April 17, 2025 • 61 mins
In this deeply personal episode, Devi opens her heart to reflect on the ever-evolving journey of healing, authenticity, and what it means to truly live in alignment. As she prepares to share her upcoming book Living in Wisdom with the world, she takes a moment to honor the path that brought her here, one filled with lessons from chronic pain, the power of self-expression, and the beauty of community support.
She expounds on the complexities of healing — how it’s not linear, not always graceful, but always sacred. Devi speaks to the importance of honoring our humanity, our physical bodies, and the tenderness it takes to keep showing up for ourselves day after day. We also explore how meditation is a portal to deeper knowing, the spiritual expansion that comes with self-compassion, and what it really means to share your truth out loud.
As Devi prepares for her book tour, she reflects on the courage it takes to put your story into the world — and how healing becomes even more powerful when it’s done in community. This is a conversation for anyone learning to trust their process, lean into their softness, and live from a place of embodied truth.
Connect @DeviBrown @DeeplyWellPod
Mentioned in this Episode Leading Women Defined, curating sacred spaces for impact and connection. Founded by @iamdebralee
Recommended Reading Maria Shriver – I Am Maria
Listen Cleo Sol
Pre-Order Devi's New Book, "Living in Wisdom," Available Worldwide April 22nd! DeviBrown.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Keeps to the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'll go by the name of Charlamagne of God. And
guess what, I can't wait to see y'all at the
third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right, We're coming
back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April twenty six at Poeman
Yards and it's hosted by none other than Decisions, Decisions Man,
DyB and Weezy. Okay, we got the R and B
Money podcast. We're taking Jay Valentine. We got the Woman
of All Podcasts with Sarah Jake Roberts. We got Good
(00:23):
Mom's Bad Choices. Carrie Champion will be there with her
next sports podcast and the Trap Nerds podcast, with more
to be announced. And of course it's bigger than podcasts.
We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with black owned businesses
plus the food truck court to keep you fed while
you visit us. All right, listen, you don't want to
miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now at
Black Effect dot Com Flash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Take a deep in through your nose. Holds it now,
release slowly again deep in haale hold release, repeating internally
(01:33):
to yourself as you connect to my voice. I am
deeply well I am deeply well. I am deeply wow.
(02:00):
I'm Debbie Brown and this is the Deeply Well podcast.
Welcome to another episode. Welcome back to the show. Of course,
I'm Debbie Brown. Shout out to everybody watching on YouTube
and listening in their cars and your phones however you
(02:22):
listen to podcasts. Oh, y'all, it has been a month.
It has been a crazy last few weeks. This episode,
I want to check in with everyone and kind of
talk about some of the thoughts and the themes and
the things that are expanding and growing in my life
and the world. Hopefully in your life and in your hearts.
(02:46):
One thing, and this is just very random, but the
last few years really since the pandemic, I want to say,
so like five years ago, I kind of like stopped
wearing makeup and doing my hair, and I've just, yeah,
I've been very happily in my like you know, just
like normal ordinary self. But I'm on a press run
(03:10):
that has officially kicked off from my book, and so
like I'm getting my makeup done and like get my
hair done and things like that, and it is just funny.
It's it's I don't know if this makes sense for anyone.
But it's been an interesting experience for me, having come
from previously being in an industry that kind of demanded
that from me every day to then being able to
(03:31):
experience my life not connected to that whatsoever. And that's
more who I am. I never really kind of like saddened,
did my makeup, though I wish growing up I knew
how to. And I never really sat and did my
hair bunch though I wish I had known how to,
And so it's just funny, like right now, I feel
like I am fully embodying two kind of different sides
(03:56):
of like who I am and how I move and
how I feel. And it's been really interesting after spending
so many years disconnecting myself intentionally and purposefully kind of
from the world or from you know, certain aspects of
being seen, and to now because I have a book
(04:18):
out that I really want you to read that I
think you'll love and I think it'll be meaningful for you.
You know, you kind of got to like turn those
things on. So it's been interesting. My background, as I'm
sure you know if you listen to this show, was
spending many, many, many, many many years in broadcasting, and
so I honed a lot of great technical ability to
(04:38):
like speak and project my voice and host. And then
when I moved into this evolution of my purpose years ago,
I had to spend time coming down from my training
to be able to talk like myself again, because you
get so used to kind of whatever the performance is
(04:59):
with your work, right, Like, you know how sometimes you
have to answer the phone a certain way at work
or speak to people in a certain way. When you're
in broadcasting, it's all about not having even a second
of silence, and then like, yeah, just being like very up,
very fast, very succinct, you know, like word economy, saying
(05:19):
as much as you can with a few words and
doing it quickly. And so I had to really come
down from that style of speaking after doing it for
so many years and be in kind of practice with
like how can I continue to do this work like
(05:39):
with a microphone in front of me, but do it
as the private version of myself that's not on display.
So that was a really kind of interesting part of
my journey. And it's just kind of funny, how, you know,
every I've noticed every few years, the cyclical nature of
our lives is that, you know, things become full circle
(06:02):
and are brought back in front of you, and you know,
you kind of get to get to notice them and
see them, be them, taste them, do them, but now
from kind of an expanded view and as like a
different version. So that has been interesting and fun. This
week I officially kicked off a lot of my press
for the book Living in Wisdom, A Path to Embodying
(06:27):
your Authentic Self and Breathing grief and developing self mastery.
I cannot wait for y'all to get this book. It's
out April twenty second, so very very soon from right now,
and I want to share a little bit about what
this process has been in case there is anyone listening
that is also birthing something, feels a desire to create
something to be birthed, or has recently birthed something. This
(06:51):
creative process is just so fascinating. And I think, even
though writing a book is something I've done before, and
kind of speaking about a book or speaking about myself
is something I've done before, these last few years, I
have just really, really really enjoyed not forming a lot
(07:16):
of opinions about things, and I have really enjoyed like
surrendering to even though I you know, I've been doing
my work and doing this podcast and all the things,
just like really surrendering to my personal life more and
being in harmony with that life and really feeling the
(07:39):
value of that life so much more. And then it's
like when you do something that you know you feel
called to do and create, and you also have to
give it the honor and respect it deserves by like
marketing it, you know, or like talking about it or
being with it. I'm having this like very interesting experience
(08:01):
right now. But it's been really fun. It's been really
fun to talk about the book. It's also been to
be quite honest, like very emotional to talk about the book.
I don't know when you'll hear this episode, but for
me right now, in this moment, I am still a
week and a half out from anybody reading it, and
almost no one in my life has read it so far.
(08:22):
I think maybe I let two friends read it, and
a couple people in regards to work have read it.
But yeah, I am at this moment a week and
a half out of having something really close to me
and really tender to me and really personal to me.
In this book, I share a lot about my life
(08:44):
and my process and you know, speaking to the work
in a very personal way, not as abstract. Right. What
you may kind of notice is a lot of the
guests I choose to have on this show are people
that have done work or whose work represents work that
I've already done on myself. So, for instance, if I
(09:06):
have someone on this show who specializes in inner child healing,
my desire to have them on this show really stems
from the fact that I spent many, many years, and
actually did a program that lasted three years in healing
my own inner child, and in getting really intimate and
(09:27):
close with my original wounds and understanding how generational trauma
moves and how it moved in my life and how
it moved in my body, and how you know, so
much of my chronic pain was because of my experiences,
and so I share those stories in this book, or
(09:48):
you know, if I've had someone on this show to
share about psychedelics, I don't necessarily center myself in the conversation,
because I want everyone listening to glean the wisdom and
hear the life expect speriences of the person I'm in
conversation with. But I spent several years doing a lot
of different kinds of psychedelics and found them to be
(10:10):
really powerful for my healing and especially for some of
those deeper layers of my subconscious work that I needed
to do on myself as someone that experienced childhood trauma
and also many different forms of trauma, you know, all
the way through many decades of my life. And so
you know, when I have astrologers on the show, it's
(10:32):
because I'm obsessed. When I have a numerologist on the show,
it's because I, you know, started working with my own
numerology years ago, or shamans or healers, you know. My
desire is to amplify the work of people who do
and work in these different modalities at a at an
incredibly integrious level, and to amplify what they do and
(10:55):
their expertise. But I usually feature them because I am
years removed from having done a lot of those processes
and work on myself. And so what is going to
be different about this book is whereas on this deeply
well show, I do give glimpses into my own life,
and I do give you know, reflections about my lived experience.
(11:18):
But my desire on this show is not to have
a podcast about myself, to be quite honest, it's not
to have a podcast about all the things that I'm
trying and doing. And so many of those shows exist,
and that's one of the reasons I don't do that,
because I think, if that is how you best learn
and receive, I think a lot of shows do that
really beautifully. But I'm someone that likes to you know,
(11:42):
I believe in keeping your personal mystery. I believe in
keeping the magic of your life kind of to yourself
so that it further informs and enhances and grows the
work you're able to do and your connection to God.
But in this book, I really explore a lot of
(12:03):
that personal side of what are some of the specific
themes of pain I've been through, what are some of
the challenges I've been through as a child, as a
young person, as a woman, as a mother, And what
are some of the ways that I look to heal
those things within myself? You know, and I believe personally
(12:27):
I meant to teach in a path of wisdom, which
means I may not share immediately something that has happened
or something I've done. I usually will share it many
years removed, after I've let myself settle into the learning
and the healing, open to the continued work, because we're
going to continue to do work our whole lives and
(12:49):
have ideally really been able to kind of integrate and
embody the other side of the healing, come into the
wisdom of it. And so yeah, when I do this show,
you know, my desire when I have some of these
just beautiful guests on who all have powerful work and
beautiful life stories and usually a lot of challenges. Like
(13:12):
myself and like many of the people who listen and
learn on this show, my desire is to deeply empathize
with their experience. I may not be necessarily hearing anything new,
right because I am a teacher, and I am a
lifelong learner, and I am my own open and divine,
sovereign channel to the divine, And so you know, my
(13:33):
desire is to really just ask important questions that are useful.
It's to have deep empathy for whoever is in front
of me. You know, I'm a deep feeler, as I
know many of you are. But part of the way
God uses me and uses me as a healer is
(13:54):
to also reflect and mirror you know, the truth of
pain and also the beauty and I'm a wounded healer.
I'm someone that has had hard things happen and God
has allowed me to keep my heart open anyways, and
then use those experiences and use the presence that I've
(14:14):
honed to be near darkness in service to others and
ideally in service to everyone listening to this show. So
it's you know, one thing that I think is really
special about this book is in this book, I share
my stories in this book, I share my overcomings in
this book, I let you know some just to peak right,
(14:39):
just a taste, because, as I say on this show
often and a lot and in a lot of the
positioning of the show, I design this show to be
specifically for people that have had complex lived experiences, that
have had a lot of different run ins with so
many different kinds of traumas or so many just different
(15:01):
kinds of challenges, whether that is a big tea or
little t trauma, because that is exactly what my life
path has been and what I have been allowed to
learn through and grow through and heal through and continue
to heal through because the work is never done. But
my life's path has taken me all over and I
have studied so much I have done many certifications in
(15:24):
so many different hosts of healing modalities and have had
the pleasure to be in practice with my learning and
with my expertise and with the modalities that I use
and do for many many years with clients with myself.
And that's what this book is about. It's my stories.
(15:44):
It's observational stories of working with clients. It's things that
I have experienced and seen and learned from as a
healer working in the world like an actual healer, doing
some of the deeper work with people in some more
challenging ways, and from having you know, hosted many, many
(16:10):
many retreats with thousands of people all over the world.
And I'm not an Instagram girly, so to be quite honest,
I don't post every event I do. For every ten
events that I go to, I might post one thing.
For every ten retreats that I host or five companies
(16:31):
that I've worked with, I might post one thing, and
it might even be a year later. That's just my cadence.
That's just how I flow with social media. But you know,
that is the foundation of who I am and the
work that I do and the work that I share
and my style of teaching is really about leaning into
(16:51):
knowledge and less about kind of my personal, individualized experience
with things I never want to come in this space
and trauma dump. I had a very vulnerable episode recently
where I opened up and I shared that part of
my journey was for many years suffering from chronic pain
(17:14):
and autoimmune and part of my connection to God and
my connection to my own healing was learning the ways
to heal myself from the pain and doing many, many,
many years of studying research around what creates chronic conditions
in the human body. And so, though I haven't done
(17:36):
this on this show yet, some of the work that
I do, and actually a workshop that I taught this
week over the last several years is a lot of
my in person workshops and in person retreats are actually
about inner child healing, and they're actually centered and rooted
in understanding what chronic pain is. Because out of the
(17:58):
stats of chronic pain and then effects hundreds of millions
of people alive, eighty percent or women and seventy percent
or Black women. A lot of that has to do
with epigenetics, a lot of that has to do with
what we now know and say is the issues being
and the tissues or the body keeping the score. But
these are things that sometimes end up in your body
(18:20):
and your activated genes because of things that happen to
you because of work you've been avoiding, because of trapped
energy and emotions. And some of it is just things
we inherited within our DNA because our mothers, our grandmothers,
our ancestors were traumatized people, and a lot of that
(18:41):
becomes compounded into our own physical, lived experience. And that
is really the crux of what my day to day
work is. When I'm not doing this podcast, that is
the work that I do with one on one clients
wellness and well being and teaching some of the deeper,
complex layers of how to get into the crev is
of our healing and how to do it consistently. Is
(19:04):
the work that I do in the workshops that I
teach and the retreats that I lead. So it's always
a pleasure to be in service to people in that way.
Deeply well. When I host this show, I really love
(19:25):
speaking to it from a community standpoint where I invite
other people in to share their work and to share
their process. And there are so many of us, so
many of us hundreds of thousands on this planet right
now doing the work of the soul. And I think
when you are fortunate enough to be diligent in your
(19:50):
own healing so that you're actually able to get on
the other side of it. You know something that I
may have forgotten to mention in the last episode because
I was really shout out to my sling if you're
watching on YouTube, I was really inspired to talk about
pain last week and to share some of my journey,
but to talk about the new things I was learning
(20:12):
having had this surgery. And I was really excited to
have this surgery because this was an injury that I
first came into five years ago, when I was in
some of the deeper throes of the work that I
was called to do on myself. I spent many years
in all kinds of therapies, from cognitive therapy to somatic therapy.
(20:32):
I have worked with some of the most incredible healers
on the planet to do some of my deeper work.
And then I've just been in deep co creation with
God on the work that I need to do, you know,
spending hours meditating a day, spending hours in reflection and
personal process, and then also working within community environments, working
(20:57):
with groups, doing some group therapy again, working with psychedelics,
doing pleasure work within myself and within my path. And
you know, this work of higher consciousness, it is a
never ending work. You are never you know, unless perhaps
your path is to become Buddha like or the Buddha,
(21:20):
you know, you're never not going to be oscillating between it.
And if you're a highly sensitive person, even if you
have cleared a lot of your own personal story and
pain out of your body. And that is my hope
for everyone, because when I look back to the kind
of pain I carried physically ten years ago versus what
I experience now, oh my god, it's just night and day.
(21:44):
You know, I may have a flare up a couple
times a year, because that's the biology of the human experience,
and it usually comes after I have kind of over
exhausted myself in the work. Either I led too many
retreats back to back to too many speaking engagements, were
around too many large bodies of people. Sometimes with my work,
I find myself kind of in groups that can be
(22:06):
up to five hundred, sometimes up to one thousand. The
nature of that as a highly sensitive, energetic person means
that even when I do all the protection rituals on myself,
even when I cover myself in healing, I may pick
up some stray energy. I may pick up, you know,
some other things that can you know, make my body
(22:28):
tired and wipe my body out. It's the nature of energy.
And so a few times a year that does happen
to me. But truly I have found for me personally,
the more healing work I have allowed myself to do
on myself, and the deeper I'm able to go with
that work, It's changed my relationship with my body. I
(22:51):
used to have ninety percent inflammation. So it's like if
I had stress, or if I had an experience of
having a reaction to my complex trauma. Sometimes it felt
like I could put on twenty thirty pounds in a
day and it would just be inflammation. And so that
part of my life has changed dramatically. The fog in
(23:14):
my brain has changed, the tension and the pain in
my back and my body is just it's just changed
in such a revolutionary way that I am so grateful for.
But when I share certain parts of my story, you know,
it's really to be in community with those I know
(23:35):
may have a similar path and didn't always have the
language for it, or didn't always have someone in front
of them that was able to speak to the complexity
or the nuance of what that experience is. So I just,
first I want to say thank you to everybody that
was present. I know I'm kind of going all over
the place, but everybody that was really present with that
(23:56):
episode last week, because I received there's so many messages
from people that they've had a similar path, or this
gave them the language, or this gave them a starting
point within which to begin their journey to understand why
their bodies may or may not feel the way that
(24:16):
they do. And so I'm just really grateful for the
presence for last week's episode, even if it was triggering
for some of you. But the work is never done,
and if your work did include chronic pain, also have
a lot of grace for yourself because there will be
some kinds of people in the wellness world or in
the healing space that will want to shame you because
(24:38):
you have pain and try to tell you that you
haven't done enough work, and they don't know the truth
of what your karma is, what your destiny is, why
you need to understand things about your path the way
that you do, and usually it's always to be in service.
It's so you can teach it. It's so you can
(24:59):
hold space front of other people and show them the
grace in it. You know. I feel proud of the
fact that, even though I am in a little bit
of shoulder pain, I'm healing really well though. I'm so grateful,
Like it's kind of wild to me how quickly and
fully this shoulder is healing. Like I just feel like
(25:20):
I have so much of my life force back in
now being three weeks removed from surgery. But you know,
like having this surgery, as I shared last week, it
really gave me the chance to now get a glimpse
of understanding and cultivate a lot of compassion for what
surgical pain is. Like I haven't had surgeries. I didn't know,
(25:42):
you know, being a mama that hat a C section,
it's like being able to speak to that experience with
other people. Like that's what being alive is. It's having
our experiences and sometimes the challenging ones and sometimes the
unescapable ones, right, because not everything means you know, like
(26:03):
this kind of shiny healing that allows you to quote
unquote be perfect. None of us are ever will be.
It's just we heal what we can heal and what
we have access to, and then we recover, and then
we heal more, and then we recover. But we stay
on this path. And really the point of being on
(26:25):
this path is our own healing, and it is our
lineage healing and our cross generational healing. And then it's
also so others can bear witness to us, either while
we're on the path or as we've come off the path,
you know, having healed certain things, but it should always
be in service and it's never ending. And you know,
as beings that are having a spiritual experience and a
(26:49):
human experience, I think it is so important to honor
the limitations of our humanity and our physical body too.
So you may healed a lot of your root original wounds.
You may have got back to the root of the
root and been able to you know, heal the childhood trauma,
(27:10):
maybe heal some of the experiences that hurt, or the
neglect or things that didn't get your consent, or process
all of the vast emotions that perhaps you weren't allowed
to process in real time. As things happened. You may
be doing all of that beautiful work, and you may
still have physical limitations in your body. And it's not
(27:33):
because necessarily there's work undone or something you're not doing
enough of or doing right. It's also the honoring of
what your physical experience in this life is. Right. So
like this is just like a kind of a wide example.
But if hard things happened to you, and then you
(27:53):
also found that you got a certain diagnosis of a
really challenging disease, or maybe something happened, and maybe you
found yourself disabled in a certain capacity because of the
limitations of age and physicality and what it is to
be biologically engineered as human. You may not come into
(28:17):
perfect health where everything works like you're an elite athlete
or works perfectly, or you have a complete healing or
restoration in something. And it doesn't mean that you haven't
done your work, and it doesn't mean that you're not enough,
and it doesn't mean you're not doing enough. It simply
means you're here embodying the totality of what it is
(28:39):
to be a spiritual being and what it is to
be human. And some of us have karma with certain
physical issues that we are working out in this lifetime
or we are meant to use in service to helping
other people in this lifetime. Something I thought that was
really interesting when I first started, probably well over ten
(29:00):
years ago, understanding that my path was kind of the
wounded healer path and beginning to slowly dismantle the chronic
pain that enveloped my life and understand my body's reactions
to my experiences. I was exploring my chronic pain from
the lens of spirituality, spiritual curriculum, therapy, cognitive therapy, somatic therapy,
(29:28):
and also a lot of different viewpoints, you know. I
started to find it kind of fascinating, as I tend
to do, and I started studying my astrology chart. And
for those of you that know, I think astrology is
a really beautiful tool and companion for being alive. It
can be a really special sacred science. But in astrology,
(29:50):
and especially in some of the older astrology like Vedic
astrology or what is referred to as Yodish astrology, which
is very very very very old, and a lot of
people that practiced astrology were also medical doctors for their
time or on a past episode, I had doctor Suhas
(30:11):
who is a master astrologer and an emty medical doctor,
and he utilizes both in his practices to understand people.
Something I found in my astrology chart was that certain
placements I have lent themselves to saying that some of
the experiences I would have in this life would be
centered around bone pain and specifically pain in the spine,
(30:35):
and that some of my work was to understand some
of the things that had happened to me or that
I had witnessed, so that I could be in co
creation with releasing that pain from my body. So that's
part of what this work is too, and it's not overnight.
It's an ongoing process, and I talk about a lot
(30:55):
of that in my book and I'm really excited to
share that. But it's also been fascinating kind of noticing
as I'm a week and a half out from launching
this how it feels to talk about it with people.
So so far, I've recorded I want to say, three
or four podcasts in the last two days where I've
had a chance to talk about my book and share
about my book, and it's been deep, you know, because
(31:20):
I am not self focused on this show and always
speaking from I guess what I might be saying with
some judgment is like a trauma dumping perspective. I'm not
saying I went through this and this is how I
did it, and this is how you.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Do it do it.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
I'm more I'm interested in providing pathways for everyone listening
to see what resonates with your spirit uniquely, and then
how do you begin to approach that work and then
deepen in that work based on your own intuition. It's
been really interesting talking about myself so much and kind
(31:59):
of opening to that space to talk from my first
person perspective and not more from what I believe is
a wisdom perspective, which is more so through storytelling and
through analogy and through kind of archetypes and wider concepts
of understanding. I found that to be more powerful for
(32:21):
me in my learning as a student, to learn in
that way than from learning from someone's first hand experience,
because we're all so different, layered and nuanced, and so
that is how I prefer to teach, that is how
God has called me to teach. But now just kind
of speaking so much about myself from a first person standpoint,
(32:42):
it's interesting. Yeah, I do it happily and it's been
really fun kind of exploring these stories, but it's also
not how I teach, so it's just been interesting to
experience and to look at it from that standpoint. So
y'all will be getting the book sewn. I'm very excited
about that, and very excited for you to kind of
(33:06):
utilize this book and open with it through my own experiences,
but definitely through some of my observations of clients and
people that I have been with and teachers that I've
learned from, and then also just real technical practice. This
book is filled with practices of higher consciousness. Inquiries, questions
(33:27):
to ask your inner child, questions to ask who you
are now, Questions to ask your soul about your purpose.
There are so many prompts in this book. One of
the certification programs that I did for over three years
was this master's program in spiritual psychology, and it was
(33:47):
three years and every time we met for class it
would be for three days in a row, for twelve
hours each day, and it was gnarly. You had to
do so much self processing, so much self processing around
things that you don't even want to say out loud,
let alone in front of a classroom or in front
of a partner, But it was the path to freedom
(34:09):
for me to deepen too understanding in addition to so
many other things I had done and been doing. But
a lot of what I gleaned in that program I
share in this book as well, especially the practices and
processes to meet those younger, tender, beautiful versions of who
we are and maybe who there wasn't space to become
(34:31):
because of life experiences. But how do you integrate and
reconnect and come into acceptance with all the layers of
who you are and who have you been? So there's
practices for that, and then there's also practice to really
deepen into advanced meditation, which opens your higher awareness, which
hopefully helps to cultivate your intuition and really bring online
(34:55):
perhaps some of your deeper gifts and some of your
intuitive gifts, some of your to be in direct communication
with Source and with the divine, and ways in which
to hopefully activate and turn on some of your energy
centers so that you can experience your body and your
life differently. One of the practices I lean into the
(35:16):
book that I love so much is leaning into maudras,
which are really a way to advance in your meditation practice,
but a way to really open to some of the
downloads that may want to come into you and your
life miraculously and instantaneously. That's one of the beautiful things
(35:37):
I think about building a meditation practice. You know, at first,
you think, as you're starting to study meditation that it's
just about peace, or it's just about getting quiet or
getting still. But the more you practice meditation, the more
you're able to access all the different layers and realms
of higher awareness. So when you first start your practice,
(35:58):
the baseline may just learning how to get still and
how to get quiet. Once you've done that and not
be irritated by it or not to seek stimulation because
of it, the next layer would be when some of
those pain points start coming up, and you might find
yourself in meditation crying or getting angry or even getting like,
(36:19):
you know, like laughing, getting really happy. But you're able
to tap into maybe all the emotions that you've been
suppressing for a lifetime. And so as you sit with
that and learn to release that and witness it and
be present with it and observe it and release it,
then you're able to go a little higher into what
(36:40):
your meditation practice is and what it feels like, and
then you're kind of getting above ground, and you're opening
to meditation as a tool for higher consciousness, as a
tool for purpose, as a tool for really fuel and
pleasure and rebuilding and recircuiting your brain, and you know,
(37:01):
kind of leaning into growing the neuroplasticity which is within
your brain and kind of recarving out some neural pathways
and healing older calcified ones so that you can be
who you really are and so that some of the
pain in your life can leave. And I think that
(37:22):
for me, in doing the work has been the greatest blessing.
I've been able to open my compassion and my understanding
and really open to a profound ability to empathize with
anyone in front of me deeply. Well, some of the
(37:45):
psychology programs that I did when I was getting certification,
sometimes you'd have to bear witness to really hard confessions
from other people, things that may make you want to
judge them, things they've done to other people, things they've
done to themselves. But meditation and compassion and empathy allow
(38:05):
you to kind of open to see the deeper struggle
that is within and behind people that do cause pain
to other people and to really see how we're all
kind of some of our experiences, and we choose to paths.
And some people who were harmed you know, there really
(38:28):
is no other choice but to choose a path to
harm until you know otherwise. And others who were harmed
choose a path first, often of pleasing and even self
righteousness or self denial and over empathy without boundaries. And
then as you become empowered, you turn that empathy and
(38:50):
that compassion outward and inward, and you know, you're able
to really recognize that your role is to serve. It's
not to please, it's not to fix anyone else's problems.
It's not to become whoever other people think you should be,
or behave how they think you should behave, or do
things how they think you should do them. But it
(39:11):
is to anchor down into the truth of who God
told you to be, the truth of who you are,
the truth of the work that you've done, and then
hold space for others and both there sometimes perceivedly good
and bad behavior. You know, I think strength comes in
so many forms, and for some of us, strength there's
(39:32):
really like you know, holding people up for other strength
isn't witnessing for others. Their strength is kind of holding
a quiet power, a mysterious power about who and what
they are. But we're all here to focus on our
spiritual curriculum and then to use it as a way
(39:55):
to serve others. And that's really that's really what it is.
It really is that simple. When you do your work,
you then serve, and your work is never done. We're
always continue to refine it. There's always deeper to go
in your own path of healing and your own path
of self mastery. We will be doing the work till
(40:16):
the day that we're gone. But hopefully, you know, you
get to a place and that's my intention with this
book where you're able to get a lot of the
gunk out of the way and then some of the
work of your life is really just about continuing to
refine and continuing to ask God how you're meant to
be used and how you're going to show up in
that work for others. But we're all meant to do
(40:39):
that differently. Once you get to a healing. For some people,
it is being powerful motivators and maybe really inspiring people
through their own life stories and you know, kind of
bringing a deep level of motivation to others. For some
it's like, you know, kind of disappearing and maybe you
live a monk life and you know, do something that
(41:00):
is off the radar of even being seen, but you're
holding this powerful healing space and enlightened space for others
that don't even know you exist. For some people, it's
really holding up some of the deeper themes in the
work that others are doing, or you know, speaking to
things in kind of bigger way that creates space for
(41:22):
more people to hear it. But you'll know what your
work is as long as you stay devoted to your
practices and devoted to the divine and devoted to your
personal spiritual curriculum, which a lot of people can have
projections on and ideas of, but only you and God
really know what that is. So find strength in that.
(41:44):
Find solace in that you know your healing journey does
not have to make sense to anyone else. You don't
have to quantify it for anyone else, you don't have
to trauma dump it for anyone else, so that you
are believed or seen as accurate. You know, you just
have to do the work you're called to with integrity,
(42:06):
with diligence with devotion and then find ways to serve others,
Find ways to love others and to embody love for others.
Find ways to embody your learning and your work and
your wisdom so that you can actually live who you
(42:30):
say you are. A lot of people can get up
and say who they are in front of people. A
lot of people can get up and proclaim what they
are on the internet. But the truth of your life
always tells the story. Are you in conflict with who
you are? Are you in conflict with other people? Are
you looking at others through a lens of lack or judgment.
(42:53):
Are you feeling peace and wholeness and worthiness at the
core of who you are? Or are you just telling
people that's how you feel. There's no judgment in it.
But there's always work to be done, you know. And
I think when it comes to even the discernment of
who you should listen to on your path, who you
(43:14):
should believe, whose work you should be connecting to, really
take a long, hard look at the person and what
is the truth of their life. You know, I don't
always bring all my personal stuff to the table here
because I also think, well, why should I? I'm working.
Is that necessary and actually useful for people? Or is
the work I'm providing the most useful and nourishing thing
(43:36):
for others. You know, I don't want to live a
SIMS reality. I think the Internet is the only place
where people think they have to engage twenty four to seven.
Nothing else about life is that way. You know. I
personally love the privacy of my life. I love this
specialness of my life at this moment in my life.
(43:56):
Though the world is always changing, and I accept that
about being alive, that it's not always going to be easy,
It's not always going to be graceful. It's not for
no one. And I have met with some of the
most enlightened minds on the planet in the last ten years.
I have had access to some of the absolute great
(44:18):
spiritual leaders of our time in the last few years,
and not just hearing them speak, having years and years
to build relationships with them, having long, deep conversations with
them over time, and I've come to know that not
a single person is perfect, and we are all always
(44:39):
strengthening and refining in our paths on this journey of
healing and then on this journey of teaching and serving,
and so you know, to just deeply understand and accept
that that is the case. You know, we are always
here really for all of it. Yeah, but I've really
(45:01):
learned that, you know, nothing shows the truth of how
much work someone has done or not on themselves, like
the actual quality of their day to day life. And
I think that's where I came into a deep understanding
about how grateful I am or where I've at least
(45:23):
momentarily arrived on my path. And I feel really proud
to say this because this was not my god, my god,
my god, this was not always the case in my life.
But I live a really beautiful life right now. I
live a really beautiful life, a life that to such
(45:44):
a large extent is conflict free, a life that has beautiful,
healthy boundaries everywhere where. The deep close community on my
life that you will likely never see shared on Instagram
are people I have deep respect, love, admiration for, and
harmony with. And people who have deep love, respect, admiration, harmony,
(46:08):
and support of me. And we do special things to
we get together. We do ordinary things together, like spend
time and fill each other with love and support and friendship.
I spend a lot of time in my garden. I
spend a lot of time focused on being a good
mother to my son. My motherhood means a lot to me,
(46:31):
and that's why I don't really share it on social media.
Why I don't really share photos of myself and my
son and all the fun things that we do together,
the good moments, the hard moments, because that's our business,
you know. And I think as soon as I pull
out a camera or try to come to a quick
understanding of who he is or who I am in
a moment, I rob both of us of the magic
(46:56):
of the relationship that we have right now. You know,
I don't want to be so focused on documenting him
at six years old and what I know about being
a mom of a six year old right now, because
I'm living it and I want to feel all of it,
and I don't want to distort it by making it consumable.
(47:16):
As soon as you make certain private parts of your
life consumable to strangers or to other people, it changes
the authenticity of it. It changes how it feels inside
of your body, It changes how you interact with it.
You know, as soon as you start taking a picture
based on how it will perform, it changes the relationship
(47:39):
of what you're taking a picture of, right Like, think
about if you see your kid making a funny, silly
face and you just want to capture it. But then
if you're so used to capturing the perfect picture of them,
you're going to do it another five to ten times
to make it perfect so that it can then be shared,
and then you lose the truth and the beauty of
(47:59):
that rige maybe perceivedly, you know, ordinary or nonesthetic image,
and the moment that was being created in that image,
and then you're doing it for performance. You're doing it
for perception. And I think our kids feel that, right
Like if I take a picture of my son and
(48:19):
then I ask him to take it five more times
and then I'm finally happy with it, and I'm giving
him that feedback, and then I'm staring at my phone
and sharing at it. Whether I think so or not,
and whether he has a language for it or not.
He's learning how to perform. He's learning that a very
specific smile is what I'm after, That a very specific
(48:40):
response or way of positioning his body is what will
please me. And that's what I want to avoid in
my relationship with my son. I want him to be himself.
So I guess I'm sharing some of this nuance, and
I hope it's relevant for people, because I think it's
something we should all be kind of considering and exploring
as we re negot sheate our agreements with social media
(49:03):
moving forward. I'll be forty this year, which I'm really
excited about, so just in general, I think, not just
because the work that I've done, but just because generationally,
this is the time I'm coming into, you know, you
start to really renegotiate and look at a lot of
the agreements you have. So it's been kind of cool
(49:23):
in the last couple of weeks. Again, I'm three weeks
removed from having this rotator cuff surgery, and I'm a
week and a half out from dropping my book. So
I'm kind of noticing this moment in my path and
in my time of healing and of coming into a
new biological age of who I am and how I
(49:44):
present and how I live. It's kind of interesting experiencing,
you know, an aging body with an injury, and experiencing
talking about some of those deeper, darker chapters of my
life life that I'm many years removed from. You know, nothing,
no experience I share in this book is younger than
(50:08):
five to six years old, and a lot of them
are ten and twenty years old. So I've had a
lot of time to reflect and glean the wisdom of
the things that I share with you in this book
and the space to having been able been allowed to
come into a multitude of perspectives of what these experiences
(50:29):
crafted within me and in my life and in other people.
And so yeah, it's it's really interesting to share this
at this moment of life, almost turning forty and birthing
this kind of baby that feels really intimate for me
and really vulnerable for me. Again, I'm yeah, I like
to work and I like to be in my life,
(50:50):
and I kind of, you know, hold both sacredly but
separately in a lot of regards, and they're coming together here,
and so I'm making peace with that and making peace with,
you know, the fact that strangers get to know things
about me that they didn't come to know from actually
knowing me as a person. It's it's a really interesting
(51:11):
feeling in space. And I've talked to a few other
author friends who have had their own revealing books and memoirs,
and you know, they've all assured me that, like, yeah,
this is a part of the process. Waking up at
three am, like oh God, am I sure about this?
You know that that's a part of the process, and
questioning everything and having a little bit of you know,
(51:32):
discomfort at the new vulnerability that you're kind of being
called to share. And I know that doesn't always seem
like it because we are in a culture and a
time of oversharing where you know, people are people are
going live while they're getting like a Brazilian wax, people
are going live with their families in the midst of conflict,
(51:52):
or you know, just telling really private things to people
like I know that has become the norm, but that's
actually not the norm, and it's not necessarily safe for
you or your wellbeing to operate in that way unless
you're sure that you're called that that's how God is
asking you to be used. But yeah, it's been interesting
(52:15):
exploring the context and the nuance of all of that.
So that is what I have been thinking about and
moving through this week, and since you know, the last
layer of the conversation that I've had with you, and
I've also had some really special experiences so quickly Before
we head out of this episode, I want to share
a very dear friend of mine, Maria Shriver, has an
(52:37):
incredible book out called I Am Maria. It is profound,
it is beautiful. It is a book of her vast
and unique and really astounding and inspiring life experiences and
life tragedies that she's moved through and some incredible poetry
(52:59):
that has really inspired me to write more and to
share more and to kind of be in the romance
of myself more. And so that book is available everywhere now.
And I had the opportunity to join her in New York,
which also was crazy because I traveled two weeks after
having had surgery by myself and like got on stage
(53:21):
and shared and you know, I had a wild, like
thirty hours in New York while I was healing from surgery.
But it all went beautifully and it all went well.
I had the chance to open her book tour with
her at the Immanuel Center in New York, which is
this stunning synagogue with just the most gorgeous dained glass
windows everywhere, and there was candles everywhere, and Maria and
(53:44):
Hoda had a beautiful conversation and another another dear friend
and mentor of mine, Elizabeth Lesser, shared an incredible poem,
the founder of the Omega Institute, and I got to
share an opening, meditation and attention setting with the audience
and it's really special and really beautiful. So that was
something that really moved me in my life in the
(54:06):
last couple of weeks. And I'll be doing it with
her again here in La and Santa Monica for her
leg of the book tour this week, and I just
can't wait. I love her so much. I have so
much reverence and respect for who and what she is
and what she represents and just all that she has
accomplished as a woman, as a soul in this life.
(54:27):
And then I also had the beautiful opportunity to be
with the incredible group of women from Leading Women to Find,
which is an incredible yearly kind of pilgrimage that happens
with some of the most beautiful and powerful and intentional
Black women all over the world that are just you know,
(54:51):
doing some incredibly ceiling shattering bar lifting things for many
years and the visionary work is the brainchild of being Credible,
Misstep or Lee, And so I've had the chance to
be with them a few years in a row, and
this year I led a workshop on grief and a
workshop on processing emotion and working with pain in the body,
(55:14):
and it was just really special. I led some meditations
there and I just got a shout out all of
just the magnificent, magnificent women that were in attendance, and
it did so much for my heart to be there. Yeah,
made some really special connections, so much love to everybody
that was there. And then I also did something, Oh
(55:36):
my God, And I think I'll end with this. For
those that have listened to this show or have done anything,
have been on a retreat with me, you know that
for many years I am a huge fan admirer of
the astounding, phenomenal Cleo Soul. Wow, what a woman, what
(55:58):
a work, what a gift, what a voice she is.
I really relate with her because at least my perception
of her, not knowing her, is that she is kind
of a natural recluse, like myself in the best way,
and someone that is just kind of really surrendered to
(56:18):
the beauty of their in real life life and doing
the work that they're called to do, but then likes
to kind of just back up a little bit and
rest and be with their world, and so I really
identify with that, and I love that about her. You know,
she drops projects that can change your life and just
are so beautiful, and then she disappears and goes back
(56:39):
into her creativity, and I think that's really special. So
she embarked on a two city tour where she hit
up New York and had I think four sold out
shows back to back, and then she sold out the
Hollywood Bowl here in LA which I think holds more
than twenty thousand people. And I went with a group
of my girlfriends. I went with my girl April, with
(57:02):
Leyla Delia, and with my dear friend Lauren Lauren London,
and we all just had a girl's night at the
Bowl and sang and swayed and just felt like the
beauty of this special, special work. One of my girlfriends,
Brittany Pacnett Cunningham, she was describing Cleo Soul while trying
(57:27):
to understand like who she was because people have been
like losing their mind since these concerts about her work
were being introduced to it. She called her a holy
shad eh. I thought that was so funny. I was like, yeah, no,
that's that, that's it. That's it. You know, she does
a healing work, a healing service to the world, and
her voice was even better in person. It's just it's
(57:50):
something that's going to be ingrained in my heart for
a really long time. And it was so special when
I'm so grateful that I got to go and I
got to go there with three women that I love
so much and just be in friendship and community with,
and yeah, it was amazing. So I'm I would say,
I'm pretty sure most of y'all all listen to Cleosul
(58:12):
like I do. But if you don't, do yourself a
favor and maybe lock into a playlist and see how
it makes you feel and how you connect to it.
All right, y'all. I will be announcing my book tour
very soon this week, hopefully on Instagram and also on
my website and on my newsletter Debbi Brown dot com,
Forward slash book at Debbie Brown on ig sign up
(58:34):
for my newsletter on my website. The first three stops
I'm making Atlanta, LA, and Houston Htown. I'm so excited.
Here in La, I'll be in conversation with Layla Delia,
and Atlanta I will be in conversation with Carrie champion,
and in Houston, I will be in conversation with Bunbee
(58:56):
and I cannot wait. And also a little bit later
in the summer, after I'm healed up a little bit more,
I will be hitting New York. I'll be hitting d C, Philly, Detroit,
and Chicago. So I can't wait to be in all
these cities and to be with you. If you haven't yet,
please take a moment and pre ordered the book. I know,
like whenever I used to hear about pre orders, I'd
(59:17):
be like, Yeah, I'm gona buy the book when it's out.
I don't need to pre order it. But you know,
this matters to the publisher as it matters to the people,
So you know, I just hope you get it whenever
you feel called. But if you would pre order it,
tell a friend and I'll be announcing those tour dates
in just a few days. And I cannot wait to
see you and to be with you. And yeah, my
(59:39):
heart is really open and really grateful in this season
and just very ready to be and do whatever God
has called me to. So thank you for listening. Back
next week, and if you get a chance, please rate
and review on iTunes and go ahead and leave a
comment no I mista. The content presented on Deeply Well
(01:00:07):
serves solely for educational and informational purposes. It should not
be considered a replacement for personalized medical or mental health
guidance and does not constitute a provider patient relationship. As always,
it is advisable to consult with your healthcare provider or
health team for any specific concerns or questions that you
(01:00:28):
may have. Connect with me on social at Debbie Brown.
That's Twitter and Instagram, or you can go to my
website Debbie Brown dot com. And if you're listening to
the show on Apple Podcasts, don't forget. Please rate, review,
and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Deeply
Well is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network.
(01:00:50):
It's produced by Jacqueis Thomas, Samantha Timmins, and me Debbie Brown.
The Beautiful Soundbath You Heard That's by Jarrelyn Glass from
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iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Keeps to the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'll go by the name of Charlamagne of God. And
guess what, I can't wait to see y'all at the
third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right, We're coming
back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April twenty six at Poeman
Yards and it's hosted by none other than Decisions, Decisions Man,
DyB and Weezy. Okay, we got the R and B
Money podcast. We're taking Jay Valentine. We got the Woman
of All Podcasts with Sarah Jake Roberts. We got Good
(00:23):
Mom's Bad Choices. Carrie Champion will be there with her
next sports podcast and the Trap Nerds podcast, with more
to be announced. And of course it's bigger than podcasts.
We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with black owned businesses
plus the food truck court to keep you fed while
you visit us. All right, listen, you don't want to
miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now at
Black Effect dot Com Flash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Take a deep in through your nose. Holds it now,
release slowly again deep in haale hold release, repeating internally
(01:33):
to yourself as you connect to my voice. I am
deeply well I am deeply well. I am deeply wow.
(02:00):
I'm Debbie Brown and this is the Deeply Well podcast.
Welcome to another episode. Welcome back to the show. Of course,
I'm Debbie Brown. Shout out to everybody watching on YouTube
and listening in their cars and your phones however you
(02:22):
listen to podcasts. Oh, y'all, it has been a month.
It has been a crazy last few weeks. This episode,
I want to check in with everyone and kind of
talk about some of the thoughts and the themes and
the things that are expanding and growing in my life
and the world. Hopefully in your life and in your hearts.
(02:46):
One thing, and this is just very random, but the
last few years really since the pandemic, I want to say,
so like five years ago, I kind of like stopped
wearing makeup and doing my hair, and I've just, yeah,
I've been very happily in my like you know, just
like normal ordinary self. But I'm on a press run
(03:10):
that has officially kicked off from my book, and so
like I'm getting my makeup done and like get my
hair done and things like that, and it is just funny.
It's it's I don't know if this makes sense for anyone.
But it's been an interesting experience for me, having come
from previously being in an industry that kind of demanded
that from me every day to then being able to
(03:31):
experience my life not connected to that whatsoever. And that's
more who I am. I never really kind of like saddened,
did my makeup, though I wish growing up I knew
how to. And I never really sat and did my
hair bunch though I wish I had known how to,
And so it's just funny, like right now, I feel
like I am fully embodying two kind of different sides
(03:56):
of like who I am and how I move and
how I feel. And it's been really interesting after spending
so many years disconnecting myself intentionally and purposefully kind of
from the world or from you know, certain aspects of
being seen, and to now because I have a book
(04:18):
out that I really want you to read that I
think you'll love and I think it'll be meaningful for you.
You know, you kind of got to like turn those
things on. So it's been interesting. My background, as I'm
sure you know if you listen to this show, was
spending many, many, many, many many years in broadcasting, and
so I honed a lot of great technical ability to
(04:38):
like speak and project my voice and host. And then
when I moved into this evolution of my purpose years ago,
I had to spend time coming down from my training
to be able to talk like myself again, because you
get so used to kind of whatever the performance is
(04:59):
with your work, right, Like, you know how sometimes you
have to answer the phone a certain way at work
or speak to people in a certain way. When you're
in broadcasting, it's all about not having even a second
of silence, and then like, yeah, just being like very up,
very fast, very succinct, you know, like word economy, saying
(05:19):
as much as you can with a few words and
doing it quickly. And so I had to really come
down from that style of speaking after doing it for
so many years and be in kind of practice with
like how can I continue to do this work like
(05:39):
with a microphone in front of me, but do it
as the private version of myself that's not on display.
So that was a really kind of interesting part of
my journey. And it's just kind of funny, how, you know,
every I've noticed every few years, the cyclical nature of
our lives is that, you know, things become full circle
(06:02):
and are brought back in front of you, and you know,
you kind of get to get to notice them and
see them, be them, taste them, do them, but now
from kind of an expanded view and as like a
different version. So that has been interesting and fun. This
week I officially kicked off a lot of my press
for the book Living in Wisdom, A Path to Embodying
(06:27):
your Authentic Self and Breathing grief and developing self mastery.
I cannot wait for y'all to get this book. It's
out April twenty second, so very very soon from right now,
and I want to share a little bit about what
this process has been in case there is anyone listening
that is also birthing something, feels a desire to create
something to be birthed, or has recently birthed something. This
(06:51):
creative process is just so fascinating. And I think, even
though writing a book is something I've done before, and
kind of speaking about a book or speaking about myself
is something I've done before, these last few years, I
have just really, really really enjoyed not forming a lot
(07:16):
of opinions about things, and I have really enjoyed like
surrendering to even though I you know, I've been doing
my work and doing this podcast and all the things,
just like really surrendering to my personal life more and
being in harmony with that life and really feeling the
(07:39):
value of that life so much more. And then it's
like when you do something that you know you feel
called to do and create, and you also have to
give it the honor and respect it deserves by like
marketing it, you know, or like talking about it or
being with it. I'm having this like very interesting experience
(08:01):
right now. But it's been really fun. It's been really
fun to talk about the book. It's also been to
be quite honest, like very emotional to talk about the book.
I don't know when you'll hear this episode, but for
me right now, in this moment, I am still a
week and a half out from anybody reading it, and
almost no one in my life has read it so far.
(08:22):
I think maybe I let two friends read it, and
a couple people in regards to work have read it.
But yeah, I am at this moment a week and
a half out of having something really close to me
and really tender to me and really personal to me.
In this book, I share a lot about my life
(08:44):
and my process and you know, speaking to the work
in a very personal way, not as abstract. Right. What
you may kind of notice is a lot of the
guests I choose to have on this show are people
that have done work or whose work represents work that
I've already done on myself. So, for instance, if I
(09:06):
have someone on this show who specializes in inner child healing,
my desire to have them on this show really stems
from the fact that I spent many, many years, and
actually did a program that lasted three years in healing
my own inner child, and in getting really intimate and
(09:27):
close with my original wounds and understanding how generational trauma
moves and how it moved in my life and how
it moved in my body, and how you know, so
much of my chronic pain was because of my experiences,
and so I share those stories in this book, or
(09:48):
you know, if I've had someone on this show to
share about psychedelics, I don't necessarily center myself in the conversation,
because I want everyone listening to glean the wisdom and
hear the life expect speriences of the person I'm in
conversation with. But I spent several years doing a lot
of different kinds of psychedelics and found them to be
(10:10):
really powerful for my healing and especially for some of
those deeper layers of my subconscious work that I needed
to do on myself as someone that experienced childhood trauma
and also many different forms of trauma, you know, all
the way through many decades of my life. And so
you know, when I have astrologers on the show, it's
(10:32):
because I'm obsessed. When I have a numerologist on the show,
it's because I, you know, started working with my own
numerology years ago, or shamans or healers, you know. My
desire is to amplify the work of people who do
and work in these different modalities at a at an
incredibly integrious level, and to amplify what they do and
(10:55):
their expertise. But I usually feature them because I am
years removed from having done a lot of those processes
and work on myself. And so what is going to
be different about this book is whereas on this deeply
well show, I do give glimpses into my own life,
and I do give you know, reflections about my lived experience.
(11:18):
But my desire on this show is not to have
a podcast about myself, to be quite honest, it's not
to have a podcast about all the things that I'm
trying and doing. And so many of those shows exist,
and that's one of the reasons I don't do that,
because I think, if that is how you best learn
and receive, I think a lot of shows do that
really beautifully. But I'm someone that likes to you know,
(11:42):
I believe in keeping your personal mystery. I believe in
keeping the magic of your life kind of to yourself
so that it further informs and enhances and grows the
work you're able to do and your connection to God.
But in this book, I really explore a lot of
(12:03):
that personal side of what are some of the specific
themes of pain I've been through, what are some of
the challenges I've been through as a child, as a
young person, as a woman, as a mother, And what
are some of the ways that I look to heal
those things within myself? You know, and I believe personally
(12:27):
I meant to teach in a path of wisdom, which
means I may not share immediately something that has happened
or something I've done. I usually will share it many
years removed, after I've let myself settle into the learning
and the healing, open to the continued work, because we're
going to continue to do work our whole lives and
(12:49):
have ideally really been able to kind of integrate and
embody the other side of the healing, come into the
wisdom of it. And so yeah, when I do this show,
you know, my desire when I have some of these
just beautiful guests on who all have powerful work and
beautiful life stories and usually a lot of challenges. Like
(13:12):
myself and like many of the people who listen and
learn on this show, my desire is to deeply empathize
with their experience. I may not be necessarily hearing anything new,
right because I am a teacher, and I am a
lifelong learner, and I am my own open and divine,
sovereign channel to the divine, And so you know, my
(13:33):
desire is to really just ask important questions that are useful.
It's to have deep empathy for whoever is in front
of me. You know, I'm a deep feeler, as I
know many of you are. But part of the way
God uses me and uses me as a healer is
(13:54):
to also reflect and mirror you know, the truth of
pain and also the beauty and I'm a wounded healer.
I'm someone that has had hard things happen and God
has allowed me to keep my heart open anyways, and
then use those experiences and use the presence that I've
(14:14):
honed to be near darkness in service to others and
ideally in service to everyone listening to this show. So
it's you know, one thing that I think is really
special about this book is in this book, I share
my stories in this book, I share my overcomings in
this book, I let you know some just to peak right,
(14:39):
just a taste, because, as I say on this show
often and a lot and in a lot of the
positioning of the show, I design this show to be
specifically for people that have had complex lived experiences, that
have had a lot of different run ins with so
many different kinds of traumas or so many just different
(15:01):
kinds of challenges, whether that is a big tea or
little t trauma, because that is exactly what my life
path has been and what I have been allowed to
learn through and grow through and heal through and continue
to heal through because the work is never done. But
my life's path has taken me all over and I
have studied so much I have done many certifications in
(15:24):
so many different hosts of healing modalities and have had
the pleasure to be in practice with my learning and
with my expertise and with the modalities that I use
and do for many many years with clients with myself.
And that's what this book is about. It's my stories.
(15:44):
It's observational stories of working with clients. It's things that
I have experienced and seen and learned from as a
healer working in the world like an actual healer, doing
some of the deeper work with people in some more
challenging ways, and from having you know, hosted many, many
(16:10):
many retreats with thousands of people all over the world.
And I'm not an Instagram girly, so to be quite honest,
I don't post every event I do. For every ten
events that I go to, I might post one thing.
For every ten retreats that I host or five companies
(16:31):
that I've worked with, I might post one thing, and
it might even be a year later. That's just my cadence.
That's just how I flow with social media. But you know,
that is the foundation of who I am and the
work that I do and the work that I share
and my style of teaching is really about leaning into
(16:51):
knowledge and less about kind of my personal, individualized experience
with things I never want to come in this space
and trauma dump. I had a very vulnerable episode recently
where I opened up and I shared that part of
my journey was for many years suffering from chronic pain
(17:14):
and autoimmune and part of my connection to God and
my connection to my own healing was learning the ways
to heal myself from the pain and doing many, many,
many years of studying research around what creates chronic conditions
in the human body. And so, though I haven't done
(17:36):
this on this show yet, some of the work that
I do, and actually a workshop that I taught this
week over the last several years is a lot of
my in person workshops and in person retreats are actually
about inner child healing, and they're actually centered and rooted
in understanding what chronic pain is. Because out of the
(17:58):
stats of chronic pain and then effects hundreds of millions
of people alive, eighty percent or women and seventy percent
or Black women. A lot of that has to do
with epigenetics, a lot of that has to do with
what we now know and say is the issues being
and the tissues or the body keeping the score. But
these are things that sometimes end up in your body
(18:20):
and your activated genes because of things that happen to
you because of work you've been avoiding, because of trapped
energy and emotions. And some of it is just things
we inherited within our DNA because our mothers, our grandmothers,
our ancestors were traumatized people, and a lot of that
(18:41):
becomes compounded into our own physical, lived experience. And that
is really the crux of what my day to day
work is. When I'm not doing this podcast, that is
the work that I do with one on one clients
wellness and well being and teaching some of the deeper,
complex layers of how to get into the crev is
of our healing and how to do it consistently. Is
(19:04):
the work that I do in the workshops that I
teach and the retreats that I lead. So it's always
a pleasure to be in service to people in that way.
Deeply well. When I host this show, I really love
(19:25):
speaking to it from a community standpoint where I invite
other people in to share their work and to share
their process. And there are so many of us, so
many of us hundreds of thousands on this planet right
now doing the work of the soul. And I think
when you are fortunate enough to be diligent in your
(19:50):
own healing so that you're actually able to get on
the other side of it. You know something that I
may have forgotten to mention in the last episode because
I was really shout out to my sling if you're
watching on YouTube, I was really inspired to talk about
pain last week and to share some of my journey,
but to talk about the new things I was learning
(20:12):
having had this surgery. And I was really excited to
have this surgery because this was an injury that I
first came into five years ago, when I was in
some of the deeper throes of the work that I
was called to do on myself. I spent many years
in all kinds of therapies, from cognitive therapy to somatic therapy.
(20:32):
I have worked with some of the most incredible healers
on the planet to do some of my deeper work.
And then I've just been in deep co creation with
God on the work that I need to do, you know,
spending hours meditating a day, spending hours in reflection and
personal process, and then also working within community environments, working
(20:57):
with groups, doing some group therapy again, working with psychedelics,
doing pleasure work within myself and within my path. And
you know, this work of higher consciousness, it is a
never ending work. You are never you know, unless perhaps
your path is to become Buddha like or the Buddha,
(21:20):
you know, you're never not going to be oscillating between it.
And if you're a highly sensitive person, even if you
have cleared a lot of your own personal story and
pain out of your body. And that is my hope
for everyone, because when I look back to the kind
of pain I carried physically ten years ago versus what
I experience now, oh my god, it's just night and day.
(21:44):
You know, I may have a flare up a couple
times a year, because that's the biology of the human experience,
and it usually comes after I have kind of over
exhausted myself in the work. Either I led too many
retreats back to back to too many speaking engagements, were
around too many large bodies of people. Sometimes with my work,
I find myself kind of in groups that can be
(22:06):
up to five hundred, sometimes up to one thousand. The
nature of that as a highly sensitive, energetic person means
that even when I do all the protection rituals on myself,
even when I cover myself in healing, I may pick
up some stray energy. I may pick up, you know,
some other things that can you know, make my body
(22:28):
tired and wipe my body out. It's the nature of energy.
And so a few times a year that does happen
to me. But truly I have found for me personally,
the more healing work I have allowed myself to do
on myself, and the deeper I'm able to go with
that work, It's changed my relationship with my body. I
(22:51):
used to have ninety percent inflammation. So it's like if
I had stress, or if I had an experience of
having a reaction to my complex trauma. Sometimes it felt
like I could put on twenty thirty pounds in a
day and it would just be inflammation. And so that
part of my life has changed dramatically. The fog in
(23:14):
my brain has changed, the tension and the pain in
my back and my body is just it's just changed
in such a revolutionary way that I am so grateful for.
But when I share certain parts of my story, you know,
it's really to be in community with those I know
(23:35):
may have a similar path and didn't always have the
language for it, or didn't always have someone in front
of them that was able to speak to the complexity
or the nuance of what that experience is. So I just,
first I want to say thank you to everybody that
was present. I know I'm kind of going all over
the place, but everybody that was really present with that
(23:56):
episode last week, because I received there's so many messages
from people that they've had a similar path, or this
gave them the language, or this gave them a starting
point within which to begin their journey to understand why
their bodies may or may not feel the way that
(24:16):
they do. And so I'm just really grateful for the
presence for last week's episode, even if it was triggering
for some of you. But the work is never done,
and if your work did include chronic pain, also have
a lot of grace for yourself because there will be
some kinds of people in the wellness world or in
the healing space that will want to shame you because
(24:38):
you have pain and try to tell you that you
haven't done enough work, and they don't know the truth
of what your karma is, what your destiny is, why
you need to understand things about your path the way
that you do, and usually it's always to be in service.
It's so you can teach it. It's so you can
(24:59):
hold space front of other people and show them the
grace in it. You know. I feel proud of the
fact that, even though I am in a little bit
of shoulder pain, I'm healing really well though. I'm so grateful,
Like it's kind of wild to me how quickly and
fully this shoulder is healing. Like I just feel like
(25:20):
I have so much of my life force back in
now being three weeks removed from surgery. But you know,
like having this surgery, as I shared last week, it
really gave me the chance to now get a glimpse
of understanding and cultivate a lot of compassion for what
surgical pain is. Like I haven't had surgeries. I didn't know,
(25:42):
you know, being a mama that hat a C section,
it's like being able to speak to that experience with
other people. Like that's what being alive is. It's having
our experiences and sometimes the challenging ones and sometimes the
unescapable ones, right, because not everything means you know, like
(26:03):
this kind of shiny healing that allows you to quote
unquote be perfect. None of us are ever will be.
It's just we heal what we can heal and what
we have access to, and then we recover, and then
we heal more, and then we recover. But we stay
on this path. And really the point of being on
(26:25):
this path is our own healing, and it is our
lineage healing and our cross generational healing. And then it's
also so others can bear witness to us, either while
we're on the path or as we've come off the path,
you know, having healed certain things, but it should always
be in service and it's never ending. And you know,
as beings that are having a spiritual experience and a
(26:49):
human experience, I think it is so important to honor
the limitations of our humanity and our physical body too.
So you may healed a lot of your root original wounds.
You may have got back to the root of the
root and been able to you know, heal the childhood trauma,
(27:10):
maybe heal some of the experiences that hurt, or the
neglect or things that didn't get your consent, or process
all of the vast emotions that perhaps you weren't allowed
to process in real time. As things happened. You may
be doing all of that beautiful work, and you may
still have physical limitations in your body. And it's not
(27:33):
because necessarily there's work undone or something you're not doing
enough of or doing right. It's also the honoring of
what your physical experience in this life is. Right. So
like this is just like a kind of a wide example.
But if hard things happened to you, and then you
(27:53):
also found that you got a certain diagnosis of a
really challenging disease, or maybe something happened, and maybe you
found yourself disabled in a certain capacity because of the
limitations of age and physicality and what it is to
be biologically engineered as human. You may not come into
(28:17):
perfect health where everything works like you're an elite athlete
or works perfectly, or you have a complete healing or
restoration in something. And it doesn't mean that you haven't
done your work, and it doesn't mean that you're not enough,
and it doesn't mean you're not doing enough. It simply
means you're here embodying the totality of what it is
(28:39):
to be a spiritual being and what it is to
be human. And some of us have karma with certain
physical issues that we are working out in this lifetime
or we are meant to use in service to helping
other people in this lifetime. Something I thought that was
really interesting when I first started, probably well over ten
(29:00):
years ago, understanding that my path was kind of the
wounded healer path and beginning to slowly dismantle the chronic
pain that enveloped my life and understand my body's reactions
to my experiences. I was exploring my chronic pain from
the lens of spirituality, spiritual curriculum, therapy, cognitive therapy, somatic therapy,
(29:28):
and also a lot of different viewpoints, you know. I
started to find it kind of fascinating, as I tend
to do, and I started studying my astrology chart. And
for those of you that know, I think astrology is
a really beautiful tool and companion for being alive. It
can be a really special sacred science. But in astrology,
(29:50):
and especially in some of the older astrology like Vedic
astrology or what is referred to as Yodish astrology, which
is very very very very old, and a lot of
people that practiced astrology were also medical doctors for their
time or on a past episode, I had doctor Suhas
(30:11):
who is a master astrologer and an emty medical doctor,
and he utilizes both in his practices to understand people.
Something I found in my astrology chart was that certain
placements I have lent themselves to saying that some of
the experiences I would have in this life would be
centered around bone pain and specifically pain in the spine,
(30:35):
and that some of my work was to understand some
of the things that had happened to me or that
I had witnessed, so that I could be in co
creation with releasing that pain from my body. So that's
part of what this work is too, and it's not overnight.
It's an ongoing process, and I talk about a lot
(30:55):
of that in my book and I'm really excited to
share that. But it's also been fascinating kind of noticing
as I'm a week and a half out from launching
this how it feels to talk about it with people.
So so far, I've recorded I want to say, three
or four podcasts in the last two days where I've
had a chance to talk about my book and share
about my book, and it's been deep, you know, because
(31:20):
I am not self focused on this show and always
speaking from I guess what I might be saying with
some judgment is like a trauma dumping perspective. I'm not
saying I went through this and this is how I
did it, and this is how you.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Do it do it.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
I'm more I'm interested in providing pathways for everyone listening
to see what resonates with your spirit uniquely, and then
how do you begin to approach that work and then
deepen in that work based on your own intuition. It's
been really interesting talking about myself so much and kind
(31:59):
of opening to that space to talk from my first
person perspective and not more from what I believe is
a wisdom perspective, which is more so through storytelling and
through analogy and through kind of archetypes and wider concepts
of understanding. I found that to be more powerful for
(32:21):
me in my learning as a student, to learn in
that way than from learning from someone's first hand experience,
because we're all so different, layered and nuanced, and so
that is how I prefer to teach, that is how
God has called me to teach. But now just kind
of speaking so much about myself from a first person standpoint,
(32:42):
it's interesting. Yeah, I do it happily and it's been
really fun kind of exploring these stories, but it's also
not how I teach, so it's just been interesting to
experience and to look at it from that standpoint. So
y'all will be getting the book sewn. I'm very excited
about that, and very excited for you to kind of
(33:06):
utilize this book and open with it through my own experiences,
but definitely through some of my observations of clients and
people that I have been with and teachers that I've
learned from, and then also just real technical practice. This
book is filled with practices of higher consciousness. Inquiries, questions
(33:27):
to ask your inner child, questions to ask who you
are now, Questions to ask your soul about your purpose.
There are so many prompts in this book. One of
the certification programs that I did for over three years
was this master's program in spiritual psychology, and it was
(33:47):
three years and every time we met for class it
would be for three days in a row, for twelve
hours each day, and it was gnarly. You had to
do so much self processing, so much self processing around
things that you don't even want to say out loud,
let alone in front of a classroom or in front
of a partner, But it was the path to freedom
(34:09):
for me to deepen too understanding in addition to so
many other things I had done and been doing. But
a lot of what I gleaned in that program I
share in this book as well, especially the practices and
processes to meet those younger, tender, beautiful versions of who
we are and maybe who there wasn't space to become
(34:31):
because of life experiences. But how do you integrate and
reconnect and come into acceptance with all the layers of
who you are and who have you been? So there's
practices for that, and then there's also practice to really
deepen into advanced meditation, which opens your higher awareness, which
hopefully helps to cultivate your intuition and really bring online
(34:55):
perhaps some of your deeper gifts and some of your
intuitive gifts, some of your to be in direct communication
with Source and with the divine, and ways in which
to hopefully activate and turn on some of your energy
centers so that you can experience your body and your
life differently. One of the practices I lean into the
(35:16):
book that I love so much is leaning into maudras,
which are really a way to advance in your meditation practice,
but a way to really open to some of the
downloads that may want to come into you and your
life miraculously and instantaneously. That's one of the beautiful things
(35:37):
I think about building a meditation practice. You know, at first,
you think, as you're starting to study meditation that it's
just about peace, or it's just about getting quiet or
getting still. But the more you practice meditation, the more
you're able to access all the different layers and realms
of higher awareness. So when you first start your practice,
(35:58):
the baseline may just learning how to get still and
how to get quiet. Once you've done that and not
be irritated by it or not to seek stimulation because
of it, the next layer would be when some of
those pain points start coming up, and you might find
yourself in meditation crying or getting angry or even getting like,
(36:19):
you know, like laughing, getting really happy. But you're able
to tap into maybe all the emotions that you've been
suppressing for a lifetime. And so as you sit with
that and learn to release that and witness it and
be present with it and observe it and release it,
then you're able to go a little higher into what
(36:40):
your meditation practice is and what it feels like, and
then you're kind of getting above ground, and you're opening
to meditation as a tool for higher consciousness, as a
tool for purpose, as a tool for really fuel and
pleasure and rebuilding and recircuiting your brain, and you know,
(37:01):
kind of leaning into growing the neuroplasticity which is within
your brain and kind of recarving out some neural pathways
and healing older calcified ones so that you can be
who you really are and so that some of the
pain in your life can leave. And I think that
(37:22):
for me, in doing the work has been the greatest blessing.
I've been able to open my compassion and my understanding
and really open to a profound ability to empathize with
anyone in front of me deeply. Well, some of the
(37:45):
psychology programs that I did when I was getting certification,
sometimes you'd have to bear witness to really hard confessions
from other people, things that may make you want to
judge them, things they've done to other people, things they've
done to themselves. But meditation and compassion and empathy allow
(38:05):
you to kind of open to see the deeper struggle
that is within and behind people that do cause pain
to other people and to really see how we're all
kind of some of our experiences, and we choose to paths.
And some people who were harmed you know, there really
(38:28):
is no other choice but to choose a path to
harm until you know otherwise. And others who were harmed
choose a path first, often of pleasing and even self
righteousness or self denial and over empathy without boundaries. And
then as you become empowered, you turn that empathy and
(38:50):
that compassion outward and inward, and you know, you're able
to really recognize that your role is to serve. It's
not to please, it's not to fix anyone else's problems.
It's not to become whoever other people think you should be,
or behave how they think you should behave, or do
things how they think you should do them. But it
(39:11):
is to anchor down into the truth of who God
told you to be, the truth of who you are,
the truth of the work that you've done, and then
hold space for others and both there sometimes perceivedly good
and bad behavior. You know, I think strength comes in
so many forms, and for some of us, strength there's
(39:32):
really like you know, holding people up for other strength
isn't witnessing for others. Their strength is kind of holding
a quiet power, a mysterious power about who and what
they are. But we're all here to focus on our
spiritual curriculum and then to use it as a way
(39:55):
to serve others. And that's really that's really what it is.
It really is that simple. When you do your work,
you then serve, and your work is never done. We're
always continue to refine it. There's always deeper to go
in your own path of healing and your own path
of self mastery. We will be doing the work till
(40:16):
the day that we're gone. But hopefully, you know, you
get to a place and that's my intention with this
book where you're able to get a lot of the
gunk out of the way and then some of the
work of your life is really just about continuing to
refine and continuing to ask God how you're meant to
be used and how you're going to show up in
that work for others. But we're all meant to do
(40:39):
that differently. Once you get to a healing. For some people,
it is being powerful motivators and maybe really inspiring people
through their own life stories and you know, kind of
bringing a deep level of motivation to others. For some
it's like, you know, kind of disappearing and maybe you
live a monk life and you know, do something that
(41:00):
is off the radar of even being seen, but you're
holding this powerful healing space and enlightened space for others
that don't even know you exist. For some people, it's
really holding up some of the deeper themes in the
work that others are doing, or you know, speaking to
things in kind of bigger way that creates space for
(41:22):
more people to hear it. But you'll know what your
work is as long as you stay devoted to your
practices and devoted to the divine and devoted to your
personal spiritual curriculum, which a lot of people can have
projections on and ideas of, but only you and God
really know what that is. So find strength in that.
(41:44):
Find solace in that you know your healing journey does
not have to make sense to anyone else. You don't
have to quantify it for anyone else, you don't have
to trauma dump it for anyone else, so that you
are believed or seen as accurate. You know, you just
have to do the work you're called to with integrity,
(42:06):
with diligence with devotion and then find ways to serve others,
Find ways to love others and to embody love for others.
Find ways to embody your learning and your work and
your wisdom so that you can actually live who you
(42:30):
say you are. A lot of people can get up
and say who they are in front of people. A
lot of people can get up and proclaim what they
are on the internet. But the truth of your life
always tells the story. Are you in conflict with who
you are? Are you in conflict with other people? Are
you looking at others through a lens of lack or judgment.
(42:53):
Are you feeling peace and wholeness and worthiness at the
core of who you are? Or are you just telling
people that's how you feel. There's no judgment in it.
But there's always work to be done, you know. And
I think when it comes to even the discernment of
who you should listen to on your path, who you
(43:14):
should believe, whose work you should be connecting to, really
take a long, hard look at the person and what
is the truth of their life. You know, I don't
always bring all my personal stuff to the table here
because I also think, well, why should I? I'm working.
Is that necessary and actually useful for people? Or is
the work I'm providing the most useful and nourishing thing
(43:36):
for others. You know, I don't want to live a
SIMS reality. I think the Internet is the only place
where people think they have to engage twenty four to seven.
Nothing else about life is that way. You know. I
personally love the privacy of my life. I love this
specialness of my life at this moment in my life.
(43:56):
Though the world is always changing, and I accept that
about being alive, that it's not always going to be easy,
It's not always going to be graceful. It's not for
no one. And I have met with some of the
most enlightened minds on the planet in the last ten years.
I have had access to some of the absolute great
(44:18):
spiritual leaders of our time in the last few years,
and not just hearing them speak, having years and years
to build relationships with them, having long, deep conversations with
them over time, and I've come to know that not
a single person is perfect, and we are all always
(44:39):
strengthening and refining in our paths on this journey of
healing and then on this journey of teaching and serving,
and so you know, to just deeply understand and accept
that that is the case. You know, we are always
here really for all of it. Yeah, but I've really
(45:01):
learned that, you know, nothing shows the truth of how
much work someone has done or not on themselves, like
the actual quality of their day to day life. And
I think that's where I came into a deep understanding
about how grateful I am or where I've at least
(45:23):
momentarily arrived on my path. And I feel really proud
to say this because this was not my god, my god,
my god, this was not always the case in my life.
But I live a really beautiful life right now. I
live a really beautiful life, a life that to such
(45:44):
a large extent is conflict free, a life that has beautiful,
healthy boundaries everywhere where. The deep close community on my
life that you will likely never see shared on Instagram
are people I have deep respect, love, admiration for, and
harmony with. And people who have deep love, respect, admiration, harmony,
(46:08):
and support of me. And we do special things to
we get together. We do ordinary things together, like spend
time and fill each other with love and support and friendship.
I spend a lot of time in my garden. I
spend a lot of time focused on being a good
mother to my son. My motherhood means a lot to me,
(46:31):
and that's why I don't really share it on social media.
Why I don't really share photos of myself and my
son and all the fun things that we do together,
the good moments, the hard moments, because that's our business,
you know. And I think as soon as I pull
out a camera or try to come to a quick
understanding of who he is or who I am in
a moment, I rob both of us of the magic
(46:56):
of the relationship that we have right now. You know,
I don't want to be so focused on documenting him
at six years old and what I know about being
a mom of a six year old right now, because
I'm living it and I want to feel all of it,
and I don't want to distort it by making it consumable.
(47:16):
As soon as you make certain private parts of your
life consumable to strangers or to other people, it changes
the authenticity of it. It changes how it feels inside
of your body, It changes how you interact with it.
You know, as soon as you start taking a picture
based on how it will perform, it changes the relationship
(47:39):
of what you're taking a picture of, right Like, think
about if you see your kid making a funny, silly
face and you just want to capture it. But then
if you're so used to capturing the perfect picture of them,
you're going to do it another five to ten times
to make it perfect so that it can then be shared,
and then you lose the truth and the beauty of
(47:59):
that rige maybe perceivedly, you know, ordinary or nonesthetic image,
and the moment that was being created in that image,
and then you're doing it for performance. You're doing it
for perception. And I think our kids feel that, right
Like if I take a picture of my son and
(48:19):
then I ask him to take it five more times
and then I'm finally happy with it, and I'm giving
him that feedback, and then I'm staring at my phone
and sharing at it. Whether I think so or not,
and whether he has a language for it or not.
He's learning how to perform. He's learning that a very
specific smile is what I'm after, That a very specific
(48:40):
response or way of positioning his body is what will
please me. And that's what I want to avoid in
my relationship with my son. I want him to be himself.
So I guess I'm sharing some of this nuance, and
I hope it's relevant for people, because I think it's
something we should all be kind of considering and exploring
as we re negot sheate our agreements with social media
(49:03):
moving forward. I'll be forty this year, which I'm really
excited about, so just in general, I think, not just
because the work that I've done, but just because generationally,
this is the time I'm coming into, you know, you
start to really renegotiate and look at a lot of
the agreements you have. So it's been kind of cool
(49:23):
in the last couple of weeks. Again, I'm three weeks
removed from having this rotator cuff surgery, and I'm a
week and a half out from dropping my book. So
I'm kind of noticing this moment in my path and
in my time of healing and of coming into a
new biological age of who I am and how I
(49:44):
present and how I live. It's kind of interesting experiencing,
you know, an aging body with an injury, and experiencing
talking about some of those deeper, darker chapters of my
life life that I'm many years removed from. You know, nothing,
no experience I share in this book is younger than
(50:08):
five to six years old, and a lot of them
are ten and twenty years old. So I've had a
lot of time to reflect and glean the wisdom of
the things that I share with you in this book
and the space to having been able been allowed to
come into a multitude of perspectives of what these experiences
(50:29):
crafted within me and in my life and in other people.
And so yeah, it's it's really interesting to share this
at this moment of life, almost turning forty and birthing
this kind of baby that feels really intimate for me
and really vulnerable for me. Again, I'm yeah, I like
to work and I like to be in my life,
(50:50):
and I kind of, you know, hold both sacredly but
separately in a lot of regards, and they're coming together here,
and so I'm making peace with that and making peace with,
you know, the fact that strangers get to know things
about me that they didn't come to know from actually
knowing me as a person. It's it's a really interesting
(51:11):
feeling in space. And I've talked to a few other
author friends who have had their own revealing books and memoirs,
and you know, they've all assured me that, like, yeah,
this is a part of the process. Waking up at
three am, like oh God, am I sure about this?
You know that that's a part of the process, and
questioning everything and having a little bit of you know,
(51:32):
discomfort at the new vulnerability that you're kind of being
called to share. And I know that doesn't always seem
like it because we are in a culture and a
time of oversharing where you know, people are people are
going live while they're getting like a Brazilian wax, people
are going live with their families in the midst of conflict,
(51:52):
or you know, just telling really private things to people
like I know that has become the norm, but that's
actually not the norm, and it's not necessarily safe for
you or your wellbeing to operate in that way unless
you're sure that you're called that that's how God is
asking you to be used. But yeah, it's been interesting
(52:15):
exploring the context and the nuance of all of that.
So that is what I have been thinking about and
moving through this week, and since you know, the last
layer of the conversation that I've had with you, and
I've also had some really special experiences so quickly Before
we head out of this episode, I want to share
a very dear friend of mine, Maria Shriver, has an
(52:37):
incredible book out called I Am Maria. It is profound,
it is beautiful. It is a book of her vast
and unique and really astounding and inspiring life experiences and
life tragedies that she's moved through and some incredible poetry
(52:59):
that has really inspired me to write more and to
share more and to kind of be in the romance
of myself more. And so that book is available everywhere now.
And I had the opportunity to join her in New York,
which also was crazy because I traveled two weeks after
having had surgery by myself and like got on stage
(53:21):
and shared and you know, I had a wild, like
thirty hours in New York while I was healing from surgery.
But it all went beautifully and it all went well.
I had the chance to open her book tour with
her at the Immanuel Center in New York, which is
this stunning synagogue with just the most gorgeous dained glass
windows everywhere, and there was candles everywhere, and Maria and
(53:44):
Hoda had a beautiful conversation and another another dear friend
and mentor of mine, Elizabeth Lesser, shared an incredible poem,
the founder of the Omega Institute, and I got to
share an opening, meditation and attention setting with the audience
and it's really special and really beautiful. So that was
something that really moved me in my life in the
(54:06):
last couple of weeks. And I'll be doing it with
her again here in La and Santa Monica for her
leg of the book tour this week, and I just
can't wait. I love her so much. I have so
much reverence and respect for who and what she is
and what she represents and just all that she has
accomplished as a woman, as a soul in this life.
(54:27):
And then I also had the beautiful opportunity to be
with the incredible group of women from Leading Women to Find,
which is an incredible yearly kind of pilgrimage that happens
with some of the most beautiful and powerful and intentional
Black women all over the world that are just you know,
(54:51):
doing some incredibly ceiling shattering bar lifting things for many
years and the visionary work is the brainchild of being Credible,
Misstep or Lee, And so I've had the chance to
be with them a few years in a row, and
this year I led a workshop on grief and a
workshop on processing emotion and working with pain in the body,
(55:14):
and it was just really special. I led some meditations
there and I just got a shout out all of
just the magnificent, magnificent women that were in attendance, and
it did so much for my heart to be there. Yeah,
made some really special connections, so much love to everybody
that was there. And then I also did something, Oh
(55:36):
my God, And I think I'll end with this. For
those that have listened to this show or have done anything,
have been on a retreat with me, you know that
for many years I am a huge fan admirer of
the astounding, phenomenal Cleo Soul. Wow, what a woman, what
(55:58):
a work, what a gift, what a voice she is.
I really relate with her because at least my perception
of her, not knowing her, is that she is kind
of a natural recluse, like myself in the best way,
and someone that is just kind of really surrendered to
(56:18):
the beauty of their in real life life and doing
the work that they're called to do, but then likes
to kind of just back up a little bit and
rest and be with their world, and so I really
identify with that, and I love that about her. You know,
she drops projects that can change your life and just
are so beautiful, and then she disappears and goes back
(56:39):
into her creativity, and I think that's really special. So
she embarked on a two city tour where she hit
up New York and had I think four sold out
shows back to back, and then she sold out the
Hollywood Bowl here in LA which I think holds more
than twenty thousand people. And I went with a group
of my girlfriends. I went with my girl April, with
(57:02):
Leyla Delia, and with my dear friend Lauren Lauren London,
and we all just had a girl's night at the
Bowl and sang and swayed and just felt like the
beauty of this special, special work. One of my girlfriends,
Brittany Pacnett Cunningham, she was describing Cleo Soul while trying
(57:27):
to understand like who she was because people have been
like losing their mind since these concerts about her work
were being introduced to it. She called her a holy
shad eh. I thought that was so funny. I was like, yeah, no,
that's that, that's it. That's it. You know, she does
a healing work, a healing service to the world, and
her voice was even better in person. It's just it's
(57:50):
something that's going to be ingrained in my heart for
a really long time. And it was so special when
I'm so grateful that I got to go and I
got to go there with three women that I love
so much and just be in friendship and community with,
and yeah, it was amazing. So I'm I would say,
I'm pretty sure most of y'all all listen to Cleosul
(58:12):
like I do. But if you don't, do yourself a
favor and maybe lock into a playlist and see how
it makes you feel and how you connect to it.
All right, y'all. I will be announcing my book tour
very soon this week, hopefully on Instagram and also on
my website and on my newsletter Debbi Brown dot com,
Forward slash book at Debbie Brown on ig sign up
(58:34):
for my newsletter on my website. The first three stops
I'm making Atlanta, LA, and Houston Htown. I'm so excited.
Here in La, I'll be in conversation with Layla Delia,
and Atlanta I will be in conversation with Carrie champion,
and in Houston, I will be in conversation with Bunbee
(58:56):
and I cannot wait. And also a little bit later
in the summer, after I'm healed up a little bit more,
I will be hitting New York. I'll be hitting d C, Philly, Detroit,
and Chicago. So I can't wait to be in all
these cities and to be with you. If you haven't yet,
please take a moment and pre ordered the book. I know,
like whenever I used to hear about pre orders, I'd
(59:17):
be like, Yeah, I'm gona buy the book when it's out.
I don't need to pre order it. But you know,
this matters to the publisher as it matters to the people,
So you know, I just hope you get it whenever
you feel called. But if you would pre order it,
tell a friend and I'll be announcing those tour dates
in just a few days. And I cannot wait to
see you and to be with you. And yeah, my
(59:39):
heart is really open and really grateful in this season
and just very ready to be and do whatever God
has called me to. So thank you for listening. Back
next week, and if you get a chance, please rate
and review on iTunes and go ahead and leave a
comment no I mista. The content presented on Deeply Well
(01:00:07):
serves solely for educational and informational purposes. It should not
be considered a replacement for personalized medical or mental health
guidance and does not constitute a provider patient relationship. As always,
it is advisable to consult with your healthcare provider or
health team for any specific concerns or questions that you
(01:00:28):
may have. Connect with me on social at Debbie Brown.
That's Twitter and Instagram, or you can go to my
website Debbie Brown dot com. And if you're listening to
the show on Apple Podcasts, don't forget. Please rate, review,
and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Deeply
Well is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network.
(01:00:50):
It's produced by Jacqueis Thomas, Samantha Timmins, and me Debbie Brown.
The Beautiful Soundbath You Heard That's by Jarrelyn Glass from
Chris soul Cadence. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Devi Brown
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