Oct. 14, 2025
Healing Through Art: Elizabeth Jane's Journey from Heartbreak to Empowerment
Send us a text In this inspiring episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we welcome emotional well-being expert, artist, keynote speaker, and author Elizabeth Jane. After facing a shocking divorce after 25 years of marriage, Elizabeth transformed her personal struggles into a powerful tool for uplifting others. Living in Sydney, Australia, she shares her journey of resilience and creativity, discussing how her experiences led her to explore various modalities of healing and self-improveme...
In this inspiring episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we welcome emotional well-being expert, artist, keynote speaker, and author Elizabeth Jane. After facing a shocking divorce after 25 years of marriage, Elizabeth transformed her personal struggles into a powerful tool for uplifting others. Living in Sydney, Australia, she shares her journey of resilience and creativity, discussing how her experiences led her to explore various modalities of healing and self-improvement. Elizabeth's book, "Free and First: Unlocking Your Ultimate Life," serves as a toolkit for anyone navigating challenges, whether they be health-related, financial, or emotional. She emphasizes the importance of self-love, setting boundaries, and the transformative power of creativity, including her newfound passion for painting. Join us as Elizabeth offers practical tips for overcoming self-doubt, fostering healthy relationships, and embracing vulnerability without oversharing. This episode is a heartfelt reminder that healing and joy are possible, no matter the circumstances. Tune in to discover how to elevate your life and reconnect with your true self.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by emotional well being expert artists, keynote speaker and author Elizabeth Jane. Elizabeth is going to be talking about her personal struggle and how she is using that to help uplift people. she faced a divorce after 25 years of marriage and she's going to, as I said, use that personal struggle to help people who might be going through things. You know, we got a lot going on in the world today so we're going to be talking to her about everything that she's up to. So Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining m me.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Oh that's my pleasure Curtis. Thank you for having me.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Okay. Well, I live here in Sydney, Australia and have four adult children. And I thought I had, you know, we had the picket fence and the lovely home and healthy children and everything was rocking along really well. and then I went through a divorce that came as a total shock. after 25 years. We'd been humming along and I didn't see it coming and it really was a really big curveball for me. Curtis. it set me back and I'd always been very much an optimist and into uplifting people and I couldn't believe how low I felt fell. and I just felt discarded and I went through all the, the roller coaster of emotions and that got me organically, journaling and exploring different modalities as to ways people can lift into a better place through well any trauma. Whether it's a health challenge or a relationship challenge or, or even a financial challenge. My book is really a toolkit to sort of help you not only get through the challenge but to actually see the challenge, doesn't come initially for most people, but see the challenges and opportunity to really power up and to take the reins on your life and yeah, optimize it in all areas. health and wealth, relationships. So and so when, when I started to uplift my life, I thought well I really wanted to, to get the word out to help people. Initially it was just my friends and children and people I met.
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> Elizabeth Jane>But I realized it had a much bigger audience and which was the world. and so hence I, my book is of going into second edition, be put into different languages, on and on audible, and that's why I volunteer with podcasts, and radio interviews, around the world.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Yes, well, you also are an artist, so kind of, kind of tell people about that.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Yes, well, the painting was new to me, Curtis. It came as, a way of helping me to heal. because as one of the major tools in my book is actually being able to not get lost in your. Your thoughts.
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> Elizabeth Jane>and often they're negative thoughts if you're not feeling good. and one easy way is to actually bring yourself into the present by, a, hobby that you enjoy or, that really brings you. It can be anything. It could be stamp collecting. It doesn't really matter. But for me, I threw myself into paint, even though I hadn't allowed myself to draw or paint at school because my parents said, well, you're clever. You can't do those subjects you're doing. You're doing physics, you're doing physics and chemistry. And so, on the, May 2019, I dived, so to speak, into painting. And it was really.
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> Elizabeth Jane>It's sort of like unlocking the creativity within you. it's the connection to, your truth of you.
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> Elizabeth Jane>and that can come through in, in writing or, Well, any artistic, you know, talent or, Yeah, any.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Anything really. Anything that's creative can. You can. If you just ignore the mind. You have to ignore the mind. Because my mind was saying as I walked into the painting room for the first time, my. My mind was saying, what are you doing here?
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> Elizabeth Jane>You're going to look like the circus clown. You don't know how to paint. My teacher bought my paints and my canvases and I looked around and everyone seemed to know what they were doing. And I felt a bit silly. and if I hadn't sort of pushed through that and gone, well, I'm just going to pretend I'm a child and have a go. Have a go. And My first painting that I ever painted is the front cover of my book. the, Which you can see on my website in full. But it's, It's yeah, the lotus.
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> Elizabeth Jane>The lotus flower. and I didn't know that the paintings that I was painting would, nicely sort of fit the. The chapters of my book to reinforce the tools that I was talking about. I didn't know that at the time. And then it was just like, oh, gosh, this second painting goes here. And my first 13 paintings, went into my book, which was. Which was a was a big surprise. Yes.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, for anybody who might be going through self doubt, emotional pain or feel overwhelmed right now, give them some best practice tips on how they can lift themselves up and reconnect with real joy.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Yes, yes, a very, very good question Curtis, because that's what it's all about. And at the beginning when I couldn't get out of bed, when you, when you can't, you know, and I must say here that I'm not a health practitioner. So if your listeners are in a bad place, please make sure that you're seeking health, you know, health advice as well, medical advice. But if you are going back to when I was in a bad place, I would literally have a list, a go to list, near, on the fridge, on the mirror in the bathroom about things that would uplift me, my 1010 things, you know, that would sort of, sort of jump me out of the gloom and doom where I had was just spiraling down with my thoughts. and once I realized that my thoughts weren't really, they weren't really helpful, I became more aware and I would jump start myself back into bringing myself into the powerful present. and energize myself that way rather than getting lost in the, what I call the shame blame game, you know, where you sort of, you know, you're going over and over and over about the problem and it just, it just takes you down, takes you down further or fearing the future. So going into the past or the future, sometimes we do it unconsciously. But if we're not feeling good, it's often because we've gone there, we've gone into the, the past, the should have, could have, would have, the regret, the shame, the blame, the judgment. Or we've gone into the fearing the future. What do I do now? So that was my first tool that I would have of reaching for my list of things that brought me joy to snap me out of my mood so to speak, or my, all my thoughts that were overtaking me. Even though we can't be aware of our thoughts because apparently we have 60,000 thoughts a day. So the only way we can keep track of our thoughts is how we feel.
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> Elizabeth Jane>And that brings me to my second point which is really, really important because we're in such a fast, fast world right now. We're stimulated with you know, we're all busy working, some of us are busy, you know, trying not to think about our problems by busy partying, busy shopping, whatever we're Busy with. The problem with this is it's counterproductive. It's counterproductive to us feeling how we feel. And that is the key to actually stop and to feel how we feel. Because if we can't feel how we feel then we can't and feel it actually in our close, close our eyes and actually feel it. Not just in, you know, we feel it in our body. You know, we can feel the heartache or we can feel the anger brimming or we can feel the unworthiness or we can feel whatever it is, the loneliness. And that's a really important thing to do to start that energy or that, that, that heavy, heavy emotion to be able to be, to move through us like a, like a dog will shake. A dog will shake when it gets into fear. It will just shake and the, and the energy just sort of like moves on. But we're sort of often where we've, we're sort of programmed, who have been programmed to not, you know, shed a tear or we can't be angry here. You know, we can't be angry.
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> Elizabeth Jane>and so it's really how we can learn to actually first stop and feel into our emotions. And I've got another tool which is related to this. It's the ABC of me. So you stop and A, you acknowledge, allow and accept. They're the A's. Acknowledge, allow and accept how we feel. So we just name it, we call it out. Oh yeah, hey, look at this. I'm really angry here. I'm really angry. And then what do we do with this anger? Well it's energy. We can actually, you know, we can have a road rage concept and, and have a bit of a biffo with the person that we're angry with. but that really just makes us feel worse. it energizes the negative energy. and there's a no win situation there. Or we can hold it in, which is not good because you know, holding, holding, restraining emotion within us is, you know, doctors are cottoning on that it's not a good thing to hold on to emotion. So we really need to work the middle road and we need to feel A, acknowledge, allow and accept how we feel.
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> Elizabeth Jane>And then we need B to work out what we need and set a boundary. Hey, no, I really don't like that lid being off the toothpaste. and is it possible the lid can be put on and this is my boundary, you know, and affirming a boundary, and standing Up.
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> Elizabeth Jane>And C is the abc. C is the communication. Because the communication of how we communicate have that empowered conversation, is really key to being able to free ourselves of the. That awful, you know, what we think is an awful feeling that's holding us back, holding us down, holding us from moving on, holding us from being, you know, enjoy and free. So yes, the ABC of me, to be free was a tool that I started to practice with, and have empowered conversations with my children and you know, my work colleagues. and you can. And it takes practice and it takes, It takes a lot of vulnerability if you're not used to speaking about how you. You feel. And It takes a lot of courage to stand up. if. Especially if. Well, like me. I was in my relationship, I was in the people pleasing category. So to learn to stand up and to stand up about what I needed, and to set those boundaries was a real learning curve. At first it was sort of like I, I was very. I was too passive or I would say say nothing about it and you know, keep the peace and carry on. Know all that sort of jargon that is sometimes thrown about, you know, oh, she's, she's easygoing, she's peace, peacemaker, peacekeeper. I think that's the difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker.
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> Elizabeth Jane>A peacemaker I see as powerful because that's when you're standing up and speaking your truth and in your authentic power. So, Whereas a peace, keeper can often just let the problem lie and not be looked at, which can cause a rippling effect to relationships wherever. Whatever relationship that is, whether it's with your boss or colleague or child or partner.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, speaking of relationships, why do so many people feel anxious, unloved or unworthy in relationships? And what is the first step to regaining that confidence and to where they can get to the point to where they can have a respectful relationship?
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> Elizabeth Jane>Yes. Well, Curtius, that's a really good question.
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> Elizabeth Jane>I, I believe it. Life is a mirror. And so, you know, with so much, so many challenging situations worldwide and even within, you know, within the household, challenging situations where people are not feeling supported, not feeling uplifted, it really starts. It's an inside job. It starts with you. It starts with you. And then once you start to work on. In my book, my book is really, done in a very simplistic way because, you know, when people are going through challenges, it can be too much to be too profuse. You know, I didn't want to have something. So I have a whole chapter on self care. It's about, it starts with you. You have to start your own self watering system of self love.
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> Elizabeth Jane>You have to start acknowledging that you're, you're enough. You know, that's, you know that's the sort of a phrase that's sort of around, around with psychologists. And you have to start realizing that if you don't, if you disrespect you, what will happen is others will come and disrespect you. So if you. So it's, it's, it's really getting your internal landscape up, up to scratch. As when you love and respect yourself, you will find that the external reality of life will pick up and you will have more respect and more love come, come your way. So it's also to do with lifting our vibe. so as we process the heavy emotions we allow space to lift our consciousness or our level of understanding. And that makes way for more supportive relationships and yes, you know, higher, higher vibrational opportunities.
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> Elizabeth Jane>And so it's really important. It's an inside job.
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> Elizabeth Jane>It's a matter of okay, what's holding me back? Am I holding any grudges? There's the whole chapter on forgiveness as Nelson Mandela said. Okay, what did he say? He said non forgiveness. He said resentment is like drinking poison yourself and expecting your enemy to die. So the non forgiveness is worse for you, can be worse for you. So again forgiving, looking at your relationships, if there's anyone that you're holding grudges with that can really lighten your load and make you feel a lot lighter and happier and more enjoy than carrying around the weight of a grudge or non forgiveness. so that doesn't mean we're condoning their behavior, does not mean that at all. It means that we're accepting that that's the best that they can do at their level of understanding at their, where they're at, where they're at with their consciousness. And that's you do, they can do them, but you do you and so you, you forgive them. but it might mean severing that relationship if it's not supportive for you.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>M. Well let's talk about heartbreak, rejection and failure. How can people look past that when they face it to get to the deeper lessons so they can learn from them and grow.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Yes. So it's really hard at the time when you accept experience heartbreak in whatever form it comes in you Know, whatever form, but if you can stand back from it. And it, it took me a long time for this. it's not an overnight wonder, but if you can stand back and say well what. What have I got?
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> Elizabeth Jane>What. What's the lesson here? What, what's what.
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> Elizabeth Jane>What am I meant to learn from this? You know, how can. Because if we're, if we're attracting a certain person into our life that doesn't respect us and then we don't learn the lesson of how to respect ourselves and to stand up for their behavior, we tend to, we may get rid of that disrespecting partner or but then we are likely to get another one in their place. So, so for heartbreak we really need to look at. Okay, where have I, you know, it's pointing the finger at the person is and judging them is not really. It's a two way tango. If you allow bad behavior, if you enable it, well you're party to it. So you really need to look at what your role was in, in the situation. so here we'd like. We're talking about a relationship that's broken down.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Was I speaking my truth? Was I standing up for me?
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> Elizabeth Jane>Was I loving myself enough to say well this behavior is not on and this can't go on and to set boundaries or was I sort of just hopping and walking around on eggshells hoping it would go away? Or, or I was to blame, which is quite a common one. I was somehow to blame for the behavior that came my way. that's. It's much better to step back from it and work out what's causing this behavior to come my way. and to look at it and be constructive of how to go forward with Well the ABC of me is a very good tool to implement with that.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Talk about the difference between vulnerability and emotional oversharing, you know, especially in regards to, you know, trying to build trust in a new relationship.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Yes, yes. Well, I think how, you know, it's easy to say oh, that person's too emotional. For me it was like, oh, it's like. So we have to have the vulnerability to speak how we feel. And that allows the heavy emotion to move on as I said earlier. So it allows it to sort of be processed and move on. And you need to be present and fully present with how you feel in your body and for this to happen. but what happens is the over sharing is when you know, you might do your exercise class. You know, I often see it where you know, women or men will go to you know, the gym or to yoga and then they're doing all the good work to help loosen themselves up and to feel good. and then they'll go to the coffee shop and then they'll talk about the job, the drama. They'll overshare and they'll go over and over and over about the drama which I've touched on before. And that does not, that does not lift anyone. It's, it's actually energizes the negativity. The, the negative makes a big bomb of negative energy. that doesn't inspire, doesn't lift, it doesn't allow growth and upliftment to any, anyone or anything.
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> Elizabeth Jane>So, so that's the over sharing. That's what I'd like to sort of say going over and over and over and big, big noting judging the, judging the complaining and everything that comes with, with that is. Is counterproductive to actually lifting yourself into a, ah, not only a better place but a very much more powerful place where you, you can, you can learn to be seen and heard for, for who, who you are. Which is an amazing, an amazing person for who you are. I mean we're. Everyone is unique on this planet. How many billion people we are. I mean that's just. Everyone all got a different thumbprint and we all can offer the world something very very potent that no one else can offer. So we're all very, very special.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to be aware of.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Yes, well, I am just about to launch the second edition of my book. So my book at the moment is.
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> Elizabeth Jane>It's called Free and First putting yourself First Free and First unlocking your ultimate life. And it's available on my website ElizabethJane.com and then you need.au for Australia so it's ElizabethJane.com and then my second edition book will be hopefully at some stage available in all other languages and on Audible. I'm holding that vision because it's it. It's a real toolkit. It's a manual to. You can actually open the book on any page and find something that will really uplift you and put you in a, In a, in a place that you feel powered up and happy to but face the day ahead and the future in a You know, you know like excited about the future rather than being held back.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well you just put out your website.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Elizabethjane.comau so close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Yes, well, anything to lift your vibe is, is to take your, your. Your vibration to. To go up. is.
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> Elizabeth Jane>Is. Is choose that, this choice point every moment of the day. We can choose something that makes us feel good, or we can choose something that hurts us. So keep choosing. You know, gratitude, there's a lot of things about gratitude. If you wake up in the morning and you can think of three things to be grateful of, it puts you on in a really good space to face the day. And then when we're feeling bad during the day, just take a reset, go to the bathroom, put your feet on the grass. Just take two minutes of time to deep breathe and to bring yourself fully back into the present by concentrating on your breathing or the sights and sounds around you and your whole parasympathetic nervous system will be, will thank you. And you'll feel less stressed and have more clarity and, more power to. To face what's ahead for you.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth jane.comau go check out her book. Check out everything that she's up to and gonna be up to.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Follow Rate, Review Share this episode to as many people as possible. You know, a lot of people are going through hard times. There's a lot of stuff going on, so they could definitely benefit from this message. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and for more information and leave any suggestions or feedback or anybody want to be a guest out there. If you got a story to share, visit www.craveball337.com thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Elizabeth, thank you for all that you do to make the world a better place. And thank you for joining me.
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> Elizabeth Jane>thanks, Kirst. Thank you for having me on. Hope you have a wonderful day.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit www.craveballah337.com until next time, keep living the Dr.
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