Regina Louise on Strategies for Unconditional Self-Love

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Regina Louise, an American author, child advocate, and motivational speaker who's best known for successfully navigating through more than thirty foster home placements as a ward of the California Juvenile Court system. Today Regina and Eric discuss her book Permission Granted kick Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self Love. Hi Regina, Welcome to the show. Hi Rach, thank you for inviting me. I am really

excited to talk with you. We are going to be discussing your book that's called Permission Granted kick Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self Love. But before we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with the pair Rible. In the parable, there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a seconds. She looks up at her grandmother and she said, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. Beautiful. What comes to mind right now is we're born into the circumstances we're born into. For some those circumstances are rich and are fortifying in that we have parents or caregivers who are there to validate our experience into our realities. And so we moved through life perhaps with a balanced sense of self. And for me, that wasn't my experience, and so I was born into the pure, raw emotions of all the challenges of life. And so in me lives the wolf of

envy as well as the wolf of possibility. And I have tread the razor's edge of both all of my life. So when I feed envy, I feed insecurity, I feed of self worth, I feed less than I feed a false self. When I feed possibility, I picked myself up by my boot straps, and I become effective, intentional determine. I move from a place of wonder, imagination, and excitement

and respect for this thing called me. It's beautiful. Before we get into your book, I think, having a little bit of knowledge about your background you referred to it there just a second ago, you know you were not born into very fortunate circumstances, and then it's safe to say things potentially got worse from there. I'm not laughing

at your childhood. It's just it's a remarkable story. And while you've told old that story in a variety of places and we're not going to go into it in its long form at all, you know, a minute or two about it might help give listeners a little context about your background before we move into your book and your strategies that you've used to really heal yourself. Thank you, Eric for that preface into what I'm going to respond to,

because you identify the quality of remarkable. My life is remarkable, and I'm gonna I will accept that, I will move forward and answering the question from that place of my life being remarkable, that's beautiful. I grew up in the same unlicensed foster home which would be referred to today as a kinship home of sorts. My mother lost her mother in early childhood latency age, and she actually was found sitting next to her mother's body who had been deceased,

and then was taken in by a neighbor. And all sorts of things were a flip, you could say one my say, my mother was I a victim of being sexually trafficed, and my sister was born such an act whereas I I am the product of two teenagers who were very attracted to one another, and I am the result of that attraction. So I had have permissioned myself to re imagine how I came into this plane. So I came into this plane as a result of at

the very least lust, And I'll take that energy. There's some energy in it, and you know that may contribute to my passionate sense of spirit and my seemingly ever vest and hope. You know, so I am. And I was a very spirited, coacious, in your face sort of a child. And I wasn't willing to accept my circumstances. I wasn't willing to allow anyone two beat my spirit out of me. It just wasn't up for negotiation. So, as young as I can remember, I've always felt protective

of my own interior experience. And I was a victim of horrific child abuse and neglect. So I learned two a tune to what did not feel right inside of me, and then listen for the ways in which too alleviate the suffering or discomfort. As young as I can remember, eleven and then one day in church, I had an experience which not so unlike the phrase and O holy night. When the soul felt its worth, I felt my worth,

and I decided to defend my own innocence. And so I took myself away from the people who did not seem capable. And I didn't stop running until tell you the truth. I don't know if I ever stopped running in one way or another, but I was. I left that situation and I went on to live in over thirty different foster homes. I was in a residential treatment center level fourteen, which is about the highest a child can be placed in before being admitted to a mental hospital.

And I was. I lived much of my adolescent on a cocktail of psycho tra tropic rather drugs cocktails. And you know, it took decades for me to understand the politics of race, class, gender. That was the framework through which people saw me. They pathologized me. And given that I was an orphan with no one fighting for me, no one considering my humanity or my dignity, I began the work of remembering the soul felt its work and

unpacking that. And that is the way I believe I was able to resurrect my spirit, fortify my imagination and permit myself to live my best life. Despite the I love this word. I'm gonna try and use it in this conversation, despite the vicissitudes. I love that word too. In this moment, right here, right now, Eric, I feel spirits fingerprints massaging, the sadness, massaging the release of built up grief, you know, And so thank you for an opportunity to explore that and allow me to be real

with it. Yeah. And one of the things I love about the book is that there's a lot of very difficult circumstances in it for you that you don't shy away from, nor do you shy away from the impact that has had on you as an adult. And yet there's always a sense of a belief, you know. I like what you said there. The soul feels it's worth There's always this sense through it all that you somehow had that vision, which I think is really really powerful.

And given that I am a soul not unlike any other soul in the eight billion souls upon this planet, pushed to the extreme, we are all built for resilience. And for those who believe in the tenant of Christianity, look what Jesus himself endured to only transcend that. So if the Crucifixion and the resurrection are emblematic of what is possible for the soul, then I've done nothing more than what any of us are capable of doing. It's just that I was put to the test as a

human to do it, as many are. And it's the belief for me. My thoughts drive my beliefs. My beliefs drive my emotions how I feel about a thing. And because I believed that for good to love the world, that he gave his only begotten son, and who saw the show believes you have evolescent life, I believe that that would be the depth and the crux of a belief that I believe. I wrapped my soul around the

axle of mm hmm. It sounds like you've got a little friend there who's not happy about not being involved in this conversation. You heard Tandi. Yes, she, Tandy really likes me. She likes being around me, and sometimes I'm trying to get away from Tandy to have some space. But how old is she? Tandy turned one on December five on Monday. Alright, so she's still learning? Yes, yes, yes, yes, We've got two dogs in the other room, and they

are on the other end of the life spectrum. They're both well I think one of them might be eleven, you know, So there, you know, we call it. We jokingly refer to it as that the doggy retirement home here, you know, because they're they're they're elderly, but so they're they're a little more peaceful than than Tondy is. Yeah. Do you know how they spin on a window or a door when they walk and she's not above it? Yep,

she will span errant yep. Well, if at any point you feel like letting her in, she's she's of course welcome. I think I need to do that otherwise, so give me a moment. Okay, yeah, h alright, let's see. Okay, Well, welcome Tandy. So I want to move into your book. Now, there's nine strategies for, as you said, bootstrapping your way to unconditional self love. And I want to start though.

There was a phrase you used just kind of in passing early in the book, but it stuck out to me and I wanted to ask it, and you you referred to it. You said, we can all bend a fit from a cleared out heart, say a little bit more about what a cleared out heart means to you, because it's a beautiful phrase, thank you for me. A

cleared out heart means I've been attentive two. What shows up, what comes calling, what comes knocking in my life, And I take the time that it takes to be with, sit with, listen, to contemplate whatever arrives, And in so doing I privilege challenging feelings, fear in the avarice, whatever arrives, and it becomes familiar with these visitors, and I understand to the best of my ability what each of them, the gift that each of them brings to and for me,

And with that, I'm better able to rest in the disturbance, rest and the truth of who I am. So the more I face the repressed experiences, the more room I make, more space I make for the repressed emotions or feelings or experiences to show up, and the more that I can filter them through the contact of me. Wow, you can take your collar off temporarily. That will, that will solve that problem. I've got lots of experience in this area. Yeah, Tony Dundy, come, Mamma, come, come, Yeah, here we go.

Eric is so smart, and he must have a great editor. I and my sound editor, Christopher, who's listening to this. Hello, Chris, uh loves dogs too, so we are we are big,

big dog lovers. So okay, okay, I don't know. Um. We we're just finishing up sort of talking about privileging difficult emotions, my my, my feelings, and especially the difficult ones, because the heavy ones fear, which is big, the lack of feelings safe, which is big in the which is big for me to filter those through my heart and to understand the circumstances, to understand that in order for

me to be alive. Now, I was brilliant enough to hand over my sense of self, my sense of being to someone else to use in order for them to try and live their own lives vicariously through me, and and recognize that I had a lot of adults in my life who who were predators, emotional predators, spiritual predators, right at intellectual predators. And when I can hold that and become the refuge for all of those experience says and recognize that they are not me, but rather circumstances

I endured, I clear my heart. Oh thank you for that. And I think that applies a little bit to what you say your strategy number four, which is to grow through what you go through. And in the book, though over and over, I'm really struck by you talk about

doing what you just said. And I think you used the word I privilege the emotions that are negative, right, And there are lots of times in the book where you really, in essence stare them down, right, but you bring them and you say, I'm gonna be here with you, right, And a lot of us are very happy to try out the idea that are difficult experiences in life are

what help us grow. It's a lovely idea. It sounds good on a greeting card, right, But when we're right up against those emotions, we just want to get away. And I was just really impressed by how you stay with them. So how do you help yourself do that, because that's a difficult thing to do. You know, we're wired to kind of want to get away from a

negative emotion. Sure, And I just want to digress a bit and say, addiction, substance abuse, those are bridges that we build consciously or otherwise two avert ourselves from going to the depth of the souls in need. I believe that when I can withstand the heat of my own loss, my own disappointment, my deep insecurities, my deep years, when I can not disintegrate unintentionally in the face of intimacy with myself, then what I do is what my caregivers, not one of them really could do. So my task

as the adult. And let me say this before I say that, I know I cannot change the past. I know I cannot change anything that occurred in my childhood. But what I have come to understand is that I can reclaim the dignity that I lost. M that I can because dignity and self worth are but synonyms, right, So I understand the assignment, and the assignment is to believe that within me exists a mind, a soul, and a power that is far greater than any lesser law

in the universe. And every time I show up and I don't unintentionally disintegrate interface of intimacy, every time I show up to allow what occurred and never had the chance to be expressed to metabolize. What I am doing is giving my spirit the opportunity to triumph. You mentioned addiction. I'm a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. And there was a line in the book that really struck me, and I think it sums up very well kind of what

I ultimately believe about. We have to be able to do this and over in order to get over addiction. And this is what you said. There was only one way to be without smoking, and that was defined a way to be with myself, my feelings, my loneliness, the reality, my circumstances, the depth of the loss and the pain. And it's just that, like I think, to get over an addition, we have to get to the point where we go. I can be with what's in here. I may not like it, it's uncomfortable, but I can be

with it. And I love the way you speak to that, and you talk about the fact that whether you want to think of it as something out there, something in here, it doesn't even matter. There is a power that we have, there's a dignity that we have as people that allows us to be able to do that. I agree, you know, I get tender as you put it that way, as you reflect back right, Writing oftentimes can be a one

way It's like a one way experience. But when I experience you giving me back and understanding the meaning of what I've written. It mirrors back to me the gravity of what I experienced, and it it allows me to feel seen in a very tender way, in a very true way. And I just wanted to respond to that. And I didn't hear your next statement because I was still and that I am glad for. That makes my

heart warm to hear you say that. We were just sort of talking about this, this ability to be able to handle what is inside of us, you know, to know that there is something within the human spirit or God's spirit, or whatever your beliefs are, there's something in there that is, as you said earlier, is capable of overcoming these even horrible things. Well, as you say what you say, I will claim it for myself as the

ginormous back cause, front cause, first cause, all cause. Lately I have been working two sharpen my awareness and what that means for me is pruning, pruning the white noise, if you will, that assaults that intellect, the mind endlessly. And one of the things that was so profound recently, I was driving through my neighborhood and a lot of the streets are shrouded in trees that have the capacity

to move towards one another, to create a canopy. And as I was driving through, I recognized, and it nearly knocked me to my knees. Although I was driving that I was actually driving through the mind of consciousness, pure unadulterated. You can't adulterate it, pure, pure consciousness. And I began to weep, and I saw how the trees, how the tips of their valves reached out in a majestic way to create this entrance into the mind, into the spirit

of God and all that is. And I watched the breeze move through the trees and the effortlessness of existence being what it is and not needing to be different for anyone or anything. And I gave myself permission two consider that, no matter what anyone says about my race, my creed, my color, my religion, for whatever that means, my life can be effortless. And I can recognize that there was something larger, greater, deeper than what I can see with the naked eye. And I am grateful. Yeah,

that's beautiful. And you just said something that made me think about a conversation I had with somebody the other day, and you were talking about all the white noise that assaults our soul and spirit now and there there is so much of it. There is so much of it. And I was thinking about also the experiences that you've had that caused great, great harm and trauma, and what's the right way to say this? When we are really deep in healing, there is a clarity sometimes that we

don't get in day to day life, you know. I know for me my early years of recovery, the transformation was so clear and so profound because I was so I was so damaged, there was so much to do. I find sometimes it harder to enter that space as I am more healed, And I think, to your point, the way to do it is that pruning of these things. I think sometimes early on in our healing, we're already pruned.

Everything is pruned right, and as we heal and we return to more of the parts of the world my experiences, and this is for myself, is I have to, like you say, I have to really work on pruning the unimportant stuff that starts to get in the way. One of the things that has supported me on my healing journey, other than the decades of talk therapy that I have allowed myself. Thank at you. I am what's called I

worked for the Hoffman process US. I don't know how familiar you are with it, but I am a Huffman processed teacher eight times a year outside of my own private practice of socio emotional coaching healing. And one of the first times I ever at the opportunity to grieve publicly, openly, loudly, was when I went through the Hoffman process for the first time in two thousand and fifteen. And if you want to talk about growing through what you go through,

h I had never eric. I didn't even know there was There's so many things I didn't even know that I had not been pretty to in my life, so many and it was going through that experience and facing the death. I mean, I'm talking the simple experience of not being celebrated really for a birthday, not receiving Christmas

cards Christmas. I mean decades and decades and decades of feeling as though I was a refugee in my own country, feeling as though I was an impostor in my own country, feeling as though I was completely, completely, unapologetically systematically erased, and walking around with that having more grief then I knew was humanly possible, being a reservoir for so much toxicity that is just handed down epo genetically, and yet

recognizing my soul's worth, and it was my duty. It was my duty and it is my duty two empty the garbage can, to take it out, to recognize the toxicity that which is not for me, let it go. And as Reverend like I'm thinking, as Reverend fourteen century, was it, Reverend Hillo, If I'm not for me, who

will be? And so giving my self permission to listen to that inherent GPS system a k A. My spirit to show me, to lead me, to guide me in that which was for me, and to turn from that which is not, and so growing through what I go through, going through all of it, I listened. I listened, and I decided to become that interpreter of my own maladies and carve out a way to be in this world on my own terms and to commit to that. And

that is how I live my life today. And also this this other idea that just popped into my mind as I began to write my latest book, Permission. Granted it was the first time I allowed myself to really recognize and to feel the truth that I spent my adolescence and solitary confinement. Eric who does that? Who does to a low girl, black white Latina doesn't matter? And I remember when I was on the set of the

movie about my life. I am Somebody's child, and the young actor who played me, Angela Fairley, ran to the gate and grabbed a hole to that cyclone fence as Jean drives away. And at that very time that movie was released, they were children at the border, being separated from all the thing knew. And I can see how none of it really it's personal, and how do we how do I transcend even that, even that, and find and remember not even fine, just remember my word. Then

I invite other people to remember, there's sometimes tragedy. It's going to find who it's gonna find, and it's going to do what it does. And I allowed myself to consider that it's not personal. The ena all that you've endured, it is not personal. This had nothing to do with who I am, because none of these people knew, They didn't know what I would grow up to be. They had no idea. This wasn't about me. This was about their limitations. I just had and to be at the

end of their projections. You know, I wasn't protected, so I've learned to protect myself. I wasn't valued, so I learned to value myself. So in all those places where those people who were tasked to care for me aren't or weren't, it literally has made more room for me to show up and to be all that I can be, which of course has its own set of issues, because if I had a dime for every time someone told

me I was too big, I'd be a billionaire. And people don't understand though, that to be as big as I am is a testimony to the depth of the darkness and the hard things. You said. So many really powerful things in there. One of those is about the personal aspect. I think that is so important. It's a concept I teach in a program I run called Spiritual Habits around if we can stop taking some of this stuff personal. It happened to us, it affected us, but

as you said, it wasn't about us. And the difficulties that happen in life, by and large are not because of our failings because of something that's wrong with is not because of we're not worthy. It's because that's life.

Life is filled with challenging circumstances. And I love what you've talked about sort of intergenerational, right, Like you were just the tip of the spear of a lot of intergenerational pain that's been rolling down, and you talk about in the book you know, to the best of my ability,

it ends here, and I think that's really powerful. And I certainly did not go through anything like what you went through, and yet my family has passed paying down generation to generation, and I'm like, I'm not going to stop any of it from getting to my son, or am I gonna stop all of it, but I'm gonna

stop what I can. And that piece about not taking it personal brings me to another part of your book that I pulled out that I really liked, which you talked about I must recover from the introjections I experienced

while growing up versus projections. Talk about what an introjection is, because I think this is what you were just essentially just saying, right, So an introjection in the context in which I'm using it, I heard constantly, You're never going to be anything, You're never going to succeed, you are a waste of time, you are Satan's child, you are

an abomination. So those are projections. But when I take them in and began to construct an identity a way of being in this world as a result of that, then began to use those introjections as the knife that will whittle my sense of self, carve my identity from then I'm in trouble. And I was the sort of child who it's sort of like Jim Carrey when he said I know him, but what do you? I know him, but what do you? I had a little bit of that, like, oh, okay,

that's what you think. And I remember saying things like that's not me, that's not me, that's not me, that's not that's not me, that's not me. So yes, I heard those things. Some of those things, yeah, I allowed to come in. And some of those things became the foundation of me being a rebel absolutely okay. And when people told me I was less than, that came in

less than what what does that mean? So then I'm going to go and and move against that, and and let that be the sharp edge, right, the growth edge that I move up against, and allow that to cut and carve and chip my character into being. So if I'm less than the opposite of that is I am everything. I'm everything and I am nothing. But at least I get to say that, And what does that mean for me?

So introjections, when we begin to understand them, two interrogate that, to investigate that, to sit with that, to be with that, to understand it, and have some mastery over what it is we believe to be true about it. It can serve us or not. You're talk in the book about the ability to be seen, and you have a line you said, to be seen is to become acquainted with what lies within you, and then to welcome those whom you feel safest to join in on the magnificence of

your being. It's just a great line. Yeah. I have a pattern of feeding my less than enough self. And when I fall into a pattern of self deplication, self hate, then I set other people up to feed that part of me, the self deprecation, the self hate. And in so doing, I am allowing a part of myself, my false self, to be seen, and I use that as a weapon against me to prove then that I am less than whole. When I am healthy and cognizant, awake, aware,

alive about the truth of who I am. Then I allow myself to first see myself and then engage in a way that supports the full truth of who I am. There's another line where you say, offer an alternative to the trope of victimization, that I could only treat my self and others as well as I had been treated. I think that's so so great. I mean, there is a reality to being a victim of things. And as you said, there are tropes of that, and one of them is that you know, I can only treat myself

for others as well as I've been treated you. I can be really intense Eric and how I view myself and how I view circumstances, and bear with me as I as I make my way through what you just said. And I have, according to a lot of people, every right in the world to recognize that I was a victim. One of the best things that my social worker said to me, the one who would not allow me to be adopted, she said, you do not have the luxury as do young white girls who have daddies that have

deep pockets that can pay to fix anything in their lives. You, however, don't, so I recognized it, and I couldn't afford to feel sorry for myself. And as W. H Auden says, I've never seen a wild thing, I feel sorry for itself. And I sort of adopted that idea of not being a victim, of not not giving that the power over me. Yes,

there were circumstances where I was victimized. If being a victim is a state of consciousness that requires a certain kind of perseveration in order to keep the energy of it going, then the way I look at it is if I look back and go, you were a victim of certain types of experiences, those experiences are over the trauma of those experiences get triggered. Why because the very nature of trauma is to overwhelm the meaning making faculty

of the brain. And when later the triggers arrive, it is that that moment we can bring consciousness to those feelings, going back to the cleared out, are going back to being a refuge and sit down with the victim or the circumstance that was victimizing. Sit down with thine, have a conversation, have empathy for the little girl who was the recipient of unconscionable actions, and behaviors, so to sit down with my own innocence and to say, come on,

sweet child of mine, tell me what happened. What do you need? And oftentimes it's a witness, it's someone who will hear the shame of it. As a teacher at Hoffmann, as we're teaching some of that heavy, heavy, heavy human experiences, we use a the quote from John Bradshaw who says, in order to be killed of our shame, we need to have the opportunity to share our shame with someone

who will not shame us. I have learned two become a reservoir of understanding for my own shame, and at times that is recognizing that a part of my child was a victim unwittingly, and so that I don't get lost in the grief of that. It's a beautifully nuanced take on this idea, because I do think this is such a slippery slope. It's so hard to talk about sometimes these ideas that these things did happen to us that should not have happened to us, or or or

these things happen to me. Because the life finds the opportunities to express itself and whether or not it should or shouldn't have is irrelevant? Right, that's fair. Maybe it would be better to say these things were done to me that caused harm to my internal self, so should should not? I agree these things happened that harmed my internal self, and it would be lovely if whoever did the harming would come along and do the cleaning up. That would be That would be lovely and comforts not

how it happened. And so the responsibility is transferred to us. And yet sometimes when we say that, it's said in a harsh sort of way. And what you just described was taking that responsibility on in a really tender and healing way, you know. And so I just thought again this this topic often lacks nuance when people talk about it,

and I think it's important that the nuance is important. Absolutely, I am intentionally slowing my central nervous system down because I used to pimp my trauma and I used to allow other people to do it too when I didn't know the difference. So I will say the first fifteen years of my being an advocate for healing, I did it at my own expense. But I did not know that, and I did not recognize that I was re traumatizing myself so frequently making a lot of money doing it.

But I didn't recognize that, And now I understand that it's important to bring a tenderness. It's important to slow down that vague nerve, to slow down so that sharing my truth is more of a reward, right, so that it's more of an experience where dopamine serotonin is east and my body knows the difference, right, and my body is saying thank you, Regine. I appreciate the way you are being with me and not overextending at the expense of me, So that tenderness you identified is so important

for I believe. I'm careful to generalize because I don't like being captured in a why it swept generalization, So I'm mindful of that. But in the work I do, I'm able to observe what happens when human beings become worthy, when they believe that they are worthy of that tenderness you just pointed out of their own tenderness as opposed

to always needing to have it from someone else. Yeah. Yeah, And boy, is that a powerful switch when you're able to sort of give some degree of it to yourself and what you were just saying made me think a little bit about you know, when you said pimping out

my trauma. You know, I think early on in our recovery journey from whatever we're recovering from the amount of time that we have of being in the recovery journey versus the amount of time that we were in the hard part of it is out of balance, and so there's a lot more of the old stuff, you know. I know earlier for me, you know, three years into recovery from from heroin addiction, I had three years of recovery and a lot of years of not and so all the years of not being in recovery, there's a

lot more talking about that now. I find that that part of it to be very like, yeah, okay, yep, that happened, and now let's talk all about how you get better from it, right, And it feels like that shift you know, occurred in you also, Oh my goodness.

For my book, my first book, Somebody Someone, came out in two thousand and three, and up until two thousand and eighteen, which is when I flip the script on the type of writer I want to be, there was another flavor of writer that was born and I recognize I don't want to continue to re traumatize myself and

then spend you know, three times as long recovering. So from you know, standing on stage five thousand, ten thousand people, now I better understand how to do that without it being at my expense, but still very viscerle and and

and connecting with humanity. So now it's about not so much what happened to me, but what I did with what happened to me, So making meaning out of it, getting some distance from it and making meaning out of it, and bringing the tools of minthfulness and meditation and contemplation, centering to the experience and extricating myself from it, and having an ability to be reflexive to stand outside of the situations and recognize that, oh, that was an event,

that was the situation, and that is not me. Yeah, so extricating myself, that is not me. That is what happened, but that is not me. Whoa whole new level of engagement. If I'm not an orphan, if I'm not a useless black woman, if I'm not that person that was unintentionally born that is taking up too much air for someone who was intentionally born. If I'm not that, then who am I? Right? And two be the arbiter to be

the author of who I really am. That's something to aspire to and to bring others along, to include other It's one of the things that I recognized as a memoirist, because I have mostly written in the genre memoir is I saw how it felt as though my experience was not universal, especially in America, where oftentimes we don't privilege taboo experiences, children boring out of wedlock, orphans, marginalized people.

You know, we have these categories for being that have actually nothing to do with anything other than the fact that maybe people are afraid that those people who have allowed life to touch them in that place where spirit meets bone and have been scorched and burned multiple times, perhaps the fear that just being in proximity with someone like that will then affect you know, one's life. Aside from uh, yeah, I lost where I was going anyway, Well, I think that is a great place for us to

wrap up with. Really, the thought that I think you left us with there that was it was really beautiful. Is this idea of being the author, you know, being the author of our own life. Before we say goodbye. Maybe you could share a little bit about what's coming

up in your world. Oh, thank you. I'm so excited, Eric, I am fortunate enough to be partnering with the Omega Institute in New York and in March, I will offer a experience with them for people, and the best way to stay abreast of what that will be and when all of those deeds is to go to my site www Dot I Am Regina Louise dot com and subscribe right and then in September I will I'm so excited. You have no idea how long I've waited for this opportunity,

especially as a black woman, writer, artist, teacher. I am going again, in collaboration with the Omega Institute, offer a five day immersive in person experience. Eric, I'm over the moon. So again. To stay abreast and informed, you can follow me on Instagram at the real Regina Louise or my website www Dot I Am Regina Louise dot com. Awesome, and we'll put links in the show notes to all that stuff, so listeners you can just click on that if you want to, if you want to go through easily.

And that's so wonderful. I love, love, love Omega, and we just confirmed a workshop with them for the fall for us, so more details on that coming. But yes, the place has been very important in my healing and it's a wonderful place. So congratulations of some like two really great experiences. Thank you. I am grateful. Yes, well, I am grateful for you taking the time to come on and share your work with us. Eric, I am always, especially lately, I am always cognizant of the gift of

podcasters sharing their platform with artists like myself. So I want you to know that I appreciate you and thank you for sharing again your platform with me. It means everything. You are very welcome. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank

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