Ep 91: Part 4/12, The Rise of the Real Andrea: How to Build a Relationship with Yourself Series

In this poignant, and touching episode, Janelle and Andrea wade into the gritty glorious impact on your relationships, family, boundaries, and even choir potluck, when self-relationship blooms. Spoiler alert: The ultimate judgement she had to overcome was her own. No filters. No fake smiles. Just two women talking truth, power, and what it means to come home to yourself. Grief and gold here Bravehearts. There’s a nod to Glennon Doyle and Steve Enright. You’ll hear:

-How Andrea’s ex-husband saved her from her dishonesty with herself

-Why “letting go of form” can open the floodgates to love

-Important! How to honor your parents as you grow and change

-Why Andrea started reading less school emails (score!)

-A cheat sheet for when you forget (and you will!)

-About an Easter brunch where the hosts refuesed to abandon themselves to save the “holiday plan”

-Where Andrea still tells white lies! (Damn it! She can’t stop!)

-A 20th wedding anniversary celebration with….her ex-husband

-Why lack of presence really does ruin the collective

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrea Enright 0:00

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

Andrea Enright 0:41

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.

Andrea Enright 1:08

Wow, I'm exhausted. Bravehearts, where do you hear all this shit?

Andrea Enright 1:15

Where do you hear how much change happens when you start building a relationship with yourself? Yes,

Janelle Orion 1:19

so in this episode, Andrea shares with us the part two of the outer work that's necessary of building a relationship with yourself and how that's fraught. It's fraught with challenge and obstacles and disappointment, but yet also inherently so deeply worth it, but it's a it's a conscious choice, again and again and again, day after day after day, yeah,

Andrea Enright 1:50

because really building a relationship with myself and maintaining that relationship on an ongoing basis has changed my relationship. You'll hear about how it's changed my relationship with my parents, my relationship with my partner. I changed my boundaries. It's changed my trust in the universe. It's changed how I how I

Janelle Orion 2:10

show up at potlucks, yeah, yeah.

Andrea Enright 2:14

And it's changed my relationship with my intuition. So just wait. Boom. So much happening in this episode. I can't wait for you to hear it. It is raw and vulnerable, but that is definitely the best way to be man.

Janelle Orion 2:32

Welcome to permission to be human. Hi, bravehearts. I'm excited to be here today. I'm Janelle

Andrea Enright 2:39

And I'm Andrea,

Janelle Orion 2:42

and today we're doing the part two with Andrea about what does it mean, and how do we build a relationship with ourselves and for us, it includes two parts. There's inner work and there's outer work, and it is a never ending dance between those two things, the inner work requires being honest with ourselves and discovering what we want, while the outer work means living our truth as a daily practice. In the last episode, Andrea spoke about her inner work, and today I'm going to interview her about the outer work of building a relationship with herself. How did building a relationship with yourself change you?

Andrea Enright 3:28

Whoa. How did it not change me? Right? Guess relationships lead to more relationships. So I feel like I had a new relationship with my intuition, and we're talking over the course of the last 20 years, this happened right, very slowly, with my intuition. I didn't know is my intuition for many, many years, for probably for the first 20 or 30 years of my life. I just heard this voice saying this thing, and I'm like, Oh, I'm not sure about that. I better go check and see what other people think. I better go check for proof. So before, with my intuition, I was searching for all this proof. I wanted multiple signs. I wanted to fact check the fuck out of my whispers, like

Andrea Enright 4:13

I literally think something now, and instead of questioning it, I'm like, Oh, I guess I'm supposed to do that. I'm supposed to consider that for sure, like that's a big sign. Okay, I'm

Janelle Orion 4:24

gonna pause you for a second there, because what I'm hearing is that you've had a voice, your intuition, your inner whispers, most of your life, let's just say, talking to you, but you even that was coming from inside of you, but you doubted that, so then you had to affirm you went on this quest to affirm the inner voice by asking everyone else

Andrea Enright 4:46

correct Absolutely, and not just asking other people, but thinking about it for a long period of time and thinking, Oh, maybe, but it was definitely nothing I trusted. I mean, even now, I have had one thing. Thing that comes to mind, knowing at me for literally years, still not doing it like it's just there, you know? And so I'm not getting an A plus at this yet. Maybe I never will. Almost always it comes up for me as an option. I should either do it now I know like or strongly consider it, so I can then find an alternative if that's not the way. So a new relationship was also formed with others opinions. Like, I still care. We all care to an extent, and we'll never get rid of that completely. I won't, but I just started not caring as much, right? Like I started reading less school emails, like I realized that things just always sort of worked out, you know, I just, I wasn't worrying about having the tickets, you know. I wasn't worrying if we checked all the boxes, if I got the pot luck, exactly right? You know, especially in these low risk situations. I mean, if you're going to a concert, you need a ticket, but if I'm going to something that's in the community that doesn't cost that much or is free, like, who cares, right? So there was a lot of little things like that that I stopped worrying about. I think this stems from not only stop being worrying about other people's opinions, but having better trust in the universe and things working out.

Janelle Orion 6:28

So what I'm hearing is that there was a whole bunch of things you were doing. You were like, checking a whole bunch of boxes, such as, oh, I have to read the school email, and I have to make sure I'm getting the ticket on time, by the deadline, Bucha and set. And then part of you realized, oh, I can still go to this event, even if I don't reply or read the email, or I can still go to this thing and I get, oh, the tickets, you know, they're still available the day before the show, right? Like, you didn't have to, like, hold on so tightly to all of the things. Yeah,

Andrea Enright 7:01

it's not exactly, no, it wasn't about planning. It's, it's just more about handling details. Like, I'm not gonna handle that detail and it's still gonna work out. Okay, got it? That's, that's really so much what it's about, because I had such a level of anxiety about, oh, what's gonna happen if I don't get it right? And guess what? Nothing, in so many cases, fucking nothing.

Janelle Orion 7:28

So you it was your level of rightness, no one else's level of rightness.

Andrea Enright 7:31

Yes, like, oh, like, no one's paying attention, except me. And I think what this takes though, is a lightening up of myself, right when I was young, my family had mantras for the year, and there's many mantras across decades, my parents still do this, and one of them I'll tell you about. The backstory is that, you know, I run pretty anxious. And I would say my dad is also more anxious in general than my mom. And one year, he just said the family mantra was going to be, we're lightening up. And so I would ask him something, and he'd say, Nope, I'm lighten it up. And that was just what he would repeat, whatever. And, yeah, and, you know, that was something to remember, like, oh, lighter.

Janelle Orion 8:31

I love this. I've never heard this mantra story. I always love learning something new about you after all of our years of being friends, okay, yeah, some of

Andrea Enright 8:38

their mantras are pretty good. Um, so a couple of the things that happened, I started expressing myself a lot more because I didn't care what people thought. I was just like, Yeah, I'm just gonna wear the thing. I'm gonna wear a cowboy hat and cowboy boots more often. I'm gonna go barefoot to pick up parent pickup. I'm going to put these, these insulators, these turquoise insulators that are antique things from the top of telephone poles that I'm obsessed with. I'm going to buy 100 of them and put them all over my house just, you know, anything like that. I'm going to mod podge my living room wall with book pages, you know, glue them all on, like wallpaper, just little things like that. I started expressing and not caring as much about them not fitting in.

Janelle Orion 9:24

So I'm curious, with these things, would you say stemmed from inside of you, like a part of you, something inside said, oh, I want to mod podge my living room wall. And then in the past, would something inside of use have said, Oh, no, we that's not okay. No one does that. And eventually you're just like, oh, the inner voice is like, I still want to do it. And you're like, okay, yeah, I

Andrea Enright 9:46

just, I'd always wanted to do it, let's say these types of things. But thought, no, that's not quite right. Like, it just doesn't fit in the box. Also changed a lot of my relationships. I. Yeah, and this is hard. It's super it's really hard. And this is the part where I want to scare brave hearts. They're gonna be like, I'm not building a relationship with myself. Are you joking? That sounds awful. You know, I was changed my relationship with my parents, not drastically, but it started to shift over time. I would say, over the last 10 or 15 years, it really started to shift. I began seeing myself differently. My parents, on the other hand, still saw me as the woman that they raised.

Andrea Enright 10:33

And this is incredibly challenging, and I'm still navigating that. I'm navigating how to be my authentic self and also pay tribute to the person that they know.

Andrea Enright 10:47

And so my current state is a melding of both, and I'm learning how to show up completely for myself and the world and also honor them. I'd

Janelle Orion 10:58

love to dive into this because so what I'm hearing that when you said they still saw you as the woman that they raised right? What I'm hearing, I think, is that you you know you're almost you know, as you enter your fifth decade, you recognize you have changed a lot, from the young girl that you were living in their home to the 20 year old version, 30 year old version, and so on to who you are now is, in your opinion, quite different, perhaps, than the 20 year old version of you. And they perhaps are really like holding on to the 20 year old or this is younger version of you, and not the one that listens to her inner whispers as strongly as you do now, I

Andrea Enright 11:44

think it's less dramatic than that. It's a little more subtle. It's not the 20 year old version of me, it's the 38 year old version of me. It's more in the last 10 years that I've changed more significantly, and I think that's been an adjustment for them, and I know it's hard when people change, and often when people change in your life, maybe you outgrow them, or they outgrow you, or you go in different directions, but your family will always be your family, and so it's important to slowly learn to navigate How to treat that delicately and authentically.

Janelle Orion 12:22

So I'm curious, because we have in my episode, right? I spoke like, oh, wow, building a relationship with myself is actually spiritual path. And so I'm curious when you just said, Oh, in the last 10 years, does that align with the timeline of when you would say, I don't know if you would use these words, waking up. Yeah,

Andrea Enright 12:40

that's what I mean. I would say, I mean. I would say I started building a relationship with myself 20 years ago, but the more significant changes came in the last 10 years. Okay,

Janelle Orion 12:51

thank you. So then I just want to hear, I just want to honor and acknowledge what you're saying. And so the brave hearts to hear is that building this relationship with yourself has a cost, because changing relationships with the people around you, especially those who you love so deeply, can be really painful. Yeah. And a question I have for you is, do you feel it's been worth it with your parents?

Andrea Enright 13:14

Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, there's no doubt that it's been worth it. And in fact, I remember when I had a particularly difficult interaction conversation with some of my family in the last five years, and I came back to Denver after visiting them, and you said to me, Oh, well, I think you made the right choice. And I said, Oh, it wasn't a choice. Yeah, it wasn't a choice. I knew who I was, and I had to be that person. And I tried to do it as I tried to be myself as kindly and as softly as I could. But I had to be myself. I

Janelle Orion 14:07

have this like vision, right? Of like the toothpaste, like, the more yourself, like, the more you're squeezing the toothpaste out, and at some point, like, you can't go back in right? There's no choice, like you're yourself, and so there's no way you can squeeze yourself back into the version of you or you were before.

Andrea Enright 14:29

Yeah, I can't. You can't unsee what you've already seen. Thank you. And sometimes there's a morning there that has to happen.

Janelle Orion 14:39

Yeah? Grief, deep grief, yeah, for the version of yourself that maybe, like, there's a, I think, in some time that the ignorance is bliss, right? Like, oh, our relationship used to be fine, but I didn't I, but it required me not knowing myself in order for that to be the case. So I have to grieve that true

Andrea Enright 14:57

or just knowing a very low. Unique version of myself.

Janelle Orion 15:02

So what else changed as you built a relationship with yourself? I

Andrea Enright 15:06

changed my boundaries. I say no more. I pause more. I'm less of an instant people pleaser. It's still hard for me in the moment, I find that I don't say yes, but I don't say no either right away. I think a perfect example is a couple nights ago when you called me spontaneously and said, Oh, you know what, I have a free night and I need to leave my house because my roommate is performing a ritual. Could I come over? And right away I was like, Oh, I don't know, because I had been a little bit attached to being alone that night without my daughter. And you, you know, being the kind anticipatory person that you are, said, Well, why don't you think about it and just call me back, because I knew you knew that's what I needed to do. And so I did that. So I got off the phone, got away from that energy, put distance between me and you, and then figured out if that was something I could adjust to and switch to, and if I wanted that to happen. And so then I called you back and said, okay, great, come over and we

Janelle Orion 16:18

had a beautiful, fun night together.

Andrea Enright 16:19

Yeah, we did, yeah, sitting on the porch. I've let go of friends. I skip more events, I cancel and I will confess I sometimes still make shit up when I cancel. I do I cannot bear sometimes to just say, No, I'm just not in the space to come to this tonight. There's certain people that I know can receive it, and certain people that can't, and I still,

Andrea Enright 16:51

if he has still a little bit of a battle for me. I recently heard a colleague of mine at a meeting explain after Easter weekend,

Andrea Enright 17:05

a situation she was in, everyone was planning to go to a relative's house for brunch on Sunday morning, maybe say 10 people and the hosts called the night before and said, You know what? We're not doing this anymore. We're gonna go play golf as a family instead. I don't know the details, but it sounds like this brunch had been planned for a while, and my colleague was said she was really struggling to accept this and but she was like, okay, that's what they wanted to do. And I really, I see both sides, you know, I really, I see her struggle, her disappointment, her hurt, and then I see this other family saying, that's not what we want to do.

Janelle Orion 17:52

And I like to say what I'm hearing is like, you can go all the way into something so like this family had said yes to the brunch, went all the way in, all the way up to the night before, and then they still have permission to change their mind. We all have permission to change your mind, no matter how Aren't

Andrea Enright 18:09

there some rules around this? Like, oof, that's, yeah, I wouldn't do that, not the night before. I wouldn't like unless I something had happened, and I was like, Wow, no, we need space to, like, process this issue or crisis,

Janelle Orion 18:25

which, of course, could be what they were doing on the golf course, right? But they just said, that's what they chose not to say, right? True. That's true. So, right? They were like, Oh, actually, dour family is going to be hurting if we don't just have our family here, uh huh, and it's actually like, it's gonna be hurting if we don't have fun with our family, right? That would be another way to look at it, which is, yeah, they just prioritize their immediate family first, and at the cost of disappointing others, yeah, and we don't always know. And I also curious what you think about this. Andrea have found there's a collective energy. And if one person is in like, let's just keep using with his family example, right? That eight people that they had to call and say, Hey, sorry. Like, we're not doing it this way, those eight people now had a free morning and afternoon. They got to do and choose do whatever they wanted with. But, like, in some cases, like, obviously this one woman kind of struggled with, like, what happened, although she gets to be a lesson on our podcast, so we had that example come from it. But someone else might have been like, oh my god, I'm so glad I didn't want to go and I couldn't say, No, sure,

Andrea Enright 19:41

totally possible. Like, I have a friend Katie, who always says, I love getting a cancel. Every time she gets a cancel, she's excited because she gets to stay home. Yes,

Janelle Orion 19:55

yeah. So I can definitely see both sides. But okay. I

Andrea Enright 20:00

think your question was about the collective group too. If there's one person who's really not in then it, of course, it impacts the entire group. I definitely agree and

Janelle Orion 20:10

and sometimes that's us, and sometimes it can be very hard being us, because you're like, oh my gosh, I'm impacting the entire group. But the way I see it is, we're impacting the entire group if we show up, not in our join ratings, because we don't want to be there, and we're impacting our group by taking care of ourselves. So what's the better way to impact the group? Yep, yep, I hear you next question. What else have you learned?

Andrea Enright 20:34

I let go of form easier, right? And we've talked a lot about the podcast, about letting go of form. So brave hearts, you might remember this can mean letting go of the form of love. Some people express love with gifts, and some people express love with texts, and other people hug and other people don't. And how can we let go of form in receiving that love? Because if we don't, we're basically denying ourselves love. So I mean, that's, that's one of that's a great example. But we can also let go of form with everything else, right? Marriage doesn't have to look a certain particular way. A career doesn't have to look a certain way. Motherhood doesn't have to look a certain way. And I have a recent example that I haven't talked about, and there's a recent example that I think is really trivial, but really profound, in that every year, twice a year, my choir has a song share, right? Janelle introduced me to this choir. It is now like one of my favorite things in the world. Lift the spirit choir. Woo, woo, yay. Lift the spirit choir. And at every song share, they have a potluck.

Andrea Enright 21:46

And I just really don't fucking love potlucks. I don't love to cook. I can't eat lots of things now because of my Ayurvedic diet and my menopause, pair of menopause, and my sleep and blah, blah, blah, and I don't want to cook something the night of the concert. Like, the night of the concert is filled with, like, I have meetings all day, and then I'm managing my daughter and getting to the place on time. And, you know, it's just, it's a busy day, and it usually, and it's, it's just not something I want to do.

Andrea Enright 22:22

And so the first few song shares, I figured it out, and I brought something, and it wasn't that great, whatever. You know, I can always bring chips and salsa, whatever. And then a few song shares ago, I was just like, No, I'm not doing it. Like, I'm not doing it anymore. I don't need to eat after and I give to the choir in a different way, like, I bring a lot of energy to that choir. Like, in the beginning, I'm very encouraging. I encourage people to come to the next one if they've never been again. I tell people I'm so glad they're part of my life. I always have a comment, you know, at like every other practice about something, I hand out my magical postcards to everyone. At some point during the season, there used to be a crown I brought in and, like, we would take turns wearing it, and I'm just like, No, I contributed in this other way, and I'm just not bringing a potluck item. And guess what? Nothing happened when I didn't bring a potluck item because nobody cares.

Janelle Orion 23:25

Well, nothing happened in terms of their like, someone else judging you. But it sounds like you broke through your own freedom. So like you actually, what happened was that you got to show up, like, happier or like, less stressed,

Andrea Enright 23:40

yeah? Anxiety free, yeah. So I'm like, Oh, I'm like, Oh, I'm just, I'm just not doing it. There's plenty of food, like, so I just outed myself.

Janelle Orion 23:50

You. So what I hear, though, is you added yourself for taking care of yourself, right? For doing what served you, not what was being asked of you.

Andrea Enright 24:00

Yeah? And I know that if I told them, they'd be like, okay, great, don't bring a potluck item. So yeah, I'm just like, actually kind of proud of myself around that.

Janelle Orion 24:14

Okay, so we've heard a lot already about how your life has changed as a result of building a relationship with yourself, and I'm curious, now that you've flexed that muscle in these different ways, do you ever stop building relationship with yourself like and how does that show up? Yeah,

Andrea Enright 24:34

I guess it's not that I stop building a relationship with myself, but I start ignoring my voice, or I stop being honest your inner voice, I stop being honest with myself. And this occurs when I make misaligned choices, basically, and sometimes I don't catch it until I'm in doing the thing I'm with the person i. I'm with a client, I'm on an outing, and I'm realizing I don't want to be there, and it was my fault for choosing it, and I already knew that I shouldn't have come, that it wasn't the right choice, and my practice is just to say, okay, how can I make sure that this doesn't happen again?

Janelle Orion 25:20

Why did you make that choice? If your inner voice said one thing, what prompted you to to not listen to it? Obligation,

Andrea Enright 25:27

people pleasing, avoidance of complications and drama. I didn't want to disappoint someone. Sometimes just an old habit. Your

Janelle Orion 25:36

last statement there about not wanting to disappoint someone reminds me, and I think we've mentioned this before with Glennon Doyle, that her comment that she said to her daughter was, your job is to always disappoint others before you disappoint yourself.

Andrea Enright 25:54

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And so

Janelle Orion 25:55

it sounds like sometimes you find yourself, Oh, I'm concerned. I'm gonna count on a caretake someone else's feelings, and I'm gonna disappoint myself, yeah,

Andrea Enright 26:05

forsaking your own. So I also realized that it sometimes me abandoning myself, not being honest with myself, is because I'm in a place of panic or scarcity or desperation, and when life gets hard, there's a lot of that, and that's, that's what it comes up when it comes to finances or love. I think those are two really charged topics. I also realize I don't want to be considered cheap, and so I can spend money when I don't have it doesn't come up that much. But just occasionally, I was talking to some men the other day about the balance of gender equity and who should pay at dinner, and you know that big Convo. And I said, so how do you determine that when you want a first date, when you're, you know? They both said, individually, I'm always going to pay there's nothing worse than being considered cheap. And I thought that's, I mean, it's not really news, but it was interesting to hear again today, like in this day and age, like, you know? And that resonated with me. I understand. So

Janelle Orion 27:22

what I hear a lot in your share is that a big reason that you will disappoint yourself or not be honest with yourself is just the fear of being judged by others and how others are gonna perceive you,

Andrea Enright 27:41

Yep, totally, that's it. Is

Janelle Orion 27:44

there other areas that it comes up that you haven't been honest with yourself? So

Andrea Enright 27:53

with my husband, we are separated, but we have not gotten divorced yet I actually wasn't honest with myself about my marriage. At a certain point, we had been through a lot of life together. We actually just celebrated our 20th anniversary, and in our life, some things were very hard, so much of it was poignant and beautiful. We had we had gone on so many different adventures. We had shifted our life so many different times. We had zigged society zag again and again. We had tried polyamory, and that had helped us come back to ourselves. We'd both grown so much individually, and then we came back together, but at some point, we decided that we wanted to be more devoted to each other's growth and vibrancy than the container of marriage. And even saying that out loud for me across the last few years was hard, but I knew that was the right thing. And I bet, but I eventually wasn't honest with myself about that, because I was so afraid of divorce, so desperately, desperately afraid of the shame of the guilt of the disappointment of the flaw of the stain. And I was so afraid of doing this to my child.

Andrea Enright 29:32

I was so afraid of the consequences and the impact on her life, on her vision, on her mental state, on her life, on the pressures the choices I would forcing her to make, our spark had died, and there was a dis ease to living together, and so I wasn't honest, really with myself about it, and he made it happen. He decided to move out and. And only then was I really willing to admit to myself that I also wanted that distance.

Janelle Orion 30:08

Yeah, I remember that moment with you sitting on a couch in my house when I was like, oh, like, do you want this? Like, can you see that? Yeah, you want this. And you were like, fuck

Andrea Enright 30:26

yeah, yeah, it's really hard. But as I said, we just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, and he asked me to dinner, and he got me flowers and a card, and he said we had a beautiful three hour dinner at sushi den. We never go anymore, even though we live, like four blocks away from it. And he said, What if we get to keep everything we've been through? What if we don't? We don't have to throw it away? You know? What if we could be really good friends, since we clearly know each other so well for the rest of our lives, and I'm really excited about

Janelle Orion 31:09

that. Hmm, let's take a deep breath. Braveheart,

Andrea Enright 31:12

yeah, dude, some big stuff,

Janelle Orion 31:15

yeah, Andrea just shared so beautifully the courage it takes to recognize that sometimes what you want deep, deep, deep down is the thing you've said you had didn't want, and you do it anyway. And that dinner, right? The fact that you are separated, you're moving towards divorce, and you still chose to celebrate your 20th anniversary together, that he invited you out and that you shared this like, yeah, like nothing has to be thrown away, like everything was beautiful because it got us here, to me, is the most beautiful example of getting divorced in love and I honor and deeply Respect the courage it takes to choose that path too.

Andrea Enright 32:02

Yeah, I'm so grateful, really grateful to him. So

Janelle Orion 32:08

it sounds like building a relationship with yourself is an ongoing practice. It's not like, Oh, you flipped the switch and it's done. It sounds like there's still moments that you're in it and then you can forget, and then you're in it, and then you forget. So what do you do to maintain it, to maintain this relationship of being honest with yourself, I

Andrea Enright 32:29

don't fucking know. Do you have any ideas? Yeah, it's hard. It's really hard. And I think it's, coming back to the body. It's taking time for myself, without any other people or other distractions, once a day, or even three times a day, for a minute. It's attuning to myself, right? It's attuning to my body. It's attuning to my mind, and it's listening to what I want, just constantly coming back to myself to say, Wait, is this what I want? Is this the right thing? And it's really hard to shut out the noise right and the distractions and what other people are talking about, but I have found that a quieter life, a life with less people, a life with less events, is something that has allowed me to do that for sure.

Janelle Orion 33:30

I'm curious. The other part, which I heard you say throughout this whole episode, is there's noise that feels like it's coming from outside of you, like, oh, the noise was, I need to bring something to the potluck, but then actually the conflict was within yourself of like your own judgment of yourself as if you didn't. So I'm curious, how do you maintain that distinction when the input might be coming from outside of you, but actually it's the conflict within of your own judgments of yourself. Yeah, because

Andrea Enright 34:04

I think you're saying I'm always going to have that outside stuff coming.

Janelle Orion 34:08

But if you like, you said like you didn't bring something to the potluck, and no one actually cared. So how did you resolve the fact that you didn't bring something to the potluck, and that doesn't mean you're a bad person, that in quote, unquote imperfection was actually fine, right? Because it was, it was ultimately all about you, thinking about how you feel about yourself.

Andrea Enright 34:27

Yeah, I think it just goes back to letting go of form, though, right? Because for me, it's like, no, I there's some kind of rules or obligation I want to keep doing and following. But when I realized that can look differently depending on who you are and where you live, and what time of day it is, and what the season is, and just so many different things. And I'm like, Oh, I can still offer myself. It just doesn't have to look like that. And I think that that comes up a lot in maintaining that honest relationship with myself, because that means I can. Still participate in the world, but it doesn't have to look exactly the same.

Janelle Orion 35:06

Well, what I'm hearing also is you are recognizing that what you're offering your unique gifts and what you're offering has value. Yes, right? That no one else is going to say to a choir, hey, you should, like, bring a crown and, like, support everyone and cheer them on, yeah, as they sing a solo, whatever, right? That's your idea. And so then you had, what I'm hearing is that you're like, oh, that has value. My creative idea and expression and action on that has value. And so I don't have to bring something to the potluck, because I just did something that impacted others in a positive way, yeah? And you get to see that your contribution was valuable, yeah?

Andrea Enright 35:50

And I think that comes back to creation, right? Your own creation can work too. In most cases, you know, you don't have to do a particular thing, and that is having valuing myself and having trust in in my own offering.

Andrea Enright 36:08

I also realized that in maintaining an honest relationship with myself, I want to maintain a positive relationship with myself. So one of the catches that happens if I'm not is that if I make poor decisions, I start self loathing. I'm just like, Oh, you're such a bad person for doing that. Because I know it's not the right thing to do

Janelle Orion 36:37

for yourself. Yeah,

Andrea Enright 36:41

it just builds on itself, right? So I'm doing the thing that's not in alignment with myself, and then I start hating myself because of it, and then I'm really in trouble, and it doesn't feel good to have that self loathing.

Janelle Orion 36:54

What I'm hearing is that when you are in alignment with yourself, and you make a decision that is goes against what was asked of you, that even though you feel the

Andrea Enright 37:11

nope, nope, this is about me making choices in my life that are clearly misaligned with my soul, but making them out of obligation, cultural conditioning, desperation, needing money, wanting attention, making miscellane choices, and then making that choice and thinking, Oh, shit, this is the wrong choice. And thinking, No, Andrew, you made this choice consciously. What were you thinking you're betraying yourself, you're abandoning yourself, and then I start not liking myself,

Andrea Enright 37:48

and that's really when I know I'm in trouble. So it's a little different than just like not doing the people pleasing. This is actually about making a misaligned choice that I know I've been making for a while, but

Janelle Orion 38:03

you're consciously making a misaligned choice. So yes, back to what you said earlier. There's something in your world that you know you haven't been doing, and you feel like you should do it, but so there's part of you that's must be self loathing if you haven't done it yet, because it feels like it's misaligned.

Andrea Enright 38:20

No, okay, nope. This is a little different. So I would say there's, let's say there's two categories. There's stuff that I am not listening to my intuition about, that I know I should do because I'm afraid to like and I'm not doing them because I'm afraid to disappoint someone. And there's obligation, there's cultural conditioning, and there's also whispers that are telling me not to do something, and I do it anyway.

Andrea Enright 38:47

So this is the reverse, okay, and I do it anyway, and I consciously do it, and I'm consciously not aligning my decisions with my best self.

Andrea Enright 38:59

And when I make those decisions, I know it's wrong and I do it anyway because of something I'm needing, whether that's love or money or attention or or a dopamine hit or a distraction. I mean, this can be even about getting onto Instagram too much, right? Like, I'm like, No, leave the phone outside, leave the phone in the living room. I occasionally, sometimes I do it, and then sometimes I bring it in, and I'm just like, No, not doing that, because I want the dopamine hit. I want to be able to look at my phone right before I go to bed. And over time, if I do that too much, then I start to not like myself because I'm making continual misaligned choices.

Andrea Enright 39:41

And that's when things really for me, that's when things get bad. Okay, it's tricky. You know? It's this. This relationship with yourself is something I'm constantly working on, just like I'm working on a relationship with my friends or my partner or my family, and I. So it's not without heartache and not without struggle, but it is the most important relationship in our lives. And Bravehearts, I support you in all of it.

Janelle Orion 40:15

Yeah, okay, let's take another deep breath to close out. Andrea, thank you so much for sharing so vulnerably about the work the outer work, right of once we discover who we are, then having to live it in the world. And there's a part of it is in relationship to others, but then the other part is, oh, I know what's best for me, and when I don't do it, then the person I'm disappointing is myself, and having to face that is almost the hardest thing from what it sounds like, and it's part of the journey, part of the ongoing journey home to ourselves. So thank you. Thank you for sharing, and I love you so much. I see you being such a brave heart. I love you too.

Andrea Enright 41:07

Bye, bravehearts. Love you.

Andrea Enright 41:14

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.