Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Meet Yourself In Truth with Janne Robinson

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Do you ever feel like your life no longer fits you? Like you’re walking around in a version of yourself that you’ve outgrown—but you're not sure what the next version looks like? In this powerful Language of Love Conversation, I’m thrilled to welcome back poet, author, and truth-teller Janne Robinson to the show. Together, we explore what happens when you hit that inner wall—when you're stuck, misaligned, or playing house in a life that no longer feels like your own. We dive deep into Janne’s journey from living a life that looked good on paper but felt soul-crushing, to courageously claiming her truth and starting over twice. We explore: Why “not this” is often the first clue—and the most sacred invitation to begin again What to do when your partner isn’t growing with you—and how to honor love even in letting go The radical power of one honest conversation to change the entire energy of your relationship How your body speaks the truth before your mind is ready to hear it The emotional and physical toll of living in misalignment—and why your soul won’t let you fake it forever How shame keeps us silent—and how your truth can set not just you, but others, free Why having a guide who’s walked the hard path before you changes everything And why love that grows with you, not around you, is the rarest, richest love of all Ready to begin your own truth-telling journey? Join Janne’s free 10-day experience, Meet Yourself in Truth, starting June 2nd—a sacred space for live coaching, community, and the gentle unraveling of what no longer serves you. Sign up here: https://janne-robinson.mykajabi.com/a/2148081458/P2bZhWSA Connect with Janne on her website and join the waitlist for her upcoming book Truth Is Your Medicine. You can also follow her on Facebook and Instagram for updates and don’t forget to visit my website for expert-backed resources to help you heal, grow, and thrive in your relationships. Have you left behind a life that no longer fits—or are you still standing at the edge, unsure what’s next? I’d love to hear your story. Email me at [e-mail] to share your journey and be considered for a future episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of love i am so excited yanni to have you on the language of love again you've been on before but this topic i feel is so important and so up for people i mean my peeps know that i talk about authenticity all the time. And certainly, after you've gone through enough AFGEs, those another

freaking growth experiences where your life is broken open, you've been through big things, you change and you evolve. And it's hard not to show up in the world authentically as a result of that. And a lot of times your old life doesn't fit. But what I'm finding, and I'm hearing from so many of my people here, that even not going through big upheavals where they're having some real recalibration in their life or big healing in their life. They're just feeling kind of either stuck in relationships or lives that don't really feel like a lobster outgrowing its shell or my life doesn't really fit. There are things going on that I don't know how to be honest about with my loved ones, with my partner, or I feel stuck in my life, my job, my career. And I know I'm

being called to something else, but I don't know what that is. So I'm so excited to dive into this with you. The truth is your medicine, because that's really what this is all about, right? It is. Yeah. And I'm excited to talk about it as well. I feel like as a coach for 12 years, that's the main premise that my work is usually around is like, hey, when we get quiet and we listen inside, we usually know there's a truth there. And sometimes there's a confusion around what to do with that and if it's possible and i think that a lot of the times when we feel stuck especially in a core or primary part of our life so a marriage or a partnership where you live in a house with somebody or a career that pays your life there could be a part that's like well i don't

know how to evolve this without completely destabilizing everything that is there and so i know that there's a truth but i'm scared to take action on it i think we hit these moments in our lives where one of the things that I feel is so true is like we're on a highway in a car and we just, we think this is it. We have chosen the life that we are in, even if it's an iteration that we feel that we've outgrown, even if we're not feeling connection in our marriage or meaning in our work, we're like, train is on the track, I'm committed, and this is where I am. And we forget how many exits are on the highway and how many choices are there at any point in time that we can choose and we just kind of get this black and white thinking of this is the way that it is

and you know part of that is when you get married if you're in a marriage you say these vows of like it's this it's black or white it's this you know till death do us part and a job I think it's terrifying to have an evolution especially at certain stages of our life and so it's a very courageous conversation that we don't even want to look at sometimes because it could mean this accountability of what does that mean for those core parts of my life that are the foundation, right? Like partnership, home, career. And at the same time, then we can end up inside of a life or a version of our life that just no longer has connection, that no longer has meaning, that no longer has sex. I can say that on your show, right?

and gay hendrix i worked with for many years always said you know sex problems are often honesty problems yeah we've stopped being honest and we've stopped being open in our marriages and sometimes we stop being honest because we're aware that that honesty is going to highlight huge core beliefs that are off and if we really have those honest uncomfortable sweaty conversations it may mean that the writing will be on the wall that we have to leave so we're like I'm not even going to have the conversation to see the writing on the wall I really like that we have a beach house in Santa Monica and I keep playing house yeah and I think that's a choice because I work with tons of people that are obviously struggling in this way individuals and couples and I say this

to myself I say this to them I've said this to my friends that eventually the pain of being in the situation where you are feeling stuck or out of alignment or out of your truth starts to get greater than your fear of what's on the other side, of opening that Pandora's box, of having that conversation or of taking inspired action. And I want to ask you about that, but there have been so many times, I mean, I joke with my husband that we've been married probably four or five different times to each other because I think he's been married and we've been together almost 25 years to at least four different versions of me and i have to get to that place of choice that scares the crap out of me where i am changing the rules in some way that at least to me i'm

imagining is going to be a big deal knowing him the way that i do and i'm like oh shit and i'm taking that leap of faith and ready for whatever that's going to create whatever pandora's box that's going to open. And then he just keeps rising to the occasion, which I think is a big part of why we're still in alignment and still together. But it's scary as hell to do that because a lot of times it's not so much that the relationship isn't working. I mean, yes, there are parts of it that aren't working, but you really care about this person. You love this person. You've built a life with them. Yes, there are people who are just staying together for the house in Santa Monica beach. But there are a lot of people, myself included, that there's so many

beautiful aspects to our life and so, you know, cost benefit analysis, right? But then there are these things that are just feeling I've evolved and changed, or I'm realizing new aspects of myself or something has gone on for me personally, where I can no longer operate the same way I did before. And so I need things to change and that's going to create upheaval. So it's not always black and white. And I'm just wondering from your perspective, because I think this is the big question, even in looking at the truth, much less taking action from that truth. And like we were saying, opening up to look at the truth, what is the payoff? One payoff is that if you're in a lot of pain, obviously you're going to have a lot more aliveness, peace, joy on the other side when you

follow this path of truth but what else what's the reason if you're scared to do this like what's the payoff yeah well first i want to say i love that your husband has risen to love the 32 flavors of laura and then some i always tell him you know like you will never be bored i promise you don't know there's no need for that i will always be changing you'll always be in a relationship with different versions of yana so i love that you've been able to have the courage to show that and then be loved and all of those i feel like if people do wedding vows it should be i commit to getting to know you for the rest of your life and loving and seeing if i can love because this is an evolution and novels change every seven years so why wouldn't we why wouldn't you know our music

our clothes our style it's like we're always shifting so we should have some more liberal vows that was that is i agree the payoff of turning towards our truth is i don't know about you, but when I have the courage to have those really sweaty, uncomfortable conversations that I know could make or break, could be a friendship, could be a partnership. I feel like two things ultimately happen. And one is we become so much closer and there's this newfound connection and this really ability to be seen by that person, which is what intimacy is, and strengthen the connection that is there. Or again, the writing's on the wall of, oh, dang, you know, this might not work. And so there's a 50-50 reward risk there. And so I think that there's a quote I love from

A Course in Miracles. I don't have any tattoos, but if I were to get a tattoo, I had this on a surfboard, I could put it on my body, is that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. And I feel like the things that are true to the bones of our souls, we can't fuck it up. That if we are ourselves, if we have the conversation and there is not a way forward, there's not a willingness, you turn over all of the pebbles and the rocks and you go to couples therapy or you commit to figuring it out together. And if you really can't find a way forward, I don't think we've ever have the ability to lose anything because I think that the things that are meant for us at the core root of who we are, bringing our authenticity, bringing our truth

is just going to create stronger connection in those relationships. Yeah, I really believe that too. And it's something as a recovering codependent, I mean, I've been in recovery, I guess since 2009, something like that. But I started then this tradition and my husband didn't even really know I was doing this. I didn't intentionally keep it from him. For some reason, I guess I never said it out loud without realizing it until he happened to be at a talk I was giving and I mentioned it. And he was like, I had no idea you were doing this part of it. But he knew this part that every morning I would give him a 30 second, we would give each other a 30 second heart to heart hug. We do that every single morning. But what I am silently doing is pulling

love in from my crown light of spirit love, circling it in my heart and sending it to him and just really sending him love from my heart and saying to myself, I choose you today. And that's for me. I have to constantly remind myself that I am in choice. But of course, if our relationship fell apart, I would be devastated. I would miss the crap out of him. I would curl up into a ball for a while, but I know I would be okay no matter what. I mean, I've had enough life experience of my world imploding to know that I can survive almost anything. But if I choose him consciously every day, then I'm in my power to get whatever needs to stand for my truth, right? Because I feel like if you're not in choice in relationship,

if you don't feel that there is nothing that is truly meant for you that you can lose and whatever you lose you will survive because it wasn't meant for you or it's just on that which is right is always unfolding then it does create some space there to take those leaps i think there's also a timing with those words that you can't just pop those words on somebody at certain moments in grief because that wouldn't be a task there yes yeah yeah and i love what you just said i i don't want to name him from a confidentiality space but there's an amazing musician i know who's toured with taylor swift and very hot very charming and he toured all the time i had a judgment that musicians often cheated on their partners and he was i was saying how do you tour

and been in a relationship for so many years and he said every single morning i wake up and i choose her so i love yeah it's a conscious decision i think it really is and he's choosing in a different way right like i'm choosing so i can stay out of my codependent patterns that's like a trigger reminder for me he's doing it so he's reconfirming his commitment you know which i think is cool so the truth is your medicine it's the path to your freedom it's the path to clarity it's the path really to the life and the love that we want and i know you have some stories in your own life that you share when you teach, how do we start giving people a sense of this, of how it works and what the process even is to start unpacking this, right? We're feeling that niggling. We're

feeling that out of alignment-ness. We're feeling stuck. We're feeling like some things aren't serving us and we're kind of stuck in these patterns or we're wanting to take a leap, but we're scared shitless to do it. And we're just not even looking over there. well i think rather than be abstract i'll share a personal story of yeah but yeah it's very much one of those moments where you start to realize not this and you're not always sure of what this is but you just start to get that feeling of not this you know or elizabeth gilbert calls it like we can eat the shit sandwich of our life for so long and then we have a moment where we can't eat the shit sandwich anymore my moment and on the note of outgrowing our lives i had literally i

was wearing a suit in this moment that was too tight on the shoulders that I had outgrown so this is one of those moments and stories of my life that I've shared a lot of times because it has I can feel it so deeply inside of me because for a long time before this moment I had that awareness around something's off and how it presented itself for me was you know Louise Hay talks about in her book You Can Heal Your Life that when we feel trapped for long enough And sometimes when we forget that we have the power of choice, we think that, you know, this is it. This is the life trains on the tracks. That's the emotional root of depression. So I think sometimes when we stay in things for too long, we start to feel the beginnings of depression or deeper depression. And she even says suicide is when we see, we forget there's any choices. We just see things as black or white of like live or die. And so I had known for many years when I was living in Alberta 12, 13 years ago, that I didn't really like this version of my life anymore. And for me, I didn't really like the city that I lived in. People can think of that shallow, but I think it's an environment that's so important for us. and it was minus 30 degrees Celsius and cold and gray and industrial, and I didn't love where I

was living. I wasn't using my gifts. I'm an author and a poet and a writer and a speaker and a coach, and I was making money through serving and bartending and selling condos for a developer. And I also felt that there was just degrees of connection in my life I couldn't access because a core part of my job and how I connected with people in the world didn't feel authentic to me. I knew that for a long time and I would travel. That was one of my escapisms is I would go on trips and then I would feel like myself when I wasn't at my job or I would go for a month trip somewhere. I would watch TV shows on Netflix and distract. And for any of you that have the vice of wine, wine only works until it wears off and then you feel all the misalignment and

sadness underneath it. So there had been this feeling of, it started to feel like depression and sadness and just hopelessness almost of, gosh, this is it. This is where I'm at. This is going to be my life. And nobody in my life was an entrepreneur. Nobody in my life went and started a business or did any of those things. I didn't have any mentors. There was no one I could look at in the world and be like, wow, that's something that could be on the menu for me. But there was a moment where it was 3.45 p.m. and I was sitting wearing this gray pinstriped suit from Aritzia that was definitely too tight in the shoulders, drinking this Starbucks Americano with cream and sugar. It was cold, so like all the cream was curdled. And to this day, like when you get sick off of something as a kid and you can't eat it anymore, I can't do Americanos from Starbucks. Sorry, we're never going to be in a sponsorship relationship. and I remember just going like not this I can't do this anymore I can't pretend anymore that this is enough and there has to be something else and about six months before I'd gone on a kayaking

trip with this my mom and some of her friends and one of them was a filmmaker an incredible filmmaker who was an artist Deanne Whelan but she also monetized her art you know she made a film on Everest and was one of the artists that was paying for her life through her art, which I didn't know was available. And as a fellow writer, we're told that, you know, writing's for the weekends. And we'd had a conversation six months prior where she had encouraged me to just change one thing. She said, you know, maybe it's just moving to BC. Like, you don't like Alberta. There's trees here. Like, maybe you just need to be by the ocean. And maybe it's not immediately that you make money from your writing and your art, but that could be something that you

work towards. And so she planted a seed and it didn't sprout immediately because we need time with big choices and change. There's an integration phase that I think is mature and important. I think sometimes we go to these personal development weekends and then we want to blow up our lives. It's like, you could sit with it for a minute. I know you're in the heat of feeling empowered because it's but there's a maturation of i can sit with this for a minute so i sat with it and then at 3 45 p.m i remember i picked up the phone and i called my mom and i just said i think i'm just gonna move to bc which did mean moving my city moving my jobs but i just went i think i just need trees that was the first truth laura it wasn't very profound listen i'm a big tree

i would move for trees i need trees that's actually a problem in california i'm like these trees these are a little tidy I go camping and I'm disappointed but I love the surf and it was like the mentalized today surfing so there's lots of good things in California so anyways I was like I'm gonna move to BC and I said to my mom could you reach out to Deanne and see if she has any connections for developers or serving jobs once I get there because I don't yet know how to make money off of my art and you know one thing at a time and in this moment laura i had the most i feel like that the universe sometimes rolls out this red carpet for us when we actually have the courage to commit to what we want 100 agree have found that to be true every single time i take

the leap it is astounding yes so this moment i'm like in the show suite i'm actually waiting for 10 grand, which at this point in my life was a lot. I was making like 30 grand a year at this moment in my life. And this developer owed me 10 grand and I was waiting for the money to move. So also financially, there was this hindrance of, well, I'll just wait for that money to make the choice. And I'm here on the phone. My shift ends in 15 minutes and this woman walks into the office and she's not one of my clients or a new lead that I'm going to get commission on. she is one of my the business partners clients and so i hang up the phone with my mom i'm like hey reach out to d and this woman walks in and she's like hey i know you're closing in 15 minutes

i bought one of your units i just flew in for the weekend is there any way you could take me to the white avenue location and we can walk through and laura thank god i have really strong integrity so i was like okay i was like we'll do it so we're walking in hard hats checked out of this entire life and definitely i'm like done you know but i'm there in a hard hat because i have integrity, and we're walking, and I start to connect with her, and she's sharing about how her father is sick, and so she is buying this unit to move back to take care of him, and as we're in this conversation, she says, I have this amazing cabin on the Sunshine Coast of BC, and I don't know what to do with it. Oh my gosh. And I'm like, this is going to sound crazy, but as you walked

in, I said I wanted to move to BC, and actually, I said that she didn't tell me on the Sunshine coast i was like where is it sunshine coast is where d lived and i'm like whoa and i was like well i'd love to see it i don't have like a lot of like money in my move and she turned to me laura and said you can live rent-free in my cabin until you get paid out this money by this developer i didn't end up living in her cabin but i just want to talk about like talk about some universe orchestration of that i ended up living in a different cabin but it was like this whole shift the second that i made the choice and then d called me and said yeah i can get you on a job bartending or serving but she wants to be an artist so why doesn't she come work with me

and it was like you know 10 bucks an hour internship i still got a second job but i got welcomed in to the invitation of being in the energy of not just like a woman but like a badass woman like cheryl strades following d she just spent six years walking 24 000 kilometers across Canada. She's licensed by Paramount and Elevation and Oscar qualified. And so she wasn't just an artist, she was a successful artist, which is what I really needed to big leap. One other thing. Hey, it's Dr. Laura Berman. I've been a sex, love, and relationship therapist for over 30 years. And the main question I always get asked is how the heck do we spice it up in a long-term monogamous relationship well if you want to take your love life your sex life to the

next level whether you're in a relationship or not check out my free course on quantum sex it's going to teach you how to take your sexual response to the next level capable of full body orgasms how to use sex magic to manifest your dreams and how to connect on an even deeper level sexually with your partner. Just go to drlauraberman.com and you'll find it right there on the homepage, the Quantum Sex free course. Check it out and let me know what you think. I got pregnant. As I moved out of my house, going to live in this cabin, start my life over, got pregnant. I did have an abortion. It was with someone that was very new in my life and it wasn't the moment but there were so many reasons I could have not gone yeah and I could have still had the

baby and done it I went through a whole going through the belief systems of like nope there are moms who make it happen it just wasn't the moment and it wasn't the partner for me to bring a kid forward with at that point in my life but I had all of these hurdles and obstacles of are you really going to commit to this and I don't love all of this man's work but Jordan Peterson has a quote that says commitment only works when you do it and it's like the second that we can really commit to something like with our two feet in i think that we're able to yeah i think that it's not just us there's a co-creation happening and things start to unravel and then being in the energy of d that's when my entire career started because i saw her do it you know she had such

audacity. She'd be like, Lori, she'd be like, call National Geographic and ask them if they'll do a cover. And it'd be like, I'm not a PR person. I don't know how to talk to National Geographic. And you know, I'm a bartender. And he said, no, no, I like trust you. Just go talk to them. And being in her energy, I started to write. I was writing 14 articles a month. I had articles and poems that went viral. And my whole career took off as a writer in that mentorship was critical. And I think that in starting our lives over, we need a mentor or a person who is, you can't ask the people in your life who don't have courage to show you how it's going to be done because they're not choosing courage. You need, whether it is relational courage or career

courage, you need somebody and you know that you know who that person is that like talks straight and is and is in the world and it requires such vulnerability to be courageous it takes such vulnerability to be to have audacity and you've been doing this you have so many books you've been doing this you've been an artist and working with your work in so many ways for so long it's this constant vulnerability of evolution and change and there's so many elements of that that take huge courage and for me it was d who is your first did you have like a mentor a person Oh yeah, I've had a lot of mentors, a lot of them through the years. I just wrote about it not long ago, I think on social media, because one of my first mentors, I was her first ever intern and I

talked my way. I was in graduate school learning to be a therapist, but I'd come from the background of anthropology and evolutionary psychology. And I was obsessed with this woman named Dr. Helen Fisher who was like a genius and she had written all of these beautiful books the sex well for at that point she'd only written the sex contract but to me it like I was like oh my god this is so fast like if I could work with someone like this and I literally called her up cold like I figured out I was in New York City in graduate school and I knew she lived in New York City she worked at the Museum of Natural History and I tracked her ass down and like found a way to get her on the phone or I wrote her a letter. There was no email or anything back then.

And she had never even thought about an intern. I remember I met with her the first time. She's like, wait, you work for me for free? And I was like, yes, and I'll do whatever you need. She was one of the most amazing mentors to me professionally, educationally, so aspirational to me. And she took me under her wing for years and championed me in a million different ways. And even much later in life, when I, I mean, there've been so many times where I've just taken the sleep out of the norm. I was really involved in academia and in all the sexual health conferences and sex therapy conferences. When Viagra came out, I was like, there is something here. Nobody has mapped the nerves and blood vessels central to women's sexual function.

What the hell? And why don't we understand what's going on physiologically with women? when we have 20 years of research on men. So I started diving into all that and working with the pharmaceutical companies that were giving all the Viagras and the Levitras and all those things to men. Okay, help me figure this out. Let's do studies. Let's analyze. And my professional organizations felt so threatened by Viagra for some reason, because I think they mistakenly and quite frankly, stupidly felt like if there's a pill you can take for erections or for arousal that will do away with therapy, which is like so ridiculous to me. And it always was because if you don't like your partner or your body or your life, you can pump yourself full of blood flow and

nothing's going to work. But they were threatened by that and they tried to blackball me. And I was a full-time professor and they blackballed me in every way they could and did so much smearing and this woman championed me and like if anyone because she was in the middle of all of these organizations and people would start to say things and she would be like shut the fuck up you don't even know who this like she would stand for me i miss her so much she just recently died from cancer but she was an amazing champion. And I also really love this idea of how the universe really does. And I've found it time and time again, when I'm scared shitless to do something, I'm like, all right, I'm doing it. The red carpet will roll out in really unexpected ways. And you alluded to

this with the pregnancy and with other things, I find that there are tests. And people ask me about this a lot. Why am I being tested? I'm curious what you think. I feel like it's like universe spirit whatever calling on you to get really really clear on how much you want this like how much do you really want this how committed to this are you not in a way of like let me see if you're worthy but in a way of being of service to you so you can be so clear that no matter what comes you're doing this so what do you think what i love about this so much is there's i have a course your truth is your medicine and there's a module called do you really want this which literally goes exactly what you're saying which is sometimes after yes after we make that choice

and i'm also sorry to hear about her passing i've heard i'm gonna spend some time looking at her work but i think that there can be uh you know when i was younger it would look like i'm gonna go on a trip or i'm gonna travel and you meet someone you start to fall in love and you're like you know and then that looks different at different iterations of our life but i don't know why our commitment gets tested i had a completely different in a different way of the universe not rolling out a huge rent so let's also be clear we're not going to bypass the accountability that's okay for instance i have a visa and i'm a canadian but i live in california and one of my first visas was denied or was it denied or there's a request for more evidence either or i had to

leave the country and i was not happy because i was like no i want this i'm very clear i want this i want to live in encinitas and live a block from the beach and surf with pelicans like very much so this is what i want and we can almost feel this what the hell you know yeah and i ended up getting approved and getting a different visa which ended up working that was a moment too where you're like wait no i really do want this so i don't always think the universe rolls out a red carpet and i think we can be tested in how much do you really want this and i turned around and figured that visa out and then i turned around and figured out a different visa once i had that visa because i'm a very self-sustained woman that loves independence and i loved that my publisher

sponsored my visa but then i wanted like full like i want to sponsor myself and so i ended up i'm on an o1 visa and i had an e1 before and um yeah i had that micro and macro rejections and you know i'm i'm not sure maybe it's just testing the commitment and how much we want it also it's important not to make everything mean something yeah like it's my life to make everything mean you know like if you want it no one and you know usually we could tell that we either feel relief or sadness and contraction in our bodies from a somatic space i remember getting the visa it wasn't relief you know it wasn't like oh that's what i wanted it's like no there's a huge reaction in my body so that was the truth of what i wanted and i needed to go back out and make that

happen so also it doesn't always mean something i think that our truth and how we feel and it's really that feeling, you know, what set me on my journey of starting over and having this entire new life. And I really could be living in Edmonton and all of these living the same version if I wouldn't have made some of these choices. The choices got easier. Once you start to make the first couple, you start to kind of get in a rhythm of like, oh, I'm okay. I'm okay. And we have a huge capacity for change. Our nervous system doesn't always know that we'll be okay. And it's important to actually my therapist, Larry, sometimes I'll be like, I don't know. He's like, you're okay. And I'm like, am I? Is it okay? He'll be like, no, you're okay. So it's helpful

to know that we have that capacity for change and we'll figure it out to a degree. And sometimes we also choose things and other times, sometimes we don't choose things. And another story in my life that impacted me so much was that my mom was an airplane mechanic for 15, 20 years at WestJet. She's also like a shaman. She's an amazing woman, very full of duality. And she didn't like her job anymore because working in the trades as a woman is often full of sexism and racism and homophobia and she just didn't like the environment and she didn't quit because again sometimes when you're in a job you're like this is it and you know mechanic it's a good job she one day had a tear in her carotid and a clot and almost had a stroke and when she woke up in the icu the doctor said

you can't do your job anymore and she's been forced to retire and leave that job so sometimes we make a choice and sometimes we do not make a choice and that happens and then we have to deal with that and either or there's i don't want to say that there's absolutely grief and time that needs to be spent in processing those pieces of it but either or we need to know how to navigate new versions of our life or these different parts and i really see it as the core parts of us we have like our career the city that we live in our primary partnership if we're in a relationship or marriage there's our friendships it really just takes three to five people that line up when you walk into a room as gay said that to me once and i really feel that it's like we're my core

friend and then there's our family relationships and there's a relationship with ourselves which includes our vices and our managing and being aware of where we're numbing or you know like our self-care our spiritual mental physical emotional health and how we care for ourselves i think those are an inventory of things that it's good to pay attention to because often when we start to feel that depression it's that feeling inside of i'm feeling a little trapped or i'm just not jumping out of bed with energy excited to start my day it's good to look at those parts of your life and go is there a conversation that needs to be had is there a change or a choice that needs to be had and often and i'm sure that you give advice on relationships all the time but i

often say if there's a relational piece you don't have to just go all out you know you can choose to just have the conversation and commit to going all in though like hey i don't know if i want to be here and like do you want to go to couples therapy for a certain time really commit to seeing if we go all in if we can transform this marriage and this relationship to be there and other people the sweaty uncomfortable conversation is they already know the truth and for them it's just and they gotta pull the trigger yeah yeah yeah and i think there's also the space in between i mean one of the stories i've told before and this was probably i don't know 10 years ago maybe more there was really nothing wrong in my marriage i was we were really

busy i was really busy professionally and we had three young kids but i was on this trip to new York and there was a snowstorm that caused a huge, huge delay, I think hours. And I was sitting next to this man who was really attractive and we started talking and I felt a little charged and I was, you know, harmlessly in quotes, flirting with him. And he was flirting back and we were just, you know, joking back and forth. And eventually, you know, after several hours of shooting the shit together. We get on the plane. And then by this point, as we've all experienced, oh, sorry, we've timed out our crew so we can't take off. You're going to have to spend the night here. So we get off the plane and he's waiting for me. He'd gotten off before me. And he says,

hey, do you want to grab food? And I started to say yes. And then I was like, what the fuck are you doing? This is really dangerous. And so I said, no, I can't. I'm going to go to my friend's house. And I went back to the friend that I'd been staying with and I didn't do it, but I couldn't stop thinking about this guy, not because I wanted something different, but because of the charge I felt around it. And so I went home and I remember I had just gotten a shower. I was in the bathroom and my husband came in. And I remember being scared shitless, but I was like, you know what? I have something to tell you. I noticed that I was flirting with someone on the trip home and I really liked it. And I felt a big charge around it. And what I've gotten clear on is I want more

of that energy in my life. I want to flirt more. So I am going to take my 100%, because obviously I haven't been flirting with you either. I'm going to take my 100% and try to inject some flirtation into the relationship from my side. And I'm wondering, would you be willing to meet me there? And he was like, yeah. And even just saying it, right? Just saying the truth and taking my 100% and all of that, but just saying the truth removed that withhold. Once again, the truth is your medicine, I think not just because it helps you on the path of action and choice to create changes, but my husband and I talk about this all the time that when we have these withholds in your relationship, these truths you aren't saying, they are like bricks and

sometimes lots of bricks and a wall between you. And so when you can speak the truth in a loving, take my 100% kind of responsible way, especially if there's an action request associated with it, it brings you so much closer together because those little withholds really start to build up, I find. I'm so glad you're in the public sharing your stories with people so that it can get rid of their shame around the same experiences they have that probably have a grip because when when someone like you has the ability to be open and to share those pieces thank you it was a beautiful story i have a similar story that i'd love to share but also yeah thank you for just i feel like your audience i mean that's something you probably know but we have the ability to share

stories that are that like from some of those more stickier like you know we could have shame And it just eradicates shame for everybody else around the faculty. I'm all about eradicating shame. Shame exorcist. I will lift my dress up. I hope you're early. Insides, insides, outsides. Like, that's in my heart.

I really feel like. As my husband says, I'm the world's worst bank robber and have no filter, but it works. Yeah. I had a very similar experience when I was 21. I was dating a guy who he wasn't interested in spirituality and I was at 19 I was actually the most I was probably the most spiritual from 19 to 23 I was like on the Eckhart Tolle like cute like really deep really went really deep and I was so into it and he wasn't into it he was like an entrepreneur who built like motorcycles and I met this musician I was a

flute of Vancouver was in a relationship and flute of Vancouver met this really hot musician who was really spiritually connected and deep. And we talked for hours. And for me, I went also like, am I supposed to be with this guy? Am I not supposed to be? And I went one step further of like, is this the guy? I remember I went home and I had dinner with a friend of mine who is an amazing chef at an Italian restaurant and my roommate, we were drinking wine and I was just sharing authentically the experience I'd had. And my friend turned to me and said, well, what if he's actually just a messenger of that piece that's missing that you need in your relationship and so we don't always have to fuck the messenger thanks for the message and so i went i did i went

to my boyfriend i didn't tell him hey there was a really hot musician maybe i wasn't fully as honest as me but i was 21 so give me some break but i did say hey i've noticed that one of the things i'd really like to share with my partner is going to be an appreciation and understanding of spirituality and sometimes he would fall asleep like i'd be telling him about a profound spiritual thing and he was like not interested i shared it i was like i want to talk i want to have conversations i want to share this with you and he was like okay similar like let's do that and the relationship fully fell apart because of some for me those pieces but i also didn't end up with that other guy so i do think we can think we need to fuck the messenger and it's also okay in

those moments to go uh okay i have my integrity check good and it's those moments too where we slightly step out of our integrity to feel the importance of it yeah yeah do a little dance and then you know not you know so i thanks for sharing i also felt like that because i was dating a lot of musicians for a while and i feel like it was the universe trying to tell me like hey yana you have your own art but i was like i'll just i just yeah i'll just i'll go be by the rock star it was like no okay you are the rock star yeah you are the rock star yeah it's like recognizing the truth. There's claiming the truth to inform maybe just smaller shifts that you want to create in your life. And then there's the truth where you're kind of coming to the truth that you really

want to make a leap. And it's scary because more often than not, it's taking the leap into the unknown. And there's all of the fears that come up. I won't be able to support myself. I can support myself here, but I'm miserable in this job. What happens if I can't? Like all the what ifs or, you know, this is going to be a nightmare if I need to divorce this person. I love how Mike Dooley, famous for notes from the universe, right? He's a beautiful teacher. But I remember him once saying to me, look, we put a destination in the GPS, right? And we can't expect to get to that destination unless we turn on the car, press the gas and start driving. Like you have to take action. And there are going to be a million detours. And as you make those detours, whether

it's a detour in the road or a wrong turn you make, you're going to be guided back onto the same path to eventually get you to the destination you're hoping to reach or manifest. And I love that metaphor, but it can be really scary and confusing, especially when you don't have a clear vision or there are all of these fears coming in about what is on the other side of claiming that truth. So I'm wondering if you can speak to that a little bit. I don't know why this is showing up as a piece, but sometimes I have uncertainty being like a self-employed person for 12 years and being a self-sustained woman who never came from money and is continuously taking care of myself and paid people. I face a lot of uncertainty sometimes just in making the choice of having my own business and

getting in the car of like, I'm going to continue to do this and not really sure where the money is going to come from or what we're going to do. And I have always been okay. I think that even in the moments that the business had some debt to it, which I openly talk about, I think it's important to talk about the success of I made half a million dollars in three days and I've had 70K of debt. And the duality of our life also from a business and a financial is something that I try and be open with to get rid of the shame around those pieces. So I'm segwaying a little bit into business right now, but I think that that's one of the core places that I experienced that if sometimes you don't always know. So in the sense of going broad, I think that I've always

figured it out and I've always been okay. You know, where so many of us are so afraid of what if it all blows up and I go bankrupt or I go homeless. I'm like, do you have somebody that loves you? Cause you're probably not going to be on the streets. And Susie Batiste is a good friend of mine she's the founder of poopery and she's talked openly about this has gone through several bankruptcies and his business is worth 400 million dollars and even when we lose it all we often are okay and we can say all is in our business all is in our money go through a divorce lose everything so i think that sometimes a person our core primary attachment can be our all and then we sometimes lose that sometimes by choice sometimes by death like we don't always choose how that

happens um one of the first people I thought I would spend my life with died and there had to be a process of realizing I could be met and have a different person in this life and so I think that if you look historically at your life even though you can have anxieties or fear around what's going to happen if I make this choice or this change or I quit this job or I start my thing it's like historically have you been okay yeah and and there could be moments where like well i didn't really feel okay when i had 70k of debt or when i was this happened or i got a million dollar audit from the irs and you know that was stressful but it's like yeah but have you been okay i think we forget our massive capacity for change and our resiliency and the

fact that like if any we're solving very different problems now uh that we used to okay so before i to be like do we have enough berries for the winter we have a capacity to survive as humans and to not just survive but like yeah figure it out and so i think that the cost of staying in things that are misaligned is where we manifest disease and all of these like i do think that the cost of emotional misalignment creates itself louise hayes work i love in our physical body and there's a cost emotionally and physically to misalignment that i think far outweighs the uncomfortability that you're talking about the lobster and how they don't outgrow their shells and these little mushy things and they have to go into the wild and like figuring without a shell

yeah i mean i love that metaphor so much because when a lobster outgrows its shell it sheds the shell and that it is literally undefended vulnerable and mushy walking around on the ocean floor until the new shell develops and i feel like that's such a beautiful metaphor for change because there is that period of unknowing of feeling unsafe of being in the uncertainty that comes with change and living in your truth when you make a move closer to your truth, it's scary. It requires real courageousness. And I know you have this course, which I'm really excited about. You have this whole free thing, right? I'm excited to be there because even now there are changes that I, like even for me, figuring out how to not give up on sex and love,

which I love talking about. And I have this whole new book and everything else coming out. and not even a but this real uncertainty and lack of clarity of how to also embrace death sex and death bringing all of that together right and there's so many unknowns and so many people because that's the other thing that stands in the way and you mentioned this before the people that aren't making change or don't want you to change who aren't either living their truth or have an invested interest in you not shifting your truth you know there are lots of ways oh no you're going for sex and love your car you know so those voices are rattling around but anyway you have this really robust like most of us just do a free one night whatever zoom thing but tell us about this

meet yourself in truth thing you're doing yeah that's a good thing i just love what you just said too about like yes like when we're an alcoholic we hang out with a lot of alcoholics then we decide we're not gonna drink anymore and they're like don't hang out with us anymore because we don't want to, we're not stopping drinking. So like, yeah, sometimes there are people around us that are uncomfortable with our change. And I didn't even touch on that, but yeah, that's true as well. I have led this, it's a 10-day free experience where I actually film a course live. It's called Meet Yourself in Truth. And I have a core program, a thousand people have gone through called Your Truth is Your Medicine, which is a one-year thing.

but i found that there was this like 0.5 step of the truth of how we sometimes don't even think that it's on the menu for us and we have to work with our fears and our blocks about even knowing that it could be possible to change our lives and so yeah it's a 10 day it's a labor of love it actually takes like five months with my team to build out and it involves we talk about you know the truth of how we run away from ourselves and specifically we look at the ways we numb and avoid and there's a conversation about that we also talk about the masks in our life in a different session and why we wear those masks and how we think they are protecting us but in the reality how they're hurting us because you know laura there's only one you and when you don't bring

that you to your relationships in your life everybody in your life misses knowing the only you that'll ever exist so if it's your husband or your parents it's like you know we only get reincarnation might be real but like who really knows and you'll be different in that life so it's like this is it and why it's really important to bring that to our lives and how this mentality of compartmentalizing to stay in parts of our life and not you know wear those masks how it actually is hurting us and so we do a deep dive on that we look at all the limiting beliefs around honesty and truth and really this incorporate this is a big thing right it's like don't say your political views don't say your religious views avoid anything that's controversial

controversial and then meanwhile that's a part of people's beliefs and values and who they are and so we're always like compartmentalize compartmentalize anything that's like just put it away i think that comes in many different forms so we have three teaching days i teach for six hours of teaching and workshops that i do live and then i have two hot seat coaching days where i will bring people forward and coach them and answer questions and help people move through things and so yes if they want to if they want to or you can be an observer you could be a wallflower somebody else raise their hand and what i love about that laura is um it's so safe to have huge breakthroughs when you're not the one in the hot seat because your protector parts are not up

because i'm working with carla but she might ask a question or something because so much of this human experience is shared and relevant and i'll say something to her that someone's needed to hear for 10 years always and there's a safety because i'm not looking they're like you're looking at me but when i'm not looking so there's such a beauty in sitting in group and community and i go i'll go be a participant and receive in groups as part of the integrity of being a facilitator i've gone to peter levine retreat in sedona called returning to wholeness and i think it's so important to do this in community so it's a huge community experience and it's free and yeah i'd love if anyone listening would like to come meet themselves in truth and spend some time looking a little

deeper like it's important we look under the hood of the car of who we are because it's you and so so many times we're spending money on all these things and our time on so many things and it's like look under the hood of the car every once in a while because you know it's good to connect to what's there so if you're feeling any of what we've talked about today it is free and i'd love to have you and Laura will share. Yeah, I'll put it all in the show notes, how to sign up. It starts soon, right? Yeah, that's right. June 2nd to 12th. Yeah. So very excited to have that. What I think is cool about it is that there's obviously it's rich in content, but if you are feeling a little niggling around this, or maybe you already know there's a leap you want to make or a truth you

need to speak or face, and you're not sure how to do that or just kind of abstract right now, and you can feel it around the edges of yourself or you're feeling out of alignment, just doing this is going to get you clear and help maybe look at some of the blocks and get some clarity and maybe even some coaching, which is, I mean, she's amazing. So to get coaching with her is a real gift.

So I think it's a beautiful opportunity. I'm excited about it. And it's free. Who can have a problem with that? It is, yeah. There's a little bit of an application that asks some questions when you want to come join, but yeah it's free and I also I say to people come to the calls get child care figure out what

you need like if you're going to commit to something do it all the way and be there to receive and hear the pieces too so yeah I love that yeah well Lauren it's always real you're a velveteen rabbit in the world just love another velveteen rabbit and so excited for both of your books there's such duality in your creative bodies of work yes they're holding yeah I'm holding a lot of duality right now as someone who has always not enjoyed that i'm embracing it but it's amazing yeah and i'm a scorpio not a gemini so so it's been fun but it's so beautiful to talk to you and i'm so grateful for for the work that you're doing in the world and all of your offerings and we will put everything in the

show notes is there like an easy website or anything you want to say here or should i just put it in the show notes wish i memorized the website yeah but i don't have it so yeah that's all right go in the show notes and i'll also when i post on social media i'll put the links up too but we're so grateful for you thank you for spending time and speaking of truth and your truth is your medicine i hope this has inspired you to maybe explore possibly take a little leap or consider taking a leap in your life into your truth, I highly recommend it. It can be scary as shit, but it always pays off.

At least so far, it has never disappointed. And life is a lot more fun and easeful when you're living in your truth, that's for sure. And much more healthy physically and emotionally. Thank you, Yam. you