Nothing is Broken, Nothing is Wrong

Welcome to Season 3 of Ladies Like Us!

1.    Intro – Hi it’s me. I'm back to champion my Otherhood people and their life concerns 

2.    This season is all about finding the deepest level of approval for ourselves. And the Upward Spiral. This is for everyone, not just the Otherhood.

3.    Kicking off with a talk about self validation.

It’s not always clear how our validation pathways get set up. There’s a concept that’s been studied in psychology called the locus of control. It’s tied to our individual experiences of success and failure and the main distinction is that those with an external – believe life is happening TO them, and that they are powerless against what life has in store for them, vs an internal locus --- which has people operating from a place of self trust and belief in their ability to make things happen—their agency. 

 How do we develop and discover where our personal source of agency lies? 

This is a big topic, and I can’t fully unpack it here, but listen to what I lay out as a foundation towards self approval and self trust-- 2 big topics this season. 

Transcript

Hello, it's Linda. I've missed you and I am so, so happy to be back. Welcome to season three of Ladies Like Us.  Season three of ladies like us, is called, nothing is broken, nothing is wrong, and I'm going to really just flesh out that concept during this season. I feel kind of fired up on a lot of levels.

And have so much that I wanna share with y'all. So stay tuned for that. If this is your first time tuning in, to ladies Like Us, welcome and  I'm sure listening to my intro, you understand that this podcast was started in the spirit of having conversations for people in the Otherhood, and by the Otherhood, I mean those who do not have children.

So, I'm calling it ladies like us. It can be,  people like us, right? Anyone who is not situated, with children, with,  offspring who are projecting into,  the future and are part of our legacy. So,  I consider this to be, an important arena  our needs are different, our lives look different probably to us since we likely grew up with parents.  And we know what it is to be a child of parents, right?  But also we appear different to the rest of the world, or,  just a society in general and I like to look at it from our soul's growth perspective.

So we're each given experiences in life to evolve us, right? The great unfoldment, the unfoldment of who we are, right? It life's a journey and. I think on that journey, you're given certain things to work with that help you better understand yourself,  expand you, give you purpose and meaning, a kind of framework for your life.

And I think that children definitely provide a lot of. Material  to be worked with, a lot of things about having children naturally have to create struck.  In our adult lives. And I think without that, without that say obligation slash vocation, we have to approach life a little differently.

And so we look at what is in our life.   Work with that to,  evolve us. We look for other doorways. we look for how to be in our purpose and how to, how to feel our purpose, right? And like approve of ourselves. As we go through this journey. So   welcome and I don't necessarily speak about Otherhood concerns all the time, I'm really looking at all like the whole human condition. So whoever this resonates with, I'm so, so happy you're here and, uh, yeah, let's, let's dig in. So nothing is broken, nothing is wrong. That's what I'm, uh, that's what I'm leading with. Okay.  I recently redesigned my website. I I had put my light on or planted my flag for women in the other hood who were either still considering motherhood or just needed to move to a place of acceptance. And,  I was, Really just devoted to, to working with, with people at this level. And I realized that what I, what I really wanted was like the thing behind the thing.

So kind of like why are these things important, right? Like what is it to have? Uh, deep desire like that. What is it to create what you want?  What is it to, to not have it?  

 There's a fork in the road and you have to take one path. You may start out with resignation or a sense that. Life didn't quite work out the way you expected, but what is it to actually like, meet that life, right? Embrace that life, um, go all in and find so much beauty in that life.

so for me, the nothing is broken, nothing is wrong. goes back to what I really wanna stand for, which is, I guess what I call existential confidence. I think about it like this by its shadow existential anxiety. So what is it that, what's that feeling, that sense that, you regret past choices.

 Like, this didn't happen to me. X, Y and Z, you know, like you had an abortion years ago or you were too career driven or I don't know, maybe, you let go of somebody who would've been good father material, but who didn't light you up, and then relationships after that. Didn't quite pan out or create a nest for that home you wanted to create, you know, any number of, of of things that are, on our journey and they don't line up with maybe what we think we want.

And this isn't a disregard, like you may really want, you may feel pressured to want it as well. And so fully exploring all of that, um, knowing your whys. liking your reasons for things. the existential anxiety comes from the sense that the path you're on isn't the path you're supposed to be on.

Right? And how can that be true? Because you're like, you're on it . Um, that's how you're. You know, you're supposed to be on it. And so rather than, sit in anxiety and doubt about it, what is it to look at it, head on, accept it, but then love it. And so for me, Moving from the anxiety of feeling off about your path, the sense that you didn't choose, right.

Your gifts aren't being used, you're, you're in the wrong purpose, all that stuff. When you move to existential confidence, you know, it doesn't mean you, you have it perfect and that like everything, all the stars are aligned, but you kind of know when. , you, you really feel good like about your life choices and you know that all the good isn't just in the past.

Like you have a lot to look forward to and you're excited.  You're passionate. You belong to your life. I've spoken about belonging in, in past episodes, and I think sometimes we, we are so outwardly driven that we think,  we just need to belong to a place. a group. that acceptance needs to come from other people, but really, like anything else, it starts at home.

Very, very close. , like look in the mirror kind of close. When you're in non-acceptance of, of your life,  you're just gonna carry that everywhere. Feel like you're on the periphery of life and not, not in the center of your life. I was always working on this piece when it came to. People in the other hood that I was working with. But I think what I, I thought about even more was that, strangely enough, my, my niche really appealed to, people who have children. And I thought, Hmm, why is that? And I think it's because a lot of them are like, oh my gosh, my kids mean so much.

Like they've changed my life. . And so they're thinking like those who don't have them, like how empty their lives must be or, or they're just, you know, but for the grace of God, there go, I like that could have been me to not have those things. And I'm gonna ask you to resist, um, getting annoyed by that because it's not pity, it's just that.

You know, with anything, , when you hear that someone's mom  died when they were really young, you're like, oh my God. And all of a sudden you're super grateful for the fact that your mom's still around, right. It's just, it's just human nature. But I think in the having of the thing, meaning children and, and that, that sense of family and continuity,  they can really re.

that it was an important space that I was creating to really like, allow themselves to. Face down that void, that that emptiness, that, that sense that they missed out on something really big. Right. And it is really big for sure. I mean, , there's no way around that, but it's not better big, it's just, it's big though, right?

A whole, you know, human being. You're doorway for a human being and the, the nurturance of this soul is kind of in your hands, right? So, We want to find other things in our lives that allow us to work with our own soul's purpose to a similar degree.  So I'm gonna just offer one little nugget.  In this episode, and we're gonna, we're gonna move through a lot of topics, but today I just wanna kick off with a little bit about self-validation. So, like I said, I think my deepest desire, Is to, for myself and for anyone listening, is to help you find the deepest approval of yourself.

yeah, just the deepest sense of approval of yourself. . And so when you think about approval, you think about validation, right? And let's think about self-validation for a minute. It's not always clear how our validation pathways get set up, right?  There's a concept that's been studied in psychology.

Called the locus of control, it's tied to our individual experiences of success and failure. And, the main distinction is that those with an external locus of control,  believe that life is happening to them and that they are powerless against what life has in store.

as opposed to an internal locus of control. operating from a place of self-trust and belief in their ability to make things happen, their agency. So let that sink in for a moment and the think like, how do we develop and discover where our personal source of agency. You know, it's a big topic, right?

So I just wanna like lay down that nugget first because if you find yourself in the other hood and you felt powerless, like certain things just didn't align, whether you were circumstantially and fertile. Meaning, you know, your body was probably fine, but you really just never had a shot at it because you never had the nest, or the partner set up in a certain way or financially.

Maybe you needed to go through some treatments, but you just didn't have the resources, right. Or the support. Or maybe your body just really wasn't cooperating, right? And so it's easy to feel like we're lacking in control. But again,  there are certain circumstances that, that we can't, but then there's so.

So much that we can. And,  having belief that  the path that you're on,  for perfectly good reason and you look for how it's working for you and not against you. this only benefits how, how you perceive your.

So I'm setting up this self-validation piece,  because it's an important part of self-trust and, and having that deep approval of. Right. These, these all work in conjunction with one another. I mean, they're all, they're just interrelated. And so part of having existential confidence is, feeling like, hey, That's the right choice because I made it.

That's the right choice because I made it. How about that? Right. Fuck you. No, just kidding. I, I hope I, I hope I made you laugh.  So let's, keep going With existential confidence. And next week I'm going to talk about the upward spiral.  This came to me in a vision while I was taking peyote.

Just kidding.  No, but  I had a very challenging last six months of my life and somewhere. When I was really like in the void in the, in the bottom of the bottom and, and, and very low, it came to me very clearly and I think it's a pretty cool model of how to think about your life and I'm really jazzed to share it with you.

So, um, that'll be coming up soon and I hope you enjoy this episode. And. Yeah. Stay tuned. I'll see you soon. Okay, bye.