Ep 89: Part 2/12, Janelle's Messy AND Magical Journey to Self-Love: Building a Relationship with Yourself Series

What happens when you stop outsourcing your worth, get radically honest with yourself, and finally become your own damn soulmate? This episode is a warm slap in the face (with love) for anyone who's tired of self-abandoning and ready to live heart-first. Janelle dives into the raw, real, not-always-attractive terrain of building a relationship with… you. From sacred (not selfish) spiritual and personal growth and emotional faceplants to listening deeper and saying "no" without guilt, this convo will crack you open and piece you back together—with more clarity, compassion, and a fierce sense of self. You’ll hear:

-Why self-love isn’t a bubble bath (but also... sometimes it is)

-The spiritual AF side of solo decision-making

-How body awareness is your internal compass, not just a wellness buzzword

-What happens when you stop being your own emotional bulldozer

-Why self-forgiveness is the gateway drug to real growth.

-The power of the pause---you don’t have to decide right now!

-Why Your ‘yes’ means nothing if your ‘no’ isn’t real.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrea Enright 00:00

Janelle, struggling to discuss sex and intimacy with your partner, not feeling met, seen or heard in your relationships. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea. We're two midlife Mavericks sharing our own experiences, messy AF and no regrets with marriage, divorce, polyamory and pleasure. We've learned that when you're brave enough to figure out what you want and ask for it, with partners, friends, family and most importantly, yourself, you'll feel more alive and free question everything, especially your mother's advice. There's no rom com formula for this. But don't panic. Being alone matters, honey, I can't miss you if you don't leave, what if your breakup could be your breakthrough? Our podcast is for brave hearts. Anyone who seeks or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms in the spirit of finding their truth. If you're seeking permission to be brave in your relationships and want to feel less alone along the way, we got you. Wow, building a relationship with yourself is it's such a massive project, but it is a relationship that you will have for the rest of your life. And Janelle tells us exactly how she has navigated this, the struggles and the celebrations across time, it's amazing, and it helped me, even today, as i She reminded me to like how much she tunes into her body and she stays aware and she practices patience for the right timing to maintain this relationship with herself.

Janelle Orion 01:41

Yeah, yeah. And I would say, Andrea, it was so fascinating talking to you, because I had never thought of it that a relationship with myself as a spiritual practice. And that's kind of what came up right in our conversation. We ended up, I define self love, and that's the lens of which it I defined it, so I got to be surprised at my own story.

Andrea Enright 02:00

It's always nice, yeah. And ultimately, that you know, what bravehearts will see is that all of this, all the navigation of building this relationship and maintaining it, is that you end up more clear and more confident in your body, in your being as you move through the world. And it's worth all of the discomfort, but there's a lot of discomfort,

Janelle Orion 02:24

yeah, but the result is living a life with more ease and more joy.

Andrea Enright 02:30

Yeah, absolutely. Get ready for some deep, deep self work. Bravehearts. Here we go.

Janelle Orion 02:42

Hi, Bravehearts, I'm Janelle

Andrea Enright 02:44

And I'm Andrea. Welcome to permission to be human, season four. And Bravehearts, I'm struggling today, but I'm recording anyway. I am here. I'm here showing up for you, but I'm grumpy and

Janelle Orion 02:59

for us and for us and for me, and I'm so grateful Andrea, because, yeah, sometimes we we should, you think over recording our own podcast, we can have our own schedule and do whatever we want. And sometimes there's still deadlines, and we're kind of up against the deadline. So Andrea is pulling it out for us today.

Andrea Enright 03:15

Yeah, yeah. So, ah, so we are back with part two of how Janelle built and maintained a relationship with herself. In the last episode, she shared the catalyst that caused her to go within and the tools she used to discover where she wasn't being honest with herself. In this episode, we'll dig into the outer work of being in relationship with yourself, and that's where the rubber meets the road, like this is how she embodied it, how she practiced it, and how she maintains it. And I don't know if this is harder or easier than the inner or the outer. I think they're both just fucking hard. They both, yes, they both require skills. Yeah, different skills. Yeah, different skills. So, yeah. So what did this look like? How did building a relationship with yourself change you? The first thing is that I love myself more. Okay, I trust myself more, the elusive self love. I had someone say to me recently, like, what does self love mean anyway? Yeah, it's a

Janelle Orion 04:27

good question. It's a feeling. I'd say it's a feeling that probably encapsulates that I trust myself. I also have a deeper faith in something bigger than me, which I could say is actually just love like that. Love is above me, beyond Me, in Me. I've actually not thought of it this way, but I'm going to say it right now, in a way, building a relationship with myself has been a spiritual journey. So it

Andrea Enright 04:55

sounds like you're calling on yourself and you're also calling on spirit. Mm. Are in this process?

Janelle Orion 05:00

Yes, in a way, as a result of this process, it's like, oh, as one, I'm one in the same, right? Like I am also spirit, like I have mind, body, spirit, like there's, like, there's just more layers of me than I thought before. Like, I really building a relationship right with myself, showed me right? Oh, here's my ego, here's the part that I had identified with. And Andrew, you call it like the inner witch versus the evil twin. Like, what is my intuition? My intuition is also spirit. My intuition is this love. And so all of that came through this journey for me, yeah, and so

Andrea Enright 05:45

Bravehearts, whatever you call that, like you can call it whatever you want, Spirit, God, universe, Jesus, Peter. It doesn't really matter. It's just it is kind of random. I guess I don't mean that it's random, but it is a personal preference, right?

Janelle Orion 06:01

And I would say the difference for me in this, well, this is this episode is already going in a different direction than I thought it was gonna go. But, right? Like, I grew up Catholic, the Catholic Church were like, yeah, there was, there is Jesus Christ, and here's the priest, and here's the Pope, and we have a new pope now, and the way that it was, at least, I interpreted it was that Spirit, God, the divine, was outside of me. And it was something that I had to look towards someone else for guidance for and so the difference is, and it fascinatingly, my dad, Jack Kenny, would say Jesus Christ is inside of him, although he and I have ended up in the same place, but use different words, but it's this like, oh no. Like, yeah, like, I am in the image of God that is inside of me. And so I now relate to it in a way I definitely did not relate to the way that the church conveyed it. And this relationship to myself has been the pathway to my spiritual awakening resonance, the thing that makes me feel alive and less alone and connected and more human. So I

Andrea Enright 07:20

think that that was a great explanation of self, love, really, and how it, you know, and it's intertwined with spirituality.

Janelle Orion 07:29

What other things about building relationship with myself are like very there's very concrete things, right? I'm better at communicating my desires, part of the journey of building a relationship with myself and discovering what I wanted resulted in me getting divorced. The more I've learned to listen to my body. I now eat when I'm hungry, I recognize all the times that I'm like, Oh, I'm like, pushing through hunger because I've got something to do or I don't want to, I'm out and I don't want to spend money because I've got food at home, and I'm like, No, I'm hungry. I'm eating. Yeah, listening to my body resulted in me stopping working out for almost nine months, maybe 10, which was really surprising, like, just like, one day it was like, you're done. And I was really clear, and my body actually went through metamorphosis at that time. And I could say that, Oh, like, of course, I'm not working out. Like, my body's changing. Like, you know, I got softer. But what it really felt like, no, was my body wanted to change. Like, I, you know, like, I've been in menopause for five years, and it just, I just listened to my body say, I want to change. And then after about nine months, and I felt this about like, five months in, I was like, Oh, I wonder when my body's gonna tell me to work out again. And about nine months in, I remember Thanksgiving saying to my sister in law, yeah, I'm having this experience. I haven't been working out. I wonder what's when it's gonna happen. And then the next day, my friend invited me to a hot yoga class, and I went, and I was like, Oh, back. My body's back. I could once work out again. And I had done hot yoga twice a week since then, right? It just like, turned on again. But I was just, I was listening for it. I didn't ever forced it.

Andrea Enright 09:19

Yeah, this is fascinating. Oh, my God. It feels very elusive to me. I'm like, really, your body was just like, No, I'm not doing that anymore. And I think if you're not accustomed to listening to your body, you might miss those signals 100%

Janelle Orion 09:33

because it's it's subtle, although, in a way, not subtle, like I had. I did a workout, I went two to three times a week, and I just started missing it more. I started dreading it more. The communication was actually pretty obvious. I'm not excited. I'm not in joy the way that I had been the first two years that I had been doing it. But

Andrea Enright 09:56

for someone who doesn't necessarily always enjoy working out. I think that's pretty hard, like, because I may not, I do love to run, but, you know, I'm not always in the mood to go. But

Janelle Orion 10:09

then how do you feel afterwards? Right? Are you glad that you went? I mean, like, there's a whole spectrum,

Andrea Enright 10:16

correct? But, but did you go and feel shitty after you worked out? I

Janelle Orion 10:20

always felt good, but like the effort it was taking me to get there was it started to outweigh the experience. Okay, I see so there was still a shift. Yeah, I'm not saying, oh my gosh, you got to love working out all the time. Like, that's, that's not it. It was just a noticing I've been doing this workout for two or maybe three years, maybe two years, right? And I loved it for the first year and a half. And then I was like, and it started to change. And so instead of being like, forcing myself, which is what I would have done in the past, I was like, Oh, I think my body's saying I'm done with this. Yeah. Okay, so other things is that I have less fear of the unknown, like I am just more comfortable knowing that I don't know what's coming. My life has taken so many twists and turns on this journey, right? I did not think I was going to get divorced, and that I'm thriving because I did. I did not think I would become a tantric or a pro DOM, and yet I'm thriving because I did. Right? It's so it's like, oh, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen, and that can be uncomfortable, or I can breathe and just be like, okay, universe, where you gonna surprise me today. This is

Andrea Enright 11:49

all really a direct result of you building a relationship with yourself, and it feels like you're equating that to taking charge of your life.

Janelle Orion 11:57

Because I know know what my boundaries are, like, what I'm willing to do and what I'm not willing to do, what I'm willing to put up with and what I'm not willing to put up with, like, the people who I'm okay to have in my life and the people that I'm not okay to have in my life, I have just so much more clarity. Another thing that has happened is that, like, along the way, much like stopping working out, my body was like, Okay, you're not gonna wear pants anymore. Just gonna wear dresses. Now, it's so

Andrea Enright 12:25

true. You totally did you used to wear jeans. Like, yes, oh

Janelle Orion 12:29

my gosh. Don't even have jeans in my closet. I do have a couple pairs of hands still, but they're really baggy, and sometimes they can almost look like a skirt. But it was like, Oh, something like, part of the trajectory for me of going inward, in my case, resulted in my outer expression being more feminine. I'm more vulnerable with others, like I was more transparent, because I I'm less concerned about whether they like me or don't like me, or what they think about me or what they don't think about me. Like I'm so clear and confident and like the path that I'm walking is the correct path, and that not everyone is for me, friends or lovers or otherwise. This is actually reminding me of what Hillary said in our last episode a couple of episodes ago about CUT TO THE CHASE quicker, so that we're walking with the people who are in alignment with our values faster, right? And like to delay that is more suffering. So I am. I'm more vulnerable with others. It's not that I don't care about them, but it's like, Oh, if they don't see me, or have you know, like, don't resonate with like, the vibe that I'm giving off, then it's like, okay, great. Nice to meet you. Moving

Andrea Enright 13:51

on. Yeah, I definitely have seen this transformation in you, just like, I mean, clarity is confidence, really, you're very certain about who you are, and it doesn't really matter, right? I have become the most important relationship in my life. Yeah, nothing. Nothing is above that. And from there, from that relationship, which is my primary you could say, is how I orient to the world and to other people, right? And this is a great segue into the next question, because I know you referenced Hillary. She's a brave heart that we interviewed in the last season about how to talk to your partner about sex and intimacy. And I believe she said something, and I'm paraphrasing here, to the effect that when she is misaligned with herself, she's in hell. And my question was gonna be to you, do you ever stop being in relation with yourself? And how does that show up?

Janelle Orion 14:51

Yeah, this is still a practice. I mean, I feel like I'm pretty far along now, after having done this for a while, and it's still a practice. I'm not. Not harden myself, like where I feel the skill comes in isn't in being perfect. In this it's about how quickly can I recognize that I'm out of alignment with myself, and how quickly can I come back to center? So what? When I'm confused about something like if I don't have clarity, then I pause. I don't keep moving forward. I don't make a decision. I don't rush anything.

Andrea Enright 15:33

This is really important. I think there is a tendency when we're confused. Well, for me, there is when I'm confused, I'm panicky, right? And then I start being more erratic in my movements, and even less aligned and less certain and less intentional,

Janelle Orion 15:52

yeah, so my noticing is just to pause then, right? Because I could go down, I could go down the path of what you just said, because that would be the natural path to go down. And instead, I'm like, Oh, I'm on that path. I'm going to pause and do what I need to do to come back to center, which is, often, am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I tired? Right? It's very simple things,

Andrea Enright 16:18

yeah. And that's really good news, that

Janelle Orion 16:19

am I uncomfortable? Like, am I uncomfortable? Like, literally in like, Oh, my, do my shoes hurt? Right? Haven't been standing all day.

Andrea Enright 16:27

Yeah, great points. Just a basic, like, Maslow needs, yeah? And I'm noticing that just, like, right now I'm like, my mental state is not great, and it is definitely because I am not completely healthy, and I cannot sleep, and so I'm just, I'm ruined, like, I just, I feel like, wrecked mentally and physically, but the physical, it's just directly, it Just impacts the mental right? And I can't, like, rise back up, because my body's like, No, you shouldn't be doing anything until you get, like, eight more hours of sleep, but I don't know how to get that sleep. So, yeah, great. Great point. Okay, so this is what happens when you get out of alignment or when you're not in relationship with yourself, maybe when you abandon yourself, is that? Would that be a good way to put it?

Janelle Orion 17:27

Yeah, and that and that abandonment can look lots of different ways, right? It could be that I'm just ignoring signs that my body is saying, right? And so again, I've mentioned food a few times, like there's moments I'm like, Oh, I'm hungry and I'm not doing anything about it. So what's that about? Right? Like that. So yes, I can eat, but what am I doing that's preventing me from acknowledging my body? Right? Okay, so there's something else there, but it says that's just the sign of it. Something else is that like, when I feel, I start to feel really anxious and about and like a sense of urgency about getting something done. I said, I have a new phrase now that I go pause and I'm like, okay, like, because chances are that deadline is an arbitrary deadline that I have created for myself, like it's a false sense of urgency, really,

Andrea Enright 18:21

okay? This surprises me, like, because I'm like, if I think about my deadlines, I'm like, Nope, I do not. They're not like, nope. They're not arbitrary at all.

Janelle Orion 18:33

Yeah, and so, and some of them aren't, right, but some of them are. So I'm at least distinguishing between them and even today, right? Like we could have said, like, we know that our schedules are tight, right? But this is still an arbitrary deadline for us to have created this right podcast. And we're still saying, Okay, this is the deadline we've set, and we're going to honor it because we can't. It seems harder to try to find another time because we don't think that we can. And yet. What if we just didn't record? What if we pushed the recording of our podcast back a month? Right? Like we have options? Do we want to exercise the options that we are in choice over?

Andrea Enright 19:13

Yes, I would, but you won't let me. I mean, I'm sort of seizing, but like you're, you're definitely more like, No, we're gonna keep

Janelle Orion 19:24

I'm like, let's just skip a week. Okay, this is so funny. Like, this is actually a really funny dialog, because Andrea is the one who I feel is always deadline oriented. And I'm like, we know,

Andrea Enright 19:36

yeah. I'm just, yeah, I would just put it off.

Janelle Orion 19:43

The other thing is, when I notice that I'm trying to fix something that is not mine to fix, right? And so it can be really uncomfortable to see someone struggling, or like to feel someone else's emotions and energy, right, and just to sit in the you. I can't solve this for them. They have to solve it for themselves. And I can feel if I tried a big Okay, okay, I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. Like, let's just do that. Like, then I'm like, Oh, I'm putting their needs above my own. And this isn't, this isn't my area,

Andrea Enright 20:17

got it? Yeah, that's probably a big one,

Janelle Orion 20:21

right? Because what I'm doing, like is, again, it's like giving them the opportunity to be in their own desires and their own boundaries, versus trying to caretake them,

Andrea Enright 20:31

right? Do they expect you to caretake them, though,

Janelle Orion 20:36

some might. I mean, I don't know if we want to, like, stick with the example that we've got going on right now, right? Is it my job to say, let's not do the podcast because you're sick? Or is it your job to say, let's not do the podcast because I'm sick?

Andrea Enright 20:49

Yeah, but it doesn't matter, because we won't find another time. Like, I have to just suck it up. Like, so, yeah, I'm not, I'm not in like, great shape, but, like, No, it's not your job, for sure, I would tell you if I just be like, No, we're not doing it right.

Janelle Orion 21:07

And so that's the example. Like, but like, part of me wants to be like, Oh, Andrew, feels terrible. Like, I wish we could do something. I wish we had fixed it, or I want to fix it, but it's not really my place to do that, right? It's for you to say, like, I'm actually too sick to do it. Yeah, yeah, that's a

Andrea Enright 21:23

perfect example. Okay, so how do you maintain a relationship with yourself?

Janelle Orion 21:27

One of them is having awareness, and that awareness of my body, a simple thing that I've been doing a lot lately is noticing how often I'm not gonna My hands are not clenched. They're not like tight like this, but I find that they're often folded bent something, and that if I just flatten them out, right, put them down, if I flatten them on my legs, it's like a little mini hack of like bringing awareness to myself and like letting energy flow. I do that many, many times a day. And it's a way for me to bring awareness to my body. I would also say tracking, like the little simple things, but also like, When am I starting to lose presence? You know, we had that story when on the episode with John, he and I were on a date, and at like, 10pm I was like, ah, and I realized, like, I really couldn't track what he was saying anymore. And I was like, okay, like, I'm really attracted to you, and I need to go to bed, because I want to be in presence. And so that is one of, like, it's a real honoring of myself, of like, being in relationship with myself, because I it's like, I'm sending myself to bed. I'm taking care of me, although it could be considered selfish, it means I'm honoring the other person by only being available when I'm fully present with them.

Andrea Enright 22:59

Yeah, I love that, and I think that's a great example. I remember you talking about that. And I think for some of just maybe Speaking for myself, and maybe for some brave hearts that, yeah, if you're not in the presence of other people who recognize that honoring, then it feels selfish like, Oh, you're just bailing Right? Like, you're going to bed early. It's like, No, I'm taking care of myself. I, you know, I was definitely required to, like, not retreat to my room as a child. I didn't even know that. I was like, of course, losing presents or like, needed to rest, needed downtime. But No, the other people were in the room were more important, and so that's why it's important to surround yourself with people who are like minded, right? Who are who understand that, like taking care of ourselves and our bodies matters. And of course, there's much more cognizance,

Janelle Orion 23:51

which involves saying no to a lot of things and to a lot of people.

Andrea Enright 23:54

It does. It does. Leads me to a question for you, though, is like, did you ever come up against resistance when you were like, Nope, I'm not doing that. Nope. I'm taking care of myself, whether it was in the moment or about plans or about a party. You know, when you in the beginning, when you are around people who weren't accustomed to you being so attuned to

Janelle Orion 24:13

yourself, it's a good question. I'm like, thinking back in time, or

Andrea Enright 24:18

like fam, maybe like any family obligations, I

Janelle Orion 24:21

would say the biggest resistance was with myself, right where I was like, Oh, am I disappointing people? Am I missing out? I was my biggest critic about saying no, and that takes me to another piece of how do I maintain a relationship with myself? Is a practice of forgiveness of myself, because there are times so in the last episode, we spoke about, or I spoke about, the journey home to ourselves, and being honest with ourselves involves recognizing the time, all the times that we did, even if you don't know any better, that we abandoned ourselves or hurt. Ourselves, right? Like it wasn't someone else's fault, but I caused myself a lot of pain. And so I can find myself like just minding on my own business, like going for a walk around the park, and suddenly have a memory come up of something about my past relationship where I'm like, oh, and I'm like, I'm like, Oh, I just did that. I did that to me at that time. I'm like, Janelle, you forgive yourself. You did the best you could. And I don't like dwell in the memory, but I just let it pop up and say, Oh, that's that version of you didn't know any better. And that forgiveness piece is really critical to this journey home to ourselves, because there's a lot we just didn't know. Because also part of the journey home to ourselves, and being honest with ourselves means that we can't blame other people, right? Because it's not other people's fault, like if we're responsible for ourselves, which is like the takeaway of coming home to ourselves, which means that if we're responsible for ourselves, then the times that we hurt ourselves are our fault. So can we forgive ourselves?

Andrea Enright 26:09

Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like I'm like, Oh no, I'm not blaming anyone else. I'm blaming myself, but I'm not forgiving myself. Are there any more concrete examples of you like something you do every day that's not abstract, but just like things you do in the world that help you maintain your relationship with yourself. Like

Janelle Orion 26:30

Andrew, you just mentioned being surrounded by like minded people. I do believe that being vulnerable and sharing my truth is super important, and yet I also recognize that it's I don't have to share everything with everyone right, that I'm discerning what someone else has the capacity for right that so that I'm protecting myself. It's not to protect them, but it's to protect myself. So like the balance is, where is where do I feel transparent enough that I'm feeling like I'm living the truth of who I am, and I'm not over sharing to the point that I'm gonna then get negative feedback because someone can't hold my truth. One thing I do is, if I'm gonna have a hard conversation, is that I make sure that I'm resourced right. We learned this from Hazel Grace in our last series, is, oh, I don't have to have the hard conversation when I'm tired and exhausted. I can have the hard conversation. I can hold it for a couple of days, or whatever it takes, till I'm grounded. I've come back to centered. I'm not hungry, I, you know, I'm well fed, I've slept, I'm resource. And then have the conversation, right? Like, that's something that I can do. I think

Andrea Enright 27:56

this just requires patience, right? It's just like, instead of wanting to get it done, which is, you know, with our productivity gene, we're just like, No, no, let's have the conversation now, because that would make me feel better, and then it can be over and like, and I think waiting and slowing down is really a practice in itself that takes time and patience. Yeah, 100%

Janelle Orion 28:17

and another way to look at patients is, like, waiting for the right timing. And a practice that I have been in for a while now is I don't make a decision until I have to. And my mind would be like, Oh, I used to be a planner, and then I would plan a lot of things out. And now I'm like, Okay, what decision do it need to make today? Like, what's being asked of me today, and I'll make it. And it's been really, really fascinating to, like, dismantle this planning aspect of myself, because I find that when I wait until the decision is necessary to make all the information is there to make it, and it becomes much easier. I'm not, like, circling in my head as much on that. I also allow myself to change my mind, right? I can, like, go all the way into an idea and then, like, at the last minute, be like, Oh, that's not what I'm gonna do. I'm

Andrea Enright 29:24

encountering such a shift also in my planning nature, in that I make plans way ahead of time, and then things have changed so much by the time that date comes around that I don't want to go or I wish I hadn't made that plan. I mean, this is an ongoing, I mean, started happening when I was 30. I remember people not making plans and not committing, and me being kind of annoyed with that. I'm just like, No, are you going to go or not? Like, and I kind of get that like, you know, because they're kind of like, waiting for something better to come along on Saturday night and they're not sure if they can. Commit. So I get that feeling, but now I just, oh, I just hate committing. I really just, I hate committing to a Sunday plan until Sunday comes. Yes,

Janelle Orion 30:11

okay, brilliant, that I that totally it. Because who are you? You don't know who you are, what you want, until Sunday. Yeah. How am

Andrea Enright 30:18

I gonna feel on Sunday? Will I feel exhausted from the week or, like, ready for a new adventure, I'm not sure. And what comes to mind right now is this FOMO mentality that is often present with early bird tickets, conferences, events you've got to buy now because you're going to save, like, you know, $75 and it's not until May. I mean, we're, we're attending an event this week that we probably bought the tickets in January or February, and oh my god, I'm like, No, this sounds awful. I cannot. I have literally sat in dread about this event that I need to go to on the weekend now, and I it keeps coming up in my head, and I'm just like, oh my god, I can't believe I have to go. I am not well. I'm tired. I really need a rest, but I already paid for it a long, long time ago. And it just is a great example of, hi, just, I just don't like doing that anymore unless it's absolutely necessary, you know, because of, you know, multiple people's plans or prices, etc, right?

Janelle Orion 31:24

So, I mean, something that I've started doing, and there is a surcharge for it, and I can I get that I'm choosing to pay the surcharge is to not save that money so that it feels like, in the long term, where I'm saving ism is an energy I pay a little bit more for a flight, but I'm going to fly on the exact days that I want to fly, at the time that I want to fly when I know that everything is aligned, versus like, having to, like, fit into a box that doesn't feel exactly right. So in this way, what I'm hearing you say, which I agree with, is like the practice is to be, where is the energetic flow? And I oftentimes the flow of today is the flow of today. I do not know the flow of a month from now, so I'm not going to make a decision about something for about a month from now, right? Yeah, some of the other things is my latest mantra, right? Is like making being uncomfortable a practice where it's like, okay, I'm uncomfortable. Is that okay? Can I just be uncomfortable? Is there anything really wrong? No, nothing is wrong. And do I have everything that I need right now? Yes, I mean that statement keeps me in, into in presence, very often, up to the minute. Of like, I'm thinking, like, till tomorrow. I'm like, tomorrow is not here. I am talking about today. Do I have what I need right now? Do I have the money to pay the bills today? Yes, that I don't have to worry about tomorrow. And it's really like, I feel like it's like in my root like this deepening, deepening of groundedness and not panicking about what tomorrow is going to hold, because I'm just paying attention to today, and I'm paying attention to my body today. The other thing that I do now is pray. I pray a lot to my ancestors, to the divine. I just sit in front of my altar every morning and just ask for help. Ask for help from the spirit world, from this mystical realms that I don't I don't know what I'm doing. It's not like but I just I just know there's something there. I don't see it. I don't have visions other people I know can, like, see all the different beings that are around us. I don't have that skill, but I just know I'm supported. And that is extraordinarily comforting in moments where I don't know what's gonna happen, like I don't know what the future holds, and yet I don't feel alone and I feel supported because my ancestors are walking with me.

Andrea Enright 34:12

Wow, it's a lot of different strategies. Actually, there's a lot of tools. You've mentioned, a lot of strategies about how to build a relationship with yourself, and how to keep practicing that relationship with yourself, even when you fall down, even when you miss, even when you forget, even when you lose awareness. And I'm also hearing that it just allows you to move through the world with more clarity and more ease,

Janelle Orion 34:42

the more and more practice I get at this right, then the more and more confidence I have in making heart led decisions, right? I really believe in an open hearted life and that, like our hearts are the wisdom keepers of humanity, yeah, like one of my biggest practice. Just says, even today, after, like, living from an, you know, open hearted place for the past couple of years is like every day, I'm still having to let go of form, let go of what I think I know something is going to look like, to being like, what is the reality of what it looks like? And I would say my, probably my final message, which still feels like a massive one, and I'm still this is like, I'm very early at the stage of this is recognizing that my like, the truth of me, stems from inside of me. It does not stem from anything that came from outside of me, any message, any rule, any law, any tradition, it's for me to decide so anything outside of me I'm questioning. And like, you know, our first episode Andrea, like all these years ago, of doing this podcast, like episode two, I think, or maybe it's even one, I think Episode One is question everything, especially your mother's advice. And I'm like, did that, and now taking it to a whole new level of, like, literally everything, anything that's coming at me. I'm like, checking with myself to say, is that true for me? Hmm, what's an example of that? I think probably the biggest one just has to do with like, what I do for work, right? Like erotic wellness. I 100% know that I am in service to humans, to humanity, to people, that teaching people education and skills in the areas of pleasure and intimacy through touch based practices where they can feel in their body. What feels good is not mainstream in our culture. It is not standard. It's frowned upon, right? It's like taboo. It's like, don't do it and and I know that the people who I'm working with lives are changed because of it. And so in this way, it's like, oh, right, like I am so much more confident about who I am and what I am doing because, like, the goodness of it, right? Like it's coming from love, it's coming from love, and so it's good regardless of what the laws say, regardless of what culture says, regardless of what our Puritan religions say. I'm like, no pleasure sex and intimacy helps us feel more whole and human.

Andrea Enright 37:37

Yeah, I feel your certainty and the power in that. Yeah. Maintaining an honest relationship with yourself is an ongoing, lifelong process. Yep, it's a deep practice. It's a spiritual practice. Yeah, thank you so much for being so vulnerable today with us and really going into all that you've experienced and all that you've learned, and all that you continue to

Janelle Orion 38:03

learn. Thank you and thank you for showing up, even though you don't feel great, you're welcome. Thanks for

Andrea Enright 38:09

giving me permission to say that. Thanks, Bravehearts, bye, Bravehearts, we'll see you next time. Hey, Bravehearts, looking for permission, work with us. Andrea offers permission coaching, and Janelle offers erotic wellness sessions. Follow us on Instagram, meet us in real life at permission to be human workshops in Denver. Subscribe to our newsletter. Do all this and more at our website. Permission to be human. Dot live you.