August 5, 2024 • 35 mins
Morgan brings on two guests this week. First she interviews professor and therapist Dr. Alexandra Solomon, who has been studying relationships for over two decades. They discuss why grief is synergistic, the importance of stepping into love, why two opposite things can be true at the same time, and how to have high quality relationships. Then country artist Kylie Morgan stops by to talk about the beginning stages of her career, her experience with bullies in high school, and why she went to couples therapy with her now husband when they started dating.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Personally with Morgan Juelsman.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's the second episode of Take This Personally. I'm Morgan.
You may know me from the Bobby Bone Show. I've
always found that it's easier to get through some of
life's challenges when we feel less alone, which is really
why I started this podcast. I'm hoping you can connect
to one of my guest stories or their pieces of advice.
This week, I have on doctor Solomon first, who is
(00:39):
beyond an expert with over a twenty years of experience.
She studied psychology and women's studies at the University of
Michigan and she also received her PhD in counseling psychology.
Than I have on country artist Kylie Morgan, who is
a friend and came on to share some of the
most vulnerable moments in her life that led her to
(00:59):
wear her career is now. I'm so excited to talk
to doctor Solomon right now. Thank you for joining me,
and I want to get your expertise on several topics,
but we're gonna dive right into the deep in to start,
I want to talk about trauma and growth. Do you
(01:21):
feel like people have to go through almost traumatic things
to feel that growth or do you think they can
still feel that growth.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Without having gone through something terribly bad.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I love the idea of gentle awakenings right of just
sort of, you know, as I remember years and years
ago Oprah Winfrey talked about, you know, sometimes when we
get the first brick upside our head, you know, the
first little inkling that we are creating a pattern for ourselves,
it's painful. If we don't pay attention to the brick
up side the head, then we will get the entire
brick wall crashing down upon us. And I think some
(01:56):
of us, yeah, some of us can get a little
bit more like, no, no, well I got this. I'm good.
I don't need help. For some of us, the you know,
the sort of wake up call has to be louder,
but it doesn't have to be that way. As you're saying, Morgan,
that there's you know, I think we can resource ourselves
at any point in time. It's you know, one of
the things I do is I teach an undergraduate class
at Northwestern University called marriage one oh one. Well, those
(02:18):
students aren't going to get married for you know, any
number of years, but there's lots that they can learn
about understanding who they are and what they want and
need in their intimate relationships. So I like, I'm here
for therapy early and often I'm here for you know,
gentle lessons. But I hear you. So did you have
to learn some things in your life the hard way? Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yes, I mean I from boweying in high school to
some abusive relationships. I've been through the trenches, and I
don't wish that upon anyone, but I also look back
and it helped me to become who I am today
in almost an unfortunate series of events. But now and
today I look at that, and when people ask how
and why, I'm like, well, this is where I came from,
(03:00):
and so of course I would hope I'm better from that,
But you don't hope anybody ever goes through that so.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, and you didn't have to become better for it.
You could have taken all those painful experiences and you
could have said, see, that just proves that life is
unfair and I'm a constant victim and nothing good is
going to happen to me. Right, that you could have
taken those experiences and allowed them to make you hardened
and bitter, and you know, you could have experienced like
a loss of vitality, and you could have just kind
(03:26):
of stayed stuck there. And I hear that you have
done what you needed to do in order to use
those experiences to fuel you into purpose and passion and
capacity for joy.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So that's yeah, absolutely, I've loved that for me, but
I would love that for other people too. So, you know,
do you have any good ideas for people who maybe
have gone through that and they may find themselves in
a very negative space.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I mean, I do think part of it is teasing
apart that thing happened to me versus that thing defines me.
I think part of what creates the conditions for people
to get stuck is they can fuse the things that
happened to them with their identity. And all of us
are more than any given painful experience. I believe each
(04:09):
of us is an expression of divine consciousness. Whatever you know,
each of us belongs to this huge collective of humanity
and as part of something like far, far, far bigger
than any one of us. And so to me, whatever
pathways people use to kind of remember that, whether it's
movement or music or dance or conversation or prayer or
(04:33):
volunteer work, like whatever. Those gateways are that help people
remember like, oh I belong, I belong and I'm part
of something bigger than me. That I think is what
helps us get clear that the bad experiences we live
through do not define us.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
The older I get, I've been in some relationships at
this point, and just the older I get, the more
I realize everybody comes with things.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
You're just going to have to accept certain.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Things that you want. Nobody's going to come perfect. There's
going to be baggage along the way, no matter what.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
How that looks is up to you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And I just want your kind of advice on for
so many people because relationships, regardless if they were even good,
maybe they weren't as bad as mine in the dramatic
sense that they were. They're just hard and they can
be traumatic and very hard to move on from. So
how do we jump into another relationship after, say, our
heart gets broken and things are hard. How do we
(05:28):
go into a new relationship and find that level of
vulnerability again?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I think we don't spend nearly enough time talking to
people about healthy relationships and healthy sexuality and all of
that good stuff. But we also don't spend enough time
talking with people about how to break up well, how
to integrate after laws, how to start over again. I'm
finding myself doing more and more of that work, even
with therapists when I'm presenting at therapist conferences, and very
(05:55):
often I'm talking with therapists about how to help clients
break up well, heal heartbreak start again, because I think
that there is not something that therapists necessarily have been
trained in doing, and it's what you are talking about.
I think heartbreak and relationship endings hurt for all kinds
of reasons, including literal brain science. Our brains code emotional
(06:16):
pain in the same way that our brains code physical pain.
So heartbreak hurts because it hurts. It is painful, And
I think we sometimes have these like misguided coping mechanisms
where will say to ourselves, it shouldn't hurt like this
because they were no good for me anyways. It shouldn't
hurt like this because it was only a three month
long relationship. It shouldn't hurt like this because whatever my
(06:38):
friends didn't like them anyways. Well, all that will do
when we invalidate ourselves, all that's going to do is
make our healing journey take that much longer because we
aren't even letting ourselves start the journey. We're invalidating ourselves
out of the journey versus letting ourselves grieve the loss
of that relationship. Even if we're the one who ended it.
(06:59):
You can be the one who ended a relationship and
still grieve the loss of that relationship. You're losing the
future you imagined with that person, and you are having
to let go of what that relationship meant and the
experiences you had and every grief. You know, grief is synergistic,
meaning that the grief in the loss of this relationship
(07:20):
is going to awaken the grief of the loss of
my father or my grandmother, or that move that we
had to make, or that tragedy that happened in my community.
Like grief's chain together. For as hard as it is,
there's also that opportunity in a breakup to just have
that season or that chapter of loss and letting ourselves
(07:41):
just be very much present to that without shrinking it,
minimizing it, rationalizing it, moving through it, getting the lessons
and then starting to kind of come up out of it.
That's a process that if we don't constrict it, it
will just happen. We will come through it, and the
goal is to come through it open hearted, rather than
(08:03):
to come through it kind of scabbed over and hardened
and cynical. And I think the way that we do
that is by just letting the loss be exactly the
length and width and height that it is.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I love that, and I think it's so true. There's
so many people.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
That I know a lot of my friends who I've
seen them hurt from two month relationships compared to each
sureer relationship sure, And I think there's something to be
said that we bond with people so differently, and that
there is no one size.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Fits all for everything that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
It's important to share and reiterate because I just don't
think we hear that enough.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
One hundred percent. It was a podcast episode that I
had done We're One of the points that I made
is some of us who've had heartbreak, some of us
who have survived trauma. One of the things that sometimes
happens is that we no longer fall in love. We
become the kind of people who step into love, and
that can feel sad, like I miss the fact that
(08:57):
you know, when I was younger, before I new hurt,
like I know hurt. Before that I would fall head
over heels and I don't do that anymore. Rather than
seeing that as something that's wrong with us, just allowing
that to be what it is and to know that
there is not as you're saying, there is no right
and wrong way to bond with somebody, and stepping into
love is beautiful. There's a wisdom to that, there's a
(09:19):
gentleness to that. There's a way that when we step
into love, we aren't short circuiting our nervous systems, right,
so it can be a kinder process that that's okay.
I want people to know that that's okay.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I mean I'm someone who's sitting here listening to this,
and I'm like preach yes, because I have done both.
I have been the woman in the enticing, intoxicating relationship
and I've also now been in this incredibly healthy relationship.
And i can tell you on this side of things,
on the healthier side, it is so much more rewarding
(09:50):
and enjoyable than the intoxicating situations that we see in
movies that we think we want.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, you don't perhaps feel intoxicated, but what you do
feel is I imagine safe and calm, and like your
nervous system is like taking a big exhale, and that
can feel really different.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I want to talk to you too about the ways
that we invalidate ourselves.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I'm guilty of it.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I know a lot of people are of saying others
have it worse.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
How do we get away from doing that and feeling
that way?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well the only way that I know
how to do it is with something in something that
comes from psychology, which is called dialectics. So dialectics. You know,
our research has shown that a lot of our emotional
resilience and emotional well being rests upon our ability to
hold a dialectic. And a dialectic is a space where
(10:49):
competing truths, where two things are true at the same time,
two things that seem opposite are actually both true. I
had a terrible day and I am blessed. Those both
are true. We can be blessed and suffering that both
those things can be true. I don't have to prove
that I have it worse than anybody else in order
(11:10):
to be entitled to my suffering, and the way that
I do that is by holding both my grief and
my gratitude my courage and my fear, the fact that
I'm whole as I am and I'm forever a work
in progress. Like these things that just seem like they
can't possibly both be true at the same time are
as part of the thing that makes being alive so complicated.
(11:32):
So I think if I have one of those moments,
I certainly have had those moments where I am just
in the suck. I am just like suffering and struggling
and wanting to host a big old pity party for myself,
and then I'm just like, ah, I'm being ridiculous because
there are people who have you know, quote unquote actual problems.
Both those things are true. Yes, I am absolutely blessed
(11:53):
and I am absolutely you know, burnt out or struggling.
So that's where I try to go, because You're right,
if I cannot validate my own suffering, you can bet
that I'm not going to be able to validate the
suffering of people around me. And then I'm not going
to be very fun to be around because I'm going
to be judgmental and dismissive, you know, and like roll
my eyes at people, and that's not going to be
a recipe for healthy relationships.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And being self aware is kind of one of the
big buzzwords right now in psychology and therapy. Visit living
up to all the hypes? Should we be focusing so
much on that? And what does that look like? If
somebody hasn't ever heard the word self aware and they're like,
what do I need to.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Do with that?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
What would be the first steps you'd tell someone to
get through this first phase to be on that journey.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Self awareness is my that's my jam, That's how I
spend really all day every day is supporting people in
different ways to understand with curiosity and with compassion who
they are and why they are the way that they are.
And I think it's it is essential if what people
want is high quality relationships, whether that's relationship with partner,
relationship with their family members, relationship with their kids. We
(12:58):
have to be willing to get curious about why we
are reacting the way we are reacting in any given moment,
Like that's just the work of it. So I think
the first step is to just begin to notice how
we're talking to ourselves, notice when we have rise and
fall of different emotions during the day, Like just getting
really curious and starting to view our thoughts and our
(13:21):
feelings and our behaviors as data. It's just data that
we then can sit with and wonder about. I think
one of the things, you know, you started off by
asking about, kind of what's changed in the last couple
of decades the whole field of self help. As I
was growing up in the eighties, my mom always had
a stack of self help books next to her nightstand.
So self help isn't new necessarily, but we're living in
(13:44):
this really exciting time with social media of podcasts, where
there's so many resources that somebody can bring in and
I think just listening to different podcasts that are about
relationships or about psychology, or reading, you know, following different
Instagram accounts there like daily small doses of self awareness work.
I think those are really gentle ways to start, especially
(14:05):
if someone's not interested in committing to therapy or something
like that. But there's little things we can do each
day to just begin to check in with ourselves.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
How do you suggest I think it's hard for people
to receive feedback. There's criticism and there's unkindness, but then
there's feedback, and because of social media, there is also
this other side that we've seen this very cruel side
of the world, so it's really easy to loop in
feedback with criticism and negativity.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
So how do we kind of.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Look at something like, Okay, this is feedback to help me,
versus this is criticism to hurt me.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
That's right. I think that's a very very good point,
And it's all about the strength of the relationship. Yeah,
I will not take feedback from somebody where I have
a sense that there's an ulterior motive or a hidden agenda,
or a lack of willingness to be in dialogue with me,
in community with me. I won't take feedback from somebody.
If I don't have a s that somebody has my
back or has my best interest at heart, or who
(15:03):
really can feel the core of me as a good,
decent person, they don't get the right to give me feedback, right,
you know. And that so that I think it really
is about the strength that's I want us to be
cultivating the kinds of relationships where there's enough trust that
then feedback feels like a generous gift rather than an attack.
(15:25):
And that's what there was. Right with my husband, I
trust that he's in my corner. I trust that he
has my back. I trust that whatever he wants and
needs to say to me is in the service of
everyone in our family feeling safe and understood and held
and celebrated, rather than to take me down or to
prove some point or to diminish me.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
When I do think in that same area, there's also resentment.
We see a lot of relationships that people feel and
resentment builds up over so much time for new couples,
for even couples that have been together a long time,
how do you avoid that resentment rut that everybody falls into.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Resentment is a big one, and I think resentment happens
when we don't have that ability to give and receive feedback.
Right If I can't give, if you've shown me that
you are a closed door and that you will not
take my feedback, and everything I try to bring up
with you you flip it back on me, then that's right.
The absolute side effect is going to be that I'm
(16:27):
going to build a resentment because I'm biting my tongue
because it feels really difficult to talk to you. So
resentment is going to be the side effect. It may
help you in the moment because you don't have to
deal with the difficulty of me giving you feedback. So
in some ways you might be like, sweet, this is
easy because she's not riding my ass, she's not telling
me what I've done wrong, quote unquote. But so the
(16:48):
moment might feel like it's been solved. But the problem
is I'm building up a well of resentment because you
aren't open and available to dialogue. Now, it's incumbent on
me that when I do have feedback for you, that
I do it in a deeply loving way where I
convey to you, Morgan, you are my heart, like I
am deeply invested, and here's what I love about how
(17:08):
things are going, and here's what I value, And I
really make sure that I am forward and explicit about
all of the ways I can see you putting an effort,
trying hard, like ways in which you know I show
you that I have your back. And then I say
to you, I want to give you this feedback because
because of how much I love you, because of how
much I want the space between us to feel good
(17:30):
and safe and close.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
It sounds like along these same lines that communication is
so important, but it feels like that's the bottom layer
of all of this communicating is where it starts.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Absolutely, oh, absolutely yeah. And you know, communication is more
than just saying words. It is talking about something, talking
about my internal experience, my thoughts, my reactions that I'm
having in my relationship with you, saying in a way
that communicates also empathy and benefit of the doubt. Right.
Sometimes I I spend quite a bit of my time
in couples therapy with people who are like, I'm just
(18:03):
expressing my feelings. I can say what i want because
I'm communicating. Well, communicating isn't. It's not just a free
for all. We have to be mindful of. We have
to start with the end in mind. How do I
want this conversation to go. If I want you to
be open and receptive and to take what I'm saying in,
then I had better start by calming myself down or
(18:26):
like whatever it is. I mean, like literally, like listening
to music, like taking some deep breaths, asking you first, hey,
like Todd to gesture with me, are you available for feedback? Right?
There's things that we need to do around communication. It's
more than just spitting out every single thought and feeling.
That's you know, knocking around inside of your head. But
we also need to have a set of skills around
(18:47):
how we make repairs, how we apologize, and lots of
us grew up in homes where we didn't see apology
and forgiveness modeled for us, so we may actually not
even know how to make a heartfelt apology. So when
we do go into that tempson of the time where
we say things, where we speak before thinking, where we
allow our emotional brain to be in the driver's seat
(19:10):
rather than our wise brain, we have to learn how
to and be willing to look our partner in the
eyes and say I'm sorry, I don't like how I
said that, I would like a redo or with our kids.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It's been incredible talking with you, and I appreciate you
taking some time to come on and teach us a
lot of things that I think we all needed to hear.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Thank you, Morgan, it was a fun conversation. Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I don't know about you, guys, but I feel like
I've just been seriously educated on matters of relationships. So
if you feel the same and you want to connect
with doctor Solomon, her website is doctor Alexandrasolomon dot com
spelled Solomo in or you can follow her on Instagram
at doctor dot Alexandra dot Solomon. On with me right
(20:02):
now is country artist Kylie Morgan. She's had a crazy
journey to get to where she is today with her
career and with her personal life, which is why I'm
really excited to have her on this week. Hi, Kylie,
thanks for coming on. Please give the people a little
bit of your beginning story just in case they haven't
heard any of this yet.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
What's up, everybody, I'm Kylie Morgan. Thank you so much
for having me. So. I got my little pink guitar
for Christmas from my papal when I was twelve, and
truly there was no turning back. I told my mom
when I learned my first three chords and wrote my
first song on guitar, I was like, Mom, I'm skipping
college and moving to Nashville to be a country music card.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
You knew very early.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Yeah, my mom, My poor mom was just like, oh no,
what did I get myself into? And I did it though.
I just like was always the kid that said if
she was going to do something, I would figure out
a way to do it, and so it kind of
always made sense that I felt like a fish out
of water because my mindset and my dream set, I
would say, it was just so different than anybody that
I went to school with, and so I just kind
of always felt like I was different from everybody. Sometimes good,
(21:06):
but most of the time bad. Dealt with like bullying
all growing up and just kind of being in a
different mindset makes people think that you think you're better
than them, but truth is, it's not the case at all.
I just think differently and had really big dreams, and
so I started going to Nashville to co write songs.
When I was fifteen, I met this guy that pretty
much took me under his wing. His name's Russ Zabatson.
He's been a song plugger for years here in town
(21:28):
and is still one of my favorite people and has
been just a huge part of my story. I pretty
much signed my first indie record deal when I was
fourteen with this super small like company in Oklahoma that
pretty much created their label for me. It was this
guy that was just loved music, and his wife actually
ended up slipping one of my CDs to his LA
music friend and pretty much said what do you think
(21:51):
of her? And there he was like, I think you
should fly out to LA and let me hear her.
And so I went out to LA and played a
song for him with an attitude guitar, but truly from it,
just like we grow from anything that we struggle with.
And so started going back and forth to Nashville at
fifteen and found people that would be willing to write
with me. One of them was a guy named Walker Hayes,
and he was one of the very first people I
(22:11):
ever wrote with when I came to Nashville, which is
insane that he would agree to write with fifteen year
old first of all, and now to see where he
is now, It's just so cool to have that piece
of my story in art history that we have together.
And so I just knew once I walked down Broadway
for the first time that Nashville was gonna be home.
And so I toured full time, ended up doing sophomore
through senior year online so that I could spend full
(22:33):
time touring and just like figuring out who I was
as an artist, getting my feet wet, going back and
forth to Nashville, writing continuously, and finally at nineteen, I
packed up a bunch of thrift store furniture and moved
to Nashville. I saved up all my money from touring
and was able to buy a house my first publishing deal.
When I moved here and signed my first pub deule,
I was making twenty k here, which is impossible to
(22:56):
live on, especially in Nashville. But thankfully, since I bought
my house, I had a room, so like, she paid
my mortgage and I just had to pay for my
food and so that was the only way I was
able to survive off of that. But that led to
another publishing deal with a guy named Shane mcinally. I'm
sure that some.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Of you have had another, as you should be bragging.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I met him when I was I think I was
twenty years old, and it was actually when Walker signed
with Smack and Robin Palmer, who is the reason actually
Shane got his first cut ever. I got a call
from her, and long story short, I was in the
middle of being like, WTF, what am I going to do?
I lost my last deal because they lost their investor,
(23:35):
and so like, I moved to town with the deal,
so I never met with any like managers or like
publishers or anything like that because I already moved here,
so no one knew who I was, and I was terrified.
And so I got a call from Robin Palmer and
I'll never forget this voicemail. It was like, Hi, this
is Robin Palmer. I heard your songs through Walker Hayes's
catalog and I was just calling because who are you?
(23:57):
And I want to know you?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So call me back.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
And so I immediately called her back and we got
a meeting and I've just played her some of the
stuff that I've been working on and she was super
stoked about it, and it played it for Shane. Shane
came to see me play at the Bluebird Cafe and
I got my publishing deal right after that, and that
led to a management deal, and then three years of
just branding myself, figuring out who I was an artist,
(24:19):
what I wanted to say. That led to Shane bringing
me into Universal, introducing me to Mike Dungan, and got
my record deal and then it was like, Okay, we're here, right,
We've made it. Those are the highlights, and it's still
a journey from here.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
No. I think it's a great to show just how
far you've come where you are now and what happened
along the way. There was something that really stuck out
to me when you were talking about that and you
were saying you were a fish out of water for
a really long time because of the mindset you had,
and I think for a long time. Especially you and
I are very close in age, and when we grew up,
it was hard to be different. If you were different,
(24:53):
it wasn't understood yet, you were weird. Yeah, today, being
different it's like the best thing.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
I would world best.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
You're unique, Yes, thanks to talk and all the other
things that are out there.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Being that fish out of water.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
What do you feel like kind of during that timeframe
of your life where you're trying to figure everything out
and nothing was really making sense.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
What was that.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Kind of hardest moment for you that you look back
on and you're like, that really kind of changed the
course of my life.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Yeah, I actually never forget this moment. When I started
writing songs, I started writing it for me, like I thought,
it was just therapy for me. It made me feel better.
I would go home and like lock myself in my
room with me and my guitar, and I would just
vent to my guitar and write about what I was
going through. Also much cheaper than therapy. Music was my healer,
and I just always knew that. Like at first, when
I started making music, I thought it was for me.
(25:38):
And then I begged my mom for MySpace music when
I was like thirteen, and back then like just like
social media had just started, you know, like happening, and
my mom thought that I was going to get kidnapped
and killed if.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I like put anything on the net.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
And so I like begged her, begged her, and finally
for Christmas, she gave me a MySpace music and she
put it in a little card with a pass and
it was like Mom's trust and I like, She's like,
I'm trusting you to get on this. Every time you
type it in, you have to think of me. And
so I went on. I was write when the MacBooks
came out with Garage Band, and I just recorded just
me and my guitar some songs, put them up and
(26:15):
ended up getting a lot of like plays in traffic
from it. Started putting stuff on YouTube, same thing, and
that led to actually, this is the moment that I
realized music was not for just me. When I went
to Nashville for the first time. That week of first
writing songs, I wrote with this beautiful human named Liz
Hangber and other beautiful human named Rob Crosby. Liz Hangber
has written a bunch of like Riba hits and Brooks
(26:37):
and Dunn songs, things like that. Rob Crosby wrote Concrete
Angel by Martina McBride and again, for them to even
agree to write with me was just unreal. And we
go into the room. We start talking about, you know,
what's going on, and she said, Liz was like, I
just want to bring this up. You know, when you're
in a writing room, you never know what you're gonna
write about that day until you get in there, see
where everyone's head's at, see what everyone's feeling. And Liz
(26:59):
was like, I have this thing wing on my heart.
I just want to bring it up. I heard this
story of this girl named Phoebe who I recently kind
of dove into, and she was fifteen, and she recently
just committed suicide because of bullying and dealing with that
and couldn't take it anymore, took her own life. And
I was fifteen at the time and had been dealing
with bullying, so like, it was hit home for me
(27:20):
really hard to know that it led to that for
someone else. And so we just decided to write that story,
and we wrote this song called Phoebe in honor of
her and ended up putting it on YouTube. It got
like seventy thousand views in like three days, and I
ended up reading all the comments and it was just
these kids were being like, this song saved my life,
thank you. I was I was thinking about doing this,
(27:41):
and now that I saw the effect it had on
other people, like I don't, it was just it was
one of the moments I was just like, music is
not for me at all. My music is yes, it's
for me, but it's also for others. And that's what
gave me the inspiration to be like, Okay, no, this
is this is going to happen because I want I
want to help more people through music. And that's what
helped me all growing up was I would, you know,
(28:03):
lean on artists like Taylor Swift, Shania you know, all
those original artists that helped me get through things. And
I wanted to become that for other people. And so,
knowing that that affected I wanted, I didn't want to
stop there. So I actually ended up starting my own
bullying prevention campaign called It Matters What We Do, which
is a line from the song. I ended up touring
from schools all across the country, from pre k all
(28:24):
the way up to university level, and would go and
fly in and talk about bullying and then play and
perform and like make it a fun, you know thing,
rather than adult being like, don't do this.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
It was like a peer to peer thing, and I
would just do meet and greets after and I would
just have kids crying in my arms. That point in
life was just no matter how frustrating the music business gets,
I have to remember why I started music, because that
is the reason why God gave me this talent.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So it gave you this super charged passion.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Almost not only was it something that was like in
your blood, it became something that was like.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I have to do this to help others.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And do you think, as you've gotten older, do you
look back on that.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
I know, for me, like I look back on that
and I'm not thankful for it.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
That's not the right word. I don't hate that it
happened because it changed the course of my life.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
I cannot wait for you to hear the song. It's
called Me and Girls. The top of the chorus it
says thank God for me and girls to show me
how bad words can hurt. And the whole point of
the song is because all these bad things happened to me,
I got the good things that truly made me who
I am. And instead of looking back and being like, yeah,
thanks for like spreading all those rumors about me and
(29:31):
like saying that I'll never get anywhere, and like no,
like I'm not saying that, but I'm saying, like, thank
you for giving me the strength to overcome the words
that you're saying and continuing to find a way to
move forward in that way I know how to deal
with it. And even in my adult.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Life, I think the message that you were constantly sitting,
not only just being an artist but as a person.
Thank you. Which is why I was so exciting to
have you on because we get to talk on this
like very human side and it's so much different. I
did also want to talk to you because you know,
you do have a song that's that went viral still
going viral independent with you. You know, earlier on this podcast,
I was talking to doctor Solomon, who's an expert in
(30:07):
basically all things, but definitely in relationships.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
A little bad. I need to listen to that part
of the podcast. For sure, I could always use tips
and tricks on that.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
No, but like and she's so awesome, and she talked
about how to have these really refreshing, honest conversations with
the people in your life. What's important about it is
that you make sure that space is there and that
they're ready to have that conversation. What kind of healthy
things have you and Jay found that work for you, guys.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, well, I'll be honest, Like, so I met him
when I was nineteen, the little baby Kylie, and I
was the girl who was married to her career. I mean,
that's all I thought about. That's all I ever. I eat, breathe, sleep, music.
So it's like I've had a goal since I was little,
and ever since before I met Jay, every relationship I
was in I was forced to choose between the relationship
(30:53):
or my music, Like whether if music was thriving, then
my relationship was in the tank. If my relationship was thriving,
then music was sucking. Like it just was never a balance.
And so truly, when I was nineteen, I saw him
walking down the stairs of this publishing company on music Row.
I was like, that's my husband. I knew it, and
I was just terrified to know it, but also like
wasn't willing to admit that I ever wanted to get
(31:15):
married because I always thought that I would still continuously
have to choose and I just was always like, oh,
I'm the girl that I'll never get married, and that's fine,
Like I'll just I'll be in a happy relationship. We'll
be together, but like you know, we don't got to
put any label on it, or like the word wife
still terrifies me, Like it kind of grosses me out. Sometimes.
I just feel like I also haven't always had like
(31:36):
the best examples of marriage in different parts of my life,
and so it just the idea of it just scared me.
I just always thought that one was above another, and
like that's how it was. He for the first time
showed me that I could have both because he treats
me like an equal, and so for me and us,
it is continuously learning about each other in a way
(31:58):
that like when you, I mean this, you know your
taste buds change every seven years, how are you not
going to change every seven years? And continuously growing together?
And I mean we we had a mishappen in our
relationship we were like make or break and we decided
to go to therapy, which like helped us tremendously. And
usually people are like, especially in the South, they're like, oh, therapy,
like what's wrong with you? And I'm like, oh my god,
(32:19):
please change your mindsecaus, therapy is the best thing in
the entire world. Like it just makes you think so
differently and it gives you it makes you learn things
about yourself that you didn't even know. So we started
doing therapy and we just applied those things that we
learned there in everyday life and we don't go anymore,
but we truly like learn so much from it. And
I think the biggest thing that we learned is continuously
(32:40):
realizing that we're both going to evolve and we're both
going to change, and we can either do that together
or we can do that separately. And that's how it
always ends in divorce usually when that happens. And so
if we can agree to like continuously grow together and
evolve together in different ways that each other is needing,
whatever stage of life that's in, then that's when we
can continuously be closer and like continuously not feel like
(33:02):
it's work.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Kylie, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
This is so cool to hear your story and just
hear you get really human with me, absolutely share this
side of you. You guys heard earlier doctor Solomon talk
about a lot of things, and Kylie and I broke
down a lot of what Doctor Solomon and I talked about.
Not that Kylie realized it, but it's cool. You know,
when you go to therapy and you come in, you
talk about it with your friends.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
So again, thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
Thank you for giving artists and you know, people a
space to come to to just kind of check out
and realize that we're all on a journey and it's
like no one's life is all put together, even if
it seems that way. And I think it's just so
cool that you're now giving somewhere some people like took
place to go for that reminder.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
I loved having two incredibly awesome women on this week.
If you want to connect with Kylie Morgan, her music
is everywhere you stream music and her social media is
at Kylie Morgan Music. Now you can go follow the
Instagram page at Take This Personally. You can also hit
us up on the email Take This Personally at gmail
dot com if you have questions or topics you want
(34:05):
us to bring up with experts, whatever it may be.
Hit us up on either one of those, and there's
some full interviews. If you go to YouTube at web
Girl Morgan, you will find some full interviews with some
of these experts and guests that come on. Next week
is a special episode. I'm really excited about this one.
Nicole the neuroscientist comes on to talk to us all
about brain health, but not only that, we're also wired
(34:26):
to eat bad foods. How do we break habits, how
do we fix negativity bias? And how can you learn
to be creative?
Speaker 3 (34:34):
All of these things are helpful when understanding the brain.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And then on that second half, I'm bringing on Jared,
who is my personal trainer and a really good friend
of mine. Not only are we going to talk about
physical health, but also Jared has an incredibly inspiring story
from homelessness to where he is now as a celebrity
personal trainer. And if you love this podcast and you
love this episode and there's more to come, please get
rate it five stars. I'm so happy to have you
(34:59):
here in the outpouring of love and support for this
podcast has been amazing to me and I'm just so
excited to see how more connected we can be and
less alone in this crazy, crazy world.
Personally with Morgan Juelsman.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's the second episode of Take This Personally. I'm Morgan.
You may know me from the Bobby Bone Show. I've
always found that it's easier to get through some of
life's challenges when we feel less alone, which is really
why I started this podcast. I'm hoping you can connect
to one of my guest stories or their pieces of advice.
This week, I have on doctor Solomon first, who is
(00:39):
beyond an expert with over a twenty years of experience.
She studied psychology and women's studies at the University of
Michigan and she also received her PhD in counseling psychology.
Than I have on country artist Kylie Morgan, who is
a friend and came on to share some of the
most vulnerable moments in her life that led her to
(00:59):
wear her career is now. I'm so excited to talk
to doctor Solomon right now. Thank you for joining me,
and I want to get your expertise on several topics,
but we're gonna dive right into the deep in to start,
I want to talk about trauma and growth. Do you
(01:21):
feel like people have to go through almost traumatic things
to feel that growth or do you think they can
still feel that growth.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Without having gone through something terribly bad.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I love the idea of gentle awakenings right of just
sort of, you know, as I remember years and years
ago Oprah Winfrey talked about, you know, sometimes when we
get the first brick upside our head, you know, the
first little inkling that we are creating a pattern for ourselves,
it's painful. If we don't pay attention to the brick
up side the head, then we will get the entire
brick wall crashing down upon us. And I think some
(01:56):
of us, yeah, some of us can get a little
bit more like, no, no, well I got this. I'm good.
I don't need help. For some of us, the you know,
the sort of wake up call has to be louder,
but it doesn't have to be that way. As you're saying, Morgan,
that there's you know, I think we can resource ourselves
at any point in time. It's you know, one of
the things I do is I teach an undergraduate class
at Northwestern University called marriage one oh one. Well, those
(02:18):
students aren't going to get married for you know, any
number of years, but there's lots that they can learn
about understanding who they are and what they want and
need in their intimate relationships. So I like, I'm here
for therapy early and often I'm here for you know,
gentle lessons. But I hear you. So did you have
to learn some things in your life the hard way? Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yes, I mean I from boweying in high school to
some abusive relationships. I've been through the trenches, and I
don't wish that upon anyone, but I also look back
and it helped me to become who I am today
in almost an unfortunate series of events. But now and
today I look at that, and when people ask how
and why, I'm like, well, this is where I came from,
(03:00):
and so of course I would hope I'm better from that,
But you don't hope anybody ever goes through that so.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, and you didn't have to become better for it.
You could have taken all those painful experiences and you
could have said, see, that just proves that life is
unfair and I'm a constant victim and nothing good is
going to happen to me. Right, that you could have
taken those experiences and allowed them to make you hardened
and bitter, and you know, you could have experienced like
a loss of vitality, and you could have just kind
(03:26):
of stayed stuck there. And I hear that you have
done what you needed to do in order to use
those experiences to fuel you into purpose and passion and
capacity for joy.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So that's yeah, absolutely, I've loved that for me, but
I would love that for other people too. So, you know,
do you have any good ideas for people who maybe
have gone through that and they may find themselves in
a very negative space.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I mean, I do think part of it is teasing
apart that thing happened to me versus that thing defines me.
I think part of what creates the conditions for people
to get stuck is they can fuse the things that
happened to them with their identity. And all of us
are more than any given painful experience. I believe each
(04:09):
of us is an expression of divine consciousness. Whatever you know,
each of us belongs to this huge collective of humanity
and as part of something like far, far, far bigger
than any one of us. And so to me, whatever
pathways people use to kind of remember that, whether it's
movement or music or dance or conversation or prayer or
(04:33):
volunteer work, like whatever. Those gateways are that help people
remember like, oh I belong, I belong and I'm part
of something bigger than me. That I think is what
helps us get clear that the bad experiences we live
through do not define us.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
The older I get, I've been in some relationships at
this point, and just the older I get, the more
I realize everybody comes with things.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
You're just going to have to accept certain.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Things that you want. Nobody's going to come perfect. There's
going to be baggage along the way, no matter what.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
How that looks is up to you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And I just want your kind of advice on for
so many people because relationships, regardless if they were even good,
maybe they weren't as bad as mine in the dramatic
sense that they were. They're just hard and they can
be traumatic and very hard to move on from. So
how do we jump into another relationship after, say, our
heart gets broken and things are hard. How do we
(05:28):
go into a new relationship and find that level of
vulnerability again?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I think we don't spend nearly enough time talking to
people about healthy relationships and healthy sexuality and all of
that good stuff. But we also don't spend enough time
talking with people about how to break up well, how
to integrate after laws, how to start over again. I'm
finding myself doing more and more of that work, even
with therapists when I'm presenting at therapist conferences, and very
(05:55):
often I'm talking with therapists about how to help clients
break up well, heal heartbreak start again, because I think
that there is not something that therapists necessarily have been
trained in doing, and it's what you are talking about.
I think heartbreak and relationship endings hurt for all kinds
of reasons, including literal brain science. Our brains code emotional
(06:16):
pain in the same way that our brains code physical pain.
So heartbreak hurts because it hurts. It is painful, And
I think we sometimes have these like misguided coping mechanisms
where will say to ourselves, it shouldn't hurt like this
because they were no good for me anyways. It shouldn't
hurt like this because it was only a three month
long relationship. It shouldn't hurt like this because whatever my
(06:38):
friends didn't like them anyways. Well, all that will do
when we invalidate ourselves, all that's going to do is
make our healing journey take that much longer because we
aren't even letting ourselves start the journey. We're invalidating ourselves
out of the journey versus letting ourselves grieve the loss
of that relationship. Even if we're the one who ended it.
(06:59):
You can be the one who ended a relationship and
still grieve the loss of that relationship. You're losing the
future you imagined with that person, and you are having
to let go of what that relationship meant and the
experiences you had and every grief. You know, grief is synergistic,
meaning that the grief in the loss of this relationship
(07:20):
is going to awaken the grief of the loss of
my father or my grandmother, or that move that we
had to make, or that tragedy that happened in my community.
Like grief's chain together. For as hard as it is,
there's also that opportunity in a breakup to just have
that season or that chapter of loss and letting ourselves
(07:41):
just be very much present to that without shrinking it,
minimizing it, rationalizing it, moving through it, getting the lessons
and then starting to kind of come up out of it.
That's a process that if we don't constrict it, it
will just happen. We will come through it, and the
goal is to come through it open hearted, rather than
(08:03):
to come through it kind of scabbed over and hardened
and cynical. And I think the way that we do
that is by just letting the loss be exactly the
length and width and height that it is.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I love that, and I think it's so true. There's
so many people.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
That I know a lot of my friends who I've
seen them hurt from two month relationships compared to each
sureer relationship sure, And I think there's something to be
said that we bond with people so differently, and that
there is no one size.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Fits all for everything that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
It's important to share and reiterate because I just don't
think we hear that enough.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
One hundred percent. It was a podcast episode that I
had done We're One of the points that I made
is some of us who've had heartbreak, some of us
who have survived trauma. One of the things that sometimes
happens is that we no longer fall in love. We
become the kind of people who step into love, and
that can feel sad, like I miss the fact that
(08:57):
you know, when I was younger, before I new hurt,
like I know hurt. Before that I would fall head
over heels and I don't do that anymore. Rather than
seeing that as something that's wrong with us, just allowing
that to be what it is and to know that
there is not as you're saying, there is no right
and wrong way to bond with somebody, and stepping into
love is beautiful. There's a wisdom to that, there's a
(09:19):
gentleness to that. There's a way that when we step
into love, we aren't short circuiting our nervous systems, right,
so it can be a kinder process that that's okay.
I want people to know that that's okay.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I mean I'm someone who's sitting here listening to this,
and I'm like preach yes, because I have done both.
I have been the woman in the enticing, intoxicating relationship
and I've also now been in this incredibly healthy relationship.
And i can tell you on this side of things,
on the healthier side, it is so much more rewarding
(09:50):
and enjoyable than the intoxicating situations that we see in
movies that we think we want.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, you don't perhaps feel intoxicated, but what you do
feel is I imagine safe and calm, and like your
nervous system is like taking a big exhale, and that
can feel really different.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I want to talk to you too about the ways
that we invalidate ourselves.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I'm guilty of it.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I know a lot of people are of saying others
have it worse.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
How do we get away from doing that and feeling
that way?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well the only way that I know
how to do it is with something in something that
comes from psychology, which is called dialectics. So dialectics. You know,
our research has shown that a lot of our emotional
resilience and emotional well being rests upon our ability to
hold a dialectic. And a dialectic is a space where
(10:49):
competing truths, where two things are true at the same time,
two things that seem opposite are actually both true. I
had a terrible day and I am blessed. Those both
are true. We can be blessed and suffering that both
those things can be true. I don't have to prove
that I have it worse than anybody else in order
(11:10):
to be entitled to my suffering, and the way that
I do that is by holding both my grief and
my gratitude my courage and my fear, the fact that
I'm whole as I am and I'm forever a work
in progress. Like these things that just seem like they
can't possibly both be true at the same time are
as part of the thing that makes being alive so complicated.
(11:32):
So I think if I have one of those moments,
I certainly have had those moments where I am just
in the suck. I am just like suffering and struggling
and wanting to host a big old pity party for myself,
and then I'm just like, ah, I'm being ridiculous because
there are people who have you know, quote unquote actual problems.
Both those things are true. Yes, I am absolutely blessed
(11:53):
and I am absolutely you know, burnt out or struggling.
So that's where I try to go, because You're right,
if I cannot validate my own suffering, you can bet
that I'm not going to be able to validate the
suffering of people around me. And then I'm not going
to be very fun to be around because I'm going
to be judgmental and dismissive, you know, and like roll
my eyes at people, and that's not going to be
a recipe for healthy relationships.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And being self aware is kind of one of the
big buzzwords right now in psychology and therapy. Visit living
up to all the hypes? Should we be focusing so
much on that? And what does that look like? If
somebody hasn't ever heard the word self aware and they're like,
what do I need to.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Do with that?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
What would be the first steps you'd tell someone to
get through this first phase to be on that journey.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Self awareness is my that's my jam, That's how I
spend really all day every day is supporting people in
different ways to understand with curiosity and with compassion who
they are and why they are the way that they are.
And I think it's it is essential if what people
want is high quality relationships, whether that's relationship with partner,
relationship with their family members, relationship with their kids. We
(12:58):
have to be willing to get curious about why we
are reacting the way we are reacting in any given moment,
Like that's just the work of it. So I think
the first step is to just begin to notice how
we're talking to ourselves, notice when we have rise and
fall of different emotions during the day, Like just getting
really curious and starting to view our thoughts and our
(13:21):
feelings and our behaviors as data. It's just data that
we then can sit with and wonder about. I think
one of the things, you know, you started off by
asking about, kind of what's changed in the last couple
of decades the whole field of self help. As I
was growing up in the eighties, my mom always had
a stack of self help books next to her nightstand.
So self help isn't new necessarily, but we're living in
(13:44):
this really exciting time with social media of podcasts, where
there's so many resources that somebody can bring in and
I think just listening to different podcasts that are about
relationships or about psychology, or reading, you know, following different
Instagram accounts there like daily small doses of self awareness work.
I think those are really gentle ways to start, especially
(14:05):
if someone's not interested in committing to therapy or something
like that. But there's little things we can do each
day to just begin to check in with ourselves.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
How do you suggest I think it's hard for people
to receive feedback. There's criticism and there's unkindness, but then
there's feedback, and because of social media, there is also
this other side that we've seen this very cruel side
of the world, so it's really easy to loop in
feedback with criticism and negativity.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
So how do we kind of.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Look at something like, Okay, this is feedback to help me,
versus this is criticism to hurt me.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
That's right. I think that's a very very good point,
And it's all about the strength of the relationship. Yeah,
I will not take feedback from somebody where I have
a sense that there's an ulterior motive or a hidden agenda,
or a lack of willingness to be in dialogue with me,
in community with me. I won't take feedback from somebody.
If I don't have a s that somebody has my
back or has my best interest at heart, or who
(15:03):
really can feel the core of me as a good,
decent person, they don't get the right to give me feedback, right,
you know. And that so that I think it really
is about the strength that's I want us to be
cultivating the kinds of relationships where there's enough trust that
then feedback feels like a generous gift rather than an attack.
(15:25):
And that's what there was. Right with my husband, I
trust that he's in my corner. I trust that he
has my back. I trust that whatever he wants and
needs to say to me is in the service of
everyone in our family feeling safe and understood and held
and celebrated, rather than to take me down or to
prove some point or to diminish me.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
When I do think in that same area, there's also resentment.
We see a lot of relationships that people feel and
resentment builds up over so much time for new couples,
for even couples that have been together a long time,
how do you avoid that resentment rut that everybody falls into.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Resentment is a big one, and I think resentment happens
when we don't have that ability to give and receive feedback.
Right If I can't give, if you've shown me that
you are a closed door and that you will not
take my feedback, and everything I try to bring up
with you you flip it back on me, then that's right.
The absolute side effect is going to be that I'm
(16:27):
going to build a resentment because I'm biting my tongue
because it feels really difficult to talk to you. So
resentment is going to be the side effect. It may
help you in the moment because you don't have to
deal with the difficulty of me giving you feedback. So
in some ways you might be like, sweet, this is
easy because she's not riding my ass, she's not telling
me what I've done wrong, quote unquote. But so the
(16:48):
moment might feel like it's been solved. But the problem
is I'm building up a well of resentment because you
aren't open and available to dialogue. Now, it's incumbent on
me that when I do have feedback for you, that
I do it in a deeply loving way where I
convey to you, Morgan, you are my heart, like I
am deeply invested, and here's what I love about how
(17:08):
things are going, and here's what I value, And I
really make sure that I am forward and explicit about
all of the ways I can see you putting an effort,
trying hard, like ways in which you know I show
you that I have your back. And then I say
to you, I want to give you this feedback because
because of how much I love you, because of how
much I want the space between us to feel good
(17:30):
and safe and close.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
It sounds like along these same lines that communication is
so important, but it feels like that's the bottom layer
of all of this communicating is where it starts.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Absolutely, oh, absolutely yeah. And you know, communication is more
than just saying words. It is talking about something, talking
about my internal experience, my thoughts, my reactions that I'm
having in my relationship with you, saying in a way
that communicates also empathy and benefit of the doubt. Right.
Sometimes I I spend quite a bit of my time
in couples therapy with people who are like, I'm just
(18:03):
expressing my feelings. I can say what i want because
I'm communicating. Well, communicating isn't. It's not just a free
for all. We have to be mindful of. We have
to start with the end in mind. How do I
want this conversation to go. If I want you to
be open and receptive and to take what I'm saying in,
then I had better start by calming myself down or
(18:26):
like whatever it is. I mean, like literally, like listening
to music, like taking some deep breaths, asking you first, hey,
like Todd to gesture with me, are you available for feedback? Right?
There's things that we need to do around communication. It's
more than just spitting out every single thought and feeling.
That's you know, knocking around inside of your head. But
we also need to have a set of skills around
(18:47):
how we make repairs, how we apologize, and lots of
us grew up in homes where we didn't see apology
and forgiveness modeled for us, so we may actually not
even know how to make a heartfelt apology. So when
we do go into that tempson of the time where
we say things, where we speak before thinking, where we
allow our emotional brain to be in the driver's seat
(19:10):
rather than our wise brain, we have to learn how
to and be willing to look our partner in the
eyes and say I'm sorry, I don't like how I
said that, I would like a redo or with our kids.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It's been incredible talking with you, and I appreciate you
taking some time to come on and teach us a
lot of things that I think we all needed to hear.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Thank you, Morgan, it was a fun conversation. Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I don't know about you, guys, but I feel like
I've just been seriously educated on matters of relationships. So
if you feel the same and you want to connect
with doctor Solomon, her website is doctor Alexandrasolomon dot com
spelled Solomo in or you can follow her on Instagram
at doctor dot Alexandra dot Solomon. On with me right
(20:02):
now is country artist Kylie Morgan. She's had a crazy
journey to get to where she is today with her
career and with her personal life, which is why I'm
really excited to have her on this week. Hi, Kylie,
thanks for coming on. Please give the people a little
bit of your beginning story just in case they haven't
heard any of this yet.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
What's up, everybody, I'm Kylie Morgan. Thank you so much
for having me. So. I got my little pink guitar
for Christmas from my papal when I was twelve, and
truly there was no turning back. I told my mom
when I learned my first three chords and wrote my
first song on guitar, I was like, Mom, I'm skipping
college and moving to Nashville to be a country music card.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
You knew very early.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Yeah, my mom, My poor mom was just like, oh no,
what did I get myself into? And I did it though.
I just like was always the kid that said if
she was going to do something, I would figure out
a way to do it, and so it kind of
always made sense that I felt like a fish out
of water because my mindset and my dream set, I
would say, it was just so different than anybody that
I went to school with, and so I just kind
of always felt like I was different from everybody. Sometimes good,
(21:06):
but most of the time bad. Dealt with like bullying
all growing up and just kind of being in a
different mindset makes people think that you think you're better
than them, but truth is, it's not the case at all.
I just think differently and had really big dreams, and
so I started going to Nashville to co write songs.
When I was fifteen, I met this guy that pretty
much took me under his wing. His name's Russ Zabatson.
He's been a song plugger for years here in town
(21:28):
and is still one of my favorite people and has
been just a huge part of my story. I pretty
much signed my first indie record deal when I was
fourteen with this super small like company in Oklahoma that
pretty much created their label for me. It was this
guy that was just loved music, and his wife actually
ended up slipping one of my CDs to his LA
music friend and pretty much said what do you think
(21:51):
of her? And there he was like, I think you
should fly out to LA and let me hear her.
And so I went out to LA and played a
song for him with an attitude guitar, but truly from it,
just like we grow from anything that we struggle with.
And so started going back and forth to Nashville at
fifteen and found people that would be willing to write
with me. One of them was a guy named Walker Hayes,
and he was one of the very first people I
(22:11):
ever wrote with when I came to Nashville, which is
insane that he would agree to write with fifteen year
old first of all, and now to see where he
is now, It's just so cool to have that piece
of my story in art history that we have together.
And so I just knew once I walked down Broadway
for the first time that Nashville was gonna be home.
And so I toured full time, ended up doing sophomore
through senior year online so that I could spend full
(22:33):
time touring and just like figuring out who I was
as an artist, getting my feet wet, going back and
forth to Nashville, writing continuously, and finally at nineteen, I
packed up a bunch of thrift store furniture and moved
to Nashville. I saved up all my money from touring
and was able to buy a house my first publishing deal.
When I moved here and signed my first pub deule,
I was making twenty k here, which is impossible to
(22:56):
live on, especially in Nashville. But thankfully, since I bought
my house, I had a room, so like, she paid
my mortgage and I just had to pay for my
food and so that was the only way I was
able to survive off of that. But that led to
another publishing deal with a guy named Shane mcinally. I'm
sure that some.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Of you have had another, as you should be bragging.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I met him when I was I think I was
twenty years old, and it was actually when Walker signed
with Smack and Robin Palmer, who is the reason actually
Shane got his first cut ever. I got a call
from her, and long story short, I was in the
middle of being like, WTF, what am I going to do?
I lost my last deal because they lost their investor,
(23:35):
and so like, I moved to town with the deal,
so I never met with any like managers or like
publishers or anything like that because I already moved here,
so no one knew who I was, and I was terrified.
And so I got a call from Robin Palmer and
I'll never forget this voicemail. It was like, Hi, this
is Robin Palmer. I heard your songs through Walker Hayes's
catalog and I was just calling because who are you?
(23:57):
And I want to know you?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So call me back.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
And so I immediately called her back and we got
a meeting and I've just played her some of the
stuff that I've been working on and she was super
stoked about it, and it played it for Shane. Shane
came to see me play at the Bluebird Cafe and
I got my publishing deal right after that, and that
led to a management deal, and then three years of
just branding myself, figuring out who I was an artist,
(24:19):
what I wanted to say. That led to Shane bringing
me into Universal, introducing me to Mike Dungan, and got
my record deal and then it was like, Okay, we're here, right,
We've made it. Those are the highlights, and it's still
a journey from here.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
No. I think it's a great to show just how
far you've come where you are now and what happened
along the way. There was something that really stuck out
to me when you were talking about that and you
were saying you were a fish out of water for
a really long time because of the mindset you had,
and I think for a long time. Especially you and
I are very close in age, and when we grew up,
it was hard to be different. If you were different,
(24:53):
it wasn't understood yet, you were weird. Yeah, today, being
different it's like the best thing.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
I would world best.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
You're unique, Yes, thanks to talk and all the other
things that are out there.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Being that fish out of water.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
What do you feel like kind of during that timeframe
of your life where you're trying to figure everything out
and nothing was really making sense.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
What was that.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Kind of hardest moment for you that you look back
on and you're like, that really kind of changed the
course of my life.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Yeah, I actually never forget this moment. When I started
writing songs, I started writing it for me, like I thought,
it was just therapy for me. It made me feel better.
I would go home and like lock myself in my
room with me and my guitar, and I would just
vent to my guitar and write about what I was
going through. Also much cheaper than therapy. Music was my healer,
and I just always knew that. Like at first, when
I started making music, I thought it was for me.
(25:38):
And then I begged my mom for MySpace music when
I was like thirteen, and back then like just like
social media had just started, you know, like happening, and
my mom thought that I was going to get kidnapped
and killed if.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I like put anything on the net.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
And so I like begged her, begged her, and finally
for Christmas, she gave me a MySpace music and she
put it in a little card with a pass and
it was like Mom's trust and I like, She's like,
I'm trusting you to get on this. Every time you
type it in, you have to think of me. And
so I went on. I was write when the MacBooks
came out with Garage Band, and I just recorded just
me and my guitar some songs, put them up and
(26:15):
ended up getting a lot of like plays in traffic
from it. Started putting stuff on YouTube, same thing, and
that led to actually, this is the moment that I
realized music was not for just me. When I went
to Nashville for the first time. That week of first
writing songs, I wrote with this beautiful human named Liz
Hangber and other beautiful human named Rob Crosby. Liz Hangber
has written a bunch of like Riba hits and Brooks
(26:37):
and Dunn songs, things like that. Rob Crosby wrote Concrete
Angel by Martina McBride and again, for them to even
agree to write with me was just unreal. And we
go into the room. We start talking about, you know,
what's going on, and she said, Liz was like, I
just want to bring this up. You know, when you're
in a writing room, you never know what you're gonna
write about that day until you get in there, see
where everyone's head's at, see what everyone's feeling. And Liz
(26:59):
was like, I have this thing wing on my heart.
I just want to bring it up. I heard this
story of this girl named Phoebe who I recently kind
of dove into, and she was fifteen, and she recently
just committed suicide because of bullying and dealing with that
and couldn't take it anymore, took her own life. And
I was fifteen at the time and had been dealing
with bullying, so like, it was hit home for me
(27:20):
really hard to know that it led to that for
someone else. And so we just decided to write that story,
and we wrote this song called Phoebe in honor of
her and ended up putting it on YouTube. It got
like seventy thousand views in like three days, and I
ended up reading all the comments and it was just
these kids were being like, this song saved my life,
thank you. I was I was thinking about doing this,
(27:41):
and now that I saw the effect it had on
other people, like I don't, it was just it was
one of the moments I was just like, music is
not for me at all. My music is yes, it's
for me, but it's also for others. And that's what
gave me the inspiration to be like, Okay, no, this
is this is going to happen because I want I
want to help more people through music. And that's what
helped me all growing up was I would, you know,
(28:03):
lean on artists like Taylor Swift, Shania you know, all
those original artists that helped me get through things. And
I wanted to become that for other people. And so,
knowing that that affected I wanted, I didn't want to
stop there. So I actually ended up starting my own
bullying prevention campaign called It Matters What We Do, which
is a line from the song. I ended up touring
from schools all across the country, from pre k all
(28:24):
the way up to university level, and would go and
fly in and talk about bullying and then play and
perform and like make it a fun, you know thing,
rather than adult being like, don't do this.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
It was like a peer to peer thing, and I
would just do meet and greets after and I would
just have kids crying in my arms. That point in
life was just no matter how frustrating the music business gets,
I have to remember why I started music, because that
is the reason why God gave me this talent.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So it gave you this super charged passion.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Almost not only was it something that was like in
your blood, it became something that was like.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I have to do this to help others.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And do you think, as you've gotten older, do you
look back on that.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
I know, for me, like I look back on that
and I'm not thankful for it.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
That's not the right word. I don't hate that it
happened because it changed the course of my life.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
I cannot wait for you to hear the song. It's
called Me and Girls. The top of the chorus it
says thank God for me and girls to show me
how bad words can hurt. And the whole point of
the song is because all these bad things happened to me,
I got the good things that truly made me who
I am. And instead of looking back and being like, yeah,
thanks for like spreading all those rumors about me and
(29:31):
like saying that I'll never get anywhere, and like no,
like I'm not saying that, but I'm saying, like, thank
you for giving me the strength to overcome the words
that you're saying and continuing to find a way to
move forward in that way I know how to deal
with it. And even in my adult.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Life, I think the message that you were constantly sitting,
not only just being an artist but as a person.
Thank you. Which is why I was so exciting to
have you on because we get to talk on this
like very human side and it's so much different. I
did also want to talk to you because you know,
you do have a song that's that went viral still
going viral independent with you. You know, earlier on this podcast,
I was talking to doctor Solomon, who's an expert in
(30:07):
basically all things, but definitely in relationships.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
A little bad. I need to listen to that part
of the podcast. For sure, I could always use tips
and tricks on that.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
No, but like and she's so awesome, and she talked
about how to have these really refreshing, honest conversations with
the people in your life. What's important about it is
that you make sure that space is there and that
they're ready to have that conversation. What kind of healthy
things have you and Jay found that work for you, guys.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, well, I'll be honest, Like, so I met him
when I was nineteen, the little baby Kylie, and I
was the girl who was married to her career. I mean,
that's all I thought about. That's all I ever. I eat, breathe, sleep, music.
So it's like I've had a goal since I was little,
and ever since before I met Jay, every relationship I
was in I was forced to choose between the relationship
(30:53):
or my music, Like whether if music was thriving, then
my relationship was in the tank. If my relationship was thriving,
then music was sucking. Like it just was never a balance.
And so truly, when I was nineteen, I saw him
walking down the stairs of this publishing company on music Row.
I was like, that's my husband. I knew it, and
I was just terrified to know it, but also like
wasn't willing to admit that I ever wanted to get
(31:15):
married because I always thought that I would still continuously
have to choose and I just was always like, oh,
I'm the girl that I'll never get married, and that's fine,
Like I'll just I'll be in a happy relationship. We'll
be together, but like you know, we don't got to
put any label on it, or like the word wife
still terrifies me, Like it kind of grosses me out. Sometimes.
I just feel like I also haven't always had like
(31:36):
the best examples of marriage in different parts of my life,
and so it just the idea of it just scared me.
I just always thought that one was above another, and
like that's how it was. He for the first time
showed me that I could have both because he treats
me like an equal, and so for me and us,
it is continuously learning about each other in a way
(31:58):
that like when you, I mean this, you know your
taste buds change every seven years, how are you not
going to change every seven years? And continuously growing together?
And I mean we we had a mishappen in our
relationship we were like make or break and we decided
to go to therapy, which like helped us tremendously. And
usually people are like, especially in the South, they're like, oh, therapy,
like what's wrong with you? And I'm like, oh my god,
(32:19):
please change your mindsecaus, therapy is the best thing in
the entire world. Like it just makes you think so
differently and it gives you it makes you learn things
about yourself that you didn't even know. So we started
doing therapy and we just applied those things that we
learned there in everyday life and we don't go anymore,
but we truly like learn so much from it. And
I think the biggest thing that we learned is continuously
(32:40):
realizing that we're both going to evolve and we're both
going to change, and we can either do that together
or we can do that separately. And that's how it
always ends in divorce usually when that happens. And so
if we can agree to like continuously grow together and
evolve together in different ways that each other is needing,
whatever stage of life that's in, then that's when we
can continuously be closer and like continuously not feel like
(33:02):
it's work.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Kylie, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
This is so cool to hear your story and just
hear you get really human with me, absolutely share this
side of you. You guys heard earlier doctor Solomon talk
about a lot of things, and Kylie and I broke
down a lot of what Doctor Solomon and I talked about.
Not that Kylie realized it, but it's cool. You know,
when you go to therapy and you come in, you
talk about it with your friends.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
So again, thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
Thank you for giving artists and you know, people a
space to come to to just kind of check out
and realize that we're all on a journey and it's
like no one's life is all put together, even if
it seems that way. And I think it's just so
cool that you're now giving somewhere some people like took
place to go for that reminder.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
I loved having two incredibly awesome women on this week.
If you want to connect with Kylie Morgan, her music
is everywhere you stream music and her social media is
at Kylie Morgan Music. Now you can go follow the
Instagram page at Take This Personally. You can also hit
us up on the email Take This Personally at gmail
dot com if you have questions or topics you want
(34:05):
us to bring up with experts, whatever it may be.
Hit us up on either one of those, and there's
some full interviews. If you go to YouTube at web
Girl Morgan, you will find some full interviews with some
of these experts and guests that come on. Next week
is a special episode. I'm really excited about this one.
Nicole the neuroscientist comes on to talk to us all
about brain health, but not only that, we're also wired
(34:26):
to eat bad foods. How do we break habits, how
do we fix negativity bias? And how can you learn
to be creative?
Speaker 3 (34:34):
All of these things are helpful when understanding the brain.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And then on that second half, I'm bringing on Jared,
who is my personal trainer and a really good friend
of mine. Not only are we going to talk about
physical health, but also Jared has an incredibly inspiring story
from homelessness to where he is now as a celebrity
personal trainer. And if you love this podcast and you
love this episode and there's more to come, please get
rate it five stars. I'm so happy to have you
(34:59):
here in the outpouring of love and support for this
podcast has been amazing to me and I'm just so
excited to see how more connected we can be and
less alone in this crazy, crazy world.
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