Episode 012: Natalie Vartanian: When Everything Looks Perfect … But you Answer the Call of the Soul
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Dawn Gluskin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Bare Naked Radio. I am your host, Dawn Gluskin. Today, I am so excited to welcome Natalie Vartanian to the show. A mutual friend of ours connected us and it feels already like we’re long lost soul sisters. So we’re going to have a great conversation today. We’re going to be talking about sex and mysticism and all kinds of good stuffs. Hello Natalie.
Natalie Vartanian: Hello everyone!
Dawn Gluskin: So excited to have you here. We’re just having a really great conversation before the show. So really excited to share with you. For those of you that don’t know Natalie, she is a certified life coach, a relationship expert, business strategist, writer, teacher, and all around provocateur. Her biggest goal is for people to create life their way in whatever way turns them on. Natalie’s working on self-publishing her first book about her sexual escapades and revolutions. That’s going to be very interesting. I’m looking forward to reading. It will be out later this year at the end of 2018. So yay! That’s exciting! Let’s just get right into it. How we usually like to start this show is with a little bit of storytelling. For those who aren’t familiar with your work and who you are, if you could just give us a little bit of your background: how did you get into the world of healing and you do some tarot work and, of course sex is becoming a big part of your message and how that book chose you. If you could just talk a little bit about your journey.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah, I definitely went the route of high school, immediately go to college, and start working during college. I had these like big plans for how I was going to make a lot of money and have a house. I like to say I was fully bought into the American Dream even though that wasn’t my soul. My soul was always kind of rebellious and I’m fascinated by mystical things and fairies and other worldly things, but very rooted in our reality, especially in the United States. I spent my twenties very much with the question of, “Why am I hear, what am I doing with my life?” Even though I had good jobs and I had great friends and, even at some point, I got the fiance and we bought a house together and I was an “Instamom”, because he had kids. On paper, everything looked perfect in some ways. Not that it didn’t have its struggles, but in a lot of ways, I was the epitome of success for a lot of people. I did. I loved my partner. There were things I enjoyed about my job and what I was doing. I went to Leadership Weekend and it just changed everything because it just had me clued into all these dreams that I had for myself. I’m, like, “I’m not doing any of them. We’re not traveling the way that I always thought I was going to travel. I’m not writing, I’m not…” My soul didn’t feel free.
Dawn Gluskin: I think so many people can relate to that because it’s on the outside in, everything looks picture perfect. On the inside, there there’s this longing, like, there’s something more. And then I don’t know if this was your experience, but with a lot of other people, it’s like they almost feel bad for wanting more, like, “Why can’t I just be happy? I have the perfect life. Other people would kill for this life.”
Natalie Vartanian: Totally. Yeah. “I should be counting my lucky stars, I should be on my knees every night, praying for this amazing life that I have.” And then there’s guilt with that. This guilty of, “Why can’t I just be happy with what I have?” Which is painful. It’s a very painful, lonely place, and shameful place to be. Talk about another taboo place of, like, “Everything is good. What are you complaining about? You shouldn’t be complaining about your life.” This Leadership Weekend just kind of blew everything open. Shortly after in my situation, I kinda had to blow up my life in order for it to change because it was so rooted and deep in everything that I didn’t want for myself. I moved and I separated from my partner at the time. I started working remote. Soon after I looked into coaching and, or even going back to school. I was just, like, “What do I want to do with my life that feels more “me” and more aligned in my purpose – that I have a reason to be here, that feels good for me?” That became my question. It was a quest at that point.
Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. Sometimes you have to kind of burn it all down to get to that fertile ground that you can re-create yourself from. To your point, a lot of people do feel that guilt when they have the outside looking in, it looks so perfect and then “Why can’t I just be happy?” But really, what you need to know about that, and for anyone that’s listening and going through that, is what’s happening as your soul is speaking to you and your soul knows that you’re here for a higher purpose and for another reason. It’s gently giving you that discomfort, giving you those feelings to lead you and to guide you, to have you get curious and say, “Okay, why am I not happy?” Just start asking those questions and guilt aside, “Why am I not happy?” and just start getting curious about that. Which it sounds like you did. You did burn it all down.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah. And it took a while to realize that even that place is not a bad place because then I judged myself for being unhappy. I was just, like, “Ugh! What’s wrong with me? Why am I always so sad or unhappy happy or not fully happy?”
Dawn Gluskin: Our emotions really are just information.
Natalie Vartanian: Well yeah, they’re just pointers. They’re just, like, “Hello! Hi! Look at me.”
Dawn Gluskin: I’ve got something to tell you!
Natalie Vartanian: Exactly. “Be Curious about me.” They’re like little kids, pulling at your clothes until you just turn around and you’re, like, “Oh hey, hi, how’s it going?”
Dawn Gluskin: I love that metaphor. “Listen to me, Mom.”
Natalie Vartanian: Right. And they get louder and louder and louder. Sometimes it does and I think – we were talking about this earlier. “The call” “The voice”. Sometimes it is just the faintest of whispers.
Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, starts out that way.
Natalie Vartanian: It does, it starts out that way and when we become more tuned, we can hear them and act on them, but when we’re not, it’s like we have a bunch of heavy duty earplugs. It has to get louder and louder.
Dawn Gluskin: Then all hell breaks loose.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah. Sometimes it does. It needs to, for us to pay attention and to wake up.
Dawn Gluskin: Your version of that was the feelings of “I’m not happy with this settled life.” Your pivotal moment was going to that leadership training and it woke something up in you, which is cool because a lot of people will stay asleep, even though they have those whispers and there’s things that are pointing. And then sometimes, we will do our whole life that way. If we don’t have the universal two by four over the head that wakes us up, we end up at our death bed saying, “You know, I wish I had lived a life true to myself, instead of one others had wished for me.” So we are the blessed, the lucky ones that have these sort of life-altering experiences that wake us up while we’re still here.
Natalie Vartanian: It had to be a life-altering one. Actually, something I realized as we were talking, Daw, was that – I mean I’m one of those people that was a reading self-help books from when I was 18. So it’s not like I wasn’t exposed to this stuff, but it’s kind of different. I was ingesting it and definitely was doing small things in my life and thinking these questions and being aware of, but I still found myself firmly in that groove of the kind of life that we’re conditioned to live and not ask about. So yeah, I did need the two by four. I did need to go to this leadership training, this transformational weekend and have it all in my face, so neon bright that I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Dawn Gluskin: What was it like deciding to leave your relationship and your home, basically starting your whole life over. I’m sure it’s scary. How did you get through that?
Natalie Vartanian: It was super scary. Luckily at that time, I had started to collect people that were really for me and for my happiness and for my dreams.
Dawn Gluskin: I love that, “collect”. I’m an awesome person collector, too. It’s great.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah. At that point, I had started doing that and even had that moment of having to do an evaluation and clean house with even the people in my life. “Are they for me? Are they for my dreams? Are they going to encourage me if I have a crazy thought, like, ‘I want to move to northern California.’ Are they going to say, ‘Yeah, fuck yeah. Follow your dreams and I’ll come visit you’ versus ‘Why are you leaving me?'” I still remember a conversation where I was talking with a friend about moving. I’m, like, “I don’t know anyone up there.” And she’s, like, “Natalie, you do not have a hard time meeting friends. Of course you’re going to find friends.” She was just so encouraging and loving with me.
Dawn Gluskin: That’s a keeper.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah, she was, it was really sweet and I felt really blessed to have that. Once I decided each of the things – it was very fast when I decided about my relationship, it was probably like a week or two later when I decided about moving. I was from So Cal to Nor Cal in about a month, month and a half. It was very clear. The energy was very clear where I wanted me to go and I wasn’t fighting it anymore.
Dawn Gluskin: How that happens once you decide on something and the universe conspires. I think that was from The Alchemist. When you make a decision that whole universe conspires and works with you. It’s like, “Okay, she made the decision, she listened to the sign, she’s doing that. We’re going to help her and support her.” And then it all starts to come together. And the fear, the fog lifts.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah, it does. It does. It is a very magical, mystical place. And I think this is the part where it is hard to believe that that’s true when you’ve never lived like that before. I remember feeling like, “Is it really going to show up if I jump? Everyone says this, but I mean it’s a lot of work to then have to pick up my life after falling flat on my face.” There were just so many things. I’m just such a planner and a logistical person and I want to make sure Plans B, C, and D are in place, before it happens and there’s some merit to that, right? Just think about all your options and do your homework and have some kind of contingency plans in place. But those then stop you a lot of times from even doing plan A because you’re so busy planning B, C, D, E, F, whatever.
Dawn Gluskin: From an energetic perspective, too, it sounds like a confused, mixed message out into the universe. It’s, like, “Okay, I’m all in, I’m going to do this, but in case it doesn’t work, I got all these backup plans.” It’s, like, “Well, do you want it to work or not? Because if you want it to work, put all of your energy into it working.” And then maybe have a little backup plan in the back of your head, but you’re right, if you’re so rigid and have all those plans of it not working, then it’s probably not gonna work because that’s what you created.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah, because we’ve fragmented ourselves. We are splitting our energy in that way and it is hard to do a lot of things really well versus a couple of things or one thing really, really well. Just focusing that energy and in that way, I did have to burn that bridge. I was, like, “I’m moving. I’m not just separating and I’m not just leaving my job but I’m moving.” I have done a couple of times where I’ve moved and it’s failed and I’ve had to come back. That’s life. But I think with each time we do, that muscle gets stronger to make bold moves.
Dawn Gluskin: I think everything’s serving always. Even a “failure”. It could have felt like a failure in the moment, but I’m sure it taught you what you needed to know or unwrapped something for you or there’s something that happened with each of those moves even though it might have seemed like a failure on the surface. That’s also getting curious, getting curious about a fear of failure. So it’s, like, “Okay, failure, what are you trying to tell me?” Then you learn for the next time: what you do like, what you don’t like, what works, what doesn’t, and you adjust.
Natalie Vartanian: For me, I know that I value adventure and learning, in the sense that, at least I tried. At least I’m not gonna wonder later: “What if? What if I didn’t make that move to Austin for the boyfriend. What if I had actually gone after that career I dreamed about?” instead of sitting with those questions – Yeah, I did it and I tried and I gave it my everything and we decided to complete. And I don’t have to have that regret for the rest of my life.
Dawn Gluskin: At least, you know. At least you tried. At least you’re in action. That’s what I tell people. Just get into action. Don’t worry about if it’s right or wrong. Just do something. Don’t just stand there. Take some action. There is no right or wrong. Just know that if you’re moving – all roads lead home sort of thing. But you have to be in motion and you can’t just stand in one spot. So once you’re out there in action, things start happening. I also wanted to come back to something you said earlier, too, was that you had started reading the self-help books at age 18 and even though you had read them, you still went through the struggle. I felt like in you saying that, there were little seeds being planted and I’m pointing this out so people know that if you’re doing the work and it doesn’t feel like you’re progressing or transforming or are getting where you want to be, it’s working on some level, even at a subconscious level. Because reading all those books, starting at age 18, probably helped you build an awareness muscle that helped you say, “Okay, this is not the life I want. I need to take action and start it over.” Where most people would just keep going and be unhappy and that would turn into illness and that would turn into depression and anger. You know, all these things. But you had some level of subconscious awareness that you’re, like, “No, I need to do something drastic.”
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah, definitely. And I’m so grateful for that because you’re right, it becomes fertile ground to for the seeds that you then want to plant because you’ve just – We’re working on the environment so that when the seeds get planted, they have the best chance of blooming and thriving. Or even just even just coming out of the ground. Whereas they would probably would not have before if we didn’t have that awareness, if you didn’t have those mindsets, if we didn’t have that even belief that we could even try.
Dawn Gluskin: And that fear of failing or not, making the wrong decision or “I’m gonna regret this.” I think most people just regret not trying versus doing that crazy thing. The crazy thing always serves in the long run. If you had a client that you’re working with right now in a similar situation and they just come out and they’re, like, “Natalie, from the outside in everything looks amazing, but for some reason, there’s something inside of me that’s not happy. My whole life, I’m questioning everything.” What do you tell them? What do they do? What kind of advice would you give, for our listeners now?
Natalie Vartanian: I feel like that’s when so many of my clients. So much of my question at that point becomes: what part of you believes that you can’t have the kind of life that you truly want.
Dawn Gluskin: That’s a great question.
Natalie Vartanian: And what is that life that you truly want? If you didn’t have to worry about anybody else, if you didn’t have to worry about disciplining anyone, if you didn’t have to worry about hurting anyone or abandoning anyone or all of those places where we feel that our life is so tied to everybody else’s life. Just untangle for a moment and give yourself the space to just think: what would I want my life to look and feel like?
Dawn Gluskin: That’s a great question to start with. Yeah. ‘Cause then we release all of those limiting beliefs. You release all of those stories, those judgments. You are the creator of your reality, which by the way, you are, what would you create? Such a good question to ponder. On this show we always like to talk about heartaches and struggle. Something that goes on in the world is a lot of times people will put out their highlights reel. Because we just want people to like us and accept us. Don’t judge us. Just put your best face on and go out and face the world. But behind the scenes, we’re all human. We’ve all had our share of heartache, “failures”, all of that good stuff. But it’s so inspiring to hear what other people have been through and how they have coped with it. So what is something that’s coming to mind for you that you’ve struggled with in your life and then found a way to overcome it?
Natalie Vartanian: I feel like there’s several. For me, a lot of it has been around family. Again, my situation – my dad was in and out of our lives growing up and then he committed suicide when I was nine. So it’s been in this place of thinking – definitely has me wonder why are we here, why are we alive, what has us live lives that we feel are happy and fulfilled and purposeful. What separates some people from just living and kind of sleepwalking and suffering and others that choose, “I just don’t want to be here.” For whatever reason, some souls just don’t want to be here. Even to separate that from that a little bit. It’s been a long time for me to get to this place, I guess detached, where I can look at it from his perspective or someone’s perspective and not have it deeply impact me. I feel a lot. I’m sure a lot of your listeners are deeply empathic. We feel people. If someone’s around you that you can tell is sad or you can tell is having a rough time, we feel it. That’s been a big lesson for me. Even just this past weekend, I was at a workshop supporting men. I was, like, “I just want to practice what is it like for me to just be in my experience in my body? If I am happy and someone around me sad, can I maintain my happiness and still feel for their sadness? Can I do that?”
Dawn Gluskin: That’s really a superpower to be able to do that. To be able to just be with whatever feelings come up, whether it’s ours or other people and not becoming so attached to them. Not falling down the rabbit hole, so to speak, but just being in the moment. Obviously what you dealt with as a nine year old is so traumatic and then I’m sure it’s showed up in a lot of places in your life, but it sounds like you were able to turn that pain into power in a sense. Being able to connect with people deeply, being able to savor the moment, follow your passions. It’s all in the higher good sense of the experience. Do you see those as gifts that have come out of that?
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah, and this is why I’m so grateful for the kind of work that I do with people that I have done with me. I mean, I definitely attend workshops and I definitely go to therapy and I definitely have coaches and people to help me, guides to help me on this path and to help reframe a lot of this stuff. Because I mean, I could have been one of those people that became a drug addict and/or was heavily medicated or just was having a really, really robotic life. I could have been that. Given my circumstances, I definitely could’ve been that person. I’ve seen those people, who weren’t able to cope in some ways or learn or heal. I feel so grateful that I’ve been on that path and I have those guides and I can sit here now and feel into – wow, I’m so much more empathic of a person because of what happened growing up. I am much more of a cheerleader for people’s most turned on lives because of what happened. Because I saw what happened with my dad, who in a lot of ways I intuit that he was a tortured soul, that he was an artist that wasn’t able to express, that he had so many dreams that he probably wanted to live that he couldn’t.
Dawn Gluskin: Now that’s fuel for you as part of your life purpose, your mission, how you serve and help other people. To your point, too, it’s not easy to do the work. I mean, doing the work, looking at our achievements, peeling back the layers, getting to the root core of our trauma. That’s not easy. It’s so much easier just to go drink or do drugs or have sex with strangers or whatever it is. We all have our coping mechanisms and to just drown it out and to go numb and then there is no judgment because we’re just trying to deal the best we can. But to do the work, it’s not the easiest thing, but it’s so liberating and empowering on the other side. And then you can use to turn around and help other people do the same thing. It’s kind of like the self-fulfilling prophecy or the paradox of life – how we teach what we need to know and what we’ve mastered in own life and our mess becomes our message and that whole thing.
Natalie Vartanian: There was even a thing recently, too, where we were looking at some of our core wounds and how they are our greatest blessings. We were really talking about this thing of: your life is plan A. All the shitty things that happened to you wasn’t the thing that detracted you from having a life you’re supposed to have. That was the life you’re supposed to have. That is plan A and we’re just kind of sitting with this, like, “What? You’re telling me that my shitty experience of my dad committing suicide was the plan?”
Dawn Gluskin: Some people don’t get that. They’re, like, “What do you mean? This horrible thing was supposed to happen?” But if you take it from a higher-self level and if you believe that you were incarnated into this human body for a reason, for your own evolution, for your own growth on a higher level, everything that’s happening is teaching you, is helping you to ascend, to grow into who you are, to remember who you are. When you look at it from that level, it starts to make sense. And if that doesn’t make sense right now, just sit with it. And maybe it will. It’s crazy. It’s, again, the paradox of life. “Oh, I’m supposed to suffer so I can feel enlightenment? What?”
Natalie Vartanian: For me, growing up, I didn’t feel like people really paid attention to me or my family really saw me. There was so much chaos and trauma and drama in our household that in a lot of ways, I felt very invisible. I felt like no one was really paying attention or knew what was happening for me. You know? And tracking me and loving on me. So that has become my superpower. That is what I do with everyone. That’s the biggest feedback that I get from people, like, “Natalie, being around you, I feel like you so hear me and understand me.” I make them get the most important person in the world in that moment. I’m so present with them and it’s because I didn’t have that. So I want everyone around me to feel that. How would I know that that’s if I didn’t notice it from that “lack” place.
Dawn Gluskin: And everyone that’s listening: your details of your life are different. But if you could just take that on, that you’re suffering can now be how you serve. When you go through the healing process and you really come to terms with that – then it’s such a power. You come from a place of power and just helped so many other. But I wanted to talk about the book. It’s got such a good title. “Sexcapades.” We were talking about it a little earlier and you’re, like, “Well, it’s not like I chose to write this book.” It kinda chose you. Tell us a little bit about that and what’s it about and how did it choose you? Yeah, we want to know more.
Natalie Vartanian: The first iteration of the book was going to be the bigger memoir book and I had a friend point out that most people do it the opposite way. They have the smaller books and then they write a memoir book. In it was going to be the chapter on sex. There was going to be a chapter and everything: love and relationships and money and God and all of the different areas of my life that I’ve been with and transformed and the stories around them. But the more I whittled it down to what was doable for me to write, I also realized this is the one area that I do have a lot to say and a lot that I’ve learned and a lot that I’ve explored for myself and also in connections with other people. I have a podcast around sex. I was that person that everyone came to talk about sex because I was that safe place. I just realized I do have a lot to say here. I have done a lot of my work here. I do feel very different where I can say that I feel turned on around sex where I couldn’t say that before. I was so scared of it growing up. I was just, like, “What is this thing? And I don’t know what it is and I don’t know how to figure it out. And I’m scared of men and I’m scared of women.” All of it felt so far away from me.
Dawn Gluskin: It’s almost like part of your own healing is coming out with this book and also because you’re like one of the sacred rebels. I think that’s why we connected.
Natalie Vartanian: I like that. “Sacred rebels.”
Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. We know that what’s going on on the planet right now is not right. There’s this new paradigm coming through. One of the taboos and the paradigms that you know is sex. It’s such a taboo topic. You don’t talk about it. Even in school today they’re, like, “We don’t talk about that. We’re just going to sweep it under the rug. Kids are getting addicted to porn and they don’t know the sacred side of it.” There’s so much out there that it’s just a hot mess, right? Let’s just talk about it for what it is and when it’s supposed to be something pleasurable and it’s biological. Let’s just be open about it right then. Then we wouldn’t have all these deviant behavior that comes up in a bad way. I think it’s good. I think more people need to be talking about it. I grew up in a very Catholic household so I was one of those people that don’t talk about it. So I lived that life. I had all these questions. They even teach you it’s wrong to think about it.
Natalie Vartanian: Right, exactly. And then they wonder why we’re all just hot messes.
Dawn Gluskin: It’s the most natural thing.
Natalie Vartanian: You have us live in that vacuum, like in a black hole around it. But this is the funny thing. We actually interviewed a friend of ours who’s Mormon for my last podcast. We were talking about how crazy it is that it’s, like, “Sex is bad, sex is wrong, don’t have attraction, don’t have affection, don’t have desire.” It’s, like, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. Oh, but until you get married and then we get married that first night, you’re just going to have sex that’s going to blow your mind and fireworks and so much passionate desire.” That’s so traumatizing for people. You’re going to go from off to on in one night.
Dawn Gluskin: And it’s probably not going to live up to your expectations.
Natalie Vartanian: – have been traumatized because they got married, were virgins and then all of this expectation and pressure, in addition to how bad and evil sex has been made their whole lives and now you want us to just think that sex is the most holy beautiful thing because it’s with my husband or my wife?
Dawn Gluskin: When it’s been evil all along. Then kids are starting earlier and earlier these days. Which blows my mind as a parent, oh my gosh. It’s because no one talks about it to them in a healthy way. So they go out on the Internet and they find the dark hole, the darkest corners of the Internet. That’s where they’re getting their sex education from. And it’s, like, “Oh my gosh, no wonder they’re so messed up about it now.” That’s not the way to do it. I have conversations with my children about it. My oldest daughter who’s 10, my youngest, she’s five, so we haven’t really yet. I tell her the good and the bad and the ugly because I don’t want her to go to the Internet for her education.
Natalie Vartanian: Yeah, I hear that. And it’s true. It is this interesting place of – we are so concerned about the information that they’re going to get and how they’re going to be, that we don’t say anything. But that’s the thing: then they’re getting their information elsewhere.
Dawn Gluskin: And they’re forming these crazy beliefs.
Natalie Vartanian: We can have influence on that, if we are courageous enough to speak to it because it is such a taboo thing. We do have to overcome our own taboo around, “You don’t talk about sex.”
Dawn Gluskin: A hundred percent. I love that you are taking a stand on that and you’re putting all of your personal stuff out there. It takes something. My whole platform is about being vulnerable and telling your stories, but sometimes, it takes something to put yourself out there. You’re, like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe what I’m telling people this.” But it’s also empowering and it’s healing for yourself and for others. I, for one, definitely look forward to reading it.
Natalie Vartanian: Thanks!
Dawn Gluskin: I love talking to you. We could talk forever and the show always goes by so fast and I’m, like, “This is good”, but it’s that time of the show. We have to start winding down and this is where I give you a chance to let all of our listeners know where they can connect with you, get more from you, learn about your book when it gets published, all that good stuff.
Natalie Vartanian: The best place to goes to my website. You can access it via my name www.NatalieVartanian.com or www.ThisTurnedOnLife.com. Both will point you right to the website. From there, you can find out about the book. There’s a mailing list, if you want to get on the list to be the first to know when it comes out. You can do that. There’s also at the top an opt-in to get on the newsletter, just the general newsletter. I have a freebie opt-in gift for you around living a turned-on life and the steps to help accomplish that. And there’s more: there’s blogs, writings, different ways we can work together, tarot, coaching, etc. But yeah, I’d love to connect any that would serve.
Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, definitely go check out all of her good stuff. She’s got a lot of great stuff on her website and you can always just go to www.BareNakedRadio.com and click on Natalie’s show and under her show notes, you’ll see all of her social media, her website links. Go there and definitely check her out.
Natalie Vartanian: Thank you so much, Dawn.
Dawn Gluskin: It’s such a joy talking with you. Like I said, I could talk forever, but you know, I know people have other stuff to do.
Natalie Vartanian: Go, people. Be free. Live your most turned-on life.
Dawn Gluskin: When you publish the book, we’ll have you back on and we can talk more about that. Thank you so much, Natalie.
Natalie Vartanian: Thanks, honey.
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