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October 2, 2025 16 mins

In this My Legacy Bonus Drop, entrepreneur and bestselling author Marie Forleo joins her best friend Kris Carr for a conversation about embracing your “too muchness,” honoring your younger self, and choosing love even in the hardest moments. 

Together they explore: 

  • Why standing for each other’s “littles” is the secret to lifelong friendship 
  • How to observe without absorbing the pain of others 
  • The practice of bringing only love in the room 
  • Redefining family and building joy on your own terms 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is my legacy. In this week's bonus Drop, Marie Folio,
entrepreneur and best selling author, gets real about setting boundaries
and embracing parts of herself once labeled too much. Together
with her best friend Chris Carr, they reflect on what
it means to honor your younger self, speak your truth,
and surround yourself with only love in the room. Let's

(00:23):
jump in.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Let's go back a little bit to that little girl.
Because one of the things that my best friend and
I do, and I got this from my best friend,
is that we have pictures of ourselves as little girls.
She calls them our littles. And I have it right
next to my bed and right next to where I

(00:46):
make coffee, and I have it on my phone, just
that reminder of being little and my reminder and my
promise to her. And I know, Marie, that you've said
that when you were little, you were almost seen as
too much, you know, too much, too big, too bright.
And that's something that so many women, I think, can

(01:07):
I identify with. What would you now go back and
tell your little.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
That she can never be too much, that all of
her quote unquote too muchness, all of the brightness, all
of the creativity and the magic is exactly who she
was meant to be. And I think that's actually one
of the things that I love about my friendship with Chris. Chris,
I'll just pull you into this for a moment, because

(01:37):
she is the one person in the world where when
I'm having a moment, even as an adult woman, and
I'm like, am I asking for too much? You know,
I'm kind of going through something as it relates to
a relationship or a business or an idea, and I
feel like perhaps my expectations are too high. This woman
right here, Miss Chris Carr, is the one that reminds

(01:58):
me to ask myself and to remember that all of
my quote unquote too muchness is what makes me so special.
And she regrounds me in the fact that I don't
have to dial down my light, and I don't have
to dial down my heart, and I don't have to
dial down any part of me to fit into this world.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
So Chris, beautiful, beautiful Chris, what would you tell your
little Oh?

Speaker 4 (02:27):
I feel like I talked to my little a lot.
So I love this and I love that you have
this picture where you But I have a frame picture
of myself at around eight years old and I'm at
Rye Playland and it's my birthday and this I mean,
you know, braces are coming right, she's got a jaw

(02:49):
on her. But this picture, I don't think there's a
picture in my life that I've seen of such unbridled joy.
And so much of the work I think that we
as humans is staying connected to that joy, especially when
we're going through really difficult times. And so I would
just encourage her to follow her joy and to never

(03:13):
feel like her joy isn't enough, or her joy is frivolous,
or her joy should look a certain way. And I think,
really that's what I've been trying to get back to,
is that sense of the joy that she had at
Rye Playland. And one of the things that I know
about my relationship with Marie is that we stand for

(03:33):
each other's littles so a lot of time. I mean,
we were on the phone this morning, you know, gabbing
for an hour as we often do. Multiple times. I
came on, I was like, why do your eyelashes look
so good?

Speaker 5 (03:45):
She's like, I curled them with heat. I was like,
how do I do that? Before the podcast?

Speaker 4 (03:49):
You know, these are the things you know, we talk
about all the things, including the most practical things so
hot eyelashes, but I think standing for each other's littles
is such an important part of our friendships, especially when,
as Marie said, things come up. You know, I had
this great therapist once who said to me, if it's hysterical,

(04:10):
it's historical. And oftentimes the work we do when we're
in these really deep spiritual friendships is when somebody is suffering,
is to go back underneath the moment and sort of
lead us back to the place where your heart was
broken or the place where the pain started, and to
actually just be of comfort and to hold space for

(04:33):
one another. And I think we can all do that,
and the more we bring that into our relationships, into
our lives, I think the deep bar our lives get.

Speaker 6 (04:43):
Maria, I wanted to ask you, You've taught the world
so many amazing things. You've taught me so many amazing things,
and I want you to share with us what are
the coolest things that you've taught me that I love,
and just explain this to our viewers in the way
that you do. Because you're such a great storyteller. This
is something that I use it's the thing that you've
taught me, which is observe, don't absorb.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, I think, first of all, this is really really helpful,
especially for those of us who are empaths, those of
us who are really also sensitive to energy, those of
us who tend to also have people in our lives that,
let's say, have different kind of energy that is not
necessarily a good chemistry match for you. So the notion
of observing and not absorbing, and I'll just say this,

(05:30):
you know, for especially what my life has been like
these past couple years. You know, family, we love them,
and then sometimes same thing like.

Speaker 5 (05:37):
Josh and I you need to shake each other because
you're like God, gotta get away.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Same thing can happen in our work environments and with
our friendships. So I think observing someone it's like observing
what they're going through, having ultimate compassion for what they're experiencing,
being there in terms of listening, mirroring what they're going through,
without absorbing it into your own energetic field, taking it on,

(06:04):
becoming responsible for fixing it, for figuring it out, or
thinking that you are necessarily the cause of this other
person's distress or upset or stress, even if they tell
you that you are so, you know, I have been
through this most recently and again my mom, God bless her.

(06:25):
She's still with us. She's struggling a lot right now.
And you know she said some things in the past
little stretch of time that were extremely hurtful and some
might say cruel. I've shared some things with Christians. She
was like, WHOA, that's a lot. And so it comes
back to this notion of me going like and I
can observe her in her pain. I can observe her

(06:47):
what she's experiencing, which is a lot of terror and
a lot of fear and a lot of loss of control.
And I can empathize with the notion of what she's
experiencing and how those lash outs might be directed me
if I'm in her presence. But I don't have to
absorb it and take it on. I don't need to
be a sponge and I don't need to as painful

(07:09):
as this is. As the daughter of the woman who
taught me that everything is figure outable, I don't have
to figure it out for her, nor is that my role.
I can trust at a very deep level that there
is for me, and this is my own belief system,
there is a higher power watching over her. She is
on her own soulful and spiritual journey, and the greatest

(07:32):
gift I can give both her and myself is to
show up. And Chris taught me this one only love
in the room, meaning bringing only love in the room.
Can I observe her and not absorb that negativity? Can
I observe her and not absorb her pain and her
fear as my own to.

Speaker 7 (07:50):
Observe without absorbing? I love that, Marie. Chris. Can I
turn to you because you've sat with some of the
most extraordinary teachers in particularly physical well being. But we
know how connected physical and mental is, and so what
is a practice that you can share with our listeners
that's been deeply profound on a physical practice, but that's

(08:12):
similar to what Marie shared with us has helped helped
you on mental self care.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
Well, I want to go back to what Marie said,
which is choosing love and having love be in the room.
I learned that as my chosen father was dying, and
I was so scared to have difficult conversations about death
and dying, and yet I knew that these were the
conversations he wanted to have, and so I had to
do a lot of like homework on how to do that.

(08:42):
I remember my therapist telling me, why don't you start
by having talk about talking about it? So have a
conversation about talking about death and dying, like, hey, would
you like to have this? And if the answer is yes,
here's how I'm going to have to prepare for that.
And this is what might happen. And I may break down,
I may cry, and I don't want to make you

(09:03):
feel guilty in any way, shape or form. Is that
going to be okay? And so we had this blessed
opportunity to have those deep conversations. And because I live
with stage four cancer, so death is something I have
thought about quite often.

Speaker 5 (09:17):
For twenty years.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
In some ways, he wanted to have the conversation with me, right,
And so when we were able to have that, it
showed me what the capacity what love actually looks like,
because I think before this experience, love had a different
flavor to me, and love became something so much bigger.

(09:43):
And when I talk about only love in the room,
it was you know, those end those last few days
or the last three years, but really the last few
days when your person the person that you love, a
cherished person in your family is getting ready to leave.

Speaker 5 (09:58):
His or her body.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
And if you ever have that opportunity to be in
the room, you get to know humanity at such an
energetic level. And there's no time for talking, there's no
time for fixing. All of that is behind us. The
only thing that can be present is will I show
up with love? And even if you don't know what
to say and you don't know how to behave and

(10:22):
things don't go the way you want it to go,
as long as that intention of love is there and
what's guiding you, I feel like there's a lot less
of a chance for regret.

Speaker 5 (10:37):
And so.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
I just wanted to hop on what Marie said because
I thought it was so powerful, and it becomes this
practice for each and every one of us. What does
it look like to only have love in the room.
It doesn't mean things are always going to be loving,
but it's like, how well, how are you going to
show up? How are you keeping your side of the
street clean and intact.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
One of the things I've been reciting lately is that
I walk in love so literally, having the intention of
every place that you are showing up and in every conversation,
even when even the conversations or the truths may be
very challenging. But to start and root in that intention

(11:23):
of being walking, standing surrounded in love.

Speaker 8 (11:29):
We're building something real here, one episode at a time.
If you want to be part of it, subscribe, It's free,
it matters, and we're just getting started.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Now back to my legacy.

Speaker 6 (11:46):
Chris, you've talked about your loving role as an ant
and living a full connection without being a parent. What
have you learned about building a family on your own terms?

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Well, you know, it's interesting because we think that we're
h I guess we're domesticated to believe, especially as women,
that we're going to settle down and find a good
partner and raise kids, and you know, and then you know,
the rest of the fantasy story that I think in
a lot of ways strangles many of us. And I
mean that respectfully, but I think especially as young women,

(12:17):
when we are we're steep in the stories of what
our lives are supposed to look like, as opposed to
the stories that may come from within about what we
want our lives to look like. It can be this
big unlearning that needs to happen. I thought, I would
have kids. I thought I would do all the traditional
things that I saw people do or I saw portrayed

(12:39):
in the media. And then when I got diagnosed, it
was really clear to me that to choose to have
children would mean that I would have to choose to
put my health in a lot of danger. And so
thankfully being in a partnership with somebody who was also like, no,
I love you, I want you to stick around. This
is more important to me than the two of us

(13:00):
having our own kids, we were able to say, Okay,
well what do we want life to look like? And
it's supposed to be thinking like, oh, this is sad,
and in some ways it was. There were times where
we were both very sad, but we never said, well,
we're childless. We always said we're child free. And if
we're child free, that means we have all these other opportunities,
opportunities to have to be wonderful. Aunties and uncles were like,

(13:26):
the he's the favorite funkal and we take our nieces
and nephews to Disney World. We get to do all
the things. I think I'm built to be a grandmother,
not a mother, if that makes sense, because grandmothers can
say grandmothers are the most exciting people to come and visit.
And I have a lot of young people in my
life who love to come and visit. But when the
meltdowns happen and they do, I get to have my

(13:50):
exit music, right.

Speaker 9 (13:57):
And so we've been able to build a really great
life life with kids that we love, and dear friends
that we love, and a lot of you know, rescue animals,
as Marie said, that we love and and get to
nurture and recall me the other day and she's like,
what are you doing?

Speaker 5 (14:13):
I said, I'm on a pigeon rescue. What are you
talking about.

Speaker 4 (14:18):
I'm like, I'll call you later, but I got to
handle this pigeon situation right now.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Chris. What what animals do you have now right now
that you that are in your rescue unit.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Well, yeah, I would have a lot more if my
husband would allow me. So this is one thing against him.

Speaker 5 (14:35):
This can't be all glowy about Brian.

Speaker 9 (14:40):
Actually he gave.

Speaker 5 (14:41):
Me metal farm animals that I have outside. Yeah, he's good.
I have a metal goat, I have a metal pig.
I have a metal chicken.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Because I actually wanted to rescue all of those creatures
and he was like, no, here, happy birthday, Chris.

Speaker 6 (14:58):
When you have that dinner talking about you know, dating
advice from this fine gentleman, this son of doctor King.
You could also say that the Kings suggested you bring
in more animals that need love and support, like you cannot.

Speaker 5 (15:11):
You can't argue that.

Speaker 6 (15:12):
You can't argue with that. I mean, this is being
channeled from doctor King all the way down right.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
I was gonna say, I support this methodge I.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed today's conversation, subscribe, share,
and follow us on at my Legacy Movement on social
media and YouTube. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus
content every Thursday. At its core, this podcast honors doctor
King's vision of the Beloved Community and the power of connection.

(15:44):
A Legacy Plus Studio production distributed by iHeartMedia creator and
executive producer Suzanne Hayward come executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen
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