Uncharted & Unfiltered: The Journey Back to You

E142: Reclaiming Your Truth

• Cynthia Jamieson • Episode 142

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Thirty years. That's how long I carried parts of my story in silence before finally bringing them into the light. Today, I'm sharing not just the polished leadership lessons, but the full, unfiltered journey that shaped who I am as a coach, mentor, and human being.

In 1996, as a young mother trying to keep it all together, I experienced workplace sexual harassment that changed everything. I didn't have the language then to name it, but that moment made me quiet when I wanted to scream, strong when I felt scared, and fierce about boundaries and justice. Now, I'm naming it—not for sympathy, but for sovereignty. For every person who has carried something quietly, for the parts of myself I once hid.

Through my meditation practice and work with the Institute of Intuitive Intelligence, I've been learning to hunt down fear in my system and release it. The chakras have become my teachers, helping me recognize when my body is asking for attention. Those moments when you feel a tightness in your chest before speaking up? That's energy talking to you. Most of us were never taught to listen, but I'm learning with deep reverence, and it feels like coming home.

I share other personal revelations too—why I haven't watched the news since 9-11, how meditation shifted from luxury to necessity, running a half marathon before training to prove I could, and the dreams still living in my heart: a café by the water where people gather to create and connect, books I long to write, and a home that serves as a hearth where family can arrive just as they are.

It has taken me nearly 59 years to speak this freely, live this openly, and love this fiercely. But now there's no going back. What truth is ready to be named in your life? What dream waits quietly in your heart? If something stirred while listening, let that be your sign. You don't need to act, just notice. And if you feel called to share, I'm here—no judgment, just presence and a whole lot of love.

Please rate and review with your honest opinion. Subscribe and share with your colleagues especially if you have worked with me and found value in the work we’ve done together.

Connect with me in my favourite places, LinkedIn and Instagram and my website is: https://www.cynthiajamiesoncoach.ca/

Make it a great week!

Cynthia Jamieson 🧡🌱

✨ Ex-HR Exec | Conscious Leadership Coach | PCC Certified | Developing Authentic Leaders to Trust Their Internal GPS |🏃‍♀️🚴‍♀️🧶 Passionate About Movement & Creativity | 💖 Nanny to 4


Speaker 1:

Welcome to Unchartered and Unfiltered the journey back to you. I am Cynthia Jameson, your host, and this is where we break free from the noise and dive deep into what truly matters you. If you're tired of the shoulds, the expectations and the pressures to fit into a mold that doesn't serve you, you're in the right place. This isn't a podcast about easy answers or sugar-coated advice. This is your invitation to reclaim your path, embrace the unknown and become the bold, unapologetic version of yourself that's been waiting to show up. It's time to get unfiltered. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and welcome back to Unchartered and Unfiltered a journey back to you. Hello, friends, how are you? It's Cynthia here today, and today I've decided I am not going to hold anything back.

Speaker 1:

This episode has been on my heart for a while now, and I think it's finally time. Time to share not just the polished parts, not just the leadership lessons and insights from the coaching chair, but the full story, the real bits, the painful parts, the quiet, ordinary moments that have cracked me open and the ones that called me truly, truly called me to the work that I do today. So, if you have a hot tea or a coffee or something with bubbles if that's what you prefer nearby. Now would be a really good time to cozy up, and you know that I love the metaphor of us sitting across from one another on the couch and that very much gives me solace and gives me comfort and gives me so much joy when I drop in tune in to have a conversation with you each and every week. So I would really like to start here, and what I mean by that is today, as I record this, today, as I record this, I have been meditating daily for a year and a half and I have enjoyed all of that so much. It has given me so many gifts that I can't even begin to explain to you. And, as I mentioned last week, and I think I've mentioned before, I have been working with my mentor, crystal Moreland, since last fall, deepening my connection to my intuition and also, because I have also talked about this before, many of you know that I have been studying with the Institute of Intuitive Intelligence, where I have been honing and training what they call the superconscious intuition.

Speaker 1:

And this work is not surface level. Let me just say that, and it's also not about having all of the answers or by or. Let me see how do I want to explain this. It's not about having all the answers or bypassing the hard stuff with spiritual language. It really isn't. It's about getting really honest with yourself. It's about being really human and showing up and being in full responsibility and full accountability for who you are, how you think, how you feel, what you do and that energy behind all of that.

Speaker 1:

And one of the things that we have been doing, that I've been doing is learning to literally hunt down my fear in my system and with the intention of releasing it, and I can tell you that fear hides in sneaky places. So part of that process I'm not going to spend a lot of time about that but part of that process also involves learning about the chakras, and I didn't know a whole lot about the chakras at all, but I can tell you that they aren't spinning wheels of light, but they are energetic patterns, they are divine teachers and they are also sometimes feisty little gremlins with really strong opinions and sometimes they want to hide from you. They are our personality archetypes, they are our wisdom keepers, if you will, and they are memos from your soul. So if you've ever felt a tightness in your chest before speaking up, a lump in your throat during a hard conversation. That is your energy talking to you, that is your body asking for attention. Now, most of us were never taught how to listen to our bodies and I am learning. I'm learning slowly and I'm learning with deep reverence. And I will be honest with you. It is shifting so much inside of me. It feels like a. It feels like a coming home. You know when you haven't seen someone in your family for so long and you knock on the door and they open the door and all of a sudden, you know when you haven't seen someone in your family for so long and you knock on the door and they open the door and all of a sudden you just have this warm embrace. That's how it feels. It's a reclaiming, it is a no more holding back kind of moment. It is a let me hug you so hard because I've missed you so much kind of moment, and so I'm going to take you back. I've done this before. I'm going to do it one more time. I want to bring you back to 1996.

Speaker 1:

Now, my boys at the time were six and four and I was trying to keep everything together. And then I experienced something that changed me forever. I was sexually harassed at work. Now, at the time I didn't have the language to name it, I did not understand trauma, we did not talk about things in terms of trauma at that point and I didn't know how shame could lodge itself in your nervous system like an uninvited guest. But I do know this. That moment changed me. It changed my life, it changed the trajectory of my life. It made me quiet when I wanted to be, it made me strong when I felt scared and it made me fierce about my personal boundaries, about fairness and about justice.

Speaker 1:

And today I am naming it, and I'm not doing this for sympathy, I'm doing this for sovereignty, for every human who has carried something quietly, for the parts of me that I once hid. And through this work, with intuition and energy, I have been reclaiming those parts of myself, one chakra at a time, if you will, because I am not ashamed. I am not defined by that moment in my life. I am whole. I am standing in my story, fully, finally and freely feels so good to not be held back, held under, held by something that is so far back. And it's so interesting to me because I think the reason this has been coming up for me is because it is almost exactly 30 years and life has this way of bringing things back around so that you can heal certain parts of yourself, and there was a part of me that was stuck in that moment, and in my work with the Intuitive Intelligence Institute, I was able to reclaim that, and so maybe you've got a story like that too. Maybe you have a truth that hasn't yet been named, or a dream that you have quietly shelved, a version of you that has been waiting for permission to show up. And if that's you, I just want to say I see you and I want to ask where are you still holding back what's asking to be named, claimed, healed or honored in your life? Now I also want to share a few other things that you might not know about me, Because when you decide that you're going to share what has been on your heart, you don't just choose some certain bits, you choose some other pieces so that people can get a sense of who you are as a human being, as a coach, as a leader.

Speaker 1:

Now, I have not. I've got a few of these, not many. I have not watched the news since 9-11. The news since 9-11. That day lives in my bones and I decided that I did not want to keep living on a steady drip of fear, and that decision has changed my nervous system and my life. That is one of the best decisions that I have ever made and, as a mom, and really wanted to spend time being present with them, having them be outdoors, getting energy from Mother Nature I wouldn't have described it that way at the time but really being present with what was they were kids.

Speaker 1:

Something else I want to share with you I cry. Yeah, a lot Turns out. I cried on this podcast today Joy, grief, beauty, frustration, greeting cards, movies I love all of it. And I used to think that I had to hold it all in. I used to think that I had to suppress my feelings in order to be safe in my own body, and then I used to think that I had to hold in these feelings so that I could be quote unquote professional. And now tears are sacred and all of them are welcome by me, by my clients, by my family, by anyone.

Speaker 1:

I think it's so beautiful to allow yourself the ability to cry, because that's your body's way of releasing what you may not know, that is stored within your system, and I will tell you. When I first started meditating, I cried a lot in my meditations and I didn't understand why, and I didn't know why that was happening, and so that's how I learned about it, because I did some research on it. And when you begin being still, when you and actually there's a choice before that, which is when you stop pushing and decide to give yourself space and grace, to be in the stillness of who you are, your body doesn't realize what's happening, and your body decides on its own rhythms and its own decision way that it makes decisions to release what no longer serves you. And what I also have learned that I find so incredibly beautiful about this is we don't have to know what we are letting go of, we just have to be willing to let go of it, and I think that's why well, I know that's why I have really really held on to this meditation practice, and I can't see my way without it.

Speaker 1:

One other thing that I would share is in the last oh my gosh seven weeks, I have spent 30 to 35 minutes a day sometimes longer in prayer, spending time with God, and I have spent another 30 minutes of time in the day in meditation, and what's interesting about that is, for me, stillness used to feel very much like something I couldn't do. It felt like I wasn't able to sit still long enough to be still, if you will, so I needed to learn how to do that, and over the course of my life I've been able to learn how to be still, and it also used to feel like a luxury, and I just think that's fascinating, because past me would have rolled her eyes at the luxury, if you will, of me spending an hour a day by myself, but now I crave it by myself. But now I crave it. I crave it so much that it's actually non-negotiable and it's not even enough time. There's more time that I want to spend in stillness because there's more for me to learn from my body. There's more for me to learn from tuning out of everything that's happening around me, not because I'm better than or any of that at all. It's really for me to take an opportunity to drop into the world within the world, to notice myself, to witness myself, to spend time doing that and getting to know who I am. Now, the last thing I want to share is something that I think every I think that you'll find hilarious At least most people. When I share this with them, they they laugh and then they ask me tons of questions about it.

Speaker 1:

But back in 2012, I ran a half marathon before the training even started. This is a bit of a scream, because, for me, I felt like I needed to know that I could do the thing, and so what I did is I didn't set out to run to do a half marathon in one go, but here's what I did I ran it in 5K increments just to prove to myself that I could. And it's so interesting to me that this is coming back around, because sometimes what I want to leave you with to think about here is, sometimes belief is all we need to begin. All we need to begin is the belief that we can. My husband says this every once in a while Belief is the most powerful thing, and it can change so many things about you as a human, about an organization that you're with, that you're working with, about a country that you're living in, like.

Speaker 1:

Belief is an incredibly powerful thing, and the more that I work with the institution of intuitive intelligence, the more powerful that is, because if I believe that I am God, if I believe that I am capable, resourceful, whole, like if I have all of the abilities, if you will, that God, however you define God has, then I'm pretty darn capable, and so are my clients, and so I have been showing up knowing, believing that God is across from me in the Zoom room and it's changing everything, because it's changing my ability to show up in my strength as well as knowing that they too are God. And if I know that they're God, I don't fear for them, I don't worry for them. I can have a conversation with them, I can highlight a pattern, I can highlight a theme, I can highlight how they're holding their most beautiful selves back, and I think that's so incredibly beautiful and it ties so beautifully with the knowing and the learning and the belief set that I have around coaching, which is that everyone is creative, resourceful and whole, and all of my clients have had an amazing life before they met me and they're going to continue to have an amazing life after we stop working together. We just come together for a portion of their journey, and I just think that's here I'm saying the word again beautiful and it is, and it is. So, now that I've shared some of those things with you, I also want to share some of the most beautiful dreams that are still living in my heart, and I want to share them because it feels important. I'm maybe not sure why, but it does so. One of the dreams that I've been carrying around since my early 20s is to have a cozy space, a cafe by the water. The by the water wasn't something I was thinking about when I was in my 20s, but it's certainly now something I was thinking about when I was in my 20s, but it's certainly now something I'm thinking about.

Speaker 1:

But it's a place where people gather to knit, to write, to sip, to share, to cry, to laugh. It is a place of being human. It is a place of learning from one another, sharing wisdom, knowledge, and it's a place where everyone belongs. And in my mind's eye, it's so incredibly beautiful because I see all of these windows around and I can see these people coming and bringing their, whatever it is that they're working on. Maybe they have their laptops with them, maybe they have. You know some handcraft, some. You know leather work or some string art or rug hooking or knitting leather work, or some string art or rug hooking or knitting, crocheting. Or you know people I saw at the. We were at a market here on the weekend and someone was creating beautiful images out of ripped up pieces of magazine Like so, whatever it is, I can just see and I can hear it and I imagine like even poetry readings, and there's music being played and there's coffee being served and it's a place where everyone is welcome and it's a gathering place and it's a beautiful place to commune with one another.

Speaker 1:

Another dream that's on my heart is I and part of this is me claiming this I want to write the books that I have spent decades upon decades reading. I have spent a lifetime loving self-development, leadership stories with a touch of magic, and now it's time to write my own, and maybe the most tender of all. I want to be the fireplace the earth, to live in, a home by the water where the soup's on the stove and the grandkids can tumble into the door and, of course, the kids as well with them. It's not just about the grandkids, but everyone knows that they're safe to arrive just as they are. They can be messy, they can be tired, they can be joyful. Arrive just as they are. They can be messy, they can be tired, they can be joyful. They can be growing. They can be human.

Speaker 1:

That's the energy that I am building into my life and into my coaching. So there it is. That's the whole story, the cracked open, sacred, still being written story of who I am and how I got here. It has taken me almost 59 years to speak that freely, to live this openly, to love this fiercely. But now that I'm here, there is no going back energy. There is no going back energy. There is no going back energy.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening, thank you for witnessing, and now I would like to know what is the dream that's living quietly in your heart?

Speaker 1:

What truth is ready to be named, claimed or reimagined? Is ready to be named, claimed or reimagined? And lastly, if something stirred in you while listening maybe it's an old story, a quiet dream, a truth waiting to be held let that be your sign. There's no pressure to act, just notice. And if you feel called to share, I'm here. No judgment. And if you feel called to share, I'm here. No judgment, just presence and a whole lot of love.

Speaker 1:

I'll see you back here, same time, same place, next week. Have a great one. I hope that you're walking away feeling more aligned with your true self, more confident in the choices ahead and ready to leave the safe path behind, knowing you've got everything you need within. Remember, the journey to you isn't about finding one perfect direction. It's about trusting yourself enough to explore all of it. If you're ready to dive deeper, join me for the next episode, and don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss the next step on your path. I invite you to join my mailing list at wwwcynthiajamesoncoachca, where we'll deepen our relationship and you can claim your copy of your Inner Compass, a guide to charting your course to authenticity. Until next time, stay unfiltered, stay true and, most importantly, stay you.

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