The Stuff We Still Don’t Share: Divorce, Depression, Sex and More
Do you really share everything with your best friend? Or do some things get stuffed into our subconscious? Janelle and Andrea discuss their own journey across taboo topics--divorce, money, masturbation, addiction and depression to name a few--and how they overcame their fears. Psst---This was the original reason for their IRL Braveheart Conversations! There’s a nod to Brene Brown’s “Gifts of Imperfections” and Judy Blume. You’ll hear:
--Why judgment of others is caused by judgment of ourselves. Ack!
--How the topic of Divorce is somehow still taboo
--Janelle & Andrea’s hacks for stopping the shame
--Why sex and money are the new politics and religion
--How we’ve all faked ORGASMS!
TRANSCRIPT:
Janelle Orion 0:01
Andrea, hi friend, hi friend. And
Andrea Enright 0:03
to the brave hearts listening out there. Welcome to permission to be human. I'm Andrea
Janelle Orion 0:08
and I'm Janelle.
Andrea Enright 0:08
Get ready for some real time relationship. Woo
Janelle Orion 0:11
and wisdom from the front lines with occasional tantrums and tears about
Andrea Enright 0:15
how breaking rules, blurring boundaries and tossing tradition can be catalysts for finding your truth.
Janelle Orion 0:20
Let's debunk the fairy tales we were told as children and create a new map for life. Yes, Disney can go fuck itself if you're seeking permission to choose your own path. Freedom is the new F word. People and want to feel less alone along the way, we got you. Please
Andrea Enright 0:36
note, this is our side of the story. Our partners and metamours have their own individual experiences, and we do not speak for them.
Janelle Orion 0:50
Hi, brave hearts.
Andrea Enright 0:51
Welcome to permission to be human.
Janelle Orion 0:54
I'm Janelle.
Andrea Enright 0:55
I'm Andrea, and we're here coming at you again with our spirit crowns on. Yay, Janelle got these flowers surrounding her face today, really soft and feminine. This
Janelle Orion 1:07
is actually a gift from a woman named juicy at my 2022, Burning Man. And the one that Andrea is wearing is actually one that I made myself thanks to boombox and a craft event that she hosted shows you about all the parts, and then I created it. Yeah. How would you describe this to someone? It's like a classic Burning Man trucker hat, like, if you were on Instagram, like, this is, like, the vibe that looks like it, oh, like a very classic Instagram Burning Man. Look, okay,
Andrea Enright 1:41
yeah. And, like, what if I looked at it, I'd be like, mixed between policeman hat and steampunk, yeah, like, a little Right? Like, bunch of silver chains. It's fun. Okay, all right. So what are we what are we sharing today? So, okay,
Janelle Orion 1:58
Bravehearts, as you know, what we talk about on our topics on our podcast are taboo topics regarding pleasure, intimacy, marriage, divorce, all sorts of things. And what we have discovered is that there are taboo topics and then there are taboo topics that there are despite being external processors who share a lot of information, there has been the recognition that there's still things that we don't share,
Andrea Enright 2:27
yeah, even with our best friends, even with our therapists, just and it's kind of amazing, because you think when I talk to people, and I've chatted with people over the years, and I've chatted people with people since I started this podcast, and they say, Well, no, I I talk to my friends about things like that's that's what my friends are for. And turns out, for a few topics, not so much. Yeah. So some things are private, and I totally respect that. And there will be things I'm not sharing today on this podcast, because yeah, and I want to share everything right? But what I'm seeing again and again that when you give topics air to breathe, amidst friends, amidst strangers, anonymously, not anonymously, even in a business group that Janelle and I were in, call out to three to five club, when you air those questions, you feel less alone. You sometimes can release them into the air, which gives them different life. You get surprisingly novel solutions. There were so many times I said in that three to five loop, well, you know, this is a really common problem. I'm sure everyone has this. And like, I've heard all the solutions, but like, here's what I'm going through. And then someone's like, what about this? Do you have you tried this? I'm like, No, amazing. And then finally, it really does allow you to process them differently when you speak them out loud. Now, not everybody is an external processor. Janelle and I are champion external processors. We like to talk about things out loud, but I do think there is just a modeling or contagion that happens when you talk about taboo topics in a group
Janelle Orion 4:25
with each other, I agree with everything that you're saying, and what I have discovered over time is that there are some topics that were so deeply laced with shame or embarrassment that I wasn't even talking about them To myself. It's not as much that I was consciously not talking about them with others. It's that I hadn't even started questioning my own assumptions about them. This whole podcast came up because in the episode that we did, I don't remember the number, but where I spoke about that, I. Had I did an orgasm and self pleasure through self pleasure until I was 21 right? That my best friend at the time, who probably 10s of 1000s of hours we had spent talking in the decade between when we met, when I was 11, till I was 21 and it wasn't until she listened to that episode that she learned that, and I didn't. It wasn't conscious to me that she didn't know about it. But what I remember at the time was it wasn't, Oh, I'm denying or hiding talking about my orgasm like I just knew I was broken, right? So there was nothing to talk about. In a way, it was like, oh, Cosmo said I was supposed to be able to orgasm from self pleasure. I didn't. I am broken, and now we're moving on.
Andrea Enright 5:44
So interesting. How you could just come to such finality? Yes, right,
Janelle Orion 5:48
right? So it didn't feel like, oh, I need to talk about it, because it was like, here's just the fact about me that in every way, was not true. Yeah.
Andrea Enright 5:55
And I also want to point out what you said earlier about not actually having a conscious conversation with it yourself, right? Like, it's not that you weren't being honest with yourself, but you weren't, I don't know, maybe that was it. You weren't really acknowledging it, right? I
Janelle Orion 6:11
just was like, Oh, I did an orgasm. I must be broken. And then that's it. Like, I didn't, like, sit and reflect on, oh, could that be not true? Should I see a therapist? Is there something else wrong? Like, none of that was in,
Andrea Enright 6:24
yeah,
Janelle Orion 6:25
got it my psyche,
Andrea Enright 6:27
right? So, and we'll get into a little bit of, like, how things shifted later, but right now, it seems like, you know, there's some finality, potentially there was, like, was there fear of judgment or embarrassment or shame there, or Yes, probably deep right, right, not even acknowledged, right? But I was just like, Oh, I'm broken in this way. And so, right? And I think there's also a, almost an egocentrism about this, of like, for me, of like, Oh, I was the only one this happened to, right? Which is like, it's not selfish, exactly, but just like thinking I'm special or something, and actually, I'm not, there's 1000s of people who have gone through said thing, right? And so, and of course, there's a fear of being judged and a fear of distancing yourself from people or being deemed weird. So he's all nor it's normal, I think, especially when we're young and we're culturally conditioned and we haven't, like grown yet to think, Okay, I'm not going to talk about this. My spirit crown is jingling
because I'm moving my head a lot. So,
Janelle Orion 7:30
okay, so, and I will say that what, what's interesting about what happened to me at 21 is that I did tell some of my girlfriends at the time, right? They were like, oh, you should try again. It had some solutions for you. And yeah, and use something like look. And I, in my case, I actually looked at, like, Gustav's paintings of women masturbating
Andrea Enright 7:55
art books. I remember you telling this. I'm just like, Yeah, I was looking at porn. You were looking at art
Janelle Orion 8:00
books of porn. So anyway, but my point being is that, yeah, like, it took me 10 years to to speak it. Now, when I spoke it, my wife, my girlfriends, had a solution. Okay,
Andrea Enright 8:11
amazing. So we're gonna go deep into let's just bounce back and forth, like ones things that didn't we didn't talk about you guys talked about the fact that you, you did not, yeah, you didn't masturbate. You thought you were broken until 21 so I started self pleasuring. Just kind of accidentally realized this really early on, and I thought, like, it felt really good. And I thought, Oh well, I'm clearly doing something wrong, right? And like, touching myself in a private area, like I just had all the skills, all the shame about it, right? Because someone had already told you that there was a private area that you weren't supposed to talk or touch. I guess it was just kind of in the air, right? Like it
Janelle Orion 8:47
was private. Nobody had to say it in the air we breathe, it was. And
Andrea Enright 8:51
so I just kept getting more and more embarrassed about it. And I mean, and though I've certainly never talked to anybody about it, but I didn't want to be caught doing it, so I would go into my massive closet, biggest closet I've ever had in my life, and like, hide there and do it and so and I really thought it was wrong until I read we've covered this. I know another episode Judy blume's Q and A book that basically saved me from my own self judgment. She's like, this is super normal. This is what everybody does. This is totally okay to do this. There's nothing wrong with you. So anyway, I don't know who I could have told, to be honest, at 12 or 13, you know, there's probably nobody for me to tell then, but in
Janelle Orion 9:32
general, right? Which is why books are so valuable. Yeah, it's true. It's
Andrea Enright 9:36
true. So what's another thing that you didn't mention?
Janelle Orion 9:39
So for me, I was very selective with who I told about my lack of sexual intimacy in my marriage. I mean, obviously you knew all about it, and some other friends did, but you know we were, I would say most people actually probably had their perception that we were having a lot of sex was that we were open and we were a poly. And we were in a very like sex positive community. We were going to Burning Man, right? It just felt like there was like, Yeah.
Andrea Enright 10:06
And, you know, in the same way, there were definitely times when I was not having sex with my husband for long periods of time, and, yeah, I didn't tell anybody about it. It was like a source of shame, like I was like, No, I'm supposed to be doing this. We're failing for some reason. We're not. We can't figure it out at an you know, different because of different reasons. And yeah, I certainly did not, did not share that with even my girlfriends, no way. So there's one big one right there, right,
Janelle Orion 10:37
right? Either you're, yeah, not having sex is a thing of shame did not both of us had these friends of not talking about exactly, Okay, what else for you, for me was the fact that I sometimes faked orgasms. And yeah, we do.
Andrea Enright 10:53
In fact, I remember sharing it once, and like thinking, Oh, I should not have said that out loud. I will never say that out loud again. This was, like, before I was married or anything, but like, there was some judgment I felt or sensed, but yeah, for sure, did not tell people about Yeah. And I
Janelle Orion 11:13
remember when I finally released it to my partner, where I was like, I'm in a relationship where I want to be authentic and true, and I'm not in this moment, and it was probably like the hardest, scariest, most shame filled, oh my god thing I've ever said that did it released me from from it released me from myself, because it released me from having to fake an orgasm. Okay,
Andrea Enright 11:39
so what would you say to people who are like, Oh, I don't like, I don't want to disappoint this other person, but I would be so free and feel so released if I said this out loud, should they do it or not? That is that hard?
Janelle Orion 11:56
Yeah, I am not here to say an answer of right, do it or not, right, because right another partner like, I don't know what the partner would is gonna, how they're gonna respond. I only knew that the pressure inside of me to not be like true on the inside and on the outside was had gotten to the point where I it did not feel good to me, right? I would almost rather lose the partner than have it be off. Me be off.
Andrea Enright 12:28
Okay, but I see, I see that you were choosing yourself, but you were waiting until the pain was the discomfort was pretty significant. Yes, okay, yeah, beautiful. Let's see. So what about that big D word, divorce? Yeah, so I'm not divorced, I'm married, I'm still married, yeah, and I've been married. I've never been divorced, but I think I was even afraid to say that out loud to my husband, or even talk about, oh, well, I suppose if we got, you know, we never said it, right? We just never would say it was too scary, even so scary to me. Now,
Janelle Orion 13:04
I remember when you guys did say it,
Andrea Enright 13:08
yeah, like, not. And this was not saying, Oh, we're gonna it was just like, you know, what
if,
what if? Or, like, what's going on? Like, how are we gonna remedy this? Like, what would it look like if, and that was a big deal saying it out loud to him. Now I still didn't like I think now I would say, yeah. Now I've actually come to a comfort with it and expressing it to others and saying like, Oh, if we got divorced, or, you know, if we separated, but for a long time, I would never have said that out loud to anyone that we were considering it, that I was scared of it, or anything. It was just like a word that was off limits, right?
Janelle Orion 13:50
It's funny that you say that because we had an interesting difference of memory between my husband and I, which was what I was really resistant to was ever joking about divorce. Do you know any couples, oh, yeah, like, oh, that's divorce worthy. Like, or like, oh, that's grounds for divorce. When they're in a fight with their partner, sometimes they're joking, sometimes they're serious, but it's like, it's that there's a quality to that, that I always was like, Oh, I'm not okay with that. I feel like I expressed that to my partner of like, okay. One of my boundaries is that we never joke about divorce. My understanding many years, the Intuit was that he heard it as we can never mention the word. If we mention the word, it means we're getting divorced.
Andrea Enright 14:43
Very different. We got so different and like
Janelle Orion 14:45
and yet, yeah, as a result, we never talked about the word divorce until got divorced.
Andrea Enright 14:53
Yeah, it's a big one. I was recently on a podcast with Karen Covey, who. I think You were on a podcast with her too. Is that right? Not yet. Not yet will be yes. So she is a divorce coach, and she mentioned that she really wanted to have in real life Braveheart, or in real life conversations, groups for women who are considering divorce or going through it. And there's no way she can do that, because nobody will fucking come right, because it's too hard, it's too hard to show up potentially see someone you know, and think, yeah, we're thinking about it. Yeah, it's on my mind, and I totally get it. I mean, I don't, I don't blame anyone. I'm just like, this is just such a taboo topic
Janelle Orion 15:39
to acknowledge, internally and then externally. So
Andrea Enright 15:42
hard, yeah, total compassion for myself and for anyone who is like chatting about it, okay, yeah, so that's one. That's you.
Janelle Orion 15:51
Another one is how much money I was making as I started out as an entrepreneur, which was not very much, and how much I was relying on my husband to support our lifestyle.
Andrea Enright 16:03
Yeah, yeah. Did anything shift for that at some point for you,
Janelle Orion 16:08
I'm like, I'm just reflecting on that. I, I would say I have had been on such such a deep money journey since then, there was a, there was a real deep, like underworld journey for me in my relationship to money and my worth being tied to money, and, oh, what it was meant, what it meant to be married to someone who was making a lot more money. So our lifestyle was bigger. I had, like, it was very complex. And so things have shifted for me. But I would say it has taken years and years and years to, like, uncover all of that. And it's really interesting. It means, in our culture, we don't talk about money. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say,
Andrea Enright 16:46
that, like, this is the biggest type of topic of all. Like, it kind of seems like, yes, yeah, yeah. And do you have any clarity about that? Like, in share, because you have shared, like, I haven't actually spent on a coach or right
Janelle Orion 17:02
and how much debt I'm in or different things? Yeah, I would say that for the clarity is coming to terms with what is true for me, where my worth lies in relation to money, which is that my worth is not tied to money, and that I also believe that how I'm relating to money now is, for all intents and purposes, not relatable by most people in our culture,
Andrea Enright 17:35
there's a mic drop, yeah,
Janelle Orion 17:38
and my relationship to money now is, without a doubt, one of the things that has me feeling so free, so joyful and so radiant, because I feel like I have broken through bonds that were like, totally tying me down, and yet, yeah, I cannot say to someone, oh, and you should do what I'm doing,
Andrea Enright 17:58
right? Okay, so I think this ties back to what we've talked we've spoken about many times in the podcast, about being in your radiance, just in the Braveheart conversation episode, we talked about, if you're gonna announce or share an unconventional choice with a loved one who may have more conventional views, you want to make sure you're in your radiance. When you do it, I hear that you're in your radiance about money, and so
Janelle Orion 18:20
you can talk about it, right, and I recognize that the people I'm telling my dad, my ex partner, anyone, they're just like, what? And I'm like, yeah, what, yeah, I know it's crazy, and, and so, yeah, anyway,
Andrea Enright 18:36
I love it. Love it. Thanks for sharing that. I asked you on the spot. Okay, what else we got here? Yeah, I guess it's my turn anxiety and like, the consideration of anti anxiety meds. This is like a total do not talk about topic for a long time. For me, I am not on meds, and I've considered them, and they've, you know, I've been like, oh, I can't talk about that. That is, like, there's so much shame around that it's such a source of, I had fear of judgment, I had fear of hurting myself. It felt like a crutch, you know, all of that. And I've just, I think, so much of what changes here. You know, over time, it's just that you experience more, and then you're like, Oh, I see I was judging that. Now I'm experiencing it great. So, yeah, I definitely did not. Was done. Not feel free to talk about that. I think now, even if I did get on meds, I would just, I would just I just feel pretty open about it. I mean, there's definitely a shift of mental health, yeah, speaking in our society. So
Janelle Orion 19:46
that's, that's good, yes, yes, yeah. And speaking of mental health, like there are times that I hid in my closet or under my desk because of my lack of self worth in relation to money. Specifically, I just wanted to just. Here. I wouldn't put it into the category of like, suicide ideation, but it was in the like, can I just disappear? Can I just not be here?
Yeah, yeah. And most
people who see me know me, would just, you know, see my smile and my enthusiasm and all that, and have a hard time put being able to consider me in moments like that, yeah, yeah.
Andrea Enright 20:27
And I can also relate to Yeah, just being very, very depressed and not wanting to tell anyone that it was that bad or that. And I think probably there's some addiction tendencies. I don't really go into it any deeper than that, but like, knowing that nothing serious debilitating to my health, but knowing that I have an addiction to something, and feeling like weak and shame about that, and not just not telling anyone and then handling it myself, mm hmm, you know. And that worked out for me, okay, but I don't know if it gotten worse. What have I needed help?
Janelle Orion 21:09
Right? For you, something I know you've struggled with the whole time is your nail biting, right? Yeah, I'm
Andrea Enright 21:15
clearly addicted to biting my nails and, like, that's so, like, I can talk about it, because anyone who sees me can see my nails, yeah, yeah. So that definitely has control over me, and it is something that I kind of carry with me. I've gone through phases of letting that go, but in general, I can't, I can't keep it a secret, because anyone can see my nails. And so that kind of brings up a whole other kind of secret that, like, you can't keep a secret, right, or something you have shame about, that's like, right now the open,
Janelle Orion 21:43
and interestingly, I think that some things are often out in the opening to everyone else, but you just don't think that they are. It's probably
Andrea Enright 21:49
true. Interesting. Do you have a specific example of that?
Janelle Orion 21:55
I would just think of like, of someone who might have like, a, like an eating disordered eating, right? Yeah, who has the perception that they're overweight, but everyone can see that they're not overweight, or,
Andrea Enright 22:07
yeah, yes, something like that. Gotcha. Yeah, no, that's true. Like your own, your perception of yourself is so different than right, what people may see, yes, lots of compassion for that too. Like, I've eaten a whole pie of ice cream and been like, Well, I'm not telling anyone about that. I'm sure I'm not the only one. But, like, just in, like, stress eating, you know, like times of like, uh, and then, you know, feeling like total shit after that. But, yeah, it's funny. I put something on here, but I I realized I'm like, Oh no. I totally talked to people about that. But in the beginning, when I was a mom, I was like, I don't know how to fucking do this. Like, this is so hard. No, I like, people kept telling me to listen to my intuition, and I didn't hear a fucking thing. I was so angry. Like, what are you talking about? And so I think there was a small, short period where I was like, Oh, I don't know how to do this. Like,
Janelle Orion 23:02
I don't know how to be a mom. Yeah,
Andrea Enright 23:04
I don't know how to do like, these basic things. Like, I just, it's not coming to me. Like, people said, Oh, you'll it'll come to you, like, you'll know what to do. And I'm just like, nope. Like, you know, in a human's life hung in the balance, right? Like, like, it was so frustrating in the beginning, but I did tell people that I think there was a small part of me that wanted to hang on to it and be like, Oh, to it and be like, Oh, it's too shameful, but I need help. And, yeah, I reached out. So anything else, you're good. So let's talk about, like, when did this change for you? And we talked about one of those topics, but, or has it changed at all? Like, are there still things, of course, that you don't you don't, you don't tell people sure there are. Everyone has private things. That's fine, right, right,
Janelle Orion 23:47
right? We're not advocating for sharing every there's discernment, discernment in life, discernment, I would say, you know, I've had very close girlfriends my entire life, and as we have discussed, I'm an external processor. So I think what changed is when my subconscious shame and denial about things started to come to the surface, as my awareness about myself increased. If you listen to the episode of me, of the butt plugs in tantrica episode, I didn't know I had shame. I mean, I'm one of those people who read Brene Brown's gift of imperfection, right? Thought it was the most incredible book. It's all about shame. And then I was like, That's really fascinating, because I don't experience shame. And like, that is, like, the depth of the naivete, or like, awareness I had of certain emotions in my body. So over time, as I did different retreats and different, you know, somatic body work, things suddenly was like, Oh, that feeling, oh, that's what shame is. Oh, now I know what shame is. And I remember, I remember, like, you know, having the flashbacks of, like, having a boy come home. After school, and we were, like, naked in my bedroom high school, and my mom came home and I hid him in the closet, and I snuck him out of the house, and I just never thought about that again. I never smashed it down, just like, smooshed it down. And then when it came up during that time, during concession, I was like, oh, that's what shame is. That's there it is. Wow. I
Andrea Enright 25:19
think this is really important for bravehearts to hear, and just for me to hear right now, it's like, no, there are things that you have pressed on so far. You can't even see them anymore, like they're out of sight. You don't hear about them. Nothing brings them up until something does. So
Janelle Orion 25:32
something does. And so for me, that was really what shifted. For me, it was the awareness. I don't know if I to discuss, like, I can't say why that happened other, you know, psychedelics and polyamory and all the things that was on my journey that allowed, like a expanding, a shifting of my compressed state, yeah, where things could start to bubble up. And then I discovered them. And then once I discovered them, sometimes I talked about them, and sometimes I still didn't even know that they were a thing. It still took a while to figure it's
Andrea Enright 26:04
a process since patience, it's years, sometimes years. Yeah, so for me, I think there are kind of two aha moments that happened over the course of not a moment, but more like five or 10 years. One was, oh, like, we're all so similar, rather than different. Like, this is a big belief, like, a massive shift in my belief system that didn't, of course, just happen one day. But as I kept spending time in the world with people, I was like, oh, like, I'm like, It's the bad news, good news that I tell my clients, like, you're not special at all, and you're really special. But those things are both true, right? And like, what you know, what unites us is much greater than what divides us. Like, we're all humans. We all the human experience. We all want to be loved. Like, there's so much that we're similar on and I really think in the for the first 20 years of my life, I'm like, No, I'm different. So when I found that out, I was like, oh, with the shame and the embarrassment of stuff, I'm like, oh, okay, I'm not the only one that's feeling this way, and that just made me feel better. So that shifted things. And then the other moment was I realized I can remember, like being on my back patio when I really had this. I had been practicing it, probably for a while, but I realized this looking at my little androgynous Buddha on the water feature, thinking, oh yeah. Like when you stop judging others, you stop judging yourself. Andrew, when you stop judging yourself, you stop judging others. It was interesting how those things work together. And they would just, like, fall away. Like, want to fall away when I stopped doing the other and I just had so much less judgment. And I'm like, Oh, that is so freeing, because it's actually kind of exhausting to keep that up, like, to keep judging, to keep saying, no, they're doing it wrong. No, you're not. You don't have it right. Oh my gosh. It just feels like you're not defending a cage anymore, and so or defending what's yours. And so when that eased as well, then I could talk to people about stuff and just be me,
Janelle Orion 28:17
right? What that's bringing up for me was, was remembering there was a point where I really wanted my husband to kiss me every night before bed, like I just want to kiss before bed every night. And then he became resistant to that, and that made me sad. And so that was like a point of tension in our marriage, and I don't remember how but then there was a revelation that at my mom's funeral, when I was 34 my dad had gotten up, given the eulogy and shared the prayer that He said to my mom every night before bed, their entire 37 years of being together with a kiss. And I realized, like, right, that that was 34 I've been married now I was like, probably 44 or something, right, married, and realizing that, oh, my does like that had gotten to my subconscious of showing it, though that's what must be a good sign of a good marriage, and so I need to kiss every night that really wasn't mine, right? I had taken on a view it was, you know, a beautiful experience, but nonetheless, it wasn't mine. But I was making my marriage wrong because I didn't have what my parents had. And once I saw that, and like, that realization again, like bubbled to the surface, I was able to be like, oh, like the thing that I thought I needed and wanted that I was holding on to and defending and Like. Causing conflict before in writing marriage was like, oh, it's not even mine.
Andrea Enright 30:05
Oh, wow, yeah, but this is how we take things in when we're young. Yes, we're like, Oh, great. That's what that means. Super, put that away, done next thing, right? Because we don't know to look any deeper necessarily. Or at least, I didn't, yeah, I don't think I did. I did not. Seems like my daughter does. Yeah,
Janelle Orion 30:24
that's and that's hope for the
Andrea Enright 30:26
bit it is actually. So ultimately, what we've been talking about is this idea of radical acceptance that I, like, said to you, I think early on, I was just like, I just feel like, when we boxed, early on, I was like, you just have this radical acceptance of everything I'm saying. Like, I would just say something, and I'd expect you to be like, Oh my gosh, what like? And you never did, right? And I was like, oh, there's just this radical acceptance. And so when we radically accept ourselves, we can share. It easier not to say everything should be shared, but there might be something. I invite you, bravehearts to think about something that actually would feel better if you shared. Mm, hmm,
Janelle Orion 31:08
just to think about it on my journey of personal growth work, one of the systems that I came across was the internal family systems. Model, i, f, s, e, o is one of my favorites, and it focuses on that there are no bad parts within us, that all of us are inherently good, and that all parts of us, even the part of us that's like, Fuck you, part, is actually a good part, but it's defending something in a way that is maybe no longer useful. That part came online as a child because it had to defend us from something in an area or a person that we were unsafe with. Yeah, that is still kind of running the show today, but in actuality, is coming from a place of protection, but is kind of block could potentially be blocking the love that we're trying to receive. Now that's just one example of it. But learning to accept all the parts of me, even the parts I quote, unquote, didn't like, was really impactful on my journey. Like recognizing that I did have anger, that I did have disappointment, that it was okay to express those things. Like I am definitely in the like, smiling, everything is great. Like, I knew, like, four adjectives for emotions, right? Like, happy, good, like, enthusiastic, positive. That's it. It's all I knew. It's all operated in, yeah, and so in that way, I had actually, like, just completely discounted the parts of me that were, did feel angry, did feel sad, did feel disappointed, and allowing those to be present, to think, Oh, those are okay, was part of this journey as well.
Andrea Enright 32:48
Beautiful, very brave hearts. That's all we have today. Yeah, we see you,
Janelle Orion 32:56
yeah, and we know that there are taboo topics and that there are taboo topics, and the more we learn about ourselves, the more we can hold ourselves. Yay, softly and lightly. We'll
Andrea Enright 33:07
see you on Instagram and at the Brave Heart conversations. We love you. Love you. Bye. Do you need permission to be human? You got it?
Janelle Orion 33:17
Listen, subscribe and review on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, learn more about us at permission to be human. Dot live you.
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