It's been a while since I've recorded an episode and given you  an update. But today I want to just give you a quick insight on what I have been doing on my sabbatical. I recently gave a Life Lately Instagram stories update. I just did a photo dump in my stories sharing what the past few months have been like for me.

And during one of the Q and A polls, somebody asked what in the world have you been doing since you've been on sabbatical? So I want to , Give you a high level overview of how I've been spending the last few months. I am a little over five months into my sabbatical And  I don't have a set date on when I plan to take coaching clients back on I'm just giving myself permission to rest and be in this season for as long as my body is  requesting it of me.

And I'm super, super deeply grateful to be in this season. But I want to give you a quick update. If I had to categorize what these past five and a half ish months have been, it really has been transitioning from being that girl to becoming that woman.  I'm in my early thirties and I have spent my entire adult life  learning how to secure the bag, being on my Hawk Hustle  getting the money, getting the degrees, getting the corporate jobs, then transitioning into building a business.

I had a business in college and then,  if you've been following my journey along for the last seven or eight years, I've been running this online coaching business and my entire adult life has  been purely focused on financial security and financial stability. And, that's  something I am,  grateful for because I had the mindset that I had in my twenties is I want to spend my twenties making money.

I want to spend my thirties really stacking my money. And I want to spend my forties,  enjoying my money. And that's something I've been telling myself for the past decade. My plan came to fruition. But, I think it's really interesting that since I've been on sabbatical, I've noticed things that I think, I shouldn't say I've noticed, I've always known, but I have become more aware of the other areas of my life I have either completely discarded or totally neglected.

And those have been the areas I've really been replenishing over the past five and a half months since I've been taking the sabbatical and on this break. Like I made pancakes for the very first time a month and a half ago and ever, like making pancakes from scratch, cooking on the stove, making pancakes.

That was the first time I've ever done it. And there's a lot of firsts that to me seem very like basic and simple, like normal life skills, but it's just not where my energy and focus was my entire adult life. I really felt like this season has been transitioning into becoming that woman and.  Really feeling this sense of assurance, feeling this sense of  self worth and inner confidence on a much like grander level. That's more derived from like me, from like the inside of me, the interior of me, how I perceive myself, what I look and what I when I look in the mirror versus kind of that confidence or that quote unquote sense of self value or self worth being predicated based off of like external factors.

And that is something that I think just over time as you mature into adulthood and as you mature as a woman I know for me those are things that I've just learned over the years. And I think just depending on what your starting ground was I, a lot of my sense of self worth was  really dictated based off of external validation or external accomplishments.

A lot of my earlier years of life was really preset on like me proving something to myself, exceeding the odds of what is expected of me. A black woman, in america and or just li  know, trying to be good e the people that I quote o life and people that I wa my life noticed me.

And y there was a, there's a se a lot of our lives and I guess calibrate that and since I've been on sabbatical, it's been really good for me, especially in those areas.  There's eight categories of things that I've been doing since I've been on sabbatical. If there's anything that you want me to dive into deeper, if you'd like a little bit more insight on, if you're listening to this on Spotify, there's a Q and a box.

You can just leave a comment down there. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment, or if you are listening to this somewhere else, just, either you can send me an email or send me a DM on Instagram and just let me know if you, if there's an aspect of this you want me to dive into deeper, or if there's links or things like that you want me to share with you.

I feel like this sabbatical has been like my grown woman glow up.  One thing that I think is also important to know is that during the sabbatical, I'm not working with any coaching clients.

And so I have a lot of free time. I'm not creating marketing content. I'm not launching offers. I'm not doing any coaching delivery.  I'm literally just pouring into myself and focusing on Jerusha. So eight categories. The first. thing that I've been doing since I've been on sabbatical is really   📍 understanding my nutrition and getting better at  cooking and , being more self aware of the food that I'm putting into my body.

 So some of the things that I did at the very beginning of this,  I met with a naturopath doctor about a year and a half ago and I got a bunch of blood work and testing done. Part of the reason why I met with a naturopath doctor a year and a half ago is because I noticed for an extended period of time, I was just super, super sluggish in the morning.

And I did not know why. I would get 8, 9, 10 hours of sleep and still wake up exhausted. Come to find out after  I did my blood work got my testing results back, I have really low cortisol levels in the morning. And something that my naturopath doctor had told me is that part of that was just because of stress.

Being a business owner, running your own business, that comes with a load of stress. A lot of silent stress that  maybe doesn't show up because if you're like me. You're probably high performing and you probably are very high functioning Despite whatever stressors may be coming into your life and  because I have been running my business for seven years  because of the amount of stress that I had been under for such a long period of time, it was starting to fry my circuits.

And my naturopath doctor at the time said, if you continue at this pace without making any changes in your diet and your fitness and reducing the things that are creating stress in your life, you probably have another nine to 12 months before you get yourself into  actual burnout. 

Getting the testing done and I've heard countless stories from peers of mine who have experienced burnout, been hospitalized because of burnout. Whether that's burnout that's induced from their business or burnout and stress that is induced from their personal life. Like baby, I can learn the lessons without having to personally experience the struggle.

 That was my first wake up call. It was like, okay, I need to start making some changes and adjustments. . It's really difficult, I think, to make dramatic changes while you're still in stressful environments. So it was this very slow, transitionary thing over like the first nine months.

And then as I went into sabbatical, that's really where I started regulating my nervous system and really making some more of these,  significant changes that my body was requiring of me. But when it comes to food, one of the tests that I did a year and a half ago, I got a food intolerance test done.

And that was really insightful for me to get a better understanding of what's easy for my body to digest. What causes me  gut or health issues when I eat it in excess. And that just helped me start to rearrange my diet and be more mindful of what I eat. I also, when I went on sabbatical, I started doing food journaling.

Because I was calorie deficient, vitamin deficient and I wasn't, I just wasn't eating enough and I wasn't eating enough of like nutritious meals on a consistent enough basis. So for the probably the first six weeks, eight weeks of my sabbatical, I would journal my food and  I wanted to just become aware of what I was putting into my body.

I wasn't even like at the point yet where I was ready to make changes. So I would track my food, see what I was eating. see what was like, when I ate this, how did my body react? Did I, was I super bloated? Did it make me sluggish? Did it give me energy? And I just tracked those things for the first two months.

And then after that is when I really started okay, how can I start making incremental changes when it comes to my diet? So I started following more people on Instagram that  shared meal planning and shared cooking recipes. And I really started to , Create what I call my forever meal plan, which is what are just staples that I can have ingredients on hand in my fridge so that when it comes time to think about what I need to eat, I don't feel this  overwhelmed from decision fatigue of not knowing what to decide.

So that's like a lot of what I've been doing. I've been just like Experimenting every week, trying new recipes, cooking for my friends, cooking for myself. I'm at the phase now I'm almost again five and a half months into sabbatical. I'm at a place now where I I know how to meal plan finally.

I know how to properly grocery shop for myself. I have like good routines around that. And I have a pretty decent cadence. I'd say I'm like, I'm not great yet. Okay, don't get me wrong  i'm not I have not perfected this i'm not fully domesticated in this area But i'm in a really healthy place where , I meal prep my green juice once a week.

I will meal plan and meal prep like lunches and a few dinner ideas and at least have the ingredients on hand and sometimes prepare some of those ingredients in advance. And I normally will experiment and try at least  one new recipe a week based off of something I saw on somebody's Instagram, like food vlog account.

So  that's been a big chunk of my time. It's just like learning how to cook and learning how to feed myself properly. . The second thing has  been around fitness. And again, a lot of this again was derived from my test results and my cortisol levels. Because my cortisol was low and my stress levels were high, both in my business and in my personal life doing  high intensity workouts or workouts that would increase my blood pressure were not good for me.

In the beginning,  literally all my body could handle was just walking. I could not go to the gym. I would try to go to the gym and lift weights. I would literally be in lifetime fitness crying on the main floor. That is not cute. Because my body just couldn't handle the stress. So for the first two or three months, all I could really do was walk.

And I was just focused on in the morning, try to go for a walk as often as you can. And I would probably go like maybe two to three times a week. I would just walk around my neighborhood,  within an hour or two hours of me waking up. And then I just gradually increased what my body could tolerate.

I'm at a place now, again, five and a half months in, very slow incremental improvements. But now I am doing low intensity workouts, so that for me looks like Pilates. I do Lagree Pilates.  I'm at a cadence of about once or twice a week depending on my travel schedule. And then just literally like a week ago, I started strength training again. So I found an account again on Instagram, there's two girls I love to follow that have really good workout plans that work well for me.

And their body type and their body physique is like similar to mine. I used to follow Makeup Shayla, baby. She is bodied down and there is no amount of work that I can do that will make my body ever look like hers So while I love makeup Shayla and like love, how she shares about her fitness and her diet routine I have okay, Jereshia, you need to follow People who have a similar physique as you so that you can have realistic expectations around what you can look like After putting in the reps.

So right now I do pilates once or twice a week. I strength train  two times a week and then so that's four days a week that i'm committed to working out either Lagree pilates or strength training And then the other days are either rest days or i'll just go walk around the neighborhood and I also joined  a pickleball league and we'll talk about that a little bit later, but I have pickleball once a week So that's like pickleball pilates and Strength training are  the three things that I'm primarily doing right now for my fitness So that's been really good for me The other thing when it comes to fitness and health is again based off of my blood work I started taking supplements and I know that supplements are not  a fix or a you know Some people have different opinions about whether or not you should be taking vitamin supplements or you should be getting it from your diet But when you are in a position like I am where my levels were so depleted  I needed the supplements just to get me back to normal.

So I'm taking my supplements now. I've been on B12. I've been on omega three. I have been taking magnesium citrate at night and then my, I just got my blood work redone a couple months ago. So there's a new,  I can't even remember what it's called, but it's something to help with stress and my adrenals.

So that's been now incorporated into my routine as well. So yeah the blood work was really important because again that data helped influence and really helped guide me on how I need to be making adjustments in my day to day lifestyle without just  mimicking what I see somebody online doing without any context.

So those are the first two things. The third thing is really fun and making friends.  I don't know if you are like me and struggle with this, but I feel like when you're in your thirties making, I'm like, how do I make new friends? I, a couple of years ago, I relocated and moved to Southern California.

I don't know anybody out here, but me, myself, and  I need to make friends. I need like all of my other girlfriends, live in different parts of the country. And we have to plan a trip and fly to each other to see each other and we FaceTime regularly, but I want local girlfriends.

So some of the things i've been doing both on the friend side and  the fun side is one be making new friends like one thing that i'm very intentional with and have been with since i've been on sabbatical Especially the last two or three months Is I will go to  local meetups And one thing I'm very grateful for, like I'm, I will forever be grateful for Instagram because this is how Instagram changed my life from a financial business perspective, but it also has been the thing that has introduced me to new things that I wouldn't normally have access to.

You can find Instagram accounts of people who just like host local events. There's a girl that puts together events intentionally for other women to meet each other. So I've been going to like maybe, I went to maybe two or three of those events.

I went to this overnight Galentine's Day event back in February and I met a group of really great girls. And we still stick together now. So we joined, like five of us joined a Pickleball League, four of us joined a Pickleball League together. And then we also will  routinely get together for dinner or  just different outings.

I'm going to a Padres baseball game next week with these girls.  It's been really a blessing. If you're looking to expand your social circle locally, put yourself out there, go to the event and follow through,  actually follow up with somebody that you meet at the event and you never know what it might turn into.

Outside of that, I've been dating myself. And really just learning how to have fun with myself that is not predicated on making money. For somebody who has been an entrepreneur for a very long time where money has been the number one priority and my number one focus. I didn't have hobbies. Like when people would ask me, Jay, what do you do for fun?

I would be like, make money, create marketing strategies, help people create their business plans and create their business models and their offers. Like fun for me didn't really exist outside of making money. And maybe outside of like travel and usually when I traveled back when I was working it was either for work or for a business conference or a business event or it was to travel so that I could literally do nothing and recover from the amount of work that I had been putting myself under and I'm like, I need to figure out what I just enjoy.

So one thing that I started with was , what were the things that brought me joy as a child and how can I , recreate or give myself the childhood I wish I had. And so that's what I started with. I used to love painting. I used to love arts and crafts. I love just like crocheting and creating things.

I love doing my nails. I loved,  doing my own makeup and  doing my hair. So I started with that and then now I pretty much have a cadence now where I  have solo date nights with myself. I'll look at what's going on locally in the area. I look at events at the museums that are putting on.

I will just go on Eventbrite or things like that and just see who's doing what events. And every month I will look and decide, okay,  what's a new experience I want to try or what's something I want to do. And that might be going to a concert. I recently went to a calligraphy class.

I went to a pottery class and invited some girlfriends and we like painted our word of the year on mugs and different objects. I've just been really intentional with that. That, when it comes to fun I've been reading fiction books, and I've been, like, starting to read fiction again.

Those are all things I loved doing as a kid.  I started doing it with myself now as an adult.  Other things I've been doing is again, really putting myself out there. I had never had a dance recital in my entire life. I always wanted to be put in dance class as a kid. That would just never was my reality.

So I put myself in a dance class. like sensual floor play dance class. It was an eight week class. You learn a routine over the eight weeks at the end of the eight weeks you perform. Baby.  Okay. I'm in my early thirties, having my first dance recital in red lingerie and six inch stripper heels. That was one of the best experiences I've had since I've been on sabbatical very much outside of my comfort zone, but so much fun.

So that has just been, when it comes to this third category of fun and floor play,  I've been dating myself, having more fun with myself, trying new things to see what I like and what I don't like, and just being really intentional with nurturing my existing friendships, in addition to creating new friendships as well. 

The fourth thing is family time. 

This is something I've really struggled with for the majority of my life because of the dysfunction in my family dynamic. I've always been the person that has really craved and desired to have family gatherings, hosting family, doing things with family, I experienced it a little bit as a kid my uncle James, who was my great uncle, and when my aunt was alive, they would really be the glue to bring the family together for Thanksgiving or Easter, but as people are getting older and are passing away, my family right now doesn't really have the, that glue structure anymore.

I've been really putting forth an effort to make  and spend quality time with my loved ones. And if you are somebody that's maybe in a similar family dynamic situation as me, I don't have close relationships with either one of my parents. My grandmother raised me.  

She just turned 92 years old. And I'm really closer to my cousins than I am my actual siblings It's sometimes knowing how to navigate that can be tough but if it's a desire that you actually have I encourage you to Extend the invitation and just put forth a little bit of effort So something I have been doing since i've been on sabbatical I recently flew my grandmother out to southern california and we spent a couple days together, which was a riot My grandma wore me out For her to be 92 years old, I do not know how she has so much energy.

I was so tired. I'm like, ma'am, I need to go to bed. I need some rest. I have been, just making sure to FaceTime and call my cousins. and just showing up for the moments that matter. I recently, both of my cousins asked me to be a godparent to their kids.  So that just warmed my little heart and I think that's really been helpful too.

I think when kids come into the equation again it really does something to bring family back together. But I've just been really intentional with that, flying back home and just to be present, just to be present with my family. Be there for the kids first birthday parties, like things like that have been really important to me.

So I've been making sure that that's being prioritized and not something that's been put on the back burner.  The fifth thing that I have been doing is family planning for myself. Like I am somebody who  very type A feels like everything needs to be perfect. All the money needs to be in the account.

 Things need to be in a certain order before I'm ready to take on new responsibilities. And one thing that's this sabbatical has really taught me is that if you are somebody who typically tries to control a lot of things in your life, if you try to control how you have kids when you have kids.

If you try to control like the intimate relationships in your life, you try to control your partner, if you try to control your friendship, if you're like the person that is butt clenched all the time trying to control everything,  I am here to tell you that A lot of that control is rooted in fear.

It is not, it's typically not coming from a place of peace, and it's not coming from a place of freedom, it's not coming from a place of security, it's coming from a place of scarcity, it's coming from a place of fear, and it's coming from a place of just not really great energy. And that is something that this sabbatical has really taught me.

I have never in my life felt like I was ready to have kids. I've always, quite honestly, been really afraid of giving birth. A lot of that is because of like my fear around family dynamics, partly because of what I experienced growing up as a kid,  I never really saw what good looked but I had a very clear picture of what bad looked like and what I absolutely do not want to replicate.

So I think that when I have always envisioned having children and being a mother to me,  I'm not the person that's Oh my God, I want to have babies. I'm the person that's I want to have a really strong partnership. I care about partnership and parenthood. Like most crucial and making sure that I'm with somebody and I'm also in a season where I have The peace within myself to know that I can show up as a good partner with whoever I am having kids with and also I have the capacity to be a good parent like Having a baby is not just having a baby  choosing to have children means that  you're choosing to be a parent To somebody and there's a level of responsibility that comes with that So I think that i've just taken that i've taken that role very Seriously because I don't want to be a single mom.

I don't want to be a single parent by choice. I know that things happen, but like by choice, I don't want to choose that. And part of that really dynamic is really Jay how much reparenting have you done for yourself to navigate the dynamics with your own parents and how that has impacted you and how you show up in the world?

, how well do you currently now take care of yourself? Because I think that's going to be a direct reflection of how you take care of your child. And also what type of partner do you want to be and how is that being prioritized and how does that stack up in the midst of all the other things that you have going on in your life.

And I've never felt comfortable having kids. That's also part of the reason why I have never had kids up until this point. That's been a very intentional choice not to bring children into this world. But since I've been on sabbatical,  I really feel like I'm in this nesting season where I am. I am  doing a lot of this work and really recalibrating myself and quite honestly,  coming back home to myself where I do now feel  safe and secure.

And I just feel like  I have the capacity to care for another human being, not from a place of I want to have this baby so that it can love me, but from this place of, I feel full of love with how I love myself. I feel like I'm at a place now where I'm learning how to take care of myself in a really intentional way.

And I value myself enough to be mindful of what food I'm putting into my body. I value myself enough now to be mindful of how I work out and how I take care of my body. I value myself enough now to know how to nurture my needs and explore pleasure and desire and, invest in friendships and community.

It took me a long time to navigate those elements of life.  So I've been doing a lot of family planning. Like I'm, don't be surprised if you are about to become the next internet auntie. I'm like ready to have kids. So not saying I'm going to pop up and get pregnant tomorrow, but I think, I'm like ready for that.

Like I feel a sense of peace around that, which is something that I've never really felt in my entire life. And I feel it now, which I'm super, super grateful for. So yeah so things I've been doing in that arena, I've been, again, following accounts on Instagram. I've been listening to more podcasts or reading more books about parenthood and Just learning the different ways that people choose to parent their children and just exploring.

I just I don't know what the right way is but I'm just really curious right now of  what are the different ways people are choosing to do it. So that's been some of the content  that I've been consuming and  things I've been curious about and exploring and things I've been having conversations with my other friends that are parents.

I've just been really curious about, like, how are people choosing to parent. What does motherhood look like? What does parenting look like? What does partnership look like? It's just something that I've been curious about.  

The next thing for me has really been around forgiveness. And it is really interesting how  I was really good at masking a lot of my grief. And a lot of my anger and a lot of my resentment through chasing accomplishments and success, I think that different people harness those emotions in different ways.

Sometimes you can be, angry, resentful, grieving, and  that will matriculate itself into like substance abuse or alcohol or overeating. For me, I really harnessed Those really strong emotions until becoming successful and making money.  But either way it goes, it's that was my coping mechanism.

I think that is something that, the sabbatical has really taught me is we all have coping mechanisms. They all might look different. But my coping mechanism was chasing external achievement.  My coping mechanism was making money. My coping mechanism was my business. And while that had really positive outcomes at some point, , It catches up to you and it's okay, you can't keep outrunning your grief.

You can't keep outrunning this anger that you have and this resentment that you have in this like these big Emotions that you have had for a very long time. You can't keep ignoring them and  I will say that like I kept trying to outrun it and  Now looking back, I didn't realize this is what I was doing in the moment, but looking back is like the more I try, the more that I was trying to control every element of my life.

That was me trying to outrun this grief and anger that was that wanted to be addressed and needed to be let out  if you notice that like you're in a state where you're like constantly trying to control everything you're  Ridiculously type a about everything you're trying to micromanage everything that might be a signal that it's time for you to slow down  that was it for me Like I know it took me a year to give myself permission to go on the sabbatical even though  I had been You Preparing the business for it for about 18 months before I chose to leave and it was really difficult because I'm like if I slow down  Subconsciously, I knew I'm like you're gonna have to not have to but you're gonna have the opportunity to address these things that you have been avoiding and I think sometimes I was afraid of slowing down.

I was afraid of reducing my speed and reducing my pace because I was afraid of dealing with this with quite honestly these big emotions. So for me, when it comes to  forgiveness and grieving,  I needed some tools to be able to navigate these emotions. So I took an online class around  grief and heartbreak and self love, which was really nourishing for me.

It was also really heavy. Because , I'm in this season where I have nothing but free time. I wake up, there's nothing on my calendar all day long. And it's what are you gonna do with your time? And, sometimes sitting in the big emotions were just like really hard to do.

And I am deeply grateful that I was actually in a season where I didn't have to worry about money or have to worry about performance or worry about work. All I had to really do was just like focus on taking care of myself and giving myself the space to grieve. So like the first like three to four months of my sabbatical was really like an emotional rollercoaster.

rollercoaster. Like it was, every day I didn't know how I was going to wake up feeling, but it was a lot of grief. It was a lot of, it was just a lot of processing really big emotions. And I will say taking that course helped again, give me  tools around how to navigate my grief, navigate my heartbreak,  navigate,  just things that have been impacting me for years.

 The biggest thing that I've been working on forgiving in this season is forgiving my father. It's still something that I'm really wrestling with and struggling with. I met my mother when I was 25, and I feel like I did a lot of that chapter felt closed, and I got a lot of able to process a lot of emotions when I met her, but there is something with my dad that I'm still even navigating now. 

So that's something I'm still working through and pacing myself through. But outside of that, it's also just been a season of me learning how to forgive myself. I think that we can be really hard on ourselves sometimes, and, not sometimes, a lot of us can be really tough on ourselves. And it's just I've been really working on actively forgiving myself, and just being kind to myself, and loving on myself, and nurturing myself.

And part of that, it encompasses all the other things I've already mentioned I think that part of the way that I used to punish myself was by not experiencing pleasure. It's this weird subconscious thing that's even happening. Cause it's okay, think about the food that you put in your body.

The food that you put in your body is a direct reflection of how much you love yourself. And I used to be like I like Chick fil A. I like, McDonald's French fries. I like eating these things, even though they showed up on my intolerance test that my body literally doesn't like it. It's we are so good at tricking ourselves into saying these foods taste good.

I don't want to be restrictive. And I'm not saying that you have to be restrictive, but It's like you know that you're doing something that your body is going to revolt against after you do it Why do we continue to do it to ourselves? For me it boiled down to there was a part of me that just didn't love myself enough to make a make a decision that I know that would make me feel good after the choice was made And that has been something that I've been really working through of you know You're you'd rather doom scroll on Instagram than go to the gym Why? 

Because of the part of you that like, I think for me, a part of me really struggled with self worth, self value, and self love. And that was reflected in the choices that I was making around my food, my fitness, how I had fun, how I experienced pleasure, how I had capacity for community and friendships.

Because it's like I would make choices that would make me sluggish. I would make choices that would make my body feel bad. I would make choices that would really isolate me and make me feel more lonely. And it was like, you're lonely because of choices that you're making. You're not lonely because people don't want to be around you.

And that was  a really big wake up call. So this season has been  recalibrating and getting back into alignment with those things and just making sure that. I'm more mindful of the choices that I am making and not just choosing things because I don't value myself enough. And really working on rebuilding that self love, that self worth, and that self value. 

The last thing is my femininity. And if you know me, I have been, a lot of my life has been functioning in a very masculine, dominant energy source. Being an engineer,  and going into corporate America, it is a very masculine environment. So like I think I was conditioned to survive and to succeed in that which meant You know leading in my masculine energy And then building a business does require a good amount of masculine energy too to achieve that that level of success and output but  i've been really working on What does femininity mean?

What does it look like for me to rest in my femininity more and just really learning the differences between masculine energy, feminine energy, and how I show up. So again, I'm a learner and I'm, I learned really well through seeing things modeled and through learning environments. So I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, reading books, taking classes, online workshops around feminine energy and femininity.

And I'm also really working on in my intimate romantic relationships, how can I rest in my femininity more? Because one thing that was very true for me for a very long time is that I was masculine in my work environment and I would come home and be masculine in my romantic environment. And if you're with a masculine man, that is not really going to jive all that well.

Because like the, there needs to be some balance of the energetics. And it's not to say that like you're supposed to be all of one, none of another, but it's just I wanted to learn how to.  to rest and navigate and to shift and mold into both energies and feel safe in both. And part of, I think the reason why I struggled with my femininity before is a lot of this, a lot of this goes back to the previous category of forgiveness is that I had a really difficult time relying on men.

I had a very difficult time feeling safe depending on other people. I had a, especially in romantic relationships or very personal relationships. So in those senses, what I would do to show love is I would control. I would try to control the environment, control when things would happen. I'd be the one planning everything, controlling all the details, versus observing and  receiving.

I had a very difficult time with receiving. And again, that was my own stuff. That has nothing to do with other people in my life that I had to. everything to do with like my own baggage and my own stuff and just stuff I needed to navigate and my sense of like my scarcity and the feelings that I had around that.

So learning how to care for myself has really helped me rest in my femininity a lot more. Also taking classes, reading books, listening to podcasts has been really helpful just to expand my perspective on what this stuff actually means and What does it look like in action in real life?

I've been doing a lot of releasing control and just surrendering to life, surrendering to God, surrendering to the environment around me. And for somebody who was very, who's typically in control in type a, I'm here to tell you that. When you do loosen your butt cheeks and just relax, it's amazing that all the things that you want, you'll still end up getting.

And that's been like probably one of the, again, another big eye opener in this season is that I used to work so hard to get the things that I wanted. And a lot of that hard work was totally unnecessary. Yes, work is required, but there's more than one way to work. Like how hard can you work at just resting and receiving? 

That can be hard work, but a lot of the things I've wanted in this season, I'm like, Jereshia, you're not gonna be the one to , control and force the outcome. Just set the intention, state the desire, and wait. Rest. Receive. And I will guarantee you like, so much of the things that I've wanted in this season have literally shown up for me without me having to force my way to obtain it.

So I've been practicing that a lot. It is a practice. It is something I'm still working through and have not. It's not Oh, Jereshia has all the answers. No, girl. I just, I'm asking myself a lot more questions and being  more open to exploring different ways in which things can come to me. I've been approaching life with just more ease, more comfort, more pleasure, more desire.

That probably the other thing around my femininity is like creating more rituals and routines for myself. So that's like my skincare routine, my self care routines, my wellness routines, my beauty routines, my self maintenance routines,  I hired recently a color analyst to analyze my color, analyze my bone structure, analyze my tones and features to tell me like what colors look best on my skin tone, what colors look best to highlight my features.

I recently got my hair cut. I totally did a transformation with my hair. I based off of like the results of that color analyst and that color analysis that I got done. And then I've just been building routines in for me,  getting my massages, my facials. I'm going to my aesthetician just like just routines of doing my everything shower once a week,  just taking care of myself.

 I think that for a very long time, I didn't prioritize it. I was like taking care of yourself to this magnitude is not necessary. You do these things when you're burnt out or when you're tired to like recoup, but  these things were not like in my normal routine where they were prioritized before work and I'm just really grateful for this season to be able to practice this level of care for myself without having to worry about work because for me it was very difficult for me to do both in the midst of  the stress of work and you know being responsible and carrying that weight in addition to taking care of myself  the final thing has been really around like my sexuality And pleasure and desire and pleasure and desire doesn't always have to attach to  sexual intimacy, but just, I've been learning a lot more about, I've been really curious about sexuality.

I'm really curious about pleasure and desire. And  again, just reading books, listening to podcasts, exploring that more. It's just so interesting how many of us will. Are so quick to cut off desire and cut off Pleasure like we will literally, tell ourselves like oh, we're not allowed to experience that.

I can't have that or My orgasm can't be that good or whatever it might be and it's just like it's wild that you know I've been i'm just becoming aware of the limits i've been putting on myself around  pleasure and desire And again, all this stuff is not sexual Some of it is i've been very curious about just like how other people are experiencing sexual pleasure in their romantic relationships And the different types of relationships people are having and it's not to say that i'm like looking to go rogue in regards to My sexuality, but it's just been something i've been curious about because I think that there is a level of freedom That you have to possess in order to experience heightened  levels of pleasure because you have to open your body up to experiencing and receiving those things And there's a level of  freedom and peace that you need to feel within yourself to even allow yourself to go there And that has been something i've been just really curious about but even with pleasure and desire  I've been doing is like logging my mood on a daily basis So there's a habit tracker that I use on my  iphone and that it also allows you to track your mood So i've been noticing and noticing the patterns of like when do I feel my absolute best?

 When do I feel this sense of pure joy and pleasure and desire and just like juicy deliciousness of life And i've been able to  track back on when my mood was and  what I did that day to experience that So for example getting my hair done i've been doing my own hair for a very long time  I haven't gone to the salon on a regular basis and  years.

But I realized that going to the salon and getting a blowout and letting them do my hair where the, like that day I felt an extreme level of pleasure and desire. Like I felt so good. So I'm like, okay, that can be a ritual now where that is a form of pleasure and desire of just going to get your hair done and feeling incredible afterwards.

And I went and got myself something to eat. I got some orange wine I just, it felt so good and juicy. So like I'm, those have been, that's like the last thing I've been really exploring, but a lot of this, if you look at the themes, across all eight different things that I've been doing since I've been on sabbatical, it's really a lot of just like self awareness, self discovery.

And  realignment like coming back home into myself and activating different parts of myself that have been neglected or shut off because I thought that was either what was required or it was a part of myself that I just wasn't yet ready to  experience  So that is what my sabbatical has been looking like.

I'm excited for the next few months as well. And, people keep asking, Jay, what's going to be next? Or what's the business going to look like? I don't really know. But one thing I am deeply grateful for is that whatever the business looks like on the other end of this, it's going to be rooted from a totally different place of what my business has been over the last seven to eight years.

My business was fully , built from a place of survival. You  Get to a place of financial security, build up my personal net worth. That was 100 percent the focus.  And now it's whatever gets created is going to be from a place of more pleasure, be from a place that is more activated from my feminine energy and just  the feminine side of me.

It's not going to, I don't think it's going to be so masculine and aggressive as it felt like before. And I'm just, I don't know. I'm really excited to see what it looks like and it's going to be built in a way that has family first as a focus. The way that I built my business before there was no space for children in my business model previously.

In the way in which I was running the business, in the way in which I was operating the business. So I know that whatever gets created on the other side of this will be with  having kids in mind, having a very full life and a full self in mind. So I'm excited to see what comes on the other end of it, thank you so much for listening again. If there's any part of this that you want me to go into deeper links that you want me to share again, just leave it in the comments. of either on Spotify, you can leave it in the question bubble on YouTube, you can leave it in the comments or just reply to an email of mine or again, send me a direct message, tag me that you're listening to it on Instagram story so that I can do a part two or a follow up.

And I'm just really excited to share this journey with you and to, keep you up to date on what my life has been like, but   📍 just   📍 thanks for rocking with me. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting me and showing up for me in every season of my life. Many of you have, seen this entire journey from the very beginning back in 2016, 2017 until now. Some of you might be listening and may be new to me, but just know that I appreciate you deeply.

So much. Until next time, be blessed.