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Episode 009: Renee Schofield: Reframing Drug Addiction & Leading from the Heart

Listen to the episode and access the show notes here.

Dawn Gluskin: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Bare Naked Radio, I am your host, Dawn Gluskin. It’s a joy and a pleasure to introduce today’s guest, Renee Schofield. Say, “hello” Renee.

Renee Schofield: Hey! Good morning.

Dawn Gluskin: So good to have you here. Renee and I met many years ago through an organization of women business owners called “Count Me In” and what I love most about that group is the friendships that many of us have formed. We’re still in touch today, watching each other from afar, and sort of cheering each other on and supporting each other however we can, which is awesome. Renee is the owner of TSS, which is a safety company. They specialize in workplace training for safety and Renee has some really unique stories and perspectives to share with us today. So we’ll be getting into a few of those different things.

One aspect of the work that she does is they do drug screening that is inside of safety. That’s sometimes a controversial topic, but Renee has her own take on that subject. She’s also going to share a little bit about her own personal life and her daughter had gone through her own struggles with drug addiction. She’s 14 years sober, so we’re really excited for her for that. Renee has a message and a stand on that that she’s going to share with us today.

Another aspect of the work she does is what they call, “Trauma Scene Decontamination”. And it’s just like what it sounds like. They actually go up and clean trauma scenes where the worst things you can imagine have happened, most of us would never want to see. And that’s part of the work she does. She also has a really big heart and she does coaching in business but also with folks returning to the workplace after being incarcerated. She’s just got a lot of stuff going on and I’m just so happy to have her here today.

So Renee, I wanted to start off with just reading your bio or talking about some of the stuff that you’re up to. I want to talk about your passion because it sounds like what you’ve got on your plate – it’s not necessarily easy work – taking a stand on a controversial topic and the trauma, taking a stand on changing the stigma around drug addiction. You could just be a business coach and that would be easy and there’s nothing wrong with that. But why do what you do? What gets you out of bed in the morning and excited about your business and your life?

Renee Schofield: I think the most important aspect of what I do here is the ability to be that change-point for every person that we touch. Whether someone’s coming for a drug screen for a new job, we get to provide that service and makes sure that the employer and the employee, the protocols are followed appropriately and they get to go to work very soon. If they’re coming because they’re involved in a probation situation or maybe a child custody battle, then we give that same service in the best way possible to allow them to maybe see their kid or maybe be returned to treatment because they’re not clean. So, we get to be that change-point in that aspect. If we teach somebody CPR, first aid – I have multiple people that come back and say, “Because of what I learned in your class, I did CPR on my boat while I had charter fisherman out” or “This happened and I knew how to stop the bleeding.” Everything we do is people heart-centered. So that gives us that unique opportunity to be that cross in the road where people get to make a different choice, perhaps.

Dawn Gluskin: I love that. It sounds like you’re really in business for changing lives and giving people an opportunity, whether it’s they’re fresh out of prison or whether they’re trying to get sober or better their lives in some way. And I just want to point that out for our listeners is when you can take that perspective on something – when you’re being of service, when you’re being about something bigger than yourself, it makes those hard days and those difficult times a little bit easier to get through. Let’s talk about some of your growth opportunities. I touched on it a little bit at the beginning of the show here. I always use the word “failure” in quotation marks because I don’t believe in anything as a failure. I think everything is just an opportunity to grow and to stretch us and help us learn and be more of who we really are. So what do you perceive as your biggest “failure” and how did you turn it into something to expand your growth?

Renee Schofield: Probably one of the hardest things in my life has been walking through my daughter’s addiction. Being in this industry and it happened right in front of me. So, I initially took on the, “I should’ve done something different. I should’ve seen it coming up. This is what I do for a living. I should have known better.” And then I got over myself and realize it isn’t about me. This was about addiction, what it does to families and individuals. Once I recognized and acknowledged that addiction doesn’t have boundaries and it doesn’t care who you are and where you live or how much money you have or how clean your house is or any of that – when it happens, it happens. You take that on as a parent, you take that on that guilt of “I should’ve done something differently.” And I actually had someone say to me, “Well, you know, I have three girls than I’ve just loved on them so hard that this would never happen if you had loved her more.”

Dawn Gluskin: Oh wow. Okay. Hashtag #ThingsToNotToSayToSomebody. I can’t even fathom that. Clearly, they didn’t know about addiction and what it really is, either to make a comment like that.

Renee Schofield: Exactly. Right. I took that really, really hard, but then I also am that person looks at challenges are opportunities. You just tie a knot on the rope and you hold on and you hope that that day will come, that your kid or your family member or your friend walks through the door and says, “Gosh, today’s my day and today I want to go to treatment.” We were fortunate enough that that happened for us. Not everybody is.

Dawn Gluskin: Totally. First of all, I just want to say thank you for the work you’re set out to do, for changing the stigma around addictions. I shared with you before we started the show that my brother, he suffered through a drug addiction for many years. He was addicted to prescription pain pills, which it’s, like, “Oh, it’s a prescription. And he got it from a doctor.” He was doing OxyContin and Xanax. I have my own opinions on all of those kind of drugs and why they’re out there. It’s a multi-billion dollar profit business. He was not one of the lucky ones. He was clean and then he would go back and it’s just such a struggle when you see someone going through that. They’re not choosing – like, he wanted to be sober, he wanted it to be clean, and he ultimately lost his life to a drug addiction and overdose nine years ago. Dealing with all people’s judgments and opinions about that, “Well, he should’ve done this” and “He chose that.” At some point, yes, we are responsible for our choices, but it’s not THAT black and white. So, thank you for speaking to that.

Renee Schofield: That’s true. People need to understand that nobody wakes up in the morning, says, “You know what, today I’m going to be an addict. That’s what I want from my life. I’m just going to be an addict.” They don’t wake up and do that. Prescription drugs, when they’re used appropriately and for the right reasons and monitored and exit your life in the appropriate timeframe, there’s good things about that.

But there are those huge things as we’re seeing the opioid crisis across the nation now – declared emergency status, it’s just rampant in our communities. Once that gets a hold, then we have to find ways to move people through it and that’s access to treatment and support and for them AND for their families, because that ripple effect goes all the way out. It’s not just the addict, you’re talking about everybody around the addict. And then you get a sober person after treatment and you don’t know how to deal with them because you’ve been dealing with the addict all that time. It’s that whole look at how we do things. For what I do, we’re not counselors here. We do the drug and alcohol screening. One of the things we really focus on here is we take care of people. So, while we’re not counselors, we know where they are. When somebody comes through here, we have that ability to respond when they say “I really am looking for a counselor today and I need to talk to somebody.” Then we can connect them right away within a couple of hours usually.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s beautiful that you’re doing that work in the world. It’s hard to because you could just be, like, “This is not my cross to bear. My daughter, she’s sober now. Let’s let someone else worry about that.” But, you’re so big-hearted and you want to help. You genuinely want to help people and want to help people that are in that crisis and change the world. Thank you because it’s not easy work to do. Sometimes it would be just easier probably to sweep it under the rug, but you’re helping so many people. So thank you for that.

Renee Schofield: It’s what we’re here for.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s such a beautiful example of, as the saying is, to “turn your mess into your message”, right? Even as a parent or a sister or someone that’s gone through that or person that has dealt with the addiction themselves, there’s all this shame this underneath that stigma. It’s like that shame of, “People are gonna judge me.” You even mentioned 14 years later, your daughter still feels some of that judgement, which that is a shame. She should be celebrated for the victories and what she’s overcome and not have to even worry about that anymore. But it is a “thing” in society and our community where we have to change the way we think about things like this.

Renee Schofield: As we talked about a little bit earlier, if I break my leg when I’m 20, when I’m 40, people aren’t still talking about that. They don’t bring it up in a job interview. They don’t go, “Oh, that’s the girl who broke her leg 20 years. But when you have a substance abuse issue, as a society, we really kind of put that stigma on there and we’re not really willing to let it go. And I’m not saying that pretend that it didn’t happen because it did happen and it’s part of the fabric of who they are. If they’ve moved through treatment and become sober, that’s an every day battle they fight. Who are we to push them back down with a stigma. Finding those ways for the community to have positive conversation and to celebrate people in recovery and really honor that they’re doing their thing and be grateful for that and let them recover. Let them do that.

Dawn Gluskin: We should just be celebrating each other and helping pick people up. I really think we’re all connected. We’re all one. We’re all in this thing together. And to push someone down this after they’ve struggled – and the people that are doing it, they’re not doing it intentionally either. It’s something ingrained in their belief system that, “That’s bad. You did this bad thing like 20 years ago.” The same thing goes for people in prison. There’s not a person out there in the world that’s never done anything in their life that they regretted or they’re, like, “Oh, that was a bad decision” or “I wish I could rewind time,” but you know, we all have to learn our lessons. We all have to make our mistakes and have our missteps and learn our lessons. And then, it’s not up to us to judge somebody else on their journey. We need to forgive ourselves for our missteps and also be that forgiving with one another.

Renee Schofield: That’s the name of the game. That’s what we should be doing. It’s hard. It’s work.

Dawn Gluskin: It is. But I love that you’re being part of that change. I think it’s such an important message, too, because we all have the capacity to make a difference. And sometimes people are, like, “This is too big of a mission, how am I going to change the stigma on drug addiction… that’s so big.” But if all of us just do our little part whenever we’re called to affect in this world and just show up and be the voice and be the change. We all matter and make a difference. So thank you. I wanted to bring up something else you mentioned is that you live in the state of Alaska. You mentioned that there’s a really high number of suicides in your state and that was how the trauma contamination work that you do was born. Tell us about that, how that got born, and how you handle that. And everything. Because my heart hurts just thinking about it

Renee Schofield: In Alaska, and in lots of places – Alaska does have a high number of suicides. A few years ago, we had a situation where over a period of a year and a half or so, we had 18 or so suicides. Some of them were close together, some spread out, and some of them were copycat – for different reasons. But during that time, I recognized that what was happening was when the event itself occurs and the police come and the coroner comes and the body is removed, then those scenes were just being turned back over to family members. And a lot of times this happens in your home: in a bedroom, a bathroom, in your living room. And that broke my heart, that we were inducing second trauma to people on the worst thing, you know?

So, what can I do about that? And I connected with a guy in Texas who had a training center. I went down and did a training with him where we actually cleared all of the confined space and blood-borne pathogens and all of those things. He had set up a training center that had pig blood and he picked up roadkill, so we had smells. It was a phenomenal training.

But what that allows me to do is: when something like this occurs, a family can contact us and we can go to their home or to that site – sometimes it’s a workplace, where something’s happened in the workplace – but we can get there. While we cannot change this event, we can remove some of that trauma, whether it’s taking carpet out. And we can decon on almost anything. We can take car seats out of the car, take them off the frame. And decon those. We’ve done medavac jets where a person might bleed out inside the plane on the way to, in our case Seattle, because that’s our trauma location. Then they will call us and say, “Our whole plane is full of blood and we need that taken care of.” So, we will go and, one, decontaminate that fluid and then get that removed so that they can put the plane back together and get it back in service.

When we’re done in a home, and depending on the situation and the size of the room and what’s really happened, it might take us 12 hours, it might take us three days depending on what we have have. When we’re completed, again, we can’t change what’s happened, but we can minimize that trauma. That’s a big deal to me.

Dawn Gluskin: That is a big deal and I just want to honor you again for that because you saw a need, you saw people that are already suffering and then they have to suffer all over again and it touched you in your heart and you actually took action. You said, “Well, I am a human being that can do something about this and make a difference in these people’s lives.” And you took action.

Whereas you could have easily looked the other way. “That’s not my cross to bear”, but it would be perfectly acceptable, right? Because we all have our own stuff going on. But you just have such a big heart and I just love people that, that have the big heart and are also not afraid to get into action in service of others. Thank you for that. And that is a job that I could not do. Like, I just couldn’t. But, like you said, someone has to. Why would it be that family that’s already traumatized.

Renee Schofield: Yeah. And the ability to just be pretty clinical about it. I won’t say that I come away from every one of them going, “Okay, we’re finished and it’s beautiful and we’ve done our job.” Sometimes the story is really hard. I live in a small community. There are about 13,000 of us here. We work all over the nation. We can go anywhere. But when we’re working here, we’re going to see those family members at the grocery store and at the basketball game and everywhere. We really want to just honor the person who has passed on, clean the things that we can save. In some cases, we’ve been able to save artwork and poetry, the things that they’ve written on or clothing that is extra special to the family. That means so much to be able to have those things that would otherwise be just incinerated and go away.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, that’s incredible, the work that you’re doing. And thank you. Like I said, it’s not easy to answer “the call”, is what I call it. At some point you got “the call” that was like, “I can do something about this. I can be the difference maker.” Listen to your heart. Whereas your brain could kick in and be like, “No, that’s a crazy idea!” The difference you’re making in those people’s lives, It’s just… it’s incredible.

Renee Schofield: I’m very blessed to have staff who runs the day-to-day here in the office. We have six locations in different places. I’m fortunate to have people who just support that effort. While most don’t want to come to those scenes, they will come to the door and bring lunch or make sure that I have bottle of water, whatever it is. That’s really key to have the solid workforce that really honors taking care of people and that’s what we do.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s great to have that support and also that you, as a business owner, that you are able to cultivate the right people that are aligned with you, that can be that support team. Yeah. Good work. I also want to talk a little bit about fear. We talk about, on Bare Naked Radio, about our fears because our fear, a lot of the time, takes to the driver seat and it’s what stops us from answering the call of our heart. It’s what stops us from being who we are in the world. It’s what has us pretending and wearing a mask and showing up as someone else. So, I always ask the question: what scares you the most or maybe used to scare you that maybe you’ve overcome and if it is an overcome situation, what did you do to get to that point?

Renee Schofield: I think on different facets whether you’re talking personally or professionally or where you are and different things, I think everybody has something that – and maybe not everybody always acknowledges it, you’ll kind of push that back in the back of your mind – but truly when you get in front of this and go, “Alright, I’m going to overcome this. This is a great opportunity.”

One of the biggest things for me is: what does the future look like for my “minis”? Those are my granddaughters. What did we do for them and what are we setting them up for in our family and in our world, in our community? What have they got to look forward to? I’m always concerned about: will I be here for them in the future. That drove me to, “You need to get off your duff and get to the gym, you need to take better care of yourself so that when they are 25 and walking down the aisle or running their first marathon, that you have the ability to be there.” That’s a big deal to me. A lot of people work out every day. I had to learn for that to become a pleasure instead of a chore.

I’ve had a business coach since the Count Me In: Make Mine a Million group award. Through coaching, I was able to turn that around from, “Oh, I gotta go to the gym” – you don’t “gotta.” You have to get to “I am honoring this body, that birthed my children, that carries me around, that makes me think of cool stuff to do. I’m honoring this body. And so that changed that in a big way for me. And then, through the work that I do – I volunteer on lots of different organizations. Most of them focused on substance abuse and treatment and recovery. From legislation to sitting with somebody who just needs to ask a couple of questions. That makes this space better for those girls and give them something to start to work with to make their own path.

Dawn Gluskin: That is such a beautiful, beautiful reframe there. And I really want to make sure that our listeners get that. We all have fear and our fear is different. And Renee spoke to her fear for years. “I’m not going to be here for my minis.” And that’s a fear that really was real and touched your heart. A lot of times, there’s two things we can do with fear. We can just kind of push it down. “I don’t want to deal with this. I don’t even want to think about it and we’ll find some other way to cope with it.” Some people use alcohol or shopping or drugs or whatever.

Or you can just kind of face your fear. What I say is to, not just fear, but anger, any kind of emotion that has a connotation that is “negative” and just ask it, “What are you trying to tell me?” It sounds like you did your own version of that. “Hello Fear. What are you trying to tell me?” “I was trying to tell you, it’s time to honor your body. It’s time to really take control of your health.” And you’re working out. And then you have that beautiful reframe with your mindset: “No, it’s not something I HAVE to do. I GET to do this. I get to be there for my grandchildren and for myself and for my employees and for all the people I save in the world.”

When you can return it around like that, it becomes so powerful. It could either be something that brings you down and makes you feel bad about yourself. Or it can be super empowering. I love that you did that work and were able to turn it around. We all have that capacity to do that with our fears.

Renee Schofield: I had started with: if you miss a workout one day and then it was, like, “Okay, I missed on Tuesday and it’ll be okay to miss Wednesday.” And before you know it, you’ve missed several weeks because you just keep talking yourself away. Just being able to acknowledge that you missed a workout – it’s okay to miss a work out. I’m not perfect. Some days, I do really solid heavy duty and other days I’m, like, “Eh, I’m going to swim in the pool today.” If you just acknowledge that you’re going to try and just go do something, even if it’s just walk around your yard that day, that’s something. Just being okay if you don’t do it that day, saying, “All right, tomorrow’s a new day, we’ll start again.”

Dawn Gluskin: Meet yourself where you are. Don’t beat yourself up. Really good. Really good. So the other thing we talk about it a lot on the show is living a life without regrets and that’s inside of the number one deathbed regret is people on their last days, the terminally ill, the very elderly, being asked the question, “Is there anything you would go back and do differently? Do you have any regrets?” It’s always the same answer keeps coming up: “I wish I had lived a life true to myself instead of the one that others had wished more me.”

This question is kind of just – bear with me, but if you found out that you had one year left to live, what would pop in your mind, once you work pass through all of that, is there something you still need to do in order to be able to get to that finish line and be satisfied with the legacy you’re leaving? I mean it sounds like you’re already doing an amazing job. And is there anything else that’s present for you?

Renee Schofield: I would spend more time with the minis. I would do more of that and we do already, but I do think we get caught up in the day-to-day and we get really busy and, you know, things are going on and they’re in gymnastics and dance and all of those things. I really try to focus hard on being authentic, which is not always popular because not everybody agreed with my businesses and a lot of things. But I gotta stay true to who I am because that’s who I am. I don’t care if people remember the day I was born or the day I die. I want them to remember that dash in between. That’s what matters. So what I do now will reflect on the future forever. It doesn’t matter that my name’s on it. It doesn’t matter that people go, “Oh, that’s the woman who did that.” It matters that it happens so that we leave the place better than we found it.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s beautiful. I want to commend you because I really see that you are doing that, you are living that and it’s beautiful. You said something in there that I really want to point out to our listeners is that being authentic and true to yourself as not always popular. That’s such a great point because a lot of times we back down from being who we are, from expressing our true voice, from showing up in the world as who we know we really are and who we want to be, because we’re afraid of all of those judgments and opinions. When you’re true to who you really are, the right people are going to show up, the right people are going to love you. Yeah, you’re going to have some people that are, like, “You’re not for me.” And I think if you’re don’t have that, if you don’t have any opposition, no one’s calling you out, then you’re not doing it right. Because if you really are going to piss somebody off, you have to embrace it.

Renee Schofield: Our entire company – every week we have a staff meeting and one of the things that’s on our agenda in big, bold letters that everybody gets is we are about authenticity. So everything we do is build culture. And, like I said, it’s not always popular when you stand up and say, “Legalizing marijuana probably isn’t a great thing for our kids.” There’s a lot of pushback on that because a lot of people think, “Well, it’s not so bad.” Well, it took us 50 years to decide that cigarettes weren’t good for us. It’ll take us 50 years to get there. My point with it is: no matter where you fall on the fence with that, people assume that legal equals safe. OxyContin is a perfect example. Alcoholism. So when you think “legal equals safe”, your kiddos start thinking, “Well, it’s legal. So it must be okay.” And when you get up in a room and say that, that’s not always popular.

Dawn Gluskin: I get it and I see both sides because I am for the medicinal use for many reasons because it can replace a lot of the prescriptions that aren’t good. But there has to be an education, especially for the children. So you make a very good point. Because you can use it in ways that will positively affect your health, your well-being, that you can use it for spiritual reasons. There’s no judgment here for what people choose to do with their life. However, there is the other side and that goes with any substance, alcohol, you know, anything else out there that if you’re using it for the wrong reasons, if you’re trying to escape from something, it can be a detrimental thing. And especially to the children when their brains are still developing. There are two sides to every coin. I always try to listen to both sides. I get it. I know that that argument must not be a popular one because people have opinions about it. But thank you for being true to yourself.

Renee Schofield: People have very definite opinions on it. And that’s okay. That’s what we’re made to do. That’s how we’re built. So just find that spot of being able to talk about whatever issue it is and being authentic and holding true to yourself in what you think about something and not letting somebody back you into a corner on something. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be open minded and learn new things. But that authenticity is really, really critical.

Dawn Gluskin: It really is. To live a well-lived life. Well, Renee, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. I just love what you’re up to. I love that you are so authentic and that you’re following the call of your heart and doing things that a lot of other people would back down from. So thank you for who you are in the world. I just wanted to give you an opportunity at the end here to promote yourself, anything you’ve got going on, what you’re working on, where can people find you on the Internet, all that good stuff.

Renee Schofield: Well, thank you. At TSS, the staff kind of runs, like I said before, the day-to-day, so I’ve been really coaching some folks and trying to just spend more time on that because I enjoy that a lot. You can find us on the internet at tss-safety.com. Everything safety is there. We do a lot of different webinars. For instance, today we’re talking about drug programs on the webinar and in a couple of weeks, we’ll be doing harassment training and so there’s lots of opportunities to look at that kind of stuff. Let’s see. On Facebook, you can find us @thesafetyspecialists [“TSS Inc.”] or you can find my coaching Facebook page at “NO SPEED LIMIT.” I’m a huge NASCAR and dirt track racing fan. My coaching kind of takes that racing theme. I enjoy that, you know, putting fuel in your tank and get your roadmap out. I spend a lot of my coaching going that direction. I have business coaching clients and we have a few that may be coming out of incarceration, rehab, little bit of that, connecting them to resources and help them with their resume. Those things are really, really awesome when you can see somebody just flourish. That’s really is what I’m here for.

Dawn Gluskin: Absolutely. And I love what you’re doing. And for our listeners too, if you didn’t catch those links so you can always go to barenakedradio.com and it’ll be in the show notes under Renee’s show. Thank you again, Renee. I mean, really, it was a pleasure having you here today. You are an inspiration and I love what you’re up to in the world and just thank you for being so authentic and willing to get “bare naked” with us today on the show. So thank you.

Renee Schofield: I’m so grateful for the opportunity, Dawn. We’ve been following you closely for a long time and you’re doing such amazing things for people and that really matters. And I honor that for you. And thank you for giving me this space.

Dawn Gluskin: Well, I will receive that acknowledgement as well. Thank you so much.

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Episode 007: Sarah Shoemaker: Stepping into the Soul Journey

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Dawn Gluskin: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Bare Naked Radio. I am your host, Dawn Gluskin and today, I am so excited to be chatting with this amazing woman, Sarah Shoemaker. Say “hello”, Sarah.

Sarah Shoemaker: Hey Dawn. Hey audience. It’s great to be here.

Dawn Gluskin: Yes, so excited to have you. We were just having a great chat before the show for, like, the last 30 minutes. I was, like, “Oh, we need to get started.” Excited to get going with you so everyone else can listen in.

Sarah is a woman’s resiliency coach who comes to this work after a lifetime of digging in, close observation, and doing the work personally. After becoming a birth mother at the age of 19, Sarah began striving and playing by all the rules, only to wake up one day in her early thirties and realize the true self that she had left behind. Always on a journey of the heart, Sarah has recently turned her career and education and leadership into one focused on women and mothers, in an effort to heal the collective wounded story of “never enough”. A woman of my own heart! So excited to have you here! Welcome Sarah.

Sarah Shoemaker: Thank you, Dawn. I love your mission of truth storytelling. Lovely. It’s right in alignment.

Dawn Gluskin: Yes it is. And I so get playing by all the rules and just waking up one day and be, like, “Oh no, no more! I was born to be a rebel”. So good to unleash that.

Let’s just get right into it and talk about your story a little bit here. So, you went from at the age of 19, being a birth mother and having those feelings that we all can relate to in some way of, “I’m not enough”, feeling disempowered. And all these many years later, you’ve come full circle and now you found your power and you’re taking a stand for other women to help them step into theirs, which is just beautiful how it comes around full circle that way. So, let’s hear about it a little bit. Take us back to age 19, how life was then, and how you stepped into this purpose.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah. I love that short version of the full circle. It doesn’t feel like that once you’re going through it.

Dawn Gluskin: When you’re in it, it’s a long road. But yeah, hindsight is like that.

Sarah Shoemaker: It is. It’s, like, “Oh that was all it took? Okay!” So, at 18, I got pregnant in my first semester of college, which was a shocker to everyone, for sure. And although I was very close with the birth father, after I became pregnant, it became very strained. I kind of had this, like, “I’m gonna put my head down, I’m going to do what needs to be done” and I really, really focused in on the pregnancy, on making sure she was okay, I’m making sure she was well.

And then, I chose her family through an open adoption process. I’ve actually been blessed enough to know my daughter and her family as she’s grown. She’ll be 18 this year. The story of being an 18 year old, 19 year old mother and coming from a family that really valued education, the story was “Well, you’re not enough yet, you’re not old enough yet, you don’t have enough education yet, you don’t have the marriage yet or the money yet.” So after placing my daughter – well and those things become just in our internal belief, like our internal monologue.

Dawn Gluskin: Absolutely and I think we all have our own version of that. Something that happened in our life, an event. And we create this whole story around it: this thing that happened, now it means something about me and who I am and it’s not true, but we believe it like it is. And we live our life like it’s true.

Sarah Shoemaker: Right. And that’s where – that’s trauma. It gets lodged and it has a story and a tape around it. And until we do some true healing work and some real digging in, those are the tapes that play. I just set about, like, “Okay, well, if I can’t raise this child, I’m going to do everything I can in order to be a mother again one day” in order to prove that I’m good enough. So I immediately went back to college. I was back in college probably two weeks after she was born. And I got one degree and then I immediately went back for a Master’s in Special Ed. And then, later I got a third degree – all of these degrees, like, “Oh, okay, well, I still don’t feel successful yet. The finances still aren’t in place yet. I wonder why.” And it’s because the tape was still playing.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s when we go outside of ourselves, too. “I just needed one more degree, then I’m going to love myself and life will be amazing!” And it’s, like, “No, that didn’t work. Okay. Another degree, then it’s going to happen!” And we all have our version of that, going outside ourselves and looking for that next thing that’s going to make it all come together.

Sarah Shoemaker: Right. Right. Yeah, definitely lived that and I talk about striving and “efforting”. Like, that is not a word in the dictionary!

Dawn Gluskin: It should be. Let’s put it in there.

Sarah Shoemaker: They should put it in there because it’s so real for so many women. Just continual “efforting” to just get there, to just be enough.

So, I did. I came back around to being a mother again, thank goodness. And my son is now nine. But when he was about four years old, I really started to remember the inherent nature of who I was and reawakened to that. And I developed a mindfulness meditation practice at the time, which is now what I help teach to women in my coaching. But really, it helped alleviate those anxious tapes of “I just have to do one more thing” or “I’ll feel successful when”. Just began the long road back to myself, I guess is how I say it.

Dawn Gluskin: When you finally turned the gaze inward and the attention inward, you realize “Oh, I am enough, I am perfectly enough just who I am in the world, just how I’m being and I don’t need all that other outside validation” which is the beautiful thing about a meditation practice and other spiritual practices, is that we learn that we are enough and we have always have been, always will be, and it doesn’t matter what our circumstances are or what’s happened in our life or what choices we’ve made. We’re all perfectly divine beings that are more than enough.

Sarah Shoemaker: So much more than enough. And I say sometimes: “Enough is only a baseline”. And yeah, I mean we still get caught up in it. Every single one of us. As I’m starting this business, I’m sometimes finding myself asking the same questions for saying, like, “Oh, I don’t know enough about that yet”. And then I laugh because I’m watching what I’m doing. It doesn’t all fully go away, but yes, when we turn toward ourselves and practice this acceptance, that maybe we weren’t shown externally, but we can start to give ourselves internally, We change our world.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, absolutely. And for someone else who’s on that path now and they’re trying to look inwards, they’re trying to find the truth of who they are and maybe erase some of those stories that are not serving: what’s some other work or some other tools or something they can actually implement in their life right now, in addition to the meditation, which is of course very powerful. But what else can they start to look at, an explorer start shifting.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah. Great. I actually want to stick with this topic of mindfulness for a minute because, often we’re looking for the next answer or the next affirmation or the the next thing outside of ourselves. But there’s this alchemy that happens within the individual when we can sit in full presence of ourselves.

Let’s say that there’s an emotion that you’d rather not have but continues to be persistent in your life. Oftentimes what we’re doing is walking away from that emotion and we want to turn our back on it, when really, what we need to do is cultivate the experience where we can actually learn to sit with it and kind of turn toward it. And then in that process, you shine the lights in the areas where you’ve been avoiding. And then it doesn’t have as much power anymore.

Dawn Gluskin: I love that. ‘Cause nobody ever teaches us that. We have this belief somewhere that “anger is bad” or “it’s not good to feel sad”. We have these judgements about our emotions. But the truth of the matter is our emotions, it’s just information and it’s telling us something. The more curious we get about that instead of pushing it away, the faster we can get through it. A lot of our instinct is just “pretend it’s not there” or we cope with it through whatever, alcohol or sex or shopping. Everyone has their own vice to deal with that.

Sarah Shoemaker: Perfectionism.

Dawn Gluskin: Like, working. There’s so many ways – eating. There’s just so many ways to not deal with. Just ask it. That’s what I do and it sounds a little weird, but it’s so powerful. Say, “Okay Anger, what are you trying to tell me today?” Or, “Okay Sadness, why are you here? What do I need to know?” And to your point, that is what mindfulness is all about, is being mindful and just exploring it and asking it and in sitting in meditation and letting the answers come through. It’s, like, “Oh, I’m angry because I’m not doing what I want in this world. That’s why in this manifesting this anger, so I need to change this.” Powerful.

Sarah Shoemaker: So powerful, and so often these beliefs or these circumstances, these things that happened in our lives, they become trapped in the body too. Not only is it this trapped emotion or trapped thought pattern, but all of that gets trapped in the body. And so, really kind of getting in touch with, like, how does the body hold these patterns? I do some of that work with women, but there’s plenty of great healers out there that do that kind of work, too.

But sometimes the mind is so busy blocking what it is that we’re trying to avoid that the truth actually lies elsewhere. When I was in my twenties and early thirties, I was actually holding trauma patterns in my body that – it was perpetuating and not even realizing it. So as I was going, going, going, the court is always up. And I eventually had this big adrenal crash when I was probably like 33 years old. For your adrenals to be that tired by the time you’re 33 – I was really hustling, you know?

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. I experienced the same thing. This is burnout. What happens, in least in my world, I was, like, “Okay, so I’m just going to wake up and I’m going to get my coffee” because you need that stimulant to get going. You go, go, go all day, maybe have more coffee, whatever it takes – hustle, hustle, hustle. And then at night, I needed to wind down. So I was, like, “Oh, I need to have my glass of wine or two glasses”.

And then I finally realized a pattern. Like, “Wait a second, I need a substance to start my day, I need a substance to end my day, and everything in between”. It’s just go, go, go and working out and working. And I experienced the same sort of thing and it’s about the same age, too, so it’s something that we do to ourselves. Now I don’t drink coffee or wine. I function beautifully and I feel the best I’ve had in my life because I’ve gotten curious about, like, “Why does it have to be like this?” and gotten more back to my body’s natural rhythms and ways of being and listening. Some days are ebb days, which means just resting and relaxing. And then I had my flow days where it’s, I can hustle and it’s just tuning in.

Sarah Shoemaker: I’m so glad you brought that up. Those cycles of rest are just so essential for the nourishment of the body.

Dawn Gluskin: And after an ebb, if you take the time for yourself and you know that you’ve been working really hard and you take that day just to, whatever, meditate, go to the beach, journal, get a massage, just take care of yourself and the next day you’re back at it. You’re so refreshed, the ideas are flowing, and you’re just reinvigorated. They’re so critical. The busier you are, the more important those days are.

Sarah Shoemaker: It’s so true. And I think for the women who are listening who are just still crunching it all the time, just really not allowing themselves to slow down because they think that there’s no time to slow down. It is really something to experiment with because that pause allows you to get this –

I love when people call emotions like a navigation system. Because it really allows you to – “what is the next piece of action that would actually make me feel better”? Not just accomplish the next thing, but really be in alignment with what I am trying to create and produce in the world.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, and that’s such a great word, “alignment”, “feeling”. So, the word in there is not “strategy”. It’s not about “forcing”. I’m all for strategy, you need to have strategy in your business. You can’t just feel your way through everything, even though I basically do! You have to have some strategy. But yeah, that tuning in is so powerful because then, what should I say “yes” to, what should I say “no” to, what should I do today? And I actually say that every morning in my morning ritual, my morning prayer, and then I asked that question, “What would you have me do today? What would you have me say? Where would you have me go and to whom?”

Just ask those questions and get curious and just receive whatever comes through. For some people, that may sound a little out there but it’s the energy and the intention and it’s so powerful. That’s how I manage everything I do. I don’t even schedule anything before 10 o’clock every morning. The time before that is my time to journal, to meditate, to take care of myself, and I get a lot done from that point.

Sarah Shoemaker: If that spiritual ring really isn’t resounding for people – I came from working in schools and, like, teaching mindfulness in schools and there we’re not talking about mindfulness as a spiritual practice. It’s very secular. We say “inserting the pause”. You’re just bringing this pause that’s intentional into your day and then breathing and in doing that, we’re regulating the nervous system, regulating the body and clearing the space a little bit for that – maybe it’s divinely-inspired action, maybe a spiritual message. Maybe it’s just, like, “Oh, right, that was the next thing I wanted to do” – wherever folks are coming from.

Dawn Gluskin: Don’t get tripped up over the language and just get curious about it. I like how you said that, a “pause”. Instead of, “let’s meditate”. No, let’s just pause, check in with ourselves. Language is beautiful. I love language and I’m a writer, but it also can be limiting and sometimes we can be limited by the constraints of language, so don’t get ever get tripped up with a concept or an idea because of the wording, but just feel into it and be curious about how that can affect your life.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, totally. Something for everyone.

Dawn Gluskin: You have recently made the transition into full-time entrepreneurship. So, first of all, congratulations!

Sarah Shoemaker: Thank you!

Dawn Gluskin: The most exciting and the most scariest time of one’s life, when you look over the edge of that cliff and you’re just, like, “I’m just going to do it” and you jump in, you’re, like, “Oh my gosh, I’m falling”. Then at some point your wings come in and you start flying. It’s exhilarating and it’s scary. Tell us a little bit about how that is for you and what you’re up to now, what you’re going into full-time and why you were called to do it.

Sarah Shoemaker: Awesome. Yeah. I don’t quite feel like I’m falling, so I hope – maybe that’s to come –

Dawn Gluskin: It’s a ride, day by day.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, totally. So, I started Embodied Breath about six or eight months ago. This idea was really coming to me and we just had this conversation about whether or not to use spiritual language, but I will say that I have been answering a call. It is not something I even expected to be doing. But about a year ago, I started to really feel pulled in this direction. I have been working with children in schools, but my main focus was never really the academics. Even as a school administrator, my main focuses were how do kids feel, how are their hearts, how are their bodies? And so, really creating heart-centered holistic schools.

And in doing that, I was also kind of doing all of my personal work alongside of that in the last four or five years. And so my heart was being called to women and I’m also watching the mothers of the adolescents that I worked with. I’m watching like these loops that trip us up as women and as mothers, these, like, “not good enough loops”, “shame loops”, “guilt loops”. Just with all of the trauma healing that I had gone back to do all of the inquiry that I had personally walked through, still walk through, around the relationship between the masculine and the feminine. Just really, really being called to work with women and mostly allow women space to share their story. Like what you’re doing, Dawn. And to really own what it is they really want in their lives. So, if we’re following somebody else’s rules that were set up a long time ago, maybe there’s a part of us that got lost.

Dawn Gluskin: And that’s the one thing we talk about on this show a lot is the number one deathbed regret. And I bring that up just because we have time to shift that now while we’re still living in and not wait ’til we’re in that point and just looking back.

What people always say when asked that question: “Do you have any regrets? Is there anything you would do differently?” The most prominent answer is, “I wish I had lived a life true to myself instead of the life that others had wished for me”. And that’s what you are saying. We live by other people’s rules, other people’s wishes, desires. We get trapped in other people’s beliefs and it gets so clouded. We’re, like, “Who even am I? What do I want?” And we want to make other people happy. And then at the end of our life, we have this epiphany, “Oh my God, I was supposed to be doing this the whole time”. And unfortunately it’s too late.

Sarah Shoemaker: How sad is that.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. But it’s not too late right now. And for people that have that – I find that it’s “the call” as you call it, which I love. That’s what I call it too. Sometimes it whispers. There’s this knowing: there’s something else, there’s something more. “I love being a mom”, “I love working for this company”, or whatever it is. “I love this part of my life and I know I’m here on this planet right now for something more”. Either rise up and answer it, even though it’s scary and even though you don’t know the next step and what’s the future gonna look like. Or you can ignore it, which a lot of us do for years and years. And sometimes, the universe will smack you in the head with a two-by-four to wake you up and sometimes, you step into it on your own and sometimes, you never do anything. That’s when that regret comes in, at the deathbed.

Sarah Shoemaker: One of the reasons why I feel like I’m not freaking out right now, in terms of your entrepreneurial question, is because I’ve been straddling both worlds of education and entrepreneurial-ship for half a year now.

Dawn Gluskin: Which from a strategy perspective, is actually a great strategy. Wean your way in. You don’t just wake up one day – “I quit my job!”

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, no, that wasn’t the process. I’m a single woman with a mortgage! Being strategic and heartfelt was the intent. I’ll have calls with women because I always give a free consult so that we can feel each other out, no pressure, because the woman has to be ready. You have to be ready to say “yes” for ourselves and to ourselves. I’ve gotten off the phone with women and they say, “Oh, well, I’m going to think about it”. And then it’s, like, “Ah, not right now”. And I feel sad, generally speaking, because I’m, like, “Oh man, she just turned off that light for a little bit”, you know? Everybody has their process. I wish each of them well. I hope that it turns back on for them so that it’s not like that end of life regret, “Oh, I was such a good mom, but I stuck with that career that I really didn’t want”. It’s heartbreaking because we do all have these specific gifts to bring.

Dawn Gluskin: And what happens a lot of time too, when people do that, when they just can’t quite find the courage to take that step or they’re just not quite ready. And they keep saying, “Tomorrow or next week, next month. Give me six more months”. When I owned my technology company – my story is I grew a business from zero to 3,000,000 back to zero again. The whole time I was in it, I knew that wasn’t what I was meant to do. It making good money, I loved it, but I always had this in the back of my head, “I’m gonna do this for one more year, then sell the company. I’m going to take that money, I’m going to do what I really love” and like seven years later, the universe is listening to me the whole time, “Okay, Dawn. Today’s the day. Your time is up. We’re going to take all of this from you and you’re going to have to start from scratch and now’s your chance to do it right”. Which it did and it was devastating, but I got the message finally.

That’s how it occurs for some of us. Some of us need that two-by-four in the head. Or sometimes it shows up as an illness. People working themselves to death and going into the hospital and almost losing their life and then they get that second chance. There’s just different variations of how we finally come to the truth of who we are and taking that next step. It is scary. Anyone listening, if you have that curiosity, I just invite you to explore it. And as someone that also does coaching and consulting and healing work, I get what you say when you’re so sad for them because you want it so bad for them and you can see their future for them and you also have to respect where they are and their readiness and their willingness and you can never force it. So, you just provide a space and be open to supporting someone when they’re ready.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, that is completely my approach. I kind of joke a little bit because I worked in special education for a number of years. There’s a lot of resistance on the part of some children and I love that. I love the mystery. About three or four months ago, I was, like, “Oh my gosh, you know what? I just cannot wait to work with clients who are just so ready to work with me”.

Dawn Gluskin: Those are the best.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah. Right. Right. That’s what I’m doing here. I’m not pressuring anyone into doing work that they’re not ready to do and I’m standing here and I’m only working with women right now. I’m only coaching women. It really is the sisterhood of, like, “Okay, Women, what do you want, what do you know, deep down that you may have been ignoring, what kind of support, do you need?”

Dawn Gluskin: I know, too, from my own experience, that the conversations that you’re having with them, even if they’re not ready to take that next step yet, you are still planting a seed or helping them plant the seed, helping them water is a little bit, and it’s going to grow and they’ll come back. They just might need to work through some stuff first.

Sarah Shoemaker: Absolutely. If it’s not me, it’s not me. It’s not about that. This work is to be of service. The Feminine right now.

Dawn Gluskin: Absolutely. But I do see a lot of – there’s a lot of that going on in the planet right now where people are really assessing their lives. On one hand, it’s a little bit destructive. You see these long-term careers ending or these long term relationships are ending and there’s all these big endings going on. But on the other side of that, are these new beginnings. There’s just a calling out there in the universe for people, women and men, to rise up and to bring us into this new world. There’s so much going on in the world right now that’s just heartbreaking and it’s not who we are as humans. It’s not why we’re here. It’s not the way things could be. And we’re here to shift that and people are stepping up. It’s beautiful.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, I love it. I was just thinking that I wouldn’t have mentioned this thing about story that came to mind. A lot of us identify with a story that has this pain point where we get stuck in it. You probably work with a lot – and then there’s like this point where, you honor the story, honor the trauma, have healed it. Because it really does take some healing. It’s not like you just absolutely one day wake up and decide.

Dawn Gluskin: It doesn’t work like that. It’s a process.

Sarah Shoemaker: It is such a process. It’s picking up every rock on the path and looking under it. That’s what I inherently do for myself. My birthday is next month and I was born on the day of the soul searcher. Leave no rock unturned. That is the story of my life. After you’ve done that healing, then there’s honor for this story without identifying with those pain points anymore. I can talk about the pregnancy of my first child and her adoption and how it changed my life, but there’s not this emotional charge to it, I’m reliving pain every time, you know?

Dawn Gluskin: That’s why I do the work I do around storytelling. It’s a big part of the work I do in my business – helping people find out who they are in and tell their stories because when we don’t, when we have, like, shame around something, we walk around, and we take that with us. Everywhere we go, that whole, like, “I’m not enough” or “they’re going to find out the truth about me. I can’t ever let anyone know this” that we show up as like masked version of ourselves, just pretending like, “Oh God, I hope they never find out about me”.

That’s why this is Bare Naked Radio. It’s about just ripping it off, the peeling off all those masks, all those layers and being, like, “No, this is who I am” and just being vulnerable and “This is my story. This is what’s happened. This is my life and you know what? I’m not ashamed of it anymore”. And there’s something just so healing and liberating about that. Once you own your story, it no longer owns you. You don’t have to go public and shout from the rooftops, but just even owning it with yourself. Saying, “that’s what happened to me and you know what? I’m not ashamed of it anymore”. Yeah. It’s so healing, it’s so liberating.

Sarah Shoemaker: I personally believe that inside of those deepest traumas, inside of that story that we’re holding on to feeling shame about, is also our greatest liberation and our greatest life’s lesson and therefore our greatest gift to offer back to the world.

Dawn Gluskin: Yes. That’s how it goes. Yes. My stand in the world is about full self-expression and being the truth of who you are. And the irony is I spent my childhood and a lot of my early years being the opposite of that. Completely un-self expressed, very quiet, very withdrawn, didn’t have a voice and now I’m, like, “Give me a microphone”. Now I won’t shut up! It’s full circle. [Our pain] becomes what we get to teach in the world and also what we get to learn and continue to master and be embodied even deeper.

Sarah Shoemaker: Oh, beautiful. Thank you for doing the work you do in the world.

Dawn Gluskin: I love it. I love it. I also want to say one other thing, too – when you talk about healing and it doesn’t happen overnight and that’s how it occurs and as you start doing this work, as you start practicing mindfulness, as you start looking at your shadows, that you start really getting real about your emotions and what are they here to tell me. As you start making that your every day practice – because it’s like a muscle. Like when you go to the gym and you work out a muscle and it becomes stronger. Your ability to work through any situation and heal through a crisis of any kind, it becomes so much easier. Something that would normally take you out for six months, you can work through it in six minutes. Once you become masterful at this, you feel it, you’re, like, “What are you here to teach me? Got it. Okay, moving on”. Then it becomes like that. So, it’s worth it to do the work and life gets easier. A little motivation for anyone listening that’s, like, “Oh, but it’s so much work”. It’s powerful and it gets easier.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, it really does. This is why I love mindfulness as a tool because it’s really accessible and it doesn’t have to be a spiritual practice unless you want it to be. It’s not a prayer practice unless you want it to be. Just the breath work and the orientation – I’m seeing results in my clients where they were super afraid of being seen in the world or doing any sort of public speaking or even a woman speaking up in a room full of men in a meeting – that kind of thing. And then they’re seeing the results in that from their personal practice. I’m the coach, I’m the guide, but really, their own personal practice around these techniques that we’re learning together – it’s transforming their lives on a daily basis. So they’re, like, “Oh, okay. So this time I felt strong enough, centered enough, regulated enough in my body to speak up when I was being spoken over”. Keep showing up for yourself.

Dawn Gluskin: You’ll be surprised, as you continue doing this work, you’re just going to reach these new levels of badass-ery that you didn’t even know existed in yourself. I’m loving this conversation. I would talk to you all day because we can just talk and talk and talk and I would love that and it’s getting to the end of the show. I always like to let our audience know where they can find out more about you. If they’re vibing with your message, like, where are you on social media? What are you up to now? Now is your chance to let people know.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, my website is www.yourembodiedbreath.com and I really do use a lot of Facebook and Instagram. I’m “Sarah Shoemaker” on Facebook and I’m also Embodied Breath on Facebook and Instagram. I would love to connect with women one on one. I have a lot of one-on-one coaching opportunities right now and some group work. As I follow my heart, we’ll see how that group work evolves. I do work online and distance as well. So, proximity to me physically is not an obstacle.

Dawn Gluskin: Awesome. Yeah. If you are wanting to connect with Sarah, make sure you go check out her website, follow on social media, and all of those addresses will also be in the show notes on www.barenakedradio.com. So, definitely hook up with her. Well Sarah, it has been absolutely amazing talking to you. You’re just such a wealth of knowledge and you just have this real grounded presence. You just feel like, “Aaaaah” in your presence. So, thank you so much for baring so openly with us today.

Sarah Shoemaker: Yeah, and like I said, thank you so much for your work in the world. Sharing stories is powerful practice, so thank you for stepping into your gifts and bringing it to all of us.

Dawn Gluskin: Absolutely, it’s my pleasure. Alright, thank you.

Sarah Shoemaker: Thanks. Bye.

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Episode 008: Joie Cheng: The Healing Power of Self-Love

Listen to the episode and access the show notes here.

Dawn Gluskin: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Bare Naked Radio. I am your host, Dawn Gluskin, and I am so excited to be with our guest today, Joie Cheng. Say “Hello”, Joie.

Joie Cheng: Hi Dawn.

Dawn Gluskin: So good to have you here. Joie is the self-love transformation queen and she’s passionate about helping people love themselves so they can live their best life possible. She’s a certified coach and author, speaker, mentor, healer, Circle Facilitator, and a trained yoga teacher. She’s also the best-selling author of “The Naked Truth: A Woman’s Journey to Self-Love”, which is about her personal journey of healing herself naturally from deep depression and suicidal thoughts through self-love. So we obviously share something in common with the Naked Truth, Bare Naked Radio. We have a similar mission in the world, so I’m really excited to talk to you today and have you share your story.

Joie Cheng: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on your show, Dawn.

Dawn Gluskin: Absolutely. So I have a funny story real quick before we get into Joie’s story. We were both actually at The New Media Summit in San Diego last September, which is an event for podcasters, so it’s kind of like speed-dating style.

We were both participants and we got to pitch, like, 40 podcasters so it was kinda crazy. We were both pitching these podcasters and she was doing her Naked Truth pitch and I was doing my Bare Naked Radio pitch and I kept hearing, “You know what, you’re the second “naked chick” to come through this line today.” And I was, like, “Oh I have to meet the other “naked chick” and then we never actually met at the event but here we are, full circle, and you’re on my show today so it’s great to have you here.

Joie Cheng: Thanks, Dawn. I know, I love that story. I didn’t know that until just now. So I love that. We’re both the “naked chicks”, right?

Dawn Gluskin: We’re on the same wavelength there which is cool. I mean, it’s really something that needs to happen in this world and “naked” obviously as a metaphor, but it’s such a great one because that’s kind of how it feels to be who you are in the world is, like, “being naked”.

Joie Cheng: Right. If you’ve seen my book cover, but I am literally naked. That’s the funny thing where I had a lot of people tell me, like, “Wow, that’s so brave of you to put yourself naked on the cover.” And I tell them “Honestly, it’s actually scarier for me to be naked in the book.” It’s really just a reflection of what the book is.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s a great point. And sometimes it is scarier to bare your soul than it is to bare your naked body because we carry around so much shame sometimes in our stories and we don’t want people to find out who we really are and people want us to be a certain way. So we wear these masks and I think we both stand for the same thing, which is taking off the mask, taking off all of the stories and just being the truth of who you are. I’d love to hear about your story. Especially how you were able to heal yourself naturally. There are a lot of people that go through rough patches in life, depression, and sometimes when that does turn into suicidal thoughts and not necessarily loving yourself and seeing yourself for the divine being that you are. Tell us a little bit about that journey, how that looked and then how you were able to transform it and turn it into your message.

Joie Cheng: When I was in my twenties, I went through a period of deep depression and suicidal thoughts and it was really hard for me to get out of bed. I couldn’t even imagine getting old because I couldn’t imagine living that long. And there were times where I would cross this bridge on my way to work and just think, “I wonder what would happen if I jumped off this bridge?” It was obviously a really sad time in my life but it was also really confusing because there was nothing to me that would make it seem like I should feel that way. I didn’t have a traumatic experience, I didn’t have someone close to me die or a horrible breakup or anything. My life, on the outside, looked good.

I mean, I had a good job, I had family and friends that cared about me, I had a boyfriend and everything was fine in my life. I just felt this way inside and I didn’t know why. What really helped me – Oh, and then to make things even worse, I was in an abusive relationship. Thankfully it was only emotionally abusive the time. But who knows if it could have become physical. Oftentimes, it starts that way. But it was when I was in that relationship that I realized that I didn’t love myself. I said to myself, obviously if I did love myself, I wouldn’t be in this situation. I continually put myself in the situation.

I dated that boyfriend for four and a half years on and off. At some point, I actually went to a seminar for the healing work that I do, the energy healing I do now, called Matrix Energetics. And it was at that seminar that I really started to see these beliefs that I had had that were holding me back, that were putting conditions on my happiness. For example, I had a belief that if I got married, I’d be happier. And another belief that if I was single, I’d be miserable. So, I just started questioning. I said, “How do I know that being married is going to make me happy? I’m sure there’s a lot of married people that are not happy. How do I know being single is making me miserable. What if being single was the best thing that I ever did.

So, I had this pattern of being in long-term relationships, going from one relationship to the next because I was afraid of being alone – with stuff from my childhood. I realized in that moment that when I asked those questions, that it really created a space for something else, for a different possibility. That gave me the courage to say, “You know what? I’m going to end this relationship and I’m just going to be by myself for awhile. I’m going to learn how to be single and be happy being single and learn to love myself because that’s really what I need”, you know? So I made a decision and from then, I started attracting opportunities and things into my life to support that decision that the universe brought things into my life.

Now looking back, there were two things that really helped me. One was learning to love myself and the other, I think you spoke a little bit into this, spirituality is understanding that we’re not our thoughts. The thoughts that we have, that negative critic in our head that’s constantly telling us we’re not good enough, that those thoughts are not true, right? Those are the thoughts that we’ve been conditioned to believe about ourselves because the truth is we’re spiritual beings having human experiences right now, that we are eternal souls and that truth of who we are is perfect and divine. And I truly believe that we all are healers. We all have the ability to heal ourselves and heal other people. And when I understood that, I was, like, “How can I not love myself?” When I really got that that’s the truth of who I am, then there’s no way not to love myself. Especially as women, too. We literally bring life into this world.

Dawn Gluskin: When peel back all those thoughts, all those things that we’ve been conditioned to think about ourselves and just get back to the truth of who we are – we are all walking miracles and just these amazing souls in these human bodies. You mentioned that it was from childhood and that’s kind of how it happens for all of us, whether or something we learned through our homes or through our schools or people in our lives that have certain beliefs. Then we take them on as our own so it can be a little bit confusing because at our soul level, we might have one belief, like, “I can be happy alone” or “I don’t need anyone else to make me happy.”

But somewhere a five year old or a six year old girl got the idea that, “No, you have to be married to be happy.” Then we go our whole lives doing that and people do that with their careers. “I would never make money as an artist, so I ended up going to school for business”. People all have these versions of that. But it’s so beautiful when you can peel back and sort through it and figure out, “Okay, what do I really believe and what are all these other people’s beliefs” and that’s part of the getting naked too, is peeling off all those things that don’t serve us, that really aren’t true to who we are and which is, I’m hearing, is what you were able to do. The process you used was really just looking and examining everything? Or was there anything else that kind of helped you peel that back?

Joie Cheng: Like I said, the first thing that really helped me was the understanding first, the awareness of the beliefs that I was having that weren’t serving me, the limiting beliefs. And then flipping those so that they could become more empowering by just asking the question, “How do I know that this is true?” Right? And that’s a lot of what I do with my healing work, too, is that it’s asking these questions, open-ended questions and the beautiful thing is that just asking the question creates space for different answer, possibility. You don’t even need to know the answer in that moment to create a miracle.

Dawn Gluskin: I was just hearing the listeners – I was hearing some of them thinking as you were saying that, “Well, what if I ask and I don’t get an answer?”

Joie Cheng: That’s okay. You don’t need to know the answer. The answer will come and it may not come right away. It may come months later or something. The universe works on its own timing. We tend to be like, “I want something now” or “I want something yesterday.” But it’s like the universe doesn’t work that way. And that’s the beautiful thing: you don’t have to have the answer. Marianne Williamson says that a miracle is a shift in perception from, fear to love. That’s really all it is. Right? So we have a choice to create miracles in every single moment of our life.

Dawn Glusin: Yeah. So, all my super analytical people out there that are listening right now: you don’t always have to have the answers. There’s just so much magic. And just being curious and, like Joie said, creating space. Just by asking the question, you’re creating an opening for something different to come in. And it might not happen instantaneously, but it could be one day you just jolt up in bed and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I get it now.”

Yeah. I had a similar experience like that. Many, many years ago I was on a retreat. A healer asked me a simple question: “Who are you?” And I started going into my spiel: “Well I’m a mom and I own a business and da da da. And he’s, like, “No, no, no, no, no, who are you?” And I’m, like, “I’m trying to tell you.” “No, who is the real girl?” And I was, like, “Oh.” And it just struck me and it was such a simple question and I didn’t know the answer. But I knew that that question was creating something in me and I sat with it for many years and that’s really what opened my spiritual journey. It was just that one question about it. That’s how powerful curiosity could be in asking the questions. So when did you decide to start writing the book? Were you healed and the depression was in the rear view mirror or how’s the timeline for you showing up?

Joie Cheng: Honestly, up until a few years ago, if you had asked me if I wanted to write a book, I would have said, “No.” I had no intention, no idea, the thought of writing a book, um, desire. And then three years ago, four years ago I think it was like the end of 2013. Um, yeah. Or maybe 14 I think. Anyways, I went to a seminar and there was a speaker, James McNeill, and he was speaking on a stage and he was talking about how when we die, if we don’t write our story down, it gets lost in the world forever because nobody could tell our story the way that we would. And that really touched me, you know? It made me start thinking about what’s my legacy, what do I want to leave behind when I die?

So that planted the seed. Then I was going to have my book out in 2015. I put May 15th, 2015, I thought five, one, five, one five. That’d be really cool date to have my book launch. So I put that on my Google calendar. The day it came and went and I didn’t really have a plan. I was, like, “Oh yeah, I was going to write my book then.” I hadn’t. So then last year, I did the same thing where I said, “Okay, July 17, seven one seven, my book is going to be published. But this time, I actually had a plan. I hired an editor so I invested money and time and I had a lot of support to make sure that it would happen. Honestly, I do believe that there are no accidents.

Everything happens for a reason and there were things that happened in my life between 2015, 2017, that needed to happen to be in my book. So I wasn’t ready to share it with the world until last year. And then I couldn’t get it to not come through me. Like, it came through me in three months. It just was mostly effortless. I kind of equate writing a book to the birth process. I don’t have kids on my own, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but what I can imagine as far as having a child, where there’s times where you have to really push, there were definitely moments where there was one day that I spent, like, 12 hours, editing my book.

I just had to like push through and get it done. There was another moment where I didn’t think I could do it. And I reached out to a friend, a sister of mine, and a group of them actually, and said, “Hey, I’m really needing some support right now.” And one of them sent me a message back and she’s, like, “I know you can do this, you’re inspiring me.” And I was, like, “Oh fuck.” That’s what I live for is to inspire people. I just knew I had to push through and, honestly, everything I called upon, not only the physical people, angels in my life, but also the divine angels. At some point, I feel like we can really do anything when we just say, “Okay God, I know that this needs to happen, but I need your support and all the angels.” I call out everything, divine and physical beings. And, I don’t know if you know about different archetypes, but I called on my warrior goddess archetype that just gets stuff done. So I called on her, too, and got it done.

Dawn Gluskin: The whole Dream Team on board. I love what you said, too, about how you wanted to write it for so many years and it just wasn’t coming out. For all of our listeners out there that want something on your schedule, sometimes it’s actually a blessing when it’s not happening. Things aren’t happening for you on the timeline that you had imagined. There’s gotta be a balance of the push and putting it out there and also the ebb, letting things happen and unfold naturally because it sounds like that’s what happened with you. Then all of a sudden, you had no choice but the book was coming through you. All in perfect timing, all after the lessons that comes through everything. It would’ve been a totally different book if you had published it a few years earlier. You have to find the flow in that. So that’s not an excuse to sit back and not write a book if you’re called to. But it’s also, letting yourself off the hook a little bit and knowing that you’re co-creating. The universe has a say and then you have your say, too. When you work in balance with both, things just flow all in divine timing.

Joie Cheng: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely agree.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s beautiful. So, a lot of times on this show we like to talk about fears: the obstacles that come up in life and overcoming things and turning our mess to our message. Fears come up and I’ve talked to people from just starting out in their businesses to multi-millionaires, highly successful. One thing that everyone has in common is we all have that fear voice that pops up and sometimes it’s more prominent than others. But even if you do all the work in the world and you do all that mindset work and it still will come up from time to time. But it’s actually a little bit of a blessing because when it’s coming up, it’s telling you something and there’s a gift within. So I love to just bring fear out and let’s just talk about it. What’s one of the fears that, either that you’ve overcome in your life or that you’re working through, and how are you working through it or how did you work through it?

Joie Cheng: I would say – they say that the public speaking fear is the number one fear. People fear speaking over death, right? That is also my experience. I definitely have that fear. My heart races, all those physiological symptoms that happen before I speak. And I know that speaking is what I’m here to do. That’s one of the things that I’m here to do. How I deal with it is just like continued to lean into it, right? Because the more that I speak to them, the less nervous I think that I will feel. That’s one of the fears that I’m working on right now. It’s just continuing to speak. I’ve got a couple speaking events coming up this month and so I’m excited. I have one that’s a couple of hundred people, that’s my biggest audience so far at the end of the month. I’m going to be a on a real stage. I’m sure I’ll be reflecting back on our conversation then.

Dawn Gluskin: There’s such an up leveling that happens, too, when you step into your fears because you have two choices. You could just back away from it. You can be, like, “You know what, I’m just gonna hang out. I’ll promote on Facebook and I can do podcasts”, which is still public speaking, but it’s a little bit more chill. You’re not in front of a group of people live. And you could probably be very successful that way, but I love that you’re pushing yourself because you see a bigger future and a bigger vision where you’re, like, “No, I need to be on these stages. I’m here to shift something on this planet” and you’re pushing through it. And I know from my own experience just how much you uplevel your confidence. You turn into a different person as you continue to put yourself out there and do those things that scare you the most. Has that been your experience as well?

Joie Cheng: Yeah, I was going to say that actually, fear to me is a representation that I’m on the right track. I’ve done things where I purposely, I’m, like, “Oh my gosh, I would be so scared to do that” and then I’ve actually been, like, “That is the reason I need to do that.” Here’s a little examples, kind of a silly example.

A friend of mine, several years, ago asked me if I wanted to go to pole dancing class. At first, I said “No.” And then in my head, because I was thinking, “I don’t know, that sounds like something totally out of my comfort zone. I would not do anything like that.” And then I’m, like, “Actually that’s the exact reason that I should. Actually, yeah, I will go to a class with you.” So, I went to a class with her. Actually did several classes with her. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.

I think that’s actually a guidance to know. To me, when you’re, like – the level of fear that you feel is also equal to the level of growth that you’re going to experience from that fear, right? So in my experience, when there’s been something – even my book for example. There’s some sexy pictures of me in my book and when I posted those on Facebook, I had so much fear come up, but I was, like, “Okay, now I’m logging off. I’m never going to look at Facebook again.” What was amazing was, I was actually ready for the negativity. I was, like, “Okay, I’m ready.” It actually never came and it was actually uncomfortable, how it didn’t come.

It was almost like I was, like, “What’s going on?” And it really never did. I only had a couple of friends that just asked me why I decided to put the pictures in my book. But it was still coming from more of a curious space and not – And I knew it was about that. It wasn’t about me as their own level of discomfort. I truly think that when we step into things that scare the heck out of us, that’s how we grow the most.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s such a great lesson, too, because a lot of time, whatever the fear we have only exists in our mind. We create this story – the fear of public speaking, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You’re not going to, like, die on stage.

Joie Cheng: Even if I trip and fell or something, I don’t think anyone’s going to throw stuff at me. They’re not going to be, like, “Get off the stage!” They’re going to be, like, “Oh my God, is she okay?” That’s probably not going to happen anyway.

Dawn Gluskin: And even if you say the wrong thing, you will live another day. But we just create the worst thing. There’s actually some psychological things going on with that because we need our tribe to stay alive. It’s rooted into our DNA, like the survival instinct. And so if we get ostracized, if we do so bad on that stage that we bomb, that all our friends will diss us and then we will die. It is kind of connected to that. I read this whole study on that. But it’s just so ridiculous that when you break it down and you’re, like, “What’s really going to happen? What’s the worst that’s gonna happen?”

But then what’s the best is going to happen? You can get your message out there to so many more people and grow as a human being. There’s just so many beautiful things from facing any fear and it just gives you that confidence that you can do it. And “I was afraid of this and I did it.” And then “What else can I conquer” and “What else?” Then you just kind of keep on taking the bigger fears. So, I love that you did that. Then for anyone else is listening that has the fear of speaking, which I’ve had as well – one thing I do before I get on stage, I always shift it and I say, “This is not about me, this is about whoever in that audience, I don’t care if it’s one person, but whoever needs to hear this message today I’m doing this for them.” And it kind of takes the pressure off. You can just show up for the people. Do you have any tips or any practices that you have been using?

Joie Cheng: I really love that. And actually that’s what I did with my book when I wasn’t sure if I could do it. I just remembered, “Okay, what if there’s someone out there who is suicidal right now, is really depressed, is going through what I went through, my book could save their life.” My intention in my book was if one person’s life is saved because of my book and if that one person is even me, that’s worth it. To me, that was my intention because it’s so easy to overwhelm ourselves, to think, “Oh my God, I want to change millions of people’s lives.” I don’t know about you, but I have a huge vision because who knows how long we’re here.

We might as well make the biggest impact we can make. But that can get really overwhelming. So if I think, “Okay, if just one person in this audience, if their life is saved or their life is better because of something I said, then it’s worth it.” I love what you said about that. It’s really about the other people and getting out of our own way. I say a prayer that I said also when I was writing my book. Before I would sit down every time I’d write, I would say, “God, allow divine wisdom to flow through me. Allow me to be a channel for divine wisdom.” I say that because I truly believe that we are channels and that we just need information and nothing is really ours. I mean, really, we have this information that’s given to us and we are just the transmitters of it.

Dawn Gluskin: Yes absolutely. I love how you said that. It really does take the pressure off when you get into that place of service and you’re just, “How can I serve, how can I be the conduit? How can I get this information out there so it can help someone.” It takes the pressure off. It’s not about me anymore. And then it just – all those crazy voices in the head die down and you can get in and do what you have to do. I was laughing earlier when you were talking about the Facebook post because I’ve done that many times. Sometimes I post very vulnerable, open things about my life because I try to walk my talk. If I’m going to talk about being bare naked and baring your soul, I do that often. I usually try to do it from a place of inspiration, but then there’s still that part of my brain that’s like, “Oh my God, they’re going to judge me. They’re going to think I’m insane” like all those voices in my head and I had someone say something like, “Oh you have no fear, you just post whatever.” And I’m, like, “Oh my God, you have no idea.”

I am having this conversation with myself, like, “Do it! Just do it… no, they’re gonna – well, I can delete it, nobody saw it yet.” And like you said, just log off and walk away. I’ve done all of that. It’s so funny and it’s always well received. I mean, I can’t say you’ll never get a hater or a criticism when you’re putting yourself out there because that just comes with the territory. But when you’re being true to who you are and true to yourself, overwhelmingly, you’ll have more people drawn to you that love you and support you and want to see more. So do it. You have nothing to lose. That’s my advice for the day.

Joie Cheng: That’s good advice. I agree. That’s the movement that I am creating and starting and inspiring people to share their naked truth. I think that we need people in the world that are sharing their truth that want to make a positive impact in the world that are coming from that space because we have so much power and influence.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, absolutely. The show’s gonna be wrapping up here in a minute. And I’m loving talking to you and I would love to talk to you all day. I’m like that with all my guests, like, “Can we just talk for, like, three hours?” Let the audience listening know a little bit more about how you work with them, if they’re wanting to get their story out and how you work together and also where they can find you on social media, online and all that good stuff.

Joie Cheng: If anyone is out there listening right now and feeling like, “Wow, that’s so amazing what you’ve done in your story that you’re sharing, that you’re sharing with the world” and I truly believe that we all have our own unique story and the world needs to hear it. There’s someone out there that needs your stories. So if you feel inspired, I would love to get on a phone call with you and you can go to my website at www.joiecheng.com and you can set up a complimentary 30 minute Clarity Breakthrough Call and we can talk. If you know what your story is, we could talk about what that would look like, if you want to write a book about it. Or if you’re not sure if you have a story, I can help you with that as well. I would love to support you in that.

Dawn Gluskin: Awesome. And I will have all of Joie’s website and social media links on www.barenakedradio.com. So just go to the website and click on her show and you can get in touch with her there. It was so nice, getting the two “naked girls” together today.

Joie Cheng: I’m glad we finally got to meet.

Dawn Gluskin: Our goal is to get the world naked. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show and you have such a great inspiring story. I’m rooting for you. I know you’re going to kill it on your speaking gig and just get on bigger and bigger stages so I’ll be watching you grow, so thank you so much for being with us today, Joie.

Joie Cheng: Thank you, Dawn. It was such a pleasure to be on the show with you.

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