BONUS: Navigating Unknowns: Jess & Melissa Post-Interview Reflection

Speaker 1: 0:05

This is the Inner Rebel podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Hey listeners, Right after Jill left the recording session, Melissa and I found ourselves in another deep and intimate conversation, and so we decided to press record again and share the rest with you. Here is our talk after our conversation with Jill. I think what I'm conscious of the hard part for me is that, you know, I haven't met the person yet. It doesn't mean it has to be with a person, but I would like it to be. I haven't met that person yet and I'm aware of the timeline in my head of I don't want to rush a relationship. I don't want to rush to be like, okay, great, Any year from now we're going to start trying. I don't want that. I want to have time with whoever it is, to get to know them and be sure that that is the person I would want to do that with. And that already pushes it forward by a while. Like I don't know who it's going to be. I don't know how long it's going to take it might not take that much time, but I don't know and I want to be really sure that I'm doing it with the right person. So I just feel conscious of that. It's just an awareness that I have. I just don't know where my body is going to be. I just don't know. There's so many unknowns that are just built into it.

Speaker 2: 1:24

I'm not going to be the person that says, well, this is never going to happen for me. I don't believe that at all. But also, can I be at peace with the fact that it may not happen? Can I be okay with that? Can I be okay that so much of my life up to this point has not actually turned out to be exactly how I envisioned it? I mean, it's more expansive in a way than I ever thought it could be right. In another way it's even better than I could have envisioned it. But there are certain dreams in my heart that I haven't been able to fully let go of yet. And it does cause pain and it does make it tricky to know how to navigate it, and I certainly am not one to settle. But I can understand the temptation that women have.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's so interesting too. The biological clock is real for everyone. I have one kid and there was something weird that clicked inside of me when I was 40, turned 40 this year, and I was like, what if I end up wanting it and now I can't do it anymore and I waited too long? What if we do want it? What if we end up wanting another one and it's too late and that we should have done it? You know, the idea that the choice can be taken away from you is very scary.

Speaker 1: 2:26

Yeah, I think that's it For all moms and every mom I know. They grieve the aging process in the 40s. Even if they feel complete, there's still a grieving process of my body is done with this phase or the ability to have this choice, and there's a lot of grieving whether you never have a kid, whether your path to motherhood is unconventional, whether you have one kid, whether you have two kids. It's just something about being a woman and transitioning out, of being able to be child wearing, and it's very real from so many women.

Speaker 2: 2:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:59

But what was coming to me is what if you're going to like meet a man with babies or something?

Speaker 2: 3:02

I mean maybe, who knows? I'm open and also I've always felt like a mom. There's so many parts to me that have been so clear to me that the fact that they have not manifested and that my life took the turn that it did has been very perplexing to me, because I feel so naturally that's what I'm meant to do. I love kids so much. I am just such a natural nurturer. I love family. These are all things that are at the core of my being. I'm a cancer. I mean it's just at the core of who I am. So maybe I was really not meant to do it with the person that I married. Clearly I wasn't. And this is all happening for me so I can align with the person I am meant to do it with or in the way I'm meant to do it. I'm open to that.

Speaker 2: 3:46

But I think there is some truth, or I guess where the practicality or the realism comes in is I have to look at life how it is and not interpret it to mean all kinds of different things. What does that mean for me? That doesn't mean it'll never happen, but can I be at peace with every possibility? Can I be so comfortable in the unknown and so comfortable in that uncertainty, so surrender, and so trusting that every version of it is going to be okay. I can hold the vision for what I really, really want. But no and maybe this is the letting go piece she was talking about but no, also that I will be okay no matter what, no matter what happens, no matter what comes my way. I have the capacity to meet that moment and make the best of it.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Yeah, I think that's it. You will get to okay, like what's happened in your marriage. Obviously you couldn't have predicted or wanted to happen, but you're learning that you will be okay.

Speaker 2: 4:47

Yeah, this lesson came directly for me because I was a person who really put so much on my dreams in a way that I truly felt, if it doesn't happen the way that I think it's supposed to happen, I will not be okay, Like I'd rather die. I was that person, and not just with, not really around family. That was always like I wanted it, but I also was in a relationship and assumed that that was going to happen at some point. But around other aspects of my life, you know, in the first conversation we had, we talked about how Tracy worded the dismantling, everything that fell away, all of these identity pieces were all things that I thought if they fall away, I will not survive. And so here I am Surviving.

Speaker 2: 5:33

I think it has made me a little bit nervous to get too attached you know, a little bit nervous to get too overly identified with it going one way and I just try very hard to be present and open.

Speaker 1: 5:48

And I think there's a difference of knowing I'll be okay no matter what and preparing myself for every possible outcome, you know, because you could really easily get into doomsday and I don't know that we can proactively be okay with every option. You know, I think there is a there's a level of surrender and acceptance that happens when you go through it. But I just teeter on preparing for the worst.

Speaker 2: 6:14

I think what we were talking about earlier in the conversation about going into the darkness and meeting these different parts of yourself and having compassion and love and being neutral in all of it, not interpreting anything through the lens of good or bad, right that if you feel whole and solid in yourself, then you know you have the capacity to meet whatever comes and be okay. That's all. I mean that I know that I am resilient and I have trusted myself and that I have the capacity at this point, after living through everything I've lived through, that no matter what version of events happens, I can't predict it. It's not about predicting all the different scenarios, it's just I have literally no idea what's going to happen. I just don't know.

Speaker 2: 7:01

None of us do. That's life. None of us know, even when we think we have all these secure measures in place, none of us have a clue what's actually going to happen. So can we all feel okay and strong and solid in ourselves, whole in ourselves, to know, no matter what comes down the road, that we are going to be okay and know how to meet that moment and survive it and maybe even thrive?

Speaker 1: 7:27

through it. Drop my actual mic, drop my actual mic. Drop, yeah, but that's the whole point, right, that's the whole point and that was basically the essence of Jill's conversation. Right, the safety's on the inside, the safety's not on the outside, and I always talk about being the eye of the storm, like the storm will go on, right, life will be unpredictable. Things will happen. I mean, it's recently.

Speaker 1: 7:51

This has not happened in my immediate circle, but my best friend from college, her husband's best, best, best, best, best friend, died of esophageal cancer at 35. I don't know, less than a year after getting married they went to residency together as a doctor. He was a professional Iron man athlete, competing as of the summer diagnosis to death like six months. My other dear friend, my husband's best friend's wife, her very best friend from college, died at 40 something to young kids, eight-year battle of cancer. Like in the same week they both died. And those are all those moments that remind you. None of this is guaranteed, none of this is certain. I don't want to live in fear of that, but I also I'm not gonna wait to live because of some made-up timeline that will. We have to do all these certain things first before we Can retire and then live our lives.

Speaker 2: 8:41

It's like it should, in a sense, give us more freedom and more permission. Right, because if we are putting all of these measures in place and you know we're so Attached to this idea of safety and security we don't want to leave our comfort zones because we're afraid of what might happen. But it's like you said, you, the jobs that you've been having, these secure jobs that happen to to my ex-two. We'd be at a desk job and the whole company would go down, and then when he actually found his passion and this very Unreliable industry, he thrived and it went really well for him. The fact that we cannot control any of it means to me that you might as well go and do the thing you really want to do and hope for the best, because even if you don't do it, if you deny yourself your truth, your passion, the thing you really want to go out and do something else might come along right and Blow it all up too. So you might as well do the thing you really want to do.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Yeah, yeah, and yeah, that's like I know I love it. I mean, obviously I love it. That's why I hope people actualize their visions for a living, because if there's even a glimmer of an idea in your body, I'm like, yeah, let's bring it out. If there's a glimmer of anything in your body, yeah, and you're at least willing to say it to me, I'm like we're gonna do this. Okay, I know, you know that, right, we're not fucking around, we're not waiting. I get that there's timing and I get that there's reality. But also, so much of it is a choice, it's a decision. There's no perfect time in life to decide to, in a sense, flip your life upside down on purpose. There's never a great time for that right, but there's a great time to decide that you're no longer going to settle, that you're no longer gonna shove that dream, that voice, down inside of you. I'm equally passionate as you are, but it is. It's like I. I mean I literally.

Speaker 2: 10:39

That's why I say it's my favorite conversation when somebody says to me I have an idea, I have this vision, I have this thing that I've been thinking about, and I'm like, okay, you know, and Jill also said, which I really appreciate that we also don't know that the journey itself Might be exactly the point, that maybe it is the point yeah, it is the point, but but it is the point. People don't want to start something until they know what the results are gonna be, and that's just not life period but we don't know that that vision is taking us down a path that is going to help us meet ourselves, and it doesn't actually matter what happens on the other end of it.

Speaker 1: 11:21

And you know, it's interesting because I didn't know that. I have a quote, and I think it was in this talk that I did my journey out of corporate ended up being a journey into myself, and I had no idea that that was the journey I was on, nor did I actually realize that that was the journey I was guiding people on when I started to do my mastermind and I was like, oh, this is nothing. I mean. The thing is that the vehicle, the place to put your desires and your work, the point of all of this is the becoming yeah, it's you, it's the CEO school for your life, of you learning to be your sovereign, offended self and make choices from a totally different place than you've been making them. Yeah, that's the point. You.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Building a widget has never been the point. Right, it's not, but we think that it is. That's why I, even for a long time, I was like do I even call myself a business coach? But it's the thing that gets the person to say yes to going on a different kind of a journey. They don't know what they're searching for, but they will think that they're searching, which I was the same way, I think I'm searching for this thing, but what I'm actually getting is this, and this is exactly what I needed. Yeah, it's the surprising thing that you didn't know you needed. Yeah, well, was you? It's you. You're the thing you didn't know you needed.

Speaker 2: 12:39

You are the thing you didn't know you needed. I'm glad we had this talk. Hey there, rebels. If you enjoyed this podcast, we would love your support in a few quick ways. You could like follow or subscribe on your preferred platform to help others discover us too. You could also leave us a review. We also have a Facebook group and you can find us at facebookcom. You can also find us on our social media page, where support means everything to us, and we can't wait to continue this journey together.