Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Remembering Love in Tender Times with Cleo Wade

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Life can be a rollercoaster, often catching us off guard. But what if I told you that there's a way to turn these moments, both good and bad, into something truly valuable? It all starts with the incredible power of self-love, learning from life's twists and turns, and the art of setting boundaries to find inner peace. In today’s Language of Love Conversation, I'm so excited to have a chat with New York Times bestselling author and poet, Cleo Wade. Cleo’s work dives deep into themes like love, hope, and resilience. And today, she gives us a sneak peek into her brand-new book, Remember Love: Words for Tender Times. We cover some really inspiring topics in our chat. Cleo shares her thoughts on self-love and personal growth – two things we could all use a bit more of in our lives. We also talk about how all relationships naturally evolve and sometimes need to be shed, just like a snake sheds its skin. In this episode, Cleo and I deep dive into: The power of self-love and its role in vulnerable moments The idea of turning life experiences into life lessons The importance of setting boundaries and letting go for personal freedom and peace The significance of emotional wisdom and its role in personal growth Why shedding relationships is part of personal growth How to recognize and break free from codependent tendencies How childhood experiences shape our understanding of love and approval The power of poetry to unite people from different walks of life The dynamics of love as a collaborative effort, challenging the notion of one-sided devotion The art of effective conflict resolution through the transformative power of apology and humility Why rebirth is a transformative phase and requires care and support How to overcome self-doubt and take steps towards growth If you're interested in preordering Cleo Wade's latest book, Remember Love: Words for Tender Times, you should visit her website. You can also grab some of her other fantastic books like Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life, What the Road Said, Heart Talk: The Journal: 52 Weeks of Self-Love, Self-Care, and Self-Discovery, Where to Begin, and more. And don't forget to stay connected with Cleo on Facebook and Instagram! 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 life Cleo Wade is a New York Times best-selling author and poet whose work explores love hope

resilience she's written many books heart talk where to begin and what the road said her newest book, Remember Love, Words for Tender Times, is a beautiful compilation of poems and essays that remind us that love, particularly self-love, is what saves us even in our worst, most tender days. And Cleo likes to say that love is the sacred birthright of every human being. It's not a want, it's a need, and we require its nourishment now more than ever. Listen in to my heartwarming and inspiring conversation with Cleo Wade. Cleo Wade, thank you so much for joining us on the Language of Love. Thank you so much for having me.

What an amazing title for a podcast. Oh my gosh, it's like the perfect name. Good. Well, that's saying a lot, given how beautifully execute words, what a wordsmith you are. And I'm all about helping people learn to love and be loved better. That's why I'm on the planet. And one of the many reasons that your newest book spoke to me so much, Remember Love is the title of the book, Words for Tender Times.

And Lord knows these are tender freaking times. I don't think anyone knows a person who doesn't, hasn't kind of felt like they were truly going through it or, and especially that person's themselves. I feel like this is just a, it really is a tender time we're living in. Yeah, it is. And it's a time full of what I like to call AFGEs and other fucking growth experience after another, you know, these things that break us open and break apart. And I know you write about that. We're going to dive into that in a little bit. But I wanted to start with just, you know, you are not old. I mean, you're not a little girl. You're a woman, full-fledged. You have two kids. But you definitely

have this wisdom of someone really deep who's been through some stuff. And not only been through some stuff, but has really spent a lot of time thinking about it, processing it, and gleaning the wisdom that those AFGEs that you've probably been through have taught you. So I wanted to start there. You don't have to give us your life story, but what are you like in your 30s, early 40s, right? So in my experience now in my early 50s, and I had some cool friends, but there weren't a lot of...

I was one of those people too who experienced way too much and knew way too much from an early age. And I just wonder if you find that as well with your same age peers, do you find yourself a bit deeper and wider in your, not in a condescending way, in terms of where you put your attention and how you live? I feel like I live in such deep curiosity that seeks connection. And so I think that for me, I really do believe that every person has this kind of infinite intelligence within them. And one of my best friends once said to me, your life experiences are only as valuable as your ability to turn them into life lessons. And so I think, I don't know

that I feel that there's a more or lessness between what anyone knows that I'm in community with or in relationship to me, but I think I have a, as a practice, a real focus and intention on finding or creating or alchemizing these life experiences into a life lesson. And so I think that it's kind of just all about the intention. And I think most people, including myself at times, but you're just living in what's happening. And I think for me, something I've, even since being a young child, had a kind of passion for understanding why things happen or how things happen or how to look at things from a different perspective or a different angle so that I think there's no greater wisdom than emotional wisdom.

And that's something I've always felt. And so I think I personally enjoy the journey of kind of learning from people's emotional experiences, including my own. In some way, become an expert in because it's like your brain is always being drawn to that one thing, if that makes sense. Yeah, you're primed to that. that's the lens that you wear as you go through your life. And I think that creates, I certainly find that that creates a depth. I was the same way. And the reason I ask is because it wasn't

until I started really getting conscientious about the intention to call peers into my life and friends into my life who were aligned with me. Most of the time, at your age and stage in life and certainly younger, I felt like I was this weird outlier, you know, everyone else was partying and having fun. Not that I didn't party and have fun. I did, but it was like, people looked at me weird when I went deeper and it was just the people that I was hanging out with. Yeah. I think also, you know, what's one of the coolest things that people don't talk about in being an adult is to live your choices beyond your circumstances. So when you're growing up, your kind of first year, your first friends are always your parents, friends, kids. Yeah. And

then they're the people you go to school with. And then, you know, I think for me, because I moved to New York at a really young age, I moved there right after high school when I was 17. And it was, I really got to choose the people I was around for the first time. And that's not to say that I still, I have my two best friends from sixth grade homeroom that I'm still extremely close to you. I have my best friend from little league who was just staying at my house yesterday. So I, I have a lot of, um, not a lot. I have those three very close friends from that, my kind of origin kind of circumstances and self, and they're such gifts to my life. But I think one of the hardest things about life is that every few years you have what I call like

a shedding, you know, you really shed these relationships that, um, you've emotionally grown out of. Um, and I think it's really hard when you feel that you're a loving person to forgive yourself for sheds, but having these sheddings, it's so natural. It's so seasonal. It's like why, like some puppies just shed only in like their allergy season or whatever, or, you know, and it's very, um, it's a very natural thing. And I think it's really hard to accept that because when you feel this need or calling to love, it's hard to reconcile that with an inability to be in relationship with everyone you meet. Yeah. And sometimes letting people go is really sad and scary, even if it's not in service to keep the relationship going.

And you write about, I mean, you write about everything in this book from friendships to love to healing, to breakups, to breaking apart, to taking a chance on love again. But I did write this. I wrote down so much of what you said. It's just, I don't know, because I'm so verbose. It amazes me how concise. You don't write in haikus, but it could be when you write these powerful statements in like three sentences or less. But one of them that really stuck with me, which you're kind of alluding to is distance is not always avoidance. Distance is sometimes the boundary we need in order to heal from the hurt caused by others and avoid re-injury. And then you also write, everyone wants what they want, regardless of what you can give. If you want

freedom and personal peace, you have to learn to be okay with letting people down and letting people go. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of what you write about is also sort of the antidote to codependence. And maybe I'm reading it with that lens because I'm covering codependent. But one of my favorites was you were writing about help. And you say, help that is helpful. If you fall into the mud, do not befriend its residents. Reach out your hand. Find help from someone living on a lotus. Because of course, lotuses are those gorgeous, aromatic, amazing, brilliant flowers that have to kind of... They float on the mud. And they have to grow through that difficult, deep, dark, heavy mud in order to blossom. So

they've grown through the darkness and they are floating above it. And I just thought that was such a beautiful image. So I was wondering if you could speak to a little more. I mean, I know you spoke to the friendship thing a little bit, but it's not difficult. A lot of those, what you just touched on are, you know, whether it's you're recovering from codependence or you're recovering from being a people pleaser. And I think all people who have, if you have spent a considerable amount of time in your life, trying to get others to like you, there comes a point where you choose between everyone liking you or you being able to love yourself. And a lot of what I wrote in those, what you just pulled was this idea. And I've,

I've gone through that myself. There's been times in my life where all you want to do is control the narrative of how someone feels or is thinking about you, or why didn't they understand that you did it at an hour? They still don't like you, but even though you did, and it's so effortful in that way. And you realize that the way of that way of life is a, is a life that runs completely and utterly on fumes in the direction of others satisfaction. And you are always driving away from yourself always. Yeah. And so what does it look like to redirect inward and go towards your own heart and go towards your own ability to love yourself? And I really don't think you can love yourself while being obsessed with other people liking you or being okay with what you're doing

in your journey. It just, it just doesn't work. They'll always bump up against each other. They're mutually exclusive. I think you're absolutely right. And when you can, and it also is the antidote doing that kind of letting go, or at least releasing from other, you know, other people's expectations or liking you or being pleased with you or approving of you. And I think that starts for many of us. I know it did for me in childhood where approval and love were confused and there wasn't enough of it to go around, but that's part of it. But I think you're absolutely right that you can't be fully free and they are diametrically

opposed pleasing other people. They sometimes can overlap, but if you are focused on pleasing other people, you very often have to abandon some aspect of yourself or at least not fully actualize some aspect of yourself more often than not in order to make someone else happy. And by the way, yes to consideration, you know, yes to thoughtfulness of other people and their experiences. I don't think that we should ruthlessly pursue. I don't think you can ruthlessly pursue love of self. I think you, if you're being ruthless, you're actually probably praising your ego, not loving yourself. And so I think that it's actually about saying, what is reasonable here and looking to new ideas

of what reasonable even means because so much of us, like you said, have these childhood experiences that build what is reasonable. There's actually a part of the book where I write about having found this project from school when I was in, I think, second grade and it was writing a Valentine to our parents. And I write about how my mom had found my Valentine recently. She found it last year and sent me a photo of it. And it said, you know, I show love. I love my mom by, and I named all these things. And one was like, not being quiet when she's on the phone, doing the dishes, something else like it, but they were all things that were making myself like kind of invisible and being of service to what somebody needed to get done. And, you know, we didn't pour,

I didn't have babysitters. I didn't have, my mom didn't have help. And so it's understandable. Like, and I'm, and I'm, and I write, you know, I'm very close with my parents, especially my mom. And, you know, I write about being so grateful that for watching a single mother do so much for us. And I wondered when in my life, this idea of deep consideration of the other turned into kind of putting this cloak of invisibility on myself and saying like my purpose or the only way love gets to happen for me is if I am doing something for someone else. And my needs are irrelevant, basically. Yeah. And my being is irrelevant. Do you know, like who loves me when I'm just sitting there

and I do nothing? Who loves me if I don't, if I haven't earned the love and love is an action word. It's work-oriented, but it's a we kind of space of work. And I write in the book, love is work, but a person should never feel like a job. What is it? I'm like, what is it? I know. I can never remember what I write either, but here it is. I write it down. I think this is what you're talking about. First, you say, our relationships are powerful when they're fueling stations, the places we fill up, not the places we're drained. We don't work for those we love. we work with them. A loving relationship is a collaboration. We contribute to a shared sacred experience. In that it's like love can be work, but the person you're with cannot be your

job. And I learned that from my own experiences of turning and, you know, I love a Kristen Neff moment of learning about codependence and everything else too. And you're surprised how slippery the slope is of all of a sudden the center of your entire life is only about things you do for another person. And then all of a sudden you can't even see yourself. You only see yourself through this veil of whether or not your performance for them yielded what they needed from it. So, you know, whether it was, did they like the lunch I made and you are completely lost and you disappear. And I write about, I wrote so much of this book is or things I wrote about my own relationships where that was the case for me, ending relationships and complete and utter

exhaustion that even though I was heartbroken, I was relieved, but like deep down, my secret self was relieved. And even though I probably would have, you know, if you would have asked me then I wouldn't have been able to say that. And anytime I'm writing, I do like to kind of go into some of the hard or tender things of life. But my goal is always to say, yes, here I was stumbling around in the dark, looking for the light and I had to find it within. And this is the trail that led me back to myself to turn that light on. And that's really what Remember Love is about, obviously. And I write this in the intro. It's like, I don't have the answers. And I think anyone who tells you they have the answers is, but I will always sit in the questions with my readers

and hold their hand. And I will always write the book that I feel and hope can be their companion when even if they're going through the toughest thing and they had a house full of people, they were supporting them, but then everyone left. And as one person left and the next person left and you're left alone, and then it's just you and your thoughts. I will always write the book that you need next to you when you just need that last bit of comfort before you fall asleep for the night and no one else is there. So that's really was the intention behind pretty much every topic I touched on in this book from grief to breakups, to feeling lost in yourself, to feeling lost in your work, to, um, wondering like,

should we be working this way? Like, do we need to repace and does, does the way we're living in the world, honor the world and the earth that we stand on and the bodies that we're next to. So, you know, that was really the big goal. It's a beautiful intention. And to me, it really, it felt like that reading it, but it also felt like roadmap of sorts of like little tools and tips and strategies and ideas and mostly primarily inspiration around how to navigate all the division, all the fear, all the chaos, all the upheaval that the past several years have represented for us and all the division. You know, you talk a lot

and I should say you write a lot, not only about success and what defines that, which you just alluded to. And I love how you quoted, you know, Gloria Steinem. She's one of my favorites, but who defines success as the moment when you feel you're doing something you care about, that you can be honest and that you're able to live in the moment. You know, to me, that's definitely the definition of success. But also, how to say you're sorry. To me, that read, we have to want our healing and the healing of those we're in conflict with more than we want to be right or justified. Self-righteousness alienated us. Humility binds us. And how you say later, I'm sorry is a shorthand for I see you. I know you're hurting. I take responsibility for myself.

I know this was also in the context of the micro of your relationship with your partner or your friends or your family, but to me, it's also on a macro level. If we could do this in politics or in all the other divisions happening on the more macro societal level, it feels more important than ever to do that. I just wonder if that was in your mind as you were writing this. You know, I think a big kind of spiritual or energetic thing I felt while writing this book was it's, it's in the writing of the book, but mostly energetically, it was very present for me was repair this idea that, you know, we are in repair and what does repair require? What does recovery require? How do we, you know, recover this time we felt was lost? How do we, you know, recover from, you know, being indoors for years?

How do we recover from, you know, aunts and uncles we don't talk to because of an election? How do we recover from the, just the mental strain of being people who are online more than we're in nature? I'd say that even if I'm writing about something that is so specific to my life, you know, whether I'm telling the story of the Valentine I wrote as a second grader, or I'm telling the story of something from my life, I always try to consider like a greater universal energy and how it can be applicable to this because what I have learned about my writing over the past decade is that, you know, I feel so lucky that so many people share their stories

with me about how they interact with my work. And I've actually seen, and I know that I've, you know, had one poem be, you know, something that a 16 year old took as they went into a facility to, um, you know, heal their eating disorder. And I've seen that be the same exact poem that someone who was 65 use when they filed for divorce from, you know, uh, that the divorce they'd wanted for 10 years, I've actually held those two things as the writer. And so I think for me, you know, that's a big hope I always have is no matter who you are or what you're going through, the sentiment energetically and spiritually,

like you really are not alone. Like those two people are connected because of that poem. And it's for vastly different circumstances that they're kind of struggling through or with. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey and it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you

and lots of the healing resources that I've found. And I am so thrilled to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days

of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig. We've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work. We've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org.

Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. I'm hearing that theme in a lot of what you're saying. And I think it's so beautiful. And as someone who, like I said, a recovering codependent's greatest fear is abandonment and being alone, right? So that sense of being alone in the world, no one cares if I wake up tomorrow, no one cares that I'm sick,

no one knows that I'm here. That feeling of being in a vacuum and being alone is epidemic right now. I mean, I think it's always been there for many of us, but I think it's epidemic right now. And I, I, you know, I've heard you mention that a few times, even in this conversation of this idea, you know, that that's your intention. And it's also your prayer, you know, that people who, but it's your intention with your writing that if someone is feeling, you know, that none of us are really alone, which I agree with you, but it's hard for many to feel that. You know, you are right when you say we are never alone, but people are living in isolation still. So when I planned my tour that begins the kind of the week, the book comes out, we created a friendship hour on every tour stop because, you know, to me, like my book, you know, remember love is really about this, the intimate experience of rebuilding yourself, if that is what you

need in whatever it might be, or rebuilding a relationship. My tour is really, you know, because I'm not a performer. I don't have a tour where I like have a spotlight. I'm just a friend who writes a book for my readers. So I think when we even conceptualize the idea of going on tour, our first thought was, you know, how do we make a tour bigger than us or bigger than a book? And it was like, we need to center this tour on community. We need an hour for people just to meet friends.

And I have little, I've just started casting all my friends to come in as camp counselors on the tour to, to be people who are helping people mingle and meet and get people there so that, you know, even cause the hardest thing about being isolated alone is that you're still afraid to go somewhere alone. And so we're really trying to get people to come and we, we got Bumble for friends involved so that they can connect there on a platform just for friends after, because I think it's also hard to connect on social media because social media is kind of a weird place and people are overwhelmed by the amount of people they follow. And the space in general doesn't always

feel amazing for people. And so we wanted a place that like they could just connect. And so I think for me, I always think about, you know, yes, I want you to feel like when you are having a moment of aloneness and you're feeding yourself spiritually and hope, and I'm hoping my poetry or my book can help you there. I also think about who and how we exist practically in the world. And I'm like, you know what? We need to just like,

we need to dedicate this toward a friendship because people have moved during the pandemic and they don't have friends where they are or they had kids and they don't know they've been in isolation with their kids for a year and they haven't there. Maybe their other friends don't have kids and they don't know how to meet someone new

or they just have different, you know, they're going through a shed. Or they have some social anxiety or they just shy. I feel like there's been in the shedding you referred to, you know, there's been a lot of shedding of friendships that create space for new relationships, but calling those relationships in can be tricky. I love that, you know, incorporating that into your tour. There's also, I know there's bubble friends. There's also no more lonely friends. That's a great group on social media that supports something similar. And, you know, one of the things that we were talking about even before we started recording was this idea that you write about in the book around rebirth. and you know the truth is there we're being born again million times probably if we're lucky in our lifetime but i'm wondering if you can say a little about the concept of rebirth and just change and changing of seasons shedding you know all of that is part of the same thing to me at least like kind of aha moments i had i think that was one of the first you know short essays

that I wrote for the book was on rebirth because when I was pregnant, I had spoken to this really amazing healer. And, um, she said to me, your daughter's birth will be your rebirth. And the sentence really, um, kind of shook me to my core because I of course heard of thought about considered, um, reincarnation and this idea of rebirth or, you know, you meet someone and you instantly connect. So you feel that spiritually you must've been in some past life with them. I joke in the book, I was like, I've not had a spider come into my office, but I didn't kill the spider because I was afraid I'd turn and come back as a spider. So, you know, the idea of reincarnation rebirth was very familiar to me, but not the idea

of a rebirth in your lifetime. To me, I'd always kind of talked about that as like a change or a transition, or I feel like a new person or like an old me or the best me, or this idea that we're kind of just iterating off of a, you know, a kind of original space of self. And so when she said that, I was really like, I was like, wow, what an, like, I, you know, that was something I'd thought about for three years before I wrote about it. And so I thought about like every time in my life, I actually gone through a rebirth, but called it a transition because in transition, there's this tension, right?

There's like my old self and my new self and we're pushing and we're pulling and I'm kind of stuck between and kind of just leaning more in this direction. And a rebirth is very interesting because it's as if you wake up one day and everything is unfamiliar, like you're interpreting and experiencing your friends in a completely different way. You're interpreting, experiencing yourself in a completely different way. Like you have a complete, such a complete shift that nothing feels the same, even if the same kind of figures are around. So your romantic relationship just does not in any way

feel like the one you had previous to this moment. Your friendships do not feel that the same players are there, the same people are there, but nothing feels the same. And I realized how right she was about this idea of a rebirth. And I wrote that I wish I would have known that language earlier in my life because I can actively say that it wasn't a transition when I, which I would have called it a few years ago when I kind of quit my day job and really stepped into writing and focusing on being and cultivating the courage to write as my job. It was a rebirth because I have to tell you, my friends were drastically changed during that time. My life completely changed. Every relationship I had, even ones that I still maintained, were completely different relationships.

Like they were, it was as if the, you know, I plugged in the phone and pressed, you know, whether it's upgrade or whatever, and everything kind of like kind of had an, uh, kind of spiritual like upgrade difference, whatever. So I think for me, this idea of rebirth, you know, I is so fascinating because you experience all the things of birth, you know, you're so vulnerable and you're so kind of sensitive And it's so different than, and in transition, you're kind of, your body is saying like, I'm ready to fight for like, let's go. Like, I'm just getting through, I'm, I'm chugging, I'm struggling, but I'm like, I'm, I'm in

this mode to go. And in rebirth, you're a little like, I feel that I'm in a need to be cared for. Cause I feel very, very fragile. Yeah. And there's a surrender to it too, like a softening and going almost like going through a portal. Yeah. where, uh, that's what, you know, I guess like the birth canal support, and so it's like,

and so I think for me, the idea of rebirth was profound. And then the more I talked about it with my girlfriends, like we were saying, um, you were talking about your child going to college. My friends were having rebirths. Like, you know, those were the things when I, you know, I sent that, I remember sending that essay to a friend of mine who had just dropped her daughter up at college and she was in tears and she was like, yeah, it's like the fragility I feel is just that, you know, whether I wanted, you know, I'm so happy for them. And this is, I'm so happy they're moving on to this next phase of life. But this, this phase of life of, um, have non-parenting in my house has really brought a rebirth upon me. And they were, and I said to them, I was like,

you know what? I feel like if we would have been able to call this a rebirth, we would have just known how to treat you or be with you during this whole process. But instead, because it was just like, I'm just dealing with a thing or I'm having a struggle or I'm having a change and like not all changes. And I write this in the book or our transitions, like some changes are so profound that you are a completely different person. And you have no idea who, you know, just like a newborn infant coming being born like you have no idea exactly what it's going to look like right or who you're going to be I mean that's something I said to my girlfriend that I said like this is the first time in my entire I would say memory of my adult life certainly in the 27 years since I

first became a mom 27 years ago this is the first time that I really don't know I don't know what the next year is going to be. I don't know what it's going to feel like. I don't know what I'm going to be doing. Like, I mean, I know the gist of it, but it does feel like a recalibration and a rebirth. And I think you're absolutely right that there needs to be softening care, midwife support. Yeah, but it's, and, and that is just a different energy and guess what else? There's a different level of grace for a rebirth than there is for a transition. Like you sit there and you're like, no, this isn't just a change. This is a rebirth. Like I am having, I am kind of born again in this life. I'm everything I'm experiencing is different. I'm going to have to change a lot

of things that kind of flow with the feelings I'm having. And in transitions, I just, I just don't think that when you're like, oh, I moved from like this apartment to this one. So I'm just like in this, or I got, I moved from doing this job here to doing the job over at this other, you know, competitive company, those transitions, like, yes, the grace, yes, the learning, what you call learning curve, all those things. But for a rebirth, the grace, you need to give yourself the forgiveness, the okayness of saying like, yes, like cry every night. Like you're a crying baby. You're a child. Like you're, you're, you're, you know, this is, you are a fresh in the world again. It's a lot. It's important. That makes a lot of sense. I think that's

beautiful and such an important lesson for people and such an important remembering. One of the other things, it's not too far from what we're talking about, but it really struck me because I write about quantum love and the idea of how our bodies hold an energetic frequency that's constantly shifting and changing primarily based on our thoughts and feelings conscious and unconscious and that those that are constantly shifting and changing our vibration but it's actually our energetic frequency our vibration that creates our reality and I was so excited when I was reading some of what you were writing about love was really about quantum love I mean you didn't say it this way obviously because I'm sure you haven't read my book yet but I'll send

you a copy, but you were talking about how you say, I'd never considered that my beliefs have been guiding my feelings and behaviors. Do I believe that I show up for love, but love doesn't show up for me? Do I believe feeling bad is part of love? You go on to write about realizing that it wasn't this person that you were committed to at the time, you know, that was creating the conflicts or the crises or the breakup or whatever it was that was happening, but you were committed to the belief system that reflected the deeper struggles you had with feeling worthy of kind, consistent, and nourishing love. And if there's one thing that describes the work, the core of the work that I do with so many, it's that. It's like everything comes down to your sense of

worthiness, of kind, consistent, and nourishing love. And your beliefs about your worthiness, whether it exists, whether it's attainable to you, all of that flavor your feelings and your thoughts, which not only changes on a logistical level, changes the way you interact with people and what you notice and don't notice and everything else, but on an energetic level, it changes your reality. So I just wanted to pick your brain about that because I loved that so much. I wrote about that because I experienced it and I knew that to be true. You know, it took me a really long time to get to the place where I could understand that what we have in life, you know, the choice that we make choices towards, you know, not the things that just happened to us. And, you know, we're, we're not our choices, but what we choose in life is, and then have

as a result of that choice is always a reflection of what we believe we deserve to have. And so, and that's, that's true across the board in anything. I think a lot of what people struggle with, even if they, you know, there's a, something they really want in their career or something they really want to be doing, or I think for a lot of people that underlying belief. I've never spent time with people who have reached this peak of the most intense popularity on the planet, whether it's the most famous actress in the world or the most famous football player in the world. If you find some trail in their interviews, you will almost always find something where they'll say, as a little girl, I knew this

about myself. I always knew that this was my destiny. I always knew, I always knew, I always new. Singers will say that, I mean, you'll, the people who have like, who have those really unique things. And it's interesting because you'll, you'll, you'll hear them say I worked really hard for it or, but underneath it, they truly believed that like they were going to be on the cover of a magazine. Yeah. And so, or whatever that goal was for them. And so I think, you know, in what does it look like to apply that to relationships was like really my great point of that, you know, if I can't get my partner to do as much of the childcare as I do, you know, and I have a really hard time asking for that, is there something underneath it where I just don't

believe that men can really equally do what women can do for their children? Right. Like, is there like, you know, and do I believe that like, no matter how many times I ask, he's going to fall short. And is that part of why there's space to fall short? Right. Or do I believe that if I ask, I'll be a burden and it'll be too much for him or that he'll resent me or that he'll think I'm a bad mother or like filling or a nag or this, or all these things we like fear being rejected because of. Right. And I think when you're choosing partnerships or choosing friends, you know, a lot of the times people write to me about saying they're going through with a friend. They're like, I just have this friend and she's always putting me down and I just don't know what

to do. And I was like, you know, at some point you have to believe that female friendship has nothing to do with somebody competing with you or tearing you down or making you feel bad. Like you have to believe that female friendship is not a space of someone just pulling at your insecurities. Like that there are actually people who are there to make you feel at the very least like secure with who you are and your bond. Oh my gosh. I can't stress that enough. And I talk about that all the time and I know you write about that a lot and I am so aligned. You even write about jealousy in the book and you talk about how to, I wrote this down, to embody true joy in a way that wishes joy for others is a deeply spiritual practice. It requires an almost

religious devotion, a moment-to-moment choosing and re-choosing of the kind of person you want to be. It's an active decision to alchemize emotions like jealousy into something helpful and I write a lot about, you know, using jealousy as information about how, you know, getting clear on what you really want. And it's not about that other person, but there's, I like only welcome in friends and relationships, you know, who are aligned with that because there's so much, I mean, we're raised in many ways in this society, if not by our families, by our culture to be so competitive. And it's not to say that there should never be any competition. There's a time and a place for that. But I think female women in particular, we need to be lifting each other up, celebrating each other's

accomplishments, supporting each other's joy. And it's not nearly enough. It's more often than not. Yeah. Well, you know, there's so much societal conditioning. You know, one of the hardest things I think for women and people of color and people who have not been given fair opportunities to release scarcity when opportunities do come your way. And this idea of anytime I go speak at a school, one of the first things they always say is the most important kind of mindset to go into is if you see another person in the room who looks like you in a room full of people who don't look like any of you to say, come on, Let's get together, not it's me against you and release this idea that there's a piece

of, you know, they're going to have a piece of the pie and instead say there is no pie. Like the pie is like an, is a pie is infinite and it's like, it's abstract. It's an abstract, actually like opportunity and abundance is an abstract energy that you can pour into and expand. And that's the nature of it. And so this idea that we, um, you know, invest in scarcity psychologically with each other, um, is so dangerous. Um, but of course it, it, it's happened in our kind of, you know, deeply kind of patriarchal

society, unfortunately. Yeah, it does, but it's up to us to, I was just talking to a girlfriend the other day who is really excited to like open this healing center. and she had met someone who had a really big, you know, following and platform and resources. And she's trying to raise the money to do this, right? And so she tells this person who's not, who can't do what she does, doesn't do what she does,

but does something else and has financial resources. And so she was talking to this person primarily about investing in her project, but also as a friend. And this person took in everything she was saying, looked at her business plan and then disappeared. And then the next thing she hears is that this person is now talking about doing a version of what she wanted to do. And my friend was like bereft and ready to throw in the

towel and so traumatized. Like, that's it. I'm done. It's not, you know, someone else is doing it. And I was like, wait a minute. First of all, you know, that's it to me. That's a perfect example of what you're talking about. And what I was trying, you know, what I was focused on helping or understand is that there is more than enough people who need these kinds of services to have 50 places like this. And no one has the unique flavor of ice cream, you know, aka healing that you offer. And the people that you're going to attract in are different than what that person. And there's infinite amounts of people, infinite amounts of resources. But we're so quick to see the other, especially that looks like you, acts like you, has a similar vein as you as what you're

trying to do as competition rather than as proof of concept or even collaboration or just celebration. Like, look, someone can do it so I can too. And like, it's a worthy inquiry into oneself to say like, do I have a secret self that's trying to get out of this? Because I don't believe the dream is possible. And so I think that, you know, sometimes you can look at things as an affirmation of your dream, or sometimes you can look at it as a reason not to move forward. And I think some people look at it as like, you know, it's like some people are like, it's raining. It's a sign. Like, you know, like it's what a great idea. And then somebody else is looking at it being like, it's raining. It's a sign. Like, you know, so I think, but the

person who was waiting for, and just hoping they're like crops would be, you know, harvested their likes, it's a sign things are working in my way. So the things that you, you know, really want, you know, you find kind of affirmations for everywhere and the things you're secretly doubting, you also find affirmations for that because that underlying belief system is so powerful. It colors the lens that you're viewing the world through it really. Yeah. Or, you know, or you sit there being like, I'm saying this idea and maybe there's something deep in my belief system that you'd be better at it than me. Like, you know, and so I think that we do always have to investigate that belief, like whether it's in how you pick your partners,

how you get out of a relationship, how you cope with like not going back into a relationship by working on the belief system that is like, do I believe I deserve someone who doesn't show up for me. Is that why I want to go back? Or I can't do any better. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's beautiful. I mean, I could go on and on. I know you have little kids waiting for you, but I do want to end with this because I think it's relevant to all of us around this, just these three lines that you write, how to do the thing you're afraid to do. It's relevant to what we're talking about, but it's really about everything. You say, grab fear's hand, hold hope's hand, and start walking. And that's it. And that's really the nature, right? We have one hand on fear, one hand on hope,

and you just take the step forward. Yes. Amen. I mean, that's just, you know, and I think for me, again, you know, I don't, I feel like that poem is really an example of, you know, I don't write because I have the answers, but I will write to say, I'll always be your friend through the questions and the big steps and the small steps. And I'll always be honest with my readers. You know, I don't tell them fear is not going to be there or that there's a way to rid yourself of fear, but I do think it's possible if for no other reason than because I've experienced it myself, that you can hold hope's hand and grab fear's hand and take a step at the same time. So I agree. I have found that to be absolutely true. Cleo way. Thank you. Thank

you for the gift. Thank you for the gift of your words. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. And you're beautiful. Like, I don't know if this is a video thing that you people see this beautiful room she's in, but it's like very magical and soothing And like, it's healing even to just like, like be in the visual presence. So this is my shrine. Yeah. Take it. You need to, you need to take a photo of you in the shrine.

Thank you all. And thanks for listening. Thank you. Thank you, Quia Wade. But I'm too shy I can't fall asleep without your arms around me I guess I'm falling in love Baby, you're my rockstar