July 9, 2025 • 66 mins
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Nicole Foster is the founder and CEO of Cajou Creamery, a plant-based ice cream company who has ventured into tech with the creation of Sommos, the AI-powered storytelling platform. Sommos helps families preserve, organize, and share their stories before they’re lost to memory loss, digital clutter, or time. Nicole is a legacy advocate and former civil rights and healthcare attorney building a new frontier at the intersection of memory identity and technology.
Nicole's Notes from the Sidelines:
- Courage is built and nurtured from a strong belief in self, and self-love, and the belief in the universe.
- Make decisions based on intuition, what feels light versus heavy.
- In stillness, you start to hear spirit. Give yourself the gift of stillness daily, even if it's just 5 minutes.
- Think about what you put in your body; food, music, and conversation need to be stimulating and growth-promoting or they will lead to stagnancy.
- Life is abundant; it's not about giving things up, but rather moving toward things for my highest good.
- Everything happens for my best and highest good. If something doesn't happen for me, then it wasn't meant to, and I'm not going to freak out.
- We all have a story; you could either be the heroine or the victim.
- We need to train our bodies to understand when spirit is answering, what it feels like in the body, and trust it.
- Give yourself liberty to think big, and write out the vision. We don't have to know how, but it's the adventure.
- The act of storytelling is so beneficial, especially for the elderly. It increases cognitive functioning, and helps stave off the risk of dementia, increases wellbeing, and the storyteller and listener release oxytocin, feeling connection, love, and pride.
- We all have knowing, and the ability to trust intuition, but it takes internal work of shutting off noise from the outside.
- Midlife isn't a crisis; it's a reinvention. We need to support our fellow sisters.
**The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to constitute legal or medical advice;all information, content, and material on this site are for general informational purposes only. This podcast contains links to other third party websites. Such links are only for the convenience and enjoyment of the user.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Hey ladies, this is Sideline Sisters and I'm your host Jenny
Chaffetz. This is a show for no BS midlife
women who want to escape the mundane routine of their lives
and be captivated by conversations that are fun,
relevant and juicy. These interviews will take you
into the lives of relatable women who've gone on a journey
and live to share the lessons. They will be funny, sad, scary,
(00:28):
wise, encouraging and real. These are the stories you want
to hear. This show is your invitation to
take back your power, reignite your passions and step off the
sidelines. Let's go.
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Sideline
Sisters. My name is Jenny Chaffetz and
(00:49):
I'm your host. I am so grateful that you found
your way here, whether it is through a podcasting app, my
website, or YouTube, I'm just really honored and grateful that
you are listening and finding these conversations interesting
and valuable. I feel so honored that my guests
come on and share really personal, vulnerable stories in
(01:12):
an attempt to connect with the listener and validate other
people's experiences in life. And in case you missed it, last
week's conversation with Liz Hershnaftali was a really
powerful example of how this allworks.
She came on and talked about herwork with her own podcast, the
(01:33):
Capital Coffee Connection Podcast, and she also shared her
family's heartbreaking experience in Israel, the deaths
of family members, and how her great niece was taken hostage.
Really horrific things for anyone to experience and to come
here and speak about it, to educate and maybe even motivate
(01:54):
this audience is something I honestly treasure.
So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I really
encourage you to do so. And today you get to hear the
story of another brave woman. Nicole Foster is the founder and
CEO of Cashew Creamery, a plant based ice cream company.
She has also ventured into tech with the creation of Somos, the
(02:17):
AI powered storytelling platform.
Somos helps families preserve, organize and share their stories
before they're lost to memory loss, digital clutter, and time.
Nicole is a legacy advocate and former civil rights and
healthcare attorney, building a new frontier at the intersection
of memory, identity, and technology.
Nicole boldly tells her story ofhow her two companies were born
(02:42):
from tragic events within her family, and she also talks about
her individual journey toward building courage and intuition
and self trust, things that manyin this audience struggle to
find for themselves. So I really hope this
conversation with Nicole offers some tips and leaves you feeling
(03:03):
hopeful because it's possible for all of us to develop this
inner knowing and to also feel connected and supported by our
fellow sisters. Now, before I get into today's
conversation, I want to talk to you about breathwork.
Breath work is becoming more common and available online and
in person. But in case you don't know what
(03:24):
it is, I want to tell you because I only heard of it and
got into it five years ago, eventhough it's been around for
thousands of years. What breath work is at the very
foundation is using our breath intentionally to move energy in
our bodies. We focus on a particular breath
pattern, and it could be something as simple as a basic
(03:46):
inhale and exhale. But when we focus on breathing,
just breathing, our body is doing work for us.
It's like internal housekeeping system.
The power of your breath allows stuck energy, and stuck energy
really just means emotions that you haven't processed.
(04:07):
So all the stuck energy that found its way into the corners
and crevices of your body. Imagine your breath acting like
a broom drain cleaner, feather duster, and vacuum cleaning up
all of the dust bunnies and dog hair and gunk that has
collected. Think of this situation.
(04:28):
You had an argument with your spouse first thing this morning,
but then you had to go into workand immediately get on a
conference call or sit in a board meeting.
You might still be really frustrated about that conflict
at home, but you can't deal withthat right now because you have
work to do. So that frustration, that
irritability, anger, sadness, confusion, all of that is left
(04:51):
settling in your body somewhere unprocessed.
Now if we we do that over and over and over again, day after
day, year after year, we begin to experience dis ease.
All of that unprocessed stuck emotion in the body needs
somewhere or something to do so we could begin to feel unwell.
(05:12):
It could lead to all kinds of health problems, skin, hair,
metabolism, digestive, reproductive rage, stress,
anxiety. It could lead to all kinds of
things because it hasn't been looked at and dealt with
properly. So when you get into the breath
work practice, your body has theopportunity, the freedom to
(05:36):
process some of what's been ignored.
And it's not done with talking, it's not done with running, it's
not done with eating or drinking.
Just breathing will allow your body to move some things around.
Going back to that housekeeping analogy, when you do that deep
clean and move the furniture around and look under things and
(05:56):
tidy up, you make space. Boom.
What a concept. I know in our obsessed
consumerism, we often don't havespace in our homes to look
around and feel peaceful. But when we do that deep
housekeeping and decluttering, there's space.
And maybe that means that you decide you need a new end table
(06:17):
or refreshed bed linens. But that perspective,
perspective comes by giving yourhouse space.
The same way perspective and clarity come when we give our
bodies space. When we do the work, the breath
work and move things around inside, we see things
differently and we're able to get understanding grace for
(06:39):
everything that we have been through.
Describing breath work is kind of like describing a roller
coaster or a delicious warm fromthe oven chocolate chip cookie.
You kind of have to experience it to really get it, which is
what I want to invite you to do with me.
I've shared a link in the show notes so that you can experience
(07:00):
a breath work session with me. The one I'm including in the
show notes is an energizing session.
So just click the link in the show notes and you'll be able to
grab that free breath work session.
But in addition, in the SidelineSisters Facebook group, there
are a number of breath work sessions available for you to
experience on your own, with alldifferent themes or intentions
(07:22):
behind them. So I'll put.
Those links in the show notes for the free Energizing session
as well as the Facebook group. And I invite you sincerely to
try it out for yourself in the comfort of your space.
And then let me know what you think.
If you found it in any way worthwhile, then know that you
can work with with me individually on your specific
(07:44):
concerns or issues and get that beautiful, special nurturing
support from me privately. Now let's get into today's
conversation with Nicole. I am thrilled to be here today
with my new friend, Welcome, Nicole Foster.
Thank you, Jenny. It's so wonderful to be here.
Thanks for having me. Well, I'm, I'm really excited
(08:06):
for you to tell this audience ofpredominantly midlife women all
of the incredible lessons you have learned over the course of
time and have have the courage to speak openly about.
So we're just going to get rightinto it because, you know, we're
(08:27):
midlife women. We don't have time to waste.
Just kidding. Just kidding.
Let's not beat around the Bush, right?
So we had a nice chat before I press record and I wrote down a
bunch of notes. But I'm going to start off with
something you said to me just a couple moments ago.
And you posted as sort of a question related to the things
(08:49):
in your life or the things that we're all facing in our own.
And the question you said was, do you have the courage to make
the choice? And you were reflecting on
things that you had done in yourown life.
And some of those were, I imagine, really hard decisions
to make, but they came from thiswell of courage.
(09:12):
So let's, let's start there. Tell us about courage.
Where, where does it come from? How do you find it?
And what does it feel like to touse to to to present it to the
world? Wow, that is a huge question.
(09:38):
I mean, courage for me is, is built and nurtured from a strong
belief in myself, from a strong self love, from a strong belief
in the universe around me being forever abundant.
And so I was explaining to you that I make decisions based on
(10:01):
my intuition, what feels liked, what feels like I'm moving
towards lightness versus what I'm if it feels like it's heavy,
it's dark. I have to feel like I'm getting
over something and it's an obstacle.
If it, if it, there was any of that, the latter, it's not the
right decision. So I go with my intuition.
My intuition is my Co founder and my copilot in life.
(10:25):
And it's, it's based on, you know, a practice, you know, it's
like practice and, and meditation and focus to, to be
able to trust my intuition enough that I know that when I
ask it a question and I say, is,is this right for me?
It's going to give me an answer that's going to, I'm going to
(10:47):
feel it in my whole body. And I know, OK, it's right.
It's not right. And I make a decision
accordingly. So that courage, I guess, you
know, as I said, it's built, it's nurtured and I have had to
rely and it's getting stronger. And as I get older it's a more
like I don't have any more FS togive right?
(11:08):
Yeah, I actually was gonna, I was gonna speak that, finish
your sentence for you. Yeah.
Had a feeling that's where you were going.
And so it's getting much easier to walk away from things that no
longer serve me if I feel like, you know, I was sharing with you
relationships, jobs, roles, titles that I might have been
(11:29):
eager to get to at one point. But when I look around, I'm in
the room and I'm like, I'm triedthis on.
It doesn't work for me. And I'm not going to stay there
just for ego, right? I'm not there.
I'm not in this life for vanity metrics.
I'm a lawyer, I'm a judge, I'm athis and that if it doesn't
nurture my spirit. And so I had my own firm.
(11:50):
I was attorney, a trial attorneyat a boutique firm.
And I loved it and I did it for years.
But after a while, I looked around and I was like, OK, I did
45 jury trials. This is what I wanted to do.
Do I need to do this? I mean, are there other things
in this one life that I want to try?
Absolutely. Are there other things that stir
my soul? Yes.
Am I brave enough to go for it? Yes.
(12:13):
And so you make, I'm not just going to quit my job the next
day or like close down my law firm, but I made plans to do
things a different way at different transitions in my
life. You know, when I had a baby,
something else presented itself and I was like, oh, there's an
opportunity here. And I and I, I walked towards
that. Wow.
Now in this world. There, and this has come up so
(12:37):
many times on this show, in so many conversations with midlife
women, there is an addiction to outsourcing power, to looking
externally for answers and influence.
How have you managed to cultivate the self belief, The
(12:57):
intuition that for a lot of people feels vacant, feels like
there's a void in that chakra. Like I don't have intuition.
I need to go ask 27 people in myneighborhood and at the mall
what I should do about my marriage.
Wow, OK, For me it was meditation.
(13:23):
When I started meditating, the voices came like I don't want
to. Oh, that sounds great.
No. No, no, no.
Yeah, I get it. In stillness you start to hear
maybe spirit, you know, I believe in spirit, So I started
to hear spirit little things andI was paid perk up because maybe
(13:45):
it wasn't my voice necessarily, but it came in stillness.
And you have to give yourself the gift of that stillness
daily. And I don't mean getting a
cappuccino, you know, like goinginto Starbucks and getting a
cappuccino by myself. I mean taking the time to take
510-1520, maybe more minutes by yourself, No chores, no
(14:09):
responsibility. We're women, I know it, You
know, we got all the, all the things we got to do and we're
burnt out, right? So what we that's why we need to
take those minutes for ourselvesand pour into ourselves because
I told you I cannot pour from anempty cup.
I have to pour into me. And so, yeah, so that's what I
do it. When I started meditating, I
started hearing voices, my voice, this, the voice of spirit
(14:33):
much more clearly. And I began to be able to really
trust my intuition. And I think the other thing
that's really important is that,you know, society cuts us off
from the center of our intuition, right?
We are taught to ignore it, especially in this age because
it's no longer, we're no longer of reproductive age, but our
wombs are the center of our intuition, our power.
(14:57):
It's the seat of our power. When you take a moment to
reconnect to your womb, that's also when you know all that
intuition, all that trust, all that, and that, that, that
reconnection, that power, that that trust, it all comes pouring
into you. But you just got to like take a
minute to reconnect to that. We have to unlearn what society
(15:20):
has taught us about our wombs, right?
It's just there for and now you don't need any reproductive
health. You're fine, right?
And but you're not, you know, and you are.
But it's because you have to take that moment to like just
sit with maybe your hands over your womb and just be like, hey,
what do you have to tell me? You know?
So I believe very strongly that we've got the power to do that.
(15:40):
I believe that we have the powerto heal our own bodies.
We don't need to seek anything externally.
I think everything starts with the things we put into it, the
food, the music, the conversations, The if you're not
putting things in that are stimulating and are fostering
growth, then I think that it's going to lead to stagnancy.
So I'm very careful about who I'm talking to, what I'm
(16:03):
reading, what I'm listening to, what I'm watching, you know what
I mean? It's super powerful stuff.
Yeah, I love that. I met a coach of a women's
empowerment kind of coach a while back.
And we all know that watching the news is negative.
(16:27):
It is vile. And I heard her explain how she
cuts herself off from from all news sources and relies on, you
know, a particular friend to tell her if there's an
earthquake coming or something. No, I guess earthquake already
came. But you know, if there's if
(16:47):
there's some sort of a major. Yeah.
And it was it was just funny. And I've since heard that
message repeated so many times. And I have done a really good
job at cutting myself off to thepoint that, you know, my brother
will say to me, Gee, you know, what are you living under a
rock? Like?
How do you how did you not know about such and such global issue
(17:10):
or world event? And it's like, because it sucks,
why do I want to know that? Why do I want to tune my my
radio to that station? I don't want to think about
that. Yes, it's happening, but it's
not a damn thing I can do about it.
So I just have to, I don't know,water my garden and focus here
(17:31):
and not get sucked down that abyss.
But it's not. Easy.
And I think it is not easy. And I think that what you're
doing is a is an act of resistance.
It's revolutionary, right? You're not getting sucked into
the fear based anything. And I think that that's really,
(17:53):
that in itself is resistance. Now just for for my own value,
when you talk about meditation, what does that look like for you
or, or has it changed over time?Did you just choose to sit in a
chair or lie in bed for 10 minutes of quiet?
Do you use? Guided meditations What?
Is most important for you. No, I cannot just sit there with
(18:16):
like, Zen. I have to focus my mind on
something. And so I started with Joe
Dispenza's, like morning meditation.
I just love him. And I noticed I was blown away
by how I meditated this first time like several years ago.
(18:36):
And one of the things he says inthe meditation is if your family
is noticing the change within you, you'll know this was real.
And I, I like it came to me thatwhat somebody's going to say,
your energy is different. My 8 year old at the time I
went, came downstairs. I had meditated in the morning
and came downstairs and my son, the first thing he said to me
(18:57):
was your energy is different. I was like, what?
That's crazy. And I was like, I was hooked.
I was like, OK, there's something to this.
Not only it's not just about making yourself really calm, but
it's also about what he, what he, what he does that I like.
And this is what I do is that I kind of meditate on who I no
longer want to be and who I wantto be and what I want to be,
(19:20):
what I want more of in my life, what I want to bring into my
life. And then I give myself the
emotional energy like it's already happened.
And in that, and that's the energy that people see the
switch. Wow, that's big stuff.
And what works for me is, you know, visualizing that I want to
(19:42):
be filled with love and light and like that's part of my
everyday. I want love and light to be
radiating even to people who I don't particularly love or like.
I want that love and light because I think again, that's,
that's a resistance. I need to.
If I can give that off, then maybe you can receive that.
(20:02):
And then maybe slowly the world will change.
I mean, we're, we're living through some really crappy times
right now. So my little piece, just like
you, I'm watering my garden. This is the way that I water my
garden. You know, I'm going to be, I
want to be the best version of me, the most loving, the most
kind, the most determined, the most disciplined, you know,
version of me and. And that really helps me it and
(20:27):
I get I'm closer to that, you know, Yogi that I would be if I
just sat in a corner quietly because then I'd be punishing
myself because I thought something and Oh my God, Oh, you
just thought that, you know, I can't keep my mind.
I this works. Yeah, yeah.
Now I'm curious. I I find myself doing this where
(20:51):
I ask like a three-part questionall in one, and then I expect
you to remember all the parts ofit, right?
And you know how old I am so girl.
OK, so first part, were you raised to embrace this kind of
side of you to to connect with your intuition?
(21:13):
Was that always a part of your life?
No, I was raised Catholic and Christian and that that was a
religion that I mean, we talked about prayer a lot, but it was
very, you know, fear based sin, original sin.
(21:37):
And growing up that never resonated with me.
I didn't understand these stories.
I didn't see myself in these stories, but I went to Catholic
school through high school and faced a lot of really, you know,
strange experiences that I didn't think would necessarily
come from a Catholic environment.
(21:57):
And just, I think when I was, did my formative years in DCI,
did my formative years in DCI, went to college at GW and I got
my master's degree in GW. And then I went to Philadelphia
and I spent some time in Europe as well working as a consultant.
I don't know. It was during those times when I
(22:20):
read the book The Celestine Prophecy, and that book kind of
opened my eyes to energy and kind of transform the way that I
thought about things and the Catholicism.
I felt free to say, OK, I I haveto.
I can walk away from Catholicismbecause it just doesn't serve me
right. Right.
(22:41):
It, it just didn't, you know, but all things spiritual
empowered me to grow into the essence of who I was.
And so it really changed my mindset again, from a fixed
mindset to a growth mindset and help me again have that courage
and develop that courage and have that ability, that bravery.
(23:03):
Yet to be able to make certain changes in my life and not feel
like I'd be giving this up because I don't believe I'm
giving anything up. I believe that life is abundant
and I'm moving towards the choices that are for my for my
good and that everything here isfor my good.
And that's the way I look at life and it's helped.
And I try to speak life into, into all my circumstances.
(23:26):
Now I fall, I mean, like we all do, I fall.
But then I think that what separates me now is my ability
to jump back into the mindset that's positive and and
uplifting as opposed to dwellingin this negativity, which I
which I used to. Does that make sense?
(23:48):
So, yeah, so once you embraced this courageous perspective,
what is it like when you come upagainst a challenge, whether
it's a personal relationship, a business decision, a health
issue, just some sort of stumbling block?
(24:10):
How do you keep from falling into the trap of either woe is
me or this is hard and kind of spiraling out in that or the
fear thoughts. I mean, how did do they just not
come in or is there work that you do to keep them at Bay?
(24:32):
Oh yeah, they come in. I was just trying to think of a
situation just recently where I could have let myself spiral
into this like fear place. And then I was like, no, I'm not
going to do that. I'm going to just be calm about
it. And it was.
I've spent part of the year in Oaxaca, Mexico, because it's
just more a calming place for meto be, to do my work, right.
(24:53):
I, I will get into what I do a little bit later, but it's a,
it's a calming place for me. And my kids are with me.
And I'd sent away for my son's renewal of his passport.
And I recognized that it, it'd been two months, it'd been over
two months and we didn't have the passport back.
And now it is maybe five days before we're about to leave.
(25:14):
And there's no information in the system about where this
passport is. And we're leaving in a few
minutes to go to my to his grandmother's 80th birthday in
the United States. And that was a moment that I was
like, oh, like about to freak out.
Like, what are we going to do freak out?
And then I was like, everything happens for my best, for my, for
(25:37):
my good. And I truly believe that if we
don't make that flight, we weren't supposed to be on that
flight. If we don't go to that party, we
were not supposed to go to that party and then we had plans to
go to another country afterwards.
If we don't, we're not supposed to go.
I mean, OK, I'm not going to be silly about it.
I'm going to make put some things in place to see, OK, can
(25:58):
we do this? What are some alternatives?
But I'm not going to freak out. Don't you know that we were
leaving on a Thursday and the passport came on Wednesday of?
Course it did. And so I that gave me even more
so now the next time I know, OK,now I know.
You know what I mean. It's like everything closer to
the knowledge, OK, this is the right way, this is the way.
(26:21):
That's gold right there. I mean, getting that proof and
then just, you know, storing it in the evidence box of when I
trust myself, when I follow thispath of staying calm, believing
in the highest and best good andall that it, things fall into
place. Things fall into place, things
(26:43):
are yours exactly where you needto be.
I got to trust that you know I'mexactly where I need to be when
I need to be there that I'm a pure good hearted person.
I'm not moving from any malintention.
I'm moving in this world throughpeace and love And I, you know,
not everyone is moving through peace and love, but with me, but
(27:05):
I almost feel impenetrable, right, like impervious to their
anybody else's negativity. I just try to brush it off.
I don't know how to how else to explain it, but it it's taken a
lot of work. I mean, but I recognize that me
angry all the time. I mean, I left situations where
I just felt angry all the time. I felt like I wasn't seen.
(27:28):
I felt like I wasn't respected and that you can feel that all
over your body. I felt it.
I, I carry tension in my neck and my lower back.
I felt it everywhere and every day I was like, oh, and then I
was like, why am I doing this? You know, this is the other way.
This decision. Should I, should I stay here?
And, and spirit was like, no, you know, and I'm feeling the
(27:51):
lightness towards making this other decision.
And it's like as soon as you make the decision, it all falls
away. Hey everybody, sorry for the
interruption but I have to tell you about the upcoming gentle
coaching workshop called Coping with Challenges.
Yeah, we all have coping strategies but maybe yours are
not the most healthy or supportive for your nervous
(28:13):
system. If your go to coping mechanism
is food, drink, shopping, gambling, scrolling, bingeing,
Netflix, then I want to invite you into this free workshop
where we will explain or other techniques that will be a little
more conducive to overall well-being, feeling content,
(28:37):
serenity and even better sleep. The workshop is Tuesday July
15th, 3:00 PM Eastern Time for one hour and you can check the
show notes to register. I really hope to see you there.
Oh my gosh, yeah. But there could be listeners who
are hearing this story saying that's great that she did that,
(28:59):
but maybe she doesn't or she hasn't experienced some of the
pains of my life that she she stays love and light.
But you know, I had breast cancer or I had an abusive
marriage. So that's great for Nicole, but
that's not going to work for me.What would you say to those
(29:20):
people? I was in an abusive marriage.
I mean, you know, I was in an emotionally abusive
relationship. It's not like, you know, it's
been all like poppies and you know what I mean?
But it's about mindset, right? It's about, it's about the story
we tell ourselves. And we all got a story.
(29:45):
And you can either be the hero of the story, or you can be the
victim of the story. And we all have the pen.
We're in charge of writing that story.
I can write any story at any ending, and I can make myself be
any role in it. I choose to make myself be the
heroine of my story, right? I mean.
(30:08):
That's I, I want everyone to sitwith that for a moment because
that's, that's big. That's really big.
That choosing how we're going towrite the story, it feels like a
really big mountain to climb. Yeah, listen, I I was in a
marriage that and I don't want to say I don't want here to drag
(30:30):
my husband down or my ex-husbanddown because he's a good man.
But you know, we all have thingsright And we sometimes don't
know how to approach, you know, relationships.
We're doing the best we can, right?
But there were things that he said and did, I mean not
physically abusive, but like very emotionally abusive and and
(30:51):
even in the relationship that I just ended, very emotionally
abusive, very manipulative, lying, cheating, you know, that
type of thing. So I have felt have been, you
know, in situate in in those situations in the early part of
the marriage, I'd be like, my story was I'm in an unhappy
marriage and I would tell the story to anyone who would listen
(31:17):
if you just asked me how my day I'm not I'm not happy.
You can see like your whole yourwhole energy is just so
different. Until I was like, I think I
thought about something one timeduring this process, I thought
about something and my heart started to race and I was like,
(31:39):
what? That's interesting.
If you could just change your physical body with just your
thought in a negative way, you must be able to change your
physical body with your positivethoughts in the most beautiful
way. And I started to exercise that
muscle. And that, you know, has been
part of this process whereby, wow, I don't, I don't want to
(32:01):
feel like that. So my story now is, do I have
the courage to OK, this is this not serving me?
Are you, what are what are your,what are your contributions to
this relationship or to this thing?
You know, what are are you? How can you fix yourself so that
you are having a different experience?
And if you're doing that work and you're still not having a
(32:22):
different experience, OK, it's time.
Should I ask Spirit? Should I exit left?
And if the answer feels light, if you're following something
that feels like a lightness of being a lighter decision, then
that's the answer. That's your spirit telling you.
So I think what we need to do isbe training our bodies to like,
understand what it feels like when the universe is answering,
(32:44):
when spirit is answering, when God is answering, when Goddess
is answering. How does that feel in our
bodies? And then trust that.
And we do it once. And then, OK, that seemed like a
pretty good outcome. And then you can.
You're trusting that little by little.
It's like having this internal magic 8 ball that you can, you
(33:06):
can turn to for advice, you know, should I go out with this
guy? Should I order pizza?
What should I do? And.
Well, it might always say yes tothe people.
It might, it might. So using pizza as our Segway,
what was it like for you to shift from legal, public
(33:34):
servant, government, all the corporate stuff into the world
of food? Liberating.
It was so liberating. I was working for the federal
government at the last the last bit that I was doing and I
Jenny, I hated it, right. I just, there was an
inefficiency. There was.
(33:54):
What? I know break, I know it was
crazy and I just hated the work and I felt like I was built for
something bigger and better, like much more expansive, you
know, and and I had been a trialattorney.
So moving from at being a my, you know, a sovereign attorney
(34:15):
with my own firm and doing thesetrials and do you know, to going
into working for somebody else in the federal government, which
I thought was the safer thing todo.
I just thought it was the bad, better thing to do.
Now that I had a family, I was like, Oh no, this is awful.
And it took me a really long time to get out of it. 8 years,
I was in that federal governmentposition, just hating life.
I would go to work and be like, And so one time once I, I just
(34:40):
decided I saw a picture of a townhouse.
I was living in Miami and I saw a picture of like a Brooklyn
brownstone and I was like, I love this.
So beautiful. This is where I want to be
living. And I had been wanting to get
back up to the north cuz as I told you, I went to school in
the north. And so I put that in my office.
I put that in my office. I closed my door and I just kind
(35:01):
of like meditated on that. And I didn't do any work for
like 2 weeks. I did nothing.
I don't even care. Nobody knows.
And then I just started writing what how do I want to be living?
How do I want to be spending my days?
How do I want to be? And I just started writing all
this. I wanted to be around creative
pre bill. I wanted to start doing
something that was creative, something that flowed out of me,
(35:22):
something that helped people some.
And then ideas started coming when I almost get when I gave
myself the liberty to think likethat, right.
And I wasn't thinking about how it's going to happen, where the
money was going to come from, any of that.
I was just thinking, how do I want to be living and what, how
do I want to be serving this world?
And one of the things I remembersaying is that I wanted to be
(35:42):
around creative people and I wanted to.
And I love ice cream. But my son was born preemie and
so he's born at 1 LB. And he was having respiratory
issues and he was getting dairy and the dairy was making him
sick. And so now he's a toddler and he
can't have ice cream. And it was like, and it was hard
(36:05):
telling a toddler you can't haveice cream.
And everything that we found on the market was not it's.
It's hard telling an adult you can't have ice cream.
Right, Everything we found on the market was was not great.
It, you know, high calories, youknow, full of synthetic
ingredients. Even the things that were
purportedly healthy seemed to befull synthetic ingredients.
(36:26):
And then finally the the flavorswere super bland.
They were not flavors that were representative of any culture.
We were Caribbean. We are Caribbean.
And so they weren't representative of our culture or
any other culture. So I at that moment, I was like,
wait a minute, this is it. This could be the thing that I
(36:47):
kind of move into, but I had no idea what I was doing.
But I was like, that's the adventure, right?
That's it. But this is going to allow me to
live like that. And we ended up moving up to DC
and then eventually moving to Baltimore.
And don't you know that that picture of that brownstone is
pretty much exactly what my living room looks like?
I mean, I just visualize the hell out of it.
(37:10):
And I'm around creative people. We're talking about
collaborations. We're trying to build a business
from scratch. And we've gone, you know, within
a few years, we went from just an idea to being listed by the
Today show was one of the 41 best scoop shops in the country.
And so, you know, that's is the power of visualization, I guess.
(37:33):
Right. I mean it's like the guy from
The Secret who had the the picture of the dream home on his
vision board and then sure enough ends up living in it.
Right, right. God, that's such a cool story.
And especially as someone who chooses to eat dairy free and
and crap free ice cream, I wouldlove to be living down the
(38:00):
street from your shop because that would be nice.
It's not here. I'm yeah I won't trash talk
everything around me but it would be nice if if I had better
options. Yeah, it's coming soon.
It's coming soon. Good.
So that's amazing. So you, you pivoted on the
(38:20):
career and it opened all these exciting doors for you.
And then at a, at some point down your journey, you pivoted
again or, or added another extension to the company
diversity, the the personal endeavor diversity.
And what was what was that like?How did that come to be this
(38:44):
additional company that you started?
Yeah. So that was, you know, we're
we're working in my company's cashew.
We're black-owned cashew milk ice cream company and we do
things a little bit differently because we do only culturally
curious flavors. So we have flavors like orchata,
baklava, kufi, cortito, things like that.
(39:05):
I love how you say culturally curious, that's so fun.
Right. And it's because I am culturally
curious and we I travel a lot and I travel for food, so I'll
see your sights after my belly'sfull.
When where am I going? Where is the little cute place?
Driver, right, Right. You know what I mean?
Give me good. Food.
I don't need another cathedral. Yeah, right.
Exactly. And I'll see it, but I'll see
(39:27):
that. Right, fine.
You know, I travel for food. I'm a definitely international
like global foodie. Love it.
And so we named it after we did it based on the, the, the our
favorite treats from around the world.
And so, So what this is going well, right?
I opened a shop, we're in Whole Foods.
We're like growing, growing, growing.
(39:47):
And then a few years ago, my dadhad a medical procedure.
When he came out of the medical procedure, he didn't seem to be
the same person who went in. And it was like, whoa.
And there was a real fear that we were going to lose him.
And I'm now looking at my 10 year old son.
And thinking, wow, there's a real chance because I've never
(40:08):
recorded a single story that he's told me of his immigration
journey, emigration journey, of him growing up in South America,
of how we started life in this country, how my mom came to the
country. You know, these stories are
super powerful. And they regaled me with these
stories when I was younger and Iwas like, this is it.
There's a real chance that my kids will not know my parents or
(40:31):
my my dad. How do, how do families do this?
What it, what should we do? And so I asked my, I shared this
concern with my kids and my younger son, who was 10 at the
time, said, why don't we interview them?
So we called it a story galore, project story galore.
And we wrote, each kid wrote 10 questions and they said, OK,
(40:55):
figured out the date and all this stuff that they were going
to ask me when they were going to interview my parents.
And those 20 questions that theyasked Jenny changed the course
of my life because I witnessed so many amazing things in that
interview. In the few hours that it took
for this interview to transpire,I noticed my parents were very
(41:16):
stiff when they were telling thestory.
And my parents are literally getting up in age.
You know, this was like 3 years ago.
My parents are getting up in age.
They're no longer, you know, whothey used to be.
And but I watched them go from super stiff to like super lively
when they got back into the stories and the memory recall,
there was such joy that was coming back to them and almost
(41:39):
such purpose because they were telling me stories and that's
almost like they knew why, right?
And I watched my 7 second attention span kids wrapped, you
know, just so undivided attention towards my parents and
then watched this bonding occur that I hadn't seen before.
(42:00):
And in my meditation 111 morningnarrative bonding came, sprung
into my mind and I was like, boom, that's what I saw,
narrative bonding. I started researching it more
and thinking, Oh my God. And then I learned so many
things about the act of storytelling.
It's super beneficial, especially for older people
(42:22):
because it helps to increase cognitive functioning, helps to
stave off dementia, the risk of dementia by by about 50%.
Wow. Yeah, it's amazing.
The act of storytelling makes it.
It increases your well-being. And what happens is that there's
neurocognitive benefits. You start as the storyteller
(42:44):
start to release certain you know hormones like oxytocin.
I was just going to say it's theoxytocin, it's that bonding with
another being and the connection.
And the reason you bond is because the listener releases
the same chemicals at the same time.
Boom. When does that ever happen,
right? We are so connected through the
(43:06):
act of storytelling, Jenny. Storytelling was our first
technology and the way that we connected was through rhythm,
through frequency, through. And so that's why I think that
ancient civilizations knew this.And that's why storytelling was
told in the way that it was done, right.
(43:27):
It wasn't necessarily written down.
It was done through, through, through, through frequency,
through rhythm so that you can feel it and carry it in your
body. And and I think now, you know,
that narrative funded, that connection is made.
My kids learned about my parents.
They've known my parents their entire lives.
(43:49):
And they learned so much about my parents that they had never
discussed that they had and it made them feel closer to them.
Not only that, it made them feelpride in the stock that they had
come from. They were like, wow, they can do
that. Look what I can do with and I
have more resources. So storytelling is powerful and
(44:09):
it's our duty to preserve these stories.
You've got people in your family, I've got people in the,
in our family, they are living libraries.
And so I think it's, it's our duty to preserve these stories
and, and then people are interested in that, right?
People want to know their familygenealogy and things like that.
Pardon the Interruption, but I have to tell you about my
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save 10%. And now let's get back to the
show. Also, I started a company called
Somos. I, I started talking to people
and I talked to about 200 peoplein this like customer discovery
moment. And I was like, OK, what do you,
is this important to you? And if so, what do you do?
(45:15):
And I learned that 93% of the 200 people that I spoke to
thought that this was extremely important to document family
lives, to share, to preserve their family histories and
family stories. Only 30% did.
And they said the 30% said that they didn't do it because the
(45:37):
30%, the 80% that didn't do it. So they didn't do it because it
was overwhelming. It was a daunting task.
It's like they don't know where to start.
They don't know what questions to ask.
They don't know how to save it, where to organize it, what, what
what thing to use, what thing tonow, what equipment to use, what
equipment to now go and now timeyou have to go back and listen
(45:58):
to it and transcribe it. And they didn't have the time
and everyone thinks that they have time until, you know,
unfortunately so. Where did the name come from?
It's almost as a Spanish word that means we are.
Yep. So most means we are and the
idea is that we are here now andwe should never let ourselves
(46:23):
get in the situation again whereall we have is a photo and name
or a piece of something, you know, a little thing.
And we don't know the story behind it because we've got the
people here right now. Let's and we've got the
technology to do it. And so this is the first first
mover in the market, the first thing in the market that's
putting all of these it's, it's,oh, by the way, what it is, is
(46:45):
a, an AI powered platform that allows, it's a storytelling
platform, it's a social networking platform and it
allows families to collaboratively curate a shared
space of, of their family memories.
Everyone can participate. You can upload photos, videos,
voice notes, documents. It allows you to conduct these
(47:05):
intergenerational AI prompted intergenerational interviews in
the app, which are then tagged and categorized and transcribed
for you. And then everything goes into
this beautiful organized family archive.
So that's trying to build. And that's what I wish existed
when I was. It's literally what I wish
existed when three years ago when I was looking at my dad in
(47:27):
the hospital bed going Oh my God, it's way too early.
Wow, I love that one company is Spanish, one is French.
You know, you maybe you have plans for the next, you know,
Italian company, who knows? It's that's so fun And you know,
when you think about storytelling, that's one of the
(47:49):
things I love about podcasting. It's like for me, at least with
this show, I'm let's just say for the sake of it, it's a
one-on-one conversation. We're not looking at our phones,
we're not watching TV in addition to talking.
It's just eyes looking at each other, conversing, telling
(48:10):
stories. Do you do you think we get the
same oxytocin effect in this environment?
I think so. I mean, look, I mean, I feel
bonded to you, right? I I walk away from every
conversation like my new best friend.
I mean like, when are we gettingtogether?
What's for dinner, right? Exactly.
And I think it's because, yeah, we're now sharing parts of our
(48:32):
lives in, in, in, in a really intimate format.
So thank you for doing this because it gives people a space
not only to tell these stories, but to hear them and feel moved
and empowered to do different things with their lives.
Yeah, I have been so affected bypodcasts.
I listen to them and then and then I have to remind myself,
(48:55):
no, wait a second. You're actually not best friends
with Christina Applegate. You don't know her at all.
Even though you listen to her, you're not really friends with
her. But you know, she's on, she's on
the the the dream list of this show.
But it is a really fascinating development in this millennia
(49:16):
that this storytelling platform of podcasts, I just, I freaking
love it. But that's awesome.
I love, I love what you've created.
And I think that is a really powerful and rich way of
collecting all of that. You know, the stuff that just
finds its way into envelopes andboxes and drawers scattered in
(49:40):
different people's homes, never to be actually chronicled and
explained. And the amount of time that I
think we spend looking for looking through genealogy and
looking for some piece of ourselves, this is tapping into
something that's very innate, aninnate desire to feel rooted, to
know who you who you are and to know it through your history.
(50:03):
Yeah, I think we are two months,about a month from launch.
But I think this is going to be transformative for people
because. No, I was just thinking and even
for all the people out there whoare adopted or mixed, you know,
Foster and and mixed families wherever they land, if those
(50:26):
are, you know, it's that nature versus nurture that the
environment, those are their stories that.
So even if there isn't, you know, my brother's adopted and
he can go do 23andMe and get some data from that, but a huge
aspect of him is environmental. It's the home he came from.
(50:47):
And so those are the stories, even though there's not a blood
tie necessarily, that's his family.
I'm his family. It doesn't matter that we don't
share DNA. And so I, I really love that
this kind of, I don't want to say dismisses genetics, but
(51:09):
storytelling and family storytelling.
You're a product of your family or your your household, your
people, your neighborhood, that this could bring connection to
someone who might feel disconnected.
That's a really interesting perspective that I hadn't
(51:29):
thought of. Thank you for bringing that to
my attention. I think that, yeah, I think
you're right, that I think that there's obviously certain
stories you might want to know about your biological family.
Sure. But it's the family that he grew
up in with all the rich layers of stories.
I remember what happened in 1982.
(51:51):
Remember that time, you know, it's that that has made him who
he is, that has really made yourbrother who he is.
And so, yeah, that's super interesting.
I. Mean even I think about you.
So even if you had an adopted child, you are who you are
because of the journey your parents travelled.
And those are the lessons and and.
(52:14):
Values that you're. Passing on to your children,
whether they were biological or not.
So this is this is the the depthof what you're creating is is
just the the trickle down of of memories and values and.
Sure. Yeah, Jewels.
Jewels and it's definitely to beenjoyed now and to be shared and
(52:37):
to bring families closer and to be to feel connected like you
were saying. But then it's really to be
enjoyed as well by the future generations.
We want this to be around for a long time so that your future
generations know how your dad laughed or your mom or your
grandmother or how you laughed or how you sounded, how you
(52:57):
interacted with your son, how you interacted with your
daughter, the peace that the smile, then joy that came over
your when you talk to your daughter.
I mean, these are Yeah. I always say that genealogy
gives you data. Social media gives you dopamine.
And but we're designing somos togive you depth.
(53:20):
And it's that it's those rich layers.
It's those textures. You know that make you who you
are, make you so special and youhave a story to tell and it's
and it's your future generations.
Your daughter's kids are going to be able to see and experience
that in a whole new way. Or maybe your daughter's kids.
Kids. Texture.
That's such a good word choice there.
(53:43):
Wow, to have two companies birthed from personal tragedy
might not be the right word, butpersonal events?
Almost tragedy. Thank God they were.
I mean, yeah, almost tragedy. Yeah, and and your, your son's
experience, yeah, in NICU and, and dietary stuff, Yeah, look
(54:08):
what you've created from your events.
Yeah, and I just want to add that my son is 18, just
graduated from high school, and he's fine.
Smart as a whip. Yeah.
I just wanted to put that in there because, you know, being
born at a pound sounds like it'sa death sentence, but it was.
Amazing. It was amazing.
(54:29):
And my dad, it was fine. By the way, my dad is fine.
He's not fine, but he's not yes with us.
Yes, yeah, well, from from 1. High School graduate mom to
another virtual High 5. Congrats, I know that's a lot of
work. You know, I, I was just, I was
telling a, a story in a newsletter that I wrote about a
(54:51):
shop, a local boutique I went into to get a graduation gift
for a really special teacher, not just a teacher.
She was just a really special human in my kids lives.
And I, I wanted to get her something.
And so I'm at this fancy store and I'm, I'm, they sell cards
like those beautiful card stock,like the, you know, they just
(55:13):
feel really heavy and, and pretty.
They're artistic and I'm flipping through them and I
said, you know, these graduationcards, they're all
congratulations, graduate. Where's the one that's
congratulations to to the graduate adjacent person, right?
Right. Where's the good job mom?
Your kid graduated and they werelike, that is amazing.
(55:33):
We've never seen anything like it.
Let us know when you create themand we'll we'll carry them and
I'm like, well, OK, that just let's add that to the list of
projects. That's the things.
To do. Yeah, that I have going on, but
it's it is true. I feel like, you know, with
having just had that, it's like,good job mom, you did, your kid
graduated. We know how that pushed into
that. That was a.
(55:54):
Lot so well done, Nicole. Thank you.
And there's a. Moment.
I want 1 accomplishment at a time, right?
All right, so as we try to wrap this up, let's give you a moment
to speaking to this audience. You mentioned so many important
(56:19):
practices and concepts. What would be your closing
message that maybe you haven't said yet that you really want
midlife women to hear? You know, I think that we all
have this knowing, we all have this ability to trust our
(56:44):
intuition. It takes the internal work of
kind of shutting off the noise of the outside of being told who
you are by by things outside of you, especially as we age,
right? It's almost like you're
drifting. It's like a constant, like I
can't let this jowl hang down. I get this thing.
(57:06):
I got to do this and I got to doyou know what I mean?
It's like, don't you know, it's like every message, especially
in this country is about lookingmore youthful and, you know,
anti aging against aging. Really, why are we against
aging? And I don't think of midlife as
a crisis. I think of it as a reinvention.
And and I think if we need to sit with each other and hold
(57:30):
each other's hands and be like, girl Jenny, you know, you're
gorgeous. You don't I don't even want to
hear any conversation about thisand this pulling up this and a
little eye tuck here and this. We've got to remember to be
sisters to each other. I heard someone say something
about it was really interesting.The I think it was Glennon
(57:51):
Doyle. The two pieces of wood together,
like the joints that they form, like when you put two pieces of
wood together, like if you have a the Bureau.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
That the act of that, I think, is called sistering.
And so we need to remember that sistering, it can be a verb.
(58:11):
And that's who we need to be. That's what we need to be the
support, the anchor, the thing that, you know, helps your
sister get through, you know, in, in some communities like,
like help your sister fix her crown, right?
And I think that that's, we all have it and we just all have to
remember it. We've got to like collectively
shut out the noise and grow together in, in sisterhood and
(58:35):
forget this, you know, divisiveness that the country's
trying to push upon us, try to grow together in sisterhood.
And I think part of my role is to help others remember this,
knowing that they have, you know, and whether that's through
food, whether that's through icecream or whether that's through
storytelling, It's, I think it'spart of my, my purpose here on
(58:57):
earth. And I, and I feel like I am
alive in it, right? It, it completely brings me joy
to sit and talk to another womanabout any of this stuff.
So I'm really grateful that you have me on the show.
Little do you know, this has been more joyous for me that it
probably has been for you. I've loved this.
(59:19):
And, and it's because I get the opportunity to talk to another
woman about things that hey, we've all got this power.
We are friggin superstars and let's let's do it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.My daughter took a couple years
of psychology in high school andthis past year, one of these
beautiful stories that I hope I always remember is her snuggling
(59:43):
with one of our dogs saying, do you feel my oxytocin?
Do you let's let's share oxytocin.
Let's bring that out. And with your words, I I want to
say, Nicole, do you feel my oxytocin?
It's it's bubbling over. I.
Do feel it? I feel it.
Definitely a connection. I feel like I could float after
(01:00:07):
this conversation. I love it.
Me too. Well, I want to make sure you
tell people where they can find all the things that you're
working on. OK, so Cashew Creamery is an ice
cream shop that it's, you know, like, again, culturally curious
ice cream. It's located in Baltimore.
We ship nationwide. So go to www.cashewcreamery and
(01:00:29):
it's CAJOU creamery.com and Somos is the thing that is going
to change your family's life andthat is Somos with two MSSOMMOS
dot live. At this moment.
You can go to Somos dot live andsign up for early access so that
(01:00:52):
the minute it drops, you get theinformation and you you can sign
up and start to use it with yourfamilies.
Somos, by the way, is is with two M's because it's a
palindrome. You should be able to read it
both ways, right. And the reason why that's
important is because it's not just about us interviewing our
(01:01:13):
elders, It's about our elders, yeah, interviewing the younger
generations. And the wisdom is transferred
both ways. And so that's that was the that
was the reason. Why?
That's good. That's good.
You're a smart lady. Wow.
You're the best, thank you. So much.
(01:01:33):
All right, before we go, I want to invite you to raise a glass.
Usually I have something a little more aesthetic, but right
now it's a water bottle. So we'll toast our water
bottles. As we say.
Cheers to sistering because that's amazing.
Yes, yes. Cheers, Cheers to that.
(01:01:54):
I love it. This has been a delightful
experience in sistering. I thank you for being here.
I thank you for sharing all the different facets of your story,
of which there are so many more.But the ones that you
illuminated today we are better for.
And I just wish you so much success in everything that you
(01:02:18):
decide to do. Thank you, Jenny.
I appreciate that and I wish thesame for you.
Absolutely. All right, sister, sending you
love. Right sis, take it easy.
How incredible is Nicole Foster,right?
And now I get to call her one ofmy sideline sisters.
One of my sisters, period. Now let's get into her
(01:02:41):
incredible notes from the sidelines #1 Courage is built
and nurtured from a strong belief in self and self love and
the belief. In the universe.
Around me being abundant #2 Makedecisions based on intuition, on
what feels light versus heavy. Number 3IN stillness.
(01:03:06):
You start to hear Spirit. Try to give yourself the gift of
stillness daily, even if it's just 5 minutes by yourself with
no chores or anything else to do#4 pay attention to what you're
putting into your body, Food, music, conversation.
It needs to be stimulating and growth promoting or it will lead
(01:03:30):
to stagnancy #5 life is abundant, full stop.
It's not about giving things up,but rather moving toward things
for our highest good number six.And remember, everything happens
for my best and highest good. If something doesn't happen for
me, then it wasn't meant to be and I'm not going to freak out
(01:03:53):
about it #7. We all have a story and you
could either be the heroine or the victim #8.
We need to train our bodies to understand when spirit is
answering, noticing how it feelsin the body, and trusting it #9
give yourself the liberty to think big and write out that
(01:04:14):
vision. You don't have to know how it's
an adventure #10 The active storytelling is so beneficial,
especially for the elderly. There's an increase in cognitive
functioning that can stave off the risk of dementia.
It increases well-being and boththe storyteller and the listener
(01:04:34):
release oxytocin, creating connection, love and pride #11
we all have deep knowing and theability to trust our intuition,
but it takes internal work. To shut off.
The noise from the outside and hear what's coming from the
inside and #12 midlife isn't a crisis, it's a reinvention and
(01:04:59):
we need to support our fellow sisters through it.
Thank you Nicole Foster, that was amazing and I want to thank
all of you for tuning in, subscribing to this podcast,
rating it, reviewing it, and sharing it with others.
I am so excited about my vision for this show and I need your
(01:05:22):
help to grow the reach. So can you help me out?
Can you share this and any otherepisode that you have loved with
a friend, with a coworker, a family member, a neighbor?
These stories are so precious, so valuable.
So help me scream from the rooftops.
And get more. Subscribers, I appreciate you,
(01:05:45):
the listener so much. I appreciate my beautiful
vulnerable guests so much. Remember to check the show notes
for that free breath work and let me know if you want more.
And I will see you right back here next week for another
fantastic interview. Cheers to you.
Hey ladies, this is Sideline Sisters and I'm your host Jenny
Chaffetz. This is a show for no BS midlife
women who want to escape the mundane routine of their lives
and be captivated by conversations that are fun,
relevant and juicy. These interviews will take you
into the lives of relatable women who've gone on a journey
and live to share the lessons. They will be funny, sad, scary,
(00:28):
wise, encouraging and real. These are the stories you want
to hear. This show is your invitation to
take back your power, reignite your passions and step off the
sidelines. Let's go.
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Sideline
Sisters. My name is Jenny Chaffetz and
(00:49):
I'm your host. I am so grateful that you found
your way here, whether it is through a podcasting app, my
website, or YouTube, I'm just really honored and grateful that
you are listening and finding these conversations interesting
and valuable. I feel so honored that my guests
come on and share really personal, vulnerable stories in
(01:12):
an attempt to connect with the listener and validate other
people's experiences in life. And in case you missed it, last
week's conversation with Liz Hershnaftali was a really
powerful example of how this allworks.
She came on and talked about herwork with her own podcast, the
(01:33):
Capital Coffee Connection Podcast, and she also shared her
family's heartbreaking experience in Israel, the deaths
of family members, and how her great niece was taken hostage.
Really horrific things for anyone to experience and to come
here and speak about it, to educate and maybe even motivate
(01:54):
this audience is something I honestly treasure.
So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I really
encourage you to do so. And today you get to hear the
story of another brave woman. Nicole Foster is the founder and
CEO of Cashew Creamery, a plant based ice cream company.
She has also ventured into tech with the creation of Somos, the
(02:17):
AI powered storytelling platform.
Somos helps families preserve, organize and share their stories
before they're lost to memory loss, digital clutter, and time.
Nicole is a legacy advocate and former civil rights and
healthcare attorney, building a new frontier at the intersection
of memory, identity, and technology.
Nicole boldly tells her story ofhow her two companies were born
(02:42):
from tragic events within her family, and she also talks about
her individual journey toward building courage and intuition
and self trust, things that manyin this audience struggle to
find for themselves. So I really hope this
conversation with Nicole offers some tips and leaves you feeling
(03:03):
hopeful because it's possible for all of us to develop this
inner knowing and to also feel connected and supported by our
fellow sisters. Now, before I get into today's
conversation, I want to talk to you about breathwork.
Breath work is becoming more common and available online and
in person. But in case you don't know what
(03:24):
it is, I want to tell you because I only heard of it and
got into it five years ago, eventhough it's been around for
thousands of years. What breath work is at the very
foundation is using our breath intentionally to move energy in
our bodies. We focus on a particular breath
pattern, and it could be something as simple as a basic
(03:46):
inhale and exhale. But when we focus on breathing,
just breathing, our body is doing work for us.
It's like internal housekeeping system.
The power of your breath allows stuck energy, and stuck energy
really just means emotions that you haven't processed.
(04:07):
So all the stuck energy that found its way into the corners
and crevices of your body. Imagine your breath acting like
a broom drain cleaner, feather duster, and vacuum cleaning up
all of the dust bunnies and dog hair and gunk that has
collected. Think of this situation.
(04:28):
You had an argument with your spouse first thing this morning,
but then you had to go into workand immediately get on a
conference call or sit in a board meeting.
You might still be really frustrated about that conflict
at home, but you can't deal withthat right now because you have
work to do. So that frustration, that
irritability, anger, sadness, confusion, all of that is left
(04:51):
settling in your body somewhere unprocessed.
Now if we we do that over and over and over again, day after
day, year after year, we begin to experience dis ease.
All of that unprocessed stuck emotion in the body needs
somewhere or something to do so we could begin to feel unwell.
(05:12):
It could lead to all kinds of health problems, skin, hair,
metabolism, digestive, reproductive rage, stress,
anxiety. It could lead to all kinds of
things because it hasn't been looked at and dealt with
properly. So when you get into the breath
work practice, your body has theopportunity, the freedom to
(05:36):
process some of what's been ignored.
And it's not done with talking, it's not done with running, it's
not done with eating or drinking.
Just breathing will allow your body to move some things around.
Going back to that housekeeping analogy, when you do that deep
clean and move the furniture around and look under things and
(05:56):
tidy up, you make space. Boom.
What a concept. I know in our obsessed
consumerism, we often don't havespace in our homes to look
around and feel peaceful. But when we do that deep
housekeeping and decluttering, there's space.
And maybe that means that you decide you need a new end table
(06:17):
or refreshed bed linens. But that perspective,
perspective comes by giving yourhouse space.
The same way perspective and clarity come when we give our
bodies space. When we do the work, the breath
work and move things around inside, we see things
differently and we're able to get understanding grace for
(06:39):
everything that we have been through.
Describing breath work is kind of like describing a roller
coaster or a delicious warm fromthe oven chocolate chip cookie.
You kind of have to experience it to really get it, which is
what I want to invite you to do with me.
I've shared a link in the show notes so that you can experience
(07:00):
a breath work session with me. The one I'm including in the
show notes is an energizing session.
So just click the link in the show notes and you'll be able to
grab that free breath work session.
But in addition, in the SidelineSisters Facebook group, there
are a number of breath work sessions available for you to
experience on your own, with alldifferent themes or intentions
(07:22):
behind them. So I'll put.
Those links in the show notes for the free Energizing session
as well as the Facebook group. And I invite you sincerely to
try it out for yourself in the comfort of your space.
And then let me know what you think.
If you found it in any way worthwhile, then know that you
can work with with me individually on your specific
(07:44):
concerns or issues and get that beautiful, special nurturing
support from me privately. Now let's get into today's
conversation with Nicole. I am thrilled to be here today
with my new friend, Welcome, Nicole Foster.
Thank you, Jenny. It's so wonderful to be here.
Thanks for having me. Well, I'm, I'm really excited
(08:06):
for you to tell this audience ofpredominantly midlife women all
of the incredible lessons you have learned over the course of
time and have have the courage to speak openly about.
So we're just going to get rightinto it because, you know, we're
(08:27):
midlife women. We don't have time to waste.
Just kidding. Just kidding.
Let's not beat around the Bush, right?
So we had a nice chat before I press record and I wrote down a
bunch of notes. But I'm going to start off with
something you said to me just a couple moments ago.
And you posted as sort of a question related to the things
(08:49):
in your life or the things that we're all facing in our own.
And the question you said was, do you have the courage to make
the choice? And you were reflecting on
things that you had done in yourown life.
And some of those were, I imagine, really hard decisions
to make, but they came from thiswell of courage.
(09:12):
So let's, let's start there. Tell us about courage.
Where, where does it come from? How do you find it?
And what does it feel like to touse to to to present it to the
world? Wow, that is a huge question.
(09:38):
I mean, courage for me is, is built and nurtured from a strong
belief in myself, from a strong self love, from a strong belief
in the universe around me being forever abundant.
And so I was explaining to you that I make decisions based on
(10:01):
my intuition, what feels liked, what feels like I'm moving
towards lightness versus what I'm if it feels like it's heavy,
it's dark. I have to feel like I'm getting
over something and it's an obstacle.
If it, if it, there was any of that, the latter, it's not the
right decision. So I go with my intuition.
My intuition is my Co founder and my copilot in life.
(10:25):
And it's, it's based on, you know, a practice, you know, it's
like practice and, and meditation and focus to, to be
able to trust my intuition enough that I know that when I
ask it a question and I say, is,is this right for me?
It's going to give me an answer that's going to, I'm going to
(10:47):
feel it in my whole body. And I know, OK, it's right.
It's not right. And I make a decision
accordingly. So that courage, I guess, you
know, as I said, it's built, it's nurtured and I have had to
rely and it's getting stronger. And as I get older it's a more
like I don't have any more FS togive right?
(11:08):
Yeah, I actually was gonna, I was gonna speak that, finish
your sentence for you. Yeah.
Had a feeling that's where you were going.
And so it's getting much easier to walk away from things that no
longer serve me if I feel like, you know, I was sharing with you
relationships, jobs, roles, titles that I might have been
(11:29):
eager to get to at one point. But when I look around, I'm in
the room and I'm like, I'm triedthis on.
It doesn't work for me. And I'm not going to stay there
just for ego, right? I'm not there.
I'm not in this life for vanity metrics.
I'm a lawyer, I'm a judge, I'm athis and that if it doesn't
nurture my spirit. And so I had my own firm.
(11:50):
I was attorney, a trial attorneyat a boutique firm.
And I loved it and I did it for years.
But after a while, I looked around and I was like, OK, I did
45 jury trials. This is what I wanted to do.
Do I need to do this? I mean, are there other things
in this one life that I want to try?
Absolutely. Are there other things that stir
my soul? Yes.
Am I brave enough to go for it? Yes.
(12:13):
And so you make, I'm not just going to quit my job the next
day or like close down my law firm, but I made plans to do
things a different way at different transitions in my
life. You know, when I had a baby,
something else presented itself and I was like, oh, there's an
opportunity here. And I and I, I walked towards
that. Wow.
Now in this world. There, and this has come up so
(12:37):
many times on this show, in so many conversations with midlife
women, there is an addiction to outsourcing power, to looking
externally for answers and influence.
How have you managed to cultivate the self belief, The
(12:57):
intuition that for a lot of people feels vacant, feels like
there's a void in that chakra. Like I don't have intuition.
I need to go ask 27 people in myneighborhood and at the mall
what I should do about my marriage.
Wow, OK, For me it was meditation.
(13:23):
When I started meditating, the voices came like I don't want
to. Oh, that sounds great.
No. No, no, no.
Yeah, I get it. In stillness you start to hear
maybe spirit, you know, I believe in spirit, So I started
to hear spirit little things andI was paid perk up because maybe
(13:45):
it wasn't my voice necessarily, but it came in stillness.
And you have to give yourself the gift of that stillness
daily. And I don't mean getting a
cappuccino, you know, like goinginto Starbucks and getting a
cappuccino by myself. I mean taking the time to take
510-1520, maybe more minutes by yourself, No chores, no
(14:09):
responsibility. We're women, I know it, You
know, we got all the, all the things we got to do and we're
burnt out, right? So what we that's why we need to
take those minutes for ourselvesand pour into ourselves because
I told you I cannot pour from anempty cup.
I have to pour into me. And so, yeah, so that's what I
do it. When I started meditating, I
started hearing voices, my voice, this, the voice of spirit
(14:33):
much more clearly. And I began to be able to really
trust my intuition. And I think the other thing
that's really important is that,you know, society cuts us off
from the center of our intuition, right?
We are taught to ignore it, especially in this age because
it's no longer, we're no longer of reproductive age, but our
wombs are the center of our intuition, our power.
(14:57):
It's the seat of our power. When you take a moment to
reconnect to your womb, that's also when you know all that
intuition, all that trust, all that, and that, that, that
reconnection, that power, that that trust, it all comes pouring
into you. But you just got to like take a
minute to reconnect to that. We have to unlearn what society
(15:20):
has taught us about our wombs, right?
It's just there for and now you don't need any reproductive
health. You're fine, right?
And but you're not, you know, and you are.
But it's because you have to take that moment to like just
sit with maybe your hands over your womb and just be like, hey,
what do you have to tell me? You know?
So I believe very strongly that we've got the power to do that.
(15:40):
I believe that we have the powerto heal our own bodies.
We don't need to seek anything externally.
I think everything starts with the things we put into it, the
food, the music, the conversations, The if you're not
putting things in that are stimulating and are fostering
growth, then I think that it's going to lead to stagnancy.
So I'm very careful about who I'm talking to, what I'm
(16:03):
reading, what I'm listening to, what I'm watching, you know what
I mean? It's super powerful stuff.
Yeah, I love that. I met a coach of a women's
empowerment kind of coach a while back.
And we all know that watching the news is negative.
(16:27):
It is vile. And I heard her explain how she
cuts herself off from from all news sources and relies on, you
know, a particular friend to tell her if there's an
earthquake coming or something. No, I guess earthquake already
came. But you know, if there's if
(16:47):
there's some sort of a major. Yeah.
And it was it was just funny. And I've since heard that
message repeated so many times. And I have done a really good
job at cutting myself off to thepoint that, you know, my brother
will say to me, Gee, you know, what are you living under a
rock? Like?
How do you how did you not know about such and such global issue
(17:10):
or world event? And it's like, because it sucks,
why do I want to know that? Why do I want to tune my my
radio to that station? I don't want to think about
that. Yes, it's happening, but it's
not a damn thing I can do about it.
So I just have to, I don't know,water my garden and focus here
(17:31):
and not get sucked down that abyss.
But it's not. Easy.
And I think it is not easy. And I think that what you're
doing is a is an act of resistance.
It's revolutionary, right? You're not getting sucked into
the fear based anything. And I think that that's really,
(17:53):
that in itself is resistance. Now just for for my own value,
when you talk about meditation, what does that look like for you
or, or has it changed over time?Did you just choose to sit in a
chair or lie in bed for 10 minutes of quiet?
Do you use? Guided meditations What?
Is most important for you. No, I cannot just sit there with
(18:16):
like, Zen. I have to focus my mind on
something. And so I started with Joe
Dispenza's, like morning meditation.
I just love him. And I noticed I was blown away
by how I meditated this first time like several years ago.
(18:36):
And one of the things he says inthe meditation is if your family
is noticing the change within you, you'll know this was real.
And I, I like it came to me thatwhat somebody's going to say,
your energy is different. My 8 year old at the time I
went, came downstairs. I had meditated in the morning
and came downstairs and my son, the first thing he said to me
(18:57):
was your energy is different. I was like, what?
That's crazy. And I was like, I was hooked.
I was like, OK, there's something to this.
Not only it's not just about making yourself really calm, but
it's also about what he, what he, what he does that I like.
And this is what I do is that I kind of meditate on who I no
longer want to be and who I wantto be and what I want to be,
(19:20):
what I want more of in my life, what I want to bring into my
life. And then I give myself the
emotional energy like it's already happened.
And in that, and that's the energy that people see the
switch. Wow, that's big stuff.
And what works for me is, you know, visualizing that I want to
(19:42):
be filled with love and light and like that's part of my
everyday. I want love and light to be
radiating even to people who I don't particularly love or like.
I want that love and light because I think again, that's,
that's a resistance. I need to.
If I can give that off, then maybe you can receive that.
(20:02):
And then maybe slowly the world will change.
I mean, we're, we're living through some really crappy times
right now. So my little piece, just like
you, I'm watering my garden. This is the way that I water my
garden. You know, I'm going to be, I
want to be the best version of me, the most loving, the most
kind, the most determined, the most disciplined, you know,
version of me and. And that really helps me it and
(20:27):
I get I'm closer to that, you know, Yogi that I would be if I
just sat in a corner quietly because then I'd be punishing
myself because I thought something and Oh my God, Oh, you
just thought that, you know, I can't keep my mind.
I this works. Yeah, yeah.
Now I'm curious. I I find myself doing this where
(20:51):
I ask like a three-part questionall in one, and then I expect
you to remember all the parts ofit, right?
And you know how old I am so girl.
OK, so first part, were you raised to embrace this kind of
side of you to to connect with your intuition?
(21:13):
Was that always a part of your life?
No, I was raised Catholic and Christian and that that was a
religion that I mean, we talked about prayer a lot, but it was
very, you know, fear based sin, original sin.
(21:37):
And growing up that never resonated with me.
I didn't understand these stories.
I didn't see myself in these stories, but I went to Catholic
school through high school and faced a lot of really, you know,
strange experiences that I didn't think would necessarily
come from a Catholic environment.
(21:57):
And just, I think when I was, did my formative years in DCI,
did my formative years in DCI, went to college at GW and I got
my master's degree in GW. And then I went to Philadelphia
and I spent some time in Europe as well working as a consultant.
I don't know. It was during those times when I
(22:20):
read the book The Celestine Prophecy, and that book kind of
opened my eyes to energy and kind of transform the way that I
thought about things and the Catholicism.
I felt free to say, OK, I I haveto.
I can walk away from Catholicismbecause it just doesn't serve me
right. Right.
(22:41):
It, it just didn't, you know, but all things spiritual
empowered me to grow into the essence of who I was.
And so it really changed my mindset again, from a fixed
mindset to a growth mindset and help me again have that courage
and develop that courage and have that ability, that bravery.
(23:03):
Yet to be able to make certain changes in my life and not feel
like I'd be giving this up because I don't believe I'm
giving anything up. I believe that life is abundant
and I'm moving towards the choices that are for my for my
good and that everything here isfor my good.
And that's the way I look at life and it's helped.
And I try to speak life into, into all my circumstances.
(23:26):
Now I fall, I mean, like we all do, I fall.
But then I think that what separates me now is my ability
to jump back into the mindset that's positive and and
uplifting as opposed to dwellingin this negativity, which I
which I used to. Does that make sense?
(23:48):
So, yeah, so once you embraced this courageous perspective,
what is it like when you come upagainst a challenge, whether
it's a personal relationship, a business decision, a health
issue, just some sort of stumbling block?
(24:10):
How do you keep from falling into the trap of either woe is
me or this is hard and kind of spiraling out in that or the
fear thoughts. I mean, how did do they just not
come in or is there work that you do to keep them at Bay?
(24:32):
Oh yeah, they come in. I was just trying to think of a
situation just recently where I could have let myself spiral
into this like fear place. And then I was like, no, I'm not
going to do that. I'm going to just be calm about
it. And it was.
I've spent part of the year in Oaxaca, Mexico, because it's
just more a calming place for meto be, to do my work, right.
(24:53):
I, I will get into what I do a little bit later, but it's a,
it's a calming place for me. And my kids are with me.
And I'd sent away for my son's renewal of his passport.
And I recognized that it, it'd been two months, it'd been over
two months and we didn't have the passport back.
And now it is maybe five days before we're about to leave.
(25:14):
And there's no information in the system about where this
passport is. And we're leaving in a few
minutes to go to my to his grandmother's 80th birthday in
the United States. And that was a moment that I was
like, oh, like about to freak out.
Like, what are we going to do freak out?
And then I was like, everything happens for my best, for my, for
(25:37):
my good. And I truly believe that if we
don't make that flight, we weren't supposed to be on that
flight. If we don't go to that party, we
were not supposed to go to that party and then we had plans to
go to another country afterwards.
If we don't, we're not supposed to go.
I mean, OK, I'm not going to be silly about it.
I'm going to make put some things in place to see, OK, can
(25:58):
we do this? What are some alternatives?
But I'm not going to freak out. Don't you know that we were
leaving on a Thursday and the passport came on Wednesday of?
Course it did. And so I that gave me even more
so now the next time I know, OK,now I know.
You know what I mean. It's like everything closer to
the knowledge, OK, this is the right way, this is the way.
(26:21):
That's gold right there. I mean, getting that proof and
then just, you know, storing it in the evidence box of when I
trust myself, when I follow thispath of staying calm, believing
in the highest and best good andall that it, things fall into
place. Things fall into place, things
(26:43):
are yours exactly where you needto be.
I got to trust that you know I'mexactly where I need to be when
I need to be there that I'm a pure good hearted person.
I'm not moving from any malintention.
I'm moving in this world throughpeace and love And I, you know,
not everyone is moving through peace and love, but with me, but
(27:05):
I almost feel impenetrable, right, like impervious to their
anybody else's negativity. I just try to brush it off.
I don't know how to how else to explain it, but it it's taken a
lot of work. I mean, but I recognize that me
angry all the time. I mean, I left situations where
I just felt angry all the time. I felt like I wasn't seen.
(27:28):
I felt like I wasn't respected and that you can feel that all
over your body. I felt it.
I, I carry tension in my neck and my lower back.
I felt it everywhere and every day I was like, oh, and then I
was like, why am I doing this? You know, this is the other way.
This decision. Should I, should I stay here?
And, and spirit was like, no, you know, and I'm feeling the
(27:51):
lightness towards making this other decision.
And it's like as soon as you make the decision, it all falls
away. Hey everybody, sorry for the
interruption but I have to tell you about the upcoming gentle
coaching workshop called Coping with Challenges.
Yeah, we all have coping strategies but maybe yours are
not the most healthy or supportive for your nervous
(28:13):
system. If your go to coping mechanism
is food, drink, shopping, gambling, scrolling, bingeing,
Netflix, then I want to invite you into this free workshop
where we will explain or other techniques that will be a little
more conducive to overall well-being, feeling content,
(28:37):
serenity and even better sleep. The workshop is Tuesday July
15th, 3:00 PM Eastern Time for one hour and you can check the
show notes to register. I really hope to see you there.
Oh my gosh, yeah. But there could be listeners who
are hearing this story saying that's great that she did that,
(28:59):
but maybe she doesn't or she hasn't experienced some of the
pains of my life that she she stays love and light.
But you know, I had breast cancer or I had an abusive
marriage. So that's great for Nicole, but
that's not going to work for me.What would you say to those
(29:20):
people? I was in an abusive marriage.
I mean, you know, I was in an emotionally abusive
relationship. It's not like, you know, it's
been all like poppies and you know what I mean?
But it's about mindset, right? It's about, it's about the story
we tell ourselves. And we all got a story.
(29:45):
And you can either be the hero of the story, or you can be the
victim of the story. And we all have the pen.
We're in charge of writing that story.
I can write any story at any ending, and I can make myself be
any role in it. I choose to make myself be the
heroine of my story, right? I mean.
(30:08):
That's I, I want everyone to sitwith that for a moment because
that's, that's big. That's really big.
That choosing how we're going towrite the story, it feels like a
really big mountain to climb. Yeah, listen, I I was in a
marriage that and I don't want to say I don't want here to drag
(30:30):
my husband down or my ex-husbanddown because he's a good man.
But you know, we all have thingsright And we sometimes don't
know how to approach, you know, relationships.
We're doing the best we can, right?
But there were things that he said and did, I mean not
physically abusive, but like very emotionally abusive and and
(30:51):
even in the relationship that I just ended, very emotionally
abusive, very manipulative, lying, cheating, you know, that
type of thing. So I have felt have been, you
know, in situate in in those situations in the early part of
the marriage, I'd be like, my story was I'm in an unhappy
marriage and I would tell the story to anyone who would listen
(31:17):
if you just asked me how my day I'm not I'm not happy.
You can see like your whole yourwhole energy is just so
different. Until I was like, I think I
thought about something one timeduring this process, I thought
about something and my heart started to race and I was like,
(31:39):
what? That's interesting.
If you could just change your physical body with just your
thought in a negative way, you must be able to change your
physical body with your positivethoughts in the most beautiful
way. And I started to exercise that
muscle. And that, you know, has been
part of this process whereby, wow, I don't, I don't want to
(32:01):
feel like that. So my story now is, do I have
the courage to OK, this is this not serving me?
Are you, what are what are your,what are your contributions to
this relationship or to this thing?
You know, what are are you? How can you fix yourself so that
you are having a different experience?
And if you're doing that work and you're still not having a
(32:22):
different experience, OK, it's time.
Should I ask Spirit? Should I exit left?
And if the answer feels light, if you're following something
that feels like a lightness of being a lighter decision, then
that's the answer. That's your spirit telling you.
So I think what we need to do isbe training our bodies to like,
understand what it feels like when the universe is answering,
(32:44):
when spirit is answering, when God is answering, when Goddess
is answering. How does that feel in our
bodies? And then trust that.
And we do it once. And then, OK, that seemed like a
pretty good outcome. And then you can.
You're trusting that little by little.
It's like having this internal magic 8 ball that you can, you
(33:06):
can turn to for advice, you know, should I go out with this
guy? Should I order pizza?
What should I do? And.
Well, it might always say yes tothe people.
It might, it might. So using pizza as our Segway,
what was it like for you to shift from legal, public
(33:34):
servant, government, all the corporate stuff into the world
of food? Liberating.
It was so liberating. I was working for the federal
government at the last the last bit that I was doing and I
Jenny, I hated it, right. I just, there was an
inefficiency. There was.
(33:54):
What? I know break, I know it was
crazy and I just hated the work and I felt like I was built for
something bigger and better, like much more expansive, you
know, and and I had been a trialattorney.
So moving from at being a my, you know, a sovereign attorney
(34:15):
with my own firm and doing thesetrials and do you know, to going
into working for somebody else in the federal government, which
I thought was the safer thing todo.
I just thought it was the bad, better thing to do.
Now that I had a family, I was like, Oh no, this is awful.
And it took me a really long time to get out of it. 8 years,
I was in that federal governmentposition, just hating life.
I would go to work and be like, And so one time once I, I just
(34:40):
decided I saw a picture of a townhouse.
I was living in Miami and I saw a picture of like a Brooklyn
brownstone and I was like, I love this.
So beautiful. This is where I want to be
living. And I had been wanting to get
back up to the north cuz as I told you, I went to school in
the north. And so I put that in my office.
I put that in my office. I closed my door and I just kind
(35:01):
of like meditated on that. And I didn't do any work for
like 2 weeks. I did nothing.
I don't even care. Nobody knows.
And then I just started writing what how do I want to be living?
How do I want to be spending my days?
How do I want to be? And I just started writing all
this. I wanted to be around creative
pre bill. I wanted to start doing
something that was creative, something that flowed out of me,
(35:22):
something that helped people some.
And then ideas started coming when I almost get when I gave
myself the liberty to think likethat, right.
And I wasn't thinking about how it's going to happen, where the
money was going to come from, any of that.
I was just thinking, how do I want to be living and what, how
do I want to be serving this world?
And one of the things I remembersaying is that I wanted to be
(35:42):
around creative people and I wanted to.
And I love ice cream. But my son was born preemie and
so he's born at 1 LB. And he was having respiratory
issues and he was getting dairy and the dairy was making him
sick. And so now he's a toddler and he
can't have ice cream. And it was like, and it was hard
(36:05):
telling a toddler you can't haveice cream.
And everything that we found on the market was not it's.
It's hard telling an adult you can't have ice cream.
Right, Everything we found on the market was was not great.
It, you know, high calories, youknow, full of synthetic
ingredients. Even the things that were
purportedly healthy seemed to befull synthetic ingredients.
(36:26):
And then finally the the flavorswere super bland.
They were not flavors that were representative of any culture.
We were Caribbean. We are Caribbean.
And so they weren't representative of our culture or
any other culture. So I at that moment, I was like,
wait a minute, this is it. This could be the thing that I
(36:47):
kind of move into, but I had no idea what I was doing.
But I was like, that's the adventure, right?
That's it. But this is going to allow me to
live like that. And we ended up moving up to DC
and then eventually moving to Baltimore.
And don't you know that that picture of that brownstone is
pretty much exactly what my living room looks like?
I mean, I just visualize the hell out of it.
(37:10):
And I'm around creative people. We're talking about
collaborations. We're trying to build a business
from scratch. And we've gone, you know, within
a few years, we went from just an idea to being listed by the
Today show was one of the 41 best scoop shops in the country.
And so, you know, that's is the power of visualization, I guess.
(37:33):
Right. I mean it's like the guy from
The Secret who had the the picture of the dream home on his
vision board and then sure enough ends up living in it.
Right, right. God, that's such a cool story.
And especially as someone who chooses to eat dairy free and
and crap free ice cream, I wouldlove to be living down the
(38:00):
street from your shop because that would be nice.
It's not here. I'm yeah I won't trash talk
everything around me but it would be nice if if I had better
options. Yeah, it's coming soon.
It's coming soon. Good.
So that's amazing. So you, you pivoted on the
(38:20):
career and it opened all these exciting doors for you.
And then at a, at some point down your journey, you pivoted
again or, or added another extension to the company
diversity, the the personal endeavor diversity.
And what was what was that like?How did that come to be this
(38:44):
additional company that you started?
Yeah. So that was, you know, we're
we're working in my company's cashew.
We're black-owned cashew milk ice cream company and we do
things a little bit differently because we do only culturally
curious flavors. So we have flavors like orchata,
baklava, kufi, cortito, things like that.
(39:05):
I love how you say culturally curious, that's so fun.
Right. And it's because I am culturally
curious and we I travel a lot and I travel for food, so I'll
see your sights after my belly'sfull.
When where am I going? Where is the little cute place?
Driver, right, Right. You know what I mean?
Give me good. Food.
I don't need another cathedral. Yeah, right.
Exactly. And I'll see it, but I'll see
(39:27):
that. Right, fine.
You know, I travel for food. I'm a definitely international
like global foodie. Love it.
And so we named it after we did it based on the, the, the our
favorite treats from around the world.
And so, So what this is going well, right?
I opened a shop, we're in Whole Foods.
We're like growing, growing, growing.
(39:47):
And then a few years ago, my dadhad a medical procedure.
When he came out of the medical procedure, he didn't seem to be
the same person who went in. And it was like, whoa.
And there was a real fear that we were going to lose him.
And I'm now looking at my 10 year old son.
And thinking, wow, there's a real chance because I've never
(40:08):
recorded a single story that he's told me of his immigration
journey, emigration journey, of him growing up in South America,
of how we started life in this country, how my mom came to the
country. You know, these stories are
super powerful. And they regaled me with these
stories when I was younger and Iwas like, this is it.
There's a real chance that my kids will not know my parents or
(40:31):
my my dad. How do, how do families do this?
What it, what should we do? And so I asked my, I shared this
concern with my kids and my younger son, who was 10 at the
time, said, why don't we interview them?
So we called it a story galore, project story galore.
And we wrote, each kid wrote 10 questions and they said, OK,
(40:55):
figured out the date and all this stuff that they were going
to ask me when they were going to interview my parents.
And those 20 questions that theyasked Jenny changed the course
of my life because I witnessed so many amazing things in that
interview. In the few hours that it took
for this interview to transpire,I noticed my parents were very
(41:16):
stiff when they were telling thestory.
And my parents are literally getting up in age.
You know, this was like 3 years ago.
My parents are getting up in age.
They're no longer, you know, whothey used to be.
And but I watched them go from super stiff to like super lively
when they got back into the stories and the memory recall,
there was such joy that was coming back to them and almost
(41:39):
such purpose because they were telling me stories and that's
almost like they knew why, right?
And I watched my 7 second attention span kids wrapped, you
know, just so undivided attention towards my parents and
then watched this bonding occur that I hadn't seen before.
(42:00):
And in my meditation 111 morningnarrative bonding came, sprung
into my mind and I was like, boom, that's what I saw,
narrative bonding. I started researching it more
and thinking, Oh my God. And then I learned so many
things about the act of storytelling.
It's super beneficial, especially for older people
(42:22):
because it helps to increase cognitive functioning, helps to
stave off dementia, the risk of dementia by by about 50%.
Wow. Yeah, it's amazing.
The act of storytelling makes it.
It increases your well-being. And what happens is that there's
neurocognitive benefits. You start as the storyteller
(42:44):
start to release certain you know hormones like oxytocin.
I was just going to say it's theoxytocin, it's that bonding with
another being and the connection.
And the reason you bond is because the listener releases
the same chemicals at the same time.
Boom. When does that ever happen,
right? We are so connected through the
(43:06):
act of storytelling, Jenny. Storytelling was our first
technology and the way that we connected was through rhythm,
through frequency, through. And so that's why I think that
ancient civilizations knew this.And that's why storytelling was
told in the way that it was done, right.
(43:27):
It wasn't necessarily written down.
It was done through, through, through, through frequency,
through rhythm so that you can feel it and carry it in your
body. And and I think now, you know,
that narrative funded, that connection is made.
My kids learned about my parents.
They've known my parents their entire lives.
(43:49):
And they learned so much about my parents that they had never
discussed that they had and it made them feel closer to them.
Not only that, it made them feelpride in the stock that they had
come from. They were like, wow, they can do
that. Look what I can do with and I
have more resources. So storytelling is powerful and
(44:09):
it's our duty to preserve these stories.
You've got people in your family, I've got people in the,
in our family, they are living libraries.
And so I think it's, it's our duty to preserve these stories
and, and then people are interested in that, right?
People want to know their familygenealogy and things like that.
Pardon the Interruption, but I have to tell you about my
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save 10%. And now let's get back to the
show. Also, I started a company called
Somos. I, I started talking to people
and I talked to about 200 peoplein this like customer discovery
moment. And I was like, OK, what do you,
is this important to you? And if so, what do you do?
(45:15):
And I learned that 93% of the 200 people that I spoke to
thought that this was extremely important to document family
lives, to share, to preserve their family histories and
family stories. Only 30% did.
And they said the 30% said that they didn't do it because the
(45:37):
30%, the 80% that didn't do it. So they didn't do it because it
was overwhelming. It was a daunting task.
It's like they don't know where to start.
They don't know what questions to ask.
They don't know how to save it, where to organize it, what, what
what thing to use, what thing tonow, what equipment to use, what
equipment to now go and now timeyou have to go back and listen
(45:58):
to it and transcribe it. And they didn't have the time
and everyone thinks that they have time until, you know,
unfortunately so. Where did the name come from?
It's almost as a Spanish word that means we are.
Yep. So most means we are and the
idea is that we are here now andwe should never let ourselves
(46:23):
get in the situation again whereall we have is a photo and name
or a piece of something, you know, a little thing.
And we don't know the story behind it because we've got the
people here right now. Let's and we've got the
technology to do it. And so this is the first first
mover in the market, the first thing in the market that's
putting all of these it's, it's,oh, by the way, what it is, is
(46:45):
a, an AI powered platform that allows, it's a storytelling
platform, it's a social networking platform and it
allows families to collaboratively curate a shared
space of, of their family memories.
Everyone can participate. You can upload photos, videos,
voice notes, documents. It allows you to conduct these
(47:05):
intergenerational AI prompted intergenerational interviews in
the app, which are then tagged and categorized and transcribed
for you. And then everything goes into
this beautiful organized family archive.
So that's trying to build. And that's what I wish existed
when I was. It's literally what I wish
existed when three years ago when I was looking at my dad in
(47:27):
the hospital bed going Oh my God, it's way too early.
Wow, I love that one company is Spanish, one is French.
You know, you maybe you have plans for the next, you know,
Italian company, who knows? It's that's so fun And you know,
when you think about storytelling, that's one of the
(47:49):
things I love about podcasting. It's like for me, at least with
this show, I'm let's just say for the sake of it, it's a
one-on-one conversation. We're not looking at our phones,
we're not watching TV in addition to talking.
It's just eyes looking at each other, conversing, telling
(48:10):
stories. Do you do you think we get the
same oxytocin effect in this environment?
I think so. I mean, look, I mean, I feel
bonded to you, right? I I walk away from every
conversation like my new best friend.
I mean like, when are we gettingtogether?
What's for dinner, right? Exactly.
And I think it's because, yeah, we're now sharing parts of our
(48:32):
lives in, in, in, in a really intimate format.
So thank you for doing this because it gives people a space
not only to tell these stories, but to hear them and feel moved
and empowered to do different things with their lives.
Yeah, I have been so affected bypodcasts.
I listen to them and then and then I have to remind myself,
(48:55):
no, wait a second. You're actually not best friends
with Christina Applegate. You don't know her at all.
Even though you listen to her, you're not really friends with
her. But you know, she's on, she's on
the the the dream list of this show.
But it is a really fascinating development in this millennia
(49:16):
that this storytelling platform of podcasts, I just, I freaking
love it. But that's awesome.
I love, I love what you've created.
And I think that is a really powerful and rich way of
collecting all of that. You know, the stuff that just
finds its way into envelopes andboxes and drawers scattered in
(49:40):
different people's homes, never to be actually chronicled and
explained. And the amount of time that I
think we spend looking for looking through genealogy and
looking for some piece of ourselves, this is tapping into
something that's very innate, aninnate desire to feel rooted, to
know who you who you are and to know it through your history.
(50:03):
Yeah, I think we are two months,about a month from launch.
But I think this is going to be transformative for people
because. No, I was just thinking and even
for all the people out there whoare adopted or mixed, you know,
Foster and and mixed families wherever they land, if those
(50:26):
are, you know, it's that nature versus nurture that the
environment, those are their stories that.
So even if there isn't, you know, my brother's adopted and
he can go do 23andMe and get some data from that, but a huge
aspect of him is environmental. It's the home he came from.
(50:47):
And so those are the stories, even though there's not a blood
tie necessarily, that's his family.
I'm his family. It doesn't matter that we don't
share DNA. And so I, I really love that
this kind of, I don't want to say dismisses genetics, but
(51:09):
storytelling and family storytelling.
You're a product of your family or your your household, your
people, your neighborhood, that this could bring connection to
someone who might feel disconnected.
That's a really interesting perspective that I hadn't
(51:29):
thought of. Thank you for bringing that to
my attention. I think that, yeah, I think
you're right, that I think that there's obviously certain
stories you might want to know about your biological family.
Sure. But it's the family that he grew
up in with all the rich layers of stories.
I remember what happened in 1982.
(51:51):
Remember that time, you know, it's that that has made him who
he is, that has really made yourbrother who he is.
And so, yeah, that's super interesting.
I. Mean even I think about you.
So even if you had an adopted child, you are who you are
because of the journey your parents travelled.
And those are the lessons and and.
(52:14):
Values that you're. Passing on to your children,
whether they were biological or not.
So this is this is the the depthof what you're creating is is
just the the trickle down of of memories and values and.
Sure. Yeah, Jewels.
Jewels and it's definitely to beenjoyed now and to be shared and
(52:37):
to bring families closer and to be to feel connected like you
were saying. But then it's really to be
enjoyed as well by the future generations.
We want this to be around for a long time so that your future
generations know how your dad laughed or your mom or your
grandmother or how you laughed or how you sounded, how you
(52:57):
interacted with your son, how you interacted with your
daughter, the peace that the smile, then joy that came over
your when you talk to your daughter.
I mean, these are Yeah. I always say that genealogy
gives you data. Social media gives you dopamine.
And but we're designing somos togive you depth.
(53:20):
And it's that it's those rich layers.
It's those textures. You know that make you who you
are, make you so special and youhave a story to tell and it's
and it's your future generations.
Your daughter's kids are going to be able to see and experience
that in a whole new way. Or maybe your daughter's kids.
Kids. Texture.
That's such a good word choice there.
(53:43):
Wow, to have two companies birthed from personal tragedy
might not be the right word, butpersonal events?
Almost tragedy. Thank God they were.
I mean, yeah, almost tragedy. Yeah, and and your, your son's
experience, yeah, in NICU and, and dietary stuff, Yeah, look
(54:08):
what you've created from your events.
Yeah, and I just want to add that my son is 18, just
graduated from high school, and he's fine.
Smart as a whip. Yeah.
I just wanted to put that in there because, you know, being
born at a pound sounds like it'sa death sentence, but it was.
Amazing. It was amazing.
(54:29):
And my dad, it was fine. By the way, my dad is fine.
He's not fine, but he's not yes with us.
Yes, yeah, well, from from 1. High School graduate mom to
another virtual High 5. Congrats, I know that's a lot of
work. You know, I, I was just, I was
telling a, a story in a newsletter that I wrote about a
(54:51):
shop, a local boutique I went into to get a graduation gift
for a really special teacher, not just a teacher.
She was just a really special human in my kids lives.
And I, I wanted to get her something.
And so I'm at this fancy store and I'm, I'm, they sell cards
like those beautiful card stock,like the, you know, they just
(55:13):
feel really heavy and, and pretty.
They're artistic and I'm flipping through them and I
said, you know, these graduationcards, they're all
congratulations, graduate. Where's the one that's
congratulations to to the graduate adjacent person, right?
Right. Where's the good job mom?
Your kid graduated and they werelike, that is amazing.
(55:33):
We've never seen anything like it.
Let us know when you create themand we'll we'll carry them and
I'm like, well, OK, that just let's add that to the list of
projects. That's the things.
To do. Yeah, that I have going on, but
it's it is true. I feel like, you know, with
having just had that, it's like,good job mom, you did, your kid
graduated. We know how that pushed into
that. That was a.
(55:54):
Lot so well done, Nicole. Thank you.
And there's a. Moment.
I want 1 accomplishment at a time, right?
All right, so as we try to wrap this up, let's give you a moment
to speaking to this audience. You mentioned so many important
(56:19):
practices and concepts. What would be your closing
message that maybe you haven't said yet that you really want
midlife women to hear? You know, I think that we all
have this knowing, we all have this ability to trust our
(56:44):
intuition. It takes the internal work of
kind of shutting off the noise of the outside of being told who
you are by by things outside of you, especially as we age,
right? It's almost like you're
drifting. It's like a constant, like I
can't let this jowl hang down. I get this thing.
(57:06):
I got to do this and I got to doyou know what I mean?
It's like, don't you know, it's like every message, especially
in this country is about lookingmore youthful and, you know,
anti aging against aging. Really, why are we against
aging? And I don't think of midlife as
a crisis. I think of it as a reinvention.
And and I think if we need to sit with each other and hold
(57:30):
each other's hands and be like, girl Jenny, you know, you're
gorgeous. You don't I don't even want to
hear any conversation about thisand this pulling up this and a
little eye tuck here and this. We've got to remember to be
sisters to each other. I heard someone say something
about it was really interesting.The I think it was Glennon
(57:51):
Doyle. The two pieces of wood together,
like the joints that they form, like when you put two pieces of
wood together, like if you have a the Bureau.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
That the act of that, I think, is called sistering.
And so we need to remember that sistering, it can be a verb.
(58:11):
And that's who we need to be. That's what we need to be the
support, the anchor, the thing that, you know, helps your
sister get through, you know, in, in some communities like,
like help your sister fix her crown, right?
And I think that that's, we all have it and we just all have to
remember it. We've got to like collectively
shut out the noise and grow together in, in sisterhood and
(58:35):
forget this, you know, divisiveness that the country's
trying to push upon us, try to grow together in sisterhood.
And I think part of my role is to help others remember this,
knowing that they have, you know, and whether that's through
food, whether that's through icecream or whether that's through
storytelling, It's, I think it'spart of my, my purpose here on
(58:57):
earth. And I, and I feel like I am
alive in it, right? It, it completely brings me joy
to sit and talk to another womanabout any of this stuff.
So I'm really grateful that you have me on the show.
Little do you know, this has been more joyous for me that it
probably has been for you. I've loved this.
(59:19):
And, and it's because I get the opportunity to talk to another
woman about things that hey, we've all got this power.
We are friggin superstars and let's let's do it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.My daughter took a couple years
of psychology in high school andthis past year, one of these
beautiful stories that I hope I always remember is her snuggling
(59:43):
with one of our dogs saying, do you feel my oxytocin?
Do you let's let's share oxytocin.
Let's bring that out. And with your words, I I want to
say, Nicole, do you feel my oxytocin?
It's it's bubbling over. I.
Do feel it? I feel it.
Definitely a connection. I feel like I could float after
(01:00:07):
this conversation. I love it.
Me too. Well, I want to make sure you
tell people where they can find all the things that you're
working on. OK, so Cashew Creamery is an ice
cream shop that it's, you know, like, again, culturally curious
ice cream. It's located in Baltimore.
We ship nationwide. So go to www.cashewcreamery and
(01:00:29):
it's CAJOU creamery.com and Somos is the thing that is going
to change your family's life andthat is Somos with two MSSOMMOS
dot live. At this moment.
You can go to Somos dot live andsign up for early access so that
(01:00:52):
the minute it drops, you get theinformation and you you can sign
up and start to use it with yourfamilies.
Somos, by the way, is is with two M's because it's a
palindrome. You should be able to read it
both ways, right. And the reason why that's
important is because it's not just about us interviewing our
(01:01:13):
elders, It's about our elders, yeah, interviewing the younger
generations. And the wisdom is transferred
both ways. And so that's that was the that
was the reason. Why?
That's good. That's good.
You're a smart lady. Wow.
You're the best, thank you. So much.
(01:01:33):
All right, before we go, I want to invite you to raise a glass.
Usually I have something a little more aesthetic, but right
now it's a water bottle. So we'll toast our water
bottles. As we say.
Cheers to sistering because that's amazing.
Yes, yes. Cheers, Cheers to that.
(01:01:54):
I love it. This has been a delightful
experience in sistering. I thank you for being here.
I thank you for sharing all the different facets of your story,
of which there are so many more.But the ones that you
illuminated today we are better for.
And I just wish you so much success in everything that you
(01:02:18):
decide to do. Thank you, Jenny.
I appreciate that and I wish thesame for you.
Absolutely. All right, sister, sending you
love. Right sis, take it easy.
How incredible is Nicole Foster,right?
And now I get to call her one ofmy sideline sisters.
One of my sisters, period. Now let's get into her
(01:02:41):
incredible notes from the sidelines #1 Courage is built
and nurtured from a strong belief in self and self love and
the belief. In the universe.
Around me being abundant #2 Makedecisions based on intuition, on
what feels light versus heavy. Number 3IN stillness.
(01:03:06):
You start to hear Spirit. Try to give yourself the gift of
stillness daily, even if it's just 5 minutes by yourself with
no chores or anything else to do#4 pay attention to what you're
putting into your body, Food, music, conversation.
It needs to be stimulating and growth promoting or it will lead
(01:03:30):
to stagnancy #5 life is abundant, full stop.
It's not about giving things up,but rather moving toward things
for our highest good number six.And remember, everything happens
for my best and highest good. If something doesn't happen for
me, then it wasn't meant to be and I'm not going to freak out
(01:03:53):
about it #7. We all have a story and you
could either be the heroine or the victim #8.
We need to train our bodies to understand when spirit is
answering, noticing how it feelsin the body, and trusting it #9
give yourself the liberty to think big and write out that
(01:04:14):
vision. You don't have to know how it's
an adventure #10 The active storytelling is so beneficial,
especially for the elderly. There's an increase in cognitive
functioning that can stave off the risk of dementia.
It increases well-being and boththe storyteller and the listener
(01:04:34):
release oxytocin, creating connection, love and pride #11
we all have deep knowing and theability to trust our intuition,
but it takes internal work. To shut off.
The noise from the outside and hear what's coming from the
inside and #12 midlife isn't a crisis, it's a reinvention and
(01:04:59):
we need to support our fellow sisters through it.
Thank you Nicole Foster, that was amazing and I want to thank
all of you for tuning in, subscribing to this podcast,
rating it, reviewing it, and sharing it with others.
I am so excited about my vision for this show and I need your
(01:05:22):
help to grow the reach. So can you help me out?
Can you share this and any otherepisode that you have loved with
a friend, with a coworker, a family member, a neighbor?
These stories are so precious, so valuable.
So help me scream from the rooftops.
And get more. Subscribers, I appreciate you,
(01:05:45):
the listener so much. I appreciate my beautiful
vulnerable guests so much. Remember to check the show notes
for that free breath work and let me know if you want more.
And I will see you right back here next week for another
fantastic interview. Cheers to you.
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