September 22, 2025 • 54 mins
In this powerful episode of And Now Love, Cynthia Marks speaks with Devi Jags, producer, writer, activist, and host of Sparkle On. Devi shares her journey from being a competitive runner whose identity was wrapped up in athletics to becoming an outspoken advocate for gender-based violence awareness and mental health. She opens up about the traumatic experiences she endured during college, how those shaped her advocacy, and how she transformed her pain into purpose. Together, Cynthia and Devi explore the meaning of “sparkle” — happiness, passion, and self-worth — and how creativity can be a vital force for healing. Devi explains how writing, storytelling, and activism became her new form of expression, and why empowering others to discover their inner sparkle is central to her mission. The conversation touches on the complexities of sexual violence, breaking generational trauma, the importance of listening to young people, and the role of creativity as resistance and renewal. Ultimately, Devi reminds us that love and self-expression are essential tools for resilience.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Hi, my
name is Cynthia Marksand I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis
Foundation, established by my latehusband, Doctor Bernard Bail.
Welcome to And Now Love.
I am talking with Devi Jags today.
Devi is a producer, writer and activistand was inspired
to share the mission of sparkleon her podcast
(00:28):
after a series of traumatic eventswhich ultimately led to her advocacy work
and raising awareness about gender basedviolence and mental health.
Of course, we talk oftenabout how trauma shapes our lives,
and what Devi is working onis right up that alley.
So thank you for joining us.
(00:48):
We have a lot in common,and I have so many questions for you.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm very excited. Good.
I know thisfrom our previous conversations
that sparkle actuallymeans something important to you.
What does sparkle mean to you? How?
How does it apply to your message?
Well, I define sparkle as your happiness,passion, and self-worth,
(01:09):
and it's really derived from the timesthat I was a young, competitive runner.
And it was during my time in the RockyMountain towns where
I missed my friends from that summer campthat I would go to as a teenager,
and we missed this fire inside of us
that the this, you know, the mountainsand the air gave us.
(01:30):
And reallyit was the sport of running at the time.
It was all I knew as, as this thingthat got me up and out in the in the day.
And I loved it.
And I was really fortunate to recognizefrom an early age that this fire inside
you was something that I couldencapsulate as a first love.
And so I,I really think everyone has a sparkle,
(01:51):
and it is about finding that happiness,passion and self-worth inside you.
So as a first love,so kind of learning how to love yourself.
Yeah, Iso I wasn't a lot of date as a teenager
and I was like all in on running.
I was like, running is my boyfriend.
(02:12):
Running loves me back.
I compare even to this day,a lot, to this moment
when I was 16 years oldand I got to the starting line and I knew
it was going to be the fastest I ever runthat day for the two mile race. And
it wasn't this excitement or adrenaline.
It was this calm and it felt like,
(02:36):
you know, like when a room is silentand a pen could drop.
That's when my body felt like.
And I learned at 16
what it was like to trust your bodyto do really great things.
And I have never stopped holding onto that feeling of wanting that again.
Wow. So how do you account for that shift?
(02:59):
I don't think I ever did,
I don't think I ever expectedthat it would go away.
And then when it did,those years were really, really hard.
And my running career, transparently,never got back to that.
Coming into college,I had suffered three stress fractures
in my hip, femur and groinand to the point where I almost,
(03:20):
if I would have ran one more raceor one more long run,
I would have completely brokemy entire life.
Femur.
And I probably would have never run again.
How did you know to stop at that point?
I didn't have a choice,so I actually, I grew an addiction
to running, and my parents were really,really worried.
Finally, I ran.
One of it was a post-seasonrace, and I practically ran it on one leg.
(03:41):
It was one of the most
mortifying experiences of my life,but I didn't like quitting.
And I didn't know back thenthat quitting for the sake of your health
was fine to do.
So going into college,I was already so vulnerable.
And where when you say vulnerable,was that both emotionally and physically,
or are you speaking physically?
Absolutely.
(04:02):
Like emotionally,I think I was just it was everything.
It was like I was comingfrom a sheltered childhood home.
Like for the first time,I was like drinking alcohol.
I was interested in going to parties,interested in meeting boys.
One of the best gifts my mom,
my mom gave me waswhen I felt so defeated.
(04:23):
At the end of that season,the high school coaches
decided they weren't going to take meto the state championship.
They said I was a liability.
I was just like, mom,can we go somewhere this weekend?
Can we go visit?
You know, my aunt on the shore?
Can we go, you know, like, do somethinglike, can we go down to Philly and, like,
see the Liberty Bell?
And she turns me, she's like, Devi,can you be ready?
(04:45):
And, you know, the half hourwith a bag packed.
And I said yes.
She goes all right, I,I got us on a on a flight for Paris.
To this day,Paris represents perfection for me
because it was this beautiful city
and full of culture and and history and
(05:09):
I remember seeing a
lot of, like, teenagers or young adultskind of just lined up,
hanging out in groups of peopleloving life.
And they looked really happy.
And I was like, maybe I can have that too,
where it doesn't have to bethis grand achievement to find happiness.
So that exposure kind of gave you room
(05:32):
to breathe, to see that you were capable
of something other than running, thatthat was not you for sure.
I think it was also scary though, too,because I wasn't.
I struggled in school, I didn'tI didn't know.
Right. But it's a funny thing.
We all tell ourselves that this isthis is it.
You're supposed to now know whatyou're doing for the rest of your life.
(05:55):
Let's say here you were a high schoolstudents living living in your parents
home.
And now all of a sudden,you know what your world is going to be?
It's. That's a tough moment.
It is.
And I think that'swhy I gravitated a lot towards,
you know, young woman narratives.
Because we really need to do an unlearningof knowing what we're supposed to do.
(06:17):
Yeah. I think it's crazy.
I think it's a lot of added pressurethat doesn't allow room
for creativity and play at a young age.
I agree, I agree.
It's just so much stressand and in the end,
whether you make that decisionon Thursday of this year
and change your mind in seven yearsor two and a half months, it's good.
(06:39):
It's all fine. Yes. So much pressure.
Yeah.
So let's talka little bit more about your experience
and how you came to knowfrom your experience.
You had an episode, I believethat was devastating, how you found a way
to turn that around and likely
(07:00):
help yourself and help others as well.
And was that purposeful, organic?
How did all of that happen?
So when I when I got to college,
I had started to experiencea series of violent events.
It changed my body.
Not only did it change my my mental state,but physically,
(07:22):
I was already in my sophomore yearof college suffering from anemia.
I was sent to
a nutritionist that really just ended upgiving me an eating disorder
than I had experienced sexual violenceand and an incident where another athlete
made me feel threatened,because they had a gun.
(07:43):
And so with the combat nationof all these events,
plus the layer of normal young people,coming of age stories,
first love, heartbreak,not really loving all my classes
and feeling kind of out of placeand struggling academically.
There was this other added intensitythat I didn't know how to talk about,
(08:05):
because I never knew really anyonethat had been through this.
You heard about it in movies,but it didn't happen
the same way that it happens in movies.
And on top of it,I was supposed to represent a team
for a major university and I felt like
(08:26):
if I got better at running,my life would go back to normal.
When my story startedto come out of my own
hands,there were other athletes that came to me
and started sharing with mesimilar stories.
They were reaching out like,hey, you're not alone in this.
(08:48):
And then I got madwhen I saw the school not protect myself.
Plus others.
I got even more mad.
That's when I said we got to do something.
And I don't necessarily to this day,believe you have to grow
so angry and so extremein order to find your passion.
(09:10):
I don'tI don't believe that you have to go
through violenceto discover this, this part of yourself.
But I do think that the collectiveness of stories, realizing
that you're no longer alone, helpsyou realize that it's okay to speak up.
And that's what was happening to me.
(09:30):
And that's where I.
I recognize that running wasn'tgoing to be
the only thingthat was part of my sparkle speaking.
And what also became writingbecame part of my sparkle.
And actually, when I decidedto leave the team junior year,
I was actually at the bestthat I had been since I had been 16.
And it was shocking to a lot of people.
(09:52):
When I did leave the team.
But it becameevery time I enter into the locker room,
it became a sports teamhating me for speaking out.
But what they didn't see were womenthat I had taken to the hospital and
and the women that would pull me asideafter class and,
and tell me what they were going throughon this campus
(10:15):
at a place where I representedthis university as an athlete.
And I couldn't do it anymore.
And was that mostly sexual violence? Yes,
it's that pervasive.
It's absolutely that pervasivein my experience.
But also across every campus in Americaand globally,
there is a culture among sportsthat creates
(10:38):
dynamics of power and control,and it creates certain behaviors that,
a lot of activists and advocatesdescribe as rape culture,
but that it is not just siloed to sports.
Absolutely not.It is across college campuses.
And are you speaking basically of menoverpowering women? No.
(10:59):
Anyone can be a victimand anyone can be a perpetrator.
And absolutely, in my experience,
when I started speaking out,a lot of the people
that would confide in meabout their experience were men, men
have a really hard timespeaking out about sexual violence.
(11:19):
I can imagineit goes against every grain in their body.
When you left running as a junior,
was it because you were sayingto yourself, I can't support this
because there's all of this behaviorthat nobody should condone,
and yetpeople are closing their eyes to it.
Or was it that you you just no longer
(11:43):
had that desire to compete?
What compelled you to give it up?
It was both. It was coming off a series of
advocacy and scenarios where
I was helping different peoplethrough through their trauma.
I had also taken on an actual work
study role on campus as a peer educator
(12:05):
to help students identify healthyand unhealthy relationships,
and the only thing that didn't fit
in the direction and the pathwhen I wrote them all out,
the only thing that didn't fitanymore was track.
That's interesting that you say,and I think this
runs through many avenues of life,
(12:25):
that you have a passion for somethingand you work at it and you work at it,
and if you eventually don't findthat to be your passion anymore,
but you don't have anything else to go to,that's tough.
That's your you sort ofare too afraid to give up what you know.
Yeah, I think that's whya lot of people get stuck.
That was one thing that saved me, was
(12:48):
I kind of let goat some point in the trauma.
I let go of this notionof trying to be perfect.
And I found that other part of my sparkle,
letting go of the perfectionis probably when you find the answers.
I think I can say that for every kindof big self-learning moment of my life.
(13:11):
Because where does that idea of whatperfection is, you know, really come from?
And is that a reality for each of usas an individual
or some outside notion that we feelwe need to live up to?
If it is that that outside notion, it'snever going to sit well because you didn't
create it.
Yeah.
(13:31):
You know, it's not your personal ideaof what is perfection for you.
And maybe perfection is not the rightword to use, but your idea of your truth,
your idea of youcoming from your own abundance.
Yeah.
I think it and it's really hardas a young person to determine,
(13:51):
I mean, what you want in orderto create that quote
unquote perfect life for yourself.
And it changes.
Sparkle was a movementto raise awareness of sexual violence.
And then years went by
and I didn't resonate with that anymore,not because I'm not an advocate
of raising awarenessto the epidemic of sexual violence.
(14:12):
That's the origin story.
Again, I found and discoveredthat it was much bigger.
It was a way to discoverhow to reclaim who you are
or rediscover who you arethrough the power of creativity.
And everybody has that.
Everybody has a sparkle.
Therefore everybody can be creative.
Men and women. Yes.
(14:33):
And I think that's where at onepoint in my life, I needed to be
the advocate that I became on campusand after college.
And then I found new interestsand new things that I wanted to advocate
for and write about.
And that's okay.
And that's kind of why sparkle is
it's this very, like,messy and non-linear thing.
(14:57):
And it ironically representswho I am perfectly.
Well, your first
and very worthy endeavor of
advocatingfor those who have been violated
sexually was more just saying, hey,we need to be aware of this.
Let's call this out.
(15:18):
It's not okay to sweep this under the rug.
Was it that.
Yeah, I was originally supposedto be a bracelet to raise awareness
to sexual violenceand remind people of their sparkle,
and now I'm more interested
in something like a movement and tools
and healing mechanisms and conversationsand stories
(15:39):
that point to ways that someone
can kind of pick and chooseduring that time.
What got me throughthat was the power of story.
It was the spoken word poetry groupand one of the poets
named Olivia Gatewood,who was actually also on my show.
But in that moment when I was 19and she was standing up on stage
(16:00):
speaking about all these topicsI had just started to become interested
in, I pointed to herand I was like, if I can't speak like her
one day,I at least hope more women like her can.
You're never going to find like, one bookthat saved my life,
or one song that saved my life isis not going to be for someone else.
(16:22):
Sure.
Like someone might not lovethe Counting Crows
as much as I love the Counting Crows.
Really? Yes.
I just I.
Don't understand why,but that is just the world we live in.
Actually, the
training that helped me realizethat was the first thing you learn
in domestic violence training, andI think it's the best piece of advice for,
honestly, how businesses should operate,but how the world should operate.
(16:45):
You can't tell someone to leavea relationship.
You have to empower them with the toolsto be able to leave the relationship.
And I will say as an advocate,one of the reasons I don't do hands on
domestic violence work is because it'sone of the hardest things to do.
But you cannot you cannot tell someoneto leave an abusive relationship.
(17:05):
It doesn't work.
Well,I haven't thought about this in a while,
but I was in an abusiverelationship myself in my 20s,
and I went back again and again,and I didn't want to tell anybody about it
because I didn't want anybody to tell meI shouldn't be doing this.
Yeah.
I mean, clearly my body, my whole being,
knew that I shouldn't be doing this,but I kept going back.
(17:30):
Yeah. And the same as you.
I don't quite recall what strength Ifinally gathered to pull myself out of it.
And we are obviously
so farfrom not alone in those experiences.
I wish I could, I wish that I could gather
more of a of a reason why I was just done.
(17:52):
It doesn't translate to every individual,and it's so it's so hard.
And I think that's where I advocate forsomeone finding that light in themselves.
Again,
because
you can't have light without darkness.
The light never can truly dim.
And I think that's really important,as if you can
(18:15):
if someone can hold on to an anchorlike that,
that is the movementthat I'm more interested in sharing,
especially because we livein such a polarized world
now that a lot of voices are just turnedoff, a lot of voices like myself,
they're just tuned out.
I think people really need to startlistening to the nuances of things,
for sure.
(18:35):
Well, hopefully conversations like thiscan help us get there.
So young women in their teens are oftenso vulnerable and feeling such shame,
almost just for being teenage girls.
It's hard to be a teenage girl.
They are easily targeted because of itand many young women and men grow up
(18:58):
not ever feeling their sparkle or knowingthey have one,
or knowingwhat self-love is or feeling their truth.
Our notionsabout a woman's place in the world
still mean to this daythat we are not treated equal to men.
What are the ways that you arehelping women
(19:18):
find their rightful voicesthat we've been talking about?
But what are the toolsthat you are providing to young women?
I'm a big proponent for writing,if you want.
As for your career, but also for yourself.
Like I think there's different.
A lot of inner child work that you can do.
Is that what you were doing throughyour writing, through your journaling?
(19:41):
You were staying up till threeand four in the morning?
No, those were very muchlike letters to someone.
But I think what it became was a diary.
And so, yeah, it's like maybe if I hadbeen sharing more with my therapist
about what I was writing,they would have analyzed it as such.
Right?
I think now there's actual frameworksthat exist that I didn't know about
(20:04):
when I was 19.
And that is part of what we knowwe're building today
at, at sparkleis these, these frameworks that can help
someone be guided a little bit more,because writing as a creative medium
can also be a little intimidating,especially like if
if someone didn't grow upwriting or reading or anything like that.
And that's why people do gravitate towardsdifferent mediums,
(20:26):
whether it's painting or making music,like there's different ways of expression.
I look for other collaborative movements,like one of the ones that I do
is democracy.
It's kind of just mentoring young girls
that want to do activismor some sort of like.
And that's the nameyou're not mispronouncing democracy.
It is democracy. Democracy. Yes.
(20:47):
There's a lot of high schools now thathave, senior year internship programs.
And so I work with some high schoolsthat I need an intern,
but they want the experience.
We work together and I balance theinternship more like a, like a mentorship.
We'll have, like one on oneswhere we'll actually
sit down and like, I'll listen to themabout what their goals are.
(21:08):
And I think the dynamic that that brings
versus like a school setting, it'snot a lecture setting, it's
actually hearingwhat the teacher wants out of their life,
and then not even necessarilygiving the advice of how to achieve it.
It's that making themfeel validated in what they want.
(21:28):
That not not judgingwhatever it is they think they want.
Right?
I'll ask them like, well, like,how did you created or like what tools
did you use to create this,this little character that you drew up?
And they like talking about themselvesbecause they feel seen, by the way,
that doesn't go awayjust because you're, you know,
you went from a teenager to adult.Everybody wants to be seen.
(21:49):
This is like basic communicationskills and well.
Look at social media. Yes, exactly.
And I think like a lot of peopledon't stop
and maybe realizemaybe people don't want your advice.
Like maybe people just want to be seenfor who they are,
authentically who they are,and not made to feel shame when they say
(22:11):
they want to be a video game designer,and you tell them it's
probably a smarter ideato be an accountant.
And I've never believed in that.
I've always been a dreamer, kid.
I've always been loud and curiousand whatever, and I've never fit the mold.
Does it make me depressed? Sometimes, yes.
Why does it make you depressed?
The typical blueprint thatsome people follow I can't seem to follow.
(22:34):
It's a maze that doesn't have a mapand that is very overwhelming.
Sometimes I can imagineand that you say it's a maze.
Just that very word alone alreadyis complicated through your program
that you're building in helpingthese young women, they're sourcing
who they are in terms of their creativity.
(22:58):
So they're using their creativityto be able
to comfortably express themselves,
whether what they're expressing is
an unfounded shameor I really am this kind of person,
but I can't tell anybody or I reallyI really want to be a plumber.
(23:18):
I don't want to be an author.
I mean, is itgiving people space to be okay
with what their dreams areand what their fears are?
I think it's more of a tool that helps
people get back to play.
I think social media now,there's a pressure to have again,
(23:42):
perfection portrayed and that it needsto be a put together piece.
And one of the happiest years of my life
was being in my master's programfor creative writing.
After being a jock businessmajor at Xavier
and going 180 to a canvaslike Sarah Lawrence.
What a big shift.
(24:03):
It was wild, and it was.
It was one of those things
where it taught me and gave me permissionon how to be an artist.
This tool would help people discovertheir creative medium,
and not necessarily what it would meanto have a creative medium professionally,
but that sometimes one creative medium
(24:26):
informs a breakthrough in either anotheror just your own healing in general.
But besides the factif you've been through something or not,
or if you want to be an artistor not, creativity is a vital life force
that everybody needs in their life.
You can be a top consultant at McKinseyand you can love it.
(24:48):
There's no shame in that at all.
You can be a plumberand be the best in town.
No shame in that all but you still needsomething as a creative outlet
because, I mean, there's more scienceand research that supports this,
but creativity isis the way that we tell stories.
(25:09):
It's the way that we feel, okay.
It's the way that we express ourselves.
And every moment, no matter what a personneeds to be able to express themselves.
That doesn't mean they need to sit downand spill their life to someone, but
they do need a put,possibly a pen to paper for that release.
I know we've talked about it,even just with with dreams like that.
(25:30):
Is your subconsciousfighting to say something,
whether you keep a dream journal or not?
Like it helps.
Yes, it's it's a it's a real thing.
These dreams, they really are giftsthat we receive every night
that tell us about our unconsciousand all the things that we hold there
(25:50):
the good, the bad, the scary, the happy,the ugly, all of that is in there.
And why would you not want to go thereand explore yourself?
It's pretty fascinating.
Sounds awfully scary to begin with.
You know,I don't want to speak to these demons,
but once you do and you you realize
that you don't have to take those demonswith you everywhere you go.
(26:13):
You can actually have them step away
and find out who you really arewithout having to support
those demons, that trauma,the trash that we all carry.
And you and I spoke the other dayto about Bernard, my husband,
and how he had reached a point,even in his
amazingpsychoanalytic career where he felt
(26:37):
that just personally,
he wasn't gaining ground in his path
towards really knowing 100%.
And maybe we never knowthat who we really are.
He was seeing some of the bestanalysts in the world, and they had these
fabulous intellectual conversations,and he couldn't wait to go
and talk about these things,this wonderful intellectual topics.
(27:03):
And and he was well read andand enthusiastic
about all sorts of art and musicand literature and psychoanalysis.
But he still struggled like I'm theI don't get it.
And I can't really help my patients
if I don't feel like I knowwhat's going on inside of me.
He became really upset, depressed,
(27:24):
frightened, and he started to paint,
and he just painted and paintedand he wasn't doing it for anyone.
Yeah, he was doing it for himself.
It became his outletand he was pretty voracious.
I have a house full and a garagefull of paintings to attest to that.
Through the courseof that creative outlet,
(27:48):
he learned that he needed to
just put everything asidein terms of the way he'd been talking
to his patientsand sharing information with them.
He started with ground zero.
In terms of painting, I don't nothing.
Yeah, give me a brush. Yep.
And he started to write down
these dreamsthat his patients were sharing with him.
(28:11):
And it became hundredsand hundreds of dreams.
And he just cleared the slateof all previous notions.
And he discovered all of thisfabulous commonality,
all of these things that we report backunconsciously
through our dreams about our imprints,about our mothers,
about the way we were raised,about the things that we do in life
(28:36):
that aren't our own things,the things that we carry,
that we support, that we don't understand.
Why do I always have to be the wallflower?
What a why?
Why do I not feel I'm worthyto be part of the room?
He saw that all of this stuff off
(28:57):
comes from our ancestors, our mothers.
We all have mothers.
We, no matter howwell we know them or we don't know them.
They carried us. They gave us life.
And they also gave us all this stuff
that their ancestors gave to them, thingsthat they learned growing up.
And we can't help but carry that onuntil somebody gives us a different path.
(29:19):
And here we are as humans,
as teenagers, as adults,and still trying to figure out who we are
because we're so busy being what it iswe were told we needed to be.
I think it goes back to the beginningof our conversation of how our culture
and society puts so much emphasison that perfection,
(29:42):
and discoveringand going into college, right.
Of who we should be. Yeah, the thing is.
I don't think I will ever know who I am.
Do I know the traits that make me me?
The motivations that make me? Me? Yes.
I think I've always known that
there is an intuitiveknowing that you that you start to have.
(30:04):
And in some ways I also sayyour inner child always knows who you are.
But as far as the ways in whichyou know how
to carry the stories that you live with,they they change.
Like people start talkingabout healing like it's some destination.
I always say like, I'm never goingto get over being sexually assaulted.
(30:28):
I'm just going to handle it differently.
And if anyone expects me to get over it,they're crazy.
They're absolutely crazy.
Like, what happens is these
these memories, this, this trauma,it just comes out
and is expressed differentlyat every phase of your life.
I remember there's a period where I washaving a high concentration of of dreams
(30:53):
about a first lovethat might be controversial.
Oh my God,should you not be dreaming about an X,
that doesn't mean you're dreamingabout an.
Ex, correct?
A high concentration of dreams about
maybe an individual or a scenariomeans something though,
and and in my case, what it meant wasit pushed me to start writing song lyrics.
(31:15):
I don't sing and I don't knowhow to play an instrument.
And they weren't poems,but they felt like song lyrics.
And I wrote an album'sworth of songs, like,
I absolutely have some sort of albumabout a boy like I am Taylor Swift.
Not just kidding.
We're all Taylor Swift.
Yes. And but and I actually am goingto bring her up in the sense
that after I wrote these lyrics,
(31:38):
I wrote 120 pages about the, the,the character thread that I was going for.
It was that separation of this is not
19 year old Devi,this is a 19 year old girl.
And that phase shift was happening.
And I do believe it was my subconscioustelling me,
all right, we're enteringa different shift of your life.
(32:00):
If you look at Bernie Taylor Swift or AdamDuritz from The Common Crows, an example
if you look at their albumsacross the board,
their themes and their storiesabout particular characters
or scenarios repeat themselves.
And that's kind of what I mean by
the trauma is never leaving.
(32:22):
But that expression is still somethingthat continuously needs to be treated
like you're training for a marathon,like you're training to be a runner.
And and that's where I don't thinkrunning for me
was everso much about the sport of competing.
I think it was my first experienceof what it meant
(32:44):
to be an artistand to embrace being a creative person,
and that's why it's really, really vital
for young people to do sports,
because itis this essence of a performance.
It is an expression for a lot of peopleand so skate for a lot of people.
But there is a connectionbetween the athlete brain and someone
(33:07):
that is a highly creative personbecause we're all rhythmic beings.
And that's why this tool around sparkle
and finding what lights you up like thatand that should never leave.
I want that for every personon this planet.
Definitely.
That's a great wish to have for all of us.
I'm 68.
I still feel a little bit like I'm 22.
(33:30):
As you should, as you should.
I want to talkabout a couple of other things so
I know you know about what it's liketo have experienced sexual violence
and personallyand from people that you've coached
or helped and from people who have justshared their stories with you
(33:50):
and it's more than a shamethat young people
don't have a real picture of what
healthy sexual relationships can be in
that if that were the case,we wouldn't have sexual violence.
How do we go about expressing
(34:12):
to teenagers what healthy sex is?
It's I mean, it'sso taboo to talk about you,
you know, want to bring it up with yourteenager and they cringe and
how do we get beyond that?
It's difficult to encapsulatein one straight answer,
because the waysin which we talk about sex vary
(34:35):
from different background religion,all the things where I come from now,
and it's not the way that I was raisedby the way it was full transparency.
So what do you mean by that?Give an example.
I mean teaching,teaching a woman's specifically, but
also any child about their bodylike naming, naming their body
(34:55):
parts as such,but like let's say at the toddler level,
like the preschool dynamicof like sharing toys
and asking for permission, like,can I use your toys?
Those are like behaviorsthat like a lot more
younger, educational, like teachers have
and are being taught in some waysand maybe not others, just depends.
(35:17):
Right?
And then now we're living in a in a worldwhere sex education is being pulled
out of public schools and all schoolsin general, which is is so detrimental.
It is and my question,
you know, sort of applies to whatwe're used to here in the United States.
And it is exactly as you sayin other cultures.
There's not even you can't even beginto open a door to such a conversation.
(35:42):
And this sort of abuse or acting
from a placeof no good information about each other,
I don't know how we're going to stop it.
I mean, I just
we just all have to figure outhow to really love and respect each other.
And that sounds so.
It's the most important thingwe have to rely on
(36:04):
is really loving each other and comingfrom a place where we take care.
And I think that's thatwas one of the hardest lessons for me.
As someone who was trying to understand
what sex was, I mean, even
before I experienced sexual violence,
(36:25):
I didn't have healthy experiences of sex.
I, you know,I reverted to that sports mindset of like,
oh my God, I'mthe last one to lose my virginity.
Like, I gotta speed this up.
But like, no one was talking about,
I mean, I didn't have any friendsat the time that could speak to
any sort of like,pleasure that they experienced as a woman.
(36:46):
Like that was not a thing.
I think that's kind of alien in termsof a topic for most teenage girls.
Absolutely.
And I think,
I mean, I was I don't even know whyI was thinking about this this morning.
I was like,did I ever stop and think about
if I actually ever likedany of the men that I first encountered
when I was dating and trying to have sexlike I was at that point in my life,
(37:10):
I was just so curious to understandwhat sex was.
It was this desire to please menand what they wanted
and what their feelings were, andif it resulted in an experience of sex.
I mean, you could sayI was using them to, to be honest.
But it wasit was not knowing my body and my desires,
(37:32):
neverbeing able to comprehend them enough.
And we even see it in the teendramas today
that I'm absolutely still obsessed with.
It's a lot of young people, like mendon't understand
necessarily,the immensity of of desire and loving
someone is either because it's scary,it's vulnerable, it's messy,
and in some waysthat doesn't violate consent.
(37:56):
It should be right.
Like that is the beauty of love.
Like the first time you're falling in loveor the first time you have a crush.
There is an absolute beauty in that.
There is, there is.
But you're right.
Young mencome at this with a curiosity to.
And this is somethingI'm supposed to achieve.
And and unfortunately, still today, most
(38:18):
many young men are not in itas a companion.
And what a woman is feeling,a young woman is feeling in
that experience is either not consideredor certainly secondary.
Certainly.
And young women agreewith that often in that,
(38:39):
okay, like you said, selfishly,I want to know what this is.
But for me, it's it's for me,the teenage girl.
I don't expect my pleasure to be takenseriously.
We're just going to kind ofget through this.
And there's, there'sbecause there's no media representation.
I mean,
if you look at something like porn,there's not enough representation of it.
(39:01):
And there's there's obviously issuesin that industry as well,
but there's there's ways to teachand talk about it that isn't being done,
which is why I advocate so heavilyfor the power of education.
And we are being stripped of itand it's atrocious, but I think more so
when someone is a is a perpetrator or
(39:21):
someone does not respectwhat the word consent means,
rape culture is about power and control.
We are seeing that in every level
of the current administrationthat we're living in.
And so when you have a culture
that thrives and is built on powerand control,
(39:43):
you are going to have sexual violence
and you are not going to havean understand of what healthy sex is,
and then in return, you're not goingto have healthy representations of love.
No, no.
And women are less nowthan several years ago.
Have less of a seat at the table.
(40:05):
Their position is not as importantas it was recently,
and it's a very scary
thought feeling to contend with.
And it does make all of these violence
against women easier to come by.
And I think what the saddest part was,
(40:27):
even when I was so angryand starting sparkle, I didn't know
if I was ever going to believethat I was going to stop sexual violence.
It actually wasn't.
Of course, it was my goal, right?
I wouldn't have been doing itif I didn't want to stop sexual violence.
My goal was more that
(40:48):
when something so atrocious
an injustice happens,that you don't lose yourself
and that you can't lose yourself becauseno one can take that light away from you.
And that's what I'm leaning on now,
because I think a lot of peopleare feeling hopeless.
Especially young people,and especially now.
(41:10):
And this is where
art becomes the resistance.
This is where love is
and will always conquer all.
Is that when you can leanon a collective of aligned people
and yourself and find that trustwithin your body and your mind,
(41:31):
you will find loveand it will allow you to keep going.
Yeah, I think if you really allow yourselfto know yourself,
you'll find in yourselfthis love or this sparkle.
And with that tool, with those feelings,
you can't help
(41:52):
but give that to the people close to youand so on and so on.
And there's this ripple effect.
So someday, 1400 years from
now, maybe there'll be no more war,
no more famine.
And we will have figured outthat rather than control each other,
rather than have power and moneybe our rulers.
(42:16):
Love. Just love.
I do think it comeswith finding that light and knowing that
the messiness of of the dark
and the light is kind ofwhat makes it all beautiful.
Yeah.
And the and the playfulnessyou can find in yourself
when you really give yourself the graceto just be who you really are.
(42:38):
Exactly.
Such a nice placeto be when you aren't thinking.
You know, Jerry over
there is really going to judge meif I say these three things or, you know,
Betsy is going to look at what I woreand think I'm a fruitcake.
I mean, when you stop thinkingabout those things and, you know,
if we are who we truly are,we're not designed to hurt each other.
(43:00):
We're not designed to make each otherfeel bad.
And that's just a beautiful thing.
We just all need to get to that place.
We're not designed to be miserableand mean and full of corrupt shun
and greed and and and here we are.
It just sounds so, I don't know,
to flower field to just say,where is love?
(43:22):
But I mean, man, that's that's what makesus who we are at our very, very best.
Yeah, exactly.
And I don't thinkit sounds like that at all.
I think that part of even the, the shame
that's being perpetratedis to make it feel that way.
And like, I think that's whyI like shows like this and
(43:43):
and spreadingthat is more important than ever
because that message will prevailif enough people start to believe them.
So I think so.
I think so, and I must say,in all of my years, of course,
it wasn't until recentlythat I had a platform like this, but
I have never been so thoughtfulabout speaking my mind in
(44:06):
and I mean by that, am I going to get introuble for saying what I want to say?
Am I going to get in trouble
if I if I write this thing?
If I am looking at Instagramand I love that thing,
is someone following me?
Is someone watching?
What I'm doing isis am I falling into some framework
(44:27):
that is calling me out as an undesirable?
And I don't know ifif there's an intention to that,
but I feel like we are being corralled,
you know, just sort ofstay within our band boundaries.
We we need to stay in our lane.
We so need to get in another lane.
(44:48):
I, I mean, you're not the only one.
I mean, there are real thingshappening on a platform like Instagram
that yes, if you do like something,if you do post something.
Your voice will be silenced.
You will see new platforms, you will see
creators building new frameworks, building
(45:11):
new algorithms that train to not do that,
to let people express themselves freelyand to create
without the fear of being punishedfor who they are.
I don't want to live in the world
that we're living in now,and I don't think a lot of people do,
and I think that's where I think somany people
(45:33):
and young people are lostis because they don't know what to do.
But the the thing that you need to do
is, is go back to that inner child and,
and ask her what were her dreams.
And I think that's a great place to start.
I do too, it seems like there is so much
(45:54):
that parents just don't knowabout their daughters.
How do you think grown ups get to a placewhere little credence
is given to the thoughtsand opinions of teenagers?
After all?
I mean, we were all once teenagers,and I suppose that most of us
skimmed over or pushed aside our feelingsas teenagers as there was no place
(46:16):
throughout historyto comfortably express them.
And as I would say,our imprints certainly direct us
to unconsciously behave like our parents.
So how do parents begin to see
beyond themselves and hearwhat their teenagers are saying?
I feel like we don't give enough credenceto what our teenagers
(46:41):
are trying to express,and we shut them down
by either not listeningor making light of it.
They're tooyoung to have a valuable opinion.
Their thoughtsabout what they want or too immature.
They can't know enough about the worldor even themselves.
We don't value their voice,and I think that just
(47:05):
sets us up on a bad pathof helping these people
close down these children,these teenagers that we love
and take care of to some degree,we take care of.
Well, again, this actually goes backto power and control
and not in the violent necessarily waythat we were talking about before.
But a lot of adults and parentsspecifically,
(47:28):
they themselves have forgottenwhat it's like to be a student of life.
They get set in their ways,they get set in their jobs
and their rhythm as they should,
because they have the responsibility,the hardest responsibility in the world,
which is to raiseand take care of a child. Right?
And granted,a lot of parents don't even have the time
that they wishthey had to take care of their children.
(47:50):
They're so busyjust putting food on the table.
Exactly.
And that doesn't make them the villainall the time.
Not at. All.
But I think that part of of sparkle.
Is that what it means to discoveryour sparkle and learn
and dream throughout a lifetime, right?
So that's the first thing.
And the second thing is, I see this happena lot with my students that I work with
(48:15):
sometimes, is that a lot of peoplelisten to try to understand
when you don't need to understand,
you don't need to understandwhat they're going through or or
even necessarilyfeel what they do by the way,
I think we do thatbecause we're empathetic people,
but most teenagers and kidsspecifically just want to be heard.
(48:39):
Your job as a parent is, again,
to empower someone with the toolsto be able to leave the nest
and become that personthat is authentically them.
I'm also just like everybody else is.
I do want to be heard inwhat I'm saying too,
but I want to be doing itwith my own style and my own flair
(49:02):
and my own discovered,because that is the excitement of life.
It's importantto just embrace them for who they are
and not listen, to understand,but listen for the sake of listening.
Because that's what you dowhen you're a parent.
Yeah, clearly, I believe that this imprint
that we all have placed upon us in utero
(49:25):
and on and on and on, directsthe way we behave.
So that directs the way
we behave as parents, which then directsthe way our children behave.
And it goes on for generations.
So really, parents, grandparents, childrenall need to be given
the gift of finding out who they are,
(49:46):
which is in their in their unconscious
and letting go of the traumathat's been pressed upon them.
Whatever it was, that traumathat was traumatic is not going away.
Like you said, it doesn't
disappear.
But we have ways of
giving ourselves respectand not feeling shame or taking the blame
(50:11):
for something that we've been carrying.
As you bring up the word imprint,because I absolutely believe in the ways
in which our ancestry and our family,generational trauma impacts us.
That in a way, even if we haven't,were the direct person that was impact.
Because in my Indian culture, the, the,
(50:33):
the concept of namesake is very,very common.
I think there's real power in namesake.
My grandmother,she's a she's big emotions.
I've really big emotions.
I love and respect my grandmother a lot,but there are times
that we forget to disconnect from that.
(50:55):
I am not my grandmotherand this happens in every family.
This is not like anythingthat I'm just going through.
It's that yes,you are going to resemble your great
grandmother, your mother,like all the things that's very real.
They say like that racism is carriedthrough physical ailments
and health impactlike that is all true things.
(51:19):
But you, there's a time where there's a
there's a power that you have to rewriteyour narrative and break through, that
you will carry it and you will express itdifferently than your ancestors.
And this is the way we're going to helpfuture generations
by you sort of undoing this ongoing thing.
(51:39):
That's just been this thread,
not the positive thread, the unhealthythreads that we continue to carry.
Just because we continue to carry them.Yeah.
If we tune in to your podcast,we're going to see
you having these kinds of conversationswith your own guests. Yes.
I think the goal with my guestis to elevate their creative practice
(52:00):
and their process and their sparkle,learning what works for them
and what doesn't work.
And the ways that they put togethersongs or paintings or books.
And what was their pivot moments like?
Just like how I express here.
And I appreciate you letting me share.
We all have moments in our lifetimewhere we can point to it and be like,
(52:22):
yeah, that was a day that my life startedchange, or this was an age where
everything was going to be different,and I love to capture those years.
I love to be able to hear someone else'spoint of view.
It's like taking a photograph.
It is.
And I don't thinkeverybody has an opportunity to do that.
I think more often than not,we just live our lives thinking,
(52:45):
this is the life I was given.
I'm I chose this path.
I'm on it.
I'm not leaving this lane.
And to see examples, to listen to peopletalk about something
that motivated them to change their lifeor to look at the world differently.
That gives us all some strength,some resolve.
(53:08):
You you think, if what happens if I
if I go out of this lane,I am not sure that next lane is safe.
I know this lane.
Why would I do that?
Well, take a risk.
It's so awesome.
We've got to step out of ourour pre-planned zone and change it up.
(53:28):
I mean, look, the way our world is going.
I agree, I think it's
what I think aboutwhen I think about the word like legacy.
My legacy is just kind of showing upand doing whatever I want
and being me while I do itlike loud, sparkly pink, like.
(53:48):
Well, you're doing some great things.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
So how do we find you? Yeah.
So on Instagram, social media,the sparkle podcast.
But on Apple Spotifysparkle on with David Jags.
Also you can just search me David Jagsthank you so much for having me.
(54:08):
And I mean I think our aligned movements
are one in the same as sparkle is love.
And at the end of the daylove is all we have.
I think so and thank you so much
for wanting to help peoplefind that in their lives.
Yeah, I think yeah.
Thank you for watching and listening.
And tune in againand be sure to tune in to David's podcast.
(54:32):
Bye for now.
Hi, my
name is Cynthia Marksand I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis
Foundation, established by my latehusband, Doctor Bernard Bail.
Welcome to And Now Love.
I am talking with Devi Jags today.
Devi is a producer, writer and activistand was inspired
to share the mission of sparkleon her podcast
(00:28):
after a series of traumatic eventswhich ultimately led to her advocacy work
and raising awareness about gender basedviolence and mental health.
Of course, we talk oftenabout how trauma shapes our lives,
and what Devi is working onis right up that alley.
So thank you for joining us.
(00:48):
We have a lot in common,and I have so many questions for you.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm very excited. Good.
I know thisfrom our previous conversations
that sparkle actuallymeans something important to you.
What does sparkle mean to you? How?
How does it apply to your message?
Well, I define sparkle as your happiness,passion, and self-worth,
(01:09):
and it's really derived from the timesthat I was a young, competitive runner.
And it was during my time in the RockyMountain towns where
I missed my friends from that summer campthat I would go to as a teenager,
and we missed this fire inside of us
that the this, you know, the mountainsand the air gave us.
(01:30):
And reallyit was the sport of running at the time.
It was all I knew as, as this thingthat got me up and out in the in the day.
And I loved it.
And I was really fortunate to recognizefrom an early age that this fire inside
you was something that I couldencapsulate as a first love.
And so I,I really think everyone has a sparkle,
(01:51):
and it is about finding that happiness,passion and self-worth inside you.
So as a first love,so kind of learning how to love yourself.
Yeah, Iso I wasn't a lot of date as a teenager
and I was like all in on running.
I was like, running is my boyfriend.
(02:12):
Running loves me back.
I compare even to this day,a lot, to this moment
when I was 16 years oldand I got to the starting line and I knew
it was going to be the fastest I ever runthat day for the two mile race. And
it wasn't this excitement or adrenaline.
It was this calm and it felt like,
(02:36):
you know, like when a room is silentand a pen could drop.
That's when my body felt like.
And I learned at 16
what it was like to trust your bodyto do really great things.
And I have never stopped holding onto that feeling of wanting that again.
Wow. So how do you account for that shift?
(02:59):
I don't think I ever did,
I don't think I ever expectedthat it would go away.
And then when it did,those years were really, really hard.
And my running career, transparently,never got back to that.
Coming into college,I had suffered three stress fractures
in my hip, femur and groinand to the point where I almost,
(03:20):
if I would have ran one more raceor one more long run,
I would have completely brokemy entire life.
Femur.
And I probably would have never run again.
How did you know to stop at that point?
I didn't have a choice,so I actually, I grew an addiction
to running, and my parents were really,really worried.
Finally, I ran.
One of it was a post-seasonrace, and I practically ran it on one leg.
(03:41):
It was one of the most
mortifying experiences of my life,but I didn't like quitting.
And I didn't know back thenthat quitting for the sake of your health
was fine to do.
So going into college,I was already so vulnerable.
And where when you say vulnerable,was that both emotionally and physically,
or are you speaking physically?
Absolutely.
(04:02):
Like emotionally,I think I was just it was everything.
It was like I was comingfrom a sheltered childhood home.
Like for the first time,I was like drinking alcohol.
I was interested in going to parties,interested in meeting boys.
One of the best gifts my mom,
my mom gave me waswhen I felt so defeated.
(04:23):
At the end of that season,the high school coaches
decided they weren't going to take meto the state championship.
They said I was a liability.
I was just like, mom,can we go somewhere this weekend?
Can we go visit?
You know, my aunt on the shore?
Can we go, you know, like, do somethinglike, can we go down to Philly and, like,
see the Liberty Bell?
And she turns me, she's like, Devi,can you be ready?
(04:45):
And, you know, the half hourwith a bag packed.
And I said yes.
She goes all right, I,I got us on a on a flight for Paris.
To this day,Paris represents perfection for me
because it was this beautiful city
and full of culture and and history and
(05:09):
I remember seeing a
lot of, like, teenagers or young adultskind of just lined up,
hanging out in groups of peopleloving life.
And they looked really happy.
And I was like, maybe I can have that too,
where it doesn't have to bethis grand achievement to find happiness.
So that exposure kind of gave you room
(05:32):
to breathe, to see that you were capable
of something other than running, thatthat was not you for sure.
I think it was also scary though, too,because I wasn't.
I struggled in school, I didn'tI didn't know.
Right. But it's a funny thing.
We all tell ourselves that this isthis is it.
You're supposed to now know whatyou're doing for the rest of your life.
(05:55):
Let's say here you were a high schoolstudents living living in your parents
home.
And now all of a sudden,you know what your world is going to be?
It's. That's a tough moment.
It is.
And I think that'swhy I gravitated a lot towards,
you know, young woman narratives.
Because we really need to do an unlearningof knowing what we're supposed to do.
(06:17):
Yeah. I think it's crazy.
I think it's a lot of added pressurethat doesn't allow room
for creativity and play at a young age.
I agree, I agree.
It's just so much stressand and in the end,
whether you make that decisionon Thursday of this year
and change your mind in seven yearsor two and a half months, it's good.
(06:39):
It's all fine. Yes. So much pressure.
Yeah.
So let's talka little bit more about your experience
and how you came to knowfrom your experience.
You had an episode, I believethat was devastating, how you found a way
to turn that around and likely
(07:00):
help yourself and help others as well.
And was that purposeful, organic?
How did all of that happen?
So when I when I got to college,
I had started to experiencea series of violent events.
It changed my body.
Not only did it change my my mental state,but physically,
(07:22):
I was already in my sophomore yearof college suffering from anemia.
I was sent to
a nutritionist that really just ended upgiving me an eating disorder
than I had experienced sexual violenceand and an incident where another athlete
made me feel threatened,because they had a gun.
(07:43):
And so with the combat nationof all these events,
plus the layer of normal young people,coming of age stories,
first love, heartbreak,not really loving all my classes
and feeling kind of out of placeand struggling academically.
There was this other added intensitythat I didn't know how to talk about,
(08:05):
because I never knew really anyonethat had been through this.
You heard about it in movies,but it didn't happen
the same way that it happens in movies.
And on top of it,I was supposed to represent a team
for a major university and I felt like
(08:26):
if I got better at running,my life would go back to normal.
When my story startedto come out of my own
hands,there were other athletes that came to me
and started sharing with mesimilar stories.
They were reaching out like,hey, you're not alone in this.
(08:48):
And then I got madwhen I saw the school not protect myself.
Plus others.
I got even more mad.
That's when I said we got to do something.
And I don't necessarily to this day,believe you have to grow
so angry and so extremein order to find your passion.
(09:10):
I don'tI don't believe that you have to go
through violenceto discover this, this part of yourself.
But I do think that the collectiveness of stories, realizing
that you're no longer alone, helpsyou realize that it's okay to speak up.
And that's what was happening to me.
(09:30):
And that's where I.
I recognize that running wasn'tgoing to be
the only thingthat was part of my sparkle speaking.
And what also became writingbecame part of my sparkle.
And actually, when I decidedto leave the team junior year,
I was actually at the bestthat I had been since I had been 16.
And it was shocking to a lot of people.
(09:52):
When I did leave the team.
But it becameevery time I enter into the locker room,
it became a sports teamhating me for speaking out.
But what they didn't see were womenthat I had taken to the hospital and
and the women that would pull me asideafter class and,
and tell me what they were going throughon this campus
(10:15):
at a place where I representedthis university as an athlete.
And I couldn't do it anymore.
And was that mostly sexual violence? Yes,
it's that pervasive.
It's absolutely that pervasivein my experience.
But also across every campus in Americaand globally,
there is a culture among sportsthat creates
(10:38):
dynamics of power and control,and it creates certain behaviors that,
a lot of activists and advocatesdescribe as rape culture,
but that it is not just siloed to sports.
Absolutely not.It is across college campuses.
And are you speaking basically of menoverpowering women? No.
(10:59):
Anyone can be a victimand anyone can be a perpetrator.
And absolutely, in my experience,
when I started speaking out,a lot of the people
that would confide in meabout their experience were men, men
have a really hard timespeaking out about sexual violence.
(11:19):
I can imagineit goes against every grain in their body.
When you left running as a junior,
was it because you were sayingto yourself, I can't support this
because there's all of this behaviorthat nobody should condone,
and yetpeople are closing their eyes to it.
Or was it that you you just no longer
(11:43):
had that desire to compete?
What compelled you to give it up?
It was both. It was coming off a series of
advocacy and scenarios where
I was helping different peoplethrough through their trauma.
I had also taken on an actual work
study role on campus as a peer educator
(12:05):
to help students identify healthyand unhealthy relationships,
and the only thing that didn't fit
in the direction and the pathwhen I wrote them all out,
the only thing that didn't fitanymore was track.
That's interesting that you say,and I think this
runs through many avenues of life,
(12:25):
that you have a passion for somethingand you work at it and you work at it,
and if you eventually don't findthat to be your passion anymore,
but you don't have anything else to go to,that's tough.
That's your you sort ofare too afraid to give up what you know.
Yeah, I think that's whya lot of people get stuck.
That was one thing that saved me, was
(12:48):
I kind of let goat some point in the trauma.
I let go of this notionof trying to be perfect.
And I found that other part of my sparkle,
letting go of the perfectionis probably when you find the answers.
I think I can say that for every kindof big self-learning moment of my life.
(13:11):
Because where does that idea of whatperfection is, you know, really come from?
And is that a reality for each of usas an individual
or some outside notion that we feelwe need to live up to?
If it is that that outside notion, it'snever going to sit well because you didn't
create it.
Yeah.
(13:31):
You know, it's not your personal ideaof what is perfection for you.
And maybe perfection is not the rightword to use, but your idea of your truth,
your idea of youcoming from your own abundance.
Yeah.
I think it and it's really hardas a young person to determine,
(13:51):
I mean, what you want in orderto create that quote
unquote perfect life for yourself.
And it changes.
Sparkle was a movementto raise awareness of sexual violence.
And then years went by
and I didn't resonate with that anymore,not because I'm not an advocate
of raising awarenessto the epidemic of sexual violence.
(14:12):
That's the origin story.
Again, I found and discoveredthat it was much bigger.
It was a way to discoverhow to reclaim who you are
or rediscover who you arethrough the power of creativity.
And everybody has that.
Everybody has a sparkle.
Therefore everybody can be creative.
Men and women. Yes.
(14:33):
And I think that's where at onepoint in my life, I needed to be
the advocate that I became on campusand after college.
And then I found new interestsand new things that I wanted to advocate
for and write about.
And that's okay.
And that's kind of why sparkle is
it's this very, like,messy and non-linear thing.
(14:57):
And it ironically representswho I am perfectly.
Well, your first
and very worthy endeavor of
advocatingfor those who have been violated
sexually was more just saying, hey,we need to be aware of this.
Let's call this out.
(15:18):
It's not okay to sweep this under the rug.
Was it that.
Yeah, I was originally supposedto be a bracelet to raise awareness
to sexual violenceand remind people of their sparkle,
and now I'm more interested
in something like a movement and tools
and healing mechanisms and conversationsand stories
(15:39):
that point to ways that someone
can kind of pick and chooseduring that time.
What got me throughthat was the power of story.
It was the spoken word poetry groupand one of the poets
named Olivia Gatewood,who was actually also on my show.
But in that moment when I was 19and she was standing up on stage
(16:00):
speaking about all these topicsI had just started to become interested
in, I pointed to herand I was like, if I can't speak like her
one day,I at least hope more women like her can.
You're never going to find like, one bookthat saved my life,
or one song that saved my life isis not going to be for someone else.
(16:22):
Sure.
Like someone might not lovethe Counting Crows
as much as I love the Counting Crows.
Really? Yes.
I just I.
Don't understand why,but that is just the world we live in.
Actually, the
training that helped me realizethat was the first thing you learn
in domestic violence training, andI think it's the best piece of advice for,
honestly, how businesses should operate,but how the world should operate.
(16:45):
You can't tell someone to leavea relationship.
You have to empower them with the toolsto be able to leave the relationship.
And I will say as an advocate,one of the reasons I don't do hands on
domestic violence work is because it'sone of the hardest things to do.
But you cannot you cannot tell someoneto leave an abusive relationship.
(17:05):
It doesn't work.
Well,I haven't thought about this in a while,
but I was in an abusiverelationship myself in my 20s,
and I went back again and again,and I didn't want to tell anybody about it
because I didn't want anybody to tell meI shouldn't be doing this.
Yeah.
I mean, clearly my body, my whole being,
knew that I shouldn't be doing this,but I kept going back.
(17:30):
Yeah. And the same as you.
I don't quite recall what strength Ifinally gathered to pull myself out of it.
And we are obviously
so farfrom not alone in those experiences.
I wish I could, I wish that I could gather
more of a of a reason why I was just done.
(17:52):
It doesn't translate to every individual,and it's so it's so hard.
And I think that's where I advocate forsomeone finding that light in themselves.
Again,
because
you can't have light without darkness.
The light never can truly dim.
And I think that's really important,as if you can
(18:15):
if someone can hold on to an anchorlike that,
that is the movementthat I'm more interested in sharing,
especially because we livein such a polarized world
now that a lot of voices are just turnedoff, a lot of voices like myself,
they're just tuned out.
I think people really need to startlistening to the nuances of things,
for sure.
(18:35):
Well, hopefully conversations like thiscan help us get there.
So young women in their teens are oftenso vulnerable and feeling such shame,
almost just for being teenage girls.
It's hard to be a teenage girl.
They are easily targeted because of itand many young women and men grow up
(18:58):
not ever feeling their sparkle or knowingthey have one,
or knowingwhat self-love is or feeling their truth.
Our notionsabout a woman's place in the world
still mean to this daythat we are not treated equal to men.
What are the ways that you arehelping women
(19:18):
find their rightful voicesthat we've been talking about?
But what are the toolsthat you are providing to young women?
I'm a big proponent for writing,if you want.
As for your career, but also for yourself.
Like I think there's different.
A lot of inner child work that you can do.
Is that what you were doing throughyour writing, through your journaling?
(19:41):
You were staying up till threeand four in the morning?
No, those were very muchlike letters to someone.
But I think what it became was a diary.
And so, yeah, it's like maybe if I hadbeen sharing more with my therapist
about what I was writing,they would have analyzed it as such.
Right?
I think now there's actual frameworksthat exist that I didn't know about
(20:04):
when I was 19.
And that is part of what we knowwe're building today
at, at sparkleis these, these frameworks that can help
someone be guided a little bit more,because writing as a creative medium
can also be a little intimidating,especially like if
if someone didn't grow upwriting or reading or anything like that.
And that's why people do gravitate towardsdifferent mediums,
(20:26):
whether it's painting or making music,like there's different ways of expression.
I look for other collaborative movements,like one of the ones that I do
is democracy.
It's kind of just mentoring young girls
that want to do activismor some sort of like.
And that's the nameyou're not mispronouncing democracy.
It is democracy. Democracy. Yes.
(20:47):
There's a lot of high schools now thathave, senior year internship programs.
And so I work with some high schoolsthat I need an intern,
but they want the experience.
We work together and I balance theinternship more like a, like a mentorship.
We'll have, like one on oneswhere we'll actually
sit down and like, I'll listen to themabout what their goals are.
(21:08):
And I think the dynamic that that brings
versus like a school setting, it'snot a lecture setting, it's
actually hearingwhat the teacher wants out of their life,
and then not even necessarilygiving the advice of how to achieve it.
It's that making themfeel validated in what they want.
(21:28):
That not not judgingwhatever it is they think they want.
Right?
I'll ask them like, well, like,how did you created or like what tools
did you use to create this,this little character that you drew up?
And they like talking about themselvesbecause they feel seen, by the way,
that doesn't go awayjust because you're, you know,
you went from a teenager to adult.Everybody wants to be seen.
(21:49):
This is like basic communicationskills and well.
Look at social media. Yes, exactly.
And I think like a lot of peopledon't stop
and maybe realizemaybe people don't want your advice.
Like maybe people just want to be seenfor who they are,
authentically who they are,and not made to feel shame when they say
(22:11):
they want to be a video game designer,and you tell them it's
probably a smarter ideato be an accountant.
And I've never believed in that.
I've always been a dreamer, kid.
I've always been loud and curiousand whatever, and I've never fit the mold.
Does it make me depressed? Sometimes, yes.
Why does it make you depressed?
The typical blueprint thatsome people follow I can't seem to follow.
(22:34):
It's a maze that doesn't have a mapand that is very overwhelming.
Sometimes I can imagineand that you say it's a maze.
Just that very word alone alreadyis complicated through your program
that you're building in helpingthese young women, they're sourcing
who they are in terms of their creativity.
(22:58):
So they're using their creativityto be able
to comfortably express themselves,
whether what they're expressing is
an unfounded shameor I really am this kind of person,
but I can't tell anybody or I reallyI really want to be a plumber.
(23:18):
I don't want to be an author.
I mean, is itgiving people space to be okay
with what their dreams areand what their fears are?
I think it's more of a tool that helps
people get back to play.
I think social media now,there's a pressure to have again,
(23:42):
perfection portrayed and that it needsto be a put together piece.
And one of the happiest years of my life
was being in my master's programfor creative writing.
After being a jock businessmajor at Xavier
and going 180 to a canvaslike Sarah Lawrence.
What a big shift.
(24:03):
It was wild, and it was.
It was one of those things
where it taught me and gave me permissionon how to be an artist.
This tool would help people discovertheir creative medium,
and not necessarily what it would meanto have a creative medium professionally,
but that sometimes one creative medium
(24:26):
informs a breakthrough in either anotheror just your own healing in general.
But besides the factif you've been through something or not,
or if you want to be an artistor not, creativity is a vital life force
that everybody needs in their life.
You can be a top consultant at McKinseyand you can love it.
(24:48):
There's no shame in that at all.
You can be a plumberand be the best in town.
No shame in that all but you still needsomething as a creative outlet
because, I mean, there's more scienceand research that supports this,
but creativity isis the way that we tell stories.
(25:09):
It's the way that we feel, okay.
It's the way that we express ourselves.
And every moment, no matter what a personneeds to be able to express themselves.
That doesn't mean they need to sit downand spill their life to someone, but
they do need a put,possibly a pen to paper for that release.
I know we've talked about it,even just with with dreams like that.
(25:30):
Is your subconsciousfighting to say something,
whether you keep a dream journal or not?
Like it helps.
Yes, it's it's a it's a real thing.
These dreams, they really are giftsthat we receive every night
that tell us about our unconsciousand all the things that we hold there
(25:50):
the good, the bad, the scary, the happy,the ugly, all of that is in there.
And why would you not want to go thereand explore yourself?
It's pretty fascinating.
Sounds awfully scary to begin with.
You know,I don't want to speak to these demons,
but once you do and you you realize
that you don't have to take those demonswith you everywhere you go.
(26:13):
You can actually have them step away
and find out who you really arewithout having to support
those demons, that trauma,the trash that we all carry.
And you and I spoke the other dayto about Bernard, my husband,
and how he had reached a point,even in his
amazingpsychoanalytic career where he felt
(26:37):
that just personally,
he wasn't gaining ground in his path
towards really knowing 100%.
And maybe we never knowthat who we really are.
He was seeing some of the bestanalysts in the world, and they had these
fabulous intellectual conversations,and he couldn't wait to go
and talk about these things,this wonderful intellectual topics.
(27:03):
And and he was well read andand enthusiastic
about all sorts of art and musicand literature and psychoanalysis.
But he still struggled like I'm theI don't get it.
And I can't really help my patients
if I don't feel like I knowwhat's going on inside of me.
He became really upset, depressed,
(27:24):
frightened, and he started to paint,
and he just painted and paintedand he wasn't doing it for anyone.
Yeah, he was doing it for himself.
It became his outletand he was pretty voracious.
I have a house full and a garagefull of paintings to attest to that.
Through the courseof that creative outlet,
(27:48):
he learned that he needed to
just put everything asidein terms of the way he'd been talking
to his patientsand sharing information with them.
He started with ground zero.
In terms of painting, I don't nothing.
Yeah, give me a brush. Yep.
And he started to write down
these dreamsthat his patients were sharing with him.
(28:11):
And it became hundredsand hundreds of dreams.
And he just cleared the slateof all previous notions.
And he discovered all of thisfabulous commonality,
all of these things that we report backunconsciously
through our dreams about our imprints,about our mothers,
about the way we were raised,about the things that we do in life
(28:36):
that aren't our own things,the things that we carry,
that we support, that we don't understand.
Why do I always have to be the wallflower?
What a why?
Why do I not feel I'm worthyto be part of the room?
He saw that all of this stuff off
(28:57):
comes from our ancestors, our mothers.
We all have mothers.
We, no matter howwell we know them or we don't know them.
They carried us. They gave us life.
And they also gave us all this stuff
that their ancestors gave to them, thingsthat they learned growing up.
And we can't help but carry that onuntil somebody gives us a different path.
(29:19):
And here we are as humans,
as teenagers, as adults,and still trying to figure out who we are
because we're so busy being what it iswe were told we needed to be.
I think it goes back to the beginningof our conversation of how our culture
and society puts so much emphasison that perfection,
(29:42):
and discoveringand going into college, right.
Of who we should be. Yeah, the thing is.
I don't think I will ever know who I am.
Do I know the traits that make me me?
The motivations that make me? Me? Yes.
I think I've always known that
there is an intuitiveknowing that you that you start to have.
(30:04):
And in some ways I also sayyour inner child always knows who you are.
But as far as the ways in whichyou know how
to carry the stories that you live with,they they change.
Like people start talkingabout healing like it's some destination.
I always say like, I'm never goingto get over being sexually assaulted.
(30:28):
I'm just going to handle it differently.
And if anyone expects me to get over it,they're crazy.
They're absolutely crazy.
Like, what happens is these
these memories, this, this trauma,it just comes out
and is expressed differentlyat every phase of your life.
I remember there's a period where I washaving a high concentration of of dreams
(30:53):
about a first lovethat might be controversial.
Oh my God,should you not be dreaming about an X,
that doesn't mean you're dreamingabout an.
Ex, correct?
A high concentration of dreams about
maybe an individual or a scenariomeans something though,
and and in my case, what it meant wasit pushed me to start writing song lyrics.
(31:15):
I don't sing and I don't knowhow to play an instrument.
And they weren't poems,but they felt like song lyrics.
And I wrote an album'sworth of songs, like,
I absolutely have some sort of albumabout a boy like I am Taylor Swift.
Not just kidding.
We're all Taylor Swift.
Yes. And but and I actually am goingto bring her up in the sense
that after I wrote these lyrics,
(31:38):
I wrote 120 pages about the, the,the character thread that I was going for.
It was that separation of this is not
19 year old Devi,this is a 19 year old girl.
And that phase shift was happening.
And I do believe it was my subconscioustelling me,
all right, we're enteringa different shift of your life.
(32:00):
If you look at Bernie Taylor Swift or AdamDuritz from The Common Crows, an example
if you look at their albumsacross the board,
their themes and their storiesabout particular characters
or scenarios repeat themselves.
And that's kind of what I mean by
the trauma is never leaving.
(32:22):
But that expression is still somethingthat continuously needs to be treated
like you're training for a marathon,like you're training to be a runner.
And and that's where I don't thinkrunning for me
was everso much about the sport of competing.
I think it was my first experienceof what it meant
(32:44):
to be an artistand to embrace being a creative person,
and that's why it's really, really vital
for young people to do sports,
because itis this essence of a performance.
It is an expression for a lot of peopleand so skate for a lot of people.
But there is a connectionbetween the athlete brain and someone
(33:07):
that is a highly creative personbecause we're all rhythmic beings.
And that's why this tool around sparkle
and finding what lights you up like thatand that should never leave.
I want that for every personon this planet.
Definitely.
That's a great wish to have for all of us.
I'm 68.
I still feel a little bit like I'm 22.
(33:30):
As you should, as you should.
I want to talkabout a couple of other things so
I know you know about what it's liketo have experienced sexual violence
and personallyand from people that you've coached
or helped and from people who have justshared their stories with you
(33:50):
and it's more than a shamethat young people
don't have a real picture of what
healthy sexual relationships can be in
that if that were the case,we wouldn't have sexual violence.
How do we go about expressing
(34:12):
to teenagers what healthy sex is?
It's I mean, it'sso taboo to talk about you,
you know, want to bring it up with yourteenager and they cringe and
how do we get beyond that?
It's difficult to encapsulatein one straight answer,
because the waysin which we talk about sex vary
(34:35):
from different background religion,all the things where I come from now,
and it's not the way that I was raisedby the way it was full transparency.
So what do you mean by that?Give an example.
I mean teaching,teaching a woman's specifically, but
also any child about their bodylike naming, naming their body
(34:55):
parts as such,but like let's say at the toddler level,
like the preschool dynamicof like sharing toys
and asking for permission, like,can I use your toys?
Those are like behaviorsthat like a lot more
younger, educational, like teachers have
and are being taught in some waysand maybe not others, just depends.
(35:17):
Right?
And then now we're living in a in a worldwhere sex education is being pulled
out of public schools and all schoolsin general, which is is so detrimental.
It is and my question,
you know, sort of applies to whatwe're used to here in the United States.
And it is exactly as you sayin other cultures.
There's not even you can't even beginto open a door to such a conversation.
(35:42):
And this sort of abuse or acting
from a placeof no good information about each other,
I don't know how we're going to stop it.
I mean, I just
we just all have to figure outhow to really love and respect each other.
And that sounds so.
It's the most important thingwe have to rely on
(36:04):
is really loving each other and comingfrom a place where we take care.
And I think that's thatwas one of the hardest lessons for me.
As someone who was trying to understand
what sex was, I mean, even
before I experienced sexual violence,
(36:25):
I didn't have healthy experiences of sex.
I, you know,I reverted to that sports mindset of like,
oh my God, I'mthe last one to lose my virginity.
Like, I gotta speed this up.
But like, no one was talking about,
I mean, I didn't have any friendsat the time that could speak to
any sort of like,pleasure that they experienced as a woman.
(36:46):
Like that was not a thing.
I think that's kind of alien in termsof a topic for most teenage girls.
Absolutely.
And I think,
I mean, I was I don't even know whyI was thinking about this this morning.
I was like,did I ever stop and think about
if I actually ever likedany of the men that I first encountered
when I was dating and trying to have sexlike I was at that point in my life,
(37:10):
I was just so curious to understandwhat sex was.
It was this desire to please menand what they wanted
and what their feelings were, andif it resulted in an experience of sex.
I mean, you could sayI was using them to, to be honest.
But it wasit was not knowing my body and my desires,
(37:32):
neverbeing able to comprehend them enough.
And we even see it in the teendramas today
that I'm absolutely still obsessed with.
It's a lot of young people, like mendon't understand
necessarily,the immensity of of desire and loving
someone is either because it's scary,it's vulnerable, it's messy,
and in some waysthat doesn't violate consent.
(37:56):
It should be right.
Like that is the beauty of love.
Like the first time you're falling in loveor the first time you have a crush.
There is an absolute beauty in that.
There is, there is.
But you're right.
Young mencome at this with a curiosity to.
And this is somethingI'm supposed to achieve.
And and unfortunately, still today, most
(38:18):
many young men are not in itas a companion.
And what a woman is feeling,a young woman is feeling in
that experience is either not consideredor certainly secondary.
Certainly.
And young women agreewith that often in that,
(38:39):
okay, like you said, selfishly,I want to know what this is.
But for me, it's it's for me,the teenage girl.
I don't expect my pleasure to be takenseriously.
We're just going to kind ofget through this.
And there's, there'sbecause there's no media representation.
I mean,
if you look at something like porn,there's not enough representation of it.
(39:01):
And there's there's obviously issuesin that industry as well,
but there's there's ways to teachand talk about it that isn't being done,
which is why I advocate so heavilyfor the power of education.
And we are being stripped of itand it's atrocious, but I think more so
when someone is a is a perpetrator or
(39:21):
someone does not respectwhat the word consent means,
rape culture is about power and control.
We are seeing that in every level
of the current administrationthat we're living in.
And so when you have a culture
that thrives and is built on powerand control,
(39:43):
you are going to have sexual violence
and you are not going to havean understand of what healthy sex is,
and then in return, you're not goingto have healthy representations of love.
No, no.
And women are less nowthan several years ago.
Have less of a seat at the table.
(40:05):
Their position is not as importantas it was recently,
and it's a very scary
thought feeling to contend with.
And it does make all of these violence
against women easier to come by.
And I think what the saddest part was,
(40:27):
even when I was so angryand starting sparkle, I didn't know
if I was ever going to believethat I was going to stop sexual violence.
It actually wasn't.
Of course, it was my goal, right?
I wouldn't have been doing itif I didn't want to stop sexual violence.
My goal was more that
(40:48):
when something so atrocious
an injustice happens,that you don't lose yourself
and that you can't lose yourself becauseno one can take that light away from you.
And that's what I'm leaning on now,
because I think a lot of peopleare feeling hopeless.
Especially young people,and especially now.
(41:10):
And this is where
art becomes the resistance.
This is where love is
and will always conquer all.
Is that when you can leanon a collective of aligned people
and yourself and find that trustwithin your body and your mind,
(41:31):
you will find loveand it will allow you to keep going.
Yeah, I think if you really allow yourselfto know yourself,
you'll find in yourselfthis love or this sparkle.
And with that tool, with those feelings,
you can't help
(41:52):
but give that to the people close to youand so on and so on.
And there's this ripple effect.
So someday, 1400 years from
now, maybe there'll be no more war,
no more famine.
And we will have figured outthat rather than control each other,
rather than have power and moneybe our rulers.
(42:16):
Love. Just love.
I do think it comeswith finding that light and knowing that
the messiness of of the dark
and the light is kind ofwhat makes it all beautiful.
Yeah.
And the and the playfulnessyou can find in yourself
when you really give yourself the graceto just be who you really are.
(42:38):
Exactly.
Such a nice placeto be when you aren't thinking.
You know, Jerry over
there is really going to judge meif I say these three things or, you know,
Betsy is going to look at what I woreand think I'm a fruitcake.
I mean, when you stop thinkingabout those things and, you know,
if we are who we truly are,we're not designed to hurt each other.
(43:00):
We're not designed to make each otherfeel bad.
And that's just a beautiful thing.
We just all need to get to that place.
We're not designed to be miserableand mean and full of corrupt shun
and greed and and and here we are.
It just sounds so, I don't know,
to flower field to just say,where is love?
(43:22):
But I mean, man, that's that's what makesus who we are at our very, very best.
Yeah, exactly.
And I don't thinkit sounds like that at all.
I think that part of even the, the shame
that's being perpetratedis to make it feel that way.
And like, I think that's whyI like shows like this and
(43:43):
and spreadingthat is more important than ever
because that message will prevailif enough people start to believe them.
So I think so.
I think so, and I must say,in all of my years, of course,
it wasn't until recentlythat I had a platform like this, but
I have never been so thoughtfulabout speaking my mind in
(44:06):
and I mean by that, am I going to get introuble for saying what I want to say?
Am I going to get in trouble
if I if I write this thing?
If I am looking at Instagramand I love that thing,
is someone following me?
Is someone watching?
What I'm doing isis am I falling into some framework
(44:27):
that is calling me out as an undesirable?
And I don't know ifif there's an intention to that,
but I feel like we are being corralled,
you know, just sort ofstay within our band boundaries.
We we need to stay in our lane.
We so need to get in another lane.
(44:48):
I, I mean, you're not the only one.
I mean, there are real thingshappening on a platform like Instagram
that yes, if you do like something,if you do post something.
Your voice will be silenced.
You will see new platforms, you will see
creators building new frameworks, building
(45:11):
new algorithms that train to not do that,
to let people express themselves freelyand to create
without the fear of being punishedfor who they are.
I don't want to live in the world
that we're living in now,and I don't think a lot of people do,
and I think that's where I think somany people
(45:33):
and young people are lostis because they don't know what to do.
But the the thing that you need to do
is, is go back to that inner child and,
and ask her what were her dreams.
And I think that's a great place to start.
I do too, it seems like there is so much
(45:54):
that parents just don't knowabout their daughters.
How do you think grown ups get to a placewhere little credence
is given to the thoughtsand opinions of teenagers?
After all?
I mean, we were all once teenagers,and I suppose that most of us
skimmed over or pushed aside our feelingsas teenagers as there was no place
(46:16):
throughout historyto comfortably express them.
And as I would say,our imprints certainly direct us
to unconsciously behave like our parents.
So how do parents begin to see
beyond themselves and hearwhat their teenagers are saying?
I feel like we don't give enough credenceto what our teenagers
(46:41):
are trying to express,and we shut them down
by either not listeningor making light of it.
They're tooyoung to have a valuable opinion.
Their thoughtsabout what they want or too immature.
They can't know enough about the worldor even themselves.
We don't value their voice,and I think that just
(47:05):
sets us up on a bad pathof helping these people
close down these children,these teenagers that we love
and take care of to some degree,we take care of.
Well, again, this actually goes backto power and control
and not in the violent necessarily waythat we were talking about before.
But a lot of adults and parentsspecifically,
(47:28):
they themselves have forgottenwhat it's like to be a student of life.
They get set in their ways,they get set in their jobs
and their rhythm as they should,
because they have the responsibility,the hardest responsibility in the world,
which is to raiseand take care of a child. Right?
And granted,a lot of parents don't even have the time
that they wishthey had to take care of their children.
(47:50):
They're so busyjust putting food on the table.
Exactly.
And that doesn't make them the villainall the time.
Not at. All.
But I think that part of of sparkle.
Is that what it means to discoveryour sparkle and learn
and dream throughout a lifetime, right?
So that's the first thing.
And the second thing is, I see this happena lot with my students that I work with
(48:15):
sometimes, is that a lot of peoplelisten to try to understand
when you don't need to understand,
you don't need to understandwhat they're going through or or
even necessarilyfeel what they do by the way,
I think we do thatbecause we're empathetic people,
but most teenagers and kidsspecifically just want to be heard.
(48:39):
Your job as a parent is, again,
to empower someone with the toolsto be able to leave the nest
and become that personthat is authentically them.
I'm also just like everybody else is.
I do want to be heard inwhat I'm saying too,
but I want to be doing itwith my own style and my own flair
(49:02):
and my own discovered,because that is the excitement of life.
It's importantto just embrace them for who they are
and not listen, to understand,but listen for the sake of listening.
Because that's what you dowhen you're a parent.
Yeah, clearly, I believe that this imprint
that we all have placed upon us in utero
(49:25):
and on and on and on, directsthe way we behave.
So that directs the way
we behave as parents, which then directsthe way our children behave.
And it goes on for generations.
So really, parents, grandparents, childrenall need to be given
the gift of finding out who they are,
(49:46):
which is in their in their unconscious
and letting go of the traumathat's been pressed upon them.
Whatever it was, that traumathat was traumatic is not going away.
Like you said, it doesn't
disappear.
But we have ways of
giving ourselves respectand not feeling shame or taking the blame
(50:11):
for something that we've been carrying.
As you bring up the word imprint,because I absolutely believe in the ways
in which our ancestry and our family,generational trauma impacts us.
That in a way, even if we haven't,were the direct person that was impact.
Because in my Indian culture, the, the,
(50:33):
the concept of namesake is very,very common.
I think there's real power in namesake.
My grandmother,she's a she's big emotions.
I've really big emotions.
I love and respect my grandmother a lot,but there are times
that we forget to disconnect from that.
(50:55):
I am not my grandmotherand this happens in every family.
This is not like anythingthat I'm just going through.
It's that yes,you are going to resemble your great
grandmother, your mother,like all the things that's very real.
They say like that racism is carriedthrough physical ailments
and health impactlike that is all true things.
(51:19):
But you, there's a time where there's a
there's a power that you have to rewriteyour narrative and break through, that
you will carry it and you will express itdifferently than your ancestors.
And this is the way we're going to helpfuture generations
by you sort of undoing this ongoing thing.
(51:39):
That's just been this thread,
not the positive thread, the unhealthythreads that we continue to carry.
Just because we continue to carry them.Yeah.
If we tune in to your podcast,we're going to see
you having these kinds of conversationswith your own guests. Yes.
I think the goal with my guestis to elevate their creative practice
(52:00):
and their process and their sparkle,learning what works for them
and what doesn't work.
And the ways that they put togethersongs or paintings or books.
And what was their pivot moments like?
Just like how I express here.
And I appreciate you letting me share.
We all have moments in our lifetimewhere we can point to it and be like,
(52:22):
yeah, that was a day that my life startedchange, or this was an age where
everything was going to be different,and I love to capture those years.
I love to be able to hear someone else'spoint of view.
It's like taking a photograph.
It is.
And I don't thinkeverybody has an opportunity to do that.
I think more often than not,we just live our lives thinking,
(52:45):
this is the life I was given.
I'm I chose this path.
I'm on it.
I'm not leaving this lane.
And to see examples, to listen to peopletalk about something
that motivated them to change their lifeor to look at the world differently.
That gives us all some strength,some resolve.
(53:08):
You you think, if what happens if I
if I go out of this lane,I am not sure that next lane is safe.
I know this lane.
Why would I do that?
Well, take a risk.
It's so awesome.
We've got to step out of ourour pre-planned zone and change it up.
(53:28):
I mean, look, the way our world is going.
I agree, I think it's
what I think aboutwhen I think about the word like legacy.
My legacy is just kind of showing upand doing whatever I want
and being me while I do itlike loud, sparkly pink, like.
(53:48):
Well, you're doing some great things.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
So how do we find you? Yeah.
So on Instagram, social media,the sparkle podcast.
But on Apple Spotifysparkle on with David Jags.
Also you can just search me David Jagsthank you so much for having me.
(54:08):
And I mean I think our aligned movements
are one in the same as sparkle is love.
And at the end of the daylove is all we have.
I think so and thank you so much
for wanting to help peoplefind that in their lives.
Yeah, I think yeah.
Thank you for watching and listening.
And tune in againand be sure to tune in to David's podcast.
(54:32):
Bye for now.
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