#159 Messy, Mindful, and Magnificent

Today, I interview Julia Miron, who grew up in a home where speaking her truth wasn’t safe. As the youngest in a household filled with anger, control, and emotional chaos, she learned to stay silent to protect herself. She retreated into journaling, music, and nature—places where she didn’t have to explain herself, where she could finally breathe. Her voice, however, remained hidden. Her words barely above a whisper, while the other kids laughed and played freely.

Years later, when a loss made her realize that she wanted to speak, the fear of being seen and heard still held her tightly. The idea of standing in front of people terrified her. She had tried Toastmasters, but the pressure to perform only made things worse.

Then someone told her about Speaking Circles. Skeptical but curious, she walked into her first session—and everything shifted. For the first time, she stood in front of others and didn’t feel the need to hide. There were no judgments, no corrections, just presence. Even though she was sweating and trembling, she was allowed to simply be. She began showing up not only on the page but in her voice.

Today, she is a certified mindfulness teacher and coach, supporting individuals through one-on-one sessions that blend mindfulness and Speaking Circles. She’s also launching her podcast, The Messy Meditator, where she opens honest conversations about the beauty and struggle of being human. Through her work, she helps others find the safety, stillness, and self-acceptance she had searched for most of her life.

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Julia Rebecca Miron is a mindfulness teacher and coach, qualified by Brown University as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher. Her mission is to make mindfulness accessible to more people by demystifying the idea that you need to be perfect and Buddha-like to practice it. She believes that showing up messy is better than not showing up at all.

She’s also a writer, and her work has been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul. She’s currently preparing to launch her podcast, The Messy Meditator, which explores mindfulness, messiness, and life.

In her free time, she loves hiking, listening to R&B and hip hop, connecting with loved ones, and doting on her dog, Disco.

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Find Julia here:

https://www.instagram.com/the.messy.meditator/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliarebeccamiron/

https://www.themessymeditator.com/

Transcript

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode # 159 Julia Miron

“Messy, Mindful, and Magnificent”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. I'm host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast, and I've got a delight today. I have a friend that I really can't wait to share with you. She's somebody I met a couple of years ago in a facilitator training for this process. You might've heard me talk about Speaking Circles, where you’re really more committed to being authentic than to being a professional speaker.

Hi, Julia.

Julia Miron: Hi. Thank you for having me here.

Doreen Downing: Oh, absolutely. I'm excited. You wrote something, and I’d like to—well, in terms of a bio, I’d like to find that. I thought I had sent it to myself so I could read it and give you some introduction, so people know what you do, so it kind of perks them up, like, “Oh yes, she is...”

Julia Rebecca Miron is a mindfulness teacher and coach. Her mission is to make mindfulness accessible to more people by demystifying the idea that you need to be perfect and Buddha-like to practice it. She believes that showing up messy is better than not showing up at all.

She’s also a writer, and her writing has been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul. She’s currently getting ready to launch her own podcast—actually, I think it’s already launched, because I have an interview to be on it pretty soon. It’s called The Messy Meditator, which explores mindfulness, messiness, and life.

In her free time, she loves hiking, listening to R&B and hip hop, connecting with loved ones, and doting on her dog, Disco. What a name for a dog.

(02:03) Julia Miron: Thank you. The irony is that my dog hates music.

(02:04) Doreen Downing: Oh, I thought you were going to say the irony is my dog hates meditating.

(02:12) Julia Miron: No, I suspect she's pretty good at that.

(02:14) Doreen Downing: Yes, get really relaxed, huh? Well, we'll be able to talk later about the messy stuff and meditation and what you know about mindfulness.

But I always like to start as close as I can to early memories—what it was like arriving in this universe, and what kind of family. Because I truly believe that's where we first find our sense of self. Do we feel confident? Are people welcoming us? Are they saying, "Yay, go girl!" or are they not?

So, if you could go straight there—why not?

(02:57) Julia Miron: Oh wow, diving into the deep end. Okay, my childhood has two sides. Part of it was very idyllic, and the other part was very—I'll just stay on theme—messy. Messy and chaotic.

I’ll just say that the people I was surrounded with were blindly operating from their wounds. It was like these wounded people raising me in a very wounded way. There was a lot of judgment, criticism—just tons of judgment. I didn’t feel safe to use my voice. I’ll go there. I didn’t feel safe in a lot of ways, but especially I didn’t feel safe, accepted, or okay as who I am. I had to do everything perfectly, but I never could—because nobody can.

(04:03) Doreen Downing: Absolutely.

 (04:03) Julia Miron: Even if I did some things perfectly, someone would find something wrong with it. It was just very chaotic, and in a lot of ways, I had to be emotionally responsible for other people. And as a kid—that's not your job. Your job as a kid is to be a kid and play.

(04:36) Doreen Downing: That’s a great first snapshot. I think people who listen to the podcast will say, “I can relate.” There was a family situation where, yes, there was obviously some good stuff, but the parenting—I’m getting kind of clinical there—the way people are parented is often shaped by the parents' own limitations.

You ended up feeling like it wasn’t really an expansive playground for you to find yourself as a young one. A couple of questions came up for me as you were talking. You said you didn’t feel safe. What would be the consequence? What was unsafe? How?

(05:36) Julia Miron: That’s a good question. I’ll start by saying I’m the youngest in the family, so I had siblings older than me too. It wasn’t just the parents—it was all of the people who towered over me.

There was a lot of anger in the household. I often describe it as if anger was the fifth family member and also the favored child. It always got its way and special treatment. There was just a lot of anger in the house. On the flip side, the people who weren’t exploding in anger were repressing it, and it would come out as passive aggression and manipulation.

It was just a lot of mind-fucking. I feel like passive aggression is almost worse than aggression because it messes with your head so much. There was always this impasse where I couldn’t move forward being myself or saying anything. It always felt safer to hide. I’d just hide in my room with my childhood dog and a journal or music—those were my therapeutic things. Or I’d get lost in my imagination. I’d go play outside.

The idyllic part was that we lived in this really beautiful place, and I’d just go outside and play and get lost in my imagination. But as far as safety—it was more about meeting their emotional needs than them meeting mine.

So yes, either the aggression or the passive aggression messed with my head a lot. I felt like I couldn’t just be free to mess up or do anything, really. There was a lack of freedom there.

(07:46) Doreen Downing: Mm-hmm. I really got the sense that where safety was, for you, was in retreat or withdrawal from that kind of environment. And when you talk about safety, it feels like music, your quiet room, or nature. I think listeners can relate to that too—finding a quietness that isn’t bombarding us.

In those moments, our bodies aren’t in a hypervigilant state. We’re more relaxed. I mean, the trees aren’t going to come after us.

(08:29) Julia Miron: Yes.

(08:29) Doreen Downing: And a dog is something you can love and pet, and it loves you back easily—without you having to do anything. I like hearing both sides: the danger you felt, but also where you felt more possible, where you could feel good about yourself and enjoy. It felt like you had some measure of joy, but definitely not right in the middle of the towers.

For those who are just listening and aren’t watching, Julia just said “towers” and put her hands up, looking straight up at the ceiling. So—those are the siblings, I guess.

(09:13) Julia Miron: Yes. All of them.

(09:14) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, let's—

(09:17) Julia Miron: Yes, and—go on. Oh, I was just going to say, I think that retreating and hiding in a way helped me find a certain voice because I started journaling. That was the only time I could express myself, because if I said something someone didn’t like, I was muzzled—or worse. I’d get yelled at, gaslit, or have it thrown back in my face and used against me. I never felt heard.

So I’d go into my journal, and I could get all my anger out and say everything I needed to say. I would write letters to my family because that was the only way I could say everything without being cut off, muzzled, or shushed—without someone saying, “How dare you?” if I said, “You hurt my feelings.”

That helped me become a writer. It really helped me find my voice in writing. That’s another side of the coin.

(10:27) Doreen Downing: A benefit.

(10:30) Julia Miron: Yes, exactly.

(10:32) Doreen Downing: It’s a little different than turning lemons into lemonade. It really is—right in the midst of something difficult is where you can find your voice. At least the writing voice, but it sounds like the speaking voice was stunted, you might say.

(10:56) Julia Miron: Oh, totally. Yes, very much. I saw a video—sorry, no, I saw a video of myself when I was in second or third grade. We buried a time capsule as a class and said we’d open it 25 years later. We ended up doing that with the teacher, and there were videos of all of us.

The video of me—I was so shy and quiet you could barely hear my voice. I was so taken aback watching that because you couldn’t hear me. All the other kids were loud and playful, and I was just so in my shell. 

(11:41) Doreen Downing: Yes. I feel compassion for that little one who got locked in there, and yet something along the way brought her out of the shell.

In terms of having a voice, getting through high school and college and into the adult world, do you have any stories from that time?

(12:13) Julia Miron: Oh gosh, it’s been a journey—and it still is. If you’re talking about high school into young adulthood, one of the things that comes to mind for me was just getting out of my hometown. That was huge, because then I could just be myself and discover who I am.

I am naturally a loud, bubbly, joyful person, but I never experienced that when I was younger. I couldn’t be that. I remember getting a bartending job in my early twenties and having to yell “last call” at the end of the night. That was a big one for me.

I was so scared to do it—it was a crowded bar, and you're in a position of power as a bartender. I had to step into that power and just yell. The first few times I had to pump myself up. But over time, I got used to it and would just go in with confidence, like, “All right, get out of here—last call!”

That was the very first little thing that ever happened.

(13:44) Julia Miron: In my late twenties I was going through a very, very dark period, and I started going to therapy for the first time. That’s when I really started to just find myself in a lot of ways, and that was huge. Just stepping into my own skin in a lot of ways and introducing myself to myself in a way that I’d never known.

In that process, I discovered Speaking Circles. That was just—at that point, because of everything I was working through in therapy, I had finally discovered that, “Oh my God, I’m a writer.” I’d been writing my whole life, and that was the one thing that people had always praised me for, but I never thought it was something I could do.

In therapy I realized, “Oh my God, it completely makes sense that I should do this.” I started exploring writing more. Then I realized, “Okay, if I want to put myself out there as a writer, at some point I’ll have to speak. It would be good for me to confront this fear anyway.”

Right around that timeframe, my dad passed away, and I knew that there would be a lot of people at his memorial, and I knew I wanted to speak at his memorial. I had already been exploring Toastmasters. I don’t know if I should even say their name on here, but I think it serves a good purpose—just not for me, not for certain people. For me, it kind of exacerbated the issue.

I went to a lot of different branches to explore—maybe I just need a different group. It wasn’t helpful. Then somebody who had done Speaking Circles in the very early days told me about it. He had been telling me about it a lot. I finally thought, “Okay, let me just look into this.”

I saw the website, and it resonated so much with me. Then I went to my first Speaking Circle, and it was like just the first night—it was so transformational. Everything changed after that.

(16:09) Doreen Downing: What you just said—there was a phrase I loved hearing. I think I’m going to have to paraphrase it, but you talked about being in therapy and you introduced yourself to yourself. Something like that. Of course, it’s all about getting to know ourselves and more awareness, but I just like that—“Hello in there.”

Julia Miron: Yes.

Doreen Downing: Toastmasters is way more around speech crafting and speech delivery and performance techniques. In terms of self-discovery on the deeper level, to find maybe the wounds that have happened to us around our voice, it’s a whole different process.

Before we talk about Speaking Circles, I want to take just a quick break and then come back, and we could open it up with talking about Speaking Circles.

Julia Miron: Sure.

Doreen Downing: Hi, we’re back now on the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast with my guest—Rebecca—I mean, Julia Rebecca Miron. We’ve been talking and tapping into Julia’s history of coming from a family—older siblings, critical parents—just not a lot of room to expand into the fullness of being alive and to be heard and seen and get some good, solid roots for confidence. Anger seemed to be in the air a lot, whether it was right out there or more passive.

Where we are now in this journey in Julia’s life is that in finding out that she was a writer—because that was one of her safe zones, to go and be by herself and write—that’s where she developed this ability to find her voice from her writing.

Now we’re at the stage in her life where she’s exploring, “Ah, I need to speak up,” and maybe Toastmasters isn’t the place to learn how to go out and share this value that writing is. I guess that’s where we are now. And you found, from a friend, Speaking Circles.

Tell us about Speaking Circles.

(18:43) Julia Miron: Before I forget, I’m just going to correct the pronunciation of my last name. It’s Myron. Everyone gets it wrong all the time, so I usually spell it how people sound it—with a Y. Say, pronounced Myron with a Y, because people always get it wrong. But anyway, thank you.

Speaking Circles. To relate it to writing, I’ve discovered that for me, I feel like Speaking Circles is a lot like writing, what the writing experience is like for me. Where you can kind of just get into this flow.

My first Speaking Circles was such a transformational experience. I immediately—“Take my money. Sign me up. All the things.” I kept going for quite a while until I became a facilitator. I still try to get on circles here and there also.

It reminds me a lot of the writing experience, where I can just really tap into my actual voice, what I really have to say, and my essence.

(20:00) Doreen Downing: Because it’s a quieter environment. That is one element of it that I think would work for people who are more sensitive, like we are. There aren’t expectations to perform or do certain kinds of speeches. It’s just space, just like with writing on an empty page—space to listen to the moment and see, discover more about what the words are that’s inside, that want to be expressed. 

(20:47) Julia Miron: It’s interesting too because the more circles that I went to—similar to writing—I started to feel like, “Oh wow, I think there’s something for me here. I think I’m supposed to be doing something with this.” Because this feels—like something that I’m—I don’t want to qualify it as good, but it did feel like something that I was good at, that felt good, that felt—it just felt like there was a sense of purpose for me somewhere in that experience that I’m still exploring and getting to know and figure out.

(21:22) Doreen Downing: What I’m hearing is the journey to be who you are and who you’re meant to be. I guess there are lots of avenues and lots of expressions that are available to us, and we just have to keep stepping into those in order to find them.

This environment called Speaking Circles—I know pretty well, because I have a similar situation where I would say that I held myself back. The first Speaking Circle was transformative for me. I’ll share first what was transformative. Then I’d like to hear what that first time was that was so transformative for you.

In Speaking Circles, you only give essence appreciation. Positive—what you’d like to see grow in the person. No correction at all. Just—almost like, “Wow, you’re amazing.” And there’s truth in it. It isn’t just some kind of, encouragement to be more. It is just, “This is my experience of your essence.”

Lee Glickstein, the founder of Speaking Circles, said to me, “Magnetic. Doreen, you are magnetic.” That helped me see that, “Oh, I could be myself. I could be quieter. I didn’t have to be dynamic and out there and pushing words out into an audience. Even just—I know you said that even around the table, it was hard to find space to be yourself. That feedback that night was a moment—a life-transforming moment.

Anything more about your—I mean, I know you said it was like writing and you were already familiar with that, but anything else about what the process itself is that you have found valuable?

(23:19) Julia Miron: I’ll have to remember, because it was a long—it was over ten years ago now. For me, it was much more about the actual experience than the feedback. I don’t even remember what the feedback was. For me, it was just this freedom that I experienced. I felt so safe.

(23:37) Doreen Downing: Uh-huh.

(23:37) Julia Miron: And this thing that I had been so terrified of—and to reference you, you mentioned around the table—when I was younger, there were times where I would feel sentimental at the dinner table and want to, you know, make a toast. I’d ding my glass, and everyone would look at me, and I would get so scared, and I’d just go, “Cheers,” and just try to retreat back into myself because I was so scared to say what I wanted to say because, “Oh God, someone’s going to laugh at me,” or whatever.

It was the opposite of that in a Speaking Circle. I was so terrified of speaking in so many different contexts. So terrified. I mean, it was like my absolute biggest fear, and I stood there. There’s no format really. Your time is your time to do whatever you want with it.

All that fear and terror just melted away. I was sweating and shaking. I do kind of remember that part—and it didn’t matter.

(23:46) Doreen Downing: Uh-huh.

(23:46) Julia Miron: Because I wasn’t being judged. Everyone was there for the same purpose. Nobody was there to judge at all. It was the opposite. Leave your judgment in the car.

Just to be able to stand there imperfectly—shaking and sweating and not knowing what to say—and not having to be afraid of saying something wrong.

(25:23) Doreen Downing: Oh wow. Freedom. That’s the word you used. To be accepted. Not only that—the essence appreciation probably helped you see that what was inside of you is what people were resonating with or listening to. From a deeper sense. Not your body. Not even the words.

This is wonderful. Thank you for flushing it out just a little bit more.

(25:54) Julia Miron: I’ll add to that real fast too. Something that came to mind is, “Oh God, did I lose it?” It was a good one too. It was the experience of being in that Speaking Circle. It was the feeling that I had always been searching for. Just that unconditional acceptance.

This is what it feels like to be heard. This is what it feels like to be seen. This is what it feels like to be accepted. It was something that I had been longing for my whole life and had never experienced until that moment.

(26:34) Doreen Downing: Pretty profound.

(26:36) Julia Miron: Yes.

(26:38) Doreen Downing: Very. No wonder you stayed on the path. Let’s see. Let’s move forward, because I know that you have your own podcast now, and I’m excited about joining you. Between the last few years and where you are now—having done the mindfulness-based training program—you would call yourself a mindfulness teacher or? Say more about that journey.

(27:12) Julia Miron: Like I said, it’s all still a journey, and I’m figuring it out day by day. I took the mindfulness-based stress reduction teacher training, which is—when I had originally taken that program as a participant years earlier, that was the other super transformational thing that happened in my life—learning how to meditate and learning mindfulness through that program.

I had wanted to teach it ever since, so I finally did the teacher training program. It’s a years-long process, but I’m now qualified to teach the program. With that, I am teaching and coaching people individually and loving doing that, especially the individual sessions, because then I actually can incorporate the Speaking Circles work and the mindfulness and just whatever people are working through in their lives.

That’s an amazing experience. I’m also working on launching a podcast. I’ve only recorded. I haven’t released anything yet, so I’m still in the baby phases of it—of recording. I’m recording a few episodes, and then it’ll be launched. This episode might come out before any of mine have, but maybe around the same time.

Doreen Downing: Let’s say more about what the purpose of it is then. What are you doing?

Julia Miron: There’s a few purposes. One is just marketing—letting people know who I am and what I do and why they might want to have anything to do with me, and what I do. I’ve also just—I’ve been wanting to do a podcast for years, and I really just want to have cool conversations with cool people.

For years, I actually thought about starting a podcast and calling it that—calling it Cool Conversations with Cool People. But right now, I’m focusing on the mindfulness aspect, and it might shift shape as I get into it.

Exploring, as you mentioned in the bio, just this messiness that we all experience. It shows up a lot when we meditate and when we practice mindfulness, and that’s when people often think that there’s something wrong with them—they’re doing it wrong. It’s like, “No, messiness is part of being human.”

And when we practice mindfulness, we’re meeting our humanity, which might be messy at times, so let’s explore that, and let’s talk. I’m excited to have conversations that I want to have with people and talk about what they do and things that I’m interested in that overlap with mindfulness. I’m looking forward to how it might take shape as it evolves and launches.

(30:19) Doreen Downing: You mentioned coaching. How do people find you?

(30:25) Julia Miron: My website—themessymeditator.com. On Instagram, it’s the.messy.meditator. The dots are important because someone has themessymeditator, and her name is Jules, so that can be very confusing for people.

Doreen Downing: I’m sure.

Julia Miron: And LinkedIn—Julia Rebecca Myron.

(30:55) Doreen Downing: We’ll certainly have it in the show notes.

We’re coming to the end of our time, and I would love to open up just into a kind of Speaking Circle moment. Listening to this coming-to-completion with our conversation and listen to what might want to be communicated before we end.

This is your opportunity to leave us with whatever wants to be—whatever you listen into this now moment and you want to be leaving us with.

(31:50) Julia Miron: Starting with that stillness and just gratitude for this experience. It’s been nice remembering. You were asking questions about the past, and it’s been nice to remember what it was that first sparked this journey.

I find myself wanting to say something really poignant and powerful as parting words, but sometimes stillness is the best thing that we can leave people with.

(32:33) Doreen Downing: Oh, I feel that. With you saying “stillness,” that helps me go inside of myself, and feel the power, and the goodness of stillness, and surround myself with a sense of—because right now, it is so chaotic out in the world—and to feel stillness is within reach.

I loved stillness as a parting thought. Thank you so much, Julia.