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Episode 014: Leigh Daniel: Bringing Love to Law

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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’m excited to welcome a positive changemaker and lovely human being by the name of Leigh Daniel to the show.

Leigh Daniel: Hey there everybody and thank you, Dawn, so much for having me today.

Dawn Gluskin: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Leigh came highly recommended by a wonderful friend of mine, Debbie Sodergren, and we just talked a bit before the show. She’s lovely and I cannot wait to talk to her. She’s got a really interesting background and you guys are gonna love her. Leigh had been practicing as a family lawyer for almost 20 years when she realized the energy and stress was taking a toll on her. She had looked for another way and found Mike Dooley’s Infinite Possibilities. After becoming a certified as a trainer, she came home and transformed her law practice and her life. She’s gone on to create Project Positive Change, a global network of heart-centered entrepreneurs. I would just love to dive right into your story so the audience can get a feel of who you are and what you stand for. If you could just take us back a little bit – so you’re working as an attorney, which we all know can be a very stressful job, 80 hours a week. And something inside of you said, “You know, I need a way out.”

Leigh Daniel: I didn’t realize it at the time because I didn’t know that much about energy and things like that. Being a divorce lawyer, I would get really engrossed in what was going on with my cases. Being in that negative energy all day long, five days a week, I didn’t realize how it was affecting me. My health was taking a toll, I would eat a ton to processed cheese. Velveeta was like my food choice. A big block of Velveeta cheese. I know it sounds silly, but I was so unhappy. Even though it looked like on the outside that I had everything going for me – I had my practice, it was very successful, known as a very super mean lawyer.

Dawn Gluskin: Which I can’t believe. You seem so nice.

Leigh Daniel: Somebody said to me yesterday, “But she looks really nice.” They were, like, “Oh no, the courtroom.”

Dawn Gluskin: It’s game on in the courtroom.

Leigh Daniel: Yeah, it’s fortunate. I just knew that I was really unhappy. I had high blood pressure and my actual physician referred me to a spiritual counselor and she got me looking around at different things on the Internet and I happened to run across Mike Dooley on a Mindvalley newsletter. After I went to Mike’s event, everything changed for me from that point on.

Dawn Gluskin: What was it about his event or about his teachings that resonated with you? What was sort of your A-ha moment?

Leigh Daniel: Well, the biggest one was – well, if any of you that might be listening are not into this woo-woo – I mean, I showed up and was absolutely terrified, about all the happy people, I thought, “What? It’s not even 9:00 in the morning. ”

Dawn Gluskin: “Why are these people so happy?”

Leigh Daniel: “Why are they happy? Why are they all wearing so many bracelets.” I came to realize that the more spiritual you are, more bracelets you have.

Dawn Gluskin: I definitely fit that, though!

Leigh Daniel: I was feeling so out of sorts and so out of place. I kept running back to my room to hide between breaks. But on the second day, I wasn’t paying that much attention, but Mike said something like, “You can keep going to therapist or you keep taking medicine or maybe you could just decide to stand up and be happy.” And I thought, “Wow, I’ve wasted a lot of money, first of all.” I absolutely have nothing against therapists or drugs. But I just thought, “Is it really that simple?” I went back to my room and I just felt like shaken. “Is that true?” So when I came back, I brought my staff in and I said, “We are doing something differently. We’re going to be a law firm based on love. But we didn’t. We’ve managed to transform the way we practice law from that point onward.

Dawn Gluskin: What does that look like, bringing love to law? What did that look like for you guys?

Leigh Daniel: The very first step was really reframing everything that happened because there’s so much negativity here that I had to not only reframe for us – let’s just say there’s a hostile lawyer and I’ll say, “What can we say nice about them?” And it might be something like, “They dress really well. They’re very well spoken” instead of cursing them or thinking, “Oh, they ruined our day, what a horrible person they are.” Just a continual reframing from the negative to the positive. Then I had to do that with my clients as well because you can really, especially in the family situation, you can get so stuck on everything that’s going wrong.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. Attorneys are known for being cutthroat. The best ones are. The more cutthroat you are, the better your results are. It seems such a strange place to bring love. Bringing love into the battle field.

Leigh Daniel: I was very conflicted at times. I remember once I had a case with a cross-dresser. I was cross-examining him. He and his lawyer were just glaring at me and I didn’t care how many dresses he wore. I was doing my job to bring it up to the court. I really was thinking, “How can I attack this man? I feel like I’m judging him.” I felt so horrible. But then I learned that if I could just come from a place of intending just to show the truth rather than intending to attack – It’s really about intention, you know what I mean, Dawn? It’s the intention that I put behind what I’m doing. Do I have compassion? I am really showing the truth? Or am I really there trying to destroy somebody?

Dawn Gluskin: That’s a great reframe because as a lawyer, your job is to let the truth come to the table and then let the courtroom decide. It’s not personal and it’s not about attacking – acknowledging that there is a human being on that stand. Instead of making it personal. That probably is helpful to you too, I’m sure. A lot of those feelings of stress and happiness you had felt prior or because of the nature of that work.

Leigh Daniel: Yeah, for sure. You can’t be that miserable and stuck in that much negativity and not be affected.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. And then enters the Velveeta.

Leigh Daniel: The Velveeta, the bottle of wine. I also have a couple of pigs at home. It was a really difficult time. I think that this happens to a lot of people. I got to a point in my career that I thought, “Is this is really it? I make six figures or more, I can do anything I want, but why am I so unhappy?”

Dawn Gluskin: So many people can relate to that. The outside looking in, you have the perfect life, everything’s great. Then you’re like, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I not happy?” What was the answer that you came up with for yourself?

Leigh Daniel: I found that I could just create whatever I wanted. If I wanted to keep creating misery, I could keep creating it. If I wanted to create something different, I had to think about something different. And Mike’s Dooley’s thing that he says is “Thoughts become things.” I really started putting that into practice and thinking about what I’m thinking about. But I just looking at my thoughts and seeing how am I approaching things? I stopped calling a client, spouses – like they really want you to call other person a name. Like, “What about this person? They’re so so and so.” I had to just keep pointing them away rather than getting engaged in calling them names or say, “You know what, let’s look at this from a different perspective of…” or “Why don’t we look at what’s going to happen in the future that’s great rather than all the bad things that happened in the past.”

Dawn Gluskin: It sounds like your role almost evolved from not just being the attorney and trying to win the case, but also almost like a counselor and then helping them heal. Is that kind of how it occurred at times?And

Leigh Daniel: Sort of. Yeah. I also have a huge community of people that I do referrals, I send lots of people referrals for coaches and therapists and things like that. But really, just having them stop looking at all the bad and just focus on those little good things that they can find in their life. Maybe they are upset because, “I’m not going to see my kids every day” and I say, “Well, but what if you have more quality time with the kids when you see them?” I just kinda keep directing them back to that space.

Dawn Gluskin: I love it. I love it. For those who laughed at you and said, “We’re going to go out of business when you bring love to law.” You’re still thriving. How has it affected your bottom line?

Leigh Daniel: At one point – I think it was around maybe around six or seven months later – I definitely was at a crossroads where I could tell people would come in and they wouldn’t hire me. That had never happened before. I thought, “What’s happening?” This one really negative woman – the sky was falling. Literally she parked in front of the offices and a tree fell on her car. Everything that was bad would happen. She fired me and I thought, “Oh my gosh, it was a big money client.” And I won her first case, this was her second case. I thought, “But I didn’t want to represent her.” After that, I started really thinking about the person I wanted to attract into my practice. We’re far more successful now than we were then. So it hasn’t effected my bottom line at all.

Dawn Gluskin: It seems it’s affected it positively and you’re getting the clients that you want to work with. Which is beautiful. That’s just like doing the work that you love, working with people that you want to work with. I mean that sounds like a perfect ending.

Leigh Daniel: My website has positive change all over it and Buddhas all over the office. I think if they walk in or they looked me up online at all, they’re going to see that my platform is about being positive, bringing positive change into their lives. That’s all I talk about. That doesn’t make me any less of a competent or tough lawyer. It just means that I do my job and I do it from a place of respect for the other people.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s such a great point because you can still do your job effectively, like you said, uncover the truth, makes sure that justice prevails. But you don’t have to bring on the dark energy. You don’t have to attack people. It’s like you can do it in a way with integrity. We often talk on Bare Naked Radio about being the truth of who you are and how we’re so afraid to be who we really are because we’re going to be judged. Or in your case it’s like, “Well, you’re a lawyer, you’re supposed to show up a certain way. Not with Buddhas all over the office, not talking about positive change.” There’s a fear of like, “I’m going to lose clients”, but you’re going to lose the clients you don’t want, which is a good thing. You’re going to attract the ones that you do want and the people that you most want to work with.

Leigh Daniel: Also the people that come to me are satisfied because no matter how their case turns out, they know that I’m really giving them more than just legal advice. I’m giving them love. At this office, that’s what we do. Everybody that works for me, I indoctrinating them into the idea. I’ve looked for people to work for me that come from a space of compassion and really wanting to give back. That’s just become what we are here.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s beautiful. Often in the show we often talk about your biggest failures, quote unquote, because I don’t believe there’s any true failures. Just learning experiences or biggest fears. And talking about that, you had talked about when you first started speaking and doing workshops and then you were getting some negative feedback from other attorneys. They caused you to question yourself.

Leigh Daniel: I get negative feedback from other lawyers because they say that I’m too happy.

Dawn Gluskin: They need to go to Mike Dooley’s event. Right? Like you. To realize, “It’s okay to be happy.”

Leigh Daniel: It’s our natural state is to be happy. I can recall a trial where I had just gone to lunch with my client and I was feeling pretty good. It was just a case about money. There weren’t any children or any domestic abuse. There’s nothing heavy duty about the case. It was just a money case and they both had money. The other lawyer says, “Objection, Your Honor.” I’m like, “What is she objecting to?” And she said she was objecting because Miss Daniel is smiling.

Dawn Gluskin: There’s no smiling in the court room!

Leigh Daniel: No, evidently not. And I said, “What?” And she said, “She’s been smiling at the court reporter the entire time.” She’s sitting across from me! I had to go into the judge’s chambers. I had to go explain that I taught people happiness and then I was pretty good at it obviously.

Dawn Gluskin: Wow. I mean that really paints the picture of what the atmosphere is like in a court room. You’re smiling. Just being a happy, normal person smiling at another human being that you get called into the judge’s chamber to be reprimanded.

Leigh Daniel: The judge wasn’t mad at me, but it was just kind of – I think they all know now. One lawyer says a little song, “Happy, happy, happy.” I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” But I think they are used to it now. There’s not a lot of smiling in court room.

Dawn Gluskin: You’re just going to show up as who you are and you’re probably way happier. Have way less stress levels. Living a richer life than the average attorney because of what you’ve gotten turned on to. Then tell us: you came home after your transformation, becoming one of the happy people. I do have to ask now: do you wear the bracelets?

Leigh Daniel: I have many more bracelets now. Many many more.

Dawn Gluskin: I love it. I love it. Then you went on to create Project Positive Change. Tell us about the project and how it took off and where you guys are right now.

Leigh Daniel: After I found out that life could be different, I was really on fire to teach more people. I went and coached or taught hundred people out of Mike Dooley’s book and his workbook. That was first. Then I started doing retreats in Key West, Florida. I did nine successful retreats there and I met so many people. I started writing on a Facebook group, “We share infinite possibilities.” I met tons of people who wanted to make a difference in the world and we didn’t know how to do it. It was so expensive to get started doing online marketing. Lots of us had other jobs. So I said, “What if we just formed this community and started helping each other?” So that’s what I did. It’s been almost three years. April 1st was my very first webinar. The first people that joined, I thought, “I can’t believe you guys are joining. I just have an idea.” Soon, we set our goal for 111 people and that’s how many joined by mid-July. It was pretty incredible. All of us have a common goal to do business in a different way. That is to really put service to the world first and we want to make money and we will make money, but it’s not just about the bottom line. It’s about creating purpose in our lives and creating purpose in our business.

Dawn Gluskin: If you can create service to the world first and happiness inside a courtroom, which isn’t usually service to self and not happiness, but competition. If you can create that there, then yes, you can create that across any industry.

Leigh Daniel: I remember I used to read Marianne Williamson and she wrote in “A Return to Love” that when she used to work as a waitress in New York City that everybody else just thought she was a waitress. She knew she was a lightworker. I really think that’s all of our roles as light workers in whatever, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, if we can just bring that higher consciousness and that higher vibration to wherever we are – we’re shifting things just a little bit,

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, because our light and our consciousness – that’s the truth of who we are at the core of our being. And then we forget. Life happens and we start building up all these layers and all these beliefs and then we just forget who we are. Especially when you get sucked into some of the more corporate, cutthroat environments – like practicing law especially as a great example of that – then you lose sight of that so easily. But it’s not that hard to bring it back. Right? What would you recommend to people listening that are saying, “I want more light in my life?”

Leigh Daniel: I say start with the littlest step of reframing. Just catching what you say first because that’s pretty easy. What do you say about yourself? What do you say about your neighbors? When I first came back I had to kind of cut ties with lots of people that were negative in my life. While I thought, “Well shoot, I’m not going to have any friends.” Now, I had a community of hundreds of people who support and love me, but I didn’t want to be around people who are gossipy or who backbiting or competing. I just cut that out of my life.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s such a beautiful point for all of our listeners too. Sometimes we’re afraid just to be who we really are or to step into our light or step into our power because we’re afraid of losing people. But sometimes you do lose those clients that aren’t aligned or sometimes you do lose those friends that aren’t in alignment. It’s okay because when you lose the people that aren’t your people, that aren’t in alignment with you, the right people can come into your life. You’re creating actually creating space for more abundance, for more joy.

Leigh Daniel: I remember going to dinner with a group of women. They said, “We missed you, blah, blah, blah.” I sat there and listened to them all talk about other women and I thought, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to talk about people. I want to lift people up.” I know there’s some things you can’t avoid. I certainly can’t avoid going to court everyday and it sure as heck didn’t feel good all the time, most of the time. But if you can choose and you’re in a place that you don’t feel good, then don’t stay there. We have a choice to choose something that lifts us up and makes us feel great or something that makes us feel bad.

Dawn Gluskin: It is something that you have to do, like going to the court room. You can find a way to make it. How do you bring your light into that situation?

Leigh Daniel: Oh my goodness. I started wearing crystals in my bra. I did a little Reiki before going into the courtroom. I just say whatever it is I want to manifest that day. Recently at a trial and the whole way there, about an hour and a half. I just said, “I’m love and I am fairness and I am…” I just kept saying affirmations. I set my intention to do the best I could. It was the most incredible feeling of calm competency, skill – it’s just about setting intention.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s such a great role model for some people because a lot of times people will be maybe stuck in a job that they don’t love and there’s another calling for them. They’re like, “Well, how do I do both? I can’t quit my job because I still need the income. I’m not in a place to do that yet. Or maybe I don’t want to for other reasons. And I have this calling, this passion to do something else, like a soul calling.” It sounds like you’ve got the best of both worlds. You’re bringing love into the courtroom and you have your project, Project Positive Change. How do you manage it all? Do you just work constantly?

Leigh Daniel: I work a lot but I have a great team. I have a team of people with Project Positive Change. I have a team of people in my law office. I just surround myself with people that have the same vision that I have and know what the end result is which is to make, especially in my domestic practice, to make them leave in a better place than they were when they started. Just financially or not just with their children actually to have a piece of hope.

Dawn Gluskin: It sounds like you’re really invested in your team and helping them transform. If they come to work with you, they’re going to get uplifted and you guys are going to grow together.

Leigh Daniel: I’ve hired two lawyers since that happened and I fired one guy too because he was really angry and negative. I just said, “I can’t have you acting like that.” The people that I’ve hired are positive. They can see that silver lining, they really care about the people that come into the office. They’re not just a file. They’re not just money. It really means something.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s beautiful because in the business world, sometimes we can forget we’re working with humans. It’s not just a number on a spreadsheet. Those are real people with real feelings with real lives.

Leigh Daniel: Right. And I recently spoke at an event in the UK to about a hundred women. I had a very successful law practice and I was sharing that by even showing some vulnerability, showing your clients that you’re a real person, telling them anecdotes, connecting with them. That’s why I find that I’ve been so successful. Somebody wrote a comment that I had shown her a way to do business that she never thought of before.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s such a great point because a lot of people correlate vulnerability with weakness. It’s, like, “Being vulnerable, I’m opening up, you can hurt me now, I’m opening myself up to it.” But you actually find strength in vulnerability, which is how I view it too.

Leigh Daniel: And the other people that are around you – that enables them to show themselves as well. Right? My dog comes to work with me, that helps a lot.

Dawn Gluskin: Just the dog? Not the pig?

Leigh Daniel: No, the pigs are too big! One of my dogs comes here and I have lavender oil on. The people that especially stressed, I’ll get the lavender out. It just makes everybody feel like there’s a lot at the end of that tunnel.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. Well you sound like you’re doing it right. You’ve got lavender oil, you got the dog, you’ve got the Buddhas, we got the crystals and the Reiki. I’m like, “I want to go to your law office because that’s where it’s going on.”

Leigh Daniel: Well, you don’t! Dawn, you don’t want to come here. This is where people get divorced.

Dawn Gluskin: That is true. I just want to come hang out.

Leigh Daniel: I just bought a farm as well. I’m so excited about my new farm

Dawn Gluskin: Aw, I love it. So how did you end up with the pig and the farm?

Leigh Daniel: Well, the pig lives actually in the city. So hopefully nobody that works for the city is going to be listening today. I call him my “Hot Piggy In The City”. I had a picture of a pig over my bed like an artpiece, with a pig lounging on a couch for years. And then I had another picture in my kitchen of a pig. When I went to this flea market one day, I didn’t go with the idea about a pig, but I’m pretty sure that having those pigs in my house are exactly why I ended up with a pig. He’s a lovely guy.

Dawn Gluskin: Impulsively you’re like, “I’m buying a pig today.” It was meant to be.

Leigh Daniel: I’m like, “Let’s just take this hog home.”

Dawn Gluskin: Wow. I love it. Why not, right?

Leigh Daniel: Exactly.

Dawn Gluskin: Well, you have been such a joy to talk to you. Of course the show always goes by so fast, but we’re coming to that time in the show – our listeners who are loving you and your energy and they want to find out more about the Positive Change Project – how do they get in touch with you on social media, on the web. Where can they go next?

Leigh Daniel: Thank you, Dawn, for asking. We have a really great Facebook page called Project Positive Change. On the page I have 180 members from 25 countries and we have all kinds of videos helping people with so many different things, from their pets to their careers to Akashic Record readings, intuitive readings. You can check us out on Facebook, Project Positive Change. We have a website, projectpositivechange.com You can reach out to me on social media, Just send me a Facebook message or find me at my Facebook group: “We Share Infinite Possibilities.”

Dawn Gluskin: And all of those links will be up on barenakedradio.com in the show notes under Leigh Daniel’s podcast episode. If you can bring positive change and light and happiness to a courtroom, then you can bring it to anywhere in life. Thank you for demonstrating that and just showing people how it can be done. And I love your spirit and love you and thank you so much for being on the show today.

Leigh Daniel: Thank you so much for having me.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s my pleasure.

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Episode 015: Debbie Sodergren: Woo Out of the Closet

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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’m here with a very special guest, a dear, dear friend of mine, amazing human being. I’m so excited to introduce to you Debbie Sodergren. Hello Debbie.

Debbie Sodergren: Hi everyone.

Dawn Gluskin: Debbie and I have known each other for, gosh, a couple years now and we just instantly connected. You know when you meet someone that’s, like, your person? That was kind of how it was with us. We’re in the same mastermind group together. We’ve got to travel to Hawaii and Puerto Rico and all these cool places together and she’s just amazing. I’m so happy I get to share her with you all today. If you don’t know Debbie yet, she is the CEO of Up Vibrations, LLC. Clients hire her to cultivate their mindsets, reduced stress, and raise their energy vibration to create the success they desire in their life. She does this through one-on-one coaching and group programs. I have worked with her before and she just really helps you clear out whatever you need to clear out and get connected to your higher self. She’s just amazing. So, hello Debbie. Welcome.

Debbie Sodergren: Hi Dawn. This is so wonderful being on Bare Naked Radio. I’m very excited to be here today with you.

Dawn Gluskin: Me, too. Me, Too. Oh my gosh. So much to talk about. Let’s just get right into it. Let’s talk about how you ended up where you are today. You have a really cool background. You’ve studied that metaphysics and you’re just so connected. How did you get where you are today and how did you become an energy vibration expert and what even is that for the people out there that are scratching their head?

Debbie Sodergren: It’s interesting because I’ve always been this and it’s always been difficult trying to find where in the world, in our society does what I am and how I’m put together, how do I fit in. It wasn’t until after I got married and, um, I used to work in the marketing world and left my job at the airlines working in marketing. I left my job working at Lego and marketing. I was going back to night school and taking some classes to – I’m a constant learner. One of my teachers – I was taking a psychology class. She, at the end of class, had said, “Hey, by the way, for those of you interested, I’m a medium and I offer classes in mediumship and paranormal and in metaphysics. If you are interested, come see me at the end of class.” Well, oh my gosh, my radar went up and I was just, like, “Thank you, Universe.” Like in my head, thank you universe, because I know how all this works. I just never really had a format around it. And so I went up and spoke with her and I ended up, Lo and behold, going to her school for six years called the New England School of Metaphysics. I graduated in 1998. I took everything they had to offer. At that point it was, like, “Okay, so I’m going to do this.” During that time, I’d had three children, so my dream job was being an at-home mom with my kids because my husband’s job had him traveling all the time. Our goal at that time – we had the same idea of values of what we wanted for our children – was that we were going to raise them, which meant one of us was going to stay home with the kids. When we first got married, I made the bigger paycheck. But over the long haul he had the buildout for having the bigger paycheck for the lifestyle. So, no problem. I would love to be an at-home mom. My parents both worked full time and I did not have an at-home mom. So that’s something that I craved to be for my children. While I was an at-home mom, I’d taken these classes. I graduated and I started doing classes in my home to different women’s groups that I was associated with through my children’s associations, whether it was a school group or a neighborhood group. And I was, like, “Yeah, I do this thing where I teach meditation classes and I teach you about your energy body.” And they’d be, like, well, “What’s your energy body?” I’d say, “Well, okay, so you have this physical body that you can see, but you also have these layers of energy that are outside of your body and inside of your body. Over in Indian ayurvedic training, they call them the 7 major chakras in your body and 21 minor chakras and hundreds of sub chakras. In the Chinese energy system, they call it the meridian system that’s inside the body. They’re pathways.” I explained it to people in this kind of language where they got it and they were, like, “Yeah, I would love to know more about how to integrate using that with my physical body and what’s going on around me.” A great pathway for me to do that with them was through meditation because meditation was just becoming mainstream and people were doing it. There were studies out in the early, the late nineties, early 2000s about the benefits of meditation. So that was a really safe way to introduce people to what my underlying purpose was, which was to get them to know about their energetic body vibration and by getting them to know, love, and trust me by taking four weeks of basic meditation and awareness with me, I was then able to answer their questions, build trust with them so that they were just salivating and satiated. That they wanted so much more. And then, we would continue onto this course that I put together. It’s a 12 week course called “The Journey Within.” It talks about a bunch of fun stuff. I try to keep it lighthearted and fun and I think that’s why I’ve had such great results with it is because I de-mystify it. I take away all of the stuff around it that makes it feel or sound like it’s something that would be hard to attribute yourself too. I try to make it so that it’s every day and you can actually do this, like in your home. You don’t have to go someplace special.

Dawn Gluskin: You have such a great story because I know that even from childhood you always have known that you are very connected to sort of the other dimensions and you’re really tuned in to the divine frequencies. Maybe as a child – and I know this because I know you – that that was something you kind of shut down a little bit because it was, like, “Well, this is kind of weird. Why doesn’t anyone else have this?” But you have such a great journey. You go into marketing and you decide that wasn’t your path. But then you go study metaphysics for six years, which is awesome because a lot of people don’t get the opportunity to have a formal education around these things. We’re all just kind of figuring it out. But then you bring it back to your mom groups and you’re teaching just moms, the regular people. Everyone has this capacity to tune in to their energetic body and I’m making a point of this because a lot of people hear about this stuff and they shut it down because, like, “Well I don’t understand that” or “I’m not special.” But we all have the ability and the capacity to tune in. Beautiful, magical things happen when you work with the laws of the universe. I just love how you’re bringing these concepts and you’re making them accessible to everyone. You started with moms and now I know you work with a lot of business leaders as well.

Debbie Sodergren: Yeah, I do. Thank you for that. Aw, that’s so sweet of you. Well, you know, back in the day when I was first starting to do this, I thought, “Who better than somebody like me, who is a mom, who’s taking care of the kids. Whenever I would file my taxes, they would say, “Oh, what are you, a housewife?” The one time that I answered it, that I was done with that word because I was, like, “I’m not a housewife. That’s not what I am. I’m not a wife to my house. That’s just not what I am.” And so I was sitting across from the account and my husband and I said, “Well no, actually I’m the manager of domestic affairs.” And there was silence in the room and he’s, like, “Excuse me?” And I said, “No, seriously. I thought about this, I manage everything that goes on. If I was in an office and if I was a secretary for a CEO, these are the things that I would be doing it.” I listed out everything and he just sat there and his jaw dropped open. He goes, “My wife’s going to love you.” So I’m just trying to bring some dignity to the whole idea of being an at-home mom. It’s a stressful thing and especially when you’re on your own for 24/7 for four or five days in a row, you can go crazy for a little bit and you don’t really have a place to vent. In our society, we have not been taught a proper way to unplug from all the external things that are calling our attention, to really get grounded, to go inward, to listen to that inner wisdom and tap into it. We’ve been so distracted by everything outside of us that we forgot how to listen to it. So what do I do really is I help people get reacquainted with that whole process of going inward and because it’s nothing that we’ve been taught in our regular school life or our whole lives. It’s by nobody’s fault, there’s no judgment here. It’s just looking at it as an awareness. It’s all about really teaching people to reconnect to that and you can’t do it in a weekend and you can’t do it in a night. It takes time.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s not a pill. You’re not going to swallow a pill and have this magic happen. It’s a practice.

Debbie Sodergren: Exactly. And our society has been sold on this idea of, “If something’s wrong, here’s a pill, let’s fix it.” Don’t get me wrong, I agree with allopathic medicine, but I think allopathic medicine is good for crisis mode. Then when you can get things under control and manageable, then you really need to start digging to look at what’s the underlying root factor of what this is so that you can then shift it so you don’t have to suffer with it any longer.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, and that’s such a great point because all the wisdom we need, all the healing we need, everything is available to us inside of us and our heart, in our gut. It’s available within. And meditation helps you connect with that. So when you say it’s an inside of you, a lot of people think, “Oh, inside my head, right?” And actually what’s going on inside of our heads, a lot of time is just fed by the outside world of wanting to fit in, of the beliefs we’ve created about ourselves. That’s another one of the beautiful benefits of having a regular meditation practice and a regular spiritual practice is connecting to that inner wisdom that comes from the heart, that comes from your intuition, to get rid of the stories in your head that are false and connect with your truth. It’s just so beautiful and I think everyone – gosh, why aren’t we teaching this in school to children? Everyone can benefit from knowing this, but we’re not really learning that. Especially here in this Western society.

Debbie Sodergren: Yeah. As far as your listeners go, if you take anything away from our call today, my purpose to being on this call is to help you understand that: give yourself permission when someone that you love comes to you with a different idea or a different mindset or a different way of being, instead of coming to them with judgment, come to them with compassion in your heart, so just drop from your head down into your heart. In fact, science has now proven that the electromagnetic field around the heart is four times larger than that. That’s around the brain. That’s huge. So if we could just drop down into our hearts and really have compassion for our differences and embrace the differences – because that’s what makes everything the spice of life – and stop passing judgment on it, I think that we will be co-creating the world that we really want to see moving forward.

Dawn Gluskin: I love that and of course you and I, we’ve been doing the work for many, many years so we know how to drop into our heart, but for someone that’s listening and they’re, like, “Well, how do I do that?” They spend so much time in their head. What would you say? Just like a to get started, like how do you visualize yourself doing that or what’s your sort of training if you can give like a quick little training here?

Debbie Sodergren: Absolutely. What I like to do when I’m doing an interview or if I’m doing a talk on a stage somewhere is just share with the audience. Remember the acronym FLY and it stands for First Love Yourself. When you are in stress mode of making dinner and the kids and the homework and you’ve got stuff on your plate that you didn’t finish at work or you need to get back into the office and it’s gonna be a late night. Whatever it is: if you have a significant other or not even that stressful, whatever those stressors are, what you can do is just take a couple moments to yourself, meaning stop whatever you’re doing, just kind of go into the bathroom, close the door, close the lid on the toilet and just sit on it and close your eyes and do three cleansing breaths. As you do them, breathe in through your nose, expanding your abdomen out, holding it at the top of the breath, and then exhaling through your mouth and pulling your belly button to your spine. After you do those three cleansing breaths, just kind of sit there, continue sitting there with your eyes closed, and just kind of go inward and see “How am I doing right now? What is it that my needs are? What is it that I need?” You might need to say to somebody, “Hey, can you stir this a few moments? I just need to sit and drink a cup of tea” or “can you just do your reading right now while I do…” Do whatever it is that you need to do. Maybe you need to stretch because you forgot about stretching. Maybe you forgot about drinking a glass of water and nourishing your body. It’s a really simple thing and it sounds simple and I can feel some of the eye rolling. Let me tell you.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s so powerful. Don’t dismiss what’s simple. It doesn’t have to be hard. We’re designed for it to be easy. Really. When you let go of all the story and just connect. There’s nothing more powerful than connecting with yourself, your truth, your divine self. It really is that. It can be that simple.

Debbie Sodergren: It sure can and I tell people, “If you are shrugging your shoulders, you’re not quite sure then why not try it? Nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah and our audience – we have some pretty openminded listeners too and they’re always willing to learn and that’s the feedback I’ve gotten from other episodes. I love that. Just take that on. And I love that you’re saying, you know, to go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet because if you’re a mom, you know that sometimes that’s just where you escape, a closet or the bathroom. “Can I just have a minute?”

Debbie Sodergren: Exactly. Exactly. And it only takes a couple minutes to do a couple cleansing breaths and then if you don’t want people to know what you’re doing when you’re in there, just flush it for the sake of flushing it and when you do imagine all your stress leaving, going down and leaving the house.

Dawn Gluskin: Then eventually gets to the point where you’ll just be wherever. Like, I’ll be on a bench at the park, I don’t care. Like, if I need a minute, I’m going to close my eyes and take it. It just gets to be like that because you know how good it is for yourself. And it’s, like, “I don’t need a high.” My kids know all the time. They’ll see me meditating and just know, like, “Leave Mommy alone. She’s having a moment.”

Debbie Sodergren: Yeah. And it’s really healthy. And as a matter of fact, when I see somebody in public do that for themselves, it triggers in me, Oh yeah, my own self care. Where am I going to take a moment? Maybe I’ll get in the car and get to the next location and I’ll turn the keys off. And I’ll sit in the car and I’ll just do it before I go into the next session, just so that I can get really get present around what it is that’s calling my attention next. Yeah. And the more you practice it, the easier it is to drop in, right? You can just a few seconds, not even with closing your eyes, you can just do it. I’m just walking, you know, walking through a crowded place or whatever it is. So it’s just setting the intention and you definitely can get there really quickly.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s why you want to practice. Awesome. I love everything you’ve talked about so far. On Bare Naked Radio, we always sort of touch a little bit on subjects of biggest “failures”. I always say “failure” in quotes because failure is just an opinion, but I think our biggest failures or our biggest heartaches really are what shape us into who we are. That’s where we get our super powers from. We talk about your mess becoming your message or transmitting your pain into your purpose. You have such a great story and I would love for you to share it with our audience today. Debbie is like “Little Debbie” and then how you’ve grown into who you are now and being so connected and what that journey looked like for you. So you want to share a little bit about that?

Debbie Sodergren: Yeah. Uh, how far back do you want me to go?

Dawn Gluskin: Well, let’s go back to like when you were sick. You were four or five?

Debbie Sodergren: Okay, sure. Yep. I just wanted to make sure I was going to go where you wanted me to go. So when I was four years old I went and had a kindergarten physical just like everybody else does. And during my physical, my doctor had noticed something strange with my heart. So they sent me to a cardiologist and they realized that I had a hole in my heart. Everyone’s born with a hole in their heart. Mine just didn’t close up, so they realized that I was going to need open heart surgery. After figuring out if they were gonna send me someplace to another state where there was a specialist or whatever, the cardiologist decided to come to where I live and do the surgery. After my first surgery, which was about eight hours, my parents came into my room to see me and my mom looked at me and she’s, like, “Something’s off. Her color doesn’t look good. Something’s not right.” They came in and they reassessed me and they realized that the procedure that they used didn’t work. So they needed to go in and do open heart surgery again. It was during the second open heart surgery that I feel I’ve had my out of body experience. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember it through the lens of my four year old self. Once I came back, there was times when I was able to leave my body and I’d, like, travel across the street to see my grandparents. Or I’d go next door and see my best friend. I started saying stuff to them, like, “Oh, I saw you get up at such and such a time” or “Oh, I saw you had such on for your PJ’s.” An adult had sat me down and was, like, “You can’t talk like this. They’re going to take you away. Well, when you say that to a 4 and 5 year old… they don’t want to be taken away. So the next best thing I could do that was within my power was when I went to bed at night, I would just close my eyes really tight and I’d make this with my hands and I would just will myself to stay in my body. “Please stay in my body. Please stay my body.” And I did it, to the point where that’s what I mastered. So I didn’t have to do that willfully. I was able to do that naturally. That’s how my routine of practice became my habit so that it became just a natural thing for me. And growing up I was always kind of different. I hung out with the kids in the smoking area, but yet I was the track manager. And I was in plays. So I was kind of like the social butterfly just kind of fit in with everybody. I liked that about myself. There were times when I really felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. Like I was this lone nut out there and “how come nobody else does what I do and how come nobody talks the way I do or nobody wants…” Anytime I tried to broach the subject of anything that was esoteric or metaphysical – friends who knew me and loved me – I would like bring up the subject and they’d be, like, “What are you doing? My God, you’re freaking me out. Stop talking like that.” So I kind of didn’t say anything. Throughout the years, I went to college, wasn’t really what I wanted in college, so I didn’t want to spend the money. So I left college after a year. I put myself through travel school because I thought, “Oh, I love to travel, I want to see the world, I’m all about that.” I became a travel agent and got a job at the airport working for a car rental, knowing that I wanted to get in to an airline. So what I did was every day on my lunch break, I’d go talk to the people at the airline. And sure enough, before you knew it, there was an opening. I interviewed and I got the job. That was one way of me knowing that if I just put my mind to something, if I just did some small action steps, I would create it. To me, I never second guessed that if I wanted something I could achieve it. It was just kind of something that I felt like I knew. From that point on, I kept trying to fit in in different jobs and, like I said, in marketing, through the airlines and through LEGO and stuff. I became a real estate agent because I thought, “Oh my God, I love homes and I would like to help people manage their dreams.”

Dawn Gluskin: You’re just like trying to find yourself and like, “How can I fit into the box?”

Debbie Sodergren: Exactly what it was like. And then finally, my kids were grown at this point. I was an at-home mom, my kids were grown. I had done a lot of work on myself and my own frustration and not fitting in and in my needs. I finally just had this download one night and I was meditating and Spirit came in and just said, “It’s time. It’s time to step into being you.” And I’m, like, “What are you talking about?” This is the conversation in my head. I was going, “What are you talking about? I am being me.”

Dawn Gluskin: You got so good at denying who you were that it was like, “What do you mean?”

Debbie Sodergren: Yeah. And then it was loud and clear. They said, “No, no. You have one foot in each world, we really need you to be the luminary that you said you were going to be while you were there. Let us support you. Let us worry about everything else. You just do what you said you were going to do when you came down.” So I was like, “Alright.” And I woke up and next day, I said to my husband, “I’m going to be giving up my real estate license. I’m just going to hang my shingle out there as an energy worker.” He was, like, “How are you going to do that?” I’m scratching my head, “I don’t know.” So I got on the phone and I made like 30 calls on the shoreline looking to rent space and I got two phone calls back. One of them was from a massage therapist practice and they said, “Yeah, we’d love to sublease to you. I ended up going there and I just trusted the process and it really worked out for me. I ended up running a Groupon of all things and I had, like, 300 people buy a Groupon for an energy session. That was the beginnings. I just did with whatever came to me naturally – like the idea of a Groupon. I don’t know. It came across my email once where there was a Groupon for something and I thought, “Huh, I wonder if I could do a Groupon for what I do.” I got in touch withGgroupon and they’re, like, “Yeah, you could do that.” They walked me through the process and I didn’t even think twice about it.

Dawn Gluskin: You were just being guided. That’s such an important point too because sometimes you just need to be in motion. You don’t have to have all the answers figured out or all the next steps or the big vision. You were literally being called by Spirit to get into motion and you just took the first step and the next step. It’s so beautiful. There are so many great things in what you shared, Debbie, because I know a lot of our listeners can relate. Certainly I can relate to a lot of your story with there’s something about us that we know is different or special or unique or it’s just a little other worldly, right? And then you’re told, like, “No, that’s too weird. People are gonna think you’re crazy.” And that usually happens at a young age and then you just learn to shut down. “That’s too out there. That’s weird.” All of these things and not everyone necessarily can leave their body, which is pretty cool. But everyone can kind of have their own version of that. That thing about themselves that they don’t want anyone to find out that they’re going to be judged about. People aren’t going to like them. So you just water yourself down. And that’s so much of what Bare Naked Radio is about, is peeling back the layers and being, like, “Hey, this is me. This is who I really am. I’m not hiding anymore. I’m not wearing the mask anymore. You’ve emulated that so beautifully when you got the call and it was. like, “No, Debbie, we need you. We need you to step up.” And you could have been, like, “No, no, I don’t. That’s scary. I don’t want to do it. But you took that step and even just sharing this today on the show, that’s huge. That takes something, right?

Debbie Sodergren: Yeah. It takes a lot because you know, there’s people that think that they know me and my community of where I live and they might listen to this show and they might not know some of this information that I’m sharing here because I’ve never been in a setting where I could share the context of my authentic self. I’m a Gemini. I’m a really good chameleon. I can fit into any environment. If you want me to put on the the at-home mom or you want me to put on the hat of being a member of the community or whatever it is. I’m comfortable doing it. To me it’s like the world is my stage and so I’m just playing these different parts in my stage and now the universe is really tapping me. My source is tapping me to step into being my authentic self and let the world see that and in my own beliefs of what was taught to me and ingrained in me when I was younger. That is my lens for thinking, “Oh, they’re not going to like me. Oh, they’re not going to accept me.” I’ve got the training now behind me and the wisdom and I’ve got the courage to just stand there and say, “It’s okay.”

Dawn Gluskin: It’s all perfect, too. I think it’s all perfect because at a young age, you had the near death experience which obviously opened some channels for you, but even being told to shut it down and living your life that way for so long. Now the time is right and the universe is ripe and there’s a lot of people coming out. We even talked about this. You talked about doing a show called Coming Out of the Woo-Woo Closet.

Debbie Sodergren: Yes, yes. I did a podcast show for a year with another co-host. We were before our time and we did this show. Now we just offer it on our website for people just to get to know, love, and trust us. You and I have been in some masterminds together. We’ve done some traveling together and we are likeminded and you are so in my corner and I love you for that. It’s exciting that one of the things to do is to get that podcast show going, “Woo Out of the Closet” kind of thing because everybody’s got their story of it.

Dawn Gluskin: There are so many. It’s even me. I can relate to that, too, because my way of connecting to sources is through channeling. I channel a lot of things in writing and I’m, like, “Oh my God, people are gonna think I’m crazy. ‘Oh, I’m talking to God. God’s talking to me.'” People are gonna be, like, “Okay, she’s crazy. They’re going to take me away.” And I was, like, “Can I say? People are gonna think I’m weird.” I had the exact same thing. I’ve shut a lot of it down, too. And the same thing, now more recently I’m being more open about it and just owning it and it’s who I am. How could you be too much love or too much light. It’s not possible. Anybody who judges you for that or has an issue with that’s just their own stuff that they’re working through and you can never take it personal.

Debbie Sodergren: Well yes, their own fears. It’s their own limitations. If they really stopped for a moment and they do those three centering breaths and get into their body, they realize, “This is it. This is me too. This is it, guys. This isn’t a dress rehearsal.” Knowing that information now going forward, what are your choices going to be? Because you always have a choice.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. It’s beautiful. I just love that you’re stepping up to the plate and answering the call and just sharing your brilliance with everyone and there’s a lot of people. You’d be surprised how many people are sort of “in the woo-woo closet” when you start talking to people. That happens a lot in my work. I’m the “Truth Digger.” I’m kinda like the “truth serum.” I get a lot of, “Oh, I’ve never told anyone this before, but…” I get a lot of that. Interestingly enough, I’ve worked with several clients who have had near death experiences. For whatever reason, my field, I attract those kind of people and it’s the same thing. Like I’ve never told this story before and so many people are coming out, so if you’re at home listening now and this is you, this is your permission to be who you are and it feels so good to not have to pretend anymore and not have to worry about what everyone’s going to think and just to be yourself. Who you were meant to be on this planet at this time and you even said it before, what you agreed to. We all have these soul contracts that we agreed to come here on earth at this time to cause something. So it’s time to step up, if you’re listening and that’s you and you’re hearing yourself in this story idea. I dare you! It’s not even a dare but it just feels so good. I heard you. Tell somebody. Tell people. Come out.

Debbie Sodergren: It’s time. If you’re listening to this podcast, that’s a sign that it’s time.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s so beautiful. Oh, I love it so much and I could literally talk to you for hours and I can’t believe our time is just about up already.

Debbie Sodergren: I know it goes by so fast, right?

Dawn Gluskin: I love you so much and everyone who’s listening now is falling in love with Debbie like I have and wants to get connected with you. Can you tell everyone where they can find you on social media, how they can connect with you?

Debbie Sodergren: Sure, absolutely. Thank you for that. I have a website, so if you go to my website, it’s www.upvibrations.com and I have a freebie on there. So if you’re interested in a little grounding, it’s less than five minutes. You can get it for free, you can put it on your phone, you can put it on your computer, whatever you need. I’d love to give that to your audience as a gift. I’m also on Instagram, @DebbieSodergren. I’m on Twitter and I’m on Facebook. On Facebook, it’s “Up Vibrations LLC.” So if you check that out you can join. It’s my company website. I’ve got different groups and things in there that you’re welcome to check out.

Dawn Gluskin: Awesome. Love it, love it. And as always, all of the links will be up on www.barenakedradio.com. You can just click on Debbie, her show, and her show notes and you can get easy access to all of that. Oh my gosh, Debbie, I just thank you so much for sharing and for coming out of the woo closet and inspiring many others to do the same. That’s what this show is all about, is being the truth of who we are so that we don’t go to our deathbed with that regret that so many people have of, “I wish I had lived a life true to myself.” Now is your time.

Debbie Sodergren: Absolutely. And I love what you do because sometimes when you’re first coming out like this and you’re saying this, it’s hard to find the language around it so that people can associate with you still and you’re not making yourself excluded. I love the work that you’re doing with just taking people’s stories of who they are and stepping into their authentic selves and making it in a way that shows them the love that they bring forward. And not the weirdness.

Dawn Gluskin: Oh yeah. Gosh, of course. Because that’s how we are. That’s the truth of who we are. It’s all love. We just need to honor that and be who we are. I’m talking to myself when I say this to like the reason this is my message – our pain becomes our purpose. This has been my life too. And as I come out and express myself, the more people that do it, that’s what this planet needs right now. So keep doing the work. Everybody connect with Debbie. She will help you connect to your energy, body, and love on yourself and FLY: First Love Yourself. It’s such a great acronym and so much good stuff. So thank you for being here, Debbie. Love you.

Debbie Sodergren: Alright, thanks for having me, Dawn. Thank you.

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Episode 012: Natalie Vartanian: When Everything Looks Perfect … But you Answer the Call of the Soul

Listen to the episode and access the show notes here.

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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Episode 010: Pattie Rydlun: How this Renegade’s One Brave Decision Altered the Course of her Life Forever

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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 you are in for a treat. She is feisty. She is funny. She is full of wisdom and amazing. She’s my friend and you would never believe that she is 72. Pattie Rydlun, welcome to the show. Say “Hello.”

Pattie Rydlun: Hi. Hi Dawn. Hi everybody. I’m so happy to be here today. Thank you.

Dawn Gluskin: So excited to have you. If you don’t know Pattie yet, she has an unmistakable message around work, business, retirement, and life in general. She believes that you can accomplish your goals with relish at any age. Pattie will tell you about the joys of getting older. It’s true. And she will make you laugh with her stories. She discounts, dismisses, and derides those traditional thoughts about being 70 and she does it all with a smile. She’s essentially a renegade who obliterates those age-old myths by living with zest, vibrancy, and the overwhelming desire to make a difference. And she does this through her coaching practice and she shares openly on her daily Facebook Lives called “Good Morning Renegades.” And I’m so excited to have you here! Yay, Pattie!

Pattie Rydlun: Yay Dawn! I’m happy, too.

Dawn Gluskin: We’ve known each other for a little while now. We’ve spent some time getting to know each other in a mastermind and a group coaching program and we’ve had some really interesting conversations.

Pattie Rydlun: Yes, we have.

Dawn Gluskin: We always kind of start out just getting to know you a little bit so our Naked listeners can kind of get an idea of what you’re about. I know that you are so passionate about women stepping into their power and aging powerfully. I know that you have so many stories, but give us a little bit of background, a little peek into your life, and how you got here today, and how this became your mission.

Pattie Rydlun: Okay. I, of course, being 72, have quite a bit experience. I was a teacher for 20 years and then got a freelance job – writing. And from there I went into corporate and was in corporate for 20 years. I left corporate after 20 years, so I was about 62? Maybe 10 years ago. Like so many people that are that age, I realized that it was such a missing not to have work, right? Because I ran a $20,000,000 company with seven direct reports and would get all the work out and with a smile and we had a great team wherever I worked. All of a sudden, there was nothing. I went from “woosh” to nothing.

Dawn Gluskin: “So now what?”

Pattie Rydlun: Exactly. And I floundered. I was, like, “Well, maybe I’ll freelance and maybe I’ll go back to teaching for awhile and maybe I’ll coach.” That was what it was. I did freelancing for a while, but I was so committed to helping women, as you said and I’ve said often, to stand in their power because not only did certain things happen to me, but also to women around me. That was my first thing. I started out with women’s life coaching, which evolved into career transition coaching, which evolved to where I am now. I want women to stand in their power and to age powerfully, so that we can do anything we want at any age, whether you’re in your twenties, thirties, seventies, eighties, even nineties. But it was probably one of the more difficult career things for me to stop working and to then find my way. I’m thrilled to be where I am today.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s awesome. And I know that because you are 72, you’ve lived through so much and you’ve seen so much in your lifetime. And of course now women really are stepping into their power like we’ve never seen before in our history. You can see women stepping up in the workplace. You can see women stepping up in politics. You can see women speaking out and not taking it any more with the women’s marches and the Me Too movement and Time’s Up. There’s all this stuff going on on the planet where women really are stepping up. As someone who is seeing the progression of time from how it used to be to how it is now and where we’re going in the future: what is your take on all that? Where we’ve come from, where we are now, where are we going? How do you see it?

Pattie Rydlun: Yeah. It’s so funny that you’re talking about that because I talked about that yesterday and today, stemming from Women’s International Day. This morning I just said that I want this to really take hold and make a difference because I’ve seen it almost happen too many times. All way back in the 60’s. I was in graduate school and it was this big women’s movement. I remember also another great movement against racism. One of my best friends in graduate school was a black young woman and I said, “Listen, you’re way ahead of the game. You are in the right place. All this is going to change and the world is yours.” But, you know what? It wasn’t. I’ve seen it too many times. When I went to high school, we couldn’t even play basketball. We could only bounce the ball twice and then we had to pass it.

Dawn Gluskin: Was that just for the women?

Pattie Rydlun: Just women. We were too fragile to play like the boys.

Dawn Gluskin: “Bounce the ball then pass it to a boy. He knows what to do with it.” Okay, got it.

Pattie Rydlun: You know, all these crazy things. And I want to say a couple of things about this movement that: please make it happen now! I want to be a part of it. I want to see it happen. What do I have, maybe I have 30 years left, but we have to make it happen. It’s interesting because I’ll go out and demonstrate, I want to help people get elected, whatever it takes. I want to see it happen because we’ve been on the brink and then we go back. We’ve been on the brink and then we go back. The second thing about this movement is whatever progress we make – I’m about to get a little teary because it’s so important to me. Whatever progress we make going forward now, we’re really standing on the shoulders of all the women before us.

Dawn Gluskin: Oh my gosh, yes. Because it’s just building and building. Progress is an interesting thing, to your point, because you’re right, we do make progress. We make these big leaps ahead and then – I don’t know what happens, if it’s complacency or maybe because it really needs to be a deeper healing as a collective consciousness; to really getting to heal the root of the problem. Women can vote and there’s been things in the workplace but we’re still not making the same amount of money and we’re still not represented in politics. The proportions are so disproportionate. There’s so much more progress that we can make and there’s still a lot of healing that needs to be done – the way it’s been, what women have roles we’ve been put in and what we put up with and the men, too. Not that they’re to blame because they’ve learned from society how to treat and how to show up. So much healing. It has to go really deep. You’re right, it’s happening and there’s still more work to do.

Pattie Rydlun: Yes. And it was so interesting because yesterday when I was at this networking meeting, I didn’t talk about my business or anything. I just talked about women standing in their power, doing what we can at whatever age. And I was so happy because the reaction from the men that were there was so phenomenally great and so supportive that I just had to go hug them all because we need to be unified on that point and not pulling each other apart. You know, it has to be a working together.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s not us against them. And it makes sense, from an evolutionary standpoint, that there needs to be an even ground like there wasn’t before. There are biological differences. Well, the obvious ones! Men tend to be stronger physically. If you go way back in history, the men had to go out and do the labor. And, of course, women bear the children. Again, biology. So we can’t ignore the biology. It makes sense that the woman has the children and stays home and takes care of them and all that. But nowadays in the digital world and where we regress to – those old paradigms don’t make any sense anymore. We have to catch up with the times and it’s time for equality and all of that stuff. But it’s still there. It’s present. The old ways of being.

Pattie Rydlun: Yes, yes. On that very point, it’s important also not to throw out the things that work with going forward. I can remember years ago, always telling women who would come back into the workforce, who would come to me to interview for a job, I would say, “Listen, be proud of all the skills you have running a household.” I heard a man the other day – and I’m going to forget. I’m so sorry. I can’t remember his name. He would be thrilled if I mentioned his name, but he made the point which was so great. He said, “When I cook dinner, I cook dinner. That’s it. I have everything in front of me. My wife cooks dinner. She makes sure the kids are doing their homework. She answers any phone calls.” He named, like, five or six things and I was like, “Yes, that’s what we do. We are such task-oriented people and so organized and so skilled.” I don’t want us to throw that out because we have that.

Dawn Gluskin: What I’m hearing in there is to still celebrate our differences and acknowledge our differences. Women are the nurturers and men are strong. And men can also nurture and women can be strong. It doesn’t have to be in a box. Still celebrate what you different and don’t let it put you in a box. It’s really what the conversation is.

Pattie Rydlun: Yes. And to remember how many skills that you actually have.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. And then you see a lot of men stepping up, too. Sometimes, the woman goes to work and runs a business or whatever and the man stays home and takes care of the house. It’s beautiful. They can do an incredible job and hurray for them for getting themselves out of that box.

Pattie Rydlun: I’ve seen that, more and more, I would say probably the last 20 years that I was in corporate and even now I hear it more and more: how often the woman is the person who goes to work. I remember one of my executive editors, we hired her and her husband was a Stay-At-Home Dad. She did all the work. It’s good to see because it’s a better sharing, I think. And not, like you say those boxes, those stereotypical roles that you’re supposed to take. I think they’re still around, but I think, like you’re saying, we’ve got to get out of those boxes.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. I agree completely. We also have to look at it from a place of encouragement and how can we grow in what’s the best for the planet, what’s the best for our family, and look at it from that lens. There’s a lot of anger out there, which I get. Sometimes it’s “feminists” get a bad name because “Why are you hating men and why are you so angry?” I’m not angry. I would say I’m a feminist because I think women should have equal rights. But I do get why there’s that anger out there. I’m not saying it’s healthy or it’s really helping, but I get it because women have been treated a certain way for such a long time – in the workplace and getting constantly harassed. It just becomes a way of being, you just kind of deal with it and accept it. And we’re kind of pissed off, like, “I’m tired of it. I’m not taking your shit anymore.” I think once we move past that is when the real progress will start to take place.

Pattie Rydlun: I agree. Part of me wonders whether it can really ever, ever be be done with. For now, I think they’re still be some vestiges of that hanging on. And what’s interesting for me is that I really left because of how women left corporate because they were stepped over for promotions. I can tell you a story about a man in this company. He came in every morning with his New York Times, closed his door, read the paper, and then he got promoted to an even higher position. It’s a little difficult and there was nothing that could be done about it. So, it’s those kinds of things, which I was, like, “That’s why I’m going to be a coach. I’m going to help women. I’m done with this.” I still am obviously passionate about that. All this other stuff with the Me Too movement. Some things were just – I was told and other women were told, “Well that’s how it is.”

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah. “Just deal with it. That’s how it is. They’re just boys being boys.”

Pattie Rydlun: It should not be.

Dawn Gluskin: That movement is so powerful. And of course that’s what, on Bare Naked, we’re all about: being raw and real and vulnerable. All these women that are stepping up and these wounds that they have been holding onto for lifetimes, for decades. All that pain. It’s very healing that it’s coming to the surface. And now, people get it. I think men are starting to get it because they didn’t understand before. Because they, too, have that underlying message. “That’s just how it is.” You get a pat on the back, as a man, when you act this way. I love that it’s all coming to the surface because you have to feel it to heal it. And it’s out there. It’s messy right now, but I do see progress. It’s beautiful and I love it. I love that you’re seeing it in your lifetime. Like you said, “I want to see this, I want to see it happening.” It’s going to be a continued evolution. We can go deeper. I’m really, really excited about our future. Our Millennials, our children. How they’re stepping up and showing up. I think the future is bright, I really do.

Pattie Rydlun: I was really confident in 1967. All these years, I was, “Okay, let’s see if it sticks.” And I do feel it’s different this time. I do feel that the openness and the younger generations, along with the old – this multi generational push to me is phenomenal – that we’re all working together and with men who get it. I had a really couple of good male friends in the business. I didn’t tell a lot of people but I was let go from one of my jobs and I was mortified. Of course, got another job right away. This was before I ran the $20,000,000 company and was the president and then before that, vice president and then president. But so I was talking to this friend of mine and I was telling him this story and I said, “Oh yeah, we had a meeting and this guy put his hands on my shoulders as we’re leaving. And I turned around and I said to him, ‘You put your hands on my shoulder again… My boyfriend’s a lawyer. I’ll be after you.'” So my friend, who’s a guy, he looks at me and he goes, “And you wondered why you were let go months later? And I was, like, “Oh, I never made the connection.” Those little, I don’t want to call them “little”, but those things happened. And like we were saying before, it’s almost like it was just accepted that that’s how it goes.

Dawn Gluskin: I’m assuming your reaction to that man wasn’t just about him. It was probably about all the other ones before. You were finally in a position of power where you can be like, “I’m not taking it anymore.”

Pattie Rydlun: What makes me think when all this news from women has come out – I think about myself and I’m certainly not on such a level where some women were so harassed and so assaulted. But I think that this behavior is still so pervasive. I think it’s changing, but, you know, much more than I think we could ever imagine.

Dawn Gluskin: And so much of it has been brought to the surface, which I know a lot of people are angry about. I look at it a little bit differently. Of course, we have our president, President Trump, love him or hate him. He’s here to cause a shift on this planet. I really do believe. That his way of being, while clearly I’m not a fan of his behavior, I’ll just put that out there was out there. Like, at all.

Pattie Rydlun: Ditto. Ditto.

Dawn Gluskin: Let’s just put that out there. However, the way he’s behaving is bringing the spotlight on this and people are standing up and saying, “This is not okay.” They’re shining the spotlight and you have to bring light to the darkness to heal it. I feel like he’s stepping up and playing a role. His role as the villain, depending on “what side you’re on”, but serving a role. I think as a on a planetary level, as a collective consciousness level. He’s drawing attention to the way things have always been. The people that have been in the closet about it or being more vocal and then the opposing side. Like, no, we’re not taking this crap anymore. And that’s why you see what’s happening. You got to kind of get people pissed off into action, I guess, because we become so complacent. To your point of why there was movement in the 60’s and it was probably like, “Okay, we made some progress. Let’s just chill now and hang out.” Now people are it feeling it again.

Pattie Rydlun: Yeah. Well, I believe that for change to happen – I make the analogy to a pendulum, where it’s swinging back and forth. That it’s got to go to the extreme and then it’ll come and settle in the middle. Do you know what I mean? When everything settles down. But I think we always need to go on that side of – whether it’s having anger about the situation or a fed-up-ness about the situation. Whatever it is, that pendulum swing all the way up and I just wanted to come back to the center. Everything has changed for the better.

Dawn Gluskin: I do see it. I see it and I feel it and I do see progress being made and we still have work to do. I have two young daughters, a 10 year old girl and 5 year old so for the future for them – I’m so hopeful and they don’t have to deal with a lot of stuff that I’ve had to and that you’ve had to and the generations before us. It’s already changed so much. If I think about my grandmother and great-grandmother and all the stuff they had to deal with – we have progressed and there’s work to do.

Pattie Rydlun: I don’t have any children but I have grand-stepdaughters and I’ve got grand-nieces. I worry about them. The oldest one is 15. I want everything to be solved for them before they step up and into the world. It is different already. So that’s a good thing. But I think it’s really important that the history of it all, that they remember. I tell them all the time, like, “Things were different. You’re very lucky about where you are. You can make even better changes for women.”

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, absolutely. I know you’ve got an amazing book and we’ve talked about this before, just talking about all the stuff you’ve seen. I think whenever it gets published, it’s going to be a real gem just to see the world through your eyes and what the progress you’ve made as a woman that’s risen up the corporate ladder and has seen all the changes in the women’s movement. You’re still active in it now, like you said. It’s really interesting and fun perspective that you have. On Bare Naked Radio, we love to talk about fears and failures and heartache and all that stuff that sometimes people don’t like to talk about. We like to sweep it under the rug. But I think there’s also something beautiful about bringing it out into the open because people can hear your stories and you’re like, “Oh my god. You, too? it’s not just me. I’m not suffering alone?” Also to hear how we overcome our life obstacles. That’s something inspiring. You told me before the show, you don’t get to be 72 without heartache and failure. What is coming up for you? Something you’ve overcome, an obstacle, a failure, a fear, some heartache you’ve had in your life, and how you’ve transformed through it or survived and thrived afterwards.

Pattie Rydlun: There’s some things I have, to be honest, I’ve never even shared. Just getting to 70 or 75 or whatever it is, you accrue, whether you want to or not, so much experience and so much valuable information. It’s easier for me to even tell my nephew, who’s working 16 hours a day, which I did for a year and then I was physically ill, that you should not do that to yourself. But sometimes when you speak to younger people, they’re, “Oh, yeah, I can listen, but you know, this is different, this is different.”

Dawn Gluskin: We have to make our own mistakes.

Pattie Rydlun: So I’m, like, “Okay. Go for it.” I got married at a young age. That’s probably one of the most traumatic things that happened to me because it was not to a person who turned out not to be a good person. I’ve never spoken about it, but it was such a traumatic thing for me because it was abuse, physical and emotional. I’m one of the lucky ones because I had a family who was so supportive, who actually would say things like, “I’m praying for you to leave. We’re here for you.” I was steeped in my faith. I said, “How can I do this?” I was born and raised Catholic.

Dawn Gluskin: Yup, me too. I get it. “You’re married forever, it’s a sin.”

Pattie Rydlun: Yeah. But I had a very wise father who said to me, “I’m your father and I would never hurt you. Do you think God wants you to be in a situation where you’re hurt?” That was it for me. I got it. I help by giving donations of money because, after all these years, it’s still a difficult thing for me to hear about and see. I’m generous that way, but I think that the older I get – I don’t know how to change that situation as far as giving people the support that I had, having that loving family that’s like, “No, no, no. You don’t stand that. You get out.” And whereas I dated a man years ago after this happened and I knew him as a friend for about five years and then we started to date. We were talking about marriage and I had to say to him, “I have something to tell you.” Here’s what we don’t know about ourselves – some people will privately ask me to talk to some people they know. Here’s the thing, if you go through that, you can always survive and make yourself move on. And someone gave me really good advice. They said, “Embrace what happened to you.” And I use that in any and every aspect of my life, whether it’s embracing the business not going well, it’s embracing a career change. But I had to embrace that whole situation that happened to me. And then I could move on. And so when I was dating this fella, I told him I had to tell him something and I told him. And he said, “Oh my gosh, Pattie, this is what you went through.” Here’s the key operative sentence. I said, “Well, it wasn’t as bad as what other women go through.” And it took him saying to me, “Do you get that you really are an abused woman if you can say that sentence?” And that’s it. It’s that self-knowledge that’s so important. Because I was, like, “Oh, he’s right.” So I stopped saying that because it was just such an “A-ha” moment for me. In that respect, I’m embracing everything that happened to me. In life, you just have to be open to [the experience where] you never know where that one person is going to say the right thing to you to change your life for the better, to show you an insight, to say, “This is so.” You get that “A-ha” moment. You really have to be open to it.

Dawn Gluskin: People show up in our lives. In miracles, they call them spiritual relationships and that’s when people come up in your life to teach you something or reflect something to you. Yeah, if you’re open to it, we’d probably have those encounters every day or fairly often. There are so many gems in what you said. Pattie, the way I see you is, you’re just this woman of incredible strength and independence, just fun and feisty and you’re not taking anyone’s crap and I’m, like, “Yes! I love you.” And in your history, you were not that. You were someone who stayed in the relationship and didn’t know the way out and putting up with things no one should ever have to put up with it. For anyone else who is in some kind of struggle or in that kind of situation, you can get to the other side of it. Not only can you get to the other side of it, but you can find superpowers once healed from it
. Once you’re away from it, it really gives you your strength. We often talk about turning your “mess” into your message or transmuting your pain into your power and you’re such a beautiful example of that. Thank you for sharing and being so open with us today.

Pattie Rydlun: Yes, it’s interesting and it’s only taken me a few years. I want others, especially women, to know that you can always surmount all these things that happened to you. We all have that inner strength within us. When you need it, it’s always there. It’s always there.

Dawn Gluskin: I know when you’re in it, sometimes it doesn’t feel like that. “That’s easy for you to say but I’m in it and it’s so hard.”

Pattie Rydlun: Believe me, I was in it!

Dawn Gluskin: Our “it”s are all different but we’ve all been in. “Why does the universe hate me?? What did I do?”

Pattie Rydlun: I used to think I was living in a movie. Like, “this only happens in movies.”

Dawn Gluskin: But just take a step at a time – that was you reaching out to the family and then the next step and the next step. And then before you know it, just keep stepping and then you’re looking back in the rear view mirror and this all behind you. Just get into action and get moving.

Pattie Rydlun: Yes. And what I like to tell people, too, is whether it’s anything personal and emotional or career-wise or even age-wise or whatever, it’s not like you make this decision and then it’s, like, “I just feel so sunshine-y.”

Dawn Gluskin: It’s a process.

Pattie Rydlun: You take it day-to-day and all of a sudden you realize, “Wow, I didn’t think about that today.” It’s like this little butterfly on your shoulder, so gentle and you realize you’re at peace. And I think that’s the goal: peace in our hearts and our mind and our spirit.

Dawn Gluskin: I love that you say that because we all want that instant gratification.

Pattie Rydlun: That doesn’t happen!

Dawn Gluskin: But no, you have to get through it, you have to trudge your way through the mud.

Pattie Rydlun: But you know what? I like to tell people, “We’re like fine pieces of silver.” It gets nicked and then you polish it and it gets like black and you have to polish it. But all of those things contribute to this beautiful patina. That’s how I look at us. All the things that happened to us – we take them and they make us fuller and richer and deeper and more beautiful.

Dawn Gluskin: That is beautiful. Well, Pattie, I absolutely adore you and I can talk to you all day. The time always goes by so fast on this show. And I’m, like, “Oh, no!” But this is the time in the show where we get to promote you. If you are loving on Pattie, I’m going to let her tell you what she’s up to and where you can find her on social media and how you can connect with.

Pattie Rydlun: Okay, great. My website is pattierydlun.com. You can hop on there. I have some stuff about habits. You put your email in, but I hope you go there because I am writing “50 Ways to Age Like a Renegade” download that I’m gonna offer for free. And then, of course, I’ll keep you posted on my book which is going to be done by the end of the year and out there. Also, I would love it if you would join me on Facebook live because I talk about business, I talk about life, I talk about getting older and you know that you can be a renegade at any age. I’m on Facebook, Twitter. It’s all Pattie Rydlun. And Instagram. I’m on Instagram as well. Thank you so much, Dawn, for this opportunity to talk and to tell you about where I’m at. So, thank you.

Dawn Gluskin: Yes, yes, yes. And of course you can always go to barenakedradio.com and click Pattie’s show and then all her links and everything will be there. We make it nice and easy for you. Pattie, thank you so much. I adore you and your fun, feisty energy and I’m, like, “That’s me when I’m 70.”

Pattie Rydlun: That’s you now! You’re wonderful. Thank you so much. I love you, too.

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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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