Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 371. What Are You Still Carrying That Doesn't Belong in Your Life After Divorce?

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371. What Are You Still Carrying That Doesn't Belong in Your Life After Divorce? · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

0:00
SPEAKER_04: You hit your 40s and you're like burnout.
0:02
SPEAKER_04: Burnout burnout.
0:03
SPEAKER_04: And you also hit your 40s.
0:04
SPEAKER_04: This is the greatest part.
0:05
SPEAKER_04: Anyone who is not in their forties yet, here's what you get to look forward to.
0:09
SPEAKER_04: It's the decade of I don't give a fuck anymore.
0:11
SPEAKER_04: Like I truly don't, I don't care anymore.
0:14
SPEAKER_04: And not in like, I'm giving up, I don't care.
0:16
SPEAKER_04: It's more like I'm gonna do what I want to do because life's too short, right?
0:20
SPEAKER_02: It's it's like yeah, isn't it this like sort of accumulation of carrying things?
0:23
SPEAKER_02: And now at some point we hit this full fulcrum point, right?
0:27
SPEAKER_02: Where I'm carrying so many things, and now I have to make choices about what I'm gonna keep carrying and what I'm gonna put down.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: And the and we end up putting down a lot of things like other people's opinions, right?
0:36
SPEAKER_02: Because we realize we can't carry all the things we are passionate about, we want to carry, and carry all of that.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: There's not enough, there's not enough of us to go around.
0:44
SPEAKER_02: So we have to set things down.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Hi, love.
0:51
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave, and build back your confidence.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorcee.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: Alexis from the Breadwinners.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: I am so excited to sit with you today.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: Likewise.
1:26
SPEAKER_04: Man, this is a long time coming, Don.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
1:29
SPEAKER_04: We have we have strived to make today.
1:33
SPEAKER_04: I have to say, you were one of the first people that reached out to me when I launched in November.
1:39
SPEAKER_04: Really?
1:40
SPEAKER_04: Honestly, like I was like, oh my God, people are listening to what I'm saying.
1:45
SPEAKER_04: Like, it was wild.
1:47
SPEAKER_04: I actually have a screenshot of it.
1:48
SPEAKER_04: I was like, oh my God, somebody reached out to me.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: When I emailed you?
1:52
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you were like a therapist likes my content on mental health.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's talk about why I reached out.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: Because I think it's very relevant to my audience who is currently like either in the throes of divorce, which is one of the most major like reinventions and a moment where that woman more often than not has to be a breadwinner in her new life if she wasn't already in her old life.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: Um I read your content and it just spoke to me so profoundly.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to say I fangirled, but maybe.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: I'll take it.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: Let's say it inspired me, and how I've gotten from there to here is to surround myself by people who inspire me.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: Likewise.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: And so I knew I needed to have a conversation with you, and here we are.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: Um, I I so much of what you write lands in my body in such a meaningful way.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: And I think it relieves something, something I feel like I've been carrying somewhat solo, maybe, not completely solo, because there are a lot of other women who I've connected with who, you know, bear burdens, right?
3:08
SPEAKER_02: Um the conversation about being a breadwoman, breadwinner, and being a woman and the noise about what that's looked like in my marriage or in my friend groups or whatever it is, you are talking about things that are just not so widely and openly discussed.
3:28
SPEAKER_04: They're awkward and uncomfortable.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and now they are.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: And as a woman who also talks about things that are awkward and uncomfortable, like, you know, alternative medicines and religion and you know, things that we have to be able to get in the mess and do together.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm just so grateful to be connected with you.
3:50
SPEAKER_04: Thanks.
3:51
SPEAKER_04: Likewise, I mean, it it really is the whole precipice for why the breadwinners community exists, is like the modern working woman, the modern woman today, is dealing with a whole host of things that generations past just didn't deal with.
4:13
SPEAKER_04: And and if they did, if generations past did deal with it, they just brushed it under the rug and they didn't talk about it.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: Right.
4:22
SPEAKER_04: And what I'm realizing through the breadwinners community, every time we get these incredible, highly accomplished women together in person, they're all like, oh my God, like it's okay to talk about this stuff.
4:33
SPEAKER_04: And it's like, yeah, it's okay to talk about this stuff.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: And I well, it's okay for us.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: It might not be okay for a lot of other people.
4:42
SPEAKER_02: Right.
4:43
SPEAKER_02: And that's the courageous choice, right?
4:46
SPEAKER_02: Is do I which group of people do I want to stay in or remain in?
4:51
unknown: Yes.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: The group who says it is okay to talk about it, or do I want to focus?
4:55
SPEAKER_02: Because there are going to be people who can't talk about it.
5:01
SPEAKER_04: I also think that's one of the hardest parts about navigating relationships and friendships as you get older, including your marriage.
5:10
SPEAKER_04: Like I would put that in the friendship category because like if you aren't friends with a person, like what are you?
5:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:16
SPEAKER_04: Ideally.
5:17
SPEAKER_04: Um But I I actually think that's one of the hardest parts of getting older is acknowledging that relationships that served you when you were younger, whether it was five years ago or 25 years ago, it's okay to sometimes let those things go because you change as a person and that person changes to go find that new space of people where you can be yourself in whatever version of that is today.
5:47
SPEAKER_04: I'm actually going I'm in my mid-40s and I'm going through that now of like grieving friendships that served me for a very long time that we have since moved on.
5:58
SPEAKER_04: And that's okay.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: What was your gritty inspiration for launching the breadwinners?
6:12
SPEAKER_04: Um the truth is it fell in my lap.
6:16
SPEAKER_04: This the entire community, I g I mean, I guess you could say I manifested it, but I didn't think I was manifesting it.
6:25
SPEAKER_04: I left my 20-year corporate marketing career in January of 2025 after just being exhausted and not fulfilled, and having three kids in three years and going through IVF and moving to a new city and traveling a ton for work and kind of working for people that weren't very nice.
6:49
SPEAKER_04: You hit your 40s and you're like burnout.
6:52
SPEAKER_04: Burnout, burnout, and you also hit your 40s.
6:54
SPEAKER_04: This is the greatest part.
6:55
SPEAKER_04: Anyone who is not in their forties yet, here's what you get to look forward to.
7:00
SPEAKER_04: It's the decade of I don't give a fuck anymore.
7:03
SPEAKER_04: Like I truly don't, I don't care anymore.
7:06
SPEAKER_04: And not in like, I'm giving up, I don't care.
7:09
SPEAKER_04: It's more like I'm gonna do what I want to do because life's too short, right?
7:13
SPEAKER_02: It's well, yeah, isn't it this like sort of accumulation of carrying things?
7:16
SPEAKER_02: And now at some point we hit this full fulcrum point, right?
7:20
SPEAKER_02: Where I'm carrying so many things, and now I have to make choices about what I'm gonna keep carrying and what I'm gonna put down.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: And the we end up putting down a lot of things like other people's opinions, right?
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Because we realize we can't carry all the things we are passionate about, we want to carry, and carry all of that.
7:36
SPEAKER_02: There's not enough.
7:37
SPEAKER_02: There's not enough of us to go around.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: So we have to set things down.
7:40
SPEAKER_04: I want to come back to that.
7:41
SPEAKER_04: Like, let's put a pin in the what we carry, because I talk a lot about that in the community as almost like an inspiration point.
7:49
SPEAKER_04: But so I left my 20-year career to take a sabbatical.
7:53
SPEAKER_04: And I was just like, I just need a minute to just be and just be like be with my kids and go play tennis and just turn my brain off.
8:00
SPEAKER_04: And that lasted six weeks.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: Um I imagine that's what would happen.
8:08
SPEAKER_02: Every time I tell my husband, like, I need I have to quit.
8:11
SPEAKER_02: Like, I imagine that's what would happen.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Six weeks later, I would be like, I am not building.
8:18
SPEAKER_04: And here we are.
8:20
SPEAKER_04: Um But I think the timing was because my friend Kim and I just decided to host a dinner during South by Southwest here in Austin because it's what we do.
8:31
SPEAKER_04: We're board, we're both like brand builders, marketers, and we just like love hosting dinners.
8:34
SPEAKER_04: And the intention was to host an anti-South by dinner.
8:37
SPEAKER_04: That was it.
8:38
SPEAKER_04: And for anyone who's been to South by Southwest, an anti-South by Southwest dinner.
8:42
SPEAKER_04: So for anyone who's been to Austin during South by Southwest knows that it's, for lack of a better term, a shit show.
8:49
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
8:49
SPEAKER_04: There's just a lot going on in the city.
8:51
SPEAKER_04: The whole conference takes over the entire city.
8:54
unknown: Okay.
8:54
SPEAKER_04: And when you come, you're like triple booked, you're running from event to event, you like show up to a cocktail party, you drink half a drink, you're like, I gotta go to the next event.
9:03
SPEAKER_04: The event ends, you get on a plane, you have 50 business cards, and you're like, I don't even know who I met.
9:08
SPEAKER_04: Like, what was that?
9:09
SPEAKER_04: I blacked out.
9:11
SPEAKER_04: So the goal for us was to host an anti-South by Southwest dinner, which was intimate, intentional, and curated, where you show up for the evening and you don't leave.
9:21
SPEAKER_04: Like we didn't tell people like you can't leave, but it we really set the environment where you would I know where you would want to stay.
9:29
SPEAKER_04: It's an interesting strategy to lock the door.
9:32
SPEAKER_04: Um so we just, you know, invited 30 incredible, high achieving, badass working moms who were in the same season of life as us, who are building their careers while they were building families, whatever that looks like.
9:49
SPEAKER_04: Invited 30 women.
9:50
SPEAKER_04: We just assumed, oh, it's south by southwest.
9:53
SPEAKER_04: We'll have like a whole bunch of no shows because people can't make it.
9:56
SPEAKER_04: Every single woman showed up.
9:59
SPEAKER_04: And it created this super safe space because all of these women were on the same footing.
10:05
SPEAKER_04: Versus when you show up, it wasn't a networking event where you, you know, we all go to these events where you're like, oh, I gotta perform, I got a posture, I got like my elevator speech about what I do, and da-da-da.
10:19
SPEAKER_04: It wasn't any of that.
10:19
SPEAKER_04: It was just like, just show up and be yourself.
10:21
SPEAKER_04: And we didn't have programming.
10:23
SPEAKER_04: There was no programming, there was no intention for what we wanted it to be.
10:26
SPEAKER_04: We just wanted people to show up, and they did.
10:28
SPEAKER_04: And I stood up at that dinner and I was like, hi, um, I just left my 20-year corporate marketing job.
10:35
SPEAKER_04: I don't know what I'm gonna do next.
10:36
SPEAKER_04: If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
10:38
SPEAKER_04: Like, truly, I was like, that's how vulnerable it was.
10:41
SPEAKER_04: Like everybody was standing up.
10:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:43
SPEAKER_04: Like these and there was a woman who sold her company for billions of dollars this the week after the dinner.
10:50
SPEAKER_04: She stood up at the dinner and was like, Hi, I'm here tonight because I need friends.
10:54
SPEAKER_04: And everyone was like, What?
10:56
SPEAKER_04: Like everyone knows who she is.
10:59
SPEAKER_04: She's incredible.
10:59
SPEAKER_04: She built this incredible company.
11:01
SPEAKER_04: And like, literally, that's that's the type of environment it was.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: It just like created this super safe space for these women to just be like, here's what I'm dealing with right now.
11:10
SPEAKER_04: To open the room.
11:12
SPEAKER_04: Yes, truly, with like no judgment.
11:14
SPEAKER_04: And the women around the table weren't there to like fix your problems.
11:19
SPEAKER_04: They were just there to hear you and to create a sense of camaraderie.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: Alexis, you're describing group therapy and probably his historically like what women's circle used to be.
11:32
SPEAKER_04: Yes, truly.
11:33
SPEAKER_04: And I the best part about it is like we didn't create it, which is what I always say at every dinner.
11:40
SPEAKER_04: Like it just like, how do you do this?
11:42
SPEAKER_04: How what do you how do you curate your dinners?
11:43
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, look, I curate the people who show up to the dinners who get invited, but I don't do the programming.
11:51
SPEAKER_04: The guests are the experience, full stop.
11:54
SPEAKER_04: When you curate a table the right way, take a step back and let the magic happen.
12:00
SPEAKER_04: And it happens at every single dinner.
12:02
SPEAKER_04: It is like insane.
12:04
SPEAKER_04: When you truly strip everything back, and the way that I run like kind of the initial programming, people just show up as themselves.
12:13
SPEAKER_04: They're not showing up as like, let me read my LinkedIn profile.
12:18
SPEAKER_04: Um so that was the start of it.
12:21
SPEAKER_04: I some of the guests came to me afterwards and they were like, you have to go build this into a platform.
12:25
SPEAKER_04: This has to exist beyond this one dinner.
12:27
SPEAKER_04: And so I just started building by myself.
12:31
SPEAKER_04: And here we are.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: Here we are.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: Caught my heart.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: What are some of the so one of the things I want us to talk about today is your recent post about failing in public or falling in public?
12:45
SPEAKER_02: You wrote about both of them, right?
12:46
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that funny how people so many people read it the wrong way?
12:49
SPEAKER_02: Read it the wrong way.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh, because I think divorce for most women feels like both falling in public and failing in public.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: And you know, there's that.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: So I want us to revisit that because I think that that is beautiful.
13:01
SPEAKER_02: But what are some of the grittiest things you've heard women talk about that have not previously seemed seemed safe to talk about?
13:15
SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh, so many things.
13:18
SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm I'm going dinner by dinner.
13:22
SPEAKER_02: I think the I need friends thing is profound.
13:24
SPEAKER_02: I think that's way more common than we realize.
13:26
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:27
SPEAKER_04: And like real friends, right?
13:31
SPEAKER_04: It's like sure, you can have you can be surrounded by a lot of people.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: No, like I just accidentally pooped my pants and I need help.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: Like real friends that you can I mean, that's a very odiferous example, but like really like vulnerable.
13:49
SPEAKER_02: Like very vulnerable.
13:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:51
SPEAKER_04: It's it is part of the program.
13:54
SPEAKER_04: So so how I said the programming is rooted in human development because I have I'm fortunate to have some influential women come to the dinner.
14:03
SPEAKER_04: And then I have these other women who are also incredibly successful in their own right, however, you want to define success, but are at different stages of their lives.
14:12
SPEAKER_04: Like some of them don't have kids, some of them are like just starting their startup, but like I see something incredible in them, and they show up and they're like, Alexis, what am I doing at this dinner?
14:22
SPEAKER_04: Like imposter syndrome.
14:24
SPEAKER_04: I see it at every dinner.
14:25
SPEAKER_04: Like all these women walk in, they're like, What am I doing here?
14:28
SPEAKER_04: Like, why am I here?
14:30
SPEAKER_04: And then the way that the programming runs is it completely disarms the table because the influential woman who everybody knows their name sits across a table from someone who is just a regular person doing extraordinary things.
15:36
SPEAKER_04: And the programming, the way people introduce themselves, I'll give you an example, it just sets them up as a human being.
15:45
SPEAKER_04: That's it.
15:46
SPEAKER_04: We are all just humans.
15:47
SPEAKER_04: So then the rest of the dinner for the following two and a half hours, you're sitting across from that person, but you're talking to them as a human being.
15:56
SPEAKER_04: So I'll give an example.
15:58
SPEAKER_04: Um, at one of the dinners, I the prompt was around this idea that at the age of seven, the human brain recognizes that other people have opinions of you.
16:12
SPEAKER_04: Prior to that, the human brain does not recognize that anyone thinks something of you other than your own self.
16:20
SPEAKER_04: So the question was going back to your seven-year-old self or younger, what is your the core memory that you loved so much about life, whatever it could be?
16:32
SPEAKER_04: Because the theme of the dinner was self-worth, self-love.
16:34
SPEAKER_04: So it was going back to this idea of like, okay, go back to your seven-year-old self when you truly loved yourself, because no nothing on the exterior was telling you otherwise.
16:45
SPEAKER_04: And several women went around the table, and two of them who are incredibly accomplished.
16:56
SPEAKER_04: I was floored when this happened because I assumed people were just gonna go around and tell these like beautiful, joyful stories of like being a kid, right?
17:05
SPEAKER_04: Which some people did.
17:06
SPEAKER_04: Like, here was my happy moment of being a child.
17:10
SPEAKER_04: And two of them stood up and said when I was seven or when I was younger, um I was abused.
17:20
SPEAKER_04: One of them was like, I was abused by my stepdad.
17:24
SPEAKER_04: And it it is was formidable to who I am today because it taught me how to get through hard things.
17:32
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I and I was literally sitting at the jitter, I was like, holy shit.
17:38
SPEAKER_04: The fact that someone could take a prompt and be that vulnerable to be like, here's the truth of it.
17:45
SPEAKER_04: Like my self-worth came from a really difficult childhood.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
17:51
SPEAKER_04: And that I mean, talk about disarming the table because she was one of the more influential people that people are like, oh my God, why is she here?
17:59
SPEAKER_04: And then she stands up and says that, and it's like, oh my god.
18:03
SPEAKER_04: Like then you can talk about anything at dinner.
18:08
SPEAKER_04: Anything.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: Truly.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: Um so the comparison then starts to fall away, and it's more connection than comparison.
18:16
SPEAKER_04: And yes, and like deeper connection.
18:18
SPEAKER_04: Like people walk away from these three-hour dinners with incredibly deep connections that the biggest thing, which is such a good problem for me to have right now, people are like, oh my God, what's next?
18:30
SPEAKER_04: Like, what are we doing after this dinner?
18:33
SPEAKER_02: Um But then to your point, in your most recent Substack newsletter, link in show notes.
18:44
SPEAKER_04: Appreciate it.
18:45
SPEAKER_04: I hope you enjoy reading.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: Is now people are asking you for more, and now there's that little voice that's clicked into your brain that is performative.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: Yes, right?
18:57
SPEAKER_02: Like afraid to lose something, afraid to disappoint someone, afraid to be too polarizing, afraid to let someone down, afraid to fail or fall in public, all of that.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: And um wow, let's talk about that because we talk so much about authenticity these days.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: We talk so much about vulnerability these days, but I think we've almost turned authenticity and vulnerability into performance.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: Like, look at how many podcasts exist to be authentic and vulnerable.
19:26
SPEAKER_02: And then I know.
19:28
SPEAKER_04: And it's this is like no discredit to myself and what I've built and all the other incredible women building in the same space as me.
19:39
SPEAKER_04: But like also the term ambition.
19:40
SPEAKER_04: Like everyone's like ambitious women, everyone's doing the ambition.
19:44
SPEAKER_04: And it's like it just gets watered down after a while.
19:47
SPEAKER_04: Where it's hard to really understand the true meaning of it because what it's really about is like, okay, well, what does that mean to you?
19:55
SPEAKER_04: It's not about what ambition means or what authenticity means to society writ large.
20:01
SPEAKER_04: It means like, what does it mean to you so you can be your truest self?
20:06
SPEAKER_04: The reason I wrote the article was uh frankly a reminder for me.
20:12
SPEAKER_04: Like and I talk about it in in the piece.
20:17
SPEAKER_04: When you're building in the early days before anyone's really listening or watching, you don't really have anything to lose.
20:25
SPEAKER_04: So you're like, well, I'll just try this and see what happens.
20:30
SPEAKER_04: And I'm still very early in building the breadwinners.
20:34
SPEAKER_04: It's only been around for like nine or so months, but I'm also starting to catch myself because I was like, oh, I have a following.
20:40
SPEAKER_04: Oh, I have several thousand people reading, listening.
20:43
SPEAKER_04: I should be careful about what I say.
20:45
SPEAKER_04: Oh, I should create the safe thing so I don't embarrass myself.
20:49
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I literally just before we got on this call, I just sent an email to 50 women and like sitting at my computer.
20:57
SPEAKER_04: Don, you die.
20:59
SPEAKER_04: I'm in this room by myself.
21:00
SPEAKER_04: I'm sitting at my computer.
21:01
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it.
21:03
SPEAKER_04: I literally saying to myself, coaching yourself, coaching yourself.
21:05
SPEAKER_04: You can do it.
21:05
SPEAKER_04: You do it like hit send, hit send, hit send.
21:08
SPEAKER_04: Because my fear is I the long and the short of it is I'm launching phase two of the Brennwinners, which are these day-long workshops.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
21:16
SPEAKER_04: And I'm afraid nobody's gonna sign up.
21:19
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I love you and so I'm like, you can do it, you can do it.
21:25
SPEAKER_04: You because it is failing in public.
21:26
SPEAKER_04: Did you do it?
21:27
SPEAKER_04: Like the worst thing that's gonna happen I did.
21:29
SPEAKER_04: I hit send.
21:30
SPEAKER_04: The worst thing that's gonna happen is two of my friends will sign up.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: And like, and that's what it's gonna be.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: My version of that is I can always sleep on Tiffany's sofa.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: She's my lead coach.
21:42
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: I know.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: Like I would rather live into my life, right, and risk having to sleep on Tiffany's sofa than play small.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: But I really believe that today's version of me, which is many, many versions later, right?
22:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh came from the moment where I got divorced.
22:05
SPEAKER_02: And like my old life burned down.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: What I thought I understood about life and myself and marriage and all the things burned down.
22:13
SPEAKER_02: My relationships with my family to an extent burned down in that moment.
22:17
SPEAKER_02: Like I literally felt like I had nothing to lose, and all of a sudden I could really touch my truth.
22:23
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
22:24
SPEAKER_04: It's what that's exactly it.
22:25
SPEAKER_04: And I felt like I had nothing to lose.
22:28
SPEAKER_04: Cause when you have something to lose, you're like, Well, I'm not gonna do that.
22:32
SPEAKER_04: Why would I risk losing that?
22:34
SPEAKER_04: The way that I talk about it is like, I feel like I'm holding this egg.
22:37
SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, don't drop the egg, don't drop the egg, don't drop the egg.
22:41
SPEAKER_04: Which I'm sure a lot of women in your community probably feel the same.
22:44
SPEAKER_04: They're like, Well, I like I got this thing.
22:46
SPEAKER_04: So, like, what happens if I drop the egg?
22:48
SPEAKER_04: It's like I was at coffee with a good friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, and I was saying I was giving her that analogy.
22:56
SPEAKER_04: And she's like, Alexis, what if there wasn't just one egg?
22:59
SPEAKER_04: What if there was a dozen eggs?
23:01
SPEAKER_02: Dozen eggs.
23:01
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, oh.
23:04
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
23:04
SPEAKER_02: And for so many women, especially at the moment of divorce, leading up to during, even after for an extended period of time, I would argue one of the eggs that they really struggle to reconcile is the kid egg.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
23:18
SPEAKER_02: Because women get so lost.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: And I still I have a dear friend who called me out on this last week, like sacrificing myself to try to facilitate something for my child that is a like it's not even a thing, right?
23:32
SPEAKER_02: It's codependency.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: It's it's demonstrating to her enabling and codependency in the family system, right?
23:37
SPEAKER_02: But like here I was still doing it, you know?
23:39
SPEAKER_02: Um, where we have this egg called my children, and I want to give them everything, and I want to protect them from everything, and I don't want them to feel this pain, and I'm going to sacrifice myself so profoundly that I don't even remember the truth of who I am.
23:53
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
23:54
SPEAKER_02: Because I don't want to drop the egg.
23:57
SPEAKER_02: And then we end up dropping that egg anyways, because we end up the egg itself gets broken.
24:03
SPEAKER_04: Well, and maybe not maybe.
24:07
SPEAKER_04: The reality is that's the egg that needs to break.
24:11
SPEAKER_04: Like of the dozen eggs, that's the egg that needs to break in order to show your-right?
24:16
SPEAKER_04: This is such a bad I'm gonna continue with the analogy.
24:19
SPEAKER_04: Like to see.
24:21
SPEAKER_04: But like also to show your kids like maybe the next version is a hard-boiled egg.
24:26
SPEAKER_04: Like when it doesn't when it does fall next time, maybe it doesn't crack so badly.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
24:33
SPEAKER_04: And the reason I say that, I'm fortunate I I'm the receiver of a divorced man.
24:40
SPEAKER_04: So I'm the second wife.
24:43
SPEAKER_04: I say the best kept secret is divorced man.
24:47
SPEAKER_04: Tell us more.
24:49
SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh.
24:50
SPEAKER_04: Well, at least from my this is my experience, but like he's he l he's lived it before.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:56
SPEAKER_04: And he knows all the things that he's not gonna relive again, both his faults and the other person's faults, but he's like, I am not going down that path again.
25:05
SPEAKER_04: Like that door is closed.
25:07
SPEAKER_04: I will not relive those mistakes.
25:10
SPEAKER_04: Now, I don't think every man's like that.
25:12
SPEAKER_04: I'm very fortunate to have this incredible husband, but his son was seven, six or seven when him and his wife got divorced, and they went through the same thing, which was he was an only child, and it's like, well, how do we how do we talk to him about this?
25:33
SPEAKER_04: How do we do this?
25:34
SPEAKER_04: And he's 19 now.
25:37
SPEAKER_04: And you know, it's easy for me to say because like I wasn't there going through the divorce with the kid and the whole thing.
25:43
SPEAKER_04: I came in after.
25:45
SPEAKER_04: But what I will tell you is he sees a full happy, messy, beautiful family.
25:56
SPEAKER_04: And now he he was an only child and now he has three siblings.
26:00
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
26:00
SPEAKER_04: And my husband looks back and he's like it would have been fine because we wouldn't have known any different that he was gonna be an only child.
26:11
SPEAKER_04: But now he gets to live his life with a bigger family and see a whole different side of what it means to be in a partnership with somebody.
26:23
SPEAKER_04: A whole different side of his dad.
26:25
SPEAKER_04: A whole different side of his dad.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: He got to yeah, and and kids need to meet the various sides of themselves too.
26:33
unknown: Yeah.
26:34
SPEAKER_04: So look, the the egg analogy is very real.
26:37
SPEAKER_04: Everyone can go use the egg analogy however you want.
26:40
SPEAKER_04: But but like I understand what I will say to whoever's listening is like, I get why you're holding that egg.
26:46
SPEAKER_04: I have I have a dear friend who is literally she says to me, Alexis, like I will move on from my marriage when the kids leave the house.
26:57
SPEAKER_04: And it's been it's been over a decade.
27:00
SPEAKER_04: It's been over a decade.
27:01
SPEAKER_04: And again, there it's not some like horrible abusive marriage, but that she's just like, I when they leave the house, when they go to college, like and I'm just like, oh my gosh.
27:14
SPEAKER_04: Purgatory.
27:16
SPEAKER_04: And like, what are you showing to your kids?
27:18
SPEAKER_04: Your kids know.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes, they know.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: They know.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: That whole piece about attachment style and co-regulating nervous systems and attachment, right?
27:29
SPEAKER_02: If mama ain't regulated, and not that mama needs to be regulated all the time, right?
27:34
SPEAKER_02: But but the health of your attachment style, the health of your nervous system is directly what is absorbed.
27:43
SPEAKER_02: It's not the words we say, it's the energy we emanate.
27:48
SPEAKER_04: When was the moment that you were like, okay, like I just I have to go do this?
27:54
SPEAKER_04: Like obviously it'd been like spinning in your head, but like what was the moment?
27:59
SPEAKER_04: This what was the egg drop moment for you?
28:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: So many, many egg drop moments.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: And I want to circle back just to touch something from way earlier in the conversation.
28:13
SPEAKER_02: The first egg drop moment was certainly when I got divorced.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: And that that's the moment I opened my private practice.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: It was an insane thing to do on paper, right?
28:21
SPEAKER_02: I had a chronic illness and I had all this healing I had to do myself.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: But I took this lump sum alimony and I hustled.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: And probably a few months after I opened the space and all the things, I was like, what have I done?
28:37
SPEAKER_02: But there was a fire.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: There was um a knowing that I I had to step like I see more women go the other direction when they get divorced, right?
28:46
SPEAKER_02: They they let go of their uh side hustle or whatever to take on a salaried position because it creates security.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:55
SPEAKER_02: But I security for me needed to come from me building a thing that could fit into my life and not the other way around.
29:02
SPEAKER_02: Now, entrepreneurship, I work probably more and harder than I ever would if I was working for someone else.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: But it is on my terms and it is at my pace, and it is I am able to, you know, um take care of my needs as I need to and my daughter and all those things.
29:18
SPEAKER_02: But you you mentioned something about the women in the room and um defining ambition and you know, uh when we compare ourselves to other people and that imposter syndrome piece.
29:32
SPEAKER_02: And I would argue after years and years and years and years and years of working with women, that what we're all reaching for is connection insecurity.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: And we can call it ambition, or we can call it boss babing, or we can call it whatever we've gaslighted ourselves into needing.
29:56
SPEAKER_04: Girl bossing and leaning in, and I mean the whole thing.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: That was us gaslighting ourselves into overworking and undercaretaking ourselves, right?
30:06
SPEAKER_02: It's like if you can't beat them, join them.
30:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but what we Because it was filling a void.
30:10
SPEAKER_04: Like, let's be honest, because it was filling a void.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: Say more.
30:16
SPEAKER_04: Look, I I actually to me the the definition of ambition is like spending your time with the things that you value.
30:26
SPEAKER_04: That's it.
30:27
SPEAKER_04: So that has nothing to do with having a career.
30:30
SPEAKER_04: It has nothing to do with making a lot of money.
30:33
SPEAKER_04: It just doesn't.
30:36
SPEAKER_04: I don't think that's how people live though.
30:39
SPEAKER_04: No.
30:39
SPEAKER_04: But that's the reality that I came to when I decided to like truly blow up my career and be like, I'm out.
30:49
SPEAKER_04: And then I was like, oh my God, what am I left with?
30:53
SPEAKER_04: Because to me, the definition of success and ambition means, oh, I gotta I gotta go have like another big corporate job that I can put on my LinkedIn.
31:02
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like climbing.
31:04
SPEAKER_04: It's the climbing, it's the climbing the ladder.
31:06
SPEAKER_04: So that's the void.
31:07
SPEAKER_04: To me, climbing the ladder is the void.
31:09
SPEAKER_04: And it doesn't mean that none of those things provide value.
31:12
SPEAKER_04: Like your career for sure provides value if you're looking at it in the right context.
31:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I think climbing for women, if we really peeled back the layers for the most part, really is about trying to create security.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: And you can't get security from a job title.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: You can't.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: No.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: It has to come from this sort of inner searching and knowing and finding and you know, building and attuning to one's deepest needs and desires, right?
31:40
SPEAKER_02: It it has to come from creating security within oneself, and then that gets reflected outside of us, right?
31:47
SPEAKER_02: So so many egg drop moments, the moment I got divorced, right?
31:51
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, now I get to figure out who I am because I've been being who everyone told me to be up into this moment.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, there were moments as a as a new mom where uh breaking cycles became more important than um pacifying other stakeholders at the time of my life, right?
32:13
SPEAKER_02: So different egg drop moment, like drawing new boundaries.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: Um then various places where I realized that what the internet or like popular culture was saying about mental health couldn't be true because it wasn't working for me, right?
32:32
SPEAKER_02: Like I was doing the therapies and the yoga and the whatever, but I was still chronically ill.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: I was doing functional medicine, still chronically ill.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: So like all these moments in my own life where I'm like, well, if what they say is really true, then this would be working for me, and it's not, which means there's more, there's more, there's more, there's more, and refusing to agree when it wasn't working.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: So I've then, you know, gone back to the drawing board, either from a soul perspective or a clinical perspective, right?
33:04
SPEAKER_02: So the most recent one when homeopathy, which is frequency medicine, which is a complete form of medicine that has existed for over 275 years, it's existed since the beginning of time, but it was discovered in our modern era, 275 years ago, has the answer to every illness, mental, physical, name it, right?
33:25
SPEAKER_02: But has been suppressed because of Western medicine and big pharma.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: When I discovered it and recognized and had this reckoning where I had all of a sudden I saw how it worked and I couldn't unsee it, and I was like, this is where my practice, this is to direction that my podcast, my practice, where everything has to go.
33:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:43
SPEAKER_02: And it's like I can't unsee it.
33:45
SPEAKER_02: I can't I can't live with the conflict inside of me not going all in on this thing that I understand um is so profound.
33:56
SPEAKER_04: Um you and I talked about this one of the first times that we chatted, but um I'm a firm believer in all of that like vibration work through my my doctor treats me through Nate, which is similar.
34:12
SPEAKER_04: It's like vibrations um that can you can be healed with anything.
34:19
SPEAKER_04: And I actually think that's also just stripping down to this truest sense of just listening to your body.
34:30
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
34:30
SPEAKER_04: Just listen to what your body needs because your body's gonna tell you.
34:33
SPEAKER_04: I've been dealing with so many health things, mold.
34:37
SPEAKER_04: I've been dealing with mold in our house.
34:38
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we won't go down that path, but I've been dealing with like chronic health issues for the last like four to six months.
34:45
SPEAKER_04: And I was the same.
34:47
SPEAKER_04: I was just like chasing and chasing and chasing and chasing.
34:50
SPEAKER_04: And I was doing all the health things and like, nothing's working, nothing's working.
34:52
SPEAKER_04: And my body tried to tell me every which way to Sunday.
34:57
SPEAKER_04: It was like, you're not listening.
34:59
SPEAKER_04: You're not listening, you're not listening.
35:01
SPEAKER_04: And it wasn't literally until like a month ago where I was like, oh, okay, sorry, you've been trying to tell me for six months something is going on.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't feel good to be in this house.
35:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: And I like to sometimes feel like a victim and be like, we've been brainwashed to be afraid of our bodies.
35:18
SPEAKER_02: We don't like it.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: We want to shut them up.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: We want to take a pill, we want to scroll, we want to have a drink, right?
35:23
SPEAKER_02: And that's all true.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: And we have been brainwashed.
35:26
SPEAKER_02: And I do believe that we are lining big pharma's jets with our hard-earned money, our hard-earned breadwind money.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: But also, I think from the beginning of time, we've wanted to numb, right?
35:37
SPEAKER_02: Like it's just is of the human experience.
35:39
SPEAKER_02: We would rather avoid, we would rather bypass than listen to our bodies and honor them.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: It's a safe because it's because it's safe in that moment.
35:48
SPEAKER_04: In that moment, the numbing is perceived.
35:53
SPEAKER_04: I mean, my perceived my husband talks about his previous relationship as comfortably numb.
36:00
SPEAKER_04: That's how he described it.
36:01
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
36:02
SPEAKER_04: He's like, look, it wasn't bad.
36:03
SPEAKER_04: Like we never fought.
36:05
SPEAKER_04: He's like, anyone from the outside would have not seen or thought any different.
36:11
SPEAKER_04: But he's like, it was just comfortably numb.
36:14
SPEAKER_04: He's like, would have spent the rest of my life just like slowly turning off all the lights.
36:19
SPEAKER_04: It's just like things just kept getting quieter and quieter and quieter before you're just like sitting in this, like, well, I guess this is what the next phase of my life is.
36:30
SPEAKER_04: And so the hard, the really hard thing to do is be like, can I turn these lights back on?
36:36
SPEAKER_04: Like, I remember what it was like.
36:41
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
36:42
SPEAKER_04: Watch the roach, truly watch the roaches scatter.
36:45
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, he's like, we had a lot of skeletons under the rug that we just kept brushing under the rug.
36:52
SPEAKER_04: And it's really hard to face that, to have that moment to face it.
36:59
SPEAKER_04: And thank God you have a community like this where you talk about these things because it's similar to our tables.
37:05
SPEAKER_04: It's like you have to create the safe space for people to acknowledge it and say it out loud, and then have everyone else.
37:11
SPEAKER_04: I'm sure you can't hear them because they're listening to your podcast, but like to have people like collectively exhale and be like, oh, thank God somebody else said it.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:20
SPEAKER_02: So, but now let's talk about the next step because you have thousands of people reading your newsletter, and you were so afraid to send this email about in-person workshops.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: So, and the the similar concept for my community is I created a 12-month program that is multimodal, right?
37:41
SPEAKER_02: And it's become, and it's a and it's a group and individual.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: It's it's very individualized, but it's group format because of what you described.
37:49
SPEAKER_02: You cannot recover in isolation, right?
37:51
SPEAKER_02: It's that group experience, that lived experience of connectivity and vulnerability.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: And do you know how many women are like, I'm not really into the group portion.
38:03
SPEAKER_04: A lot.
38:04
SPEAKER_04: Because it's really, yeah, it's that's really hard.
38:07
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I think because a lot of people feel like it's a hall of mirrors.
38:13
SPEAKER_04: Like it doesn't matter who's in the room.
38:15
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
38:16
SPEAKER_04: It matters that you're saying those things in the room.
38:19
SPEAKER_04: You're in the room.
38:20
SPEAKER_04: It could be a bunch of dummies in like literal dumb, not like the metaphorical.
38:24
SPEAKER_04: No, no, no, no, like literal dumps.
38:25
SPEAKER_04: Like mannequins.
38:26
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
38:26
SPEAKER_04: Like mannequins.
38:28
SPEAKER_04: But it has nothing to do with who's in there.
38:31
SPEAKER_04: It has everything to do with am I ready to say those things out loud?
38:36
unknown: Yeah.
38:37
SPEAKER_04: Someone once said to me, it's like, if you're really uncomfortable with something, like look at yourself in the mirror and say it out loud.
38:43
SPEAKER_04: And like, there have been moments where I literally sitting in the mirror and like I cannot say it out loud.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: For example, you didn't think I wasn't gonna ask a follow-up, did you?
38:56
SPEAKER_04: Well, let's see.
38:58
SPEAKER_04: One of them was when I was building the breadwinners and I had like so much self-doubt where I was like, what am I doing?
39:06
SPEAKER_04: Like, am I what am I what am I building?
39:07
SPEAKER_04: What is this thing?
39:08
SPEAKER_04: I don't know what it is.
39:10
SPEAKER_04: Because it was, I had like flipped everything on its head of going to build a business, but like it was really about building community first.
39:18
SPEAKER_04: And so, like my 20-year corporate brain was like, does not compute.
39:22
SPEAKER_04: Like there is like, where is the business plan?
39:26
SPEAKER_04: Where are the revenue streams?
39:27
SPEAKER_04: Where are the hooks and the loops is just my yeah, totally?
39:32
SPEAKER_04: And so I just sat with so much self-doubt of like, why are you doing this?
39:38
SPEAKER_04: Like, this is ridiculous.
39:40
SPEAKER_04: Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
39:43
SPEAKER_04: But everything that I was meant to build just kept falling in place.
39:50
SPEAKER_04: It just kept landing and landing and landing.
39:52
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna like one more step forward, one more step forward, one more step forward.
39:58
SPEAKER_04: But like the annoying little voice in the back of my head was like, What are you doing?
40:01
SPEAKER_04: What are you doing?
40:02
SPEAKER_04: And so I I like actually like could not look at myself in the mirror to be like, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: It was really hard.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: Do you have people who will say it to you when you can't say it to yourself?
40:17
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
40:18
unknown: Yeah.
40:19
SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm very lucky to have those incredible people who are like the greatest cheerleaders who give who give me the self-confidence that sometimes I don't have myself.
40:33
SPEAKER_04: It's like, that's okay.
40:34
SPEAKER_04: That's okay to go find your self-confidence from somebody else.
40:39
SPEAKER_04: There's nothing wrong with that.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I agree.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: It's a it's a lily pad, right?
40:44
SPEAKER_02: It's a yeah, I tell people sometimes to borrow my belief in them.
40:48
SPEAKER_02: Borrow my belief until you can run with it, or borrow my faith, or borrow my whatever.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: So nice.
40:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because as long as we're reaching for a next evolution, we're going to go through periods of uncertainty and self-doubt with each phase of reinvention or um leaning into new beliefs or ideas or stretch goals.
41:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:10
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
41:11
SPEAKER_04: That's really nice.
41:12
SPEAKER_04: I really like that.
41:13
SPEAKER_04: I'm writing it down.
41:13
SPEAKER_04: Borrow my belief.
41:15
SPEAKER_02: You heard it here, Alexis Contos writing something I said that I think I heard in an Al-Anon meeting.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: So there's that.
41:21
SPEAKER_02: Great.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: Doesn't matter.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: Take it and run with it.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: Gotta find inspiration somewhere.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: Talk to us about the word breadwinners, right?
41:37
SPEAKER_02: There's because again, I think at this stage women listening to Dear Divorce Diary the podcast have such a mixed, uh, like maybe even more negative connotation with it than positive at this stage in life, right?
41:50
SPEAKER_02: I and I've gone through many, many phases with it.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: There have been times where I took such pride in it, and times that it felt embarrassing, and times that it felt exhausting, and times that it felt empowering, right?
42:02
SPEAKER_02: But talk to us about what that word means for you in its various iterations.
42:09
SPEAKER_04: I have to say it is one of the things that ironically is maybe the most unsettled thing about what I'm building because I kind of see multiple versions of it.
42:25
SPEAKER_04: One at like at a very high level.
42:29
SPEAKER_04: To me, the term breadwinner is outdated, and it's like time to redefine it for a society and culture in which everything operates differently than it did 50 years ago.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
42:42
SPEAKER_04: I think I think it was the definition of breadwinner goes back to like the 1800s.
42:48
SPEAKER_04: Oh, where the yeah, like the person who brings the literal bread home to the literal bread.
42:53
SPEAKER_04: The literal bread.
42:54
SPEAKER_04: Like you are winning the bread to come bring it home and serve your family.
42:59
SPEAKER_04: Feed your family.
43:00
SPEAKER_04: Um and then society in like the 50s, 60s, 70s just continued to take on.
43:06
SPEAKER_04: And it was like, well, the breadwinners, like, you know, bringing home all of this financial support.
43:12
SPEAKER_04: So to me, it just like feels outdated.
43:14
SPEAKER_04: And so for some women, for some people, for some families, that definition still holds true, which is like, I bring home the money.
43:23
SPEAKER_04: What I truly believe and what I would love for the conversation to evolve to is this kind of goes back to the where I put the pin in earlier.
43:32
SPEAKER_04: Oh, um this idea of what you carry and what you bring.
43:38
SPEAKER_04: So we carry a lot of are we doing things right?
43:42
SPEAKER_04: Are my kids healthy?
43:43
SPEAKER_04: Are my kids happy?
43:44
SPEAKER_04: Is my home okay?
43:45
SPEAKER_04: Am I taking care of myself?
43:46
SPEAKER_04: Is my husband happy?
43:47
SPEAKER_04: Am I spending enough time?
43:48
SPEAKER_04: It's like you carry all those things.
43:49
SPEAKER_04: And so, like the connotation of carrying is like, oof, like we carry a lot.
43:55
SPEAKER_04: But what you bring into your family is actually incredibly lighthearted.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: Look, I breathed, I inhaled, I expanded.
44:04
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
44:05
SPEAKER_04: Like, think about all the things you bring.
44:08
SPEAKER_04: You bring joy, you bring love, you bring laughter, you bring light, you bring safety and security, you bring all of those things.
44:16
SPEAKER_04: So to me, that is breadwinning.
44:19
SPEAKER_04: Breadwinning is uh bringing important things into the home.
44:23
SPEAKER_04: Chills.
44:24
SPEAKER_04: Chills.
44:25
SPEAKER_04: That's it.
44:26
SPEAKER_04: So whatever that means, and yes, one of the important things is money, but that's not the only thing.
44:33
SPEAKER_04: So I always encourage people, and this is this was the prompt at our launch dinner in LA last fall was what you carry and what you bring.
44:42
SPEAKER_04: Like think about the things that you carry and think about all the beautiful things that you bring into your home.
44:50
SPEAKER_04: That's breadwinning.
44:51
SPEAKER_02: Okay, darlings.
44:52
SPEAKER_02: That's homework.
44:55
SPEAKER_04: Truly.
44:55
SPEAKER_04: It's like give yourself a moment.
44:58
SPEAKER_04: Give yourself a moment to think about, you know, maybe some of the things you carry you need to let go.
45:04
SPEAKER_02: Let go, put down.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
45:06
SPEAKER_04: Just like let let it go.
45:07
SPEAKER_04: One of my one of the women who's been a part of the community for a while.
45:12
SPEAKER_04: She has this incredible company.
45:14
SPEAKER_04: And this is actually one of the vulnerable things that she said at the dinner.
45:17
SPEAKER_04: She's like, I just want to be the fun mom.
45:20
SPEAKER_04: She's like, I'm always so serious.
45:23
SPEAKER_04: She's like, I'm my husband gets to be the fun dad.
45:26
SPEAKER_04: And I'm always the serious mom, like barking orders and saying no and correcting people.
45:31
SPEAKER_04: And she's like, I just want to be the fun mom.
45:35
SPEAKER_04: And that's what she carries is the seriousness.
45:39
SPEAKER_04: And what she wants to bring is fun.
45:41
SPEAKER_04: Like she's actually a hysterical human.
45:42
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, what are you talking about?
45:43
SPEAKER_04: You're so funny.
45:44
SPEAKER_04: And she's like, there's not space for it in that context.
45:47
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
45:47
SPEAKER_04: There's not space for it.
45:49
SPEAKER_04: So that's just, you know, that's an example.
45:52
SPEAKER_02: Because she for some reason perceives that there won't be safety or security if she relinquishes that, right?
45:59
SPEAKER_02: Like somehow she's really feeling like that is creating security or safety.
46:04
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that dance, it's tricky, man.
46:06
SPEAKER_02: But but actually fun immediately lands as safety in the body.
46:13
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
46:14
SPEAKER_04: It and it's completely like it releases like oxytocin and like all these things where you're like, wow, that was really nice.
46:23
SPEAKER_04: Like, can I do that more often?
46:25
SPEAKER_04: The prompt around that dinner was um this idea of identity foreclosure, which is the psychologists in the 60s coined this term for mostly high-achieving people, these people who have spent their entire lives from when they were really young, continually like hitting the mark on everything that other people had set up for them.
46:48
SPEAKER_04: Of like, you were really good at this sport, did it, you got these great grades, awesome, you got into this college, good.
46:53
SPEAKER_04: And then you just keep going.
46:54
SPEAKER_04: You're like, oh, I'm doing it, I'm going, I'm succeeding, I'm setting these expectations of other people, checking the boxes.
47:01
SPEAKER_04: And it's not to say that none of that is fulfilling, but you reach this phase, the stage of your life where you approach identity foreclosure, which is acknowledging the version of yourself that could have existed if you weren't so good at being the other one.
47:16
SPEAKER_04: So the question to the group was what version of yourself have you yet to become because you're so good at being this one?
47:23
SPEAKER_04: And that's when my friend stood up and was like, I would really like to be the fun mom because I've been really good at like having my shit together for 45 years.
47:35
SPEAKER_04: So and I expected people to get up and talk about like the version of themselves and their careers to be like, well, I was a lawyer and I would really love to have been a comedian.
47:45
SPEAKER_04: Nobody talked about their jobs.
47:47
SPEAKER_04: No one was like, Oh, I really wish I was a chef.
47:49
SPEAKER_04: Everyone talked about like the version of themselves that wish they could slow down more because they spend their entire lives being busy and moving.
47:57
SPEAKER_02: Human experience.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: They talked about the human experience.
48:01
SPEAKER_04: Every single person.
48:04
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
48:05
SPEAKER_04: So that's what happens at the dinners.
48:07
SPEAKER_04: Like, that's what we talk about to the dinners.
48:09
SPEAKER_04: Like nobody needs to like hear about your latest award that you won or how many kids you have.
48:17
SPEAKER_04: Like, that's great.
48:17
SPEAKER_04: If you want to talk about those things, go for it.
48:20
SPEAKER_04: But you can go somewhere.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: It's not who you are.
48:23
SPEAKER_00: They're roles, they're things you carry.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: The things they're the things you carry, which are beautiful things.
48:29
SPEAKER_04: Like a beautiful career, a beautiful family.
48:32
SPEAKER_04: Like all of those things are beautiful.
48:34
SPEAKER_04: We could scroll your Instagram and see those things.
48:36
SPEAKER_04: Sure.
48:37
SPEAKER_04: And you can like go to a lot of other places and talk about those things and feel good about yourself and your career in one place and go to a support group for moms in another.
48:47
SPEAKER_04: But like that's not what this is.
48:49
SPEAKER_04: It's like just show up as yourself and like take a moment to like actually acknowledge all the amazing things you're doing as a human being.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: That's where we need to go as a community of women.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: Women who are not comparing ourselves to each other, women who can keep our hearts open amongst being vulnerable, where we are encouraging each other to have the capacity to give and receive, where we can just be with each other.
49:25
SPEAKER_04: It's there's one people I get often asked, how do you choose who sits at the table?
49:32
SPEAKER_04: Um most guests are nominated by previous guests in other cities.
49:38
SPEAKER_04: So I will send notes to the community saying, Hey, I'm going to X City.
49:43
SPEAKER_04: Who would you nominate?
49:45
SPEAKER_04: Now, just because you get dominated doesn't mean you get invited, but I go through this process of then like kind of back channel vetting everybody.
49:51
SPEAKER_04: But there is one criteria for every single person who sits at the table.
49:56
SPEAKER_04: And that criteria is you give more than you take.
49:59
SPEAKER_04: That's it.
50:01
SPEAKER_04: And it's actually like a very like hard line.
50:06
SPEAKER_04: And that's what the back channeling's for.
50:08
SPEAKER_04: Because like everyone can be like, oh, of course I give.
50:10
SPEAKER_04: Like I give all these things.
50:12
SPEAKER_04: But when you don't ask other people, that's actually when the truth comes out.
50:17
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: Can we unpack that a little?
50:19
SPEAKER_02: Do we have time to unpack that a little?
50:21
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
50:21
SPEAKER_02: Because I would argue that most women think they give more than they take, and that that's actually its own pandemic is women overgiving.
50:31
SPEAKER_02: We were just talking about this on the podcast, though, that when we're giving from a place of burnout, is it really giving?
50:40
SPEAKER_02: Or is it something else?
50:43
SPEAKER_02: So, what have you learned about women?
50:45
SPEAKER_02: Tell us what you've learned about us.
50:47
SPEAKER_02: What are women actually doing that they're not in on the joke?
50:50
SPEAKER_02: They're not realizing.
50:52
SPEAKER_02: What is it?
50:53
SPEAKER_02: What big trend you're seeing?
50:54
SPEAKER_04: This is this is the interesting thing.
50:56
SPEAKER_04: Nobody knows that that criteria is what they were evaluated on until they're sitting at the table.
51:03
SPEAKER_04: And then I tell them in my opening remarks.
51:06
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, oh, by the way, you were all nominated.
51:08
SPEAKER_02: Oh, by the way, I just told the internet.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: Now the internet knows, Alexis.
51:14
SPEAKER_04: So, yes, if you get an invite now, that's the criteria that you've that you've uh accomplished.
51:20
SPEAKER_04: The criteria of you give more than you take is a frame of mind.
51:27
SPEAKER_04: It's like you just you do it naturally, where as somebody who takes more than they give is someone who shows up and is looking at the evening like what's in it for me, versus going into it with an open heart and an open mind of like I most people go to these dinners, they're like, I don't know what this thing is.
51:51
SPEAKER_04: I don't know who's gonna be there because I don't share the guest list until like the day before.
51:56
SPEAKER_04: So people have committed to this thing and they're like, I don't just gonna go.
52:01
SPEAKER_04: So so that right there is a bit of check yourself.
52:05
SPEAKER_04: Cause I've had people ask, set can you send me the guest list?
52:09
SPEAKER_04: And I say, Nope, nope, I'm not sending you the guest list because you just asked the wrong question.
52:14
SPEAKER_04: Like if you just if you ask You want to know who's at the table, you're taking you're taking more than you give.
52:20
SPEAKER_04: Like that's not that's actually a test of like, sorry, you just asked the wrong question.
52:26
SPEAKER_04: Um but it's the people who show up and perform, who posture, who are there to be like, okay, what can I get out of this dinner?
52:37
SPEAKER_04: What's in it for me?
52:39
SPEAKER_04: That you're weird.
52:40
SPEAKER_04: Those aren't the people that you're like, you're you're you're kind of reading the room and you can feel it.
52:45
SPEAKER_04: Like that you're reading the room to be like, ooh, like I gotta go talk to this person, or like, oh, I I wish I was sitting next to that person.
52:52
SPEAKER_04: And I've had I've had people come to dinners to be like, oh, can I switch seats?
52:56
SPEAKER_04: Because I want to sit next to that person.
52:57
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, that's a big X.
53:01
SPEAKER_04: Like that is not that is not the mentality that we're looking for here.
53:07
SPEAKER_04: Because you have no idea what's gonna come from the person that you don't know that's sitting next to you.
53:14
SPEAKER_02: How did the you that you're showing up as today, who was always in there, right?
53:20
SPEAKER_02: Show up in your corporate career like this.
53:24
SPEAKER_02: Do you find that there's a lot of authenticity and transparency in corporate America?
53:29
SPEAKER_04: Like, no, no, there isn't.
53:31
SPEAKER_04: And it's it's part of the reason why I grew up in Boston.
53:38
SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm like a Bostonian through and through.
53:40
SPEAKER_04: And like I am a very direct person, almost to a fault.
53:44
SPEAKER_04: Like I'm just like too honest sometimes.
53:48
SPEAKER_04: And it just like got me in trouble in my career.
53:51
SPEAKER_04: Like I was told I had sharp elbows, or I was told, like, kind of get in line and like don't ask the hard questions.
54:00
SPEAKER_04: And and I'm realizing like that's the essence of who I always was.
54:06
SPEAKER_04: I was always the kid that like stirred and made commotion in classrooms and I disrupted other kids.
54:12
SPEAKER_04: But it was one, I was just like true to my authentic self.
54:17
SPEAKER_04: And then in corporate world, not always, like I had some incredible jobs and worked on incredible teams that just fueled that.
54:26
SPEAKER_04: And I'm still like wonderful friends with those people because they were also like-minded in that sense of just like accept that anything can happen, and that's where like really amazing stuff happens, versus places and companies that were just like, oh, like don't ask those questions and you know, why are you ruffling feathers that way?
54:49
SPEAKER_04: Those those places are like the fall in line because society expects you to do those things.
54:54
SPEAKER_04: This that's such a broad statement.
54:55
SPEAKER_04: But you kind of get the gist of the thing.
54:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's always been this element about you that has this capacity for disruption and sees the value in it.
55:04
SPEAKER_04: In my mind, when things aren't fair, I'm like, I really like will fall on my sword for stuff, and that's gotten me in trouble.
55:12
SPEAKER_04: Where people are like, sorry, that's just not how the world works, or like that's not beneficial to our business.
55:17
SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, this is fucked.
55:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: It ought to be.
55:21
SPEAKER_02: Like, what's wrong with you people?
55:23
SPEAKER_02: So that's also Geminis can just say it, say it straight.
55:27
SPEAKER_02: Geminis, Geminis, look up with their words, yeah.
55:30
SPEAKER_02: So there's a little bit of your moon sign there.
55:32
SPEAKER_04: Is that the two?
55:33
SPEAKER_04: Is that the two faces?
55:35
SPEAKER_02: Yes, Gemini.
55:36
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
55:36
SPEAKER_02: Twins, twins.
55:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:38
SPEAKER_02: But we're we're truth tellers, Geminis.
55:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: Truth tellers.
55:42
SPEAKER_02: That's exciting.
55:43
SPEAKER_02: If you could leave our listeners with you've already left us with so many gems, so I'm just piling on at this point, Alexis.
55:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh, right, what you bring versus what you carry, that is uh that's that's the homework, right?
55:57
SPEAKER_02: But if you could leave our listeners with something to challenge the way they're seeing themselves or the world that they're what you want them to sort of examine or noodle on.
56:12
SPEAKER_04: I would encourage big people to take a good hard look at how you're spending your time, who you're spending your time with, and evaluating whether that serves who you are today.
56:35
SPEAKER_04: Because I I realize I've realized actually a lot in the past year we've we have so many seasons of who we are as a human.
56:49
SPEAKER_04: And like the old version of yourself may not be serving who you are today, and you may be in this quantum leap in between the old version of yourself and the new version of yourself.
57:01
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
57:03
SPEAKER_04: And that's the that's the hard work that I've had to do with some of my friendships and my and my work.
57:09
SPEAKER_04: What I what I came to terms with a year and a half ago is like my work is no longer serving me.
57:14
SPEAKER_04: It did 15 years ago and 10 years ago and five years ago.
57:18
SPEAKER_04: It served me, but that was an old version of myself.
57:22
SPEAKER_04: So I I think the work is acknowledging what version of yourself exists today, or the transition that you're going into, and then grieve that previous version of yourself, whether it's the single woman before she was a mom, or the married woman who's now divorced, or the mom who spent 18 years taking care of all of their kids in the family and the household, and now the house is quiet.
57:54
SPEAKER_04: Like celebrate and grieve who that person was because you did beautiful things and wonderful things, but that is no longer who you are.
58:02
SPEAKER_04: And then once you're acknowledging who the version of yourself is today, take a look around and figure out are you spending your time with the people who are filling your cup, who are bringing things to you instead of carrying things or making you carry things.
58:20
SPEAKER_04: So, like the carry and bring thing works in the home, but it also works in all other aspects of your life.
58:25
SPEAKER_00: All relationships.
58:26
SPEAKER_04: Like, what are you carrying in your job?
58:28
SPEAKER_04: What are you bringing in your job?
58:30
SPEAKER_04: What are you carrying in your marriage?
58:31
SPEAKER_04: What are you bringing?
58:32
SPEAKER_04: What's your what is your husband carrying in the marriage?
58:35
SPEAKER_04: Like that's like a really hard look of I spend my entire life.
58:39
SPEAKER_04: This is like a little bit of a tangent, but like I've spent my entire life building pros and cons lists when I have to make a really hard decision in life.
58:45
SPEAKER_04: Like anything in life.
58:47
SPEAKER_04: I like literally sit down and I write a pros and cons list for option one.
58:50
SPEAKER_04: Such a Virgo thing.
58:52
SPEAKER_04: And I write a pros and cons list for option two.
58:55
SPEAKER_04: And so my advice to people when they're going through something really hard where they're like, I have to make this decision, I don't know how to do it.
59:01
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, just sit down and write the pros and cons list.
59:05
SPEAKER_04: Because there's always going to be a what if on either side.
59:10
SPEAKER_04: And so the exercise is acknowledging who you are or who you're growing into, and then doing the pros and cons list, the carry and bring to see is this the right next step for me?
59:24
SPEAKER_04: It's really hard work to do.
59:26
SPEAKER_04: It's really hard work to do on your own.
59:29
SPEAKER_01: It is.
59:30
SPEAKER_04: Which is why you've created these beautiful groups.
59:32
SPEAKER_04: Like this is what group therapy is for.
59:34
SPEAKER_02: To have somebody else say it to you.
59:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:37
SPEAKER_02: And then, right.
59:38
SPEAKER_02: And then to have other people's beliefs you could borrow in the meantime, right?
59:42
SPEAKER_02: And to have someone remind you it's okay to drop the egg because if you are willing to meet yourself in that mirror, the universe will have your back, whatever you want to call that, right?
59:52
SPEAKER_02: Like intelligent creator, like source energy.
59:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:57
SPEAKER_02: You yeah, you gotta be willing.
59:59
SPEAKER_02: In summary, you have to be willing to let go of what was in order to become what can be.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_02: And there's no bypassing that.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_02: There's no outsmarting the system.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_04: No, there isn't.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_04: Because that's the stuff that will carry with you.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_04: That's I mean, it just goes it goes back to the the egg dropping analogy.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_04: Is like that's the egg that has to drop and crack.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_04: And like then you have to find a way to clean it up.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_04: But you have 11 other eggs and that dozen.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_02: And in theory, a group of people who are willing to walk with you while you clean.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_02: Clean with you.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_04: I wouldn't have I'm this is now like my analogy, but like I wouldn't have had the dozen egg analogy if it wasn't for literally sitting with my friend for an hour and a half over coffee, and she said it to me.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, oh, you're totally right.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_04: Super helpful.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_02: Where do you prefer people find you on Substack?
1:01:00
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_04: Um our Substack is wearthebreadwinners.substack.com.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_04: The breadwinners.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_04: We are the breadwinners.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_04: It's a rallying cry.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_04: Um and on Instagram, we are the breadwinners.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_04: And I love individual notes, just like the one that Don sent me.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_04: So um I'm Alexis at the breadwinners.co.co.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_04: I'd love to hear from you.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for this conversation.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_04: Thanks for having me.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_04: This is so lovely.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_02: Friendship, can we call it that?
1:01:33
SPEAKER_02: Can we call it a budding friend?
1:01:34
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for inspiring me and inspiring all of the women and the women who have yet to even be introduced to you.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_02: I cannot wait.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm so excited to be all of you.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_04: Please seriously reach out and say hi because I love it more than anything when I get individual notes.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me on.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_00: This is awesome.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: All right, darlings.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: We love you so much.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_02: Peace.com.