46 | Permission to Offend: A Tribute to Rachel Luna

What could change in your life if you gave yourself full permission to offend—and stopped apologizing for who you are?

In this episode of The Art of Badassery, host Jenn Cassetta talks with Rachel Luna, author of Permission to Offend, about how embracing your truth can be the key to breaking free from limitations and creating the life you want. Rachel shares her journey from a traumatic childhood to serving in the Marine Corps, and how those experiences fueled her rise as an international speaker and certified master neuroscience coach. Together, Jenn and Rachel dive into the power of reframing beliefs, practicing self-care, and building resilience so you can step boldly into your unapologetic self.

Learn more about Rachel Luna:

• Rachel’s website = https://www.rachelluna.com/
• Rachel’s book Permission to Offend = https://www.rachelluna.com/new-read/
• Rachel’s Podcast = https://www.rachelluna.com/podcast/

Sign up for Jenn Cassetta's newsletter for a boost of badassery to your inbox and never miss an episode: pages.jennifercassetta.com/newsletter

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi there, I'm Den Cassetta, your Chief Badass 3 officer. If you're feeling drained, hesitant, stuck in self-doubt, or you just have a case of the blog, the Art of Badass 3 podcast is here to help you unleash your mojo once and for all. We'll provide you with tips, techniques, and real-life examples of how you can kick ass in all areas of your life. You'll learn how to flex your mental muscles, rise above fears, and turn setbacks into superpowers. So let's enter the dojo and let's get to work. Welcome everybody. Welcome to the Art of Badassery podcast with me, Jen Casada, your chief badassery officer. And today I have a very special guest. She is a true badass, a black belt in badassy, and you'll see why. Welcome, Rachel. Hello, hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited, Jen. Me too. I'm gonna give your quick intro, your bio that I want to read word for word because it's so incredible. And then we're gonna do some deep dives. And I really can't wait for everyone to hear your story. Stories. So let's go for it. Rachel Luna, author of Permission to Offend, which, by the way, I am almost finished with, and it's so amazing, is a highly sought-after international speaker and certified master neuroscience coach to six and seven figure earning entrepreneurs, named by Forbes as one of the 11 most inspiring female entrepreneurs to follow on Instagram. Go follow now. This former U.S. Marine has a reputation for inspiring confident action and helping her clients to double, triple, and quadruple their income. Her clients often referred to her as their secret weapon. Rachel calls herself a magnet for miracles because despite losing both her parents to AIDS, struggling with eating disorders in her teens, and battling alcoholism and depression in her early 20s, Rachel has never allowed herself to be limited by life, circumstances. Instead, she persevered, and when she was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in the summer of 2019, Rachel tackled it the same way she does everything with confidence, faith, and love. Rachel, I want to cry just reading your bio. That's how inspiring it is to be. Thank you. So, everyone, I'm, like I said, almost complete with your book. I'm listening to it on audible, which I highly recommend because there's such a difference between hearing Rachel say weight pa and reading weight pa.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

I actually recommend that people buy both the hard copy and the audio, because the hard copy has exercises and diagrams, and sometimes you lose a little bit of that. And it's I prefer to buy both. Like I'll listen while I'm reading. Also helps me read and comprehend faster, but that's just my ADHD dyslexic brain.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

So I get it. I do get it. And I am the same way with my book. There's a lot of written exercises that, unless you're really disciplined when you're listening to Audible books and will stop and do them, uh hard copy is much better. So this is why she can triple people's income, by the way. Ideas like that.

unknown 3:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

So, Rachel, again, your story is so brave. I think you're so brave and such a badass. And I created this podcast because I want to hear people's stories, specifically comeback stories, because when people are gonna go follow you on Instagram, they're gonna see this super successful, wonderful, great personality, like all together. You got it all together, sister. And yet, at this in your book and in your stories, you share so many struggles that you've been through, starting with losing both of your parents to AIDS. I read the part of your book where your mother passed away when you were super young. Was it three and a half? Can you just share with us what happened with your dad and your godmother? Mom.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah. Okay, so I was three and a half years old, and both of my biological parents had AIDS. To be clear, my my mother had AIDS and my father was HIV positive. So she passed away very quickly. And my father was a high-functioning alcoholic and IV drug user. I didn't know this, Jen, but he was using drugs on and off until he died, which was and ended up being many years later. And I didn't know. Like he was just super duper high functioning. Ironically, he was a counselor, a drug and alcohol rehab counselor at the VA. So that just goes to show you just never know. You never know what demons people are battling, really. Anyway, so my biological mom dies, and my father, knowing that he's got all these demons that he's battling, he gives me up to my godmother. Now, here is a really cool, interesting fact that I don't think I talk about in the book. Before I was born, when my biological mother found out that she was pregnant with me, she wanted to have an abortion because she already had three sons. They lived in the brong, she was already on like welfare and she was barely making ends meet with those three boys. And she was a single mother. When my dad and my mom got together, my dad already had another woman pregnant. So my sister, Kimberly, is only 10 months older than me. I don't think I've ever shared this before. I don't know why I'm sharing it today. Does not matter. The point is, my mother was struggling, like she was struggling, she didn't even want me. But my godmother, Carmen Santini, God bless her, she petitioned for my life. I have told that part of the story as she petitioned for my life that she championed for me because I want people to know that there's someone out there that is championing for you. There's someone out there who believes in you and your mission and what you're doing. And maybe you haven't even met them yet. But that doesn't mean that they're not out there. So this is your encouragement to keep going, to persevere, because there will be someone who believes in you even more than you believe in yourself. So Carmen Santini petitions for my life and Maggie, my biological mother, says, Okay, but if it's a boy, you're gonna keep her. And my godmother says, I got it. If it's a boy, I'll keep him. Little does she know that four years later she was gonna end up raising me. So my father gives me up to my godmother, not for adoption, but just he calls her up and says, Can you take Rachel until I can get myself settled and get back on my feet? My godmother calls my grandmother, my father's mom, and she says, Honey, please just keep that little girl. Because my son has been trying to get on his feet for 30. However old my dad was 37, 38, right? He's never gonna get on his feet. Now, when that happened, I'm four years old, I don't know any better. And I start to tell myself these stories, not consciously, but the emotion, the energy was everybody I love leaves me. Yeah. My dad rejected me, my dad abandoned me, my dad didn't love me enough to keep me. And then I had evidence to support that story because several years later, he meets another woman, they get married, and he ends up raising her daughter. And I remember thinking to myself, like, why wasn't I good enough? You're out here raising this other girl. She has a mother. I didn't even have a mother, and you just threw me away like trash. I said this to myself. Here's the thing: I kept telling myself the story that my dad abandoned me and I was rejected, but that is not the fact. The fact is I saw my father intermittently. My father was in and out of my life as best as he could. And we talk about that in chapter one, the stories that you tell versus the facts of the situation. And then I remember I would call my dad and I'd be like, Dad, can I come and hang out with you for the weekend? And he'd say he didn't have money. And I didn't understand this because you have this other girl eating up all your food, and you know, you have enough money to give her an apartment and whatever. But here's the thing that I didn't understand as a kid is that little girl had a father who was paying child support. So my father wasn't really doing anything for her. And if I could have been on a fly in the wall, I would have seen that my dad wasn't really much of a father to her. He wasn't more of a father to her than he was to me. They just happened to live in the same home. And then here's the other thing. It's so interesting the stories we choose to tell ourselves from our one-sided lens and perspective. Because this whole time I'm telling myself this story that my father has given me up, he's abandoned me, he didn't love me, blah, blah, blah, blah. At around 11 or 12, somewhere in that age range, I ask my mom, Carmen, who, by the way, as soon as I live with her, I'm already calling her mommy. Because remember, I'm a I'm basically a toddler. I so I'm calling her mommy, but I knew always that she wasn't Maggie. I grew up knowing that Maggie had died. And I say, Please adopt me. I don't want to be Rachel Rodriguez. That's my maiden name. I want to be Rachel Rodriguez. I want to be Rachel Santini. I want to be part of this family. This is my family. So my mom says, All right, I'll ask your dad. So she calls him and they have this agreement to meet at the county courthouse or whatever, wherever you go and file the papers, and my mom goes down, and my dad never shows up. Now, this is back in the day before the cell phones or whatever. So there was nothing to do but to go home and then call him when she got home. And he picks up the phone and he says, Gomay. Gomay is a slang term for comadre, which is the Spanish word for co-mother, co-parent. It's what you would call the the godmother of your child. Yes. I just can't give her up. I'm sorry. I just can't give her up. I get the chills when I think about that. And I get like a lump in my throat when I think about that. Because this whole time I'm telling myself this story that my father abandoned me, that he rejected me, that he didn't want me. And he's telling himself the story that as long as I never signed that paper, I've never given my child up.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

So it's so important to ask clarifying questions. Don't just assume that the other person knows what you're thinking or what you're feeling or understands what you mean. And it's so unfair to the other person to say, you should know. You should have already felt as if we're all clairvoyant intuits that would just know. And even those of you that identify as intuitives or clairvoyants or prophets or whatever you want to call yourself, there's still the human experience. And you still have to ask that clarifying question.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah. Were you ever able to get clear with it? Did you have to come to it on your own?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

No, because thank God my mother told me the story. I think years later, I asked, Why didn't you ever adopt me? That's all I ever wanted. I only ever wanted for you to really be yours. Yeah. And she said, My mom is very blunt, thank God. And she was like, I don't even know where you're you, of course you're mine. So we don't have the same name. So many other parents out there don't have the same last name. You were already mine. And I didn't try. She's like, I did try. Your father didn't show up. And I said, What do you mean he didn't show up? He said he couldn't give you away. But the way that she said it was so like nonchalant. Like he said he couldn't give you away. So whatever. What I was gonna do, force him? No, you already lived with me. You were already mine. That I did make him go to court with me and file that I was your legal guardian. She said, and the only reason he did that was because I told him I gotta register her for school. And I gotta be the one to take her to the doctors. And if I don't have these papers, they're gonna think I kidnapped this child. You're not gonna put me in that position. So that was the only reason he would even file those papers. Yeah. I never had the conversation. I think at some point I just understood. When I learned all the things that he was battling, I had great compassion and empathy that he was doing the best that he could. And I also forgave him because his best was not good enough for me. It's not what I wanted or needed as a father. But it was all that he could do. We hold people to these unrealistic standards.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

One of my favorite authors, Mike Dooley. His theme is always you do the best you can from where you're at with what you have. And that's what we can look at other people struggling and know that they are really doing their best, even though their best isn't good enough for you. It's like you can at least come to some sort of peace within. But there's one thing about your story I really would love to get a little more clarity around. And that's the limiting belief, the story that we make things mean, right? So especially when we're kids, something happens and we make it mean something, and we carry that some of us for the rest of our lives. And it winds up keeping us from our best lives, from our most badass selves. So you made it mean, your dad leaving, you made it mean that so many things.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Okay. So what you're talking about is what I call the framework for freedom. And that's right there in chapter one of the book, Permission to Offend. So in that chapter, I give you a bunch of diagrams and stories and examples. But for me, when my father gave me to my godmother and asked her, like, hey, will you look after this kid? Keep her alive, make sure she doesn't die until I get my life together. I made it mean that I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't worth fighting for, that I wasn't worth doing everything that you possibly could, making all the sacrifices to raise me, that I wasn't good enough.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

And that's just not true. Of course it's not true. And so what I want to know, because so many people out there, I'm sure, can relate. In fact, your story can relate to some people I know in my personal life. And so we have these limiting beliefs, we have these stories. And it's one thing to recognize them, but how do you actually either get do you get rid of them? Do you replace them? How do you make them? How do you make it stick?

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah. So we I first want to neutralize the story and I want to take the emotional charge and meaning out of it. And then I ask myself, like, is this the most useful story? How does this story help me? It's not helpful for me to think that I wasn't good enough or lovable enough or enough in any way, shape, or form for my father, want to get it together. And also, it's not, in my opinion, it's not a fair story. Because as I said, my father was an addict. And unless you've ever dealt with addiction, you have no idea the stronghold that it has over your over the person's life. And I know that there will be some people that argue, yeah, but some people break free from addiction. And why couldn't he? Listen, I don't know. I'm not him. You have to look at each person's circumstance on the individual. My father lost his sister when they were kids playing. This was back in the day. They used to ride elevators, the elevator surf, and she got school. She was on the top of the elevator and they were all there. Do you know the trauma of watching your sister get crushed to death by an elevator? And then your parents never wanting to talk about it and acting like nothing.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Could you imagine like I can't even imagine? Well, that's so we have to have compassion and empathy for ourselves and for the other people involved. Then we neutralize, then we ask, is this a helpful story? And then in my life, I'm always looking for stories that I can amplify. What's the best story that I can tell myself? So the story that I chose to tell myself after I came to grips and terms with it, which I wish had been sooner than later, but it was much later in life, was that man, my dad loved me so much, and he wanted the best for me so much that he gave me away. And he had to live with that decision. He had to live and confront his inadequacy because here's the other thing. I did see my dad growing up. So it's not like I never saw him again. And imagine I now live in a nice neighborhood. I now go to private school. So every time I come and visit you, my hair is done, my clothes are nice, I am clean, I smell good, I have dance classes, I get trips to Puerto Rico. I have the life that all your other kids don't have because he had other children and they were not as well off as I was. Whoever raised them did not get the golden ticket that I got. It's not to say that they weren't loved because I know my sister was well loved and I have a good relationship with her. But look at and my one, my oldest brother from my mother's side. Remember, there were three over there. I have tons of brothers and sisters, and they were all dispersed. He always says Rachel was the princess. Out of all of us, she was the one. I get emotional about him because he's in a bad situation right now. But he says, out of all of us, Rachel was the best one. And the only way that I could be here today and I could be the best one was because my father made that selfless choice. Maybe it was selfish in the moment. Maybe for him, it was like, listen, I can't take care of this kid. I'm grieving the loss of the love of my life. And my mother was the love of my father's life. My father lost the love of his life. He's grieving her death. He's confronting his own mortality because you have to remember, Jennifer, this was happening back in the 80s where funeral homes wouldn't even take bodies if the death certificate said AIDS. And for that reason, my mother's death certificate said natural causes. So that a funeral home would take her. So my father loses the love of his life. He has to face his own mortality. He didn't know that he was more of a carrier than a victim of AIDS. And it ultimately wasn't AIDS that took him, it was prostate cancer or figure. And that's the thing about disease, too, right? Some people are carriers, they don't really ever express symptoms. And then other people, they just get exposed to it like my mother, and she died within six months. But he didn't know that. So he's looking down the barrel of a gun and facing his own mortality. What if? And this is a story I could tell myself, much better than he gave me up for he didn't love me, much better than he didn't want me, much better than I wasn't good enough. What if to him he was thinking he's gonna die? Yeah. And he doesn't know if he's gonna live in if he's gonna die in six months or six years, or I think he ended up living 13 years. He ended up living 13 more years, but he did not know that in that moment. He did the best that he could. So the story I chose to tell myself was my dad wanted the best. He did the hardest thing and he gave me up.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for my father to see me thrive, knowing that he had nothing to do with that.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Yeah. Oh my god. Okay, so to recap for everyone out there, the steps, right? I'm all about your the processes. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah, so clear in chapter one, but let's break it down. Let's break it down. So you have a something happens, something happens, right? You either think a thought or feel a feeling. Sometimes you'll feel before you even conceptualize what you're thinking. So you'll either feel a feeling or you'll think a thought, you'll tell yourself a story from that thought or feeling. After you tell yourself a story, you have to assign a meaning. And the thing that we want to do is examine the facts, separate the facts from the story. What actually happened? What actually happened is Maggie died. And factually happened is that my father gave up legal guardianship to my godmother. What factually happened is that I still saw my father throughout my lifetime, up until his death. Those are the facts. All the stories that I told myself, all the stories, which is the most helpful, beneficial story. Oh, there's no helpful stories. All of these stories are awful. Let's find a better story to tell ourselves so that we can live in this moment in the present. Stop letting the past dictate your present and predict your future. No, from right here, right now, what's the best thing I can tell myself? The best thing I can tell myself right here, right now, is that my father made a decision that totally blessed my life. He made the hardest decision. And it was the best choice for all of us. Thank God he made that decision. Thank God he loved me enough and that he wasn't so selfish and egotistical as to think that's my daughter. I'm going to take care of her no matter what, and had me living on beer and freaking government cheese, which by the way was what would happen when I would go visit him. We'd hang out outside. Until he was an addict. We would hang out outside and he would be drinking beer. He was an alcoholic. He would be drinking beer. And I remember saying, Daddy, I'm thirsty. And him giving me a sip of beer. Here, baby, this will quench your thirst. And if I was hungry, there's a block of cheekies in the fridge. Go cut yourself a few slices.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Oh, gosh. So those kinds of stats. I love that. And I hope anyone out there with all of our stories, like we all have them, right? We all have our stories to try that on. Try that what do you call it?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

The framework? The framework for freedom. Yeah. Framework for freedom. Chapter one. Right there. I start off with it in the book. So if you take nothing else from the book, at least you have that. And that applies to everything. Your partner does something that you think is dumb. You start telling yourself all these stories. And I give an example of that in the book where my husband, man, he was pissing me off that day. And I was telling myself all these stories. And then I had to confront and say, I'm telling myself all these stories. And he was like, You are telling stories because the truth is, right? And so it applies in business. I use this in business all the time. Everyone has a bad launch. Everyone, every single person, every company on the market has had a bad quarter. What is the story that you're telling? What's the truth? The truth is we're in a recession. The truth is inflation is crazy. The truth is, I just went to get a bag of groceries the other day with $68. And I don't even think if I got a full meal from that bag of groceries. There are so many truths, but what is the story that we're telling ourselves? And what is a better story that we can amplify so that we can take the best aligned action from today, right here, right now, that will help us create the future that we truly desire and the life experience that we want to have today.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

I love this. I love it so much. And I think that's going to help so many people. So I want to move through your life story a little bit more because you go from all of this childhood trauma and you went into the Marine. Can you walk us through Marines?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

I joined the Marine Corps because I had something to prove. I was trying to prove to myself that I was tough, that I was a badass for sure. Because I'm petite. I'm only 4'11 and a half. So listener, if we ever meet in person, I know that I'm short. You don't need to tell me. I didn't realize how short you are. Everyone says it. I'm telling you right now, I'm petite. I joined the Marine Corps and it was the best decision of my life. What was a story that I found myself telling myself after a while was like, wow, I have consistently put myself in dangerous situations throughout my whole life. I've up in situations where I've had to be a survivor. And I don't think that was conscious because I did not consciously choose the Marine Corps. I'm going to prove that I can survive. I just was inherently fighting for my life all my life, even in the womb. The Marine Corps was awesome until I got pregnant. I got pregnant out of wedlock, and that's when my dream life in the Marine Corps came to a screeching halt. And I have to give credit to giving myself permission to offend for really turning that situation around. Because in the Marine Corps, you have a chain of command, right? So if something is wrong, you go up to the person who is next senior to you, and that person brings it up, and so on and so forth. But when you request masks, you're jumping your whole chain of command and you're going basically outside the house and you're going to mommy and daddy in the big tower. Right. You never do this. The only time you would do this is under like extreme duress. It's when everyone in your chain of command has failed you. And at that moment, I really did feel that my chain of command had failed me. So what I did was I gathered all the evidence that proved that my commanding officers were creating a hostile work environment for me because I had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and they had a negative experience with another Marine who had gotten pregnant before me. So they were using this is a perfect example of the stories, right? They were using the experience and the story that they had with that previous female Marine to castigate me. Okay. What I did was I gathered all my evidence and I went to my chain of command. And I said, I'm going on vacation tomorrow. And when I get back from leave, I'm requesting mass and I'm filing a complaint against you. And I named all the other parties. And I said, and here's my evidence. I'm giving you the opportunity to fix it. So we don't have to go there. So you don't say that blindsided you and that I didn't give you the opportunity to correct it. By the way, that is one of the scariest conversations ever, Jennifer, because you don't understand how the Marine Corps is. That could be a career ender for you right then and there. Even have the ovaries to save permission to a friend. Guess what happened? What happened? And guess what happened? I'm on the plane. This is when I was stationed in Germany. So I'm on the train. Oh wow, going to France, to Paris. And I get a phone call from my direct. We were the same rank, but he was my boss. So my boss calls me and he said, and by the way, he had nothing to do with the hostile work environment. It was people above him. And he goes, Hey, Staff Sergeant Rod. I was a staff sergeant. My last name was Rodriguez. Hey, Staff Sergeant Rod. Just want to let you know we fixed everything with your orders. We got you housing, everything that I had been fighting for, they did overnight. Because I gave myself permission to have been. So I'm happy to say that my career in the Marine Corps ended on a very positive note. I love the Marine Corps. It was amazing. I did not know though that at age 23, this was a few years before I got pregnant, at age 23 that I, or 22, I should say, I would be writing my will. What? Yeah, because we got called up to war. I was part of our Operation Iraqi Freedom. And so I was writing my will at 23. Nothing sobers you up like confronting death, right? It's almost like death has been like trying to knock at my doorstep, but no, because I'm a woman of God. So I rebuke it in the name of Jesus. And according to Psalm 91, I will be satisfied with long life. Wow. Anyway, so that was my experience in the Marine Corps. It was wonderful. I still recommend and advocate that anyone who has a desire to join our armed services, anyone that has a desire to serve their country, specifically even in the Marine Corps, I recommend. It was the best experience of my life.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

How did your experience in the Marine Corps lead you to neuroscience?

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Okay, so there I was in the hospital in Germany with the Wounded Warrior Battalion. Oh, wow. And I am seeing these kids, Jennifer, 17, 18 years old, and of course some grown men too, but coming into our hospital, losing their limbs. I had one patient, his whole face had burnt off completely, all the skin on his face. I had another patient who lost both of his legs and part of his genitalia. I had another patient who lost all of his extremities, arms, legs, another patient who broke almost every single bone in his body and his mouth was wired shut. The extreme circumstances are awful. And then I also had patients that one patient lost just his pinky toe. Just his pinky toe. But here's the thing we were trained in empathy and compassion in that job. And you cannot minimize the emotional pain and suffering of a patient who loses a pinky toe versus someone who's in the ICU.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Because they've each experienced a trauma. So you and I, the average person would be like, would see a person who's lost a pinky toe crying about it, oh my God. And say, You just lost the pinky toe. You'll be fine. You're a little off balance. So what, man? You've got your life, right? But you have to recognize that there's so much more that comes with losing your pinky toe. The trauma of having been in that explosion, the trauma of knowing that you, the survivor's guilt of knowing that you survived, yeah, and all you walk away with is losing a pinky when some of your buddies are dead or they don't have legs or they don't have a face. So much. So as I'm there in this hospital watching these kids and seeing these stories, it takes such a toll on you. And I thought, man, I've always wanted to help people just live on purpose and to like make the most of this life. And I had years before, even before going on active duty, I had seen a show called Starting Over. And they would put women in a house and these life coaches would come and help them. This is at the very beginning of life coaching. Like it was the first time I'd even heard of that job. So that had planted the seed. So when I'm sitting in the hospital thinking about what I'm gonna do next and knowing that my contract was coming to an end and I'd have to make these tough decisions, I thought, wouldn't it be cool to be a life coach? And that way I could motivate and help these kids because their career in the Marine Corps is over. It's they're done. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought I'm gonna become life coach and I'm gonna help people so that they live however long their life is, it means something. And it's something that they really wanted to do and that they feel proud and that they look back and say that they made the most of it.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

So that led me to life coaching. And then the more I learned about life coaching, I've been in this game for 13 years now, certified. I've always been fascinated with why are we the way that we are? And as someone who is neurodivergent, I have ADHD and dyslexia, I always wonder what's wrong. I instead of saying what's right with me, I always the stories, here we go again with the stories. Right. What's wrong with me that I want things to be organized and pretty, but I constantly have piles and piles around me. That is the ADHD brain. And why is it that I am so excited about starting things, but it's so hard to finish them. And so I was interested in what was going on in my brain that was stopping me. And why is it that some people can start and finish easily? And others of us like just can't seem to make it past that first stage. So I began to go on this quest of what is the brain, how does it work and what's happening? And that took me to neuroscience. And that is such a fast fascinating topic because it's not just the brain, right? It's there's the inside, the outside, the up and the down. It you get to learn about epigenetics and how the things that your parents thought and feared gets locked into your cells, into your molecules, and gets transferred on to the babies. And so it's no wonder to me that because I had such a traumatic, so much stress, so much fear, so much anxiety while I was pregnant with my oldest daughter because of my uncertainty in the Marine Corps. That kid has so much anxiety and fear, and I'm just working on reprogramming and she's 15, and I'm like, man, it's taking so long. Wow, that's how we got here.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

That's oh wow, Rachel. That is so amazing. And I'm sure everyone's gonna have so many other questions for you. And I just want to mind you to make sure you follow Rachel Luna. Girl confident. Yeah. Yes, yes, girl confident. Um, girl confident and grab a copy of Permission to offend because it could change your life. It absolutely will change your life.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

And I don't say that because I'm the author, I'm saying that because of the evidence, the testimonials, the Amazon reviews. I'll just say this one last thing, Jennifer. I know we're at a runtime. But I had a woman write to me and say that after she read, after she finished chapter four, she finally got the courage to set boundaries and take herself and her son out of her physically abusive marriage, that she got the courage to get a restraining order. And she felt that because she read my book, Permission to Offend, her life and her son's life were saved.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Now that is so, so incredible. Anyone who is hesitant out there about writing a book or just getting your story out there in any way, that's what I want you to remember. Like you just never know whose lives you're gonna touch. And I'm sure you could have never planned that, Rachel, but you actually have saved saved lives, right? Not just change lives, but actually save lives with your message. So that is so important. Really quickly, I have some rapid fire questions. Rapid fire, yes. Yeah, rapid fire. Don't take too much thought, but like the first thing that comes to your mind, what's one practice you do for your self-care on a daily basis that is absolutely non-negotiable for you?

SPEAKER_01 35:09

I journal and I do my Bible devotional time.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Amazing. Awesome. What's your favorite food from childhood? Funny. Oh, craft maggot cheese. Rips. What's your favorite? Personal development, self-help, whatever you want to call it, book, not your own, obviously. Life's Golden Ticket by Brendan Bouchard. Oh, awesome! I've been to his live seminars. He's really awesome. Yeah. And then name one person, living or dead, that you would love to have a beverage with. And what is that? What is that beverage that you're drinking?

SPEAKER_01 35:44

I am going to have a delicious green juice with Jesus because I have questions.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

We have a lot of questions. And last one, Rachel, just tell everyone where we can find you online and how we can find your book. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Since you're already listening to a podcast, I would encourage you to subscribe to my podcast, Permission to Offend. You can meet me and sign up for Free Coach Fridays over on my website at racheluna.com. And then, of course, on Instagram at GirlConfident. My book is available in English and in Spanish on paperback, hardcover, audio, and Kindle, where all books are sold. So go to Amazon, go to Barnes and Noble, go to your favorite indie. It's everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Wow. Amazing. I'm so proud of you. I'm just so blessed that you were able to come on my podcast. So everyone, uh, everyone listening, please share this episode with a friend who could really use a boost of badassery. And in case you forgot, you are bold, you are brave, you're a badass, and you know it. Have a great day.