Saturn Returns with Caggie - 2.17 Self-Love with Nia the Light

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

As Season 2 comes to an end, Caggie is joined by Nia Pettitt also known as Nia the Light. A content creator, founder of The Curl Bar London and soon to be published author, Nia discusses the boundaries that she has had to implement in her professional life, and the hurdles she has faced on her journey to success. Likewise, the two explore the journey to self-love and discovery; to finding solace in your own body no matter its shape or size and the truth that you are worthy. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. Self-love is not a destination, it is a journey. So just because you heal something, when I started loving my hair, I then had to learn to love my skin because I started to see myself naturally. Now today I am joined by the wonderful Nia The Light. At 23, Nia is the founder of The Curl Bar, a hair salon in London, and she's set to release her first book, which comes out in April. And she's set to release her first book, which comes out in April. A Gemini with a big heart and a loyal following,

Nia takes us on her self-love journey. And her message for young girls is this, that regardless of your stretch marks, body acne, scarring, body shape or size, you are still beautiful and worthy. Nia reminds us that self-love isn't a destination, it's a journey. I hope you enjoy this episode. But first, let's check in with Nora hope you enjoy this episode. But first, let's check in with Nora, our astrological guide for the season.

At the age of 23 and 24, we go through our second Jupiter return. So it doesn't get as much attention generally, I think, because it doesn't feel as intense as Saturn return after the age of 28 it doesn't come with as many karmic lessons rather it comes with opportunities it's a cycle that brings opportunities professionally it brings expansion it brings more curiosities it brings more interest in things that are beyond us like our belief systems we challenge our birth religion often during this time the first time that you had your Jupiter return for everybody really is at the age of 12 and so the ages of 12 and 13 is really when we become a full-fledged teenager and so if if you think back at that time, you did have more of a sense of independence and you wanted to crystallize your identity a bit more.

You wanted to explore more. You wanted to really grow up. So at the age of 23, that theme kind of comes back, but it comes more in a mature version. So you want to expand, you want to explore, you want to become even more independent and then Saturn return comes and you can crystallize that or if you weren't authentic obviously you'll be challenged so the audience who don't know who you are would you mind explaining

a little bit about who you are and what you do sure so my name is Nia and I'm a Gemini I'm 23 I love when you start with that I know that I use it to define me but I feel like it will help you know along the way where you understand that typically they say Geminis have two personalities which not necessarily I think I do but I have my business mode and then I have my like just regular degular girl and they're definitely different but not not extreme and Gemini gets a gets quite a bad rep yeah we do but hey I'm not my purpose yeah I'm not my purpose isn't here to change the stigma of a Gemini I just do whatever but yeah so I'm 23 a Gemini and I own a salon a curly hair salon to be specific called the Curl Bar London and I also am a content creator so I have my own platforms online

and I'm gonna be an author in two months three months yeah wow congratulations you've got a lot going on yeah it's it's busy but at the same time it's not like when you say all those things out loud it's like wow you bet you don't sleep but because of lockdown it's like oh no I sleep I have enough time so when did you start the curl bar so the curl bar was actually born on January the 16th 2020 so tomorrow is the one year anniversary and I had started doing hair when I was 16 but then I took a big break when I began university because I couldn't handle that with also my social media and then loads of my clients were like Nia please like I haven't had my hair cut by you since two years ago. Like, can you

do my hair? So I then went to view a shop in July 2019. And I fell in love with it and started working on it kept a secret for like five months, which is so hard. And then yeah, I mean, I only got to be open for six months out of 12 last year, but I learned so much in that time. I became a completely different person who I love, but at the same time, I miss who I was before. What do you mean? How so? So business can really test you and test your spirit. But before opening my salon, I was a very very soft person which not to say I'm now really tough and strong which aren't bad things at all but now I've had to learn not to take things

personally I've had to learn to deal with certain situations that I wouldn't have been able to before and I've just had to learn boundaries and just very uncomfortable experiences that make me a strong businesswoman which if you want to have a successful business you can't be you can't be sensitive as soon as you step into that mode so I've learned those things let's talk about that a little bit because I think that's a really interesting point and something that it's it took me a lot longer to figure out and it's still something that I struggle with myself in terms of you know we the the sort of association with being a woman and being feminine is to be to soften and it's been a massive lesson for me to soften in certain areas and to surrender to certain things

and yet on the flip side as wanting to you to run my own business and be progressive in that sense, we should or we're told to lean into a more sort of masculine state. And I've always found a lot of conflict in that because I'm not very good at setting professional boundaries because I take things personally. And also, I don't want to upset people so as someone that's you know 23 how have you managed to overcome those hurdles in terms of like putting on that business persona and leaning into that aspect of yourself it's actually very hard and the reason why I know how to do it now is because I didn't know how to do it before and I saw the I saw the downsides to what happens when you don't put your boundaries up and I think the best thing I could say to anyone is to be professional from the beginning if you treat you know your staff like your friends or or even like if you're around your customers or the

way you communicate with them on socials if you're not speaking to them with a professional manner, or you're talking to them as if you're just sending a casual text, you can't be offended when they now speak to you in that same way, because you've crossed those boundaries. So you have to be not tough per se, but you have to be professional from the beginning so that people respect you. Whereas if you show that you know like I said you're their friend or you're just kicking it and it's not serious to you they will give you that same energy so I had to learn you know how to be a good boss because of by being a bad boss yeah by being a bad boss not like a badass boss like just a bad

boss I mean I didn't have any training. I didn't have anyone to say, you know, this is what you should do. And I didn't know like certain procedures and I had to learn everything from scratch. And I, like I said, I didn't have a book. I didn't have anyone to guide me. So literally it was a lot to say, okay, how do you be a boss? Like professionally, what procedures need to go in place? It was a lot, but now okay, how do you be a boss, like professionally, what procedures need to go in place? It was a lot. But now I can say I'm a very good boss. And I have amazing staff. I work with amazing people, even on my social media side of things. So I'm really thankful for those lessons. They were painful, but I'm very thankful for them. Would you mind sharing? I mean, you don't

have to go into the greater details, but some of the lessons you learned, perhaps the hard way of blending the lines of personal and professionalism and how that may have backfired and how you then learned to set a boundary. Because I think also people are incredibly fearful of they don't want to be bitches.

You know, we don't want to be seen as being a bitch. And so we just often don't speak up when we should and it's a very you know it's it's a really tricky thing to master so I would love you know for you to share some advice on how you navigated that I would say if you see something that is making you uncomfortable or that you don't like as a boss because at the end of the day with any business you do or anything that you do for yourself if you take on other people to do it for you, it will never be as good as you. That's just the hard truth, because we're always going to pour 1000% into our own business, like no one's going to do that. Like, that's just what I've come to learn. So I think,

yeah, you have to let your expectations go. But in that same breath, you also have to give people, like, small doses of responsibility so that they grow into their role. And because no one's going to, like, learn how you want things done within the space of their first day at work. So you have to be patient and you have to communicate. of their first day at work so you have to be patient and you have to communicate but anytime you see things you don't like I think the best thing to do is to give them you know a positive so maybe if you saw that your staff was late on that day maybe check in and say hey was everything okay today before going in with the you were late this is one penalty like if you do it again blah blah blah so maybe find out the why and just go with a calm approach before you know yeah exactly because then that person they

don't they don't know you like that so they might now feel uncomfortable they might now be a bit hesitant to express themselves or be themselves around you and then it causes tension at the end of the day humans are humans so you know we all can't be machines and robots but you still have to express when you're not happy as a boss but just doing it in a way that isn't offending their character but more so their actions and how it can affect your business I guess the key really is like communicating and especially through conflict. Yeah, definitely. But also communicating when, when people have done a good job as well. I find that that isn't mentioned, you know, even even in life, not just outside of

business, it's much easier for people to tell you when you did something wrong, as opposed to when you've done something right, which I really don't like about humans so I really make sure that when my girls do a really good job at the salon or whenever I work with a creative team I emphasize to them that they did a great job I'm proud of them or maybe I reward them I just really find it important to affirm people positively because if you're constantly you know giving them the negative and the criticism fair enough you're making them better but we all need to be praised it sounds like you you've got a lot going on considering how young you are would you say that you've always had quite an innate sense of self and worth or is that something that you you've kind of had to fight for as well gosh I would say

from when I was young like maybe 11 that's when I really broke into myself because wow that is young yeah but before that you know I would say my life experiences made me establish myself very young mostly through my hair because I relaxed my hair up until I was 11, which is if those of you who don't know, it's when you take chemicals and straighten out your curls. So I was doing that from a really young age. And then I stopped at 11. And because I had to learn how to love my natural hair, which was something that, you know, at the time, especially where I grew up, I would walk in the high street, and I would never see anyone with curls on their hair. So I was just like, okay, this is something that's very big. It's very wild. And people

comment on it all the time. If I can love this and go on this journey of loving it, this obviously wasn't my intentional thoughts, but at the time I was learning to love it. And then in the process, I ended up loving myself. So I think that's what sparks that sense of self for me. And from there, it was when I did my year six school play, I feel like that's the day you know, near the light was born. I was acting as Peggy Mitchell. And I had to wear like this curly Afro, not Afro as such, but just like a curly wig. And I went on stage and I was like, you're right, my darlings. And then from that, I have it on like a CD. And from there, that's just when I just felt like I had finally gained the confidence to just go on stage and just show all the teachers and all the parents and all the pupils like who I was because I was so quiet.

So you were super young. that's a really young age to sort of develop that sense of self yeah but my mom is a very like vibrant character like she's a type of woman that when we'd go to African park well Zimbabwean parties and she's in the on the dance floor like just by herself and then bringing loads of other women to dance with her. She was the woman that hosted people's baby showers and cooked for them. I think I saw my mum from a young age show me what it is to bring women together, but also to be confident in who she is, despite of whatever she was going through at the time so I had a really positive example showing me what it is to own yourself as a woman and also to embrace the things that make you different and

stand out definitely because when you said that you so you relaxed your hair up until 11 yeah and what how if you don't mind me asking how come you did that from such a young age was that just what you'd seen and what people know I mean I wasn't self-aware to know like at five like oh I need a relaxer mom but at the time the area I grew up in and especially because my mom is Zimbabwean and my dad's English so my Zimbabwean side I was the first biracial child between my Zimbabwean side, I was the first biracial child between my Zimbabwean side. So there was no advice for them to know like what products to use on my hair. So my mom just did what she knew because she was relaxing her hair. So she did it to me.

And not that I ever, you know, get frustrated at my mom for doing that because that's what led me to my journey. But that's what made it easier for her. It's not easy to do a curly kid's hair like I have a whole salon dedicated to it and I've seen moms come in and just like ask us to just teach them and just guide them on how to detangle or how and you see the kid crying with the fear before they even sit in the chair and we have to you know really make them feel confident and calm so I can't imagine well I couldn't imagine my mum doing that whilst also working and just making sure everything was okay around us so I don't blame her for it at all but that's at the time was the safest option because there was no YouTube tutorials there wasn't a curly hair eye or boots so that that was all she knew

and that was all we had at the time so a lot has shifted since then most definitely and then at 11 you just suddenly were like this is something I'm going to embrace yeah so I had seen a girl I obviously just started secondary school and I saw a girl her name was is Yasmin and um she had curls she was in the year above me and I just remember looking up to her like wow like your hair's so beautiful and she obviously she was mixed race and she knew I was so she was like I'm sure when we wet your hair your curls will come back and I was like okay so I went home and you know tried to wet my hair and there was no curls because they had been straightened for so long so my mom noticed I was washing my hair like four times a day trying to bring back my curls and she was like my good child like what are you trying to do and I

was like I want my curls I saw this girl in school and she said I can have curly hair as well and my mom was like you're gonna have to cut off your hair because you've been straightening it and once you cut it off then your curls will come back and it was the most disastrous hair appointment I've ever been to in my entire life I like I walked in and she I asked her for caramel highlights and instead she added bleach blonde streaks but my hair is black so I had black and yellow striped hair it was horrible and then she cut it so short like up to my ears but I remember going on the bus and even the bus driver was like what has happened the bus drivers don't pay attention to nobody like they just care if you paid or if you've tapped your card. So he looked at me and his eyes glared wide like, oh, my God, who did this to you?

Because I need to not make sure anyone in my family goes to them. So I went home. I went to sleep and I just cried, hoping when I woke up, my hair would come back. But luckily, I did it in a summer holiday. So I had time to recover. And I, you know, dyed my hair would come back but luckily I did it in the summer holiday so I had time to recover and I you know dyed my hair then I still kept straightening it because it was so short to wear curly so I just kept it straight anyway but that's what began the journey of bringing the curls back wow that is quite the start of journey and then so in terms of social media and you having this

huge impact and your you know your hair being this whole thing what was what was the kind of response from people and how has that snowballed for you well I started Instagram when I was 16 which I think is when it was born so I've been with Instagram from you know the beginning but at the time when I was using it, it wasn't a brand thing at all. It was just like, I was 16, you know, feel and fly, like just growing into being a teenager. And me and my friends just used to use it to take pictures and anytime we'd go to parties, we would just have mini photo shoots. But then when I started going to like curly hair events, because I did a hair modeling job, and I didn't know there was a whole community where women just came together to celebrate their hair or educate each other. So when I knew about it, I started going to these events and that's when I just started documenting my hair journey.

It wasn't anything intentional because I was only 16, but I loved media in school so for me it was just another expression to you know show my media teacher and say I've made this blog like can you read my articles I wanted to be a journalist so I just made sure I learned the new media because I knew that it would affect journalism and the projects I was into. So it was actually kind of a school project kind of thing. But it then sparked into my job, which is very, very cool. And how is your relationship with social media now? I think it's changed so much since then. I mean, I've gone through like so many different stages of a relationship in social media but I would say that

in the beginning it was just like fun it wasn't intentional and it was just very organic but then it became once I picked up on how to get numbers or what people were interested in I then became very addicted to it and I started gaining my self-esteem from likes from people's comments and you know earlier I said it's easy to um pay attention or for instance affirm someone negatively as opposed to positively so in that sense if someone said a mean comment it would affect me more than the 99 positive comments because that's already sort of in your belief system somewhere about you and it's reaffirming that. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it started to affect me when I'd receive the negative comments as my platform got bigger. And then from there, my relationship with it has

changed in the sense that not to say it's a business for me now, but I don't share myself personally. And the reason why is because I used to be so personal on social media, but I saw the negative effects of it. So now to protect myself, I don't share myself in that way. And there's so many of my other like content creator friends who used to be so open, but now they feel the same. And, you know, I said earlier to be strong as a businesswoman but I'm still owning my vulnerability and my softness as an individual and I do balance those

two things out that sounds so crazy for me to answer this question honestly I just wear that that role like when I put my curl bar pin on and I step into the salon I'm I'm the curl bar boss like I step into that that role but when I leave like anyone who has a job when you leave and go home you're you you're just you know in your own space you're you cater to your own needs like have you eaten have you rested but when I'm in the salon I cater to everyone else so it's just like that in the sense that I kind of switch on and off depending on where I am or what role I'm fulfilling at the time because essentially I guess what we're talking about here is is self-love and self-care yeah you know the the issue guess, and I'd say particularly, you know, girls of your age, probably worse than mine, is that social media is this landscape where people feel like they have to share everything.

And because, you know, we and you've grown up with it, it's very much interweaved with our sense of self which is hugely problematic and I think then when you do open up the doors completely and don't create the boundaries around it like you say when someone said you you give so much and then someone says one negative thing and that's all you can really see so I think being able to create that structure yourself and having that discipline is really important. Yeah, I mean, I'm still working on it. I think the thing I want to work on the most is just not being on it so much and just spending that quality time with myself, because I've been on this platform for seven years now, like that is such a long time. So I want to just detach from it so I can learn who I am without this fixation of, I need to create, I need to do this for this brand,

I need to post on stories. Like one of my dreams, I mean, it's such a difficult time for me to say this as a dream, but it's to just come off of social media for like a year and just go traveling like around the world. That's just something I want to do because I've just been so career driven since 16 and I want to just learn myself outside of my career but I feel like especially my generation was so fixated on how quickly we can make a goal happen or how quickly we can buy a house how really yeah like on social media there's such a huge focus on I'm 18 and I just bought a five-bedroomed house like so I've never really given that much thought to it because I guess when I was 18 that it didn't exist yeah but now it does because so many other influencers yeah there's so many other influencers who are like 16

or even like the YouTubers that are six years old and they're millionaires. Like there's so many kids now because of social media who are so rich. So when we see that highlighted all the time, it's natural for someone who doesn't have the means to buy a house at 19 to be like, oh, wow, I'm not doing as good as them or I'm not doing this. There's so many times when I meet 23 year olds who are like, sis, you make me

feel that I'm not doing anything with my life. And it makes me feel bad because obviously I'm showing to them that, you know, I'm young and I can achieve these goals, but I don't want it to pressurize them into thinking they're not enough because they're not. Their goals look different to mine as do mine look different to theirs. This is a really interesting thing because everyone's version of success is different because everyone has different values and prioritizes different things and should have different aspirations. yet social media because we're on it so much and giving it so much attention it's like this this one thing you

know that we're all supposed to be going after and you just see it 24 7 every time you go on your phone and it then can make everybody feel slightly disheartened with what they have or haven't achieved and you even there's a sort of hierarchy to it because even those you know the people that are saying to you you make me feel like I haven't achieved enough I'm sure that you feel the same about people that you look at right I used to be like that but now I'm I actually underestimate how much I've achieved and it's only up until this lockdown or the first lockdown when I was going through all my photo albums or watching like old vlogs

and I was like wow my life has been amazing and because I say this to my mum all the time but from literally maybe 19 or 18 or 19 my life just got so busy I was traveling like back to back there was one year where I would go on a trip for like two weeks the day I'm landing I've got a flight the next morning then I go on another trip then I land again and maybe that if I land at 7am I have a flight at 8pm the same day going somewhere else. So my life was just so busy that I never got the chance to just sit and be present because I was always focused on the next thing. Whereas now I sit down and I look and I'm like, I've traveled to so many beautiful parts of the world or like I'm 23 and I have my own salon. I put that as my goal list when I was 40.

Like I did not expect to do it so young or even having a book out, like just all these things. I'm like, wow, I've done that. So now I'm in a space where I'm celebrating what I've done as opposed to just being so pressurized to do the next thing. Has that had to take a conscious decision?

Most definitely. That is not an easy thing to do the next thing. Has that had to take a conscious decision? Most definitely. That is not an easy thing to do because naturally we're all what's next people, but it's not healthy. Like it's not healthy to achieve buying a house. And then as soon as you get the keys, you're like, yeah, great. What's next? I feel like when you dig deep into that, there's actually something you're not happy with, because you're now having to distract yourself with, you know, a goal. So I mean, that's just what I found. I use goals traveling as a way to keep my mind occupied from what I was truly feeling, only up until I was still and I saw that I wasn't happy about certain things, or

there's things I needed to heal. That's when I realized how much I was carrying and I saw that I wasn't happy about certain things or there's things I needed to heal that's when I realized how much I was carrying but I didn't realize it because I kept myself busy. What would your sort of tips or advice be for people struggling with dealing with whatever they're trying to run away from essentially? I would say often it's like really simple things when you just remove all the noise but I always say ask yourself why for everything so if you're like I'm not happy then just I would say write it down so you can see it and it you don't get too cluttered in your mind but if you say I'm not happy then do a line and say why and then you would say because I'm not good enough or actually that would be like

the last line so maybe something like because I haven't gotten a job in a few months and then why because I I need something and then you just keep asking yourself that why and then you get to the core which would often be something like I'm not good enough or I'm envious of this or I don't love myself like when you get to the core of what the problem is then from there it's about taking action which obviously is easier said than done but I find that once you establish the things that sit on your shoulder or the things that are bringing you down but you don't know what they are that's when you can kind of begin to work on them and self-love is not a destination it is a journey so just because you heal something when I started loving my hair I

then had to learn to love my skin because I started to see myself naturally so that's I think that's just the beauty of it but at the same time it's like oh I thought I'd be happy when I loved my hair but now it's like no there's something else because what talked to me about your journey with skin because you had did you suffer from acne for a period was that yeah but I don't like to use the word suffer because I like I was perfectly normal and healthy but my skin was just expressing that my hormones were changing I had acne from um seven and I started getting it when I was like it was during summer so everyone was like oh it's just a heat rash but it got to November and I still had the spot so I was like I don't know about you guys but it's not hot in London so I don't know

what this is but I then went on this long journey of like using my lunch money to buy dream at moose to cover up my skin or it was just a really horrible journey of I couldn't even have eye contact with people because I was so paranoid they'll look at my skin it was very severe like when you have the red bumps that are internally there and you can't squeeze them it was really really bad how young would you say you were aware of it from like a self-conscious place or was that from the beginning too oh from the beginning because everyone around me would highlight it if if I'd go to school everyone would make fun of, like call me whatever they could find. If we would play a game of dot to dot, someone would say, this looks like your skin. Like those are the extremes of things people would do in school. And then if I'd go to a family gathering, my relatives would say, which means like, what's like your skin, your spots, what's

going on. They would highlight that to me and my mom and even my weight as well. Because I'm from Zimbabwe, most of my relatives or my cousins are very curvaceous and they're way thicker than me, which I'm always like, oh, goals. But it was always pointed out to me at family gatherings that I was skinny or I needed to eat more. They would purposely put more food on my plate because they didn't feel like I was healthy so I've always had people point out to me myself and it's funny because now I'm on social media I open myself up for the same thing which is so weird like now I think about it but I don't think it it is weird I think it's actually quite you know it's quite a common thing that I notice from a lot of inspiring people that I speak to is they always alchemize what they've struggled with and turn it into their strength then you kind of show other people that they can

embrace those aspects of themselves too and in terms of advising people on how to kind of embrace their real self because you know the problem with social media and I I notice it quite a lot and it's something that my mum's actually observed it's like there becomes like a certain look or a certain thing that people feel they have to aspire to and if they feel like they stick out in any way they don't they struggle to embrace those aspects of themselves what would your advice be for young girls growing up in the world of social media and how to overcome those things I think it's it's really cliche for me to say you know don't look at other people and compare yourself to them but

that is honestly the most simple advice because we really don't know what someone is going through when they post or we don't know their whole life and you know it's easy to look at a feed and be like oh this girl is living the best life like this isn't fair why can't I travel like her why can't I have a body like her but we really don't know how that girl feels about herself. We don't know her life to envy it. So it's really important to also follow people that do show the reality of their life and that do show themselves unfiltered, not necessarily visually, but also just vocally,

because then we will learn to love ourselves by seeing them do the same. I'm guilty of this myself, but we think that social media is this out of control landscape where we are inundated with comparison, all the stuff. But actually a friend of mine, I noticed on when he went on his Instagram versus when I go on mine. And I just realized I was like wow our worlds are totally different based off what he chooses to follow and he chooses to see and we forget that we have a

choice in that and we can we have to take responsibility to a degree and what we're what we're filling our feed with and our mind with because if we're constantly following you know just supermodels that look a certain way and are a certain size, then of course, that's going to make us feel slightly inadequate, perhaps. But if you follow things that are real and inspiring and uplifting, then that will do the same thing. So I think that that's quite an interesting takeaway is like, be mindful of what you're filling your feed with, essentially. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your book. So will you tell us what it's all about? It's a self-love journal that incorporates my journey

whilst also inviting the reader to do the same, which I really love. And I'm really excited for people to spend quality time with this book because it will allow you to be present with yourself and also just invite that journey of self-love I'm not saying it's a healing book where once you read it you're going to be like a whole new person but I'm just saying that it will spark that desire to want to love yourself more and to want to embrace yourself more. And I love that it's illustrated because I tried to, and I hope I did a great job, incorporate every woman I know,

whether it's a woman who is a black pilot, because we never see what a black female pilot, because we never see those representations. Or if it's a woman with an amputated leg or if it's a woman who wears a hijab or a woman with acne a woman with body acne I literally wanted everyone to flick the page and say oh this looks like me this looks like my auntie so I really wanted to incorporate everyone but the date it comes out is on the 6th of April that's very exciting so has it got like journaling prompts and stuff like that yes it does it has so it has some pages where it shares my own journey depending on the topic so there's six different chapters um self-love self-care relationships body skin and lines of love

and it just tells the story my story in those different chapters so my experience with the relationships my experience with friendships with self-love with my goals and it also invites the reader to now express their relationship with all of those things so I really really enjoyed making it and I every time I look at it I'm like oh my gosh like I can't wait for everyone to experience this that sounds so exciting and what was the final chapter lines of love yeah so that one's actually a really special chapter because I wanted my book to just be a reflection of my brand and a huge part of my journey has been going on tours and connecting with women so that chapter actually shares stories from some of my supporters and

they discuss their journey with their lines of love which are lines which are stretch marks and their scars with a story so the scars on their body and the story behind them because often we look at our scars and you know we wish that we could change them or heal them quickly but we don't look at the story behind it or the journey of how we were able to heal from the pain the scar caused so if it's for instance a c-section instead of looking at it as a burden you carried life like that's a beautiful scar to remind you every day of what you did or if it's a scar from a burn it will remind you of how strong you are and how you soldiered through that burn so I really wanted us to look at our scars with a different narrative of more so how we got them and how we what came out from them

and then also embracing the lines the stretch marks that illustrate the growth from girl to woman so I really really love that chapter I can't wait to read it that's very exciting oh thank you all right well I think that that that is everything, unless there's anything else you want to add for our listeners. I think just the one about self-love is not a destination, it is a journey. So even when you are looking forward to your skin clearing up on your face or you losing weight, just know that there's still so much more for you to uncover about yourself and that's the beauty of life if you you know if you're not growing and learning then you're not really living so just keep embracing the journey and don't be so hard on yourself about what you

could have done or what you should be doing just embrace the person that you are in this very moment I think that's beautiful thank you so much thank you thank you for having me you're so welcome if you want to hear more from Nia you can find her at Nia the light on instagram and Nora at stars incline and me at kaggy's world thank you very much to all of those of you who bought tickets for the live show. Sadly, we've had to push it back due to the pandemic, but it is still happening. And the new date is the 13th of April. So that's something to look forward to.

In the meantime, please do share this podcast with anyone you think might find it helpful. January can often be a cold and dark and difficult month at the best of times. But this one is particularly challenging so look after yourselves and each other. Saturn Returns is a Feast Collective production. The producer is Scarlett O'Malley and the executive producer is Kate Taylor. Now this is the last of the series and series three is coming soon but until then thank you very much for listening and remember you are not alone goodbye