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- [00:01]
A
The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Daria, welcome to the show.
- [00:22]
B
Thank you.
- [00:23]
A
I'm so happy to have you here.
- [00:24]
B
Thrilled.
- [00:25]
C
So I learned about you and got connected to you through Anwar. Our mutual. I had Anwar on the show a couple months ago and loved him. Our audience loved his episode. And then he reached back out and he was like, I really think that you should connect with my friend Daria. She's coming out with a book.
- [00:41]
A
She would be a great guest.
- [00:42]
C
And I was like, absolutely. I took like one look at what he sent with your info and I was like, oh, absolutely. Thank you.
- [00:50]
B
Thank you so much. First of all, yes. Shout out to Anwar because he is a riot and, like, full of wisdom and just such a good person. So I'm grateful too, and thank you for having me. I love your show. So it was for me, I was like, oh, my God. This was one of the shows I really wanted to be on. And I think the evolution of your show as well is so aligned with my thesis of trusting my magnetism. So I'm here for it.
- [01:16]
C
Absolutely. I mean, as I was doing my preliminaries of research and got to hear parts of your story, I was like, yes, exactly.
- [01:25]
A
This is.
- [01:25]
C
And I think especially now that the podcast has evolved and is kind of expanding and we're talking more so about sharing stories as opposed to going super deep into wellness related topics, which I do think we can do today a bit. Because I would actually love to talk to you about the different healing modalities that you've had experience with, but how that's a part of your whole story. It just is like, perfect. Yeah.
- [01:48]
B
Thank you.
- [01:49]
C
Before we started rolling, I was asking you a little bit about your astrology, also asking you a bit about your career path thus far. So I would love to catch the audience up on that. Sure. Because we were talking about how you.
- [02:01]
A
Were a triple heir.
- [02:02]
B
Libra Moon.
- [02:03]
C
Yeah, Libra sun and Moon.
- [02:05]
A
Aquarius Rising.
- [02:06]
B
That's right.
- [02:07]
C
Which is really fun.
- [02:08]
B
It is. You know, I feel like I just live in a world of ideas and ideals and it's where I'm the most comfortable. It's where I like to go. I mean, my Mercury's in Scorpio, though, so I can go deep on a topic. I like the research and the investigation, but yeah, I like to live in that world. So I'm surrounded by a lot of Taurus energy to keep me grounded.
- [02:33]
C
I love that I'm a Taurus moon, so I love Taurus energy.
- [02:36]
B
Taurus is a Taurus moon too. And I feel like she and my Taurus sun girls all kind of keep me both feet on the ground. But we love the lovely things. Yes. We have Venus in common.
- [02:48]
C
Exactly. Yeah. I feel like I also need airy friends in my life, though, because my chart is very Earth heavy. I have a Taurus moon, and then I have a Capricorn Stellium. I have Virgo, Mercury, and Mars. So I need my airy friends and my watery friends to help me chill.
- [03:09]
A
Out a little bit.
- [03:09]
B
I love that. So where I have the least presence, I would say in my chart, is fire. Lot of air, lot of water. So I have a Libra Stellium, a Scorpio Stellium. And then my Venus and my Jupiter are in Virgo. So that's where the Earth comes in. But Fire is my north node and my Vesta are in Leo. We were talking about that. And so I think that's where my fire comes in. And coming close to that sort of version of myself or integrating more of that into my life, my work, you know, I think is the goal. Right. If the idea that our north node is our spirit's journey, the mission that it's on when it chooses to come in this lifetime, if you believe such a thing, that that's part of the path that I'm on is sort of finding a little bit more fire in the form of brilliance and bright light.
- [04:03]
C
And being seen is something that I think a lot about with le. Is that something that you feel like you've come into, feeling comfortable being seen.
- [04:11]
A
Or have you always felt that way?
- [04:12]
B
No, I will tell you. Comfort in being seen on stages where there's a distance. Absolutely. And so the theater kid, the dance kid, the former cmo, who could be on stage giving a keynote. Absolutely, yes. And I think that's very Aquarian to some extent, with a little nod to that, being seen in le. I think this book, this experience, is the greatest test of my. The capacity that I've created to be seen. I mean, it was one of my biggest fears, I think, is to be seen or one of the hardest things. And so I like being the seer. And this is a pivot. And it's great. I mean, I think this is a growth edge that I'm leaning into. But I would be lying if I said that this wasn't also like a version of white knuckling into that. Into that sort of soul mission.
- [05:13]
C
It is being seen in such a vulnerable way. In sharing your story this way.
- [05:20]
B
Yes. When I started writing, a friend of mine whose book came out two years before mine. He asked me if how raw and how exposed was I going to be? How much was I going to share? And I said, I mean, I'm going for full frontal honesty, right? Like, I'm going for, like, here it is. And I think, because if you're going to go there and talk about telling yourself the truth, then you have to actually be able to tell the truth. Sometimes that's painful, Sometimes that's embarrassing. Sometimes it's, you know, you just wish it weren't still true. You want to say, oh, I've gotten past that.
- [05:59]
C
And.
- [05:59]
B
And I think that's also very much a denial of the human experience. And so for me, if authenticity is some version of just showing the world the relationship that I have with myself, it definitely has started in a really big way in a very different way with this book.
- [06:18]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we talk more about what your writing process was like? Because I would also imagine it's a very different than writing fiction or even sitting down writing marketing materials. When you are writing from such a vulnerable place and you're pulling so much out of yourself. What was that like for you? What space were you in while you were writing?
- [06:40]
B
It was hard. I mean, I had to isolate to allow myself to do it. I was in conversation recently with Dee Watkins, and we were talking about how valuable it is to be in cities and in dense spaces because it's in those environments that you sort of your ideas and your thoughts can bump up against other people and other ideas. And I love that. I'm so stimulated by that. I've always very much been kind of a city mouse and became a city mouse, country mouse, when I got my house out east a number of years ago. But I love that stimulation. But what I was finding as I was trying to start. Well, it started with the proposal, getting the idea, the structure of it on paper, and starting to really kind of dig through what are the stories that belong in this book in service of this bigger message that I'm hoping to offer to people. And it became clear that I needed more quiet. I needed to be still. I needed to be safe in a different kind of way. And before we pitched the book, I decided that I was gonna leave la, where I was full time, you know, and out here part time, that I was gonna go full time to the Hamptons and just be there and cocoon and write and feel all the feelings and to really not be in response to other stimuli, that I was the stimulus. I was the source. I was the, you know, sort of the alpha and the omega in that moment, right in the storytelling enough to be able to do that because it was hard. And there were moments where I was so fragile and so raw that, I mean, at points I had to put it down in terms of the process. And so, you know, it's hard to say that there was one singular process. There were certainly mechanically things that I did from a routine perspective. I would get up, I'd go to Pilates, and then I'd go straight to the library. And then I would stay there from generally about 10am to about 4, 4:30pm for most, pretty much all of the first draft. And then my editing process, you know, it took place all over the place. You know, planes, the library, at home, you know, kind of in the various ways that life required me to move. I had to sort of be able to do that. But it was important for me to really get still, really get quiet and to feel really surrounded by, I think, all of the rooms that I had created for all the parts of myself, you know, in this one sort of home that I call myself, I belong there the most. And so I could be also, I think, the most free to examine things that came up. And obviously not everything goes in the book and there is that editing process, but I also appreciate the process for everything that gets resurrected when you're trying to land the plane on something that feels substantial and solid and true.
- [09:35]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:37]
A
That's really beautiful though, that you were.
- [09:38]
C
Able to create that container and to kind of put your heart on the page from that safe space that you created.
- [09:45]
A
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- [13:11]
C
When you started writing this book, was that when you left your CMO role to step into writing? Did that happen concurrently or was that before?
- [13:20]
B
Technically before it was interesting though Because I made the decision to leave. And at the time I thought I was just going to take a break. And I said, I think I need a break. I had gone from New York City, where I'd spent the majority of my career, moved to Los Angeles for a chief marketing officer role at JustFab. And within four months of my move, the world shut down. So I spent two years, essentially, during a pandemic, selling fast fashion footwear.
- [13:54]
C
To.
- [13:55]
B
People who are at home in slippers and socks. Like I was.
- [13:58]
A
Yeah.
- [13:59]
B
And I think. And. And largely the audience was black and brown women, largely women who didn't make a ton of money, didn't have a lot of disposable income, and I was asking them to spend it on red suede stilettos. I was like, there's something that feels a little misaligned here. I don't know where I lost the plot in some ways, but I felt like I had, you know, on the. And it mattered a lot to be in that role, to lead a team of that size to globally. To be able to bring in women like Kelly Rowland, like Ayesha Curry, like Aoki Lee Simmons, and help expand the language, the visual language and the verbal language, all the ways we speak to being inclusive. I did feel was on mission and kind of on my personal path of. Of purpose, if that's a big. That's a big word. But I was living on purpose in that way. And then on the other hand, I was like, asking people to sign up for a footwear subscription during a pandemic. And I think that was a forcing mechanism to stop and to reimagine how I wanted my talents to live in the world. So I resigned. I had about five weeks notice that I had given. We had a couple campaigns to see through, and I wanted to make sure that that was done well and also that I could transition reasonably within that kind of timeframe. But during that time, this sort of, I call it the cosmic tap on the shoulder happened of like, it's time to write this book. And it kind of came out of nowhere. And I was like, okay, sure, here we go. And I left not knowing what that meant. I didn't have an agent. I didn't know that I needed to write a book proposal. I mean, it was the quintessential leap of faith that people talk about when they have no idea what the next step is. I used to hear entrepreneurs talk about that. You know, I had this idea. I didn't have a business. Business plan. And I, you know, I have an MBA from Stern. I'm like, what. What do you mean? I totally understand it now. It was like that. So they did sort of happen concurrently, but I think I. I was meant to give one away in order to make space for this next. This next thing.
- [16:13]
A
Yeah. Which absolutely makes sense.
- [16:16]
C
And I love that you describe it as a leap into that next phase.
- [16:20]
A
Because I think for a lot of.
- [16:21]
C
People, they may assume making it to the C suite is like, end all, be all right. You're a CMO of a major brand, which is amazing. And especially for us, you know, getting to do that kind of thing, that's like, you stay there. That's. That's the end all, be all. That is like the pinnacle. And the fact that you decided to, one, create space for yourself and then two, to follow this calling, I think.
- [16:47]
A
Is really beautiful, honestly.
- [16:50]
B
Thank you. And I think that's part of the problem, Right. Is this idea that success that's performative, I. E. I mean, frankly, you could consider all success to some extent performative. Right. Because you're doing something with a desired outcome.
- [17:07]
A
Yeah.
- [17:08]
B
And often that outcome is determined successful by some metrics outside of yourself. And I am no exception that I followed a lot of that path. And I remember getting to a point where I was like, so what's next after this? Like, another CMO job? I don't want to be a CEO in that sense. I had given myself permission to not want to be a CEO, so I'd gotten that far. But I was just like, so for what? And I think that was the beginning of me choosing alignment over ambition in the most honest, sincere sense of the word. And that doesn't mean that I don't like my creature comforts and the things that come with that. I'm really clear that sometimes even the interest in this book is derivative of and because of some of the things that I've done Right. And part of why my story is interesting to people. But. And also, that's not everything and it's not enough. And so, yeah, it was actually really easy to walk away from it. I was so far from defining myself through that lens by the time that I made the decision to resign, even if it was just potentially for a break that it didn't. It was so inconsequential to me. Now it's not lost on me that I'm now living a version of that very clearly. It's important too, that I acknowledge that, yes, there's privilege with the background that I've come from in terms of my career and I'm very much choosing alignment over ambition. I've said no a lot to calls that have come in, and sometimes you hear the dollars and you're like, oh, that sounds good. That sounds great. That sounds amazing. And it's not what my heart wants. And so, yeah, it is a leap and it's a giving in. I think more than a giving up, it's a surrender to whatever's being asked of you and knowing that you don't need to know all the answers. So I focus. I say a lot. I focus on the direction and not the details, because the details aren't my business.
- [19:10]
C
Mm. That's good. That is good. That's a lesson I think I needed to hear. I wanna talk more about alignment over ambition because I think that that's gonna be a really big takeaway for everybody who's listening. It's already a big takeaway for me. I wanna dig more into what that means, maybe starting with the ambition piece. Because to have a career like you've had, it requires a lot of ambition.
- [19:35]
B
Yes.
- [19:36]
C
Can we start with maybe where the seeds of ambition were planted for you? And then if there was either a specific moment where you realized you wanted to lean more into alignment, or was that kind of a slow process where you started prioritizing alignment over ambition?
- [19:52]
B
I want to start by saying I think they can coexist. I don't think that they're mutually exclusive and that it's binary. I think that when we're right, sizing. Because balance isn't the word, but when you're finding harmony in both of those energies, I think it can be important sometimes to allow the pendulum to swing a little bit harder in the direction of alignment. Particularly if you feel like you're still in search of what that means, what that looks like, what that feels like in your life. Now back to our astrology chat. My Mars is in Scorpio, in the 10th House of Career.
- [20:29]
A
Interesting.
- [20:30]
B
I was born that way.
- [20:31]
A
Yeah.
- [20:32]
B
Okay. I wanna be really clear. That drive is there. I don't think it's going anywhere. And there are moments where, even with this book, where I'm like, I did it. I wrote this book. This is so wonderful. I'm so proud of myself. Yay, me. And then I'm like, let's get it. Let's go. You know? So I feel both. I think for me, alignment really just means am I paying attention to and honoring all the ways in which my gifts want to live in the world? And regardless of whether they make me money, regardless of if they are in service of this other thing that someone else even has witness to. Nobody else has to even know it. But am I actually allowing. Do I have the capacity? Have I created the container for all these things to surface? Am I? And to feel really good and in harmony? I think, in that way. So I don't think it's a choice indefinitely. But I think that you have to be really clear on what it looks like to feel aligned. What are the values that you live by that allow you to feel like all of these versions of yourself exist? And they have space and they have. They don't always have equal weight and equal voice, like fear. Right. Does not have the loudest voice in my head, but that I acknowledge that too. And so that's really where I am with it. And I think I will always have goals that I'm striving toward, but mostly through a lens of curiosity, through exploration and an examination, as opposed to, like, self improvement, self development and performative success. And so I think of it more maybe as Sarah Elizabeth Lewis talks about, as mastery versus success. And that, for me, I think, is where the right sizing comes in. What that looks like.
- [22:27]
C
Yeah, Yeah, I like that reframe a lot. Something that I definitely struggle with at times is the performative elements of success. And like, recently, I hosted a few podcast live shows and I felt a lot of pressure to sell out the shows because when I did a show last year, it sold out and everybody knew about it. So if I do these shows this time and they don't sell out, and in my mind everybody knows about it, then there's this perspective that this year is not as successful as last year, when most people forget. Nobody's thinking about that as much as I am, but I'm thinking about that and putting pressure on myself for this thing that feels so external, when the real point is, like, whoever's meant to be there will be there. Whoever's supposed to receive the message will receive it. And those other kind of ego things. And maybe that's the Leo in me, like having that. That ego desire. It's always something that I'm trying to keep in check.
- [23:25]
B
But that's interesting, though, because you could look at that one of two ways. And I hear both in even what you're just saying, which is part of the ways in which your platform expands, perhaps is through live events, and that there is something important to you about bringing people together in conversation. How big does that audience need to be? If the conversation is meaningful, does it matter?
- [23:51]
A
Right.
- [23:52]
B
I. I think it's really hard, at least for me. And this may be my not liking to be seen, you know, but I think the whole idea of influence and influencers and followers and audiences, I mean, these words are so. I have a weird relationship with them, really.
- [24:10]
A
Even as a marketer?
- [24:12]
B
Yes. Because at the end of the day, we're just people having human experiences, ideally together, and learning from each other in that process. And so if, you know, to quote Maya Angelou, who was quoting tyrone from, like, 600 BC, if nothing that is human is alien to me, there's nothing that anybody could experience or go through that in this lifetime. I may not, but that I couldn't also go through myself. And so, I don't know. You know, I'm wrestling with that myself, with these questions of not wanting to perform a level of anything, really. If I'm honest and just showing up. And it could be ego that says, well, I just want my work to be good enough, and I just want what I do and how I show up to be enough. And, like, why do we have to. Jazz hands, all of it. And so I'm with you in that. And I'm still parsing out how I feel about it and trying to interrogate how much of that is shadow coming, even to my own projection of what it looks like to be on this big stage. Whatever big even means.
- [25:24]
A
Right?
- [25:25]
B
What the hell does that even mean?
- [25:26]
A
Yeah.
- [25:27]
B
Yeah.
- [25:27]
A
And it's arbitrary.
- [25:29]
B
All made up.
- [25:29]
C
Yeah.
- [25:30]
B
I mean, it's all made up.
- [25:31]
C
Truly?
- [25:32]
A
Yeah, truly.
- [25:32]
C
Yeah.
- [25:33]
A
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- [26:17]
C
I love the flexibility it gets me.
- [26:19]
A
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- [28:58]
C
I would also love to talk a bit about healing and healing experiences, healing modalities. Because a Lot of what you talk about in the book is your background, where you come from, and the experiences that you've had since then to become who you are now. And a big part of that is exploring different healing modalities. And so I would love to talk more about your experiences there.
- [29:22]
B
Yes, I think briefly, for the uninitiated, my background, to call it tumultuous would be fair. I grew up in Detroit in the 80s, 80s and 90s, and in really deep poverty. Both of my parents struggled with drug addiction, debilitating drug addiction, particularly in the case of my mother, who I grew up in the household with my father. My parents split up when I was really young, and I have one younger sister. And so having a front row seat to her crack addiction and all the ways in which that got in the way of us being cared for, you know, all of the abuse and neglect that often comes with that, the exposure to unsafe people and environments, food scarcity, and I mean, you name it. So I wanted to give that backdrop because for a long time, really up until my mid-20s, I. My mission, I thought, was just to get out of that. Like, that felt like the work. The work was just to flee and to build a different life, and one that felt safe and secure and stable, supported by a really strong foundation in education. And so, you know, I did what a lot of us do. Yeah, I went to university. I graduated at 20. I started an early career in architecture and interior design, marketing, and then went to business school. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. And that I felt like, okay, I'm done. You know, I'm 26. I'm at stern at NYU, and I'm good. And then I realized that I'm looking forward to another graduation where I won't have family there. And this time I'm in a smaller school environment and surrounded by more people. And there probably will be questions about why there's no one here for Daria. So that sent me to therapy, not because I was upset with the question, but because I was trying to figure out how to explain to people why there was no one there. And so I went in, literally, to troubleshoot this one question. And I go in and I tell the therapist all of this, and I'm like, okay, I just am really trying to prepare for this moment. And she's like, can we. Yeah, we gotta.
- [31:34]
C
Let's take a few steps back.
- [31:36]
B
Can we start at the beginning? What do you mean? And so that opened the first door to my healing journey through talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. And I did that for about a decade. And I felt really good that that was the foundation for the growth. I'm a speaker. I integrate by speaking. I'm like, this is my jam. I can do that all along. Intellectualizing so much of what had happened and starting to integrate it mostly in my willingness to share it with other people. It had been a secret for so long, my background. And so that felt like the work was done. And then it became really clear to me. I had started, I would say, dabbling in meditation, but it wasn't a core practice for me. And I similarly with journaling, it was something that I'd started and I was always writing things. But I think the active practice of journaling for healing work, lots of somatic experiences and explorations. And I think I was doing a lot of these things naturally. I was just responding to what I felt like I needed in real time. But I hadn't really thought about what does it look like to have a sort of set of tools, Resilience building tools that are always on and always available and the things that just keep you well. And so not wellness, but well being.
- [33:04]
A
Yeah.
- [33:05]
B
Moving through the world as a person who feels cared for because my needs are met.
- [33:09]
A
Right.
- [33:11]
B
So that. That took time and I think realizing how much I hadn't done in integrating it physically, how much it lived in my body in all these ways, whether it was like knots in my stomach, silencing myself, continuing to choose things that other people thought, you know, kind of to the conversation about career, choosing things that other people were like, that's good, that's great. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm rocking it. All of those kinds of things, you know, I think slowly unraveling them and really just listening to myself. So it's a pro. I think healing is a practice. I don't think that it's ever one thing that you do, one modality that you try. You're constantly experimenting. Because the brain is really tricky in that you will think that you've moved past something and then some new way of being triggered shows up. You're like, where did that come from?
- [34:08]
C
Right.
- [34:09]
B
I thought I had moved through that. So it's a practice. I think it's, for me, a lot like arranging the furniture in your house. You know, when you think you've got it just the way you want it, it's all laid out and set up. You're like, it's time to paint the kitchen. We need new cabinets. And so if you can look at it like that and understand that you don't have to be stuck in the wound to understand it, but that you can understand that the wound is there and it may need some tending to. And so if you can just think about what are all the ways in which I can tend to those parts of myself that feel a little bit tender or that need a little bit more tenderness right now. That's honestly a lot of what I think about healing and really just acknowledging that it's there. I think the more that we have the capacity to acknowledge what's there and what comes up, sadness, whatever it is, I think our range for joy actually grows, too. At least in my case. I feel so much more joyful about the littlest things. I find delight in everything because I've seen also how sad it can be. I know what despair could feel like.
- [35:21]
C
So can we talk more about the integration of somatic practices? I would love to get more into that. And maybe we can even start by talking about what somatic practices are like, what somatic means. Because I do think a lot of us intellectualize things, and talk therapy can be a fantastic tool to give us language and to help us understand things. And I know I do a lot of intellectualizing everything. And I did reach a point where it was like, I have. I'm all talked out. I'm all journaled out. I can describe 10 ways to Sunday what happened, but I'm still not. I'm not processing it through my body. It still is. It's living in here a little bit.
- [36:09]
B
So soma just means body. It's the Latin translation for body. And so somatic is of the body. And so any kind of somatic practice is just the physical in interaction with the relationship that you have with your body, not the self, the physical self, you know, the physical body. And so that could be everything from dance. I mean, for me, solo dance parties are the greatest form of therapy ever. And it's funny, when I started naming them and became so clear that I was. The way that I was using them, it was in thinking about just the fact that I used to do it all the time when I was young. And sometimes even with my sister, you know, sometimes something bad might have happened, serious or not, and I would turn on some kind of music, usually Janet. And I would just dance and, like, at her kind of, and she'd be cracking up. And I thought it was just funny because I was getting a rise out of her. But it was doing something for me, too. And then my. I had never really told anybody this. My roommate in college, sophomore Year was, I think, similar to my sister in that she was a little bit of a brooder. Oh, my God. If she hears me say this, and I would do the same thing for her. I'm like, no, we just gotta, you know, dance it out. This is pre grays, okay? Pre Yang gray. Dance it out. But I would say that to her, like, just. And I would say, well, she said, what do you mean? I'm like, okay, play a song and perform it at the mirror or at me. And she's like, you're insane. I'm like, do it. And so we would do that. And so later on, when I would find myself feeling low or just needing energy, needing a hug, and by myself, that's what I would do. It's what I still do. So they might be five minutes. I've done two hour solo dance parties and it is amazing. But walking, Pilates, yoga for a lot of people, climbing, I mean, you name it. Whatever it is that allows you to be more in contact with your physical self through an activity, it all counts. It all counts.
- [38:23]
C
It's such a helpful practice. I'm in therapy now with a therapist who also specializes in somatic practices. And so every session we will be talking about something and I will be overanalyzing it. And she's always like, where do you feel it in your body?
- [38:40]
B
Yes.
- [38:41]
C
Don't tell me what you think happened. Tell me where you feel it in your body while this is happening, while you were living this memory constantly. And it's been about a year that.
- [38:49]
A
I've been doing that now, and I'm.
- [38:52]
C
Kind of starting to be able to identify.
- [38:54]
B
Yes.
- [38:55]
C
Where I feel things in my body. But it's a long process to, like.
- [39:01]
B
Connect with that, to know what that feels like. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I would argue for a lot of us, this is true for me that the place in your body where you feel agitation or sickness or stress or strain is probably also the same place where you feel your intuition. Ooh. So for me, it's in my stomach. Yeah. And I tend to find that my. That same. In my case, it's often a knowing. It feels like an and. And it's. It's sort of a feeling and a knowing that I feel it in there too. And so just like when I'm really upset, I get nauseous. If I'm really, really upset, I may vomit. I also feel it there when something. When I'm channeling something and something is coming in. And so I think sometimes that information may come in the form of a pain point, a physical pain, and it could be neck strain, whatever. Right. Headaches. I think all of those are indications potentially of where you're actually blocked and silencing some other part of you that's wanting to be expressed. And so I don't think it's just the pain. I think it's the pain showing up in a place in your body that's blocking the expression. And that expression is both, you know, releasing the pain, but also the expression of, like, how we create and where, you know, more of our life force comes from.
- [40:29]
C
Yeah, that is super interesting.
- [40:32]
A
I actually really, really like that.
- [40:33]
C
So have you found that as you've become more aware, you're able to better listen to your intuition once you made that connection?
- [40:42]
B
Instantly. Yeah, it's instant. It's instant. And I test myself a lot. I used to do a lot of little tests. Like, this is a really silly one. I play wordle every day.
- [40:53]
A
Love Wordle.
- [40:54]
B
And I have the same starting word every day. And then I just intuitively feel the next word. I really do. I believe you. I think it's this.
- [41:03]
C
Yeah.
- [41:04]
B
And I kid you not, whenever I second guess it, I was right. I'll get it. I'll get the next one wrong because I second guessed it. And then the third one, for example, will be the right one. It's so funny, like, all these little ways of just practicing listening to yourself and, and. And validating, I think, affirming yourself. Yeah, it's really funny. Now, though, generally speaking, I feel really clear when I'm getting an intuitive hit. It comes to me, like I said, as a clear knowing or a clear feeling generally in knowing, it's almost like I just suddenly know something to be true and I have no reason to know it other than it is. And I trust it. I listen to it.
- [41:48]
C
Yeah.
- [41:49]
B
And it's fine, you know, no one else has to. It doesn't have to make sense to anybody else. But I've allowed myself to do that enough where I can trust that I'm making the right choice?
- [41:59]
C
Yeah, in a lot of ways, I found listening to your intuition is kind.
- [42:03]
A
Of like a muscle.
- [42:04]
C
Like it's you. You put in the reps to strengthen it over time.
- [42:08]
B
And I think creativity and intuition kind of share that same rhythm. You know, I brainstorm a lot with people and I'll be full of ideas and just. I really almost want them all to come out because the more I do it, the better I get at it. I think being creative in any way, it's the same thing. I think it's all mastery, self mastery and action and in practice. And I think when we resist any of those things, again, creativity doesn't. It means just taking inspiration from something, wherever it came from, and doing something with it. Nobody has to know. No one has to see it. The more you do that, the more it revisits you, you know? I love Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's one of my favorite books, and I've read it. I've listened to her. I like to listen to her. And she talks about this visitor, this genius that visits us and asks us to play. And if we listen to it, it may then guide us next and, you know, inform how we engage with it. And if we don't, it goes on and visits somebody else, it will leave you. And maybe it wasn't your idea to play with at that time. Maybe it wasn't yours to make manifest into something, but if it is, that's the job. Like, that's the creativity. And I think the more you do that, the more visitors you get.
- [43:33]
C
I love that perspective. I had just read Big Magic shortly before I started this podcast, and so it was very much in my mind. And so when I had the idea for the show, I started it immediately and launched it, like, a week later, because I literally had that part in my head of, like, I really believe in this idea. If I don't do it, someone else might, and I would be devastated to see it. So I'm just gonna jump in and figure it out.
- [43:56]
B
And look. Look what you've built. Yeah. It's incredible. It's incredible. I think that's exactly it, though. It's oddly that simple, you know, to have both, I think, really high expectations for life and know that that's reasonable.
- [44:13]
A
Yeah. Yes.
- [44:15]
C
Can we talk more about that?
- [44:16]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I think that whether it's relationships, whether it's the relationship with yourself of the world, you know, I started by talking about trusting my magnetism. I do. I have really high expectations that everything that I can imagine being possible in my life is meant for me to explore. And I understand that that might feel. I may always be sort of in search of some version of that or allowing myself to explore versions of that and to be okay with that expectation, that it is reasonable to think that people in my life will show up with the idea of love being an act of discovery of each other, finding the best versions of ourselves. That if my love for you is you being better and you helping me be better just by the mirror, that we hold up for each other. That's my expectation. And I think that's reasonable. It's a high. It's a high bar. But I think it's very fair and reasonable. And I say that full stop.
- [45:23]
A
Right?
- [45:24]
B
That's. In any relationship that I have, I hold myself to that same standard. I also make space to fall short of that, but to never lose the ideal of, of that notion, whether it's the work that I put out. I mean, I'd write a different book today than the one that's, you know, coming out. And I also turned it in, you know, almost a year ago. It's a very strange relationship to the work and the timeline. And so the version of myself that turned in the first draft a year ago is already a little bit different. So I think being okay to be in pursuit of this knowing and knowing that you'll never know, like, not certainty, knowing, I think, is. That's my jam. I love it. And it's. It's not scary. I mean, if I could spend all my free time sort of somewhere between, like, Buddhism and philosophy and astrology and design, that would be. And wine, I mean, with friends, you know, like, that's how I want to spend all of my free time, just asking these questions and exploring these things and not needing to get anywhere.
- [46:32]
A
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- [48:14]
B
Join us on May 17th in Los Angeles for the Dear Media Edit, a Live Wellness Experience. A day of curated conversations and immersive.
- [48:23]
C
Experiences with your favorite Dear Media hosts and leading voices in health and wellness.
- [48:28]
B
Explore what it means to truly feel good inside and out. Tickets are on sale now@dearlymedia.com events.
- [48:40]
A
How do you. I don't want to use the word balance because I don't really do that on this podcast anymore.
- [48:45]
B
That's right.
- [48:46]
A
Kind of the point.
- [48:46]
C
But how do you allow high expectations and grace to coexist? What does that look like for you? Because I think that can be something a lot of us struggle with. I know I can struggle with that, with having high expectations of myself and figuring out, okay, how much grace do I give? I think I'm a lot better giving grace to other people, or many of us are, than we are to ourselves and knowing how much to give, but also still maintaining the standards that we have for ourselves. Sometimes it feels like a difficult dance.
- [49:19]
B
I think it is. I actually think of it the way I kind of think about grief and joy. Two things can be true. You can grieve the loss of something and still find joy in other things. And so I don't think the word necessarily is balanced so much as it is integration. I think it really is making a room in the home of yourself for all these little parts. Some get bigger rooms, some have better decor, but some of them live in the basement, but they have a place. And I think when we deny them, I think we actually block the good things too.
- [50:02]
C
Right?
- [50:02]
B
You can't. You can't block out the dark to let light in. So harmony, maybe, is the word, not balance. I think that there is a knitting together of all of these things. It's allowing yourself to be disappointed when you feel disappointed. And, you know, the part of me that wants to believe that I can live deeply in Buddhist teaching says that suffering is inevitable and that we will all suffer. And that's part of our shared experience as human beings. And that desire, you know, should be checked and questioned. Right? But I think that NPS desire is very much a teacher for me. It informs a lot of the decisions I make. But I do, I think that it's really that simple as, like, how can I have harmony within myself with all of these things that have to coexist.
- [50:54]
A
Yeah.
- [50:54]
B
The moment that you try to cut one off, you're cutting something else off. You may not know what it is, but I. I firmly believe that.
- [51:01]
A
So true. So true.
- [51:03]
C
Something else I'd love to talk to you about. We kind of semi started this on threads the other day. Relatability, the idea of being relatable.
- [51:14]
A
Cause you posted on thread a question that I thought was a. Was a good question.
- [51:18]
B
Yes. I was like, what is this need for black women to be relatable?
- [51:23]
A
Yes.
- [51:24]
B
It's always been maddening to me. I'll admit. This is not new for me. I think there are obviously a lot of current conversations that are happening that are. That's resurfaced that for me. But I even write about it in the book to the extent that when people. I'll tell a story, I tell in the book. So the first person I ever told about my background, my family and everything was a friend of mine in college. We were on a road trip. So I was about 19, she was 20. And we're on this road trip. And you know, road trips as they do, you know, in between belting songs and all the things, you start talking and having these really deep and meaningful existential conversations, as one does on the open road. And I was kind of like, okay, I feel like we're close. I want to tell her more about my story. I don't. It's hard to connect with somebody with a secret this big. So I tell her about my family, and she looks at me and all she says is, I thought you came from money.
- [52:24]
A
Interesting.
- [52:25]
B
She had.
- [52:25]
C
Yeah.
- [52:26]
B
And it was the first time that I got a window, a real window into what people thought about me, or at least some people.
- [52:34]
A
Yeah.
- [52:35]
B
I have since continued to have that idea reinforced, that people somehow believe that someone who looks a certain way, presents a certain way, speaks a certain way, dresses a certain way, has certain interests, a certain level of education, a certain level of performative success. Right. Air quote, the resume, the house in the Hamptons, whatever could not possibly have come from poverty. You couldn't possibly be a poor black girl from Detroit and have manufactured this life, you know, created this life. It doesn't. Our minds, a lot of times don't even allow those things to coexist. And so they. The surrogate story that people tell themselves about me is that, well, she came from money. And so I have always been. Not always, but for a very long time, so aware of that perception, never feeding it never. I've never suggested that my family background as anything other than what it was. I just didn't talk about it for a long time.
- [53:36]
A
Right.
- [53:37]
B
But knowing now, you know, what people think, even after I share it, I'm even happier. You know, it matters that we have possibility models in all the ways. And I think it's challenging for black people because, you know, we have all these cultural references that signal belonging. We belong to each other.
- [53:57]
C
Okay.
- [53:58]
B
Whether it's the cookout, the black card that can get revoked. Like, we have language that we use that says, you and I, we belong together in this thing. And it's beyond one drop rules and things like that. Right. It is. It is deep. It runs deep. The challenge with that, though, is sometimes we don't allow people to belong when we don't understand their experience. It's like we need for everything to fit together. It needs to all work together. And I think it's really fascinating to see it from non black people, this need for relatability. And I think that coming from this place of often not wanting us to have more than they have, or this idea that we. How in the world could she have come from this place and gotten to this other place in her life? I didn't come from that, and I'm not where she is. Right. And I do think that there's an element of that. For sure.
- [55:00]
C
For sure. Yeah.
- [55:02]
B
I see it all the time. People size you up all the ways. I'm not gonna list them, but I. It happens often. And then we turn to our own people and there's this need for us to understand a portrayal of a black person's experience. Not the black experience, but a black person's experience. And we need to relate to it. I don't personally. There are so many shows, movies, music that I have listened to or watched that I don't relate. I don't relate to the story or the characters or the people, the way they speak, whatever I'm like. But I can be entertained by it. I can just appreciate that it's funny or interesting or it made me think about something that I hadn't thought about before. And I think even with this book, you know, I remember there was something. There was a moment where I was writing about the Hamptons, and I was told that that wasn't relatable. I was like, well, I have a house in the Hamptons, so I don't know what to do with that.
- [56:03]
C
Right. It is what it is.
- [56:04]
B
And it was pertinent to the story. Right. It Wasn't a gratuitous lob into no man's land or, like, a bragging thing. It was just a reality, a part of my life. And, yeah, it was really bizarre, and it came from a black person. So it's frustrating to me. I think my hope is that we can continue to deconstruct some of the ways in which we have inherited these expectations that we look and perform a certain way. We're the first ones to be like, we're not a monolith, but be a.
- [56:40]
C
Monolith, but enforce a monolith amongst ourselves.
- [56:43]
B
Let's enforce it, you know, and we get to decide how we enforce it. And it's like, actually, you don't belong to me first, and then I belong to a lot of other communities. But, yes, I belong to the black community after I belong to me. And so I get to decide what that looks like and how that shows up. So, yeah, it's been really nutty for me. And I think we have still a lot of imagery, I hate to say it, that plays into one type of blackness, particularly with black women. And it's allowed when it looks like this. I don't want to name names, but, you know, it's allowed when it presents a certain way. If it's sassy, if it's, you know, has a big personality. We don't all have big personalities. That's okay.
- [57:30]
A
Yep.
- [57:31]
B
And that doesn't make a person inauthentic because they're not being big in whatever way you think that should look. And I think all of that is coming up again in a lot of these conversations, whether it's the Megan Sussex conversation or the Issa Rae conversations. And it's baffling. It's unfortunate. And I just want us to continue to interrogate the ways in which we box ourselves in and create limitations for ourselves by projecting these expectations onto each other.
- [58:02]
C
Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I have felt such this need to continue kind of picking at the topic. It's something that I've just been thinking about a lot. This idea of relatability, this idea. It is often on women, and particularly black women, to need to be relatable no matter what life stage we're in. No matter what. You know, oftentimes we hear that conversation come when a woman, particularly a black woman, has reached a certain amount of success. Right. It is the reason why people will say, you, you know, I don't like Beyonce because she's not relatable, or, I don't want to buy Beyonce's products because she's not relatable. But I don't ever HEAR Anyone call LeBron James unrelatable. And they're both unrelatable because they both operate at such a level of excellence that that is just who they are.
- [58:51]
B
Correct.
- [58:51]
C
But why. Why is it only for the woman to be expected to be relatable and palatable for. For everyone, all the time? Why can't she just operate from a zone of excellence and have people appreciate that?
- [59:04]
B
God, seriously. Elise Lunan writes about versions of this in her book On Our Best Behavior. And really, she's looking at sort of the Seven Deadly Sins as a framework for how women are sort of forced to be good to perform goodness. I think that is absolutely true, full stop for women, and I would say doubly true when you're a black woman. These expectations of what it looks like to perform goodness in all the ways. Right. Anwar talks about this, too. Like, even in dating, you know, being a daughter and being good versus being a partner, we. We've got to start to unwind that and unpack that. And I think we really have to be willing to do it and not feel like it's at the. At the expense of or at the risk of, you know, we're not outing anybody here. Right. There is no ostracization happening. Right. We're not ostracizing people by saying, like, can we look at this? Can we actually be honest about the fact that you all somehow need Beyonce, of all people, to be relatable? Why does her life have to make sense to you?
- [60:15]
C
Right.
- [60:16]
B
What is this deep need for somebody else's life to make sense to you? Can't you just take inspiration from some aspect of it and let that. Maybe that was meant to be a possibility model for you? Maybe, you know, her genius, her professional forming, her level of genius, is an offering for you to see greatness in yourself and for you to think about where that lives in you and how you can bring that forward instead of being, you know, it's not a criticism. Like, how is her greatness a criticism of someone else? Yeah, it's. It is. It's particularly female, and it's scope and focus, and I mean that really broadly, but it does. It has a very specific energy and tone and taste when it comes to black women. And it is maddening. I'm glad that we're talking about it because it's. And it feels like such a delicate thing to discuss, and that's. That's unfortunate.
- [61:17]
A
Yeah.
- [61:17]
B
You know, because we've Talked about much harder things. And it's like if we can live through and talk about and sort through some of the hardest things that a human being can interrogate, we. We need to go there too. We need to allow ourselves to go there too.
- [61:32]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Because I think for so many of us, it can be such a limiting factor. People not wanting to show up and not wanting to shine out of fear of, you know, repercussions for that.
- [61:44]
B
A thousand percent. I mean, I think I was talking to someone about this. I've been sort of noodling on this piece around black maternalism and even writing about it. You know, obviously my relationship with my mother is perhaps a bit extreme and in it, in the shape that it's taken. We've been estranged for over 20 years. And that was something that I felt very clear that I needed to do to be well, to become well, to find well being and to maintain it for now, for however long. For now is. And this idea that we are not allowed to say I had a bad mother, particularly if you are a black woman, you are not allowed. Or if you do, you immediately go to all the reasons why. But the circumstantially. And this happened, and this happened, and we try to explain it away. We're not even allowed to say that culturally. The expectation is that we've mythologized black mothers so much so that they are untouchable, even if they've caused harm. That's. That has to change.
- [62:51]
A
It does.
- [62:52]
C
It's also dehumanizing, I think, to the mothers in that scenario who are whole humans with, you know, strengths, shortcomings, all of the things that all coexist. Similar to what we've been talking about with so many themes that multiple of these things can be true. That. Yeah, when we do have that very kind of pedestalized maternal figure, it's very dehumanizing to the people.
- [63:15]
B
It is. You strip the humanity out of both people, in fact, I think, because I've objectified you and you've been objectified, and there's nothing human about that dynamic at all. And so I love that you're going there, honestly. And I think it's odd to call it brave, but it is. Particularly now when I think people are looking for something to pick on.
- [63:42]
A
Yeah.
- [63:43]
B
They're often looking for this one thing to say, well, that's actually the problem right there. And this is, you know, why such and such can't happen and why, you know, and it's like, no, but what about living in a world where you and I both are flawed and accepting that as a reality and then holding each other to the standard that I know that you can also rise to because you're a wonderful, holy made human being.
- [64:11]
A
Yeah.
- [64:11]
C
Yeah.
- [64:12]
B
And I have faith in you.
- [64:14]
A
Yeah.
- [64:14]
C
And being ready to call in instead of call out.
- [64:17]
B
Correct.
- [64:17]
C
We do a lot of call out and not enough call in.
- [64:20]
B
Correct. Yes. Yes. And just let people be wherever they are. And when you can, invite them closer to love on them, show them tenderness, show them grace.
- [64:32]
A
Yes.
- [64:33]
B
Yeah, That's. That's my dream.
- [64:35]
C
Yeah. I love that.
- [64:38]
A
It's mine too.
- [64:38]
C
I think that that's a really beautiful space to be in. Yeah.
- [64:42]
A
So as you have this amazing new.
- [64:44]
C
Book out in the world, what is.
- [64:46]
A
Your hope for it? What is your hope for those who.
- [64:49]
C
Read it and what they take away from it?
- [64:52]
B
My hope is that people leave with a sense of curiosity about the work of self inquiry and an exploration that they feel like they've been given perhaps permission to not need to improve anything, but just to be curious. I end the book with research that I found around post traumatic growth. And it's been years now since I first learned of this concept. And it's still not in the zeitgeist, I think, in the way, certainly not in the way that PTSD is, but in general. And there were a couple of things that I found in the research that I want to leave your audience with because I find them so empowering and so inspiring and really a call for us to our greatness. And those two things were that. But first, the conditions under which we tend to experience post traumatic growth. Number one, we know and have a supportive community around us. Right. We know that it exists and we can lean on the people in our circles. It's really important. The second thing is where you can find meaning in what happened. It can be hard, but I think when you have enough capacity to allow yourself to feel your feelings, naturally, we tend to find meaning in things. We're meaning making creatures. The third is the hardest, which is to find the benefit of what happened. And, you know, when I think about a lot of what we've been talking about in terms of healing, but if I think about that broadly as a collective experience, when you talk about shared experiences with black people, we know how to do those things. We know we have community, we have found a lot of meaning. We made meaning out of so many of our experiences, and we've actually found benefits to some extent in order to rewrite new stories. The second thing, though, that really blew me away in the research was who was most likely to experience post traumatic growth? It's women. It's people from non white backgrounds and people from impoverished backgrounds. And what that says to me is that a lot of the conversations around epigenetics have been around generational trauma, around what we inherit. Obviously, for me, the book is about, yes, what we inherit, but what we choose to carry. But if, if generational trauma through this lens of epigenetics can explain what we inherit from our ancestors, then perhaps also we've inherited wisdom and we've inherited strength and an inner resolve. And so I really hope that people read this book and are reminded of their power in that way. Whoever you are, but especially people who in my case were born on that third rail, as Melody Hobson calls it, being poor, being black, being female, and being told that the world has no expectations of you. And to defy every single odd, you know, is really the offering that I'm making. And my hope is that people can walk away and say, I am exactly who I think I am, even if that means I have to rewrite the story that I'm telling myself to be reminded of that.
- [68:16]
C
Absolutely. I cannot think of like a better.
- [68:19]
A
Mic drop than what you just said. Thank you, Daria, thank you so much for joining me. I loved this conversation. I'm so excited for our community to hear it. I'm so excited for our community to read the book. We'll make sure we have it linked in the show notes so that everyone can get a copy and read it. Can you please let people know where they can find you?
- [68:37]
B
Thank you so much. I mean, this has been such a joy, such a treat, Just such a fun exploration. Folks can find me@dariaburk.com and on Instagram mostly. Aria Burke. Follow me on LinkedIn too. Aria Burke, where I publish a newsletter called the Power of Possibility. And yeah, you can hear more about the book and the work that I'm doing in the possibility space as a result of, I think, what's been unlocked for me with this, with this project.
- [69:08]
C
Amazing.
- [69:08]
A
We'll make sure we have all of that linked in the description so that everyone can follow along. Thank you.
- [69:14]
B
Thank you. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.