Building a Business Based on Lies

 Building a Business Based on Lies

Guest: Roxanne Granata

Shelley Hunter: You're listening to the Faithful Career Moves Podcast. I'm your host, Shelley Hunter and this is the place where we talk to people who have found the career they were born to do and recognize God's hand in the process. 

Welcome to episode 26. I am excited to share this story with you today, in part because I know that I'm supposed to. Here's what happened. 

Roxanne Granata, and I grew up in the same ward in Pleasanton, California. I haven't seen her in 30 plus years, but a mutual friend, my former youth leader actually posted a story about Roxanne's website on Facebook. I saw it, I took a screenshot and thought, "Maybe I should interview her one day" and that was it.

Then last week I went to the temple and "out of the blue” I saw Roxanne's mom, who I also have not seen for 30 years and I didn't even remember that she lived here in Idaho where I also now live. After the session, we got a chance to catch up and I left knowing that I most definitely needed to interview Roxanne because her story is amazing. I know you'll learn from it and it is inspiring for sure. 

I don't think it was an accident that we connected. I'm sharing it today because I believe this is a story God wants me to amplify.

I'm going to let Roxanne more fully explain what she does, but her website, which I'll link to in the show notes is where she talks of real experiences dealing with addiction, betrayal and healing. She's the author of Cutting Ties, Healing from Betrayal Trauma as The Spouse of An Addict. That's a big topic. My first question to Roxanne is what is it that you do for your career?

Roxanne Granata: Well, right now I work with individuals, mainly women, some men who have gone through hard things in their life, and they're wanting to still thrive. They don't want it to own them or take them down, and they want to be able to heal and get past what's happened. A lot of time it's betrayal, a lot of time it's just with career they feel stuck or paralyzed and they want help moving through it. With my background, that's what I do. I help people to see what's in front of them, maybe childhood wounds, other belief systems they've created about themselves and help them see it, heal it and move forward.

Shelley: Tell me what the business looks like right now. There's a website, what else?

Roxanne: There's a website, I do individual coaching, I hold women's retreats, I have a podcast and a book, and I do breath-work sessions, which is like a healing modality where you are breathing versus talking. It's like therapy, but just breathing.

Shelley: I love it. I think there's two back stories here. Tell me about your career. Tell me what you did for a living or did you work before you started all of this?

Roxanne: Yes, I've always been entrepreneurial but I wanted to be able to be home with my children. I had four children and so I was introduced to a craft company when I was younger. When I was early 20s, I had just had my first child and I am not a crafty person. I actually didn't even like crafts at all but when I was introduced to it, all of a sudden, just something hit me like you can do this and it is fun and you could also make a business out of it. I ended up doing that for 12 years and making a living off of teaching people how to do this particular craft.

That's where my career started and then it just went forward from there where I ended up speaking in front of large groups. This company I was in, taught me those things, those skills and then I was hired as a speaker to speak for other events for corporate events.

Shelley: I did not see that coming. Was this scrapbooking, the heyday of scrapbooking?

Roxanne: Yes. It was scrapbooking back in 1996 is when I started that.

Shelley: Oh my gosh. I didn't realize that. Then how did you transition from crafting to coaching?

Roxanne: This is a big story really. I was married for 21 years and at 17 years in, I found out or realized or it all came together that my husband at that time was struggling with addiction. Everything came out and all of a sudden, my life is crazy and I'm thrown into this world of therapy and healing and 12 step. I was in the 12 steps for partners of addicts, and this whole new thing that I didn't really even know I was part of, I was thrown into. It was in those moments where therapy saved my life. Before that, honestly, I had a belief about therapy that you don't go to therapy because therapy ruins your marriage. It's like, no therapy brings everything to light so you can decide if you want to stay in the marriage or not.

That's where my story unfolds to how my career ended up to where it is now. It was based on as I'm learning these things, I'm having my own breakdowns, my own feelings of this betrayal and loss and how can this be my life to where it ended up turning into what it is today.

Shelley: I know what you're saying. How can this be my life? I've uttered that exact same thing, but you sound so okay right now.

Roxanne: Absolutely right. That started in 2012. It's been a journey of healing and it's been my own discovery of where God is in my life and how to find him and how to listen to him even when he is telling me something that sounds crazy. As I'm starting this journey, the first part of my career was writing the book, and I wrote the book in 2014. I was still married at that time and it came about because I was having my own breakdown moments. At this point, we had been in 12-step in counseling for a couple years. My husband at that time had also gone to rehab and he had come home and we moved to a new town to try and like we're going to go all in. We're going to take this year to heal.

He had been home for maybe six weeks at that point and he had all these different recovery tools he was supposed to be doing. Like, so your wife has been through all of this betrayal. My husband's addiction is sex addiction pornography, so all of this betrayal, infidelity type of stuff. The counselor is telling him she is not going to trust you and she's going to be nervous and she's going to have all these trauma responses, these triggers. Your job is to when she comes to you with a trigger is to say, "I know I am so sorry. I am sorry I put you through that, how can I help you?" Those types of things, very calming things.

This one particular night, it was the fall of 2014 and I was having one of these, all of a sudden, I was like, "Oh my gosh, what is real? What can I trust? Nothing is true. I don't know what I'm doing" and I was panicking like seriously just freaking out. I went and found him. I'm like, "I'm having this trigger and I just need you to tell me something that's honest. It doesn't even matter what kind of honesty it is. Just tell me something that's true." Well, he wasn't in a good place at that moment and he's like, "No, I'm not going to tell you." I'm like, "Okay." My anxiety it just starts rising. I'm like, "No, I'm serious. I really need you to tell me something that's true because I'm freaking out."

He's like, "No, I'm not going to tell you anything" and I went through the roof. I was like, "You tell me something right now, you tell me something that's true." He's yelling back "I will never tell you the truth, I will never."

Shelley: Oh my gosh.

Roxanne: I know, can you even, right. I was so freaked out. It just skyrocketed my panic, my trigger, the anxiety and I went into my closet and I was like, "Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? This is crazy. How can I-" I'm talking to God? "How can you ask me to do this?" 

I'm freaking out and I look over and all of his neck ties are hanging across the bar totally lined up straight across, all even, color coordinated. This is how it looked in my mind anyway, with almost this perfection and I'm like, "This is a lie. My life, this is not perfect. My life is not perfect." At that moment I knew what I wanted to do, and I wanted to cut them. That's where I had gotten, I wanted to cut these ties, and I did. I went in my bathroom, got these little scissors. They're bathroom scissors. They're just these little tiny blades, and so I'm cutting.

Shelley: I can just picture you sawing through each one of them with a little blade. Oh, my goodness.

Roxanne: This is exactly right and I just poured my hate and anger and frustration into cutting these ties. Then I fell to the ground and I was so broken. I'm like, "God, can you not see how broken I am? I am seriously, so broken." What's so interesting is that those ties, because they were those small blades, it only cut a one- or two-inch notch in each of the ties. None of them broke all the way. Almost like my life. We are intact but not quite, type of a thing. That's the journey where it started, so that was on a Saturday. On the Monday I was on a treadmill and I had done enough therapy at this point to know that, I have got to get in control of myself.

I cannot let what somebody else does or doesn't do affect what I do because I was acting in a place that isn't to my core value of who I am. I did something crazy, and so on the treadmill, I was trying to process that. That's when I heard it. I heard you need to write a book and I saw the cover of it. I saw the name of it. It's called Cutting Ties. The cover is the ties. I have all the ties and I said, "Oh, do you want me to write a book?" My inspiration was yes, please write this book and share with others that they are not alone and that you can make it through this. The first chapter of my book is this story of my breaking point. Almost like my own rock bottom of finding my way out of the craziness.

Shelley: This is hitting more nerves than I anticipated. I'm going to need a moment here, but I think it's so powerful how God spoke to you in a way that resonated with you. Also, what does that look like when you start writing a book about this while you're still married?

Roxanne: We were in recovery long enough, even though he had that response after I left, I left packed a bag for, I thought I was going to leave for a day, I didn't, and then when I came down and I was feeling inspired and everything, I just texted him and I had said "You may or may not need all new ties." He was like "I know, I saw and I'm sorry." He came down from his too and it was fine, but we were recovery and we were healing at that moment. In our mind we were planning on learning everything that we needed to, and then going out into the world and speaking on this stuff together. When I told him I'm supposed to write a book, he was on board with it.

We are married obviously at that time and then I did choose divorce a year later, but in that process of writing the book, it was, I didn't know how to write a book that I'm telling Heavenly Father I'm like, "I don't know how to write a book. How am I supposed to do this?" Plus, I was so over maxed in my own emotional stability at that time, I said "I don't even have the capacity to learn what I'm supposed to do. If you want me to do this, you're going to have to tell me." Every time I would feel super anxious and I would think, what can I do? I just need to take a break. I need to go on a drive or I need to take a bath or maybe I'll just watch TV.

The anxiety would get worse and worse until I would finally click. I would say, "Oh, am I supposed to write?" It was like, "Yes, please write." I'd go sit at the computer and I'd say, "Heavenly Father, you want me to write this? I do not know what you want me to say. You're going to have to tell me." Every single time I'm not kidding. Every chapter in my book is him immediately giving me the title and then telling me what to write. I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I never, with each chapter, I didn't go back and reread and go, "What should I do next?" I just wrote it until I had nothing else to say and then I would sit back and I'd be like, "I think I'm done."

I'd read it. I'd be like, "What? Oh, my goodness." Yes, God is so good. He is so good. He just really wanted people to know the truth of what it feels like, how painful it all is to go through something hard like this. Also, that you can make it, that you can be okay. The faithful side of it. How as hard as it is turning to him really does save your life.

Shelley: Did you have a sense when you were writing it that maybe nobody will ever read this, but it's for me?

Roxanne: Yes. Partially, there was a time where I was in my closet. I use my closet a lot to pray. It's a place where nobody's there. It was one of those moments where I was weak. I came not freaking out, not in my crazy place where I cut ties, but I came in that vulnerable, humble, quiet shattered place. If you know that place it's the depths, the depths of your whole soul. It's despair and everything and giving all to him. I don't even know. I can't do, I don't even know how to do this. I came to him in that moment like that, and I just said to him, this cannot be just for me. I know I'm worth it to go through this on my own and find you and let you help me through this.

I really want this to matter to more people. I really want other people to know they're not alone because I felt so alone. I did not want people to do that. He's given me that over these years.

Shelley: How have your kids dealt with this?

Roxanne: It's been difficult, addictions are hard, but they too, they're now older they have had own path to God with it and they have truly watched me seek him out. We would cry together. We would talk about things together. We talk about the truth. That's one thing that is scary I think for parents and as mothers to share the truth with our children, but the truth, it hits our heart and we feel it. My children when I would tell them the truth, meaning not every detail and not all the stuff about infidelity and stuff. Not exactly. They know this stuff, but not the details. It gave them this, I totally understand.

My daughter when she found my workbook that said something about healing as the spouse of an addict, something like that, betrayal, trauma, all this stuff on it, that basically said what it was. She saw it. I noticed that she saw it and I went in her room and she was in her closet and she was praying in her closet which she had this little tiny walk-in closet. Where did she learn that? Even though life has been painful, she saw what I was doing to make it through. She was in her closet so I said I was in there and she said, "Just a minute, I'm coming out a minute." She comes out and she said, "I was in my closet praying."

I just was like, "Heavenly Father, how could you could you let me find this book? How do I have to know about that book? I didn't want to know about that." She said my answer was "You needed to see this because you needed to realize that it is not you." I said to her, "What do you mean?" She said "All these years-" she was only, I'm not sure. 14, maybe. She was pretty young 15, but she said "All these years, I keep thinking, why is my dad, why does he not connect with me? What is wrong with me that he doesn't connect?" He looks like he does. He's very loving and he would cuddle with my kids and with my other daughter, it looked like they were so close, and they were but my one daughter that found it she's like "I didn't feel that and Heavenly Father told me it wasn't me."

It's so important that truth hits our heart. We're like, "I can do something with this." It's like me on my closet floor. If I don't know the truth, I don't know what to see. It's harder for me to discern. It's harder for me to hear the spirit and know how to step. It's not about how hard it is. It's just about knowledge so that we know what to do.

Shelley: This is a tender topic. What advice do you have for somebody else going through their own version of something, they're having that same feeling of this has been brutal. I think I've found a way out and I want to share it with other people, but they're feeling nervous. Well then, my story's really out there.

Roxanne: I guess it's about going to God and finding the process and the timing. When I wrote the book that was 2014, 2015, but I didn't put it out until 2018. That was God's way of allowing me time to heal and to see what was still in my way so I could share my story. If I was to share it with this belief that all men lie and everybody cheats and these things that aren't actually true, then I would be not using him in the best possible way. The thing is too about our trials is what I've found is it really doesn't matter the severity that we've gone through, the tools of finding our path and healing and healing the resentments or bitterness or why me's or whatever from our trial the tools are the same.

Going to God to find out what it is we need is what's going to help us be able to be clear enough to know the path that he wants to take us, but sharing our story sometimes it is painful. A lot of times you're going to get people that don't agree but knowing that the reason someone might not agree is based on their own belief system or maybe it's personal to them and they can't believe you'd be sharing this. You have to know that as long as you're on that path with God, you're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to share. You'll know, and you'll have to let those voices on the outside you'll have to quiet those voices.

Shelley: Yes. I think that's an important nugget. Sharing the stories God inspires you to share when He's ready for you to share them or when you're ready and He knows it. I want to reflect back a little bit here. I think we're always on a path to pick up the skills and the insights and the learnings that we're going to need to prepare us for what's up ahead. The craft career, how does it relate to what you're doing now?

Roxanne: It totally relates. It taught me so many things. Back when I was-- I would've been like 24 when I started with that company. I had a serious fear of talking in front of people. Like really and here I was like, "Well I'm going to be turning 25 and I would like to conquer this fear." Getting up in front of people, even a small group of five or six people and teaching them how to do scrap booking, it was so scary, but it led me to where I eventually for that company was speaking in front of 10,000. How does that relate? So much because now I work with individuals, I speak at events. I have my podcast. I do that for a living and it prepared me so much in so many ways.

Shelley: Yes. I love that. Roxanne, before I ask you the questions that I ask all of my guests, what didn't I ask you about your business that I should have?

Roxanne: Well, the thing about moving forward in life and finding that passion and working with God is that He is going to direct you. Like you said, I started out with the craft company and then all of a sudden, I'm writing a book and it just keeps on going. As we practice listening to Him on what that path is, or what job it is, or what skill to learn, He'll show up. He'll be able to give us the blessing later on. When I was going to start my podcast, I was sitting in a marketing class, as an adult. This is just a couple of years ago. All of a sudden, in this marketing class, they weren't talking about podcasts but immediately I got that inspiration of, "You need to start a podcast and it's called Choose In."

Again, it was like the book. I'm like, "What are we talking about here? I don't know what I'm doing." Even with that, I told my husband, I told other people and I was like, "I have to start this podcast," and everybody wanted to give me suggestions. Everybody said, "Well, go listen to this, and this and this and this." All I kept hearing from God was like, "No, you're doing this with me and we're going to do it your way." Meaning authentic to me. I was on a few because of my book but I'd never listened to any to gain information. I just started it with him and that just kept going. Even my retreats. My first retreat was fall of 2020. We're talking middle of the pandemic.

Shelley: Oh my gosh.

Roxanne: I'm like, "Wait, what?" He's like, "It's time. You got to start doing retreats." I was doing one-on-one sessions at that point and I'm like, "This is crazy." I was like, "I'm going to spend thousands of dollars renting this place how am I going to get it filled?" He just kept assuring me he was going to fill it. I do want to say that it doesn't mean that all of these things when He asked me to do them that I just listen and everything is fine. No, I'm a wreck. I'm a wreck in the process of listening. I'm like, "I hear you. I'm going to do it" but I am a disaster. I cry a lot. I have to get in my bathtub and process. I am super emotional but I do it anyway because He's shown up for me so many times.

Shelley: Roxanne, tell me about a leap of faith you had to take to get where you are now with your business.

Roxanne: There's been so many. I was working, in between, I was still single. Actually, I was just getting married. I've been married now for a couple of years, but I was cutting hair. I'm at my job, and I knew that this was just an intermediate thing that I was doing, but I was there and He told me I needed to quit my job and just go for this. At this point, I was helping people on the side for free. I was always talking to people. I always do. I had them for years, but all of a sudden, He's like, "You need to turn this into an actual career that can support you." I'm like, "You want me to quit?" "Yes, I want you to resign. I want you to give your two-weeks' notice."

I'm thinking, "This is crazy because I need the money. I need to do this." Anyway, I listened and I came home from work and I just told my husband, "Hey, so apparently, God wants me to really do something with this and so I quit my job." We just laughed because He does that. That's scary. I need money. I have a life, and even though I was married that doesn't mean anything. I need my own career and I need to have that. I started the podcast and He tells me that He wants me to start taking clients for payment. I just was like, "Oh my goodness. How is this going to work?" I did my thing where I get in the bath and I cry and I'm like, "I hear you and I'm going to do and I promise I'm doing it but I do not know how. How is this going to work?"

Immediately that first day when I was doing that, He gave me three clients. Three people reached out to me. I didn't even have it online yet. I had a website but He just gave it to me. I thought, "Oh my goodness. Okay." Then it's been a process since. That leap of faith to do something scary like quit a job, it takes a lot and it is leaning on God to go, "I hear you and I hope you're right and I hope I'm hearing this right." Taking it anyway and just going, "You know what? If for some reason it doesn't work out, I can always go back and cut hair," but that was not my purpose or passion for this life. I already knew that. This is. What I'm doing now is.

Finding that purpose changes everything. It lights your whole soul up and you're like, "I know exactly why I'm doing this and it's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. This is why I'm here." It's just evolved. That's a big one because it evolved into all these things to where this is what I do every single day now.

Shelley: When I am in that moment, in that prayerful moment, where I think I've been told but then it just seems so crazy that you're not sure I changed my prayer to, "I believe that you've told me this. I'm going to start walking in that direction. Stop me if I'm wrong.

Roxanne: Absolutely.

Shelley: What's an unexpected blessing? Something you could not see for yourself in all this trauma. This has been painful. What's an unexpected blessing for you?

Roxanne: I think that blessing of truly seeing the way God works in our life. I found that I would get an answer to something and I would make meaning out of it. Like, it must mean this. When He was telling me to write this book, I was still married to my first husband and so I'm seeing myself, I'm seeing this visual of, I'm basically on the hill teaching people things, helping people. I saw me and my husband doing that. That's the meaning I made out it, "God must want us to stay together. He's going to change him. He's going to make him do this," but that isn't what happened. I'm doing that but he wasn't.

I have noticed that in this, having to look at it and be like, "I'm going to go forward in faith doing this but it may look a little different than I'm perceiving it to be." Now the person I'm married to now, I actually dated him in college for three weeks, so we're talking back in 1992. By mutual friends, it was like, "Hey, you guys are both single," and we ended up back together. He loves God as much as I do, that's what I was asking for, "Send me someone that loves you as much as me." All the things aligned to where we are on the same page of that moving forward and trying to figure out every day what God wants. That's a huge blessing.

The other thing I would add too is working with people every day and they're coming to me with either heartache or where they feel stuck in their jobs, or whatever it is. Every time I have a session, before I start, I pray, "Listen, I only want to say what you want me to say. I do not want to just say what I want to say. Tell me what that is. Whether it's experiences or examples or just asking them the right question. Tell me what that is." He does it for me. It's like they have someone to listen to them and answer them in a way that God would want. He sees them and He can use me to help them and they feel it and they know it. It's just a gift to bring God to other people and have that on a daily basis.

Shelley: Roxanne, the question I ask all my guests, how have you seen the hand of God in your career?

Roxanne: Well, every time I feel like I don't know what I'm doing or there's a dead-end or I do something that I think I'm supposed to do, and then it doesn't pan out the way I thought. As I go to Him, it's again like what you said about your career choice or what you learn. He's having me do something, maybe because it's not going to be the next big thing but because it's going to teach me or allow me to get to the next thing, or to bring someone into my life that can help me with that next thing because I've taken these steps. The other thing it shows Him that I'm willing to do it and try even if it doesn't always work or even if there's mistakes.

What it has taught me so much is that He truly is my partner. I don't want another partner. I have my husband, but in my relationship, everything has to be through God. Really this is what I do. I literally link arms with Him. I'm like, "Where are we going?" I don't want to do this by myself. I want to do it with Him.

Shelley: Roxanne, thank you so much for sharing your story of your career and the journey you've been on.

Roxanne: Thank you for having me, Shelley. I have loved being here with you.

[music]

Shelley: I'm going to be honest, that triggered a lot of things for me, unexpectedly, but I am so glad for it because it reminded me how far I've come as well. I know that closet. I know that despair and I know that confusion but I also know the triumph of emerging from it. Truly, that is why I am so passionate about involving God in your career because He has carried me through mine. He prepared it for me when I didn't know I was going to need it. All of the little jobs you have like Roxanne's craft job, those things, they pay the bills in the moment and that's maybe what you think, they're for, but I see them as so much more purposeful.

Every calling you have, every volunteer assignment, in all walks of life, we are learning things we may eventually be called upon to use. Now, to be clear, when you're learning something new, please don't panic and think it means you're about to get divorced. For many women, that is a pivot point but it's far more likely you're being prepared to serve others with the special gifts and experiences that God has given you so don't run away from it. Kick and scream, if you must, take a bath if you need to, but get up and get to work, and find out what God has in store for you. I promise it will be better than you can even imagine.

Thank you for listening to the Faithful Career Moves Podcast. If you want to know more about how to connect your natural talents and abilities, to job opportunities and business ideas, then visit our website at faithfulcareermoves.com.