Hello everyone. Welcome to episode eight of a Life in Color. I have spent the last day and a half at a soccer tournament screaming against my better judgment. I know when I'm sitting on the sidelines, one, I don't actually know much about soccer, but I get so caught up in the energy on the sidelines that I'm totally, that mom. I end up yelling and screaming and I actually don't have that strong of a voice. So I then I end up coughing and, it's very, very windy and dry outside today. So if my voice sounds a little rough, that is why, But it's definitely a gorgeous day. The sky is so brilliantly blue and against all of the trees that are still hanging onto those leaves, and they're all kind of rust colored with a little bit of yellow. It is gorgeous outside, and I actually just really love windy days. Anyway, I always have. today I want to tell you about what it feels like to build. A life from your inner world. I'm not gonna talk about the strategy or the tools that I'm using or the logistics. I wanna talk to you about the emotional journey that this has been so far. I wanna share the story that I don't think I've fully said out loud. I've said some pieces of it. This isn't the polished version. It will just be my truth. These last few months have felt like. I've been kind of living at the threshold of two different lives. I've got the old life that I built from scratch that I worked hard to build, that I'm proud of. And then there is this new life that is trying to come through me. That's it's trying to be born through me. So instead of waiting until I have figured it all out and I can kind of lay out exactly for you what it is, what you need to do step by step in a very clean manner. instead of waiting for that I wanna tell you as it exists right now, and we'll check in on this occasionally again, but I just want to be as vulnerable as I can, as open as I can about what this has been like and hopefully. if you all are feeling inspired to move in a different direction in any part of your lives, this will at least validate some parts of it for you. If you, experience any of these same emotions. This is not a story about arriving somewhere, okay. I have not arrived anywhere. I'm very much still on this journey, it's not a conclusion. This is just my story of becoming, I'm still in the middle of this shift. I'm still balancing two selves and I'm still learning how to listen and kind of just figure this out as I go, and it's still very scary you all know the backstory of the way that all of this began, but I wanna go back a little further than that and talk to you about what it felt like before I made the decision to explore this, new way of living that allows me to be fully authentic. For the last few years of my career, and in my life, I knew that I was not fully satisfied with how I was spending my days. I knew that the work that I was doing wasn't really super exciting to me and that it didn't really feel like it came naturally, even though I was good at it and I continued to be, recognized and get promoted. it always felt like I was trying really hard and exhausted at the end of the day and at the end of the week. It just seemed like the people around me had an easier time navigating what we were doing than I did. but I sort of accepted that as this is what it is to have a job and this is just what it's like to be me in this role or in life really in general. And I actually, so I had been at the same company for over a decade and I actually left to go to a new job that kind of fell in my lap. One of my old bosses called and said, Hey, I'm working at this company and I think you'd be great. You should submit your resume and talk to them. I wasn't looking for a new job. So in the interview, I remember being a little bit, not disrespectful, a little bit flippant, I was interviewing sort of on a whim and as a favor to my old boss. And as I was talking to the owner of the company, I started asking questions about like, why are you doing it like that? I would think that you would wanna do X, Y, Z. And just based on my previous experience, and that ended up being the reason I got the job. It was a good experience but it became clear that I needed to find something else to do. I was not even close to being ready to, step out into a totally different career. I was pretty burned out after that. when it came time to look for something new. I remember looking across all industries at all sorts of different options even companies that I was excited about or that felt a little bit more colorful or creative, as soon as I was reading the job description, I just got this sinking feeling in my stomach because I just didn't want to have to do this all over again. I just remember feeling like a very strong sense of No inside my body. But no wasn't an option. I have to work. We're a two income family. I have to help provide for the family and, I didn't know what other option to even be looking at, so I came back to my original company. And, you know, I already had networks there, I already understood how the company worked. And even though I had this full body no experience, at least I knew exactly what it would be like and it wouldn't demand from me and energy and extra directions beyond just my job description. But that was a very clear moment for me it went from a low level, whisper on a daily basis of like, isn't there more? Like, is this really what it needs to feel like every day to like a, no, this is not what it needs to feel like, find something else. So I will say for the last couple of years, I've had kinda one foot out the door I am a person that makes decisions based on feeling. I don't know if you've ever taken the Myers-Briggs test, but I am definitely a feeling person. that's how I assess a situation on how it feels And so when I was doing that job, I was just always, it's like I have a set of antenna that are, listening all the time, looking for signs, looking for ideas and things that might have legs that I could, jump onto, or like a rope that I could grab onto and jump off the ladder. I remember looking up that ladder at my boss and my boss's boss and all the way up and looking at what used to be very appealing to me. I used to feel really ambitious about wanting to be as high up as I could get, and especially at a big giant company like that, if I could be one of those, really sharp, super stylish women giving talks and being interviewed and that always appealed to me and all of a sudden none of it. It just didn't at all. It, it was so clear to me that this was not the place for me to be and that I couldn't rest. I needed to find a new path to be on. I just remember it feeling like this doesn't look like me. I remember multiple occasions when I would be sitting in a meeting and looking around at all of the other people and being impressed by them and feeling a little bit, a little bit of imposter syndrome for sure. I think that's always been there no matter what, but also feeling like I know that I have all of these other things to offer the world, all of this other knowledge inside of me. That these people will never know about because there's no reason for me, there's not even a mechanism for me to express any of that here. And so I feel like the value that they have that I'm really impressed by my imposter syndrome is probably because I don't feel like those are the things that I have to offer the world. And so I'm trying to do these things and be these things that are. can I do it? Yes, And most of the time it's because I'm seeing what needs to be done and sort of emulating, but it's not the thing that I have that I think is most interesting about myself the things that I think can actually, provide value. Not someone else's value, but my specific. Special kind of value. And so it feels like imposter syndrome no matter how successful you are, because you're not being authentic. I wasn't being authentic. And that is, the thing that I think got louder and louder and louder inside of me. before a transformation ever announces itself the way that it did to me, it starts with restlessness, and that's what it was. Something deep inside of me was whispering. It's not gonna be this, not this anymore. You can do more. There is more. So I don't know if any of you have gotten to that point or if you're still in the phase where it's just a whisper in the back of your mind, or sort of low level discomfort with what you're doing every day, or if you're feeling uncomfortable, but you've kind of accepted that this just is what it is until you retire. I'm here to tell you that's not true, and I hope if you are feeling unfulfilled in what you're doing, that you are able to find some alternative place to spend your attention. You don't have to quit what you're doing, but I hope that you find a way to spend your days doing things that fill you up and do not deplete you entirely. when I rejoined this new job with one foot. I started looking and I started thinking about what could that be, and I started doing the things that I know filled me up. I did a lot of journaling. I created a habit where I would wake up every morning and grab my journal instead of my phone and just write whatever came out. I often have thoughts in the morning, either influenced by my dreams or by whatever I was thinking about while lying awake in the middle of the night, which I've been doing lately. some interesting things started to come out and then I started choosing moments carefully to speak these words out loud to people. I found some people that I trust at work or friends, and I would start to dribble in some of these ideas just to kind of test the waters and see, was there any kind of positive reinforcement or reaction that I thought might be widespread? A couple of things happened. I knew I had these paintings that were always well received, a couple of the ballerinas that I had already painted. I knew that people liked my art. I knew that I liked my art, right? I felt proud of it. I liked creating it. I felt drawn to thinking about it all the time. I started there and I thought, well, maybe I could sell my art. Maybe I could find a way to become one of those artists that can charge bajillions of dollars for their paintings and, call, that my full-time job. as I was looking at the paintings and I was thinking about what makes them valuable to me and what might make them valuable to someone else, that's when the idea of writing stories about them came to me I've talked about this before. The stories were always about the pieces of me that I felt these paintings represented. And so I wrote that set of myths what I thought I was building a few months ago was an art business, which is different from what is forming now and what has, been forming since then. And I have tried to stay as open as possible to, changes in ideas or just where my energy is being pulled. And it's been very interesting. I mean, even from the get go, even knowing that people like my art. Right from the get go. I felt like an imposter. I'm not a trained artist. I've never done this before. I haven't put in, decades of trial and error, and I don't even have sketchbooks that are full to the brim with little paintings like most artists do. I have a set of canvases because I just buy canvases at the store and I always paint on them. I don't have a fancy storage system. I don't have a fancy art studio. I just paint in my sunroom, so I already felt like a little bit audacious to try to create some kind of business to sell my paintings. And then the stories happened and I shared them with some of my friends and my husband and then the more I thought about them and the more I talked about them, they all came together into kind of a common world, and here we are. let's talk about what we've actually built so far. I have a business partner. She doesn't wanna be the face of the company, which I totally understand, but whenever I say we, that's what I'm talking about. I have this set of paintings that I created. The birth of the Elemental Primas and their world, which then extended into the emotional realms that we've talked about. in doing that, I really felt like my voice was returning to me. When you're quiet and you allow yourself to write and see what comes out. I kind of amazed myself in some cases. Like I would write and write and write and sometimes I would be like, oh my God, this is complete trash. And sometimes I would be like, whoa, that happened. Like, that's actually pretty good. I will say that it is very tempting to leverage chat, GPT or you know, other. Large language models to help you, design the business and come up with all the pieces. And that's fine. I won't say I never used it to come up with ideas or brainstorm, but it is important that you quiet all of that down and maintain your connection to your work because it can be really easy to just go with all of that. There's a lot of information out there, it's right at your fingertips, but it's not authentic. And I think it's important to keep your finger on your own pulse and make sure that what you're putting out there is yours and not the result of an algorithm or someone else's. Because what you possess is the thing that the world needs. That's the thing that's gonna differentiate whatever you build, whatever you're doing from whatever anybody else has been doing, you have to make sure that you keep it real and authentic. And also just for my mental wellbeing, I need to feel like whatever I'm putting out comes from me and not, whatever I was able to get the algorithm to feed to me. so we have the set of paintings, we have the journal that I've talked about, that has been it's one thing to create a painting, right? That's a piece of art with my hands. I created it, it exists. Creating the journal and turning that from a digital product, which is where I created it, into a physical product, has been absolutely excruciating because it's very hard, it turns out, to find a printer that will print the kind of book that we've created. Every page is custom art. Every page has colors on both sides of it. So it's not a journal. It's not like just a cover and then blank paper on the inside. It's like a book but I need it spiral bound. I need it to be, it needs to be a certain way. It needs to have a certain quality. But I will say this, these obstacles have done a couple of things. When you start a new venture. It is really easy to get a little bit confused. At least for me. I won't speak for you. For me, it's easy for me to get confused about my own boundaries and my own opinions when a whole bunch of other information gets mixed in. And so with this journal, when it started to look like maybe we couldn't have it just exactly as I thought it would be, but here are some other options. I try to be open to those and I start kind of considering those and eventually I have to get really clear about no. We can't sacrifice on this one boundary. Like it has to be paper that you can write on or else its function is negated. It has to be paper that's thick enough to hold stickers. That's the point, right? The colors have to look good. This is an art business, like it's a, product that has to be of a certain quality. there's parts of these obstacles that actually provide clarity to me rather than frustration. They also provide a lot of frustration, so I don't wanna be confusing there, you know the saying, what stands in the way, becomes the way. I don't know, someone turned that into basically the obstacle is the way. I think that that is so profound and so true, I kind of live by that, but I also feel like sometimes the universe is speaking to me a little bit, like slowing me down on purpose and saying not yet, this part needs more, it needs more soul, it needs more detail. It's just not there yet. It's not ready. it's like kind of a balance between Pushing my way through an obstacle because I know that on the other side I will be clearer, I will have stronger boundaries and the end product will exist. And also listening and knowing when to say okay, all right. It just seems like this isn't working. We're not gonna force it. Maybe it's just not ready yet. when it's ready, it will happen. yeah, that fire dancer journal. We're gonna throw that into that category. It's out in the world. It's not quite where I want it to be, but it's there. It's close, when it's ready, it will happen. I have had several signs. I interpret them as signs, universal hints that I'm going in the right direction. for one, every time I talk to any woman in the world about this business that I'm creating, every single one of them says yes, you're talking about me. That's me. I'm on the ladder and I don't want to be here. And I'm feeling unfulfilled and I don't know what to do, and I'm just staying here anyway, even though I'm miserable. this weekend I was watching K-Pop Demon Hunters. Okay. I've never seen it before as I'm watching it and the final song there is a line where she says, why did I cover up all the color inside of me? Or something like that. Hello? That's like the exact thesis of this company. that felt like a little clue. I just feel like there are little signs that speak to something inside of me that say, you're on the right path. this is actually something that exists out in the world. This is work that is worthwhile and valuable and keep going. It also feels like I'm waking up on the inside. I don't feel dead inside during the day anymore. I don't feel like an imposter. that's a lie. Sometimes I feel like an imposter when I'm doing new things, but it's a different feeling. It's because I know I'm doing something I don't know how to do. It's not because I'm really good at something, but it's not me. It's a different feeling. It started out as a really small flicker of curiosity and it has grown into something. I couldn't stop this now even if I wanted to. things are kind of pouring out of me at this point when I grab my journal pages and pages come out. and we have this podcast, we built this podcast, I'm so proud of this so far. This has actually become a really sacred moment for me each week to turn on the mic and just see what comes out. I generally have a topic in mind when I start an episode. I probably shouldn't even admit this. There's very little planning that goes into these episodes. I don't generally know exactly what I wanna say. I don't even outline most of the episodes. I just see what comes out. But it has become a really lovely, routine for me to sit down and do this. It allows me to check in with myself. It allows me to really think about our customers and our listeners and connect with the world in the best way that I can and just really show up in a vulnerable and honest way every week. I think the podcast so far is the piece that means the most to me. I feel like I'm discovering my own voice in real time. probably if you go back to episode one and then you listen now, hopefully I sound a little bit different. I feel like I'm learning along the way, but I feel more confident in my voice because of this podcast. I've noticed it even when I'm having conversations with people, I've noticed that my voice shows up a little bit more readily and more confidently. that has been really interesting as well. One thing that has been surprising in some ways, and I, I guess I expected this, and I think this will likely be true for anybody, when you're transitioning from one state of being to another, I have really worked hard to try to find a balance between the business oriented, executive in me and the artist in me. It turns out they do not easily coexist, maybe that's part of the discomfort that I've been feeling forever. the leader in me who is used to leading projects and groups of people and being focused on revenue projections and optimizing the process and setting deadlines and then holding to those deadlines and pressure to launch everything. She's still in there very loudly and she wants to be useful and I am also struggling to shed my identity with that.'cause there's a lot of me that isn't excited about letting go of that piece of my identity because it's been there for such a long time. I think of myself as strong and a leader maybe in this new existence it won't quite look like that. So there's some of that fear showing up too. I'll talk about that in a second. that old me is trying to schedule my creativity and my creativity is refusing to work under pressure, so that has been another opportunity to soften, right? I need to make sure that I am not solely focused on achievement and productivity, and I'm also slowing down being quiet and allowing my mind to wander not forcing and trying to control my creativity because at the end of the day, for this company, my creativity is, the backbone of it, right? The things that I create are the things that make this company what it is. So I need that to show up On a regular basis. So I can't, it drives my business partner a little bit crazy because she also is very high achieving business woman. she wants to say Hey, we need to get this done by the end of the week. Can you have that painting finished or Can you have this, whatever it is, can you get that done? The achiever in me really wants to say like, yes, I will find a way, but I have learned, the hard way over these last few months, no matter what I say, no matter what I agree to, I cannot force that. It shows up when it shows up. it takes time and slowness. I have to calm down I can't like schedule an hour in the middle of the day and say, that's when I'm gonna paint. Because it's just not how it works. I can't write that way. I can't paint that way. I mean I can, but what comes out is junk. It's forced. it's like a little duet inside of myself. I do need the structure and the leadership and the decision making and I need to be thinking about the future of the business and do we have momentum and whatever. But the creative side of me also has to take center stage sometimes. So it's like a little dance going on inside of me that I'm trying to figure out how to balance. I also will say, as I, referenced this when I said the achiever in me really wants to say yes when somebody asks if something can be done by a certain time. There's a lot of voices in my head that show up that are not mine, that I didn't realize I was listening to and following on a regular basis. I am so driven by what other people think and want, so I have a lot of fear and anxiety that comes out of wanting to perform, wanting to make sure that, I'm not letting anybody down or I'm not making mistakes or, things where someone could say that I was wrong. These are things that really trigger old wounds for me, I guess, they're not my voice. My voice. I don't actually care if I'm wrong. To me, creativity is all about just trying things. And sometimes you're right and sometimes you're wrong, and that's okay. Either way, you're learning many times there's not a right or a wrong answer. So the piece of me that is trying to still perform for everybody else isn't actually coming from me. That's coming from what everybody else has been saying my entire life. I'm slowly but surely trying to let go of those messages that I've internalized from whoever, expectations, from people comments from bosses and coworkers scripts I was trying to follow for different roles or situations that I was in. My own thoughts are starting to show up and I'm starting to be able to differentiate between the two and the whole be professional or be agreeable or don't take up space thing. Is starting to fall away, but it's also just becoming more and more noticeable, even though it's hard to shed those things. when your inner world rises, whatever that looks like, you finally start to be able to hear which voices are yours and which ones don't belong there, and you can start to excavate those It's so hard. It's really difficult to let go of things you've been doing and thinking for so many years. something else that has been rising up for me throughout this journey is I am not excited about being super visible online. I've never really had a big presence on social media before. I don't know if it's a fear of being seen. maybe it is. maybe fear of being seen in my vulnerable state is part of it It is so ridiculous. I will make videos with my face in them and I will sometimes think about people that I knew 20 years ago who I'm like friends with on Facebook or something what are they gonna think because they've never seen this side of me before, I don't even know these people anymore. It's so interesting the insecurities that pop up when you are revealing yourself out in the open. I. I am visible on Instagram. I'm the face of this business, but I really holding a boundary between, being vulnerable and open when it relates to this business and my art and this journey that I'm on, and holding that boundary when it comes to talking about the rest of my life. I don't want to be an influencer. I wanna be the face of the brand, I have no desire to open up my life in that way, also being known as an artist, there's some kind of, I don't know, subconscious stigma in my head associated with that because I have worked so hard to build this pretty technical life for myself. so now that I'm trying to step out into the world and declare that I'm an artist, I do think there's a part of me that's a little bit insecure about that. What will people think? What does that mean about the last 20 years? What happens to the last 20 years and all the experience that I gained, and what do I do with that? I think that level of authenticity reveals you, but being revealed in that way takes a lot of courage every day, and I don't feel brave every single day. I feel alive. I know that. I know I'm moving in the right direction, but I don't feel brave about it every day. Sometimes it's just plain terrifying. There have been quite a few revelations along the way that have really surprised me. Things that I've discovered about myself as we have been stepping through this. the logistical details of building a business are really complicated too. there have been pieces of the journey that have surprised me, that I've enjoyed, in all of my past careers i'm lucky that. I have always had to continue learning new technologies and new skills, and every project that I stepped onto, I had to very quickly spin up on, new information and new tools. So I'm familiar with that and building this business has involved a lot of that. that has been a, confidence boost for me. So the logistics of it. While complicated, I'm handling it, and that's the part that I thought was gonna be the hardest because that's the part that I knew nothing about. The emotional parts of it have been way harder. One of the revelations that I have had around all of this is you can't think your way into authenticity. What I've done is I got really good at living in my head and my thinking brain. so I can come up with ideas all day long and I can think about what that might look like. But in order to actually build any of this, I have to open my heart and let it spill out onto the table in front of everybody it doesn't work unless you do that. And that's really hard and scary and also really energizing and inspiring for myself. The more I do it, the more I wanna do it, because it feels so good to show up in that real way no matter what people say about it. And to be fair, everyone has been very kind and very open so far. I'm sure that won't always be the case, but the more I do it, the less I care about what everybody else thinks. I will also say that inspiration shows up for me when I stop trying to control it. Surprise, I try to control everything, right? I've been trying to be a type A person forever, and so I've gotten very used to trying to control every detail and also when I decide that I'm gonna do something that is vulnerable and shows the inside of me. My instinct is to then try to control every piece of that so I can make sure that what shows up looks a certain way so that it will be received a certain way, which is actually not vulnerable the only time that I can actually let go and feel inspired and let new ideas sort of flow through me is when I am not holding a piece of paper and a pen and trying to force the words. It's when I'm in the shower. I don't have my phone. I don't have any way to document. I literally was in the shower a few days ago and some ideas came and I was writing words in the steam on the glass, trying to preserve some of the ideas that were coming through my head. It happens when I'm driving, especially if I turn off all the music and the podcasts. I'll have ideas then. I've taken to creating voice memos on my phone because that's the only way to document some of the things that come through me. And sometimes the ideas are so fleeting, like I have a moment of inspiration but if I keep going, I'll think of more other things and then I forget what that moment was. And that's so frustrating. Almost devastating. I think a big lesson for me is that the quiet in life, the quiet times when you have to quiet your body and you quiet your mind, that's not empty time. That is where all the good stuff is hiding and waiting to come out. You have to make space for it, and you have to be quiet enough to listen. Another thing I wanna talk about, this is something I want you all to know about. There is a fear cycle that has shown up for me, It starts off, I have an idea. I get really excited about it. I dig into it. I, flesh it out as much as I can, and I could spend days in that, thinking that this is gonna be the best thing, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden fear shows up she says things like. You are being unrealistic. This isn't gonna happen in the way that you want it to happen, or this idea is silly actually. And it makes me consider changing and I start to think about. what am I doing? maybe this was a really stupid idea and maybe I should just crawl back into my corporate box that I'm so familiar with. Even though it's uncomfortable, it's the devil, you know? Right. I know exactly how to do that. That's a routine that I'm familiar with. I know how to be successful in that way. I know the people I will be surrounded by. it is dependable income, all of these things. so I really start to feel tempted to slide backwards. Maybe I can find a way to do this in a more predictable way. What I'm really saying is maybe I can hide because the spotlight feels very hot and scary. And then I start to think about diluting my ideas. Like, okay, Maybe I can remove some of these parts that feel a little bit too personal or maybe I can try to, be creative, but like not that creative. I'll just do a little bit, I'll just kind of sprinkle some things in here and there, but not too much because. What are people gonna think? And that feels really scary. And maybe I can do all of that from my safe little routine box over here. Maybe that will fulfill me. Somehow it won't. I know that it won't, but that is the urge that comes up. This cycle has happened multiple times over the last few months for me, I will say every time that I'm in that mindset, something beautiful happens. I will either have a conversation with somebody where the idea really resonates or I will have a moment of clarity about, how all the pieces fit together and what the next step might be. I will get some sort of positive reinforcement that will be enough to reaffirm. My ideas and give me enough confidence to keep moving forward, and that confidence is enough, at least briefly. That's enough for me to continue on, and I always am able to take a few more steps before that fear pops up again and we go through this whole cycle again. It repeats itself. I think every time it repeats itself, though it's a little bit weaker. Almost imperceptively, but it's a little bit weaker. It's wild how quickly fear can talk you out of the thing that you know that you're meant to do. The biggest lesson, that I wanna share with you today is that you cannot become who you are while you're clinging to who you were. You can't show up in the world in an authentic way if you are still trying to maintain your current identity, You can't show up in your relationship in an honest. An open way. If you are still clinging to words that you said in the past that were untrue, or a role that you've taken on that is so closed that it doesn't allow you to be authentic, you can't have both, you have to let go of the past in order to move forward into the future, which I promise is brighter, I am still learning how to unc unclench my grip on the life that was safe that I had before. That life was safe, but it never let me shine, and it never left me feeling alive and excited. I will tell you that I'm at a point now where I have a pretty clear vision for what I'm hoping are our next steps. Some of them are already happening. I talked about the printing drama with the journal. There is a potential that we found a local printer that is associated with the university that's close by. and they have a nonprofit print shop they print beautiful prints. We're gonna print our art like the prints for my paintings through there. Those will be for sale on the website very soon. But I'm also hopeful that they could be a solution for the journal and the accessories. I'm so excited that the prospect of having a local print printer like people that I can go talk to, face-to-face products that I can look at before I pay for them and make sure that they're exactly as I want them to be. There's just something about being able to work with humans and not just talk to them over the phone. I'm working on the next journal, so every primo will have a journal associated with it, and I'm, very, very excited to build those. They're really fun to work on. but they take a lot of effort and a lot of energy because I'm really trying to put as much thought and care into these as I can. the next one is going to be for the quiet keeper, prima ness and her realm is all about sadness and fear your shadow self. So that has been fun. I'm creating a set of color maps that are gonna be all about the phases that I've gone through as we create this business. And the biggest thing that I'm hoping to come next that I am really just longing for this to be true is I wanna build community for a life and color. I wanna start finding people that are like-minded so that we can start to have a group of people that can encourage each other, that can support each other, that can show each other how to show up in an authentic way. I don't know if any of you have ever seen Ann with an e. It's a beautiful show. If you haven't, you should watch it. But it's Ann of Green Gables her best friend in the show has An aunt who is this very wealthy, very eccentric woman, and she throws these extravagant, lavish parties. This all takes place in the 18 hundreds. So it was at a time when if you were too far outside the norm, it was not accepted this Aunt Josephine would throw these parties where all of her friends would show up in the most unique outfits however they wanted to behave. With whoever they wanted to hang out with, she would display their art. It was just this beautiful scene. And that's kind of the image that I have in my head for what this community could look like. I just want people to show up just exactly as they want to, even if it's different every time where we could actually know each other and start to feel safe expressing whatever's inside of us. Also start to flex those muscles of being around other people who are different from us, who are living authentically, so that we can then go out into the world and create those spaces for the people around us as well. I just want this to be something that spreads through the world so that we remember that humans are beautiful no matter who they are or where they're from or what they do with their time. There's so much beauty that needs to come out of each of us, and we need to make space for that to be true. That is what I want for this community, I don't know exactly what all of this will become yet. I have an idea and that used to terrify me. But lately it's exhilarating, we're just gonna create as we go and figure out what feels right what will put the most value out into the world? And that feels kind of like magic. I'm loving that. Through this process, I have rediscovered parts of myself that I have not touched in a long time. My inner teen who needs to be told it's okay to express yourself and make some noise and take up space and be angry and be sad and whatever it is that you need to be. My softness. The ability for me to show up softly for all situations. That's something that has been new that has been also energizing because it feels so true. I don't have to put on a mask. I don't have to armor up for any situation. I can just wait until I know what to say or I know how I feel, and that's okay. I also have found a new kind of power in this. the power that I was putting on before was someone else's. I was building that based on ingredients that I found at work or around other people, things that I admired but didn't come from me. in building this business and in showing up authentically, I am feeling more and more powerful in my own way. that has been really surprising. I expected the softness, the power has been welcome. I'm happy to have it. but I didn't actually know that was in there. it has been a journey full of euphoria and excitement and also grief and panic and hope, and most of all, just a sense of homecoming. I have been happy to discover that you can let your inner world lead what you're doing every day, lead your conversations with people, you don't have to completely give up all of the other pieces of your identity. But you do start to meet the parts of yourself that you've abandoned over time, the parts that you thought you didn't need to survive, and when they come back together, everything starts to feel more whole and easier. I am building this in real time, I'm talking to you guys about this in real time. Every time you listen or write to me or respond in any way or show up with your own truth, it reminds me that none of us are doing this alone. If you're listening to this, you might be in your own first chapter. maybe you're finally ready to turn the page two and start building something fresh that comes from you. cause this is chapter one for me. I'm still very much in chapter one and maybe you are too. I would love to hear about it. If you're comfortable, send me an email, tell me your story. Tell me what came up for you as I was talking about all of this. as always, my email is Laura, L-A-U-R-A at a life in color.co. And I think we'll wrap there. I hope that you all are enjoying whatever you're doing, wherever you are in the world. I hope that you are finding ways to show up as your own authentic self too, and I just hope you have the best week. Thank you again for joining, and I'll talk to you again next time. Bye now.