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