• 0:00 - 0:28 
Do you listen to all the experts on podcasts and think no wonder they're experts? They're awesome. They're smart. They're -- stop right there. You're awesome. You have a story to tell, and there really is no one like you. Fellow normal humans Dalia Ramahi and Jordan Drayer share what they've learned in hopes of inspiring you to find your unique voice. This is the Blooming Voices podcast. Go to bloomingvoices.com for more information. Now let's get to it.

• 0:30 - 0:34 
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Blooming Voices podcast. I'm Jordan Drayer.

• 0:35 - 0:40 
And I'm Dalia Ramahi and we're so excited to have you guys for another episode.

• 0:40 - 0:52 
And maybe, I don't know, in a way, not, not, well, of course, we're excited to have you, but sometimes I don't know, like, even though we, we profess positivity and everything on this podcast, sometimes we do get down too.

• 0:53 - 0:53 
Oh, absolutely.

• 0:54 - 0:59 
Both of us are kind of in that place right now. <laugh> so we kind of just wanted to talk about being vulnerable.

• 0:59 - 1:35 
Yes. Being vulnerable is okay. And I'm feeling especially vulnerable and a little emotional today. So if I tear up, it's all good. No, seriously. Um, Jordan and I were talking right before we hit record, um, that, you know, it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay. To feel sad. It's okay to feel your emotions. Sometimes you need to let it out positivity. Isn't about suppressing all the negative feelings that you have. So yes, we talk about changing your mindset, focusing on the quality of life you want through the quality of thoughts you choose to have.

• 1:36 - 1:57 
Right? Yeah. But that being said, we are still emotional beings. We feel, and sometimes the feels just get in the way. So how can we allow ourselves? You know, I don't know if you've heard this expression holding space. Yeah. When you hold space for someone else, you just listen, you give them the space to process their emotions.

• 1:57 - 2:27 
You don't try to wrong them. You don't try to feed them advice or interrupt their, you just hold space for them. Let them work it out for themselves while being a source of support. Right. Yeah. And we need to learn how to hold space for ourselves, especially as women, because we're not always gonna be in a position where we have someone there to hold space for us, you know, like I'm not the kind of person that's gonna call my friends. I'm just not.

• 2:27 - 2:38 
And be like, guys, I'm having a really bad day. I wish I was like, that's something I'm working towards. And also developing, cultivating the kind of friendships where I feel that I can do that in. Oh.

• 2:38 - 2:47 
Yeah. I have like two people, my sister and then like one other friend that I usually go to. Yeah. I usually, it seems like I can't process without talking to someone else and be like, what do you think of this? You talk to.

• 2:47 - 3:18 
Somebody else. But that said is how can we do it when we're on our own? When you don't have someone like, God forbid like my twin sister, isn't always there for me. And there's sometimes when she's going through her own shit or sometimes we're experiencing the same shit together. And it's hard for us to talk ourselves through it if we're both experiencing it, because we're both feeling our emotions at that moment. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So having a, a friend or someone else that you can go to, I, I, that's how it is for me in my life. I, I know everybody's situation is different, right? But talking it through is so important.

• 3:18 - 3:31 
Even if you go find a therapist to help you. But back to what we were saying, the vulnerability of holding space for yourself before we got to re before we got to recording this morning, I was telling Jordan, I was actually almost in tears.

• 3:31 - 4:06 
I am feeling really sad and vulnerable today. And part of it is as women, we, during our times of the month before it, or right at the beginning of it, we may get a little more emotional that's okay. I think the idea is to, I feel sad and it doesn't matter. The reasons I feel sad, I just feel really down. Uh, partly because of the pain I'm experiencing from my back. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> partly because, you know, I tell myself a story that sometimes look at me, I'm at my age and I'm still single and I'm still not a Gaji yet.

• 4:06 - 4:17 
Blah, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes it's whatever, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like we can feel sorry for ourselves, but we can feel sad without letting our thoughts run away with us is where, where I'm getting at. Cause.

• 4:17 - 4:28 
Somebody, I can't remember. I think it was you on a different episode. And also I've read this before, just like to set a limit, like okay. All of today or maybe even all this week or I'm gonna feel sad hour. See,.

• 4:28 - 4:30 
I think even a week is too much. Well,.

• 4:30 - 4:34 
Yeah, because, but I I'm thinking about morning perhaps. I mean like a,.

• 4:34 - 5:06 
Yeah. You're think about time limit, whether it's okay, I'm gonna yell for five minutes and get this anger out of me. I'm gonna allow myself to break down and cry and be angry for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is one hour. Right. Or I'm just gonna take the morning in bed and allow myself to just feel it and cry it out. And then I'm gonna get up and start my day or I'm gonna get up and go do something that makes me feel good. Like go on a walk, make a cup of tea, talk to a friend, whatever. Yeah. But you don't allow yourself to wallow in it endlessly day after day after day.

• 5:06 - 5:08 
No, because that is where you get stuck.

• 5:08 - 5:25 
And I often do feel better after telling a bunch of, so like cuz recently last week I was feeling really down about like the fact that I'm still single and like that I don't have a person that I can guarantee as a roommate and that we can travel together and be building a life together. And sometimes that cuz other times I'm like,.

• 5:26 - 5:26 
Whatever, want a companionship?

• 5:26 - 5:46 
Yeah. Yeah. Like most of the month, like I'm like, it's okay. I'm gonna find him he's out there. Absolutely. And, and every day I'm attracting him, but then like certain days I just get really sad and like see everybody coupled up and, and like, but then when I do vent about it to friends then uh, like pray about it the next day I feel better.

• 5:46 - 6:21 
Exactly. And, and, and, and that's the part that we're gonna talk about today? Not all the times you feel good about the times you feel bad. And like Jordan says, if you, you know, even if you have to post it on social media, even if you, if you don't have somebody and maybe just posting it and asking your friend circle online for advice or just feeling like you can share it, if that's, what does it for you do it mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know what I mean? And the, the idea is you're allowing yourself, you're giving your yourself permission to feel.

• 6:21 - 6:44 
And if sometimes the sadness can feel like you're grieving about something and you're not really even sure what it could feel like you've, you're losing something or you've lost something or you, or I like sometimes the sadness can be so heavy. Yeah. Accepting it is how you get through it, accepting that that's what you're feeling.

• 6:45 - 7:20 
And your thoughts that you create from that feeling are just that thoughts when you, so that's where I was like giving yourself a time limit because when we it's easy to okay. Say I'm feeling sad about being at my age and not where I wanna be. Right. Yeah. And then I keep lingering on it and I'm like, well, I mean, I've been a loser my whole life. I've never had a proper relationship. I never will. And like, do you see how it, but do you see how those thoughts can snowball and escalate? Yeah. And it starts to make you not just a victim in your life, but somehow as if you no longer have power yeah.

• 7:20 - 7:47 
In this moment, you disempower yourself. So feel your feelings, but recognize when you're letting your thoughts run away with you and creating stories to justify your feelings. You don't need to justify your feelings with thoughts. You, you just need to feel them and whatever thoughts come as a result of your feelings in that moment, allow them to pass by knowing it's because of what you're feeling. And it's not truth, unless you hold it and decide that that's the truth.

• 7:48 - 8:03 
Yeah. And makeup action steps after like, I find that helps cuz like the afterwards, the next day I was like, fine. I'll try out dating apps again, at least doing something, at least I'm I am working towards that. What I'm feeling bad about.

• 8:04 - 8:10 
That's incredible Jordan. Absolutely. Guys, you gotta listen to that advice. You need to create action steps.

• 8:10 - 8:15 
But like what I mean? So what would you do though? If, if it's pain, which is more, I don't know. So what.

• 8:16 - 8:58 
I, I do what I did. Um, but, but here's the thing I'm really good at managing my physical pain. Okay. And what I say is that I've had a lot of time to practice cuz I've been working on my mindset for many years. So I see, I feel like everything happens for me. Nothing happens to me. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so when I see that, I see everything as a gift and a blessing in my life, even when I'm going through my chronic pain and my, and, and, and my condition right now, that is a blessing. Why? Because I have been working towards this moment for a long time with my mindset, with my healing and my healing journey, working through my past trauma, working on my, myself as a woman, working on my, my thought process.

• 8:58 - 9:05 
So when I was faced with adversity, I can look at it, accept it and know that I'm getting through it.

• 9:05 - 9:38 
But that said, sometimes the pain is so intense. I can't allow myself to linger on the thoughts. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I just feel the sadness of, I'm not where I'm at right now that, you know, there are other people who are my age and look at the amazing things they're doing. Like I started crying because I'm like, well, what if I can't ever have children? Because the pain is so bad and I need a strong back to be able to carry ch like, and I thought about myself, I'm like, are children even something that I want? I mean, I've had this conversation with myself. I don't know, but why am I lingering on this one point?

• 9:38 - 9:54 
Because I wanna make myself feel worse. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. Because I'm choosing to make myself feel even worse by letting myself think, and then start to believe a thought that I don't even know if it's who I really am. Like, I love children, but I don't know if I want them. Yeah, me.

• 9:54 - 9:54 
Too. I still,.

• 9:54 - 10:29 
For me, it's the kind of thing that if it happens. Okay, cool. I, I like when the time comes, I'll deal with it. Right. But it's not some, I've never been like, oh, it's my calling to be a mom. Yeah. You know what I mean? So do you see where I'm going? Where you can trap yourself with your thoughts? Like it's, it's such a, so what I did is that I'm like, okay, let me do what I can in this moment. So I did whatever stretches my, I was physically able to do, cuz my mobility's kind of restricted right now. And I got my ass up. I washed my face and I came in here to record <laugh> and now I feel so much better because I'm not my thoughts.

• 10:29 - 10:32 
I'm not my feelings. They're just moments in time and it's okay to feel them.

• 10:33 - 10:40 
Yeah. And I wouldn't say like, it's, she, she is not distracting herself. No, like she, she let herself, you let yourself feel the pain.

• 10:40 - 10:41 
Yeah. I let myself.

• 10:41 - 10:47 
Cry it out and now gotta move on. Like, can't stay there forever. It's not distraction.

• 10:47 - 11:12 
It's not. And you know what distraction is. Okay. If you're also at a place of acceptance, but usually when people distract it's because they're choosing to ignore or deny. Right. So like you said, it's not a distraction. It's me choosing to get up and live my life, accepting that this is where I'm at and I'm gonna be sad about it. Mm-hmm <affirmative> there are times when I'm gonna be sad, but it's okay. Yeah.

• 11:12 - 11:44 
I've read this one article a while ago when I was before my period once. And it was, they were like, what if this cuz they were like, yeah, it's a bunch of emotions and harm. I mean hormones and things like that, you can't control. But then they, they were like, what if we looked at it this way, that this was all the times that you denied yourself throughout the month and now it's all coming to the four and you're as a woman, like you're allowed to have these feelings and like have them be strong and stuff like that. And so I was like, I don't think I'd deny myself emotions in the rest of the month, but it is an interesting thought,.

• 11:44 - 11:51 
You know, that is interesting. And you know what, there's probably some truth to, to that because our subconscious mind is so.

• 11:52 - 12:00 
Powerful. Yeah. And, and I'm worse some months than other months. So maybe on the same, the months where I'm not so bad it's cuz I let myself feel throughout the month.

• 12:00 - 12:36 
Yeah. And you're in a better place of acceptance and living your life in the present. Um, here's the thing that I read once and it was so powerful because when I was in the corporate world, I spent about 11 years in the corporate world. I was fine. I loved my job. Like I was happy as a clam. I just put my head down and did my work. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> until one day. I mean, we're talking about almost a decade in, I started to feel that it wasn't enough. And I started to become really agitated and upset and anxious.

• 12:36 - 12:50 
Right. And for the first time in my whole life, I started, I got my very first panic attack. And that was because of an email I got from my company saying congratulations on celebrating 10 years mm-hmm <affirmative>. And when I saw that email, most people would be like, wow, what a milestone?

• 12:51 - 13:21 
I literally started bawling and hyperventilating at that moment. When I got that, I remember I was sitting at my desk and my office mate was behind me and I started hyperventilating and crying and she was like, what's wrong? And I'm like, I just got an email that said, congratulations on 10 years with the company, she's like, why are you crying about it? I'm like, and I started hyperventilating. And when I was able to talk, I'm like, cause I just realized that I couldn't tell you what I did with the last decade of my life. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so everything.

• 13:21 - 13:53 
So my world literally came crashing down because for 10 years I was distracting myself with endless work hours and hours of work. Mm-hmm <affirmative> distracting myself from living my life, creating healthy relationships and just putting myself in this bubble. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So it all came crashing down. So if we don't accept where we're at, if we don't deal with our emotions in a healthy way, you don't know how that can manifest. And like you said, it could in these monthly cycles come before it make us more heightened to what we're suppressing deep down.

• 13:53 - 13:55 
So that makes sense to me truly.

• 13:55 - 14:05 
I mean yeah. More self-conscious subconscious stuff too. Yeah. I still, I, I, I don't always know how to interpret dreams, but like I feel like I've had a lot more interesting dreams the past several days.

• 14:06 - 14:11 
Ooh, I love okay. We need to, we we'll do that in another episode. I know.

• 14:11 - 14:18 
There's love there's there's like stereotype though, of listening to other people's dreams. And so people are like, I don't, I like listening to people's dreams.

• 14:19 - 14:45 
Oh, me too. I love them because I feel like nothing is an accident. So if someone's sharing your dream that somehow you're connected to it as well. Even if it's just through listening that there's something magical and a takeaway for you too, if you listen carefully to the person, seriously, you know, even it could be something so ridiculous, like uh, a dinosaur trying to just eat your hair, which was the dream I had last night. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter if like you share it. Like there's just, I think dreams are so powerful. Absolutely.

• 14:45 - 14:51 
Whenever I go to look them up though, I'm like finding all these kind of conflicting, um, definitions. And so I'm like maybe has.

• 14:51 - 14:52 
An interpretation.

• 14:52 - 15:12 
Cause like, so recently a really strange one. I mean, just shortly, like I, I had a dream that like I was breastfeeding a baby, except the milk was coming out cuddled and hard, like, like more like ALU instead of like runny. Like, and so when I went to look it up, some people are like, this is a good thing. Others are like, this is a bad thing. And so it's like, which one do I choose? And that's why I,.

• 15:12 - 15:13 
That's very.

• 15:13 - 15:19 
Interesting. I need to learn how to get better at trusting my own intuition I guess, and be like, well, this is what I think it means. And I'm sticking by it.

• 15:19 - 15:49 
I was just about to say that because I come up against all those differing and conflicting meanings all the time, you know, there's common ones like people losing their teeth or flying or whatever. Um, but then there's something more specific, right? Like going up stairs or down a flight of stairs and uh, there's general agreed upon, you know, interpretations of those kind of things. Mm-hmm <affirmative> but at the end of the day, you do have to like apply it to your own life and make sense of it in a way that makes sense for you.

• 15:50 - 16:33 
Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. We're definitely doing an episode on dreams. Yeah. <laugh> because, so we have, so I could talk about that all the time. I know, but see you're but like Jordan was saying your subconscious is so powerful sometimes. Um, you could, whatever, you're not processing when your conscious moments will come up during your sleep. Right. And if you tend to have a lot of excitable dreams or nightmares, or I don't know, uh, maybe you should start paying attention to what your subconscious is trying to tell you what it's trying to process for you that you're not specifically dealing with.

• 0:00 - 0:00 


• 16:33 - 17:05 
I do sometimes are happy. I mean, along with all the period talk like sometimes I wonder like, what is me like, am I just a bunch of hormones? And <laugh> like, do I actually have thoughts of my own? Or is it really just based on the planets and the hormones and like the earth and where the magnetism. And I start to go down that weird route. And I only seem to do that once a month where oh, interesting. But then cuz people say too, like when you drink your brain chemistry changes. So technically you are a different person at that point. Yeah. And, and it's like, okay, is very interesting.

• 17:05 - 17:12 
And, but then like, what is myself like, is my myself different from my soul? And I don't know.

• 17:12 - 17:47 
Yes. I, I, I, I'm not gonna answer that as a matter of fact, I can't believe I'm like, yes, yes it is. But I believe that it is. So, um, I think that yourself is the conscious part of you that you and your ego create to help you survive in this world. And we're not talking about ego, like pride. We're not talking about like, you know, that kind of self we're. The ego exists to keep us safe. It's our survival mode. Right? And when the ego's in control, sometimes our survival mode is to stay in our hurt, to stay in our pain, keep reliving our suffering because that's what we know.

• 17:47 - 18:07 
And according to our ego, that's safe, you are staying the same, that's safe. So when you decide, that's why it's very painful and it's a lot of deep work to work on your healing, to go through your healing process, to, you know, dig deep into your traumas.

• 18:07 - 18:37 
And I'm not talking about trying to remember them. If you don't remember them, I'm just saying about your blocks. Why, why as an, excuse me, why as an adult, you think the way that you do, why you believe certain things, the way that you do about yourself, about the world, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm <affirmative> so our subconscious is so powerful and it helps us, but I wanna say something about hormones. I know I'm rambling a bit but about hormones. I think that if you are well regulated in terms of your internal system, your hormones are obviously well regulated as well.

• 18:37 - 18:53 
So the things that you may be experiencing aren't as heightened, I think it's because we also live in an environment that's full of toxins and for full of artificial things that, you know, we consume and drink all these chemicals that affect our hormones.

• 18:53 - 19:23 
Yeah. Especially for women. And, uh, it affects our periods. I remember reading in a science journal and I'll find it so we can link it in the episode that premenstrual symptoms like cramps and bloating and tenderness that isn't the norm apparently. Oh. So I wanna read more in the science about that because that definitely come my interest is that because most of us experience it, we take it as our norm as our normal way of, uh, of being for women. But it's actually not normal. It's your body telling you something is wrong.

• 19:24 - 19:33 
Remember pain is an indicator of something that's not right or balanced or whatever. So most of us have probably a little bit of hormone imbalance and don't even realize it of our environments.

• 19:34 - 19:39 
It's like stupidly unavoidable these days, like cuz it's in the chicken and the meat and the shampoo and,.

• 19:39 - 19:50 
And even you can't even trust organic labels for the most part. Like you just don't even know because there's, and this is not like a, uh, like a conspiracy theory thing or no,.

• 19:50 - 19:50 
It's.

• 19:50 - 19:52 
True, but it's true. You don't know anymore.

• 19:52 - 19:58 
It's like you have to make your own stuff and grow your own chickens if you want to really trust anything. And uh,.

• 19:59 - 20:13 
Exactly. Like I came across an article, um, and it was showing the difference between um, European food and American food and how, uh, I'm gonna find that one too, because it was so interesting.

• 20:13 - 20:17 
How well, one thing is that you can keep the eggs out of the fridge in France.

• 20:17 - 20:54 
Yeah. Because they're exactly, and that's what the article mentioned as well. But Europeans, when they come to the states and they stay for a period of time, like two plus weeks or more, right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> even, not even that long, they tend to go back home with a little bit of weight gain mm-hmm <affirmative> and it's they found the study that it was not necessarily the case for Americans who traveled abroad. And so they looked at it and food had a big factor in it because we have bigger portions here. We have more chemicals in our food and they even talked about like things like eggs and milk and, and bread and all that stuff that we have in our chemicals that they don't have overseas.

• 20:55 - 21:04 
Whenever I travel overseas, I come back losing weight. That's anecdotal evidence. So it's not like a scientific thing, but from a personal level, I could totally relate to what the article was saying.

• 21:04 - 21:08 
I know. All right, well that's another topic, but yeah. So, but so.

• 21:08 - 21:39 
Anyway, back to the thing, but what we're talking about is our feelings and how yes. Sometimes your physical self has a lot to do with it. So the actions you can take, accept your feelings, allow yourself to feel them, give yourself a time limit of how long you gonna be in your breakdown for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes an hour. Or even if you need to take a whole day and just process it by yourself. Right. Yeah. And we're not, this is separate from like grieving, as of losing a loved one. We're not talking about that kind of sadness.

• 21:39 - 22:05 
Okay. We're just talking about when you get in your own head, right? Yeah. Um, and then after you do that, get up and start living your life, take baby steps, go on a walk, start taking care of your physical needs. Right? Yeah. Start taking of your nutritional needs, um, start taking of your social and personal needs and, and your hygienic needs like anything that you do that levels you up just a little bit is gonna make you start to feel better about where you're at.

• 22:05 - 22:38 
You are worth it. Like I, yeah. I once had this one friend that would never like take care of her feet. Like she'd get, I dunno, she'd twist her ankle and be like, oh, I'll just walk through it. It'll be fine. Ooh. And, and, or like that, she only like eats like meat and cheese and bread basically and no vegetables. And uh, like I know there are people that are like super tasters and, and or stuff like that, but you are worth it, like take care of your body and try and you have to do good things for yourself. And it won't always taste good. Or I don't know, maybe you don't like going to the doctor, but it's good.

• 22:38 - 22:44 
And <laugh> like, yeah, spend the money on yourself to go to the dentist. If you have to. And things like that,.

• 22:44 - 23:16 
Don't don't ignore your self care needs. It don't ignore it. You know, I have a, I have a friend who's a mom and you know, she had to go to the dentist and it turned, I don't know the exact details, but you know, like she had to like replace crowns or something and she had like an infection or, but she was putting it off for so long because you know, she puts her family's needs first. Yeah. And that's not wrong, but it was at the expense of her own health needs. So when it came time to do something about it, it gotten so bad and she had to pay a lot of money to get it fixed.

• 23:16 - 23:35 
And, and, and, and, and so my point is, especially to you moms out there, right. You know, take care of selves first mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, and, and to anyone else, who's not a mom love yourself enough to be like, I deserve to take care of myself and my feelings. Yeah. Allow myself to feel it all and live my life. So there you go.

• 23:35 - 23:53 
Yes. Thank you so much. And I hope you share something with, I mean, you don't have to, but if you want, you can share something with us in email. Um, we also have Twitter and Instagram. If you wanna post any pictures or share our pictures and it's been nice. It's been nice opening up to you today.

• 23:54 - 24:10 
Yeah, totally. This is like a, a good, uh, what is it called? The word? What am I looking up? Cathartic experience, right? Yeah. Like you just feel good. And if you guys, you know, want that experience too, like Jordan said, hit us up. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, we'd love to hear your story and share it. So if you want.

• 24:10 - 24:11 
Us to listening.

• 24:11 - 24:12 
Exactly.

• 24:12 - 24:13 
Yes. Thank you so much.

• 24:14 - 24:15 
Take care, guys. See you next time.

• 24:17 - 24:29 
That's our show. Didn't get enough of the twins? Go to bloomingvoices.com for more information and let us know what you thought of the episode. Twitter, Instagram, email, we've got the works. We'll see you next Wednesday.