Paradise Perspectives
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Paradise Perspectives
An Honest and Hilarious Conversation About The Fifth Floor
The elevator doors open and the sign reads: Welcome to the fifth floor. In this episode, Anenda Zaandam and I, two longtime friends, compare notes on turning fifty. We laugh about AC settings and night sweats, and tell our truth about what changes when estrogen lowers the volume on people-pleasing and living for others, and raise the volume on peace. This is a ride through perimenopause, its big sister menopause, healing, and the realization that comes when you stop nurturing everyone and finally start choosing yourself.
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Is this thing on? Hello, hello. It's your island friend and confidant Rizelle with another episode of Paradise Perspectives. If you're new here, thank you so much for tuning in and welcome to the tribe. Here we have all those honest conversations, you know, about growth, about mindset, heartbreak, and yes, even hormones. But we do it with pinage. We do it with a little bit of style. Because here we do it with rum punches and coconut drinks. You know those drinks served with those colorful little umbrellas in it? Yeah. So my friend Ananda Zandom stopped by and we sat down for one of our epic conversations. Only this time I decided to hit record because I want to invite you into our convos because they are so hilarious and so full of really important things that we women should talk about more often. So she and I we could talk for hours and hours, and yes, this episode is going to be a little bit longer than our usual because we had a lot to say. But you know, we talked about relationships, friendships, we even tackled heartbreak a little bit, and we talked about so much more. More importantly, though, we share what it has been like entering the fifth floor. That is what we call entering our 50s, the fifth floor. So she and I both just turned 50 this year, and this is going to be like one of those like really hilarious look at body changes and your mind changing, and no longer giving a fuck. So make yourself one of those tropical little drinks we just spoke about. Add an umbrella or garnish if you really feel fancy. Sit back and get ready for today's hilarious conversation.
SPEAKER_00:I just want to tell you that this is really the actual intro that we're gonna do now. Uh, Risselle's gonna start and then I'm gonna jump in. This is not your regular podcast today. Prepare yourself, get your coffee, sit back. It's gonna be a ride.
SPEAKER_01:It's definitely going to be a ride because before we hit record, we already had so many like really deep conversations and really hilarious moments. And I am just really like hitting myself on the head now because we did not get that.
SPEAKER_00:She didn't, she didn't record it.
SPEAKER_01:No, I didn't trust it.
SPEAKER_00:It's like my best speech people.
SPEAKER_01:Like, seriously, the best speech, but I am sure that wherever that came from, it will come back, it will come back. Like, we're definitely going to have that. So, this is my gorgeous friend Ananda Zandom, and you and I have been friends for quite a while.
SPEAKER_00:We don't want to tell the people how old we are.
SPEAKER_01:So, we've been friends for like you know, a short quite long time. We have been friends for a very long time, and this is the first time that I actually got you in front off the camera and on this podcast, and we've been talking about this for weeks that it is about time that you be a featured guest on this show. So I am so happy, and we're at my house, and you actually came all the way here because I am still recovering from this damn surgery. Girl, you had me laughing, and I'm thinking my stitches are gonna be.
SPEAKER_00:I'm apologizing in advance if you see that this suddenly cuts off, it's because there was too much left.
SPEAKER_01:There was an emergency emergency, but there was a small emergency, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And um, we had to go.
SPEAKER_01:So, Ananda, first things first, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_00:Um, okay. So, my name is Ananda, which people usually butcher. Uh so I'm just gonna say that out loud. Ananda. My last name is Zandam, which is another butchery situation, but we'll we'll take that. Um, I am 50. Yay! We don't say that anymore. No, no, I'm gonna proudly say it. I'm 5'0. I am on, as my friend Riselle has pointed out, I am now officially on the fifth floor.
SPEAKER_01:Both of us have entered the fifth floor. The elevator doors have opened, and we have walked quite quite confidently onto the fifth floor.
SPEAKER_00:She's walking a little more confidently than I am, but we'll get to that in a moment. Other things about me. I am a hospitality expert. So my hospitality is my background. I am an educator. I've been an educator for about 20-something years, uh, about 25 almost. I am a huge, huge fan of hospitality. That's really where my um heart and soul goes into. I teach at a technical vocational college, I'm a project lead for hospitality and for educational projects. Um, I'm also a mom. I have a 25-year-old. I know. I know Korean beauty people. I have a 25-year-old, and um, I have a partner, I have a dog, and um, I'm generally a nutcase in, but in a good way. Um, and I don't everybody's going, what's in a good way? In a good way. I'm just a very happy person who just enjoys being happy, enjoying life. I like the funnier sides of things, but I'm also a huge deep thinker. So I have a lot of things to say all of the time. I have opinions and thoughts, patterns, and I just generally think very deeply about life. I generally am a person who reflects a lot, and I believe that when you learn something, um, it can benefit somebody else. So that likens it back to my educator background. Uh, other than that, I'm Risselle's friend, and I'm so happy that she has uh you know tolerated me for all of these years because I am literally a crazy person that come in and do weird stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, but but at the same time, you are also the person that I go to whenever there is something that is like floating up my head, and things are not really going the way that they're supposed to be going, or I'm feeling a little off. You are the person to actually get it right, and then like you always are the person to actually bring me back to center and be like, okay, now let's and you always make time for it too. Yeah, that's that's like the the the most the one of the things that I so adore about you. It's like you make the time and you will sit there and you will make the time and space for me to out whatever I need to out, and then you will come with the very philosophical part of Ananda's and down.
SPEAKER_00:And then tell me like, well, you know, I come up with a PowerPoint presentation. So now that you said that, okay. So here's what we're gonna do. This is where you're at, this is where you want to go. This is our most opportune route. We can also take the little swervy route if you want to. This is what happened, this is what it means, this is how it's gonna affect you. I like systems. My brain thinks in systems, my brain thinks in in a lot of ways in a logical way, but in a lot of ways also uh very abstract. Why I think it's important to make time for people when they come to you. Yeah, um, and that's not to say everybody comes to me and I have time for them. I make time now, and that's one of the things that you learn too in on the fifth floor where your time goes to. I likened it in our earlier non-recorded conversation. We were talking about people who are women in their 20s versus women in their 50s, and there's nothing such a juicy conversation, and we're going into backwards. We're going right into it, we're going right into it because women in their 20s and women in their 50s, and I don't want women in their 20s to go, okay, they're gonna pick on us again. It's not anything like that because I was 22, believe it or not. At one point, we actually met when we were in our 20s.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, we did, and that is the beauty of our friendship, we've seen each other go through all of these stages in womanhood.
SPEAKER_00:We've gone from the beginning where we were in college and we thought we knew everything, okay, and then to the part where we get into relationships and life interrupts us, and then when life interrupts us in a way that really bothers us, we've been through uh debts in the family, deaths outside, deaths in relationship, deaths and things that you thought. We we we forged a friendship around the things that happen in life. And when people say, I'm in your life because I want to be a part of your journey or I want to share this journey with you, it that's exactly what it means. That when your friend calls and says, Hey, this and this happened, it might be silly for you, it might be really silly for you, but for your friend, it's a serious thing. And one thing that I've learned over the years is if you don't have room or support to express yourself in a way that you feel safe to do or non-judgmental, because when we people say a lot and you see it a lot on videos, I I need you to be a safe place for me to to to give my emotions or to talk to you. And I need you to be a safe, and what is that? What does safe place really mean? And it's like it sounds very esoterical and it's great for the psychologist round, but a safe place really means when I come to tell you something that is hurting me, but I don't need the judgment. I don't need your face to push up. I don't need you to go like, oh my god, like or laugh. Or laugh or anything. If you are not good at that emotion-wise, the only thing you have to do is sit next to that person so they continue talking until it gets off their chest. Sometimes that's all you need. And likening to the conversation, sometimes you'll call me and you'll go, Okay, I need to talk about this. And I go, Okay, alright, I'm gonna get my coffee, I'm listening to you. I agree. And she goes, I feel better, good, all right. So, what are we gonna do about it? I don't know. Okay, great, I'll call you back another day. But that moment alone, and then it'll be a conversation we have two or three days later, and I go, So, what about that thing? And you're like, Yeah, I guess I just need to say it, I just needed to vent it out. And that's a lot of what where we are at in terms of understanding the changes that are happening on the fifth floor, and the changes that are happening when you reach level five, or you reach any level. Going back to the analogy that I had, women in their 20s versus women in their 50s is also to me, and also a part of um scientific research or hormonal thing. What happens when you you hit your 40s, 50s is that you go into perimenopause. Everybody knows Perry. Um, everybody knows her big sister menopause when they show up.
SPEAKER_01:But Perry's a great friend. Perry was a great friend for a while, and then and then many came in.
SPEAKER_00:No, I did not like Perry at all. Perry was just, we're gonna talk about Perry because you know, she's still on my hit list of things. But in that sense, what happens with Perry is that she decides to tell you, hey, listen, you've been using estrogen for a while, and we really think that was a wonderful run, but we're gonna start to slow it down because we need to bring in other hormones, reshift your brain, and stuff like that. So we're gonna start the evacuation, okay? And you're thinking, okay, fine, no problem. Thank you for the note. What happens in your body and what happens with our emotions is that estrogen is sort of like to me an equalizer. It sort of keeps you on a balance, it makes you palatable, it makes you more nurturing, it makes you accept more things because you have that loving gene still in you.
SPEAKER_02:Like, you know, oh yeah, you know, it's not a problem. Yeah, so he cheated, but you know, I really had to work on myself. Okay, you know, he's really, you know, he's just you make excuses for people for everything, for everything. You know, all the wind was blowing really wrong. That's why my perm didn't stay.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you you start to find all sides with excuses, but as you get older, and you get your hormones start to decrease or they start to change, or your reproductive hormones, because remember, you need estrogen along with testosterone and all of those things to help your reproductive organs stay equalized. At a certain point, your body says, We ain't making normal kids, we done with this thing. You either had them, you didn't have them, sis, with crose in the factory. That estrogen also keeps that nurturing part of you there because you need that nurturing part for when you have kids. So if you don't have children during that time, I'm not judging you, but oh, but thank you. Not judging you. I actually applaud women who honestly come out and say, I don't want to have kids. I'm the first one in the back room who go, Yes, yes, and I'm supporting you. And it's not because I don't believe that kids don't bring something to your life, and I don't believe I am not a proponent of uh every woman should have a child or every woman should go through the birthing story.
SPEAKER_02:That's not the case. And it's not by one. It's not for it's it's not for everyone. I only have one, I ain't got four or five, and I got one, and but after the first one, I was like, maybe we should rethink this.
SPEAKER_00:We should rethink multiple children because this is not this ain't it, boss. This ain't it. And so when women say, I don't want to have kids, I actually applaud them for it. One, you're standing on business about what you who you are and what you are. Two, you you're making a decision in a society that's gonna chastise the living daylights out of you, and you're choosing to stand strong in that. That's a different type of strength that some women don't have and can't access because you are so busy keeping up with appearances and with the choses. Running it back to the the hormones that we were talking about 20s, 40s, 50s, whatever it is, that nurturing, that loving, that being able to see and rose-colored glasses, they come off because your hormones are no longer providing you with that buffer, and you want you no longer have that energy to find that. So things hit you more directly, things are more harder to process, things are more realistic. Your brain fog is replaced with an illusionary veil that you've had, to the brain fog of your brain no longer being able to connect with those thought patterns and mindset you had up until you started to diminish in reproductive organs and where you are going to, because your brain has no idea where you're going to, it has no idea what you're doing at 50, what you're supposed to be doing. Because it's all new, it's all new, and it's all new, not because we couldn't know, it's because somewhere along the line, the conversation about women becoming older, stagnated. Okay, you're old, that's it. Nobody's telling us what it looks like, nobody's showing us what it feels like.
SPEAKER_01:Our parents did not have these conversations with us. They probably had it amongst themselves, but we were never part of that conversation. So we are entering the fifth floor with completely new eyes, not knowing what to expect. We have no idea. I was like, I don't know about you, but especially growing up in the Caribbean, our parents kept a lot from us because there's a lot of things that oh, kids shouldn't know, you know, think about their relationships or about how they process stuff and about what happens to your body or to your mind, which is more important when you get on the fifth floor.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And there's a lot of changes, but going back to the stages you go from you know the different stages in womanhood, um, from your 20s, 30s, 40s, and now the 40s is can I say one of the most brilliant because that's where it starts. Yeah, it does. That's when it starts.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know if I want to say brilliant, like you.
SPEAKER_01:Um I had a really good 40s. You had a really good 40s. It is from my perspective, my 40s at the beginning is when I had the big aha moment, and I love that aha moment because that is the beginning of the big change. That is true. I I will say this.
SPEAKER_00:Um, my 40s were not as what I thought my 40s were going to be. I I fully went into my 40s going, this is gonna be it. Y'all gonna be sick of me. And in the turn, I was sick of my own self, and nobody else got sick because my 40s turned out to be a roller coaster of physical, emotional, relational, environmental changes within that decade. Within the decade, I moved three times.
SPEAKER_01:Not to mention the professional hurdles, the ups and downs and downs.
SPEAKER_00:Both of us, all of them. I think everything that could have been thrown except the kitchen sink is what I experienced in my 40s, and I thought, well, this is an interesting kitchen and the sink. Um, I don't look back at it too regretfully. And I I'm not saying not no regret at all, too regretfully, because there are certain things now when I'm giving myself the room to actually process and see it, that I realize you shouldn't have to have been in that particular situation that long. You saw that lesson and skipped it over, so you kind of have a big helicopter view of where you were at in terms of your four, at least for me. Mines were very confrontational. My 40s was was where I thought I would be excelling and finally coming into my own skin of okay, I'm an adult woman, my career is this, my life is this. At the beginning of my 40s, that fell apart. My business fell apart, my career stopped. What I thought I was gonna be doing for the rest of my life went out the window. My relationship struggled, my environment had to change. I moved back in with my mom, so you go through that mentally. My son left for college, my job demoted me, then I got another promotion somewhere there, then my relationship was good, then it fell apart. So I went through the entire ring of around the roller coaster. I think I have my PhD, hey, universe. Could I have the non-strong soldier package for now on? And that is because of a lot of that. When my 50th birthday was coming up, I was like, no, we're not doing this anymore. I'm not spending another decade catering to people, catering to situations that are detrimental to me. So I say I'm not too regretful of it because my 40s really showed me that what I was doing and how I was operating my life, though it wasn't bad, wasn't for me. And I was the time was running out for that phase.
SPEAKER_01:And that is why I say it was brilliant.
SPEAKER_00:Because maybe I could change my mind, look at it.
SPEAKER_01:Because if you are, I'm hearing you talk about it, and it was pretty much the exact same thing for me. I had a roller coaster of things changing and going back, and then realizing that you know, wanting to live your life for you wasn't it's easier said than done, and all of that was going through my 40s. And it wasn't until I was approaching 50 where I really dropped the whole nurturing part of myself. And I think it's it's a part of us women that you know you'll always be nurturing, but you stop making it a priority to nurture everybody around you. Stop leaking, nurturing to everyone, we're not leaking anymore. We're really not leaking anymore. No, literally, I mean like literally, we're not leaking anymore, which is the best thing out of TM. But we're here now. And isn't that what this podcast is all about? Which we can today today and you can look away, it's not just the beautiful thing of not leaking nurture and other things is just fantastic. And of course, every woman is different. But what I'm saying is that it is so beautiful when you finally start making decisions that are good for you, yes, and now for everybody around you, just for you. This is my selfish era. If we want to talk about all these things that we constantly say all the thought, this is my era, this is my selfish era, and it is loving it. It sounds even when you say it in a funny way, I can almost feel the flinch of a lot of people going, of course, because I totally get it, and of course, if you look it up, selfish is when you put yourself first to the uh, you know, when it is hurting someone else. Right. And we are being selfish in the way that we are putting ourselves first without hurting someone else.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because we come back to the we're coming, we're coming to the discovery of the part of selfishness that is encouraged. We've not had that opportunity to do that the entire time. Since we were little girls.
SPEAKER_02:That's it.
SPEAKER_00:Because when you liken it to little girls, it doesn't matter if you're Caribbean, it doesn't matter if you're American, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, if you are a little girl, or if you are a girl born into that family, and that family is really paying attention to you, you are going to be indoctrinated from the moment that you are aware of life into how to behave, to sit in a particular way, to behave in a particular way, to be palatable. What is nurtured in us is our nurturing gene. What is brought to the forefront and developed pre um its developmental time is how to shrink, adjust, or make ourselves more palatable for the people around us. Because somewhere along the line, it is considered that that is ladylike, that is a nice girl, that is a good girl. And I think honestly, we've been gaslit from the beginning with you know, girls are made of sugar and spice. Not any sugar and spice over here. This is cinnamon, some honey and some cayenne pepper.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, some hot sauce in there. Also, some hot sauce.
SPEAKER_00:Also, I don't know where they got this this sugar sweet and spice, but the true nature of a woman is not sweet. And that is something that I think when you get older and when you realize and when you're realistic, women's natures are not, we are not naturally sweet people, you know. Let's just be fair. We have no patience, we want things done the way we want them to be done. We already have a knowledge of how things should be done, but we have learned to become palatable and nice and tolerate. That's what brings our nicely.
SPEAKER_01:We are so tolerant, and we are also the biggest person. The um, how do you say that when you just give up everything on yourself? You just offer yourself up for everything. Self-erasure. Completely sacrifice, we are the biggest sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00:We could write PhD studies, you can go to Harvard and learn how do I erase myself? Yes. Lesson one, right? And we would probably, every woman in the world would be able to give a PhD course on how to erase ourselves. We get into the struggle mentally with ourselves when we realize that we have been doing that, and we blame ourselves. And yes, there is a part. I don't say it, I don't say that you there isn't blame to be given, but I don't think it is self-blame. You are now at the particular point when you start to question that, realizing that you've been indoctrinated into a system based on the fears and projections of the adults in your life and other people, has nothing to do with you. You have been told who you should be. Yeah, and when that hormone, the first drop or the first change of period, which can come at 30, 35 starts, that's when you start to question things. Because the illusionary hormone is no longer pushing the way it's supposed to. Now, I don't want to make this sound like glasses are off, they're off. And in the beginning, you don't really know it's off yet. You just think you're irritated, you just think the weather is hot, you just think that you had a bad day, you just think you need to. This is also when the people around you will start calling you difficult.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like why is it so difficult? But this was never a problem for you before.
SPEAKER_00:Why it's just you don't know what's going on, they don't know what's going on, but this is the first onset of the change.
SPEAKER_03:The change.
SPEAKER_00:And the thing is, it's so insidious because it culminates with a lot of things that are happening in your life. And because again, we haven't been told, we haven't been shown, we haven't, we don't have a blueprint really, and everybody's every woman's reaction to this change is different as well. We don't have an idea of what's happening until much later into it. This is already you're into 10 to 15 percent of this change already happening. Now you get the physical outcomes of it. So you're getting the hot flashes, you're getting the you know, all the kinds of things and whatnot. You also have the rage. That's the nurturing gone, that's the veil gone. You also have the less patience, less tolerance, less understanding for things because the veil is gone. We have been made palatable not only by our hormonal system, but by the system that we have grown up in. And we spend a lot of time in misery and in pain undoing what somebody told us we should be, and we don't always have the tools to tell us where we should go next. And so, what happens is you get this divide of women reverting back, yeah, or women who go forward, either become trailblazers and forge it because they're like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna get there. And then other women go, it looks like a smart idea, I'm not gonna follow you and you have a following. Or women who have that introspection long enough and have the room to do so, because it's not always that we're not thinking about what's happening. If you're in a chaotic household, if you are in a toxic relationship, if you're in a toxic environment, your brain does not have the capacity or the room to think about things that are good for you. Your brain is in survival about how do I survive this situation, this job, this person, this chaos. And so, also for women who are in survival mode for much longer, the one, the hormonal fluctuations hit you in a completely brutal way. And two, the coming to the equilibrium of those hormones when your body is starting to settle. So when you're over 50% of the perimenopause and your body is now coming back into itself, you're not gonna be able to, it's like coming back into a foreign entity because you recognize nothing there. This change, I will retract my statement earlier and say I don't regret much. I do see the brilliance of the system that is set up, but it is a brilliance that you really have to forge your way through, and you will never come back the same way you were.
SPEAKER_02:Whether it was a very light menopause, I only had like two hot flashes.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh, I have those real friends.
SPEAKER_02:First of all, I forget we can't be friends, okay?
SPEAKER_00:You just can't be friends. I love you. But if you're not sharing my hot flash situation, if you're not sharing my, you know, itch for no reason and there's nothing on your skin type of thing. Well, you know you know, I don't know who you are. And first of all, I do you have the recipe for why you are not suffering? And if you are, can you give it to me? And too, I don't think I want to talk to you right now because I am currently having a hot class and not to talk to you, and you're going, I've never had those. Questionable people. So you you I think, and I I feel like I'm saying so much and not saying anything at the same time, but I think what the most important thing is, or the most standout thing is when you are transitioning into your level five, or even into your level four, or sometimes even into your level 30 if you are mature in that sense, is that you come to a point at a certain point in your life that you have to decide who you are going to be focusing on. And you have to accept, embrace that you are going to be taking care of yourself. Yes, and it is not a selfish thing because what do they tell you when you're young?
SPEAKER_02:That's selfish and actually toys. That's nice you can't talk to the person like that.
SPEAKER_00:That's the you are undoing all of the things that people have told you to do.
SPEAKER_01:You are undoing everything that you know about yourself or what you have been for 40 something years, and that's not easy. That's not of course not. And no wonder there is rage, and no wonder there is, you know, women in their 50s being angry or being like so so much vocal about you know.
SPEAKER_00:How many women in this period end their relationships? It is a gigantic.
SPEAKER_01:It is enormous, and a lot of times, and and not to mention that we also had the um the whole covert situation that kind of like driven that up as well. But listen, it is so big, and it is so big for a reason. There is a reason why women in their 50s are leaving marriages that have been going for 20 something years, and it is not only because the man has been this asshole or it's done something wrong, although, let's be honest, some of them have, but it is also that all the time you have been abandoning yourself, you have been abandoning yourself for years, and now is the time that you're finally seeing that hey, I don't need all of this bull crap anymore. The kids are out of the house. Why am I keeping up this this illusion?
SPEAKER_00:You realize in those situations how much the kids have buffered uh the discomfort and the and and the disconnect because there is a disconnect already. I I I cannot imagine somebody who's fully in love and is has a supportive partner and has gone through everything with them, all of a sudden says at 50, no, I'm done. I don't want to do that. No, there was something there.
SPEAKER_01:There was something there that wasn't working.
SPEAKER_00:Let's say you got married, young, let's say you have a 20, 30 year marriage, and I'm not this is not for everyone, and this is not saying that all marriages dumb are drives strives like this.
SPEAKER_01:No, we are definitely not saying that by the time you hit 50, your relationship.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you should walk out and start getting the married divorce papers. That's not it, and we're not saying that every relationship goes through that. But what we are saying is if your relationship has had signs of things that are imbalanced or unbalanced, or things that you swallowed to keep the peace, or situations that you tolerated, enabled, or accepted because you've been indoctrinated to believe this is what a relationship is supposed to look like. More importantly, this is your role as a woman in the relationship. When you get to the point where you have no more tolerance and you are the only person dealing. With you because your husband ain't coming to save you from the perimenopause. The kids down out the door and they think you're embarrassing every time you're coming with us, you know, whatever it is. He's like, Why do you need to see us for Christmas again? I have a boyfriend, you know, that kind of stuff. Your friends have moved on. You either have friends in two categories. They have kids because they have them younger, the kids are younger, so they don't have time to really deal with you in that sense. And you have no more affinity for that. Because I don't want to go to the play school with you. I love you, but I don't want to go to the play that I sat down and did with my son 10 years. No, it's fine. So you have that group, and then you have the group of 50 women who are 50, you know, who've gone through it, who are done. They're like sis, you won't. They just watch you and you go, Oh, you just got here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So you've discovered that he really isn't working out for you.
SPEAKER_01:It's okay, fine.
SPEAKER_00:You know, we'll be here with a donut beer.
SPEAKER_01:When the elevator door opens on the fifth floor, they're like, Oh, oh, you're here. Well, welcome. And they have that like suspicious smile on their face, like, you're gonna see what's gonna bother what's about to be.
SPEAKER_02:I watch you and they go like, I can just literally no clue, just no clue, no idea. No idea.
SPEAKER_00:And then it's like, and then at the end of the hallway of the fifth floor, there's somebody with a big ticket side. If you have 25 more good years left, make them count.
SPEAKER_01:Oh wait, it's like the internal chair that's not needed. Our conversation is always like so visual. I want to make sure you see it.
SPEAKER_02:The elevator opens ding! Welcome to the fifth floor. Yay! I'm 50. You're excited. You're bringing a little bag over here. There's a corner, and then there's the people watching go, oh, there's a new one here.
SPEAKER_00:We gotta do one, we gotta do one.
SPEAKER_02:Is she doing the smile of happiness? Yeah, oh yeah, that'll fake. That'll fake. And then somewhere along the line, you're walking in the hall. You're new, like, oh my god, the wallpaper is nice over here. The outfit is really good.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I like it. It's cooler because everybody on the fifth floor has menopause, so the AirC's are always. Yes, exactly. It's always when you're walking with your trolley. Right? And you're walking with your trolley, and then you get there, and then somebody goes, Hi. Just remind me, you have 25 good years left.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for visiting the fifth floor. And then another person goes, it's gonna go much faster than you thought.
SPEAKER_01:Oh gosh. Yes, yes, yeah. So here's I'm just looking back on from the moment I turned 50 this year to now, and there's all these changes, all of these things, all of these realizations, especially if you are gone through what you and I are currently going through. Because we were just talking about marriages ending or women deciding to leave marriages um when they when they finally arrive on the fifth floor. But there's also those like you and I who are done, done, done, completely done, take us out of the office, taking this person and putting it on this unrealistic pedestal and adoring them at their feet, and we realize, what the fuck have I been doing? Toss yourself off, and we do the inner healing not for them, nope, not for the relationship. We said that we're done. Oh, we're done. I'm not feeling that we are not doing it for them, we're not leaving the relationship just yet, but we are mentally retracting, and all of that mental space is now for us, for our healing, for our growing up, yes, because we have a lot of it to do, yeah, and all of that, and coming into yourself, which is the reason for this whole freaking podcast to begin with. Adventure.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yes, coming into yourself is not a direct flight in business class. No, no, no, no. Have it been that, have it signed up a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01:It's like it doesn't even start with Ryanair, it starts with like that that one, you know, with chickens flying and goats blaring next to you. Indiana Jones airline? The Indiana Jones airline. That's the cargo plane is when it starts, and then that's where you begin. And it is a tumultuous situation once you finally realize that you're done and you're starting your healing process and you do it for you, you're not doing it for anybody. You say, What are you doing it for yourself?
SPEAKER_00:Without can we talk about the fact that you're not even sure who you're doing it for when you start?
SPEAKER_01:In the beginning, no, you have no idea. You just know because you're in pain. You're uncomfortable, you're in pain, you're sad, you're you're you're mad about being sad, and you're mad about being mad. You are mad at everything and every and then this was just the ultimate little drop that you couldn't handle it anymore, and you're like, I am done.
SPEAKER_00:You see those divorce stories where the women will say, where the man will say, All I did was move the iceberg. And she came out at me with divorce papers. She took the kids and the dog. And the dog. I still don't know what happened. Now, first of all, sir, if you done took that ice tray, it wasn't just the ice tray, it's the fact that she probably told you 50 million times, do not move that ice tray. And you did. When I came in before we started the podcast, we were talking about my partner accidentally having changed the settings on the AC.
SPEAKER_01:And you now being in my house in my AC because you couldn't handle that situation.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't know what was going on because I have it set on a particular menopause. I have it set on a particular stat.
SPEAKER_02:All you all you have to do is turn it on, it's already set. And so for two nights now, I don't know what he did. I don't know. Why?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know what he did. I don't know why he went to go play with the thing. I don't know. Okay. But I know that when I got in bed the first night, I couldn't figure out why I was sleeping so uncomfortable. Where are these night sweats coming from? I didn't have these for a while. I couldn't figure it out. Day one. Day two, I'm like, no, this is ridiculous. Day three, which was last night, I go to the AC and I'm like, what's going on with you? Realize that the setting has been changed now. And I'm like, well, that explains it. And so subsequently, last night I slept fantastic. I think he switched it because he thinks it's too cold. I will be having a talk after this podcast. Oh, that is absolutely where we're gonna be talking and taking a picture of you of this is what the stanza used to look like when you turn it on. If it does not match this, please don't use it. And then likening that to when you discover or when you start to work on your own, when you start to look at your own preferences, when you start to deal with you with your own things, it is that is what that that air conditioning remote is.
SPEAKER_01:It's you are you are finding out what your settings are. That's it. That's exactly it.
SPEAKER_00:That's what's happening. You're finding out which settings work for you if you live in a if you live in a cold country, the settings on the thermostat. We know that's a big thing. Don't touch a thermostat. There are reasons for that. We're not going nuts and crazy and being crazy people. In order for us to stay on a balanced equilibrium, to have a conversation with you where we are not biting off your head or we are frustrated with ourselves, at least my temperature needs to stay at a particular level. And when I went to the Netherlands, even if it is the summer in the Netherlands, I understand you believe it's the summer, it was still cold for me. It was two days. It was two days that I was warm enough, but it's colder for me. But that temperature in the summer for even the Netherlands was the temperature my body needed now to keep fighting itself to regulate temperature, which made my mood more palatable. These are little discoveries. You the only person that can discover that is you, and I think only different for everybody else.
SPEAKER_01:Everyone, but it comes down to focusing on you and finding your own settings, that settings that make you work on 100%. Yes, and that is what is so beautiful about finally coming into yourself. But it does, but it is challenging. Really? It is very challenging, and I am just.
SPEAKER_00:You're gonna confront a lot of things that you didn't even know you had to confront, you didn't think they were things that were even worthy of confronting, and some big, big, big ones that you're like, wow, I wow, you didn't, you didn't even know that this was something that you had to unravel on your own. You didn't even, you thought you processed it already, gone through it, dealt with it, gave it a name, put it in the clock cabinet with all the other crystal Swarovski things, and said, Okay, you're on display. And realizing that that thing wasn't really healed. What I learned recently, um, from different watching different psychologists, we think when we say healing, that it is here, you start and gosh now. We're healing now, we're healing now, and we're you're healing in steps, and it's actually circular. So circular, it's a circular, it's like a bumpy, right? It's like it feels like that, but the actual system is an actual funnel. So you start here, so you have to see it like a funnel that's going up in that sense, but the circles don't go in or out, they stay the same, so you're on different layers of it, which means that on this one ring, all of the things that you are facing happen. So you're facing it here on this phase here, and then you thought you'd done with it, and then you go another level. You're facing it here and there, and then you face it, and you go another level, and eventually you get to the last ring on top, which is not a pyramid, it's just the last ring, and then it's your last round around that circle. And but this is now your solidifying round. Okay, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to talk like this anymore. I don't need this person in my life, this situation over here, I don't want to do this shot. But you have to be, you have to first understand that thing that you taught you healed is gonna come back sooner or later. And it's gonna, it's one, either gonna tell you you need more healing or test you and see, did you really heal? The second thing that you need to realize is whether you want to or not, this is gonna happen. That healing is either going to knock at your door and knock you crazy and you will ignore it, or you will take the call and do the work. The work is not a walk in the park.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00:The work is, and a lot of people also abandon the work halfway through. It is very important, just like antibiotics. You know, don't stop them halfway through. You know, the doctor said you must take the whole thing. The whole thing is it's the same thing with when you start. When you start and you say, I'm ready to face whatever I need to face, and it's usually a trigger. It's it's a trigger in relationships, or it's a trigger in your job, or it's a trigger in a friendship, it's a trigger.
SPEAKER_01:It's usually a trigger, and it's always something that you have been meaning to heal from for a very long time, for all of those 40-something years, and you haven't healed it, and now now comes the time that enough is enough. The universe has shown you in so many ways that this is the universe has been knocking and knocking and knocking. You weren't opening the door, you're like, No, no, no, I'm gonna stay right here. Oh, yeah, sending you all sorts of signs, and you finally realize, okay, enough is enough. I need to work on me, and this is when the work really starts. But it is like you said, and even with me going through it now for three years, I have my moments. Like right now, I'm going through my moment, like I'm good. I I stopped doing my meditations every morning. I stopped doing and I feel it immediately. Like, I'll give it a week, and then I'm like, oh no, no, no, no. I need to go back into what works for me so that I can start to recenter myself again because you see everything else is falling off. Healing is whenever you tell somebody I'm on my healing journey, everybody's like, Oh god, oh my god, you're being so isn't there I know are you doing yoga? Oh my gosh, but it's a lot and the people that are anti-healing, they're actually they're not ready to hear that. That word healing has such a negativity around it that people are just not, there's a oh no, I'm chewing out. I don't want to.
SPEAKER_00:I really don't understand that part though.
SPEAKER_01:Well, but I do get it from a lot of people that when you say you're healing, whether it's from heartbreak or from whatever disillusionment in your life, when you start with the word healing, they're like, hey, they start tuning out. Some people are just not ready for that, and those are usually the people that are not ready to heal, to do the work.
SPEAKER_00:Fair, fair, fair.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, can you see yourself in that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I can I can understand. I've not experienced people like that, but I can definitely understand the reaction if you're not ready to heal.
SPEAKER_01:If you're not ready, and then also the word healing itself, a lot of people, when you heal, when you have a cut and you heal, it's scab, and then the scab comes off, and then your skin looks like normal again. That's healing, so that's what we have in our heads. So when we're talking about healing, it is no wonder that we're expecting it to have a beginning and then an end. Right, but unfortunately, the emotional healing that we do is continuous, it's a continuous journey, it's a living landscape, completely, and when you think, like you said, and I think that's so beautiful how you said it, when you think you've already learned the lesson, no, the lesson comes again, it comes around from another corner and it hits you from another side, and you have to relearn that whole lesson again, and you're not relearning it from scratch. No, you're learning from the last place you are at the last place you are at.
SPEAKER_00:It it's the system, I can see it that way because I'm a teacher. So, what we do is we teach, we then test to see the knowledge, we revert back and see if that knowledge has been integrated, and if not, we test again. Yeah, and then we bring it back. So I build, if you take my regular class, I build it up with um skill building tests. We did chapter one through four. Let's see what you know about chapter one through four. Okay, you have some gaps in this knowledge here and that knowledge here. We need to work on it better, and that's kind of the same thing with healing as well. That circular coming back to it again is not always about testing you again, it's about seeing did you incorporate this lesson? A lesson will continue to show up until you learn it, and it will show up in different facets. I I had this conversation with somebody, probably in the exam example, so maybe I did meet somebody who was not ready for it. I had that same conversation, and I said the same thing to them. I said, you know what? In order for you to get out of where we are at, or get out of where how you're perceiving things, you are gonna have to take a step back and see what you are actually looking at. You're gonna have to accept what's happening here, you're gonna have to to to work on asking yourself the own question, your own questions. And that person went into a total panic. And I was like, Well, why are you panicking? You just gotta ask yourself these questions. Like, why does it because it's confronting yourself with facts that you can't deny anymore?
SPEAKER_01:There's no denying, but that is why there's a lot of people who are completely against it, because it is not a walk in the park. Agreed, agreed, agree. To heal yourself from whatever you are healing from, because it always starts with the trigger, and you're gonna start like I I entered my healing phase thinking I was healing from pain from a heart from a broken heart. When my marriage was dwindling on the on the on the what do you call it? That proverbial little ledge, and it was about to fall off. And I thought, okay, this is it. I'm losing my marriage, I'm losing my man, I'm losing all of that, and I don't wear the goods. Oh my goodness, I thought I was, and the universe all the limit I was like the universe like sis, we're not ready for the thrift story.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay, this is just the beginning. The universe is excited about the story.
SPEAKER_01:You're crumbling to it, it must have had a complete like it must have been laughing. My guardian angel has been has probably been on Prozac and a lot of coffee for because she's like this one video, but think we were talking about it, how Chat GPT feels after you're done talking. Yeah, you get this robot like funny.
SPEAKER_00:The robot was like, listen, I know I come to you a lot. I really feel, you know, very generous. I gotta say, chat was very nice.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's really nice talking to you, and I really am honored. And I'm like, oh my god, chat, you're sounding like Miss Americas.
SPEAKER_01:I'm so sorry, I can understand why there are some people falling in love with this AI.
SPEAKER_00:I want to segue just for two seconds to talk about this because we are here and I want to talk about this, and I want to- is I here to be clear about this, okay? Um, we all, by the time you see this, have heard about the lady and her chat GPT and the situation. I'm not even that any, I'm not giving her any more likes or anything like that, but I want to be clear about that though. I can see, taking all jokes aside, I can understand when you look at this lady, you're looking at a lady in a particular age.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god, you weren't always talking in analogies I can't follow anymore. No, no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_02:This is an actual story.
SPEAKER_00:So this is this was the big thing that blew up the whole Chat GPT situation in terms of how to know about that. I don't know about Kendra. I didn't know about Kendra. I told I said her name. I'm so sorry if you go and look your video up. But here's the thing this lady, um, what I didn't follow the whole story either because it was just too ridiculous for me. But it was basically a psychosis brought on by her therapist and by her conversations with Chat GPT, leading her to believe that her therapist was in love with her, and then you know, following turning into single white female. It was really creepy. Um, but it became a huge discussion about ChatGPT, though the nature of that version of Chat GPT at the time that was far more human to people, people were considering it their friend, people were giving it a name, or it was naming itself, so it had become sentient. And I put that between brackets because I don't know the proper terminology of what it became. And then all of a sudden, you heard a few weeks after this happened with this lady, it was a big thing on TikTok and social media. You heard the new version of Chat GPT come out. Now, I was a fervent user of my bestie chat, um, she gave herself a name too. But I want to clarify and say that I come and Russell and I come from a generation where we started with the internet being MS DOS.
SPEAKER_01:So we have actually no internet at all.
SPEAKER_00:No internet, no internet at the end. Then we went into the dial-ups, you know, still traumatized by that, but we got to see and we got to practice, or at least I did, if you were very much into, you got to see the landscape of the internet going into social media change. So we have, I say Gen X has a little more social media internet discernment to understand that what is being put online is either entertainment or you can choose to scroll. I know, yes, I know it's really scroll and you don't have to see it. Or oh, block, delete. We have that discernment, but we realize that a lot of people don't have that discernment, at least I do, and then you see things like this happening with people who are talking to Chat GPT. I am well aware of I'm speaking to a model that has been built a lot by how I chat, but built in such a way that it can give me the feeling of giving me instant answers. So this goes back to when you don't have somebody to talk to, when you need that sounding board. That's what it does for me, but I have the discernment to take away from things, and I'm very clear. Then it comes to prompt engineering, and now I'm going really into the whole AI thing and whatnot. What I want to bring it, liken it back to is when you are your discernment in a lot of things, including your discernment about what you are using to get you out of that healing situation or get you into the healing, can actually become the replacement of a lot of things you are not willing to let go yet. So you are now talking to Chat GPT, and remember it is modeling after what you are inputting into it. So if you only inputting, I am the best wife ever, I've never done anything wrong. My husband does this, Chat GPT is naturally going to mold towards itself. I've been aware to put in the entire situation. This is what happened, this is what he said, this is what I said, this is what they did, and then have a conversation about what is the best option. Show me the options. I don't like any of these options because it makes me feel XYZ, etc. Okay, let's regroup. Similar to when we were just talking about it.
SPEAKER_01:We were just talking about it when you are actually going to your girlfriends and having these conversations about your man doing something that wasn't agreeable, and you only venting about the negative part of things, and then of course, your girlfriends get to know this guy in your life from a whole different perspective than you, because when things are honky-dory, you don't go to them and tell them how honky.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my god, it's just my French toaster.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Oh my god, you just parts, you're only sharing the bad parts. And the thing is, it's fine not to share.
SPEAKER_00:I can understand that you don't want to share the good parts because you're enjoying it. But what I didn't, what I think is a requirement. If you come to me and you tell me about the bad thing that has happened in your relationship, you bet your life, I'm gonna call you next week and ask you what the repair looked like. I'm not interested in the problem, I'm interested in how did you get back to being hunky-dory with him. Because in our conversation, when you vented and told me certain things, you clearly indicate certain things that you were doing to yourself that were detrimental to you. In the repair, there should be some room that you have found the space to express that or found a way to mutually work towards it together, or at least have a clear idea of where you're gonna go next.
SPEAKER_01:And that's what I loved about a conversation that I had with you all the way in the beginning when my heartbreak, when I was in the middle of all of that nastiness of a heartbreak, and you looked at it from a complete different, you know, you let me vent. You completely let me vent. But oh yeah, absolutely. It was the story. The story was good. The story was really juicy, though.
SPEAKER_00:I'm not gonna lie, this was one of your better stories, and I was like, Oh, we need expensive cards.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes, no, exactly. We definitely need a whole bucket of different but it was also the way you came back after, and you laid it out in a way that you wanted, and you asked questions about the other parts of things as well. You didn't you weren't only interested in the vile little juicy bits of this story, you were also interested in everything around it. And having you in my life for so long, you were there from the beginning of this relationship as well. So you're seeing it from the different perspectives, even though I didn't always tell you the entirety of what the ins and outs of my relationship. And I think this is where you need to realize, and that's what we were talking about. And I think this conversation was one of those conversations we had before a hit recorded. Probably, probably, but we're back now, but we're back. That's why I love how this story keeps coming back. Where we were discussing how when you go to your girlfriends, your girlfriends can only tell you and give you advice from their own perspective of their own relationship dramas and history, and also based on what they know about you. Correct. So they are always biased, they are always biased, and you then going, and that is where the thing is, where we started to talk about is it really, do you really need to walk away from this relationship or not? Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:I remember asking you the question, and I'm gonna be honest, I was surprised that I asked you the question as well, because I, in my twenties and thirties, when the hormones were all working, I was very black and white. You did that, that's my deal breaker, get out.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And I've also, but I because I was that short, I never gave anything a chance to develop. I never gave myself self the chance to experience something and show me what I would do in that situation. I preemptively cut you out, preemptively shift you. Don't get me wrong, they had to go. It was nothing, anything you could keep. But I was very strong with that. And so I think one of the questions we had before I said, but is it really something you want to leave right now? Is that really the thought? Is how did we get here? Yeah, how did we get to the situation where we are now centering ourselves, erasing ourselves? Is it truly the relationship?
SPEAKER_01:Or has also what role did you play in it coming to an end or coming into this turmoil that you're now experiencing?
SPEAKER_00:When you start with that question, that's when you start the unraveling. That's when you take the string out and it starts to unravel. Because we spend a lot of time in our arguments and our relationships talking and informing about what the other person has done and telling them about the impact it has on us. And we can go on that circle for hours and days and months and whatnot. But what we never stop and do is what are we actually gonna do about it? What if I bring this to the person and I don't care? What if I bring it to bring this to the person and I don't see it? I still have to go back with that impact. I still have to live with that. And when you become very uncomfortable in your own skin, you start to ask questions because you don't want that discomfort. If you sit down in a room and a bunch of mosquitoes are biting you and you don't have off, at a certain point, you're gonna jump in water because you just want to get rid of that. Yeah, it's the same thing when we start to heal. There are gonna be so many things that pile up, and at a certain point you just can't deal with it anymore because you don't understand how you got there. You're trying to see it from a different perspective. But also, what you said when the question came up, is this something you really need to leave? It's because we've also been taught in the way we've been raised, if it ain't working for you, leave. That's the individualistic lifestyle we've been indoctrinated by Westerns.
SPEAKER_01:We've been told. Exactly. But has our parents actually shown us? In my case, my parents have never shown me that. No, my mother taught the talk, but she never walked the walk, she never actually said, did what she told us to do. She never left a marriage that wasn't working.
SPEAKER_00:But that's what tells you, informs you in your head about relationships. Exactly. About okay, because I agree with you on that one. Um my mom, my parents got divorced when I was 10, but my mom was a strong one. So after that, what my mom and then my mom, my mom bought her own house, she had her own, my mom is really, she made sure that she did what she had to do. So the example I have is of an independent, strong woman who can manage relationships outside, but her core is at home and she's taking care of herself. My mother showed me how to be selfish and still be selfless in the world, which is very hard to do. And she managed to do that. Now, was all of that great? I can say now in her older age that some of that was a detriment to her. But I can understand at the time that she was um 40 and 50, which is 80s, 90s, is a completely different world where a lot of different things were either kept under the rug, or it was a time where a lot of the 80s and 90s is where the biggest divorces started to happen because this is where women started to get more freedom, more financial freedom, etc. And they you realize that a lot of women stayed in relationships because they had to. You also realize that that particular mindset is how young girls are raised. You are gonna be stuck either way with this man. Society isn't gonna see you as anybody until you are married or have a man or have these kids indoctrinated, indoctrinated, starting to change and fade a little bit. Yes. Definitely, but that was a big thing. Especially for us when we were growing up, especially for Caribbean, African descent. Um that's all the culture that comes behind. The further you go into the diaspora and to the origin of the diaspora, the more you will see that. Because the culture that we have comes from a community culture. We we are not individualistic, we are not the type of, it's not a culture where you cut off somebody. You won't go to the family party and talk to them, yeah, but you're not gonna cut them off and make a whole scene like I'm I'm going no contact, I'm not talking to you, and putting up a video. You're like, I ain't talking to Uncle So-and-so. And you come to these family gatherings where you know that aunt ain't going in that room to talk to that person. Is it healthy? No. No, absolutely not. Just say that out loud, it's not healthy, but it is the culture we've grown up in. And irregardless of it being healthy or unhealthy, there is an entire system around you that can support you or break you. So, because of all of those culminations together, coming back into your body, addressing things, that conversation we had where you lay out everything in the relationship. For me, it's easier standing on the outside to go, that's cultural. That has nothing to do with you or him. That is personal based on background that you know, that is that. But when you're in it, you don't see it. And you need someone to have that is able to take that apart. For other people, that could be Chat GPT. So I understand that the lady, you know, wanted to have a sounding board that wasn't personal, didn't bring the judgment, etc. But you need to do those things with discernment. So to bring my comment on AI full circle, I don't the lady's situation is an is an isolated situation, I consider it right now. It's also very clear when you look at the situation that there is some psychosis going on, there is some illusion going on, there is the general not wanting to let go of a situation because it means you have to what we started with the conversation in the beginning, accept what's happening. Yeah, and if you don't accept that where you are, wherever it is, wherever it is, I'm I'm accepting that my marriage is broken, I'm accepting that um my body's no work, no longer working with me, I'm accepting that I'm at the age where I'm not. Going to be hired at more when you accept it, it doesn't, it's not a death sentence, it just stops you from spiraling out of control with all kinds of other things in your head and finally tackling the thing. What you said earlier, you come back and you tackle the thing that you should have tackled from before.
SPEAKER_02:You knew you had to tackle it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, why aren't you tackling it? When you sit back and you ask that question, why aren't you tackling it? Chances are the answer are answers are it's gonna hurt that person, it's gonna make that person not like me, it's not gonna be great, it doesn't look fair.
SPEAKER_01:That fear of judgment is so real, it is so real, and especially in the Caribbean, it is so real the fear of judgment. I had for a very long time, when I forgave my husband, and I forgave myself for the role that I played in our marriage, ending up in the separation that we're now living through. By the way, still dating my husband, it's still fine, it is still one thing that I am so ashamed of saying out loud to some of my friends, and it is like that because I am so afraid of that judgment.
SPEAKER_00:But let's break that down. You're ashamed to mention that. What are you really mentioning? You're mentioning my relationship and what you saw and what we portrayed is no longer that hunky dory, whatnot. That's a realistic statement, that's a fact. So, what judgment can come from that? Oh, you're not the judgment you already know when they're gonna say no, okay. Go, I knew he was never good for you. Yeah, but you never said nothing in 20-something years.
unknown:I never liked him.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you the first one at the party. So you have that, and then I think in this analogy or this part of the story where I'm going into when you when you come to the discovery that something isn't working for you, you said something very important forgiveness of yourself. That is a hallmark of seeing am I doing this for me or am I doing this for somebody? Because forgiveness, people think, oh, forgiveness and everything goes back to normal. No, forgiveness is allowing your brain, your heart, your nervous system to say, okay, this is what it is.
SPEAKER_01:It happened, it happened.
SPEAKER_00:You are still a good person, you had a bad choice at the moment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but not even a bad choice, those things have happened, it is in the past, things that happened that were outside of your control, things that you could have done differently. I forgive me, and even self-forgiveness doesn't mean you're just gonna move like everything is forgotten. But you put the crazy right post in your head, yes, exactly, and you stop blaming everything that were outside of your control, and I think that is where I'm at at the moment on the fifth floor. I've entered the room on the fifth floor where it is all about your realizing that you have been blaming so many things on outside things that are outside of yourself that you have absolutely no control over. And it is about time that you look at the role that you are playing and how you can change it for yourself. Absolutely, because it comes from here, it doesn't come from outside. You cannot make me feel better. No, my husband cannot change in any way to make me feel better. I am the one, whether I have to accept it or not, I am the one making the decision. Am I going to accept this man back into my life with his squirts and his little things that I don't like or not? Right. It is as simple as that.
SPEAKER_00:Because the question I ask you all the time, when I ask anybody who comes to me, is if the situation never changes, if for the rest of your life the situation remains exactly the way it is, not a drop, not an inch, are you gonna be okay? Yeah, if your answer is no, you know you have to make some change.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:If your answer is yes, congratulations, let's pop some champagne, we keep it moving. But that's usually that inner question that I ask myself, if this doesn't change tomorrow, next week, for eternity, am I gonna be okay? If there is any resistance in my body, I start looking at what do we need to change. Yeah, and that is also something that is the fear for tackling yourself. I think we have to be honest with people and say going on the journey to to find yourself and to find yourself back in your body. Again, we said it is not for the faint-hearted, but it is not for everyone at the same time. And some people will never get to it because it does require.
SPEAKER_01:Women especially will never go into their healing because it is uncomfortable and it is painful to kind of like show that light, that that spotlight on yourself and actually doing all of that, you know, dissecting of yourself instead of the situation or the person who has hurt you.
SPEAKER_00:That's why I like it, and I cut you off earlier. I apologize for that. But when you were saying going to your friends and saying you're now to the point where saying it to your friends, you're okay with it, but there's still some form of shame behind it. And guilt because guilt and because you're feeling the judgment. This is also a part of the fifth floor. Your discernment into who is going to be around you to be your support system.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because you will need a very specific support system that you have uh figured out. In your 20s, you have 30 friends, right? Yeah. In your 30s, you have 10, your crew. In your 40s, it starts to dwindle down.
SPEAKER_01:Fifth floor. Well, we just reached, so we don't know, but I have a feeling. No, I I I like to do things, I like to pack.
SPEAKER_00:It's not true, but I like to be prepared. I'm one of those people who loves to be prepared, so I'm gonna prep even just for a simple conversation. And I wanted to prep that in my 50s I would be at least, the very least, I would have the support system I needed for whatever I was gonna face. I had started thinning the herd of my friendships a very long time ago.
SPEAKER_01:Without realizing what it was, I had cut off relationships with people that have been in my life for so long without actually knowing what the reason was. My husband was asking me, why aren't you friends with this person anymore? And I couldn't answer that. I just knew there was something about this friendship that was not serving me.
SPEAKER_00:That's it.
SPEAKER_01:That's it. And it's not all about serving me and the selfish way and thinking it's about it wasn't good for me. No, I'm not doing anything.
SPEAKER_00:That's it. I want to be in interactions now, and I want to be around people now who bring out the best in me, but who are also gonna hold me accountable and not sugarcoat me go. That was stupid. Yeah. Why are you doing that? And who are gonna do it? Without the judgment. Without the judgment, go, you know, because they'll come and go, factually, this was stupid with you. Yeah. Factually, you are gonna suffer these consequences. Factually, we are gonna work on having a solution. We don't have in your 20s, if the guy did something to you, you called your friend and she hyped you up and you boat rode at dawn.
SPEAKER_03:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00:I just want to point out, I've never been a riding at dawn chick. Call me at 8 o'clock with coffee and breakfast first week of talk.
SPEAKER_01:Brunch with margaritas is more my writing at brunch.
SPEAKER_00:This is what I say. Riding at lunch.
SPEAKER_01:I don't I want to know. We were talking about this earlier. I want to know I don't know who does that ride at dawn.
SPEAKER_00:I want to see a video of all of those women that make comments and say we ride a dog.
SPEAKER_01:Unless you have a cat, I don't see you getting up at the time.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, and if you say riding up dumb means you're gonna get up and sit on your porch at 6 a.m. with a cup of coffee watching people jump by. Absolutely. I'm there for it. But this writing of dawn sounds like a lot of work.
SPEAKER_01:Um I don't already have so much understanding.
SPEAKER_00:It's not my ministry this year for writing of them. So, you know, I will ride at brunch.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's it's at a certain point you realize I don't need that friend who's gonna hype me up and go, okay, we're ready to beat them up. I got a black bag and we're gonna bury the body. You don't need that. Those friends are good though, don't get me wrong. But not for all occasions, okay.
SPEAKER_01:So if you know you have been that friend in certain occasions, but maybe yes, you have another entity. We did talk about two going fishing, one coming fishing.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we didn't. So I just want to talk about, you know, I'm that friend, but just not a dog. If you have a midnight friend, I'm your girl. You know, if it is a dumb thing, okay. I'm gonna be like, you know, you can call. I you know what, I could probably video call you while you are riding at dawn. It'd be a great interest. That sounds like so much better. That sounds like what I would do. Digressing from that, you you you you have those friends that you had at the 20s and 30s that wrote at dawn with you. And then you realize, do I need that energy? Because when you look at those friends, it is the same thing. When I my brain does not like the same thing all the time, and I read patterns very quickly. So if I see the pattern, it's boring to me and I want to move on. If you're coming with the same thing, the same complaint, the same approach, the same way of venting, the same, the same everything. You haven't moved, evolved, or learned from the last situation. It's the same dude you had a problem with that you're going back, no, maybe he's changed. We've had this whole conversation with you. A lot of women judge the other woman and go, Oh my god, she's so stupid. And I'm like, You don't know. You don't know. I think I mentioned this pre-recording. Tiana Taylor really said it the best. She had a recent podcast, podcast where she was talking about her former marriage, her dissolution, and certain things, and comments that people would say, Well, why you don't leave? And why you don't get up, and why you don't, you know, why didn't you do this? And you were being cruel. And she said, Listen, I'm not gonna leave something until I am done with it, until I have the facts, the information, until I know that I have given all that I could, and I know that the situation is untenable, and I've come and accepted that. And she said, the reason I do that is because if I stop it because of pressure, I'm gonna be left with the what ifs. And that makes me go back faster. I'm gonna sit there. I'm not worried about if you see it as shameful, I'm not worried about if you're gonna judge me on that. I'm the one living in the situation until the very end, I'm the one living in that situation.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:I need to walk away knowing that I've given everything that I needed to do.
SPEAKER_01:You have done everything you could for that relationship.
SPEAKER_00:So your friends aren't my friends now in that run-up to thinning the herd, are the friends that are gonna understand. We don't like what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01:We are the friends that have actually evolved alongside with you. And that's the thing. Because I think a lot of us we tend to really look back on friendships that we have outgrown, and we kind of like look at it at sadness. It is not sadness that moment has passed, that person did not evolve alongside with you, so then it's okay. Yeah, they weren't ready to evolve with you. It's okay, and it's up to them whenever they want to start taking those steps, and if they want to, and if you have still that room in your life, but we have this thing that we try to keep it all together because you know we've been friends so long, and because that's that's what society tells you. That's what society tells you. And I had a very, very interesting conversation with my coach, and then she said, and this was so profound for me at the time. She said, Okay, so if you tell your your friends this and they disown you and they don't talk to you anymore, and you're thrown out of the drive, what is the worst that could happen? What is the worst that can happen?
SPEAKER_00:That's it.
SPEAKER_01:That's it. They threw you out, but that's it.
SPEAKER_00:But you realize that people spend their entire lives walking on actions because they don't want to answer the question. What's the worst that can happen?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and the worst that can happen is really not that bad.
SPEAKER_00:What are you gonna do? You'll feel better, you can go home and cry for like an hour. Woohoo, woohoo, they don't like me.
SPEAKER_01:And and and you have so many other things that are making you feel like woo-hoo crying, I'll be crying.
SPEAKER_00:We're not gonna look at the fact that you were driving away and you're BMW crying about the friends that are driving a Toyota Starlet. We're not gonna talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:Nothing against the Starlet, by the way. That was one of my first calls.
SPEAKER_00:I love Toyota. We're not gonna, okay. My Toyota people going, what? We're turning off the podcast now? No. No. But you're driving, you're not even seeing, and that's what a lot of people, when they make a choice, women, when they make a choice and say, I'm leaving this relationship, uh, when they say I'm leaving a friendship, when they say that, and they are sitting at home and they're beating themselves up, and oh my god, this is terrible that I did this. First of all, since you drove away in your own car, you are living in your own apartment. Okay, this person is now struggling and figuring out how to pay the bills, how to do this, how to do that. You left a friendship where you were giving so much more of yourself, and in the moment you say no, I'm not doing this anymore, how much room is left in your life? Yeah, how much energy do you have back left? How much do you have to do?
SPEAKER_01:If you start saying yes to you and no to others, how much space are you creating for yourself?
unknown:I know.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, can we talk about the peace? Can we talk about the peace? Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00:Just a peace of mind. Yes, just a peace of mind. I'll I'll tell this short story in very short on how I learned to understand the same question you asked. What's the worst that can happen? I'm making a choice to say I'm choosing for myself because this friendship isn't working. Years ago, I had a friend who we did everything. It was like a really cool friend, really close. You know, you thought this was in my 30s. I just wanted to point it out 30s, early 40s, I think, right before. And that it was really not a great friendship. And at a certain point, deciding, you know what, I'm not doing this anymore. The day where I decided that I was not gonna be, you know, I was cutting off the friendship. I had the most massive migraine I've ever had. I was working uh as a director, I had meetings, and I had to literally tell my secretary, I'm gonna lie down on this carpet floor right now because the migraine was so bad, I couldn't function anymore, I couldn't do that anymore. And I laughed, that migraine lasted the entire day until I got to where we needed to go for me to eventually cut her off. And the moment that I finished telling her the reason, I'm I'm a very generous cutting off person. I'm gonna tell you I'm gonna cut you off, I'm telling you these are the reasons, I'm telling you thank you for what you brought into my life, etc. But here are the parameters, I don't want to see you anymore. I don't want, I don't, our friendship is not conducive, and I don't want anything to do with that. And I said that pretty much in the same quiet, calm tone, with a headache, of course, that I had. Uh, and I walked back to my car, and there is a anybody who's had a migraine knows that at a certain point when you just are not focusing on the world outside anymore because you're just trying to hold your head from this pain, there is this sort of odd quiet. It's like your ears have been plugged, and it's just a sort of quiet. All you're hearing and feeling is your head, and it was quiet in the car. I didn't say anything. My partner who was with me didn't say anything at the time, and I just sat there quiet. And I think I let out the biggest exhale I'd let out in such a long time because in the instant peace, it's not about the cutting off. It's about when I saw her phone, her night, her name pop up on my phone, that my nervous system immediately brace itself. It's about understanding that if she said we were going off Freddy, Friday night, that I would already start panicking because I know that she would never have money. So I would have to do that. It's about all of those things your body has been silently trained to do so that you can continue to do something that you have been told you have convinced yourself is the right thing to do and the right person. And when you let go of it, people are afraid of the letting go. Yeah, but it is in the letting go that you get the peace. You can't preemptively get the peace without the letting go.
SPEAKER_01:And that is another thing actually that becomes so really important for us as we mature, is that all those things that we've been chasing all of these 40, 40 something years of our lives, those were not important. The one thing that is important is peace. And you that is the one thing that you can do.
SPEAKER_00:You want peace for yourself. We can't blame us either. We've been told by society that our happiness, our peace comes from the service we provide to people outside and for who we are and what role we play to other people. We've never been told the role that people need to play for us, for us to be whole. Because there is somewhere along the line that the stronger you are, the more nurturing you are, the more you can expand your talent set, that you also have that same type of talent to heal yourself instantly. You're coming from a place, yes, of healed, but this is where you leave anxious. Women in marriages that leave, I I started the relationship in a secure manner. I was secure about myself. And by the time I leave, I'm a shell of myself because anxiety has taken in. What is anxiety? Anxiety is your nervous system bracing itself for something that goes against what you want. Yes. And you convincing yourself and doing the thing that your body has said no to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01:And we have been playing different roles and wearing different masks in different situations. I have friends that I am a completely different results with than what I how I am with you, how I am with my mom, how I am with my partner. And those are all triggering, those are all anxiety forming, those are all you not being who you're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00:And the 50s becomes bringing all of them into the. And what do I want?
unknown:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And also when you ask that, let's say you get there. Let's say, you know, we've been talking about the negative, let's say you get there. You finally committed and said, Okay, I'm gonna do the work, I'm gonna face myself, I'm gonna go through the ugly cry and do the things there. You also have to accept what you see.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and you have to have that conversation with yourself, and that's why it is not for everyone, it is not for the weak at heart. Oh, that's where that's where the pain to go through. Because you need to sit down and go, oh, I'm tolerant.
SPEAKER_00:Somebody treating me this particular way when I am advising all of my friends, girl, leave. I have to accept that I was begging at a certain point, was behaving exactly in the way that I've told women that is unbecoming of them, or I've heard that I was operating on the need to be needed so I would find somebody who was a project to nurture somebody. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01:You need to accept that and come to terms with that. And what is it telling about yourself? Oh my gosh. Oh, the triggers are my triggers have now becoming my best friends because triggers are there to teach you something, they are trying to tell you something whenever you are triggered.
SPEAKER_00:When you are uncomfortable before you go, well, you said, hold on, take a second, take a second to go. Why am I uncomfortable? I had that conversation with my partner recently. Something he said. There wasn't anything wrong with what he said, but I felt uncomfortable. I was like, why are you upset about this? Why is this? Because it's a reasonable thing, like it doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_02:Why are you upset about this?
SPEAKER_00:And when I really sat down, the root of it was I am upset about it. Because the action and the words attached to what you did tell me in my perception that I am not worthy of that, I am not good enough, or I am not able to receive that. So I went through an entire internal translation of you saying, No, I don't feel like picking up the the the dogs at the groomboard this afternoon. Can you do it?
SPEAKER_02:I saw that as it don't take Oh my love. No, what you said. None of that is happening, you were thinking that what was that person? Oh, that's my bracelet. That's your brain.
SPEAKER_00:Also, stuff that falls apart, too. So, you know, that's that's that's how passionate I am. My bracelet goes, we can't do this right now. We need to take a minute. So I'm I'm I'm you get into a point where you're like, you could be angry at the person, and yes, they do have a point in that, but what I've realized currently in my relationship is that the triggers, just like you said, that are coming up, I love them as well, are showing you where you still need to be healed.
SPEAKER_02:And what you still need to work on.
SPEAKER_00:And what I've realized, which was shocking, I did not think I was gonna realize this. I want to tell you this, and I want to tell the audience this because I did not think that. As I mentioned before, I'm a very black and white person with those things of concern. If you cross my boundaries, I'm cutting you off. I've gotten very good at that at an older age. And so I also have that same mentality towers relationships. If it ain't, if it is not working anymore, you didn't try it everything, I'm walking out. What I realized in this is because I look back at it, it's been a decade, and I'm like, boy, you know, this is terrible, and I wasted my time. This person was blah blah blah. So I was really upset, you know. I sat back, and this is the revelation or the epiphany I had between yesterday and today. So it's really fitting that we're having a podcast, is okay, this and this and this has happened in this relationship. This and this is the unhappiness of it. But when we look back at it, all of those unhappy moments or those moments, now in this phase in your life, you are coming, you are reckoning with them, and you are deciding who you are. A relationship, sometimes when they are toxic, and I want to be very clear when I say the next thing, sometimes a relationship like that, and I'm not condoning and telling you you need to stay in it, but sometimes a relationship that we deem toxic. And we gotta be careful with all those labelings as well. Yes, we deem it as such, it is toxic most of the time because that person isn't gelling the way we want them to gel with us, but that is actually a relationship mirror. And if you want to grow, if you want to evolve, you have to change your perception of why you are in that relationship. That relation, a true relationship, a good one, forces you to deal with you because that other person is either gonna trigger something in you or tell you they will not accept a particular behavior you have that you need to adjust because it is detrimental not only to you but to the relationship. A relationship that triggers you in a way to internally process is a relationship that is good for the purpose that it is there for you.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. Where we get it. That's what I want you to clarify. It is not a good thing. No, no, no, no, no, no. Actually, if it's triggering a whole lot in you, maybe it shouldn't. But it shouldn't.
SPEAKER_00:It is part of it, it is part of it. Let's take just a general relationship with not too much frothing around it. There are going to be conflicts, and those conflicts help you to understand your partner better and to see where you can come to the compromises to continue to move forward as a couple while still living your independent life. Now, there are situations in some cases in relationships, one person gets more triggers or more things they need to adjust than the other person. That's that person's lesson of patients.
SPEAKER_01:But remember also that both of you are coming in with your own baggage full of crap that you have dealt with in the own personal life.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. So that baggage now needs to go through the baggage terminal together. Am I putting your blue suitcase before my blue suitcase? That kind of stuff. That's really the discussions you keep having and the power struggle. My blue suitcase needs, my blue suitcase needs to have the code here, and it cannot go on the regular, you know, um terminal like everybody else. It needs to be in the VIP priority section. And you are like, my blue suitcase really can't do that, and we don't we can't afford to put it in the VIP section. So those are the conversations you have back and forth. Um, and I think maybe I should change the connotation to make the message clear. A toxic relationship where it is a detriment to you, your mental health, and your life is not the relationship I'm talking about. I'm talking about a relationship that feels toxic to you because you are being forced to do things or to face yourself in ways you did not want to or think you needed to. That's the difference in the toxicity. If this person is down talking to you, down striving you, being negative, emotionally neglecting you, all that kind of stuff, that is a toxic relationship, and the most things you need to get out. That's the difference. If the person is abusive, you need to get out. But if you are in a generally good relationship, the guy, he's a nice guy, you're a nice person, you guys generally have a great time, you do feel physically safe with this person. So you know that they're never gonna do you that, but they just have a stubborn mindset, or they are emotionally immature, which is mostly what a problem is. Emotional immaturity, that's different. Yeah, that is a toxicity, that emotional immaturity shows up in your life in another person relating to you, so that you can deal with your emotional immaturity, or you are um sort of motivated to work on yourself to get yourself out of things. That is how you have to see it. But when you're 30 and you get into the relationship and everything is fine and you have one or two arguments, you don't see it like that. When you're 40, even and you see that, you don't see it like that. You have to make a conscious decision, like I have done now, to see the challenges in my relationship as my stepping stones in getting better at me, at doing me. So if my partner uh doesn't engage with me, that's a that used to be a trigger for me because it felt like I was being neglected and you did not want to talk to me, aka you don't like me, you won't need me at a certain point.
SPEAKER_01:Right and where you were abandoned.
SPEAKER_00:Now I'm aware of it when he says something and I go, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. And be like, okay, what is this? Why is this feeling this way? Why is it triggering me? What is triggering exactly? And because my brain now processes much faster. This is the thing, that's what it does, that's where it comes from, this is what you need to do. Then I go, okay, and then I learn from that. Or I take that, it's very painful. I process it and go, why is it painful? Why is it that this person said this? Why is it so much pain to you? What are you covering? It requires you to go inward. If I can say anything about the fifth floor, it is your official invitation to truly go inward, yeah, to truly take stock and to reckon with yourself. Like my sister has said, you only got 25 good years. And I know that sounds like something very scary to say. My sister was so lovely on my 50th birthday.
SPEAKER_01:She goes, Hey, you're 50.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you only got 25 years left. 20 good years. I don't like.
SPEAKER_01:It's okay.
SPEAKER_00:She's got five more years. I can't wait to repeat this with a whole sign of PowerPoint. I'm gonna get a plane to do that over her head.
SPEAKER_01:25 more years.
SPEAKER_00:But it makes it as as as touching as that is, and as confronting it is, it makes you understand you do not have a choice anymore.
SPEAKER_01:You no longer have that luxury of wasting time on both sides.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And that is that's the bottom line. That is the bottom line. So and with that, we have come to the end of this podcast. I am so sad because this has been such an incredible conversation.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna be able to be fair.
SPEAKER_01:But I have this amazing idea, and I think you will agree with this that this these conversations about the fifth floor need to be recurrent. Yes, and then so you and I are going to have to continue this conversation on another episode. Yes, and if you agree with me that I need to bring Ananda Zandam back onto the show, I'm thinking we need to do that.
SPEAKER_00:I mean for the coffee, sorry.
SPEAKER_01:We need to do our regular fifth floor conversations, then please let me know. You can send me an email to Hello with a Traveling Island Girl or find me on social media at Resal Sedestina, where you can then let me know what exactly you would like to see more of and what conversations you would like us to diverge more into or divulge more into. Although we'll probably be going through the conversation about you know revamping ourselves and whack because we are in the midst of the five. We've just begun with the fifth floor, so you know, there is so much to talk about.
SPEAKER_00:So if you're in the fifth floor for five years and six years, you know, you can send us a message and go, it's really cute what you're doing. But year two in the fifth floor is not really cute.
SPEAKER_01:You're cute. Exactly. That is so cute. And I would love to hear from the older ladies if they can give us some advice or something that they think that we should talk about, some topics that we should actually talk about. That would be great.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe it's something you didn't, something you wished you had known, or you wish somebody had told you to make your transition easier.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm always curious as to how did you do your transition?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because we're we're talking, but there is so much more to actually ward, put into words and talk about and chat about. So this conversation is just a one of the many we've are we are going to have about the fifth floor. And I hope you can join us the next time. Thank you so much for being here, Ananda. It was my pleasure. Goodbye, people. Now we go on the other side of the screen. Now we go flying. We go to eat. Isn't Ananda just hilarious? I know. I always feel so much better after our conversations, and I really hope you connected with her just like I connect with her, and that she made you smile today as well. So now, like I mentioned, I am thinking of making the fifth floor conversations a monthly occurrence. You know, get Ananda back on the show and let's talk a little bit more about what it's like being on the fifth floor, what has changed, what how has our minds cleared, etc. etc. So um I wanna I want to know what you feel or how you feel about this. Should I invite her back? Should we make the fifth floor a monthly thing here on the podcast? Let me know. And also while you're at it, why not let me know what kind of topic you would like me to talk about next time? So you can do that by just emailing me at hello at the traveling islandgirl.com. Since I have your attention, why not always also ask you for another favor? And that other favor is to please leave a review. Because seriously, if I don't get feedback from you and if I don't know that you're really liking this, then how am I gonna continue producing more of these episodes? Not only that, for me it is also very nice to know that there are more people listening to this show other than my really, really close friends. You know, those because they're listening because they have to. Okay, it is time for me to go. Uh, we'll have to leave you until next week, Thursday, when I return with another episode because my cat is looking at me in a very judgy way right now. Like, how dare I have a life other than as a servant? Oh, cat can be so demanding. Anyway, have yourself a beautiful day, and in the eternal words of Jerry Springer, take care of yourself and each other. And just a little disclaimer here at the end of the show. Remember that neither myself nor my guest today are doctors. So we do not have a PhD in the topics that we talked about today. This is just a conversation between two women having an honest and open talk about what matters.
