Conversations with Dr. Cowan Friends | Ep 80: Kelly Brogan MD | DrTomCowan
Summary
Transcript
Yes. Thanks, everybody. And welcome to another edition of Conversations with Doctor Cowan and friends. And there have been a few people who’ve been repeat performers or repeat whatever’s. And, Kelly, so you’ve been on, I think once maybe. Yeah. So once. So I think two is the, is the record so far. So there’s been a few twos. And I think, Kelly, you probably already know that I don’t usually do the usual introduction of. You went to MIT and got a degree in whatever, and then you were a doctor and now you’re still a doctor, but not so whatever because, like, that stuff is mostly irrelevant and I don’t remember it anyways.
So I like to tell some sort of potentially, that’s the word, potentially relevant personal story. All right. So I think we’re talking somewhat. You could, and again, I always give the guests the option to correct anything they hear. That just sounds, that’s just not right. But I think in some ways we’re talking about relationships, right. So at least we got the right field. So I’m going to relate a little bit of a personal relationship that I’ve had and then how I think it relates to you. So I was married and then divorced and then in a relationship and then got out of that relationship.
And then eventually I met who’s now my current wife, Linda. And I met her at a donut shop in California, which is probably the only time I’ve been in a donut shop in the last 40 years. It was at a school doctor and teacher conference. And it was a very immediate experience. And I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I’ve probably asked her to marry me or something like that in about three to four days later. So soon after that, I called my mother, who I was fairly close to, and said, oh, mom, I have some good news or something, or some news.
And I just met a woman like two weeks ago, and we decided to get married, or I decided to get married. And even though it was on a phone call, I could hear her jaw drop. Because let’s just put it like she was not impressed with my choice of women before this. And she probably thought, no, this is weird. So I heard that experience. And like I say, I had a good relation with my mother. We were. So I said, and I don’t know what got me to say this. I said, mom, I want you to come down and meet Linda.
And if you don’t think it’s a good idea, I’ll, I’ll, like, hold off. So, you know, her thing about me was he never listened to me when he was like, four. So for me to say something like that, I think was strange for her. But interestingly, Linda was coming. Linda was living in San Francisco and I was living in New Hampshire, and Linda was coming to visit. And she came soon. And my mother came to meet her to sort of take me up on that challenge because she. It was, she took it seriously. And so she came, and Linda was there, and she went off into a room to talk to Linda.
And literally 15 minutes later, I still remember this, she came out of the room and said like that. And I think it’s fair to say that in her life, there was nobody she loved more than Linda. And an example of that was sometime 15 years later. My mother didn’t like to talk about controversial things. That’s probably where I got it from. And we were talking about reincarnation, and she didn’t like to even talk about things that most people don’t believe in. She heard. She would listen to it all and listen to it, and she said, well, I don’t know if there’s reincarnation, but if there is, I want to come back as Linda.
It’s very clear words. So why am I saying this in this podcast? It’s like, why is this relevant? Because I know that you’re single. And I don’t know, I’m now saying or telling you, I may have said this before, but when it comes time for your next relationship husband, I want to have a say, like, I’m part of the vetting party for sure, like my mother’s role. And then it hit me that one of the questions I’m going to ask this gentleman is whether he believes in viruses or not. Right? Because obviously that’s important. And then it hit me that you actually owe me, like a thanks or something.
Because it’s partly because of me that there’s a significantly larger pool of applicants than there was hot no virus guys than there was four years. I thank you on behalf of all women. Yes. So that’s what I. So I just wanted to make that clear that I have a role in this because it wasn’t for me and Andy and Mark and all the, there’d be a lot fewer, no virus people. And so they wouldn’t have a clue what I was asking, though. Like, what do you mean? But now everybody knows. Not everybody, but enough. So I think we’re good.
So hopefully now that we’ve got that clear, then I can ask you the main question, which is, so you have a new book coming out today, I think, is the launch day, called the Reclaimed Woman. Is that right? Yes. So my question then is, what is a reclaimed woman? And maybe, as importantly, why would any woman want to be a reclaimed woman? First of all. First of all, I love that story. I love Linda, and I understand why your mom had that instantaneous reaction, because it’s the same reaction I had when I met Linda, and there’s all types of stuff we could unpack from that scenario.
But you’re not paying me for that consultation right now. Yes, no, it’s absolutely the case that you will have a say. And, in fact, I could expound on this extensively how much you have taught me about the energetic dynamics. Yes. It would be fantastic to partner with somebody who shares every opinion I have ever had. And trust me, I have a huge, huge bag of opinions. I tote around with myself. And by the way, when you get a new opinion, they have to take. Right. They gotta come on board. Don’t be hanging out in the old opinions.
Yeah, exactly. And you know that I have been chiefly interested in having an experience that you could describe as energetic. Although, you know, obviously, words like that have started to lose their oomph over the arc of the new age. Um, there is an experience that I want to have in dynamic that I have even touched with men that I respect in my world. And you are top of the heap. Right. So. So, for example, uh, I think. I think I’ve shared this with you. Um, I don’t know, because I’ve shared it with others. We. We have, you know, like, a colleague group, right? So we have this colleague group, and early on in the group, and I’m very enthusiastic.
It was your idea to gather these colleagues, and I. I’m very enthusiastic, like, huge cheerleader. So excited. I get so much out of, like, feeling, belonging in our little group. And early on, you had asked me to send you, like, the link to our meeting. Right? So I have a team. Okay. And we could talk about the energetics of female entrepreneurship, because that’s my latest passion. However, I have a team. I don’t, like, generate and send links to anyone. Okay? I don’t do that. And when you first asked me, there was a part of me that felt, like, affronted.
Who do you think I am? Kind of part of. Why can’t you figure it out yourself, big guy? Right? I’m not your secretary. I’m not your assistant. I’m not, like, here to make your life easier. Right? And because I believe, you know, we have a very ordained connection that is here to support me in all sorts of growth. The another part came online, and I was able to generate awareness of this part that said, it feels good to support men that you respect. Like, it actually feels good to me. And I hadn’t had a lot of contact with that part because the dominant energy that, you know, and I’ll answer your question that has been enculturated for me and so many women of my generation and the generation before, I would say chiefly, although you could say it tracks back even longer, is this self protective.
Right. Entitled, bitter, resentful energy. And it doesn’t take much for that part to take the mic. Right. It just takes, like, a minor insinuation that there is a power dynamic at play. That’s all it takes, literally. And I have been very identified with that part. I would say I was even, like, born a feminist. I don’t know. As long back as I can remember, I, you know, felt that I was at the helm of a crusade. I mean, even before, you know, I specialized in women’s health and, you know, was celebrating the hpv vaccine and took birth control for twelve years straight.
I had this energy that I, you know, I think was inspired largely by my mom and her particular experiences in life. That said, I’ll show you men. I’ll show you that I can do what you can do bleeding kind of a thing. And that is coddled. And it is celebrated by so much feminist propaganda. And you and I recognize in so many different psyops, there is this tapping into the reservoir of victims consciousness and the associated energy. And these movements, you know, political, spiritual, ideological depends how deep you question. These movements get their energy from the hurt and the fear and the pain of the people that are captured in the dialectic.
Right. So I was like so many women thinking that I was celebrating what it is to be a woman when what I was really doing was leveraging and perpetuating my own pain and fear of men, right? And so that projection of my inner dimensions. Right? So the father that came from my father, the father that is within me, you know, you could use jungian terms and call it an animus. You could call it your yang. I like to call it my inner husband. Right? So this energy is going to be reflected right on the outside in how I regard men in general and also how.
Because it’s holofractile how I interact with that dimension inside of myself. Right. So do I have this, like, inner tyrant that’s, like, pushing me and shaming me and judging me and criticizing me? Or do I have a trustworthy custodian of my energy, or do I have a sound, devoted presence, what I like to call a container for whatever the hell is going on inside of me. In that moment where you asked me about the link, I could grow this container in capacity to interact with all of these different parts that have different stories and have different agendas, then try to facilitate a consensus between them where I can access my choice, my power of choice, and align with that choice coherently.
Right? So I have chosen to be in this group with you, and the aligned choice would be to act that way. Right? And it’s not different than when I have chosen husbands, and so many of us choose husbands, or I’ve chosen motherhood, or I’ve chosen my career. And then there are parts of me that are at odds with that choice. And what happens is this inner war, this inner tension, gets played out on the outside. And, you know, the good news and the bad news is, as you know, we can’t control anything except what’s going on in here.
So how can I get to the place where I can harmonize all of my relationships in life without needing anybody else to change? Because early on in the pandemic, I thought, okay, so, like, what does sovereignty mean to me? Like, what even. What even am I, like, fighting for? Like, what is this end goal? And what came to me was it means that I can access okayness without anything outside of me needing to change. Right? So that’s a different thing than everybody getting it, everybody joining forces together, the bad guys going away. It’s a very different agenda.
And so when I applied that agenda to my relational experiences, to my experience of my own body, my sexuality, the dynamics and patterns that I was seeing in my life, that seemed to be largely unchanged by the fact that my health was in order and I had these basics of self care and lifestyle and information and awareness in place, I still was encountering these patterns where I felt that I had reason to blame others for my struggles, and I just then needed to get them to see. So I learned that my shadow lives under this banner of, like, I’ll get you to see.
Yeah, I’ll get you to see my perspective. And so getting to the place where I don’t need to get anyone to see anything and I can align with my choices so that I don’t fight with what it is that I am saying I’m doing or want to do something that I’m saying no to, right? So I can get to the place. In answer to your question, what is a reclaimed woman? A reclaimed woman. Who is the woman who’s. Yeah, before that. Oh, yeah. I just want to get your feedback on something, too. That hit me when you were talking about, you know, one of the main questions I get is, how do you get people to believe so.
And see. Yeah, right. I get that all the time. Whatever. My husband, wife, child, dog doesn’t believe, you know, they believe in viruses, whatever, right? If you take that silly little, simple example you gave. So here I am. And, you know, let’s just say for the sake of argument, an otherwise reasonably intelligent, competent man, for the sake of arguing, yeah, but I can’t figure out how to get the link to whatever, a video conference. It’s ridiculous. Like, any fool could do that. So I play the incompetent fool for whatever reason and get you to do it for me.
And by you getting out of that dynamic and saying, sure, I’ll do it, in a way, I could see that it essentially shone a light for me, like, because I must admit I have thought, Tom, are you kidding? Like, you can’t figure out how to get the link. And so I actually, in a way, changed. Not that you still send me the link. I like to send you the link. That’s what I tapped into. Like, I feel good supporting you in this way. It actually serves me. And when you are supported in this way, I live in a safer world.
And that’s my deepest heart’s yearning. As a woman, I’m not interested in freedom or self representation or equality. I am interested in feeling safe, feeling safe in my body, feeling safe in my relationships, and feeling safe with men, because it’s my assertion that we are built vulnerable as women. Biologically, we have a vulnerability that we have been gaslit around. We have been encouraged to pretend that that vulnerability doesn’t exist, that, you know, sex is an equal playing field thanks to birth control, you know, that work is an equal playing field, that parenthood is an equal playing field, that we are somehow, you know, physically, you know, in this egalitarian dynamic.
And what I have woken up to is, no, that’s not the case. That’s not the case. And I have specific vulnerabilities as a woman that are biologically conferred. And I walk this plane with a white noise of fear around that vulnerability being accessed or mishandled. Right. So what happens? I develop an entire strategy called my personality with associated manipulation and all sorts of tactics to get good at it. And I got really good at it. I was especially good at it. And. Yeah. And the primary weapon that women wield is our capacity to shame men. Right? So, like, I have done my share of chastising men in an effort to get them to see how they’ve wronged me.
Right. And so that is called a zero sum game, where I win at the expense of you, I, woman. At the expense of you, man. And this is what has been fomented by many waves of feminism. And the end of that war is not in our victory. And the cowering apology and servitude of men. Yeah. I mean, that’s not going to ever have become a relationship. That’s going to become a victor. Right, right. So some time before you and I, um, started to collaborate more, I recognized and I was inspired. You know, I have many teachers that I, you know, share about in this.
In this book. I was inspired to experiment and to commit to no longer speaking ill of men. Because what we do as women is we like hen Peck, right? And we get together and we complain about our exes, and, uh, you know, this guy who did that, and can you believe that? And not just men, obviously, but because it’s complaint culture. I call it commiseration, connection. But there is a specific permission that we have granted each other to collude around the injustices that men are responsible for on the micro and the macro. And so if I commit to no longer speaking ill of men, and that means when a girlfriend comes to me and she’s complaining about how her husband doesn’t do this or does do this, I don’t contribute my energy to that conversation, and she knows that.
Now, all my girlfriends were in this commitment, shared commitment, and that is the end of the victim triangle. Right. That is the end of the triangulation against the bad other who ultimately holds this energy that is mine. Right. And so you don’t correct them. You just don’t contribute to the furthering of the conversation. Right. Yeah. Right. Or take her side against him. Yeah. Right. And you know, this, like, I have a girlfriend who experienced what anybody would describe as a major transgression, you know, on the part of her husband, and she decided it was grounds to end the marriage.
And for an entire year, I held the conviction that there are no victims here, that this was a co created experience. And here’s all of the beautiful gems that she’s mining from the cave of this visitation with a lot of cardinal wounds. And it’s not like I was taking his side, but I was just taking no sides. And that is such a disruption in human relationships because most of us were raised to triangulate. And then that proclivity is leveraged on the world stage and in all of the dominant narratives, where you’re expected to triangulate against the source of the problem.
But what if every single upset is an opportunity for you to go meet the part of you that is holding this response? Because these opportunities are ways to recollect pieces of yourself so that you’re not acting out these dynamics with others any longer and you can make sober choices. Right? You can see clearly, because when we’re in our woundology and we’re picking partners and we’re deciding on opinions and we’re reacting to whatever’s coming into the field of our life, we do not have sound. You know, what’s called neuroception. I know, whatever. You and I hold these terms lightly, but we don’t have sound perception of danger and safety.
And you’ve talked about this like, I talk about this, like, the. The capacity that we have to narrate what’s going on is informed by our perception of whether or not we are fundamentally safe, right? Like, if there’s a pile of laundry on a chair, I. In my dimly lit bedroom, I can see an intruder and have a whole physiologic cascade of events inside of myself racing hard and shortness of breath and intrusive images. Or I can see that it’s a frigging pile of clothes on a chair. Because I have a system that is regulated. How do we regulate our system? Like, how do we become unbothered as women? I thought that it was the world’s responsibility to do that for me.
Right? It was my man’s responsibility. It was my kid’s responsibility. It was the Illuminati responsibility. I have experienced the reclamation path to be a homecoming to the responsibility that I have to learn this self conferred safety. And. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that’s an incredibly profound kind of experience to get to a place. And I’ve described this in other ways, too, because I also understand that I. Let’s just say I’m not fully there. There’s no there to get to. That’s the plot twist. The place of, you know, not going to war with other people and all that stuff.
Because I sort of remember I’m speaking as a woman. And I tell you this all the time, that I don’t know what men are supposed to do. I don’t know. I mean, maybe the sport of. And the. The play of those battles is actually an essential aspect of your actualization. So I do think the more we can remember that we have different. They track together, but there are different paths that we have. Yeah, but the way I. The way I described it is if you’re, like, an animal or an indigenous person and you’re, like, out hunting and.
And you’re also potentially prey, you can’t afford to be emotionally, like, disconnected or delusional about what you’re experiencing. You just have to stay present and grounded. And what’s real is real, and you. You know, what you deal with, what’s yours to deal with. There’s. You can’t afford to do that. And that’s mostly, I think, how we live our lives is we’re fighting demons and fighting battles that don’t have anything to do with us or whatever. You know, they’re just. Yeah. So if you can get to the point where this is theirs, you know, and it’s not me.
You didn’t do this to me. You’re not a victim. That’s a whole. That’s a very powerful place. That’s, I think, the way I could. Yeah. That’s what you’re talking about. Yeah. And it’s not a force of will, at least for me and most of the women I know. It’s not a force of will exercise. Right, where you just decide on a Wednesday, I am sovereign and personally responsible, and nothing will bother me ever again. This is like. It’s. And it’s a process of actualizing into that capacity. And the first and arguably most challenging dimension of it is to simply prioritize your felt experience, actually.
Right. So if I get an email that sucks and bothers me and I don’t like it, old me, for very good reason, would have quickly penned a cutting response with all of the rhetorical points illustrating my rightness. Yeah. Which you’re very good at. Which I’m good at. And I might have cloaked it in some sort of playful light, you know, half humorous thing. Right. Because that’s the flavor that I ultimately refined, I would say, over my decades. And what I’m doing in that, in that effort is engaging whatever defenses I have to not feel the thing that is already in there.
And it’s quite effective. I mean, I spent many decades of my life feeling mostly nothing. Right. So just living up here. And that is, you know, from my understanding, mostly from teachers like David Data, the masculine body. Right. Like, a man’s bodily experience is fundamentally different. A woman’s experience is filled with sensation. Like, there’s so much happening in here. And when I live disconnected from that, I am missing out on so many dimensions of my creative inspiration, my pleasure, my capacity for play, but I’m really missing out on, like you said, that connection to my intuition and my inner yes and my inner no.
So, like, my answer to what is a reclaimed woman? It’s a woman who says yes when she means yes and says no when she means no. Because what most of us do is suppress awareness of our felt experience, and we pretend that we didn’t just do that, right? So I meet the man, I go on the first date, and in my bones, I feel right like this. No, he doesn’t have what you need, but I suppress awareness of that. And I make what I refer to in the book as the poor bargain, which we do all the time as women.
We make these poor bargains, and we say, okay, it’s good enough. It’ll work out. Like. And then we take on the project of turning that thing in front of us, you know, turning the hardware store into the grocery store that sells eggs, right? And imagining if I just keep trying, if I just keep at it, it will eventually give me what I need. But we knew, right? This could be with an outfit. This could be with a job. This could be with any of the agreements and choices that we make. There is a splitting that happens and a suppression of the awareness of the part that is saying, you know, this is not the way.
And so in that moment where I send that email, right, I am saying, whatever feeling is in there doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. And what matters is securing my dynamic position of power, seeming power. And that comes by being perceived as right and sometimes good, but mostly right. And these days, what I might do if I get an upsetting email is, you know, what I call enter through the upset. And it’s not much of a practice, but it’s a devotion. It’s a. It’s a devotional orientation towards myself that says what I’m feeling matters. And so I would literally get the shitty email, and I would sit back in my chair.
Sometimes I’ll set a timer, because I like to have these containers, as you know. I know you do too. We have a similar relationship to time being a powerful field for containment anyway. So I might set a timer for, like, 90 seconds, and I will just track the sensations, but I won’t just, like, passively watch. Like, oh, my chest is feeling tight and my belly is hurting. I will recruit this inner yang energy, father energy, husband energy, whatever you want to call it. And I will grow my spine, and I will gaze into myself with this, like, good husband vibe that says, like, I’m here for you.
What do you got, baby? And that allows me to, like, hold space for myself so that whatever’s happening, I just am checking it out. I see that. I see that, I see that. And there’s no story. There’s no narration. This is not, like, the shadow work part of the show. It is simply offering my attention to my felt experience. The meta of this is life changing for women. It’s the pattern disrupt of all pattern disrupts, because otherwise, you are in your fear based control tactics. And they work. They work, and they also perpetuate this experience of unsafety.
And what comes with that is bitterness and resentment and this sense that I call of living behind a glass wall. It’s like, then even your celebratory moments in life end up feeling hollow. And the revivification of your body, of your life experience, the animation of your humanity, starts with this kind of a reunion, right? So I might do that, and it will. I don’t know if this is a fair question. Do you have a sense of the percentage of decisions, choices that women make that actually come out of this kind of. I don’t know if it’s fear based consciousness, but not a genuine yes.
Like, yeah, is it 100%? It’s like. I mean, because we don’t have our parts in consensus, even. What feels like a total fuck yes is often from that place of inner fragmentation. Right? Like, the biggest decisions that I have made, that I felt so enthusiastically a yes for, have turned out to be a violation of a big no that was felt by other parts I decided not to pay attention to. Yeah. And often, you know, we say no. Right? Like, we’ll get divorced. Right? We’ll leave the guy, when what we really long for is love and connection from that person, and then we end up engaged in what I call the erotic caress of the enemy, where we’re, like, still in dynamic, you know? And this could be, you know, with.
With. In the activist realm. I mean, this. This happens whenever we don’t acknowledge that what we long for is connection, and what we are doing is punishing. Right? So that split defines most of our lives, I would say. Because to align coherently is. Is vulnerable. It’s very vulnerable because all your parts are now saying, this is what’s wanted, and you could be rejected. You could be exposed for that desire if it’s not well handled. But it doesn’t need to be well handled by anyone if it’s well handled by you. And that’s why this other practice I call wearing the villain crown is the companion to this game change shift.
Because if you don’t practice being bad and wrong in the eyes of those you care about, you will ultimately capitulate and take the bait again. Because, you know, and you helped me so much with, I mean, you are, I would say, the primary correcting force in my life. As somebody who can, in one sentence, deliver me the opportunity to identify my covert intentions, you’ll be like, maybe you want to consider doing this, or maybe you want to consider not doing that. And I can receive the opportunity from you to see that there was something operating behind the curtain.
And usually what’s required is that I then own the fact that what I thought I was so right about, maybe I was not. And to get good at that, to practice that it actually becomes not only easeful, but strangely enjoyable. Like, strangely delightful. I don’t know how else to put it. Where the opportunities where I get to practice humility actually feel like what they are, which is that I get access to a piece of myself. And I know that that piece has gifts, right? It has energetic offerings that I then get to enjoy. And it could come in the form of some inspiration or, you know, some feeling of joy and pleasure just walking around the world that wasn’t available to me two days before when I was still in that pattern, you know, of my previous self.
I mean, this is. This is incredibly profound thing. And I don’t say that often or easily, because what you’re talking about, I mean, in what, in a way, is you’re. You’re asking of yourself most primarily, and then essentially inviting other women to come along is to be real. In other words, if this is like, really investigate, is this really what you want? Is this really who you are? Is this really what feels right for you? And get rid of all the programming, and it should. And it’s got, you know, I mean, that is an incredibly powerful way to live, go through life.
Well, you reference one of the greatest barriers, which is the. The programming and the. The habit. I would say that we have as women to secure a sense of safety in the world through our competitive advantage. And we are competing not only with men, but also with other women and even with our own kids. And I know that sounds weird and crazy. However, whenever there is a dynamic that requires that somebody collude with your perspective in order for you to feel okay, you are going to take the bait of attempting to control them. And in that climate, there is no room for intimacy.
For connection, for even complementarity. And in that world, we do not feel well, we do not feel fulfilled, and there is no possibility for us to enjoy our feminine gifts, which we incarnated, to experience these energies that move through our vessel, our creativity, our capacity to play, and to bring this sacred intuition to the collective, let alone to our own lives. So that’s why I’m a huge believer. My first couple of books. You can reclaim your health by yourself in a silo. Yes, it’s fantastic. As is the setting in your clinic and in these communities. It’s fantastic to marinate in a more fearless culture around our bodies and symptoms.
But in the end, it’s possible to do that work, right? Like, you’ve had people who’ve read your books, I’ve had people who’ve read my books, and they have gone on to change their story of health, to come off of medications, to shed diagnoses pretty much on their own. This work that involves the reclamation of energy that is hidden behind your shame, I think it needs to be done in a permission field of other same sexed people, right? So I believe that women are meant to do this work together because we give each other permission and we practice this kind of radical self approval with each other, right? So if you can come and, like, maybe not always, right, there’s women who get critical of each other, right? When.
When there is a meta agreement that we are here to experience our own power, then the. The meta field, like that meta agreement will make it. So that critical reflex, I call it, like, whenever, as a woman, you imagine that, you know better how another woman should. Woman, right? That critical reflex relaxes, and there lives a possibility to hold these softer truths together and to normalize that, right? I have another girlfriend who, like so many of us, left her the father of her kids at some point and divorced him, right? And his behavior over these years has been arguably very challenging, and I have myself been triggered by his behavior and looked at that myself.
And more recently, she came to me vulnerably and expressed something that, you know, I am very much a willing ear and heart for, because it’s something that I, and so many, I think, women who’ve been divorced from the fathers of their children are looking at, which is like, this grief, right? This grief that is in need of attention. Okay? So she comes to me and she’s like, you know what? I wonder what would have happened if I applied these principles that you, Kelly, and I talk about with regard to women’s empowerment. I wonder what would have happened.
If I did that with my first partner, I just wonder what would have happened. Implying that maybe she was not only co creative, but she was even primarily responsible for what went wrong and for the seemingly inevitable fact that they separated. Right. So what she’s saying is, like, I actually had power, and I’m willing to own that. Even in this case, where it seems so obvious that I needed to leave and that there was no way to save this marriage. Yeah. That requires a certain kind of listening ear. Right? Like, and an agreement that we are here to hold each other’s vulnerability as women, because that offers safety.
We can offer safety to each other. We can offer this containment to each other as women, and we can practice to bring that out into dynamics with men and children in the world. And I’m not sure that you can grow that capacity outside of that shared agreement and philosophy and worldview. And in order to enter into this field together as women, we kind of have to get to the point where whatever we’ve been doing, it’s just not really working. You got to get to the enough is enough moment in order to want something different. Got it.
All right, so I know we have a time barrier here. So here’s another stupid question. So this is what this book is about, right? Yes, it is about that. And it’s funny because I was. You know, I really enjoy plot twists. I enjoy plot twists in my own life. I enjoy getting to the point where I never could have foreseen how much sense something could make. Yeah. And these big reveals about how I’d gotten it wrong. And I think that, you know, you and I have really trained this muscle. And that’s why, you know, if you tell me on a Thursday, you know, hey, you know what? Brushing your teeth is maybe not a good idea.
I can hear it. Like, I can. I can embrace any of the plot twists because I’ve come to, like, relish that. Yeah. And I was thinking about how this book, like, what if I had had this book, which is my effort to curate everything that I needed to know in advance of about 10,000 dark nights of the soul and to put it in between two covers, and what if I had been given this book 15 years ago? And the truth is, as I think you would agree, I wouldn’t even have cracked the COVID first of all.
And even if I did read it, it would have gone in one ear and out the other. Yeah. So it is meant to be, like the gentle, loving companion to and for the woman who is ready to level up her story. And to resolve this gaslight that says I should be happy. Given all of the gifts of feminine empowerment that I’m enjoying, why am I still feeling like I’m living behind a glass wall? And to give you the tools that are practical, that have worked in many ways for me to deliver you to the experience of your true feminine essence, which is when I think we feel alive, and I do think that’s what we long for, it’s like we don’t want to feel happy or successful or productive or accomplished.
Like, we want to feel animated and alive in these bodies. And so I think that’s the answer to my second question, which I’m going to answer. So why would a woman want to do this? To feel more alive, more joy, more. Yeah. I’m doing what I’m doing on earth. It’s just good. It’s just really. Authentic. Yeah. I would say authentic. Authentic. Yeah. And then also hard to come up with the word for it, but, yeah, there’s just a lot of drama that we cook up as women, and sometimes it’s low scale drama. Right. Like your ongoing struggle with money.
And sometimes it’s big scale drama. Like, I’m a professional at that. And there is a longing that we have to feel, like, unbothered. Right. To feel at ease and to look around the landscape of our life and not only see no hotspots, but to actually be able to hold that, because that’s the other side of the desire coin, is once you get the thing, do you have the capacity to actually hold and have it? And that’s something that requires practice and development. So, yeah, in the right hands. I’ve already seen it happen to the women who collaborated with me on the writing of this book.
This book is a portal, and it’s my most favorite type of disruption these days. Got it. I mean, it’s just an incredible deed. That’s, I think, the only way I could say it. So the practical. So a buy the book, get it, and read it. And is there any other things people can do? There’s, like, a program or. Tell me about what else people can do. Yes. So, Thursday the 27th, I am offering a masterclass where I teach a couple of the tools from the book that are, I think, the highest yield, and then also present the companion program that I have created called reclaimed, because this work is meant to be done with other women, and I attract very special gals.
And so it will be launching the ETH, so we’ll do it all together. It’s basically like a very high level book club version of the experience. And, yeah, I would love to see your folks, your folks in that container. All right. Well, I would say I would do it, but since I’m not a woman, I don’t have to do it. Not invited. Not even honorary? Not even honorary. It’s good. All right. Kelly, it’s been amazing. I mean, I just. It’s just so inspiring to listen to and really try to get from my limited male perspective, maybe, of this, what it is you’re talking about and how profound this is for women to really see the world differently like this.
It’s great you’re referenced in the book and thanked, and I will do so again, which is to say that you have played a very, very sacred role in the actualization of this material and in my own maturation, you know, modeling for me what that masculine energy can look like so that I can internalize it, even and offer it to myself. So thank you. All right. All right, everybody get the book. The 27th is the masterclass. Hopefully we’ll get it out by then and go from there. Kelly, thanks for joining me. It’s been amazing. Thank you, Tom.
All right.
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