Permission to BE

Not permission to be perfect. Not permission to be put together. Not permission to be the version of yourself that everyone else is comfortable with.  

Just — permission to be.  

Excellent. Messy. Broken. Needy. All of it. Without apology.  

Somewhere along the way, most of us learned that only certain versions of ourselves were acceptable. The strong version. The capable version. The one who had it handled. And we got so good at performing those versions that we forgot the rest of ourselves was still in there — waiting for permission to exist.  

In Episode 5, Nicole Morris sits down with self-made entrepreneur Dr. Pamela Charity Phoenix for one of the most honest conversations The Permission Slip has held yet. Together they explore what it actually means to give yourself permission to show up fully — not just in your highlight reel moments, but in the ones nobody posts about.  

This is a conversation about wholeness. About releasing the exhaust valve on the pressure to always be your best self — and trusting that your whole self is enough.  

You don't need to earn the right to exist as you are. This episode is your reminder.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Trauma often distorts our view of ourselves. Today, Dr. Phoenix talks to us about how to be comfortable in our skin no matter what we've been through. All right. Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody to today's episode of the Permission Slip Podcast. I am your host, Nicole Land Morris. I am the author of the transformational release book. It's not me, it's you. Take their labels off. As we are giving people permission to take everybody's labels and expectations off. This is the first season. We're wrapping up the first season of the podcast, the inaugural season, and it's been very groundbreaking for me, including my guest today, who I am so beyond excited to have her here for a number of reasons. Now I'm gonna let her tell you who she is, but before we do that, I'm gonna tell you who she's been to me. Dr. Phoenix, she has paramelached. I know she has Dr. Phoenix. I call her Dr. P. I call her like all the things. But she has been somebody who has been pivotal on my personal journey to self-acceptance and even dealing with the topic of conversation today, which is permission to just be. And I am incredibly grateful for her. We're gonna do a little bit of storytelling today, a little bit of transformation sharing on our experiences together. But before we get into that, welcome, welcome, Dr. Fix. Hey, Nicole. So say hey to the audience, tell them who you are. You are you are not like you are not a person that like tells people who you are, what you do. You just kind of have this. It's very like ninja-like. So but I need you to take a second and just talk about who you are and like what you've been doing because you've been you've been impacting lives for multiple decades. So um talk talk a little bit. Yeah, talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah, you know, like I I am that doctor that works under the radar, because I don't I don't need all that, you know, the all the accolades, the pats on the back. I just like to I love to do the work. It inspires me. Plus, I'm an introvert, so that doesn't help, you know, me wanting to tell everybody what I'm doing, but I am a mother of two boys, grown boys, and uh and I now have two wonderful granddaughters. Yay! Now that's the now that is the story right there.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Right there.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Go from boys to now granddaughters. Girls. Yes. Oh, I love it. I love it, I love it. So I'm an author of three books: Charity's Vegetarian Paradise back in the day, That Girl Can Cook, and Sankofa Rites of Passage, which is on Amazon. Um, I think that's and I have a lot of publications because you know when you're a doctor, you gotta do them publications and stuff like that. I'm also a therapist as well as a naturopathic doctor. And Nicole is we were definitely friends before we started doing the work. We we actually met on a cruise, didn't we?

SPEAKER_04 2:57

And that's where I was that's why you are like so perfect for today because you are the embodiment. You are you are the embodiment of the topic, right? So I remember when we first met on that cruise and we were doing I was yet. I was facilitating a session on mirror work. Like I you remember like that cruise was just it was an interesting experience from a uh around away, and that's definitely how we collect.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I like to use that I word interesting.

SPEAKER_04 3:26

We did listen, listen. And I remember like, so we were doing mirror talks, right? And I and I talk about mirror talks in the book. So, guys, the books behind me, just you know, I gotta drop my subs, right? But we were I was facilitating a session on mirror talks, and I thought you were just so dope because you got in the mirror and and you've been comfortable in your skin since then. I think I feel like that was like 20, like almost 15 years ago, 2013, 2012, something like that. It was a long time ago. And you got in the mirror and you were like, like it was something like that. You're like, I just like to be silly, I just like to be this. I loved it because even in that moment, for the people who were ready to absorb that, you were actively demonstrating a level of self-acceptance that a lot of the attendees of that cruise were seeking. So talk a little bit about your journey to being so comfortable with yourself. And then we're gonna lead into how you have been helping us and some of the things that you've seen and some other conversations. But how did you how did you get to that? Even to this place, right? Where I mean, like she, y'all, she's so understated herself. This woman has been in the community, you get community for decades in school and organizations. She is having impact. You got here because you give it out, right? You you give it out to so many people. How did how did you get there?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah, that's a good question, Nicole. Like, I have to think about it. Cause even you talking about this cruise is so funny to me. Cause all I remember, a lot of what I remember is us being at at the comedy club and you standing up and you were cracking up, we were laughing. I don't I don't remember exactly everything in that workshop, but there were a lot of women that really needed to get comfortable with themselves, you know, because, you know, I guess, you know, well, I know this as a people, we walk around not really being transparent, you know, with our representative on doing things that are acceptable and also oftentimes people pleasing, you know? And I just so from the start, like I went through the rites of passage many years ago, because I'll just tell my age I'm 62. And uh I went through a rites of passage almost 40 years ago. And when I went through that rites of passage, like the traditional therapy uh for me didn't necessarily work. And I needed something deeper to understand, like, who am I? Why am I even here? What am I supposed to do? And I'll tell you, Nicole, since I was 10, I was also adopted and I was adopted by a family member. And, you know, we know all adoptions don't go well, right? So I remember being 10 and asking God, who are we? Why are we, what are we doing? Are we just doing the same things over and over again? So I was just a peculiar type of child, you know, and I remember saying at 10, I gotta do everything on my own. Nobody owes me anything. And I know that's that's very strange, but so the family I was with, you know, families hold a lot of secrets, right? There's a lot of secrets within families. And so I am clairvoyant. I now I know I'm I'm psychic, I'm all those things that I didn't know at 10, but I did feel like something here is not right in this family. Something's not right. And I started having dreams. And so I graduated from high school at 17, and I remember feeling like I don't, I really still don't know what's going on. So that summer I went to Chicago to see my grandmother and my birth mother. I mean, I didn't know I had a birth mother. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Wow. Okay, okay, bestie.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Her daughter, um, walking down the street in Chicago, 51st Street, and we got to on 50th in King, and she says, Well, you know, you're not, you know, you're not Jesse and May's daughter. You don't even look like them. And I'm like, What? You know, so yes, yes, walk and it's in my book, it's in the Sankofa Rites of Passes. I write about everybody I needed to forgive from my in the book. I call her my evil stepmother. I do call her that because I needed to give name to the pain.

SPEAKER_04 7:48

Kind of demon seed in my book, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

I was just writing my own truth, though. Okay. But uh, so I learned that the summer before I went off to college. So, you know, you imagine how crazy I thought I was. You mean everything that I thought was is not, and you're telling me you're my mother. So yeah. So that's that happened to me my freshman year at college. And I went to a HVC. I went to Kentucky State University, I had a full scholarship. I was a uh basketball player. So I was just down there going through the motions of of trying to figure it all out. Like, I don't know who I am, I have no idea. And also the different sides of the family were fighting, right? Um, not literally fighting, but like, no, but but this is for a living every day.

SPEAKER_04 8:39

Like I and we all these years I've known you, Doc. I never knew your story.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, yeah. And and like I said, I wrote a lot of it in the book because when I moved from Chicago five years ago to Ohio, and um my my my birth mother passed in 2015. So that's when I finally felt like I could leave Chicago because I'm her only daughter, I'm her only child. So I I always always took that as my responsibility to make sure that she was okay, right? Even though it was tumultuous, you know, after you learn something like that, you're wondering, like, why did you give me up? What happened? And then there's so many secrets and so many things on each side. I literally felt like when I was from 17, and then I graduated college at 22, and then two years later I'm pregnant, and I'm living in Chicago. So now I'm trying to figure out I'm culture shocked because I come from a small town in Kentucky, right outside of Fort Knox. And big difference than the big city of Chicago.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

In Chicago, like for sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

So it took me about two years to get used to living in Chicago and understanding people, right? Because I'm, you know, we're we're I'm in Kentucky, it's country. Hey y'all, hey y'all, how y'all doing? You don't do it's not that it's it's like why like bump me again. Right. I'm already, I'm already a quiet person anyway. So I'm already observing how I need to, how I need to be to survive, right? I graduate college, I go back to Chicago. No, no, after I graduated Chicago, I go back to Chicago. But there's a, you know how you have a big gap between you finish your requirements for school, because I I really could have came out in 85, but the summer 85, but what what happened was they only have one graduating time. So I that whole from 85 to 86, I went into the military. Okay. That's okay. I went into the military.

SPEAKER_04 10:37

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

I didn't know the president of the military period, which is really crazy anyway. That I mean, I I did serve, I I served eight years, Army Reserve, and I was still floating. But you know how, as women, what we do, even though we're we're struggling, we're still, I got no, I gotta be responsible for myself, so I gotta keep moving. So I went, I went into the military, I did basic AIT, I was in Alabama and then North Carolina, and then I came back to Chicago to be around my birth mother. And that was that was hard, you know, because you still have questions about what happened here. And then and then you also have people in your life, like my grandmother, whose name is Charity. That's my I'm her namesake, and she was my heart all the time. And and you don't want to disappoint your grandmother, but at the same time, you cannot sweep your emotions under the table. Like I'm dealing with some real deep, like, what? You just want me to sweep it under the table, act like I've been here all the time, all these years. I'm like, I can't do that. And I I know that was, you know, like as a as a people, we don't deal with our emotional and mental health a lot. So when I asked my grandmother and mother that to go, my birth mother to go to therapy, they said, no, I'm not crazy. You crazy. Uh you go to therapy. I'm not crazy. Nobody wanted to do nothing, but I needed that, right? So I needed, so anyway, just going back to trying, you know, doing your best to be who you are, your authentic self. So in 1997, um, I met Dr. Bambadi Shakur, and I went through her rites of passage. Okay. And so going through that rites of passage allowed me to go back a year before I was born. It's very spiritual. It comes out of Ghana, and you understand, like, okay, what it was my purpose? What did this earth call me into? Why did I want to come? And what did this earth need when I came on that particular day? Because that's how it's done within the uh the rites of passage. So you go back and you study the historical, what was going on in the world, you also uh talk to your parents and ask them, like, you know, a year before you were born, when you were conceived, what was going on on time in their mind, because what's in their mind and on their heart affects the wound.

SPEAKER_04 13:06

Yes, deposit is deposited.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Absolutely. It's all right there. And so when I got to those questions, and that was very difficult because I had to talk to my birth mother. You know what I'm saying? And that was hard for her, and she was very tearful as I was writing down what she was saying. You know, like maybe your mother's age and maybe her mother, you know, during those times, people, you know, it was it was about we had to just push it down.

SPEAKER_04 13:34

Like they they they had to just push it down. They couldn't, but there was no space to especially for women.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Especially for women. The way the women did, and some people still today they love the boys, they raise the dog. They raised the girl. And my mother's told me that she felt she never felt like that she was worth anything because she had two brothers, they both were older than her. And in a sense, when you know men grow up, sometimes they just lead a family, they don't even look back, they didn't really look back for their little sister.

SPEAKER_04 14:08

Yeah. And um, uh, can we say that I have a little sister who feels that way about a big brother who uh-huh, but we that's a separate conversation. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So she never felt good, but she always like my grandma, her mother, she always felt like she had her doing things for them and everybody else. And she never felt really truly loved. And so she told me she started dressing up like a boy so that she would get that attention. That isn't that crazy. That's just to get the attention. See, I want to just dress up like a boy.

SPEAKER_04 14:43

So now, okay, so now I'm kind of putting it together, right? That you understood from your mother, just even in terms of how she birthed you, there was a she didn't feel acceptable to her own self, to anybody around her. And she births someone whose whole purposeful seek is to know who they are and live authentically from that place, including coming back with her.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, because I'll tell you, that's a good way to put it, Nicole, because what I felt when I met her, let me say when I met her, I always knew her, but I knew-who she was. I knew her as my aunt. So you understand how how how this goes from she's my favorite aunt. She comes down to Kentucky and she hangs out, she buys us stuff, and woo-woo-woo. And she's so nice to me, and she's nicer to me than these people. Because I also lived in a family, you know. You see, my complexion, you know, it was a problem for them. You know, you think especially being in the South. You think you're better than us because you got that lots of you know. I'm a child, I don't even know the difference. You know what I'm saying? So I had to bear that burden in that family because everybody in that family was chocolate, it was dark, beautiful, but they had a problem with me. And I look like my grandmother, right? I don't look like them at all. So, um, I mean, it's so many ways I could talk to you about this story.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

So many layers.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, the the greatest thing is that I was able to, as a young person, understand that I needed to um, you know, read things that was inspiring, like Susan Taylor. I always went red in the spirit. It always was motivating. I had to memorize things that to constantly, because we're we're responsible for ourselves no matter what happens to us. You know, we still have to build from within. So um I would read this one uh point, promise yourself to be so strong that nothing um, you know, that nothing can hurt your mind to talk health happiness and I can't remember exactly, but just just build other people up and be just as happy for other people as you are for yourself. So that made me like a sister sister. Like my friends are my sisters because I don't have any um, I don't have any uh brothers and sisters. And um, yeah, so I I don't know. I mean, I can get lost in the story because you're right, it is it is a lot of layers. And when I tell this story, I usually only tell this story at people's requests, and then when my clients need a particular story, you know, to help them process what they're going through. So that's probably why it never come came up with you, Nicole, because that's not what I had our other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Yeah, I had a bunch of other stuff.

SPEAKER_04 17:37

I didn't have that stuff, but I had other stuff. But the thing is, and you hit on so many things. Like, I actually legitimately I had to stop so I could take notes because it was so many. I missed like four things. I'm like, I'm gonna remember that because I'm gonna come back to that. And I was like, shoot, it keeps leaving. So let me pull off my laptop here so I can write down so we can come back to some of this to some of this stuff because it's so layered and it's in this conversation where people you just laid out an incredibly traumatic foundation, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

And yet and a lot of us come from trauma, a lot of detail.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

Exactly, exactly, and yet you sit here a whole, powerful, peaceful, peacefully contagious spirit. Well, no, honestly, like it like it is, and it's come, it's even coming through the screen. It is peacefully contagious and confidently and comfortably contagious that all of those layers and all of those things that I can imagine people from adoptive families hearing your story and saying, Oh, and it doesn't have to make me show up in a damaged way later because there is nothing about who I've ever experienced you as, forget even know you to be who I've ever experienced you as in 15 years. There's nothing about any of that where you have ever bled your trauma onto me. Um you have you have not showed up that way in these space. And I know everybody, everybody's human, so I'm not saying that you're perfect at all.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

Yeah, but I'm just saying like I'm perfect, no, I'm just some people, you know what I'm saying, they can't help but spill.

SPEAKER_04 19:29

And so I could hear the person who found out that their uh maybe was their mom or some other huge secret in the family that got buried that you know is still affecting how they see themselves today, and you completely took control of your narrative about who you were going to see yourself as. Now you did it during doing a bigger, like purpose seek, but the magic behind everything you excuse me, behind everything you just shared and who you are today is that you took control of that. And like you said, and like you said, you knew at a really early age, you knew that you had to be your answer. And so it's funny, I was talking to my you know, so you know my babies, you know, all my babies, you know, my mom, my sister, my nieces, like you know everybody.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

I think I've talked to almost all of them.

SPEAKER_04 20:27

I believe you have actually in one form or another.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah, you have a beautiful family.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

Thank you. And so I was I was actually talking to my youngest son today, and I was talking about my daughter. And Octavia made a decision when I started when I started moving around the country in the pandemic, and I'm gonna learn how to stop saying my baby's names, because you know, people might actually know me one day, and then they're gonna be trying to find my babies. So I'm gonna have to figure out I'm gonna train the same thing. But I was I was talking to my baby, and and and when I started moving around the country in the pandemic, and you know the shift that I had to go through to take my power back from everybody around me. Lots of pivots, lots of pivots. Yeah, but what I also did, which I go into the book and we'll go into in these conversations on the podcast, when I did that, it destabilized everybody around me because I had positioned myself as their anchor. Yeah, but it was their anchor in the department.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Everybody was dependent on you, absolutely in some way, yes.

SPEAKER_04 21:29

And when I did that, Octape, my daughter, decided that she was never gonna allow that to happen again. Now, I don't know if she's known if she knows that that's what she decided. But if I look at her today, how she lives her life, she anchors to things, but her substance and what she's gonna let be true to her, she does all of that on her own. And then my other, my youngest son, is the opposite, where he's still he'll be 20, right? So maybe he's supposed to. So we'll see how he continues to evolve. Right. He still prefers to anchor to me. And I'm like, you gotta go. And not you gotta go like you gotta go get out and go struggle and go get. I'm not saying you gotta go get it out the mud, but you have to know who you are, regardless of who you think I am. Yeah. And regardless of who I am to you, because at some point, number one, I'm not gonna be here regardless of how long that is. But number two, every time you give your definitions, the ability of something else to define you to something outside of yourself, when it shifts, you will shift too. And so I'm hoping that he embraces that at some point again. He'll be 20. So I think he's got some time. But it's just important. And a lot of people, they aren't comfortable just being their own anchor. And they may choose not to, right? The the whole purpose behind this podcast and and the conversations like this is not necessarily to drive my perspective or or how like I think we should all live empowered or whatever. It's to drive awareness so that like you might want to choose to be anchored, but then make that conscious choice. And you're dealing with then you're gonna deal with that versus be a victim or be powerless or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah. I like what you're saying because, you know, from from early, you know, from when they're like toddlers, you know, you you start to me, you start teaching them about what it means to be a clear thinker.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

You know what I'm saying? I think the thinking that you can you can problem solve it yourself, you can figure out, but you also can ask questions, but you just keep moving in it. You know, it it's interesting because I remember when some I was teaching second grade while I was getting my doctorate, and and these children, they were all over me. I was teaching, you know, I'm in their substitute teaching, I'm teaching them about aromatherapy, and and you know, I'm doing a little bit of uh just a little bit of, you know, color therapy. I'm doing little air things that they're interested in. And they was like, um, I think I think at that time I was I was married to my Ghanaian husband. So it was like, Mrs. Lampte, why why did you ever, why did you leave the army? And I said, I said, well, why did you leave kindergarten? You know, and it was so funny because it just came to my head, I was like, what's the quickest way I can get them to understand? Make them get me up here trying to explain to them, you know, the military has a limit, you know, in your life, you know. So I was trying to, you know, but I think just every stage of our life, ages and stages, there's something new to learn, you know, and the independent, you know, uh Dr. Joe was it, Joe Dispenser says, either you're gonna be a victim or you're gonna be a creative. You're either gonna create what you want or you're going to sit back and be passive, like and let it happen to you. So we're not doing that. We're taking control of everything. And just as an African American, I mean, I also study Pan-Africanism and um definitely have have studied the Nguza Saba Ma'at principles. And so, you know, Kuji Chagalia says we define who we are. You know what I'm saying? We have to define that we have to take that control. Because to give it to someone outside of you means that you also will probably blame someone outside of you too. Absolutely. Yeah, it's easier.

SPEAKER_04 25:28

So, in your so because you have seen lots and lots and lots of people, why would somebody anchor to like why would they hear why would they hear a conversation like this and decide that they don't want to be in control in your experience? What's been some of the driving thoughts or things that has made a person either consciously or even unconsciously decide I'm gonna stay here?

SPEAKER_00 25:54

But but I think sometimes people don't want to be responsible and accountable because it's just easy if I follow, but it's really not when you really know how life is. I do understand that some people do have anxious attachments to people, right? And so even if it's our child or our mates, we want them to get to be in, to get to a secure attachment, right? And secure means that you're confident in yourself.

SPEAKER_04 26:20

I say, what's the difference? Well, help help us understand the difference because somebody might have it and not know what to call it. They just know when they get around this person, they feel better. And so if they're not around, you know what I'm saying? Like, how how would somebody has that even know? Like, what could they pay attention to?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Well, I I well, with my clientele, like there's a lot of people right now who have been sad or you know, depressed, angry, or just anxious, anxious moods, right? But the anxious attachment is like some let me give you an example. Like if I'm calling someone every 10 minutes because I where are you at? Or or just following a person's location. It's like, well, you well, you didn't see me three hours ago. I'm exaggerating, but it's like people that want to see but but but 100% people do that.

SPEAKER_04 27:09

They people do that.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Well, I thought you were gonna be here, you're not here, you know, the location, and and to me, all that stuff really a lot of the social media stuff, the phone attachments, all of that, kind of, kind of, you know, enhances, heightens that anxiety, you know. But I I really feel like we all need to work on our own confidence and also learning how to love ourselves and be complete within ourselves. You know, I I see this in relationships all the time. Somebody comes around, they might put a band-aid on whatever wound you have, and it's good until it rips off a little bit. So, so when you talk about being your own anchor, I remember somebody said, you know, Dr. Phoenix, you're you're you're not the leaves, you're the tree trunk. You're solid. I was like, yes, we all need to be solid, you know, like like the like the wind blows or somebody might scream and the leaves may fall off and wave, but that tree trunk right there, you know what I'm saying? And so the goal to me is always be the tree trunk. And and and that means doesn't mean like, oh, I'm gonna be so hard or I'm gonna be so soft. It means you're gonna be balanced.

SPEAKER_04 28:21

And it means that that I'm gonna be my own stability.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Yeah, and I'm gonna be balanced. So if I feel too far over to the right, I'm gonna breathe, I'm gonna do my sound bowls, I'm gonna do my my meditations, I'm gonna do my tapping, I'm gonna massage my foot, you know. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do some, you know, I'm gonna get some work done so I can get back balanced. And most of all, I'm gonna be in tune to the most high God all the time. And I'm gonna be listening so that energy can pour into me because a lot of times people want to get that energy from each other. I I think uh, what's the book that talks about how people drain each other's energy and and don't and leave each other depleted versus you know, energized? Like the R exchange is reciprocal, it's in my eye, and so we leave here on a higher vibration.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

So for me, sometimes you gotta sit here and do something like this, just breathing, just breathing thoroughly, because a lot of people breathe thoracically, not diaphragmatically, and it's like now what?

SPEAKER_04 29:27

You know, we're gonna bring we're gonna have to bring you back for some practical application. I'm not joking. I'm so serious, but we I want I wanna go in a different in a little bit of a different direction too. Okay, I'm gonna tell no no, but I'm I wanna I wanna tell on myself a little bit because I think it's a different perspective of anchoring. Okay, yeah. One of the things I didn't do, I didn't necessarily anchor to another person. I anchored to work. I know you were gonna I could I could I could just said that right with you. Yeah. I anchored to I was like, you know what? The work, if I do work, whether it's at work for somebody else or work for myself, I felt like the work had outcomes that I could control always. So I actually use working and I'm grateful, right? Because I could have picked a million other coping mechanisms that would not have me sitting here today.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

You could have decided not to work.

SPEAKER_04 30:26

I could decide not to work. Addiction, uh, addictive personalities or addictive traits is definitely in my genealogy. So I I have an addictive I have addictive tendencies, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:38

But it is And you've had a lot of good jobs too.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

Yeah. Well, and it's uh look, so I got to be addicted to something that was fruitful and productive. And uh but it was what I anchored myself to because I felt like it was the only sure thing. The people weren't sure around me, the people weren't safe, the people, or I was responsible for them. So, like my relationships, my familiar relationships and things like that, while they were full or plentiful, I look back now and they were codependent or some other kind of just not symbiotic. I don't want to overstate the negativity of it, but it wasn't healthy and it wasn't healthy for me. And I knew even even without saying it, I knew it didn't feel safe. I knew it wasn't safe because it didn't feel good, right? It didn't feel it felt familiar, but it didn't feel like you said, we leave on a higher vibration. Right, because it's a higher vibration, maybe because it's a material accomplishment, but it's not a higher vibration like the ones I was talking to you about before we went live, where like, man, this this is amazing, and um so grateful that I've got to have that experience with that particular relationship at this point. I'm just beyond grateful to to God. But I I wanted to talk a little bit. I wanted to kind of go so when I said go in a different direction, it because it's it's gonna be for some of those people too, that they anchor to work or they anchor to because the the the people weren't safe. And instinctively, I just knew they weren't safe because I was always fighting. And I was like, well, who wants to do that? Yeah, I don't want to do that. Um, so I'm gonna go over here where there's no fight, and then I can be can be excellent over here, and then I can, you know, and then the feedback comes back until it stops because that feedback from those work from that job was always controlled by another person.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Okay, right, right. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for women, because there's a lot of really intellectual, super smart, super loving women. I think there's there's two things. I think people anchor to school and they anchor to work, they anchor to a lot of things. But I I think the safety in work is that at least we're gonna have some money in this house. Hello, practical terms, right? Right, right. So, so the anchoring doesn't even seem like you're anchoring because you like, hey, I gotta be on my hustle, right? But I also think that when you're going through tough times in your relationships too, that you anchor to outside things. You know what I mean? Because, you know, I remember when I my first marriage, well, my only marriage, because anyway, but yeah, I married somebody from another country. I met him in uh West Africa, and then probably a year later he came to Chicago, and I had you had to get married within 30, 40 days, just the fiance visa type of thing. But I went to Africa, I went to West Africa twice and you know, figure, okay, he's he's the right one, I guess. You know, I really shouldn't have got married. Let me just say that.

SPEAKER_04 33:49

And and and hello, we can like say that too, right? Like, we get into a point where we gotta tell the truth, and the other thing is we gotta tell the truth for the next generation.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Yeah, like yeah, but I I'm glad you're saying that, Nicole, because I talk about this all the time amongst friends. I I cr I'm I'm a I'm a jokester, so I like to I think laughter is very healing. Absolutely. So I I I shouldn't have gotten married, but I did, and and my youngest son, uh Elijah, is a blessing. He's 25. So even though you shouldn't do something, God will change it where it's it's still a blessing, right? I also was grieving before I got married. My grandmother had passed. Well, my grandmother passed 30 days later, I went to Africa. I went, I went to Ghana for the second time. So that's that's a whole story within itself. But um I I married, I had a wonderful son. Um, the marriage was what it was. I had given it, I'm the type of person like, it's not really working. I'm not gonna stay in this no 10, 15 years and be miserable. I need to figure it out. My mother kept saying, How long are you gonna be in this? He knows he's not really, you know, she was just talking a lot of stuff because nobody really loved, liked him like that. And I told her, I said, I'm gonna give it two years and I'm gonna see what's up. Um, but I also am a person too. I too, because no, I'm not doing this. I'm also a person, I'm also a very free spirit. So yes, for me, the type of person I am, I felt like being married to him, that marriage was highly overrated for me. And the reason why, and this is for the younger generation, because if you're not kindred to the person that you marry, like equally yoked, and you don't build on solid things before you get married, and there's no way we could have possibly built and dated like we were supposed to date. He was in Ghana, I'm in Chicago, so we were, you know, the phone calls, the letters, yeah, you all happy, and oh, this is my man, my man, my man, all that. Girl, please, you know, um, because that's you know, pretty is as pretty does. Okay. That's why I would tell people, you know, we had a beautiful wedding, all of that, and everybody, oh, y'all so cute together, y'all fine, but no, it just wasn't, it was very for me, it wasn't that it was extremely uh negative. It was no like, you know, people say, oh, they cheated. No, it was none of that. It's just the cultural differences was way, way too much. And I'm getting to a point. A lot of times as as as people, not even just women, we choose people in a sense that uh that we need to rescue or save, right? If a person isn't for a sister, if a brother is not on your level or higher where he can pull you up, or where at least you start here, you don't go down and pull somebody up as a woman. And that was a mistake. You know what I'm saying? But it also he also represented differently, too. But as soon as you find out, you gotta get out.

SPEAKER_04 36:53

Not the representative. She says, No, but she said two kids.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

One, two, just two, just finger.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

I'm not desperate. No, no, no, no. So, so yeah, so uh seven years later, because he fought it for a long time. Seven years later, I did get divorced. And uh Yeah, it took that long. It did. And then he tried to take me back to court. Now, this might be too personal to appeal the to appeal the divorce. I was like, I am not going back to that courthouse. Uh, it's not happening. They're gonna have to find me in Canada or something. I'm not the me and the court reporter, because he didn't show up for the divorce, and and the judge was like, Well, what do you want? Do you want to go back and be Pamela Charity Tate, or do you want to uh keep your name Lamptey? His name was Lamptey. And I was like, No, I want to go forward and be Phoenix. Because my cousin had just given me, and I'll share it with you, I'll send you a picture of it, a poem about, because uh she, you know, when I was first born, I lived with her family first before my mother's other brother adopted me. So she was, they were all in shock too that I left that family. Because, you know, back then we didn't do anything right. You know, black people did anything. Emotions, look, food, shelter, clothing, loving the hungling, self-actualization, your emotions. That stuff didn't matter. We are just, we are just probably five, 10 years in with honoring emotions. And if you look at my website, that is my thing. The way you feel matters. The way you feel now, right now, not tomorrow, not the next day. You know, people be like, oh, I'm gonna get back to you. No, I need, I need, I need to be whole right now. We come from wholeness, we return to wholeness. So, you know, I wanted to be balanced in that moment. And emotions do matter. And that's why I got my doctorate, and my concentration is in emotional wellness, because that's a piece that as a society we have been neglecting for so long. You know, we'll we'll deal with our we'll deal with our physical, maybe all a little mental, they look crazy, but we but our emotions is like shove them under the table, you know. Person God, you got three days or a week local. Two years. And grieving is not linear, so we know that stuff comes, you know, flows back and forth. And I hope I answered your question because you know, I can't.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

No, you did. No, you did it. This listen, I'm gonna tell you that this having a conversation as you said. That that's the point, though. This is so rich.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Are you saying I I moved it to adjust so I could sit a little different.

SPEAKER_04 39:42

Yeah, no, no, it's it it don't don't worry about it, Doc. Listen, we we will do this. Like as we go on future things, we will make sure that everything is set and all that good stuff. But this conversation has been so rich, and there's so much more to unpack, and so much more for us to talk, including the emotional wellness of our folks. Because I actually was quite literally, so that must be in the spirit. I was thinking about that this morning, like literally thinking about that this morning. And just and and thinking about with the just with everything that the current administration is doing, with the primary goal being the final destabilization of black Americans. And the reality is that they won't ever be able to do it because they've never given us stabilization in the first place. Excuse me, every system that they dismantle, it really impacts other people who they consider minority. But because they hear DEI and associate it with black, what you're really doing is you know, because black folks have had to figure it out on their own. Um, in any of it, so a whole other thing. Doc, where can people find you? Where can people find more about your work? Find more about what it is. Like I said, we're definitely gonna have you back for some practical things, some other conversation like this because this was amazing. This was amazing, and I have this like RSB recovery thing that I've been doing. So, my whole season one of my podcast, I have been coughing intermittently in every episode.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Yes, is it is it nerves or is just something no, I got sick.

SPEAKER_04 41:15

Um, I I got a my bonus son has a daughter, and we were taking care of her for a while, and she's at, you know, she was at school at daycare, she's two, and so she brought us all the cooties. And this last round of cooties she got us has like wiped me out for three weeks, and now I just have the remnants of it. So it's like a random cough every now and then.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Yeah, you gotta have you gotta be, you have, you gotta have all kinds of stuff for them children that's set up.

SPEAKER_04 41:39

Every time them little babies run up and we pick her from school, I'm Gigi. Okay, I'm too young to be anything else. I'm Gigi. And so she runs up and she's like, D. And then the other little kids come and they got snotty nose and they like me too. And I'm like, oh, like, oh my gosh. You gotta come with the box of puffs, right? And and and sanitizer spray. Like, I'm gonna be light solid to you. Like, go over there. Okay. But um, so anyway, tell us where can we find you? So give us your website, your social media handles, okay, and all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Okay, so my website is let me just think, because you know, I won't say it wrong, but it's uh phoenix8lifesolutions.com. And then I am on Instagram and I am doing an interview with somebody too on TikTok this Wednesday on TikTok. So I guess uh what who am I? Twin Love, Phoenix One Love on TikTok. I don't really do a lot of social media. I don't have time for that. You know, I'm trying to live life. I'm trying to move overseas to go back to Panama because you know, I went in January for 11 days. I'm getting ready to go back. Yes, yes. I'm trying to be I'm trying to be one of them expats or retirees in another country that makes sense and still, you know, do do a I think for me, I will probably always do a little light work therapy. Absolutely, you know, the people, just helping people kind of reframe, you know, some of their thoughts and you know, just think higher on a higher vibration to to really take control over your life because that's really the the control that you have is the control over your own life. You know what I'm saying? By being accountable, being responsible, being loving, being patient and kind, you know, giving yourself compassion instead of judgment, you know, and and I'll say this stop chasing, stop chasing people and projects, you know what I'm saying? Because you gotta learn.

SPEAKER_04 43:39

You gotta learn that it keeps you on that outside seek.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Because you know, people with high vibrations, healers and you know, people with high vibrations usually are people that are ones that give all the energy. And I just had this conversation and somebody was just breaking down. I do all this, and I was like, well, who is the greatest healer, healer of all time if you read the Bible? You know, you know, for those who believe, you know, the the creator went into these spaces, healing, performing miracles and all that, and loving on people, redeeming all the negative stuff that was in the atmosphere. And then when he left, they they were uh, you know, we got a whole bunch of haters and people. And they went right back to the debauchery. Right back to it, like you, like as if you never did anything. So I I always say, you can do it, but do it in love and keep moving. And so that's really um, Nicole, the way I operate. I operate in high vibration love because I really do love people and I really do love myself. You know, it took me some time because it's a lot of us who are high sensitive people. And so when your emotions are all over the place, you have to learn how to balance your emotions. Because once you balance your emotions, baby, you know what I'm saying? You're good. Then it becomes yours. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I have had a wonderful time.

SPEAKER_04 45:04

So it's uh phoenix8life solutions.com. And we're gonna have all of this um, you know, we're gonna have links and everything posted and all the other places. So phoenix8lifesolutions.com where you guys can go and connect with uh Dr. Phoenix. I'm gonna tell you she has been a godsend and a life send to um to my family.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

But I just want to add, come to Dr. Phoenix when you're ready to go to the roots, okay? Only. Because you know, I don't deal with the people in between.

SPEAKER_04 45:35

Yes, this is true. More to come, guys. As always, you can find more about us and learn more about the work that Labels Begone is doing by visiting labelsbegone.com. Uh, you will be able to access the permission slip podcast on all major platforms here. Launch date, release details, all of that is coming soon. And as always, shameless plug, buy the book. It's not me, it's you. Take their labels off. Get that book, get the book. And so again, I'm Nicole Morris. I'm your host, I'm the author, I am the founder, and now I am signing off. Happy today. On the next episode of the Permissions Flip.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

Like, I am no longer being that pillar for anybody but myself. I am no longer choosing people over me. I am now in my self care season and choosing me season. So I'm no longer putting other people before me. I'm no longer over it. The Permissions Podcast, now available on all major podcasting platforms.