Speaker 1: I stopped people pleasing when I realized the people that
Speaker 1: I was trying to please were not trying to versificate
Speaker 1: their energy to me. I also realized that I was
Speaker 1: putting myself second almost all the time for other people
Speaker 1: with very little versification. I had to stop for my
Speaker 1: own sanity and for my own self respect. When you
Speaker 1: compare your efforts to others and you almost look and
Speaker 1: you can see they've got boundaries that I don't have,
Speaker 1: because if I ask them to do what they're asking me,
Speaker 1: they would say no. Why would they say no? Is
Speaker 1: it because they're a horrible person? Is it because of
Speaker 1: this or they're selfish? No, it's because of their boundary.
Speaker 1: The Number one health and Wellness podcast, Jay Shedy, j Sheddy,
Speaker 1: jem Lendy only shed.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
Speaker 2: come to become the happier, healthier and more healed. Today's
Speaker 2: guest is someone that I've known for quite a few years. Now.
Speaker 2: We'll share a bit about our background and story of
Speaker 2: how we got to know each other. I'm speaking about
Speaker 2: Meghan Rock, a first generation British Trinidadian entrepreneur, author, speaker,
Speaker 2: and the inspirational force behind the renowned platform the good quote.
Speaker 2: Her new book is out right now. It's called How
Speaker 2: to Stop Breaking Your Heart. You'll see a little testimonial
Speaker 2: here from me, because I think this book is brilliant.
Speaker 2: It's got so many great insights, wise pieces of guidance
Speaker 2: that will help you in your lowest, difficult, toughest times
Speaker 2: and help you avoid those if you manage to be
Speaker 2: able to surpass them. Please welcome to On Purpose, Megan Roxane. Megan,
Speaker 2: it's so great to finally have you here. This is awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me Jay, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's great to be here.
Speaker 2: I was so happy when you told me you were
Speaker 2: writing a book and you said, you know, can you
Speaker 2: read it and share a testimonial for it, because I
Speaker 2: know how challenging this journey's been for you. For putting
Speaker 2: yourself out there. I mean, you built the most motivational
Speaker 2: page on social media without a doubt, the quote and
Speaker 2: the amount of impact that it's had, how it shifted
Speaker 2: the culture of what people were doing on social media.
Speaker 2: It's had such a beautiful ripple effect to so many
Speaker 2: other people. You've supported myself including I'll share a bit
Speaker 2: on that. And you've always had this challenge of putting
Speaker 2: yourself out there. And so when you were writing this
Speaker 2: book and I picked it up and I looked at
Speaker 2: it and you asked me for a couple of words,
Speaker 2: I was just so proud of you as a friend.
Speaker 2: I was so excited for you, and I was so
Speaker 2: excited for everyone else that would now have access to
Speaker 2: you as well and your story. So congratulations from a friend. Really,
Speaker 2: I mean it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 2: I just want to give a bit of background for people.
Speaker 2: I remember I just i'd started posting content of Facebook
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen and it was really taking off. And
Speaker 2: then I remember Instagram being a platform that I was
Speaker 2: trying to find traction on and sharing my content, and
Speaker 2: I was looking at other pages that had the same
Speaker 2: values as mine, who believed in wisdom, people who believed
Speaker 2: in wanting to share that freely with everyone, people who
Speaker 2: wanted to make wisdom as cool and as sexy and
Speaker 2: as accessible as everything else on the internet. And I
Speaker 2: remember coming across the good quote, and I remember just
Speaker 2: sending a DM and saying, Hey, would you guys share
Speaker 2: my stuff? And I literally, at that time, you used
Speaker 2: to just send I would find anyone of equal value
Speaker 2: on social media and I would just DM them and say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'd love to connect. I'm making content, would you be
Speaker 2: able to share it? And you were so kind that
Speaker 2: you decided to support me at that early stage, And honestly,
Speaker 2: it gave me my first breakthrough on Instagram because all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, all these people were aware of my work.
Speaker 2: And what I always found was that it was always
Speaker 2: still about the content, like content had to be good.
Speaker 2: But what I found was that the fact that you
Speaker 2: were able to distribute it to so many more people,
Speaker 2: I was able to see that my content was resonating
Speaker 2: with even more people. So I'm so grateful for that
Speaker 2: initial connection and collaboration we had because it was so
Speaker 2: important to me and the beginning of my journey. And
Speaker 2: I know it's not just me, You've helped so many people.
Speaker 2: So anyway, my first question is, how does it feel when,
Speaker 2: at four years old, you hear from a grandparent that
Speaker 2: they don't love you. Oh wow, that's how you start
Speaker 2: the book?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so that was the first time I ever
Speaker 1: felt the impact of words physically. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: words can hurt you. I didn't even know there was
Speaker 1: a thing of internal pain. I was only four and
Speaker 1: I was used to getting a little slap behind the
Speaker 1: back of the leg if I did something naughty, but
Speaker 1: to be told, especially when my entire reality was based
Speaker 1: on love. I had a really great home growing up,
Speaker 1: so to be told that was really difficult to comprehend.
Speaker 1: But the physical pain of my chest, my heart, it
Speaker 1: literally felt like somebody was trying to split it. And
Speaker 1: I would never forget that pain because it was the
Speaker 1: first time I've ever felt it. And when I explained
Speaker 1: to my mother what happened and I described the pain,
Speaker 1: it's almost like she knew, Okay, my family's gotten to
Speaker 1: her now. It was a good four years, but she
Speaker 1: didn't ever want me to experience that, and I did,
Speaker 1: And if I'm being honest with you, it really took
Speaker 1: away a lot of my innocence as well. I was
Speaker 1: robbed of innocence during that time. I don't think children
Speaker 1: should know what it's like to be hurt or spoken
Speaker 1: too badly, or have to cry themselves at nighttime, or
Speaker 1: sitting on the so far waiting for their parents to
Speaker 1: come home, and you know, feeling sad. It's not an
Speaker 1: emotion that a child should have to feel. I felt it,
Speaker 1: and it's a lasting memory that I would always remember.
Speaker 2: Why did he say? Did you ever ask him?
Speaker 1: Or did you My grandfather was a interesting man. He
Speaker 1: actually passed away four days before my book came out.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's been intense because I was caring for
Speaker 1: him as well, a request that was given to me
Speaker 1: by my mother, which I mentioned in the book. My
Speaker 1: grandfather he lived a very selfish life in a sense
Speaker 1: where he didn't care how he hurts people, what his
Speaker 1: words did. He didn't care. He was a happy go
Speaker 1: lucky rum drinker.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: As a man, he did what he had to do
Speaker 1: for his family. He provided, but as a person he
Speaker 1: wasn't that great. He had great friends, you know in
Speaker 1: the family in the West Indies. Everyone think he was
Speaker 1: this great guy, but actually to live with him, he
Speaker 1: was a bit of a monster. The reason why I'm
Speaker 1: being careful of my words is because my grandfather and
Speaker 1: I went on a journey in the last two years
Speaker 1: of me caring for him and I forgave him and
Speaker 1: he explained to me the reasoning behind his treatment towards
Speaker 1: his children, and it was simply put what he experienced
Speaker 1: is what he provided. So there's a level of generational
Speaker 1: ignorance that was passed down from my grandfather, and the
Speaker 1: ricochet of that is why I'm sitting right here with
Speaker 1: this book in your hand. There wasn't that much emotional
Speaker 1: intelligence with my grandparents. You know, they would do something
Speaker 1: to you, they wouldn't apologize, and that was kind of
Speaker 1: something the generation that they came from were customed to do.
Speaker 1: And apologizing to your children, it's not really something that
Speaker 1: you hear people do. My mother apologized to me many times.
Speaker 1: She said to me one time, you know, anything that
Speaker 1: I experienced in my house growing up, I will not
Speaker 1: bring here. So my grandfather was just a character that
Speaker 1: I knew. Was always miserable, always angry, drinking, love to
Speaker 1: watch cricket, and that was basically it. He wasn't a
Speaker 1: great person to be around if you were looking for
Speaker 1: motivation or anything positive.
Speaker 2: Wow, how did it feel? I didn't even think we're
Speaker 2: going to go down this direction? But it's I have
Speaker 2: to ask, like, how did it feel to care for
Speaker 2: someone who told you they didn't love you that early
Speaker 2: in your life? Because that process seems to be I know,
Speaker 2: when I'm speaking to a lot of my community, or
Speaker 2: I'm reading comments or I read dms, and I really
Speaker 2: listen in on what my community cares about so I
Speaker 2: can serve them better. And a lot of people find
Speaker 2: themselves in that position where someone who's caused them pain
Speaker 2: is the person that they're now caring for or they're supporting,
Speaker 2: or they're in the same house for years, and the
Speaker 2: question is always, Jay, how do I survive around someone
Speaker 2: like that, let alone care for them? So how did
Speaker 2: you even reconcile it in the beginning of that two
Speaker 2: year journey, because that feels like the ultimate test of
Speaker 2: everything that you're saying in the book.
Speaker 1: Well, this is going to sound so strange, but in
Speaker 1: my spirit this morning, I knew you were going to
Speaker 1: ask me something like that, and I saw that you
Speaker 1: shared something on your stories. Somebody asked you about their
Speaker 1: relationship with their mother and your reply was forgiveness and empathy.
Speaker 1: And that's it, Jay, That's literally it. I My mother
Speaker 1: asked me to care for my grandfather was passing away,
Speaker 1: and reluctantly I said yes because that was my best friend,
Speaker 1: and I knew that there was a reason behind it,
Speaker 1: and at the time I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: But I just knew through future Megan, this is an
Speaker 1: investment that I actually have to go through and devote
Speaker 1: myself to. And it was literally for that. My mother's
Speaker 1: last lesson was for me to care for my grandfather
Speaker 1: so I can understand the power of forgiveness. I thought
Speaker 1: I understood forgiveness, but I didn't. Looking after my grandfather
Speaker 1: meant that I had to create new boundaries. I had
Speaker 1: to stand up for myself in so many ways. There
Speaker 1: were so many rumors spread by other malicious family members
Speaker 1: of mine that were untrue that I had to work
Speaker 1: my way around whilst grieving for my mum. You know,
Speaker 1: my grandfather was left unattended for the years that I
Speaker 1: was looking after my mother. When she was passing away
Speaker 1: from stage four cancer. We actually went to the West
Speaker 1: Indies and when I got back, I assumed that my
Speaker 1: mother's sit blinds were looking after him, but they weren't.
Speaker 1: So when I got back, I was faced with the
Speaker 1: responsibility of looking after him, renovating his house, bringing him
Speaker 1: back to a full bill of health, which I did,
Speaker 1: and during that entire process there was a level of
Speaker 1: trust that had to be obtained. Even helping my grandfather
Speaker 1: walk again, I had to literally help him walk, and
Speaker 1: there were times where he would just be like, pass
Speaker 1: me the guinness, I haven't got time for this. I'll
Speaker 1: just sit here, you know. And there were other times
Speaker 1: where he was really determined. And it was through these
Speaker 1: experiences I had no other choice but to seek forgiveness
Speaker 1: because I was spending a lot of time with him.
Speaker 1: And then there were a lot of unanswered questions, a
Speaker 1: lot of things that I needed for my own journey,
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I wanted to a lot
Speaker 1: of chapters that I wanted to close for my mother,
Speaker 1: even though she passed away, just for the principle of it,
Speaker 1: you know. So my grandfather and I did a lot
Speaker 1: of talking. When I became more aware of his reasonings,
Speaker 1: his justifications, which weren't great at all, but transparently truthful,
Speaker 1: I then started to develop a level of respect for him.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of bravery and courage at ninety
Speaker 1: years old to admit where you've gone wrong in life
Speaker 1: and actually apologize to somebody less than half your age,
Speaker 1: especially if it's not part of your culture or it's
Speaker 1: not something that you've been raised to do. So when
Speaker 1: my grandfather passed away, you know. I went to view
Speaker 1: his body and I sat there and I just thought
Speaker 1: to myself, it is well, it is well. The chapter
Speaker 1: is closed. I broke that curse. Moving on. My children
Speaker 1: don't have to hear about their great grandfather. Is so
Speaker 1: much anger in my voice. I could just say I
Speaker 1: could talk about the last two years. I don't have
Speaker 1: to talk about everything that happened before because I've healed
Speaker 1: past that. And the reason why we do heal obviously
Speaker 1: for our own harmony, but so we don't pass on
Speaker 1: more pain. I didn't have to inherit my family's pain
Speaker 1: and trauma, but I did. But it's my duty and
Speaker 1: my job to ensure that I don't pass it on.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what my mother was trying to
Speaker 1: teach me behind the importance of forgiveness is to put
Speaker 1: a final stop to it so that you can move
Speaker 1: on and live your life. But you have to forgive
Speaker 1: because I had so much anger in my heart for
Speaker 1: my grandfather. But then when I saw him and his
Speaker 1: little efforts of determination to get walking again. Or I
Speaker 1: might go and see him in the morning, he might
Speaker 1: make me some peel out, you know, or some curry
Speaker 1: goat and Peelau or whatnot. And I think, Okay, there's
Speaker 1: something bubbling here and I'm not going to be the
Speaker 1: person to interrupt that. Let me just see where this
Speaker 1: journey takes us. So when he passed away, I was
Speaker 1: happy for him. I was happy that he was able
Speaker 1: to transition. I prayed for him, and I was able
Speaker 1: to walk away knowing that I don't have to carry
Speaker 1: that burden anymore.
Speaker 2: What's so valuable with the insert you just shared is
Speaker 2: that you were able to place the virtue of forgiveness
Speaker 2: above how you felt about it because it meant something
Speaker 2: to your mum, because you believe that it had something
Speaker 2: to do with a better future for Megan. And I
Speaker 2: find that to be remarkable in a time where I
Speaker 2: feel we've actually gone the other way. So a lot
Speaker 2: of the time, we're so fixated on what makes me
Speaker 2: feel good now, what makes me comfortable now, what feels
Speaker 2: right for me now. And it's really interesting, because I've
Speaker 2: been thinking about this a lot lately, that this pursuit
Speaker 2: of virtues is actually the only way you'll ever be happy,
Speaker 2: because even if you did what you wanted now and
Speaker 2: you disregarded everything else later on, you still haven't healed
Speaker 2: or created and built forgiveness, and so you're still living
Speaker 2: in that bitterness and that pain, even if the person
Speaker 2: passes away, and even if you were away from them
Speaker 2: for years and years and years. Yeah, but how do
Speaker 2: we reconcile that, Like, at what point is it self
Speaker 2: disrespect to aspire for a virtue while someone is potentially
Speaker 2: creating havoc in your life? How do you see that
Speaker 2: in terms of setting boundaries in I'm going to care
Speaker 2: for them because I see this virtue being there, But
Speaker 2: then at the same time, I'm not just going to
Speaker 2: allow myself to be abused or disrespect.
Speaker 1: Growing up, I witnessed my mother do various things to
Speaker 1: contribute to her healing, whether it was yoga, whether it
Speaker 1: was going for walks, meditation, simply spend the time alone,
Speaker 1: also forgiving enforcing her boundaries, which was really difficult for her.
Speaker 1: She was the first child of six siblings, so she
Speaker 1: didn't really get to enforce her boundaries, nor did her
Speaker 1: siblings care or honor them. And I watched that growing up,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the most profound experiences that
Speaker 1: I spoke about in the book was when she bumped
Speaker 1: into her father when they were in Sainsbury's and they
Speaker 1: reunited and they had their conversations and she ended up
Speaker 1: looking after him, And there was one day where he
Speaker 1: was rude to her. And I remember coming home from
Speaker 1: college and she was cooking really fast, and I could
Speaker 1: just smell the curry from downstairs, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's in the middle of the week. Mum usually cooks
Speaker 1: on a Sunday. Are we having guests? No, The guest
Speaker 1: was the anger that came from the experience she had
Speaker 1: of her father. She enforced her boundary and it was
Speaker 1: the first time she's done it in years, so she
Speaker 1: didn't know how to respond. And I watched that and
Speaker 1: I watched how it actually strengthened the relationship with her
Speaker 1: father because he started to respect it. And I think
Speaker 1: he also realized there's no one else left. So if
Speaker 1: I'm going to have this relationship, I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to ensure that I stick to the rules to keep
Speaker 1: it healthy. So with me now of the same man,
Speaker 1: having to go through the same experiences, my boundary enforcement
Speaker 1: came very quickly. There was one day where I bought
Speaker 1: him a bottle of guinness. You know, he did a
Speaker 1: lot of things that day, and we did a reward
Speaker 1: system where if he did a hundred steps, you know,
Speaker 1: and this and that will give him some something. He
Speaker 1: loved guinness, so I brought him a bottle of guineas
Speaker 1: and it was warm, so he kind of threw it
Speaker 1: at me and he was like, put it in a freezer.
Speaker 1: It's warm. And I said, actually, what I'm going to
Speaker 1: do is I'm going to go home and I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave the bottle right there and you can put
Speaker 1: it in the freezer yourself. I'm not having that. That
Speaker 1: is absolutely rude. And I got up and I left
Speaker 1: and he called me, and he called me, and he
Speaker 1: called me, and I picked up and I said, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not coming back until you apologize because that was
Speaker 1: really rude. And when I got back, he made breakfast,
Speaker 1: you know, he cleaned down, staid like everything that I
Speaker 1: usually get him to do every day, he did it
Speaker 1: all in one day. And you know, he apologized and
Speaker 1: sat down and we had a conversation and I said
Speaker 1: to him, moving forward, this is not happening because I'm
Speaker 1: not going to care for you and deplete my own
Speaker 1: energy at the same time. That's insane. I've watched my
Speaker 1: mother do that. So throughout this entire process, I just
Speaker 1: learned that my no is my no, my yes is
Speaker 1: my yes. If I don't like something, I tell the person.
Speaker 1: I don't feel bad about telling the person because what's
Speaker 1: the other option? I take the bad treatment while they're
Speaker 1: none the wiser. That is hurting me. It doesn't serve anybody.
Speaker 1: So the boundary enforcement, I think I gained a lot
Speaker 1: of confidence over the span of two years looking after
Speaker 1: my grandfather, enforcing my boundaries, standing in my word, and
Speaker 1: not being scared, and that was one of the most
Speaker 1: powerful things that I learned. So it wasn't difficult. It
Speaker 1: was more if I respect myself and love myself, I
Speaker 1: will put these boundaries in place so that I don't
Speaker 1: deplete myself every time I come to visit this person.
Speaker 1: And if they respect and love and honor me and
Speaker 1: even are thankful for my devotion to caring for them,
Speaker 1: they will ensure that the environment is healthy and safe.
Speaker 1: And that was literally the case. If it wasn't, I
Speaker 1: would have just walked away, paid the NHS staff to
Speaker 1: look after him and check in every now and then.
Speaker 1: Because I have to put myself first. Learn that with
Speaker 1: my mother's story, as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope that's really refreshing for people to hear,
Speaker 2: because I feel like when we think of forgiveness, we
Speaker 2: think of it as like this fully all encompassing thing
Speaker 2: where there's no boundaries, you just give in. And to
Speaker 2: hear that clarity because I found that when we don't
Speaker 2: set boundaries, what we don't realize we keep enabling that
Speaker 2: person to behave that way, and we become enablers. We
Speaker 2: think we're helping them, but actually we're hurting them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the only one we're helping is ourselves because we
Speaker 2: feel better about ourselves for a second where we're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm so tolerant and I did everything just perfectly for them,
Speaker 2: But then what we don't realize is we're just continuing
Speaker 2: that behavior. Yeah. One thing I've discovered really hearing from
Speaker 2: everything you're saying is that there's three types of people
Speaker 2: in life. The first is someone who repeats the pain
Speaker 2: they saw, The second is someone who does the opposite
Speaker 2: of the pain they saw, and the third is someone
Speaker 2: who heals from that pain and gives people what they
Speaker 2: never had and creates a space for people to have
Speaker 2: the life that they never got the opportunity to have
Speaker 2: and it sounds like you chose that third option. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and anyone who chooses that third option protects their future self.
Speaker 2: What's the difference between people pleasing and wanting people to
Speaker 2: be happy? Because I think people get that confused they
Speaker 2: don't know the difference. Before you hear the answer, here's
Speaker 2: a quick break, big thanks to our sponsors. Let's get
Speaker 2: back to it. How would you define what a people
Speaker 2: pleaser is? Whereas it's someone who likes to see people happy.
Speaker 1: Okay, So from the chronic people pleaser myself, I would
Speaker 1: say just acknowledging the fact that you do not control
Speaker 1: somebody's happiness. It doesn't matter if you give them everything
Speaker 1: they want. There's going to be another factor in their
Speaker 1: lives that's going to implicate their ability to be completely happy.
Speaker 1: So it's not your responsibility, it's not your purpose to
Speaker 1: make other people happy, and and it's a job that's
Speaker 1: never going to have a reward because there's so many
Speaker 1: factors to our happiness anyway, one person can't achieve that.
Speaker 1: So for me with people pleasing, I just realized that
Speaker 1: as much as I do want to make this person happy,
Speaker 1: my happiness also is valid and it's also important to me,
Speaker 1: So I have to set boundaries, and you have to
Speaker 1: enforce your boundaries with people in general, I always want
Speaker 1: to ensure that I'm creating a healthy space for people,
Speaker 1: whether it's in my home or whether it is as
Speaker 1: long as you're in my presence, I want you to
Speaker 1: be happy. I want you to feel seen, heard, appreciated, valued, understood,
Speaker 1: but again not at my own detriment. So if I'm
Speaker 1: not receiving the same thing from you, then something has
Speaker 1: to give or something has to stop. I stopped people
Speaker 1: pleasing when I realized the people that I was trying
Speaker 1: to please were not trying to recificate that energy to me.
Speaker 1: I also realized that I was putting myself second almost
Speaker 1: all the time for other people with very little reciprocation.
Speaker 1: I just decided that it just wasn't for me. There's
Speaker 1: a whole backstory in my book about people pleasing and
Speaker 1: it explains my journey on that, but in the short form,
Speaker 1: I had to stop for my own sanity and for
Speaker 1: my own self respect, especially when you look when you
Speaker 1: compare your efforts to others, and you almost look and
Speaker 1: you can see they've got boundaries that I don't have.
Speaker 1: Because if I ask them to do what they're asking me,
Speaker 1: they would say no. Why would they say no? Is
Speaker 1: it because they're a horrible person? Is it because of
Speaker 1: this or they're selfish? No, it's because of their boundary.
Speaker 1: So I realized that everybody around me had their boundaries
Speaker 1: when it came to me. But as I was people pleasing,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any for anybody else. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, with people pleasing, it just takes you to
Speaker 1: links that you were never prepared to go, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's just unfair to put yourself in that position.
Speaker 1: Do the best you can to support, but never at
Speaker 1: your own detriment. And if it is going to be
Speaker 1: at your own detriment, then that's something that you have
Speaker 1: to sit down and discuss with yourself. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: costing me this, But what am I learning in the process.
Speaker 1: When does it come to an end? What are my
Speaker 1: boundaries in this particular experience. But across the board, I
Speaker 1: would say scrap people pleasing as a whole. You don't
Speaker 1: need to do that, and the people around you will
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable with you doing that anyway. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends that would be like relax,
Speaker 1: you're overcompensating just to put me back into into gear.
Speaker 1: Because people pleasing isn't for the habits of people pleasing
Speaker 1: isn't going to stop overnight. It's actual small practices that
Speaker 1: you have to implement on a day to day to
Speaker 1: rewire this this vein of ours to stop doing this nonsense.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think boundaries. Enforcing your boundaries is the
Speaker 1: main is the key thing to putting an end to
Speaker 1: people pleasing. Then just realizing that put that love into yourself,
Speaker 1: put that devotion and that time and that energy into yourself.
Speaker 1: Why are you so scared to do that? Because you'll
Speaker 1: find a lot of people who people please, they don't
Speaker 1: actually have great relationships with themselves. So that energy's great,
Speaker 1: But just bring it back to yourself, you know first.
Speaker 1: Similar to when you're on the airplane, you have to
Speaker 1: put the mask on first before you help other people.
Speaker 1: It's very similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, I could agree with you more. I
Speaker 2: think that I started people pleasing when I realized that
Speaker 2: there was nothing I could possibly do to actually please
Speaker 2: someone fully, that there'd always be some gap, some blemish,
Speaker 2: some mistake, even if I tried with the deepest, purest
Speaker 2: intention and I recognize that. Actually, if I simply tried
Speaker 2: to create a space for people to flourish, and then
Speaker 2: it was up to them to make the most of it,
Speaker 2: and if they didn't, I could only make the space better,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't please them. I could improve the environment,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't improve them. I think that's when we
Speaker 2: fail is when we make a person our project, or
Speaker 2: we make a person our purpose. We make a person
Speaker 2: our obsession, as opposed to the environment and the space
Speaker 2: and the energy, which you can control. You can control
Speaker 2: the energy someone feels when they walk into your house, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can't control whether they want to rise to that
Speaker 2: energy or whether they want to bring it down. You
Speaker 2: can control the energy someone has in your workspace, but
Speaker 2: you can't control whether they're going to subscribe to that
Speaker 2: energy or unfollow. Like, you can't change that. And so
Speaker 2: I think if you're spot on that, if we spend
Speaker 2: more time curating energy that we emanate and that we
Speaker 2: live by and the spaces that we walk into have,
Speaker 2: then now we're leaving it up to everyone else.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, you came in this morning and you were smiling
Speaker 2: and you were happy. We gave each other a big
Speaker 2: hug like it's been we've been having bubbly conversation, like reconnecting,
Speaker 2: like we both decided to be on that energy now.
Speaker 2: I wanted this place to be welcoming and inviting and
Speaker 2: hopefully felt that it felt calm and there weren't too
Speaker 2: many people and it wasn't stressful. But then you have
Speaker 2: to also meet me there and bring your energy, and
Speaker 2: then I have to meet you there. And so I
Speaker 2: feel like people will constantly meet you where you're at,
Speaker 2: or they'll force you to meet you where they're at,
Speaker 2: and it's your choice to decide whether you want to
Speaker 2: rise or fall. I want to dive into your journey
Speaker 2: a little bit because it feels like you got introduced
Speaker 2: to needing an emotional vocabulary very young in your life.
Speaker 2: Like when I was reading your book, I was like,
Speaker 2: this is someone who the good quote isn't a page
Speaker 2: with good quotes, because just because you're a good writer,
Speaker 2: it's because you've had to live that. It's lived experience
Speaker 2: that is now coming out in the form of good quote.
Speaker 2: And I often think about that with me too, and
Speaker 2: I aligned with that that what I share today is
Speaker 2: stuff that I've lived, it's experienced it's pain, it's stress,
Speaker 2: it's overwhelmed. It's a role I've played for many years.
Speaker 2: I always say I mediated my entire family's relationship and
Speaker 2: dynamic for many, many years. So a lot of the
Speaker 2: mediation I do today is because that's the role I've
Speaker 2: always played. And so with you, I got the sense
Speaker 2: that your emotional vocabulary grew very young in life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then you felt like sharing it. I wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you were talking about. Twenty eleven was Tumbler where
Speaker 2: you started sharing wisdom. Twenty fourteen was when the good
Speaker 2: Quote was taken out, When you started writing and sharing
Speaker 2: these experiences, How scared or worried were you originally about
Speaker 2: how they'd be seen? And how long did it take
Speaker 2: you to even have the courage to like write and
Speaker 2: put out your first post?
Speaker 1: Firstly, to dive deeper into the reasonings behind a good quote.
Speaker 1: There are so many quote pages out there. The good
Speaker 1: Quote does have the most followers because we started but
Speaker 1: it wasn't a hustle. It wasn't something that I thought.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of money, you know. It was
Speaker 1: a hobby and it was something that came from desperation,
Speaker 1: lack of community. I was in a really dark place
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find the community that I was looking for,
Speaker 1: so I had no other option but to create it
Speaker 1: myself on Tumbla. Tumblr is a beautiful platform. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love it. It's just it doesn't have any
Speaker 1: of the metrics that we fuss over on all the
Speaker 1: other platforms. It's just it is what it is. You
Speaker 1: don't care about the followers. You can put your whole
Speaker 1: self on there and somebody is going to follow you
Speaker 1: because they like you. That's what I think is amazing
Speaker 1: about tumbler. It's just a blank page blog post. Someone's
Speaker 1: going to read your blog, and if they like it
Speaker 1: or if they resonate with it, that's a follower. That's
Speaker 1: now one member of your community. So when I started Tumbler,
Speaker 1: I was listening to Whiskalifa. He had a mixtape called
Speaker 1: Cushion Orange Juice and there's a song on there, and
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, every time I came on podcast, I
Speaker 1: talk about it and I never get the name of
Speaker 1: the song. It goes something like we Belong at the
Speaker 1: Top or something like that. And I was in a
Speaker 1: really bad place when I was listening to that. I
Speaker 1: dropped out of UNI. My friends were making their lives,
Speaker 1: and I was still very stark, and I listened to
Speaker 1: the lyrics and it's very simple, you know, and I
Speaker 1: just thought to myself, Yeah, actually, I'm going to make it.
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to make it. Just gotta keep telling
Speaker 1: myself that. Okay, wow, that's what that quote did for me.
Speaker 1: That was my first initial feeling. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what the lyvic did for me. So I went
Speaker 1: on to Tumblr and I tried to blog with word first.
Speaker 1: I remember at the time, Vice was starting to really emerge,
Speaker 1: and I joined a Vice blog in Network and I
Speaker 1: had my own blog and nothing worked. And then I
Speaker 1: got on Tumblr and I took a picture of Whiskalifa
Speaker 1: and I put that livic that touched me on top
Speaker 1: of that picture. I darkened it. I posted it with
Speaker 1: some hashtags and I fell asleep, and the next day
Speaker 1: I woke up to like twelve thousand followers and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of requests, and I was like, Okay, briskly
Speaker 1: was really popular at the time, so I think I
Speaker 1: kind of jumped on that. But the fact is, nobody
Speaker 1: else was making picture quotes out of positive hip hop lyrics,
Speaker 1: and then I never told any of my friends that
Speaker 1: this blog was mine. I started seeing my friends display
Speaker 1: pictures on BlackBerry, Messenger and Facebook change to my quotes,
Speaker 1: and then I realized that there were people who were
Speaker 1: going through things that would find a particular quote and
Speaker 1: put it on their display picture. So now you know
Speaker 1: they're in their emotions today, they're sad about this, and
Speaker 1: it kind of made it easier to share how you're
Speaker 1: feeling within without having to actually vocalize it. So for me,
Speaker 1: Cushion Wisdom and Tumbler was just like, Wow, I didn't
Speaker 1: know I can connect to this many people. I didn't
Speaker 1: think people needed these quotes as much as I did,
Speaker 1: But I have twelve thousand people that resonate with me now.
Speaker 1: So three weeks in to launching Tumblr, I started a
Speaker 1: clothing line called Cool storybo, which was a slogan back
Speaker 1: in the day. And my mother was an accountant a
Speaker 1: bookkeeper at the time, and she was making about forty
Speaker 1: thousand a year, and I pulled in thirty six thousand
Speaker 1: pounds in three weeks for just selling that clothing based
Speaker 1: on that community, and I kept it very transparent. I'm
Speaker 1: building this, I'm putting this for sale because I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what it is I'm doing with my creativity.
Speaker 1: So I'm invested in myself. You can purchase if you want,
Speaker 1: so many orders Jay, And it made me realize how
Speaker 1: needed this platform is. People really need encouragement, you know,
Speaker 1: people really need to be seen. And just as Chushian
Speaker 1: Wisdom started to grow, and my mother got diagnosed with
Speaker 1: breast cancer, so I took a year off and I
Speaker 1: cared for her. And during that year, I think I
Speaker 1: kind of lost the momentum of Christian wisdom. I met
Speaker 1: my business partner in a Caribbean restaurant and he was like,
Speaker 1: this is what you should be doing. We can do this,
Speaker 1: we can do that. We move over to the good quote.
Speaker 1: And on the good quote it was a bit different
Speaker 1: because I instead of taking pictures that I didn't take
Speaker 1: and other people's lyrics I didn't write, I had to
Speaker 1: find writers. So I went on to Twitter and I
Speaker 1: started looking for writers and I found a bunch new
Speaker 1: up and coming writers, maybe five hundred followers, a thousand followers.
Speaker 1: But I was reading through their timelines and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, this is really I like this. And the
Speaker 1: demand on Instagram was much more than Tumblr. So I
Speaker 1: went from posting a few times a day on Tumblr
Speaker 1: to twenty four hours a day on Instagram. And I
Speaker 1: was explaining this to other people. Anytime people ask me
Speaker 1: about this story, I tell them I slept for fifty
Speaker 1: minutes and then I would wake up quickly post because
Speaker 1: there was no scheduling. There was no scheduling apps. I
Speaker 1: was going mad. My mental health was declined the day.
Speaker 1: But my followers. I gained a million followers in the months. Wow,
Speaker 1: in my first months. We've never seen anything like that before.
Speaker 1: And every celebrity at one stage was following us. We
Speaker 1: had when I met you in La I actually messaged
Speaker 1: Chloe Kardashian and she replied, you know, and so many people.
Speaker 1: I actually had an I think the first person that
Speaker 1: had been of us was a singer called Keerry Hilson.
Speaker 1: I think we credit her incorrectly found out that it
Speaker 1: wasn't even her quote. I mean, this is just between
Speaker 1: me and you. But it was insane the impact that
Speaker 1: it had. And I didn't have any confidence to post
Speaker 1: my staff. I didn't because I cited myself up to
Speaker 1: believe that I'm just a distributor. I'm not the talent.
Speaker 1: I find the talent and I bring it to the
Speaker 1: platform for the community. This isn't about me. And there
Speaker 1: was one occasion where I did try to put my
Speaker 1: face to it and I was hit with a lot
Speaker 1: of racism. And it upset me because obviously this is
Speaker 1: a community that I put my heart and soul into.
Speaker 1: Why are they racist? Who is following me? That's racist?
Speaker 1: So I stopped putting my face out there, and I
Speaker 1: did that for ten years. I didn't gain to answer
Speaker 1: your question. I didn't gain the confidence to put my
Speaker 1: work out there until maybe about four or five years later.
Speaker 1: You know that was from the encouragement of the writers
Speaker 1: that I was sharing. You know, we would have really
Speaker 1: deep conversations. I would post things on Twitter and they
Speaker 1: would be like share this, share this. And it was
Speaker 1: not until I really saw your growth that I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, Okay, the good quote is really huge. I
Speaker 1: could change my life at any moment. And then the
Speaker 1: anxiety came in and the imposter syndrome came in, and
Speaker 1: I just thought, you know what, I'm best to be
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. Let me just work with great people,
Speaker 1: let me meet great people, Let me use this as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to network and I'll figure out myself later.
Speaker 1: You know. I spoke in the book about premonitions. I
Speaker 1: used to get a lot of premonitions as a kid.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why my mother went back
Speaker 1: to church, because she left the church after she gave
Speaker 1: birth to me. She was a part of a really
Speaker 1: strict church. You know, you couldn't wear trousers, you could
Speaker 1: not be pregnant if you were not married. So Mum left,
Speaker 1: you know. But I kept seeing things, and I kept
Speaker 1: getting really interest in dreams. And I remember from a
Speaker 1: young age my mother would say to me, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to get ready to like education is the
Speaker 1: most important thing. And I said to her, not in
Speaker 1: my life. I'm going to live my life when I'm thirty.
Speaker 1: That's when life is coming from me. Because I kept
Speaker 1: getting told that, whether it was in my dreams or
Speaker 1: just something subconsciously, life will start for you in your
Speaker 1: mid thirties. Everything leading up to that would be experienced.
Speaker 1: And that's literally what has happened. So I allowed myself
Speaker 1: to make loads of mistakes and try and tell and fail,
Speaker 1: and I did a lot of that. On a good
Speaker 1: quote with myself and it boosted me enough to make
Speaker 1: me realize that I'm a good writer. You know, even
Speaker 1: though I knew that I was kind of bred to
Speaker 1: become a writer. My mother loved literature, so sharing my
Speaker 1: work wasn't difficult after a while. But at first it
Speaker 1: was so intense. The imposter syndrome was wild. You know,
Speaker 1: some other writers would get one hundred thousand likes. I
Speaker 1: would get fifty, and I'll be upset with that. It's
Speaker 1: crazy because it's like, fifty thousand people is two two arenas.
Speaker 1: If you ever stood in the two arena and you
Speaker 1: look around, I think the capacity is twenty five thousand seats,
Speaker 1: two of them full of people liked what I had
Speaker 1: to say. But because this writer got one hundred k,
Speaker 1: I don't feel I hate it that energy. It took
Speaker 1: away from the creativity. It took away from my love.
Speaker 1: It took away from the experience that I needed in
Speaker 1: order to create that particular quote. So I posted myself
Speaker 1: once or twice a week, and that's kind of the
Speaker 1: habit that I've been doing over the over the years.
Speaker 2: What I find fascinating about that is you had the
Speaker 2: courage to listen to your intuition like this premonition part
Speaker 2: where you're saying everything before thirty five is experienced, and
Speaker 2: then thirty five is when I start living. What I'm
Speaker 2: fascinated by is how did you build that courage? Because
Speaker 2: what I find is so similar for me where when
Speaker 2: I was fourteen, I felt my inner voice got really loud,
Speaker 2: and so I remember my parents really wanted me to
Speaker 2: do math and science and all this stuff at a
Speaker 2: GCSE and a level and obviously you have to do
Speaker 2: at GCSE you don't get to choose, but then at
Speaker 2: a level in the UK you get to choose, so
Speaker 2: you're around for anyone who's listening in the US or
Speaker 2: outside of the UK. When you're between sixteen to eighteen,
Speaker 2: you get to choose three to four subjects that you
Speaker 2: study at a levels. And I remember from fourteen, when
Speaker 2: you're starting to think about this, my inner voice was
Speaker 2: just like, do what you love, do what you're good at,
Speaker 2: do what you love, do what you're good at, do
Speaker 2: what you love, and that just kept repeating itself. But
Speaker 2: I grew up in an environment where it was like
Speaker 2: it was all about getting a good job, and it
Speaker 2: was all about doing things that other people valued. And
Speaker 2: you have a chapter in the book called we follow
Speaker 2: other people's visions for our lives instead of our own,
Speaker 2: and that's how we break our own hearts. In that
Speaker 2: section of your book, and for me, I made a
Speaker 2: pact with myself that I would never follow my parents
Speaker 2: or anyone extended family's vision for my life. I would
Speaker 2: only study subjects that were true to me. Now that
Speaker 2: sounds like a really small decision, but it was the
Speaker 2: beginning of a pattern of decisions that gave me the
Speaker 2: confidence to always back myself. So I said to my parents,
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm going to do art and design.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do economics, I'm going to do sociology.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do things that I find interesting. And
Speaker 2: obviously to my parents who'd work so hard and immigrants
Speaker 2: who'd really worked hard for me to have a good
Speaker 2: education and everything, they're like, what you're going to do
Speaker 2: with art and design? Like, how's that going to help?
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, no, no, I just know it.
Speaker 2: I just know it. And now I realized what I
Speaker 2: was saying. I knew it is I knew it internally,
Speaker 2: and since that day, every decision I made when I
Speaker 2: decided to become a Monk. I knew internally that was
Speaker 2: right for me. When I decided to leave, I knew
Speaker 2: that was internally right for me. When I decided to
Speaker 2: start creating stories and telling stories, I knew that was internal.
Speaker 2: It wasn't ever someone something someone said to me, or
Speaker 2: it wasn't like, oh this is a good strategy, or
Speaker 2: it wasn't that. It was internally guided. And even till
Speaker 2: this day, I find that when I abandoned that internal voice,
Speaker 2: that's when I make mistakes. But when I listened closely
Speaker 2: to that internal voice, that's when I make my best decisions.
Speaker 2: But I find for a lot of people, when you've
Speaker 2: ignored that voice for maybe five years, ten years, fifteen years,
Speaker 2: it's so quiet now. But first, here's a quick word
Speaker 2: from the brands that support the show. All right, thank
Speaker 2: you to our sponsors. Now let's dive back in. So
Speaker 2: two questions. The first is how have you always trusted
Speaker 2: your inner voice? And two, if someone's lost connection with it,
Speaker 2: how do they get it to become louder again.
Speaker 1: So my mother was born in a board house in Trinidad.
Speaker 1: It's a house that consists of boardlike material on wooden stilts.
Speaker 1: Very basic, you know, two bedrooms of living in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the house, so you had
Speaker 1: to stand up for yourself in that house, even if
Speaker 1: it came to dinner time, the best meat is being
Speaker 1: taken by your great uncle or your cousin. You have
Speaker 1: to stand up for yourself. Then you take that person
Speaker 1: bring them to England, very similar environment, a lot more damaging.
Speaker 1: You know, still have to stick up for yourself. My
Speaker 1: mother didn't stick up for herself there, so then it
Speaker 1: came to her raising me. Like I said before, all
Speaker 1: of the mistakes that she made, all the things that
Speaker 1: she saw or witness growing up in her house in
Speaker 1: London with her family, she was not bringing that into
Speaker 1: our house. So my house was full of so many
Speaker 1: different affirmations. Every day was just like a particular prayer
Speaker 1: I had to say. Then it was followed by a
Speaker 1: list of affirmations that I would say to myself. From
Speaker 1: four these were the things. I am smart, I am beautiful,
Speaker 1: I can do anything I put my mind to every day.
Speaker 1: And then that went from affirmations to my mother affirming
Speaker 1: my creativity. So you know, when you're a kid and
Speaker 1: you create images and your parents might put it on
Speaker 1: the fridge, or they might put it on the wall.
Speaker 1: My kitchen was my gallery, right, So I was raised
Speaker 1: in an environment where it was just like anything that
Speaker 1: I want to do creatively, creatively, I have the freedom
Speaker 1: to do that. Communication was a huge thing with my
Speaker 1: mother and myself. We barely watched TV. Was always books
Speaker 1: or just lying in bed and talking. And my mother
Speaker 1: would feed and entertain me through life stories of her own.
Speaker 1: And it's quite common in the res andds tell stories,
Speaker 1: you know, And I learn a lot of the importance
Speaker 1: of standing up for yourself by watching my mum struggle
Speaker 1: to do that with her family. And I would see
Speaker 1: her face light up when she was telling me certain
Speaker 1: stories of where she did have the confidence to do that,
Speaker 1: and those were the things that encouraged me growing up. Again,
Speaker 1: I used to have a lot of premonition, so I
Speaker 1: was a bit nervous of what to express, and when
Speaker 1: I started to speak about them with my mother, she
Speaker 1: put me in touch with an elder who encouraged that, right,
Speaker 1: and that's how come she ended up going back to church.
Speaker 1: And that elder is mentioned in my book. A woman
Speaker 1: called Millie. I love her to pieces, and she enforced
Speaker 1: pride into me, pried for the way I think, because
Speaker 1: I think out of the box, you know, pried for
Speaker 1: so many different things. So again, as I was getting older,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of elders abound me, people who
Speaker 1: are not only older, but you expect someone who's fifty
Speaker 1: sixty to know about themselves or know about the world.
Speaker 1: So when these people are pouring into me, it's boosting
Speaker 1: my confidence. And it just came to a point where
Speaker 1: my mother and really started to encourage me to listen
Speaker 1: to my intuition because there were certain things that I
Speaker 1: just wouldn't do because something can tell it. Something inside
Speaker 1: was telling me not to do it. And my mother
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, well, it seems to be telling you
Speaker 1: the right things, so honor it. And the best way
Speaker 1: to honor that is to just listen. You have to
Speaker 1: develop a relationship with it, right, So your intuition's funny
Speaker 1: because it has to develop trust with you. You have
Speaker 1: to develop trust of it, and it will test you
Speaker 1: like when you were dating and courting your wife, you
Speaker 1: guys subtly probably tested each other in certain things or
Speaker 1: even just to see what this person's deep reaction is
Speaker 1: to certain things. So, for example, my intuition would say,
Speaker 1: don't walk straight onto the station today, take a left.
Speaker 1: Take this left. It's quicker. I will take the left
Speaker 1: and there's roadworks or there's somewhere on a pavement that
Speaker 1: I can't and I'll be like, why the hell did
Speaker 1: I to my fols? And every time I went against it,
Speaker 1: even if it was wrong, I noticed the relationship was
Speaker 1: just further in apart. So what I decided to do
Speaker 1: was respond differently. I noticed that my intuition was testing
Speaker 1: me and tricking me. So every time it was like,
Speaker 1: don't eat that, eat this, and it would be horrible.
Speaker 1: Don't do you know. I'm just trying to give some examples.
Speaker 1: So what I started to do was say to myself,
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to have to depend on you for
Speaker 1: my life one day, and I'm listening to you, so
Speaker 1: I need you to start giving me some proper instructions.
Speaker 1: And it just developed after that, you know, And it
Speaker 1: gets down to the point Jay where I it's almost
Speaker 1: like I have two I listen to my intuition for everything.
Speaker 1: Should I do this today? Yeah, let me do that
Speaker 1: today because that's what I've been told within to do.
Speaker 1: It's like I trust it with everything, and it's gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where it's almost right all the time.
Speaker 1: And I know that it's a good sense of energy
Speaker 1: because it tells me not to do things that could
Speaker 1: be harmful for me. So don't interact with that person,
Speaker 1: don't drink that drink. Don't and you know, and I
Speaker 1: feel like through more I encourage the relationship between me
Speaker 1: and my intuition, the stronger it got, and so now
Speaker 1: it's just something that I honor. It could be a
Speaker 1: gut feeling, don't go down there, don't go to that
Speaker 1: place tonight, I don't go something happened. And when that happens,
Speaker 1: I just think to myself, Wow, this is really powerful,
Speaker 1: you know. And it definitely got stronger with me through fasting.
Speaker 1: Fasting is something that I love to do. I watched
Speaker 1: my mother do it a lot with the church. I've
Speaker 1: watched a lot of doctor Mindy's interviews and docu and
Speaker 1: I've read her book. And you know, the power behind
Speaker 1: Faster than Itself is just the negative voice in your
Speaker 1: head disappears three days after you start a water fast.
Speaker 1: So on your third day, the negative voice goes, I
Speaker 1: do water fast all the time, right, I might not
Speaker 1: look like it because I love food. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, water fast is something that I go to
Speaker 1: you anytime I feel unbalanced in order to re define
Speaker 1: my inner voice. I do it through fasting. I strengthen
Speaker 1: my relationship with my intuition through fasting. It's almost much
Speaker 1: louder like kind of what you explained when you were fourteen.
Speaker 1: These are practices that I do on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: I pray, I meditate. I write down for things that
Speaker 1: my subconscious tells me that I should be doing, Like
Speaker 1: why don't you start a podcast doing this? I would
Speaker 1: write it down. An elder once told me everything your
Speaker 1: body give, everything, your intuition or your gart gives to you.
Speaker 1: You're subconscious, you write it down, you acknowledge it, and
Speaker 1: you say, I don't have the time to do that
Speaker 1: right now, but I'm going to write that down. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Because imagine if as you're subconscious, I'm your subconscious. I
Speaker 1: keep giving you these great ideas and you keep ignoring me. Eventually,
Speaker 1: one day I'm going to stop communicating with you, And
Speaker 1: the day your subconscious stops communicating with you, it's over.
Speaker 1: I genuinely believe that's what creative blocks are. I believe
Speaker 1: that's what hindus are from doing so many things. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to find the time to develop a relationship
Speaker 1: within your life improves drastically when you do. Life is
Speaker 1: like on ten on the Victor scale when you have
Speaker 1: full harmony between these things compared to not being aware
Speaker 1: of it. So for me, it's that every day investments
Speaker 1: at every day devotion. You know, even today, as I
Speaker 1: was saying, I was driving and I'm thinking, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm running late, where am I going to park? And
Speaker 1: something inside of me was just like, relax, I got you.
Speaker 1: And there's a park right outside of this office, and
Speaker 1: that's it. And I kind of knew as I was
Speaker 1: driving on the road, I kind of knew I didn't
Speaker 1: have to worry. And it happens all the time. And
Speaker 1: people see that as nonchalant, or you might have like
Speaker 1: a less urgent response to things, but living in the flow,
Speaker 1: you end up at your destination less stressful, you know,
Speaker 1: also with more intention. I love the relationship of my intuition.
Speaker 1: It saved me when I was looking after my mother,
Speaker 1: It saved me when I was stranded in the West Indies.
Speaker 1: It saved me when I was writing my book, every
Speaker 1: aspect of my life, my intuition is their guide in me.
Speaker 1: I generally believe our intuition is is almost, if I
Speaker 1: say it, an ancestor of some sort, somebody, somebody you know,
Speaker 1: and it's just it just goes into the phenomenon of life, really,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Like? What are these things? What is the
Speaker 1: gut feeling? What is the subconscious? What is the intuition?
Speaker 1: Why are these things conspiring together? What are they trying
Speaker 1: to get me to do? They're trying to get you
Speaker 1: to live the best life that you possibly can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so well said. I mean so wonderful to
Speaker 2: hear your experience with it, and I love hearing about
Speaker 2: other people's experiences with that. The bugger Geta talks about
Speaker 2: the soul and the super soul, and so were the
Speaker 2: soul and the super soul is the all knowing, the
Speaker 2: you know, the all powerful. And it's almost like when
Speaker 2: the conversation starts between the soul and the super soul,
Speaker 2: the soul gets all of this inner wisdom and knowledge
Speaker 2: and now is able to make decisions. And I can
Speaker 2: resonate with so much of what you're saying. But the
Speaker 2: thing that I loved that. I think you put so well.
Speaker 2: Was this idea of sometimes your intuition is testing whether
Speaker 2: it can trust you. Yeah, and it may even misguide
Speaker 2: you in little, little ways, not huge ways, and most
Speaker 2: people give up there they got. I listened and it
Speaker 2: was just stupid. I'm not listening again. And that's exactly
Speaker 2: what you need to break through because that little test,
Speaker 2: that mini understanding of creating a collaboration, like you said,
Speaker 2: happens in friendship, happens in business, happens in romantic relationships.
Speaker 2: You just checking, You're just checking are we on the
Speaker 2: same page? Are we with each other? Because I'm going
Speaker 2: to say something crazy one day and it's like are
Speaker 2: you going to hear it? And I can relate to
Speaker 2: so much of that because I feel the same way
Speaker 2: as You're very clear energetically when I meet someone. Are
Speaker 2: we're going to vibe? But we're going to connection? We
Speaker 2: spend time there? Should we not? And it's so easy
Speaker 2: to think, oh, I'm just mad I should have that,
Speaker 2: and to have an elder that's.
Speaker 1: Where my intuition comes in the songs. Yeah, It's like
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I used to see orders
Speaker 1: and I used to feel people before they spoke, and
Speaker 1: now with my intuition, my relationship with my intuition, it's
Speaker 1: almost like it protects me. So just off the bat,
Speaker 1: I know, don't say too much to this person, you know,
Speaker 1: or this person needs a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: listening here, don't talk about yourself as much. These are
Speaker 1: the things that I would feel inside. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing.
Speaker 2: So if someone's lost touch with it, like if someone's
Speaker 2: listening right now and they're like, jee, Meghan, thanks a lot,
Speaker 2: like you know, I wish I listened to at forty
Speaker 2: or four and they're thinking, I'm just so disc I
Speaker 2: never hear that at all, Like I don't feel anything.
Speaker 2: I just don't know what to do enough. Because I
Speaker 2: also find that we outsource it, right, Like I have
Speaker 2: so many friends who will have like thirty people on
Speaker 2: a chat and they'll be like, what do I do
Speaker 2: in this situation? And then they'll go on their private
Speaker 2: stories on Instagram and be like, guys, what do I
Speaker 2: do in this situation? It's like we're constantly outsourcing advice,
Speaker 2: so we don't find it weird to go to like
Speaker 2: ten twenty thirty people who know us, but they don't
Speaker 2: know us that well, but we find it scary to
Speaker 2: sit in silence. And you talk about the power of
Speaker 2: solitude in the book in the second section and this
Speaker 2: ability to spend time with ourselves, but we don't usually
Speaker 2: go there. So if someone's struggling and saying, yeah, Jay,
Speaker 2: I'm that person. I'm the one texting all my mates.
Speaker 2: I'm not constantly asking my family to make decisions for me,
Speaker 2: constantly asking everyone's opinion, but it never works. How do
Speaker 2: I start doing this? How would you guide them?
Speaker 1: The first thing I would say is to start removing
Speaker 1: your distractions. Start removing the distractions, because the more we're distracted, obviously,
Speaker 1: the less we are going in within And for me,
Speaker 1: if I'm constantly distracted with TV, friends, work, when do
Speaker 1: I actually get to spend time with myself. So the
Speaker 1: best way that I spend time with myself is every morning,
Speaker 1: before my day, before my day starts, as soon as
Speaker 1: the sun rises, I go for a walk in my
Speaker 1: local park, and or I might just go for a walk,
Speaker 1: just walk straight for an hour, no headphones. No, I
Speaker 1: do carry my phone for safety, but no headphones, nothing
Speaker 1: and any thought that comes into my head I write
Speaker 1: down any thought that comes into my head, I write down.
Speaker 1: It could be Ah, this is shit, isn't it? Or
Speaker 1: this is so long? Why am I going for this
Speaker 1: walk this morning? I write that down and then I
Speaker 1: ask it why, And I get used to communicating with myself. Everybody,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, has something internal that communicates with them.
Speaker 1: I only recently realized that not everybody has an internal dialogue,
Speaker 1: which I found so strange because I definitely do. But
Speaker 1: there is something within our guard that is there and
Speaker 1: it's worth seeking because it could potentially be your best friend. So,
Speaker 1: as I was saying, communicate with yourself, start asking yourself
Speaker 1: the same questions that you would ask somebody else. If
Speaker 1: you find that the voice in your head is you're
Speaker 1: intuition is negative, you know, takes some time to really
Speaker 1: why do I think like that? There's been so many
Speaker 1: times I've gone for walks. I'm just like, today's a day.
Speaker 1: I'm going to put myself out there. Today's dy I'm
Speaker 1: gona put myself out there. I'm going to post this
Speaker 1: video and then something would be like no, we're not.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, okay, but why, and it will go
Speaker 1: silent and I might walk for a little bit more
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, no, why am I not doing that?
Speaker 1: And it'll be silent and I'll be like, okay, but
Speaker 1: why do I think I'm not doing that? It's because
Speaker 1: and before you know it, I'm coming up with my
Speaker 1: own answers. The more you do that, you're going to
Speaker 1: get some sort of response one day, you know, energetically
Speaker 1: from your stomach or whatever it is that you feel
Speaker 1: that sensation and it's going to give you the answers
Speaker 1: that you didn't even know was there. Jay, the amount
Speaker 1: of times I've done that, and sometimes I baffle myself
Speaker 1: with what it is my self conscious gives back.
Speaker 2: To yes, yes, I agree.
Speaker 1: It's like wow, is that that's really sad? Or oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's cool. I didn't know I thought of
Speaker 1: that of myself.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: But as you were saying before, these things need nurturing, nourishit.
Speaker 1: If you want to have a healthy body, you're going
Speaker 1: to fit it with the best foods. You're going to
Speaker 1: make sure you're moving, You're going to make sure your
Speaker 1: mind is right. With the mind, how do you have
Speaker 1: a healthy mind? Obviously there's professionals and stuff that you
Speaker 1: would go to, but the holistic ways. Definitely journaling, writing, exercising, fasting.
Speaker 1: Those are the first four things I would say to
Speaker 1: anybody who says they don't have a relationship. You're going
Speaker 1: to hear that voice as loud as hell when you
Speaker 1: are two days in through and water fast. That voice
Speaker 1: is going to be loud and you're going to have
Speaker 1: no other option but to communicate with it. So put
Speaker 1: yourself to a challenge if you want to find it.
Speaker 1: It's there, it's been hidden because it hasn't been communicated with.
Speaker 1: If you have this urge to write, you have this
Speaker 1: urge to draw, but you're playing games instead, or you're
Speaker 1: watching this. Eventually, like we said that, it's going to
Speaker 1: fade away so it doesn't exist anymore. It's your responsibility
Speaker 1: to go and seek it. So you actively have to
Speaker 1: do things by yourself that are going to cause you
Speaker 1: to end up speaking to yourself internally or outwardly. I
Speaker 1: don't mind and communicate with that. That's my honest opinion.
Speaker 1: That's what works for me for sure. Any time I'm
Speaker 1: feeling disconnected, I go for a walk, I write down
Speaker 1: what my feelings are, and I always come back feeling lighter,
Speaker 1: with some sort of answer. Whatever answer I get, I
Speaker 1: might google it, put it in chact me to you,
Speaker 1: or might go back to my therapy notes, or even
Speaker 1: call a friend and be like, this is what's happening,
Speaker 1: you know, and then it gives me something to work on.
Speaker 1: Then I will look online. Okay, I'm feeling sad about this,
Speaker 1: all these podcasts will come up. Let me start listening
Speaker 1: to other people's experiences. Okay, all the things that they've mentioned.
Speaker 1: How do I bring that back into my life? How
Speaker 1: do I use their practices to gain a deeper relationship
Speaker 1: with myself? People think that self love and all of
Speaker 1: these things is just surface. It's a lot of dedication
Speaker 1: and devotion to oneself, and you've really got to believe
Speaker 1: that you're worth it. It starts from there. It starts
Speaker 1: from your intention. What are you intentionally trying to receive
Speaker 1: from your inner self as to why you want to
Speaker 1: have these conversations? And then you were build up on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so true. Most of us, I feel like only
Speaker 2: having a conversation with fear. Yeah, we're not really having
Speaker 2: a conversation with any other part of ourselves or anxiety. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: so in a voice, we think in a voice is
Speaker 2: fear or anxiety. But what we're referring to is something
Speaker 2: deeper than that, and something so much more you than that.
Speaker 2: And that's why I think we're scared of having that
Speaker 2: time out, that internal dialogue, the solitude, because all we
Speaker 2: hear in that time is fear and anxiety. And like
Speaker 2: you said, with the fast thing, it's the same. It's
Speaker 2: true for fear and anxiety and meditation. I remember the
Speaker 2: first time I sat down to meditate for two hours,
Speaker 2: my whole body was rejecting it and there was just
Speaker 2: fear and anxiety. Am I doing this right? This is
Speaker 2: are uncomfortable? I hate this. This is the worst. And
Speaker 2: then after you get through that first two hours, four hours,
Speaker 2: six hours, eight hours, it starts to go quiet to
Speaker 2: just naturally yeah, and you go, oh, now now there's
Speaker 2: space to actually listen. And I think so many of
Speaker 2: us give up just before that. Yeah. So I love
Speaker 2: that you used fasting as an example, and.
Speaker 1: I definitely struggle with meditation. That's why I find a
Speaker 1: lot more power and fasting. Yeah, I find it quicker
Speaker 1: and more intense. I can't switch off my thoughts of meditation. Well,
Speaker 1: I couldn't until I had to practice and I did
Speaker 1: exactly what you just said. I had to get through
Speaker 1: those loud moments and just tell my brain, tell myself,
Speaker 1: we're not moving until everyone is quiet, you know. And
Speaker 1: then again, what is it that I'm saying, write it
Speaker 1: down or store it. But meditation, I find it was
Speaker 1: more of a physical experience. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever feel like a buzzy feel the circumference of your body,
Speaker 1: That to me is a completely different level. I'm very
Speaker 1: basic in meditating. I've really just started to pick it
Speaker 1: up properly, and I do about ten to fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: a day in the morning, and it accepts my day
Speaker 1: because any fears I have for that day able to
Speaker 1: just calmly go through it. Breathing help so much. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're having anxiety and your thoughts are racing and
Speaker 1: you just deep breathe for about six or seven times
Speaker 1: and you can actually feel the pressure coming down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think breath work, meditation fast and these are all
Speaker 1: really great practices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you talk about them in the book and
Speaker 2: some of your tools. Before we dive into the next moment,
Speaker 2: let's hear from our sponsors and back to our episode.
Speaker 2: We're talking about fears, Megan, I wanted to end on
Speaker 2: this because I wanted to talk about it with you.
Speaker 2: This idea of we learn about how much you love
Speaker 2: your mum in the book, even today, in this conversation,
Speaker 2: you learn about what a pivotal role she's played, like
Speaker 2: introducing you to elders, like the affirmations, giving you the
Speaker 2: gift of learning forgiveness at a time in your life,
Speaker 2: like so many things, but walk us through the healing
Speaker 2: of that process, like what are all the things that
Speaker 2: are going on inside when you're in the process of
Speaker 2: losing the person you love most in the world.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just my mother I lost. So I lost
Speaker 1: my mother in twenty twenty one in March. I started
Speaker 1: to lose people around August twenty twenty well, I lost
Speaker 1: sixteen people to COVID. Right, I lost sixteen people to COVID,
Speaker 1: and I lost three friends, one to cocaine, one to murder,
Speaker 1: and one to illness. I lost both my parents. My
Speaker 1: mother passed in March, my dad passed in August, and
Speaker 1: then I lost an uncle later on that year. So
Speaker 1: that all happened in the space of twenty twenty to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. So it wasn't just losing my mom,
Speaker 1: never met my dad, never knew my dad, not interested.
Speaker 1: It was actually losing my entire community. All my elders
Speaker 1: weren't Millie's actually the only elder I have left, and
Speaker 1: it was very important for me to get her name
Speaker 1: in print and share her story as well as my mom.
Speaker 1: The journey of my mother's transition started in July twenty
Speaker 1: twenty when she got diagnosed with stage four cancer. And
Speaker 1: at that moment, Jay I was in the position of
Speaker 1: putting my faith in my brand, like actually doing it,
Speaker 1: sat down with my business partner, like, this is what
Speaker 1: we're doing. I'm ready, you know, And that happened and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my gosh, this is happening again. This
Speaker 1: happened with tumbling out. Okay, well maybe it's not time,
Speaker 1: you know. So I just saw that as a huge
Speaker 1: step back for me to take because this is more
Speaker 1: important and this is where my life is heading towards.
Speaker 1: I then had to become a carer, and there were
Speaker 1: many times I had to parent my mom immediately as
Speaker 1: she got diagnosed. I then had to put my feelings
Speaker 1: aside and comfort her and then become very optimistic for
Speaker 1: our journey moving forward. And it was heartbreaking because all
Speaker 1: while that was happening, I was what, you know, the
Speaker 1: energy deplete from somebody who's being told that in a
Speaker 1: couple of years time they might not be here. Then
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, okay, wow, in a couple of my mom's
Speaker 1: going to die. And in my thirties, I thought she was.
Speaker 1: I thought I had a pact with God that Mummy's
Speaker 1: not going until she's a hundred, you know, like, what
Speaker 1: are we doing? What are we talking about? Okay, so
Speaker 1: stage four cancer, these are all the things that was
Speaker 1: in my head. Okay, let me research them, and I'm
Speaker 1: seeing there's not many. There's there's it's terminal, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's literally what the doctor told my mother. So
Speaker 1: it was it was really hard. I knew that I
Speaker 1: didn't have time to be defressed, you know, because depression
Speaker 1: is the first thing that comes to me when emotions
Speaker 1: are too heavy. I just I stop, I pause, I
Speaker 1: bed what And you know, I didn't have time for
Speaker 1: that because I have to go back to caring now.
Speaker 1: Every night I would clib myself to sleep and then
Speaker 1: I would watch some people on TikTok who talk about grief.
Speaker 1: There's a lady who talks about working in a hospice,
Speaker 1: and I just really, okay, I'm being called to help
Speaker 1: my mother transition, so I actually need to put myself second.
Speaker 1: And I did the entire time. It's hard operating of
Speaker 1: a broken heart. It's hard watching the person that you
Speaker 1: love crumble and lose their power, eventually losing their life.
Speaker 1: You lose yourself. The moment my mother took her last breath,
Speaker 1: I also took my last breath, and I felt, you
Speaker 1: see that same feeling that I spoke about in the
Speaker 1: beginning of the book, with the heartbreak. I felt something
Speaker 1: leave me. I felt so cold and hollow. That's the
Speaker 1: best way. Everything within me that was fun and brought
Speaker 1: lights and the things that everybody loved it went. My
Speaker 1: entire essence left with my mother. It's only till I
Speaker 1: got older along the last couple of years I've realized
Speaker 1: actually I just evolved, and the best inheritance I received
Speaker 1: was my mother's love, her and her essence. But that
Speaker 1: feeling was awful. I didn't want to be here, went
Speaker 1: through so many different things, so many different emotions. You know,
Speaker 1: my mother got ill just as COVID started to happen,
Speaker 1: and it got really cold, and she was like, I
Speaker 1: want to go home, and home for us is Trinidad,
Speaker 1: but Trinidad's borders were closed, so I ended up going
Speaker 1: to Saint Lucia and it was just supposed to be
Speaker 1: a quick break and maybe a month or so, you know,
Speaker 1: And it was crazy because COVID out there was so
Speaker 1: different to the UK, like you can still go to
Speaker 1: the beach, you can still do things. So my mum
Speaker 1: was she was really happy. You know, it's hot, sunshine,
Speaker 1: you can eat the best foods, you know. It was.
Speaker 1: We had her on a really holistic whole foods dye
Speaker 1: and all of the stuff came from Saint Lucia's was
Speaker 1: just literally eating from the ground. And at one stage
Speaker 1: I thought she was getting better, and then her health
Speaker 1: just plummeted. And next thing you know, I'm in Saint
Speaker 1: Lucia for six months and my mother passes away and
Speaker 1: I then had to Okay, she wants to be buried
Speaker 1: in Trinidad. What do I do now? So my grandfather
Speaker 1: sent me ten thousand pounds and all the planes were stationary,
Speaker 1: all the airports were closed. I had to spend about
Speaker 1: two weeks begging the Ministry in Trinidad to let me in,
Speaker 1: and when I was able to send them all of
Speaker 1: my mum's documentations she was a national, they brought her
Speaker 1: home and they were at one stage they were like,
Speaker 1: we can't bring you into the country because you're not
Speaker 1: a national. And I was just like, Okay, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go on the good quote and talk about this.
Speaker 1: And literally the next day I woke up to access
Speaker 1: into Trinidad, put my mother on this private plane that
Speaker 1: my grandfather played for got over to Trinidad, had to quarantine,
Speaker 1: didn't bury her until a month later. Family switched up
Speaker 1: on me by myself in a foreign country. Trinidad is
Speaker 1: not an easy pace to be on the rest of days.
Speaker 1: I love Trinidad. I love it. I was raised to
Speaker 1: love Trinidad. It's part of it's meat.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Been going to Trinidad since I was seven years old,
Speaker 1: so I kind of know the area. No when you're
Speaker 1: there by yourself, no family, no money, your mother's in
Speaker 1: a morgue, you know. I had a breakdown. I completely
Speaker 1: broke down to the point where I think I landed
Speaker 1: in Saint Lucia maybe one hundred and ten kg. Because
Speaker 1: I was when I'm stressed, as you can see, just
Speaker 1: finished righting the book. But when I'm stressed, I put
Speaker 1: on a lot of weight. I left and landed in
Speaker 1: Trinidad's seventy four kg. I lost so much weight due
Speaker 1: to stress. It depleted me completely. But I did it
Speaker 1: all with honor because I was my best friend. She
Speaker 1: was scared and I was scared, and I needed to
Speaker 1: ensure that she had everything that she needed because at
Speaker 1: one stage that's what she did for me. You know,
Speaker 1: I slept in the hospital the entire time. I actually
Speaker 1: got all the nurses to sign off their responsibilities. I
Speaker 1: washed my mum, I fed her, I creamed her, helped
Speaker 1: her move, I changed her bed. I did everything because
Speaker 1: for me, it was the last time I was ever
Speaker 1: going to be able to do it. So I had
Speaker 1: all this energy to do it. And honor is such
Speaker 1: a big thing for me, and so is loyalty. And
Speaker 1: because of my mother's story and the amount of sacrifices
Speaker 1: she made for me, it was important for me to
Speaker 1: reciprocate in the only way that I knew how at
Speaker 1: the time, which was to ensure that she had a
Speaker 1: peaceful transition. And it was so hard, you know, I
Speaker 1: slept in the same bed as my mum for the
Speaker 1: entire time for a year and a half. I've got
Speaker 1: so many recordings of her. We have our own podcast
Speaker 1: that I can go to. There's certain things I asked her,
Speaker 1: like when I get married and I want to run away,
Speaker 1: you know, what advice would you give me? And she
Speaker 1: gave me all these advices. When I become a mother,
Speaker 1: what advice would you give me? And we had these
Speaker 1: really beautiful conversations. I've got all of it recorded. She
Speaker 1: even recorded me a birthday message so that every year
Speaker 1: for my birthday, I wake up and I play it
Speaker 1: because it's just significant for any year. It's not specific,
Speaker 1: you know. And so we prepared and we I did
Speaker 1: as much as we could. And that's why I don't
Speaker 1: have any regrets with losing my mother or well, I
Speaker 1: don't have any regrets of how it all panned out.
Speaker 1: But I lost myself completely, and I think, to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I really only got it back recently,
Speaker 1: and I got it back through the process of writing
Speaker 1: this book because it gave me something to do. I
Speaker 1: got really low, I got really strong dependency on marijuana.
Speaker 1: I became very suicidal, made various attempts. I was by
Speaker 1: myself for a long time in Trinidad. I started off
Speaker 1: in the hoods and I met some really great people
Speaker 1: in some of the areas where you know, rumors and
Speaker 1: the government and just culture would tell you that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be I met some of the kindest people there,
Speaker 1: and these people elevated me enough to believe, or to
Speaker 1: generate self belief that I'm Meghan. I built something really great,
Speaker 1: I have a great story to tell and I can
Speaker 1: actually still try again. And I started off in the
Speaker 1: hood in Trinidad and ended up in one of the
Speaker 1: best places in a villa that cost me four and
Speaker 1: a half grand a month. Because I started to do podcasts,
Speaker 1: I started to start again. You know, I was filming people,
Speaker 1: I was interviewing people, I was traveling the island. I
Speaker 1: was trying to find who Megan was without Janet, without
Speaker 1: my mum, and I'm still trying to find that. It's
Speaker 1: really hard. It's really hard. She wasn't just my mother.
Speaker 1: She was my best friend, my sister, my homie, you know,
Speaker 1: the person I would talk to about everything that's gone.
Speaker 1: And then not only that, but all of the people
Speaker 1: that raised her they're gone too. I lost my great aunt,
Speaker 1: you know, I lost great uncles, I lost cousins. I
Speaker 1: lost a lot of people, and all I really have
Speaker 1: now is just their memory, what's up, conversations, voice notes
Speaker 1: and their essence, and that is what I use now
Speaker 1: to drive me. You know. There were times I still
Speaker 1: live in my mother's house. When I took her to
Speaker 1: Saint Lucia, stayed in Trinidad for a year. When I
Speaker 1: got back, I had an apartment in Docklands, a penthouse,
Speaker 1: and I remember my mum came to see it with
Speaker 1: me and she was like, I can't believe this is you.
Speaker 1: Because she started off in the board house, her daughter's
Speaker 1: twenty four floors up, you know, own business. It was
Speaker 1: starting to happen for me.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Now I'm back at home, back in Watford, you know,
Speaker 1: in my mum's place, and it's humbling. It's hard. The memories.
Speaker 1: When people say, oh, I have to leave this environment,
Speaker 1: there's too many memories. I never understood what that meant.
Speaker 1: It means that when you're in bed and somebody's walking
Speaker 1: in your hallway, you get a quick oh that's not no,
Speaker 1: it's not it's just your friend or if like I
Speaker 1: don't know, you're cooking and you sit in the living
Speaker 1: room while your food's cooking, and you can smell the
Speaker 1: food and it reminds you of when your mum used
Speaker 1: to cook on Sundays. There's memories everywhere. So my main
Speaker 1: intention now is to try and do as much work
Speaker 1: as I can to leave. But the entire journey of
Speaker 1: losing your parents up until now, you lose yourself. You
Speaker 1: have to rebuild your you have to parent yourself, you
Speaker 1: have to love yourself. You have to give yourself a
Speaker 1: reason as to why you're being alight, why you're here,
Speaker 1: why you're going to even work towards anything. Releasing this
Speaker 1: book was the hardest thing I've ever had to do
Speaker 1: since my mom passed away, because it was one of
Speaker 1: my biggest accomplishments and my cheerleader wasn't there, so you
Speaker 1: learn how to be your own cheerleader. It's a complete
Speaker 1: reset and it has been the worst journey that I've
Speaker 1: ever encountered, but also the best I met, the love
Speaker 1: of my life. I've been able to filter through my circle.
Speaker 1: So with the boundaries that I put in place, there
Speaker 1: were people I was able to get rid of asap
Speaker 1: because it wasn't good for me. Like everything that I'm
Speaker 1: doing now is for the benefit and the safety of myself,
Speaker 1: and I would have never gotten to this point if
Speaker 1: none of this stuff happened, you know. So I'm just
Speaker 1: learning that my mother was just a little girl who
Speaker 1: tried her best, and she left behind some really great
Speaker 1: lessons that I'm taking forth with me. Now. I look
Speaker 1: exactly like her, so it's really hard not to, you know,
Speaker 1: have that energy where I'm still somebody. Still, I'm still
Speaker 1: responsible for how it is I portray myself. I'm still
Speaker 1: somebody's responsibility. I still belong to somebody. So these are
Speaker 1: all the things that you know, I had to learn
Speaker 1: along the way. It is a journey that I don't
Speaker 1: think everybody is prepared for. I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: way you can prepare to lose your parents. I don't
Speaker 1: think three weeks is enough time for you for work
Speaker 1: to give you time off for you to mourn. And
Speaker 1: I don't think people understand how much it actually takes
Speaker 1: you lose everything. You lose everything. I've never lost a sibling,
Speaker 1: and I don't have a child yet, so I wouldn't
Speaker 1: know what it's like to lose a child. I hope
Speaker 1: I never do. But I don't think there's anything is
Speaker 1: painful as losing your mother. If I'm being honest with you,
Speaker 1: you don't know you're left to your right. You don't
Speaker 1: know you have to start all over again. And then
Speaker 1: you have to parent yourself. So when you're having a
Speaker 1: bad day, you got figure out how to You've got
Speaker 1: to figure out how to calm yourself down, how to
Speaker 1: encourage yourself, how to celebrate yourself. These are all things
Speaker 1: I'm learning how to do by myself. Never had to
Speaker 1: do that thirty two years. I never had to do
Speaker 1: that last two years. That's what I'm now having to
Speaker 1: do in order to give me some sort of peace
Speaker 1: and happiness. I don't think anything prepares you to lose
Speaker 1: a parent. And this is why I talk about it
Speaker 1: so much, because I keep saying to people, if you've
Speaker 1: got good relationships of your family, start recording content. If
Speaker 1: your parent is about to pass away because they're dying
Speaker 1: from a disease, record content because there are random days
Speaker 1: where I just want to hear my mum's voice and
Speaker 1: I can have a list of videos and I could
Speaker 1: hear her laugh and joke about things, and it's almost
Speaker 1: like she's still here. If you are listening to this
Speaker 1: and you are dealing with a parent who is passing away,
Speaker 1: preserve as much of the memories you can because that's
Speaker 1: the only thing that keeps you going. I didn't have that, Jay,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I wouldn't be here, that's for damn sure.
Speaker 1: So it's the most life change in transformational experience you
Speaker 1: would ever have, and it really does show you who
Speaker 1: you are and your life can either become something great
Speaker 1: or you can fall and never get back up again.
Speaker 1: And I've been straddling both, you know, and the depression
Speaker 1: that hits after you lose your parent. There's an aimless,
Speaker 1: hollow feeling in your entire life and it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what or who comes into it again with the people
Speaker 1: pleasing it doesn't matter. You're not going to take that
Speaker 1: from me. I have to do something with it. And
Speaker 1: my therapist always said, you know, the relationship that you
Speaker 1: had with your mother would make it ten times harder
Speaker 1: to deal with the grief because you were very close.
Speaker 1: And I love that. I love the fact that I
Speaker 1: was loved and I loved something so powerful enough that
Speaker 1: without it, my life is shit, and I love the
Speaker 1: fact that with the essence of that love, I'm reminded
Speaker 1: as to why I need to make a better life
Speaker 1: for myself. I think that is the best lesson I've
Speaker 1: gotten out all of this. My mother would be telling everybody,
Speaker 1: even down to the man at the newsagents, that I
Speaker 1: have a book, you know, So it's for me to
Speaker 1: start doing that now. You know, I used to see
Speaker 1: her leave the house all the time. Anytime she got
Speaker 1: changed from a ten pound note or five pound note,
Speaker 1: she'll put it in her pocket, and any time there
Speaker 1: was someone who needed it, she'll give it to them.
Speaker 1: There were so many people within our community and what
Speaker 1: for that knew my mother. I get discount at so
Speaker 1: many different stores because of her up to this day.
Speaker 1: So I want to be that person.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm really trying to like get rid of this sadness
Speaker 1: so I can spread more light because my plan now
Speaker 1: with the good quote is like ten times more intentional
Speaker 1: now because at first it was something that I needed
Speaker 1: and needed the community, but now it's something that I
Speaker 1: want for others to be able to have that same
Speaker 1: feeling of life security that I had when I was
Speaker 1: building it. Because you know, when you're losing a parent.
Speaker 1: Every time I speak about my mother online, I get
Speaker 1: a wave of DMS from people telling me like, this
Speaker 1: speaks to me, this is how I felt, and Jay,
Speaker 1: It's something that almost everybody is starting to experience because millennials,
Speaker 1: we're getting old, our parents are getting old, and there
Speaker 1: just needs to be a lot more transparency and openness
Speaker 1: around the topic of death and grieving. It's not taboo.
Speaker 1: It's every day we deal with it. But it's hell
Speaker 1: on earth and I'm trying to do everything I can
Speaker 1: in my power to not make it that way. But
Speaker 1: some days take over, and when they do, I give
Speaker 1: myself the grace to, like just from having a bad
Speaker 1: day when it comes to grief. I'll let everyone around
Speaker 1: me know and then I'll just switch off because I
Speaker 1: can't I can't function. And then there are other days
Speaker 1: where I'm just like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be alive. It's like this, but it's
Speaker 1: not as heavy as it was three years ago. I
Speaker 1: have a great therapist, a man called Michael Adams. He
Speaker 1: is somebody who's been working with me for the last
Speaker 1: two and a half years now, and I had intense
Speaker 1: therapy two hours twice a week, and now I only
Speaker 1: do one hour a week. We've gone through it all.
Speaker 1: I've got so many notes that I'm writing for my
Speaker 1: next book when it comes to grief, But I can't
Speaker 1: stress how hard it is to lose your mother. If
Speaker 1: you have a love and relationship, it's going to be
Speaker 1: ten times harder. If you're distant, you most likely might
Speaker 1: have a lot of regret. I didn't have any regret.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any when my mother passed away. I
Speaker 1: knew exactly what was happening. She was transitioning. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a whole, a whole story about that in itself
Speaker 1: that will always have to talk about another time. But
Speaker 1: you see the glory of God when somebody's passing away.
Speaker 1: You see the impact of the different realms. You know
Speaker 1: that we're in riven this realm right now, but there's
Speaker 1: a spiritual realm. There's all types of different realms that
Speaker 1: open up when somebody is transitioning. It is probably one
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful journeys you would ever see. And
Speaker 1: you start to think to yourself, when we became babies,
Speaker 1: what were they doing on the other side. Were they
Speaker 1: giving us some sort of celebrationary leaving Doo for us
Speaker 1: to come to earth, because when you're transitioning, it's important
Speaker 1: that people celebrate rather than more so I learned that
Speaker 1: as well. You know, I mourned three days after my
Speaker 1: mother passed away because I knew the fragility of her spirit.
Speaker 1: She's just become a spirit, so she's probably going to
Speaker 1: be just as scared as me. I don't need her
Speaker 1: to come back and see me screaming and crying down
Speaker 1: the place. I need her to see that I'm functioning
Speaker 1: fine after three days. Some people believe that the spirit
Speaker 1: then passes on and that's when you could do all
Speaker 1: of your morning, and that's what I did, And I
Speaker 1: just started to listen to the elders and start to
Speaker 1: incorporate more traditional practices, you know that come from the
Speaker 1: West Indies or within Trinidad or things that I've been
Speaker 1: raised to and that's kind of what's been helping me
Speaker 1: that during that time. But when you do lose a pairent,
Speaker 1: you need community more than anything, because you're not even
Speaker 1: going to be able to make yourself a drink. You're
Speaker 1: not going to eat, You're not you're not going to
Speaker 1: bathe you're not going to do anything, You're just going
Speaker 1: to be very stark, and so it's really important that
Speaker 1: we invest wholeheartedly into the relationships that we have because
Speaker 1: those are the only things that are going to sustain
Speaker 1: you when you go through the hardest times of your life.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 2: Megan, thank you for being so vulnerable, so open. Thank
Speaker 2: you for pouring your heart into this book. I'm hoping
Speaker 2: that everyone's been listening and watching as moved as I am.
Speaker 2: And genuinely, if you pick up a copy of How
Speaker 2: to Stop Breaking Your Heart, I feel that you'll be
Speaker 2: able to walk through life with grace. You'll be able
Speaker 2: to deal with the discomfort that comes along your way,
Speaker 2: and you'll be able to find your way even when
Speaker 2: it feels completely foggy, fuzzy and uncertain about your future.
Speaker 2: I want to give a big theck thanks to Megan
Speaker 2: for putting yourself out there, for having the courage and
Speaker 2: the bravery for taking that step. I know how that
Speaker 2: was for you, and I really believe that you doing
Speaker 2: that is going to help so many people. So thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming on and sharing your story today.
Speaker 2: Thank you to your story, and I want everyone to
Speaker 2: read the book to find the rest of it and
Speaker 2: how it all connects.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sam, thanks so much, and also thank you
Speaker 1: for adapting your outfit with the kind of my.
Speaker 2: Appreciate I was like, yeah, I have to thank you.
Speaker 1: Glad you noticed. I saw that when I came in
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, I see you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, thank you Jay. Thank you sharing your community and
Speaker 1: your platform with me. I appreciate that. And thank you
Speaker 1: for such a beautiful conversation. Thank you, Thank you beautiful.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with
Speaker 2: Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma and how to
Speaker 2: heal emotional wounds. To start moving on from the part
Speaker 2: everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable.
Speaker 1: So a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick,
Speaker 1: does it. It goes where it's soft and green and
Speaker 1: vulnerable