March 5, 2024 • 45 mins
*Previously recorded*
Michelle and Devi are ready to receive! In one of our favorite throwback episodes, Devi Brown talks about receiving what was meant for her in divine timing. They also discuss the importance of setting boundaries, being prepared to have boundaries set against you and the power of sitting in solidarity & silence. CHECK IN to this episode for a renewed perspective of getting yourself on the right track!
For more about Devi Brown, visit: https://devibrownwellbeing.com/
Listen to Devi’s podcast, Dropping Gems on the Black Effect Podcast Network!
Follow Devi on social media
Instagram & Twitter: @DeviBrown
Make sure you’re following Michelle on social media!
Instagram: @MichelleWilliams
Twitter: @RealMichelleW
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Checking In with Michelle Williams, a production of
iHeartRadio and The Black Effect.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
What's up to everybody?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Thank you for checking in. We have another wonderful episode.
I'm so thankful that y'all continue to check in and
subscribe and download our podcast now today, I'm so excited
I've said that word about three times already in the
span of one minute to have this beautiful guest checking
in with us. Her name is Debbie Brown. When I
(00:44):
tell y'all, she is so soothing. She focuses on mental health,
you know, an advocate for healing. She is an author,
a successful podcaster, master educator, and y'all, she works for
organizations such as Chase, Microsoft, Chopra, and other Fortune five
hundred companies.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Please welcome Debbie Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yay, I'm so happy to be here girl.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Okay, y'all. I've been following Debbie for a couple of
years now.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
She inspires me as someone with consistency about what her
calling is and as much as we could veer off
and be tempted because social media will make you feel
like you're supposed to be a healer, a mental health advocate,
a gardener, a singer, a carwash. Then I feel like, Okay,
(01:38):
I didn't clean my shoper good enough because Tamar or Bradshaw,
she's on Instagram. She uses these rubbers and she got
Amazon links to where you can buy all these cleaning supplies.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
But Debbie, you just.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You know, you're an educator and you do amazing healing
work not only for individuals, but fourtune, five hundred companies
call on you.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Thank you for this reflection. I feel so seen yourl right,
I so know what you're speaking to. And I think
so many were in this kind of vacuum for really
the last decade, since we all started actively using Instagram
and social media so regularly, Like it changed the way
(02:24):
people I think were able to adult because we were
in this vacuum of comparison kind of without our consent.
It started out as like excitement of like, wow, there's
so many different people, people live so differently, or wow,
I can get this knowledge or information here. I found
my tribe, and then it turned into I think for
so many living a life of not enoughness, a feeling
(02:48):
like everything had to be documented, everything you had to
teach because you did it once, or you know, everything
has to be compared to well, am I doing great?
If I look at that person and I think it's
just a very unnatural, really twisted, unhelpful, unhealthy way to live.
And so like the way I am on social media,
(03:09):
I just I want to be very clear because I'm
not an influencer. I'm not here for the people. I'm
here to share the work God calls me to and
I'm here to share things that I find interesting and
hopefully the people that find me. You know, we can
kind of speak the same language. But I'm not looking
to attract everyone. I'm not looking to build my following.
(03:29):
I'm looking to live my work.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Were you always okay with that? Were you ever tempted
to like say, like, I'll okay, y'all, she's gorgeous aesthetically right.
Were you ever tempted to be like, you know what,
I could get a redkindal for my curls.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Whoived Debby if they call you, please, If Shame moisture,
whoever wants to invest in you, please, ma'am, go for it.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, but always bring it back to healing.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Always bring it back to healing. You know, absolutely, yes,
you know. To answer your question, I think I'll be
really honest with you like, I think we're in the
age of authenticity. I think that we are in a
new era of women of ways that were allowed to
be multi hyphenate, multi dimensional. And I think because of
(04:18):
that now it feels more comfortable for me to be
myself on social. But I had a hard time. I'm
not naturally pulled to do things I see other people doing,
Like my spirit kind of rejects it, maybe in an
over the top way sometimes. But I felt like, honestly,
like I didn't belong on social for years because there
(04:40):
was this whole era where the in thing to do
was to share how good you were at tearing another
person down. You know, like there was this era where
anything that you would say someone some stranger in a
distant land or somewhere else would just meet you with negativity.
And it was years of that, and anytime I try
to poke my head up and be myself on social,
(05:02):
I'd get these comments that would say, so many you're stupid,
you're ugly, you're this, or oh, you think like the
most irrational things. And so, you know, as someone that
does not believe in tearing people down, for someone that
it doesn't occur to to try to show off my
language and my vocabulary by how painful it can be
(05:22):
for someone else. Yeah, I was sharing that I've been
sharing the same stuff for years, but it just wasn't
resonating because we were in a different moment as a society.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Either we weren't ready or it just wasn't God's time.
How many people have been doing this for years and
then all of a sudden, one thing that they said
resonates with millions or it goes viral. But you're like,
I've been talking his talk for ten years. I've been
doing this, you know. And so I love timing. I
(05:54):
love God's timing. I love when he knows that something
that you have to share is me on a broad
scale in the world and in this earth, and God
makes it happen.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
That makes it happen.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I love to see the elevation of people in which
I can spot and say God did that. They didn't
manipulate it themselves. God did that.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That is so beautiful everything that you're saying, It's just
like this morning, I was driving back from dropping my
son at preschool, and I just felt so overwhelmingly grateful
for the divine timing of God, you know, And every
time that I was irritated in my life or felt
like things weren't fast enough, or that it should be now,
(06:40):
or like this, I just felt so grateful for every
time I didn't get my way because it wasn't right.
It's not right till it's right. And you can't see
that into the patience, like the surrender, the cultivating a
deep practice of patience. People don't speak to the challenge
of it enough. But it's hard, hard, hard. It's hard
(07:01):
to be patient when you think you know. It's hard
to be patient when the world is moving out of
particular speed or frequency. But it is always in divine time.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Always, And it's amazing when you talk about the world
is moving at a particular speed. Yes, the world is
moving at a particular speed, but you still have a soul,
you still have.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
A physical part of the body.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
And I feel like a lot of us are stressed
and burnt out because we're trying to move at the speed.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It's like we're on a freeway. Say the speed limit
is seventy okay, I'm a seventy okay, maybe seventy five, But.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Then there's a car.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Other cars are going eighty five ninety five, and it's
we're naturally inclined at least I am to be like, Oh,
I've got to go with the flow of traffic. When
I mean the flow of traffic, how fast traffic is going.
So I like in what we see on a daily basis,
say on social media, they almost dictate other cars how
(07:58):
fast you're supposed to be, and it has you out
of time, out of rhythm. You might arrive to your
destination early and you ain't ready to be there so early,
or you get out the car and the door is
locked because you ain't supposed to be there right now.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It's you early.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
They ain't even unlike the doors yet. But I got
here early, you know what I mean, versus at the
right time.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
And I'm excited to talk to you about healing and
timing of it.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Oh that was so beautiful. Yes, yes, yes, y'all.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I met Debbie in person at Charlemagne's Mental Wealth Summit
in New York and there were so many amazing people
in the room, practitioners, psychiatrist, psychologists, and therapists. But your
process might be a little different in the healing space
than that of traditional therapy. Get us into your process
(08:59):
of how it's different than traditional therapy.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I really believe that to truly heal, to truly release things,
to truly call in more for your life, a higher vision,
to come into the real remembrance of your wholeness, to
expand in who you are. It is never one thing.
So I think therapy is phenomenal psychiatry. It's phenomenal. Praise
(09:26):
God for the ways that these fields have been able
to evolve over the centuries, for the kind of knowledge
we're able to come to about ourselves now. And just
that won't get you there. It won't, I won't, And
I think everyone really knows that. You know, sometimes you
get caught up in loops and therapy. Now, this is
(09:47):
a separate conversation from the conversation about destigmatizing mental health.
That we still need to be talking about access to therapy,
access to group therapy, cognitive therape, somatic therapy, all of them.
And once you've begun that journey, now there's a separate
conversation of how to elevate even higher, how to become
(10:10):
even more yourself, how to heal even deeper. I don't
think healing is sustainable in our lives. To create a
new practice, a new set of experiences without a holistic approach.
You have to look at the mental, physical, emotional, and
spiritual view of yourself and you have to come into
(10:32):
healing of all four of those components. And this is
in no way a criticism of wherever anyone is at.
This is just letting everyone know there's more available. You know,
the thing about therapy, depending on what type you're getting.
Most people, the first access point of therapy is cognitive therapy,
which is talk therapy, and it's a powerful tool. But
(10:54):
after a while, once it equips you with the language
that you need to express yourself, once it equips you
with the understanding of things that have happened to you
and you've had the space to express them, to get
wise expert counsel on them, then there's more because you
can always get stuck in a rumination. Now you have
the language, and then you find five years later you're
(11:17):
still chewing on the same things you uncovered. If anyone
finds themselves in that where you are still talking about
the same patterns in therapy all the time, you're still
stuck on perhaps one of the facets of your healing,
or you're just repeating the pattern with new people, and
so you're going in there to work the same process,
(11:37):
but with new relationships. It's time to elevate, it's time
to expand, it's time to push yourself more. And then
I would really recommend that people find a somatic approach.
I believe in blending psychology and spirituality. I think that
regardless of belief system, it's incredibly powerful for everyone to
have a devotional practice. So there is nothing about my
(12:02):
life that moves without God. There is not a thing.
Everything about my relationship with Creator informs all the other
work that I do, everything and every way that I'm
able to heal whatever goal I'm currently working on with that.
So I think everyone can deeply, transformationally, mind blowingly connect
(12:26):
with the most elevated versions of themselves when they look
at a holistic approach, start getting curious, start seeing some
of the phenomenal healing modalities and ancient wisdom that we
have had for centuries at our fingertips. It's a little
bit science, it's a little bit expertise, and then it's
a little bit mystery.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I'm still glad you talked about science and spirituality. We
are spirits. We have a body that houses the soul.
We are a spirit and a lot of us we
work on the physical. We look good, we go to
the gym, we eat all the right things. But then
it's like, man, if we can get that spiritual side
(13:08):
to match the physical, and how self aware you'll become.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I believe you will treat people better.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I've even become so much more aware because of spending
time spiritually in the morning.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I call it my first fruits. Or I don't do
anything in.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
The morning before I've done a devotional prayer or something,
and then it makes me not want to look at
stuff on the internet that's going to like desecrate everything
that I've done, you know, to get my day started.
We're like sponges, Debbie, you agree, like our spirits take
on and we feel everything, and if you don't, you're
(13:47):
just hardened.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And I used to be that hardened person.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
A friend of mine, April Mason, said the other day
that maybe we have faith for a car, maybe we
have faith for a new house, or.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
To get that degree. Right, i'm'a get it. I'm gonna
get it.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
I'm gonna get it, But we don't use that same
faith and say, man, I also deserve wholeness. Oo, and
you you always say, seek the path that demands your
whole being. Oh, I'm gonna get this car, honey. Oh oh,
I'm gonna get me a husband or a wife.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
And yeah, but ooh, we.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Need some healing so we can maintain these things that
we're these other things we've got faith for.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah, yeah, because you know ooh okay. First, I would
say the quote that you just spoke to it comes
from the great Sufi mystic Roomy Rumy's poetry was ten
twelve years ago my first foray into being with myself,
into opening to like, joy, to beauty, to deeper understanding.
(14:49):
And that quote changed the course of my life when
I first heard it. And the full quote is seek
the wisdom that will untie you're not, seek the path
that demands your whole being. And when I heard that,
it's like your whole being, So seeking a path that
(15:09):
is requiring all of you. It's requiring you to operate
on all cylinders as all of who you are, which
is what God wants for us. And seek the path
that demands your whole being, like live the life with
people in circumstances that require you to be in wholeness,
(15:29):
that require you to be your elevated self. You know,
I don't want to be the smartest person in the room.
I don't want to be the most healed person in
the room. I want to live my path, not comparatively,
and continue to learn and expand with the array of
information so many of us hold and wisdom that we hold.
(15:51):
You know, the path of wholeness. It's available to everyone,
but it's not for the faint of heart. I would
be really remiss if I pack it the way I
talked about the healing of the human spirit through tips
and hacks and tricks and quick little you know, like
lists of things you can do each day. You have
(16:11):
to get in the gutter with yourself. You have to
be willing to surrender every thought you have about who
you are. You have to be willing to look into
the deepest crevices of the things that cause you pain
so you can free yourself of them and at for
so much of that sounds scary, but it's what we're
(16:32):
built to do. We are designed to do this. We
can do this big, hard work. But so often I think,
and I say this with a lot of expanded reverence
for what the Church has meant to so many, For centuries.
But some of the issues I think some people are
(16:54):
starting to notice, especially people that have perhaps spent their
entire lives going to church and know the Word and
have felt God. The church hasn't always equipped people with
the tools to know God for themselves. Very often, the church,
depending on who you're with, and I want to say,
this is not a monolith. So some people have true
(17:16):
anointed leadership that is not trying to hoard God as
the middleman, and some really don't. And you know, very
often you go to church and you'll hear these powerful
sermons and these incredible stories from the Bible, and the
way they're talking to you about it on stage is
(17:38):
to just channel that towards a car, or towards the promotion,
or towards something that is surfaced that God could give
a damn about, you know, like God doesn't care about car,
Like these are things we invented. God knows how to
speak to you through your growth, through the ways that
you're able to expand your heart into love. Through that process,
(18:00):
you're able to attract higher outcomes, which can allow for
you to have the more comfortable vehicle, which can allow
for you to have, you know, the job that is
really speaking to your soul's purpose. But we have to
stop asking for the small things, and we have to
ask to get unstuck from everything that's blocking us from
(18:21):
getting what we want. So if I need a new car,
I'm not going to necessarily just pray about the car.
I will pray that God gives me a solution, But
I'm also going to pray God, what is my work?
What am I avoiding in myself? What are the decisions
I need to make to position myself to have the
(18:42):
receptivity to bring that car in, to bring the better
life in. But it's everything else, you know, It's your
relationship with yourself, it's your understanding of your childhood. The
thing that is so interesting to me is sometimes, you know,
I'll speak to people that are so beautifully equipped with
the word they've met, but their ability to live it
(19:02):
is so limited. And very often, you know, everyone wants
to speak to the power of Christ, of Jesus, but
are not actually in practice to walk the path Christ
existed to show us how to live to be christ like.
And to be christ Like doesn't mean to be this
(19:24):
saint up on a shelf. It means to make honorable choices.
It means to love yourself. It means to be in
relationship with God every single day.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
To be in relationship with God every single day will
look different for it everybody. And I am finding that.
You know, I'm one of the ones that you're talking about.
I grew up in church every single day. It was
my foundation. But it wasn't until I started traveling on
the road professionally that I had to cultivate relationship with
(20:00):
God for myself because I didn't have a church to
go to every Sunday on the road, right, Sometimes we
had shows on Sunday. Sometimes Sunday was a travel day
to prepare us for Monday.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So I think my growth, my strength came from will
church be in my foundation? But church is different, the
church being where we went to fellowship, where I believe
is community what we need even from slavery, we found
a community to go to to praise, sing songs of worship.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
But then what happens when you go outside those four
walls of church is Monday, right, And so learning that
I couldn't depend on just the pastor sermon on Sunday,
I needed to apply that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday in time for Sunday and if maybe you go
to We went to Bible study during the week. We
also went to choirhearsa during the week. So I was
(20:57):
there in the physical four walls of the church all
the time. But like I said, the real relationship with God,
because those were just doings, right, but the real relationship
with God to where I learned him who I am.
It happened for me outside of the actual sanctuary. My
(21:17):
home had to become my sanctuary. My bedroom had to
become a sanctuary, my hotel room had to become a sanctuary.
Tour bus had to become a freaking sanctuary. Lord, I
didn't mean to say freaking sanctuary. I'm sorry, uh, But
and on that path things happen. Relationships break apart, Certain
(21:39):
things that you wanted in your life and career you
didn't get and so a piece of you gets broken, broken,
broken every single day, and you're not whole. Can a
person be completely whole? Or is it just wholeness and healing?
Are just gonna be journeys? And will we be completely
(22:00):
and or healed?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
I think yes, I believe yes. To be fully hold
and healed. It does not mean that the circumstances of
life are necessarily going to be that much easier. Earth
is a challenging place. We just hit eight billion in
our population, and the majority of that eight billion are unconscious.
(22:23):
It's a lot of people that are not going to
do their work while they're alive. And so you're going
to do all this work of healing of wholeness and
you're still going to be living here. It just is.
And I think that's where acceptance comes in, and I
think we can I think there are deep levels of
enlightenment that a very rare few meat in their lifetimes,
(22:46):
right Like, there's some you think of the Dalai Lama,
I think it's pretty safe to say he was always
intended to be this enlightened being that shares consciousness in
the way that he does. I can't imagine the Dhali
Lama with a teenage life like mine, you know, Like,
there are some beings that I think hold space for
the rest of the world to uplift to. But then
(23:08):
I also think, you know, people ask me all the
time like do you have bad days? Right Like do
you get really angry? And I'm like, well, I'm a
human being, like I'm meant to feel all the full
spectrum of emotion. I don't have less crazy shit that
happens to me. I'll say that I don't have, probably
(23:28):
less than most, but the way I relate to it
is completely different. You know, if something doesn't happen in
the way that I visualized it, I think my wholeness
really displays itself as the deep faith that well, then
that was the right choice. You know. If that wasn't mine,
then it's not mine. If this didn't happen the way
I wanted it to, even if I really thought so,
(23:50):
then that is not the path. And so whenever I
pray for something, I say something very specific. I may
ask for X, Y, and Z. As I in the prayer,
I say this or something better for the highest good? God,
can I please have this or something better for the
highest good? Because I also don't want to place limits
(24:12):
on God.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
That's so good this or better than this?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah, the highest good?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Would you say an indicator of healing and wholeness is
in your response to the Shenanigans of war?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Who yes, oh my God, God gave me my answer.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I was like, whoo ah, wholeness.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Is maybe not even a feeling. Healing is not a feeling.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yes, oh my god, that's good. Yes, yes, because that's
the thing. It's it's once you get a healing, once
you get kind of that new depth of yourself, it's
about building a life that supports it, that continues to
make that truth. So that does mean you don't really
stay in the life that you had. Everything has to
(25:00):
change with you, and sometimes that means casting some people aside,
walking away from some circumstances, jobs, people, places, things. But
if there is a trust, and if there is a
commitment to living a healed whole life, you adjust. We
are highly adaptable beings, adjust trusted enough to leave behind
(25:24):
things even if you don't understand why.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Ooh. This leads to my next question.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I read something where you were saying, I'm paraphrasing, but
you're an expert at boundaries, m.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Setting boundaries.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Ooh I love boundaries, she.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Said, I love boundaries.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
You said it as if you said, ooh I love
allmond joys or kids. Oh, I love crying bars, Ooh
I love bread pudding.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Ooh god, I love boundaries.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Truly because every time I have the opportunity to feel
discomfort and set a boundary. Anyway, I unlock a new
layer of myself in my life. I am always, always,
always met with a better outcome than I could have imagined.
And it takes work. You know the thing about boundaries,
It took years of practice to love them. There was
(26:21):
a time one. It's hard to admit that your life
has lacked boundaries, right, especially if you are somebody that
shows up powerfully in other, you know, avenues of your life.
It's hard to say, oh, whoa, but in this area,
Holy shit, I've been letting everybody get away with things.
You know. It's challenging to look at that, but to
(26:42):
look at it and get curious and say, well, why
the hell have I been doing that? Why have I
been doing that? Can I make another choice?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Making that choice is so uncomfortable, Let me still make
it anyway, and let me just privately scream it out.
When I started setting down boundaries in my personal life,
it then led me to realize that I needed to
set boundaries in my work life. I needed to set
boundaries in every facet of how I interact with people
Like you get this beautiful kind of revolving door of
(27:13):
practice when you commit to it, and the first, you know,
I knew walking in that I was doing things that
I wasn't good at. I knew that I was going
to have to practice a new way of being That
really triggered me, That really made me uncomfortable, That really
made me look at more painful parts of my own
(27:34):
past of oh wow, you've you've actually let yourself down
quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I had to really look at that. I had to
look at my role in my choices, my role in
people overstepping my boundaries. And it's hard. It's hard because
it's always a two way street. It is never just
what someone else is doing. It is never just that
they won't respect you, that they want this, Why do
you allow it? What are you allowing? You know, It's
(28:03):
always a two way street. You have to look at
both sides. And the first when I first started realizing
I needed to set boundaries in my life, I would
I would do it, and then I would be consumed
with anxiety and I'd be thinking of, oh my god,
and they're going to think this about me and then this,
and I would literally just say, grin and Barrett, you
(28:24):
will not change your response. You will not send another message,
you will not be passive aggressive, you will not song
and dance. And I would grab a pillow and I'd
go into the other room, and sometimes I would scream.
Sometimes I would cry because I hated that it was
so hard for me. It felt embarrassing, it felt like
what the hell am I? And then it quickly gets better.
(28:49):
The second you say yes to yourself, the second you
enforce that first boundary and do not change your stance,
life opens up. You get more and more opportunity every
day to practice. Now you're saying no twenty five times
a day, and you probably hadn't said no in ten years,
and that practice opens up, and before you know it,
a couple months have passed and you are your own
(29:12):
personal expert at protecting yourself, at setting boundaries and at
making better choices.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
M I told a friend of mine that you don't
have to announce when you set a boundary.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Doctor Darius Daniels says it as well. He was like,
every adjustment don't need to be announced either, right, yes, yeah,
So some of that anxiety about setting a boundary and
or making that adjustment for me has subsided. When I
reminded myself and the friend like you don't have to announce.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
It, just suddenly.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Make the adjustment and guess what, Debby, I've been on
the receiving end of someone setting boundaries with me.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
How does it feel?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
It don't feel good.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I learned I was spoiled entitled. Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, and it's like okay. So for someone to set
a boundary with me, yeah, and I was okay.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
It made me want to be a safe person.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
And it also made me because you talk about the
passive aggressive, I was very passive aggressive, which can irritate
the other person, like why don't you just say what your.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Chest say what you mean?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Or don't come to me five days later with the
circumstance and you've been himming a han dancing like you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So we talk about girls set boundaries with people.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, but be ready for when a person sets a
boundary with you, some aware reflect, make the apologies, create
a safe environment so that person can maybe adjust the
boundary because they're entitled to adjusting the boundaries as they see.
Are you a safe person with them? Doctor Henry Cloud,
(31:04):
John Towns and the book Safe People.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
I remember reading the book.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I remember, well, I can't wait to read this book
because I'm gonna be able to tell my ex all
about himself. First few chapters of the book, it was
telling me about me. So I want to encourage people
like Yo's. It feels good to set those boundaries, but
I'm telling you, don't be so high and mighty mean
(31:29):
think you're so perfect that somebody is out there is
going to have to set a boundary with you. It
don't feel good, but imagine they don't feel good to
them when you.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Set a bondary with them as well.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
That is so so so beautiful and so powerful. Like
if everyone listening could do both of these things we
just spoke to, Your life changes radically, urgently, completely, And
I think, like, but what you just spoke to about
(32:01):
even giving that grace when you're not getting your way
is so amazing and something I think of, you know,
something I really try to do intuitively. You can notice
people in your life that are trying to make a
new way for themselves right, that are making themselves uncomfortable,
(32:24):
that are testing out boundaries as you said, and really
working your process inside so you can be a soft
place to land for them is so important. You know,
being able to give people the kind of response that
you would crave to receive from people when you are
looking to try on new ways of being. It is
(32:46):
one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and others,
you know. And sometimes because I move really fast, I
process things really fast. I talk a lot. I'm very
descriptive and expressive. But that's also my gift, and that's
not a way of being that everyone has. And so
for me, a lot of my work when I'm in
(33:06):
conversation with people I love, it's to slow down and
to be quiet, and to not speak their words for them,
and to notice when I feel like I have to
add something, to just instead sit in my own body
and take a deep breath and give that person the
dignity of their process.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
It's just so beautiful, Debbie, this is so on time.
Literally yesterday was on the phone with someone and they
were sharing some things with me, and I wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Say for the first time, but I felt so bad.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
I didn't have a lot to say, but I intentionally said,
let's sit here in this silence, just you being present
is enough. We don't have to be like, Oh, things
happen for a reason. Oh it's gonna be okay. Hey,
to them right now, they don't feel like it's gonna
(34:02):
be okay.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, so sitting.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
It was so awkward, Debbie, to not have the solution
or the or the answer, or the scripture or the
prayer right up front or the churchyisms.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
We just had to sit in silence.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I hated that it was over the phone versus I
felt like it would have been better in person to
just sit in silence with this person, But over the phone,
it was just like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
That's so powerful because when you have supportive silence, not
silent treatment, not someone being silent because they are minimizing, dismissing,
or don't want to be a part of your process,
and the feeling is different from healthy silence to non
healthy silence, but supportive silence that you just turned out.
(34:54):
It allows someone to build their trust in themselves. It
allows want to build their own emotional intelligence to trust themselves.
How often can we actually really give solutions to people's
individual unique problems, you know, truly, like a good one.
It's not something we can think about at the top
of our heads on command in a thirty minute conversation,
(35:18):
and we shouldn't try. We should just offer support. We
should offer freedom, we should offer non judgment for someone
as they're walking through process. If you have something that
is just a divine unique fit, you'll know it. But
if you're just trying to come up with something because
of your own awkwardness, because of your discomfort with that
(35:40):
person's pain, you are doing them a disservice, You are
causing them harm, and you're jeopardizing your relationship with them.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
You'll say some of.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
The most foolish things like mouths like did I I
didn't mean that? Pivoting back to boundary boundaries versus discarding people.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
It's completely different, and it's a felt difference. If there's
anger behind your boundary, then that is a completely different
mechanism happening, which you may need to happen right, because
some people need angry boundaries. If you're being harmed, if
you're being abused, if you are being mistreated, there is
a harsh line of boundary. So sometimes the boundary has
(36:29):
to be a barbed wire fence for unsafe people, for
other people that just may be unconscious or not as
emotionally intelligent as you or I've had different kinds of
traumas and triggers. The boundary can be more like a
velvet fence, a velvet sword. It can be just a line,
a visual line in the sand. But it doesn't have
(36:50):
to be a cinder block wall, you know. And I
think when we're creating boundaries, the boundary is less about
the other person and it's not individualized to every person.
You're creating a set of boundaries of what is honorable
for your unique life. Then that boundary applies to anyone
(37:12):
that comes up to you, friends, family, currents, exes. Everybody
can get the boundary. Because the boundary is about the
way you care for yourself as a whole, everybody can
get it. And so when I set a boundary, I
think part of the reason that allows it to not
feel so charged anymore for me is that when someone
is upset, I can honestly really look at them and say, well,
(37:34):
this has nothing to do with you. This is the
boundary for my life. This isn't personal about you as
a person as a soul, but this is what's required
for my life, and it gets applied to everyone.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
So good, Debby, absolutely amazing. You talk about naming your
wounds and how there's strength in it, and thank you
for that. How does a person name their wounds.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It is a long, slow, beautiful process. Our healing is
a lot of things, but one thing it isn't is
like a one weekend session of something right. It is
the continued practice. It is building a system of curiosity
with the way that you view yourself in your life,
(38:27):
and so self awareness is what allows us to come
into our healing. And the more self aware we become,
the more we're able to look at the things that
have really hurt us in our lives, the easier it
is to look at our own behaviors and not be
in judgment of them. Sometimes it's really hard for people
(38:49):
to come into self awareness because being honest with yourself hurts,
you know, it can feel really defeating For some people
that have had traumatic backgrounds. It also means meeting experiences
in their lives that didn't receive their consent, that they
didn't deserve, and looking at that stuff is hard. It
(39:10):
does feel easier to pretend things didn't happen. It does
feel easier to bypass that and to just try to
instantly push yourself into a positive thought, but it is
not sustainable. Everyone who has ever tried that knows you
may be projecting a look of yourself to the world,
but you're not feeling it in your own heart. You
(39:30):
deserve more. You deserve more. You deserve real healing, not
performative healing. For that to happen, we just have to
really be willing gently to look at the truth of
our individual lives, the truth of our behavior, the truth
of our experiences, as soon as we're able to do that.
(39:50):
And for anyone listening that may have a story that
you think that makes sense for everyone else, but not me,
because this happened to me. Here you and it's about
releasing yourself from that cell. It's about saying it out loud.
It is about saying it and sharing it with trusted
(40:12):
people who give you this space to talk about yourself
without trying to cover you with their discomfort or their
advice or their spiritual bypassing. It's about giving yourself, however
much time you need to say it out loud, but
saying it out loud so it can free you and
you can release it and you can reframe the narrative
(40:33):
of who you are and how you became that.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
As we hold our hearts and what you might want
to call your abdomen or your stomach. Just take this
hold and just let this just be stable center. In
this last I closed my eyes as Debbie was talking,
and I received it as a prayer, a prayer for
(40:58):
myself and as a prayer for the person listening, and
as a prayer for Debbie as she continues this healing
work through individuals and for corporations and to the world
that we continue healing.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
It is deserved.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
It's not for the rich person, it's not for the
person that's never been abused.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
It is for you, and it's for me.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
You are loved.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Know that. I don't care what your abuse and trauma.
I don't care what the lies say to you. You
are loved.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
We're with you. You're not alone.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Release Release, Release, You deserve, you deserve, you deserve. Who
do you want to be? Who are you being called
to become?
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Grace and ease will cover you?
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Say? Yes? H m hm.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Amen?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Wow? Oh that was so be it? Oh my god. Wow.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
This is what checking in the Foundation must be about
and must continue to be this.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
And thank you Debbie for joining us.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I really don't know if a close is necessary, so
I'm just gonna leave it here. We're just Gonna let
it breathe. Checking In with Michelle Williams is a production
(44:59):
of Iheartradius and The Black Effect. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Checking In with Michelle Williams, a production of
iHeartRadio and The Black Effect.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
What's up to everybody?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Thank you for checking in. We have another wonderful episode.
I'm so thankful that y'all continue to check in and
subscribe and download our podcast now today, I'm so excited
I've said that word about three times already in the
span of one minute to have this beautiful guest checking
in with us. Her name is Debbie Brown. When I
(00:44):
tell y'all, she is so soothing. She focuses on mental health,
you know, an advocate for healing. She is an author,
a successful podcaster, master educator, and y'all, she works for
organizations such as Chase, Microsoft, Chopra, and other Fortune five
hundred companies.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Please welcome Debbie Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yay, I'm so happy to be here girl.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Okay, y'all. I've been following Debbie for a couple of
years now.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
She inspires me as someone with consistency about what her
calling is and as much as we could veer off
and be tempted because social media will make you feel
like you're supposed to be a healer, a mental health advocate,
a gardener, a singer, a carwash. Then I feel like, Okay,
(01:38):
I didn't clean my shoper good enough because Tamar or Bradshaw,
she's on Instagram. She uses these rubbers and she got
Amazon links to where you can buy all these cleaning supplies.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
But Debbie, you just.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You know, you're an educator and you do amazing healing
work not only for individuals, but fourtune, five hundred companies
call on you.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Thank you for this reflection. I feel so seen yourl right,
I so know what you're speaking to. And I think
so many were in this kind of vacuum for really
the last decade, since we all started actively using Instagram
and social media so regularly, Like it changed the way
(02:24):
people I think were able to adult because we were
in this vacuum of comparison kind of without our consent.
It started out as like excitement of like, wow, there's
so many different people, people live so differently, or wow,
I can get this knowledge or information here. I found
my tribe, and then it turned into I think for
so many living a life of not enoughness, a feeling
(02:48):
like everything had to be documented, everything you had to
teach because you did it once, or you know, everything
has to be compared to well, am I doing great?
If I look at that person and I think it's
just a very unnatural, really twisted, unhelpful, unhealthy way to live.
And so like the way I am on social media,
(03:09):
I just I want to be very clear because I'm
not an influencer. I'm not here for the people. I'm
here to share the work God calls me to and
I'm here to share things that I find interesting and
hopefully the people that find me. You know, we can
kind of speak the same language. But I'm not looking
to attract everyone. I'm not looking to build my following.
(03:29):
I'm looking to live my work.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Were you always okay with that? Were you ever tempted
to like say, like, I'll okay, y'all, she's gorgeous aesthetically right.
Were you ever tempted to be like, you know what,
I could get a redkindal for my curls.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Whoived Debby if they call you, please, If Shame moisture,
whoever wants to invest in you, please, ma'am, go for it.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, but always bring it back to healing.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Always bring it back to healing. You know, absolutely, yes,
you know. To answer your question, I think I'll be
really honest with you like, I think we're in the
age of authenticity. I think that we are in a
new era of women of ways that were allowed to
be multi hyphenate, multi dimensional. And I think because of
(04:18):
that now it feels more comfortable for me to be
myself on social. But I had a hard time. I'm
not naturally pulled to do things I see other people doing,
Like my spirit kind of rejects it, maybe in an
over the top way sometimes. But I felt like, honestly,
like I didn't belong on social for years because there
(04:40):
was this whole era where the in thing to do
was to share how good you were at tearing another
person down. You know, like there was this era where
anything that you would say someone some stranger in a
distant land or somewhere else would just meet you with negativity.
And it was years of that, and anytime I try
to poke my head up and be myself on social,
(05:02):
I'd get these comments that would say, so many you're stupid,
you're ugly, you're this, or oh, you think like the
most irrational things. And so, you know, as someone that
does not believe in tearing people down, for someone that
it doesn't occur to to try to show off my
language and my vocabulary by how painful it can be
(05:22):
for someone else. Yeah, I was sharing that I've been
sharing the same stuff for years, but it just wasn't
resonating because we were in a different moment as a society.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Either we weren't ready or it just wasn't God's time.
How many people have been doing this for years and
then all of a sudden, one thing that they said
resonates with millions or it goes viral. But you're like,
I've been talking his talk for ten years. I've been
doing this, you know. And so I love timing. I
(05:54):
love God's timing. I love when he knows that something
that you have to share is me on a broad
scale in the world and in this earth, and God
makes it happen.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
That makes it happen.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I love to see the elevation of people in which
I can spot and say God did that. They didn't
manipulate it themselves. God did that.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That is so beautiful everything that you're saying, It's just
like this morning, I was driving back from dropping my
son at preschool, and I just felt so overwhelmingly grateful
for the divine timing of God, you know, And every
time that I was irritated in my life or felt
like things weren't fast enough, or that it should be now,
(06:40):
or like this, I just felt so grateful for every
time I didn't get my way because it wasn't right.
It's not right till it's right. And you can't see
that into the patience, like the surrender, the cultivating a
deep practice of patience. People don't speak to the challenge
of it enough. But it's hard, hard, hard. It's hard
(07:01):
to be patient when you think you know. It's hard
to be patient when the world is moving out of
particular speed or frequency. But it is always in divine time.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Always, And it's amazing when you talk about the world
is moving at a particular speed. Yes, the world is
moving at a particular speed, but you still have a soul,
you still have.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
A physical part of the body.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
And I feel like a lot of us are stressed
and burnt out because we're trying to move at the speed.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It's like we're on a freeway. Say the speed limit
is seventy okay, I'm a seventy okay, maybe seventy five, But.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Then there's a car.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Other cars are going eighty five ninety five, and it's
we're naturally inclined at least I am to be like, Oh,
I've got to go with the flow of traffic. When
I mean the flow of traffic, how fast traffic is going.
So I like in what we see on a daily basis,
say on social media, they almost dictate other cars how
(07:58):
fast you're supposed to be, and it has you out
of time, out of rhythm. You might arrive to your
destination early and you ain't ready to be there so early,
or you get out the car and the door is
locked because you ain't supposed to be there right now.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It's you early.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
They ain't even unlike the doors yet. But I got
here early, you know what I mean, versus at the
right time.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
And I'm excited to talk to you about healing and
timing of it.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Oh that was so beautiful. Yes, yes, yes, y'all.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I met Debbie in person at Charlemagne's Mental Wealth Summit
in New York and there were so many amazing people
in the room, practitioners, psychiatrist, psychologists, and therapists. But your
process might be a little different in the healing space
than that of traditional therapy. Get us into your process
(08:59):
of how it's different than traditional therapy.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I really believe that to truly heal, to truly release things,
to truly call in more for your life, a higher vision,
to come into the real remembrance of your wholeness, to
expand in who you are. It is never one thing.
So I think therapy is phenomenal psychiatry. It's phenomenal. Praise
(09:26):
God for the ways that these fields have been able
to evolve over the centuries, for the kind of knowledge
we're able to come to about ourselves now. And just
that won't get you there. It won't, I won't, And
I think everyone really knows that. You know, sometimes you
get caught up in loops and therapy. Now, this is
(09:47):
a separate conversation from the conversation about destigmatizing mental health.
That we still need to be talking about access to therapy,
access to group therapy, cognitive therape, somatic therapy, all of them.
And once you've begun that journey, now there's a separate
conversation of how to elevate even higher, how to become
(10:10):
even more yourself, how to heal even deeper. I don't
think healing is sustainable in our lives. To create a
new practice, a new set of experiences without a holistic approach.
You have to look at the mental, physical, emotional, and
spiritual view of yourself and you have to come into
(10:32):
healing of all four of those components. And this is
in no way a criticism of wherever anyone is at.
This is just letting everyone know there's more available. You know,
the thing about therapy, depending on what type you're getting.
Most people, the first access point of therapy is cognitive therapy,
which is talk therapy, and it's a powerful tool. But
(10:54):
after a while, once it equips you with the language
that you need to express yourself, once it equips you
with the understanding of things that have happened to you
and you've had the space to express them, to get
wise expert counsel on them, then there's more because you
can always get stuck in a rumination. Now you have
the language, and then you find five years later you're
(11:17):
still chewing on the same things you uncovered. If anyone
finds themselves in that where you are still talking about
the same patterns in therapy all the time, you're still
stuck on perhaps one of the facets of your healing,
or you're just repeating the pattern with new people, and
so you're going in there to work the same process,
(11:37):
but with new relationships. It's time to elevate, it's time
to expand, it's time to push yourself more. And then
I would really recommend that people find a somatic approach.
I believe in blending psychology and spirituality. I think that
regardless of belief system, it's incredibly powerful for everyone to
have a devotional practice. So there is nothing about my
(12:02):
life that moves without God. There is not a thing.
Everything about my relationship with Creator informs all the other
work that I do, everything and every way that I'm
able to heal whatever goal I'm currently working on with that.
So I think everyone can deeply, transformationally, mind blowingly connect
(12:26):
with the most elevated versions of themselves when they look
at a holistic approach, start getting curious, start seeing some
of the phenomenal healing modalities and ancient wisdom that we
have had for centuries at our fingertips. It's a little
bit science, it's a little bit expertise, and then it's
a little bit mystery.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I'm still glad you talked about science and spirituality. We
are spirits. We have a body that houses the soul.
We are a spirit and a lot of us we
work on the physical. We look good, we go to
the gym, we eat all the right things. But then
it's like, man, if we can get that spiritual side
(13:08):
to match the physical, and how self aware you'll become.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I believe you will treat people better.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I've even become so much more aware because of spending
time spiritually in the morning.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I call it my first fruits. Or I don't do
anything in.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
The morning before I've done a devotional prayer or something,
and then it makes me not want to look at
stuff on the internet that's going to like desecrate everything
that I've done, you know, to get my day started.
We're like sponges, Debbie, you agree, like our spirits take
on and we feel everything, and if you don't, you're
(13:47):
just hardened.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And I used to be that hardened person.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
A friend of mine, April Mason, said the other day
that maybe we have faith for a car, maybe we
have faith for a new house, or.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
To get that degree. Right, i'm'a get it. I'm gonna
get it.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
I'm gonna get it, But we don't use that same
faith and say, man, I also deserve wholeness. Oo, and
you you always say, seek the path that demands your
whole being. Oh, I'm gonna get this car, honey. Oh oh,
I'm gonna get me a husband or a wife.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
And yeah, but ooh, we.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Need some healing so we can maintain these things that
we're these other things we've got faith for.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah, yeah, because you know ooh okay. First, I would
say the quote that you just spoke to it comes
from the great Sufi mystic Roomy Rumy's poetry was ten
twelve years ago my first foray into being with myself,
into opening to like, joy, to beauty, to deeper understanding.
(14:49):
And that quote changed the course of my life when
I first heard it. And the full quote is seek
the wisdom that will untie you're not, seek the path
that demands your whole being. And when I heard that,
it's like your whole being, So seeking a path that
(15:09):
is requiring all of you. It's requiring you to operate
on all cylinders as all of who you are, which
is what God wants for us. And seek the path
that demands your whole being, like live the life with
people in circumstances that require you to be in wholeness,
(15:29):
that require you to be your elevated self. You know,
I don't want to be the smartest person in the room.
I don't want to be the most healed person in
the room. I want to live my path, not comparatively,
and continue to learn and expand with the array of
information so many of us hold and wisdom that we hold.
(15:51):
You know, the path of wholeness. It's available to everyone,
but it's not for the faint of heart. I would
be really remiss if I pack it the way I
talked about the healing of the human spirit through tips
and hacks and tricks and quick little you know, like
lists of things you can do each day. You have
(16:11):
to get in the gutter with yourself. You have to
be willing to surrender every thought you have about who
you are. You have to be willing to look into
the deepest crevices of the things that cause you pain
so you can free yourself of them and at for
so much of that sounds scary, but it's what we're
(16:32):
built to do. We are designed to do this. We
can do this big, hard work. But so often I think,
and I say this with a lot of expanded reverence
for what the Church has meant to so many, For centuries.
But some of the issues I think some people are
(16:54):
starting to notice, especially people that have perhaps spent their
entire lives going to church and know the Word and
have felt God. The church hasn't always equipped people with
the tools to know God for themselves. Very often, the church,
depending on who you're with, and I want to say,
this is not a monolith. So some people have true
(17:16):
anointed leadership that is not trying to hoard God as
the middleman, and some really don't. And you know, very
often you go to church and you'll hear these powerful
sermons and these incredible stories from the Bible, and the
way they're talking to you about it on stage is
(17:38):
to just channel that towards a car, or towards the promotion,
or towards something that is surfaced that God could give
a damn about, you know, like God doesn't care about car,
Like these are things we invented. God knows how to
speak to you through your growth, through the ways that
you're able to expand your heart into love. Through that process,
(18:00):
you're able to attract higher outcomes, which can allow for
you to have the more comfortable vehicle, which can allow
for you to have, you know, the job that is
really speaking to your soul's purpose. But we have to
stop asking for the small things, and we have to
ask to get unstuck from everything that's blocking us from
(18:21):
getting what we want. So if I need a new car,
I'm not going to necessarily just pray about the car.
I will pray that God gives me a solution, But
I'm also going to pray God, what is my work?
What am I avoiding in myself? What are the decisions
I need to make to position myself to have the
(18:42):
receptivity to bring that car in, to bring the better
life in. But it's everything else, you know, It's your
relationship with yourself, it's your understanding of your childhood. The
thing that is so interesting to me is sometimes, you know,
I'll speak to people that are so beautifully equipped with
the word they've met, but their ability to live it
(19:02):
is so limited. And very often, you know, everyone wants
to speak to the power of Christ, of Jesus, but
are not actually in practice to walk the path Christ
existed to show us how to live to be christ like.
And to be christ Like doesn't mean to be this
(19:24):
saint up on a shelf. It means to make honorable choices.
It means to love yourself. It means to be in
relationship with God every single day.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
To be in relationship with God every single day will
look different for it everybody. And I am finding that.
You know, I'm one of the ones that you're talking about.
I grew up in church every single day. It was
my foundation. But it wasn't until I started traveling on
the road professionally that I had to cultivate relationship with
(20:00):
God for myself because I didn't have a church to
go to every Sunday on the road, right, Sometimes we
had shows on Sunday. Sometimes Sunday was a travel day
to prepare us for Monday.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So I think my growth, my strength came from will
church be in my foundation? But church is different, the
church being where we went to fellowship, where I believe
is community what we need even from slavery, we found
a community to go to to praise, sing songs of worship.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
But then what happens when you go outside those four
walls of church is Monday, right, And so learning that
I couldn't depend on just the pastor sermon on Sunday,
I needed to apply that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday in time for Sunday and if maybe you go
to We went to Bible study during the week. We
also went to choirhearsa during the week. So I was
(20:57):
there in the physical four walls of the church all
the time. But like I said, the real relationship with God,
because those were just doings, right, but the real relationship
with God to where I learned him who I am.
It happened for me outside of the actual sanctuary. My
(21:17):
home had to become my sanctuary. My bedroom had to
become a sanctuary, my hotel room had to become a sanctuary.
Tour bus had to become a freaking sanctuary. Lord, I
didn't mean to say freaking sanctuary. I'm sorry, uh, But
and on that path things happen. Relationships break apart, Certain
(21:39):
things that you wanted in your life and career you
didn't get and so a piece of you gets broken, broken,
broken every single day, and you're not whole. Can a
person be completely whole? Or is it just wholeness and healing?
Are just gonna be journeys? And will we be completely
(22:00):
and or healed?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
I think yes, I believe yes. To be fully hold
and healed. It does not mean that the circumstances of
life are necessarily going to be that much easier. Earth
is a challenging place. We just hit eight billion in
our population, and the majority of that eight billion are unconscious.
(22:23):
It's a lot of people that are not going to
do their work while they're alive. And so you're going
to do all this work of healing of wholeness and
you're still going to be living here. It just is.
And I think that's where acceptance comes in, and I
think we can I think there are deep levels of
enlightenment that a very rare few meat in their lifetimes,
(22:46):
right Like, there's some you think of the Dalai Lama,
I think it's pretty safe to say he was always
intended to be this enlightened being that shares consciousness in
the way that he does. I can't imagine the Dhali
Lama with a teenage life like mine, you know, Like,
there are some beings that I think hold space for
the rest of the world to uplift to. But then
(23:08):
I also think, you know, people ask me all the
time like do you have bad days? Right Like do
you get really angry? And I'm like, well, I'm a
human being, like I'm meant to feel all the full
spectrum of emotion. I don't have less crazy shit that
happens to me. I'll say that I don't have, probably
(23:28):
less than most, but the way I relate to it
is completely different. You know, if something doesn't happen in
the way that I visualized it, I think my wholeness
really displays itself as the deep faith that well, then
that was the right choice. You know. If that wasn't mine,
then it's not mine. If this didn't happen the way
I wanted it to, even if I really thought so,
(23:50):
then that is not the path. And so whenever I
pray for something, I say something very specific. I may
ask for X, Y, and Z. As I in the prayer,
I say this or something better for the highest good? God,
can I please have this or something better for the
highest good? Because I also don't want to place limits
(24:12):
on God.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
That's so good this or better than this?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah, the highest good?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Would you say an indicator of healing and wholeness is
in your response to the Shenanigans of war?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Who yes, oh my God, God gave me my answer.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I was like, whoo ah, wholeness.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Is maybe not even a feeling. Healing is not a feeling.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yes, oh my god, that's good. Yes, yes, because that's
the thing. It's it's once you get a healing, once
you get kind of that new depth of yourself, it's
about building a life that supports it, that continues to
make that truth. So that does mean you don't really
stay in the life that you had. Everything has to
(25:00):
change with you, and sometimes that means casting some people aside,
walking away from some circumstances, jobs, people, places, things. But
if there is a trust, and if there is a
commitment to living a healed whole life, you adjust. We
are highly adaptable beings, adjust trusted enough to leave behind
(25:24):
things even if you don't understand why.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Ooh. This leads to my next question.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I read something where you were saying, I'm paraphrasing, but
you're an expert at boundaries, m.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Setting boundaries.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Ooh I love boundaries, she.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Said, I love boundaries.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
You said it as if you said, ooh I love
allmond joys or kids. Oh, I love crying bars, Ooh
I love bread pudding.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Ooh god, I love boundaries.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Truly because every time I have the opportunity to feel
discomfort and set a boundary. Anyway, I unlock a new
layer of myself in my life. I am always, always,
always met with a better outcome than I could have imagined.
And it takes work. You know the thing about boundaries,
It took years of practice to love them. There was
(26:21):
a time one. It's hard to admit that your life
has lacked boundaries, right, especially if you are somebody that
shows up powerfully in other, you know, avenues of your life.
It's hard to say, oh, whoa, but in this area,
Holy shit, I've been letting everybody get away with things.
You know. It's challenging to look at that, but to
(26:42):
look at it and get curious and say, well, why
the hell have I been doing that? Why have I
been doing that? Can I make another choice?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Making that choice is so uncomfortable, Let me still make
it anyway, and let me just privately scream it out.
When I started setting down boundaries in my personal life,
it then led me to realize that I needed to
set boundaries in my work life. I needed to set
boundaries in every facet of how I interact with people
Like you get this beautiful kind of revolving door of
(27:13):
practice when you commit to it, and the first, you know,
I knew walking in that I was doing things that
I wasn't good at. I knew that I was going
to have to practice a new way of being That
really triggered me, That really made me uncomfortable, That really
made me look at more painful parts of my own
(27:34):
past of oh wow, you've you've actually let yourself down
quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I had to really look at that. I had to
look at my role in my choices, my role in
people overstepping my boundaries. And it's hard. It's hard because
it's always a two way street. It is never just
what someone else is doing. It is never just that
they won't respect you, that they want this, Why do
you allow it? What are you allowing? You know, It's
(28:03):
always a two way street. You have to look at
both sides. And the first when I first started realizing
I needed to set boundaries in my life, I would
I would do it, and then I would be consumed
with anxiety and I'd be thinking of, oh my god,
and they're going to think this about me and then this,
and I would literally just say, grin and Barrett, you
(28:24):
will not change your response. You will not send another message,
you will not be passive aggressive, you will not song
and dance. And I would grab a pillow and I'd
go into the other room, and sometimes I would scream.
Sometimes I would cry because I hated that it was
so hard for me. It felt embarrassing, it felt like
what the hell am I? And then it quickly gets better.
(28:49):
The second you say yes to yourself, the second you
enforce that first boundary and do not change your stance,
life opens up. You get more and more opportunity every
day to practice. Now you're saying no twenty five times
a day, and you probably hadn't said no in ten years,
and that practice opens up, and before you know it,
a couple months have passed and you are your own
(29:12):
personal expert at protecting yourself, at setting boundaries and at
making better choices.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
M I told a friend of mine that you don't
have to announce when you set a boundary.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Doctor Darius Daniels says it as well. He was like,
every adjustment don't need to be announced either, right, yes, yeah,
So some of that anxiety about setting a boundary and
or making that adjustment for me has subsided. When I
reminded myself and the friend like you don't have to announce.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
It, just suddenly.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Make the adjustment and guess what, Debby, I've been on
the receiving end of someone setting boundaries with me.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
How does it feel?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
It don't feel good.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I learned I was spoiled entitled. Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, and it's like okay. So for someone to set
a boundary with me, yeah, and I was okay.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
It made me want to be a safe person.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
And it also made me because you talk about the
passive aggressive, I was very passive aggressive, which can irritate
the other person, like why don't you just say what your.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Chest say what you mean?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Or don't come to me five days later with the
circumstance and you've been himming a han dancing like you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So we talk about girls set boundaries with people.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, but be ready for when a person sets a
boundary with you, some aware reflect, make the apologies, create
a safe environment so that person can maybe adjust the
boundary because they're entitled to adjusting the boundaries as they see.
Are you a safe person with them? Doctor Henry Cloud,
(31:04):
John Towns and the book Safe People.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
I remember reading the book.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I remember, well, I can't wait to read this book
because I'm gonna be able to tell my ex all
about himself. First few chapters of the book, it was
telling me about me. So I want to encourage people
like Yo's. It feels good to set those boundaries, but
I'm telling you, don't be so high and mighty mean
(31:29):
think you're so perfect that somebody is out there is
going to have to set a boundary with you. It
don't feel good, but imagine they don't feel good to
them when you.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Set a bondary with them as well.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
That is so so so beautiful and so powerful. Like
if everyone listening could do both of these things we
just spoke to, Your life changes radically, urgently, completely, And
I think, like, but what you just spoke to about
(32:01):
even giving that grace when you're not getting your way
is so amazing and something I think of, you know,
something I really try to do intuitively. You can notice
people in your life that are trying to make a
new way for themselves right, that are making themselves uncomfortable,
(32:24):
that are testing out boundaries as you said, and really
working your process inside so you can be a soft
place to land for them is so important. You know,
being able to give people the kind of response that
you would crave to receive from people when you are
looking to try on new ways of being. It is
(32:46):
one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and others,
you know. And sometimes because I move really fast, I
process things really fast. I talk a lot. I'm very
descriptive and expressive. But that's also my gift, and that's
not a way of being that everyone has. And so
for me, a lot of my work when I'm in
(33:06):
conversation with people I love, it's to slow down and
to be quiet, and to not speak their words for them,
and to notice when I feel like I have to
add something, to just instead sit in my own body
and take a deep breath and give that person the
dignity of their process.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
It's just so beautiful, Debbie, this is so on time.
Literally yesterday was on the phone with someone and they
were sharing some things with me, and I wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Say for the first time, but I felt so bad.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
I didn't have a lot to say, but I intentionally said,
let's sit here in this silence, just you being present
is enough. We don't have to be like, Oh, things
happen for a reason. Oh it's gonna be okay. Hey,
to them right now, they don't feel like it's gonna
(34:02):
be okay.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, so sitting.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
It was so awkward, Debbie, to not have the solution
or the or the answer, or the scripture or the
prayer right up front or the churchyisms.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
We just had to sit in silence.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I hated that it was over the phone versus I
felt like it would have been better in person to
just sit in silence with this person, But over the phone,
it was just like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
That's so powerful because when you have supportive silence, not
silent treatment, not someone being silent because they are minimizing, dismissing,
or don't want to be a part of your process,
and the feeling is different from healthy silence to non
healthy silence, but supportive silence that you just turned out.
(34:54):
It allows someone to build their trust in themselves. It
allows want to build their own emotional intelligence to trust themselves.
How often can we actually really give solutions to people's
individual unique problems, you know, truly, like a good one.
It's not something we can think about at the top
of our heads on command in a thirty minute conversation,
(35:18):
and we shouldn't try. We should just offer support. We
should offer freedom, we should offer non judgment for someone
as they're walking through process. If you have something that
is just a divine unique fit, you'll know it. But
if you're just trying to come up with something because
of your own awkwardness, because of your discomfort with that
(35:40):
person's pain, you are doing them a disservice, You are
causing them harm, and you're jeopardizing your relationship with them.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
You'll say some of.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
The most foolish things like mouths like did I I
didn't mean that? Pivoting back to boundary boundaries versus discarding people.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
It's completely different, and it's a felt difference. If there's
anger behind your boundary, then that is a completely different
mechanism happening, which you may need to happen right, because
some people need angry boundaries. If you're being harmed, if
you're being abused, if you are being mistreated, there is
a harsh line of boundary. So sometimes the boundary has
(36:29):
to be a barbed wire fence for unsafe people, for
other people that just may be unconscious or not as
emotionally intelligent as you or I've had different kinds of
traumas and triggers. The boundary can be more like a
velvet fence, a velvet sword. It can be just a line,
a visual line in the sand. But it doesn't have
(36:50):
to be a cinder block wall, you know. And I
think when we're creating boundaries, the boundary is less about
the other person and it's not individualized to every person.
You're creating a set of boundaries of what is honorable
for your unique life. Then that boundary applies to anyone
(37:12):
that comes up to you, friends, family, currents, exes. Everybody
can get the boundary. Because the boundary is about the
way you care for yourself as a whole, everybody can
get it. And so when I set a boundary, I
think part of the reason that allows it to not
feel so charged anymore for me is that when someone
is upset, I can honestly really look at them and say, well,
(37:34):
this has nothing to do with you. This is the
boundary for my life. This isn't personal about you as
a person as a soul, but this is what's required
for my life, and it gets applied to everyone.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
So good, Debby, absolutely amazing. You talk about naming your
wounds and how there's strength in it, and thank you
for that. How does a person name their wounds.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It is a long, slow, beautiful process. Our healing is
a lot of things, but one thing it isn't is
like a one weekend session of something right. It is
the continued practice. It is building a system of curiosity
with the way that you view yourself in your life,
(38:27):
and so self awareness is what allows us to come
into our healing. And the more self aware we become,
the more we're able to look at the things that
have really hurt us in our lives, the easier it
is to look at our own behaviors and not be
in judgment of them. Sometimes it's really hard for people
(38:49):
to come into self awareness because being honest with yourself hurts,
you know, it can feel really defeating For some people
that have had traumatic backgrounds. It also means meeting experiences
in their lives that didn't receive their consent, that they
didn't deserve, and looking at that stuff is hard. It
(39:10):
does feel easier to pretend things didn't happen. It does
feel easier to bypass that and to just try to
instantly push yourself into a positive thought, but it is
not sustainable. Everyone who has ever tried that knows you
may be projecting a look of yourself to the world,
but you're not feeling it in your own heart. You
(39:30):
deserve more. You deserve more. You deserve real healing, not
performative healing. For that to happen, we just have to
really be willing gently to look at the truth of
our individual lives, the truth of our behavior, the truth
of our experiences, as soon as we're able to do that.
(39:50):
And for anyone listening that may have a story that
you think that makes sense for everyone else, but not me,
because this happened to me. Here you and it's about
releasing yourself from that cell. It's about saying it out loud.
It is about saying it and sharing it with trusted
(40:12):
people who give you this space to talk about yourself
without trying to cover you with their discomfort or their
advice or their spiritual bypassing. It's about giving yourself, however
much time you need to say it out loud, but
saying it out loud so it can free you and
you can release it and you can reframe the narrative
(40:33):
of who you are and how you became that.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
As we hold our hearts and what you might want
to call your abdomen or your stomach. Just take this
hold and just let this just be stable center. In
this last I closed my eyes as Debbie was talking,
and I received it as a prayer, a prayer for
(40:58):
myself and as a prayer for the person listening, and
as a prayer for Debbie as she continues this healing
work through individuals and for corporations and to the world
that we continue healing.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
It is deserved.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
It's not for the rich person, it's not for the
person that's never been abused.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
It is for you, and it's for me.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
You are loved.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Know that. I don't care what your abuse and trauma.
I don't care what the lies say to you. You
are loved.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
We're with you. You're not alone.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Release Release, Release, You deserve, you deserve, you deserve. Who
do you want to be? Who are you being called
to become?
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Grace and ease will cover you?
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Say? Yes? H m hm.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Amen?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Wow? Oh that was so be it? Oh my god. Wow.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
This is what checking in the Foundation must be about
and must continue to be this.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
And thank you Debbie for joining us.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I really don't know if a close is necessary, so
I'm just gonna leave it here. We're just Gonna let
it breathe. Checking In with Michelle Williams is a production
(44:59):
of Iheartradius and The Black Effect. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
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