Marcy Langlois:And so what happened is I got sober, or, as I stayed sober, my body started disclosing all of this stuff to me that had been tamped down and I started. First it was skin problems. I started getting psoriasis all over my body, then it was. I started having really bad heart palpitations and then I had chronic sinusitis, like I was just infected. I woke up every day and I felt like I had the flu, and then it was insomnia, and then it was anxiety, and then it was like I don't know, 10 or 15 anxiety panic attacks a day and then, right, it just kept going and my body was slowly deteriorating and the Western medicine community could not do anything for me at all. Literally, they didn't know what was going on with me. They didn't understand what was going on with me.
Marcy Langlois:So my friend said to me like three years into being sober, you need to go to a naturopath and just see, like, get a whole different perspective and just see if someone can help you. I was so desperate and so willing so I went to the naturopath and they do a whole different series of intake information than the Western medicine, right? They want to know what is your story, they want to know what trauma have you experienced, they want to know all of it, right? So it was like whatever, a five-page document or whatever it was. I just said to the woman like there's no way I can fill this out and see you today, like I don't, we wouldn't have enough time. And I said my story is so big and deep. She's like just come in let's talk. So I tell her my story, just like I just told you my story, and I'll never forget it. She set the pen down, she stared me right in the eye and she said oh, my goodness, I cannot believe that you're clean and sober. That is amazing and a miracle.
Marcy Langlois:And the other thing that I know is that everything that's going on in your body is the trauma that's stored in your body, and the only thing I can do is support your body while you heal the trauma. But I cannot heal you and neither can anyone else. And I was like so what does that mean exactly? She's like so you need to go to therapy. And I'm like are you kidding me? I don't need to go to therapy. I've been sober for like three years and I've done the 12 steps and a lot, right, all this stuff. She's like no, you really need to go to therapy. That's going to be your only chance to recover your body. And I was like well, I'm going to show you, lady right. And I went to therapy to spite her, because I really didn't believe that I needed therapy. I really believed that I had made peace with my past. And that's so funny still today, right, like 20 years later, I'm still in therapy and I do a lot of different modalities at this point, but I still have support.
Marcy Langlois:And so I went to therapy and I started to do all the work and my body continued to get worse. And that's how it goes. That's literally how it goes. And what I realized is that or where I should back up to is that at the same time I got sober a little before I got sober, back up to is that at the same time I got sober, a little before I got sober, I had started a career in mortgage banking. And that's a sales career, right, basically? And that's a really bad place for somebody like me, somebody who doesn't have a sense of self, somebody who needs outside affirmation and validation to feel okay about who they are. A sales career can provide that right.
Marcy Langlois:And so I basically switched addictions. I started working instead of drinking and doing drugs. I was working the same exact way. I'd work from the moment my eyes opened until the moment my eyes shut literally, and it paid off, right. I had all of these great accolades in my career and I've been in the top 1% for years and years in my industry, and all this stuff. Oh, that's wonderful. However, my body was dying and it and they would tell me that. They all told me the same thing Until you deal with the trauma which I was dealing with, the trauma by going to therapy.
Marcy Langlois:I went to the Meadows, which is a world-renowned trauma facility and treatment center. I went there twice. I did every modality that I could find EMDR, holographic, reprocessing, all everything I could find. I tried it. But the thing is that when you have a tremendous trauma history like I had, and I was continuing to be a nut seven days a week and I'm in this constant state of stress that, even though I'm over here trying to heal all this trauma, the body never came out of the chronic state of stress, and so you cannot heal the body if you stay in a chronic state of stress. It's impossible, it will not happen, believe me.
Marcy Langlois:I tried, I took every kind of supplement there was to take, I did every modality and I was continuously getting worse. So I met a doctor and she was amazing, and she's still amazing and she's still my doctor today. And she told me the truth If you don't stop working, then you can only expect that your conditions are going to get worse. And I was like but you don't understand. You don't understand, right? And it's the same as when I was drinking, right, if you don't stop drinking, marcy, this is going to get worse. But you don't understand. And then I kept the same behavior going Right. And you see the parallel there, right?
Brad Minus:Yeah, yeah. I'm just wondering how I mean you have all these symptoms. Everything's happening. You got sinusitis, you got these. Aren't like small little symptoms, these are things that can really trip you up. Yet You're still working. That blows my mind. But I guess your addiction the addiction which now we're saying is work is still overriding the fact that you've got these symptoms that are popping up that you can't seem to get away from. So everything in the world is telling you to slow down, let yourself heal before you keep putting stress on the body. There's a parallel to this. Keep putting stress on the body. That that goes. There's a parallel to this.
Brad Minus:So and just to just segue just out of this, just for a second is is endurance sports. So that's what I do, right? I'm an endurance coach. I, I coach people to do triathlons and marathons and stuff, and I tell my clients I give them their workouts and that's putting stress on the body, right, I have to give them a week. Every three weeks they get one more week and that's what we call a recovery week, where I bring them down, I slow them down, I I keep their durations down to minimal, I do the whole thing, but it's the same thing. You can't, I can't. Run them week after week. They'll go over-trained, the body will break down, they won't sleep, the appetite will go down to nothing.
Brad Minus:It's almost a parallel, just like what you were saying. You just kept working without any kind of recovery. It's obviously it's apples and apples, but it's also apple and oranges. Obviously you're talking about more of an internal stressor, internal and external, mental, the whole bit and somebody that's spending five days a week working out at least two, three hours a day. You're talking about 12-hour days, 15-hour days. So it's the same, but it does delve a little bit of a parallel that maybe some people that don't quite understand how somebody can work that much might understand it a different way. So that's why I just wanted to draw that little bit of a parallel um, absolutely the same yeah, so I so it's so that's so interesting to me because I've over trained.
Brad Minus:I have been there and so I might have felt a tenth of what you had to feel. But the aspect of but there was times when I'm just like I just wake up and I don't want to train, I'm done. You know what I mean. I need the day off and you're like, no, keep going, and of course that's going to start breaking down the body and especially the mental state. So what did you end up doing?
Marcy Langlois:So what I ended up doing is I had no part in it, so my body said no more. Right, my body said no more. Finally, I had met part in it, so my body said no more. Right, my body said no more. Finally, I had met my match, and so it was like November-ish 2020. And it was the busiest year I'd ever had in the mortgage business. Right, it's COVID and interest rates are 2.75%. Right, it is. You just can't even. It's crazy. And both of my grandparents my mom's parents both passed away. My grandfather passed away in January and my and then my grandma passed away in October and I was so close to them, they were such an important part of my life and who I am today and how I am today is from them, and so they both passed away. And so it was November.
Marcy Langlois:After I returned from my grandmother's funeral, I started having these weird symptoms and they didn't seem interconnected at all. It was like random. I started feeling like I thought I was having tremors, but I've never had tremors in my life, so I didn't know. Right, like I'm like I'm not sure. Was that a tremor? Was it right? Like I couldn't tell. And then it would just happen for a second and then nothing else would happen. So I was like I'm not sure, right. And so I was scared to tell my doctor. But that should have been my first time, right? But then I started noticing like I was having trouble with shortness of breath and I was having trouble with my heart getting erratic. All these different symptoms were happening and they kept getting worse.
Marcy Langlois:And by the week before Christmas I was definitely having tremors and I was having all these other symptoms and they were becoming more intense and they were becoming more frequent. And my doctor, marcy, for real, if you don't stop, this is going to get very bad, very quickly. And so I said okay, I'll take the week off between Christmas and New Year's. Okay, I'll do that. So I did that. I took the week off. And then I was like, okay, and I'll shorten my workday by an hour every day, I'll get done work at four o'clock instead of five o'clock. Really, she's like that's probably not going to do it, but okay, that's better than nothing.
Marcy Langlois:So I did those things and I just kept getting worse and worse through the month of January, like really bad. And I didn't tell anybody because I was scared. I was really scared and then, on February 6th of 2021, I was sitting at my computer. I'll never forget it and I hope I never do. I was sitting at my desk working on my computer, and the tremors were so bad throughout my body and in my brain that I could not tell if the desk was moving, if I was moving or if the computer was moving Like I. Literally I couldn't tell. I was on the floor, touching the floor, because our washer, our laundry room's below my office. So I was like must be, it's the washer's going off, right? Yeah, no, the washer wasn't going off. It was all internally in my body. So I called my branch manager and I said hey, look, I'm really in trouble here with my health. And she's like take a long weekend, it's probably stress and whatever. I'll watch your business, come back on Monday.
Marcy Langlois:So as soon as that happened, my body was like oh good, now we can really show you what's going on. And for 40 days I was bedridden. I couldn't even talk on the phone. If my wife brought the phone in the bedroom, then the tremors would increase tenfold. So what I learned? And I had a three-day stretch where I thought I was going to die literally. The symptoms were so over the top, I couldn't was unbelievable.
Marcy Langlois:So what I ended up having was mass cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance. And that is basically when your nervous system and your immune system go haywire and your nervous system starts believing that everything is an invader. So that's what causes anaphylaxis, right? So I never had anaphylaxis, thank God. But I had hundreds of reactions to food. But here's the kicker I had hundreds of reactions to my thoughts. So if I was thinking the wrong thing, so if I started thinking about my career and if I was ever going to be able to get back to it, the tremors would literally increase in my body tenfold.
Marcy Langlois:But if I could walk myself back off the ledge and I could just be calm and be in the moment and just watch some silly Netflix show and just stay there, then I could keep the tremors not manageable because they were awful but reasonable, right. But if I started getting in the future and full of fear, then I was done, literally. It was terrifying what would happen in my body. My heart would become erratic, I couldn't see anything. I couldn't breathe, because histamine stops the air, right, it shuts the air down. So I literally couldn't breathe. So this is when I got it. This is when I got it was those 40 days.
Marcy Langlois:It was absolutely the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life. 150% was the best thing that's ever happened to me in my life, because I realized in that three day stretch, when I thought I was going to die, that I had to surrender. I had to surrender in a way I'd never surrendered. I had surrendered when the car accident happened and I got to the place where I could say, okay, I don't like that, this happened and I would do anything to take it back, but I accept that this is how it is and I cannot change it. And so there's something really powerful in surrender. Most people think that it's a giving up, and it is, but it's not really. It's a letting go of the resistance, of what is and accepting it just as it is Right.
Marcy Langlois:And so in that moment, when I thought I was dying, I surrendered. I realized that all the accolades, all the money I had made, all the whatever, it didn't matter. None of it mattered. And that if I was going to survive and if I was going to get to live my life, whether I got better or I stayed in the same condition that I was in, that I was not going to die the way. I wasn't going to die like this, because I had not lived the way that I had wanted to live. And how I wanted to live was loving my wife better, loving my daughter better, being present, like, instead of being on the phone and tied up in that all day long. I was going to show up for the people that I love the most, and so I made a commitment, I made a vow in that moment that if I went on to live, that this is how I was going to live and that's what changed my whole life.
Marcy Langlois:Right, like that was the beginning of the change of everything about me, and I was so grateful that I did not die in that time and that I had gone on to live and that, even though my circumstances were not ideal, it was okay. I was alive, I had a chance, I had a chance to heal myself. And so I just said to my doctor so what's the story? She said, marci, people don't heal from this, people don't recover from this. We can give you medication, we can give you supplementation Obviously you've already modified your diet but people don't recover from this. It's how it is right, the nervous system is too far gone. I think I took that as a challenge, brad, let's be honest. And so I was committed. I was like, oh yeah, well, that's not an option for me, I'm not living my life like this, I'm going to kill myself.
Marcy Langlois:And so I had been a meditator for the last 10 years of my life, prior to getting sick, really sick and I followed Dr Joe Dispenza, but I only did part of his work I didn't do all of it, which was the thinking right, changing the way you think and what you feel and what you believe right.
Marcy Langlois:And so I became entrenched in his work and I started meditating three and four hours a day and I started having these profound, mystical, out-of-body experiences that are just otherworldly and unbelievable and so sacred and special. And I knew that I was on the right track when this started happening. But unfortunately, because my nervous system was so convoluted and so fragmented from everything I had experienced, my nervous system wouldn't tolerate the experiences or the meditation or anything. So I had to stop doing that work and I had to find my own path. So I'm happy to report to you today, three and a half years later, that I do not have mast cell activation syndrome. I do not have histamine intolerance. I do not have mast cell activation syndrome. I do not have histamine intolerance. I do not have any of the viruses that I had that originally created those conditions and all of my blood work shows that I'm no longer sick.
Brad Minus:Wow, that's insane. Wow, you like, you came off of this thing and you became the David Goggins of meditation. My God, yeah, three. You just went three to four hours. You came off of this thing and you became the David Goggins of meditation. My God, yeah, three. You just went three to four hours, if you listen to his books, which is totally way off base, way extreme.
Brad Minus:But you were like he talks about it, like I found stretching, so I did it three to four hours a day. I found this, so I do four hours a day. You went in and you're just like, hey, I am not letting this thing beat me, I am going to sit there and meditate and get through this the best I possibly can. And if you found it through meditation, then that's amazing. But you know what it does prove and if anybody out there has ever had one doubt that there's no such thing as a mind-body connection, this is the ultimate case study. The turnaround is the absolute epitome of the greatest case study ever. So that's absolutely amazing. So, three and a half years after them, telling you that you are not going to heal from this, you are.
Marcy Langlois:Everything's normal. That's right. That's right. I would say I'm about 95%. Well, I still am reintroducing foods into my diet and there's still some tweaking that's happening. Healing is continuous and constantly evolving. It's never I don't think we ever arrive. There's always something to work on. It's never I don't think we ever arrive. There's always something to work on. But yeah, I have an incredible quality of life. I ride my bike and I go for walks every day, and really there's nothing that I can't do, that I want to do. I wake up every day, I sleep well, I have my mortgage business. I do that two hours a day, just two, right and I have a wonderful team that supports that business so that I can get away with working two hours a day at it. And then I have a coaching platform to try to help other people. But that's like to come from where I came from. I literally could cry when I tell you these things out loud because I so grateful Like I beat all the odds. I beat every single odd.
Brad Minus:So that's and that's absolutely the moral here is that you've got to understand that you have certain stressors that are external, but we also have stressors that are internal and they could affect each other, affect the way you think and affect the physicality of it as well, and you've got to make there's a balance there as well. Everybody talks about, all right, I'm going to balance my food, balance my exercise, balance my life, work-life balance, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that internal, what's going on inside in your head, is just as important, and you totally proved that. A quick, couple of quick questions before we wrap this up. One is where did you get the idea to start a coaching platform?
Marcy Langlois:I so, to back up right, like I said, I've been sick all of my life, right, I never really was well, and so when I got sober and my body was really deteriorating, I've spent hundreds of hours reading, learning, researching, reading research papers, taking classes, papers, taking classes. I don't have any formal certifications, but literally everything that I could possibly learn about how the human body works and how to make it well. I did it right, and that was my second career, basically was trying to get well, and so, if I can shorten other people's suffering by a day, a week or a year, I just want to help people, because I had to read hundreds of books to get the answers that I got. So it's like, if I could, just, I don't know everything, that's for sure, but the things that I do know I want to help people with.
Brad Minus:Was there a single event that said, oh hey, you know what I can help these people, I can go. So the only reason I'm asking is this, right, and I'm just going my own experiences I started training for my first Ironman and the month before I ran a marathon and I had a team because we had done this fundraising and this one woman she was 53 years old and I knew that she could do better than she did in training and because I was doing an Ironman the very next month, I was not going to be running this as a race. I wasn't running this marathon as a race, I was running it to run it with my team that we had raised so much money for. So I took this woman and I said, hey, listen, I said you're going to run with me. So it just did quickly. She had run her first marathon. Six months earlier, she ran the France marathon at five hours and 15 minutes. Five hours and 15 minutes, yeah, five hours and 15 minutes.
Brad Minus:We crossed the line together because she came along with me. We crossed, like this, hand in hand, 432, wow, which is huge. Right, that's her friend. Yeah, so, her friend that was also on our team, who was a very who was a very great runner. She goes. She looks at me, she goes. Karen is off the charts on cloud nine and she goes and it's because of you. He says you should coach. That was my moment, right, that was the moment where I'm like huh, dang, dang. So I'm asking you was there a defining moment here where you have something like that that said, oh wait, or maybe you gave advice to somebody, or maybe you took somebody underneath your wing? Was there that light bulb moment?
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, my mortgage business was all built on coaching realtors. Right, that's where I get my business from, and so it was always coaching realtors to help them improve their business. Because I just believe in giving to people right Like helping other people their business, because I just believe in giving to people right Like helping other people, and so I already had that mindset and ability. But when I tell my story publicly, and the feedback that I get from telling my story publicly is always like how did you do this? Like, how Like I, how did you keep going? How, why?
Marcy Langlois:Right, like, people want to know all of that stuff and they they're always like I'm so inspired by you, I'm so I feel like I can do anything now. Right, like, my troubles aren't nearly anything like yours and that and I hate that when people say that, because it doesn't matter what your troubles are, they're your trouble, right, and you, it's your obstacle to overcome it. It doesn't matter how it rates or there's no rating system, it's a difficulty and your job is to overcome it as a human being. Right, that's the way I think and feel, and so it's like I just want to help people in that capacity, because I believe, I know, that anyone can overcome anything, no matter what it is Like I. I'm so convinced of that, but it takes a lot of commitment to be willing to do it.
Brad Minus:Yes, absolutely, it's definitely that commitment. So you also have a podcast. It's called Living Beyond Limits. What made you start that?
Marcy Langlois:To help people. I just want to get out there and help people. Okay, yeah, I just want to tell people, although you know, and the biggest thing that I know is that what we think and what we feel and what we believe is what our life is, period.
Brad Minus:Yes, yes, I definitely agree. So is there a day that you normally? Is there a day that you normally release?
Marcy Langlois:Well, right now my show is on hiatus because I have so many interviews as a guest on shows other people's shows that I have set my podcast aside. But I think I've published like 36 episodes or something like that, and they're all solo casts, so they're like 10 minute episodes and you can go on there and you can just listen, and each episode is identifying a problem that we all deal with as human beings and then it gives you like a three to five step process at the end of the podcast on how to help yourself overcome that. So it's literally I'm just giving right, just giving information to help make people or help provide people tools, tips and tricks on how to live a more fulfilling, happier, peaceful, whatever it is life that you're looking for.
Brad Minus:That's perfect, and you're going to be episode 36. So for me, that's perfect.
Marcy Langlois:Great, it's awesome.
Brad Minus:So, yeah, so that's outstanding. It came out perfect. It came out perfect. So that's fantastic. And, yeah, and I'm grateful that you're here and we're going to keep and once this episode gets released, we're going to keep releasing clips and stuff and making sure that it pops here. Then, hopefully you'll be able to, you'll be able to have this episode for your podcast a way to point to it because you really went into depth and I think that the story needs to be told. I'm sure you've told it a lot of times because you are fluid when you talk about it. So I'm grateful to have you on and I'm grateful that you are doing what you're doing as far as coaching goes, because I really think people will get a lot out of it and I'm sure that the clients that you have are succeeding because of you and the experiences that you've gone through that have taught you this, plus the ability that you have gone ahead, and we've all done it as coaches, as we always want to be better coaches. So we're constantly reading, constantly looking at, like you mentioned, research papers and studies and the whole bit, and we do that as coaches. So for all of you listening out there that think a coach is a coach and they've got all their knowledge and that's just the way it is. It's never going to change. No, we are all of us. I don't know one coach out there that's not constantly trying to improve their methodologies, trying new things that will get our clients closer to success. It's as deep in the sports and fitness as it is in recovery and mindset. It's a constant thing. So keep listening. And again, so you're going to get.
Brad Minus:She has a her website, marcilangloiscom MarciLangloiscom. That'll be in the show notes. She has her podcast called Living Beyond Limits, which is on hiatus right now, but your last episode released on June 14th, so it hasn't been on hiatus that long. So there's a lot of stuff, a lot of great information out there and, like she said, they're 10 and 15 minute episodes, so it's binge worthy, totally. So Living Beyond Limits and Chill and this is basically what she's saying here, right? So we'll make sure that's definitely in the show notes as well. And then you have a coaching one-on-one. I don't know if it's not a freebie.
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, that's just. If someone's interested in working with me as a coach, they can click on there and schedule a free call with me to see if we're a good fit.
Brad Minus:And I'm going to put that up as well. So you're going to have all of these things that you can get in touch with. Marci, now, are you available via social media as well, and which one do you use most often that people can probably drop into your DMs or something, and which one do you use most often that people can probably drop into your DMs, or something?
Marcy Langlois:Yeah, tiktok, facebook, instagram and YouTube are where I'm located and I'm on those at least twice a day, every day.
Brad Minus:So, all right, fantastic, and those will be also linked in the show notes. So, if you want to get ahold of Marcy, there is no way that you're not going to have the ability to do that because you're going to have her website, her socials, on everything. So, and I would say, take advantage. If you've got something, if you've got an obstacle in front of you that you just can't seem to to to get around, talk to Marcy and cause. She's been through it, she's also done all the research and she will find a strategy to help you get through that. So, marcy, thank you, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. We so appreciate you and listen to Living Beyond Limits and Life Changing Challenges and, for the rest of you, we will see you in the next one. Thank you so much. Okay.
