The One You Feed - Regina Louise on Strategies for Unconditional Self-Love

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Regina Louise] is an American author, child advocate, and motivational speaker, who is best known for successfully navigating through more than thirty foster home placements as a ward of the California Juvenile Court system.Eric and Regina discuss her book, Permission Granted: Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-LoveBut wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Regina Louise and I Strategies for Unconditional Self-Love and…Her book, Permission Granted: Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-LoveGrowing up in difficult circumstances and still feeling her worthHow we can all benefit from a cleared-out heart Learning to grow through what we go throughUnderstanding that you can’t change the past, but you can reclaim your dignity and self-worthLearning to be with the difficult feelings inside of usUnderstanding that the tragedy she endured was not personalHow she learned to protect and value herself when her caregivers couldn’tHer introjections leading to her growthThe tendency to feed the “less than” of herselfTaking responsibility for her own healingCreating distance and making meaning of her past experiencesRegina Louise Links:Regina’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Regina Louise, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Radical Self Love with Sonya Renee TaylorPerfecting Self Love with Scott StabileSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I know I cannot change the past. I know I cannot change anything that occurred in my childhood. But what I have come to understand is that I can reclaim the dignity that I lost. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden. And together our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday,

we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join in the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Regina Louise, an American author, child advocate, and motivational speaker who is best known for successfully navigating through more than 30 foster home placements as a ward of the California Juvenile Court System. Today, Regina and Eric discuss her book, Permission Granted, Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love. Hi, Regina. Welcome to the show. Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love unconditional self-love. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf,

which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops. She thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother. She said, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Beautiful. What comes to mind right now is we're born into the circumstances we're born into. For some, those circumstances

are rich and are fortifying in that we have parents or caregivers who are there to validate our experience, our realities. And so we move through life perhaps with a balanced sense of self. And for me, that wasn't my experience. And so I was born into the pure raw emotions I was born into the pure, raw emotions of all the challenges of life. And so in me lives the wolf of envy as well as the wolf of possibility. And I have tread the razor's edge of both all of my life. So when I feed envy, I feed insecurity.

I feed lack of self-worth. I feed less determined. I move from a place of wonder, imagination, and excitement, and respect for this thing called me. It's beautiful. Before we get into your book, I think having a little bit of knowledge about your background, you referred to it there just a second ago, you know, you were not born into very fortunate circumstances. And then it's safe to say things potentially got worse. From there. I'm not laughing at your childhood. It's just it's a remarkable story. And while you've told that story in a variety of places, and we're not going to go into it in its long form at all, you know, a minute or two about it life is remarkable. And I will accept that. I will move forward in answering the question from that place of my life being remarkable. That's beautiful. I grew up in the same unlicensed foster home, which would be referred to today as a kinship my mother lost her mother in early childhood, latency age, and she actually was found sitting

next to her mother's body who had been deceased and then was taken in by a neighbor, and all sorts and all sorts of things were afoot. You could to one another, and I am the result of that attraction. So I have permissioned myself to re-imagine how I came into this plane. So I came into this plane as a result of, at the very least, lust. And I'll take that. Energy. There's some energy in it. I'll take that. Energy. There's some energy in it. And, you know, that may contribute to my passionate sense of spirit and my seemingly effervescent hope, you know?

a very spirited, precocious, in-your-face sort of a child, and I wasn't willing to accept my circumstances. I wasn't willing to allow anyone to beat my spirit out of me. It just wasn't up for negotiation. So as young as I can remember, I've always felt protective of my own interior experience. And I was a victim of horrific child abuse and neglect. So I learned to attune to what did not feel right inside of me and then listen for the ways in which to alleviate the suffering or discomfort. As young as I can remember, 11. And then one day in church, I had an experience which,

not so unlike the phrase in O Holy Night, when the soul felt its worth, I felt my worth and I decided to defend my own innocence. And so I took myself away from the people who did not seem capable. And I didn't stop running until, to tell you the truth, I don't know if I ever stopped running in one way or another but I was I left that situation and I went on to live in over 30 different foster homes I was in a residential treatment center level 14 which is about the highest a child can be placed in before being admitted to a mental hospital. And I lived much of my adolescence on a cocktail of psychotropic, tropic rather, drugs, cocktails. And, you know, it took decades for me to understand the politics of race, class, gender. That was the framework

through which people saw me. They pathologized me, and given that I was an orphan with no one fighting for me, no one considering I began the work of remembering the soul felt its worth myself to live my best life despite the, I love this word, I'm going to try and use it in this conversation, despite the vicissitudes. I love that word too. the sadness, massaging, the release of built-up grief, you know. And so thank you for an opportunity to explore that and allow me to be real with it. Yeah, and one of the things I love about the book is that there's a lot of very difficult circumstances in it for you that you don't shy away from,

nor do you shy away from the impact that has had on you as an adult. And yet, there's always a sense of a belief, you know, I like what you said there there the soul feels its worth there's always this sense through it all that you somehow had that vision which i think is really really powerful right and given that i am a soul not unlike any other soul in the eight billion souls upon this planet, pushed to the extreme, we are all built for resilience. And for those who believe in the tenets of Christianity, look what Jesus himself endured to only transcend death. and the resurrection are emblematic of what is possible for the soul, then I've done nothing more than what any of us are capable of doing.

It's just that I was put to the test as a human to do it, as many are. as many are. And it's the belief. For me, my thoughts drive my beliefs. My beliefs drive my

emotions, how I feel about a thing. And because I believed that for God to love the world, that he gave his only begotten son, and whosoever shall believe shall have everlasting life,

I believe that. That would be the depth and the crux of a belief that I believe I wrapped my soul around the axle of. Sounds like you've got a little friend there who's not happy about not being involved in this conversation. You heard Tandi. Yes, she, Tandi really likes me. She likes being around me and sometimes I'm trying to get away from Tondi to have some space.

How old is she? Tondi turned one on December 5th, on Monday. All right, so she's still learning. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We've got two dogs in the other room, and they are on the other end of the life spectrum. They're both 12 12 uh i think one of them might be 11 you know so they're you know we we call it we jokingly refer to it as the the doggy retirement home here you know because they're they're they're elderly but uh so they're

they're a little more peaceful than than tondi is yeah you know how they spin on a window or a door when they walk in? She's not above it. Yep. She will spin, Eric. Yep. Yep. Well, if at any point you feel like letting her in, she's of course welcome. I think I need to do that otherwise. So give me a moment. Okay. Yeah. All right. All right. Let's see what she does.

Okay. Well, welcome, Tandi. So I want to move into your book now. There's nine strategies I see what she does. And I wanted to ask it, and you referred to it, you said we can all benefit from a cleared-out heart. Say a little bit more about what a cleared-out heart means to you, because that's a beautiful phrase. Thank you. out heart means I've been attentive to what shows up, what comes calling, what comes knocking in my life. And I take the time that it takes to be with, sit with, listen to, contemplate whatever arrives and in so doing I privilege challenging feelings, fear, envy, avarice, whatever arrives and I become familiar with these visitors and I understand to the best of my ability what each of them the gift that each of them brings to and for me and with that I'm better able to rest in the disturbance, rest in the truth of who I am. So the more I face the repressed experiences, the more room I make, the more space I make

for the repressed emotions or feelings or experiences to show up. And the more that I can filter them through the contact of my... Wow. You could take her collar off temporarily. That will solve that problem. I've got lots of experience in this area. Tondi. Tondi, come experience in this area. Tondi. Tondi, come, mama.

Come, come. Yeah, here we go. Eric is so smart, and he must have a great editor. I do. Sound editor. And my sound editor, Christopher, who's listening to this, hello, Chris, loves dogs, too. So we are big, big big dog lovers so okay okay

i don't know where you were um you were just finishing up sort of talking about privileging difficult emotions my my my feelings and especially the difficult ones because the heavy ones, fear, which is big. The lack of feeling safe, which is big. Envy, which is big for me. To filter those through my heart and to understand the circumstances, to understand that in order for me to be alive now, I was brilliant enough to hand over my sense of self, my sense of being to someone else to use in order for them to try and live their own lives vicariously through me and recognize that I had a lot of adults in my life who were predators, emotional predators, spiritual predators, right?

Intellectual predators. And when I can hold that and become the refuge for all of those experiences and recognize that they are not me, but rather circumstances I endured. I clear my heart out. Thank you for that. And I think that applies a little bit to what you say, your strategy number four, which is to grow through what you go through. And in the book, though, over and over, I'm really struck by you talk about doing what you just said. And I think you use the word I privilege the emotions that are negative, right? And there are lots of times in the book where you really, in essence, stare them down, right? But you bring them and you say, I'm going to be here with you, right? And a lot of us are very happy to trot out the idea that our difficult experiences

in life are what help us grow. It's a lovely idea. It sounds good on a greeting card, right? But when we're right up against those emotions, we just want to get away. And I was just really impressed by how you stay with them. So how do you help yourself do that? Because that's a difficult thing to do. You know, we're wired to kind of want to digress a bit and say addiction, substance abuse, those are bridges that we build consciously or otherwise to avert ourselves from going to the depth of the soul's need. I believe that when I can withstand the heat of my own loss, my own disappointments, my deep insecurities, my deep fears, when I can not disintegrate unintentionally in the face of intimacy with myself,

then what I do is what my caregivers, not one of them really, could do. So my task as the adult, and let me say this before I say that, I know I cannot change the past. I know I cannot change anything that occurred in my childhood, but what I have come to understand is that I can reclaim the dignity that I lost. That I can, because dignity and self-worth are but synonyms, right? So I understand the assignment,

and the assignment is to believe that within me exists a mind, a soul, and a power that is far greater than any lesser law in the universe. And every time I show up and I don't unintentionally disintegrate in the face of intimacy every time I show up to allow what occurred and never had the chance to be expressed to metabolize what I am doing is giving my spirit the opportunity to triumph. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out

if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You mentioned addiction. I'm a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic, and there was a line in the book that really struck me. a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. And there was a line in the book that really struck me. And I think it sums up very well, kind of what I ultimately believe about, we have to be able to do this in order to get over addiction. And this is what you said, there was only one way to be without smoking. And that was to find a way to be with myself, my feelings, my loneliness, the reality, my circumstances, the depth of the loss and the pain. And it's just that, like, I think to get over an addiction, we have to get to the

point where we go, I can be with what's in here. I may not like it, it's uncomfortable, but I can be with it. And I love the way you speak to that. And you talk about the fact that whether you want to think of it as something out there, something in here, it doesn't even matter. There is a power that we have. There's a dignity that we have as people that allows us to be able to do that. I agree. You know, I get tender as you put it that way, as you reflect back, right? Writing oftentimes can be a one-way, it's like a one-way experience, but when I experience you giving me back and understanding the gravity of what I experienced, and it allows me to feel seen in a very tender way, in a very true way. And I just wanted to respond to that,

and I didn't hear your next statement because I was still in that. And I didn't hear your next statement because I was still in that. I am glad for that. Makes my heart warm to hear you say that. We were just sort of talking about this ability to be able to handle what is inside of us, you know, to know that there is something within the human spirit or God's spirit or whatever your beliefs are, there's something in there that is, as you said earlier, is capable of overcoming these even horrible things. Well, as you say what you say, I will claim it for myself as the ginormous back cause, front cause, first cause, all cause. back cause, front cause, first cause, all cause. white noise, if you will,

that assaults the intellect, the mind, endlessly. And one of the things that was so profound recently, I was driving through my neighborhood, and a lot of the streets are shrouded in trees that have the capacity to move towards one another to create a canopy. And as I was driving through, I recognized, and it nearly knocked me to my knees, although I was driving, that I was actually driving through the mind of consciousness. Pure, unadulter. And I saw how the trees, how the tips of their boughs reached out in a majestic way to create this entrance into the mind, into the spirit of God and all that is. And I watched the breeze move through the trees

and the effortlessness of existence being what it is and not needing to be different for anyone or anything. And I gave myself permission to consider that. No matter what anyone says about my race, my creed, my color, my religion, for whatever that means, my life can be effortless. And I can recognize that there is something larger, greater, deeper than what I can see with the naked eye. And I am grateful. Yeah, that's beautiful. And you just said something that made me think about a conversation I had with somebody the other day.

And you were talking about all the white noise that assaults our soul and spirit now. And there is so much of it. There is so much of it. There is so much of it. And I was thinking about also the experiences that you've had that cause great, great harm and trauma. And what's the right way to say this? When we are really deep in healing, there is a clarity sometimes that we don't get in day-to-day life. You know, I know for me, my early years of recovery, the transformation was so clear and so profound because I was so damaged. There was so much to do. I find sometimes it harder to enter that space as I am more healed.

And I think to your point, the way to do it is that pruning of these things. I think sometimes early on in our healing, we it is that pruning of these things. I think sometimes early on in our healing, we're already pruned. Everything is pruned, right? And as we heal and we return to more of the parts of the world, my experience is, and this is for myself, is I have to, like you say, I have to really work on pruning the unimportant stuff that starts to get in the way. One of the things that has supported me on my healing journey, other than the decades of talk therapy that I have allowed myself to engage in, I am what's called, I work for the Hoffman process. I don't know how familiar you are with it, but I am a Hoffman process teacher eight times a year outside private practice of socio-emotional coaching, healing.

And one of the first times I ever had the opportunity to grieve publicly, to grieve publicly, openly, loudly, was when I went through the Hoffman process for the first time in 2015. And if you want to talk about growing through what you go through, I had never, through what you go through. I had never, Eric, I didn't even know. There's so many things I didn't even know that I had not been privy to in my life. So many. And it was going through that and facing the death. I mean, I'm talking the simple experience of not being celebrated really for a birthday, not receiving Christmas cards, I mean, decades and decades and decades of feeling as though I was a refugee in my own country, feeling as though I was an imposter in my own country, feeling as though I was completely, completely, unapologetically, systematically erased. And walking around with that, having more grief than I knew was humanly possible, than I knew was humanly possible.

Being a reservoir for so much toxicity that was just handed down epigenetically and yet recognizing my soul's worth and it was my duty. It was my duty and it is my duty to empty the garbage can to take it out to recognize the toxicity that which is not for me let it go and as reverend like i'm thinking as reverend 14th century was it reverend Hillel? If I'm not for me, who will be? And so giving myself permission to listen to that inherent GPS system, aka my spirit, to show me, to lead me, to guide me in that which was for me, and to turn from that which is not.

And so growing through what I go through, going through all of it, I listened. I listened. And I decided to become that interpreter of my own melodies and carve out a way to be in this world on my own terms and to commit to that. And that is how I live my life today. And also this other idea that just popped into my mind. As I began to write my latest book, Permission Granted, it was the first time I allowed myself to really recognize and to feel the truth that I spent my adolescence in solitary confinement. Eric, who does that? Who does that to a little girl?

Black, white, Latina, it doesn't matter. And I remember when I was on the set of the movie about my life, I Am Somebody's Child, and the young actor who played me, Angela Fairley, ran to the gate and grabbed a hold to that cyclone fence as Jean drives away. And at that very time that movie was released, there were children at the border being separated from all that they knew. knew and I can see how none of it really is personal and how do we how do I transcend even that even that and find remember, not even find, just remember my worth. And I invite other people to remember theirs. Sometimes tragedy, it's going to find who it's going to find. And it's going to do what it does.

And I allowed myself to consider that. It's not personal, Regina. All that you've endured, it is not personal. This had nothing to do with who I am. Because none of these people knew. They didn't know what I would grow up to be. They had no idea. This wasn't about me. This was about their limitations. I just happened to be at the end of their projections. I wasn't protected, so I've learned to protect myself.

I wasn't valued, so I learned to value myself. So in all those places where those people who were tasked to care for me aren't or weren't, it literally has made more room for me to show up and to be all that I can be, which, of course, has its own set of issues. Because if I had a dime for every time someone told me I was too big, I'd be a billionaire. And people don't understand, though, that to be as big as I am is a testimony to the depth of the darkness and the hard things. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you,

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, Not Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really.

Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You said so many really powerful things in there. One of those is about the personal aspect. I think that is so important. It's a concept I teach in a program I run called Spiritual Habits around if we can stop taking some of this stuff personal. It happened to us. It affected us. But as you said, it wasn't about us.

And the difficulties that happen in life, by and large, are not because of our failings, because of something that's wrong with us, not because we're not worthy. It's because that's life. Life is filled with challenging circumstances. And I love what you've talked about about sort of intergenerational, right? Like you were just the tip of the spear of a lot of intergenerational pain that's been rolling down. And yet my family has passed pain down generation to generation. And I'm like, I'm not going to stop any of it from getting to my son. Or am I going to stop all of it? I'm going to stop what I can.

And that piece about not taking it personal brings me to another part of your book that I pulled out that I really liked, which you talked about. liked, which you talked about, I must recover from the introjections I experienced while growing up versus projections. Talk about what an introjection is, because I think this is what you were just essentially just saying. Right. So an introjection in the context in which I'm using it, I heard constantly, you're never going to be anything. You're never going to succeed. You are a waste of time in this world as a result of that, then begin to use those interjections as the knife that will whittle my sense of self, carve my identity from, then I'm in trouble. And I was the sort of child who is sort of like Jim Carrey when he said, I know I am, but what are you? I know I am, but what are you? I had a little bit of that, like, oh, okay,

that's what you think. And I remember saying things like, that's not me. That's not me. That's not me. That's not, that's not me. That's not me. So yes, I heard those things. Some of those things I allowed to come in. And some of those things became the foundation of me being a rebel. Absolutely. Okay. And when people told me I was less than that came in. Less than what? What does that mean? So then I'm going to go and move against that and let that be the sharp edge, right? The growth edge that I move up against and allow that to cut and carve and chip my character into being. So if I'm less than, the opposite of that is I am everything. I'm everything and I'm nothing.

But at least I get to say that. And what does that mean for me? So introjections, when we begin to understand them, to interrogate that, to investigate that, to sit with that, to be with that, to understand it and have some mastery over what it is we believe to be true about it, it can serve us or not. You talk in the book about the ability to be seen. And you have a line, you said, to be seen is to become acquainted with what lies within you, and then to welcome those whom you feel safest to join in on the magnificence of your being. It's just a great line.

the magnificence of your being. It's just a great line. Yeah. I have a pattern of feeding my less than enough self. And when I fall into a pattern of self-deprecation, self-hate, then I set other people up to feed that part of me, the self-deprecation, the self-hate. And in so doing, I am allowing a part of myself, my false self, to be seen. And I use that as a weapon against me to prove that I am less than whole. that I am less than whole. When I am healthy and cognizant, awake, aware, alive, about the truth of who I am, then I allow myself to first see myself and then engage in a way

that supports the full truth of who I am. There's another line where you say, offer an alternative to the trope of victimization, that I could only treat myself and others as well as I had been treated. I think that's so, so great. I mean, there is a reality to being a victim of things. And as you said, there are tropes of that. And one of them is that, you know, I can only treat myself or others as well as I've been treated. You know, I can be really intense, Eric, in how I view myself and how I view circumstances. And bear with me as I make my way through what you just said. And I have, according to a lot of people, every right in the world to recognize that I was a victim.

One of the best things that my social worker said to me, the one who would not allow me to be adopted, she said, you do not have the luxury as do young white girls who have daddies that have deep pockets that can pay to fix anything in their lives. You, however, don't. So I recognized that and I couldn't afford to feel sorry for myself. And as WH Auden says, I've never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. And I sort of adopted that idea of not being a victim, of not giving that the power over me. Yes, there were circumstances where I was victimized. If being a victim is a state of consciousness that requires a certain kind of perseveration in order to keep the energy of it going, then the way I look at it is, if I look back and go, you were a victim of certain types of experiences.

Those experiences are over. The trauma of those experiences get triggered. Why? Because the very nature of trauma is to overwhelm the meaning-making faculty of the brain. And when later the triggers arrive, It is at that moment we can bring consciousness to those feelings, going back to a cleared-out heart, going back to being a refuge, and sit down with the victim or the circumstance that was victimizing. Sit down with them. Have a conversation.

victimizing. Sit down with it. Have a conversation. Have empathy for the little girl who was the recipient of unconscionable actions and behaviors. So to sit down with my own innocence, and to say, come on, sweet child of mine, tell me, what happened? What do you need? And oftentimes, it's a witness. It's someone who will hear the shame of it. hear the shame of it. As a teacher at Hoffman, as we're teaching some of the heavy, heavy, heavy human experiences, we use a quote from John Bradshaw who says in order to be healed of our shame we need to have the opportunity to share our shame with someone who will not shame us.

I have learned to become a reservoir of understanding for my own shame. And at times that is recognizing that a part of my child was a victim unwittingly. And so that I don't get lost in the grief of that. That's a beautifully nuanced take on this idea, because I do think this is such a slippery slope. It's so hard to talk about sometimes these ideas that these things did happen to us that should not have happened to us.

Or. Or. Or. These things happen to me because life finds the opportunities to express itself. And whether or not it should or shouldn't have is irrelevant. Right? That's fair. Maybe it would be better to say these things were done to me that caused harm to my internal self. So should, should not, I agree. These things happened that harmed

my internal self. And it would be lovely if whoever did the harming would come along and do the cleaning up. That would be lovely. And that's not how it happens. Now you're preaching. Come through. That's not how it happens. So the responsibility is transferred to us. Absolutely. And yet, sometimes when we say that, it's said in a harsh sort of way.

Sometimes when we say that, it's said in a harsh sort of way. And what you just described was taking that responsibility on in a really tender and healing way. And so I just thought, again, this topic often lacks nuance when people talk about it. And I think it's important that the nuance is important. Absolutely. I am intentionally slowing my central nervous system down because I used to pimp my trauma. And I used to allow other people to do it too, when I didn't know the difference. So I will say, the first 15 years of my being an advocate for healing, I did it at my own expense, but I did not know that. And I did not recognize that I was re-traumatizing myself so frequently, making a lot of money doing it, but I didn't recognize that. to bring a tenderness, it's important to slow down that vagal nerve, to slow down so that sharing my truth is more of a reward, right? So that it's more of an experience where dopamine, serotonin is released.

And my body knows the difference, right? And my body is saying, thank you, Regina. Right? And my body is saying, thank you, Regina. I appreciate the to generalize because I don't like being captured in a wide swept generalization. And so I'm mindful of that. But in the work I do, I'm able to observe what happens when human beings become worthy, when they believe that they are worthy of that tenderness you just pointed out, of their own tenderness as opposed to always needing to have it from someone else yeah yeah and boy is that a powerful switch when you're able to sort of give some degree of it to yourself and what you were just saying made me think a little bit about you know when you said pimping out my trauma you know i think early on in our recovery journey from whatever we're recovering

from the amount of time that we have of being in the recovery journey versus the amount of time that we were in the hard part of it is out of balance. And so there's a lot more of the old stuff. You know, I, I know earlier for me, you know, three years into recovery from, from heroin addiction, I had three years of recovery and a lot of years of not. And so all the years of not being in recovery, there was a lot more talking about that. Now, I find that that part of it to be very like, yeah, okay, yep, that happened. And now let's talk all about how you get better from it, right? And it feels like that shift occurred in you also. Right. Oh, my goodness.

For my book, my first book, Somebody, Someone, came out in 2003. which is when I flipped the script on the type of writer I want to be. There was another flavor of writer that was born. And I recognize I don't want to continue to re-traumatize myself and then spend, you know, three times as long recovering. So from, you know, standing on stage, 5,000, 10,000 people. Now, I better understand how to do that without it being at my expense, but still very visceral and connecting with humanity. not so much what happened to me but what I did with what happened to me so making meaning out of it getting some distance from it and making meaning out of it

and bringing the tools of mindfulness meditation and contemplation centering to the experience and extricating myself from it. And having an ability to be reflexive, to stand outside of the situations and recognize that, oh, that was an event, that was a situation, and that is not me. So extricating myself. That is not me. That is what happened. But that is not me.

Whoa, whole new level of engagement. Yeah. If I'm not an orphan, if I'm not a useless black woman, if I'm not that person that was unintentionally born that is taking up too much air for someone who was intentionally born, if I'm not that then who am I? Right? to be the author of who I really am. That's something to aspire to and to bring others along, to include others. One of the things that I recognize as a memoirist, because I have mostly written in the genre of memoir, written in the genre memoir is I saw how it felt as though my experience was not universal,

especially in America, where oftentimes we don't privilege taboo experiences, children born out of wedlock, orphans, marginalized people. You know, we have these categories for being that have actually nothing to do with anything other than the fact that maybe people are afraid that those people who have allowed life to touch them in that place where spirit meets bone and have been scorched and burned multiple times, perhaps the fear that just being in proximity with someone like that will then affect, you know, one's life. Aside from that, yeah, I lost where I was going. Anyway. Well, I think that is a great place for us to wrap up with really the thought that I think you left us with there that was really beautiful is this idea of being the author.

You know, being the author of our own life. Before we say goodbye, maybe you could share a little bit about what's coming up in your world. Oh, thank you. I'm so excited, Eric. I am fortunate enough to be partnering with the Omega Institute in New York. And in March, I will offer a experience with them for people. And the best way to stay abreast of what that will be and when all of those deets is to go to my website, www.iamreginalouise.com and subscribe, right? And then in and subscribe, right? And then in September, I will, I'm so excited. You have no idea how long I've waited for this opportunity, especially as a Black woman writer, artist, teacher. I am going, again, in collaboration with the Onega Institute, offer a five-day immersive in-person experience.

Eric, I'm over the moon. So again, to stay abreast and informed, you can follow me on Instagram at TheRealReginaLouise or my website, www.iamreginalouise.com. Awesome. And we'll put links in the show notes to all that stuff. So listeners, you can just click on that if you want to go through easily. And that's so wonderful. I love, love, love Omega. And we just confirmed a workshop with them for the fall for us.

So more details on that coming. But yes, the place has been very important in my healing and it's a wonderful place. So congratulations. Those sound like two really great experiences. Thank you. I am grateful. Yes. Well, I am grateful for you taking the time am always cognizant of the gift of podcasters sharing their platform with artists like myself. So I want you to know that I appreciate you and thank you for sharing, again, your platform with me. It means everything. You are very welcome. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.

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