(00:01) [Music] I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pul dancer or honorary member of the disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my her victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally truly
(00:43) own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of Who You Are this is Reclamation radio hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I’m Dr Kelly Brogan and I am here with the lovely Christine Hustler who is a master coach who is an author and I was first introduced to her work when I bought one of her programs called be the
(01:23) queen and it was at quite a dark moment um in my journey there have been many I would describe that way uh and I felt so uh held by not only your energy and this is just in the program so not only your energy but the way that you conceptualize love connection and a woman’s journey to securing that in in her life so I’m super excited to have you here just to be in conversation about many there’s so many things we could talk about um and I would love to really feature you as as a woman who is walking this heroin’s journey home to
(02:06) herself and who helps others to do the same and so welcome yeah thank you and I’ve definitely tripped and fallen in many holes along the way as I’ve walked this journey that’s for sure and it was so lovely to have you in that program thank you for trusting us um you know that’s a program that’s very close to my heart because you know I spent my I got divorced in my early 30s and spent my whole 30s when everyone was getting married and having babies and it’s like oh gosh another wedding I have to go to solo no not another baby shower and you
(02:38) know at 40 I was like all right I am ditching all the dating advice and like calling in my my person and so I just yeah I love to help women I love reclaim Reclamation that’s the perfect word like really reclaim who they are and the the the partnership’s just a bonus yes exactly so so so I remember the first time I was sort of encountered it was through a coach I was working with encountered this concept of readying which I want to talk about the shadow of that too but readying for healthy love and sort of the the good news and the
(03:16) bad news is that it starts with you right so that’s like really annoying to hear when you’re when you’re in the more desperate grips whether you are in a relationship and like seeking the secure attachment that may or may not even be available there or whether you’re single and you know grappling with the uncertainty of whether or not a partner May ever even arrive the most annoying thing to hear is well it’s essential that you you know that you learn to love yourself first right and you know part of why I I really
(03:50) appreciate probably because of a lot of what you’ve been through which i’ love to you know depict a bit um you seem to get that there is there is a Razor’s Edge that we walk right and and it can be um just part of the self-rejection that we’re used to engaging to say that you need to do something you need to be something you need to fix something about yourself in order to be worthy or even ready for love so I’d love to you know hear your perspective on this self-love Journey maybe you could also share you know sort of like how it’s
(04:33) looked because I I also know we had hadn’t ever talked about this but I also know that you are very familiar with my world of deep prescribing and um Reclamation from The Guild of Psychiatry and have had your own Journey even in that regard so this idea of coming home to yourself of being you know the one you’re seeking uh is is something that you’ve iterated over Decades of your of your life in order to arrive to this place of understanding how women can um interact with this concept of self-love in a way that isn’t ultimately um self-
(05:07) rejecting right it’s like your project that never ends and just keep working on it so yeah so I’d love to hear a bit about your selflove journey and and what that’s looks like oh I love this so much there’s so much that is in what you’re saying and I’m I’m sitting here going yes yes yes to so much of it so okay let’s see where do I start I form form Med a very strong belief I was broken at a very young age um it really there were pieces of it but it really got cemented in at 11 when I got put on Prozac it was like something is wrong
(05:44) with you like and some people might be like wait 11 yeah right yeah and I saw this all the time yeah yeah and and it was like and my parents bless them they took advice from doctors they trusted they you know what was really going on from my P now having hindsight is there were two things happening huge empath very very very very sensitive kid without the tools to process that I still have a very sensitive ner nervous system highly empathic and gluten intolerance those two things combined and just feeling everything that was happening some
(06:22) trauma that happened as a child there was just there was just stuff anyway it’s part of my journey I’ve have no anger about it now um but that having that be part of my experience at 11 formed a very I am broken story and I think most people have some some of that either I’m broken I’m not enough something’s wrong with me I’m unlovable I’m undeserving I’m unworthy these are core misunderstandings that most humans buy into to some degree or another and to me like if we talk about selflove in so many ways it really is about self-
(07:01) Reclamation so my journey to self-love wasn’t really about like affirmations or you know even like taking better care of myself or anything about that it really was healing the trauma that’s what it was about and if I can just skip a second to the whole that was one of my biggest pet peeves about the dating coaching industry and even advice I got from coaches was there was this this messaging that as soon as you fix this about yourself as soon as you’re more feminine or as soon as you are more confident or as soon as you
(07:41) heal this thing then your perfect person will come in and it does not work like that at all that could not be farther from how it works so well isn’t that just to double click on that isn’t that just a recapitulation of the original wound right like something is wrong with you and if you just you know put on the minstrel show for your parents they will finally love you and women like one of our superpowers as women is we’re highly adaptive that is a superpower of us however the shadow side of that is we’re too adaptive and our adaptivity becomes
(08:15) a survival strategy and we lose sense of who we really are and we become who we think we need to be to be safe to be loved to be validated to fit into all those types of things so to me if we look at like the Journey of calling in part parip it’s really just a reflection of where you are with your healing journey and like what inner child wounding is still playing out subconsciously so in my own life I can look at every relationship you know I’ve been engaged three times married twice divorced once still with my second
(08:49) husband um and every relationship had to do with like the healing opportunity that person presented not the degree of how much I loved myself it was more okay what is this because I think we have soulle contracts it’s like okay what is this person really inviting me to look at and if we look at a very classic example that I see so much with women is oftentimes there is a father if we’re talking about heterosexual woman oftentimes there is a father who is emotionally unavailable in some way narcissistic in some way and it’s like
(09:25) what song and dance did I have to put on to you know get his attention and there’s what the what the subconscious will do and the subconscious and inner child and the nervous system are all so closely connected is look for someone that’s similar to whoever love we wanted the most but didn’t get and want to date them and be very attracted to them because we’re all like the intelity of the human soul is to evolve and the way that we evolve is to clear that the things that have been pain painful the things that have formed
(10:01) us to um form negative beliefs about ourselves the emotional pain all of that and so that’s really how dating and attraction works it it really isn’t about like how much you love yourself so when I really want to help women call in their person it’s not about fixing anything it’s about looking at what your inner child may still be longing for and may still be trying to like play out by calling in a certain type of person and so it’s about coming home to yourself it’s about being an incredible parent to yourself because like then you just you
(10:40) attract at the place that you’re at right so someone because I think all of us can think of many examples of people that have gotten into relationships and we can look at that person and go yeah they don’t love themselves very much like they there’s kind of like a hot mess going on so if the formula was just selflove it would be a lot easier so it’s to me it’s really about healing and so for my journey you know not just in terms of my husband but just in my Evolution as a soul and as a human being on the planet
(11:14) it’s been okay outer experience is a reflection of inner reality like whatever I’m drawing in right now or not you know wherever there’s a block or where there things coming is is a reflection and opportunity to go huh like what inside of me is seeking to become conscious like what from my unconscious or my childhood is is like seeking to be known by me so that I can really like heal it and healing to me is and I take this from my spiritual psychology degree healing is the application of love to the places inside
(11:47) that hurt so we don’t heal by sitting around and psychoanalyzing ourselves and blaming people or anything but just really loving and reclaiming and instead of having parts of our psyche or in child or subconscious stuck in the past still wanting XYZ from Dad or XYZ from Mom we give that to ourselves and we have a healthier relationship with ourselves and then we attract a healthier relationship with another person so to sum it up I would say it’s more about our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with
(12:22) all parts of ourselves that’s going to draw in the most healthy relationship externally totally I I couldn’t agree more and I have played with different definitions of self-love because I think not unlike love as a concept it’s highly subjective there are so many different uh potential interpretations of what that even means and I think you know especially in a lot of our confusion in the current moment of uh self-development and you know in the wellness space and whatever self-love can sometimes feel like you know really
(13:00) Fierce boundaries and like a big no and sometimes it can feel you know like oh it’s baths rose petal baths and you know it’s uh anointing yourself with oils or what you know what is it and I love this idea of the recollection and embrace of your parts like bringing yes to wherever there was a no um inside and I had to Define personal development work from like the way I do it it it would be reparenting like the really archetypical mother and father like reparenting self and in reparenting there’s boundaries right there there is that but I think
(13:43) that a lot of times because self-love seems like an elusive thing and people actually don’t know how to do it in a way that’s relational with themselves like we think about relationships with other people but we often don’t know how to be relational with ourselves so it doesn’t matter matter how many rose petal baths I’m taking or how much I’m saying no to people what am I telling myself inside like how am I treating myself how am I with myself after I set those boundaries like how do I take care of the tender
(14:14) parts of myself how do I take care of the rageful parts of myself it’s really like how do we parent ourself that’s that’s to me what self Lov has been yeah I totally agree and in that listening in that inner uh witness uh I call it self- husbanding but in that orientation towards the self you are better able to translate an inner yes to an outer yes right and be consistent in that alignment and and of course vice versa that little no inside can be articulated instead of split like continuing right to live in this split so I’d love to
(14:51) track back to you know a bit of your journey and I’m sure this could be an entire conversation coming off of psychotropics I don’t know if it was you know one or multiple meds uh because it was decades right that you were medicated 11 till I’ve got off of them like around 29 or 30 but it took years to do that it’s of course yeah so I’d love you know for your Reflections on like what in what initiated that you know because I’m always studying the Readiness that you know women experience to make the transition from a medicated
(15:28) Consciousness to uh begin that Journey you know home to home to themselves and you know sort of what you felt was ignited even by the discontinuation and then moving forward into your uh career you know helping others walk this path well um I think it was a few things I you know for so much of my life my survival strategy was achieving things and I lived very neck up um and by my 20s I was I’ve been on you named the anti-depressant I’ve been on it unless there’s new ones that have come out but which I’m sure there are because
(16:10) you know um but by my 20s I was on an anti-depressant and not every day but often Azo so often an anti-anxiety as well um which I find is very common among empaths like just dealing with like a high degree of anxiety because we have have such sensitive nervous systems anyway that’s another conversation so for me it was um I had gotten on my spiritual path I had started studying at a place called the University of Santa Monica where I got my masters in spiritual psychology and then did another Ms in Consciousness
(16:48) health and healing and then ended up being on the faculty there um I was married to my first husband at the time and he was a very safe person so I had like a safe home um and I had a really awesome coach who I mean coach is like an understatement I feel like she was like Christ Consciousness incarnated she is no longer on the planet um but just a really like Fierce love who who was like you can you can do this but it was internally a just noticing things like I didn’t have great memories um like like I couldn’t I my
(17:27) recall was good but there were like things from my teens and my 20s my sister would tell me about and I’m like what I have no idea I don’t like I have no idea that happened and I just gotten really into health and well-being and my liver was really not in a good place and there was just a lot it wasn’t just anti-depressants I had headaches every day I was taking tons of Exeter and pain stuff I mean I I I took hormones in my teen years like it was just I was there was a lot and so I I just got to the point where it was a it was an
(18:00) empowerment move to go all right like this is my body right because when we’re kids other people make choices on behalf of our body and I really wanted body autonomy I wanted to just be like this is mine I reclaimed this I was aware I dissociated a lot of my life like I actually want to get back in my body and because of my coach and because of my training I didn’t fear feelings anymore like I was willing to go to my rage and really the thing one of the most important things I mean there’s the technical things like I didn’t have
(18:37) alcohol you know I had a cleaner diet like anything that would have made it harder I just took off the table but the the thing that really was kind of the doorway was can I walk through the fire like am I willing to really sit with my rage because I think as women we can access our sadness but the magic is in our rage and I did like anger work like anger release every day for I would say a year because there was just a lot in there that I needed to move and and I needed to show myself that I could like go into the feelings and get to the
(19:19) other side and that’s why in expectation hangover my last book I I talk about feelings being waves you know you just have to be the surfer and and ride them through and so when I saw I could do that first with the assistance of practitioners but then by myself like wow like these feelings aren’t so scary anymore so but it was really just an inner decision it was an inner decision and I think when we decide like fully are like yes like this is I’m committing to this the how isn’t as important it was my commitment and I didn’t have a
(19:55) position of like anti-depressants are bad people shouldn’t be on them anyone who’s on them is weak like I didn’t have any of that it was more I want to take my body back and feel I’ve been on them so long I just wanted to feel what it felt like not and I was the what the final thing I’ll say is I also didn’t have a like I will never go on them again I also let myself have for a lack of better word permission that if I tried and it was really bad and really awful like I wouldn’t shame myself if I went back I ended up not but I think having that
(20:36) permission and not having because I can be really hard on myself you know an inner critic she’s you know I’ve had I call her candy we’ve we’ve had moments together so to have this you better get off of them and stay off of them and you can never go back I think would have felt like a lot of pressure so giving myself that permission of like if if it if if I feel feel like I can’t do this then that’s okay too you did it and you did it I mean it’s it’s so um it’s amazing you know my my tag is own your body for your mind
(21:11) you know and experience the specific pleasure of who you are so I feel like you’re just like living living my mission um because it sounds like and and I love hearing that because I have a much more um I you know I would say rigid initial container uh have had you know really held more rigid space for the the women that I’ve worked with so I love hearing about like what it was like for you to not create that you know sort of um polarization with the rejection of medication because it’s a very fine line right to say no without actually making
(21:49) something bad and wrong um so that’s beautiful and I imagine that when you finally you know were um reclaimed in this way a lot of your Creative Energy started to to come online um yeah I got divorc well I was gonna say so I wonder where you know it’s interesting Christin because in my practice uh you know I was married at the time and certainly not like an advocate I didn’t even have opinions about divorce I you know my my parents are still married and um I noted that like over 90% of the women who would come through do my protocol get
(22:33) off their meds and then exit the practice would be divorced by the end of our work together I mean it was it was as astounding and so I sort of reasoned like oh well you know they entered into the relationship in one Consciousness and now they’ve shifted and so it doesn’t really make sense and um you know I didn’t have really a more nuanced perspective certainly not than I have now on on marriage and Associated um um agreements and what women can do and all these things but I really um saw how common that was so I was curious you
(23:07) know if that’s something that you experienced with your with your div the timing of it yeah yeah and my ex-husband he’s a great man like there’s not a bad word I’d say about him um and we definitely had a soulle contract there were things that he really helped me like I need he was the perfect person to illuminate what I needed to look at and I was the perfect person to illuminate what he needed to look at and we were also together when things were going on in our families that were were difficult so we just were great and then it was
(23:37) like there was an expiration date it just like his Consciousness and life path was going one way and my Consciousness and life path was going another way and especially after you know getting off medication and not being so cerebral and really opening up spiritually um just like opening up like craving someone who was doing that too you know but when we met that wasn’t who I like that wasn’t who I was you know I started I was on the journey but I was more like talking about it than actually living it so when I did start to live it
(24:13) it was just we just went different directions I wonder I don’t want to like put you on the spot pedagogically but I actually have notes like from from your program because I loved this how you and maybe you I don’t know if this is yours or your framework or whatever it doesn’t matter but um I was just going to read literally like these different kinds of Partnerships that you describe because I think it’s it’s extraordinarily helpful I mean I’ve come to believe in like marriage for life so that’s funny being
(24:47) twice forced how I got here but you know I’ve come to really Orient towards that and advocate for that and you know this is sort of like my later life advocacy however I have lived um several of these uh archetypal Partnerships you describe so okay so maybe you can flush them out just a little bit and this is meant to be like a workshop but like you talk about issue-based relationships compatibility based relationships Journey mate um relationships very um yeah close to home fantasy based also close to home and
(25:21) side by-side partnership which seems to be you know um the holy the Holy Grail if there if there is one um so when you’re you’re talking about you know the expiration date and this concept that a relationship can be of a certain um type and play a certain role in your life it sounds like there are different categories that people fall into and they’re pretty yeah archetypal yeah so I came up with those that actually is mine I came up with that um mine whatever that means H when after my divorce and I had been coaching
(25:54) people for nearly 10 years at that time and seeing all the relationship and living those out myself except for the side by side one and the the issue based one just to go through them briefly this is the one where the chemistry is like insane you just it’s like a drug this person is like a drug but with that comes just tension and fights and like your issues and their issues go perfectly well together like if you had a father that cheated and that person is a cheater but you’re just so attracted to them it’s like they just go together
(26:30) and these are some some of the most unhealthy because a lot of us confuse chemistry with connection and chemistry often is a red flag to run the other direction um that really like that intense chemistry that drug chemistry when people like oh my gosh it was like I could tell this person was my soulmate we have this amazing chemistry and like oh I know how this is gonna go so because what it is doing is it’s bringing up the stuff you don’t really want to look at and it takes that intense chemistry for you to like
(27:03) actually go there um so issue based relationships don’t tend to last unless both people kind of separate do their own work heal the issues that are perpetuating all the inner child woundings I I want to stop you there just and don’t lose your train of thought yeah because you know this is a lot uh the Imago framework right and this concept that there are these eroticized wounds and you’re attracted to you know the positive and the negative in your caregivers and that that kind of Attraction is itself a symptom of this
(27:37) fundamental incompatibility uh that if surmounted would be healing for both people and you know I you know I I wrote about all this in my last book so I I’m obviously a huge believer in the the spiritual and psycho emotional potential for these types of relationships to catalyze extraordinary growth um and I have never seen two of those folks stay together but that’s the entire IMO framework as I understand it is like you absolutely can and and you know he can become sensitive to her sensitivities and she become
(28:15) sensitive to his and they they grow you know in complimentarity and I’ve just not seen that happen and so you know when we’re in these kinds of Dynamics especially in you know twinflame psychology and all this stuff you think like oh but it’s just hard work and I just got to keep working on myself and I just got to keep on that grind I would like to see and phone in if you have an example like I would like to see um if it ever is the case that there is an Evol a co-evolution and that you know people can make this kind of
(28:49) relationship work you know I haven’t seen many either and I’ve seen a lot of relationships um what I do know of one but what happened is both people like what tends to happen is people want to work on their relationship and really in this case both people need to actually go apart and work on themselves and like their most their inner child wounding basically um and come together but you it’s you have to be so aware of your triggers and as Terry real talks about you know so often we’re in the Adaptive child role and not the relational adult
(29:29) role and you have to be so aware well in any relationship but especially an issue based like when the Adaptive child is really up and it’s it’s so subtle and it feels so present that you often don’t know it feels so real and it feels like all you know but oftentimes in those relationships the Adaptive child is trying to have a relationship and it it just doesn’t work um but it is possible it’s just it’s it’s a big commitment on and both people have to not just one yeah exactly and equal amounts committed um so say a word about the
(30:05) rest yeah yeah so the next one is compatibility based which is often what people choose after like the marathon of an issue based relationship is like oh wow like we’re so alike we like the same music we do the same things we’re so alike and it’s refreshing it’s comforting it’s like a warm fuzzy blanket that’s so worn in but then gets boring and there’s not a lot of polarity and there’s not a lot of Attraction and you’re kind of just like with your best friend um and again those those can work the thing with
(30:39) those relationships is you really got to work on the polarity and the intimacy and the sexual attraction piece because you become so just in your compatibility that often there’s not a lot of friction and polarity to to keep the intimacy alive um but doable you know that’s a little less work again if you have two willon people can make it happen is it ever going to be as hot and heavy as an issue based no but psychologically it’s going to feel a lot safer the journey mate relationship I would say my ex-husband and I were Journey mate
(31:14) relationships like there was some kind of Soul contract there um it’s not like it doesn’t have the craziness or the intensity of an issue based but there’s just like a you know you come together for a reason maybe it’s to have a child together um you come together for reason and then there’s just a time when it’s just you’re just done and you try and you kind of try to get back but it’s like we’re just we’re complete and it’s not necessarily messy or anything like that it’s just we learn what we needed to learn and we’re complete and it only
(31:44) sort of gets messy if one person is like hanging on to what was instead of like what’s true right now then the fantasy based relationship this is like when we’re just we’ve got rosecolor glasses on we’re looking at someone’s potential we’re ignoring red flags we’re trying to make someone into someone something they’re not um we’re just not like rooted in reality and we all know how those turn out and then the side by-side partnership is again not two people that have like healed everything because as we discussed we’re not broken and we’re
(32:18) never there like if you’re still a human being on the planet like you’re still you’re still evolving and but it is someone that has like can look forward with you you can stand side by side and you can like look towards your shared vision and values instead of looking so much to each other to heal all your childhood stuff like you’re not looking at that person to be the parent you never had but always wanted you’ve actually done that inside yourself and you’re like okay where are we going like we know where we’ve been we’ve handled that to
(32:49) the best of our ability that stuff’s going to come up we’re going to turn in and Trigger each other at time but we’re going to be able to get out of it and like look forward towards our vision and values and I would say that’s more what my current relationship is with my husband I mean there’s definitely our adoptive child stuff comes out he’s got a lot of mother stuff he projects on me I’ve got stuff I project on him like it’s that’s just kind of that’s marriage and relationship throw a kid in the mix more stuff’s gonna come up and so like
(33:14) we’re not like you know you know this totally conscious all the time however when we have disagreement we are really in a rut we reach out for help we’re like our vision is growth that’s one of our values like we get help we work with a counselor um when we’re at each other we we stop we like talk about like what’s getting triggered inside of us we we process things more consciously with ownership and responsibility versus like it’s your fault you’re doing this to me um but I don’t want to like say that a side
(33:47) by-side partnership is like this Blissful there’s never any arguments like you’re just floating along in sacred Union all the time because it still work it’s just there’s more awareness there it sounds like it’s also an invocation of like the concept of the egregor there being something that you’re both devoted to right and creating together um that that is the container right it’s like the marriage the partnership itself is the container and it’s not that you’re necessarily looking to the other person for all of the the
(34:22) need meeting so it sounds like you might describe though that prior to your current relationship you did get pretty good at identifying and meeting your own needs so did you get to a point where you were like m i don’t need a partner like I’m good yes and no so I got to the point where I could have the desire without discomfort meaning like I knew I wanted like it was a desire of mine to be in a relationship sh um I like the challenge I like the growth I’m really here to evolve and I know like relationships are
(35:06) definitely help with that and I like sharing my life with someone but I I where I got to when I really C when step came into my life was I could have the longing without the suffering like I could I could long and say yes this is something I want and I am not I can feel longing without pain because when I was in that place of I’m single I’m happy I don’t need anything that wasn’t 100% true and I think when women especially get themselves to that place if it is their heart’s desire to be in a relationship you’re not being honest
(35:49) right so that it does cause an energetic block so yes be in the place where you’re loving your life but keep your longing like longing without St to me is The Sweet Spot yeah I have found in my own Journey that longing is one of the most overwhelming of all feeling States I mean when I would practice just feeling longing like I would like lay back on the couch and it would feel like a geyser like a train was was running through my body if I really allowed myself to feel it without translating it into action right like you know what
(36:30) should I be doing to better my chances and I do think a lot of the shadow of manifestation falls into this category because to sit with the longing and allow it to exist is to open yourself to one of the most kinetic of all yeah emotions and it takes practice I would say um but it does bring you to the place where you can access you know David data calls it like the the feminine essence of being full and wanting more like how can you right like tap into that fullness and then also play with that um with the desire right so so in in
(37:09) the in the encounter and I’ve heard your story um and uh and it’s fantastic but like in in the encounter with Steph how clear was it to you that this was going to be a different kind of connection oh from the get-go mostly because I saw myself not doing things that I’d done in past relationships mainly try to be what I think he wanted me to be I was just like this is me those beads you’re wearing look ridiculous like you’re not a monk on the mountain why are you wearing those you’re about to meet a bunch of my
(37:51) friends I hate them instead of being like Oh really we joke about the story maybe we told him be the queen oh and this is like day four cuz we we got introduced we had a three-month relationship over WhatsApp hadn’t met in person met in person moved in together that day married three months later but so the story I’m telling you about the beads is like day three of us being together and I saw him put those on and I’m like all right this is my this is it Christine like are you going to say it Cur yeah cured perform
(38:25) Cur perform because I was like I had been so and I Love David dat and all that stuff on femininity and but in some ways in my mind it got muddled and like I turn into this 1950s like yeah I love what you’re wearing um and I think there’s a difference between emasculating and just being like I didn’t the way I said it is like I think I said it like those beads are a lot we’re about to meet my friends for the first time like I know I shouldn’t care what they think but I do so like do you mind taking him off it
(38:59) was something like that which I and any healthy man isn’t going to be emasculated by that and I was like finding my way you know between that the the the places I would flipflop in old relationships between that emasculating controlling thing and that like I’ll just be whoever you want me to be while silently building resentment and making myself sick inside that sounds great so I had to find my my way um but that’s not a particularly romantic moment but though those were the times like I can think of several times where I just
(39:31) spoke up about what wasn’t working for me in the relationship and what I really needed I didn’t just complain I’m like this is what I need and he he heard it and Steph is not a pushover oh my gosh he’s like very sturdy in his masculinity um and so like I’m I you know that’s our dance right and we still six years later choose each other on on a daily basis you know having a kid you know you think you I we joke about how we were so confident in our like personal development abilities and our communication abilities then we got
(40:12) married and then we had a kid we’re like oh wow like we we’re still students in so many ways so we’ve been humbled many times but it’s awesome to have a partner who shares my number one value which is growth and I couldn’t do it with anybody who didn’t yeah yeah I mean in in uh family consolation therapy which I’m like a self-proclaimed Zealot about the uh the hierarchy is right that that you put your husband first and your child children come after you know in that hierarchical organization and when which we’re prone to do as mothers when we put
(40:54) our children first um and our marriages atrophy it actually disorders the entire system right so um this kind of foundation for realness and um it sounds like you very early tested the waters of like will you still love me you know if I show you this you know part of myself it sounds like that Foundation is what’s needed you know to progress through these uh these stages of your you know your your partnership into um the mother and father roles you know that are awaiting you I’d love for you to talk as we talked a little bit
(41:36) before we started uh a bit about the the the sort of pregnancy birth um and even you know postpartum experience that you’ve had as uh a reclaimed woman if I could brand you in my own my own likeness it’s better than Advanced maternal age I did not like that brand I know because I was telling you you know that practicing in New York uh with as a reproductive psychiatrist you know with with women uh who were preconception you know or anti-natal or postpartum my average age was probably 43 42 43 of the patients that I worked
(42:19) with so you know it’s a very skewed curve perhaps uh based on what a lot of other demographics are used to when it comes to women of you know um maternal age and I just yeah I just I just want to put like neon lights around any uh any birth story like yours so I’d love for you to share a word or two about it yeah well it’s interesting like having a baby wasn’t a like I have to do this um because a lot of times people would be like well if you want a kid you know don’t like you don’t have to wait for a partner I was like no that’s not my
(42:56) priority um cuz I believe there’s lots of ways to Mother um having your own biological child is one of them and I felt like there were ways I was mothering in my life in my career but I also felt Athena that’s my daughter I felt her around me and she really started to come in strong when Steph and I were introduced and after my divorce a few years after my divorce I think I was like 34 I did freeze my eggs not because I wanted a child for sure for sure but because I know myself and I have a part of me my inner critic
(43:31) candy again is her name who loves to should have could have would of me and I’m like all right candy here’s what we’re gonna do we’re gonna do this egg freezing thing because if I get to my 40s and that’s when I meet my person and I can’t get pregnant I’m gonna beat myself up over this so we’re GNA do this now funny story I didn’t use those eggs they’re still chilling in Beverly Hills where they’re frozen didn’t need them at all so we were married for about three years or so and Steph was a yes on a child I was still an I don’t know and um the
(44:08) biggest reason I was an I don’t know is because you know my whole life as we talked about anxiety and worry and even depression has been something I’ve had to I’ve chosen to um just be mindful about and know that there’s a tendency for me to go there is it a biochemical tendency is it a learn tendency is it a karmic tendency who knows who cares it’s there and so my fear was that I was going to have this baby and have something I love so much and be a nervous wreck the rest of my life because one of the things when I love
(44:43) deeply I care deeply and as a child I paired worry and love together like if you love you worry not just a little bit a lot and so I like that was part of my resistance of like can I handle the the the love and I actually went to for the second time Dr Joe dispenza’s Advanced Retreat and really stepped into like all right let me just get out because I’m totally in fear and I don’t want to make a fear-based decision let me just I get into coherence and make a love-based decision and it was a yester me so that
(45:15) sort of the backstory and then it was at the retreat um we actually Can See For the First Time the first time we tried conceived and I was like whoa that happened quickly and then eight weeks later I had a miscarriage and um I really had to be mindful of even my Midwife at the time who wasn’t my Midwife for Athena birth was like well your chances because you’re over 40 are like 70% you know that you’re getting miscarriage and I was like in the middle of it and going what part of this you is making me feel better like
(45:48) zero and it was like and at the time two of my good friends who are about six years younger than me were pregnant at the exact same time so I was watching them go through their pregnant see while I was losing mine it was difficult um but I really just kind of put my blinders on went back into my relationship with my husband and into my healing like really had conversations with the souls and was like okay I’m open again and my husband and I made an agreement again mostly for my mental health we will give it a year I will try
(46:16) for a year to the end of the year so not even a full year to the end of the year then maybe we’ll consider using my eggs and then I’m done like I’m not doing this fiveyear like I don’t I don’t have it in me and so he said okay and then the next time we tried got pregnant and then I had Athena um and when I got pregnant when I went and try to find like douas and midwives and all those types of things instead of being like congratulations that’s so awesome it was wait you’re 44 like did you use ibf no all right well you know you’re
(46:50) going to need sonograms every this and that you’re going to need da d da we don’t know if we can do a home birth I’m like what’s going on and then one Midwife called me a birthing person and I was like wow what’s what’s happening like I’m a woman who got FR like what is like what Matrix am I in right now and so I had to really just like find my people that did not see me as this like old lady having a baby and really supported my decisions about sonograms and about not doing the testing and like all the things um and I did have a few
(47:31) sonograms again for my mental it’s like I think with all these things when we’re extreme too much either way that can create tension and so for me I always had to check in and be like okay what is better for my mental health like a an like I wanted her to have the anatomy scan the anatomy scan so that like I know this Baby’s good which is going to be better for my mental health or kind of being the unknowing where I’m going to be stressing that’s going to jack out my cortisol that’s not going to be good so that’s how I made my decisions and my
(48:02) whole thing with women and birth is like empowering the mother like really empowering the mother of like you get to decide about like what is going to work for you and I was really committed to a home birth I found midwives who were totally on board with that a DOA that was awesome my husband was completely on board and I had my daughter at home and it got a little sticky because the whole like 36 hours when your water breaks like you know we got to that point and my uterus had just stopped because it was tired and they’re like you’re going
(48:32) to need to go to the hospital it’s been 36 hours I was like no I’m not so like what are my other options because I’m I’m not they’re like well you know d d da and I was like well let’s check see where she is and she was ready I was fully dilated and I just pushed that kid out without contractions I’m like this we’re not we’re having this baby at home and that was just what I did but I never could have done that Kelly if I and it wasn’t my ideal like I would love to have a water birth and all these things um but I think that the birth in
(49:05) so many ways is the initiation of the kind of mother we need to be and like that particular Journey for me like had me tap into a Warrior part that I had not accessed before and I have to say after that birth and after having Athena my relationship to anxiety has completely shifted yeah completely shifted sorry that was a very long story oh my gosh I can listen to this all day no I mean it’s fascinating because you know I I have tended to as I mentioned create very strong boundaries and now as I you know with with the system you know
(49:41) it’s sort of like you know it’s All or Nothing kind of a thing with Pharma with interventions or whatever yeah and now I see it more as like an arc like a maturational Arc you know and when I talk to I don’t know if you know Yolanda Norris Clark I’ve had her on the PO and she’s Ally of mine and you know she said um 10 10 babies and you know went from these kinds of warrior because I relate to that a lot um this kind of like Warrior archetype natural birth uh to a blissful the several actually Blissful births and
(50:15) I I think of the relationship to uncertainty as being you know a I would characterize it like an inner masculine maturational Journey right so like the more we as women can sit with uncertainty like there was a time in my life where I was Consulting akashic readers and Clairvoyant and Tarot readers and all the things like pretty much on a by monthly basis you know and it was very normalized like in my friend group and all the rest and I now see it I’m about two years on the wagon I now see it as you know I’m just
(50:55) readying to trust God and my process and whatever the happens and just considering the possibility that maybe I don’t know best what is meant to go down but to access that with a first pregnancy you know um it’s also right like who we surround ourselves with like I didn’t know anyone who’d had a home birth uh when I was pregnant with my first and you know I had a natural birth but it was a very very Marathon like you know like I’ll you know bad kind of my way through it and if I had known right like one woman honestly I mean I
(51:30) was so in The Matrix at that point yeah so I agree that the initiation experience is very personally tailored to where you’re at and and what you need and I just I just love that there um there was this right because there’s there are few hex’s more powerful than you are too old and fragile and decrepit and broken it’s that same again you know so it it’s such a powerful thing that you were able to access your your spine in that process and I really I love it and yeah and I want to acknowledge you too for you know
(52:09) because I think we need people that like you who are willing to go so far the other way because it’s the only way it’s the only way that like we can get people’s attention sometimes we have to like really scream something until some people people are listening and I think that’s a natural thing we go over here because we’ve been so far over here and we need to somehow come back to the middle I mean we’re seeing this play out right now so well in so many ways and I think it’s fine to still have things like there’s certain things I’m a strong no
(52:45) on um where there’s like not a there’s just not negotiation and but I but what I think is important and what both of us are saying in so many ways is like it has to be your inner no not anyone else’s like it’s your yes it’s your no what you really like trusting ourselves inside and I think that’s one of the things that so many of us have gotten away from is this ability to trust oursel to trust God to like and to like inner Source rather than Outsource our answers because I did that too and still at times I’m like well maybe I’ll just call
(53:21) this one psychic and what they have to say just to confirm my right and then it and then it comes back to again like growing that capacity that you tapped into when you were readying to deprescribe you know that capacity to just be with whatever the hell you’re feeling right because often we invite that worst case scenario into our present experience um and it’s all in the imaginal realm like we’re already experiencing it right so we uh the reassurance is almost you know uh misplaced desire in ways so I um I love the Arc of your journey and I
(54:05) know that it is informed to a tremendous extent your capacity to be there you know for other women who are at various stages in their professional careers in their health and wellness Journey um and you know in their I don’t want to say search for love their contact with self-love and relational um Mastery really so I’d love to know you know what’s alive for you now and I know that you are um still in the penumbra of your your motherhood initiation um and I imagine um doing that notorious dance between your role
(54:48) as entrepreneur and wife and mother um and so I’d love to know yeah what’s aive for you and and what um what you’d like to share with folks who are listening before we before we oh thank you I mean I you know we talked about the be the queen program we’re going to be launching another live cohort of that um around Valentine’s Day 2025 and um you know what really is alive for me now is surrender in so many ways you know especially I’ve been a coach for 20 years I’ve done all the things um um and I’m seeing the coaching industry
(55:31) especially become kind of a celebrity industry in so many ways um and so what I’m working on kind of what’s brewing you know one of the things that I see so often is coaches who are really amazing but don’t want to do the marketing like struggle to get clients and then clients listeners people out there who like want the right practitioner whether it be a coach or therapist or trumatic practitioner or whatever and they don’t know how to find it and that’s what I’m working on solving right now is um helping coaches
(56:02) really build and helping people be matched with people that are really great fits because I’m in the point in my career where I’m like thinking more Legacy of like how do I really help and share and like take this work um into more hands and have more people benefit from it so more stay tuned on that that’s something we’re working on right now but I have my podcast which you’re going to be on um over at non withit where I do both interviews and I coach people live on the air so if you want some free coaching and therapy check out
(56:32) over at non withit and then I just recorded my expectation hangover in my voice on Audible oh amazing so that will be there as well and then everything else my name is all the things website Instagram all that stuff so beautiful it’s almost like you as you were describing you know this this current aliveness and and the project it’s almost like you’re becoming like a growth match maker right like you’re like bringing together yeah that’s the intention because what I’m seeing is like so much is on like you know reals
(57:06) and social media and all that kind of stuff and I’m not saying that’s bad I just don’t think it’s everyone’s frequency in terms of the the most authentic way to connect and so I’m I’m working on trying to to have another way yeah that’s beautiful I mean I think of um my now friend her name at the time was swarm Paul and now it’s Patricia and she was my first like literal angel that descended from on high as my series of Dark Knights began in 2013 and I I I like I’m not even sure if she has a website to this day right she
(57:45) like completely changed my life and uh was such a midwife for me and is now such a dear sister and I think of yeah she’s just not participating in you know whole um realm I there’s so much wisdom and so much talent and Gifts out there in the world that aren’t findable through the ways most people may search and so that’s what I want to do is help like highlight those people very cool well we will have all all the things all the links um in in show notes of course it’s such a pleasure to connect to you oh my gosh and I’m really uh yeah it’s
(58:25) it’s so it’s So Beautiful to have a colleague and an ally who also just completely speaks the language I’ve been steeped in for for so many years uh personally and professionally so it’s really really beautiful and I look forward to chatting with you on your end me too thank you for having me thank you thank you you [Music]
