Some weeks the world moves so fast you lose track of what's real. This is one of those weeks.

This time it's just the two of us. Tammy and Lori, at the table, talking about what happens when the ground keeps shifting under your feet. Relationships that used to take years now start and end in months. People you trusted turn out to be someone else. Information comes at you from every direction and you can't always tell what's true. It can leave you ungrounded and doubting your own read on anyone.

So we talk about disillusionment. The kind that hits when you learn something that doesn't fit the picture you'd built of a person, or the story you were sold your whole life. We talk about the rot that's becoming visible right now. And we talk about why you can't heal a thing until you expose it to the air.

Lori shares the prayer she says to release what isn't hers. She tells the story of the 25-year secret she finally told her husband, and what happened when she did. Tammy talks about the grief that shows up without warning. About her mother. About carrying the belief that she was the burden who changed her mother's life.

Then we come back to the ground. Box breathing. Feeling your feet on the floor. Humming, and what it does to the vagus nerve. Turning the noise off. Small things that pull you out of the story in your head and back into the room you're standing in.

And we land on freedom. It's Independence Day week. It's the country's 250th. It's Hope's birthday. This year the word means something different to us. We are not waiting for a country or a system to hand us our freedom. Freedom is here. It's right here.

This one is for anyone who has seen the picture they trusted come apart, and had to find their own footing again.

New episodes of The United States of Us drop every week. Come sit with us.

(00:00) Welcome to Episode 10, and why the name matters (01:46) Bombarded with information: fear and propaganda (03:11) Relationships are speeding up (04:44) Disillusionment when people aren't who you thought (06:43) Our nervous systems were never built for this (09:39) "They" versus us: we are the co-creators (11:22) The rot was there the whole time, and why healing needs air (15:16) Everyone was doing their best: clean vessels and attachments (18:48) Releasing what isn't yours (20:28) Why we can't watch what we used to (24:43) The release prayer, spoken in full (27:44) We do not consent to this fuckery (29:11) Grief, consciousness, and a spiritual end of the world (32:02) Discernment and loving every version of yourself (34:32) When awakening strained a marriage: the secret she told (38:12) Soul contracts and unconditional love (40:43) Divorce is not a failure (42:47) Tammy's parents and the burden she carried (47:16) Redefining family, and the mothers who kept showing up (49:51) Coming back to the ground: breath and presence (53:11) More tools: meditation, humming, the vagus nerve (56:02) The future we're choosing: community and enough (59:49) Independence Day, the 250th, and freedom that's already here