216. Triumph Over Trauma: Shenea Stiletto's Journey to Advocacy

00:00:10 This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandy Scarlett Hello, everyone, and thank. You for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. Here, I'm Sandee Sgarlata. 00:00:27 I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess. Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together. And since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. 00:00:58 It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours. Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at Coach. 00:01:26 Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy. The showto is in the house. I'm so excited for this. So excited to be here. 00:01:41 Sandy, you're so magnificent. Thank you so much for having me today. Thank you. I tell you, you and I just connected so quickly at the conference in DC. And it was so funny because I just knocked on that door and I walked in and you poor thing, you're changing your clothes. 00:01:59 I'm like oh, my God. I'm sorry. 00:02:03 I was stretching, had a leg up, getting ready for my performance. Performance. Oh, my gosh. So, as I mentioned before, I hit record, it would take me an hour to read your entire bio, and this is a short one, but just to give the audience a glimpse of who I'm about to speak with. Sandee is a former two time world champion Acrobatic gymnast. 00:02:28 She's a USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame member. A circuspreneur? And I'd never heard that term until I met you, a world class circus head balancer, inducted into the World Aerobic Hall of Fame, who has been performing for nearly two decades, including Cirque du Soleil. So that was really incredible. And you were the first ever African American woman to perform a lead character in an Acrobatic role in Cirque du Soleil. 00:02:58 That's incredible. Wow. Thank you. Yeah, so I've just been giddy waiting for this because I just wanted to see your beautiful face again and your performance at that conference. So you spoke a little bit, but you gave us a show. 00:03:17 And for the audience, Sandee is one of those Acrobatic performers that can hold herself on one hand, legs stretched out over ahead, moving in different positions, and it's like, wow, incredible. Thank you, Sandy. I had a great time putting that performance together. I did something unique, which is funny because I've been asked very recently several times to incorporate my hand balancing acrobatic circus performances with a talk. So it's been a really fun experience combining the two. 00:03:54 It's a nice little challenge of going from cardio upside down to hi, I need to be present and remember what I'm going to say today, what I'm going to talk about. Oh, my gosh, the audience is great. Women were great. It was it was really incredible. So I want to dive into a lot about what you're doing, but you have a really phenomenal story, and I don't know how much you want to share about it. 00:04:20 That's totally up to you. But can you just give the audience a glimpse of your gymnastics career and heading into where you are today? Oh, wonderful. Thank you, Sandy. I was fortunate enough to become the first ever American World Champion in acrobatic gymnastics. 00:04:41 And so acrobatic gymnastics is the non it's one of the non Olympic disciplines under the umbrella of usage gymnastics. So I was competing alongside my friends that were artistic gymnasts that do the balance theme, like Simone Biles or Shannon Miller, dominic Dawes for audience listening there. And I do the partnering acrobatic form of gymnastics. So I had a partner, and I was also fortunate to become a two time World Champion. So that had never been done before for America. 00:05:09 I became an honorary Olympian in 2004. I was inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame because of that. I went on the Olympic tours because of that, which was really amazing. They'd never had acrobatic gymnastics on an Olympic tour before. So at that time in my career, things were very epic and quite revolutionary for those times. 00:05:32 And it allowed me to transition into the circus. I was heavily recruited by Cirque du Soleil from when I was a young, young teen. That's back when they used to employ teenagers, they don't do that anymore. So I was in kind of that world from the very beginning. And so, for those unfamiliar, again, with acrobatic gymnastics, many of the Cirque du Soleil acrobatic performances that you see for years and years and years actually come from my sport. 00:05:57 And again, crossing my fingers that one day becomes Olympic sport. But I again was able to benefit from so much of that world by being quite historic at that time. So I set off into my circus journey and I started performing not just for Circus Lane, but all over the world for so many different entertainment companies, popular circuses within Europe, within Asia. I really branched out. I wanted to be an independent performer. 00:06:29 That's what I call a circuspreneur. I coined that phrase a few years ago because I feel like that is what kind of encapsulates what it means to be me. You are an entrepreneur. You are seeking for yourself, you are creating for yourself, and you are in a very niche environment and niche artistic form that still, even though circus is now very mainstream and it's projected all over our screen through the Got Talent franchises, which I've been on all of those. I've been on America's Got Talent twice. 00:06:58 I've been on netherlands got talent. Germany's got talent. Spain's got talent. Argentina's Got Talent. There's kind of not a Got Talent that I have not been on at this point. 00:07:07 But that is very much the world that I have figured out how to hustle in and how to create this career out of. I also am an advocate, an advocate for youth sports and for survivors within the Olympic movement. I'm a survivor of youth state gymnastics. So for those familiar with the really big settlement case that involved the Larry Nasser survivors, there are hundreds of us that were a part of that case, actually. And so I've been doing advocacy work for many, many years, first advocating for myself, obviously as a survivor, and then branching off to advocate for others and taking that advocacy work also too, into the circus environment and the circus industry, because there's a lot of non regulation within the circus industry that is very similar to the gymnastics world. 00:08:00 And so I found myself in this really valuable position where I could take so many things that I learned within one world and bridge it to another because the gap was very, very small. So I work with state senators, congresspeople, and I've worked with several different nonprofit organizations, getting new laws passed, getting statutes extended, and no formulation of language, of law language. And so it again has taken me into many, many different spaces from starting in one environment and then harnessing that knowledge and evolving into other spaces and using it for different things that I feel are very valuable and could make some very valuable change in the world. Wow, you're just incredible on so many levels. And I love that you're taking an experience that was traumatic and very tragic and you're putting it to something really good to help others. 00:08:59 I mean, that's really amazing because a lot of women don't have the courage, quite frankly. It's hard and we're up against a lot. And when you start getting into these systems, it's not easy being called basically a liar. For the past ten or 13 years that I've been involved with the settlement, actually going through the criminal court cases, even having a certain level of notoriety and seeing how kind of far not far, how limiting that is. And how far that can kind of take you and thinking that, oh, well, I mean, I'm definitely going to be in a different category even because I have a certain level of notoriety here. 00:09:37 And why would anybody challenge me on my truth or what I have to say or what happened? And you see all of the different hurdles that we are up against. And I always tell people, because I'm an advocate for Rain as well, and so I've been working with so many survivors over the years and I have many conversations where I say I don't blame you. I don't blame you if you don't want to go forward, if you don't want to go forward in a system that is broken when you have this system, even within dealing with people like Simone Biles or a case of this size where the FBI was willing to push the cases under the rug. And these are very high profile people. 00:10:18 So anyone else in a space that does not have what we perceive as more access thinking, where is my case going to go? How am I going to be treated? And it definitely takes an entire village to support you through this. Like my settlement and our settlement is not over. And so that's been six years from start to finish and it'll now be almost ten plus years start to finish for myself from when my original case began. 00:10:45 So that's many, many years of your life, of your time, of your energy, of your happiness and getting very serious about what you want to do every single time something comes up because you have the choice, they come to you and they say this is a new aspect of the case. This is a new aspect of where you could maybe go and where are you at in your life. And sometimes you don't feel like you want to go there anymore. You have to bring people close to you into that aspect of your life again and you are a different person every single time something comes up. So for me, it's been very helpful and almost necessary to just have an amazing support system and seeking out every single opportunity of support that I absolutely can. 00:11:28 We have this conversation too, Sandy, about things like years ago that I was seeking out were super friend and now they're just like the standard in treatment for PTSD and treatment for survivors of abuse. And so I'm grateful too that I was able to harness that through those that were just really brilliant and saw, okay, you are going to have this is very complicated journey and it's not something that just happens overnight. A survivor's journey is, I think, a consistent, constant evolution, especially if you have to keep on digging back into the legal system, unfortunately, which has a lot to be left desired. Yeah. To put it in a nice way very lightly. 00:12:12 Yeah. 00:12:15 I can't imagine because most people have some sort of trauma from their childhood and there's all different levels and comes in different shapes and sizes and whatnot that's something that probably more women than we know have gone through because not everybody admits it. And whatnot how did you come to terms with that to be able to one, because you have to make peace with it at some point, right? Because otherwise it's going to rule and ruin your life. And then to be able to not only have peace with it, but find happiness in your life. Yes. 00:12:55 And that is, I think, the most important thing, Sandy, of finding peace within your life and not allowing it to be your life. It's not who I am. It's not it's not my life. It's not. And you know, I've sought a lot of spiritual guidance, you and I connected over Marion Williamson, who I find exceptional. 00:13:18 And I am a devout meditator. I have been I've been on several different spiritual journeys in finding what speaks to me the best and throughout that as well, utilizing that valuable, I think, information to assist myself on these different journeys and having mentors and having spiritual advisors and getting the psychological treatment that I very much need. But I really did come in contact with people and mainly one of them was Marion Willington, who I've had several, several interactions with, of saying that this is not going to define your life, this is not going to define who you are. And I think it's maybe easier for certain individuals, maybe just based upon personality wise or whatnot, I can't really say for sure. To really get that and to really say for that to get in, I really got that. 00:14:09 It got in years ago where I knew for a fact that this was not going to be like a badge that I wore for my entire life. It was going to be a tool that I used and it was going to have to be something that I had to pay attention to and that I was going to have to understand multiple layers of myself and not retrieve anything that was maybe lost, but really just create a completely different human being and see who that person is going to be. And without coming back to that sense of struggle for every single thing that happens in my life, which, again, can be a very difficult thing to do. So again, having the access that I've had and putting that at the forefront of everything that I do and wanting my life to be about more than that, but definitely be like a key to open up other avenues for myself, which it in turn was able to be. And again, I think also too, not turning yourself into any kind of martyr has very much helped me. 00:15:17 I don't have to be here to hold the suffering and pain of every single person that I encounter that I meet or be the leader of a fight. I found myself. I've gotten in touch with that aspect of myself that knows that it doesn't have to do that because that can also lead to a lot of different suffering, which I have had to learn that I've learned these different things. And for every single person, it's different. Every single person doesn't necessarily need to feel that way or think that way or move through these kind of circumstances in that exact same way. 00:15:57 But for me, it's been very important to be that way and to learn where I am going to be helpful and useful and that I definitely have to put my healing and the attention on myself first. Because when you are a survivor as well, and when you, I think, find that space within you to, like, want to see justice, you think, okay, I'm just going to go out and seek justice for everyone, and it just doesn't have to be about me anymore, and all of those different things. And I think it is definitely there's a higher power there in a lot of ways where you're doing something that is beyond yourself, but if you are not consistently doing that work, whatever kind of work that may be, I think that that's where the struggles happen. And for me, it's daily. It's daily, daily, daily work, and then it's tune up constantly in rediscovering. 00:16:50 Okay, have I been ignoring some facet of myself that really needs care, or am I talking too much? I had to put up a lot of boundaries of how I engage with these conversations that involve my story, that involve that trauma, that involves that struggle, and saying that's not something that will be a part of every single conversation that I have. That is not something that I will give certain details about. And I had to learn that, too. And so picking and choosing when I delve in how deep I delve is so important because it really allows me to live my days anew, which I feel like when you have those levels of traumas, you feel like you're kind of repeating things all the time. 00:17:34 You're repeating you're stuck in that repetitive kind of PTSD state where there's a story and a dialogue going on, and it doesn't shift out of that. So being able to shift out of that and not let that spiral you down all of the time, for me, is very important and only possible with those levels of boundaries that I put in over these years and still learning all the time, of course. But what you're really talking about is just that self love and that self care and self awareness to recognize when you're having some sort of the PTSD that shows up and being able to PTSD switch pops on and then you're able to turn it off. Yeah. And having that level of self control. 00:18:22 Which is learned completely, it is so learned. It is so learned because I have PTSD from a whole very different set of circumstances. And I've learned to be able when it shows up and it doesn't show up that often any longer, when it does, I'm able to reduce it because for me, it shows up in anxiety, where I get almost a panic attack, and I'm able to calm myself down within usually less than 30 seconds. And everybody has their own method and their own technique and you need to figure out what works for you. But that's so important. 00:18:59 And even if you haven't gone through a major trauma and you don't have PTSD or anything like that, you still have to be self aware of your thoughts because the negative thoughts are still popping in your brain. It doesn't matter. And I think that life in and of itself can constantly traumatic, I think, even when I am discussing it with individuals that think like, oh, I haven't had something like that, but I still have so many things, and like, well, there's so many elements to life that come up. And again, for me, within my life, every single thing that I go through is not that particular trauma. It's new versions of life events that come up that challenge you, that take from you, that make you have to source a new version of yourself that you don't know if you're capable of doing. 00:19:53 And it can induce a lot of fear and again comes back to even a course of miracles. Am I going to choose love? Am I going to choose fear? I mean, my course of miracles lesson for today is let me recognize that all of my problems have been solved. That this problem has been solved. 00:20:09 That there are no problems, really. That the only problem I have is my separation from God or my separation from the universe or my separation from spirit, whatever you like to call it. And for me, that anchors me so deeply, just remembering that within the course of my day, because we value issues, I think we value problems a lot more than we value solutions a lot within our lives. I've definitely seen that for myself of how much am I cradling the problem instead of really amplifying the solution in my conversations or like, in my interactions with anyone that I am with, whether it's a stranger or those that I really deeply love and have been connected to. I mean, what you just said, you just put it so beautifully. 00:20:54 And don't focus on the problem. Let's focus on the solution. Because at the end of the day, we have a choice as to what we're going to think and how we think. There's nobody holding a gun to your head making you think this way. We're choosing it ourselves. 00:21:09 Yes. And the power that we have, I think remembering again how much control and power that we do have, and then obviously the things that we get to let go of, and that's been a great lesson for myself, too. There are certain things where it's like, okay, I cannot control that. There was an aspect to my case that I was literally waiting in spirit or in space for a few years. A few years. 00:21:34 I could never have known how it would come together in the way that it did for me to be able to be able to be involved and to be included for example, within the settlement process that I'm included in now. And there was so much about that that I had to let go of. And again, that's a bigger thing. But again, I think with the bigger things and you learn how to do that, it makes the smaller things a lot easier too, because there is a network that is working on your behalf at all times. And I know that even when I forget that. 00:22:10 And those, I think, are where you have people and representation in your life that brings you back, that mirrors that for you of like wait a second, do you remember that thing that happened? And it was extraordinary. Why are you doubting that to work for you? Again, it worked so many times and I've had so many miracles and miraculous situations in my life, even when I've been in spaces of a lot of torture, emotional torture in spaces that I didn't know how I was going to get out of or if I was going to get out of them. And again, I have to say I'm very grateful that I do have, I think, a default setting in certain ways that is more prone to being optimistic, which I know that there are certain people, some people that don't feel like they naturally have that. 00:22:56 And I feel like having that foundation and then acknowledging that and then realizing that there is power within the space that I have to control the way that I feel. You can't maybe control what happens to you or what people do, but controlling your perspective and having that shift in perspective which they say is actually what the miracle is, which I love, a miracle is just a shift in perspective, which is that could be a shift in perspective within anything or in any way. Exactly any way. You don't know what that shift is going to be. And having that just within the course of your day, how much that can just change your life and change your decision making from one day to the next. 00:23:36 And having, I think, that container to source that in, which for me is Transcendental Meditation, which is first thing in the morning, which is, again, hopefully at the second part of my day going into the night. So that I don't say things that I should not say. I don't send emails that I should not send. I should not have conversations that would be best left unsaid. Yes. 00:24:01 And maybe if it's not like my best day, it's better than I would have been had I not done those things and gotten myself into unnecessary trouble. Right. So I love this right behind you, you have one of your picture frames back there and it says you are exactly where you need to be. I love that if everybody could just get that, the world would be such a better place. Well, isn't the struggle always like I am not where I'm supposed to be, no matter what, you've gotten the success, you've gotten the thing you wanted, you've gotten the this, you've gotten to that. 00:24:39 Whatever is material, even the feeling, even if you're in that space, I am still not necessarily where I want to be. I could be somewhere else. That's right. Imagine it doesn't need to just be here. You can't just be here. 00:24:54 I would love to just be somewhere else. That the mind is always pulling you towards something other than where you are, which is magnificent. Right here and right now. We don't want to sit with ourselves. And I think that just comes back to where we are culturally, too, with the access to everything. 00:25:10 When you have access to everything, I feel like it's hard to be satisfied with anything. And I think that that's a very sad reality of where we are right now. But however, I feel like at the same time, people are even more aware right now of wanting to come back to being present. I think that's why everyone's so hungry for it. I know that's why I hunger for that when I'm struggling and fighting against reality. 00:25:35 I think Byron Katie says that why are you arguing with reality? You arguing with reality is what is making you struggle and is what is making you so unhappy. Because things just are there's just a cup and there's just a cell phone. That's it. That's it. 00:25:51 It's just a woman sitting. There's no story. The story is you causing problems. I love it. 00:26:00 There's so many people I want to make sure that listen to this episode, that need to hear that message. It's not coming from me, coming from someone else. 00:26:14 I know you said really, it's like that self talk that we have with ourselves. And like I say, I think, may I be the woman that the universe would love for me to be each day, and may I be better than I were yesterday. And having that self talk with myself and reminding me of those things and then wanting to live that, wanting to live that. I mean, obviously we're imperfect, but using those as guides creates for me an exceptionally better day, better moment and interaction than I think that I otherwise would have had. And that, again, goes back to, I love how you speak so much about happiness and happiness fulfilled, Sandy, because that is a space that I would love to inhabit and a space that I feel like we can inhabit much more than we usually do. 00:27:12 And even within navigating all of our issues and all of our problems, finding the space to be able to have distance from that, which, again, is what I think the value of what I've gotten out of meditation, even when I feel like I have gotten nothing from this, what am I doing? And then I look back on certain times or certain days, and I think that it's so beautiful that you don't even get to really see it. Sometimes it's like even like the unpatterning or the shift, you don't even really get to see them until you're able to look back on your life and you're like, wow, oh my gosh, I do so much better now. My jumping off point, I think, is much higher within whatever I seem to be confronted with. And I was speaking to a friend about the other day, they were speaking about happiness and joy and kind of doing the thing that we do, which is like, well, I feel like I've been good, or I feel like I've been something positive in this way. 00:28:10 Why is this happening? And a thing that I have gotten within my life is that bad things happen regardless of who you are. That's right. Tragedy happens regardless of who you are. You cannot insulate your life from tragedy, from problems, from bad things. 00:28:28 What we call bad, do we even know always is bad or sometimes it's just the next, I think, incarnation into who you are, even though I do, obviously with what we have experienced, I remind people, don't worry, of course I know evil. 00:28:52 We know that very horrific things happen. So it's not saying like, oh, I believe that everything happens for a reason. It's never bad. For us it is, but I think that comes back to what you were saying as well of our responsibility to ourselves. And it's what we are tasked and maybe hopefully called intuitively to do with those things that happen. 00:29:17 And again, it's not to put weight on anyone of every single thing that happens to you has to be harnessed and turned into something that's good or something that's for the betterment of others. But I mean, if it could be for the betterment of yourself in any way, shape or form and whatever that looks like, because it doesn't have to be this big grand scale, which I have had to learn that lesson too very many times. It doesn't have to be this really big thing. It could literally just be that I get to enjoy my tea in a more peaceful way today. That's right. 00:29:48 Well, and just a quick follow up of what you were saying. People expect instant gratification and they sign up for a course and they want this immediate result. And when I work with my clients, especially the athletes that I work with, I tell them, like, just try to get 1% better every day or even 1% better every week, depending on where you are and what you're trying to accomplish. Right. Just 1%. 00:30:17 Because people are like, they just want it now. And things don't work that way because it's all compounded. Right. So if you look at it 30 days from now and you try to get 1% better every week, 30 days from now, even though that may be 1% each week, that's compounded. So you're going to. 00:30:36 See a lot more results. That's a beautiful way to put it, Sandy. Thank you. Yes, well, we're almost out of time, but can you just give the audience a glimpse of what you're doing right now? Because I know you're doing a show in Vegas, and can you just tell us a little bit about that and how long you're going to be in that particular show? 00:30:55 Well, I perform at a I don't know how to describe it. It's a really cool space, actually. It's a distillery. It's an immersive cirque experience, and it involves a lot of things. It's a very whimsical place. 00:31:12 It's called the lost spirits distillery. It's within a complex called Area 15 here in Vegas. It's off the Strip and it's fabulous. It's got a lot of burlesque in it. It's got magicians in it. 00:31:24 It has a little bit of dinner in there. It's got a little bit for everybody. It's very dark, it's very bordello. It's kind of cabaretish, and it's like my favorite version of performances. And so I'm a resident performer there. 00:31:36 I perform nightly five to six days a week, and I've been working there now for nearly a year, and we'll see how long I stay. Okay, so it's indefinite right now? Definite right now, yes. I'm not like, in a short term contract or I'm not gigging, as we say in our circus world right now, or in our circuspreneurship or our circuspreneur environment, where you can just be kind of going from show to show. I've got a steady gig, which is fantastic. 00:32:06 And so it's a whole lot of Cirque du Soleil people there where it's exercise, lay people, it's people that still actually work for Cirque du Soleil. Some people have multiple jobs here in Vegas, so they go and they work at Cirque du Soleil on certain days, and they come and they work at the distillery on other days. So it's a beautiful melting pot of artistry and circusing. I love it. Now, where can everyone find you on social media? 00:32:32 You can find me at Shenea Stiletto, on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Twitter, on LinkedIn. You can also look for my Live Like an Acrobat podcast, which is where I explore all things circuspreneurship. Circuspreneurs, the advocacy work that I do, high performance athletics or athletics that I kind of delve into and explore weekly, sometimes biweekly. I also work for Circus Talk, which is the biggest circus network in the world. And I have a series, Think Like an Acrobat there, too, where I teach the business side of being a circuspreneur. 00:33:11 And I break that down with amazing professionals from all over the world. And we source each and every single topic that you can imagine within this environment, and we see how we can do it better and how we can be more savvy. And I'm also on YouTube at Shenea Stiletto as well. And, yes, thank you so much for having me, Sandy, for tuning in and listening. Thank you. 00:33:36 Thank you so much. I hope I get an opportunity to come and see your show when I'm in Vegas next week, so fingers crossed and I will certainly let you know. And thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And thank you to all the listeners that joined in today. 00:33:50 Thank you so much. Sandy, it's been a pleasure. 00:34:04 I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me and as always, ways. I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care everyone.