Talking Emotional Nudity with Jai Stone on ShedtheBitch Radio

Hello and welcome to Shady the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed decades of angst, attitudes, and negative mindsets. Make your real identity and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want to want. Monitor live every day on YouTube and dialogue with us at 818-522-5555. 572-2910. You can also chat with us at www.sheddingthebitch.com or share your stories on our website sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to your fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910.

Hi everyone and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, and this is indeed Bernadette Boas. It's another beautiful day, so, and hopefully it is wherever you are around the world. I'm broadcasting from Atlanta today and from my home, which allows me to have a very special guest with, with, with me, Jay Stone. How are you, Jay?

Hey Bernadette, thanks for having me.

You're welcome. And I'll introduce her and jump into everything about emotional nudity. As we can in the time that we have together. So stay tuned, sit tight. You know, if you have any questions, any comments, feel free to chat them in or to call in at 1-818-572-2910. And at the same time, I'll make sure that if you're listening to this in archive, because many of you do, or watching it on our Shedding the Bits YouTube channel, then I'll make sure you have Jay's information so you can reach out to her at any point in time. But let me just, um, a few announcements and a few reminders for everyone in the Shedding the Bitch community. One is if you haven't taken your pledge to shed your bitch, then please go ahead and do that at sheddingthebitch.com. And we do drawings— reminder, we do drawings every Friday. People are winning great gifts, great Shedding the Bitch prizes, and all gearing up to our big grand prize at the end of the year: 2 free round-trip at—

bleh—

free round-trip tickets to anywhere in the country for 2 of you. So that's a beautiful thing. So do that. At the same time, we've been talking about how can we leverage all the information you're learning here in your own life. And so our 30 Day to Riches program has kicked off. Yet I videotape all of them, and there's an interactive portal I use. So if you missed one, you can just use that portal program and and kind of be there as if it was live. So go to ShittingTheBitch.com in our programs area and you'll find that information as well. And then Twitter chats every Thursday night. And Jay was my fun guest who kept me like really on my toes because I'm still trying to get used to the whole Twitter chat thing. But she was my guest on Thursday night and we talked emotional nudity. So this Thursday night, stay tuned, 8 o'clock, join us, we'd love to have you. All right, but that's enough about all of us. You guys are loyal followers of the brand and the business, so just go to sheddingthebitch.com anytime. And then Facebook us and get her on Facebook, Emotional Nudity, and also Jay Stone, but mostly Emotional Nudity. Hook into her fan page, Emotional Nudity. But let me introduce her so we can dive right into our lovely conversation today. Alright, so in 2008, Jay began to chronicle her personal challenges on her blog and quickly gained a devout following. And in 2011, she launched a successful relationship blog and magazine. This year, she's taking on a whole new thing. She's launching a complete lifestyle brand around emotional nudity that embraces authentic living in every aspect of your life. J finds value in creating spaces where individuals are not simply tolerated but embraced. J's work has been featured on Essence.com and MadameNoir.com, and she's been named one of the 2012 Rising Stars by the Young and Powerful for Obama. She has also been listed as one of the top 50 Black businesswomen online twice, not once, twice. And Ms. Stone has been a featured expert on NPR and right here in Atlanta with the Atlanta Journal Constitution. She's also earned the coveted Best of Atlanta title from Atlanta Tribune magazine. Not easy to do, by the way. So ever so humble, J Stone always, always refers to herself as an obedient vessel, which is going to be something I really need to talk about, and believes her current work to be her divine calling, which is fabulous because that's everything we talk about here. Is what is not necessarily our calling. We just talk about getting rid of the bitches of whatever's holding you back from your dreams, right, and your goals. So you have to tell me, this emotional nudity— love it, love it— where'd it come from?

Well, it came from years and years and years of trying to conform to be what I was told I should be. As a kid, I was told that, you know, I talk too much, I'm too opinionated. I'm from Georgia, I'm born and raised here in the South, and it's just not polite to have too many opinions that you actually verbalize. And so that was a major thing. I was being told that by, you know, teachers, and I was being told that in the neighborhoods and in the churches that I wasn't enough. I struggled with weight very early in life. And so I was always told, I can remember really, really thinking that my hairstylist was like the most glamorous person on the planet. And I remember her saying, "Well, you've got to lose weight because you're not going to get a date if a guy picks you up in his two-seater and you're weighing down half of his car." You know? And so I was 15. I was 15 at the time. I was 15 at the time. And so I got a complex really early on about who I was. And I got really clear about who I needed to become in order to be accepted. And so I set out from 15 on a journey early in life to be what people thought that I should be. So I did everything, you know, I went into corporate America. I got my education, I went into corporate America, I grew my hair long, I kept it long and black and I created the Oprah Winfrey look for myself.

You gotta see the video and see it now, guys.

It is great. And so, you know, I learned how to speak a certain way and walk a certain way and talk a certain way and behave a certain way, and I became this really successful marketing manager, and I was great at marketing as long as I conformed. And once I got laid off from my corporate job and I took on becoming an entrepreneur, there's a whole different set of rules, right? I can remember being at a conference full of very highly successful women, and I got food poisoning.

Yow!

And I remember I was so sick that on the plane back, I actually had to be wheeled to the plane in a wheelchair. And so of course, imagine food poisoning, my hair is in a bun, I got on a sweatsuit, and I'm sweating bullets, and all the corporate executives happened to be on the same flight back to Atlanta with me. And I remember one of my colleagues coming back and saying, well, Jay, ABC person from BC company, you know, was really asking a lot of questions about who you were because she didn't feel like you looked like a branding executive. You weren't up to par in your appearance. And I'm saying to myself, you know, if I can't just be sick in peace, you know, what am I doing here? And so I've got tons and tons of stories stories where I was told over and over and over, I was given a message that I wasn't good enough in some way, and my whole life became me setting out to prove them wrong, to be good enough to be accepted, and I developed a very hefty sense of self-hate, you know. I had a very, a very healthy, a hefty sense of it, and it took me a lot of years a lot of coaching, a lot of therapy to get to the point where I like myself. And what I have to explain to people, there's a lot of things that we do to each other, things that society does to us, their idea of beauty, their idea of intelligence, their idea of success, their idea— and so there's a lot of women bashing, there's a lot of fat bashing, there's a lot of race bashing, there's a lot of bashing that goes on with women.

It's ugly.

Yeah, it is.

It's ugly.

We try so hard to conform, to be blonde, or to be slim, or to be whatever they're telling us is popular at the time.

Right. Right?

Right.

And we've got all these images, and I had to, I told a lady not long ago, she was saying, "I just, I don't think that being overweight is healthy." I said, "I agree." She says, "You know, but I don't." I don't understand all of this like fat power kind of, you know, I said it's not that we feel that it's okay to be overweight, is that, that we need to be okay that we're overweight while we're on our journey. Absolutely. To get back to healthy because it doesn't devalue you as a person because you have an imperfection in some way. And so when we look at how people are told that they must show up. What happens when the hairstylist told me I was too fat? What happened when the teacher told me I was too much? I put on a cloak, right? I put on a garment and that garment covered up that I talked too much and I covered up the fat and I covered up the being opinionated and I covered up the marching to the beat of my own drum.

Right.

You know, I covered up my—

You covered up you.

I covered it up.

You covered up Jane.

I covered it up and I became miserable and clinically depressed. And angry.

Angry, I was going to say. Angst is one of my favorite words. Angst. Yes.

I became this very angry person and I decided that that's not how I wanted to show up in my life.

Now, how did that come about? Because normally it's something that smacks you in the face.

It was the clinical depression. It was the clinical depression. It was the waking up and having no reason for getting out of bed. And really, really, really despising the life that I had. And mind you, it was a successful life. I had corporate executive clients, I had a lot of those things, but, um, I still just did not feel that I was accepted. And I started blogging because it was my outlet. It was my way of being able to be opinionated and not feel that I was going to be punished and catch backlash, right? And so when the blogging started taking off and people wanted to hear more about what I had to say and more, it gave me permission. And that's, I think, that what a lot of women are missing.

We're missing permission, which is interesting because we shouldn't require permission. But yes, but the world and society, and yet at the same time, I do have to challenge whether or not we, allow other people to force us to feel like we need permission versus just saying, you know what, screw y'all.

Yes.

You know, but yes, but women do feel that they need permission.

I mean, I tell women all the time, you've got to drink a glass of F you once in a while. And that's simply because if you allow too much to come in, there's nothing left of you.

Yeah.

And so you do have to drink a glass of that and kind of cleanse all of that out once in a while. But I think that with women, they're more pressured to conform. Far more pressured to conform. We never hear from men, "That's not man-like," you know, but "That's not lady-like" comes up a lot, you know, and so we're required to be the courts or keepers of morality, okay, and so our behavior is judged much more critically and much more harshly. Which means there's a lot more pressure on us to behave. So I think that you become strong enough to not need the permission.

Yes.

But I think for women in their 20s and 30s, it takes a minute to get there.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I'm proud to be— I just turned 50.

Okay.

Wow. Thank you.

Did you hear that?

Did you hear that? Thanks. But you know what, I'll tell you what, like you, it's just like I love where I'm at because I'm at a point where I don't ask for permission from anybody. I am doing exactly what I want to do and I get a lot of grief for it and I get a lot of pity for it as if I'm like on the street or something.

Right, right, right.

So I can definitely relate to that. Now, so you found your, you know, you got to a point where you hated being where you were and your decision around emotional nudity, like especially your whole philosophy around no fear and no apologies.

Yes.

How did that come about?

I think that, um, for me, um, I was afraid, uh, to not fit in even though I didn't. As much as I tried, I didn't. But there was a lot of fear around what are they going to say, what are they going to think of me. Okay, so I don't look like this, what kind of shoes do I wear? There was a lot of fear and anxiety around how I needed to show up to be accepted. And then there was a lot of, uh, apologizing. For, you know, your two opinionate, oh my God, I'm sorry, you know, okay, well, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, well, how do I fix this? How do I make it right for her? How do I make, and I was so concerned about making everything okay for everybody else that I didn't, it didn't matter. It's like what I needed didn't really matter as long as you were okay with me, you know. I really needed you to be okay. And I think that it came so early and it was so ingrained I didn't even understand how much in my life I did to be accepted.

I can relate, definitely.

Okay. And so I had this epiphany around 37. I'm 41. I just turned 41.

Happy birthday. Thank you. Just missed it on the 11th.

Woo-hoo!

Let's shout! And so, um, at 37 I started having these epiphanies and I started blogging and getting stronger. And then, you know, I started to really look at, the women in my life and the women that I was seeing, you know, I'm a big fan of Hillary Clinton. I'm a big fan of Michelle Obama. And the thing that I like about these women, because being politicians' wives, you know that we sit in the corner and we're quiet, they're quiet, and they just kind of dote, they're the doting wives and the, you know, the mothers. And I just kept seeing women that weren't like me everywhere that I looked. And then I see these women and they come in and they're self-assured and you know, they're so not apologizing for who they are. And as much as the media tried to hammer them into submission, they stood their ground and decided no. And so their existence gave me permission. Of course there's other women, there's Iyanla, there's Oprah, there was other women that I started to see, but initially there was no women really, really like me until I saw Hillary and Michelle. Those were the two women that were probably more like me than any other women that I've seen in the media.

Sweet.

And I think that that gave me very much permission. Right.

It gave me permission. And it gave you a model.

Yes.

You know, 'cause as women too, one thing I find is we need other women. We need models. We need mentors and coaches of other women that we wanna be.

Right.

And what I love about them is I don't feel that they lost their femininity in the process. I know.

Yep.

Absolutely. And so that was important to me to hang on to the femininity and not become, you know, the bitch, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

She just called me out.

Yep.

Yep.

And thank God, because I was, I was like a man in those days, you know, until I kind of shed that corporate bitch. And I, you know, real quick, You know, people would come up to me afterwards and be like, did you get a facelift?

They did.

And I added it to my book because it was so profound. And I thought, no, I just got the bitch taken off my face. And they went, it is so obvious. So yeah, I hear ya.

I hear ya.

Yeah. So one of the first things I did when I decided that I was just going to show up authentically me in every space possible, and trust me, that's still, that's still a struggle, because the programming is still there.

Oh, it's daily though. I think it's going to happen the whole life.

Right, because that was 40 years of programming that I'm now debugging. Right. And so, um, you and I talked when I first got here about when I turned 40, I cut my hair. So this is 13 years of this long flowing, this is what American beauty is. The hair flowing down my back was my real hair, honey. I ain't had no weave. I was just, trying to— it was a Clairol commercial, really. My hair, honey, I flipped it. And then when I turned 40, I did a big chop, you know, and I had all this little short hair and I felt more— and it's funny because in my 20s I had the short hair, but I lost it in my conforming. And it's funny because I was more aware of who I was in my 20s than I was by the time I got to 40, you know. As a teenager, I was more comfortable, and so when I look at my pictures when I was 18 and my pictures when I turned 40, it's the same person there, but what happened? I lost her somewhere in those 20s and 30s. I lost her in that fight to conform.

Right, right.

Wow. And so, and for me, the transition shows up in my hair, but we all have it. It shows up in different places in our lives where you can look back, probably if you look at your 16-year-old self. It's probably a lot like your 50-year-old self, but what happened in between?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

And mine was a conscious decision at first. I chose to become a bitch and then forgot.

And you choose to become a bitch from a place of, um, um, survival, um, from a place of, of, of needing to climb the corporate ladder.

Well, no, actually no. Mine came from pure what? Bitches are defined as insecurities, feelings of intimidation, my own feelings of low self-worth, not fitting in. You know, I had my own backstory of which then I just said, okay, it's much easier to mask that. Just like you're saying.

Absolutely. And for me it was all of that plus the fact that I needed to be a strong corporate executive. I wanted to be, you know, a leader. Right. And I couldn't show weakness.

I couldn't show weakness.

No. And, um, and that affected my romantic relationships because it's like the guy shows up and he doesn't know.

Oh yeah.

What his role is. So I had a lot of struggles there. So a lot of my blogs were about my personal development and my relationships. Sweet. Okay. And so, um, and out of that with, um, emotional nudity, um, you know, I worked in marketing for a lot of years and one of the things you do in marketing is break things down to their finite degree. And when I really looked at it, I wanted to strip naked. I wanted to strip off all the barriers and I wanted to really be honest about what I felt and who I was. And that's your emotions. So that's how Count Upon A Name came about. And trust me, I didn't know that it was going to be a brand when I first started using it.

Me either. I wrote Jane the Corporate Bitch going, oh, whatever. Yeah, so I hear you.

Yeah, and it's amazing as to how many people can relate to your story and they start to connect.

Absolutely.

And that's kind of how it became a brand.

Sweet. Now, life zones.

Life zones.

What are they? And how do I get on board? And just, I want to just say real quick, first of all, I just want to say real quick, if you're listening or watching, please make sure you go to Facebook, Emotional Nudity. Same with Twitter, but at the same time on Twitter you can also hook into her at @jstone, J-A-I stone, S-T-O-N-E, and then her website is emotionalnudity.com. Check out also, I want to mention quick that she has a whole Emotional Nudity Awareness Week, December 3rd through the 9th. So you got to check this out. I mean, I can only imagine how much fun it's going to be, but actually how much education and information and tips and resources she's going to be providing you during that week of December 3rd through the 9th, okay? And at the same time, for those of you on listening, go to our YouTube channel and check out this video because when this radio program ends, we're going to continue talking for at least another, probably another 10 minutes because I've got a lot to cover. And so at least you'll be able to benefit from it on a YouTube video. All right.

Okay.

So life zones.

Yeah. Life zones. Um, and when I say you want to be authentic in every area of your life, that's where the life zones come into play. So it's your, your, um, emotional, financial, relational, spiritual areas of your life. And there's 6 life zones. And, um, we have to really, um, everybody's kind of out of whack in a different life zone. And a lot of times we talk about balance, and I'm not a proponent in believing that life is necessarily balanced. I think that that's another fallacy, illusion that we've been taught to buy into. One of my friends, The Working Wife, she refers to work-life effectiveness, which I think is a great way to look at it, but I think that every one of us has a pie, right, and We talked about, on the Twitter chat, we talked about having it all.

Yes.

And I talked about the pie and is your pie relational, your relationships, your friends and family, is your pie business, is it financial? And we have all of these different pieces of the pie and they're different sizes. So some people, their spiritual piece of the pie is really, really great.

Right.

And of course, naturally for me, my emotional piece. Is really big because if my emotional wellness is off, then everything else is off for me. I don't care about money and what— I'm an emotional person, I'm very emotionally driven. Yeah. And for years, what have we heard?

You're too emotional.

You know, you're too emotional.

Yes, I am, and I'm damn proud of it.

And so, I mean, my DNA is predisposed to just being an emotional person and it happens to just make me really good at what I do. Right. But I've been told that I wasn't supposed to be.

So now that I'm shedding that bitch, we have that by the way, shedding the emotional bitch. Yes, we have this.

Now that I've shed that one, um, I think that, um, we look at pies. I think that people need to understand that, that their pie is very specialized and individualized. For example, you know, a husband is a piece of my pie, but children isn't, you know, it's just not something I've ever wanted for myself, right? Um, as much as I love kids. Um, and so, but we've never been told that as women we can actually say that out loud and not be looked at as a praying mantis, right?

Right.

Black Widow. Yeah. And so we're just not being told that we can, um, really create the lives that work for us, not that we desire. Because a lot of people— create the life you want, create the life that works.

Yeah, yeah.

Create the life that works and it becomes the life that you want.

Right, right.

Because if you create the life that you want and it doesn't work, you end up in a whole different level of misery.

Yeah, because work, you're also probably meaning too that work doesn't mean you just tolerate it, right? Because like what you say about, you know, you don't want to be just tolerated, you want to be embraced. Embraced. Yes. So the working, if it works for you, it's one that you embrace, not necessarily the one that you're willing to tolerate.

Yes. Okay. And when we talk about I want to talk about the safe spaces because I think that's a huge piece. Um, I put myself for years in spaces that weren't physically or emotionally safe for me. And so I put myself in places where I was criticized.

Is that what they're called?

Yes. I put myself in places where I was criticized. I put my person of color self in places that, that where I was told I wasn't good enough, that where I didn't fit in. And I think that it's important for people to find those spaces that are safe for you to physically and emotionally and financially to show up to be who you are and embrace. Now what happens is some people do that to an extreme where there's no accountability, right? And I'm not looking for that. You have to have accountability partners because that's going to be, um, it's going to be quintessential to your growth, right? It's going to be quintessential to your growth. So I don't mean to go in the other where there's no accountability. I just want everybody to accept me and my shit. You know, you really don't just want that. Right. And so I think it's important to have that growth, but I think it's also not to put yourself— it's basically putting yourself in harm's way.

Yeah.

We teach our kids, you know, not to play in the street because it's not safe, but we play in the emotional streets and financial streets all day long.

Well, not only that, but some people even do it— like, I'll be honest with you, I did it even in the partying, social you know, feeling like I always needed to be— Charlie wants to say hi. Come here, bud. Charlie, come here.

Come here. I think that was a nudge. Can you help me, please? Can you help me, please?

But Charlie, you all know Charlie. He just showed up. Well, he's been here, but come here, bud. Come here.

Come here.

Come sit with me. All right. Um, but yeah, so what I was going to say is, um, I, you know, those places can also be— they're safe from the fact that you think you're protecting yourself. From, you know, from your fears and all that kind of good stuff, but actually they're dangerous for you.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful.

Yes.

Okay, so what— so now, if you— you— because you've had one heck of a whew! Yeah, you know, growth. Is there a life zone? Is it, you know, is there a specific challenge that you're dealing with that you continue to work on?

Well, I've talked a lot about it because my life zone is the physical Physical fitness is the lifestyle that I struggle with the most. And a lot of that came from my way of dealing with all the other lifestyles being out of whack was to eat, you know. So I'm a food addict and it's not just eating a lot. I just make really bad choices, you know. If you ask me if you want a salad or the pie, I'm going to pick the pie every time because I'm happy as hell when I'm eating pie.

It's so much fun.

You know, and so that for me has been the biggest challenge, the biggest life zone. And it's one that I have to really work at consistently and daily and fall off the wagon and get back on. And everybody has that one life zone, right? That's an ass kicker.

Yeah. Come here.

I need you to sit.

Yeah, they do. And I would think mine, you know, um, I don't think I just have one. Uh, but mine is, kind of the— I would say not the eating, their diet. Mine's relationships. Mine's male relationships, intimate relationships, quite honestly. Because my safe space was hiding behind my work. I'm too busy to date. I'm too busy to get involved. I'm too busy to get intimate or serious with somebody. We are talking with Jay Stone of Emotional Nudity, everybody. And you need to check out her event December 3rd through the 9th, the Emotional Nudity Awareness Week that she'll be having. And make sure you go to her Facebook page, emotionalnudity.com. We're also going— we also want you to go to Twitter, Emotional Nudity, or J Stone, J-A-I Stone. And then check out her website, emotionalnudity.com. And of course, always, we're going to continue this conversation on video if this, uh, the radio show just decides to pop out on us. Sometimes it gives us extra minutes, we'll see. But we're going to continue on the video so you won't miss anything. For those of you who are listening or watching, you can always go to sheddingthebitch.com. I'll give it to Jay as well, and you can check our extended dialogue out on sheddingthebitch.com as well. Okay? Alright, so We were talking— oh, so mine's, yeah, mine's relationships and hiding behind work and business and all that. So what are some tips if someone wanted to work, start working on their life zones and chipping away at those things that are getting them, you know, all kind of in a wad?

And the very first thing that you have to do is to make a decision that you want something better. Now, a lot of people talk about it kind of in this fantasy kind of, yeah, "Oh, I want to live my best life. I want to have an Oprah experience," you know, and they're really not ready to do the work. It takes some very, you have to take some very, what can I say, truths about yourself. Naked.

I always say get naked, raw, and true. That's why when I saw your whole thing, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to love this." this girl.

Yeah, um, it takes some tough realizations and some tough honesty with yourself. And trust me, it's not easy, uh, when someone comes in your life with a real mirror, not the distorted ones. You know, I had this thing in my house where I didn't have any full-length mirrors because I didn't want to see everything. I was really comfortable with my face, I was really comfortable with my makeup and my hair, I was really comfortable with that side of myself, but I didn't want to see the full-length mirror. So when a person comes in with a full-length mirror You have to be able to make the decision that I'm going to work through that, and everybody's not there and everybody's not ready. So I think the first step is to make a decision, and then the second step, we go to emotionalnudity.com. Yes, you should right now and get into, you know, the program, right? So one of the things that we'll be doing, um, December is launching the program, um, and doing a virtual conference. For that week. So more details about that will be coming up soon.

Yeah, and I, you know, I was gonna tell you too, because I participated on this one program last week, and it actually— they did it in such a way that, like, right behind each other for like 2 hours at a time, it was a 30-minute program that just kept replaying. So if you missed any part of it, it just kept on, like, every third, you know, every top of the hour and the bottom of the hour, it just started it, repeat it. So we'll have to figure out what that is. But yes, so that'll be fun, that'll be fun. Okay, so we're not done because there was a couple of other things I wanted to find out about. I know, um, oh, needed to find out about this, um, uh, what did you have on your, on your, uh, bio?

Obsessive?

No, no, no, no, no. What's on your bio?

Hold on. The vessel.

Oh yes, the obedient vessel.

Yes. So, for all the years that I spent working in marketing and branding, I had a moderate level of success, you know. I knew that it wasn't my calling, I was just really good at it, and it took me— I was very afraid to do what I was called to do. So, when I started blogging, trust me, I didn't even start on a real blog, I started with a Facebook note.

—right?

Oh, okay. That went viral, that like people from other countries, and it was like 500 comments in like 3 days. It was something crazy. Wow. Nice. My very first blog post, and it catapulted me, so I didn't have a choice but to kind of continue on that path and do what I was called to do. But I was very afraid to have too many opinions out loud, and so I used to always ask God, why haven't I been more successful? I mean, I'm really good at this branding stuff, you know? I'm really talented here, and while I had a moderate level of success, I wasn't bringing in those multi-million dollar contracts, and I couldn't figure out exactly why. And then here I am switching, and I talk about— blogged about relationships and personal growth, and the next thing you know, I've got the third largest relationship blog in the African American community. You know, that happened in less than a year, and then the magazine came, and now Emotional Nudity, and, you know, accolades on top of accolades and visibility. And I never had, and we're talking about, I made the transition full-time a year ago. So we're talking about this is happening kind of record, in record, at a record pace. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's because I finally have been obedient. God gave me a very specific set of—

Oh, so it's, I had a feeling it had to do with him. Yeah. So it's, you're listening to him. Yes. You're finally like block, you were blocking him out maybe for, or not allowing him to really get his message across to you, which is, you're a beautiful woman.

Well, that, and I think that people have very specific spiritual gifts and very specific callings. So I think that, that, um, I was given a very specific set of gifts, um, that I wasn't using in conjunction with the way that they should have been used.

And that he wanted you to use them.

And the way that he wanted me to use them. But for the people, I'm probably more spiritual than religious. Um, I think the universe is built in a way that each person is gifted. Yeah, absolutely.

Everybody has a God-given gift.

And I think that once you find them, if you don't learn how to use them to serve, and I don't mean self-serve, right? Right, right, right. Okay. If you— that's where the fulfillment comes from. That's where— and I think a lot of people worry about the monetary piece. If you follow, use your skills and you use it in a way that when you're obedient to your calling. Right. Okay. For me, I'm divinely led, I'm Godly led, you know, but I understand and I want to address the people who have a different set of belief system. Okay. Because you don't have to limit yourself based on a religious belief system. Right. Okay. Everybody, they kind of all work the same way. Yeah, absolutely. A bigger power, a more divine calling. I think that until you're obedient to the calling, right, whatever that looks like, right, then it doesn't happen. And so, you know, it's important to really be clear about what your skill set is and to really do what you're calling. Here's what I have to tell people: sometimes your passion is not your calling.

Yeah, it's so true.

Sometimes you're— and so you have to consult that higher power because I was very passionate about branding and marketing, and you've seen the websites and the design work, and you've seen the client work, I was really, really good. I was very passionate about it and I had moderate success because it wasn't my calling. And so once I actually became this obedient vessel and I decided, I went through just really what I call a series of catastrophic events. And the question was always, why me? Why am I the one? I could so not use this. And it finally came to me 2 years ago and God said, you know, it's not for you, for other people. It's for you to help other people. And once I got that and I started to do what I feel that I'm called to do, then everything happened overnight. And so that's been an amazing experience.

Oh, well, and so I have— I was raised— I have 11 brothers and sisters. I was raised very Catholic, always was a churchgoer, and I continue to be. Now, along the way though, I learned very quickly and very early too what part of the religion I wanted to stay strict to and what parts just weren't me. You know, and so, and along the way I've become more, definitely more spiritual than anything. And the whole thing about, like, because my thing was I thought I was a corporate executive. I thought I was going to run, like, the world, you know, or Coke or something. That was my calling, I thought, for like 20, 25 years. And so when I learned that that wasn't it, and it was funny, I was telling somebody the other day, I actually went on I was on my radio show interviewing somebody about 3 months ago, and I all of a sudden kind of started giggling. And, you know, she didn't say anything, and I just kind of afterwards, and I said— because all of a sudden I went, you know, this is what I want to do. I want to be a radio show host. I want to be a telephone— television host. I want to be out there helping other women, you know, not do what I did to myself. And that was just so— I don't even know how to explain that liberating feeling that came over me. So that is so cool. Okay, so the December 3rd through the 9th event, Emotional Nudity Awareness Week. Yes, I was told it was breast— well, I knew it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October, but December 3rd through the 9th, emotionalnudity.com. Check it out and make sure you're part of that program. She'll have all the details about it there and it'll be on Facebook and her Twitter and whatnot. She's a branding person, so she gets the whole thing. As well, I'll be sharing it and making sure that our Shedding the Bitch community is fully aware of the week as well. And somehow we'll make sure that we get as much audience for you as possible because our messages are very similar in that our end goal is the same. And the whole emotional nudity thing is just, it's so true. So I want to thank Jay. Thank you so much. No, thank you. Thank you. This has been phenomenal. And please check out sheddingthebitch.com. No, well, check out sheddingthebitch.com, but check out our YouTube channel, Shedding the Bitch, and we'll have this video up there. We'll have it on our website. We'll post it to Facebook and Twitter and everything else too. And you'll get this special extended version of my interview with the guru of emotional nudity, uh, J Stone. So thanks everybody. Thank you. Thanks so much. You are very welcome. That was fun.

Yes, that was so—

oh, Charlie, what'd you do? And Charlie somewhat behaved.