Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Devi Brown On Achieving 'Higher Consciousness', Embracing Grief, Developing Self Mastery + More
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Everybody is j Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne de God. We
- 0:09Speaker 2: are the Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in
- 0:11Speaker 2: the building.
- 0:12Speaker 3: My good sister, longtime friend, DeBie Brown is back here.
- 0:15Speaker 4: Good morning, Good morning, y'all.
- 0:18Speaker 1: Oh my god, How you feel on book publishing day?
- 0:22Speaker 4: I feel free? Yeah, I feel so free.
- 0:25Speaker 5: I've had a lot of anxiety about it for the
- 0:27Speaker 5: last few weeks. You know, what's like, you know that
- 0:31Speaker 5: creative birthing, and like there's a lot of like vulnerable
- 0:33Speaker 5: stories in it, and you're like, did I do that?
- 0:35Speaker 5: Should I have done this? But yeah, now I just
- 0:39Speaker 5: feel free. It's here, it's done. I'm proud of it.
- 0:42Speaker 5: I feel great.
- 0:43Speaker 3: Living in Wisdom a path to embodying your authentic self,
- 0:46Speaker 3: embracing grief, and developing self mastery.
- 0:49Speaker 5: Tell us about that title, you know, I think so
- 0:53Speaker 5: just like being a healer, being someone that has been
- 0:57Speaker 5: on their own spiritual journey for decades, and being a teacher.
- 1:02Speaker 5: I found that, you know, those are the three things that.
- 1:06Speaker 4: Really give you.
- 1:07Speaker 5: A feeling of a well lived life. You know, when
- 1:10Speaker 5: we're looking for healing or when we're looking for self
- 1:12Speaker 5: actualization or self awareness, all the things whatever we're looking
- 1:15Speaker 5: for when it comes time to grow, It's like, ultimately
- 1:18Speaker 5: we're looking to be the embodiment of our authentic self,
- 1:21Speaker 5: to get past the performance of.
- 1:23Speaker 4: Like who we say we are and actually get to
- 1:25Speaker 4: the core. And then all of being alive is to
- 1:28Speaker 4: have grief a part of that.
- 1:30Speaker 5: You know, every day there's grief, and whether it's losing someone,
- 1:34Speaker 5: which I'm sure all of us have or will because
- 1:36Speaker 5: that's what it is to be here, or it's you know,
- 1:39Speaker 5: the daily grief of bearing witness to everything that's happening.
- 1:43Speaker 4: Finding a way to embrace.
- 1:44Speaker 5: That grief is a part of what it is to
- 1:47Speaker 5: be human is I think a really powerful shift in
- 1:49Speaker 5: our growth and then walking a past the path of
- 1:52Speaker 5: self mastery like looking to always not necessarily like be
- 1:56Speaker 5: better or prove things, but to just deepen in what
- 1:59Speaker 5: you already are. Like, Mastery isn't perfection. Mastery is like
- 2:04Speaker 5: the slow process of excellence of self, you know, and
- 2:09Speaker 5: only we kind of know what that process is inside.
- 2:12Speaker 2: I want to go back for people that don't know
- 2:14Speaker 2: Devi's been here a long time ago. But for people
- 2:17Speaker 2: that don't know who Debbie is, Debbie Brown is. I
- 2:20Speaker 2: want to start from the beginning if you don't know,
- 2:21Speaker 2: Debbie was a successful radio personality in media personalities. Uh,
- 2:27Speaker 2: and at the top of her game, decided she didn't
- 2:29Speaker 2: want to do it anymore. It wasn't like she was
- 2:31Speaker 2: pushed out. It wasn't like she had bad ratings. She
- 2:33Speaker 2: just said, you know what, I don't want to do
- 2:35Speaker 2: it anymore, top of her game.
- 2:37Speaker 3: Uh.
- 2:37Speaker 2: And then she started going on this healing journey. Debbie
- 2:40Speaker 2: was out in the clubs. She might have got into
- 2:43Speaker 2: a brawl tool, but we're not going.
- 2:44Speaker 1: To go there.
- 2:47Speaker 5: I'm talking about no idea.
- 2:53Speaker 1: Debbie Brown, and I don't under.
- 2:54Speaker 2: That was none there was this. This is a healing journey.
- 2:56Speaker 2: So I wanted her rebirth of rebirth, I want to
- 2:59Speaker 2: go to for people that don't know what made you say,
- 3:02Speaker 2: you know what, this industry is not for me. I
- 3:03Speaker 2: want to give this up. You were doing radio, you
- 3:05Speaker 2: were doing in different markets. You just had a baby
- 3:08Speaker 2: and just said it's not.
- 3:10Speaker 6: At the top of your game. How like, how did
- 3:12Speaker 6: you go from a woman in radio to just like,
- 3:13Speaker 6: now I'm done.
- 3:14Speaker 5: With it, you know, I think, And it's not even
- 3:17Speaker 5: first of all, I just have to say, and y'all
- 3:19Speaker 5: know this, Like, to me, radio is one of the
- 3:21Speaker 5: most incredible sacred ways to broadcast, because like you're really
- 3:25Speaker 5: in someone's head and body when you talk, right like
- 3:28Speaker 5: they connect to you with.
- 3:29Speaker 4: Their whole being.
- 3:30Speaker 5: It's I've always found it to be like a sacred
- 3:32Speaker 5: responsibility that makes.
- 3:33Speaker 4: You good at like everything else.
- 3:37Speaker 5: I think I realized that my purpose was evolving, and
- 3:42Speaker 5: I realized that a lot of the skills that I
- 3:44Speaker 5: was amassing, like communication, connecting with people, building community, I
- 3:49Speaker 5: just kept getting very very clear direction from God that
- 3:52Speaker 5: I was meant to do it differently and use it differently.
- 3:56Speaker 5: And I felt like I personally was going through so
- 3:59Speaker 5: much like while I was still on the radio for
- 4:01Speaker 5: many years, I was like kind of secretly quietly getting
- 4:05Speaker 5: certifications and like meditation and breath work and spiritual psychology,
- 4:09Speaker 5: like it was such a huge part of my off
- 4:11Speaker 5: the air life. And I felt like, at least at
- 4:14Speaker 5: that time, because I left the industry maybe almost ten
- 4:17Speaker 5: years ago, at that time, there was no blending of
- 4:20Speaker 5: the two, you know, and I was having situations where
- 4:23Speaker 5: I was wanting to have these deeper layered conversations, and
- 4:28Speaker 5: you know, I was being told by the people I
- 4:30Speaker 5: worked with, like no one wants to hear that, Like
- 4:32Speaker 5: now we can't run that on the.
- 4:33Speaker 4: Air, like ask more questions.
- 4:36Speaker 5: About dating, ask questions about beef ast, you know, And
- 4:40Speaker 5: for whatever reasons, it's like what I had to give
- 4:44Speaker 5: and what I felt God wanted me to give, it
- 4:46Speaker 5: was not valued at the time. And so instead of
- 4:50Speaker 5: kind of like sitting in that and you know, just
- 4:53Speaker 5: going with the zeitgeist, I was just like, Okay, so
- 4:55Speaker 5: it's time to leave. It's time to see what else
- 4:58Speaker 5: I can be used for or how else does you
- 5:01Speaker 5: know God want to use me? And it was interesting
- 5:04Speaker 5: because there was like a breakthrough moment for me where
- 5:08Speaker 5: Kendrick had come on my show. And I had known
- 5:10Speaker 5: Kendrick for a long, long, long, long long time the
- 5:13Speaker 5: very beginning of his career, so we would always have
- 5:15Speaker 5: really powerful, beautiful conversations.
- 5:19Speaker 4: Right that was in Houston.
- 5:20Speaker 5: He's brilliant, he's you know, brilliant, beyond belief. And we
- 5:25Speaker 5: were talking about like depression on this episode, and we
- 5:27Speaker 5: were talking about suicide ideation and this was twenty fourteen,
- 5:32Speaker 5: and people in my sphere didn't really see value in
- 5:37Speaker 5: those questions or in the way that we were talking
- 5:40Speaker 5: about things. So you know, I was kind of asked like, hey,
- 5:44Speaker 5: you can't. You can't share those parts of the interview
- 5:46Speaker 5: on the radio. It's too long, it's too boring, like
- 5:48Speaker 5: we need to get to the music. And so I
- 5:51Speaker 5: ended up throwing it all on YouTube and I got
- 5:53Speaker 5: such a big response, like so many people were saying,
- 5:56Speaker 5: oh my god, like I've never heard anyone talk about
- 5:58Speaker 5: that before, and that's how I feel. And then an
- 6:01Speaker 5: editor from Vogue magazine reached out to me like a
- 6:04Speaker 5: couple of days later, and they're like, this is one
- 6:05Speaker 5: of the best interviews we've seen, like we want we're
- 6:08Speaker 5: doing a feature on him. And that was like, my
- 6:12Speaker 5: that was such like a breakthrough.
- 6:13Speaker 4: Moment for me.
- 6:14Speaker 5: I was like, Okay, like if someone doesn't get it,
- 6:18Speaker 5: or you know, if you have this vision that isn't
- 6:20Speaker 5: making sense to everyone right away, you just have to
- 6:23Speaker 5: find your people.
- 6:24Speaker 4: You just have to keep being.
- 6:25Speaker 5: Your authentic self and the people that are for you
- 6:28Speaker 5: will find you. And that really gave me like I
- 6:31Speaker 5: was like, Okay, I need to do something different, but
- 6:34Speaker 5: I wanted to. I wanted to spend my life talking
- 6:36Speaker 5: about wellness and healing and health and pain and grief
- 6:40Speaker 5: and you know all the ways to transcend.
- 6:43Speaker 2: But you were so ahead of your time and now
- 6:44Speaker 2: it's okay. Now people are vulnerable. Would you see yourself
- 6:48Speaker 2: coming back to doing radio. I love radio because you
- 6:54Speaker 2: were so ahead of your time. Now we have those
- 6:55Speaker 2: conversations and it's not even a thing we talk about
- 6:57Speaker 2: that people are vulnerable. It seems normal almost.
- 6:59Speaker 1: She got Deeply Well podcast.
- 7:01Speaker 4: Yeah, Black Effect Network. Yes.
- 7:03Speaker 3: And you know the interesting thing about Dev And I
- 7:05Speaker 3: want people to notice, like I met Dev and I
- 7:07Speaker 3: think O seven O seven O eight the person Dev
- 7:11Speaker 3: is now she's always been. This is just a to
- 7:14Speaker 3: me an evolution of who you've always been. You've always
- 7:18Speaker 3: been the same one in the room, you know, the
- 7:23Speaker 3: one in the room that people can go to for
- 7:25Speaker 3: sound advice, the leader in the room saying, hey, let's
- 7:28Speaker 3: go do this, we should be doing this.
- 7:30Speaker 1: I've always felt that in you. I've always seen that
- 7:32Speaker 1: in you. Why you don't work here? If you if
- 7:36Speaker 1: you have order She was swaised co host for a while.
- 7:41Speaker 6: She don't work here at Fair east Side.
- 7:44Speaker 1: Ieart, y'all.
- 7:50Speaker 5: When it comes to healing, the way y'all have been
- 7:52Speaker 5: healing in this room. I am just so impressed and inspiring.
- 7:56Speaker 5: There have been some beautiful, transparent conversations to your point, though,
- 8:01Speaker 5: Can I just say like about you, Like I know
- 8:05Speaker 5: people know this because the people in your life like
- 8:08Speaker 5: really hold you close and like really protect you. But
- 8:11Speaker 5: you're just like an exceptional person and friend. Like I'm
- 8:15Speaker 5: so grateful for who you've been in my life for
- 8:17Speaker 5: like two decades now. And it's like when we first met,
- 8:22Speaker 5: we had nothing.
- 8:24Speaker 2: I mean, you were how did you meet?
- 8:26Speaker 1: She was working at KD Yeah, at KDE.
- 8:30Speaker 5: Right, yeah, and you were on Wendy Show, syndicated, indicated
- 8:34Speaker 5: and I used to run the boards on her syndicated
- 8:37Speaker 5: show and we would like talk through.
- 8:39Speaker 4: The mic and on MySpace.
- 8:40Speaker 5: And then I think the first time you came to town,
- 8:43Speaker 5: like I picked you up from the airport.
- 8:45Speaker 1: That was like you and me we out and literally
- 8:48Speaker 1: showed me La.
- 8:48Speaker 3: My introduction to La came through Debbie dev everybody from
- 8:52Speaker 3: Kendrick Lamard, the Nipsey Hustle, the Glasses of Loan Scrong,
- 8:54Speaker 3: I'm steady.
- 8:55Speaker 1: Gang, Where to eat? Where to go? Devil with my
- 8:58Speaker 1: toll guy. I had to check it with.
- 9:00Speaker 5: Death the way you're doing keep checking in right.
- 9:09Speaker 3: But you I love the chapter fifteen because we're talking
- 9:12Speaker 3: about that in a way healing accept. Yeah, talk to
- 9:15Speaker 3: us why that's important that you have to heal and
- 9:17Speaker 3: then accept.
- 9:18Speaker 1: You know, that's what we did in this room. You
- 9:21Speaker 1: healing and accepted just for who she is.
- 9:31Speaker 4: You know, this is the thing about healing, right.
- 9:33Speaker 5: And I've worked in wellness and well being for over
- 9:36Speaker 5: a decade now, and I work with clients directly, I
- 9:39Speaker 5: do workshops, I run retreats. I've had a lot of
- 9:42Speaker 5: access to studies and data all around healing, around trauma,
- 9:46Speaker 5: around all of it. And I found, you know, from
- 9:51Speaker 5: my own journey and with others, it's like there is
- 9:53Speaker 5: this misconception that you work on yourself to eventually be
- 9:58Speaker 5: rid of everything that's ever happened to you, and that
- 10:00Speaker 5: then your life will be perfect. That you'll go to therapy,
- 10:03Speaker 5: that you'll do somatic exercises, that you'll meditate, and then
- 10:06Speaker 5: one day you're going to just like everything in life
- 10:08Speaker 5: is going to feel so happy. That's not God's design, right, Like,
- 10:12Speaker 5: no feeling is more holy than the other. God wants
- 10:16Speaker 5: us to know and experience and feel in real time
- 10:20Speaker 5: everything that crosses our path, and that means grief, that
- 10:23Speaker 5: means joy, that means you know, jealousy sometimes anger that
- 10:27Speaker 5: means fear.
- 10:28Speaker 4: It's like, all of it is part of the.
- 10:30Speaker 5: Human experience, and so when it comes to healing, a
- 10:35Speaker 5: huge part of it is also accepting that the past
- 10:37Speaker 5: can't change. For some of us, that can feel heartbreaking,
- 10:42Speaker 5: right Like a lot of things have happened to so
- 10:44Speaker 5: many of us, so hundreds of millions in your life
- 10:48Speaker 5: that didn't get your consent, Maybe that you've never uttered aloud.
- 10:51Speaker 4: You know.
- 10:52Speaker 5: Sometimes we carry things and we're thinking about and ruminating and.
- 10:56Speaker 4: Thought our whole life about the things that have hurt us.
- 11:00Speaker 5: And I think it's important for people to know it
- 11:02Speaker 5: doesn't mean you're broken or deficient or not.
- 11:05Speaker 4: Healed because you still.
- 11:07Speaker 5: Remember those things. It's really about changing the way you
- 11:11Speaker 5: relate to them. Some things will absolutely never change, but
- 11:14Speaker 5: when you heal, it really gets transmitted into wisdom where
- 11:18Speaker 5: it doesn't feel like this hard, full, painful charge inside
- 11:22Speaker 5: of your body. Every time that memory comes up, you're
- 11:25Speaker 5: able to kind of look at it from an observer's
- 11:27Speaker 5: standpoint and be like that happened, and that really hurt,
- 11:30Speaker 5: and God, that was hard. And I have respect.
- 11:34Speaker 4: For what I've been through.
- 11:35Speaker 5: I have self respect for who I am and what
- 11:38Speaker 5: I've moved myself through.
- 11:40Speaker 2: When you talk about working on yourself, right, what does
- 11:43Speaker 2: that mean for people?
- 11:44Speaker 4: Right?
- 11:44Speaker 2: When people say I need to work on myself and
- 11:46Speaker 2: then they come back to me and it's ten hours later,
- 11:49Speaker 2: I worked on myself. I'm so for somebody out there
- 11:53Speaker 2: that says, you know, I need to work on myself,
- 11:55Speaker 2: what does that mean?
- 11:56Speaker 5: God, that's such a good question, and like that I'm healed.
- 11:59Speaker 5: Thing is so funny to me because people will go
- 12:02Speaker 5: to one therapy session and be like, Oh, I did it,
- 12:05Speaker 5: and it's like, actually, it takes eight to twelve therapy
- 12:08Speaker 5: sessions to have like a real you know, cognitive breakthrough,
- 12:11Speaker 5: or you know, you read one book and it's like, yeah, yeah,
- 12:14Speaker 5: I do this because this happened to me and that's
- 12:16Speaker 5: who I am. I think that's self awareness. But when
- 12:20Speaker 5: you're looking to work on yourself to transcend your experiences,
- 12:24Speaker 5: there's a difference. Like Instagram has given us so much language,
- 12:28Speaker 5: a lot of people are using it to manipulate.
- 12:31Speaker 2: Now I hate the language. The wrong way.
- 12:33Speaker 4: I hate it.
- 12:34Speaker 2: I know it like it bathers the ish out of me.
- 12:36Speaker 5: Yeah, it drives me nuts because it's dangerous. Like to
- 12:39Speaker 5: be clear, it's dangerous people using certain mental health language
- 12:43Speaker 5: that haven't done the work, that don't know the work.
- 12:45Speaker 5: It's a manipulation tactic. It can be very harmful for people,
- 12:48Speaker 5: can be very narcissistic. So that none of those things.
- 12:53Speaker 4: Are like devoid.
- 12:54Speaker 5: In the spiritual or the mental health space, all that
- 12:57Speaker 5: same stuff still exists. But when it comes to like
- 13:00Speaker 5: working on yourself, I think at the base level, it's
- 13:04Speaker 5: noticing how do you feel when it's just you with you,
- 13:08Speaker 5: If there is anything inside of you that feels unmet, unexpressed, unheard,
- 13:13Speaker 5: If there's anything inside of you where you feel anxiety,
- 13:16Speaker 5: there is a charge in your chest, or there is
- 13:18Speaker 5: a rejection or a cringe. Those are things to notice
- 13:22Speaker 5: because it's information that maybe something wants to rise to
- 13:25Speaker 5: the surface for your review. And I think when we're
- 13:28Speaker 5: working on ourselves, it's really about being willing to look
- 13:31Speaker 5: at the truth of what is. It doesn't have to
- 13:34Speaker 5: be perceived as positive or negative, it's just what is
- 13:38Speaker 5: true right now, and then being honest with yourself about it.
- 13:42Speaker 5: And if we try to avoid those things, Yeah, you
- 13:45Speaker 5: can move through life. You can probably still have a
- 13:47Speaker 5: lot of success in life, but the quality of your
- 13:52Speaker 5: life goes down.
- 13:53Speaker 4: The quality of.
- 13:53Speaker 5: Your interior world really goes down, and you're not really
- 13:59Speaker 5: able to tap in to like the truth of why
- 14:01Speaker 5: you're here, to your purpose to you know, and this
- 14:03Speaker 5: doesn't matter to everybody, but it matters to me. The
- 14:06Speaker 5: truth of your connection to God. You know, all of
- 14:08Speaker 5: that kind of goes mute and it goes numb when
- 14:11Speaker 5: you avoid yourself, when you tap into yourself, I think
- 14:15Speaker 5: a lot of people think, oh, it's gonna hurt too much,
- 14:17Speaker 5: or I'm going to open that door and I won't
- 14:19Speaker 5: be able to close it. But you're hurting anyway, right, Like,
- 14:22Speaker 5: at least there is an outcome to be had by
- 14:25Speaker 5: choosing to direct some of your attention and word.
- 14:28Speaker 2: Well, talk about some of the mental health and mental
- 14:31Speaker 2: health things that you've been talking about that I feel
- 14:33Speaker 2: have been commercialized to a point where people are using
- 14:36Speaker 2: these terms but they don't really mean it, right, Yeah,
- 14:39Speaker 2: So so talk about that a little bit to make
- 14:40Speaker 2: dev go off now, Yeah, No, I want to talk
- 14:42Speaker 2: about it, you know, because it really bothers me because
- 14:44Speaker 2: I hear people using these terms, and I'm sure they
- 14:46Speaker 2: don't even know what these terms mean, right, Like you say, somebody,
- 14:48Speaker 2: you just gas lit me. And I feel like sometimes
- 14:51Speaker 2: it actually stops a conversation because sometimes when people hear
- 14:54Speaker 2: those words, they automatically say, oh, I ain't fucking with that.
- 14:57Speaker 2: I'm not talking about that, especially in a workplace where
- 14:59Speaker 2: you can't and have a normal conversation if somebody says something,
- 15:01Speaker 2: because now when you hear those terms, that also comes
- 15:04Speaker 2: after human resources, you know what I mean.
- 15:06Speaker 5: Absolutely, Yeah, I mean there's just so much and I
- 15:09Speaker 5: think people should really do like a lot of deeper
- 15:12Speaker 5: layers of research, right Like I think the Internet is
- 15:15Speaker 5: phenomenal and that you know, it's the last five years.
- 15:18Speaker 5: Our consciousness has raised so much since the pandemic because
- 15:22Speaker 5: we have had access to understand Hey, a lot of
- 15:25Speaker 5: people have experienced trauma, or a lot of people have
- 15:28Speaker 5: experienced life frictions or you know, deeply challenging relationships. But
- 15:35Speaker 5: everyone is stopping at like one graphic, right Like they're
- 15:38Speaker 5: stopping at reading one thing or asking chat GPT one
- 15:42Speaker 5: question and then they leave it there, you know, and
- 15:45Speaker 5: it's like, so I think a lot of terms like understanding,
- 15:51Speaker 5: like a lot of people are over using the term
- 15:53Speaker 5: like narcissist or narcissism right, not getting your way with
- 15:57Speaker 5: someone or someone kind of even being self focused, Like
- 16:01Speaker 5: every single person alive has some layer of narcissistic behavior.
- 16:05Speaker 5: That's part of like the human expression too, it's some
- 16:08Speaker 5: self focus. But narcissistic abuse is something entirely different. And
- 16:14Speaker 5: those that have experienced understand, like you get CPTSD from it,
- 16:19Speaker 5: You get PTSD from it, you have changes in your body,
- 16:23Speaker 5: your health decreases, like it is a psychological warfare that
- 16:27Speaker 5: is insidious and can dramatically change the trajectory of your life. Now,
- 16:34Speaker 5: if that level of feeling isn't really happening to you,
- 16:37Speaker 5: it may not be narcissistic abuse, you know. And so
- 16:39Speaker 5: I think we just need to go deeper into the
- 16:42Speaker 5: layers of the things that we're learning. And I will
- 16:44Speaker 5: say people that misuse language or use it as tools
- 16:49Speaker 5: of avoidance, typically those are the people that you know
- 16:55Speaker 5: usually are on the other side and fit the other
- 16:57Speaker 5: kind of definitions for those things.
- 17:01Speaker 4: Behavior is behavior, right.
- 17:02Speaker 5: And I think, now something I'm excited about is so
- 17:05Speaker 5: many of us are spending more time with ourselves, getting
- 17:09Speaker 5: more clear, meditating or getting into nature, which really connects
- 17:14Speaker 5: you to your intuition, to your gut response in a
- 17:16Speaker 5: really deep way. It regulates your nervous system. When your
- 17:19Speaker 5: nervous system is regulated, you're able to see things a
- 17:22Speaker 5: lot more clearly, You're able to make a lot better
- 17:25Speaker 5: choices in real time. And so usually interactions with people
- 17:30Speaker 5: like that that are throwing out misused language, that are manipulating,
- 17:36Speaker 5: usually you can handle those situations completely different or get
- 17:39Speaker 5: away from them a lot quicker.
- 17:41Speaker 3: One thing you told me one time that makes so
- 17:44Speaker 3: much sense, and I love the fact that you give
- 17:46Speaker 3: so many actual examples of how to do it.
- 17:48Speaker 1: In the book.
- 17:48Speaker 3: You told me that when it comes to the language,
- 17:51Speaker 3: you can have the language and know what it is
- 17:53Speaker 3: you're dealing with. But a lot of people avoid the
- 17:56Speaker 3: actual healing, the healing work. So if you read the book,
- 18:00Speaker 3: there's a lot of different exercises that can walk you
- 18:02Speaker 3: through that actual healing process. Why do you think, you know,
- 18:05Speaker 3: people forget the healing part once they go.
- 18:07Speaker 5: To therapy because it's hard, you know, And I think
- 18:10Speaker 5: it and that's the thing that I really speak to
- 18:12Speaker 5: very clearly in my book. It's like, all of this
- 18:16Speaker 5: is hard. There is no tip or trick to heal
- 18:19Speaker 5: from challenging experiences, right Like, I'm not going to tell you,
- 18:22Speaker 5: all right, do this five minutes every day. Yes, five
- 18:26Speaker 5: minutes every day will build your capacity, but you need
- 18:28Speaker 5: to stretch past the five minutes to devote actual real
- 18:32Speaker 5: time to the changes you want to see in your life.
- 18:35Speaker 5: And so you know, something I talk about in the
- 18:38Speaker 5: book is like, there's a huge difference between having self
- 18:41Speaker 5: awareness and having higher consciousness or being embodied in your
- 18:46Speaker 5: self awareness. Self awareness is having the terms. It's going
- 18:49Speaker 5: to a couple therapy sessions perhaps or reading a bunch
- 18:53Speaker 5: of self help books and saying like this, this is
- 18:56Speaker 5: what happened, and this is why I act like this,
- 18:58Speaker 5: and this is why this is this. But it doesn't
- 19:00Speaker 5: mean you're changing any of it, right Like, it doesn't
- 19:03Speaker 5: mean you're taking it to the next step to behave
- 19:05Speaker 5: differently or to invite in different experiences with people. And
- 19:10Speaker 5: that comes through practice, that comes through process. And so
- 19:16Speaker 5: in this book, I talk about a lot like how
- 19:19Speaker 5: to get out of your way. A lot of people
- 19:21Speaker 5: have a lot of sophisticated language around avoiding themselves. You
- 19:24Speaker 5: can avoid yourself with anything. You can avoid yourself with therapy.
- 19:28Speaker 5: You're seeing the same therapist for ten years and nothing
- 19:30Speaker 5: in your life changes what's going on in there, you know,
- 19:34Speaker 5: or if you you know, I see a lot of
- 19:36Speaker 5: people avoid themselves With religion.
- 19:38Speaker 4: You can be a part of a church, you can
- 19:40Speaker 4: go there.
- 19:40Speaker 5: On Sundays and you can still not know God. You
- 19:42Speaker 5: can still not make better choices.
- 19:44Speaker 4: Right.
- 19:45Speaker 5: It is daily practice. It is showing up in your
- 19:47Speaker 5: interpersonal relationships. It is having the hard conversations in real
- 19:52Speaker 5: time as they come up, and just being present with
- 19:55Speaker 5: all of it without expectation, you know, without trying.
- 19:57Speaker 4: To control it or make it go your way.
- 20:00Speaker 5: And so in the book, we have a lot of
- 20:02Speaker 5: practices like I teach meditation in the book, we work
- 20:05Speaker 5: with mudras in the book, which are hand positions that
- 20:07Speaker 5: can really elevate your meditation practice because your hand positions
- 20:11Speaker 5: open different energy channels in your body.
- 20:14Speaker 4: There is breath work that.
- 20:15Speaker 5: Can be done in the book, and every single one
- 20:18Speaker 5: of those practices anchors in the changes that you want
- 20:22Speaker 5: to experience, because it shows you how to regulate when
- 20:25Speaker 5: you do get triggered when you do have charge, and
- 20:28Speaker 5: so both are needed. You have to have the cognitive
- 20:30Speaker 5: and you have to have the somatic. You have to
- 20:33Speaker 5: have the spiritual, you have to have the physical. All
- 20:35Speaker 5: of it kind of beautifully goes together.
- 20:38Speaker 6: So you don't think that people can heal themselves though,
- 20:41Speaker 6: Like for instance, right, like let's just save me for it. Say,
- 20:45Speaker 6: I'm going through you know, a lot, I've experienced a
- 20:48Speaker 6: lot of trauma, right, and just just an example, I'm
- 20:52Speaker 6: gonna just use myself, like and I'm constantly going through
- 20:57Speaker 6: therapists after therapist after therapists. Okay, I've even change churches
- 21:02Speaker 6: and everything and nothing nobody else seems to help me.
- 21:07Speaker 6: But I can find that on my own, Like is
- 21:09Speaker 6: there do you believe that people can heal themselves without
- 21:13Speaker 6: church or without any higher being or without you know,
- 21:17Speaker 6: any type of drug you know what I mean?
- 21:18Speaker 1: Or also any therapy?
- 21:21Speaker 6: Like do you think people can change themselves heal themselves?
- 21:25Speaker 4: So in two ways. So based on my belief, I think.
- 21:30Speaker 5: That God has to be a part of the equation.
- 21:32Speaker 5: That's my belief, that is my higher being, the God
- 21:35Speaker 5: of my understanding. I think we can each have that
- 21:38Speaker 5: right because God can look and be different for everyone.
- 21:41Speaker 5: It doesn't have to be in the confines of any
- 21:43Speaker 5: set religion. I'm certainly not within any set religion. But
- 21:47Speaker 5: I do think there has to be something that expands
- 21:49Speaker 5: your understanding of what all of this is. And I
- 21:53Speaker 5: think that that is hard to do without connecting to
- 21:56Speaker 5: something that is bigger than you. That acide, I would say,
- 22:01Speaker 5: absolutely people can heal themselves. I don't think you necessarily
- 22:04Speaker 5: even have to go anywhere unless there is another layer
- 22:09Speaker 5: of need there. Right if there is a mental health condition,
- 22:12Speaker 5: a disorder, if there are some situations like really severe
- 22:16Speaker 5: trauma that you cannot understand on your own, I absolutely
- 22:21Speaker 5: think people should continue to find all the resources that
- 22:25Speaker 5: can meet their need, jump in and out of them.
- 22:28Speaker 5: If it doesn't work, leave it, you know, trust your
- 22:30Speaker 5: gut on that. But yeah, we are our own healers.
- 22:34Speaker 5: One hundred percent of the time. I think this book
- 22:37Speaker 5: it's about self healing. It's not saying go to this person,
- 22:41Speaker 5: go to that person, get this done. I've done a
- 22:43Speaker 5: ton of stuff, you know. I've done everything. I've done
- 22:47Speaker 5: all kinds of therapies, I have done certifications, I have
- 22:52Speaker 5: done a lot of psychedelics. I have done a lot
- 22:56Speaker 5: of meditation. I've spoken with a lot of people, Shaman's healer,
- 23:02Speaker 5: so much, so much, so much. But it still comes down,
- 23:06Speaker 5: no matter what, to how willing I am to be
- 23:09Speaker 5: fully myself. It still comes down, no matter what, to
- 23:14Speaker 5: how willing I am to sit with myself, especially in
- 23:16Speaker 5: the dark periods and the dark moments, and how much
- 23:21Speaker 5: self respect I can really gather for myself and what
- 23:25Speaker 5: I've been through and experience.
- 23:27Speaker 3: I learned to meditate because of Dev. It was December
- 23:30Speaker 3: twenty twenty. It was twenty twenty because it was COVID
- 23:33Speaker 3: and that was like the first time we traveled and
- 23:34Speaker 3: we went the.
- 23:36Speaker 4: That was the best.
- 23:37Speaker 3: It was amazing with the cowbo for a week with
- 23:39Speaker 3: Dev and like Dev had like a bunch of activities
- 23:43Speaker 3: what would you call them.
- 23:44Speaker 1: Dev's It was like a spiritual retreat.
- 23:46Speaker 3: It was just a bunch of activities. We were doing
- 23:47Speaker 3: yoga and I learned how to meditate. On that trip,
- 23:51Speaker 3: I could not still quiet my brain, have my brain
- 23:54Speaker 3: still ever, But for whatever reason, in that moment, I
- 23:57Speaker 3: was able to meditate and I've been doing it ever since.
- 24:00Speaker 4: It was so amazing.
- 24:01Speaker 5: We did Yeah, we did rake you We did energy
- 24:04Speaker 5: healing yep, little mushrooms.
- 24:06Speaker 4: We did meditation yoga.
- 24:10Speaker 1: Why meditation is so important?
- 24:12Speaker 4: Oh my god?
- 24:15Speaker 1: You know.
- 24:15Speaker 5: And I think in some other maybe wisdom traditions, some
- 24:18Speaker 5: people might relate to it if you call it reflection
- 24:21Speaker 5: or if you call it moments for contemplation, But meditation
- 24:25Speaker 5: is the master healer because it gets you out of
- 24:27Speaker 5: your identity. And our identity is almost one hundred percent
- 24:31Speaker 5: made from like all of the culturally created beliefs that
- 24:35Speaker 5: we have, or our beliefs from our family of origin,
- 24:38Speaker 5: or you know, the things that we're influenced by by society.
- 24:41Speaker 4: And so when you're.
- 24:42Speaker 5: Able to get out of all those extra layers of
- 24:46Speaker 5: like what your titles are, you know what the role
- 24:49Speaker 5: you play. I'm a husband, I'm a wife, I'm a
- 24:52Speaker 5: someone's child, brother, sister, friend, When you take yourself out
- 24:55Speaker 5: of all of that, you actually get to glimpse, like
- 24:58Speaker 5: what am I designed to be? What was God's intention
- 25:02Speaker 5: for me of me before I fit into anybody's box
- 25:06Speaker 5: or any relationship. And so the thing about meditation, and
- 25:09Speaker 5: I really want to share this. You know, I believe
- 25:12Speaker 5: in trauma informed practice, and it's a little bit different
- 25:16Speaker 5: to hold that space within the healing community than if
- 25:19Speaker 5: you're not. It's recognizing that a lot of people will
- 25:23Speaker 5: have barriers to almost every healing modality that comes up
- 25:27Speaker 5: because of some of the things that they may have experienced.
- 25:31Speaker 5: So in meditation, you're going through so many layers, and
- 25:33Speaker 5: the first time you try, the first several times you try,
- 25:37Speaker 5: it could be so hard and frustrating and anger inducing
- 25:42Speaker 5: and irritating to sit down and be still, and it
- 25:46Speaker 5: could bring up everything and make you feel like you're
- 25:48Speaker 5: failing at it, and then you want to stop and
- 25:50Speaker 5: then let me go do things I'm actually good at.
- 25:52Speaker 1: You know. That is literally me.
- 25:54Speaker 6: Yeah, that is I feel like I'm missing out on
- 25:57Speaker 6: doing something, or I can be doing this with this time,
- 25:59Speaker 6: or it's not working. It's like, so I grow to
- 26:02Speaker 6: be frustrated when I try to meditate.
- 26:05Speaker 4: Man just smoking and that. Yeah, well I mean that too.
- 26:08Speaker 5: Spoken to meditate is like a great little collaboration and
- 26:11Speaker 5: yoga and stretching. But I'm so glad you said that,
- 26:15Speaker 5: because I think that is almost everyone's response, but especially
- 26:20Speaker 5: if you have been through hard things. And what I
- 26:23Speaker 5: want everyone to know is that phase passes and that's
- 26:27Speaker 5: part of what doing the work is right. It's being
- 26:29Speaker 5: patient with yourself and witnessing yourself, especially when you don't
- 26:33Speaker 5: want to do it, and.
- 26:34Speaker 4: It's saying like God, I'm sitting here and I hate this,
- 26:37Speaker 4: this is stupid. I don't want to do this. Breathe,
- 26:46Speaker 4: Breathe okay, okay, wiggle.
- 26:49Speaker 5: Release, open your body, like you start meeting those feelings
- 26:54Speaker 5: with things that harmonize that experience for you. And part
- 26:59Speaker 5: of what you're doing when you do that is you
- 27:01Speaker 5: stretch your capacity to be patient with yourself.
- 27:05Speaker 4: You stretch your capacity to.
- 27:06Speaker 5: Be present in your life, but you also stretch your
- 27:09Speaker 5: capacity for self compassion. So all those little adjustments you
- 27:13Speaker 5: make in meditation when you first start, like connect to
- 27:16Speaker 5: your breath, take a deep breath with your eyes closed,
- 27:19Speaker 5: try to look at your nose. That's something that can
- 27:22Speaker 5: focus you. Relaxes your body, Okay, I'm getting tent. Lower
- 27:26Speaker 5: my shoulders, release my stomach, release my breath. You're teaching
- 27:32Speaker 5: yourself how to regulate your discomfort. So when we say
- 27:36Speaker 5: things like you know you know it, do it when
- 27:39Speaker 5: you're uncomfortable or uncomfortable, things stretch you. They only stretch
- 27:43Speaker 5: you if you learn how to settle into them. And
- 27:46Speaker 5: so that building a practice for your wellness is how
- 27:50Speaker 5: you settle into it. Once you settle into it, there's
- 27:53Speaker 5: another level to go to.
- 27:54Speaker 4: So after you get past that which you can and will,
- 27:58Speaker 4: which I was in the same place, I hated it.
- 28:00Speaker 5: I would stop for months at a time and reject it.
- 28:03Speaker 5: When I first started my practice.
- 28:04Speaker 1: The beads in the matra helped me.
- 28:06Speaker 5: Yes, working with a mala, working with a mantra, a
- 28:09Speaker 5: sanscrit word or something that is valuable to you, you know.
- 28:14Speaker 5: The next layer would be you might start crying a
- 28:17Speaker 5: lot in meditation. That usually gets people to stop.
- 28:20Speaker 2: Right.
- 28:20Speaker 5: You might notice that, oh my god, I'm still like
- 28:22Speaker 5: close my eyes and all these tears come up. The
- 28:25Speaker 5: first thing you're thinking is what is wrong with me?
- 28:27Speaker 5: Why is this happening? Well, everything that was suppressed, you know,
- 28:32Speaker 5: everything that you haven't had the time to deal with,
- 28:35Speaker 5: probably for decades. Now, you're still enough that it has
- 28:39Speaker 5: a chance to rise to the surface. It's not bad
- 28:42Speaker 5: that it's rising to the surface. It's coming up for
- 28:44Speaker 5: your review so you can release it, or so you
- 28:47Speaker 5: can accept it. So then you get into this kind
- 28:50Speaker 5: of like double Dutch cadence with your meditation practice, where
- 28:53Speaker 5: you're like, okay, I want to pull back, let me
- 28:55Speaker 5: come back in like you're in flow. You're going back
- 28:57Speaker 5: and forward. And so the more you will allow yourself
- 29:00Speaker 5: to see like I don't want to think about this,
- 29:02Speaker 5: but it did happen, and I can move through this.
- 29:06Speaker 5: Breathe into it, Breathe into it, grace for yourself, compassion
- 29:09Speaker 5: for yourself, presence for yourself. You get past that point,
- 29:13Speaker 5: and it'll take months, it'll take time, it'll still come
- 29:16Speaker 5: up sometimes, and then you get to the next layer
- 29:19Speaker 5: of meditation. And I found that that next level of
- 29:21Speaker 5: meditation is when you're actually starting to crave it, like
- 29:25Speaker 5: you're like, okay, let me go sit down. Oh, I
- 29:27Speaker 5: finally get to be quiet. I finally get to be still.
- 29:32Speaker 4: Ah.
- 29:33Speaker 5: I feel so good when I breathe, Like you know,
- 29:35Speaker 5: you get to all these different levels, but eventually the
- 29:38Speaker 5: level you're aiming for is like higher and higher consciousness.
- 29:41Speaker 5: Higher consciousness means a greater ability to be what you
- 29:46Speaker 5: are designed to be on earth and to also extend
- 29:51Speaker 5: love and goodwill and compassion and power and influence to
- 29:54Speaker 5: others for the higher good of all concerned.
- 29:58Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna as with all that. Does Debbie
- 30:03Speaker 2: still get upset? Or do you control yourself to the
- 30:06Speaker 2: point where you don't get upset?
- 30:08Speaker 3: You's a Gemini, that's Tupac chopra. Okay, it's two.
- 30:14Speaker 1: Are you're about to lose it?
- 30:15Speaker 2: Do you meditate? You pull the beads out?
- 30:16Speaker 1: Do you like?
- 30:17Speaker 2: Or do you sometimes you just explode?
- 30:19Speaker 4: Oh my god? Yeah, I have bad days all the time.
- 30:21Speaker 5: Sometimes I book a session at a rage room, like
- 30:24Speaker 5: I have a rage room near my house. You go in,
- 30:27Speaker 5: you get a crowbar or bad Oh my god. You
- 30:29Speaker 5: pay them like twenty bucks. They give you a carton
- 30:32Speaker 5: of like plates and old electronics. You put on some
- 30:36Speaker 5: music and then you throw.
- 30:38Speaker 1: Things and remember that for next time. Jess, you don't
- 30:41Speaker 1: have to put your silk scarf on.
- 30:42Speaker 3: You don't have to go to rage.
- 30:45Speaker 1: You do not make the breakfast. But is that how
- 30:50Speaker 1: you messed up your shoulder? Jesus, you can get mad?
- 30:57Speaker 6: Yeah?
- 30:58Speaker 4: Tore my rotator cut?
- 31:00Speaker 1: Right? How is that?
- 31:04Speaker 4: I am? God has given me accelerated healing.
- 31:06Speaker 5: I'm so grateful, but you know, and I'm grateful for
- 31:09Speaker 5: the surgery and for modern medicine and all the things,
- 31:11Speaker 5: but no, I still absolutely get disappointed, get mad, get upset.
- 31:16Speaker 5: I think the reaction time is a lot less, the
- 31:19Speaker 5: personalization of it is a lot less. I can get
- 31:22Speaker 5: upset at something in more of an abstract observation way
- 31:26Speaker 5: without thinking that someone is injuring me, even if that
- 31:30Speaker 5: is what they're attempting to do. I can recognize maybe
- 31:33Speaker 5: the deeper layers doesn't mean I'm not going to be
- 31:36Speaker 5: upset or disappointed, but I'm not holding it inside. It's
- 31:40Speaker 5: definitely not something I'm thinking about for multiple days. You know,
- 31:43Speaker 5: I can kind of take it in, release it or
- 31:46Speaker 5: the way it feels, you know, because sometimes you're going
- 31:49Speaker 5: to be angry about stuff that doesn't change, that can't change.
- 31:51Speaker 5: The world is unfair, you know, it is. It just is,
- 31:56Speaker 5: and I think I'm an acceptance of that. So I
- 31:58Speaker 5: know things aren't always going to go my way. I'm
- 32:01Speaker 5: not now all of a sudden, I've meditated so much
- 32:04Speaker 5: that oh, no more challenges in life for me, Like, no,
- 32:06Speaker 5: it's hard, But the way that it feels inside the
- 32:11Speaker 5: level of spiritual confidence you have in yourself to meet
- 32:15Speaker 5: that challenge changes dramatically, and I think that you can
- 32:21Speaker 5: compartmentalize it differently. You can hold that that unique experience
- 32:25Speaker 5: is happening, but it doesn't now have to pull away
- 32:28Speaker 5: and take away from all the other good that's in
- 32:30Speaker 5: my life too. And I think like my book is
- 32:32Speaker 5: really about holding space equally for grief and joy. Life
- 32:36Speaker 5: is grief and joy all at once. But yeah, you
- 32:40Speaker 5: get mad, but you have other tools for working with
- 32:45Speaker 5: that feeling. You're not taking it out on other people, right,
- 32:48Speaker 5: You're not taking it out in yourself. You're not now
- 32:50Speaker 5: being rude to whatever person is in front of you
- 32:53Speaker 5: because of it. You know, you're not causing harm because
- 32:56Speaker 5: of your feeling.
- 32:57Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
- 32:58Speaker 3: In the grief chapter you talk about how you can't
- 33:00Speaker 3: heal and tell you grief.
- 33:03Speaker 1: Yeah, can you expound on that?
- 33:04Speaker 5: Oh my god, it's acceptance. You can't heal what you
- 33:10Speaker 5: don't let be revealed. You know, you can't heal what
- 33:13Speaker 5: you don't spend time with. And I think grief is
- 33:17Speaker 5: a hard feeling.
- 33:18Speaker 4: It's hard. All of us have had it.
- 33:20Speaker 5: Even the good stuff can be I my son is
- 33:22Speaker 5: going to be seven next month.
- 33:24Speaker 4: I love you.
- 33:25Speaker 5: Quest when you see this in the future, land, you
- 33:27Speaker 5: are my baby five nine.
- 33:29Speaker 1: By the way, he's a big boy.
- 33:35Speaker 4: I grieve who he was last year.
- 33:37Speaker 5: I'll never see that guy again, you know, like that
- 33:41Speaker 5: there is a real sadness to that. I mean, you're
- 33:44Speaker 5: an incredible father, envy, and I know, like you see
- 33:47Speaker 5: your kids at so many different ages. Now there's grief
- 33:51Speaker 5: to that, all those different chapters of who they are,
- 33:53Speaker 5: who they're.
- 33:53Speaker 4: Becoming, you know. So I think.
- 33:57Speaker 5: Nothing can be healed until we grieve it because we
- 34:00Speaker 5: have to be with the truth of our spiritual curriculum.
- 34:04Speaker 5: We cannot avoid whatever was designed meant to be a
- 34:10Speaker 5: part of our lives. And I just want to hold
- 34:12Speaker 5: space for the fact that even saying those words, it
- 34:16Speaker 5: is okay that there is a rejecting because there are
- 34:19Speaker 5: certain things that happen to us that there is no
- 34:21Speaker 5: clear way that you could say that's God's design, right, Like,
- 34:24Speaker 5: there are certain things that happen and it feels so
- 34:28Speaker 5: much better to like attribute it to how wrong things
- 34:32Speaker 5: are or the evilness of the world. And so there's
- 34:36Speaker 5: nuance in that and that that is its own lifetime
- 34:39Speaker 5: of work to come into right. So there's no quick
- 34:42Speaker 5: fix for some of those harder abusive stories of.
- 34:45Speaker 4: Things that have happened, But you have.
- 34:48Speaker 5: To let yourself feel whatever is true in your body,
- 34:53Speaker 5: whatever is present. From that point you get to choose
- 34:57Speaker 5: what the next path is and what the next step is.
- 35:00Speaker 4: But yeah, no healing, No, no true.
- 35:03Speaker 5: Authentic joy or happiness can come if you avoid absolutely anything.
- 35:08Speaker 1: Would you use some language in the book Living in
- 35:10Speaker 1: with Them? That's what we're talking about. You say grief
- 35:12Speaker 1: is a right, a pathage.
- 35:13Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, I think you know.
- 35:16Speaker 5: And I speak as someone that darkness has been a
- 35:20Speaker 5: big teacher for me in my life. And that's not
- 35:23Speaker 5: everyone's path, but it's mine, and it's some other people's,
- 35:26Speaker 5: you know, having some childhood trauma, having adult trauma, having
- 35:31Speaker 5: witnessing hard things, losing people. You know, I started to
- 35:35Speaker 5: look at my life and say, it feels so dark.
- 35:38Speaker 4: I don't look like that. You know.
- 35:40Speaker 5: Sometimes not looking like what you've been through is kind
- 35:42Speaker 5: of a curse because people think nothing's wrong, no one
- 35:45Speaker 5: checks on you, you know.
- 35:47Speaker 4: But it's like.
- 35:49Speaker 5: When I started to realize that pain serves purpose, and
- 35:54Speaker 5: I mean that literally, like pain sometimes is the servant
- 35:58Speaker 5: to purpose, Like when you can and look at it,
- 36:00Speaker 5: when you can be with it, when you can kind
- 36:03Speaker 5: of extract yourself from the personalization of it.
- 36:08Speaker 4: It can be really useful for you and for me.
- 36:11Speaker 5: You know, my path has always been to be a healer,
- 36:13Speaker 5: to be a teacher, to be present with people in pain,
- 36:17Speaker 5: to sit at the bottom of the ocean with someone.
- 36:20Speaker 5: So now I realize I needed every lesson I learned
- 36:24Speaker 5: because it informs the work that I'm able to do.
- 36:27Speaker 5: So I think once you're able to start seeing even
- 36:30Speaker 5: your harder experiences as somehow being useful for the bigger
- 36:35Speaker 5: story that your life is telling, right, for the bigger
- 36:38Speaker 5: thing that you're doing in the world, I think it
- 36:43Speaker 5: changes everything.
- 36:44Speaker 6: And with that being said, I love that you celebrated
- 36:46Speaker 6: your book in your garden and you co hosted it
- 36:49Speaker 6: with Lauren London. Yes, and so okay, so you guys
- 36:52Speaker 6: are friends.
- 36:53Speaker 1: Yeah, how what you know?
- 36:55Speaker 6: Because she's been through traumatic experience, you know, a big
- 36:59Speaker 6: traumatic experience, losing the love of her life, A book
- 37:02Speaker 6: like this would be like medicine to what she's gone through.
- 37:07Speaker 6: How was that event? Like when you celebrated, how is that?
- 37:11Speaker 6: Because I know you can see the healing directly in
- 37:13Speaker 6: her because she's your friend.
- 37:15Speaker 5: God, I just have to say one Laurena is an
- 37:18Speaker 5: exceptional woman. Like she is an exceptional woman with like
- 37:24Speaker 5: one of the sweetest, kindest like hearts you could ever imagine,
- 37:30Speaker 5: Like I've just like she's just one of the kindest,
- 37:34Speaker 5: most generous, heart centered women I have ever had the
- 37:37Speaker 5: pleasure of like being in sisterhood with.
- 37:39Speaker 1: I think, be honest with you.
- 37:42Speaker 5: We found out we were born in the same hospital.
- 37:44Speaker 5: There's a lot that is the that is similar. But
- 37:48Speaker 5: she's actually the first person I let read the book.
- 37:50Speaker 4: And it's because she is also such.
- 37:53Speaker 5: A wise woman who has done so much of her
- 37:56Speaker 5: own self work and self healing, Like she is a
- 37:59Speaker 5: very gifted and wise and so I wanted her eyes
- 38:03Speaker 5: on it her first, because I knew she could understand
- 38:05Speaker 5: the layers, you know, the complexity, the nuance of grief.
- 38:09Speaker 5: And so you know, as she was reading it, she
- 38:11Speaker 5: would just call me every few days and just be like, oh.
- 38:14Speaker 4: My god, you know this is amazing or this part
- 38:16Speaker 4: meant this to me. So it was really special.
- 38:19Speaker 5: And then you know, and she offered to do something
- 38:23Speaker 5: with me for the launch.
- 38:24Speaker 4: Of the book.
- 38:25Speaker 5: We had this gorgeous party in my garden. Gardening was
- 38:29Speaker 5: such a healer for me. And that also, I want
- 38:32Speaker 5: to say, I think is such a big anidote for
- 38:35Speaker 5: grief and anidote for healing. The more you can add
- 38:39Speaker 5: romance to your own life, man or woman, the more
- 38:43Speaker 5: you can add beauty to your life with intention, the
- 38:46Speaker 5: easier healing becomes. And it's also a scientific fact, like
- 38:50Speaker 5: beauty seen, beauty scene design, it can heal. It's why
- 38:56Speaker 5: even in some hospitals they have like healing gardens, so
- 38:58Speaker 5: there's colorful flower hours or access to sunlight or being
- 39:01Speaker 5: able to see growth. It changes the things inside of us.
- 39:06Speaker 5: So yeah, so she healed that beautiful day. She came
- 39:09Speaker 5: and hosted that beautiful day in my garden, and we
- 39:12Speaker 5: had so many people there and so many people in
- 39:15Speaker 5: the healing community, and it was just Yeah, there was
- 39:18Speaker 5: no feeling like it.
- 39:19Speaker 4: It was so special and so free.
- 39:21Speaker 1: I love that guard.
- 39:22Speaker 3: I think that's the last time I saw I think
- 39:23Speaker 3: the last time I saw yea Lie was in your guard.
- 39:27Speaker 4: I have a picture of that night.
- 39:28Speaker 5: Yeah, we all we actually all recorded a podcast.
- 39:34Speaker 4: I can't it's too incriminating off brand.
- 39:41Speaker 1: Great. It was a great night though.
- 39:43Speaker 3: I just I don't know when you were just talking
- 39:45Speaker 3: about the guard I'm just like, the importance of that
- 39:48Speaker 3: is just to have a safe space, safe sacred place,
- 39:52Speaker 3: a safe sacred place.
- 39:53Speaker 1: You know you are not good with the back. No,
- 39:55Speaker 1: don't do that, Okay.
- 39:59Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 40:00Speaker 3: You Also, you dedicated your book and I'm probably gonna
- 40:03Speaker 3: pronounce her name wrong to my Hascal May Haskell Mays,
- 40:07Speaker 3: And I didn't know who that was until I went
- 40:10Speaker 3: to go look it up. And she was a young
- 40:13Speaker 3: woman who was dismembered and ensino what made you want
- 40:17Speaker 3: to dedicate the book to her?
- 40:18Speaker 1: And you said, I pray you are free.
- 40:22Speaker 5: M I have to be really careful talking about this
- 40:29Speaker 5: because the trial hasn't begun yet.
- 40:31Speaker 1: Gotcha.
- 40:35Speaker 4: She was a beautiful woman.
- 40:37Speaker 5: I had the privilege and the pleasure of meeting when
- 40:40Speaker 5: my son started kindergarten and our boys were friends, and
- 40:44Speaker 5: so my son is in first grade.
- 40:46Speaker 4: So this just.
- 40:46Speaker 5: Happened last year. And you know, I'm sure the parents listening,
- 40:51Speaker 5: Like when your kids are in kinder like, you're still
- 40:54Speaker 5: very connected to the other families, right because the kids
- 40:57Speaker 5: can't communicate on their own. So you're creating the play date.
- 41:00Speaker 5: You guys are getting together for all the birthday parties,
- 41:02Speaker 5: like you are seeing.
- 41:04Speaker 4: Each other almost seven days a week.
- 41:06Speaker 5: And she was the mother of this sweet, beautiful little
- 41:11Speaker 5: boy that was in class with my son and two
- 41:13Speaker 5: other sons. And her husband is currently incarcerated for allegedly
- 41:27Speaker 5: murdering her and her parents, and her body was completely dismembered.
- 41:37Speaker 5: Her head was taken, her limbs were taken and not recovered.
- 41:41Speaker 5: Her parents were dismembered, and then their bodies were dispersed
- 41:45Speaker 5: in the trash cans in my neighborhood.
- 41:54Speaker 4: I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. There are whoors
- 41:57Speaker 4: in this world. You know.
- 42:01Speaker 5: I dedicated my book to her for so many reasons,
- 42:07Speaker 5: but it's really just like if someone takes your whole family,
- 42:10Speaker 5: who remembers you?
- 42:12Speaker 4: You know, Like.
- 42:15Speaker 5: I wanted to just honor the fact that she was here,
- 42:19Speaker 5: that she was alive, and that I will be thinking
- 42:22Speaker 5: about her every day of my life.
- 42:25Speaker 1: M hm m m m m mmmm O.
- 42:30Speaker 2: Living in wisdom, ladies and gentlemen. Debbie Brown is out today.
- 42:34Speaker 1: I got a lot more questions.
- 42:35Speaker 4: I just don't know where should Maybe we should go
- 42:38Speaker 4: somewhere else.
- 42:40Speaker 3: I do well, okay, Wusa, Yeah, does everybody need to.
- 42:44Speaker 1: Have a purpose?
- 42:46Speaker 4: I think everybody does have a purpose.
- 42:48Speaker 5: I think what we get wrong is that purpose has
- 42:51Speaker 5: to be quantified by something or that it has to
- 42:53Speaker 5: make money.
- 42:54Speaker 4: You know.
- 42:54Speaker 5: I think just like so many words are being appropriated
- 42:58Speaker 5: right now within mental health, I think think other words
- 43:01Speaker 5: are being used for performance, for really self validation sometimes
- 43:05Speaker 5: or ego. Right, like you hear people, well, my purpose
- 43:08Speaker 5: is this and my or you know, what's my purpose
- 43:12Speaker 5: and it's just another thing that you are kind of
- 43:16Speaker 5: mispouring yourself into purpose in my belief is simply you know,
- 43:22Speaker 5: it is your lived experience and the wisdom you've gleaned
- 43:26Speaker 5: from it.
- 43:26Speaker 4: It's the skills you've amassed in.
- 43:28Speaker 5: Any and everything you could have ever done. It's your
- 43:32Speaker 5: innate gifts, you know, the things that you have that
- 43:36Speaker 5: God gave you. And it's then using it to serve,
- 43:39Speaker 5: putting it back into service for others. And so you know,
- 43:43Speaker 5: it's like I could say my purpose is talking, right
- 43:46Speaker 5: because I was a broadcaster for years, I lead meditation,
- 43:49Speaker 5: I communicate all the things. But really, like I look
- 43:53Speaker 5: at my purpose as like being able to be in
- 43:56Speaker 5: darkness with people.
- 43:58Speaker 4: You know, I think my life's greatest purpose is the
- 44:01Speaker 4: fact that, like.
- 44:04Speaker 5: I'm not afraid of the dark, and I can be
- 44:06Speaker 5: in darker moments and not recoil with other people that
- 44:09Speaker 5: I can hold space for that. And I think, you know,
- 44:13Speaker 5: that may not be the most glorious purpose. It's not
- 44:15Speaker 5: the thing that's maybe gonna land me on a billboard,
- 44:18Speaker 5: but it's the thing that like God trained me for.
- 44:21Speaker 5: It's the thing that my life has bloomed into. And
- 44:24Speaker 5: I love it.
- 44:25Speaker 1: I love that.
- 44:26Speaker 2: I love how you break that down.
- 44:28Speaker 6: And also you spoke to how people over use words
- 44:33Speaker 6: because half the time people don't even know how to
- 44:36Speaker 6: answer that question, well, what is your purpose? I remember
- 44:38Speaker 6: I was watching one of my friends on a live
- 44:41Speaker 6: like asks a guy like she needs, she said, in
- 44:43Speaker 6: order to date, somebody didn't have to know their purpose.
- 44:46Speaker 6: Like but you know, she was on live with certain
- 44:49Speaker 6: people when the guy was like, I don't even know
- 44:50Speaker 6: what you're talking about when you say that, and so
- 44:53Speaker 6: in return, she said he was dumb, but it was like, nah,
- 44:56Speaker 6: he really didn't know what that may like me, I
- 44:58Speaker 6: still don't know what my purpose is. I mean, I'm
- 45:01Speaker 6: grateful for the woman that I'm becoming in my spiritual
- 45:03Speaker 6: growth and everything, but I still don't know what my
- 45:06Speaker 6: purpose is and what if it's not just one thing,
- 45:08Speaker 6: you know what I mean?
- 45:09Speaker 4: And that's the thing.
- 45:10Speaker 5: It's not Yeah, it's not you know, And like it's
- 45:14Speaker 5: okay if finding your purpose takes your whole life, yes,
- 45:17Speaker 5: it's the point of being alive. Like why do we
- 45:19Speaker 5: think we have to move so quickly through everything? That's
- 45:23Speaker 5: the validation piece, right, Like that's the wanting to be
- 45:26Speaker 5: seen in it or celebrated for it. But like if
- 45:29Speaker 5: it's your life's work, it is supposed to take your
- 45:33Speaker 5: whole life.
- 45:34Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
- 45:35Speaker 6: Because my mother in law, my husband's mother, she literally
- 45:40Speaker 6: just told me she just found out where her purpose
- 45:42Speaker 6: is and that is to take care of like to
- 45:45Speaker 6: oversee her granddaughter. I just gave her a beautiful granddaughter,
- 45:48Speaker 6: her very first grandchild. And that's what she said, holding
- 45:52Speaker 6: a baby like a few months ago. Oh, I know
- 45:54Speaker 6: what my purpose is now is to be here with
- 45:57Speaker 6: my family and to take care of my family because
- 45:59Speaker 6: she was living out the country for decades.
- 46:02Speaker 1: That was him, that's him.
- 46:03Speaker 6: He just started.
- 46:08Speaker 1: You have this moment.
- 46:09Speaker 2: Anything, I didn't say anything.
- 46:11Speaker 6: You say we have in law Mexican, Okay that you
- 46:19Speaker 6: don't don't do That's what I mean, you know, they're
- 46:24Speaker 6: trying to say purpose because of ice be.
- 46:28Speaker 1: I trying to I came back. I don't have nothing
- 46:33Speaker 1: to do.
- 46:34Speaker 6: He came back over here to take care of my child.
- 46:39Speaker 6: Every day they joke about her being I don't know what. Yes, literally.
- 46:46Speaker 4: You know, I mean, I understand the friction in this room.
- 46:49Speaker 4: I get like they just because.
- 46:55Speaker 1: Anything else you want to give him, I don't want to.
- 46:58Speaker 6: I don't even want to talk about thank you so much.
- 47:02Speaker 3: But no, you do say in the book that that
- 47:03Speaker 3: you cannot have purpose without wisdom, and you can't have
- 47:06Speaker 3: purpose of wisdom without acknowledgment of every single experience.
- 47:09Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, acceptance, acknowledge your life. You know, this is
- 47:14Speaker 5: the thing like and I think for people that go
- 47:17Speaker 5: through things, which is all of us. As soon as
- 47:20Speaker 5: it switches and you start to have respect for yourself
- 47:24Speaker 5: for how you move through something, it changes everything. So
- 47:28Speaker 5: it's like, lean into your lived experiences. If you're not
- 47:31Speaker 5: thinking about your hardest experiences, you're leaving something on the table,
- 47:36Speaker 5: like you're leaving a lot of abundance on the table.
- 47:38Speaker 5: Because those are our keys, those are our keys to
- 47:41Speaker 5: the next level, those are our keys to deeper layers
- 47:45Speaker 5: of our own self.
- 47:47Speaker 3: I remember you told me that one time, and it
- 47:49Speaker 3: really did help change my life and just the way
- 47:52Speaker 3: I look at things because it's like, I remember you
- 47:54Speaker 3: told me, every single version of you deserves grace, every
- 47:58Speaker 3: version of you deserves love, every version of you deserves
- 48:02Speaker 3: that hittling. And I just when you told me that,
- 48:04Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, you know, we all try to run
- 48:05Speaker 3: from certain parts of our lives, and it's just.
- 48:08Speaker 1: Like, no, you was that person. You should embrace that
- 48:11Speaker 1: person and give.
- 48:11Speaker 5: The them perra And look how much I mean, if
- 48:14Speaker 5: I could, if y'all would allow, Like even just when
- 48:17Speaker 5: I see the two of y'all, especially because I've known
- 48:19Speaker 5: y'all for long and seeing you over so many different
- 48:22Speaker 5: versions while also being you know, at the top of
- 48:24Speaker 5: your game, it's like something I've always admired, especially the
- 48:27Speaker 5: last ten years about you, mb is like the way
- 48:31Speaker 5: you and your wife have moved through the world is
- 48:34Speaker 5: so powerful and it is so healing for so many people.
- 48:39Speaker 5: And to see the way that you both decided to
- 48:43Speaker 5: look at one another in your hardest moments and seek
- 48:46Speaker 5: whatever needed to be done, no stone left unturned, to
- 48:50Speaker 5: repair your hearts and to then continue to be phenomenal
- 48:53Speaker 5: parents to your children. It's like that is literally an
- 48:57Speaker 5: example of what it is to like glean the wisdom
- 49:01Speaker 5: from your experiences and turn it into purpose. Like that
- 49:05Speaker 5: pain point for the two of you, because you chose
- 49:08Speaker 5: to be with it, to look at it, to feel
- 49:11Speaker 5: everything that was in it. Look how many lives you've blessed,
- 49:15Speaker 5: you know, It's like the count will go on and
- 49:16Speaker 5: on till the end of time. Like someone could find
- 49:19Speaker 5: your books in fifty years and it could be radically
- 49:22Speaker 5: transformative for them, Like that is dealing with your hard
- 49:27Speaker 5: experiences and the darker points and transmitting it into purpose
- 49:31Speaker 5: and making it wisdom the same, I mean so many.
- 49:34Speaker 4: Experiences with you as well.
- 49:36Speaker 5: And when you think, even just from a career standpoint,
- 49:39Speaker 5: and all the ways that you've elevated and grown every
- 49:41Speaker 5: step of the way, you have taken accountability for every
- 49:45Speaker 5: version of who you are, and then you've literally shown
- 49:49Speaker 5: up as the proof of who you've become. You know,
- 49:52Speaker 5: not just tongue in cheek, like you're not just saying that.
- 49:55Speaker 5: Like it's like you have always become a new version
- 50:00Speaker 5: and then paid everything forward. And I think that's the
- 50:02Speaker 5: living example of exactly what I'm saying, I do.
- 50:05Speaker 3: Want to ask you one more thing for you go
- 50:07Speaker 3: deb because we talk about you being on radio and
- 50:10Speaker 3: there's certain moments like this morning, I'm like, I do
- 50:13Speaker 3: wonder what dev would think about this, And it was
- 50:15Speaker 3: in regards to Kanye, right, And you know, Kanye last
- 50:20Speaker 3: week he posted, oh my mother was a lesbian, and
- 50:23Speaker 3: this week he posted that he sucked his cousin's penis,
- 50:27Speaker 3: you know, till he was fourteen.
- 50:29Speaker 1: And in my mind, like, if you're not going to
- 50:31Speaker 1: go get help, Kanye, what are we supposed to do
- 50:33Speaker 1: with this information? I wonder what do you think?
- 50:38Speaker 5: That's a hard question to answer because I don't want
- 50:40Speaker 5: to be someone to give anybody a diagnosis, right, Like,
- 50:43Speaker 5: that is not my profession, that's not my right. In
- 50:46Speaker 5: the past, and I don't know if he still identifies
- 50:49Speaker 5: in this way. In the past, he has made mention
- 50:52Speaker 5: that he does have mental illness. So here's the thing
- 50:57Speaker 5: that I think we all really need to be a
- 50:59Speaker 5: lot more real about. What is the difference between mental
- 51:03Speaker 5: health and mental illness? What is the difference between like
- 51:07Speaker 5: giving someone grace because they have anxiety and you know
- 51:10Speaker 5: they're struggling, and actually giving grace to people that may
- 51:15Speaker 5: be mentally ill. Nothing in his behavior seems odd to
- 51:20Speaker 5: me if I look at it through that lens, And
- 51:23Speaker 5: so if we see it through that lens, and again
- 51:26Speaker 5: I don't know what or if there are any diagnosises
- 51:31Speaker 5: present in his life, but if that was the case,
- 51:36Speaker 5: we have to be honest about that, and we have
- 51:38Speaker 5: to be honest about how we receive and experience people.
- 51:41Speaker 5: If someone is ill in that way, no, perhaps they
- 51:44Speaker 5: can't do better. No, perhaps they can't get help. If
- 51:47Speaker 5: you are just suffering in your mental health, but you
- 51:50Speaker 5: are not mentally ill, it is a lot easier and
- 51:54Speaker 5: more possible to get help and change certain dynamics of yourself.
- 51:58Speaker 5: If you actually have illness, that's something else entirely, And
- 52:03Speaker 5: so I think that is that's something I would like
- 52:05Speaker 5: to see change in the kind of like mainstream conversations
- 52:10Speaker 5: as we talk about people like who is ill and
- 52:14Speaker 5: does not have the ability to make different choices, especially
- 52:18Speaker 5: if they're having a big response in their illness, and
- 52:21Speaker 5: who is just not getting help because they don't feel
- 52:25Speaker 5: like it or want to, or there's ego involved.
- 52:28Speaker 4: So you know, that is my thought on.
- 52:30Speaker 5: That it's been so hard to watch, you know, I
- 52:36Speaker 5: think for a lot of us, and it's been going
- 52:38Speaker 5: on for a long time, but it's like, this is
- 52:41Speaker 5: someone that also.
- 52:42Speaker 4: Added a lot of joy to a lot of our lives,
- 52:44Speaker 4: right Like.
- 52:45Speaker 5: When I think of the Graduation album, that's like when
- 52:48Speaker 5: we first met, I was so broke and so confused
- 52:54Speaker 5: and so like and that album gave me hope, you know.
- 52:58Speaker 4: And so.
- 53:00Speaker 5: It's hard to watch who he's become because I don't
- 53:05Speaker 5: agree with so much of his behavior.
- 53:09Speaker 3: Absolutely all right, Debbie Brown Living in with Them A
- 53:13Speaker 3: Path to embodying your authentic self, embracing grief, and developing
- 53:16Speaker 3: self mastery, available everywhere you buy books.
- 53:18Speaker 1: Now, go pick it up. If you love the sound
- 53:21Speaker 1: of Dev's voice.
- 53:22Speaker 3: If you miss her on the radio, you can go
- 53:24Speaker 3: get the audio version as well, and make sure you
- 53:26Speaker 3: subscribing her podcast, the Deeply Well podcast on the Black Effect.
- 53:28Speaker 1: iHeart radio podcast network. Dev. You already know I love
- 53:31Speaker 1: you to death.
- 53:32Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
- 53:36Speaker 4: Thank you three. I love you, big fan.
- 53:38Speaker 1: She was Jesse. She was singing your praises for a while.
- 53:43Speaker 4: I was texting him all the time. I was like,
- 53:45Speaker 4: she is amazing. Oh my god.
- 53:48Speaker 5: And I also have to say I just want to say,
- 53:50Speaker 5: like for you, thank you for what you give to
- 53:54Speaker 5: the world, and thank you for the example you show
- 53:56Speaker 5: up in like you're an amazing mom, an entrepreneur and
- 54:00Speaker 5: credibly talented and gifted woman across fields and you're doing
- 54:04Speaker 5: all of it, you know, and I think that that
- 54:07Speaker 5: no one can really understand how hard that is, especially
- 54:12Speaker 5: as a mom, to give your kids the love they
- 54:15Speaker 5: deserve and show up in your purpose for other people.
- 54:18Speaker 2: So thank you, all right, and thank you Debbie for
- 54:22Speaker 2: being you. Thank you. I just to remember that conversation
- 54:27Speaker 2: we had last time, remember.
- 54:29Speaker 1: Her knocking nobody up that never happened.
- 54:31Speaker 4: We have to get back to that.
- 54:34Speaker 2: I remember that give each other grace, even the breakfast
- 54:38Speaker 2: wake up in the morning, the breakfast club