[INTERVIEW] From Toxic People Pleasing to Boundaries Coach - Building Bridges with Natalie Lue

In this episode, we cover: 

• Meet Natalie Lue, a renowned boundaries and relationship coach
• The reality of setting boundaries and breaking free from toxic relationships 
• The importance of reparenting yourself, nurturing your inner child, being honest, and compassionate with yourself.
• The importance of reflecting on your own experiences and biases, and understanding how they shape your perspective of others.

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Want to connect with Natalie Lue ?
Instagram Account:@natlue
Baggage Reclaim Sessions Podcast
Baggage Reclaim Blog
Substack Newsletter: Knowing Yourself
The Joy of Saying No Book
Natalelue.com

Remember that, you are worthy. You have value. You get to take up space in this world simply because you exist. Don’t let anyone, including yourself, convenience you otherwise. If that idea or vision for your life is in you, then it is for you.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hi and welcome to the have the Audacity podcast, where we are all about living our own version of our best life. My name is Jacey. I'm a multi-passionate human obsessed with personal growth, and I want you to come on this journey with me, where we share our stories and learn tools, tips and tricks to live the life we were always meant to live. So let's lean into the uncomfortable celebrator highs and embrace our lows, because all of it's important. It may get a little messy, but it's time to have the audacity. Hey, audacious Human, I'm so glad that you're here and I'm so excited for you to hear today's episode. I feel so honored and privileged that I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Natalie Lute, and if you don't know who she is, let me fill you in before we dive in, because one she's a powerful woman and her authenticity and how much she cares for people really shines through in this conversation and I'm really excited for you to get to hear this conversation and really I know it's really going to feel like the three of us are just sitting around vibing having this conversation. It's so good. She is so raw and vulnerable and real and it's literally felt like the three of us are just sitting having some coffee on like a cold, cloudy day with like it's pitchering a couch, some blankets. It's cozy, we're just friends chatting. That's what this conversation feels like. So let me introduce you to her before you start it, if you don't know who she is.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Natalie Lute is 46 years old. She's a boundaries and relationship coach who's the creator of one of the longest running self-huff blogs in the world called Baggage Reclaim and the Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast. The England-born, ireland raised author helps people understand how their emotional baggage is interfering with their ability to live their lives happily and authentically. Topics she's particularly well known for include emotional unavailability, recognizing shady behavior, people pleasing and values, needs and boundaries. Natalie's authored five books, including Mr Unavailable, the Fall Back Girl and the Joy of Saying no. Her advice has been featured in the New York Times, forbes, npr, USA Today and the BBC, among many other places. This woman is a force to be reckoned with and I am so excited for us to have this conversation together. So, without further ado, let's dive into today's episode. And, natalie, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. Have the Audacity podcast. I know it's been scheduling has been a bit of a thing, but I know everything works out in the perfect timing, so I just want to say thank you for being here today.

Speaker 2: 2:53

Oh, thank you for having me. Thank you for making the schedule work, because obviously you're in the US and I'm here in London and I got in my bed pretty early, so I'm not great for the evening conversations.

Speaker 1: 3:07

No, I mean, I appreciate it and I get that, and so just thank you again and I'm so I know we talked a little bit before we started recording how I'm just so excited for you to share your zone of genius. I know it's going to be so beneficial to this community, and so if the listener doesn't know who you are, what's a little bit about you?

Speaker 2: 3:28

Well, let me see, I am 46.

Speaker 2: 3:32

I am born in England, raised mostly in Dublin, ireland, and for the last well, nine, for about almost 19 and a half years, I've been blogging online, and for 18 of those, most of that has really been through baggage reclaim, a website that I set up in 2005, really as a way to talk about all of the things that weren't being talked about then, and so I wanted to have a conversation about, well, why are we so afraid of abandonment and why are we afraid of boundaries and how can we keep being in relationships with emotionally unavailable and shady people?

Speaker 2: 4:14

And I was doing that because I had been through so much of a struggle myself and I used to think that, basically, it was just the fault of my weariness, and because I was weird and lovable and all of these things Writing online connected me with lots of people who felt exactly the way that I did and who were grappling with their own experiences that created these fears, and so I started Baggage Reclaim in September 2005. Really, it's aimed at the people pleasers, perfectionists, overgivers over thinkers and really over responsible people of this world who keep saying yes, whether that's directly or indirectly, because they are afraid of abandonment and conflict and getting hurt and losing out and that's sort of become my life's work really, I guess.

Speaker 1: 5:02

No, that's a perfect. I have so many questions about this that I'm like like jump in. So I love Baggage Reclaim, that you wanted to start talking about the things that nobody was talking about. Did this come from stuff you were going through and you were kind of starting to process and conversation you were wanting to have that you realized weren't really being have?

Speaker 2: 5:27

Yeah, absolutely. I mean in 2005, I would have just turned 28. And back then there just wasn't the kind of information that was out there. No, that's out there now. And so I would pick up self-help books or I would pick up magazines or watch whatever talk shows were around.

Speaker 2: 5:48

The advice, which was predominantly aimed at women, because really the expectation, the norm as such then, was that women were more inclined to do the work, but the advice was very much oh, you're having problems in your relationship, and, bearing in mind, this would have been very sort of heteronormative advice as opposed to what's around today. Oh well, you're having these problems, put on some sexy lingerie, cook a nice meal, lights and candles On a bath, try harder, you know, offering up tips about sex or whatever it was. It was never about how come we're in these relationships and what might be driving that, and my own history was basically that I'd never been in a healthy romantic relationship. I'd only been involved with emotionally unavailable people, and then in some of those instances it crossed up into being shady, because I was experiencing abuse or, at the very least, being taken advantage of, and so I was grappling with myself. My health was on the floor, I'd been struggling with an immune system disease called Cycoidosis, which I was given quite a damning prognosis for at that age, and it really lit a fire under me. I was listening to an episode that I think has just come out today about life.

Speaker 2: 7:14

I think I said life is short, and I think that that was partly a motivator, because when somebody says to you, hey, you need to take these steroids, otherwise you're going to be dead by the age of 40.

Speaker 2: 7:29

And you're 28 at that time you suddenly think to yourself what the hell have I been doing with my life up until now? And what am I waiting for? Because I just thought I would please everybody and keep trying to do the right thing and keep trying to make myself attractive and worthy and desirable and a hard worker and all the things. And all that kept on happening was that it was hurting and I didn't have that kind of time to wait around for everybody else to spontaneously combust into something else, and so I had to focus on myself. I had to figure out what was going on in my own life, and I wasn't going to find the answers in those dodgy self-help books. So it was really looking within myself and looking around my life and it was like I was. It felt like I had experienced a bit of an awakening that summer.

Speaker 2: 8:22

And so by talking out loud about what I was struggling with but also using. I really had this. Weirdly, I had terrible taste in men, terrible taste in relationships, struggled with various interpersonal relationships, poor friendships really. But I was the person that a lot of people came to for advice. And so, when I focused on myself, I was able to translate what I was experiencing, what I had experienced, and use really things that I was learning about myself and tools that I was figuring out as a way to help others do the same.

Speaker 1: 9:00

And I love that. I don't love that. That's where it came from, but I feel like in conversations I've been having with people and I'm sure you've been in this space for a longer time than I have it's like a lot of people who do the work and they want to share. It's because you came from a place where you had to figure it out and you have that awakening moment of this can't go on like this anymore.

Speaker 1: 9:25

And once you learn those things you at least in my experience, has been like I have to tell everybody. I don't want to hold this in. If I can help you avoid that low moment and navigate life smoother and learn from things I've experienced, then why not? And I just think that's such a beautiful, genuine place which I know I can tell is a huge part of the success you've had is because it comes from that genuine place.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Yeah, I think I remember that my mission when I started out bear in mind, you know, I said I've been, I've been blogging for, or been online for 19 years and blogging and the people that I connected with as a result of that, people who were championing me Bear in mind, this is the time there was no such thing as social media and you had comments, you had an email. That was kind of it. These people looked out for me when I talked about what I was struggling with. They echoed, as I said, some of my experiences and their experiences, but they also, like, offered up suggestions of things that I could do. You know, alternatives that I could seek when I was given my diagnosis, and so my mission was that if I could help at least one person avoid what I had been through, or I could help at least one person navigate out of that same situation, then I felt as if I were giving something back, which obviously I've done many times over, but that has always been at the heart of it, because there are a lot of people like me out there who grappled with the feelings of abandonment and feeling like they just weren't enough. A lot of us who feel that way, and I think when we have an opportunity to be seen, in whatever facet it might be, through your work, through other people's work, when we have an opportunity to be seen, I think that we all get to benefit from that by people like us sharing our experiences, sharing our voice.

Speaker 2: 11:29

And I want to add as well, you know, a lot of my work is often what's what I'm looking for, like a lot of therapists, you know, share baggage free, claim and my books with their clients, and that's because part of what I guess differentiated me was that I was not a therapist.

Speaker 2: 11:50

I've taken a very human approach, as opposed to not to say that a therapist isn't human, but they can be very clinically driven and are sometimes not aware of their biases or included in what might be their own personal stuff that drives them to be a therapist in the first place or that influences why they're given the piece of advice that they are. And what was important to me in my work, and still remains the case, is to give a voice to things that we think are in our imagination, that we think am I crazy? This is something I said, this is something I did. What did I do wrong? Because there were things that I was talking about, that people had not seen written about before, and I gave names to these things or gave descriptors that like it felt like I had been in the room with them and we can't get that through the clinical experience.

Speaker 1: 12:45

No, we can't, and you have, and from somebody who really admires your work is the human comes through and it's more of just like oh okay, I'm not alone in this because you do, it does come off. And I can see that differentiation of like with a therapist. They're kind of more not that you're not the expert, but it seems like we put them a little higher than us, like they're more above us and it's not necessarily them coming alongside of you and really like being more of that almost friend aspect to it, mentor to it. If they're just a more personable relationship, I feel like is what comes through.

Speaker 2: 13:25

Yeah, there can be unwittingly. I don't think it's that. I mean sometimes it is an intentional thing and that a therapist may want to drive a particular power dynamic. But I think that often, when people enter into these dynamics, I think that they sometimes put the therapist on this massive pedestal. And for me, I'm not. I'm not invested in anybody believing that I'm the guru, you know, the expert. I don't need somebody to be like Natalie. You are the only solution to my life Because I want you to take whatever you can from me. Become the expert on your own life you know, figure out what you need to figure out.

Speaker 2: 14:04

Put it from a variety of sources if need be. I don't need anybody to be like it's you and only you. I just think that if we can all experience more love, care, trust and respect, I think we just we would live in an entirely different world. We all need a bit more compassion in this world. You know recent events I think really only actually not recent events or events all these tricky events that we go through in life, these, these crisis in in the world more compassion.

Speaker 1: 14:35

And I think a part of like having compassion for others would be having compassion for yourself, because if you don't have that for yourself and the understanding for yourself, then you can't have it for it. And everybody's like, oh, we need more compassion in the world. Well, we need to look back inwards first, because, yes, we do need compassion for others, but you can't give what you don't have.

Speaker 2: 14:55

Hey man, I you know I talk about compassion and empathy, for instance, being full circle gigs. So what I mean by that is if, if you think you're compassionate, for the only people that you extend basically compassion to is anybody but yourself, you're not really as compassionate as you think, because the compassion that you extend to others really comes from this place of deficit within yourself and as a result of your, of the way you feel about you, it's like you're busting your boundaries in the name of I'm being compassionate to others. How can we say that we're empathetic if we claim to have empathy for others, oh well, they're going through this, and that could be blah, blah, blah, but for us, oh well, we're the worst person in the world and we've messed up and there are no chances left for us and we're not good enough because of something or a number of things that happened to us, however many months or years ago, and so when we extend compassion to ourselves, we are in a much better place to also extend it to others. In a boundary place, I found a lot of people. You know.

Speaker 2: 16:07

Something I say about about boundaries, is we don't need to psychoanalyze people or come up with stories about people as to why we can or cannot have boundaries with others, because actually we're just overstepping boundaries in the first place. It's a bit like going oh well, I know that their pet budgie died when they were like five and I know that they've been through this and that, so I know that they can't handle this thing, so I'm just not going to have boundaries with that person. First of all, that's not empathy, it's not compassion, it's just straight up bad boundaries. Like we don't need to psychoanalyze people to come up with these different reasons as to why we can or cannot have boundaries, and I think that if we can be more honest and compassionate and empathetic with ourselves, then we get to share more of that with the world. I think there's some displacement going on in the world, you know where. As you said, yes, the world needs more compassion, but we actually need to learn how to take care of ourselves, and that is where the compassion is coming from.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Exactly and I I like that you pointed out about how you know you can psychoanalyze somebody and be like tell all the stories yourself of the things they've been to, why you can't expect that or why their behavior is acceptable, and we can label that as empathy when we like I know that this person lashed out at me because they're they're angry, so I'm not going to say anything like it did, like I didn't like how it made me feel. But you know, sometimes you just have to take it from people and just know that that's how they are because of the things they've been through, and and we label that as being compassionate and empathetic.

Speaker 1: 17:45

When it's not really to your point. It's bad boundaries.

Speaker 2: 17:49

Yeah, it's, it's over empathy, which is, you know, empathy they often talk about. You know, put yourself in the other person's shoes. I think sometimes what we do is it's like we throw a lot of our clothes, you know, but I'm the other person's shoes, you know, embody them. It's like I'm method acting here. I'm totally taking on the other person.

Speaker 2: 18:07

And then we make up a story of the other person. We take strands of the things that we know. We don't realize how our own experiences, our biases, impact on how we determine that information, what we do with it. And you know, there's a point where you know that example you gave is brilliant because you know, I've had people say to me well, you know, I know that this person went through this really, really difficult time and they had a hard childhood and they had this and they had that, and I'm like, okay, well, that's fair enough, but at what point do you acknowledge that this is not a healthy situation?

Speaker 2: 18:48

Also, you've been through some stuff and you're not turning around and pulling those same shenanigans on there. Why are you giving yourself permission to accept mistreatment Under the guise of what you think you know about somebody else's past? What if this is not what they need? What if, actually, what this person needs is for you to have the boundary here, so that all parties in this situation is better off having people coddle to you because of these things that you have gone through? Bear in mind that doesn't mean we should be insensitive. It doesn't mean we need to discard all of that. What it does mean is we still need to have boundaries, even though we've been through those things or the other person has.

Speaker 1: 19:33

And it's looking at empathy in a way that you it's caring about somebody to point out that how they're handling or the coping skill that they are using, and whatever it is, is not helpful, it's not beneficial for you, it's not beneficial for them and in that piece I really feel like comes from when you know that about yourself and you have. I have found in my own journey and in conversations I've had with others about that, when coming to setting boundaries, it's a lot of self worth and having self awareness and knowing yourself and knowing what is it, because we're not all going to have the same, the same boundaries Exactly. They're going to be as unique as we are as individuals and as unique as our own experiences. And so you know, really, looking at understanding yourself and how you react to things and how you need to expect others to treat you, I like I can think of an example in my family. When I navigated this and we talked more about like the joy of saying no and people pleasing, I was like that was how I got through. I navigated.

Speaker 1: 20:42

My childhood was people pleasing and it was to the point of I come from a family who I love. They're very spontaneous and they're like we'll call at five o'clock, like, hey, we're going to go, get together and have dinner, drop everything that you're doing and go and the people, please, are in me. Always was like sure, I mean, I have a deadline tomorrow, but it's okay, I can, I can stay up all night and do it later. You know, it's fine. And I would just go, even though I knew I was setting myself up and making things harder for myself.

Speaker 1: 21:14

But I would put my needs last because I didn't want them to think, oh, she doesn't care, she doesn't want to show up. Not really that they ever explicitly said those words, that's what would happen. And so it wasn't until I learned my own needs and was like okay, no, you have to call me, I need 24 to 48 hours notice if you want me to do something. And for a while I would had to be very stringent about that because I was like we have to, because you treat you, teach people how to treat you. But you know, I had gotten myself to a point where my mental health was in shambles Because I was people pleasing all over the place and as an adult it bled into the workplace with my boss and it was like doing things for them, like I would treat my parents, and it was like, okay, this is actually not loving people. I'm not actually loving people I care about.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Well, by telling myself, predicting how I think they're going to react, and manipulating the relationship, yeah, and I think I mean this is I felt all of that experience, you know, in the sense of a part of you felt unsure, insecure, unsafe about this idea of saying no to your family. It's like the group has chosen spontaneity and, in my choosing, not rigidity. You have responsibilities, commitments. There's a level of structure that you need to operate with in order to really meet the needs in your own life, and so what was happening is they come along and it's like well, future JC will deal with this, as in the one later on that night or the following morning. But then later on that night JC, or tomorrow morning, it really was not a big deal, and so I was like, really was not pleased with that previous JC, because you were dumping problems on yourself that you didn't need to have.

Speaker 2: 23:26

And on top of that, you know what we do with people pleasing is that we inadvertently villainize people, because the reasoning behind why we are not saying no, why we are not going actually I'd love to, but I can't today, but hey, I'll catch up with you guys, say, in a couple of days time, because I'm free then to do that we don't admit that. The that behind all of that is this fear that they're going to alienate us, abandon us like, lash out at us, reject us? But have we considered what it would feel like for the loved ones in our life to know that the reason why we say yes to them is because we're afraid of what they'll do if we don't Like? Do they really want us to say yes? Out of guilt and fear and sometimes terror, and you know what a lot of the time they don't and for others and that, and that this has been some of my experience.

Speaker 2: 24:21

Some of them do, some some families. It's like we want to rule you with fear and we want you to feel afraid and we want you to feel compliant. But guess what? I think that there are also plenty of people who they recognize that something has to evolve in a relationship, that you're not a kid anymore, that actually you're a grownup with your own life. And kudos to you for finally listening to yourself, because that, what seemed like a kind decision in the moment and maybe even seemed small, like, you know, just dinner with the family and it seems like it's benevolent and loving, you realize, oh, wow, like that's actually a big thing, because it's a metaphor for how you deal with your needs or you don't deal with it, because how you do something is how you do a lot of things.

Speaker 2: 25:09

And so that ease, that quickness to discard yourself and be like, oh yeah, I've got a deadline, but sure I could do it later. I could stay up all night. There's a lot of things that come into that sleep rest margin. You know, doing your work at a time and in a way that, where you have the energy for it, where you're not sort of stressed out, no blood. There's a lot of things that came into that.

Speaker 1: 25:33

Jc has her own needs too, and I love how and that was a huge thing that I learned from you and how you describe that is like you think you're doing something loving and you're actually villainizing people that you care about. And and I do like agree with you like, yes, there are people who and you know to like your own experience with some family members, like you do have people who want to control you and there, and that does exist. But I feel like we take, we put that on everybody and you don't know, you're just assuming that that's what's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 26:11

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in an environment where, you know, it wasn't just about ruling with fear. It was often terrified, really as a child, but it was so much the norm that I wouldn't even have called it sort of terror. So I and myself and my brother were talking about this a few years back. We learned to be afraid and we just didn't learn when not to be. So you know, you're always sort of on guard and my mother was one of those people that could be extremes. So it's like that nursery rhyme when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid. So in a great mood, you kind of feel on top of the world and hovering, there is this sense of but it could all go wrong in a moment.

Speaker 2: 27:01

You don't know exactly what is going to happen, although you become very attuned to sort of the signs. You know the amount of people I spoke and to friends, readers, listeners, who are like I could tell by the way the key turned it in the door, by the way they were coming down the stairs, a shift in the tone of the voice, certain words they were using. I know it well and there was a push-pull really in our adult relationship because this continued on, this sort of sense of terror really until my mid-20s and as I broke away from that, particularly as I embarked on this work, on one hand it's like, oh, look at you finding your way, getting better. And on the other hand, it was like I resent you, you're not doing as I tell you to do, you're not afraid of me anymore or not afraid of me, and the way that I want you to be afraid. And there was kind of a sense that if she could like just, you know like there are some people who will totally get this, like if your parent could turn around and like batter you, kind of give you a slap or whatever it was, but they realized that they can't when you're an adult, but you realize that they want to, that they kind of regret that they don't have that kind of leeway to do that with you anymore as an adult.

Speaker 2: 28:21

And so I made the decision in February of this year to break up with my mother, and it was. I'm not going to sit here and say it was an easy decision, but if you've taken to account that, you know, baggage reclaim has been in existence for 18 years, which is about as long as I have very consciously delved into this work and I'm not just talking about the sharing minute, as in, like, working through my own stuff, he and my trauma and the more that I knew myself, the more that my boundaries evolved, the more that my life got better, you know, the more that just everything shifted I wasn't that person anymore Is the more aware I became that at some point my boundaries were not going to be able to accommodate a relationship with my mother any longer Because she wanted things to be how they were before and that doesn't work for me and it is you know you mentioned earlier on about. You know you can kind of tell yourself a story about, like, why somebody is the way they are, and I was.

Speaker 2: 29:37

You know I've been writing a piece for my sub-stack about this breakup and it's the first time I'm sort of elaborating it all really on what has happened and it occurred to me that I had, on some level, I think, had a story that my mother was remorseful about things that she had done when we were children, and even some of the things that she had done in our adulthood and also in the story was that she she wanted, you know, desired to have a better relationship with me. She didn't want to stay in that way that she was, and that was a mix of, I guess, things that she had said along the way, seeing that there were aspects of our relationship that had changed and extending her compassion and empathy that left some space to evolve our relationship. But I realized that I was setting both of us up really for a fall, because actually what became very apparent, particularly through that last conversation, was that there really isn't any remorse at all and also that you can extend forgiveness to somebody and genuinely meaning my boundaries are the forgiveness.

Speaker 2: 31:09

Yeah, because by evolving my boundaries, not being that kid anymore, making space for our relationship to evolve, I am breaking with the past in that process. That's what boundaries do. It differentiates you from being that little kid who doesn't have any agency, doesn't have any choice, and boundaries say this is who I am and this is the choices that I get to make. Of course, I'm not in control of everything, but we are the living embodiment of our boundaries and I realized that I can extend forgiveness without having a relationship with her. That actually the compassion and the empathetic thing to do now.

Speaker 2: 31:47

At that point it was like 45 and a half years into our relationship, excluding womb time the compassionate and the empathetic thing to do was to call time on our relationship and I think something that makes so many of us into people pleasers is that we have a story in our head about why we have to do things in the way that we do, why we're afraid of certain things, why we're afraid of rejection and so forth, and it is easy to go, of course, because we're now so much more trauma aware, it's easy to go well. They've had these problems and they've had these traumas, as have we, and that is a good thing. And also you have to be careful of bypassing yourself, because that's what people pleasing does, that in your desire to maybe keep a relationship going and trying to see the best in somebody that you are inadvertently people pleasing in keeping a cycle going, and so at some point you have to realize that actually enough is enough Literally, that you don't have to keep redefining what enough is. It's time to call time.

Speaker 1: 33:04

I first wanted to say thank you for your vulnerability and just sharing that, and I know that somebody really needs to hear that, because I know in conversations with people, and especially I feel like with family members, because as a society, like humans as a whole, you're taught I mean, that's your parents, that's your family. You can break up relationships, romantic friendships, but your family's your family and at least in the culture and the states Like you don't do that, like you put your family first and it's almost deemed as very selfish. If you're like this relationship doesn't serve me, you're almost kind of like the social pariah, in a sense of like what are you doing? But even if it's horrible, you're just like supposed to accept it, you know. And so it's like, well, I mean, you can't choose your family, so you're just kind of stuck with them. But I feel like there's something to it too and I love that. You said that there's empathy and compassion in just calling it Like this isn't going to serve either one of us.

Speaker 1: 34:16

We've tried, no, it's not, and even though it's gotten better, it's not what either one of us needs. I can't give you what you want from me and you can't give me what I need.

Speaker 2: 34:31

Amen, amen, amen. I mean oh, please go on.

Speaker 1: 34:39

Oh no, I just wasn't saying it like that. I appreciate you sharing that, because it's not something I feel like is talked about enough of, even just like the reality of like that's being loving and compassionate and looking at it that way and also acknowledging that there was no way that that was easy. I mean, like I'm sure it was not just like a joyful experience where you were just like.

Speaker 1: 35:05

OK, yeah, I can do this and you're just done like you're a human with emotions, like you're not a robot it's not, you know. So I just really appreciate you sharing that.

Speaker 2: 35:17

You know what you spoke to there I think is and I alluded to this and I want to talk about this in the piece that I'm writing about.

Speaker 2: 35:26

You know, society has some quite distorted views about family and of course, our ideas about family have helped keep people together through the ages and that has been sticking together as a pack and that has helped us to advance as families.

Speaker 2: 35:44

But it has also, in the process of it, created some very distorted narratives around the idea of motherhood. You know that all mothers are loving and cozy and they want to brush your hair and tell you sweet stories and you know they they're always like kind of in your corner, whereas actually I have a mother who I experienced jealousy, possessiveness, annihilation, sometimes the violence that I experienced emotionally, verbally, physically from her really didn't fit the picture of what we're sold of motherhood Like. She is not portrayed in your home marked cards and Getty images or Google image search or whatever, and there are a lot of us, whether it's through mothers or fathers. You know fathers have a lot more leeway to be, to be messed up. There's a whole other narrative around fatherhood, like where a father can kind of do the bare basics and society is like oh my God, like, how amazing is he?

Speaker 2: 36:48

But mothers aside, this sweet saccharine, sort of like this perfection, and we don't leave in a room for the fact that there are so many different experiences of motherhood.

Speaker 2: 37:01

And you know, I am an unmothered mother, my mother was an unmothered mother, her mother was one as well, and I also refer to my mother as the other mother, the one that doesn't fit neatly into society's idea of motherhood.

Speaker 2: 37:17

And I said a family is a construct, as in that if family were purely about being blurred, then the whole thing of like in-laws and like people who come into your family that are not necessarily related to you, that that wouldn't exist. So clearly, family is not just being about blurred relatives, yeah, but also just because you are part of a family, it doesn't make you the same as those people and you are allowed to be different. And I think something that occurs within this narrative around family is this idea that you're all supposed to be kind of the same and you're supposed to kind of want to do the same things and you're kind of supposed to do whatever you can to protect what you've been taught about family. But what if what you've been taught about family isn't healthy? Like what if, for this version of family to exist. You can't exist.

Speaker 2: 38:17

Like why should we have to give ourselves up? And so you're right. I think that there will be people out there probably are already that think, oh my God, like, how selfish is she Like to cut off the people go. Oh my God, there's people out there and they've never had a family there. She is Just get rid of. I put in 45 and a half live years into this. Yeah, and I had. I didn't have Any choice in this, in the sense that I didn't have a choice In you my mother was. I didn't have a choice in as a kid, you don't have a choice as an adult. Now I had, as I said, expanded my boundaries, you know, up, leveled and all the rest, and at some point and this goes back to you did an episode recently on About when you say you don't know what to do but, actually you do.

Speaker 2: 39:19

So sometimes what we do when it comes to boundaries is and it and it's often unconsciously, but sometimes it can be kind of just say is we will do anything but the hardest or the most. The thing that we consider to be the most terrible, you know, the most difficult and I think somewhere in amongst mine, is I had given it everything but the final detonator button of calling it a day. But when you've done everything but calling it a day, at some point you've got to call it a day. The fact that you've had to go and do everything other than call it a day and that still has not resolved it tells you that the thing that you need to do is call it a day.

Speaker 2: 40:03

Whatever my relationship is supposed to have been, it's been and people pleasing isn't going to solve it and actually the decision to end the relationship is a respect to myself and to her. Let's not keep torturing ourselves into this. When somebody has spent their entire life telling you or showing you that they don't love, care for, trust or respect you, that, like I've literally been told you are a disappointment to me, you are a failure. I, you know I didn't want you.

Speaker 2: 40:38

I could have aborted you, Some pretty hardcore stuff in there, and then I've got this person. You go, OK, well, this person. When they get mad, they say all sorts of stuff. Why am I making these excuses? At the end of the day, I decided to take my mother at her word and her actions. Isn't it Maya Angelou that says when people show you who they are, believe them. Well, I believed her in full.

Speaker 2: 40:58

So no excuses to be made. I'm just going to take you. I'm a disappointment to you, I'm a failure. Ok, then, fine, we're cool, because actually she's also a disappointment to me too, and it's not wrong for me to say that she is. But that's the reality of life is that your family is not perfect, and sometimes you're going to have family members that are too disappointed for you to keep having a relationship with it.

Speaker 1: 41:25

I love that we're touching on this subject because, I mean, it is something that we have both, like, alluded to, that is not talked about a lot, and you know you touched on in that that there could be people who read your post or listen to this episode and they're like, wow, people have it so much worse. Like people would love to have parents, like you should just be happy, you have one. But we do like, and people do, they say that and I know like you get that because we do that with everything. It's like, oh, you're not happy with something, well, somebody else has it worse.

Speaker 2: 42:03

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:03

And so you should just be great. The reality is?

Speaker 2: 42:05

is you still have your thing?

Speaker 1: 42:07

You can. You can be, you can be dissatisfied with whatever it is, and you know a downward comparison, comparing something that is worse off than you to make you feel shame about your feelings. Yeah, and it's almost like a way we try to manipulate and control people of like oh, you should feel bad about that, like your feelings are wrong because somebody has it worse.

Speaker 2: 42:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:32

And we do that to ourselves.

Speaker 2: 42:33

Very definition, yeah, and it's also the very deaf what we do in response to that. Let's say, I really kind of buy into all of that. Well, my response to that will be people pleasing, because essentially, what I am trying to do is cut the ocean in my hands by maintaining a relationship with my mother so I can please everyone. Yeah, so that those people out there who didn't get to have a mother full stop get to feel okay. But how is my suffering, or even my mother suffering for our relationship? How is that helping anyone? And why am, why would I or anybody else based our life on? Oh well, there are other people out there who have it so much worse. That can guide us to be conscientious and it can guide us to be grateful, but it can also guide us into bullshits. Yeah, yes, and I feel for anyone out there who didn't get to have a mother or a father, and I also know what is that not to have my father around. But I also don't owe it to any of you to gaslight myself.

Speaker 2: 43:56

And I don't owe it to anyone to destroy my sense of well being, to make somebody out there Feel okay about that and I am. It is I can. Some people would assume that, because I've made this decision, that I sit there angry each day and I can't think of my mother in any positives at all. Actually quite the contrary. Like you know, there are times when I don't know. We'll remember, I don't know, something that we all did and she was there, whatever she was doing when she was there. It's because when she was funny, she was funny.

Speaker 2: 44:31

I can think about that and have a presentation for that and have a presentation for things that she's done for me and also recognize that in the fullness of our relationship it's not working. It wasn't working. It is okay to admit when you're in an unhealthy relationship. It is okay to admit actually when your relationship is abusive. And I think that something that we struggle with as people, please, is that if we can see the good in something or someone, it makes it really difficult for us to acknowledge but that other stuff that's not cool. Like we struggle with that bit. This is if to say, but I can see this good, so like the other stuff can't really exist or it can't really be that bad.

Speaker 2: 45:20

And you know, I'm 46, so I grew up in the 80s and 90s where often the portrayal of abuse is like torment the kid is kept under the stairs and you don't get to eat and you don't like some sort of horror thing. Yeah, that's the experience of some people, but there are other experiences of it as well and there are people who can relate, even from a romantic relationship where you know, okay, there was. There are abusive relationships where Day in, day out, something is going on. But there are other relationships I think a lot of people can identify with this where there is a period of where it's like, oh, things are okay, and then they turn. And what we have to recognize is that we can never fully relax and really truly have a mutual relationship with somebody who can turn like that. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, we don't even know how soon it's going to be, but we know that it will happen and that is a very difficult place for a relationship to be in.

Speaker 1: 46:22

And I do like through this and I really feel like it's showing up, like the person listening is like okay, I get it, I've done with people pleasing and I know there are like some relationships and boundaries that need to be set in my life, but like I don't know where to start. And you talk about this in the joy of saying no, and I know you talk about this in like you've talked about this for a long time. But like the whole art of like reparenting yourself Because I feel like that's such a key piece to talk about, Especially like in this is like how do you actually start doing this?

Speaker 2: 46:59

And because I think like ever since we became an adult, even if we've not actually realized this yet we became our primary caregiver, and I think what's happened for a lot of us is that we are well into adulthood, and we might be one into adulthood, and we're still acting as if the grownups so our parents and caregivers, that they are our primary caregivers and, as a result, we act as if we don't have agency, that we don't have any say at all in our circumstances, but we also, when we do decide that we are going to take care of us, that we're going to be some sort of driver in our life, that we can often end up replacing that same parenting and caregiving that we've had from others and basically perpetrating the same thing.

Speaker 2: 47:50

When we reparent ourselves, we take a more conscious attitude towards nurturing not just who we are today, but that little kid that still lives within us. You know, we're like those major Jewish girls, you know those Russian dolls where there's smaller and smaller versions inside, except for that there's one for all of the ages that we've been, or the moments that we've lived through in life and when we can start to, when we start to learn to say no, when we need one to ensure it. We allow us to grow up and we also allow those younger parts of us to feel safer, and by re parenting ourselves so we talk to ourselves in kind of ways we allow us to have the structure that we need. If somebody came to you today, jc, it was like little kid came to today is like hey, jc, you know I was at home and you know my mommy and daddy. They shouted at me and and I think all of this stuff that's gone on at home is because you know I'm a bad kid.

Speaker 2: 48:53

You know I don't deserve love. You wouldn't turn around and be like, yeah, that's true, and you need to basically atone for that for the rest of your days. So, like any good opportunity that comes your way in future whether it's romantic relationships, whether it's opportunity for friendship, whether it's like work opportunities you're just going to have to turn that down because I'm sorry, but you're just not a good enough kid. Well, we wouldn't turn around and say that to a kid. And yet this is how a lot of us treat ourselves that we think back to painful experiences that we've been through, not just in childhood, but sometimes in adulthood as well, and we use that as a basis to talk harshly to ourselves, to deny ourselves opportunities, to say yes to things that we shouldn't be saying yes to, and then to say no to things that actually we ended basically blocking our way. By re parenting ourselves, we take over that parent in relationship. We're not saying that our parents don't exist, but we realize that we are responsible for us, and we then get to consciously choose the type of relationship that we're going to have with ourselves. How are we going to deal with conflict? How are we going to deal with disappointment? How are we going to basically sit alongside ourselves in that moment and give us what we need.

Speaker 2: 50:11

You know when I think about you know, something I talk about openly is it's really my 40s, where I have finally started to understand limits and where the re parenting aspect of you know that mothering and fathering of myself has really gone up quite a few notches, because I didn't learn limits as a kid. Some some people who listened to this have parents who said no, no, no, that's enough, you're too tired. You're going to be really tired If you keep going like that. I did not have that. It was go, go, go, try harder. You haven't done enough. So I don't have any sense of limits. I think a lot of people identify with that and again, this is not about blame the parents. Okay, it's understanding the journey that you traveled to this point. You know our parents, grandparents and so forth. They all have their baggage, but we're the ones who are responsible for how we're dealing with that in our own personal life.

Speaker 2: 51:13

And so it's like get into you have to get into a healthier, loving dialogue with yourself. You need to parent yourself in the way that actually you may be still craving from your own parents, from your own caregivers, and it is only by doing that that you can actually start to liberate yourself from that emotional baggage that stops you from saying no in the first place.

Speaker 1: 51:35

I think that is so like beautifully said in such a spot, to just a place to just start like tangibly, like look at your relationship with yourself, and I love like how you illustrate if a kid comes to you and is like, oh, there's fighting at home, and you're like, is it because I'm a bad kid? Yes, it is Like you would never say that and so and you would never do that and so, but like you are right. How often do we do that to ourselves? Like all the time we are harsh to ourselves.

Speaker 2: 52:04

You wouldn't even say it to another. Adults Like imagine when your adult friends come into you being like, yeah, I'm going through some stuff right now. Yeah, really sucks to be you. Eh, sorry to hear that, but you need to like put on some sexy lingerie. You need to figure out your life. You obviously not trying hard enough. Like, honestly, who would you talk to in these ways?

Speaker 2: 52:24

And yet we do this to ourselves all the time and we push, push, push, push, push. And it's like a very basic example, like if how you can reparent yourself actually is and I tend to talk about this around the subject of work boundaries and burnout. There are people listening to this who the first time that they really acknowledge that they need to go for a pee is after forcing themselves to continue on with a task, to be sat at their desk, to be like running around. They finally stop, maybe they stand up and suddenly, oh my God, if I don't basically run now, I am not going to make the bathroom. There are people listening to this they hold weeds, they skip meals, they skip rest, and these are metaphors for how you take care of your needs. By skipping what seems to be the small stuff, you're actually overriding signals from your body. But you are allowed to rest, you are allowed to have meals, you are allowed to pee, and the only reason why you're not doing those things is because you are trying to please a whole other person. You are allowed to please a whole other people in the process. But if you now start paying attention to yourself and going hey, instead of waiting until you absolutely desperate to go for a pee, how about you go now? How about you stretch your body and move around? How about you close your laptop at whatever time it is and you just get yourself some downtime so that you can get a decent night's sleep?

Speaker 2: 53:50

I know kids who are like oh, I want to stay up and be on my phone and be on my laptop. Of course they do, but you know, as the parents, that you have to help guide them into a healthier decision. And so it's like well, hold on. If I let you go to bed at 10 o'clock as a five year old, what time are you going to be going to bed when you're like eight or 10? So no, that's not the time that you're going to be going to bed, because actually, even though you don't feel like it, wisdom says the health of your body says actually you need to go to bed earlier. You need that rest to allow your body to grow and get what it needs. I know you want to be on your phone and your laptop until whatever time, but actually that's not really good for your eyes, it's not really good for your brain either and that's really really disruptive to your sleep. We can give the same advice to ourselves about lots of things and without shaming us in the process.

Speaker 1: 54:42

I love all of that. It's so practical and tangible and you can just walk away and be like, yeah, I can do this, I can start talking to myself differently and looking at things differently. And I love just the metaphor of going to the bathroom. It's so basic and I know people are going to identify with that, because you can see that bleeding over into every area of your life. If you're not doing that, then of course you're going, going, going until you're sick and your body forces you to be down, it forces you into rest, or some very small stressor happens and like you spill your coffee and all of a sudden you're hysterically crying and you know that your reaction is not equal to what just happened, but it's because you haven't acknowledged that your nervous system is Stressed and you're been taking on too much, and so then, yeah, you don't make it to the bathroom, or you Hysterically cry in the middle of the grocery store because you dropped your coffee.

Speaker 2: 55:46

Like, yeah, and so it's, you are spot on, yeah, you're spot on JC, and it's like I find that people look as people, please is the idea of starting to say no can feel very scary at the beginning, but, for instance, the decision to consciously start reparenting yourself.

Speaker 2: 56:09

Is you essentially saying no to ignoring yourself, no to just like treating you like an afterthought, no to trying to make yourself somebody else's responsibility? That's essentially what you're saying, no to that. But I find as well that we over complicate boundaries, that we over complicate no. No is just the inverse of yes. Whatever you say yes to, you're saying no to something else, and whatever you say no to, that opens you up to saying yes to other things, and the thing about yes is that it puts us on the hook. Yeah. So when we look at our full calendars, when we barely have a moment to ourselves, that's for all of the yes, and so we have to be careful with our yes. We have to be discerning with our yes, because that shapes the relationship we're going to have with ourselves and with all of the treasured people and things that we're going to have in our life, and that means that some people and some things require a no, and we don't need to over complicate it and be like well, no is a terrible thing and I'm going to hurt somebody's feelings. No, first of all, when you worry about hurting other people's feelings, what you're really worried about is hurting your own feelings in the process, but also everything we say and don't say, everything we do and don't do. It's the embodiment of our boundaries. We are our boundaries, so our boundaries, at any given point, are just an expression of who we are and what we know about ourselves in that given moment. And so the example I use for this all the time, you know, somebody comes to you says hey, what's your name? And you turn around and say it's JC. And then they turn around and go okay, jackie, or okay, ac or AC. Well, first of all, when you told them what your name was, you just expressed a boundary. When that person turns around and changes your name into something else straight away, that's them expressing like it could be that they've misheard, but unlikely if they really really changed your pin name, but they're expressing an issue around respecting your boundary there. Now, if you pretend then that your name is not JC and you go along with whatever they say, so let's say they start calling you AC, right, then you, that person doesn't get to find out that actually, no, your name is JC and that's what you want to be called, and we go oh well, it's going to be the inconvenience, then we'll take it. If they're really bad about themselves, if I turn around and correct them about that thing, I tell them that I don't like that thing. Why, like? How is it upsetting to another person that you saying actually, no, my name is JC, not whatever you've been calling me. How is that upsetting to the other person? We're just not that fragile, okay.

Speaker 2: 58:52

And if some people are, but that's the matter is is that if somebody can't respect something as basic as that, they certainly won't respect anything bigger than that, you know. The other example is somebody comes into your home. You turn around and you say, hey, I need you to take off your shoes. Why is that person then turn around and say I don't want to take off my shoes, I prefer to wear my shoes in your house. It's not your house, I want you to take off your shoes in here. It's just that sort of basic respect of it. And I think that if we can recognize that boundaries are as much about what we say yes to as they are about what we say no to, suddenly boundaries don't have to seem so scary and cumbersome. You start to see, oh, actually, everything I'm doing is my boundaries.

Speaker 1: 59:42

And that really is not that you are needing. Like, if you're listening, it's like, wow, I really need you know. We say, like, put boundaries in place with you. Know, like I did with my family on the phone for a period of time where I was like you have to give me 24 to 48 hours notice or something. I am not open to spontaneous plans and and that was what I needed. But I really and I put that boundary in place, but really I had a boundary, which was that, yes, I'll show up for whatever. Like it really was there.

Speaker 1: 1:00:17

Yeah you just needed to get it in one, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:00:21

So it's not a case of, I think a lot of the time we imagine oh, I just don't have any boundaries at all.

Speaker 2: 1:00:27

No, you have boundaries.

Speaker 2: 1:00:29

It's just that the way that you are expressing them is either that it's going to be healthy because it's a reflection of your, your knowledge of your responsibilities and your knowledge of yourself oh, it's not going to be healthy and it's going to have its problems in it, because the boundary that you created doesn't really reflect what it is that you truly think, you know, feel or need or want.

Speaker 2: 1:00:50

And so, for a while, your parents understood that they could, like just turn up and be like, hey, we're going to sit and you like just drop everything. They didn't know necessarily that you were dropping everything, because you never said so and you didn't turn around and be like, well, I mean this, I mean this seems kind of cool and effort, but actually I'm right in the middle of something and I'm actually on a deadline and stuff. You would come out, you'd hang out and you would hold in all of whatever discomfort that was created by this decision so that you could, you know, be smiley, jc, while you're out at dinner, and then you would go home and experience the after effects.

Speaker 2: 1:01:33

In fact, I saved a line from I've been listening to Matthew Perry's autobiography and there's this brilliant few lines in it where he talks about I'm just paraphrasing here where he says something like he experienced the most amount of rage he had ever felt in an argument with his mother in a stairwell. But she's his mother, she's like, she's like, she's my mother. I can't hate her. So he internalizes that anger because, basically, that's what people please do. It's like you know what, right? I'm not going to tell you about how I feel. I'm not going to tell you what's bothering me. I'm not going to tell you what I need. I'm going to become an alcoholic and an addict instead, so that you don't have to know what's going on with me.

Speaker 2: 1:02:21

And so yours was like, oh, I'll just swallow all of that, this comfort around, all of that, and actually you probably felt quite irritated and frustrated, annoyed with your family at times for just like turning up and you know, sort of disrupting you in that way. But you swallowed all of that and put on the people, please this month. But people pleasing is doing what can fall in. Tents and purposes seem like good things, but for the wrong reasons. And I emphasize this because I might be somebody listening to this and be like Jaycee is just like trying to do a good thing and what's wrong with wanting to spend time with your family? Nothing is wrong with wanting to spend time with your family. Nothing is wrong with wanting to do a good thing. But you need to know that it's the motivations, your intentions, that change something from being unproblematic into being people pleasing.

Speaker 2: 1:03:13

Lots of people do things that are family. Lots of people stay behind at work or help out with this or whatever it might be, but they don't do it because on some level, they are afraid that if they don't agree to do it, that they're going to experience some form of negative consequence. They don't do it because it's tied up in their sense of self worth. So when you understand your intentions, you can go. Am I going? Am I agreeing to do this thing because I actually want to, because I'm in a position to do it, or, on some level, am I anxious, afraid something that if I turn around and say no, they're not going to be able to handle it? And if that kind of thinking is going on, if you are overriding yourself, dismissing your body, your schedule, your commitments, whatever it might be, that's people pleasing and that is a problem. There's nothing wrong with being kind and thoughtful and conscientious and giving and all the things, but you need to know the intentions behind it, otherwise you are hurting yourself for your relationships and that's not healthy.

Speaker 1: 1:04:23

And with that, like I, from my personal experience I can speak to this and you've talked to hundreds of people that I'm sure would agree. But if you're listening to this, you're like, wow, I realized my intentions behind things and I need to change them and really look at that. When you start making those decisions and you realize that, you're like, is this what I want or is this because I think this is what other people want, and you start making decisions based on what are actually things that you want, and maybe that means you show up to less things. So you say no to things that work and you say no to family events. I feel like saying no is what really you get pushed back from, as I do want to acknowledge there are people in your life that you've always constantly said yes to, and people pleased for that are going to be confused and may have some negative reactions to it because they're not used to it.

Speaker 2: 1:05:18

Yeah, it's called real life. If you turn around and said yes to somebody a thousand times, you've never given any blowback, any pushback whatsoever. Yeah, sure, no problem, Even if privately, you are seething, exhausted, irritated, frustrated, whatever it might be. It's just not realistic to expect that when you turn around and say no, that they go. Oh my gosh, thank you, oh, you're so kind. Oh my gosh, I can't believe that. This is the first time you say no. How terrible of me to have just let you say yes all of these times.

Speaker 2: 1:05:49

Of course it's going to give them a jolt, especially if the relationship to some level has relied on you being your pleasing self. It doesn't make you a bad person and it doesn't make them a bad person either. It's speaking really to the dynamic of the relationship and actually each of you are responsible for that. But you're responsible for your boundaries and people can't know what does and doesn't work for you, what is and isn't permissible, if you don't communicate it Now, if you turn around and you're like so I'll use your example If you would turn around and be like actually I need like 24, 48 hours notice and I can't make it this time and then the next time you're finally attempt to turn around and I basically just pop up out of nowhere like, hey, we're going to be like, turn around and tell them that that time clearly. Well, that's not work, so I just better go along and do it. Well, first of all, that's inconsistent with what you turned around and said the previous time.

Speaker 2: 1:06:53

How are people supposed to take your boundaries seriously if you flip, flap all over the place about it when you are consistent about it and without being punitive and being like? My boundaries are this like you can leave boundaries out of the sentence and you will get your boundaries across just fine. And if you don't show them consistently that, you mean that they don't get used to that. And so I found, for instance, with family that you know I asserted certain boundaries and created those and they were kind of like what the first time, maybe even the second time, third time didn't even say a thing.

Speaker 2: 1:07:31

But I would not have known that if I hadn't allowed it to get to the third time, Just like you would know that you could live your life in this way now, where you don't go and do that spontaneous thing, if you hadn't seen it through. So it's too much to expect, and I know we want to, but too much to expect that you can just turn around and say something to somebody like once and everybody will just roll over and go on on with it Like it's like. You probably won't even roll over when somebody turns around and says use something once. And if you are inclined to do that it's because you are your over conscientious people pleasing self and so you might be holding people to the standard that's not even healthy anyway.

Speaker 1: 1:08:11

Mm, hmm, I just that was so like, that was so impactful there and I realized when I looked down at the time I'm like, oh, we can just talk forever. I don't think this is so good and I want to be very mindful of your time and so I'll kind of wrap this up a little bit, but I do have two more final questions. Okay, and these are two. I asked everybody who comes on have audacity. And the first one is like, since this is a have the audacity podcast, what does the phrase have the audacity mean in your life?

Speaker 2: 1:08:51

Oh, I think that it's having the audacity to embrace and be your big, bold self. Like no apologies, as in. I don't mean never apologize in life, I mean stop apologizing for being yourself. Like have the audacity to take up space.

Speaker 1: 1:09:11

Mm, hmm, that is so, that's so impactful. The last one is is I have been creating a list of self care, trying to normalize it, that it's not some big thing, that there's daily things you can do, and then it looks different for everybody. And so what is your go to non negotiable, like self care thing that you do? Ooh.

Speaker 2: 1:09:37

So I don't know where someone's to choose from. But I would say that I check in with myself each day asking how am I doing today? And I encourage people actually to do this, because we can often be so busy racing around and catering to everybody else that we don't really have a sense of how we feel until possibly some days or weeks of compiling, and then we have that meltdown, like you say, where something spills or we blow up or whatever it is. But checking in with myself and that can be through literally, you know, as I'm getting ready, I kind of pause for a moment, like how am I doing today? Or sometimes that's through journaling. But every day I'm really checking in with myself so that there isn't doesn't really then end up being really surprised in the sense of like suddenly things are coming down on me and I don't really know where from. There's a trail behind me. I have a sense of when something may crop up, because I understand how I feel or what I'm grappling with at really any given time.

Speaker 1: 1:10:43

I love that question because it is so true and so powerful that we often don't pause and ask ourselves how we're doing, and it's so simple just to have a quick check in with yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:10:55

And it's also, you know, like when you ask other people like how they're doing, or they ask you and you kind of brush up yeah, fine, notice what. You do that with yourself. You know, like when you kind of brush yourself off and you want to give that clear answer and then pause for moments and be like no, like how are you doing? Because whatever you hear gives you an opportunity to respond to that in how you conduct the rest of your day. Like if I check in with myself and I'm like Jesus, I'm so tired and I'm feeling a bit ready today, then I'm like you know what? I need to make sure I go to bed early, I'm going to get out for a walk, I need to finish up work or whatever. So, like immediately I can kind of like see all the things that I need to do to help myself.

Speaker 1: 1:11:32

You can make your day, structure your day, in a way that's going to work for you. Yeah, instead of trying to fit yourself into your day yes.

Speaker 2: 1:11:41

Yeah, and so it's your day. How are you fitting yourself into your day? And everybody else is like getting to take up all this space.

Speaker 1: 1:11:49

So I really do, I love that one and I have never heard anybody say that before and I'm like that's such a simple thing but so powerful, and so thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 2: 1:11:59

Oh, thank you, JC.

Speaker 1: 1:12:01

I have loved this conversation so much and like time just flew by. I'm like we could just chat, I feel like for a long time. But the last thing, like how can people connect with you? If they're, how can they find you?

Speaker 2: 1:12:17

So, social media wise, instagram, that's Nat Lou N-A-T-L-U-E. I've got baggage reclaims, my website, baggage reclaimcom. I also have a sub stat newsletter called on knowing yourself, so that's natlilousubstackcom, and those are sort of the best ways to sort of connect with me. Obviously, in amongst all of that, like, I've got my podcast that I had, which is like 278 episodes called the baggage reclaim sessions. So there's all these ways, sort of gateways into accessing you know what I share, and also opportunities to work with me as well.

Speaker 1: 1:12:52

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I will put all of that in the show notes so it's easy to find. But I don't think you again. So much for coming on being vulnerable, sharing these amazing insights with us and just giving your time.

Speaker 2: 1:13:08

Oh, thank you so much, JC. I so appreciate it. Honestly, I was very touched at different moments in the conversation. It was just, yeah, it was exactly the conversation I needed to have.

Speaker 1: 1:13:17

Well, thank you so much. I truly hope that you loved this conversation as much as I did. It was so powerful and just such the permission slip that I know somebody needed and maybe it was you that there were so many little golden nuggets in this whole conversation. I can't wait to hear what you took away. You know Natalie would love to hear too. So if you have social media I have linked everything contact Natalie, order her books, read her blog it's all in the show notes below. But if you have social media, take a screenshot, tag Natalie and myself and share your takeaway. And if you would love to hear what you took away from this podcast episode and from this conversation, that really is getting to connect with the listeners is the best part, and I know that's something that I mean a lot to her too, and so to think of her coming on whenever you're listening to this, take a screenshot, tag us both. Share your takeaway. It would mean so much to both of us if you would do that.

Speaker 1: 1:14:26

And one more favor is if you would take one minute, if you haven't yet, and leave a five star rating for the show and drop a short review about why somebody would love listening to this. It truly helps more than you know. And if you've already done that, like juicy house, can I support you like I've done that? I love this podcast. Send it to a friend. Send this conversation to you like man. I know that so and so is coming to my mind right now, and they really need to hear this. Send it to them right now, should it, shouldn't attack. Send them the link. Say, hey, when you can listen to this, I really think you would. You know, enjoy this and get a takeaway from it, like I thought of you. That would don't mean so much to me and I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:15:11

And I have these conversations with other women and I show up on this podcast, and I created this podcast to help have positive impact on other women's life, and so I just want to thank you for helping me share and share this with the world. So you know, I can't let you leave without reminding you that I want you to always remember you are worthy, you have value, you get to take up space in this world simply because you exist. Don't let anyone, including yourself, convince you otherwise With that vision or dream, for your life is in you, it is for you, I'm always ready for you and I can't wait to talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening. If you love this episode, I would love to hear from you, so share it on Instagram and tag me so I can personally thank you for getting this message out. I'm grateful to have you on this journey with me. So until next time, remember to have the audacity.