Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Jane Marie Chen on Letting Go and Becoming Your True Self | EP 694

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

What if the moment your life collapses is not the end of your story, but the beginning of your becoming?In this intimate, live-recorded episode of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles sits down with Jane Marie Chen, global humanitarian, cofounder of Embrace (the infant warmer that has saved more than 1 million premature babies), and author of the stunning new memoir Like a Wave We Break.Filmed in front of an audience at the Oxford Exchange in Tampa, this conversation dives beneath Jane’s public achievements to reveal the deeply human story she has never told on stage. It is a story of childhood trauma, a decade-long mission that consumed her identity, the burnout that nearly shattered her, and the healing journey that helped her rediscover who she truly is.This episode continues our acclaimed series The Irreplaceables. It is a journey into the traits no machine can replicate, including resilience, tenderness, reinvention, and the courage to belong to yourself again.If you have ever felt crushed by expectations, lived for others at your own expense, or struggled to understand your own worth, this conversation is a lifeline.Get the full episode show notes here: https://passionstruck.com/letting-go-and-becoming-your-true-self/Listen, Watch, and Go DeeperAll episode links, including my books You Matter, Luma and Passion Struck, The Ignited Life Substack, YouTube channels, and Start Mattering apparel, are gathered here:https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesDownload the free companion workbook: The Wavebreaker Healing ToolkitAvailable now at TheIgnitedLife.net. It includes reflection prompts, identity-reconstruction exercises, and Internal Family Systems tools to help you reconnect with your inner self.In this episode, you will learn:• How childhood trauma shaped her identity as a high achiever and helper• Why unresolved pain often drives our desire to save others• The hidden emotional cost of heroism• What really happened behind the scenes of Embrace, and why success without inner grounding almost destroyed her• How meditation, Internal Family Systems, and psychedelic therapy opened her back to herself• The truth she finally discovered: We are not the wave. We are the ocean beneath it• How to surrender without giving up• How to rebuild purpose after a public or private collapse• How to finally come home to yourselfSupport the MovementEveryone deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter.Show it. Wear it. Live it.https://StartMattering.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on Passionstruck. I finally connected the dots. Feeling so powerless through my childhood, that's what had driven me to want to help the most powerless people in the world. I had not made that connection before. So my pain had become my purpose. But it was also my shadow because it led me to working in very unhealthy ways, as I said, to the point of just complete burning.

out because I also believe that my worth depended on what I achieved. So it wasn't just like the passion and the urgency, but there was this whole thing where my worthiness and sense of enoughness was tangled up in achievement. Welcome to Passionstruck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. each week I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment

in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is cheap. choosing to live like you matter. Welcome back, friends, to Passionstruck. This is episode 694, and today we're doing something very special. I'm coming to you live from the Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida, where we recorded this conversation in front of an incredible audience. And I want to begin by saying thank you.

To those of you who were in the room last night. and to every listener who returns week after week. Over a third of you never miss an episode, and that loyalty fuels this global movement. If this show has ever inspired you or helped you make a meaningful shift, here are two simple ways to help it grow. First, share this episode with someone who'll find it meaningful,

and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It truly is the single best way to help new listeners discover these conversations. We're in the heart of a series I'm calling the Irreplace a journey into what makes us most deeply, undeniably human. Last Tuesday, Scott Anthony helped us reimagine possibility in a world of disruption. Then, last Thursday, Lynn Smith guided us into the courage it takes to silence the brain bully.

And today, we go even deeper. I invited Jane Chen on the show because her story sits at the intersection of heartbreak, purpose, self-worth, and human resilience. precisely the terrain of this series. Many of you know Jane is the co-founder of Embrace, the low-cost infant warmer that has saved the lives of more than one million premature babies across the globe. Her work has been praised by President Obama,

supported by Beyonce, and featured everywhere from the New York Times to the World Economic Forum. But that's not why I asked her here. I invited Jane because behind all of those achievements is a human story, one of trauma, burnout, collapse, and the radical rediscovery of self-work. Her memoir, like a wave we break, doesn't just chronicle the impact she made in the world.

It reveals the internal journey she spent years avoiding. It begins with a literal wipeout and unfolds into a spiritual, emotional, and psychological awakening. In our conversation, we explore while childhood trauma silently fueled her drive to save others. We go into the collapse of emissions she spent over a decade building, the burnout that nearly broke her and the moments that rebuilt her, how meditation, internal family systems, and psychedelic therapy opened her back to herself, and the stunning insight that were not the waves of chaos and emotion. We are the emotion beneath them. This is an episode about healing, surrender, identity, and the courage to stop performing and start becoming. Before we begin, remember,

you can find companion notes, frameworks, and reflection prompts for every episode at the ignitedlife.net. My free substack, where I hope you apply these ideas from the conversations to your own life. Next, let's step into this powerful, intimate, and deeply human conversation recorded live at the Oxford Exchange with the remarkable Jane Chen. Thank you for choosing passion struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. You ever wake up and feel like your body's auditioning for a Rice Krispies commercial? I mean joints popping, muscle stiff.

Workouts taking forever to bounce back from. That's why I went all in on Bubbs Natural's collagen peptides. I get, listen to this, 18 grams of clean protein with only 70 calories. And believe me, it tastes like magic, even in plain water. No clumps, no chalky taste. You'd never even know it's there. named after Navy SEAL Glenn Bubb Doherty, this brand walks the talk, donating 10% of profits to charity.

And Bubbs is legit. It's Whole 30 approved and sustainably sourced. No sugar, no junk, no weird fillers. So live better longer. For a limited time only, our listeners are getting 20% off at Bubbs Naturals by using Code Passionstruck at checkout. Just head to BUBS naturals.com and use Code Passionstruck, and you're all set. After purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. them, please support our show and tell them our show sent you.

Thank you all for coming today. I'm John Miles, and we're so lucky to have Jane Jonas today all the way actually from Hawaii with a little stop in between in San Francisco and New York before coming. So thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. For those who aren't familiar with the podcast, I've been doing it now for about five years. It's actually in the alternative health space and its focus is on the art and science of human flourishing. And so we cover kind of all aspects of behavioral science, but we also get into functional medicine, longevity, things like that. But I love to have stories of reinvention. Those are one of my favorite topics. And so when Jane's publisher reached out, it was, and I heard it

was a memoir, it was just a book that I wanted to personally read. And Those are my favorite to have the authors on because I pour myself into them. And as I got more into this, I just knew it was going to be a spectacular interview. So thank you so much for coming. Thank you. So for those, because we're doing a podcast here who didn't see it, we started out with an entry video that was all about Jane in the Water. And your book actually starts out. The book for those of you who aren't here is, like a wave we break, is actually her surfing at the start of it.

You're an avid surfer, I understand. How did you develop that as a passion? Well, I discovered it maybe, when was this? 2016, my family was in Hawaii on holiday, and I just would watch the surfers and be so captivated. That gives something I really wanted to try. So I found a teacher, and I did it, and I instantly fell in love with it.

I just surfed the whole week every morning, and when I went back to San Francisco, I thought, oh, it's too cold, I'm not gonna do it. But I bought myself a wetsuit and a surfboard, and I just kept going. And then it just turned into something that, it wasn't just about the sport, but what the ocean taught me about letting go, about surrendering, about kind of playing with this force so much bigger than you. So it became a philosophy as much as it was a sport.

I like the way that it started because it really serves as a metaphor for the whole book. And for anyone who's ever served or I love paddleboarding, there are. are those moments where you kind of catch the wave and you have the perfect wave. In your case, you're trying to catch this perfect wave and then it's this enormous wave and you realize if I don't try to beat the wave, it's going to encompass me. Can you take us back to that moment? Yeah. I will. And in fact, I was wondering if I could just read just a little bit of the beginning of the book because it starts with that moment. The book starts with a wipeout. At its core, a wave is pure energy moving through water. A wave breaks when that energy collides with

something. A sandbar, the shore, the reef. A wave breaking is energy reaching its end, just as I had reached my end. When I was a kid, I would climb in bed to snuggle with my dad on weekend mornings. My feet were always cold, so he tucked them under his, warming my icy toes. As the warmth flooded back into my feet, he'd drill me on my times tables, barking out numbers, rapid fire. Seven times seven, three times nine, two times ten. With each right answer, his eyes lit up. Thanks to those drills, I won all the math competitions in second grade. When I reported my wins, Dad would smile proudly. Goody, goody, he'd say, and I could feel the golden beam of his approval shining down upon me. The flip side was that when I fell short of his demands, he made sure

I knew it, with a belt, his hands, a nearby stick. I quickly learned that mistakes were not permissible, that what I achieved was more important than who I was, and who I was depended on what I achieved. I didn't realize how deeply those beliefs shaped me until everything fell apart. So yes, this is the story of a wipeout, not just the one that left me shaking on the shore that day, but the collapse of the dream I poured my soul into. When it all came crashing down, I didn't just lose a dream. I lost myself. It really is such a beautiful beginning of the book and sets the whole tone for everything we're going to discuss today.

But before we get into your journey and your breakthrough moment, I want to start out with your parents because you are first-generation immigrant from Taiwan. And when your parents were growing up, this was during a period of really profound change in Taiwan because the ruling party had kind of just moved there. And as I understand it, your father really wanted autonomy in a society that wouldn't provide that. So he had this long dream of getting to the United States, but it wasn't an easy. journey I understand.

Yeah. So Taiwan, I learned so much about the history of Taiwan as I wrote this book. And Taiwan was under martial law for 38 years. So it was the country under martial law for the longest period of time until Syria surpassed that recently. And so during this period, there was so much violence and oppression. Hundreds of thousands of people were executed, disappeared during that time. And my father really wanted autonomy.

and freedom. And so he moved us to America to pursue the American dream, you know. But it was it was not easy. And my parents, they didn't speak much English when we moved to America. We didn't have much family or community. So it was a very, I think, isolating experience for them. One of the parts of the book that really grabbed me was your father had this huge passion for fishing. And we're in one of the best areas here in Tampa in the world for fishing. So, but you saw that whole light kind of disappear in him, and it happened to do with, I guess, a delicacy in Taiwan that isn't quite the delicacy here. Could you perhaps share that? In Taiwan, fishheads are considered a delicacy. But in America, we don't eat fish heads. And so my father loved fishing, and he would go on this boat to go deep-sea fishing. And so every boat ride, he just watched with horror as the fisherman gutted.

their fish cut off the heads and then threw them away their trash and so one day with his you know very limited english he worked up enough courage to ask the captain of the boat if he could keep the fish heads and after all the men had finished their fishing and gutting and all that they he went back to the captain and he had all these like this this bucket of fish heads and he looked at my dad And he just said, why would you want that? It's trash. And he threw all the fish heads into the ocean. And I just felt so heartbroken when my father told me that story.

But I think it was just, you know, in America, our treasure was considered trash. And so he stopped fishing after that. You know, and there was a lot of things that my parents faced with my mother. And in Taiwanese culture, food is such a big part of the culture, right? How you greet people is, have you eaten? That's a saying hello. And so my mother would prepare all of these Taiwanese delicacies for our neighbors to try to fit in and try to belong. And one day a neighbor came after she had delivered all of these noodles and dumplings.

And she knocked on the door. And she said to my mother, I didn't like any of that food. I just threw it all away. And so after that, my mother stopped interacting with the neighbors and really kept to herself. There's a lot of like little moments like that kind of made them withdraw more and more. When I understand that the food even for you as a little girl became a bit of a problem because your mom would make you rice balls and seaweed and the kids would teach you about it and you would have to eat these things kind of in the corner because it made you feel different.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom would pack. I love rice bowls. And back then, you know, Japanese food wasn't a thing now. everywhere, but my mom would pack me these little rice balls and packets of seaweed. It was my favorite food, and I would open my lunchbox, and all the kids would be like, ew, what is that? Now you can find out whole foods, but back then that wasn't the case. And so I was so embarrassed,

I just started throwing away these little packets, and I would, like, go in the corner and I quickly eat my food so no one could see. As a little girl, as you're growing up, you know, you describe your dad changing all these jobs, and then you kind of describe your mom as almost being silenced. Did you see that as a child, or was it kind of beyond your awareness? Like, did they keep that hidden from you, or was it pretty apparent to you? No, it was really beyond my awareness. I think I was just so confused. I was born in Taiwan. We moved to America when I was four, and so understanding, like, what is this life and this new place and this new culture and so much of it was just trying to fit in, you know, and doing anything it took to fit in.

And so I don't think I had kind of a consciousness as to, you know, what was normal or unusual. I just knew I didn't really fit into either world over time because I wasn't purely American, nor was I purely Taiwanese. And I've been spending a lot of time myself trying to understand modern society and right now, the statistics are pretty overwhelming. There are over 40% of high school students in the United States right now who persistently feel hopeless or sad, which is just really alarming to me that kids grow up

so much of their young life feeling that they don't belong. And I understand you kept trying and trying and trying to fit in, but there was this kind of undercurrent, even as you were in middle school and in high school, that you got close to it, but you never quite felt like you were part of the group. Is that a good way to- Definitely.

It would take a long time for me to feel like I belonged. Yeah, and so you end up going from high school and what made you decide to go into psychology? I know your dad often referred to you as Dr. Chen. Yeah. So my dad really wanted me to be a doctor. And in Taiwan, that's kind of like the highest, most noble profession. Both of my grandfathers were doctors.

My dad wanted to be a doctor, but he didn't become one. And so growing up, he would make me practice saying my name. He would ask me, what's your name? And I'd have to answer Dr. Chen. So he was trying to brainwash me from a very early age. And I didn't become a doctor. In an act of rebellion, I became a management consultant. But in college, I decided to study psychology,

because it was something that was just interesting to me. You know, how do minds work? Why do people do the things they do? And so I pursued that path and then got a job after I graduated in Hong Kong. It was an American firm, but it was out in Hong Kong doing management consulting works. So it was kind of strategy consulting for these big Fortune 500 companies. And then you end up going from there to the Harvard School for Public Policy. What at that point were you hoping to do?

Yeah. So when I was living in Hong Kong, I actually started doing HIV-AIDS work. And that started because I read an article in the New York Times one day that told the story of the AIDS epidemic in China. And basically what happened was in the 90s, millions of poor farmers contracted HIV through selling their blood. There was this huge blood collection campaign run by the government. But the way the blood was collected was unsanitary. So they would. would pool everyone's blood together, separate the plasma, which is what they needed, and then re-inject every donor with the remaining red blood cells, believing it would allow them to generate blood again more quickly. And as a result of that, in these villages, 60 to 80% of the adult population became HIV positive. So I read this and I was floored, just floored, and I thought, I have to do something to help. Now, at that time, I didn't know what was driving me. I just felt so much compassion for these people who were, you know,

absolutely powerless to do anything about their situation. And so I went my consulting job and I quit my consulting job. I worked with a nonprofit that was helping to sponsor the education of children who had been orphaned by AIDS. And I spent the next few years doing that. work and saw that a small group of really dedicated passionate people could make a difference. You know, we sponsored hundreds of students. And through the visibility of that work, the Chinese government actually stepped in and changed its policy and began to provide

free education to all of the students affected in those areas, all of the orphans who were affected. And so I thought, this is what I want to dedicate my life to, you know, helping others who are powerless. And I knew I wanted to do something more. I didn't know what that was, and so I decided to go to school. And that's what led me to the Kennedy School and then to Stanford. I hope you're enjoying this live conversation with Jane Chen. To watch the full video behind-the-scenes clips and audience moments from the Oxford Exchange, subscribe to our YouTube channels.

And if you want to wear reminders that reinforce your worth, visit start mattering.com, purpose-driven apparel designed to whisper what the world often forgets to say, you matter. Now, a quick word from our sponsors. Thank you for supporting the brands that support the show. You're listening to Passionstruck on the Passionstruck Network. Now, back to my conversation with Jane Chen. At Stanford, for those of you who aren't familiar, I wasn't when I first discovered this,

Stanford has a lot of degrees, but one of the schools that kind of sits at, at the heart of the university, but isn't a degree producing aspect of it, something called the D school, which I guess is the Planner School. Uh-huh. And my first cousin went to Stanford, and he said, everyone wants to go to the D school because the classes are so much fun and you get involved with so many different topics. What attracted you? I mean, did you have the same experience with the D school?

I did. So I was doing my MBA at the time, and I learned about the design school, which it's not, as John's a graduate program, all of the graduate school students can take courses there, but they're so fun. And there's this one class. It's called Design for Extreme Affordability. So the class is all about creating low-cost products or technologies for people living on less than a dollar a day. And when I heard about this, I was like, wow, I want to do this. I want to build something. And what's beautiful about it is it's interdisciplinary, so it's students from all the different graduate programs. So in my class of maybe 50 people, there were students from the engineering

school, the medical school, the law school. And it's all about kind of seeing things through a fresh lens. And so that year that I took the course, one of the challenges you could work on was to build a baby incubator that cost less than 1% of a traditional incubator, which in the U.S. is at the time was about $20,000. And I ended up teaming up with a group of students. to address this problem. So we took this course together. We discovered 15 million preterm and underweight babies are born every year around the world.

20, sorry, it's 3 million babies die within the first 28 days of their life. And one of the biggest problems they face is simply staying warm or regulating their temperature. And that's the primary function of an incubator. But traditional incubators are not only expensive, they require electricity. They required trained health care providers to operate them.

And so we ended up doing research in Nepal and India. And I remember one of the first women I met in South India, her name was Sujata. She lost her baby, who was born two months premature, because she had taken her baby to a village doctor who said, you need to go to a city hospital. so your baby can be placed in an incubator. That hospital was over four hours away,

and she didn't have the money to get there. And so her baby died. And as I traveled across India, I would hear this very same story over and over again. And so what we realized was what's needed is not just a lower cost version of a traditional incubator. We need something that can function without electricity, that's portable, that is super easy to use.

And with that, we created our product, the Embrace incubator, which looks nothing like an incubator. It looks like a little sleeping bag for a baby. The core technology is what's called a phase change material. So it's a wax-like substance that melts at 98 degrees, which is what these babies need to be kept at. Once it's melted, it maintains the exact same temperature for up to six hours. And you just reheat it every six hours, this little pouch of wax that you tuck into the back of the sleeping bag. and that is sufficient to maintain the warmth of these babies. That's an amazing story.

And I think because of the way you described the Planner School and having all these cross-functional people who populate it, it's how some of these ideas like this are birth. Exactly. Because you have engineers working with business people working. Yes. Yeah, and none of us had medical background. None of us had ever built a product before.

And I think that was a real asset because it took kind of looking at the problem, with an outside lens to come up with something so different. And then I understand that it was like an initial team of three of you, and then you had another friend who ended up joining you, but you decided, instead of incubating the incubator in the United States, you end up moving to India. Yeah.

On what you thought was going to be a year turned out to be a little bit longer than that. Can you talk a little bit about that journey? Sure. So we wrapped up the class and, And initially, none of us thought we were going to take it forward, but we knew we had a good idea. And we knew if we didn't do it, no one else would. So we started applying to different business plan competitions all around the U.S. to try to get some funding. We lost all of them.

And it was, I remember, it was a week before I graduated from Stanford, we still had no money. I had no job. I hadn't even looked for any other jobs. And then that final week of school, we won two competitions. at the same time that gave us our first bit of money. And with that, we thought, let's go to India. And the reason is India's home to 40% of all the world's premature babies. And in design thinking, what we had learned

is the most important part of solving a problem is empathy. How do you stand in the shoes of your customer? How do you truly see the world through their perspective? And so we had built this product based on that early research, research but to get it into the world we believe we had to be in the environment it was going to be used in right to really breathe the air and be in the culture and all of that and so we said let's do it we packed our bags we moved to india we thought it'll just be a year you know and when i go back to our early business plans it's like pure comedy now because we thought in a year we could

raise all this money figure out manufacturing distribute our product all over the world and then you know i could come home to America, you know. And I ended up being there for four years. And at that point, you know, we had just barely touched the tip of the iceberg. And what part of India were you in? I was in Bangalore. So that's South India. Has anyone in the room ever been to India? I've been there 24, 25 times. And I've been throughout all the country, including Bangalore. But it is, it's a real, I don't know how to describe it. It's a beautiful country and it's a It's got amazing people, but at the same point, it's a huge disparity between the halves and the halves and nines.

And I saw it in some communities more than others, but I was in rural areas like you're talking about where they basically had nothing and were living in basically makeshift. It's not even tense. I can't even describe it. It almost seemed like cardboard boxes practically. to then in Bangalore where you've got super cities of technology. So it really is a... Yeah.

So I understand that over time, the product then emerges in 25 or so countries. Is that accurate? Yeah. So it took us a few years to continue developing the product and then do the clinical testing, figure out manufacturing, and nothing went according to plan. India is a very, very hard country to operate in, but we couldn't find a manufacturer that met our quality standards, for example.

So we ended up having to build our own manufacturing facility from scratch. We couldn't find the right distributors. We built on our own distribution team. But every step along the way, we faced so many challenges. But we finally got the product out there, and that was the most rewarding part of the journey. I'll just share one story. So early on, maybe just,

a few weeks after we launched the product we donated a few incubators to an orphanage and they called us a few days later saying they had found a baby who was abandoned on a street who weighed less than two pounds he had already gone for days without food or water they weren't sure if he was going to survive so they kept him in our incubator for weeks and he did survive seven months later i visited the orphanage and I held him in my arms. A few months after that, he was adopted by a family in Chicago. And I remember that just being one of the happiest days of my life. But there are so many stories like that and it was like deeply, deeply rewarding to me. Every family we could help, every baby we could help. That's what gave me the motivation to keep moving forth, even though it was

so challenging. And if I have it correct, it wasn't like you were just going, From one part of India to the other, you went to Beijing, if the baby is correct. And then you actually got to meet him when he was 13 again. Yeah, yeah, I got to meet him. Actually, last year he and it, so I kept in touch with his family over the years. And last year, they came to visit me in Hawaii, where I live now. And I took him surfing. I'm obsessed with surfing.

And it was so surreal to like watch him and think. think about 13 years earlier, holding him in my arms, not knowing what tomorrow was going to look like for him, you know, to like all these years later, he's catching waves with me in Hawaii. It was such an amazing and surreal experience. So this startup idea that a bunch of social entrepreneurs starts becoming a global phenomenon,

and you're in the New York Times, you're lauded by President Obama. Earlier on the screen, there was a check, I think it was for $500,000, that Beyonce gives you in person. I mean, you're on Cloud 9. You have to think, like, we're here saving the world. What was that moment like? Yeah, well, it was all of it. It was thrilling.

And we started to not only make impact, but to get a lot of acclaim in the media. I was named a TED fellow. I became a TED speaker. I was a young global leader of the World Economic Forum. We got the Economist Innovation Award and the Fast Commons. company innovation award and you know all of these honors which was incredible um but on the inside i was really struggling you know it was so exhausting and those years i lived in india i never took a weekend off i worked 80 to 100 hour weeks i didn't make a single friend the entire four years i

lived there because i was working around the clock you know and it was a combination of a it was so much more challenging than we had anticipated. So we would have things crop up constantly, fires that I needed to put out. And then it felt so hard to take time for myself because of the nature of what we were working on. Like I would think, oh, my gosh, if I stop and I take a break, lives are on the line.

Babies are dying here, right? And so for years, my mantra was embrace, my company, embrace first, me second, take care of, the company first, and when it gets to a good place, then I can take care of myself. And what that ended up leading to is just complete and utter burnout. And then it was not only yourself burning out, the company itself started to burn out. So here you are, you've invested and sacrificed your life, your relationships, to try to build this company in about 10 years in, it starts falling apart.

Like what ended up happening and, you know, did things also start unraveling between the founders, too, or what happened? I mean, there was always starting a company is really hard and doing something like we were doing, yes, there was always like that conflict. But we stuck together pretty well as a team. But like I said, we would face everything from manufacturing challenges to distribution challenges. We quickly realized the economics of this just didn't work out for us to manufacture and distribute a. single product on our own. So we had an offer from Phillips Healthcare to become our global distributor. So we thought, this is the answer, you know, and I was so excited because this was like six years in and I'd been working so hard. And I thought, this is the thing that will help us

really be sustainable, you know, and make impact. We worked on this deal for nine months. And right before signing the deal, the CEO of the healthcare company stepped down. And she had been the main advocate for the deal. So the whole, the deal was shut down. They pulled a plug on it, and that meant we didn't have a distributor or the funding to continue our work. So that was kind of the first of many setbacks. And with that, we had to, you know, we had to pivot. We had to figure out new business strategy. We ended up launching a U.S. consumer product at one point. And then ultimately, we ran out of funding. And so we had a potential acquisition offer on the table. This is another thing we worked on for six months. This time we actually signed all of the paperwork. And the day that

deal was supposed to be completed, we found out the acquiring firm was shutting down. Wow. And so that left us with without the funding to continue. And now this is like 10 years in. I was beyond burned out and I just did not see a way forward at this point. And I remember at this point in the book, you talk about being on an airplane and in flight and it's like you're trying to process your whole life and what's going on. Can you take us to that moment and what's going through your mind? I just, I felt shattered, really. I felt so broken in mind, body, and spirit. You know, I was exhausted and I had given everything. I had sacrificed everything for this. And so I felt like I had failed.

You know, I had failed this mission. And there was a part, to truth be told, there was a part of me that didn't want to do it anymore because I was so exhausted and I knew that I had tried to step down and pass the torch to another CEO, but it just didn't work out and I kept getting pulled back into it. So there was a part of me that knew I was exhausted and then this other part of me that felt like I just failed. I just, I was an utter failure. And so at this point, I would really, I'd say I had a mental breakdown. And the only thing I could think was I need to get away from everything to find myself again. At this point, as much as the company was spiraling, you say kind of that you were going through your own spiral of rediscovering yourself.

And you decided you were going to put as much effort into trying to heal yourself as you did in this company. Yeah. I understand at the start of this, or kind of towards the end of this journey, a person from Tony Robbins' organization reaches out because Tony, if you're familiar with them, puts money into causes that he believes in and he had heard of embrace and wanted to invest in it. But I understand this went from an investment moment to a Tony mentorship type of moment. Is that an accurate way to Yes. So it's really interesting because everything came crashing down and I was forced to just surrender, let go. And when that happened, magic started to happen in my life. So basically, at that point, I packed up a surfboard and a suitcase and I bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia. And I thought, I'm just going to pour myself into healing because I feel so broken. So I put on my kind of CEO hat and I was like, I'm going to heal the shit out of myself.

But right before leaving, I turned on Netflix and I came across a film about Tony Robbins. I didn't know much about Tony at the time, but I watched this film and it's called I'm Not Your Guru. And I just cried my eyes out from beginning to end. And there was something about Tony's authenticity, you know, and his love for people and wanting to help people. And so the whole film documents his event called Date with Destiny that happens at the end of every year. And at the end of watching the film, I wrote in my notebook, Go to date with Destiny. And then I forgot about it.

So I go to Indonesia, and three weeks into my trip, I receive a phone call completely out of the blue from a man named Jonathan. And he says to me, I work with Tony Robbins. Tony and I just found out about your company. We'd like to make an investment. And Tony would like to invite you to date with Destiny. as his guest. So, of course, I went.

I met Tony. I met his team, and we can go into it later. They ended up playing an instrumental role in resurrecting embrace. But more importantly, that kind of started me on my healing journey. You know, and everything I learned about Tony, and one of the things Tony often says is, life happens for you, not to you. And so this moment that was like rock bottom for me, I started thinking, how could this be for me? You know, what am I supposed to learn here?

And I ended up going into this very deep healing journey that, in which I started to uncover the wounds that were driving me and what I needed to heal from. I wanted to go through some of the modalities that she went through because I found as I was reading the book, it was pretty interesting journey. So a lot of us, I do, I've done mindfulness for years. I like to do it first thing in the morning on my walks. But you kind of took it to a different extreme. You were going to these retreats, one of them in Indonesia, another one. You did where you're going for days without talking to anyone. So you would, if I have it right, you wake up at like 4 o'clock in the morning,

and until about 10 o'clock at night, you're in solitary confinement. almost. Yes. So these are called Vapasana retreats and they're silent meditations. So these are 10-day silent meditations and I decided to do one in the jungle of Indonesia. So you're in complete silence for 10 days. No reading, no writing, no eye contact, no exercise, nothing. You wake up at 4 a.m. You meditate until 10 p.m. every day. So it's a very kind of militant, intense form of meditation. And I had done my first one in Hawaii, years before that, and it was amazing. And so I decided to do it in Indonesia. And the whole idea of it is to teach you about impermanence, right? To teach you that everything comes and goes. So if you're sitting there and your knees start

to ache, well, if you just sit with that, that's going to come and go. That pain will come and go. All of our physical sensations are impermanent. And so when you start to understand that, you become unattached to any particular moment or sensation because you know it will pass. So that's kind of the premise of it, but I did it in a very, very extreme way. Yes, you did. And as I kept going through, that wasn't the only thing you did in extremes. It's like every one you want an extreme. So I end up at this point, you want to start looking at psychedelics, but you don't just want to look at

psychedelics, you start to search out like the brainchild of it all. Can you talk about that story and how it kind of led you on a journey to MDMA? Yeah. So I had read Michael Pollan's book How to Change Your Mind. And at that point, like everyone in the Bay Area in San Francisco was talking about psychedelics to treat depression, anxiety, and so on. So I started looking into the clinical studies, and it was amazing, right? For MDMA in particular, we often think of it as this party drug, but there's been years of research showing its effect on PTSD, particularly for veterans. And what the research showed was just this incredible result, just three sessions of MDMA could get people off of the PTSD scale. So I became really fascinated with that

modality. And that was one of the things I tried. That was actually incredibly helpful for me. I'm not sure if anyone's familiar with the research. I've had a number of experts on the podcast, both with psilocybin and MDMA, but they're now using it in the VA. And typical talk therapy has an efficacy of somewhere around 30 to the high 30 percent. But what they're finding with the psychedelics is that it's 70% and at times 80 to 85% with long-lasting results. So I forget, I think MDMA is in third phase clinical and psilocybin's in second phase. So in the future, both of these will be, will both be regulated for treatment. But like you're saying, it's not as if you're just, you're giving it on,

on your own. It's typically done in a very controlled environment. Yes, it's done a controlled environment. It's done with the help of a guide or a therapist. And you're working with therapists leading up to it as well. So it's not just this one moment, but it's all the work you're doing up until that point. And one of the reasons it's so effective, if I could talk about the science of trauma a little bit, but on this journey, I started to understand what is the science of trauma, right? And one of the ways I learned that was through reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. And what I learned from that is trauma is not just something that happened in the past,

that stays in the past. And that's what I had thought most of my life, right? Difficult things I went through. I just wanted to kind of brush them under the rug and move on. Trauma actually rewires your brain and your nervous system. So it's the way you're bringing the past into the present. And trauma's also stored in our limbic brains. We have three parts of our brain.

There's the reptilian brain, right, which is responsible for our most basic functions. The limbic brain, which is where all of our emotions are stored in our bodily sensations. And then there's the neocortex. That's our thinking brain. Trauma is stored in the limbic brain. But talk therapy happens in our thinking brain. And so that's why I believe some of these modalities, including psychedelics, that allow us to kind of go deeper, into our consciousness and into our emotions are more effective than things that are just at the

level of the intellect, right? And so through that, I really started to explore what had happened to me growing up. And there was a lot of physical violence in my childhood. And I remember there was one incident in particular when I was 12 years old. I came home from school one day. and I decided to read my history book on the front lawn. It was a beautiful, sunny day. When my father came home and he saw this, he flew into a rage. He decided homework shouldn't be done on a lawn. It should be done at a desk.

And so he beat me. And he demanded that I apologize. I refused because for the first time in my life, I knew I had done nothing wrong. I also knew that I was totally powerless in that moment. And so as I went on this healing journey, I finally connected the dots. Feeling so powerless through my childhood, that's what had driven me to want to help the most powerless people in the world.

I had not made that connection before. You know, so my pain had become my purpose. But it was also my shadow because it led me to work. working in very unhealthy ways, as I said, to the point of just complete burnout. Because I also believe that my worth depended on what I achieved. So it wasn't just like the passion and the urgency, but there was this whole thing where my worthiness

and sense of enoughness was tangled up in achievement. So going back to your childhood, one of the stories that I remember from the book is you, You described like there'd be cold mornings where you would jump into bed with your dad and he would kind of cover you and warm up your toes. But it was kind of conditional. Like he would quiz you. And if you were doing everything that he wanted, you would get his love.

If you were doing things that went against what he kind of desired in his mind that you should be fulfilling, it was met with pretty much 180 degrees the opposite. Is that a good way to kind of frame it? Yeah. Do you ever feel like part of what was happening to you is he was taking out his own frustrations and unmet dreams on you and hoping you would fulfill what he hadn't been able to?

I think so. I think it's a long time to piece it together. You know, and in the book I talk about, I think there is a part of that. And I think that's what's so confusing for a child. when there is no kind of clear cause and effect. And the things that would happen, there are very innocent acts,

like reading my history book in the wrong part of the house. The punishment felt very disproportionate. And so I think as a child, what happens is you end up believing, there's something wrong with me. And so that was the sense that I had, that no matter how, as I grew up, no matter how many degrees I got or babies I saved or how much recognition I received,

there was still this sense of like not enough, not enough. And I think this is, I've started to see this, that sometimes our trauma can get channeled into this drive, right? Because we feel like we need to prove more and be more and do more. So I actually see this with a lot of high achievers who have kind of early wounding. It manifests itself in this way. I think it's extremely, it's extremely confusing as a child. But in the book, I also explore just intergenerational trauma and the fact that my father had grown up in a certain way. And so that was what he knew.

That doesn't make it right. But through the process of writing the book and understanding my broader story, you know, I developed a lot of compassion for him and for my family. But still, those effects for me as a child, I needed to confront that. And it's something I think when we have painful experiences, something I've really learned in this process is the power of allowing ourselves to feel all of our feelings. right and research shows that when we have painful emotions we try to avoid them through social media

overworking drinking whatever it might be but when we suppress our emotions they don't go away they later resurface more intensely right often as anxiety or or depression and so there's something really really important about pausing long enough to allow ourselves to feel our heartbreak, you know, wherever that might come from. We're just sitting with that then allows us to move through it. And if anyone in the room is interested in exploring this more, there are three really good books. I've had all three of the authors on the podcast, but one would be Susan Kane's book, Bitter Sweet, does an excellent job of exploring painful emotions and why they're so valuable. Another one is Liz Foslian, and she has a book she co-wrote called Big Feelings,

which is a great book on this. And then the last one would be Ethan Cross, who runs the psychology program at University of Michigan, and he just came out with a new book as well. So all three of those are excellent books, if you want to explore that a little bit more. Yeah. So I was hoping we could just talk about INF a little bit, because I know that this is something that is important to you. Yes. Before we get to IFA, I'll just mention one of the things that happened, after I read The Body Keeps the score, I became so obsessed with the author, Bessel van der Kolk, that as my overachiever self would do, I basically stalked him until he agreed to become my therapist.

And he said no to me about six times. And Vessel's like 83 now. He wasn't taking you clients, but I kind of kept at it. And so working with him was one of the most game. know, life-changing things for me because he really created the space for me to acknowledge some very, very difficult things. And in writing the book, it was really interesting because I went back and I watched dozens of our therapy videos. It is horrifying to watch your own therapy videos, by the way.

And I started to see what was happening in our exchange. And there's something about, I think healing happens in community. It doesn't happen on our own. And there's something about the other person holding that space for you, you know, or moments where I would tell a story and not even realize it was sad. And Bessel would just pause me and he would look so sad. Or he would take a deep breath and then I would take a deep breath. You know, and I think it's why that it's why I don't believe AI bot or chat GPT therapy can replace a human

because of that empathetic resonance that we need to heal. And so that work with Bessel just gave me kind of the space and the empathy from someone else to dive deep into some of these very painful things. And one of the things Bessel introduced me to was a practice called Internal Family Systems or Parts Work. It's founded, there are many variations of this, but there's a man Dick Schwartz who wrote a book called No Bad Parts that I highly recommend. for anyone interested in this.

The premise of IFS is that we all contain a multitude of parts. So there are parts that emerge to protect us, right? So, John, you might have your overachiever part or the control freak or the perfectionist. I'm making this all up. I have those parts in me. I have this warrior part that one of my exes nicknamed Jengis Khan.

So we have these parts who are there to protect us from some of the more difficult emotions and we also have these parts that the practice called exiles. So a part of you that might have felt rejected when you were young or abandoned or really scared and alone. And because we don't want to face those feelings

that these protectors or managers come in and they do all these things, right? The overachiever comes in and tries to prove to everyone that we are enough to protect the part of us that feels like we're not enough. And the whole goal of this practice is to develop, to get to know your parts and then develop compassion for them,

not to banish them or shame them, but to have love and compassion and to thank the parts for the role they've played in our lives. Right? And so one of the parts I discovered was this little girl inside me was so scared that she wasn't enough. For years, I wanted everyone else to show her that she was worthy.

At one point, I became obsessed with this modality called a psychodrama. So it's a group therapy where you pick people to kind of play the roles of your parents and you reenact what happened. And then you pick a different set of people and they play the role of your ideal parents. And the idea is to kind of give yourself a more ideal version of what could have happened, which can be very, very healing. So I became obsessed with the idea of finding an ideal father, thinking if I just heard the things I needed to hear when I was young, I would be healed. At one point, I even enlisted a man who looked like Santa Claus to play the role of my ideal father. Turns out the big, jolly white man was not my ideal father.

But towards the end of the book, in this journey that I did, I picked the perfect ideal father hand, selected a friend to play the role. I wrote out every sentence I wanted him to say to me. And we, you know, we went through this, and he said all the lines, he said them perfectly, and I still felt nothing. So finally, I picked up this photograph of me as a five-year-old, and I finally said all the things that she needed to hear. And I said, I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve that. You were worthy and you're loved. And she finally believed me. And so that's when I realized that

resilience is about self-love and self-compassion, right? All the things we're looking for out there, they have to come from within here or else the goalpost keeps moving and nothing's going to be enough. But when we believe deep in our bones that we're enough, outside of our achievements, outside of our purpose, outside of how many likes we get on social media, that is true resilience. Because then no matter what happens out there, we can brush ourselves off and we can keep going. You know, we can take risks and fail and know that we're going to be okay when we have this inner sense of worthiness. It's beautiful and it gets back to what I was talking about at the beginning with so many

high school kids who are expressing these feelings that they are, but it's happening years and years before that. So the time to intervene really is when children are, you know, three to ten years old is where this kind of gets reinforced and we're living in this perpetual aspects of society where so many adults today feel like they're not enough and they're invisible in their own lives and then because they don't they're not showing up for themselves they're not showing up for their kids and it just keeps perpetuating the cycle and that's a that that's pretty much where I spend a tremendous amount of my time researching yeah I'm curious like how many people

in this room have ever felt like they weren't enough right it's just it's it's all of us have felt this. And it's something I feel so passionate about because addressing this and working with people on that, their inner wholeness, because I think the relationship we have with ourselves is the foundation for every relationship in our lives. When we have self-compassion, we can more easily extend that to others. You know, and I don't like to talk about politics, but there's like, I think there are some traumatized people, you know, in leadership roles in our country today. And I think when we don't address our inner trauma and our inner wounds, we tend to lead

from a place of fear and ego and control, right? Whereas when we do have that inner sense of worthiness, then we can lead from a place of love and compassion and purpose. So I really just believe in this so much. And I think if every child felt safe and loved, our world would look so different. And I think that goes to the inner child in each of us. Yeah, I mean, what you're saying is a great point. Has anyone ever heard of General Stan McChrystal?

He led all forces in Afghanistan at one point. And I was interviewing him about his leadership style, and he calls it humbicious. He's really big on this eyes-on hands-off leadership, and his whole thinking is if I'm here at Centcom in Tampa and I'm trying to lead a Green Beret team or a SEAL team and they're doing direct action, it's impossible for me to micromanage them. So as a leader, I have to give them enough so that they understand the aspects of what mission success. looks like I have to train them in order to do it, but I need to let go of my ego and trust that they're going to make the right decisions based on the situation that they're facing, and it's my job to have them properly prepared. But if you let the ego get in, then you start to try to micro-manage everything,

watch them from drones, satellites, everything else, and then you take over operational control and start interfering with the real-time decisions that they're making. And I think you can apply that in so many different ways. Yeah. But it kind of goes to what you were saying. Yeah, that's such a good point. And I think there's a difference between kind of healthy striving, right? Of course we want to achieve goals and there's things we want to do.

And it's good to have all of that. And then when it becomes unhealthy is when we have this sense of like we should do it or doing that's going to prove our worthiness, right? That's kind of when it starts to get into that zone of unhealthy. striving. And there's kind of a fine line between the two. But for me now, it's like I have, well, I just came out with this book. It's probably the scariest thing I've ever done. It's so vulnerable. And of course I wanted to do well. And I really wanted to impact people and bring hope and healing to others. I've put five years of my life into it. But there's something to be

said of like letting go as well, right? Like we're not in control. So the way I define success now is very different from how I used to define success. And it's really less about outcomes and more, am I living my values? Am I living with love every day? Am I giving to other people? Am I growing? And those are all things we can control. Right? So as long as I'm doing those things, the outcomes don't matter as much. A couple weeks ago, a friend came out to Hawaii to do a little ceremony with me around the book. And at the end of it, I only had one copy of the book at that time. and I threw it into the ocean. And it was just this beautiful act of surrender, right?

That I've given my soul to this. And now I'm going to let the waves take the message to where it needs to go. Did you want to read another excerpt from the book? Yeah, can I? Okay. Will this be the final excerpt? This will be the final. Okay.

Because you kind of book in the book starting out with water. Yes. And you kind of end there, too. Yeah, okay. It is easy to believe that we are defined by our circumstances, by the wounds of our past, by family, by fate. But circumstances, however powerful, are just the waves, rising, crashing, ever-changing. Beneath their churning lies something steady, infinite. No matter what we have endured.

no matter where we've come from, our essence remains, and that essence is love, unconditional, and limitless. We are not the waves, but the sea itself. The waves will always come. They will rise, they will crash, and at times they will pull me under. There will always be forces beyond my control, moments that threaten to swallow me whole.

But now I know the way back, back to the surface, back to myself. When I wipe out, I know I will rise again, even when my lungs burn, even when my skin is scraped raw from the ocean floor. The voice that once taunted, you're so stupid you should die, has been replaced by something softer and stronger. You got this. You are enough. I journeyed to the corners of the world, seeking the love I thought I was missing. I sought it in conference rooms and straw huts,

in silent meditation retreats and crowded seminars, in therapy, in medicine. I searched for it in the rhythm of waves, in the fire of rituals, in the stillness and the storm, only to discover it was always already within me. Love is not a distant shore.

It's the current that courses through us. Healing is not about fixing ourselves. It's about embracing who we are, the mess, the chaos, the grief, the fear, the heartbreak. It's not about erasing our pain, but finding the courage to hold ourselves through it. Like a wave, we break. Like an ocean, we can never be broken.

Thank you so much for sharing that. So, Jane, what is next for you? Yeah, well, as I mentioned, I'm so passionate about helping people find their most authentic selves, their most aligned selves. So over the last couple years, I've been doing leadership coaching. This year, I stepped down from Embrace. So Embrace was saved. Tony Robbins played a critical role in that. You guys will have to read the book to find out what happened.

But we reached a million babies this year. Thank you. Yeah. So I stepped down. I handed the torch to a new CEO. And with the book, I'm really stepping more into doing leadership coaching. And there's actually, I'll give you guys, I have a little bookmark with a QR code. but for people who are interested in going on their own healing journey,

I have a bunch of free resources. Parts work has been so important to me that I developed an exercise that you can download on my website if you want to try it on yourself. And I'm doing leadership coaching both for individuals and for corporations as well. And so my hope is that in helping people lead their most authentic life, that compassion they find for themselves can ripple out into the world. and into everyone that they work with. And so that's what's next for me.

In the long run, I know I want to work directly with kids who have trauma who have been victims of abuse and neglect. And so there's a lot of volunteer work that I'm doing on the side with that. But my whole mission now, as I said, is to ensure that we live in a world where every child feels safe and loved.

I'm gonna open it up for questions in just one second. I'm gonna do one bonus. question. Yeah. So I have heard a lot about this frog poison. And I can't leave this discussion without understanding a little bit more like. What was that ceremony like and how painful is it? Yeah. So frog poison, this is an Amazonian practice where they basically burn holes in your leg for women. It's a different part of the body for men. And then they sprinkle desiccated frog poison into these holes. And it's supposed to help purge toxins out of your body and purge your past. I ended up purging everything I'd ever eaten in my entire life. And so you're kind of

vomit into this bucket 10, 15 times, and then you're running to the bathroom. And it was very intense. It was not my preferred healing modality. But that's one of the many things that I tried. So that's something you'd be running to do again. Yeah, yeah, that's something I'd be running to do again. But just for your podcast listeners, coming back to your other question for folks that are interested in doing, I'm doing a bunch of leadership workshops for corporates as well. And so folks can find me on my website at jane-marie chen.com. Awesome.

That's a wrap on today's live conversation with the extraordinary Jane Chen, a conversation about trauma, healing, and the courage to come home to yourself. If you were here in the room at the Oxford Exchange, you felt it. that quiet shift that happens when someone tells the truth about their inner world with no armor, no pretense, and no performance. Here are a few truths worth carrying with you this week. First, burnout often shows up when we've built a life the world applauds, but our inner self can inhabit. Second, unresolved trauma doesn't disappear. It disguises itself as ambition, perfectionism, or overachievement. And as Jane reminded us, we are not the waves of emotion that crash and

collapse. Where are the oceans beneath them? Her memoir, like a wave we break, is one of the most honest, soul-bearing books that I've read this year. And if her story resonated with you, I encourage you to share it with someone who needs it. If today's episode moved you, please take 30 seconds to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It truly is the most powerful way to help new listeners discover these conversations. Want to go deeper? Join me at the ignitedlife.net for weekly insights and tools for intentional living. Subscribe on YouTube for full episodes, live clips, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content, and visit start mattering.com to wear your purpose and remind yourself every day that you matter.

Next week, we continue the irreplaceables with a conversation that expands from the inner world to the world around us. My guest is Don Martin, author of the new book, Where Did Everybody Go, Why We're Lonely, One of the Most Surprising and Myth-Busting Explorations of Loneliness I've ever read. about the spaces between us, the systems that shape us and the simple human truth that people need people. A perfect counterpoint to today's exploration of reconnecting with yourself. A lot of times we engage with deep dark topics, loneliness, death, religion, politics, all of those kinds of things, and come away just feeling really depressed and

hopeless. And who am I? I'm just one person, I don't matter. And I think bringing it back to something that you all talk about, I think giving people a sense of purpose. in a sense that this information isn't too much for you, you can learn it, you can learn a new thing, you can embrace a new thing, you can talk about the big scary stuff in life, and your opinion on it, your involvement in it,

even just your willingness to learn about it matters, because you matter. Until then, remember, to matter is to be seen. To be seen is to be known. Every revolution begins with one intentional act of paying deeper attention. I'm John Miles.

You've been passion struck.