Ep 2: Love's Beautiful Chaos: A Candid Discussion on Love, Loss, and Empowerment

Trigger warning for those sensitive to discussions around suicide - we start with a heartbreaking loss of a dear friend, which prompts a raw exploration of the privilege to love and be loved. 

Ever thought about why it's so hard to let love in? Join us as we debunk the myth that love is easy, and embrace the messy, complex reality that is the human heart. We'll also unravel the trappings of society's expectations and pressures as we discuss the art of "putting lipstick on a pig" - how we often mask our insecurities and vulnerabilities in an attempt to fit in. 

From navigating the often intimidating world of dating to battling societal norms as women, we share our experiences and learnings in this enlightening episode. We discuss the importance of honest and kind communication, especially in situations where there's no romantic spark, and address the need for mutual support and upliftment among women. Our conversation also wades into the deep end of privilege and freedom in the context of love, sparking a thought-provoking discussion on how our presence can liberate others. So, take a deep breath, open your hearts and let's journey together into the beautiful complexity of love.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:18

Hey, it's Lola here, one half of the juicy crew. Hello, it's Liv, and welcome back for episode two. So this episode. First of all, I want to say that give a trigger warning that suicide is mentioned in this episode. So if this is something that is particularly sensitive to you, you know. Just accordingly, maybe maybe don't listen to this, but just letting you giving you a heads up.

Speaker 1: 1:47

We were going to do an episode. The planned episode was on friendship, so if you listen to episode one, you would hear us talking about the next episode being on friendship, but we're also not people to push an agenda if it doesn't feel like it's what's needed. At the time and prior to the recording of this episode, which was recorded, I think, in June 2023, liv had some really bad news. That was very present, and so we felt like all the most natural thing would be to like loop in her experiences into the podcast, because that's where she was at right. So we went with it and we ended up with a conversation about the privilege to love.

Speaker 1: 2:37

As soon as Liv mentioned it and I live as right in the process in of it I don't even know if you had really started to process. It was quite fresh, wasn't it? It was like the next day. Yeah, it was really fresh. Okay, so he wasn't anywhere near, because I remember you're still quite in shock actually when I think about it. Yeah, but when you started, you had some musings around what a privilege it is to love and as soon as you said that, I thought, yeah, I feel like let's talk about that. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:09

It is a beautiful episode. You'll really hear us go on a journey. It really invoked a sort of immediate sense of gratitude, of wow, all the people in my life that I've loved and we had this beautiful conversation about love. And then you'll hear us. You know, there's actually quite a lot of levity in this conversation. We end up laughing a lot, we end up kind of really exploring relationships and what it is to love and how love is present in many, many places and how do we really appreciate that.

Speaker 3: 3:39

I think this episode is really good for digestion and taking a pause and taking a breath. I think that, you know, the ending of someone's life can really do that and I think that we really were in that space, that kind of sacred space where love and gratitude is really present and also humor and joy, and so I think that the you know trusting. I'm just so glad we followed it. I think it was a beautiful moment for me. I really appreciated this as a creative space to be in my raw human art broken self you know that was really where I was at, so I really hope that.

Speaker 3: 4:22

Yeah, for anyone that does listen to this, please enjoy and love to hear from you. You know what is loving to you. You know the privilege to love is something that we talked about quite deeply and I think that we will define that quite differently, so I would love to hear from anyone that's moved by this to share it with us.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Indeed. So enjoy an episode on the privilege to love. Until next time, friends, ciao, ciao. So we're going to have a juicy conversation on the privilege to love. If I think, why don't you first of all start by telling us where this comes from, because this has come out of an experience that you've had?

Speaker 3: 5:22

Thank you. So this week I found out that I'm a man I deeply loved. An ex partner of mine, a dear friend, had taken his life a few weeks ago, and it's my first time. I've never experienced suicide before. I've never experienced. I've been very close to it. I've had lots of people tell me that they've been close, they've been on the edge, they've been IDA in, they've been planning, but I've never, actually I've never experienced this kind of loss. And it's an interesting kind of loss because it's somebody that I love deeply in a romantic way. That's one of the. I've had the privilege of loving many men romantically, but he's one of my ex partners and he also was a friend for many years. After that we also really I mean me and this man really stayed in touch and so it's got these kind of layers to it.

Speaker 3: 6:33

And what's been coming up for me is I've been sitting in the grief of this loss and coming to terms with it, which, you know, quite honestly, I'm a couple of days in and I'm oscillating between Acceptance of this is what has happened and then a feeling of what the fuck, how could something like this have happened? And having an experience in my body. My body is like we're grieving. This is where we're going. The direction of travel is grief and opening. And then there's my my, my human is like what do you mean? Like this doesn't make any sense. You know that kind of I don't know whether you've ever experienced this right, like this, the spinning of all these different things all at the same time, when I can really pause inside of it it's. It's had me really feel this immense gratitude of what a privilege it is to love people. And when I think back to this particular man and this relationship that we had and it was not without his complexities, like there was many, many things that happened when me and him were romantically together I can touch the realness of it and I can feel like, wow, loving this man and loving in the way that I loved him transformed me deeply. I was not the same woman that left that relationship Like that love transformed me deeply. And it's an old Jeff Brown. It's a Jeff Brown special Jeff Brown, one of our lowler and I's. Initially we connected deeply on Jeff Brown back in the day Spiritual teacher, does beautiful writing transmissions that they're some of my favorites of his work.

Speaker 3: 8:23

He always says that the heart does not wear a watch, and you do not measure love in time. You measure love in transformation, and so the briefest encounters can change everything. It doesn't matter how long you've known someone or the context in which you knew someone, and so I I'm in the kind of early days after this experience. I'm also actually in New York right now.

Speaker 3: 8:55

My best friends, and who's also been a client of mine for many years, is getting a celebrating her marriage to her husband. They're celebrating this like three, four day affair next weekend, and so I'm really confronted with these, with these like threads, all at the same time, and it also comes for me at a time in my life where I'm really looking for love. I'm really ready for, I'm ready to love again, I'm ready to love deeply again, and it's really been quite some time for me. So that's where this theme is going from. In, you know, privileged, the privilege to love is something that I think I've touched before, but I've never. I've never sat with it like I've been sitting with it in the last few days. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Yeah, thanks for sharing that live. Oh, and sorry, sorry for your friend as well. It's the shock I think I've never lost personally haven't experienced suicide or been close. It doesn't feel like it's something that's not thread that kind of is in my system like that. I know other people where it's, it is in theirs and I think there's something for me around the shock of it. I think it is always just an extra shock. Even if someone in the public eye Goes by suicide, it's an extra layer of you know, something about that whole someone in so much pain.

Speaker 1: 10:27

They're gonna be here anymore, kind of thing. And on some levels I understand why some people don't want to be here. I can understand why some people can't cope with being here. Like there was an element, a level where I'm like, hmm, I get that. That makes that makes sense and it's that love piece. I think it's when you said about because we had we were going to do. We got some other topics planned for juicy conversations, but we're always going to go where the energy is going right. And we came on and I was like, okay, this wants to be about something else. Like something else wants to is trying to emerge here. So let's just, let's just name that, let's just talk about that for a bit before we hit record.

Speaker 1: 11:14

And I think when you said it's a privilege to love someone, you know something happened for me physically which was, you know, the kind of green light, of light it's that. It's that privilege to love. And, yes, when people pass, that is often a time when we were very clear on how much we loved. You know, love or loved someone, how complicated that love is, I don't know. For me, love takes that, takes its real form of nuance and complexity.

Speaker 1: 11:48

It steps out of Disneyland and you know rom-coms and it steps into whoa. You know this flawed motherfucker right here. I love them, you know. They were amazing and they were also a complete and art twat sometimes, you know. But that hold the reality of life that they were. They were my friend, they were my family member, you know.

Speaker 1: 12:18

And I think when you said about it's a privilege to love someone, I feel like there's so many different ways. I hear that the first way that comes up and I've never thought about this before, but the first way that comes up for me is the privilege to love someone. Because to really love someone which means unconditionally, exactly for who they are, how they are, accepting them for who they are, and navigating that complexity of doing that right as they bump up against our own edges and our own projections and our own notions of what's right and what's wrong and how people shouldn't, shouldn't be I don't believe that is available for everyone. I think a lot of people use the L word freely, very, very freely, you know, and I think love means different things to different people. For me, that the real, raw, purest version of it, I kind of it does kind of feel like a privilege to experience in my own experience of love. The reason why I say that is because I've always found love really hard, really, really, really hard, really challenging. I think love is challenging. I don't think it's easy. I don't understand that concept of people that allow, I don't know, like love. I think we kind of paint in this picture, aren't we that love is easy or something to do.

Speaker 1: 14:03

In my experience, it takes a degree of opening, takes a degree of being open, which means feeling safe enough to feel open, to be received from a system, a nervous system that's regulated enough to feel that vulnerable, Like. I'm open. Now, this is my fucking do, whatever the fuck they want to me. I'm open, right, and I think about. I think about all the trauma and the hurt.

Speaker 1: 14:36

You know that people go through all the non love that people have received and been told or in gasoline, or gasoline themselves, into believing is love and then perpetuating this version of love. That's not love. You know. Real love is transformation, with real love absolutely transforms, absolutely transforms like a freaking inferno, in my opinion, burning away everything. That isn't love, you know, and that's a idea I feel like. For me, I'm like that's a privilege Either to experience that, because you are lucky enough to be had the right set of circumstances in your upbringing to be able to do that, and it's just hey, you know? It's all I saw. I don't know any of those people. I'm just guessing that, guessing that it must exist as a thing, right? Or because you have addressed some of these issues, some of these blocks and barriers to love within yourself, which take time and energy and resources, right. So that that's where I go to when I think about the privilege to love as well.

Speaker 3: 16:00

I love that you bought in. I step in out of Disney. I think that I would say that a lot of people, and myself included at times want love to feel really good. We want it to feel really good and comfortable and like giddy and, you know, almost like childlike, just like easy. And oh my God, love, love, high kind of high pitched kind of love.

Speaker 3: 16:29

When I think about the love I feel and my definition has always been love to me is seeing and being seen deeply. So I feel the most loved when I'm seen and in order for me to be seen, I have to reveal myself. I have to feel safe enough to reveal myself wherever I am, and I feel the most connected to another person when I really take the time to see them, I really slow down and invest my time and attention in seeing them fully, to my best of my ability and in the kind of space I'm in now. This complicated, reactive but very real grief that I'm feeling inside of my body is like I can really see the truth of like, where this person was Like I'm not in any sort of delusion about that and at the same time I can feel the absolute tragedy of that person you know, choosing not to be here anymore.

Speaker 3: 17:52

And I agree that it like I also understand it. You know, I understand why for some people it is too much to be here, and so yesterday I was like I was like, oh, my heart hurts with the amount of love I currently feel blowing through it. You know that feeling in grief where it's like the gates are open, there is no door closed. Right now I am like my heart is completely open and it is feeling all of it. It's like some of it just feels so beautiful and like I'm connected to the most pure source of life. And then there's other parts where it's like so physically painful to experience the actual loss of another human being, and so it's. It's these kind of things all together.

Speaker 3: 18:45

And when I put love at the center of it, love to me is like the ability to be with all things in in all conditions. It isn't hey, when you're a good boy and you act in how I would prefer you to be in, behave, I will love you. That isn't love, right? That's control of someone's behavior based on your comfort. Love to me is like, wow, my dad's actually really taught me this one.

Speaker 3: 19:10

Like his presence has been so activating for me in so many places over the years, just by him walking in the room and being who he is and taking up space and making requests or something, and it you know, for so long, I'd be like unable to just love him there. I could just be like you are who you are. I'd be like, no, you pissed me off, you're a dick, you need this, you hurt me. And he's just like well, he's not changing, he's just going to continue to. Despite all of those things and all the things that have happened, he's not changing. He is who he is. I can either choose to fight against that and try and find reasons to not appreciate it, or I can see if there's a way here that I can be with it.

Speaker 3: 19:55

It's not accessible all the time, right, but the flow of love between my father and I happens when I see him and when I let him see me, and so I don't think that really lives in the land of fairy tale, because really seeing each other as human beings is that is. We get to see the ugly, we get to see the real, real. We get to see the suffering in someone's eyes. We get to see the struggle, we get to see the power of them or things are capable of. It's like so mixed.

Speaker 1: 20:40

I think the hard part in my experience of life, the hard part, has been receiving love. You know, big time and I could feel like my system just kind of talking a long time for me to click that that it was even a thing. Right, I'm very, very, very long time. It's almost like it wasn't a paradigm receiving love or something for me that wasn't alive in my world. And then it was. I mean, it was there, there was love to be received, but I didn't see it or feel it like that and I didn't recognize it. So that means I didn't recognize it. That's the other thing, isn't it? When you go down the let's call it, I don't know what should we call it it feels like manufactured love or something. You know, when we go down the Disney, the fairy tale, the Valentine's Day, you know kind of love, it looks good. Does it even look good? I mean, I think that's subjective. Do you know what I mean? I felt a bit like conditioned wise. That's what it's supposed to be but honestly, it never looked good to me. If I'm honest, it didn't look good. It just felt like that's what I was given. I was given this model. This is what it is, you know, and it's dense, it's a really dense model. It takes a while to chip, chip, chip through right. But what happened to me was receiving.

Speaker 1: 22:16

Oh man, it's like the receiving of love is the hard thing, and that's what I mean when I say like the privilege. You know I wasn't raised by parents or family that, in my opinion, received love and that I know that's really controversial and I know that nobody was purposely trying to harm anyone. They meant well, but it wasn't love, it wasn't love, it's not love. You know, it was something else that was very conditional, and so then you grow up with that. It was judgment. When I look back, I just think it was judgment. For some reason it feels like it was judgment and it was called love. Like I'm getting an image of like a wolf in sheep's clothing kind of thing here. You know, like this is the judgment, is the clothing. I mean, the judgment is the. I don't actually understand what is this? Yes, judgment, with love on top right. So the clothing is like the sheep's clothing, is the love, it's a wolf and it's a judgment under there. And then it just gets, you know, perpetuated, perpetuated. Everyone does it. This is what happens, and each generation tries to improve on the last generation, but they're still building on really shoddy foundations, right?

Speaker 1: 23:48

So somehow I managed to attract myself a man who did love me for me, like, legitimately all of me and I think for years I felt like something was wrong with him, probably because of that, you know, like, what, like I couldn't do it back, so I just didn't get it. I didn't understand what was going on at all, right, and we had to come apart from each other for a number of years, come back together for books. When we were apart, I recognised what was going on, like, I think this is, I think he's the one. You know, it's really weird. I had to really look at things really differently from how I've been looking, because I knew how I've been looking wasn't real and I was getting closer and closer and closer to my own truth, right.

Speaker 1: 24:43

And so I think there was just a moment for me, a defining moment of like, oh, oh, you know, I think I'm like what do I want? This is what I want. I'm like I think that's him. How come I don't want him? And it was just like.

Speaker 1: 24:59

And then it made me laugh because once we got back together, everyone around me was just like, yeah, we wasn't sure what he was doing there, like or like, yeah, I knew you two were going to get back together, and it was like I've legitimately didn't know, I really didn't know. And then, and I think it was just because in the there's a process of me loving myself, you know, learning to love myself deeper and deeper and deeper, and that love, receiving that love, had to become normal for me, you know, and I'm still open into that, I'm still increasingly open into it, but I do have the capacity for that now, you know. But I know how scary that was. There was some moment so it was like terrifying to open up like that and let someone all the way in, absolutely terrifying. I mean, logically, I knew it wasn't anything bad was going to happen. I had full trust in him, but it was. It was triggering something really deep and primal inside of like I want to just jump in here, if that's okay.

Speaker 3: 26:08

Yeah, this is one of my favorite stories of yours. I appreciate you sharing it because I also witnessed it. I witnessed this process and what I thought was so beautiful about the way you navigate this is I feel like you became a woman that was willing to be that honest with yourself. Where you're like whatever language was true for you, I can't feel this. I can't receive this. I'm going to leave, not knowing consciously that you're going to end up back with this man, but knowing that you needed to go and turn towards yourself and that you have to risk losing it all in order to do that.

Speaker 3: 27:09

And the amount of people that would never have the courage to do that and would stay in something they couldn't receive and they would blame the other person for the rest of their eternity. I mean, this dynamic exists all the time and I want to say, for anyone that might be listening to this, they might recognize themselves in Lola's story. You're like, wow, I'm totally that woman or I'm that person right now. There's some part of me that can't. I mean something that I can't really fully perceive right now. That work you're describing of coming, it's almost like going all the way back, all the way back to a little girl inside that's terrified of being loved, like re-parenting that little girl and then eventually, as the gates open, adult love partnership can come back in. In this case, like the thing I witnessed in you was he never left, he was just right there.

Speaker 3: 28:22

There was like this beautiful timing. It was just obviously clearly the truth thing meant to be. I was one of those people that was like, of course, yeah, of course. I remember the conversation we had where we were sat having breakfast at the spa and you were like, no, I'm just, I'm just revelation. I was like, oh yeah, what's that? It's me. But it was beautiful, right, because it was like a chick hatching from the egg, being like, oh my God, this is mine. And it wasn't like a running off into the distance and finding your prince charming. It was slow returning and I think what you're so good at is like meeting yourself exactly where you are, and to do that, you can actually tell somebody else hey, this is where I'm at, this is a good, this is, this is how open I am right now. And so you're giving them an honest invitation at the front door. Hmm, that's real yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:33

And that's coming from inside, isn't it? That's coming because you've got that. You say meeting yourself where you're at. That, for me, is what most people don't do. Yeah, we force that, multiple yeah, we force that. Yes, we're not meeting ourselves where we're at, we are just like we're not okay with where we're at. Because, yeah, that is this weird collapse of if I don't know. I think it's that if we're okay where we're at, we will never improve or things will never get better. But that's just bollocks, right, and I understand that and I don't.

Speaker 1: 30:06

For me, that's not all on. I mean there's personal responsibility to kind of step out of that, this agency that we have personally. But that's happened for a reason as well, right, that's that's been pumped us like nobody's business as the thing, as the truth, right. So we've been tricked there, right, and we've seen so much bullshit. And then, when you see through it, you really see through it. Then you see through it, you see through it, you realize you're like, oh, my God, it's got nothing to do with what you look like. It's got nothing to do with your height, your weight, your size, your hair, your makeup, the biscuit. You're like it's got nothing to do with any of that, not the real real, you know, and that's like I don't know.

Speaker 1: 30:57

That blows my mind. That one still blows my mind every day. And then you notice it, cause you notice things like I'll see people on TV and I'm like he's super attractive. Actually Isn't that dude? That dude is super attractive. He's not. And some of them aesthetically attractive dudes I was just like no, they're just so. Not to me anymore. It's just like because it's what's that? And my one of my favorite things that makes me laugh so much is the concept of putting lipstick on a pig. I love that. It's like lipstick on a pig.

Speaker 3: 31:35

Well, why don't you explain it for anyone in the audience? It doesn't know this one.

Speaker 1: 31:39

I just love that part. I just don't know why that makes me laugh so much. Do you know what it is? It reminds me that it was one time when I was in the prison. I was in a London prison with one of the governors and he was taking me on this tour. He's really cool. I liked him, we got on and he took me on this tour. I don't know if the imprisonment is just grim. They took me on this tour and they tried to brighten this, this corridor up or something. It looked awful and he was showing me.

Speaker 1: 32:08

You know what I'm like. I'm like, oh no, I don't know if I can do the. I don't even know what face I'm supposed to do because like, it's not going to be the right one. It's just my face is going to be like ooh. And he looked at me and he just went. I know it's a bit like putting lipstick on a pig, isn't it? And it just had me in hysterics because it literally was that. And what I'm saying here is that I'm not. I mean, there's nothing, I'm going to get it's pigs anyway, but it's that concept of like just trying to talk something up, just trying to spruce something up on the outside Like a dawn yeah, a dawn. But it's like inside. If you're a pig, just be a pigman. Do you know what I mean? Don't stop putting flowers all around you Like I'm not a pig. I'm not a pig, you know, I'm a fucking hedge or whatever.

Speaker 1: 33:06

I'm not sure what they do it, but, like you know, that thing of just like, and for me it's, it's like just be where you're at. Just be where you're at. It's like one of the most attractive things. And I'm not just talking about attractives and attracting them to the opposite sex, I mean you'll also attract anyway. You'll always attract where you're at anyway. I think You'll attract where people. So I get that You'll. If you're a lipstick and a pig kind of person, you'll attract another lipstick Pig pig and lipstick.

Speaker 3: 33:35

I'm in the smile version of this. My version of this is like. It's like. I used to think that one of my old strategies to get laid back in the day was to really really like jazz my career up. I was a CEO at the time.

Speaker 1: 34:00

Hey hello. Want to see my CV.

Speaker 3: 34:04

Yeah, but I would just go on a date and I would be so full of shit and bravado up front you know, that's so like because I really thought that if I impress this man, maybe we'll have some great sex. I really thought that I had to do all of this extra shit and then I realized like nah, I'm not gonna fuck you anyway. You don't need to do that. They don't care.

Speaker 1: 34:35

I get it. I so get it. Yeah, it's like I love that. This is my career. This is all the things that I've achieved.

Speaker 3: 34:43

Yeah, it's like, look, I'm hot shit. Yeah, I mean it's like, but it was so like this is my hard exterior, so I'm not gonna let you really see me Out back. We've got like a soft bunny but I'm gonna like put like a sort of performing peacock out the front. I did this for years. It was like really a strategy to stay safe, obviously, but also it was a strategy to get things right. It was like I don't trust the time it might take to soften and open to maybe a partner or even just sex, not socks sex.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Even buy sex.

Speaker 3: 35:31

Can buy sex, actually, yeah, you can buy sex.

Speaker 1: 35:37

I think it's like here is the oldest profession in the world. Would you like to see my CV?

Speaker 3: 35:51

Anyway. So all these strategies of getting something and think of a lipstick and a pig, it's like a lipstick on a pig. It's like all of these things we do to I thought you went to the lipstick and a pig visual.

Speaker 1: 36:07

Oh my.

Speaker 3: 36:07

God, oh my God, we've got to brain it in, sorry.

Speaker 1: 36:15

It's all got very carry on around here, all right. Okay, okay.

Speaker 3: 36:24

Okay. So all the shit that we do to try and get things because we're insecure right, it's hard to admit like, oh, I'm not. Like it's hard to be vulnerable, right, to admit where we are, yes, means that we might not get the thing we want, but we're going to be seen anyway. So I'm going to, like, show you myself and I'm going to not have a strategy of how I might be able to get something from you or manipulate an outcome that would make me feel good. I'm just going to reveal myself and I'm going to trust what might unfold with me being honest with where I'm at, not like, hey, you know what I was saying earlier about false advertising.

Speaker 3: 37:12

It's like, you know, when a woman and I've done this, she's like oh, my God, hi, oh, I'm so open, I'm so. It's always the tension and very performing in the beginning, and then you start dating this woman and they're like, absolutely hate themselves, don't do anything. You know, just like miserable. But they've hooked you up front with this kind of happy-go-lucky personality and then out back. That's not the reality, right, there's a big dissonance and this happens a lot and I have compassion for it. Right, like it's easy to it's hard because a lot of people are doing that around you, right, and like you meet, when you start kind of being like fuck that, I'm going to start being real. Yeah, some people do look at you like Oof.

Speaker 1: 38:08

Most people would say that.

Speaker 3: 38:10

I wouldn't be that honest, I wouldn't say that.

Speaker 1: 38:14

Well, think about how many like rules. I've never been good at the traditional rules of this stuff, you know. I know about them because I've seen it on TV. If I'm honest with you, I've seen it in films. But it's always felt like with friends male friends, female friends, straight friends, gay friends. They'd be like you know. They'd always be like a situation. You know how we used to have those conversations. People don't really come to me with them anymore, but this is a situation. What shall I do? You know how many times have we had these kind of conversations, and a lot of the times I just always just feel like God. I need so much more information. Like I don't know.

Speaker 1: 38:57

And I often just say like why don't you ask them? You know, and I'm always hit with like you can't ask, as if asking was like the worst thing in the world. And I was just like as if asking was going to make it less romantic. Or I had one friend ask me about how to make a move on a girl or something. Right, there's a bit of a spark there Wants to kiss her or something Doesn't want to. You know, be a creep basically. So what should you do? And I was like I need to just ask her to kiss If you can kiss her. Literally, in my mind it works like that Just can't you, just Would it be okay if I kissed you right now? He's like you can't do that, it's going to ruin the moment. And I'm thinking, is that a no, I'm not sure if it will ruin the moment at all. Actually, you know what, don't do it. Then you just sit there wondering about a fucking kiss. Why is she wondering?

Speaker 3: 39:55

You just sit there and stay wondering about the kiss Wander about forevermore. I've been following this woman on Instagram. I don't know how I found her, but she's just a recent follow-up and she's a dating person. I'm not a big fan of dating Instagram accounts there's not really that many that I resonate with but this woman what I love about her is she. People are clearly sending her DMs all the time and she uses her DMs as teaching material. So someone more like send her a case study.

Speaker 3: 40:32

Like hey, want to date with a sky. He wants to spend the night together for our second date. I'm not comfortable with that. And she's like spinning out. She's like send the whole thing, like, oh, I don't want him to think this and that. And then the woman just responds with these one-liners and it's just like I'm not ready to spend the night with you yet. Full stop, I'd love to see you. You should get her to tell Full stop. And so all she does is reflect back the request, the desire inside of the spin. She pulls it out. She's like just say that.

Speaker 3: 41:16

Or like you know, I've gone on a date with someone. It's not feeling like a romantic fit, but like, oh, he was really nice and he paid for the meal. We did the sting and it's like this is just not a romantic fit. So much of it is like upfront thinking. We need this flashy strategy and really it's like we can feel ourselves at the play by play. Oh, it feels nice to hit attention on me and he wants to see me again. I'm not quite ready yet, like we know Right, like we're always kind of like oh, I just don't really know. It's like we're usually pretty clear.

Speaker 1: 41:57

I love that. We're just not very skilled in communication, right, and it sounds like she's given permission as well. It's not just a permission, right, because they're like saying it anyway. She's like how about this? It's like yes, yeah, such a great idea.

Speaker 3: 42:13

It's your idea? Yeah, just say that.

Speaker 1: 42:18

Even things like that. So for me, all the other stuff, I love that. So she is giving, like the one liner, the clean, clear message of all the spin that they've got in their minds and that again is like a privilege to be free of that, you know, or to we never really free of it, but to even to have skills and tools or whatever to minimize it and over a period of time things do get quieter right In the mind. That's a privilege as well. Right, if you've got it. Because, like, and why I say that's a privilege is I always think of privileges what's invisible that's how I kind of see it Like what's invisible, what am I taking for granted here? What am I? Yeah, something like that. Right. So, compared to somebody whose mind is like busy, busy, busy, spinning with or loop, I can't do this, can't do this, can't say this, god be nice, can't hurt the feelings. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's a privilege if your mind is clear enough to just be like nobody's going to review just yet. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:31

I think about like I mean, catherine, do this for each other. Catherine is another really good friend of mine, also Collie. We do a lot of co-teaching together and we're both brilliant at doing this for other people. But when it's us, like one of us who's gone on a date and we're both like dating right now, we're both dating more seriously, dating with partnership, and so you want to be as honest with someone as you can upfront if it's not fit, and sometimes you know you have a really nice go on dates with really nice men that are really sweet and your intellectual conversation is in a great time, but you can still feel us it's not quite it, it's not really what I'm looking for.

Speaker 3: 44:14

He was a great guy and actually I think there's a bit of a stigma around telling someone that they're a great guy, like someone's a great guy, like you're a really good guy, you're a good man, like actually naming that is really honest and then saying I had a really great time with you. If that's true, like if you had a really great time with someone, you tell them and I'm really feeling like this isn't romantic for me and I really wish you the best and it's like so loving. But sometimes when her and I connecting, we're like we need a bit help from each other to be like we've added all this extra fluff here. You got to just clean it up for sentences. A great time with you. I think you're a great guy. This isn't feeling like a romantic fit for me. I'm really wishing you the best Right.

Speaker 3: 45:06

So loving, yes, loving, but then version one of that is like 12 things. I had a really great time, but the thing is I've been thinking all day that this is going to be all right for you to receive and you're not going to be too upset. You know it's just like oh, that's like no, throw it out, grab that version Another. You know you need someone with like a tree and even if you can't see the screen, right now I'm doing like a slice of thing like where we just cut fluff.

Speaker 1: 45:37

It's kind, I think. Kind, yeah, it's clear. Yeah, yeah, it's clear, kind, yeah, I think being clear is kindness. I like that. I mean, like you said that there, you delivered it Like we know it's not a romantic fit and also just to leave them with their stuff. If there's some stuff there for them, that's okay. They're allowed to have stuff around what you've said and they're allowed to have feelings. You don't have to get all involved, yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:07

More often than not, memo respond being like wow, thank you so much, wishing you all the best. Sometimes you might not get a response, and then that might indicate they might be a little hurt, but that's also okay. But no response is also a response, and like they don't owe you anything.

Speaker 1: 46:25

And I suppose the privilege to take that not take that personally is to have love for yourself, right, when you don't have the love for yourself, then you're not. It's not about you. You're not looking after you, which is what you're responsible for, and you're too busy worrying about impact you're having on everyone else, and not in a good way, not in a healthy way.

Speaker 3: 46:46

That's the thing people really need to clean up.

Speaker 3: 46:48

And if we go back to you know what you were sharing earlier about the journey you went through I think that that is a quality that I've witnessed that comes from being willing to take space for yourself.

Speaker 3: 47:06

Yes, like take space to get to know yourself, and I was even thinking this the other day. Right now I'm going through a process with my work where I'm just bringing out this whole new body of work around what it is to be a woman, like I'm really teaching the path of the woman, and I was thinking that what happens when I work with people and I'm like people really start knowing themselves deeply. Like I don't really say that these are all the, these are all the it's not KPIs, so I'm so out of this language, but you know what? These are all the objective. Yeah, this is all the objectives of the program. It's like there's none of that really, but I guarantee you're going to know yourself a lot more deeply by putting this time and attention and dedicating and devoting it to you, and we need that in the world. We need women that know themselves Absolutely Deeper, massive. Partner or not partner.

Speaker 3: 48:03

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 48:06

That actually doesn't freaking matter. Yeah, this is a distraction. Yeah, I agree, I'm with you. It's like we do need women, particularly women. I'm saying because I'm a woman and it's my, it's my passion. You know, working women is my passion and also, you know, we've been done dirty, man, we've been done dirty and it's had an effect on us.

Speaker 1: 48:33

Simple, so, in order just to show up in our connect. It takes so much. In some ways, it sounds so easy because once you wade through all this shit and start to see, you know, the mist starts to clear. It does weirdly feel so simple, but it's like it was not simple to do at all, right, and if you have done that to some degree because it never ends, you know then I think there is something about how you go back and help others, and I don't know what.

Speaker 1: 49:08

That can look different for everyone, but we've got a lot of work to do there, because this planet needs. It needs us, it needs we've been marginalised, so it needs us, quite simply. Right, we bring something magic when we are in the space and it isn't just a matter of us just being in it for a numbers game, right, because there's no point in us being in it. If we're just going to be trying to play the same old Tidus game, I like us to be in it and bring the thing that we bring. Yeah, now the balls to bring it as well.

Speaker 3: 49:42

Fresh juicy new game.

Speaker 1: 49:44

Yeah, for real it is. It's all about that juice, yeah, and that's a privilege. So any ladies have the privilege to be in their juice, to love, like to be loved, not even just in your romantic relationships and your friendships right In your world, in any relationships like. Use that.

Speaker 3: 50:11

We need it, man. We need it, but we need it and we need it. So it's like we're thinking like a garden that needs to be watered. That's what it reminds me of. Like when we, as women, have forgotten that we are a vast garden with like many patches, need food and nutrition and love and care. We need to care for ourselves and slow down like this, so much that can bloom and transform. When we are the ones that realize we're the gatekeeper of that. It's like we have the keys to the vessel. When I think about the privilege of this work, you know, sometimes when people ask me, I'm like what do you do? I'm like, oh, I feel like I was just showing the keys and I'm just showing other women, like, hey, like this is the key, you have it Right. And then like your garden is your garden and your garden feeds a lot of people, and like let's get that shit in bloom, baby. That's like that's nurture that garden.

Speaker 1: 51:21

Yeah, you know, one of my heroes is Harriet Tubman. For that reason, because I love the whole concept of getting free first and then going back and freeing others. You know, and it's just, I think she's such a powerful image, icon, example, all of those things of someone you know, get free first. You know she was free, she doesn't have to go back for anyone. She could have been like, yeah, I'm cool now. You know, and fair enough, fair place, where, if that's, you know, nothing wrong with that, that's what she chose to do. But nope, she went back again and again and again and freed others. Sometimes they didn't even be freed. Yeah Right, we don't force it down their throats, but we respect that. But you're there for the ones that are like, yeah, I'll take it.

Speaker 3: 52:13

Thank you so much for saying that. You've just unlocked something for me. Last night I was at this very special dinner and I was the next girl woman who South African woman, who was a constitutional lawyer in Johannesburg and she was involved in reviving the constitution in South Africa. She was a fascinating woman. She said to me she was real, like fiery powerhouse, and we were having this conversation at the table and everyone was, and there was a woman to my right was a war journalist and we were talking about.

Speaker 3: 52:57

It was one of the most dynamic and interesting conversations I've had in a really long time with complete strangers, new friends, and at some point somebody asked me a bit about what I did now and I was talking about my work and then you know what's the origin story, how did you get into this? And then I started telling them just a bit about my background and I told this woman about my work in Haiti and she looked at me and she goes how do you bridge, what's the connecting bridge between the old life and the new life? And it's a really gorgeous question. The way she asked it felt like so. She was so curious, such a nice feeling when you're first talking to somebody and I was starting to answer and I was really thinking about what's outside of me, like the way interacted with. You know, back in the day it was with our students and then now it's with my students. Now I was really thinking about the transformation of other people but, I, actually think that the bridge is that?

Speaker 3: 54:08

because she was basically kind of like why did you have to leave that life in order to have the new one? And I think what I've just heard in what you just said was I had to get free first, like I was kind of doing the same thing, but I wasn't free. And now the difference is I feel that this is what freedom feels like, and I had to do that first. No one could do it for me.

Speaker 1: 54:33

No, and then it's like this is a whole different flex. Oh good, I'm glad, Woo, Because I find it such so inspiring that whole concept every single time. I'm very clear that that's what I'm doing all the time. Yeah, Whether it's work or not work.

Speaker 3: 54:58

Right, you carry it with you.

Speaker 1: 55:00

Yeah yeah, I'm free, and I'm increasingly free, and that's a privilege, because a lot of people aren't in the same way. And so, yeah, my presence, the way I see it is, my presence liberates, and that's important, that's really important.

Speaker 3: 55:25

Wow, what a conversation.

Speaker 1: 55:30

And there you go. Do you think we did it justice? Juicy conversation with privilege to love. Mm-hmm, oh yeah, we did yeah. I think that's good, right, that's nice. I still don't know how to end these things Come.