Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. Hello. Hello, my lovelies. My body, my soul is so full at the moment. I'm just deep, deep feelings coming through. And um I wanted to pour it out into this episode to talk with you guys about something that I feel so deeply and um like intensely passionate about, uh, which is the episode's gonna be a lot of me reading from Women Who Run with the Wolves, a book that I've talked about often on this podcast. Um, and this chapter that Clarissa has, um, it is chapter nine called Homing, Returning to One Self. And so much of where this is coming from was going this morning to um, you know, we're ending school, my littlest had end of the year awards, and I found myself sitting in this first grade room with all of these parents and just looking around the room, and y'all, I was just struggling to not like climb out of my skin. Just this like these feelings of deep sadness and frustration and loss as I looked around at um what felt to me like these humans who are just living these robotic, pretend lives where we all slap plastered happy faces on and fake fucking smiles and clap for these awards for our children. As you guys can tell, I am like, ooh, I you would think my period was about to come. Um, because when I'm on my period, like the truth comes out of me. I cannot play the games that our egos play to make us think that we are okay. Um, but I'm about a probably about a week out until my period actually arrives. But that is the energy coming through me of this just like no, no, this is not enough. Just feeling the deep loss of like what we as humans have lost, becoming disconnected from our soul selves, um, you know, getting seduced into these ideas of capitalism ultimately, like, have the pretty house, have the fancy, whatever those fucking goose-called shoes are. I live in an area that is very, very wealthy. And I just stood in that room feeling like, oh my god, we have all sold out to these ideas of like the big fancy house and the name brand clothes and the attractive looking self and husband, and and we are so empty. Um, it is so basic, and we are all just trying to get through it, you know, and coping in whatever ways we can, right? Whether that's sex or uh alcohol or pills or overproductivity or hustling or shopping or eating, just these lives spent avoiding and pretending. And I just I feel it in my throat today, guys. It was just like this is not enough. And I wanna say it may be enough for for some people, but for me, it is not enough. And for most of the women that you know, for those of you that keep showing up on my 90-minute intensives that reach out to me about the podcast, you get it. You feel this deep soul longing, this like, oh my god, if this is it, it's not enough. And so I came home from that and I ended up coaching one of my clients who I just adore. I have worked with her for a very long time, and I have watched her struggle and just go through so much pain trying to understand all the pieces, right? She has CPTSD, she has severe trauma from her childhood, she has trauma from the patriarchy, telling her that she should be happy. It's it's enough, you know, just be happy. Your husband's not beating you, your husband hasn't cheated on you, it should be enough. And what just keeps presenting is it is not enough for her, and watching her go through the heart-wrenching, epic battle of reclaiming herself and watching her make that journey, which is so difficult. Having done it myself and still continuing to do it, I know that reclaiming, as I'm gonna talk about in this chapter, um, reclaiming your soul skin is no easy task. But for women like her, women like me, perhaps you, if you're listening and you're just like, oh my God, yeah, I feel this in my bones. There is no other way to live a life without it is so unbearably soul-crushing. Um, that I wanted today's episode to be a rallying cry to say, I see you, I feel you out there, and you are not alone, and you are not crazy, and it is not enough, and that is okay, and there is another way. So I want to start by giving you some context um from this incredible story. I remember the first time I read this specific chapter by Clarissa, and just oh my god, it spoke to me in so many ways, especially because you know, I was raised Mormon. And um in in this specific story, so I'll I'll backtrack a little bit and tell you the story first. So in the story, she tells this the story of this man who comes down to the ocean and he sees this woman who is actually a seal. She's a shapeshifter, she can be both. And when she is a woman, she has her seal pelt. So her seal pelt is off of her and placed on the rocks. And um, in his want for her, he ends up snatching her seal pelt. And when she discovers it's gone, she finds him and she is desperate and she's like, please give it back. And he tricks her by telling her, Come live with me for seven years, and I promise I will give it back to you at the end. And she trusts him and she believes him and she goes with him. And they get married and they have a kid, but over the years, as she's away from the sea, she starts to dry up. Her skin starts to crack, her hair starts to fall out. She's not thriving, she is struggling. And at the end of those seven years, she comes to him. And at this time, they have a child. And I love that the story shifts at this point to like the perspective of this little boy of theirs. And he says he, you know, in the story, he hears his parents fighting and he hears his mother pleading with his father, basically saying, You promised me you would give this back to me. You have to keep your promise. And the husband saying, No, I'm not giving it back to you because I know if I give it to you, you'll leave us. And so he breaks his promise to her, and she's just absolutely destroyed, desperate, like so heartbroken at the break in the trust, right? And in how much a shell of herself she's become. And the little boy in that moment, he like goes out into the storm. He's like called down to the sea, and he ends up. I'm gonna get like so emotional. I just love this part. He ends up finding her pelt, her seal skin. He ends up finding where his father has hidden her skin. And you guys will have to. Like, I so recommend like go buy the book today, go read this chapter. He finds the seal skin and he talks about like the way it smells of his mother and how much he loves her. And instead of doing, you know, what I consider to be like the broken masculine, which is the father's role, right? The keeping the seal skin, realizing, you know, if I give it to her, she'll leave. Like a part of him knows that, and he still loves her enough to bring her the skin. And when she gets it, she puts it on and he freaks out, like, oh my God, she's gonna leave me. And he's like, Mother, please don't leave me. And instead of leaving him, she grabs him and takes him into the ocean with her, down into the ocean to her home, and she stays with him and keeps him down there for like a week. Um, and ultimately, you know, the story uh progresses further with like, because he's built of both the sea and the land, he can't live in the sea with her. But um, he ends up going back to the land and having this deep relationship with his mother and becomes what I would consider like a healed masculine in the world. So, so much symbolism, like, oh my god, y'all, like incredible, incredible symbolism in this chapter. And so powerful this image of her going back to the sea and through reclaiming, you know, through reclaiming her soul skin, returning to her home, the next generation is healed. Um, and you know, I will connect the dots for you all. This is passionately how I feel about the work you are doing in deciding whether or not to stay or go. You are, for many of you, taking, you know, patterns of unhealthy, traumatic, uh, masculine and feminine dynamics that you learned from your parents, and you are saying, no, no longer. It will not pass on with me. You are generational chainbreakers. And for me, that chain was broken through the decision to actually physically leave my marriage and to create my own home. I would say my soul skin, my you know, seal pelt was stolen super, super young from me. Like, I definitely think uh the abuse with my father was a huge piece. Um, being raised in the Mormon cult, being brainwashed from such a young age. All of that. Like, I have had to really find my way back to the ocean, even right. Like, um, didn't even have a real memory or idea of what the ocean and my true home was, but I have built that and I continue to find that and find people that come from the same place as me, those soul people, those seal people, um, which by the way, most of you probably are as well. Um so in sharing that story, I wanted to kind of set the scene for some of the aspects I wanted to drop into and just some of the pieces of Clarissa's book that I want to read to you. I just want to take this episode to impart her soul-filling words. Um, you know, I said earlier, I want this to be a rallying cry to you of like, if it's not enough, you are not crazy. And this chapter is really what did that for me. So I've got um quite a few different sections. Um, so hopefully this will, you know, just be a lovely, like kind of part audio book, part me also sharing my thoughts, my um viewpoints on some of this. And um, I'm hoping that her words and my words will maybe be that call that you've been waiting to hear, that reminder that you are not alone. Before I jump in, real quick, what's coming to mind is this analogy that I use with a lot of my clients or women that you know I've met on my intensives, of realizing, you know, I this is why I love the story being about a seal, because I truly feel like I was a water creature born to land animals. And, you know, not only land animals, but probably like African Sahara, like zebras, giraffes, water buffaloes, lions. And um, because of that, you know, those individuals did not did think there was anything wrong with the way they were living and raising me. But deep down in my soul, I was deeply unfulfilled, deeply untaken care of, deeply unseen in the ways that I most needed. And, you know, this goes back to what I was saying at the very beginning of like realizing and looking around that room at these people, like some of them may be totally fine with that level of a life, with that level of depth. And I don't judge them for that, but I also recognize deeply that in my soul, that is not the case for me. And I want there to be more voices in the world of women standing up and saying, if it's not enough for you, that's okay. It makes me think so much of Glennon Doyle with Untamed, right? Her book Untamed is this. It's this rallying cry to those of us who are deeply wild and have been domesticated and find the domestic life so soul-sucking, we, you know, for me, it led to a lot of suicidal ideation, not wanting to live, believing that the problem was me, hating myself. Um, and her message, and the message in this book is like, no, no, trust yourself, trust where your soul is calling you back to. So, in that analogy of, you know, me being like a seal, and I see it, you know, when you watch seals swimming under the ocean, in especially in like California in the Bay, they are so fluid and gorgeous and beautiful, and there's so much range and movement and expression in them versus like, you know, a giraffe. And there's nothing good or bad about either one of them, they're just different. And it's really important that we know ourselves and what we are, especially if you are a sea lion married to a giraffe or a water buffalo, and needing that expression and that fullness of movement. Like when you watch two sea lions, like go Google this. Watching two sea lions dancing under the ocean together is just that's how I know that's like my, you know, I'm definitely an ocean water creature. Because I'm like, yes, that is what I want to be doing with a partner. Um so that was a little bit of a side story. I want to dive into the book now and just kind of take you through her words. Um, letting, you know, I hope that you'll just let them sink in for you. Don't be afraid to pause and rewind when things really stand out to you. And definitely if they impact you and you're more of like a visual person, which I am, um, I digest and retain things so much better when I can see them in print. If that's the case for you, go order the book. Seriously, like the paperback on Amazon, I think it's like $10, $11. It might even be cheaper than that. So, okay. So this first section that I wanted to pull from the book is where she talks about, you know, what are some of the things that help us lose the soul skin? So I'm just gonna start reading. We lose the soul skin by becoming too involved with ego, by being too exacting, perfectionistic, or unnecessarily martyred, or driven by a blind ambition, or by being dissatisfied about self, family, community, cultural, world, and not saying or doing anything about it, or by pretending we are an unending source for others, or by not doing all we can to help ourselves. Oh, there are as many ways to lose the soul skin as there are women in the world. The only way to hold on to this essential soul skin is to retain an exquisitely pristine consciousness about its value and uses, but since no one can consistently maintain acute consciousness, no one can keep the soul skin absolutely every moment day and night. But we can keep the theft of it to a bare minimum. We can develop that oho agudo, the shrewd eye that watches the conditions all around and guards our psychic territory accordingly. So I definitely wanna talk about this oho agudo, the shrewd eye. Um and I I love that she's acknowledging for many of us, especially living as humans, right? We do live on the land. We're gonna go through these um periods in our life where we lose touch with our soul. The point, though, is creating an environment in our lives that helps us keep the theft, as she says, to a bare minimum. And I was talking with my client about this just before I got on to record this, where I was helping her realize she had a very triggering event a week ago. Actually, it was from going to marriage counseling, which I just want to like side note say for some of you, marriage counseling is not going to be a fit. In fact, it might be for most of you. It was hugely traumatizing for me. Um, and I had gone to like therapy for a good two years, maybe a year and a half to two years before I ever tried marriage therapy with my husband. And I found it to be a total shit show. Um, I'd worked so hard to validate and own my truth to like actually have a voice to then go into marriage therapy and feel somebody, especially when you have a narcissistic partner that can twist things and show up really pretty and seem really normal and fine while you are like kind of losing your shit over here. It can be very, very much of like a mind fuck. So a week ago, she'd gone to a therapy session, and that's literally what had happened. She had felt like she needed to defend herself and she's always having to describe, and it's never enough, and they never understand her. Um, and basically, by the time we got to our session this week, she'd been unbeknownst to her, but I could see it so clearly, in a regression for the week, which in the um CPTSD book that I'll link that I'm super big on by Pete Walker, he talks about how if you get um into an emotional flashback and you don't realize it, you can end up staying in that and just compounding those emotional flashbacks until you're eventually in a regression, which regression looks like where she was today of just like a very disassociated, super overwhelmed, super emotional, unable to really like talk, feeling like a she didn't realize it at the time, but like basically she's she's feeling like a child, completely overwhelmed, and just the absolute like brain explosion. Floating kind of feeling of like, oh my God, I'm never gonna get out of this. Because when you feel emotionally flashbacked and like a child, the thought of getting out of your marriage and getting divorced feels like the most overwhelming thing possible. Much less like taking care of yourself, right? A lot of her self-care had dropped off this week. Sleep, um, she's just hanging on by a thread. Um, and my point to her was like, babe, we have got to minimize, start removing these things in your environment that are so triggering. You cannot expect yourself to have CPTSD and be able to do all the things that normal people do. And you have to become more aware of what are the things that are the most triggerating, sorry, triggering and eliminate them. So for her, top of the list would be marriage counseling, marriage therapy. It uh for a long time now has not been supportive for her, but she's going because she feels like she should. And that is such a tough place. I know so many of you are gonna relate to that because so many of you have codependent behaviors, the people pleasing. But what I was helping her see is if we just keep you in the space where every week you keep going and it keeps triggering you, we're never gonna be able to move forward or really have you connect back in with your soul because you are in a constant state of dysregulation. So, first things first, as she says, the ohoagudo, the shrewd eye, is stepping up and taking responsibility for the conditions in your life and guarding your psychic territory accordingly. That is part of being a functioning, healthy adult, is not letting anybody and everybody have access to your mind. Um, and I find the best way to do that is by like trusting your gut feeling. Like, if this does not feel supportive, if this does not feel uplifting, I'm not doing it. Okay, so I want to take you to this next section, which is so good. It's gonna talk even more in-depthly about more ways that we are that we can end up losing our soul skin without even realizing it. All right, so she's gonna talk specifically here about relationships, which I love because that is a huge piece of what you guys are trying to figure out is is the relationship I'm in supportive for my soul skin or not? So she says, we can contain this loss of soul by keeping close to the pelt to begin with. For instance, I see in the talented women in my practice that soul skin theft can come through relationships that are not in their rightful skins themselves. And some relationships are downright poisonous. It takes will and force to overcome these relationships, but it can be done. Especially if, as in the story, one will awaken to the voice calling from home, calling one back to the core self, where one's immediate wisdom is whole and accessible. From there, a woman can decide with clear seeing what it is she must have and what it is she wants to do. The aggravated theft of the sealskin also occurs far more subtly through the theft of a woman's resources and of her time. The world is lonely for comfort and for the hips and breasts of women. It calls out in a thousand handed, million voiced way, waving to us, plucking and pulling at us, asking for our attention. Sometimes it seems that everywhere we turn there is a someone or a something of the world that needs, wants, wishes. Some of the people, issues, and things of the world are appealing and charming, others may be demanding and angry, and yet others seem so heart rendingly helpless that against our wills, our empathy overflows, our milk runs down our bellies. But unless it is a life and death matter, take the time, make the time to put on the brass brassiere. Stop running the milk train. Do the work of turning toward home. Y'all, you feeling this? I mean, these I would say were the two biggest sources for me when I was trying to figure out whether I wanted to stay married or not at that point in my life of just like soul skin theft. I was definitely in a relationship that I would say wasn't necessarily there were aspects that were poisonous. Some of you, some of my clients right now that are in like way more poisonous relationships. Oh my God. But for me, it was more that my partner was not in his rightful skin. I love that that word when she says that. Like when they're not in their rightful skins themselves, when you have partners who don't have their own self-knowing, who are not doing the inner work, that is not a match. Um, and then this second piece where she's like, but also the world can do it. And for me, that was religion. My religion was demanding so much from me and giving me nothing in return. Really, it wasn't. It was a huge drain on my resources, on my time. It was a huge drain on my family. They take, they took so much of our just free labor. And and I didn't know at the time, but looking back now, I'm like, oh my God, that was such a huge theft of my resources that needed to be going to me and to the things that I deemed worthy. Um, I'll see this too. I've seen it in friends who are like way over involved in school activities or in their children's um sports or um at work, right? Just giving, giving, giving at work. This is where we're we're not having clear boundaries and keeping enough for ourselves. Um yeah, and this is so this next section I'm gonna talk about is gonna expound that even more. So she says, though we see that the skin can be lost through a devastating and wrong love, it may also be lost in a right and deepest love. It is not exactly the rightness of a person or thing or its wrongness that causes the theft of our soul skins. It is the cost of these things to us. It is what it costs us in time, energy, observation, attention, hovering, prompting, instructing, teaching, training. These motions of psyche are like cash withdrawals from the psychic savings account. The issue is not about these energy, sorry, the issue is not about these energet cash withdrawals themselves, for these are an important part of life's give and take, but it is being overdrawn that causes the loss of the skin and the paling and dulling of one's most acute instincts. It is the lack of further deposits of energy, knowledge, acknowledgement, ideas, and excitement that causes a woman to feel she is psychically dying. I don't know if I've talked about this already on the podcast, but this is one of my core beliefs, and it is a section in the course that I'm gonna be releasing um later this year of this idea of only giving from a full, overflowing cup, which is I do not give to others from my cup, I only give from my overflow. So when I'm checking in with whether I want to do something or be with somebody, I check back in with how full is my cup right now. And that's really what she's saying with that being overdrawn. And I want you guys to realize that because yeah, sometimes it isn't that the thing that's asking for our attention is necessarily bad or evil or poisonous, but it's that are we filled enough to actually give to that? Because life is, it is, and I love that she explains that it is about this give and this take. And um, but what I find with so many of us, and where I was before I really got into coaching and learning how to take care of and like give myself my energy and my love and attention first, is most women are severely depleted already. Especially if you are an overachieving, like a type personality like me. My response to my you know narcissistic parent, to a narcissistic religion was to just give more, keep giving, keep overachieving, just up, up, up, up, up the level. And um, I didn't realize how drained I was until I started to have, you know, severe symptoms, right? Depression, um, massive anxiety, suicidal ideations, um, lack of just enjoying my life, aggression and anger towards my children all the time. That was when I started like, whoa, something is terribly wrong. So I want you guys to notice these ways that we lose our skill, our seal skins, right? Our soul skins. Um, these either giving it into relationships that aren't a fit for us, maybe relationships that are poisonous, or just people that need us in this world that is desperate for the feminine, desperate for um for psychic processing, for people who can hold, for people who are empathic. If we just let our empathy run rampant and we give what we have to everybody, what we find is eventually we burn out. Eventually we run out. We have nothing left in our cup to give. And I would offer, this is not a new thing. Like women for centuries have been dealing with this. This is the women in the, you know, I'm not even gonna know which generation it was, but the generation where women would just disappear for like three months because they would be checked into a mental hospital and the kids would go live with grandparents. We don't get, we don't even get to do that as much anymore. And I but but we're we're still checked out. That is what I'm saying of like what I was seeing in that room of these are humans that, yeah, maybe they're not getting checked into a mental hospital, but for sure they are coping and buffering and avoiding their soul calls and living these lives that instead of being deep and rich and a full expression where, like on your deathbed, you're like, fuck, yeah, I lived, you're going through the motions and you're getting the things done and you're checklisting. So check in with yourself. How empty is my cup? How much am I continuing to just give, give, give, give, give to my marriage, to my kids, to my work, to my religion, and not retaining anything for myself. So this takes us to this next section. You know, we've talked about all these ways that we lose the soul skin. And now she's gonna dive into how we don't realize this until we suddenly do. And I want to start this, I just want to dive into this section. So she says, Because most women were raised to bear things stoically as their mothers did before them, no one notices that there is a dying going on until one day. When we are young and our soul lives collide with the desires and requirements of culture in the world, indeed we feel stranded far from home. However, as adults, we continue to drive ourselves even farther from home as a result of our own choices about who, what, where, and for how long. If we were never taught to return to the soul home in childhood, we repeat the quote theft and wandering around lost pattern ad infinitum. But even when it is our own dismal choices that have blown us off course, too far from what we need, hold faith, for within the soul is the homing device. We all can find our way back. Ah so um I actually did a uh intensive today with an incredible, incredible woman. And I why I love like I'm so excited about this piece and her talking about this homing device is because as I was reading her note, because you know, on these intensives, I I have you leave a note for me ahead of time, kind of giving me the rundown of where things are at. And in it, she kept mentioning like I just keep feeling this thought that like I need space, I need to be on my own to figure this out. And then throughout the call, that theme just kept coming up, and I was just like, there it is, there's her homing device, there is that beacon sending out that call of come home, come home, come home. Um, I know for me, yeah, the I think why I relate so much to this story of this Sillskin is, you know, I definitely was drying out uh right before I started going to therapy. And I was so spent, so empty, so completely devoid of myself. And the call that came to me was through the pain. It was through the like, I don't want to live anymore. Oh my God. It was through the fear. Like that was all I look back and I think, like, God, I was in so much pain. But that was also a gift. It was a gift because that pain showed me something is missing, something is off. And this is also like the beautifulness of the universe and the synchronicity that's out there. I truly believe like there are forces in the world, call them what you will. I call them source, I call them the universe, working for your good to help bring you back to that soul path, to whatever it is you're meant to become and enjoy and experience in this life. And, you know, just as an example, this woman that I was coaching, you know, she just whenever we'd talk about her getting to be free to do what she wants in the way she wants to, without others having to tell her what to do, she would light up. You could see it in her. And I just kept thinking, obviously, like this is a huge aspect of whatever her soul is hungry for and wanting in this one beautiful life, right? We have no idea what happens after this. I have my theories, but that's really all they are. And so taking seriously the things that keep knocking at our door that will not go away, um, the feelings that call to us that won't be silenced, those are your homing devices. Um okay, so continuing on with our beautiful book reading today. It's also, I just have to say, it is like lovely and overcast today. I'm really hoping it does not rain. Only because y'all, I have not had my lawn mode. This is like, okay, quick side note. Have not had my lawn mode in over like a month and a half, potentially. We're we're a like hardcore pasture status right now in the front yard. Um, just because it's been so muddy and wet. So I'm trying to like surrender into enjoying that. Um, none of my neighbors have said anything, but of course, in my mind, I think they are. So I'm enjoying all of the cloud cover today, and also like, please don't rain. I would really like my lawnmowers to come. Um, like it's up to my knees, y'all. When I walk out my backyard, it's up to my knees. Woo! Okay, so back on track. Yes. Okay, so I should probably be, I would love to be giving you all page numbers now that I'm thinking about this. Um, and so what I'll do is in my notes, in my show notes, I'll make sure and include like the different sections with page numbers. So if you do decide you, you know, get the book, you can go kind of follow along. So in the future, I am gonna be doing a podcast. I told you guys I'm gonna be doing one on affairs. It is still in the process, mainly because there's in thinking about affairs and their impact, um, and really like how I want to reframe them for you all. I've been also diving deeply into patriarchy and reading this incredible book um called Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly, um, you know, written in like the late 60s, early 70s. And in it, she makes this incredible point of talking about how like why it's so hard for women to individuate in patriarchal cultures is because in a patriarchal culture as a woman, you're you are only known through your roles. Like you're a mother, you're a daughter, you're a sister, you you have these roles that define you. And to embark on true individuation, you have to uh go through the terrifying experience of uh not knowing of and she uses the word nothingness, which I can deeply tell you is um in the beginning of my journey, it was so hard to confront this, this realization of like I don't really know who I am, because all I've ever been is a role. All I've ever been is what other people told me to be. And to sit in the feeling of like, I don't know what I want is so uncomfortable. When your whole life you've just been like, tell me what to want, and I'll want that. So, you know, I I it's like this um, it's this path. It's this, I think of all those great stories of, you know, heroes on their quests, like this is a quest that you go on. This is one of those adventures, uh trials, tests. I don't like any of those words because they make it seem like something that's being enforced on you, and it's not. It's something that you're just like, okay, I'm going to go out into the wilderness of the unknown. Brene Brown talks about this a lot. And I am going to be brave. And being brave does not mean not feeling fear. It means feeling fear and moving forward, anyways. So Clarissa talks about this in this section, and I want to read it to you. She says, These images of going about in and through the dark carry an age-old message that says, Do not fear not knowing. In various phases and periods of our lives, this is as it should be. This feature of tales and myths encourages us to follow the call, even when we've no idea of where to go, in what direction, or for how long. All we know is that like the child in the tale, we must sit up, get up, and go see. So maybe we stumble around in the dark for a while, trying to find what calls us, but because we have managed to not talk ourselves out of being summoned by the wild one, we invariably stumble over the soul skin. When we breathe up that soul state, we automatically enter the feeling state of this is right. I know what I need. And what she's referencing there is that in that story of the young son going out into the night, yeah, he doesn't know what's calling him. And it's as he's being called to the ocean that he finds his mother's soul skin. So I love this acknowledgement of you're not gonna know the path ahead of time. You are literally at times only going to know like the next step, like one little step next. And this can look all sorts of ways. Like I remember for me, a lot of this when I was still married was doing the work of finding out what I loved. So I, you know, at one point took a pottery class. Um, I went back to school for a semester for like calculus, I think. All of that was happening while I was still married. And I look back and I'm like, yeah, that's because a lot of that was I didn't, I couldn't even look at the issues in my marriage just yet because I had so little of myself to even bring forward. So a lot of it was building more of the meanness of the knowing who I was. I mean, I had gotten married when I was, you know, just newly turned 19. I'd only known my husband three months. So little of who I am was developed. And then I just, you know, carried that with me throughout 12 years of marriage, of just kind of becoming and being whatever I needed to be. Okay, I'm the mother. Okay, I'm the, you know, counselor in the young women's presidency. That's, you know, in Mormonism. I was defined a lot through like my roles. I'm a mother of my kids, I'm the wife to my husband, who's an investment banker. Um, I take care of the things at home. I had to go through a journey of figuring out more of who I was. And literally, like I said, that was just like, okay, this interests me. So I went like took a pottery class. And then at one point I did like a glass fusing class, or um, this book interests me, or this person at church kind of interests me. I think I want to like ask her to go out for lunch sometime. Just little, little knowings and following them, not realizing as I look back now that every little step was leading me where I most wanted to go, which was ultimately finding that deep, deepest soul knowing of like, where is my path meant to go? And it's so beautiful that each of those little steps is what preps you and prepares you to be ready once you do get there to actually take the leap. Okay, so let's jump over to page 303. Oof, this one's so good. I'm just gonna dive in. So she says the return to home is particularly important if one has been bound up in worldly matters and overstayed her time. What is that length of time? It is different for each woman, but suffice to say that women know, absolutely know when they have stayed overlong in the world. They know when they are overdue for home. Their bodies are in the here and now, but their minds are far, far away. They are dying for new life. They are panting for the sea. They are living just for next month, just till this semester is past, can't wait till winter is finally over so they can feel alive again, just waiting for a mystically assigned date somewhere in the future when they will be free to do some wondrous thing. They think they will die if they don't. You fill in the blank, and there is a quality of mourning to it all. There is angst, there is bereftness, there is wistfulness, there is longing, there is plucking at threads in one's skirt and staring long from windows, and it is not a temporary discomfort. It stays and grows more and more intense over time. Yet women continue in their day to day routines, looking sheepish, acting guilty and smirky. Yes, yes, yes, I know, they say. I should, but but but it is the butts in their sentences that are the dead giveaways that they have stayed too long. An incompletely initiated woman in this depleted state erroneously thinks she is deriving more spiritual credit by staying than she thinks she will gain by going. Others are caught up in, as they say in Mexico, dar algo un tiron fuerte, always tugging at the sleeve of the virgin, meaning they are working hard and ever harder to prove that they are acceptable, that they are good people. But there are other reasons for the divided woman. She's not used to letting others take the oars. She may be a practitioner of kidlet, which is a litany that goes like this, but my kids need this, my kids need that, etc. She does not realize that by sacrificing her need for return, she teaches her children to make the very same sacrifices of their own needs once they are grown. Some women are afraid that those around them will not understand their need for return, and not all may, but the woman must understand this herself. When a woman goes home according to her own cycles, others around her are given their own individuation work, their own vital issues to deal with. Her return to home allows others growth and development too. Holy shit, y'all. Were you listening? I mean, Clarissa, we were just dropping the truth bombs left and right in that section. Um, and I'm not gonna spend too much time on it because I think she said it all beautifully, but I do want to mention this point at the end, which I I know I have clients right now who um one in particular who is specifically in this spot of that worrying, worrying, worrying about the kids and being so afraid that her leaving will actually hurt them. And I just want to emphasize this piece that she states so eloquently of that is if that is what you do, sacrifice yourself for your children, that is the blueprint you give to them later on in life. And you have to really stop and be like, is that what I want for my children? And then this next, like so beautiful piece of acknowledging that, like when you go do your soul calls, you open up space for others to have their own growth and individuation. And I think of this so powerfully in relation to my own ex-husband. And even in that relationship that I mentioned to you all, you know, the one that the guy that I dated for like a year, in breaking up, you know, in ending my marriage and breaking up with that specific individual, a part of me knew that I was like a drug for them that was allowing them not to do their own work. And as long as I stayed, they were not going to do that work. And I've seen, at least with my ex-husband, that in me leaving, inevitably, he has had to grow and individuate through the absence of me being there and taking care of it. And I will tell you all, as much as I would have loved to believe that I could have done that, like stayed married and still pulled back enough to allow him that growth and individuation, it just wasn't the case for me. I constantly stepped in and um stepped up wherever he was not fulfilling. And I couldn't not let myself do that. So in getting divorced, it provided the structure to kind of force that. I couldn't keep doing that. I mean, I guess I could have, but I had like the excuse through the divorce not to, right? It provided me the protection of half the time I am not in charge of the kids. So guess what? Now he has to be a dad. Now he has to be involved in his children's lives. He doesn't have a choice anymore to just stay at work late or not be around or um, you know, come in in the evenings and not get them up for school. So this is where we take much bigger, expanded pictures instead of the people-pleasing sides of us that are like, oh no, no, no, I don't want to do this because it's gonna hurt people in the short term. Yes, but what are we doing to them in the long term? What blueprints are we giving our children that they will carry into their marriages? What growth and individuation are we preventing in ourselves and in our our, you know, in our current spouse, which granted, they might here's the thing too, they may not want that growth and individuation, and that's fine. But not staying under the delusion that somehow it's so nice of you. This is what I what I always think of, and I sometimes say this to my clients of like, with greater awareness comes more responsibility. And this is the whole, just because my kids are like, I want to eat ice cream for dinner, doesn't mean I give them ice cream. Sometimes that is literally what it's like for my clients in instances where they're choosing to get divorced and their spouse is so devastated about it, and having to take that higher route of understanding in your head, like, yeah, this is painful, and you would much rather I just give you the ice cream for dinner, but I'm gonna do what's best for me and our children, and understanding what is truly best, which is not perpetuating generational trauma to the next, you know, the to your lineage. You give it to your kids, they give it to their kids, you have a chance to stop it with you. All right, so I've got two more sections that I want to share with you all before I close out this episode. And this one, yeah. Let's just let's just drop in. You ready? The most important thing I can tell you about the timing of this home cycle is this when it's time, it's time. Even if you're not ready, even if things are undone, even if today your ship is coming in, when it's time, it's time. The seal woman returns to the sea, not because she just feels like it, not because today is a good day to go, not because her life is all nice and tidy. There is no nice and tidy time for anyone. She goes because it is time, and therefore she must. We all have favorite methods of talking ourselves out of taking the time to go home, yet when we retrieve our instinctive and wildish cycles, we are under a psychic obligation to arrange our lives so that we can live them more and more in accordance. Arguments about the rightness versus the wrongness of leave taking in order to return home are useless. The simple truth is that when it's time, it's time. Some women never go home and instead live their lives a la zona zombie in the zombie zone. The most cruel part of this lifeless state is that the woman functions, walks, speaks, acts, even accomplishes many things, but she no longer feels the effects of what has gone wrong. If she did, her pain would make her immediately turn to the fixing of it. But no, a woman in such a state hobbles on, arms out, defended against the painful loss of home, blind and as they say in the Bahamas, she gone sporat, meaning her soul has gone off without her, and left her feeling, no matter what she does, not quite substantial. In this state, women have an odd sense that they are accomplishing much, but feel little satisfaction. They are doing what they thought they wanted to do, but the treasure in their hands has somehow turned to dust. This is a very good awareness for a woman to have in such a state. Discont is the secret door to significant and life-giving change. Y'all, y'all, there is so many good things in this. So I just want to break it down real quick. This piece where she says, when we retrieve our instinctive and wildish cycles, we're under a psychic obligation to live more and more in court in accordance. That is what I was just talking about. Of when you have the awareness, when you start seeing the truth of like, there's trauma here, there's shit here, these are blueprints I don't want to share. You are now the adult in the room. You are now the one with the greater knowledge and the greater responsibility. Ooh, did you not love this part where she talks about this zombiness, right? Where you feel like you're doing all these things, but you're not really accomplishing truly anything. This described so powerfully where I was at previous to starting therapy, even as I went through the two and a half years of therapy with my therapist like gradually bringing me back. I was so in this space of so little satisfaction doing so much shit. I mean, I was so involved in my church at the time. I was so involved in taking care of my kids and getting no satisfaction out of any of it. So just notice, because it can be very disorienting when that happens, just so you know, this isn't a problem. This just means you have lost your soul skin and it's time to retrieve it. And I love this final piece where she says, discontent is the secret door to significant and life-giving change. And this is so big because when I'm coaching my women, so often they have been buffering massively to avoid their discontent in their marriage. They are, you know, having an affair, right? So you're having this emotional like distraction over here to avoid you for from how unhappy you are with your partner, emotional or sexual, or you're drinking a lot, or you're working a lot, or you're productive all the time, or you're just keeping yourself busy with the baseball team or the volunteering at the school. All of it to distract yourself from the discontent. And my work often as a coach is to gradually bring you right back into the center of it because I know when you finally feel how much you don't want to be in this situation, you will do, you will take the steps to change your life. You will take the steps to actually have the hard conversations, to actually start being honest, to start being real, to start really looking at what's happening without these, you know, blinders and these filters to kind of try and fuzz it out and make it not so painful. And that pain is actually the gift, as she says in these perfect words, the secret door to significant and life-giving change. So, you know, just a like heads up, the path to making the decision. So many of you want it to be peaceful. So many of you want this like certainty and solidity to come. And I want to offer that, like that, yes, there was a point of that for me, but a lot of it was through understanding, feeling my discontent, and then just starting to move forward. And that doesn't always mean you'll go. That's the beautiful thing about discontent, though, is like it gets you moving. And for some of you, that's like you start talking and you actually start being honest with your spouse of this is what's not working for me, or I need more of this, or where are you at on this, and how open are you to going on this journey with me? And you ultimately get to see, right, is he really capable of that or not? Okay, final, final piece. Turning to page 321, this is what I want to end on. All right. In the tale, it is said that many try to hunt the soul to capture and kill her, but no hunter is able. It is one more fairy tale reference to the indestructibility of the wild soul. Even if we have been working, sexing, resting, or playing out of cycle, it does not kill the wild woman. It only tires us out. The good news is that we can make the necessary corrections and return to our own natural cycles again. It is through the love for and the caring for our natural seasons that we protect our lives from being dragged into someone else's rhythm, someone else's dance, someone else's hunger. It is through validation of our distinct cycles for sex, creation, rest, play, and work that we relearn to define and discriminate between all our wild senses and seasons. We know that we cannot live the confiscated life. We know there is a time when the things of men and the people and the things of the world must be left for a while. We have learned that we are like amphibians. We can live on land, but not forever, not without trips to the water and to home. Overly civilized and overly oppressive cultures try to keep women from returning home. Too often she is warned away from the water until she is thin as a dime and dimmed in light. But when the call for extended leave to home comes, a part of her always hears, has been waiting to hear. When the call to home comes, she will follow, has been secretly or not so secretly, preparing to follow. She and all the allies of her inner psyche will restore her ability to return. This empowering process does not apply to just a woman here and a woman there. It applies to all of us. Everyone becomes snagged by land commitments, yet the old one out in the sea calls everyone. Everyone must return. Why I wanted to finish with that piece is because it can be so easy when you are in the thick of this to look at women like me or women like Glenn and Doyle and just think like, oh, well, you know, they're different than me. They have something in them that's special or that allowed them to overcome it, or you know, not little old me. That is not true. As she says, like, every single one of you has the abilities within yourself to come back to this soul call, to return to whatever home is for you. And I know that powerfully and deeply because y'all thinking back to you know, where we started this episode with me feeling so just ugh about the you know, the women and the humans today at that award ceremony at my kids' school, I used to be one of them. Oh my goodness. Like a hundred percent. In fact, even probably more so. I was so deeply indoctrinated by Mormonism, so absolutely in absence of any true version of myself beyond that like deep soul call that I always had and kind of felt and couldn't follow it ever, you know, up until that point when I started going to therapy. Like, and I would say not that I couldn't follow it ever, but it was like infrequent and it was always very difficult when I did. So just know I came from that. I came from a soul call that had been, you know, a seal skin that had been stolen at the age of four or five, and managed to through those just a little step, step, step, step, step, step, step, take another step over and over and over for the past, I believe it's about seven or eight years now, to come back home to myself. And it will be a journey I'm on the rest of my life. I want you all to know it's not like you get to home and then you're done. I am always finding more and more uh resonance with myself, hearing new soul calls, expanding into those. I was telling the woman I was coaching today on the 90 minute intensive, like, I am currently considering not only like launching this course, but as I've said earlier, like this whole community, like creating an entire world for women considering. Divorce where you all will get to connect and to know each other, and in long term, you know, potentially doing in-person events because I feel so passionate about the power of soul-led women being able to activate and support each other as we all go through this journey. But like that is not just something that I'm like, okay, great, let's do this. I am absolutely in the whole, a whole nother, right? Like braving, going off into the wilderness, finding more of myself, following the soul calls, even though I feel really afraid moment. So it's not just like a one-time thing. It is a life perspective. I think it is like a whole reimagining of what you see life as, instead of just I need to get to this destination and then I'm gonna park there for the next 40 years. It's uh I'm going to keep listening and taking the next step and taking the next step. And I truly believe, although obviously I'm not at the end of my life, so I can't say for certain, but I really so far in the last four and a half years since being divorced, I can say about the last four and a half years, it has led me into the most wildly expansive, most incredible adventures and um soulful life living that I could never have imagined before it. I just had no idea where it was gonna take me. And looking back now, I would do it over again a thousand times. In fact, I would do all of the pain and all of the trauma that I had before that, that ultimately like got me to this point of having to make this huge decision of choosing myself and my soul calls, mainly because like that journey is what has made me this me, the me you get to hear on this podcast. She was forged in the fires of that entire journey. Um and the passion and the like excitedness and the soulfulness that you hear from me is from walking each of those steps, is from going through those hard things and watching myself become more of me, filling myself, filling myself and my cup with all of me. So I want to just echo the words of Clarissa Pincola Estes by singing, return, return, hear those soul calls, but let them take you just into the next step. Trust yourself enough to just do the next little thing, whatever it is that your soul is calling to you. It does not have to be as big as like, and I'm ready to get divorced. It can be as small as I think I want to go take a pottery class, or um, like one of my clients today, I don't want to go to marriage therapy anymore. That is not soul-filling for me. Um I want it can be as small as I need to take a break this weekend. I'm gonna go rent a hotel room. Spouse, you're gonna watch the kids, and I'm gonna take some time alone. Just lean in. Trust, take those little steps, and I promise you, you will be led back to these parts of yourself that you know are missing and that are important. And I know you know that they're missing because you would not have found my podcast and be listening to it otherwise. So trust yourself, follow the calls and return. Y'all, I have so enjoyed getting to share this much of Women Who Run with the Woves with you today. I was not expecting to ever do an episode like this, but after just feeling so intensely like I needed to send out this call today, I want to encourage you in that chapter. She actually will go into a lot more detail around what you can actually do. So I kind of gave you like an overview, right? But she will go into the nitty-gritty, and especially in the book and other chapters of so many beautiful, you know, ideas and concepts and stories around how we reclaim this soul part of ourselves. So cannot recommend, you know, reading that enough. This was this is my tattoo, my woof tattoo on my arm. The only tattoo I have right now that I got like right before my divorce was finalized, comes entirely from this book. So I also just want to remind you all to please subscribe to the podcast. And if you have time, go rate it, like and subscribe to it. It just helps. I've recently had like I had what the woman on the intensive today said she had just been Googling and Googling and searching and searching and like just not finding someone saying things in the way she needed to hear. And then um, she happened to Google specifically considering divorce, and I came up and she was like, it was huge um hearing things in the specific way. So every time you go do that, you are helping other women just like you find the podcast. Also, just remember, you know, if you are at a point where you are considering and you're loving the podcast, but you're like, I want to hear individual perspectives, like I want your brain on my brain, go sign up for one of my intensives. My schedule is a little bit tighter this summer. So I know some of you have been reaching out, being like, my goodness, like I wanted to get in and things are filling up. So I just would encourage for those of you that are maybe feeling like I need it now, go get on the schedule. And then always remembering, you know, for those of you that are like, I'm really ready. I'm looking for more than just like a perspective or like a do-it-myself kind of path. I want to have you hold my hand. I want you to be there all the way through it. That I am, I still have a few more um spots open in my one-on-one coaching due to me, potentially, I'm so excited, on the precipice of uh really building out this whole world and community for you guys that I want to be launching, um, potentially um, I maybe even taking some like beta, which I'll announce that on the podcast, some um beta memberships to try it out and see what it's like, doing group coaching. Doesn't that just sound so exciting? I can't wait to like build this with you know, so many of you that are like gonna be my founding members, finding me this early in my journey with really creating like the legacy of what I want to leave in the world. So just yeah, for those of you that might be wanting that in that one-on-one coaching, just know I am gonna be devoting so much time to that that I'm really only gonna be taking like maybe one or two more one-on-one coaching clients. So after that, Phil's, I'll end up having a wait list. So if that's something you've been debating, I just want you to like check in with your gut. And if it feels right, reach out. You can schedule, we do like a 50-minute vibe check call first. Because I don't just I gotta make sure that like you're ready, I'm ready, it's a fit. Um, because it's a huge investment for me to go in on you for those three months. And I do, my clients know I go all in on just like fucking loving and seeing and pouring into you in these beautiful ways that open up all these possibilities. So if that's something you've been considering, check in and reach out if that is a fit. And um, yeah, just know that there's exciting things coming in the future. Like I said, I may be looking for some beta testers, um, as I'm considering like a membership program to the community and um ultimately doing some group coaching, which I think will be amazing. I I just see so much potential for this community. And and there's really, I don't think there's anything else like it, like what I want to build, um, a space with other women considering divorce. I just if I had known when, you know, if there was something like this when I was considering divorce, it just would have meant the world to talk to other women going through it, to watch other women getting coached who are specifically asking about and going through the same stuff as me, I think I would have felt so much less alone, uh, which can be a real problem when we're considering divorce, especially if nobody in our families or our community really gets it or sees us. Lots of exciting things coming. Um, till next week.