Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 1: welcome to my podcast!

Transcript

1: welcome to my podcast! · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

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The Sun shines out of you and into me.
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Hello, Sun shines and welcome to reimagining with I understood a podcast where we reframe,
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rethink and reimagine everything, standing in the way of love and liberation.
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I'm your host, Ayyanda and I am delighted, enchanted, ecstatic, overjoyed to have a slice
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of your precious time today.
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I feel so much love and gratitude in my heart for my TikTok community.
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You have changed my life.
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You've changed my life.
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You've changed my life.
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You've changed my life.
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You've changed my life.
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You've changed my life.
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changed how I see myself and my purpose in this world.
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And I am so grateful to each and every one of you
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for believing in me.
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So if you came from TikTok, just know you are elite.
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Okay, I mean, in the anti elite.
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Okay, whatever, I'm not gonna do that right now.
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But anyway, I'm so excited to have you with me today
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and to everyone else who supports me.
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I am so grateful to have you welcomed into the fold.
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We are sunshine, the sun shines out of us,
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the sun shines into us and we are dedicated to loving
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and to liberating each other and ourselves.
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Okay, so I want to say that I have really struggled
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to bring this to your ears.
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It's been shocking to me how much I've struggled.
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You know why?
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Because I started on short form.
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You know, I started on TikTok and I was like,
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well, everyone has a podcast.
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I'm gonna have a podcast and it's gonna be great
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because we love everyone, right?
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It's okay, not a scarcity mindset abundance.
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So then I was like, well, this is gonna be
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just easy, peasy, lemon, squeezy.
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I'm just gonna go and start a podcast.
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And I would imagine it, I would walk around,
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walk around the streets and I would listen to music
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and I'd be like, I'm gonna have the most fire podcast
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and people are gonna learn from me and grow with me
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and I'm gonna have a community
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and I'm gonna say fire things like I would picture myself
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just speaking and just like vibing in my energy.
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Just chatting and having profound things to say.
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Well, little did she know it's so much more difficult
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than I could have ever imagined.
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Do you know why?
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Because I suffer from toxic perfectionism.
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Like I literally do not know how to share myself
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with the world and the difference is
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that I also want to just share with you.
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TikTok is like a safe space.
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It's not hate comments, online hate.
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Like there's a lot of harassment.
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There's a lot of horrible things.
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But the vibe on TikTok, it's like this curated group
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of people who came to vibe.
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But then podcasts, it's like there's my family,
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there's my friends, there's people that I go to school
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but there's just so many different voices
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and this is the same reason why I struggle with Instagram.
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It's just the fear of judgment
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but also such a mixture of judgment
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from different groups of people.
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It's overwhelming, it's daunting, it's confusing.
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So I wanna just say that to anyone else
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who is struggling with sharing their voice, babes, babes,
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babes, hit me up, okay?
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Cause I got you.
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I love you and you are so far from alone, okay?
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It is a struggle.
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I think people see you posting your things
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as if you don't feel embarrassed.
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I'm embarrassed every single day of my life.
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Do I have more mechanisms to cope with the embarrassment?
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I mean, maybe who actually knows in reality?
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It's just about zooming out and asking myself, okay,
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am I willing to just put up with this little demon
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in my backyard called embarrassment?
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Actually in my front yard, in my house, in my room,
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in my bed with me, in order to serve the vision
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that I have for myself.
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So if I'm on a started podcast
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and for the first few episodes,
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I don't know how to say the P sound
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without sounding like I'm screaming in your ear,
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that's just what we're gonna have to do, you know what I mean?
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The end is in place and the means are what they are
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and they involve embarrassment and they involve mistakes
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and they involve letting go, letting go.
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People are gonna judge me, you know what I mean?
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Because that's what we do.
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As human beings, that's what we do, we judge, we judge.
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People are gonna judge me, but my people are gonna hold me
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and we're gonna grow together, okay?
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So this is really a labor of love, a labor of delight,
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a labor of pure loving energy, okay?
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If you are struggling to find your voice,
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I just want you to reframe that for a second.
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Think of every single, think of your favorite song,
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your favorite movie, your favorite book,
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your favorite TikTok creator, your favorite artist,
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your favorite singer,
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each of these people have grappled with their own fears,
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with their own anxieties, with their own obstacles
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to bringing their art into the world
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and did it not change your life that they did it?
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In spite of that fear, in spite of that anxiety,
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in spite of that perfectionism that told them
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it wasn't perfect enough, they wrote the book,
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they shared the book, okay, with help and community
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and support, I'm not saying do it alone,
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please don't do it alone, that's another lesson I've learned.
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Don't try to do things alone, oh my goodness,
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it's like I cannot convince myself enough
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that this is a mistake, and I know it in theory,
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I'm like, oh, I should ask for help,
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but then it comes to the thing and I'm like,
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I'll just do this by myself,
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I'll just come up with this entire episode by myself,
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I'll just write it by myself, I'll just edit it,
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but you know what I mean?
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And it's like, no, no, we're not gonna do that anymore,
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or at least we're gonna try and stop
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because we deserve support,
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and when you ask for support, you deepen your connection
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with the person who you're asking,
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because they are seeing you as someone who can be vulnerable
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and you are getting the gift of being able to lean on somebody,
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okay, which is what you deserve, okay?
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Lean on me, when you're not strong,
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I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on
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for if not wise, okay, perfect.
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So moving on, basically all that to say,
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even your favorite TV show,
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there were so many people, directors, artists,
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set creators, writers, screen adapters, whatever the fuck
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who had doubt, and what did they do?
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They turned that doubt into art that we enjoy,
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and that changes the way that we see and perceive
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and move through the world, and aren't we so grateful?
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So I am joining that beautiful tradition today
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of just doing it, I'm just doing it, like here I am,
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what am I doing?
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It's okay, and that's something to celebrate.
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I am so grateful for you, you don't understand this,
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but it takes a bunch of little use to make a community,
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and so thank you specifically, I love you.
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As we think about this concept of perfectionism
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and finding your voice and also fear and anxiety,
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I really want to mark the beginning of this journey with you
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with an Audrey Lorde quote that has literally nourished me,
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and we must nourish ourselves and nourish each other.
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For the past literally like three years, literally,
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I have a note on my notes app, okay,
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with three Audrey Lorde quotes,
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and they are also special and divine and precious,
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and I love each of them,
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and I originally thought I was only going to read one of them
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to you because I was like, you know, I gotta be crisp,
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but why?
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I don't have to be anything, but myself, okay,
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so these are the three quotes, number one,
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let's breathe together.
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What are the words you do not yet have?
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What do you need to say?
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What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day
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and attempt to make your own
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until you will sicken and die of them still in silence?
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Whew!
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Wow, what are the words you do not yet have?
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What do you need to say?
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What do you need to say?
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That is such a profound question.
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What do you need to say?
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And maybe it will become one of the questions
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and I ask my guests, the second quote is this,
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and I resonate with this deeply, she says,
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and of course I am afraid,
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because the transformation of silence into language
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and action is an act of self-revelation
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and that all of the things that I do,
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is an act of self-revelation
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and that always seems fraught with danger.
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Wow, whew!
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Sharing yourself, being in your truth,
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is fraught, is filled with danger.
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This is very real physical danger
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in terms of all the people who have been killed,
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who have been murdered, who have been imprisoned
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for speaking against systems of power,
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systems of oppression, fascism, regimes,
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and then also the feeling of writing
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in a journal and fearing that someone will read it.
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It always just seems so scary to move into our truth
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and to share it unabashedly, even with ourselves.
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The third and final quote is as follows
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in the cause of silence.
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Each of us draws the face of her own fear.
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Isn't that beautiful?
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Drawing the face of fear.
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Fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition.
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Oh, sometimes we do fear being recognized.
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Fear of challenge, of annihilation, that's critical.
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But most of all, I think we fear the visibility
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without which we cannot truly live.
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Wow, and then we think about coming out,
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when we think about sharing our truth,
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when we think about sharing ourselves,
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we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live.
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What a beautiful paradox,
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what a beautiful embrace of the tension of visibility
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that we both yearn to be visible,
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and somehow we find comfort as well in invisibility.
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We both are invisibilized and invisibilized ourselves.
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I don't know what I'm saying, but I think it makes sense to someone.
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So I'm gonna continue,
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because that was precious and that was special,
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and I'm so grateful.
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And isn't it funny how time all connects?
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Like who would have thought when I was reading this essay
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by Audrey Lorde, like four or three years ago,
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that it would one day be in my podcast,
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that's shocking, I'm so surprised.
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In case you don't know who Audrey Lorde is,
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was she's passed,
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may she rest in peace, power and love and liberation,
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she is a black African-American lesbian mother,
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warrior and poet,
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and she dedicated both her life and her work
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to confronting and addressing injustices of racism,
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sexism, classism, and homophobia.
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So when we think about fearing the visibility without which we cannot
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truly live, that really grounds us.
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Let's put it in the soil of this conversation today.
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Of like clearly, I needed to say this,
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clearly I needed this visibility, clearly,
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the fact that I was willing to struggle with this and wrestle
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with this podcast,
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it means I cannot live without being seen in a certain way.
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And then when you think of the danger of it,
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I want you to be compassionate with me, okay?
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I want grace.
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I'm learning to ask for the things that I want
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and ask for the things that I need,
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because that creates deeper connection.
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I am so fearful of people just being mean to me,
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because people are so mean.
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And this happens on the internet all the time
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and it's often a barrier and obstacle for me
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in sharing what I really have to say
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and in sharing my voice.
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And I embrace that fear and I do it anyway,
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but I'm still so fearful,
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because people are so brutal,
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people are so uncompassionate.
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And as we walk this journey together of this podcast
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as a community, I want us to be gentle with each other.
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I'm going to make mistakes 100,000%.
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And I'm always learning and growing
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and evolving my perspective.
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But what I need in return,
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and I mean in exchange, I don't like this language,
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it sounds very like capitalistic,
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it sounds very like we're commodifying love.
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But what I ask for is to be held in my complexity
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and not to go without critique or go without challenge,
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but that we can always, always choose
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to criticize each other with love
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if that person's intentions are love.
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And my intention is love,
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like my intention in the way that I am sharing
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this content, sharing my voice
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and also just trying to live my life is rooted in love.
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And with that, I think I ask for a loving form
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of communication with one another.
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Those are the values that I want our community to have.
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I'm standing for love.
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And so I hope that in critiquing and sharing
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and evolving our opinions together,
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we will also support each other
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and hold each other in love.
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So the podcast as it evolves
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is going to take many different formats.
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There's going to be episodes where it's just me,
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there's going to be more formal episodes
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where I'm kind of reading something that is more thought out
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and there's going to be others where we just vibe.
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Like maybe I just went on a date
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and I'm excited, what's that?
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There's also going to be conversations with guests.
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But the purpose of this two-part series of me speaking
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is to lay some foundations of the podcast,
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but also of the episode itself.
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We are starting off re-imagining beauty.
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That is where we are beginning together.
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Join me on our next episode, The Ugliness of Beauty.
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Thank you so much, Sunshine,
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for listening to this welcoming episode.
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I'm so excited to be on this journey with you.
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I shine through you, you shine through me,
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and we shine to get through.
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Okay, I'll see you next time.
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That's it, Sunshine.
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Thank you so much for listening to re-imagining with, I understood,
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a podcast where we reframe, re-think,
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and reimagine all things,
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standing in the way of love and liberation.
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Please follow my work on substack at iandestood.substack.com
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and subscribe if you have the means,
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as well as on TikTok and Instagram at iandestood.
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I would absolutely love to hear from you
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if you have good things to say I am a cancer.
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Please be nice to me, I am sensitive.
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Okay, follow our podcast community.
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The IG handle is re-imagining with iandestood.
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Please leave a rating on the podcast
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if it is five stars again.
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I'm a cancer, okay?
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I love you, have a wonderful day, nourish yourself,
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and nourish each other.