I was so honored and grateful to be invited to join this deep conversation about mental health during COVID, radical wellness, and being a woman of color entrepreneur with clinical social worker and Centered Self founder Tia Marie Brumsted and Elly Jane, host of the Women-Owned Wednesday podcast and founder of Elly Jane Collective.
Here's the link to the full episode, and below are some of my favorite gems I wrote down in my custom wellness journal as I listened!
podcastone.com/pd/Women-Owned-
On self-compassion, giving ourselves grace:
"I continue to take things one moment, one challenge at at time...bringing my best self everyday, and some days, my best is really not that good, but that's ok...I'm allowing myself space to be alright with that and to recreate what I need the next day." - Tia Marie Brumsted, founder of Centered Self Custom Planners
On self-advocacy:
"We can verbalize what's working better or differently...As we're starting to open up and return back to normal, where are those places where we don't want to return to what we were doing before? What is the new normal for us, how we can set better boundaries, and how can we move forward in a way that works better for us?" - Tia Marie Brumsted, founder of Centered Self Custom Planners
On purpose as a woman of color:
"What I was taught was that my duty as a woman is to sacrifice myself in taking care of others, and my worth comes from how much I'm sacrificing myself...I've been finding the right balance. I do believe my purpose is in service of others...it's about doing that in a way that is not self-sacrificing but is self-sustaining...That's a cycle that I would like to break - the sense that our contribution has to come from suffering and pain. It doesn't." - Alina Liao, founder of Zenit
And the mantra we ended with (which came from a custom journal order last year):
"I am not trying to run from my darkness, I am learning to love myself there."
Reflections on the Podcast Experience from My Custom Wellness Journal
I was actually nervous to listen to the episode, because I felt the night we recorded it, I was really struggling to get the words out. I put it off for a few days. But I also knew I wanted to listen to it. In my custom wellness journal, I wrote about how I was nervous and putting it off because I was worried I had let down the host and my fellow guest speaker with my speaking challenges. Thankfully, in my custom wellness journal, I have my prompt, "What's my wisest self saying?" I wrote in my custom wellness journal, "My wisest self is telling me, it will be ok, and I can't change the recording anyway, so do what you know is right and take a listen. You owe it to the work Elly Jane put into creating this meaningful, heartfelt episode."
So as I listened, I did feel embarrassment about all my "ums," which I wrote about in my custom wellness journal. But, as I let myself feel that feeling through my journaling, I came to another feeling - pride. I have to say, I am proud of what I offered to the conversation. I am grateful to have been part of it and learned more from Tia and Elly about how they approach their wellness and self-care, especially as women of color entrepreneurs. And it felt good to put that down on paper too in my custom wellness journal - how moving through those feelings of fear and nerves and embarrassment let me get to pride.