Welcome back to another episode of The Amberly Lago Show! Today I'm sitting down with the incredible Cristina Simmons, bestselling author of Eat Your Feelings, TEDx speaker, occupational therapist, and someone who has transformed tremendous pain into purpose.
Cristina's story is one of resilience, trauma recovery, faith, grief, and finding your purpose. She opens up about experiencing the loss of children, challenges in her marriage, cancer, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and raising an adopted son with autism. For years, Cristina describes feeling disconnected from herself and living life on autopilot until she realized she needed to come home to herself and rebuild her relationship with God.
We talk about what helped Cristina move from simply surviving to actually living again. One of her first steps was surprisingly simple but incredibly difficult: looking herself in the eyes in the mirror. As she began reconnecting with herself and writing her story, she started recognizing not only everything she had survived, but the strength it had taken to keep moving forward.
Cristina also shares her family's experience with autism and sensory processing. After struggling to find the support her son needed, she went back to school and earned her master's degree in occupational therapy so she could better understand his brain and sensory system. That knowledge ultimately changed the way she parented and brought greater grace and understanding into her entire family.
We also dive into the message behind her bestselling book, Eat Your Feelings, and the connection between emotional eating and unprocessed emotions. Cristina shares the moment she found herself standing in the pantry and realized, I'm not hungry. I'm sad. Instead of processing difficult emotions, she had been trying to soothe them with food.
Cristina shares practical ways she began changing those patterns through awareness, breathwork, walking, prayer, meditation, nervous system regulation, and simply learning to sit with uncomfortable feelings instead of immediately trying to escape them.
If you've ever felt like you're living on autopilot, numbing difficult emotions, afraid to share your story, or wondering whether your hardest experiences could ever have a greater purpose, this conversation is a reminder that your pain doesn't have to be the end of your story. Healing can begin with reconnecting with yourself, asking for help, using your voice, and believing that there can still be joy on the other side.
We Discuss:
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Cristina's journey from trauma and survival mode to purpose and confidence
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Finding the courage to share your story when you're afraid of judgment or failure
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Rebuilding your relationship with yourself and with God
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The mirror work that helped Cristina reconnect with herself
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Grief after losing children and learning to give yourself grace
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Adoption, motherhood, and raising a child diagnosed with autism
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Why Cristina became an occupational therapist to better understand her son's needs
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Autism, sensory overload, and understanding the behavior behind the behavior
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Marriage struggles, infidelity, forgiveness, and rebuilding together
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Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and living in a dysregulated nervous system
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What it means to live on autopilot or feel disconnected from your life
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Simple tools for nervous system regulation, including breathwork, nature, movement, and community
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Emotional eating and recognizing when you're eating feelings rather than physical hunger
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Sitting with difficult emotions instead of numbing or avoiding them
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Replacing old coping mechanisms with healthier responses
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Why Cristina now runs toward difficult things instead of away from them
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Finding confidence through doing hard things
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Using your voice and story to help other women feel less alone
Timestamps:
00:00 Preview: confidence, overcoming fear, and coming home to yourself
01:00 Introduction to Cristina Simmons and turning pain into purpose
04:00 Cristina's turning point and realizing she was meant for more
07:00 The power of community, connection, and surrounding yourself with big dreamers
10:00 Overcoming fear and finding the confidence to share your story
13:00 Mirror work and rebuilding a relationship with yourself
16:00 Writing Eat Your Feelings and turning your story into a message of hope
19:00 Grief, losing children, adoption, and finding purpose through pain
22:00 Raising a son with autism and becoming an occupational therapist
25:00 Understanding sensory overload, behavior, and giving yourself more grace
27:00 Marriage struggles, trauma, anxiety, depression, and living on autopilot
30:00 Emotional eating, nervous system regulation, healthier coping tools, TEDx, and finding the courage to use your voice
To Connect with Cristina Simmons:
Instagram
@cristinapsimmons
Website
cristinapsimmons.com
Facebook
Cristina Simmons on Facebook
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