Confidence Classic: How to Reconnect With Your Inner Compass with Saje Dyer & Serena Dyer Pisoni

You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on Whatnot is exploding right now. I've watched the shows firsthand. I've seen Whatnot climb to the top of the App Store, and I've looked at the seller earnings. Small, medium, and multi-million dollar businesses are seeing real growth. If you're selling online or out of a storefront full-time or as a side hustle, you already know the challenge. You're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in. Whatnot flips that. On Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, ask questions, and buy, and they keep coming back. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses. Whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app. They're not just browsing, they're bidding, buying, and coming back. You go live, show off products in real time, and turn what you love into real real income. People selling on Whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with your buyers. Across Whatnot, the number of sellers making over $1 million a year has doubled. Some make more, some less, but consistency pays off. This isn't a side hustle, it's a real path to building something that lasts. And for a limited time, Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. Visit whatnot.com/sell to start selling. That's w-h-a-t-n-o-t.com/sell. Whatnot.com/sell. One marketing and CRM platform built to help you connect with customers, boost engagement, and grow your business smarter. Just head to www.brevo.com/confidence and take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura. Join the millions who are already banking. Be free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com/confidence. That is chime.com/confidence. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com/confidence to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc., NMLS ID number 1240038. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com/confidence for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/confidence. You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on Whatnot is exploding right now. Visit whatnot.com/sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T.

There is actually no way to happiness. Happiness is always available to you in your situation that you are in. My dad always used to say to us, do not process life as you assume it should be, process life as it is. You know, if life is going as we assume it should be, it's easy to be happy. As soon as, you know, the wind changes and we're thrown something that we do not assume to be good, and it's not the way that we want our life to go, that's when it becomes challenging. And as soon as you start resisting whatever life bringing you, you're creating more and more resistance. How do you break down that resistance and still find happiness? One of them is by no longer assuming that life should be a certain way.

Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. Fasten your seatbelts.

I'm ready for my close-up.

Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus Confidence Classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do.

Hi and welcome back. I am so excited for you to meet my two guests today, which is a rarity, but these two ladies had to come together cuz not only are they the authors of The Knowing, which we're about to get into, but I wanna tell you a little bit about each of them. Serena Dyer Pisone is the author of Don't Die with Your Music Still in You. My Experience Growing Up with Spiritual Parents. She's been a contributor to HuffPost, Positively Positive. And her sister Sage Dyer is the author of Goodbye Bumps. She's a featured speaker in the 2014 Game Changer Global Summit. She was part of the national PBS special with Dr. Wayne Dyer. And yes, these are two of Wayne Dyer's daughters. Ladies, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for having us. Yeah.

Oh my God. So I was, it's funny, Serena, I was just on with Sage earlier before you got here and I wanted to share some behind the scenes on what happened. So to take this back a few months ago, I got a DM on Instagram from Serena and she was letting me know that she had written a book with her sister Sage and they wanted to send me a copy. And in podcasting we get, you know, books are sent to us all the time. So I said, you know, first I checked her out. I'm like, okay, she's not a psycho. Great. All right, here's my address. Please send me a book. And I get the book. Okay, this is such a true story. I get the book and I literally have stacks of books in my house because I get so many books sent to me. I put it in a stack and I forget about it. I just forgot and I move on in life, blah, blah, blah. Months later, here we are. And I was just telling Sage this. I had a friend who's been seeing an energy healer and she saw me at a spin class the other day and she said, you look so stressed out. I really want you to go to this energy healer. And I thought, I'm up for whatever, like, okay, throw it at me. It can't hurt, right? I'm like, there's nothing bad that can happen from this, right? And she said, yeah, there's nothing bad. Worst case, you waste an hour of your life. I'm like, okay, I'll go. So I go to this energy healer and first of all, she was other level amazing for anyone. And I know there's people out there that don't believe in this stuff and that's completely cool. I get it. However, I will say this woman is a game changer. There are certain people in the world that have gifts that you just might not have been exposed to yet, is my opinion. So anyhow, I am leaving her and she says to me, Heather, I just want you to remember one thing. It's all in the knowing. Don't forget, it's all in the knowing. And I said, okay. And I'm very much a visual person. So I know if I need to teach myself something, I have to write it down somewhere so that I, you know, I see the words to remind myself. So I get home, I have my to-do list out and I write at the top, It's in The Knowing, and I underline it and I put exclamation points, you know, to remind me. And then I'm sitting there that day and I'm working, and all of a sudden I glance over the table and I see your book.

And I literally—

The Knowing. And I thought, well, that's beyond bizarre, and obviously that could be a sign. So I picked the book up and I looked at the table of contents and I looked at the signs, and then I looked at Serena, what you had written to me about all the green lights. And I thought, okay, wait a minute, this is a sign right here. I've got to go to that chapter. So I went to that chapter and I couldn't believe I was overcome with emotion. And then I read that entire book in a day and I absolutely loved it. So I messaged Serena back on Instagram and said, I finally read your book and I am dying to have you guys on the show. So thank you so much for coming on today.

Well, I love that story. First of all, you do not look stressed, so I don't know what that lady's talking about because you look great. But when I saw your message and you said like, I'm so happy that you sent me the book and I finally read it and I'd love to have you on, I was like thinking to myself, wait, did I send you that book like months ago? Or I just couldn't remember when I had sent it. So then I was like, yeah, no, I sent it months ago and it must have just come, you know, come across your attention really at the right time.

Totally, completely at the right time. And first of all, for anyone listening that does not know who Wayne Dyer is, and I just want to give a little context, Wayne Dyer is— and if you go back to my episode with Sarah Blakely, Sarah Blakely attributes the entire Spanx organization to Wayne Dyer. She used to drive around listening to Wayne Dyer cassettes in her 20s. She was unhappy in life, not living her purpose or her potential. She knew it and she didn't know what to do. So she figured, listen to this man who, you know, for people who are in the personal development space, understand that he's really an authority. She would drive around and listen to Your Father's cassettes because that's how old we are, Sarah and I. And she attributes 100% that the Spanx idea came to her after weeks of her driving around and listening to your dad's tape. So Your Father has impacted so many people in so many amazing ways. And it's so exciting now to see that you two are carrying on his legacy.

Yeah, well, thank you. You know, Ellen DeGeneres actually has— it just reminded me when you said of Sara Blakely driving around with the cassettes because our dad actually officiated the wedding of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi because Ellen also attributed not all of her success, but some of her success to his cassettes in her car and just what that did for her belief in herself and her manifestation. And all of that. So you're absolutely right. He's definitely impacted several well-known individuals as well as millions of, you know, not as well-known individuals. And I think Sage and I are— we feel like to hear that we're, you know, following in his footsteps or somehow like, you know, stepping into his shoes a little bit, I think it's a huge honor. But I also think that it's really what he is kind of inspiring from the other side as well, not just for us, but for you and for so many other people that are continuing to get messages and inspiration from their loved ones or him from the other side. So it's actually a really cool—

Yeah. And also, I mean, for us as his daughters, or I'll just speak for myself, when growing up with this father who so many people looked up to and he changed all their lives, I recognized that as I grew up, but I also felt like he was just my dad. So it wasn't until he actually died that I felt connected to and called to his work in a really big way and started really just digesting it, reading, listening to his tapes all the time. I still do, and I get so inspired. So it's almost like his passing away brought us to a place where we could actually learn from his work in a totally different and new way and help to spread his message and our own message, because it's become unique for us as well.

Absolutely. And you know, one of the things when I thought about reading your book, and maybe this was the turnoff that I had, why I didn't open it initially, was this idea. I didn't come from spiritual parents. I'm not a master at manifestation. All of this is very new to me at 47 years old. So I felt a little, well, gosh, they're lucky. I mean, they had the number one guy as their guide in life. I mean, geez, uh, wish I had that. What's so funny is Your book is the antithesis of that, and I'm so grateful I got that message to read it. Even starting with— I had no idea Wayne Dyer wasn't always mystical. And when I started reading about his initial journey and the August, you know, 1974 situation that occurred that really changed his life, I'm hoping that you can share that so people can relate to— it hasn't been all flying around and happiness and harmony for, for you guys your, your whole life, nor his.

Sage is the one who discovered that connection and that synchronicity between the day that kind of changed his life, you said in August of 1974, and what that meant for us, um, after he passed away. So before she tells briefly about that, I just want to say that you're absolutely right. I think that one of the things that people probably assume is that if you have spiritual parents, you have all of the internal sort of connection to just everything happening for you and everything kind of just falling in your lap and things just being really easy. And so often I think people think that, well, if your dad is Wayne Dyer compared to, you know, the asshole that I had as a parent or the absentee parent that I had, um, then you already have it made and you already have— and in some ways I think, you know, there's a truth to that in terms of having the exposure. Yeah, the exposure to like higher consciousness type of topics, but it was not until we had to, you know, really kind of learn and apply it for ourselves that we really understood that, you know, having this spiritual parent— both of our parents actually are very spiritual— having these spiritual parents is great, but if you can't do the work yourself, it doesn't matter. And it's just like having terrible parents. They are not going to make or break your life. You have to do it for yourself.

Yeah.

And an example of that is our dad had a terrible— had a terrible father, and he became so spiritual. And we had wonderful parents, and it wasn't until he passed that we sort of really started embracing that. So sorry, Sage, what were you gonna say?

No, I was just gonna say we also described it in the introduction as it's a return to our knowing. So we're sort of born without these egos, and we spend our lives building up these boundaries and walls that, you know, sort of make up our ego. And so to get in touch with your knowing, it's returning to that place that you have built up walls against. And so that's what the book is about. And we built up the same walls that other people build up and they're individual to our own experiences. So we just kind of go through how to help you get in touch with your own knowing and how we did it ourselves. 'Cause like you said, it's not a book that like, oh, we were just born this way and we had these great parents. So everything was, you know, it was very much a returning and still is a returning to my highest self, my knowing, all of that. But for our dad, to make it a brief story because it's long and complex. But our dad passed away on August 30th, 2015. And when he died, I felt like I was at a crossroads of— I had grown up with all these incredible spiritual teachings and highly spiritual parents. And he always talks about how death is just a transition from the physical to the non-physical and how I should just think of him as being in the next room because that's all it is. It's just we can no longer see him because our bodies are limited. By our 5 senses. It's— but there's so much more than what we can perceive. And so I grew up with these ideas, but I had never been challenged to really believe them and have faith in them. So when he died, I felt like I was at a crossroads of, okay, but yes, I know that this is what you said and this is what I was raised to believe in, but at the same time, I can't see you. I'm grieving for you. I, you know, and, and I don't know. I don't know that you're still here with me. I can't know that for sure right now. And so I kind of was putting feelers out there, and I said, if, um, if this was all divinely orchestrated and if his death was on time and on purpose, then there would be a meaning behind the day he picked to die. Because my dad was very into numbers. He had this whole thing with 11:11, the number 18. Like, our sister Sky was buying a house, and one of the addresses that she was looking at was 909. It added up to 18. Our dad was like, you have to buy that one. I don't care. Don't tell me about that it has termites or this or that, just buy that one. So he was very into numbers. I could give you, we could give you a lot of examples. But so I just felt like some part of me knew that if there was meaning in this life and there was meaning in his death and that it was on time, there would be meaning in the day he died. And I kept looking for it and I couldn't find it initially. You know, it didn't add up to any significant number. It didn't, I couldn't think of any significant date that thing that had happened August 30th. But I decided to read his book, I Can See Clearly Now, which is a memoir that he wrote. He wrote it when he was like 73, and he died when he was 72. And we were all like, are you even writing a memoir? I'm sorry, he died when he was 75. And we were all giving him a hard time. Why would you write a memoir? You're gonna have to write another one in 10 years. Like, your work is just getting greater, you know? But he, he said, I just feel called to write this book. And Serena and I were out there with him when he was writing, and he was writing like 8 hours a day He just said, I have to write this book. I don't know what it is, but something's coming through me. He died a couple years later. It was his last real book that he put out. So a part of him knew that his time was coming up on him. But in that book, there's a chapter about his relationship with his father. So when, when our dad was little, when he was born, actually, his father walked out on his family. He had two older brothers. He was the youngest and he was an alcoholic. And he just didn't come home when our grandma got home from the hospital. Our dad spent his life hating this man, hating him, but also wanting to know him, you know? And he could never find him. And he said that as he became a teenager and so on, he would have nightmares about finding his father and beating him up or screaming at him. And he became obsessed. And he eventually learned that his dad had actually died. He had been still searching for him for a few years and his father had been dead and nobody had even informed him that his father had died. So his search had been in vain for the past few years. But learning that his father had died did not bring him any sense of healing or sense of forgiveness. He still carried around this hatred, this dread, this anger towards his father. And so he was then in search of his grave. He said, "If I can't find him while he's alive, I want to find where he's buried." And he set out to find where he was buried. And through a series of really crazy coincidences, he actually found where his father was buried. This is back in, you know, the '70s. It wasn't a Google search. And a phone call away. It was a lot more complicated. And he wound up finding where his father was buried, and he went there. It was in Biloxi, Mississippi. And he went to his father's grave, and he went there with the intention of pissing on his father's grave, of screaming at him, of, you know, all of that. Yeah, literally pissing. And he went there, he got out of his car, he went up to the grave, and he did all of that. He got his anger out. He screamed at him, "How could you leave my mother, my dear mother, who had 3 boys?" boys in the 1940s, you know, right after the Great Depression, to fend for herself. Our father wound up in orphanages and foster care because his mother could not afford to care for all three of her children. And so he just had all this resentment about that, that he was trying to pour out onto his father. And after he did that for however long, he, uh, went to walk away feeling no better or no worse, just the same. And he walked away from his father's grave and he walked back to his car. And when he got there, he was about to leave and he felt this overwhelming sense that he needed to go back to the grave. So he turned around and he walked back to the grave and tears started to pour from his eyes as he just felt this powerful force of love coming over him that he had never experienced in relationship to his father before. And from his mouth came the words, Dad, I forgive you. I forgive you. And he was just overcome with love, lightness, forgiveness, and just emotions that he had never experienced for his father. And when he walked away from that grave after that second experience of going back and saying, from this moment on, I send you nothing but love. I forgive you. I love you. He developed a whole new relationship with his dad. His entire life turned around. Uh, our father wrote his first successful book that went on to be the best-selling book, non-fiction book, of the decade of the 1970s. He got into a new relationship. Everything about his life turned around from that day forward. His career took off. The date that he went to his father's grave and forgave him was August 30th, 1974, the same day that he died, that he left his physical body. August 30th, you know, 50 years later or whatever it was. And when I read that, I could not believe that in my dad's own words, he said, if you were to ask me the most significant date of my life, I would say it was the events that took place on August 30th, 1974, the day that he forgave his father. His whole life turned around. Now I'm coming to find out that this is the same day that my dad chose to leave his physical body. And I'm like, This is incredible, you know, this wasn't just some random day, it was something divine. And then I thought, what is he trying to tell us by leaving his body on August 30th, by choosing that to be, you know, his return ticket home? And I felt like what he was trying to tell me personally was, you know, August 30th in his life marked the day that his relationship with his father did not end. It actually changed to take on a whole new meaning, a more beautiful relationship developed, one that was pure love. And I felt like what he was saying to me was, this is now the day in your life that marks the same thing. Your relationship with your father did not end on August 30th. Instead, it changed to take on an entirely new divine meaning, and that I can still continue to have a relationship with him even though he's not here in the physical. From this day forward, and it can be even more beautiful. And once I really internalized that notion, everything started to change for me. I started to receive signs from him. I started to feel him around me, and I just moved from like a lower level energy of grief. There's nothing wrong with grieving, and I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I think it's important. But I was stuck in sort of this lower energy. And when I shifted my perspective on his death to having this grand meaning that was on purpose, my energy shifted. I was, you know, calculating at a, at a, in a higher field, and I started to connect with him in a way that I wasn't able to before.

Meet a different guest each week.

Confidence creator.

Chime is changing the way people bank. Fee-free and smarter banking built for you. Not like old-school banks that charge you overdraft and monthly fees. Built for you, not the 1%. Chime isn't just another banking app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people with products like MyPay, giving you access to up to $500 of your paycheck anytime and getting paid up to 2 days early with direct deposit. Some old banks still don't even do this. Forget overdraft fees, minimum balance fees, and monthly fees. Chime turns everyday spending into real rewards and progress. Bank fee-free plus overdraft coverage you can count on helps you build credit history stress-free. Get paid when you say up to $500. Earn up to 3% APY on savings, 7 times higher than a traditional bank. Rated 5 stars by USA Today for customer service. Real humans 24/7. It's the new way to build credit history with your own money and get rewarded every single day. The new card that unlocks safer credit building and cash back with everyday spending. Together at last. No annual fees, no interest, and no strings attached. I would have used this if I had known about this when I was younger. The idea of building credit at a younger age, it's impossible, insurmountable. And suddenly you have an option. Chime is it. Chime is not just a smarter banking, it's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com/confidence. That is chime.com/confidence. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured Chime Visa credit card, and MyPay line of credit provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. MyPay eligibility requirements apply, and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges.

See chime.com/feesinfo.

Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1.00% APY applies. No minimum balance required. Chime card on-time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. Are you ready to take your business's marketing to the next level? Meet Brevo, the all-in-one marketing and CRM platform built to help you connect with customers, boost engagement, and grow your business smarter. With Brevo, you can manage all of your customer interactions in one place, nurture leads with their built-in CRM, reach your audience through email and SMS, and keep them coming back with powerful automations. But here's where it gets really exciting. Meet Aura, Brevo's AI assistant. Aura helps you craft smarter campaigns by suggesting personalized content, optimizing send times, and even analyzing performance data to help you improve your strategy in real time. It's like having a marketing expert on your team 24/7. And of course, Brivo offers advanced analytics, seamless integrations, and AI-driven personalization. Everything you need to create multichannel campaigns that hit the mark every time. Get started for free today or use code Confidence 50 to save 50% on starter and standard plans for the first 3 months of an annual subscription. Just head to www.brevo.com/confidence and take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura.

Confidence creator. I ask you to try to find your passion. She's having Serena for you. You didn't have that comforting— you were going through your own personal struggles and you weren't necessarily seeing the signs at the same time. Is that right?

Yes, I was gonna say, actually, that's exactly right. And what Sage was saying was like, for her, it was a reminder that her relationship with our dad changed. For me, having, you know, that was in 2015 that he passed away, and now that it's 2022 and it's been 6 and a half years essentially, and I have gone through so much in the last 6 and a half years that I talk about in the book. But just to touch on briefly, becoming a mother for the first time, my husband being arrested, indicted for his business, losing all of our financial assets, him going to trial, being sentenced to 7 years in prison, that getting overturned at the last minute, giving birth to 3 children in that time, really struggling with body image and depression because of just the weight gain from childbirth. And then to top it all off, my teenage stepson passed away from an accidental drug overdose. So that's really just like a very brief snapshot of just the highlight reel, really the lowlight reel, if you will, of everything that I experienced. And so for me, I believe now with the gift of hindsight and having kind of immersed myself more into this spiritual work, like Sage was saying, kind of starting to calibrate on a higher energy level. For me, what that represented, his act of forgiving his father and changing his life, was the knowing that I needed to discover for myself, or I needed to return to, which was self-forgiveness, self-love. Because when you grow up in a spiritual household like we did, one of the greatest benefits is that you are taught from a young age to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. One of the downsides of growing up in a spiritual household is that you are taught to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. In other words, you don't get in life what you want, you get what you are. And when all of these things were happening, happening to me in my life back to back to back, I could not help but feel as though I must be bad. I must have attracted this. I must have done something in a past life or karmically or energetically to align with all of this bad stuff. And because I had that experience of growing up with, you know, believing that you have to take responsibility for everything that happens, and because all these bad things were happening and I identified myself as attracting them or creating them, I started to carry an enormous amount of shame, of shame and guilt. And so when my dad forgave his father and his life changed, I know that for Sage, that was sort of symbolic of the idea that her relationship with our dad could change and take on a new meaning. And for me, it was symbolic in the sense that I never had to forgive anyone really before, but I especially never had to forgive myself. I never had to deal with shame and feeling as though I somehow was bad, you know, because I never had anything bad really happen in my life before everything started happening at once. And out of that whole experience of learning sort of like self-forgiveness and self-love, I came to understand that I had a choice in this. I could continue to view these things as bad Or I could choose to view them as experiences that I signed up for before I incarnated in this lifetime in order for my soul to grow. Because what Sage and I were sort of raised on was this idea that you come here and your time in your body as Heather or Serena or Sage is, uh, your time in the classroom. And that when you are done with the lessons, you go home. And we sign up, we sign up for these experiences, is what we were raised to believe, so that we can grow. And you don't grow by never being challenged or by living comfortably and safely, but in every single situation or experience that happens in your life, you have that choice to view it as a reason to stay stuck, to stay the victim, to stay feeling bad, to stay carrying shame, to stay carrying guilt, to not forgive yourself or others that have harmed you. Or you have the choice to view all of those things, all of those experiences, as rungs on the ladder that is placed before you at the time of your birth. That is your chance to climb your way up toward God consciousness or divine love or Christ consciousness. But you also don't have to. You also don't have to climb that ladder. And each time something happens and you choose to view it as bad or your fault or somebody else's fault, you know, that's your choice and that's fine, and you can stay there, or you can change the entire way you are looking at everything that has happened to you and say, This is not because I am bad. This is not because I attracted bad things. In fact, these things are not even bad. These things are opportunities for my own personal growth, for my, my own ability to become closer to God. And that took me a very long time to understand that these were not things that were happening to me because I was bad or I deserved them or karmically I was doomed to have them. But instead, these were opportunities to grow. And I really believe that in every person's life, we have that ability to make that choice for anything that happens to us.

I don't want to minimize or mitigate what Sage has gone through in her life or what I have gone through. Everyone has their own challenges and struggles. However, you losing your stepson, to me, on that, you know, losing a child seems to be one of the hardest things that someone can go through. And when you wrote about this, or I don't know, Sage, maybe you wrote the chapter about Serena going through it, I believe is the way it was told in the book. But that whole chapter and that experience and how beautiful it turns out to be was just— it was so emotional to read and so beautiful and loving. And I just, I was so— I'm so proud of you of being able to come through that other side and see the good that is there. Can you tell us a little bit about how you were able to change that experience?

Yes, because, you know, when my stepson passed away, so I met him when he was 10 and I was, you know, immediately in a relationship with his dad. Within 2 weeks of meeting, we were together and have been ever since. And so Mason was a part of my life for the last 9 years of his life, from the time he was 10 to 19. And I did not always have a great relationship with him. He and I were 13 years apart. And so a lot of times we fought more like siblings. And in the process of losing him, the experience I had with his death was so completely different than the experience I had with my dad's death. Because with my dad's death, it was pure sadness and grief that he wasn't here, but there was no aspect of that grief that was based in regret or guilt. When my stepson passed away, and I think this is the case for like any parent or stepparent or grandparent or aunt or uncle that loses a child, essentially, that they love, the guilt is ever-present. Because for me, at least, all I could do was think about the times that I was not good to him. And all I could do was think about the times that I could have been better, and I knew I could have been better in those moments, and I still chose not to. And I was consumed with self-loathing because that's all I could think about when he died was, "I could have been better. I should have been better, and I wasn't." And I honestly will say that the reason I was able to transform that experience from one of extreme pain to one of love was, A, because my husband, my, my stepson's father, who raised him as a single father his entire life, he was so encouraging of reminding me that when my dad died just 2 years before Mason did, that I was aware that in order to connect with my dad from the other side, I had to become like where he was now. I had to connect with him from a place of love because that's where my dad was now, was only a place of love. And my husband was so encouraging in wanting me to remember that Mason would not want me to feel anything but love. For him, from him, and that I was punishing myself unnecessarily. That, you know, I was a good stepmom and that I was focusing on these small things. So my husband offered me such grace in encouraging me to remember that I could connect with Mason even now that he was on the other side, from that place of love. And that if I felt I needed to ask for his forgiveness, I could do that. And so I did. And so I ended up having this crazy dream after I, I wouldn't even allow myself to feel comfortable mourning him because I felt responsible for his death, even though it was an accidental drug overdose and I wasn't even in the same state. I still felt as though I had pushed him away so many times that that overdose was somehow partially my fault. And so I didn't even feel worthy of grieving for him because I felt so responsible. And so I couldn't think about Mason in the place of joy or love because I didn't feel like I deserved to think about him in that place. And it wasn't until a week or two or three weeks after he died of really self-punishing that I had one moment as I was falling asleep where I remembered a really funny experience that he and I had. And as I was falling asleep, I was thinking about him from that place of of joy from this funny memory. And he came to me that night in a dream, and it was definitely a full, real visitation, not just a dream. And I asked him if after he died, if he saw all the mean things I had done as his stepmom in his life. And he said yes. And I asked him if he could forgive me, and he said yes. And I asked him— it's going to make me cry— if he loved me, and he said yes. And I asked him if he knew that I loved him. And he said yes. And at the end of that, at that exchange that he and I had, he said to me, Serena, I just want you to remember one thing. New teachers are emerging. Then he just disappeared. And I really thought— I woke up, I wrote the dream down, I woke my husband up, I told him all about it, and I felt a sense of relief. And I really thought that what that meant was that I was going to become a new teacher on some big stage and that I was emerging. And I had no idea that what that really meant was I was going to continue to go through a lot of difficult experiences that I could choose to look at as teachers, and that those were going to be emerging, emerging in my life. And I will say that Mason needed less time in the classroom than I would have liked, than, you know, my dad needed at his— it always makes me cry when I say this— at his 75 years. That anytime a child or a young person dies, it's so painful because we want them to have the full life. But I had to, I had to get to a point of really believing that his soul just needed the 19 years that he was here, and that he left when he was meant to go, and that I could choose to view my relationship with him as one of perpetual self-loathing and guilt, or as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, teachers that ever emerged in my own life. Because what I now know that I would not have known had I not been Mason's stepmom and lost him is that none of the judging, none of the criticizing, none of the hurtful things, none of those things are things I would ever do again. Instead, if I could have just one day of just loving him from a place of loving really everyone now from a place of no judgment. That's where I'm living, you know, that's where I essentially I'm living my life from now, or at least I'm trying to, or I'm trying to remember to. And Mason gave me that gift. Mason's role in my life was helping me to get to that next ladder of just wanting to come from a place of love more and more and more. To everyone that I meet.

Meet a different guest each week.

Hey, not entertained! Confidence creator.

When you're ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides, and more at no extra cost. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. with over 1,500 corporate guides—real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. When you form your business with Northwest, you get a complete business identity, not a stack of vendors to deal with. That includes registered agent service, business address, operating agreement, domain, website, professional email, phone number, and built-in privacy. With Northwest, your business is set to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Northwest is your one-stop business resource. Build a professional website, stay in good standing with on-time annual filings, get simple explanations of corporate bylaws, and more. With Northwest privacy comes standard. Your data is never sold, and all services are handled in-house under their Privacy by Default promise. Want more later? Get a free account, and Northwest grows with you. Form your business, then get more domains, email addresses, phone numbers, and services anytime you're ready. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/confidencefree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/confidencefree. Quince Free. These days I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. If it's not well made and versatile, it's not worth it to me. That's honestly why I love Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the cuts are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes high-quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100% European linen, 100% silk, and organic cotton poplin. Lightweight cotton cashmere sweaters, perfect for the changing seasons and can't miss seasonal colors and prints for spring. Versatile, well-made pieces that make getting dressed simple. Quints works directly with safe, ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. You're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores, just quality clothing. Quints clothing is consistently rated 4.5 to 5 stars by thousands of customers, real people wearing these pieces every day and loving them. The Quince cotton cashmere sweater has become my favorite go-to. It's light enough for layering, but it feels luxurious. The material is beautiful and it doesn't cost what I thought quality cashmere would. Stop waiting to build the wardrobe you actually want. You don't need a closet full of options. You need pieces that work. Right now, go to quince.com/competence for free shipping and 365-day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it, and you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com/confidence for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com/confidence. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan, it can feel impossible to find a lender you actually trust. Big banks say no. The internet full of sketchy offers with sky-high rates and fine print you can barely read. Whether you need help covering payroll, managing cash flow, or investing in growth, you deserve better. That's why I recommend the small business marketplace Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. It's a free, easy-to-use platform that lets you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders all in one place. What I like is that you don't need perfect credit to get started. No spam, no bait and switch. Just personalized options that fit your business needs. If I had needed this product, it's what I'd use. And here's the best part. For a limited time, when you visit nerdwallet.com/confidence and fill out the no-obligation form, you'll get VIP treatment and talk with a real person who knows all the ins and outs of small business lending. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com/confidence to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc., NMLS ID number 1240038. Confidence.

I ask you to try to find your passion.

It's such a powerful and beautiful experience.

And this book is so full of so many stories around your personal struggles, both of you, your parents. There's so much realness. That's what I so appreciate. Not only the lessons are incredible and not growing up knowing about these lessons, right? It's hard to even process it at first. So Sage, when we're talking about the 11 lessons to understand the quiet urges of your soul, what are some of the important takeaways that you want readers to bring through their life with them?

One that just pops out that just came to me— I mean, I think they're all really important, and we spent a lot of time like going through our whole lives and digging out things that could not just be relatable for us, but for, for everyone. But one that I just thought of when you asked me that was, you know, we've all heard the quote a million times, "There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way," you know. And, um, I've heard that my whole life. It never really resonated with me until one day I had gone through a struggle, nothing like what Serena is talking about, but when I found out that I was pregnant, I was— I had been married for about a year. I had gotten off the pill. I knew what we were doing, but I did not think I was going to get pregnant. At least not, you know, like, I knew that I could, but I didn't think that I would, you know what I'm saying? I don't know. So I, I took a pregnancy test one morning because I was feeling off, and I was pregnant. And I, um, felt immediately really scared and just like, oh my God, what did we do, you know? And then I felt a lot of guilt for having this feeling of of being scared and not just being excited and happy that this new life had chosen me to be its mother. And that I just felt like I should be being happy that this child is inside of me and somehow feeling what I'm feeling. And so it was just this whole tumbling down this road of feeling scared and then guilty about feeling scared. And, you know, I also, during that time, I just bought into all these things that motherhood was going to do that were going to be negative in my life, like that I would— could never have a career again. That was the idea that I thought. I was 29, and Serena and I had written most of this book, but we hadn't finished it completely, and we had kind of fell off the wayside from it. Ironically, when I found out I was pregnant, because I bought into this idea that I could never have a career once my child was born, it made me call up Serena and call up our publishers that we had been in contact with and call up our literary agent and say, we got to do this and we've got to do it now because I have 8 months until my life is just over and I can only be a mom from that point forward. I just thought that this was true, you know. And so because of that, we got our book out there and we finished it while I was pregnant. It didn't get released until, you know, last year, but because this was 3 years ago that I got— that I became pregnant. But, um, but we did finish it during that time and we got our publishing deal and all of that And I just, I bought into this idea that I would never travel again and I would never be able to do anything for myself. And just all these things, that's all I could think about instead of thinking about the opportunities that were before me, that I was going to grow, that, you know, this was a blessing and all of that. I just was only seeing it one-sided at that time. But then fast forward to when my son was born and just, it turns out, not that none of that was true because some of the things that I was thinking about are true. I mean, you don't get a lot of time to yourself. I don't travel unencumbered anymore and things like that. But what I realized was that none of it was anything to be afraid of because it has enriched my life in a different way and I'm just in a different phase in my life. So when I heard this quote again, after I had gone through all of this and my son was born and I was like, actually, I feel a sense of happiness, a sense of happiness that I couldn't imagine for myself pre-having my son. And I heard the quote, you know, there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. And it resonated with me in this whole new way that I had this idea that I really bought into that the only way to happiness for me was going to be to stay without children, traveling, doing whatever I wanted. I live in New York City, just living this life that I thought was so great and that that was the way to happiness for me. And now the road that I was on was no longer the way to happiness and I was no longer going to be happy. But what I actually came to find out was that there is actually no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. Happiness is always available to you in your situation that you're in. My dad always used to say to us, do not process life as you assume it should be. Process life as it is. Because if life is going as we assume it should be, it's easy to be happy because we're like, oh, this is what's supposed to be happening, so I'm having a good time. As soon as the wind changes and we're thrown something that we, we do not assume to be good, and it's not the way that we want our life to go, that's when it becomes challenging. And I read this thing recently that said— well, all it said was, dance with life. And I thought about that. I was on the treadmill and I was like, yeah, you don't— as soon as you start resisting whatever life is bringing you, you're creating more and more resistance. And sometimes you're in situations that you just don't have a choice. So How do you break down that resistance and still find happiness in those ways? And one of them is by no longer assuming that life should be a certain way. You know, when you find yourself in a situation that goes against the grain of what you believe your life needs to be, challenge yourself then to say, how can this serve me now? Because so much in our lives, we look back and we say, oh, this thing that I thought that was going to be so awful, this breakup, this this job loss, you know, whatever. I thought it was going to be the worst thing that ever happened, but it turns out it was a blessing. If you could see that when it's happening, you save yourself, you know, all those years of thinking that this shouldn't be happening, when in reality it might be just a gift packaged in some wrapping that you didn't know at the time. And so when I heard that quote, to wrap it up, there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way, I, I also thought, you know, that's the same way my purpose. Like, I had this idea that because I was pregnant, my only purpose was going to be to be a mom, and that I didn't find my other purpose, my career-type purpose, you know, quote unquote, so I never would. But what I realized is that there also is not just one purpose in our lives, you know, that we go through our life and I think our purpose, it can shift and take on entirely new meanings depending on where we are in our life at that time, and that you can find purpose in everything that you're doing. And if you're 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 and you still don't feel like you found your purpose, to just sort of shift that on its head, because I don't think it's one thing that you're gonna find. I think that you can live a purposeful life every day or most days. Same way with happiness, you know, there is no way to one Purpose. Find your purpose every day. And so I now find purpose in being a mother, while I also find a lot of purpose in, you know, we wrote this book and doing these interviews. And there are other things that I still want to do in my life that I now know that I can do, and that I can have a different purpose every day, every year, every decade of my life. It's like, then when you retire, what is your life? Have no purpose anymore? No, there's just a new type of purpose that you can dive into. Wow, this book and you two—

first of all, I hope you keep writing, and I hope that you will write a book for teenagers because it would be wonderful to be able to empower younger generations earlier on. I'm getting this information at 47. I feel like I totally could have used this when I was 14, like my son is. So I hope you guys will consider writing something for younger people out there. They need this information. It's so good. It's such an easy read, and It's so powerful. It's so relatable for anyone like me that these are new concepts, you know, that you're, you're not used to growing up with a spiritual guide in your life. This is the book for you. And certainly anyone that's ever dealt with any kind of loss, it's incredibly comforting and, and just really, really powerful. Where can people find you, Sage and Serena?

We're both on Instagram. I'm Sage.Dyer. My name is spelled with a J, S-A-J-E, because my parents wanted to be complicated for me. Um, and my website is stagedire.com.

Yeah, I'm on Instagram and Facebook and all the social medias, and we always respond and reply to everybody. So all the typical social media pages you would be able to, um, find us on, like I found you. So, well, I'm so glad you did find me.

The Knowing: 11 Lessons to Understand the Quiet Urges of Your Soul. Please get this book. Had a huge impact on me.

So grateful for both of you. Thank you.

We're so grateful to be here. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

All right, love and all green lights until next time.

I'm gonna make it my own.

I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I'm on this journey with me.