Jessica: 0:00

Okay, here we are All right. Here we are Season two of Inner Rebel. Melissa, I'm so happy.

Melissa: 0:07

Feels like a really exciting reunion.

Jessica: 0:10

It was just the fastest year of your life, because for me it feels like we blinked and now we're here. But you were going through a very different process than me.

Melissa: 0:18

Yeah well, and it's so fascinating because we decided to take a break a little.

Jessica: 0:24

It was like a pause, a short pause.

Melissa: 0:27

Yeah, I was going to say we decided to take a pause after season one and I would have never predicted that a whole year was going to go by. I thought it'd be like three months maybe. So it's just interesting and I'm proud of us for giving it the space that it needed, because I helped us force things a little bit too much last time and that caused some distress, and I'm really working on not forcing things, but it is a hard thing for me.

Jessica: 1:02

Oh that's beautiful, but also it felt like it was actually in your court for a while because of the nature of your life and what was unfolding in your world.

Jessica: 1:11

So we did have every intention of meeting sooner, and then every time we set a date, the date would have to shift and I felt very trusting of it. I was like, okay, the timing is as it's meant to be. Of it, I was like, okay, the timing is as it's meant to be, but I would love to learn more about where you're at now, because this past year you essentially gave birth to a soul vision, right To a business baby, and you have been on a ride. It's been a journey and I'd love to hear and share with our listeners where you're at right now with that and maybe some of the big learnings that you've taken along the way.

Melissa: 1:50

We could do a whole season on that. Just to be clear. Yeah, just like any big vision that we have in our hearts, if you're somebody listening or even you, just that like that, knowing that, calling that you're being pulled towards something, I don't believe we're ever meant to know where it's going to take us. No, because we would never do it. We would never do it. And so the last episode we recorded, I had just launched or was about to launch.

Jessica: 2:18

Do you remember? I think you had just launched. Yeah, okay, happy anniversary.

Melissa: 2:23

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was such a sweet, naive, optimistic, young entrepreneur and I love that version of me because she just thought everything was going to be great.

Jessica: 2:43

I feel like there's no other way. That's where you have to start. No one would start if they knew what it would be.

Melissa: 2:50

They would never know. But trust and belief is what drives you so much. So trust and belief, and then I would say community support. And so me a year ago was like okay, this thing is so needed in the world which I still believe even more that everyone's gonna get it right away. And as soon as this thing hits earth it's gonna take off like a rocket ship and we're never gonna look back and it's just gonna be on such high demand and our membership's just gonna skyrocket. And it didn't happen that way.

Melissa: 3:21

The things that I have learned are so critical to me as a leader, as a CEO and as a woman. I've never been a CEO of a company before. I thought that, having the corporate experience that I have and having nine years of network marketing and having managed a very large team, I thought I knew more than I did. And, just like anything, you don't know what you don't know. And so I've learned a lot around team, around hiring, team and overhiring, and not knowing what we actually needed, and thinking that I knew and hiring for what I thought we needed, but then realizing I was actually pretty wrong about that and I'm not making any of it Like, I think, whoever has come into this business, has come into this business and they have been a beautiful contribution to what we have built. And if I knew then what I knew now, I would have started totally different.

Jessica: 4:16

Can I ask two questions?

Melissa: 4:18

Yeah.

Jessica: 4:19

One. I would love you to maybe pull back, and I think in our last episode you shared what your business is, but I think it would be great to recap that and remind people what it is that you created. But then I would also love to ask what would you have done differently, knowing what you now know?

Melissa: 4:38

So the business is called the Nova Global. We call it the Nova and it is a community for soul-led, professional women and we gather virtually. We have a chapter. We have one chapter in Colorado and we're launching a second one in Boulder I'm actually talking to the chapter leader tomorrow and we have LA and the Bay Area on the horizon for beta launching this year and the Bay Area on the horizon for beta launching this year, and what we do is we provide a safe place for women to land and be nurtured in their whole selves.

Melissa: 5:13

Traditional networking, traditional communities of women, tend to focus on one aspect or the other. They can be very friendship heavy, they can be very business heavy, but I find that we are something that doesn't serve. Women is segmenting us and also putting us in environments where we feel like we have to hide ourselves. So we focus on safety, we focus on belonging and we focus on really looking at you as a whole person, and that's personally, professionally and spiritually person, and that's personally, professionally and spiritually, and so the way in which we gather feels very different.

Melissa: 5:47

I like people to feel like they're coming home, that they can exhale when they walk in the room, whether it's virtual or in person, that they can set their mask at the door and that they can just feel free to be themselves, which is a rare experience for anyone in this world, particularly women, and so we can find this in. I think we find this in coaching containers and mastermind groups and these siloed experiences, but there isn't a community that is doing this at scale. My vision is that we have Novas all over the country and all over the world, and so if you're a soul-led woman who likes to exist in the world in this kind of a way, you know you can walk into a Nova room, no matter where you are, wherever you're traveling, and know that your people are there.

Jessica: 6:32

It's so beautiful and I've been to some of your events and it's such a celebration, it's joyous, the people are so incredible and you do feel that sense of home and belonging and connection community. And you do feel that sense of home and belonging and connection community. I've also spoken to so many entrepreneurs, because a lot of them come to me as clients and they are lonely and they do need that kind of support and network to learn from and to share with. So I love what you're building, I love what you're creating.

Melissa: 6:59

Thank you.

Melissa: 7:00

And even those people who have communities still feel lonely because we're not allowed to show up as our whole selves. In fact, we don't often even know what the fuck that means, and it's a lifelong journey. I'm not claiming that I've discovered everything that I need to know vulnerably, without fear of judgment, where people can listen to you and witness you in a specific way and reflect back to you who you are, especially when you forget which is somewhat regularly a lot more than I care to admit, even as a confident person who's done a lot of work. That holding of you is critical to you having satisfaction in your life, your romantic partnerships thriving to you thriving if you're a parent. To you being satisfaction in your life, your romantic partnerships thriving to you thriving if you're a parent, to you being able to access that next level of achievement in work or impact, whatever it is that you desire from your career. You have to have people that fucking know you and see you. It is like a non-negotiable and it is the most life-changing thing that we can ever give ourselves.

Jessica: 8:08

It's a community that nurtures authenticity. Yeah, it sounds like yeah.

Melissa: 8:12

Yeah.

Jessica: 8:13

And in that journey of creating it, I have a sense that it has brought you deeper and deeper into your authenticity, which has also been probably very challenging. So let's go back to my other question about what you wish you did, now that you've learned what you've learned.

Melissa: 8:30

It's an interesting question because you can't redo it, and I almost wish I would have started in some sort of incubator that had business advisors in it that had walked this path before, because I was making it up. I was making it up, I built a lot of it with AI, which was awesome. I think it helped me shortcut a lot of things. But also I think I would have had different startup guidance had this been in a startup incubator, given the size that I wanted it to be. You know, there are things that I'm doing now that are like I brought in an operations person who has worked with franchises and she's helping me a lot with the financials, which has been something that I've been afraid to look at because I don't know how to run a business, because I've never done it before, and so the financials felt really intimidating. And she's like, okay, let's take the next week. Like I'm going to dig into this and I'm going to clean it all up. We're going to bring a bookkeeper in, and I just wish I would have started with that Like. So I wasn't afraid to look at these things and I wish that I I don't know. I think there are things like I wish I would have thought through it more, not that I didn't think through it, but, like I really love building the plane as I fly it, which is part of my human design, I was going to bring up your human design. Yeah, it's who I am. So there's like a part that wishes that I wasn't the way that I was, in that I wish I didn't have to build the plane as I fly it, and also very aware that you have to, but I wish that I would have been like oh, I already know the programming and I already know that I really need to be like a master at launching.

Melissa: 10:15

There's just so many things that I had to learn through the hard process. But, gosh, it would have been so much easier if I had known, like, how to launch super effectively and had a franchise operations person from the beginning. And I loved our operations person. She's fucking awesome. I love her to death. She's still a dear friend of mine and she's still involved and she did an incredible job. And we also needed someone to supplement that which she knew. We needed someone to supplement that that had this next level of knowledge. And now I feel like, oh gosh, I don't have to carry the weight of all these things that weren't actually getting handled by anybody, and now I have them handled at this stage of the business, but don't you think that the lessons that you have learned in your business are also lessons that you just needed to learn as a human for yourself?

Jessica: 11:03

A million percent.

Melissa: 11:04

Yeah, that's why it's like I get the question and I think it's always an important one to reflect on. But also I had to go through what I went through, and I went through a lot. I mean, you know that I had a really dark summer. It was one of the hardest times that I've gone through as an adult woman and I believe that this was an initiation for me to clean up any area that was a little bit out of integrity or out of integrity from what it's going to take for me to hold this container, Because every part of my life felt like it was asking everything of me at the same exact time of me at the same exact time, and I didn't have that capacity.

Melissa: 11:52

I was a mess. I was crying all the time, I was not sleeping. I was so stressed, my body stopped working, my foot got injured, my hormones were all out of whack and it was like my body was not going to let me keep going like this. She stopped me and so I was looking at like my marriage, my role as a mother, my role as a leader, rebuilding the entire team, trying to heal my foot, trying to fix my hormones, trying to train a puppy, like all of this at the exact same time, and what I have compassion around is when life just throws a lot of shit at you. I used to think burnout was sort of something we caused ourselves, which I think it is sometimes, but also sometimes life just fucking explodes, which I know you get on a deep cellular level.

Jessica: 12:40

I do so.

Melissa: 12:42

going back to as you build this community that nurtures and supports authenticity, I feel like I didn't build the structure back with like brick maybe I used like beanbag chairs or squishmallows, um and so I feel much more comfortable in not having it all together.

Melissa: 13:24

I I feel more comfortable in falling apart and I feel more confident, like the good side of this, if we were to label not that we need to label it good and bad but the good side of this, or the really expansive outcome is I feel so much more confident in my ability to create this and my ability to withstand some shit and my ability to relate to the people that I'm supporting. I think I needed to go through this to really have so much more compassion and empathy and understanding and an embodied lived experience for what so many of the women are going through or will go through, that are going to be in our community or already are in our community, and from a leader, from the founder, the chief visionary I have to have that to have integrity in the organization, and I'm sure I'll go through another season of this later, but it helps me really relate on a level that I did not have the capacity for before.

Jessica: 14:28

Yeah, if we could have like a human design moment for just a second.

Melissa: 14:32

Like a commercial break is like our human design, but we'd like to speak our sponsor human design.

Jessica: 14:38

We touched on it, I think, in season one, but you are a one3 profile, so you're a martyr profile in human design and the martyr is very experiential and works through trial and error and learns by doing, and that's not actually something that can be bypassed.

Jessica: 14:56

The reason I think that we call the martyr the martyr is you are built with a special kind of resiliency and capacity to take on more life. You're kind of like on the battlefield and we are all witnessing you, so we learn through you, right. But you also have 48, which is one of your gates in your incarnation cross, which is the gate of depth, the gate of the well, which is all about really learning the depth of your own inner resources to handle life. What your capacity really is and I feel like I mean this is so obvious, but that's what challenge does for us is it teaches us what we're really made of and we want to be able to bypass it and have all the answers right from the beginning. But then you would never actually know what you're capable of and you're showing up so differently, Like I can feel in your energy you look different.

Melissa: 15:49

Is it the lipstick? The way that you're the lipstick's beautiful.

Jessica: 15:54

But your energy, like your vulnerability, the way you're sitting here with me today feels like a different version of you.

Melissa: 16:01

Yeah, like a landed version of you. Well, thank you, you're welcome. Fucking earned it.

Jessica: 16:12

Damn straight.

Melissa: 16:13

Yeah, and one of the things that's been really interesting is and this has been something I've actually been working on and what we stand for is how to show up as yourself everywhere you go and not trying to put on like this hat over here and this hat over here and shape shift, and I think that's been one of the big thing that's been happening this year. I even just had a birthday and for my birthday I was like I want to bring in the work that I do in the world to my friends and some of them already experienced they've gone to some of my things but it was co-ed and I don't lead men, and it was co-ed and I don't lead men, and it was risky, I felt, and I had everyone do an opening circle. We had everyone turn inward to channel a celebration. We did a silent disco. That was a facilitated silent disco that had some stuff in it that might not be normal for most people and it felt like a really big coming out party for me and it was a surprise gift to them and I looked at it as a way to really integrate vulnerability and intentionality into an area of life that might not normally get that and to do it in a way that felt accessible and maybe that felt over the top for some people, but it's all relative, right, like I wasn't like get naked and tell me your darkest secrets in the middle of the circle I would have done that, I know.

Melissa: 17:31

Again, you got to know your audience. So there's that bridge and I think I'm bringing myself to my husband now, instead of being like, oh, is he going to be okay with who I am, like I feel integrated is what I feel, and that's probably what you're feeling is I feel more integrated. I feel, and that's probably what you're feeling, is I feel more integrated, and there's less of this like pendulum swinging around of like, oh, now I'm way over here and I'm like super spiritual. I just feel like like I've really landed in myself in every area of my life, instead of feeling a little bit different in other areas.

Jessica: 18:05

Mm. Hmm, I know there's something that we talked about when we had some of our calls. Both of us were in the thick of it, going through things this last year, and it's something that I will often say in my human design readings, because so much of human design or at least how I like to share it is really about following your joy and really trusting in your dreams and trusting in the things that are calling to you, like I really believe that our desires are meant for us, and so I really encourage people to lean into what is bringing them joy and where they're being pulled towards, and then I get feedback sometimes where it's like, well, I listened to my gut or I listened to my joy and then it got hard and we interpret that to be I must have done something wrong or it must be bad.

Jessica: 18:53

And I really encourage people to stop looking at life through this lens of right or wrong or good or bad. And the more that I live, the more that I see in retrospect it's all of those challenges that were actually initiations into the highest version of myself, so I could actually I think we've talked about this before have the capacity to have the dream, to live that dream out. We think we know what we want, but we don't actually understand what it feels like to be embodied in that vision. And we have to go on the journey to expand our resilience and expand our sense of possibility and what we can hold and what we can handle in order to actually live inside of that dream. And in reality, challenge just means life is like cool we got you, you have to learn some stuff.

Melissa: 19:47

Yeah, it is. It's all capacity. It really is. You know, if we look at it from feeling safe in your experience, like if you look at it from a nervous system perspective, it's like you're actually. You have to rewire yourself. You couldn't handle the dream I couldn't handle like being in a stadium of a thousand people and leading a community of tens of thousands of people. Today I don't have that capacity. But the journey is you have to build it and you're so right, but it fucking sucks when you're in the hard. You know you're like I don't want to go through this, like I don't want to have to learn this lesson, and so I get that.

Melissa: 20:26

For those people listening who are in it, I feel like you and I are both. Just, I was saying recently I was like I'm like a little prairie dog that just like popped its head out of the hole and was like okay, what's out here now? And I feel like we're both. I don't think we should say prairie dog and I think that means a totally different thing. You can look that up on Urban Dictionary.

Melissa: 20:49

But I feel like we're both in that season, like you're coming out of some darkness too. And I just think the timing is very interesting Just in the last month for both of us, like had we talked in September we'd be having a very different conversation than today, completely different conversation. Well, I want to get caught up on what you've been navigating. Oh, jess, I'm so excited for you to share your story.

Jessica: 21:13

Thank you.

Melissa: 21:14

So why don't you? We're going to flip the tables. Is that what you say? Flip the table? Probably not.

Jessica: 21:21

Turn the tables.

Melissa: 21:22

Turn the tables. We're going to turn them, flip them. I would love for you to share where you're at today and what's happened for you since we wrapped up a year ago.

Jessica: 21:31

It's really interesting. I mean, it's completely tied into what we were just talking about and there's so much that you said that I want to touch on. There's also something you said earlier the piece about how it never quite looks like how you think it will, that even when your vision starts to come to life because yours is coming to life you did give birth it's just like, oh, I did give birth.

Melissa: 21:56

I do have a one-year-old baby.

Jessica: 21:58

Yeah and it's like, oh, but it has a life of its own. One thing I've been really thinking a lot about is how, when the dream comes, it's still a part of real life. I think I spent a lot of my life in fantasy and thinking my dreams would save me or be this perfect version of life, and that wasn't intentional, it wasn't conscious, but I wasn't factoring in all of the real life stuff that is always going to be there alongside the manifestation of those beautiful things.

Melissa: 22:30

Because it almost feels like it's separate from like it lives over in like a shelf, like a trophy.

Jessica: 22:35

Yeah, Like I would go into these meditations and envision all these things I wanted to manifest and it was always just joy, joy, joy, joy, joy joy, joy and over the summer I started to go, go, for example, like imagining my beautiful home that I one day want to live in. What would it be like to do the taxes, the property taxes, on that home, oh my god, what a bummer dreamer you are.

Melissa: 22:59

How would I fix the flooding that might happen in the basement?

Jessica: 23:03

because I think one of my life lessons has been learning to merge dream and reality, and it has always felt like my dreams escaped me, like I was always striving for something out there, and I think the reason they were always out there was because I couldn't quite factor in or make it tangible by rooting it in reality, or make it tangible by rooting it in reality, which is that, yes, I will have, let's say, this beautiful house and this beautiful partner and this beautiful career, and I'm also going to get sick and my kids are going to maybe be little assholes.

Melissa: 23:42

Oh my God. Your new tagline is bummer dreamer. We should make a song, Bummer dreamer song.

Jessica: 23:48

It'll be the new intro to Inner Rebel.

Melissa: 23:50

Yeah.

Jessica: 23:51

Yeah, life things that are always happening, that are always unfolding, that are not in our control, like you just said, like all of the ways in which you went into overwhelm because of what life was bringing you in the midst of creating this vision that was so close to your heart.

Jessica: 24:09

I think I had to make peace with that, and maybe this sounds so obvious to everyone else, but it wasn't to me. It really wasn't. That was only kind of a recent revelation, but it's already proven to have some pretty amazing results, which I'll get to. But prior to that, I really went into this year very intentionally to give it everything I had to create what I wanted. I learned once again that I don't have control over anything and much of the year was spent in confusion and it was really hard. It was like my dreams were being dangled and then taken away.

Jessica: 24:52

I think I kept saying to you it's like I think I'm coming out of the womb and then I go right back in. So it was really confusing. Yeah, yeah, it was funny, pury dog. Like I kept thinking oh, I finally broke through, it's finally happening, and then it would go away or I'd lose it or something else would come in and make it impossible. So I felt like I was in a holding pattern that I couldn't control and it took a long time to surrender to it. But I eventually did. And it was in the surrendering that everything began to change.

Melissa: 25:26

Surrendering that everything began to change. Gosh, isn't that how it always goes? Fuck, it's true, it's real. It's what you have to do. You have to get unattached. Well, cheers to you, girl. Thank you. Now. What was it like? Just too many beat downs? Like a give up? Like what was the surrender? What did it look like?

Jessica: 25:46

There was what felt like a giant manifestation came through I mean, I don't really love the word manifestation, but a huge opportunity that I was excited about and then it disappeared and it was nothing to do with me. The opportunity itself fell apart. It wasn't about me, but that felt like a final straw and it threw me into a weird kind of portal. Like I thought I was going to have a very busy, very active summer, living a dream, and instead everything got extremely still and quiet and very uncomfortable, and I spent the first part of that grieving and in a lot of confusion. My birthday's in June and I thought I was going to go into my birthday like this is going to be my new life. I'm entering a new chapter. I finally made it, and then it was days before my birthday that I got the news, and so instead I really had to grieve it for a little while, like there was a huge empty space that was created because my plans had just been taken away.

Jessica: 26:49

So I was in this empty space and I was feeling really sad. I think I shared this on another podcast that I just did, but I'll share it again because I think it's really important. I was doing a lot of meditating and I was meditating one day and a voice kind of came through that was like we're obviously trying to give you everything you want. Why are you pushing against it? Like there was something about me resisting. What is me resisting and not surrendering to the circumstances I was in, that hit me differently, like I was pushing, I was trying to make stuff happen, I was angry about it. And if I zoomed out and went, this is all for me and I've been very clear about what I want, and maybe life is orchestrating that for me in the background. It just doesn't look like how I think it should. What would I do differently? I would just surrender. I would just be still. I would make the most of the stillness.

Melissa: 27:48

I would just be still, I would make the most of the stillness.

Jessica: 27:49

What if this is the last little bit of stillness I get in my life? How would I enjoy it?

Melissa: 27:54

And that's what I did?

Jessica: 27:55

I started to embrace the stillness and allow myself to be in the void. And then everything changed and then everything flipped, and now my life is being turned on its head because so many things are now coming true in unexpected ways and going to alter. I'm supposed to accept my life as is Life is happening for me these things.

Melissa: 28:32

It's like we've heard it, we've read the memes. They're in the self-help books, we know, and there's a very big difference. And this is like the difference of reading something in a book and living it or having an experiential learning is that it takes what it takes for you to get that Like in your life. It's not just that simple. You know, I read the book the Surrender Experiment recently again, like a second time, and it's that idea right, like what, if we stop saying it's not supposed to be this way, that's right. I was supposed to get a different phone call, that funding was supposed to have gone through, that person was supposed to have said this, that marriage was supposed to have gone another way. And I think a majority of people live their lives like that and I think we included. You know it's not like we're like, oh, I'm done thinking that, but I think that is how we live our lives so often is it wasn't supposed to be that way.

Jessica: 29:32

Yeah, and what I was doing was trying to give it all so much meaning. This job came for me and then got taken away. What did I do to lose that?

Jessica: 29:44

And like I'm at fault, like the things that go wrong, like I did something wrong to deserve this Exactly, and it was really helpful for me to depersonalize it as well and go maybe I did nothing, maybe this is just life sometimes, or maybe the timing isn't the right timing. What if I just trust it and that's a new place for me, making meaning out of it.

Melissa: 30:09

I do think in the realm of personal growth, in the realm of spirituality, it's almost like you got to make it mean something. What are the planets doing? And like, oh gosh, does Freya, this goddess, does she have something to do with it? What does she want from me? And it can be this hole you go down trying to figure out exactly what it means. And the truth is, we can decide exactly what it means. That's the curse and the gift of being human is you get to choose. I think it feels safer to try to really wrap your arms around like a specific meaning of it, but it can also be to the detriment of us, where we're always seeking this deeper meaning out of everything. I don't know. Maybe an owl just fucking flew by me. Maybe the owl isn't like coming from the heavens and trying to teach me something. Maybe the fucking owl just flew in front of me. I don't know, you know.

Jessica: 31:10

Totally and I think I can look back and see value and see meaning and see the lessons I took and how it's playing out now in beautiful ways. But I don't think we can always know the meaning in the moment that we're in it. We have to kind of see it through before we understand it in it. We have to kind of see it through before we understand it. I think there was meaning in me, learning to give up my attachments and expectations and stop personalizing everything and stop making meaning. So that was my summer. I don't even know how to segue into, just take a hard left into bliss. What happened since is a different opportunity showed up that brought me to Toronto another acting job. The previous thing that didn't work out was a film, because I'm an actor too. So I had a film opportunity and then the film lost its funding. But I got a new job. I came to Toronto and very unexpectedly have fallen in love.

Melissa: 32:12

We're saying it out loud now. We're saying it out loud I was like did you tell the world before you told him, or does he already know this? No, we're in love. All right good.

Jessica: 32:19

And I'm going to not reveal too much because it's new and I want to protect it and I don't need to reveal all of those details. But I can speak to my own process around this and what led me here and what brought it in. And there's something really profound for me in this experience because I find it so affirming. I find it so affirming, validating that when it's time and when something is meant for you, you cannot miss it. Nothing has felt easier. After being single for a brutal amount of time, I was chronically single and I had been told over and over that I was doing it wrong, that there was by who?

Jessica: 33:14

I don't need to name names, but.

Melissa: 33:15

But like a lot of people in your friends, there were friends.

Jessica: 33:18

There were family members who were genuinely concerned about me, thinking that there must be some really deep blocks or unhealed trauma, that I was sabotaging myself, that I wasn't actually open because my way of navigating the dating scene was not typical and really uncomfortable for me.

Jessica: 33:42

We even did it on this podcast and I was pushing myself to do things that did not feel good, did not feel right for me, and it was awful.

Jessica: 33:50

And eventually I just gave it up and I knew in my heart and this is why I say it's so affirming I knew in my heart that if the right person showed up, I wouldn't sabotage it. If the right person came through, I knew I would receive it and lean in. But no one seemed to believe me when I kept saying that he wasn't showing up. You know, like you get on an app and everyone I liked didn't like me, and everyone who liked me I didn't like it, just felt like we were just missing each other and I was like, why is the kind of person that I so want to be with not showing up in my reality? And now I'm looking dark and when nothing seems to be coming through and nothing came through for me for so long, and here I am, as a coach and a teacher of human design, trying to teach this stuff and it feeling hard on the inside, when I don't necessarily have verification, complete verification that it's true, like certain things were playing out for sure.

Jessica: 35:13

that validated its truth to me. But some of my bigger dreams felt out of reach and now I have the most validating real life experience that I can honor myself and I can do it my way and it's going to be okay and life will deliver.

Melissa: 35:37

Also known as your inner rebel.

Jessica: 35:38

Yeah, she knew. She knew. And I can't even put into words how beautiful my reality has just become. Put into words, how beautiful my reality has just become, I can't. It's better than anything I could have dreamed of. And I say that I say that to clients all the time that our minds are so limited and life is so much more creative than our minds could ever be. And I'm having that experience now and it's also overwhelming because it is, like I said, challenging ideas I have about my life and how it's supposed to look. But the felt experience is, yeah, this, and so I have to trust that. I wish we could hug. I know Me too.

Melissa: 36:21

And our listeners we still haven't met in person.

Jessica: 36:24

It's going to change really soon. I have a feeling.

Melissa: 36:26

Really soon. I know that's all I want to do is hug you.

Jessica: 36:30

It's just like but it's challenging me in the best way to be present and be with the unfolding. Life knows more than me, so be present for it and allow it to unfold and show me what I'm here to do and who I'm here to love. And so far it's been profound. So that is my news.

Melissa: 36:51

You're just a ball of love.

Jessica: 36:52

Which I think brings us back to authenticity. Just like you went through your challenge, the challenges that I went through brought me deeper and deeper into myself. Challenge, the challenges that I went through brought me deeper and deeper into myself. And my therapist and I had a conversation about resonance that when you are true to yourself and living at your most authentic frequency, it's like life attracts like then everything at that frequency will find you and magnetize towards you, and I've never felt that more clearly than I now do.

Melissa: 37:25

Yeah, the frequency is being matched.

Jessica: 37:27

The challenge is bringing you deeper home into yourself, and that everything that is a match to your resonance, to your frequency, to your authenticity cannot miss you.

Melissa: 37:39

You're not a bummer dreamer. Look at you. You really turned that around.

Jessica: 37:43

You totally redeemed yourself on that I've never believed in magic more. Yeah, it's true.

Melissa: 37:49

I fucking love magic. It's real, it's so real and I have Jack, who's seven and he'll be like magic's not real and I'm like you don't know what you're saying. It's like magic as it's portrayed in magic tricks. But if we think about life and magic and being able to recognize and call out those moments where you're like there's proof, I do think we need proof that magic is real, and so I'm so glad that it's on the big screen for you right now that there is an undeniable, felt sense that it's real and you'll never unknow that. You'll never unknow what you're getting to experience right now and you have this proof.

Jessica: 38:29

But it was six years of having to surrender and live in the dark and have no certainty, no guarantee of any kind of outcome, and doing it anyway, trusting anyway and not settling, believing anyway, believing anyway.

Melissa: 38:44

So that's my takeaway I mean, there's no such thing as certainty, really no, it doesn't exist.

Melissa: 38:49

Life is uncertain period, constant. It's constant uncertainty, but we just grasp onto things to be like it's guaranteed. Here's the set of rules I can abide by that make me feel feel safe. If you think you have some sort of guarantee, it feels safe. There's no certainty in any of the things we're experiencing now, but I think what actual certainty feels like for me is that the more you go into yourself, the more you learn who you are, the more you trust yourself, the more you withstand some shit, the certainty becomes you Exactly. I can count on myself. I've got my own back. I know I can handle this.

Jessica: 39:28

You've learned what you're made of. You've learned what your capacity is and that you have the resources to be okay, no matter what, to meet life where it's at, no matter what. I think that's all we can do.

Melissa: 39:39

Yeah.

Jessica: 39:40

So bravo to us.

Melissa: 39:42

We're doing great. We should call this one life on the other side. But it is so nice to be in a good space. It's so nice, it's like being made into a diamond, right when you think you can't take that pressure anymore, then you become a beautiful tiny.

Jessica: 39:56

Yeah, but let me reiterate that it comes with its own set of challenges. So this is what I mean by dreaming, and in those dreams that reality is also reality. So, yes, I'm in this incredible unfolding of a new chapter that I'm very excited about and it's really throwing me off my game at the same time at the same time, and challenging deep core fears that I have, and I'm having to be with those and to be present for the beauty of it simultaneously. And that is its own practice, right. So there's a lot to say that I know we're not going to cover right now. But yeah, it's messy and it's uncertain, and then if you can be in a place of presence within that, if you can be trusting of that, then I think you're kind of unstoppable. I think that is power.

Melissa: 40:50

It is. We actually did a beautiful. It was one of my favorite. We've done a lot of epic workshops at the Nova, yours included, and we had one yesterday on redefining our relationships with power, and it's actually part of the theme of our month at the nova, and her model that she's created is like 36 different kinds of power. Maybe it's even more than that, and one of the things that was so beautiful about that call and that call, combined with an experience that I just had on retreat with sarah janks, who's going to be one of our guests this season is that our own personal power looks and feels so much different than each other and that we have this idea of this power over like.

Melissa: 41:29

So much of our view of power is like shadow powers, which you talked about. Larissa Conte is her name, and what we got through this embodied experience on the call was everyone could actually feel in their bodies what their own power felt like and you could identify like. One of my powers is community power, and so she had all of these things that you don't normally think of as like your gifts of power, and it was such a beautiful way to reframe it, and in Sarah Jenks' retreat, she had us actually embody like broadcast is the term what our power was, and it was this whole I mean, it was a whole long experience. But you watched 150 women standing all around the room projecting what their power looked like, and some were like so soft, some was erotic, mine was like oh, like Some was erotic, mine was like, oh, like, oh, you know, and, but it was so beautiful to really feel like you're in your version of your power and it is so different than mine and it is perfect.

Jessica: 42:33

I love that.

Melissa: 42:33

Yeah.

Jessica: 42:41

I'm curious before we go, because we're in season two of Inner Rebel how has your relationship with your rebel changed?

Melissa: 42:47

She doesn't feel as rebellious. It feels like there's less proving behind my rebel and less of there was something wrong with her, kind of like what you're saying about all these people had a different belief on how you should approach dating and what you found was actually your way was the perfect way for you. I think it's just an acceptance of the fact that I am me and that doesn't actually have to have like a charge behind it. Like sometimes that rebel feeling can be like it can be resentful, it can have anger fueling it, it can have proving fueling it, and I feel like what's flipped for me and I feel like what's flipped for me is the energy underneath her is more of like what I got actually at this retreat was like one of my gifts is my light, is being a light weaver is actually what I got very, very, very loud and clear, and so what's driving me has shifted and so it's more about shining than it is about the other things and that feels different for everyone involved in my life.

Jessica: 44:08

Remember we talked about ambition versus aspiration. It feels like shifting from proving to love. Like I think when we move away from proving we actually fall into service, it takes on a different quality.

Melissa: 44:24

And that shift really has just happened over the last month. My foot I had plantar fasciitis for five months and I couldn't move in my normal way, I couldn't be out in nature like I like to be, I couldn't do high intensity activity like I like to be. I had a lot of pain and I was doing this breathwork session a few weeks ago and my body, spirit, intuition, whatever was talking to me, was like you're healed now You're able to run again, now that you're running towards something different. Oh, my gosh chills. And I, literally my foot was like, it wasn't like, but it was within like a week, like I can do everything.

Jessica: 45:07

I am full body buzzing.

Melissa: 45:09

It was wild that resonates so deeply. Yeah, I was like I'm going to let you run again, like literally and metaphorically, because the place from which you are running is different, what you're running towards is different, and I literally have like actually run four times since then, without pain, and the energy to which I feel like I'm leading this company and this movement and the meaning that I'm making or not making out of things feels so much different and I feel like I just keep dropping head to heart, like head to heart, like get out of the head, drop into the heart, now decide, and so I think the place from which I'm coming from now just I have goosebumps. It just feels so much. It feels like love, it feels like love versus fear and yeah, and fear was really fucking running the show.

Melissa: 45:56

Yeah, really running the show.

Jessica: 45:57

I think it was for most of us, for most of our lives.

Melissa: 46:00

Yeah.

Jessica: 46:00

And I think that is exactly what happened to me in the summer when I told you I chose to surrender. I think that is just moving from fear to love. Yeah, not letting it run the show anymore. Well, look at that. Look at that.

Melissa: 46:13

So how has your rebel shifted?

Jessica: 46:15

I think it's similar. I think that's why, like you said, us having this conversation now is very different than it would have been a couple months ago, but I think I have a lot more trust in her and I feel like I can move more gently now.

Melissa: 46:34

Yeah, yeah, may we forever remain in this feeling.

Jessica: 46:39

I know, by the end of this season? I'm so curious. We'll be like tearing at our hair.

Melissa: 46:45

But day one is going great. Here in your Rebel season two, we are really nailing it.

Jessica: 46:52

There is a lot of beauty to me about witnessing our growth, to be here now after a year, having given it the space to think of where we were when we were doing the last season and how so much I think of what we learned through the podcast, but also in our lives, has been integrated, and how not that we're done, obviously, but that we're seeing the shifts, the changes in our lives as a result, and that's so exciting.

Melissa: 47:22

I'm so happy that we're back together.

Jessica: 47:25

Me too. Is there anything you would like to share publicly in terms of your intention for the season?

Melissa: 47:39

Oh gosh, actually the two words that have really been guiding our company and the decisions that we're making have been elevate and deepen.

Melissa: 47:43

And it's almost like if you think about roots going deeper to expand out. I have this beautiful tree on my vision board that sits in front of me and it's like that. It's like I want to deepen into the conversations and amplify our impact bigger in the sense of both of our capacities have expanded and so I think the capacity of this podcast is going to expand as a result of that and I think the lives that we're going to touch are going to expand as a result of that and the conversations I think were amazing and deep before, but I think the access that we're going to have now it's going to feel different than before.

Melissa: 48:19

So I'm really looking forward to the unknown around all of that and being in the magic of what gets to unfold over the next season together.

Jessica: 48:31

Amen, I'm going to leave it at that. That was perfect.

Melissa: 48:35

All right, we'll see you on the next episode.

Jessica: 48:37

I'm so excited, thank you, thank you, love you For calling us back.

Melissa: 48:43

I love you so much, love you All right, goodbye, goodbye. I love you.

Jessica: 48:48

I love you.