Take a deep breath in through your nose. Hold it now, release slowly again, deep in Helle hold release, repeating internally to yourself as you connect to my voice. I am deeply, deeply well. I am deeply well. I am deeply well. I'm Debbie Brown and this is the Deeply Well Podcast. Welcome to Deeply Well, a soft place to land in your journey. A podcast for those that are curious, creative, and ready to expand in higher consciousness and self care. This is where we heal, this is where we become. Welcome back to the show. Hey, I'm Debbie Brown. This is the Deeply Well Podcast. Oh my gosh, I have so many thanks to say. Wow, Okay, let me ground this episode first by just inviting everyone to take a nice deep in hell through your nose and release it through your mouth with a sigh. Let's stay that one more time, deep in Hell. M nice way to ground in the present moment. Wow. We are almost halfway through this season of Deeply Well, which it's our first season with the new rename of the show, and it's been really fun because this year, well really just the last several months, I feel like I've been running into so many people that have been listening to the show, and it's been so cool. You know, the last couple of years, of course, we were in the pandemic, and then we're in like the weird last couple of years of after the pandemic, which it's still it's really been feeling like, you know, you're kind of blending the worlds of your life before, your life after the friendships you made, during the friendships you let go. So it's just it's really an interesting time. At least I guess I'll speak for myself. This has been really a season where I have been kind of back in the world in the way that I used to be, back that I used to experience the world in some ways prior to the pandemic, where I'm just traveling so so, so so so much for work, and I'm you know, got a lot of different events and so forth, and so I'm running into people I haven't seen some since like years before the pandemic, So it's been kind of nice. But in all of that, it's been really cool because I get to connect with people that listen to the show that I haven't had a chance to meet or hear from personally, So that has been beautiful, and I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone that stops me to tell me what the show has meant to them. Sometimes I get like really deeply in the work, and when I'm not working, I'm really not on social media like that, especially the last probably two to three years, definitely this last year because I realized I was kind of carrying some significant, significant burnout from working so so so much during the pandemic. So something that I've been doing with myself pretty deeply this season of my life is not really beyond social media, and I'll pop in sometimes, but I don't really I haven't really been having an opportunity to kind of dive into it. I've just been wanting to experience my life a lot more. My son just turned five and it's such a special time. And I'm working on a couple of projects that I'm really excited about. I'm writing, I'm recording. So I've just I've wanted to be with God. I've wanted to be with creation. I've wanted to be with my own creativity and new ways. So I actually got this little lock box that I popped my phone in and I try to only be with it. You know, a couple hours out of the day, but anyhow, that's something that I'm really enjoying. But I have to be careful because it's kind of making me too much of a recluse. And I feel like there are two worlds happening this like online world on the internet and then the world of my life and my home, and so I'm trying to find a better balance because I do want to interact a lot more and I do have so much to say. But I'm also just feeling so good working on more of my in the world tangible product projects excuse me, and just really deepening in the relationships that I have, which means, you know, kind of making time for phone calls throughout the week to visit to more deeply connect with the people that are important to me. So that's been really really major and beautiful and nourishing for my life. But within that, I guess I say all that to say, it's been incredibly rewarding and enriching, especially over this summer, to run into people who have been connecting with the show and getting that beautiful feedback and just the absolutely gorgeous reflections and sentiments that some of you listening have been making sure I hear and feel and I thank you, and as always I'm still in practice with receiving, so thank you, thank you, thank you, love you, love you, love you. Within that it was really cool for me to hear from a few people recently who let me know how much they're loving the new season of Deeply Well with the absolutely incredible guests that we've had. I mean, my god, we have had some mind blowing conversations so far this season that have just been so yummy and enriching, practical, important, tangible, all the things. But I was also ging a lot of feedback about how much some people have been missing those one on one episodes for me where we just dive into thoughts. And I've gotten a lot of feedback on my whales story, which has been so beautiful that I told maybe a few months back on the show No Actually, my goodness last January on the show Hello the Year flu about seeing whales on the beach in Mexico and some of the meditations that we do. So I'm gonna be kind of, you know, trying to assimilate and really integrate some of this feedback to have a better balance so that we can still get into practice, still have some of those deep one on one conversations, and also have our just thrilling, incredibly brilliant guess. So that's my intention. Let's get to it. One thing that I when I was thinking about this week's episode, I was really thinking about how much this summer has meant to be. As I'm recording this episode, we have just tiptoed into September. So fall us here, and it's pretty mind glowing to realize that we are like a coffin a sneeze away from being in the year twenty twenty four. Wow. Wow, time moves fast. Something I promised myself at the start of this summer, it was back in May. It was actually around my son's birthday. He's a little Taurus boy born in May, was that I wanted to have opportunities to say yes to things I really wanted to experience more. The last couple of years, I have really been just working, working, work and work, and deep in my motherhood and it's been incredible. It's been so rewarding. I love the work that I do, and I feel so grateful that I get to mom in the way that I do. This really breath taking child that I'm blessed to know. But it also means that a lot of my opportunities to travel, I've really been focusing that time on work travel, so I haven't had the chance to kind of deepen in my pleasure travel as much. And that's something I wanted to try to do this summer. So I made packed with myself in May that starting in June it was going to be a summer of yes for me. I wanted to push myself to say yes to more social engagement because typically that's the first thing to leave my list if I'm running low on time, because I get I just get so much out of having alone time. And as some of you may know, I had a career and entertainment for much over a decade, which meant that four to five nights out of every week I was out of the house, you know, to like two am, and I met shows and concerts and things and parties and all the stuff. And that is not a life that I actually am most drawn to. But I did it for so so, so, so so long. So the last several years since I've come fully into where I believe God has me called in the way that I meant to use my gifts, and that has not been something I've really wanted to do at all. So I turned down so many invitations to things. And you know, I'm a single mom, so I'm I'm working, and then I'm loving just being with my kid and that also, you know, you get tired, so so I'm the first friend to pull out of something. I am definitely admittedly the first friend to let you know, yo, I'm tired. Won't make it. Love you see you soon. I wanted to push myself to stay awake a little bit longer, and I wanted to push myself to get dressed and drive, you know, however long it took to get to something, and I wanted to I wanted to dance, you know, I wanted to get dressed. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to reconne to the parts of my personality I don't always get a chance to be in, which is extremely silly, very just full of banter, full of odd facts, wild child, hippie dancing, frolicking. I'm a frolicker, you know. I just I wanted to be all of me and all my facets and all my cylinders in a way that doesn't always happen when you get to a certain age, you know, mid thirties, when you get to you know, perhaps have a family or have you know, additional responsibilities like those things just don't happen as often, and I was missing it. So this summer that was my promise to myself, to whoever, to whatever I felt God was calling me to to just say a full bodied yes and follow the commitment through or at least open my heart to the experience in some way. So that's what I need and everything everything that came my way this summer, my God, did I say. Yeah. So it's a lot of deepening and connections with friends. There's a lot of cookouts, there's a lot of mushroom journeys. It was a lot of fun, a lot of dancing and music and night swims and beaches, and a lot of saying no to things, you know, and being really deeply okay with that. Something that I came to know about myself this summer was that well, I've known this for quite a while, but I think I finally owned it and restructured my life accordingly. But I have not been down with, you know, the girl Boss era for a long time. I left that world in about twenty sixteen, and actually I was in a Forbes article about it at the time that talked about, you know, successful career, but you know burned out, doesn't want to wear busy as a badge. And I talked a lot about that back in twenty sixteen, and I think, you know when you're really clear on how you want to move in the world, especially when it comes to work, because we are these spiritual beings having human experience, but you got to work to live, right or you gotta do your mission. You got to get work out of you, even if it's not to live, You need to create. I believe that with my whole soul. And so you say yes to stuff or sometimes you still pack it on. And this was a summer where I decided to actually really clear the slate. And I started this intention back at the top of the year when I built my workflow for the year. I built it with the intention that you're going to say yes to high impact projects so that you can really serve a larger amount of people, but you're gonna say no to a lot of requests to a lot of money, potentially because I wanted to reclaim my time and that is the one thing that there's just no substitution for time. That is the one thing that there is no replacement for time. You know, it's the one thing that you will just never get back. And something that I've really been living by for quite a while is I look at the historical proof of my life. So I remember early in my twenties when I was working, and at that time I was really getting going in entertainment, so doing the most. But I remember, you know, the kind of advice at the time, which was from that zeitgeist of that era. It was all about hustling and grinding and you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, all the things we've been talking about. Sleep is a cousin of death, and you know, hustle, hustle, and you know, some years later came girl Boss and CEO with this and so and so with that, and everything is about how you're marketing yourself as a brand. I don't want to be a brand. I want to work. I want to serve. I want to live in my purpose. I want to help. I want to use my brilliance and my creativity and all the skills that I have a mass these rooms and rooms filled with skills but I don't want it to always have to be about look at me or look at a photo of me, or me me, me, me me, And it's hard to do because that also matters. That's how people get to know who you are, that's how your work gets out there, that's how you know. It's just how life works. It's not good or bad, but it's just not something that I particularly care for. So with all of that in mind, it's been extremely important for me to find ways the last couple of years to disconnect from those narratives. So if you've noticed a little bit of changes in the way that I post, really that's just why I have to be authentic, because that's the only way that I can have the fuel and the motivation and the energy to do the actual work that I do. I don't always want to be talking about the work. I want to do it anyway. So that's what goes through my mind. So back to my summer Yes here we are, summer of Yes. I wanted to use all that new free space I had built into my calendar for the summer, and I wanted to do things that helped me really come alive, but that I didn't have to control a lot. So one of the first things that I did for my summer of yes was that trip to Paris that I talked about a few episodes back that I took with two of my girlfriends. It was incredible, it was romantic, it was my god, it was oo stunning. The next one of the one of the things I wanted to say yes to in August, was this incredible trip to Martha's Vineyard that I took, where I just experienced a level of wholesomeness, safety, and beauty that I had never ever, ever experienced in my life. It was shocking and stunning. And I'm an La girl, born and raised in La So it never popped into my head that Martha's Vineyard or any of those kind of East Coast destinations like the Hampton's. None of that was ever on my radar is something that I thought was interesting. It just yeah, it didn't. It never even occurred to me. For me on the West coast, it was more about Mexico or Hawaii or northern California, Santa Barbara. You know, we're we're along the beach, so all of our coastal stuff. And I had this tremendous opportunity to go work with Chase and with Deborah Lee's organization Leading Women to find out in Martha's Vineyard for this incredible event that they put together with just stunning, brilliant, loving, artistic, creative women. And I went there for the event and I didn't know what to expect, And as soon as I got to Martha's Vineyard, it was just I don't even have the words the amount of beauty, the flowers, the gardens everywhere, the wholesomeness. Again, I mean, it just felt so safe. And I went in August, which is historically a time that a lot of black families for the last you know, one hundred plus years would come down to the island, and I went to Equal Beach and Oak Bluffs and Edgar Town and it really changed me. I've never felt so safe and so family oriented in a place, and I just cannot wait to take my son there. So that's something that stretched me in a way I really didn't expect it to. So if any are in that area, if you can make it to Boston, get on the ferry or catch a flight in, I really really really recommend having that experience. I've only been in August but I would say, especially go in August. It was really really really really really really really special. So that was something that was another yes that just filled me in a way I couldn't even have imagined before I said yes, yes, yes deeply. Well, something else that I did that I just got back from yesterday, actually little jet legged, was I took this really beautiful trip to a very untouched, kind of remote part of Italy. One of my friends, Michelle and her wonderful love David, got married and I had the honor of being able to attend their wedding, which is what brought me there and you know, really put it on my radar. Wow. I'd been to Italy before. I've had the chance to travel to a few amazing places within that incredible country, but this was my very first time in Pulia, which is spelled with the G, so if you read it, it looks like Puglia, but it's Pulia. And I also had a stopover in Milan, and right before I left, I did a touchdown in Rome and had one of the best meals of my life. Dear God, it's crazy, but when I landed in Pulia, this trip stretched me in such a multitude of ways. So I flew out by myself and one I took my It was my very first time flying on Emirates. I'm a super well traveled person. I mean I travel one to two times a week. I'm flying somewhere the last couple of years, and so I've flown every airline. Big love to Delta, United American Strong, second and third Emirates. I have never woh an Emirates international flight is just the flyest thing I've ever experienced, period period. The food phenomenal. It was my first time too. I'm doing an international trip that had me on a double decker plane, so I had never done that before. It felt very like mad Men, or you know, just like very like early fly times, like fifties, sixties. You know. It had the lounge in the back, which was crazy. We had a party. There was like music videos playing on the ceiling and like drinks and a station of sandwiches and couches, and then in my little pod it was just I mean, come on, I had a vanity mirror with good lighting and excellent food and oh it was great. It was great. So I land, I get to Milan, and I was stopping over in Milan, and then hopping on another flight to get to Brands to then take a drive into Pulia. It was very far, very far, very far, very far, a lot of odds and ins, and when we stopped me on it was just I started walking and I'm trying to get to Customs and I come upon what feels like this cavernous part of the airport. It's this gigantic space, like huge, like bigger than a warehouse, like massive, massive, massive space, like half an acre of space, and it's all black, ceiling, walls, floor, everything black. And they had an art installation set up that was so mind blowing and it was really interesting because so I'm a tattoo girl and I love getting ink, and I love sleeves and I love all of it. So I had been following this page online that posts a lot on my Instagram, that posts a lot of really interesting, kind of invoc sometimes cringey, emotional, sexual, compelling art from all over the world. And last month they had posted this video of this particular art where the artist was tattooing Roman sculptures, see you know, the white sculptures, very often nude men and women. His name is Fabio Villi and he tattoos, classical marble sculptures, sculptures with just insane full body tattoo artworks, so colorful, really inspired by like sacredous. So it has a lot of religious themes and themes of higher awareness and multidimensionality. And it just took my breath away seeing it. So I didn't even remember that I ever saw that. I go to start walking through the airport to get to customs, and I look and I end up in this cavernous warehouse, black hole, and it is filled with like fifteen of his sculptures and they are massive, like fifteen feet in the air, you know, a hand that's actually the size of like three couches put together. And they're all the classical Roman statues with his tattoos. And I just said, wow, God. You know one of the things that I a prayer I said into motion while I was on the plane, that Emmer's flight Lord, I said, you know, I just want an experience like I want to like make love to my life. I want everywhere I go to feel inspiring, and I want to have opportunities to just really be surrendered to delight, to say what wow, whoa how did that happen, you know, And this was my first experience. Right when I touched down, I ended up on this art installation and an airport in Italy of something I had seen online and been obsessed with. So that was really special and so much gratitude and reverence for the artists. Fabio VIALI look him up if you get a chance. It's a Milan airport installation. It's called OOP. The name isn't coming up, but it's beautiful, it's searchable. I'm blown away. I'm just I bowed at the creativity. I bow to the mastery, bowed to the artistry. It was exceptional. It was so inspiring. So that was the first thing. Then I get on this southern flight and you know, eventually I make it in and the whole time I was just like surrendered to the serendipity of it all. You know. I didn't know that Pulia was such a sleepy town, like there's there's really truly nothing there. Everything is about an hour's drive. But it was exceptional. It was beautiful and strange at the same time. The pace of life. I felt like I was with the ancients. It was so special to move that slow and have everyone around you moved that slow too. No one at all spoke English, which obviously no expectation. I'm in another country, but a lot of the countries that are outfitted for tourism, usually English is spoken because it might be a common language for a multitude of countries. Right, So I usually fare pretty well. I always try to, you know, keep a translator near me on my phone and just be very respectful. But I always find that I can get a lot done just from gestures and you know, just using your phone. So I wasn't really thinking of it, and then I got there and it was like, oh wow, and it was just the most beautiful kind of gratitude and humility that can come across you when you realize you're in someone else's home and you want to experience it and you need their help, you know. And everyone was just so wonderful and so patient, and so having that experience, I was just kind of literally I was staying in the stunning property and they had all of these fig trees everywhere, so I would just pick figs and like have like a purse full of figs and eat the figs and drink espresso. But it was so remote that there really wasn't like, not a lot of food to be found until like nine pm at night, and a couple places would open, and everything was like about an hour drive away, and there were no stores. There was not you know. Yeah, it was so interesting and beautiful and ancient and old. And most of the places that I went to were crafted and built in the sixteenth century, which is like, you know, the fifteen hundred, so you feel the history of that. And that's my favorite thing about traveling to old worlds is being able to connect with that energy. It's just yeah, the feeling for me is always like gratitude and humility of like, wow, I'm here too, you know. It's kind of like it reminds me of Shawshank Redemption at the end of the movie. I forget his name, but he's like, what's that man? Why can't I think of his name? Y'all know what I'm talking about. Morgan Freeman, bless his character when he wrote, you know, so and so was here, where you'd write, you know, they'd show that on people carving that into a tree, so and so is here. Whenever I go to old worlds, I kind of just walk and I smile at the art and I smile at the cobblestones, and I smile at you know, the bricks, and I just say, DEVI was here, DEVI was here too, Me too. So I just love it. I'm so grateful. The wedding I went to was absolutely beautiful. I went to the ocean. They have this really, it's the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea were the ones that were around the island, and I'd never been in those seas before. I'd never been in the Ionian Sea. Please Lord, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly if I'm not be gentle. It felt divine. There was a quality of silence in Pulia like I'd never heard. I've been on the way outs before, I've been on the tallest mountains before, I've been a lot of different places that were quiet and remote. There has been nothing that has had kind of the haunting silence that Pulia has. And I was there with a wedding party, so it was actually quite loud a lot. But anytime I got by myself, or like when I went to the ocean, I would hear nothing, but in a way that I could hear everything. I hope that makes sense. I would hear I kept getting I kept getting these words spoken to me in my brain as I would experience the silence there, and the words were, this is the sound of creation. This is how it sounded at creation. It felt like I was hearing the pure universe. Like if you ever google what the Milky Way sounds like, or like what space sounds like, That's how it sounded. It was remarkable. It was so haunting. It was so haunting. So I will be back there. I don't know when, but I really want to go back alone, or I really want to go back with a very small, small, small group of friends and do a silent retreat there. There was no noise pollution, there was no light pollution, there was no there were no conveniences of any kind. And I love what that brings out in me. Yo. I love the way I'm able to bloom in that and the parts of myself I'm able to have access to when I feel that way. It was so gorgeous and I'm so grateful, deeply well beautiful wedding. We danced, we laughed. God, my friend Michelle, the bride was just like the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen. I was like, what, oh, beautiful beautiful, beautiful couple, bless, bless, bless. So then I had about twenty four hours left of being in that region, and then I was racing home and I wanted to make sure I could get my son from school after the long weekend, and so I decided to leave Pulia at the very last minute and book a flight to Rome. And you know, out there, once you're on that side of the world, once you're in Europe, you can get on really easy quick flights. It's like an hour flight, forty five minute flight, you know, very similar if I was like in La wanting to fly to San Diego or something like that. So I get on the little you know, the the flight that operates more like a like an uber and I get to Rome and I end up I stayed at Soho House, Rome, which was really dope. By the way, if you get a chance, please go. I never stayed in those before, so it was lovely experience, highly recommend And I only had enough time to like do one thing, have a fantastic meal, and then maybe a quick walk and then I had to leave for the airport at like six am maybe, so I had roughly twelve hours there, Like I landed at nine pm, checked into my room, and then I had I checked out of my room by like six forty five to go to the airport to get home. Gratefully, I've been to Rome before, so I've seen the magnificence of it in so many ways. But Michael was to just get a killer meal because I had been eating nothing but figs and drinking espresso for the last several days. So I thought I was going to go to Italy and happily put on a few pounds from all the incredible pasta, but I actually lost a couple. So I get to I get to Rome and we get recommended this restaurant called Rissolio Risciolio. I tagged it on my Instagram, so check out my most recent post to see kind of the images from what I'm talking about any tags, I can't even begin to tell you. It was the most incredible pasta meal I have ever had in my entire, entire entire life. It made me cry a little, like it was so good. I closed my eyes and I was like slowly, like I wasn't even chewing it. I was like pushing it up against the roof of my mouth with my tongue to let it slowly disintegrate with my eyes closed and a slow swallow, like that's how good it was. And then like a little tear came in my eye and I just started laughing. I was like, how is it this delicious? So that level of delight blew me away, and I was so grateful for that meal. We had tarremisu after and oh my god, and then a nice little quick walk around the city, you know, late at night, which I kind of cut short because it gets a little real in Rome and night, and you know, made it back at enough time to fall asleep for a handful of hours and then take a great shower, put on a lot of lotion, some compression socks, some comfy cloth, and go hop on a plane for a thirteen and a half hour flight home. And by the time I got home, summer was over. So my summer. Yes, I am so, so, so grateful, And I just want to share that if there is a craving on your heart, and let this be the soule work as we close this episode, if there's something you're craving, I want you to call it in. And I realize that for each of us, we have different ways that we can experience these cravings. We all have different restrictions on our time, we all have different barriers to being able to have even the space to take time for ourselves, and we all have different price points for things. For each of us, it'll look so different, but the impact doesn't have to be any less. The felt experience, the intensity of that felt experience can be yours, irregardless of what your budget or time allotment may be. And for some, and I say this with such such deep honor and really honesty, I know some people are listening to this show and saying, there is no way because my time looks like this and I'm working two double shifts, or I have this level of responsibility. I'm caretaking for a parent, I'm caretaking for a child. I know we all have, in different seasons, vastly different burdens and life experiences, and sometimes what can feel like real weight that can keep us from the things that we crave, the things that we deserve, the things that we desire. So any advice I share, I want to I want to share with that honesty, also humility and honor. But I do want to say that there are remedies so that you still get something, even if it's not the grandest of experience. Don't let that stop you from inviting something more into your heart and life. I think so often if we think it can't be or look in a certain kind of way, or comparatively it's not in a certain kind of way, or if it doesn't fit the dream vision, then what's the point of even attempting. But we're the point of attempting. Even a morsel pleasure can fuel you in ways you can't imagine. So I hope that we all find ways to give that to ourselves and our soul. Work for today will really be finding what that unique intention is for each of us, for each of you, what is a kind of experience you're craving? You know? Take my story out of it, take the travel out of it, and think about the intention. I didn't know how any of that was going to manifest, but my intention was to really come alive in new ways. My intention was to be inspired, to be able to move slow enough that I could pay attention to the pleasure that was available to me, to move slow enough to pay attention to the delight that could be possible. So for you, as you're sitting here and you're taking in my story and taking in these thoughts. What does that look like? What could that be for you? For this fall? You know, doesn't just have to be a summer of Yes, it's a fall of blank, a fall of what. For me personally, this fall, my attention is to have a fall of creativity and focus. A lot of work I got to get through this fall that I'm so excited about that. I'm really looking to find new ways to support myself in my ability to stay on task and to stay in excellence and to meet the demands of my life in this moment in time, specifically the creative demands. So that's my intention for this season. So think about that for yourself. What's your intention for this fall? What are you craving? What kind of experiences? The less specific in terms of how that will be fulfilled, the better, because that's where the magic of the universe gets to really come in. So think about that piece. You know, say I'm craving blank, but don't necessarily say I'm craving a trip to Costa Rica. You know, maybe think about the ways a trip to Costa Rica would make you feel, and then call in those cravings, call in those feelings, and if you happen to do that, go ahead and hit me up on social. I'm going to be trying to do that a little more and I can't wait to read it and connect. So have a beautiful rest of your day from listening to this. We have some amazing guests lined up, really special guests coming into next week's episode. And then I can't wait to share with you my recap episode from Women Who Heal at the Omega Institute, Queen of Fuin and I got back from Just Wow, a truly spiritually expansive experience, So I can't wait to talk about all the findings and all the practices that we unpacked there with you in an upcoming episode. Thank you for listening. Leave a five star review if you get a chance, peace I must stay Connect with me on social at Debbie Brown that's Twitter and Instagram, or you can go to my website Debbie Brown dot com. And if you're listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, don't forget. Please rate, review and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Deeply Well is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network. It's produced by Jacqueis Thomas, Samantha Timmins, and me Debbie Brown. The Beautiful Soundback You Heard. That's by Jarrelen Glass from Crystal Cadence. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Take a deep breath in through your nose. Hold it now, release slowly again, deep in Helle hold release, repeating internally to yourself as you connect to my voice. I am deeply, deeply well. I am deeply well. I am deeply well. I'm Debbie Brown and this is the Deeply Well Podcast. Welcome to Deeply Well, a soft place to land in your journey. A podcast for those that are curious, creative, and ready to expand in higher consciousness and self care. This is where we heal, this is where we become. Welcome back to the show. Hey, I'm Debbie Brown. This is the Deeply Well Podcast. Oh my gosh, I have so many thanks to say. Wow, Okay, let me ground this episode first by just inviting everyone to take a nice deep in hell through your nose and release it through your mouth with a sigh. Let's stay that one more time, deep in Hell. M nice way to ground in the present moment. Wow. We are almost halfway through this season of Deeply Well, which it's our first season with the new rename of the show, and it's been really fun because this year, well really just the last several months, I feel like I've been running into so many people that have been listening to the show, and it's been so cool. You know, the last couple of years, of course, we were in the pandemic, and then we're in like the weird last couple of years of after the pandemic, which it's still it's really been feeling like, you know, you're kind of blending the worlds of your life before, your life after the friendships you made, during the friendships you let go. So it's just it's really an interesting time. At least I guess I'll speak for myself. This has been really a season where I have been kind of back in the world in the way that I used to be, back that I used to experience the world in some ways prior to the pandemic, where I'm just traveling so so, so so so much for work, and I'm you know, got a lot of different events and so forth, and so I'm running into people I haven't seen some since like years before the pandemic, So it's been kind of nice. But in all of that, it's been really cool because I get to connect with people that listen to the show that I haven't had a chance to meet or hear from personally, So that has been beautiful, and I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone that stops me to tell me what the show has meant to them. Sometimes I get like really deeply in the work, and when I'm not working, I'm really not on social media like that, especially the last probably two to three years, definitely this last year because I realized I was kind of carrying some significant, significant burnout from working so so so much during the pandemic. So something that I've been doing with myself pretty deeply this season of my life is not really beyond social media, and I'll pop in sometimes, but I don't really I haven't really been having an opportunity to kind of dive into it. I've just been wanting to experience my life a lot more. My son just turned five and it's such a special time. And I'm working on a couple of projects that I'm really excited about. I'm writing, I'm recording. So I've just I've wanted to be with God. I've wanted to be with creation. I've wanted to be with my own creativity and new ways. So I actually got this little lock box that I popped my phone in and I try to only be with it. You know, a couple hours out of the day, but anyhow, that's something that I'm really enjoying. But I have to be careful because it's kind of making me too much of a recluse. And I feel like there are two worlds happening this like online world on the internet and then the world of my life and my home, and so I'm trying to find a better balance because I do want to interact a lot more and I do have so much to say. But I'm also just feeling so good working on more of my in the world tangible product projects excuse me, and just really deepening in the relationships that I have, which means, you know, kind of making time for phone calls throughout the week to visit to more deeply connect with the people that are important to me. So that's been really really major and beautiful and nourishing for my life. But within that, I guess I say all that to say, it's been incredibly rewarding and enriching, especially over this summer, to run into people who have been connecting with the show and getting that beautiful feedback and just the absolutely gorgeous reflections and sentiments that some of you listening have been making sure I hear and feel and I thank you, and as always I'm still in practice with receiving, so thank you, thank you, thank you, love you, love you, love you. Within that it was really cool for me to hear from a few people recently who let me know how much they're loving the new season of Deeply Well with the absolutely incredible guests that we've had. I mean, my god, we have had some mind blowing conversations so far this season that have just been so yummy and enriching, practical, important, tangible, all the things. But I was also ging a lot of feedback about how much some people have been missing those one on one episodes for me where we just dive into thoughts. And I've gotten a lot of feedback on my whales story, which has been so beautiful that I told maybe a few months back on the show No Actually, my goodness last January on the show Hello the Year flu about seeing whales on the beach in Mexico and some of the meditations that we do. So I'm gonna be kind of, you know, trying to assimilate and really integrate some of this feedback to have a better balance so that we can still get into practice, still have some of those deep one on one conversations, and also have our just thrilling, incredibly brilliant guess. So that's my intention. Let's get to it. One thing that I when I was thinking about this week's episode, I was really thinking about how much this summer has meant to be. As I'm recording this episode, we have just tiptoed into September. So fall us here, and it's pretty mind glowing to realize that we are like a coffin a sneeze away from being in the year twenty twenty four. Wow. Wow, time moves fast. Something I promised myself at the start of this summer, it was back in May. It was actually around my son's birthday. He's a little Taurus boy born in May, was that I wanted to have opportunities to say yes to things I really wanted to experience more. The last couple of years, I have really been just working, working, work and work, and deep in my motherhood and it's been incredible. It's been so rewarding. I love the work that I do, and I feel so grateful that I get to mom in the way that I do. This really breath taking child that I'm blessed to know. But it also means that a lot of my opportunities to travel, I've really been focusing that time on work travel, so I haven't had the chance to kind of deepen in my pleasure travel as much. And that's something I wanted to try to do this summer. So I made packed with myself in May that starting in June it was going to be a summer of yes for me. I wanted to push myself to say yes to more social engagement because typically that's the first thing to leave my list if I'm running low on time, because I get I just get so much out of having alone time. And as some of you may know, I had a career and entertainment for much over a decade, which meant that four to five nights out of every week I was out of the house, you know, to like two am, and I met shows and concerts and things and parties and all the stuff. And that is not a life that I actually am most drawn to. But I did it for so so, so, so so long. So the last several years since I've come fully into where I believe God has me called in the way that I meant to use my gifts, and that has not been something I've really wanted to do at all. So I turned down so many invitations to things. And you know, I'm a single mom, so I'm I'm working, and then I'm loving just being with my kid and that also, you know, you get tired, so so I'm the first friend to pull out of something. I am definitely admittedly the first friend to let you know, yo, I'm tired. Won't make it. Love you see you soon. I wanted to push myself to stay awake a little bit longer, and I wanted to push myself to get dressed and drive, you know, however long it took to get to something, and I wanted to I wanted to dance, you know, I wanted to get dressed. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to reconne to the parts of my personality I don't always get a chance to be in, which is extremely silly, very just full of banter, full of odd facts, wild child, hippie dancing, frolicking. I'm a frolicker, you know. I just I wanted to be all of me and all my facets and all my cylinders in a way that doesn't always happen when you get to a certain age, you know, mid thirties, when you get to you know, perhaps have a family or have you know, additional responsibilities like those things just don't happen as often, and I was missing it. So this summer that was my promise to myself, to whoever, to whatever I felt God was calling me to to just say a full bodied yes and follow the commitment through or at least open my heart to the experience in some way. So that's what I need and everything everything that came my way this summer, my God, did I say. Yeah. So it's a lot of deepening and connections with friends. There's a lot of cookouts, there's a lot of mushroom journeys. It was a lot of fun, a lot of dancing and music and night swims and beaches, and a lot of saying no to things, you know, and being really deeply okay with that. Something that I came to know about myself this summer was that well, I've known this for quite a while, but I think I finally owned it and restructured my life accordingly. But I have not been down with, you know, the girl Boss era for a long time. I left that world in about twenty sixteen, and actually I was in a Forbes article about it at the time that talked about, you know, successful career, but you know burned out, doesn't want to wear busy as a badge. And I talked a lot about that back in twenty sixteen, and I think, you know when you're really clear on how you want to move in the world, especially when it comes to work, because we are these spiritual beings having human experience, but you got to work to live, right or you gotta do your mission. You got to get work out of you, even if it's not to live, You need to create. I believe that with my whole soul. And so you say yes to stuff or sometimes you still pack it on. And this was a summer where I decided to actually really clear the slate. And I started this intention back at the top of the year when I built my workflow for the year. I built it with the intention that you're going to say yes to high impact projects so that you can really serve a larger amount of people, but you're gonna say no to a lot of requests to a lot of money, potentially because I wanted to reclaim my time and that is the one thing that there's just no substitution for time. That is the one thing that there is no replacement for time. You know, it's the one thing that you will just never get back. And something that I've really been living by for quite a while is I look at the historical proof of my life. So I remember early in my twenties when I was working, and at that time I was really getting going in entertainment, so doing the most. But I remember, you know, the kind of advice at the time, which was from that zeitgeist of that era. It was all about hustling and grinding and you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, all the things we've been talking about. Sleep is a cousin of death, and you know, hustle, hustle, and you know, some years later came girl Boss and CEO with this and so and so with that, and everything is about how you're marketing yourself as a brand. I don't want to be a brand. I want to work. I want to serve. I want to live in my purpose. I want to help. I want to use my brilliance and my creativity and all the skills that I have a mass these rooms and rooms filled with skills but I don't want it to always have to be about look at me or look at a photo of me, or me me, me, me me, And it's hard to do because that also matters. That's how people get to know who you are, that's how your work gets out there, that's how you know. It's just how life works. It's not good or bad, but it's just not something that I particularly care for. So with all of that in mind, it's been extremely important for me to find ways the last couple of years to disconnect from those narratives. So if you've noticed a little bit of changes in the way that I post, really that's just why I have to be authentic, because that's the only way that I can have the fuel and the motivation and the energy to do the actual work that I do. I don't always want to be talking about the work. I want to do it anyway. So that's what goes through my mind. So back to my summer Yes here we are, summer of Yes. I wanted to use all that new free space I had built into my calendar for the summer, and I wanted to do things that helped me really come alive, but that I didn't have to control a lot. So one of the first things that I did for my summer of yes was that trip to Paris that I talked about a few episodes back that I took with two of my girlfriends. It was incredible, it was romantic, it was my god, it was oo stunning. The next one of the one of the things I wanted to say yes to in August, was this incredible trip to Martha's Vineyard that I took, where I just experienced a level of wholesomeness, safety, and beauty that I had never ever, ever experienced in my life. It was shocking and stunning. And I'm an La girl, born and raised in La So it never popped into my head that Martha's Vineyard or any of those kind of East Coast destinations like the Hampton's. None of that was ever on my radar is something that I thought was interesting. It just yeah, it didn't. It never even occurred to me. For me on the West coast, it was more about Mexico or Hawaii or northern California, Santa Barbara. You know, we're we're along the beach, so all of our coastal stuff. And I had this tremendous opportunity to go work with Chase and with Deborah Lee's organization Leading Women to find out in Martha's Vineyard for this incredible event that they put together with just stunning, brilliant, loving, artistic, creative women. And I went there for the event and I didn't know what to expect, And as soon as I got to Martha's Vineyard, it was just I don't even have the words the amount of beauty, the flowers, the gardens everywhere, the wholesomeness. Again, I mean, it just felt so safe. And I went in August, which is historically a time that a lot of black families for the last you know, one hundred plus years would come down to the island, and I went to Equal Beach and Oak Bluffs and Edgar Town and it really changed me. I've never felt so safe and so family oriented in a place, and I just cannot wait to take my son there. So that's something that stretched me in a way I really didn't expect it to. So if any are in that area, if you can make it to Boston, get on the ferry or catch a flight in, I really really really recommend having that experience. I've only been in August but I would say, especially go in August. It was really really really really really really really special. So that was something that was another yes that just filled me in a way I couldn't even have imagined before I said yes, yes, yes deeply. Well, something else that I did that I just got back from yesterday, actually little jet legged, was I took this really beautiful trip to a very untouched, kind of remote part of Italy. One of my friends, Michelle and her wonderful love David, got married and I had the honor of being able to attend their wedding, which is what brought me there and you know, really put it on my radar. Wow. I'd been to Italy before. I've had the chance to travel to a few amazing places within that incredible country, but this was my very first time in Pulia, which is spelled with the G, so if you read it, it looks like Puglia, but it's Pulia. And I also had a stopover in Milan, and right before I left, I did a touchdown in Rome and had one of the best meals of my life. Dear God, it's crazy, but when I landed in Pulia, this trip stretched me in such a multitude of ways. So I flew out by myself and one I took my It was my very first time flying on Emirates. I'm a super well traveled person. I mean I travel one to two times a week. I'm flying somewhere the last couple of years, and so I've flown every airline. Big love to Delta, United American Strong, second and third Emirates. I have never woh an Emirates international flight is just the flyest thing I've ever experienced, period period. The food phenomenal. It was my first time too. I'm doing an international trip that had me on a double decker plane, so I had never done that before. It felt very like mad Men, or you know, just like very like early fly times, like fifties, sixties. You know. It had the lounge in the back, which was crazy. We had a party. There was like music videos playing on the ceiling and like drinks and a station of sandwiches and couches, and then in my little pod it was just I mean, come on, I had a vanity mirror with good lighting and excellent food and oh it was great. It was great. So I land, I get to Milan, and I was stopping over in Milan, and then hopping on another flight to get to Brands to then take a drive into Pulia. It was very far, very far, very far, very far, a lot of odds and ins, and when we stopped me on it was just I started walking and I'm trying to get to Customs and I come upon what feels like this cavernous part of the airport. It's this gigantic space, like huge, like bigger than a warehouse, like massive, massive, massive space, like half an acre of space, and it's all black, ceiling, walls, floor, everything black. And they had an art installation set up that was so mind blowing and it was really interesting because so I'm a tattoo girl and I love getting ink, and I love sleeves and I love all of it. So I had been following this page online that posts a lot on my Instagram, that posts a lot of really interesting, kind of invoc sometimes cringey, emotional, sexual, compelling art from all over the world. And last month they had posted this video of this particular art where the artist was tattooing Roman sculptures, see you know, the white sculptures, very often nude men and women. His name is Fabio Villi and he tattoos, classical marble sculptures, sculptures with just insane full body tattoo artworks, so colorful, really inspired by like sacredous. So it has a lot of religious themes and themes of higher awareness and multidimensionality. And it just took my breath away seeing it. So I didn't even remember that I ever saw that. I go to start walking through the airport to get to customs, and I look and I end up in this cavernous warehouse, black hole, and it is filled with like fifteen of his sculptures and they are massive, like fifteen feet in the air, you know, a hand that's actually the size of like three couches put together. And they're all the classical Roman statues with his tattoos. And I just said, wow, God. You know one of the things that I a prayer I said into motion while I was on the plane, that Emmer's flight Lord, I said, you know, I just want an experience like I want to like make love to my life. I want everywhere I go to feel inspiring, and I want to have opportunities to just really be surrendered to delight, to say what wow, whoa how did that happen, you know, And this was my first experience. Right when I touched down, I ended up on this art installation and an airport in Italy of something I had seen online and been obsessed with. So that was really special and so much gratitude and reverence for the artists. Fabio VIALI look him up if you get a chance. It's a Milan airport installation. It's called OOP. The name isn't coming up, but it's beautiful, it's searchable. I'm blown away. I'm just I bowed at the creativity. I bow to the mastery, bowed to the artistry. It was exceptional. It was so inspiring. So that was the first thing. Then I get on this southern flight and you know, eventually I make it in and the whole time I was just like surrendered to the serendipity of it all. You know. I didn't know that Pulia was such a sleepy town, like there's there's really truly nothing there. Everything is about an hour's drive. But it was exceptional. It was beautiful and strange at the same time. The pace of life. I felt like I was with the ancients. It was so special to move that slow and have everyone around you moved that slow too. No one at all spoke English, which obviously no expectation. I'm in another country, but a lot of the countries that are outfitted for tourism, usually English is spoken because it might be a common language for a multitude of countries. Right, So I usually fare pretty well. I always try to, you know, keep a translator near me on my phone and just be very respectful. But I always find that I can get a lot done just from gestures and you know, just using your phone. So I wasn't really thinking of it, and then I got there and it was like, oh wow, and it was just the most beautiful kind of gratitude and humility that can come across you when you realize you're in someone else's home and you want to experience it and you need their help, you know. And everyone was just so wonderful and so patient, and so having that experience, I was just kind of literally I was staying in the stunning property and they had all of these fig trees everywhere, so I would just pick figs and like have like a purse full of figs and eat the figs and drink espresso. But it was so remote that there really wasn't like, not a lot of food to be found until like nine pm at night, and a couple places would open, and everything was like about an hour drive away, and there were no stores. There was not you know. Yeah, it was so interesting and beautiful and ancient and old. And most of the places that I went to were crafted and built in the sixteenth century, which is like, you know, the fifteen hundred, so you feel the history of that. And that's my favorite thing about traveling to old worlds is being able to connect with that energy. It's just yeah, the feeling for me is always like gratitude and humility of like, wow, I'm here too, you know. It's kind of like it reminds me of Shawshank Redemption at the end of the movie. I forget his name, but he's like, what's that man? Why can't I think of his name? Y'all know what I'm talking about. Morgan Freeman, bless his character when he wrote, you know, so and so was here, where you'd write, you know, they'd show that on people carving that into a tree, so and so is here. Whenever I go to old worlds, I kind of just walk and I smile at the art and I smile at the cobblestones, and I smile at you know, the bricks, and I just say, DEVI was here, DEVI was here too, Me too. So I just love it. I'm so grateful. The wedding I went to was absolutely beautiful. I went to the ocean. They have this really, it's the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea were the ones that were around the island, and I'd never been in those seas before. I'd never been in the Ionian Sea. Please Lord, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly if I'm not be gentle. It felt divine. There was a quality of silence in Pulia like I'd never heard. I've been on the way outs before, I've been on the tallest mountains before, I've been a lot of different places that were quiet and remote. There has been nothing that has had kind of the haunting silence that Pulia has. And I was there with a wedding party, so it was actually quite loud a lot. But anytime I got by myself, or like when I went to the ocean, I would hear nothing, but in a way that I could hear everything. I hope that makes sense. I would hear I kept getting I kept getting these words spoken to me in my brain as I would experience the silence there, and the words were, this is the sound of creation. This is how it sounded at creation. It felt like I was hearing the pure universe. Like if you ever google what the Milky Way sounds like, or like what space sounds like, That's how it sounded. It was remarkable. It was so haunting. It was so haunting. So I will be back there. I don't know when, but I really want to go back alone, or I really want to go back with a very small, small, small group of friends and do a silent retreat there. There was no noise pollution, there was no light pollution, there was no there were no conveniences of any kind. And I love what that brings out in me. Yo. I love the way I'm able to bloom in that and the parts of myself I'm able to have access to when I feel that way. It was so gorgeous and I'm so grateful, deeply well beautiful wedding. We danced, we laughed. God, my friend Michelle, the bride was just like the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen. I was like, what, oh, beautiful beautiful, beautiful couple, bless, bless, bless. So then I had about twenty four hours left of being in that region, and then I was racing home and I wanted to make sure I could get my son from school after the long weekend, and so I decided to leave Pulia at the very last minute and book a flight to Rome. And you know, out there, once you're on that side of the world, once you're in Europe, you can get on really easy quick flights. It's like an hour flight, forty five minute flight, you know, very similar if I was like in La wanting to fly to San Diego or something like that. So I get on the little you know, the the flight that operates more like a like an uber and I get to Rome and I end up I stayed at Soho House, Rome, which was really dope. By the way, if you get a chance, please go. I never stayed in those before, so it was lovely experience, highly recommend And I only had enough time to like do one thing, have a fantastic meal, and then maybe a quick walk and then I had to leave for the airport at like six am maybe, so I had roughly twelve hours there, Like I landed at nine pm, checked into my room, and then I had I checked out of my room by like six forty five to go to the airport to get home. Gratefully, I've been to Rome before, so I've seen the magnificence of it in so many ways. But Michael was to just get a killer meal because I had been eating nothing but figs and drinking espresso for the last several days. So I thought I was going to go to Italy and happily put on a few pounds from all the incredible pasta, but I actually lost a couple. So I get to I get to Rome and we get recommended this restaurant called Rissolio Risciolio. I tagged it on my Instagram, so check out my most recent post to see kind of the images from what I'm talking about any tags, I can't even begin to tell you. It was the most incredible pasta meal I have ever had in my entire, entire entire life. It made me cry a little, like it was so good. I closed my eyes and I was like slowly, like I wasn't even chewing it. I was like pushing it up against the roof of my mouth with my tongue to let it slowly disintegrate with my eyes closed and a slow swallow, like that's how good it was. And then like a little tear came in my eye and I just started laughing. I was like, how is it this delicious? So that level of delight blew me away, and I was so grateful for that meal. We had tarremisu after and oh my god, and then a nice little quick walk around the city, you know, late at night, which I kind of cut short because it gets a little real in Rome and night, and you know, made it back at enough time to fall asleep for a handful of hours and then take a great shower, put on a lot of lotion, some compression socks, some comfy cloth, and go hop on a plane for a thirteen and a half hour flight home. And by the time I got home, summer was over. So my summer. Yes, I am so, so, so grateful, And I just want to share that if there is a craving on your heart, and let this be the soule work as we close this episode, if there's something you're craving, I want you to call it in. And I realize that for each of us, we have different ways that we can experience these cravings. We all have different restrictions on our time, we all have different barriers to being able to have even the space to take time for ourselves, and we all have different price points for things. For each of us, it'll look so different, but the impact doesn't have to be any less. The felt experience, the intensity of that felt experience can be yours, irregardless of what your budget or time allotment may be. And for some, and I say this with such such deep honor and really honesty, I know some people are listening to this show and saying, there is no way because my time looks like this and I'm working two double shifts, or I have this level of responsibility. I'm caretaking for a parent, I'm caretaking for a child. I know we all have, in different seasons, vastly different burdens and life experiences, and sometimes what can feel like real weight that can keep us from the things that we crave, the things that we deserve, the things that we desire. So any advice I share, I want to I want to share with that honesty, also humility and honor. But I do want to say that there are remedies so that you still get something, even if it's not the grandest of experience. Don't let that stop you from inviting something more into your heart and life. I think so often if we think it can't be or look in a certain kind of way, or comparatively it's not in a certain kind of way, or if it doesn't fit the dream vision, then what's the point of even attempting. But we're the point of attempting. Even a morsel pleasure can fuel you in ways you can't imagine. So I hope that we all find ways to give that to ourselves and our soul. Work for today will really be finding what that unique intention is for each of us, for each of you, what is a kind of experience you're craving? You know? Take my story out of it, take the travel out of it, and think about the intention. I didn't know how any of that was going to manifest, but my intention was to really come alive in new ways. My intention was to be inspired, to be able to move slow enough that I could pay attention to the pleasure that was available to me, to move slow enough to pay attention to the delight that could be possible. So for you, as you're sitting here and you're taking in my story and taking in these thoughts. What does that look like? What could that be for you? For this fall? You know, doesn't just have to be a summer of Yes, it's a fall of blank, a fall of what. For me personally, this fall, my attention is to have a fall of creativity and focus. A lot of work I got to get through this fall that I'm so excited about that. I'm really looking to find new ways to support myself in my ability to stay on task and to stay in excellence and to meet the demands of my life in this moment in time, specifically the creative demands. So that's my intention for this season. So think about that for yourself. What's your intention for this fall? What are you craving? What kind of experiences? The less specific in terms of how that will be fulfilled, the better, because that's where the magic of the universe gets to really come in. So think about that piece. You know, say I'm craving blank, but don't necessarily say I'm craving a trip to Costa Rica. You know, maybe think about the ways a trip to Costa Rica would make you feel, and then call in those cravings, call in those feelings, and if you happen to do that, go ahead and hit me up on social. I'm going to be trying to do that a little more and I can't wait to read it and connect. So have a beautiful rest of your day from listening to this. We have some amazing guests lined up, really special guests coming into next week's episode. And then I can't wait to share with you my recap episode from Women Who Heal at the Omega Institute, Queen of Fuin and I got back from Just Wow, a truly spiritually expansive experience, So I can't wait to talk about all the findings and all the practices that we unpacked there with you in an upcoming episode. Thank you for listening. Leave a five star review if you get a chance, peace I must stay Connect with me on social at Debbie Brown that's Twitter and Instagram, or you can go to my website Debbie Brown dot com. And if you're listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, don't forget. Please rate, review and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Deeply Well is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network. It's produced by Jacqueis Thomas, Samantha Timmins, and me Debbie Brown. The Beautiful Soundback You Heard. That's by Jarrelen Glass from Crystal Cadence. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.