This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Dorny. Hello, Let's be Clear listeners. I'm emmy and I am delighted to be able to a guest host Shannon Dougherty's Let's Be Clear podcast. I'm very very happy to be here, and I'm proud to say that I am one of the first women that came out within the fashion industry saying what's going on. We need diversity, we need inclusivity here and I shed some light on body acceptance, body neutrality, and body positivity when no one was really talking about these things. So, as you know, Shannon's podcast was all about embracing one's truth, and she was so passionate about sharing her journey with breast cancer, her ups, her downs, real moments, real parts of her life that we all got to share in the support and share in lifting her message and also encouraging all of us to look into our own lives and think, you know, what is the truth that I want to share. So I'm just delighted to be here connecting with you and carrying on what Channon has created and in her honor, and I'm just really really excited to be here. So there's quite a few things that we could talk about in sharing my truth. You know, right now I'm living in la and I'm working in another capacity outside of modeling. But what actually got me here thirty years ago was stepping up in a very thin, as thin as you can go as a model industry, in the fashion industry. And here I was an athlete, size twelve fourteen, about five eleven and in the nineties, and stylists and photographers and a lot of people were like, wait a minute, We're used to six feet five to eleven women that are size zero and two. And I just knew that I was not going to lose forty pounds to get into this industry. And I walked into a very new, burgeoning industry called the full figured industry or the plus size industry. Now, because I wasn't very very large, or I wasn't very very small, and I actually was fit, a lot of people did not know what to do with me. And my truth was I had some history with disordered eating. I was an athlete, so there were comments when I was growing up, I bet I can run faster from you, or I bet you can I you know, I don't want you to wrestle me down from the boys that I really was boy crazy with. So in society I was this strong Mamazonian scholarship, a warrity at Syracuse University, invited to the Olympic Trials, and still very athletic today. But as a growing young woman, my imagery around me was all about you can never be so thin, and I thought, well, if I can't look like that, does that make me not be good or write or be acceptable? And I always was working with it against it, And then finally when I got how old was I, I think I was in my mid to late twenties, where when I walked through the door and I got signed with Ford Models, something inside it. And I also had a background in journalism, so I was an NBC affiliate reporter. My first stop out in Arizona, and I learned about, you know, how to satiate my curiosity with people. I loved people's stories, and the more that I got out in the field and did the reporting, I loved the people that I was reporting on. But it was hard for me to sleep at night, so I took I left the job after almost two years, and I went back to New York and this is where I fell into the modeling industry, and I took with me my journalistic curiosity and when I went into the dressing rooms and when I went into you know, whatever go sees or bookings that I had, I was always wondering why the photographers spent more time with the girls that were size zero two, where certain photographers wouldn't shoot myself than these other beautiful women that were in the full figured industry because they were afraid that I, you know, Vogue or ell or any of the big magazines fashion magazines at the time wouldn't book them. So there was this very interesting We were representing one hundred million women size fourteen and above in the United States and Canada, but there was a problem with reflecting the imagery. So my truth was am I going to change the way I look? Or am I going to continue to try and just be the best that I can be? And the more that I was doing that, something started to bubble up and I had to talk about inclusivity like it was it was almost like I could not sleep unless I did that. And so I really did do a lot of talking about the why and with research and the truth started coming out, my truth, and then it was reflective of every group of women that I was speaking with that they too felt the same, or they had their own different stories, or they were learning about using their voice. And it was the most beautiful time in the nineties and into two thousand when I started doing clothing lines, and you know, the clothes. I don't know how to sew, but I used the clothing lines to be able to provide the demand that was out there. So we were in Bloomingdale's and Lord and Taylor and Dillard's, and it was truly so many and all those department stores wanted fashion shows. So I got a chance to be with the women, be able to speak with them, meet them and hear what they were talking about and what their own struggles were, whether it was media, whether it was their own personal quiet time, what was going on between the ears, what were they doing in order to feel good? And I then would turn around and then speak all that and share all that on national media and with a lot of good research and using my tools as a journalist, I along with the clients that I had and other models at the time, we really shifted the concept of what beauty was and is the need for clothing above a size twelve it's still an issue. Here we are in twenty twenty four and it's still an issue, but it has gotten better from the early nineties. Who used to just you really couldn't find anything. And that's just a little background on where I came from and where I'm at right now. I'm writing and I'm living in LA I'm also a sound healer, talk about the pandemic changing our lives. I got into sound in such a big way, and I have my own bulls. I do it for friends and family, and I actually do it for different clients if they want to work with me. But I'm also writing TV series and working with a production partner and putting empowering programming out there. You know, it all takes a lot of It takes a village for one to bring out new messaging, and especially if you're asking not only the fashion industry but also the beauty industry to change, to open their aperture, to understand more about their customer base, the whole bouquet of beauty. I look at all of us beautiful women as this beautiful bouquet of flowers, and thank goodness that we have all the flowers that we have. If we had all the flowers, and then all of a sudden one day someone said, you're only allowed to have daisies, having known that you had all these flowers before, but now you only can have daisies, or you can only have a rose, or you can only have one flower, and you could not have the whole bouquet. So obviously that's not going to happen. But opening our own aperture as to we are and the beauty that each and every individual soul and body brings to the mix of life keeps it interesting. It would be very, very boring if we all look the same, right. We need contrast, we need difference, We need to be different, have different lives so that when we all get together and we come together in community, there's something to talk about and there's also something to work with. When you have resistance, it's not always an ebb and flow. So when I say the bouquet of beauty, a lot of the industry was really working on exclusivity and beauty and working with the National Eating Disorders Association for about thirty years. At that time, it was at the very very beginning. But now today, having had thirty years behind me in the bank, I learned early on that this exclusive point of view of what beauty is got a lot of people sick, and it really wrecked with self esteem and body image. And when as a journalist, I was like, my goodness, gracious, are we going to keep on going down this road with disordered eating and surgeries and quite frankly, lots of mental health issues, and with teens and preteens having these issues. If mom was having the issues and it's filtering down. If grandma was having issues, then the mom, then the grandchildren. It was a serious situation that still remains today that it's a full core press to say I am what I am, and what I am is more than enough, and to take care of what our individual bodies need. And my goodness, I mean, we need to have good food and great and you know, good sleep, wonderful friends, and a job that we enjoy going to and at least a good job that makes us feel good when we're there. These are basic, basic things and when we have a few of those items off the list, then we're trying to overcompensate in other areas. So and this life is so so short, it's so so short. I'm a cancer thriver as well, and I learned a lot. Back in two thousand and seven when I was diagnosed with Hotchkins lymphoma. I had twenty two tumors in my chest and the surgeon took them out and I went through eleven or twelve rounds of chemo, and a lot changed for me. It had to change. I had to look at the intent of what I was doing. I had to reevaluate different friendships, intimate relationships. And it was the best teacher that I could ever ask for. I was very, very lucky to be able to survive. So with everything that was going on in the nineties and what happened to me physically with my health in two thousand and seven, it kind of was like this explosion of using my voice in a way that reflected what I learned and what I was researching and what I went through myself. I never was more appreciative of my body. It's strange. I got invited to Olympic trials, I got a full athletic scholarship to college, but I did not appreciate my body in the way that when I went through my last chemo and I was so tired, and I know many of you have gone through this, and I just said, God, bless my body, God bless my body, that it hung in there for me. I changed the way I ate. I looked at all the refined sugars. I wanted to give my body as much of a leg up in this life. I started eating in more than not, and making my own food with my own oils, and you know, using coconut sugar and all that. You know, you can go a little nutty. And I had to pull myself back. But there's a balance there, and it's our life. So the truth that I want to share is that if whatever you might be going through, whatever you might be challenged, just know that you've got this, and the answers are sometimes within the struggle and just not trying to rush through it, but just to And one thing that I learned when I was going through chemo was somebody sent me a sticky and it said shut up and meditate. I was like, well, that's not very nice. That's very nice, but I've never meditated before. And surprisingly enough, I got ten books same, all the same, the four Agreements, and I thought, well, there might be something going on here. I'm wondering what I need to do here, and when I sat down and read the Four Agreements the first book, it's now the number one book that I send to a lot of friends going through any kind of struggle. So let me try and name the four Do your best, don't make assumptions, peccable with your word, don't take anything personally. So whenever we're going through a health struggle or when there's incredible stress, we need to really pull ourselves back for wellness and say, I need to take things off my plate. I don't want to take personally of this, put person pushing me, or I want to be impeccable with my word first and foremost with myself. We have to be our own best friends. It takes some time to get there, but the truth that I know is that there is no one else that can have your back like yourself, and everything else is like beautiful, you know, bonuses, and you also, when you treat yourself really really well, you can kind of pick out people who are not treating themselves really well. And you if I'm a single gal, so i date and if I find somebody is not taking really good care of themselves, it's not that I'm really looking for it, but it's really easy to feel that when you're feeling good about yourself and you're treating yourself at this level, but you're seeing somebody and they're treating themselves at the waste level. You're kind, you're considerate, you're impeccable with your word, but you just don't go on that second date. Little things. You don't have to push anything into anybody's face. But when we start really taking good care, especially when our health becomes a challenge, I choose to look at these things, whether it's health, whether it's situations, whether it's a family member's health. I have learned to say, what is the lesson here and get into I do meditation almost every morning. If I don't, I do feel like I'm missing a body part, truly, So I'll try and do it at night if I didn't do it in the morning. But usually when I do a meditation, it's like ten to twenty minutes, nothing more than that. But it's like this anchor that really helps me sit and relax my body, get my breathing, to relax my body and relax my mind. There's so much going on right now with a lot of pressure. I can say quite a lot about social media right now, and I'm just going to talk like a mom. We got to be very very careful of how we consume social media, especially when our children are around. We are role models all the time, and when we have our kids around us, make sure that we're engaged and connected. And there is something going on with eighteen, nineteen, twenty twenty one, twenty two, twenty three four year olds, and because this is the group that had social media introduced to them at the very very beginning, way too much exposure. So for our own sake, and if we take a look at somebody else's cancer journey and they look like they are doing fantastically and they're leaping ahead, let that just be an encouragement. Do not compare ourselves. It's so so important. Everybody's journey is completely different, and your life is your life. You're not supposed to copy anybody else's life. This is your journey, this is my journey. And it has changed the way that fashion is being sold. A lot of influencers that have propelled to the forefront have really not had especially in the full figured industry, have not had a chance to have their voice be heard. They have not seen their bodies reflected and so there are some very powerful and very vocal body advocates that are now selling clothes, and I don't see a problem with that, and I think that retailers are struggling to get people back into the stores. There's a few points that when I do my consulting in businesses and retail fashion sizing and plant having a supply matching the demand and not having one or two sixteens or one eighteen. In fact, they should have so many more fourteens and sixteens and eighteens because that's the sweet spot. But and that could actually help their bottom line enormously if they would list. But that's okay, Well, that's totally fine. The majority of American women are a size fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, and twenty almost scooching up to the twenty. But so has the clothing progressed from the nineties, Yes, definitely. And a lot of companies also have not invested in two to three fit models. Now, if you're going to have an inclusive line, which I always encourage encourage lines to do zero to twenty four, you shouldn't have just one fit model. You need to have at least two so that the fuller end has the fuller cut and it's more proportionate to that full figured cut, and you have a straight size fit model that is proportionate to the straight fit. Now, if a clothing line uses one fit model, the fuller end of the spectrum is going to be too short and too small. If you see the return rates, you can see that they're using one fit model. If the return rate is much lower, you know that they're probably using doing a really good job investing. So any new company that goes into the fashion industry should definitely look into breaking down the proportion and being able to have two fit models to be able to have a line be successful styling wise. You know, we're women. We just haven't be different sizes, but we're women. We go on dates, we go to work, we have fun, we go on vacation, we have baby suits, we have all different personalities. Just because we're different sizes doesn't mean that that stuff goes away. So and yeah, so give it. Give what women have in the straight end, the smaller zero to twelve, reflect that over to twelve to twenty four because there is a customer there. I would love to talk to you about the true beauty fountaindation I feel that everybody has their own true beauty, and this is to improve youth mental wellness through events and programs designed for the whole family. And right now we have three programs that are going One is Play, Sweat, Win, and it's all about playing. I don't care if you're an adult, you still have to play. And when the adults play, the kids see the adults play, and then it's all normal. Instead of just kicking the kids and saying out and saying go play, when a family can play together, there's just more of an opportunity for that child to grow up knowing that play is not only fitness, but it's also lightening the heart. It makes us happy. We get to sweat, we get to play, we get to win. So that's something that I'm looking forward to getting into more schools and into after school programs. That's really great. Now, Fashion with that limits is over at Syracuse University for the last ten years. We're going into our tenth year and it's inclusive fashion within the fashion design programs. So a few years back I found out, let's say twenty thirteen, when I learned that there were protests in certain fashion design schools top ones that the full figured designer wanted to be able to make clothes for those client, those people, the clients that she had and her family members. But she could not find a full figure in a size sixteen or an eighteen or a twenty twenty two to twenty four form in her class, and the design school said, I'm sorry, where we don't have those, and they didn't provide it. She protested. That sparked others design schools saying well, you know, we don't have this, and other students were like, what's going on? Why don't we have this? So once again I do not know how to sew, but I knew that there was a real important opportunity here to get a true A full education in fashion meant that it had to go from zero to twelve in the forms that they had and also include sixteen, eighteen and twenty and twenty four. And at Syracuse, I just kept the first year that we introduced this program in twenty fourteen or fifteen. I know the parents really wanted to throw rotten tomatoes at me, but I said, wait, take a look. We're going to have the press show up because this is innovative, this is actually needed. We need to have design schools that graduate designers that know how to create clothing for women who are size zero to twenty four. That doesn't it makes such sense. So if they choose to go into the full full figure to end, or if they choose to go in the straight size end, or they choose to be a part of a company that wants to take their straight sized clothing options and bring them into the full figured, Syracuse was going to be able to provide the industry with these wonderful designers that was taught this, and very very very few fashion programs embrace this. So I'm very very happy that the True Beauty Foundation has fashion without limits. It's really really very important. And then five Oceanic Breasts to Calm is for the classroom where myself and other practitioners, whether it's sound healers or meditation practitioners, teach the classroom how to relax, how to get their breath normalized, to be able to work with conflict, and then show how listening skills can help. So it's five oceanic breaths that when you do a certain breath work, it can really calm you down from being in a heightened state of fear and anger, and if you just take yourself into five oceanic breaths, nice deep breaths, it will allow your vagus nerve and also your parasympathetic nervous system to calm down. That particular program was born out of pandemic time because everybody was trying to figure out how to feel better. So I love love bringing five oceanic breasts to calm to the look good, feel better foundation as well. And I've done meditation guided meditations for breast cancer thrivers and it's every little bit helps, right, especially when we're going through a really challenging time health wise, there's no reason for us to be in such a high state of stress, and just taking five breaths, just giving yourself a moment to either get out in nature and take a walk and do your very best with breath work. Being in the present moment, being in nature is one of the best ways to reset a bad day. Absolutely, I walk down. I'm very very lucky that you know now, I live very close to the ocean. It's it's frequent that I go to the ocean and walk down there. Now. I've spent years and years and years when I was living in New Jersey, taking groups out to the forest and going into the trails and all different levels of fitness. It doesn't matter. Get your hiking shoes, get a really good water bottle and put a buddy bag on or a backpack, give yourself a snack and go out into nature. Get on the trails, take a look at the birds, Listen to the birds, meditate out there if you want to camp. I encourage people to do these things because our world right now seems to be more stressful than it has been in the last twenty years. And if we can find simple tools to be able to help ourselves feel better during this time, and you know, that could be your truth. Nature is my truth, Breathing is my truth. Working with companies that really support their employees and to you know, what is your truth? Yeah, So through the adversity of my life, I'm also all the wonderful, wonderful accolades and beautiful, beautiful things that have happened in my life. You mix it together and at the end of the day, it's my responsibility to figure out how I run a role and how I want to exist in this present moment. And Shannon, I hope that you're looking down and I'm so honored to guest host today and bring my truth to this wonderful podcast that she started on her journey. And I'm really really really happy to be here truly. If you want to follow more of what I'm doing, I'm on Instagram the official Emmy th h E O F F I C I A L E M M E. And if you want to check out the podcast Let's Be Clear p O D, go ahead and follow us there. So it's been really really wonderful to be able to share today with you, and I look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please let me know. I'd be very very happy to get back to you on that. And thank you for listening and you know, checking in with this episode of Let's Be Clear. Thank you everyone. Take good care,

This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Dorny. Hello, Let's be Clear listeners. I'm emmy and I am delighted to be able to a guest host Shannon Dougherty's Let's Be Clear podcast. I'm very very happy to be here, and I'm proud to say that I am one of the first women that came out within the fashion industry saying what's going on. We need diversity, we need inclusivity here and I shed some light on body acceptance, body neutrality, and body positivity when no one was really talking about these things. So, as you know, Shannon's podcast was all about embracing one's truth, and she was so passionate about sharing her journey with breast cancer, her ups, her downs, real moments, real parts of her life that we all got to share in the support and share in lifting her message and also encouraging all of us to look into our own lives and think, you know, what is the truth that I want to share. So I'm just delighted to be here connecting with you and carrying on what Channon has created and in her honor, and I'm just really really excited to be here. So there's quite a few things that we could talk about in sharing my truth. You know, right now I'm living in la and I'm working in another capacity outside of modeling. But what actually got me here thirty years ago was stepping up in a very thin, as thin as you can go as a model industry, in the fashion industry. And here I was an athlete, size twelve fourteen, about five eleven and in the nineties, and stylists and photographers and a lot of people were like, wait a minute, We're used to six feet five to eleven women that are size zero and two. And I just knew that I was not going to lose forty pounds to get into this industry. And I walked into a very new, burgeoning industry called the full figured industry or the plus size industry. Now, because I wasn't very very large, or I wasn't very very small, and I actually was fit, a lot of people did not know what to do with me. And my truth was I had some history with disordered eating. I was an athlete, so there were comments when I was growing up, I bet I can run faster from you, or I bet you can I you know, I don't want you to wrestle me down from the boys that I really was boy crazy with. So in society I was this strong Mamazonian scholarship, a warrity at Syracuse University, invited to the Olympic Trials, and still very athletic today. But as a growing young woman, my imagery around me was all about you can never be so thin, and I thought, well, if I can't look like that, does that make me not be good or write or be acceptable? And I always was working with it against it, And then finally when I got how old was I, I think I was in my mid to late twenties, where when I walked through the door and I got signed with Ford Models, something inside it. And I also had a background in journalism, so I was an NBC affiliate reporter. My first stop out in Arizona, and I learned about, you know, how to satiate my curiosity with people. I loved people's stories, and the more that I got out in the field and did the reporting, I loved the people that I was reporting on. But it was hard for me to sleep at night, so I took I left the job after almost two years, and I went back to New York and this is where I fell into the modeling industry, and I took with me my journalistic curiosity and when I went into the dressing rooms and when I went into you know, whatever go sees or bookings that I had, I was always wondering why the photographers spent more time with the girls that were size zero two, where certain photographers wouldn't shoot myself than these other beautiful women that were in the full figured industry because they were afraid that I, you know, Vogue or ell or any of the big magazines fashion magazines at the time wouldn't book them. So there was this very interesting We were representing one hundred million women size fourteen and above in the United States and Canada, but there was a problem with reflecting the imagery. So my truth was am I going to change the way I look? Or am I going to continue to try and just be the best that I can be? And the more that I was doing that, something started to bubble up and I had to talk about inclusivity like it was it was almost like I could not sleep unless I did that. And so I really did do a lot of talking about the why and with research and the truth started coming out, my truth, and then it was reflective of every group of women that I was speaking with that they too felt the same, or they had their own different stories, or they were learning about using their voice. And it was the most beautiful time in the nineties and into two thousand when I started doing clothing lines, and you know, the clothes. I don't know how to sew, but I used the clothing lines to be able to provide the demand that was out there. So we were in Bloomingdale's and Lord and Taylor and Dillard's, and it was truly so many and all those department stores wanted fashion shows. So I got a chance to be with the women, be able to speak with them, meet them and hear what they were talking about and what their own struggles were, whether it was media, whether it was their own personal quiet time, what was going on between the ears, what were they doing in order to feel good? And I then would turn around and then speak all that and share all that on national media and with a lot of good research and using my tools as a journalist, I along with the clients that I had and other models at the time, we really shifted the concept of what beauty was and is the need for clothing above a size twelve it's still an issue. Here we are in twenty twenty four and it's still an issue, but it has gotten better from the early nineties. Who used to just you really couldn't find anything. And that's just a little background on where I came from and where I'm at right now. I'm writing and I'm living in LA I'm also a sound healer, talk about the pandemic changing our lives. I got into sound in such a big way, and I have my own bulls. I do it for friends and family, and I actually do it for different clients if they want to work with me. But I'm also writing TV series and working with a production partner and putting empowering programming out there. You know, it all takes a lot of It takes a village for one to bring out new messaging, and especially if you're asking not only the fashion industry but also the beauty industry to change, to open their aperture, to understand more about their customer base, the whole bouquet of beauty. I look at all of us beautiful women as this beautiful bouquet of flowers, and thank goodness that we have all the flowers that we have. If we had all the flowers, and then all of a sudden one day someone said, you're only allowed to have daisies, having known that you had all these flowers before, but now you only can have daisies, or you can only have a rose, or you can only have one flower, and you could not have the whole bouquet. So obviously that's not going to happen. But opening our own aperture as to we are and the beauty that each and every individual soul and body brings to the mix of life keeps it interesting. It would be very, very boring if we all look the same, right. We need contrast, we need difference, We need to be different, have different lives so that when we all get together and we come together in community, there's something to talk about and there's also something to work with. When you have resistance, it's not always an ebb and flow. So when I say the bouquet of beauty, a lot of the industry was really working on exclusivity and beauty and working with the National Eating Disorders Association for about thirty years. At that time, it was at the very very beginning. But now today, having had thirty years behind me in the bank, I learned early on that this exclusive point of view of what beauty is got a lot of people sick, and it really wrecked with self esteem and body image. And when as a journalist, I was like, my goodness, gracious, are we going to keep on going down this road with disordered eating and surgeries and quite frankly, lots of mental health issues, and with teens and preteens having these issues. If mom was having the issues and it's filtering down. If grandma was having issues, then the mom, then the grandchildren. It was a serious situation that still remains today that it's a full core press to say I am what I am, and what I am is more than enough, and to take care of what our individual bodies need. And my goodness, I mean, we need to have good food and great and you know, good sleep, wonderful friends, and a job that we enjoy going to and at least a good job that makes us feel good when we're there. These are basic, basic things and when we have a few of those items off the list, then we're trying to overcompensate in other areas. So and this life is so so short, it's so so short. I'm a cancer thriver as well, and I learned a lot. Back in two thousand and seven when I was diagnosed with Hotchkins lymphoma. I had twenty two tumors in my chest and the surgeon took them out and I went through eleven or twelve rounds of chemo, and a lot changed for me. It had to change. I had to look at the intent of what I was doing. I had to reevaluate different friendships, intimate relationships. And it was the best teacher that I could ever ask for. I was very, very lucky to be able to survive. So with everything that was going on in the nineties and what happened to me physically with my health in two thousand and seven, it kind of was like this explosion of using my voice in a way that reflected what I learned and what I was researching and what I went through myself. I never was more appreciative of my body. It's strange. I got invited to Olympic trials, I got a full athletic scholarship to college, but I did not appreciate my body in the way that when I went through my last chemo and I was so tired, and I know many of you have gone through this, and I just said, God, bless my body, God bless my body, that it hung in there for me. I changed the way I ate. I looked at all the refined sugars. I wanted to give my body as much of a leg up in this life. I started eating in more than not, and making my own food with my own oils, and you know, using coconut sugar and all that. You know, you can go a little nutty. And I had to pull myself back. But there's a balance there, and it's our life. So the truth that I want to share is that if whatever you might be going through, whatever you might be challenged, just know that you've got this, and the answers are sometimes within the struggle and just not trying to rush through it, but just to And one thing that I learned when I was going through chemo was somebody sent me a sticky and it said shut up and meditate. I was like, well, that's not very nice. That's very nice, but I've never meditated before. And surprisingly enough, I got ten books same, all the same, the four Agreements, and I thought, well, there might be something going on here. I'm wondering what I need to do here, and when I sat down and read the Four Agreements the first book, it's now the number one book that I send to a lot of friends going through any kind of struggle. So let me try and name the four Do your best, don't make assumptions, peccable with your word, don't take anything personally. So whenever we're going through a health struggle or when there's incredible stress, we need to really pull ourselves back for wellness and say, I need to take things off my plate. I don't want to take personally of this, put person pushing me, or I want to be impeccable with my word first and foremost with myself. We have to be our own best friends. It takes some time to get there, but the truth that I know is that there is no one else that can have your back like yourself, and everything else is like beautiful, you know, bonuses, and you also, when you treat yourself really really well, you can kind of pick out people who are not treating themselves really well. And you if I'm a single gal, so i date and if I find somebody is not taking really good care of themselves, it's not that I'm really looking for it, but it's really easy to feel that when you're feeling good about yourself and you're treating yourself at this level, but you're seeing somebody and they're treating themselves at the waste level. You're kind, you're considerate, you're impeccable with your word, but you just don't go on that second date. Little things. You don't have to push anything into anybody's face. But when we start really taking good care, especially when our health becomes a challenge, I choose to look at these things, whether it's health, whether it's situations, whether it's a family member's health. I have learned to say, what is the lesson here and get into I do meditation almost every morning. If I don't, I do feel like I'm missing a body part, truly, So I'll try and do it at night if I didn't do it in the morning. But usually when I do a meditation, it's like ten to twenty minutes, nothing more than that. But it's like this anchor that really helps me sit and relax my body, get my breathing, to relax my body and relax my mind. There's so much going on right now with a lot of pressure. I can say quite a lot about social media right now, and I'm just going to talk like a mom. We got to be very very careful of how we consume social media, especially when our children are around. We are role models all the time, and when we have our kids around us, make sure that we're engaged and connected. And there is something going on with eighteen, nineteen, twenty twenty one, twenty two, twenty three four year olds, and because this is the group that had social media introduced to them at the very very beginning, way too much exposure. So for our own sake, and if we take a look at somebody else's cancer journey and they look like they are doing fantastically and they're leaping ahead, let that just be an encouragement. Do not compare ourselves. It's so so important. Everybody's journey is completely different, and your life is your life. You're not supposed to copy anybody else's life. This is your journey, this is my journey. And it has changed the way that fashion is being sold. A lot of influencers that have propelled to the forefront have really not had especially in the full figured industry, have not had a chance to have their voice be heard. They have not seen their bodies reflected and so there are some very powerful and very vocal body advocates that are now selling clothes, and I don't see a problem with that, and I think that retailers are struggling to get people back into the stores. There's a few points that when I do my consulting in businesses and retail fashion sizing and plant having a supply matching the demand and not having one or two sixteens or one eighteen. In fact, they should have so many more fourteens and sixteens and eighteens because that's the sweet spot. But and that could actually help their bottom line enormously if they would list. But that's okay, Well, that's totally fine. The majority of American women are a size fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, and twenty almost scooching up to the twenty. But so has the clothing progressed from the nineties, Yes, definitely. And a lot of companies also have not invested in two to three fit models. Now, if you're going to have an inclusive line, which I always encourage encourage lines to do zero to twenty four, you shouldn't have just one fit model. You need to have at least two so that the fuller end has the fuller cut and it's more proportionate to that full figured cut, and you have a straight size fit model that is proportionate to the straight fit. Now, if a clothing line uses one fit model, the fuller end of the spectrum is going to be too short and too small. If you see the return rates, you can see that they're using one fit model. If the return rate is much lower, you know that they're probably using doing a really good job investing. So any new company that goes into the fashion industry should definitely look into breaking down the proportion and being able to have two fit models to be able to have a line be successful styling wise. You know, we're women. We just haven't be different sizes, but we're women. We go on dates, we go to work, we have fun, we go on vacation, we have baby suits, we have all different personalities. Just because we're different sizes doesn't mean that that stuff goes away. So and yeah, so give it. Give what women have in the straight end, the smaller zero to twelve, reflect that over to twelve to twenty four because there is a customer there. I would love to talk to you about the true beauty fountaindation I feel that everybody has their own true beauty, and this is to improve youth mental wellness through events and programs designed for the whole family. And right now we have three programs that are going One is Play, Sweat, Win, and it's all about playing. I don't care if you're an adult, you still have to play. And when the adults play, the kids see the adults play, and then it's all normal. Instead of just kicking the kids and saying out and saying go play, when a family can play together, there's just more of an opportunity for that child to grow up knowing that play is not only fitness, but it's also lightening the heart. It makes us happy. We get to sweat, we get to play, we get to win. So that's something that I'm looking forward to getting into more schools and into after school programs. That's really great. Now, Fashion with that limits is over at Syracuse University for the last ten years. We're going into our tenth year and it's inclusive fashion within the fashion design programs. So a few years back I found out, let's say twenty thirteen, when I learned that there were protests in certain fashion design schools top ones that the full figured designer wanted to be able to make clothes for those client, those people, the clients that she had and her family members. But she could not find a full figure in a size sixteen or an eighteen or a twenty twenty two to twenty four form in her class, and the design school said, I'm sorry, where we don't have those, and they didn't provide it. She protested. That sparked others design schools saying well, you know, we don't have this, and other students were like, what's going on? Why don't we have this? So once again I do not know how to sew, but I knew that there was a real important opportunity here to get a true A full education in fashion meant that it had to go from zero to twelve in the forms that they had and also include sixteen, eighteen and twenty and twenty four. And at Syracuse, I just kept the first year that we introduced this program in twenty fourteen or fifteen. I know the parents really wanted to throw rotten tomatoes at me, but I said, wait, take a look. We're going to have the press show up because this is innovative, this is actually needed. We need to have design schools that graduate designers that know how to create clothing for women who are size zero to twenty four. That doesn't it makes such sense. So if they choose to go into the full full figure to end, or if they choose to go in the straight size end, or they choose to be a part of a company that wants to take their straight sized clothing options and bring them into the full figured, Syracuse was going to be able to provide the industry with these wonderful designers that was taught this, and very very very few fashion programs embrace this. So I'm very very happy that the True Beauty Foundation has fashion without limits. It's really really very important. And then five Oceanic Breasts to Calm is for the classroom where myself and other practitioners, whether it's sound healers or meditation practitioners, teach the classroom how to relax, how to get their breath normalized, to be able to work with conflict, and then show how listening skills can help. So it's five oceanic breaths that when you do a certain breath work, it can really calm you down from being in a heightened state of fear and anger, and if you just take yourself into five oceanic breaths, nice deep breaths, it will allow your vagus nerve and also your parasympathetic nervous system to calm down. That particular program was born out of pandemic time because everybody was trying to figure out how to feel better. So I love love bringing five oceanic breasts to calm to the look good, feel better foundation as well. And I've done meditation guided meditations for breast cancer thrivers and it's every little bit helps, right, especially when we're going through a really challenging time health wise, there's no reason for us to be in such a high state of stress, and just taking five breaths, just giving yourself a moment to either get out in nature and take a walk and do your very best with breath work. Being in the present moment, being in nature is one of the best ways to reset a bad day. Absolutely, I walk down. I'm very very lucky that you know now, I live very close to the ocean. It's it's frequent that I go to the ocean and walk down there. Now. I've spent years and years and years when I was living in New Jersey, taking groups out to the forest and going into the trails and all different levels of fitness. It doesn't matter. Get your hiking shoes, get a really good water bottle and put a buddy bag on or a backpack, give yourself a snack and go out into nature. Get on the trails, take a look at the birds, Listen to the birds, meditate out there if you want to camp. I encourage people to do these things because our world right now seems to be more stressful than it has been in the last twenty years. And if we can find simple tools to be able to help ourselves feel better during this time, and you know, that could be your truth. Nature is my truth, Breathing is my truth. Working with companies that really support their employees and to you know, what is your truth? Yeah, So through the adversity of my life, I'm also all the wonderful, wonderful accolades and beautiful, beautiful things that have happened in my life. You mix it together and at the end of the day, it's my responsibility to figure out how I run a role and how I want to exist in this present moment. And Shannon, I hope that you're looking down and I'm so honored to guest host today and bring my truth to this wonderful podcast that she started on her journey. And I'm really really really happy to be here truly. If you want to follow more of what I'm doing, I'm on Instagram the official Emmy th h E O F F I C I A L E M M E. And if you want to check out the podcast Let's Be Clear p O D, go ahead and follow us there. So it's been really really wonderful to be able to share today with you, and I look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please let me know. I'd be very very happy to get back to you on that. And thank you for listening and you know, checking in with this episode of Let's Be Clear. Thank you everyone. Take good care,