Speaker 1: I know I cannot change the past. I know I
Speaker 1: cannot change anything that occurred in my childhood. But what
Speaker 1: I have come to understand is that I can reclaim
Speaker 1: the dignity that I lost. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think, ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Regina Louise, an American author, child advocate,
Speaker 1: and motivational speaker who's best known for successfully navigating through
Speaker 1: more than thirty foster home placements as a ward of
Speaker 1: the California Juvenile Court system. Today Regina and Eric discuss
Speaker 1: her book Permission Granted kick Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your
Speaker 1: Way to Unconditional Self Love. Hi Regina, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Rach, thank you for inviting me. I am really
Speaker 1: excited to talk with you. We are going to be
Speaker 1: discussing your book that's called Permission Granted kick Ass Strategies
Speaker 1: to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self Love. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with
Speaker 1: the pair Rible. In the parable, there's a grandmother who's
Speaker 1: talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a seconds.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandmother and she said, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Beautiful. What comes to mind
Speaker 1: right now is we're born into the circumstances we're born into.
Speaker 1: For some those circumstances are rich and are fortifying in
Speaker 1: that we have parents or caregivers who are there to
Speaker 1: validate our experience into our realities. And so we moved
Speaker 1: through life perhaps with a balanced sense of self. And
Speaker 1: for me, that wasn't my experience, and so I was
Speaker 1: born into the pure, raw emotions of all the challenges
Speaker 1: of life. And so in me lives the wolf of
Speaker 1: envy as well as the wolf of possibility. And I
Speaker 1: have tread the razor's edge of both all of my life.
Speaker 1: So when I feed envy, I feed insecurity, I feed
Speaker 1: of self worth, I feed less than I feed a
Speaker 1: false self. When I feed possibility, I picked myself up
Speaker 1: by my boot straps, and I become effective, intentional determine.
Speaker 1: I move from a place of wonder, imagination, and excitement
Speaker 1: and respect for this thing called me. It's beautiful. Before
Speaker 1: we get into your book, I think, having a little
Speaker 1: bit of knowledge about your background you referred to it
Speaker 1: there just a second ago, you know you were not
Speaker 1: born into very fortunate circumstances, and then it's safe to
Speaker 1: say things potentially got worse from there. I'm not laughing
Speaker 1: at your childhood. It's just it's a remarkable story. And
Speaker 1: while you've told old that story in a variety of
Speaker 1: places and we're not going to go into it in
Speaker 1: its long form at all, you know, a minute or
Speaker 1: two about it might help give listeners a little context
Speaker 1: about your background before we move into your book and
Speaker 1: your strategies that you've used to really heal yourself. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Eric for that preface into what I'm going to respond to,
Speaker 1: because you identify the quality of remarkable. My life is remarkable,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna I will accept that, I will move
Speaker 1: forward and answering the question from that place of my
Speaker 1: life being remarkable, that's beautiful. I grew up in the
Speaker 1: same unlicensed foster home which would be referred to today
Speaker 1: as a kinship home of sorts. My mother lost her
Speaker 1: mother in early childhood latency age, and she actually was
Speaker 1: found sitting next to her mother's body who had been deceased,
Speaker 1: and then was taken in by a neighbor. And all
Speaker 1: sorts of things were a flip, you could say one
Speaker 1: my say, my mother was I a victim of being
Speaker 1: sexually trafficed, and my sister was born such an act
Speaker 1: whereas I I am the product of two teenagers who
Speaker 1: were very attracted to one another, and I am the
Speaker 1: result of that attraction. So I had have permissioned myself
Speaker 1: to re imagine how I came into this plane. So
Speaker 1: I came into this plane as a result of at
Speaker 1: the very least lust, And I'll take that energy. There's
Speaker 1: some energy in it, and you know that may contribute
Speaker 1: to my passionate sense of spirit and my seemingly ever
Speaker 1: vest and hope. You know, so I am. And I
Speaker 1: was a very spirited, coacious, in your face sort of
Speaker 1: a child. And I wasn't willing to accept my circumstances.
Speaker 1: I wasn't willing to allow anyone two beat my spirit
Speaker 1: out of me. It just wasn't up for negotiation. So,
Speaker 1: as young as I can remember, I've always felt protective
Speaker 1: of my own interior experience. And I was a victim
Speaker 1: of horrific child abuse and neglect. So I learned two
Speaker 1: a tune to what did not feel right inside of me,
Speaker 1: and then listen for the ways in which too alleviate
Speaker 1: the suffering or discomfort. As young as I can remember,
Speaker 1: eleven and then one day in church, I had an
Speaker 1: experience which not so unlike the phrase and O holy night.
Speaker 1: When the soul felt its worth, I felt my worth,
Speaker 1: and I decided to defend my own innocence. And so
Speaker 1: I took myself away from the people who did not
Speaker 1: seem capable. And I didn't stop running until tell you
Speaker 1: the truth. I don't know if I ever stopped running
Speaker 1: in one way or another, but I was. I left
Speaker 1: that situation and I went on to live in over
Speaker 1: thirty different foster homes. I was in a residential treatment
Speaker 1: center level fourteen, which is about the highest a child
Speaker 1: can be placed in before being admitted to a mental hospital.
Speaker 1: And I was. I lived much of my adolescent on
Speaker 1: a cocktail of psycho tra tropic rather drugs cocktails. And
Speaker 1: you know, it took decades for me to understand the
Speaker 1: politics of race, class, gender. That was the framework through
Speaker 1: which people saw me. They pathologized me. And given that
Speaker 1: I was an orphan with no one fighting for me,
Speaker 1: no one considering my humanity or my dignity, I began
Speaker 1: the work of remembering the soul felt its work and
Speaker 1: unpacking that. And that is the way I believe I
Speaker 1: was able to resurrect my spirit, fortify my imagination and
Speaker 1: permit myself to live my best life. Despite the I
Speaker 1: love this word. I'm gonna try and use it in
Speaker 1: this conversation, despite the vicissitudes. I love that word too.
Speaker 1: In this moment, right here, right now, Eric, I feel
Speaker 1: spirits fingerprints massaging, the sadness, massaging the release of built
Speaker 1: up grief, you know, And so thank you for an
Speaker 1: opportunity to explore that and allow me to be real
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah. And one of the things I love
Speaker 1: about the book is that there's a lot of very
Speaker 1: difficult circumstances in it for you that you don't shy
Speaker 1: away from, nor do you shy away from the impact
Speaker 1: that has had on you as an adult. And yet
Speaker 1: there's always a sense of a belief, you know. I
Speaker 1: like what you said there. The soul feels it's worth
Speaker 1: There's always this sense through it all that you somehow
Speaker 1: had that vision, which I think is really really powerful.
Speaker 1: And given that I am a soul not unlike any
Speaker 1: other soul in the eight billion souls upon this planet,
Speaker 1: pushed to the extreme, we are all built for resilience.
Speaker 1: And for those who believe in the tenant of Christianity,
Speaker 1: look what Jesus himself endured to only transcend that. So
Speaker 1: if the Crucifixion and the resurrection are emblematic of what
Speaker 1: is possible for the soul, then I've done nothing more
Speaker 1: than what any of us are capable of doing. It's
Speaker 1: just that I was put to the test as a
Speaker 1: human to do it, as many are. And it's the
Speaker 1: belief for me. My thoughts drive my beliefs. My beliefs
Speaker 1: drive my emotions how I feel about a thing. And
Speaker 1: because I believed that for good to love the world,
Speaker 1: that he gave his only begotten son, and who saw
Speaker 1: the show believes you have evolescent life, I believe that
Speaker 1: that would be the depth and the crux of a
Speaker 1: belief that I believe. I wrapped my soul around the
Speaker 1: axle of mm hmm. It sounds like you've got a
Speaker 1: little friend there who's not happy about not being involved
Speaker 1: in this conversation. You heard Tandi. Yes, she, Tandy really
Speaker 1: likes me. She likes being around me, and sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get away from Tandy to have some space.
Speaker 1: But how old is she? Tandy turned one on December
Speaker 1: five on Monday. Alright, so she's still learning? Yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: We've got two dogs in the other room, and they
Speaker 1: are on the other end of the life spectrum. They're
Speaker 1: both well I think one of them might be eleven,
Speaker 1: you know, So there, you know, we call it. We
Speaker 1: jokingly refer to it as that the doggy retirement home here,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're they're they're elderly, but so they're
Speaker 1: they're a little more peaceful than than Tondy is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you know how they spin on a window or
Speaker 1: a door when they walk and she's not above it? Yep,
Speaker 1: she will span errant yep. Well, if at any point
Speaker 1: you feel like letting her in, she's she's of course welcome.
Speaker 1: I think I need to do that otherwise, so give
Speaker 1: me a moment. Okay, yeah, h alright, let's see. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: welcome Tandy. So I want to move into your book. Now,
Speaker 1: there's nine strategies for, as you said, bootstrapping your way
Speaker 1: to unconditional self love. And I want to start though.
Speaker 1: There was a phrase you used just kind of in
Speaker 1: passing early in the book, but it stuck out to
Speaker 1: me and I wanted to ask it, and you you
Speaker 1: referred to it. You said, we can all bend a
Speaker 1: fit from a cleared out heart, say a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what a cleared out heart means to you,
Speaker 1: because it's a beautiful phrase, thank you for me. A
Speaker 1: cleared out heart means I've been attentive two. What shows up,
Speaker 1: what comes calling, what comes knocking in my life, And
Speaker 1: I take the time that it takes to be with,
Speaker 1: sit with, listen, to contemplate whatever arrives, And in so
Speaker 1: doing I privilege challenging feelings, fear in the avarice, whatever arrives,
Speaker 1: and it becomes familiar with these visitors, and I understand
Speaker 1: to the best of my ability what each of them,
Speaker 1: the gift that each of them brings to and for me,
Speaker 1: And with that, I'm better able to rest in the disturbance,
Speaker 1: rest and the truth of who I am. So the
Speaker 1: more I face the repressed experiences, the more room I make,
Speaker 1: more space I make for the repressed emotions or feelings
Speaker 1: or experiences to show up, and the more that I
Speaker 1: can filter them through the contact of me. Wow, you
Speaker 1: can take your collar off temporarily. That will, that will
Speaker 1: solve that problem. I've got lots of experience in this area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Tony Dundy, come, Mamma, come, come, Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 1: Eric is so smart, and he must have a great editor.
Speaker 1: I and my sound editor, Christopher, who's listening to this. Hello, Chris,
Speaker 1: uh loves dogs too, so we are we are big,
Speaker 1: big dog lovers. So okay, okay, I don't know. Um.
Speaker 1: We we're just finishing up sort of talking about privileging
Speaker 1: difficult emotions, my my, my feelings, and especially the difficult ones,
Speaker 1: because the heavy ones fear, which is big, the lack
Speaker 1: of feelings safe, which is big in the which is
Speaker 1: big for me to filter those through my heart and
Speaker 1: to understand the circumstances, to understand that in order for
Speaker 1: me to be alive. Now, I was brilliant enough to
Speaker 1: hand over my sense of self, my sense of being
Speaker 1: to someone else to use in order for them to
Speaker 1: try and live their own lives vicariously through me, and
Speaker 1: and recognize that I had a lot of adults in
Speaker 1: my life who who were predators, emotional predators, spiritual predators,
Speaker 1: right at intellectual predators. And when I can hold that
Speaker 1: and become the refuge for all of those experience says
Speaker 1: and recognize that they are not me, but rather circumstances
Speaker 1: I endured, I clear my heart. Oh thank you for that.
Speaker 1: And I think that applies a little bit to what
Speaker 1: you say your strategy number four, which is to grow
Speaker 1: through what you go through. And in the book, though
Speaker 1: over and over, I'm really struck by you talk about
Speaker 1: doing what you just said. And I think you used
Speaker 1: the word I privilege the emotions that are negative, right,
Speaker 1: And there are lots of times in the book where
Speaker 1: you really, in essence stare them down, right, but you
Speaker 1: bring them and you say, I'm gonna be here with you, right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of us are very happy to try
Speaker 1: out the idea that are difficult experiences in life are
Speaker 1: what help us grow. It's a lovely idea. It sounds
Speaker 1: good on a greeting card, right, But when we're right
Speaker 1: up against those emotions, we just want to get away.
Speaker 1: And I was just really impressed by how you stay
Speaker 1: with them. So how do you help yourself do that,
Speaker 1: because that's a difficult thing to do. You know, we're
Speaker 1: wired to kind of want to get away from a
Speaker 1: negative emotion. Sure, And I just want to digress a
Speaker 1: bit and say, addiction, substance abuse, those are bridges that
Speaker 1: we build consciously or otherwise two avert ourselves from going
Speaker 1: to the depth of the souls in need. I believe
Speaker 1: that when I can withstand the heat of my own loss,
Speaker 1: my own disappointment, my deep insecurities, my deep years, when
Speaker 1: I can not disintegrate unintentionally in the face of intimacy
Speaker 1: with myself, then what I do is what my caregivers,
Speaker 1: not one of them really could do. So my task
Speaker 1: as the adult. And let me say this before I
Speaker 1: say that, I know I cannot change the past. I
Speaker 1: know I cannot change anything that occurred in my childhood.
Speaker 1: But what I have come to understand is that I
Speaker 1: can reclaim the dignity that I lost. M that I
Speaker 1: can because dignity and self worth are but synonyms, right,
Speaker 1: So I understand the assignment, and the assignment is to
Speaker 1: believe that within me exists a mind, a soul, and
Speaker 1: a power that is far greater than any lesser law
Speaker 1: in the universe. And every time I show up and
Speaker 1: I don't unintentionally disintegrate interface of intimacy, every time I
Speaker 1: show up to allow what occurred and never had the
Speaker 1: chance to be expressed to metabolize. What I am doing
Speaker 1: is giving my spirit the opportunity to triumph. You mentioned addiction.
Speaker 1: I'm a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. And there was
Speaker 1: a line in the book that really struck me, and
Speaker 1: I think it sums up very well kind of what
Speaker 1: I ultimately believe about. We have to be able to
Speaker 1: do this and over in order to get over addiction.
Speaker 1: And this is what you said. There was only one
Speaker 1: way to be without smoking, and that was defined a
Speaker 1: way to be with myself, my feelings, my loneliness, the reality,
Speaker 1: my circumstances, the depth of the loss and the pain.
Speaker 1: And it's just that, like I think, to get over
Speaker 1: an addition, we have to get to the point where
Speaker 1: we go. I can be with what's in here. I
Speaker 1: may not like it, it's uncomfortable, but I can be
Speaker 1: with it. And I love the way you speak to that,
Speaker 1: and you talk about the fact that whether you want
Speaker 1: to think of it as something out there, something in here,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even matter. There is a power that we have,
Speaker 1: there's a dignity that we have as people that allows
Speaker 1: us to be able to do that. I agree, you know,
Speaker 1: I get tender as you put it that way, as
Speaker 1: you reflect back right, Writing oftentimes can be a one
Speaker 1: way It's like a one way experience. But when I
Speaker 1: experience you giving me back and understanding the meaning of
Speaker 1: what I've written. It mirrors back to me the gravity
Speaker 1: of what I experienced, and it it allows me to
Speaker 1: feel seen in a very tender way, in a very
Speaker 1: true way. And I just wanted to respond to that.
Speaker 1: And I didn't hear your next statement because I was
Speaker 1: still and that I am glad for. That makes my
Speaker 1: heart warm to hear you say that. We were just
Speaker 1: sort of talking about this, this ability to be able
Speaker 1: to handle what is inside of us, you know, to
Speaker 1: know that there is something within the human spirit or
Speaker 1: God's spirit, or whatever your beliefs are, there's something in
Speaker 1: there that is, as you said earlier, is capable of
Speaker 1: overcoming these even horrible things. Well, as you say what
Speaker 1: you say, I will claim it for myself as the
Speaker 1: ginormous back cause, front cause, first cause, all cause. Lately
Speaker 1: I have been working two sharpen my awareness and what
Speaker 1: that means for me is pruning, pruning the white noise,
Speaker 1: if you will, that assaults that intellect, the mind endlessly.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that was so profound recently,
Speaker 1: I was driving through my neighborhood and a lot of
Speaker 1: the streets are shrouded in trees that have the capacity
Speaker 1: to move towards one another, to create a canopy. And
Speaker 1: as I was driving through, I recognized, and it nearly
Speaker 1: knocked me to my knees. Although I was driving that
Speaker 1: I was actually driving through the mind of consciousness, pure unadulterated.
Speaker 1: You can't adulterate it, pure, pure consciousness. And I began
Speaker 1: to weep, and I saw how the trees, how the
Speaker 1: tips of their valves reached out in a majestic way
Speaker 1: to create this entrance into the mind, into the spirit
Speaker 1: of God and all that is. And I watched the
Speaker 1: breeze move through the trees and the effortlessness of existence
Speaker 1: being what it is and not needing to be different
Speaker 1: for anyone or anything. And I gave myself permission two
Speaker 1: consider that, no matter what anyone says about my race,
Speaker 1: my creed, my color, my religion, for whatever that means,
Speaker 1: my life can be effortless. And I can recognize that
Speaker 1: there was something larger, greater, deeper than what I can
Speaker 1: see with the naked eye. And I am grateful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. And you just said something that made me
Speaker 1: think about a conversation I had with somebody the other day,
Speaker 1: and you were talking about all the white noise that
Speaker 1: assaults our soul and spirit now and there there is
Speaker 1: so much of it. There is so much of it.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about also the experiences that you've
Speaker 1: had that caused great, great harm and trauma, and what's
Speaker 1: the right way to say this? When we are really
Speaker 1: deep in healing, there is a clarity sometimes that we
Speaker 1: don't get in day to day life, you know. I
Speaker 1: know for me my early years of recovery, the transformation
Speaker 1: was so clear and so profound because I was so
Speaker 1: I was so damaged, there was so much to do.
Speaker 1: I find sometimes it harder to enter that space as
Speaker 1: I am more healed, And I think, to your point,
Speaker 1: the way to do it is that pruning of these things.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes early on in our healing, we're already pruned.
Speaker 1: Everything is pruned right, and as we heal and we
Speaker 1: return to more of the parts of the world my experiences,
Speaker 1: and this is for myself, is I have to, like
Speaker 1: you say, I have to really work on pruning the
Speaker 1: unimportant stuff that starts to get in the way. One
Speaker 1: of the things that has supported me on my healing journey,
Speaker 1: other than the decades of talk therapy that I have
Speaker 1: allowed myself. Thank at you. I am what's called I
Speaker 1: worked for the Hoffman process US. I don't know how
Speaker 1: familiar you are with it, but I am a Huffman
Speaker 1: processed teacher eight times a year outside of my own
Speaker 1: private practice of socio emotional coaching healing. And one of
Speaker 1: the first times I ever at the opportunity to grieve publicly, openly, loudly,
Speaker 1: was when I went through the Hoffman process for the
Speaker 1: first time in two thousand and fifteen. And if you
Speaker 1: want to talk about growing through what you go through,
Speaker 1: h I had never eric. I didn't even know there
Speaker 1: was There's so many things I didn't even know that
Speaker 1: I had not been pretty to in my life, so
Speaker 1: many and it was going through that experience and facing
Speaker 1: the death. I mean, I'm talking the simple experience of
Speaker 1: not being celebrated really for a birthday, not receiving Christmas
Speaker 1: cards Christmas. I mean decades and decades and decades of
Speaker 1: feeling as though I was a refugee in my own country,
Speaker 1: feeling as though I was an impostor in my own country,
Speaker 1: feeling as though I was completely, completely, unapologetically systematically erased,
Speaker 1: and walking around with that having more grief then I
Speaker 1: knew was humanly possible, being a reservoir for so much
Speaker 1: toxicity that is just handed down epo genetically, and yet
Speaker 1: recognizing my soul's worth, and it was my duty. It
Speaker 1: was my duty and it is my duty two empty
Speaker 1: the garbage can, to take it out, to recognize the
Speaker 1: toxicity that which is not for me, let it go.
Speaker 1: And as Reverend like I'm thinking, as Reverend fourteen century,
Speaker 1: was it, Reverend Hillo, If I'm not for me, who
Speaker 1: will be? And so giving my self permission to listen
Speaker 1: to that inherent GPS system a k A. My spirit
Speaker 1: to show me, to lead me, to guide me in
Speaker 1: that which was for me, and to turn from that
Speaker 1: which is not, and so growing through what I go through,
Speaker 1: going through all of it, I listened. I listened, and
Speaker 1: I decided to become that interpreter of my own maladies
Speaker 1: and carve out a way to be in this world
Speaker 1: on my own terms and to commit to that. And
Speaker 1: that is how I live my life today. And also
Speaker 1: this this other idea that just popped into my mind
Speaker 1: as I began to write my latest book, Permission. Granted
Speaker 1: it was the first time I allowed myself to really
Speaker 1: recognize and to feel the truth that I spent my
Speaker 1: adolescence and solitary confinement. Eric who does that? Who does
Speaker 1: to a low girl, black white Latina doesn't matter? And
Speaker 1: I remember when I was on the set of the
Speaker 1: movie about my life. I am Somebody's child, and the
Speaker 1: young actor who played me, Angela Fairley, ran to the
Speaker 1: gate and grabbed a hole to that cyclone fence as
Speaker 1: Jean drives away. And at that very time that movie
Speaker 1: was released, they were children at the border, being separated
Speaker 1: from all the thing knew. And I can see how
Speaker 1: none of it really it's personal, and how do we
Speaker 1: how do I transcend even that, even that, and find
Speaker 1: and remember not even fine, just remember my word. Then
Speaker 1: I invite other people to remember, there's sometimes tragedy. It's
Speaker 1: going to find who it's gonna find, and it's going
Speaker 1: to do what it does. And I allowed myself to
Speaker 1: consider that it's not personal. The ena all that you've endured,
Speaker 1: it is not personal. This had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: who I am, because none of these people knew, They
Speaker 1: didn't know what I would grow up to be. They
Speaker 1: had no idea. This wasn't about me. This was about
Speaker 1: their limitations. I just had and to be at the
Speaker 1: end of their projections. You know, I wasn't protected, so
Speaker 1: I've learned to protect myself. I wasn't valued, so I
Speaker 1: learned to value myself. So in all those places where
Speaker 1: those people who were tasked to care for me aren't
Speaker 1: or weren't, it literally has made more room for me
Speaker 1: to show up and to be all that I can be,
Speaker 1: which of course has its own set of issues, because
Speaker 1: if I had a dime for every time someone told
Speaker 1: me I was too big, I'd be a billionaire. And
Speaker 1: people don't understand though, that to be as big as
Speaker 1: I am is a testimony to the depth of the
Speaker 1: darkness and the hard things. You said. So many really
Speaker 1: powerful things in there. One of those is about the
Speaker 1: personal aspect. I think that is so important. It's a
Speaker 1: concept I teach in a program I run called Spiritual
Speaker 1: Habits around if we can stop taking some of this
Speaker 1: stuff personal. It happened to us, it affected us, but
Speaker 1: as you said, it wasn't about us. And the difficulties
Speaker 1: that happen in life, by and large are not because
Speaker 1: of our failings because of something that's wrong with is
Speaker 1: not because of we're not worthy. It's because that's life.
Speaker 1: Life is filled with challenging circumstances. And I love what
Speaker 1: you've talked about sort of intergenerational, right, Like you were
Speaker 1: just the tip of the spear of a lot of
Speaker 1: intergenerational pain that's been rolling down, and you talk about
Speaker 1: in the book you know, to the best of my ability,
Speaker 1: it ends here, and I think that's really powerful. And
Speaker 1: I certainly did not go through anything like what you
Speaker 1: went through, and yet my family has passed paying down
Speaker 1: generation to generation, and I'm like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: stop any of it from getting to my son, or
Speaker 1: am I gonna stop all of it, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stop what I can. And that piece about not taking
Speaker 1: it personal brings me to another part of your book
Speaker 1: that I pulled out that I really liked, which you
Speaker 1: talked about I must recover from the introjections I experienced
Speaker 1: while growing up versus projections. Talk about what an introjection is,
Speaker 1: because I think this is what you were just essentially
Speaker 1: just saying, right, So an introjection in the context in
Speaker 1: which I'm using it, I heard constantly, You're never going
Speaker 1: to be anything, You're never going to succeed, you are
Speaker 1: a waste of time, you are Satan's child, you are
Speaker 1: an abomination. So those are projections. But when I take
Speaker 1: them in and began to construct an identity a way
Speaker 1: of being in this world as a result of that,
Speaker 1: then began to use those introjections as the knife that
Speaker 1: will whittle my sense of self, carve my identity from
Speaker 1: then I'm in trouble. And I was the sort of
Speaker 1: child who it's sort of like Jim Carrey when he
Speaker 1: said I know him, but what do you? I know him,
Speaker 1: but what do you? I had a little bit of that, like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that's what you think. And I remember saying things like
Speaker 1: that's not me, that's not me, that's not me, that's
Speaker 1: not that's not me, that's not me. So yes, I
Speaker 1: heard those things. Some of those things, yeah, I allowed
Speaker 1: to come in. And some of those things became the
Speaker 1: foundation of me being a rebel absolutely okay. And when
Speaker 1: people told me I was less than, that came in
Speaker 1: less than what what does that mean? So then I'm
Speaker 1: going to go and and move against that, and and
Speaker 1: let that be the sharp edge, right, the growth edge
Speaker 1: that I move up against, and allow that to cut
Speaker 1: and carve and chip my character into being. So if
Speaker 1: I'm less than the opposite of that is I am everything.
Speaker 1: I'm everything and I am nothing. But at least I
Speaker 1: get to say that, And what does that mean for me?
Speaker 1: So introjections, when we begin to understand them, two interrogate that,
Speaker 1: to investigate that, to sit with that, to be with that,
Speaker 1: to understand it, and have some mastery over what it
Speaker 1: is we believe to be true about it. It can
Speaker 1: serve us or not. You're talk in the book about
Speaker 1: the ability to be seen, and you have a line
Speaker 1: you said, to be seen is to become acquainted with
Speaker 1: what lies within you, and then to welcome those whom
Speaker 1: you feel safest to join in on the magnificence of
Speaker 1: your being. It's just a great line. Yeah. I have
Speaker 1: a pattern of feeding my less than enough self. And
Speaker 1: when I fall into a pattern of self deplication, self hate,
Speaker 1: then I set other people up to feed that part
Speaker 1: of me, the self deprecation, the self hate. And in
Speaker 1: so doing, I am allowing a part of myself, my
Speaker 1: false self, to be seen, and I use that as
Speaker 1: a weapon against me to prove then that I am
Speaker 1: less than whole. When I am healthy and cognizant, awake, aware,
Speaker 1: alive about the truth of who I am. Then I
Speaker 1: allow myself to first see myself and then engage in
Speaker 1: a way that supports the full truth of who I am.
Speaker 1: There's another line where you say, offer an alternative to
Speaker 1: the trope of victimization, that I could only treat my
Speaker 1: self and others as well as I had been treated.
Speaker 1: I think that's so so great. I mean, there is
Speaker 1: a reality to being a victim of things. And as
Speaker 1: you said, there are tropes of that, and one of
Speaker 1: them is that you know, I can only treat myself
Speaker 1: for others as well as I've been treated you. I
Speaker 1: can be really intense Eric and how I view myself
Speaker 1: and how I view circumstances, and bear with me as
Speaker 1: I as I make my way through what you just said.
Speaker 1: And I have, according to a lot of people, every
Speaker 1: right in the world to recognize that I was a victim.
Speaker 1: One of the best things that my social worker said
Speaker 1: to me, the one who would not allow me to
Speaker 1: be adopted, she said, you do not have the luxury
Speaker 1: as do young white girls who have daddies that have
Speaker 1: deep pockets that can pay to fix anything in their lives. You, however, don't,
Speaker 1: so I recognized it, and I couldn't afford to feel
Speaker 1: sorry for myself. And as W. H Auden says, I've
Speaker 1: never seen a wild thing, I feel sorry for itself.
Speaker 1: And I sort of adopted that idea of not being
Speaker 1: a victim, of not not giving that the power over me. Yes,
Speaker 1: there were circumstances where I was victimized. If being a
Speaker 1: victim is a state of consciousness that requires a certain
Speaker 1: kind of perseveration in order to keep the energy of
Speaker 1: it going, then the way I look at it is
Speaker 1: if I look back and go, you were a victim
Speaker 1: of certain types of experiences, those experiences are over the
Speaker 1: trauma of those experiences get triggered. Why because the very
Speaker 1: nature of trauma is to overwhelm the meaning making faculty
Speaker 1: of the brain. And when later the triggers arrive, it
Speaker 1: is that that moment we can bring consciousness to those feelings,
Speaker 1: going back to the cleared out, are going back to
Speaker 1: being a refuge and sit down with the victim or
Speaker 1: the circumstance that was victimizing. Sit down with thine, have
Speaker 1: a conversation, have empathy for the little girl who was
Speaker 1: the recipient of unconscionable actions, and behaviors, so to sit
Speaker 1: down with my own innocence and to say, come on,
Speaker 1: sweet child of mine, tell me what happened. What do
Speaker 1: you need? And oftentimes it's a witness, it's someone who
Speaker 1: will hear the shame of it. As a teacher at Hoffmann,
Speaker 1: as we're teaching some of that heavy, heavy, heavy human experiences,
Speaker 1: we use a the quote from John Bradshaw who says,
Speaker 1: in order to be killed of our shame, we need
Speaker 1: to have the opportunity to share our shame with someone
Speaker 1: who will not shame us. I have learned two become
Speaker 1: a reservoir of understanding for my own shame, and at
Speaker 1: times that is recognizing that a part of my child
Speaker 1: was a victim unwittingly, and so that I don't get
Speaker 1: lost in the grief of that. It's a beautifully nuanced
Speaker 1: take on this idea, because I do think this is
Speaker 1: such a slippery slope. It's so hard to talk about
Speaker 1: sometimes these ideas that these things did happen to us
Speaker 1: that should not have happened to us, or or or
Speaker 1: these things happen to me. Because the life finds the
Speaker 1: opportunities to express itself and whether or not it should
Speaker 1: or shouldn't have is irrelevant? Right, that's fair. Maybe it
Speaker 1: would be better to say these things were done to
Speaker 1: me that caused harm to my internal self, so should
Speaker 1: should not? I agree these things happened that harmed my
Speaker 1: internal self, and it would be lovely if whoever did
Speaker 1: the harming would come along and do the cleaning up.
Speaker 1: That would be That would be lovely and comforts not
Speaker 1: how it happened. And so the responsibility is transferred to us.
Speaker 1: And yet sometimes when we say that, it's said in
Speaker 1: a harsh sort of way. And what you just described
Speaker 1: was taking that responsibility on in a really tender and
Speaker 1: healing way, you know. And so I just thought again
Speaker 1: this this topic often lacks nuance when people talk about it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's important that the nuance is important. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I am intentionally slowing my central nervous system down because
Speaker 1: I used to pimp my trauma and I used to
Speaker 1: allow other people to do it too when I didn't
Speaker 1: know the difference. So I will say the first fifteen
Speaker 1: years of my being an advocate for healing, I did
Speaker 1: it at my own expense. But I did not know that,
Speaker 1: and I did not recognize that I was re traumatizing
Speaker 1: myself so frequently making a lot of money doing it.
Speaker 1: But I didn't recognize that, And now I understand that
Speaker 1: it's important to bring a tenderness. It's important to slow
Speaker 1: down that vague nerve, to slow down so that sharing
Speaker 1: my truth is more of a reward, right, so that
Speaker 1: it's more of an experience where dopamine serotonin is east
Speaker 1: and my body knows the difference, right, and my body
Speaker 1: is saying thank you, Regine. I appreciate the way you
Speaker 1: are being with me and not overextending at the expense
Speaker 1: of me, So that tenderness you identified is so important
Speaker 1: for I believe. I'm careful to generalize because I don't
Speaker 1: like being captured in a why it swept generalization, So
Speaker 1: I'm mindful of that. But in the work I do,
Speaker 1: I'm able to observe what happens when human beings become worthy,
Speaker 1: when they believe that they are worthy of that tenderness
Speaker 1: you just pointed out of their own tenderness as opposed
Speaker 1: to always needing to have it from someone else. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And boy, is that a powerful switch when you're able
Speaker 1: to sort of give some degree of it to yourself
Speaker 1: and what you were just saying made me think a
Speaker 1: little bit about you know, when you said pimping out
Speaker 1: my trauma. You know, I think early on in our
Speaker 1: recovery journey from whatever we're recovering from the amount of
Speaker 1: time that we have of being in the recovery journey
Speaker 1: versus the amount of time that we were in the
Speaker 1: hard part of it is out of balance, and so
Speaker 1: there's a lot more of the old stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: I know earlier for me, you know, three years into
Speaker 1: recovery from from heroin addiction, I had three years of
Speaker 1: recovery and a lot of years of not and so
Speaker 1: all the years of not being in recovery, there's a
Speaker 1: lot more talking about that now. I find that that
Speaker 1: part of it to be very like, yeah, okay, yep,
Speaker 1: that happened, and now let's talk all about how you
Speaker 1: get better from it, right, And it feels like that
Speaker 1: shift you know, occurred in you also, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: For my book, my first book, Somebody Someone, came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, and up until two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen, which is when I flip the script on
Speaker 1: the type of writer I want to be, there was
Speaker 1: another flavor of writer that was born and I recognize
Speaker 1: I don't want to continue to re traumatize myself and
Speaker 1: then spend you know, three times as long recovering. So
Speaker 1: from you know, standing on stage five thousand, ten thousand people,
Speaker 1: now I better understand how to do that without it
Speaker 1: being at my expense, but still very viscerle and and
Speaker 1: and connecting with humanity. So now it's about not so
Speaker 1: much what happened to me, but what I did with
Speaker 1: what happened to me, So making meaning out of it,
Speaker 1: getting some distance from it and making meaning out of it,
Speaker 1: and bringing the tools of minthfulness and meditation and contemplation,
Speaker 1: centering to the experience and extricating myself from it, and
Speaker 1: having an ability to be reflexive to stand outside of
Speaker 1: the situations and recognize that, oh, that was an event,
Speaker 1: that was the situation, and that is not me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so extricating myself, that is not me. That is what happened,
Speaker 1: but that is not me. Whoa whole new level of engagement.
Speaker 1: If I'm not an orphan, if I'm not a useless
Speaker 1: black woman, if I'm not that person that was unintentionally
Speaker 1: born that is taking up too much air for someone
Speaker 1: who was intentionally born. If I'm not that, then who
Speaker 1: am I? Right? And two be the arbiter to be
Speaker 1: the author of who I really am. That's something to
Speaker 1: aspire to and to bring others along, to include other
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that I recognized as a memoirist,
Speaker 1: because I have mostly written in the genre memoir is
Speaker 1: I saw how it felt as though my experience was
Speaker 1: not universal, especially in America, where oftentimes we don't privilege
Speaker 1: taboo experiences, children boring out of wedlock, orphans, marginalized people.
Speaker 1: You know, we have these categories for being that have
Speaker 1: actually nothing to do with anything other than the fact
Speaker 1: that maybe people are afraid that those people who have
Speaker 1: allowed life to touch them in that place where spirit
Speaker 1: meets bone and have been scorched and burned multiple times,
Speaker 1: perhaps the fear that just being in proximity with someone
Speaker 1: like that will then affect you know, one's life. Aside
Speaker 1: from uh, yeah, I lost where I was going anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that is a great place for us to
Speaker 1: wrap up with. Really, the thought that I think you
Speaker 1: left us with there that was it was really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Is this idea of being the author, you know, being
Speaker 1: the author of our own life. Before we say goodbye.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could share a little bit about what's coming
Speaker 1: up in your world. Oh, thank you. I'm so excited, Eric,
Speaker 1: I am fortunate enough to be partnering with the Omega
Speaker 1: Institute in New York and in March, I will offer
Speaker 1: a experience with them for people, and the best way
Speaker 1: to stay abreast of what that will be and when
Speaker 1: all of those deeds is to go to my site
Speaker 1: www Dot I Am Regina Louise dot com and subscribe
Speaker 1: right and then in September I will I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: You have no idea how long I've waited for this opportunity,
Speaker 1: especially as a black woman, writer, artist, teacher. I am
Speaker 1: going again, in collaboration with the Omega Institute, offer a
Speaker 1: five day immersive in person experience. Eric, I'm over the moon.
Speaker 1: So again. To stay abreast and informed, you can follow
Speaker 1: me on Instagram at the real Regina Louise or my
Speaker 1: website www Dot I Am Regina Louise dot com. Awesome,
Speaker 1: and we'll put links in the show notes to all
Speaker 1: that stuff, so listeners you can just click on that
Speaker 1: if you want to, if you want to go through easily.
Speaker 1: And that's so wonderful. I love, love, love Omega, and
Speaker 1: we just confirmed a workshop with them for the fall
Speaker 1: for us, so more details on that coming. But yes,
Speaker 1: the place has been very important in my healing and
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful place. So congratulations of some like two
Speaker 1: really great experiences. Thank you. I am grateful. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: I am grateful for you taking the time to come
Speaker 1: on and share your work with us. Eric, I am always,
Speaker 1: especially lately, I am always cognizant of the gift of
Speaker 1: podcasters sharing their platform with artists like myself. So I
Speaker 1: want you to know that I appreciate you and thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing again your platform with me. It means everything.
Speaker 1: You are very welcome. If what you just heard was
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