Ep15:You Are 100% Responsible for Your 50%:Meg Tuohey on Relationships, Heartprint, and Inner Wisdom

A heartprint is the unique fingerprint blueprint of who you really are. And our goals match our heartprint. I mean, how beautiful is that? Did I do a good job? Am I happy with my contribution? We come with our own baggage, our own suitcases of pain. So, you know, it takes 100 hours to make a friend. How many hours have you spent cultivating your internal friendship with yourself? I don't want to feel this threat. I don't want this dissonance. I'm a good person and this experience doesn't make me feel like a good person. I want to get rid of the feeling of that. I'm going to make it your problem.

All right, Meg, thank you so much for making the time and sharing your gifts here on Scar Tissue with me and the whole community. It has been such a pleasure learning from your work and your wisdom and all that you're putting out in the world in so many different ways. And right from the beginning, We just, we just kind of, uh, connected. And one of the things that I so appreciated about you was not only how genuine you are, but your blend of both energetic kind of spirituality along with, uh, you know, your study of the psychology and the mind. And so really how you blend these things two together, so beautiful, because quite often you see People can be very heavy in one camp or the other. So with that, welcome to the podcast.

I'm so happy to be here. I feel the same way about you. When we met, I was like, there's a kindred spirit. I like, I like Melissa. I like this conversation. I like the way our brains think quite similarly. That's always a nice thing, and you don't always find that. So I'm very glad to be here.

So share with the listeners who, well, you know, we gave the intro, but share a little bit more about your work, who you be, where you're located, so they understand like the gold that they are hearing today.

You're very generous. So I am a psychologist. I specialize in women in relationships that are in crisis and everything else has failed. And then I work with those women in their relationship, but I never meet their friend, partner, husband. Never. And so I, that's my kind of favorite thing to do from a work perspective. And that's the work I do the most of. And I also have, I'm a new author. I have a book called Heartprint, which is based on the premise that I use to help the leadership of women in their relationships and in their lives. And it's this lovely story I can tell you about in a minute. And I also specialize in neurodivergency. So my favorite things to talk about are women, relationships, neurodivergency, and my book Heartprint. We can go anywhere, and they're my favorite things.

Well, congratulations, and we're going to talk about all of those. But when this comes out, we are so close right now to the, the ship date of your book Heartprint. It will be out when you're listening to this podcast. So right away, let's just tell them, where can they grab their copy of the book?

You can get it from amazon.com and from Barnes Noble. We're an ebook, we're an audiobook. And we are so excited about it. We've got the physical copy as well. So I would love for you to read it. I'd love for you to know my heroine. Her name is Ellie. And you'll love her. You'll love watching her life and all the things she's learned because it is a lovely representation of what it's like to be a human and be struggling in this human suit that we all live in.

Yeah. And I always say that. I think sometimes I have to stop and remind myself like, I'm just figuring this out. Like, I'm just in my human outfit, like wearing some skin, trying to figure out what I'm doing down here.

It's heavy. I know. It's like, yeah. Yes, I agree. Yeah.

Yeah. And one of the things I think is so beautiful too, I mean, we actually met through, uh, your work and your mission. So you trusted my company, The Brand Lab, to build out, you know, your social media and your marketing, and then with your book launch. And it is such a privilege to be trusted with something that is so deeply so sacred and so deeply yours. And watching this launch come to life and the amount of women that are signing up for the workshops and purchasing the books has just been astounding. Do you ever sit back and look at how many lives you're impacting?

I do and I don't. So I am quite an ever-moving-forward person. I am relentless is a word that might be used to describe my heart print. And that is like a good thing in many ways, and it has its shadow side as well. And so when I do stop, it usually is because someone has pointed something out to me. And that's a moment where I actually kind of allow myself the gift of dropping into the gift someone is giving me. So it feels like it's my heart print to do my work and leave this contribution. So I'm very all in and I just want to do more and more and more. And I'm a doer, right? And what you're describing is the being part, which I'm maybe less good at. And so when it does come to me and when someone stops me at a live event or talks to me on one of my calls or sends me an email or writes me a DM or a comment, that is when I, receive. And giving and receiving are two sides of the figure eight, right? And that receiving part, I got one just yesterday actually, and I was having a hard time with some other things. And I said to her, thank you so much for that gift. That energy is going to be put straight into this hard thing I'm trying to figure out where I'm running low on energy. And I am so glad to be a part of your life. I'm so privileged to have this intimate experience of teaching or working with you. Thank you for the energy it took for you to gift that back to me. I'm going to invest that energy in myself and in myself in a way that allows me to continue to serve.

Mm, so beautiful. Yeah, you always come from a place of service. I wanna get into helping the listener understand how you, uh, really define or, or what you consider to be a heartprint, how they can understand theirs. Obviously there's gonna be more of that in the book, but we'll get into a little, a little bit of that. However, I wanna pause for a moment because you spoke into something that reminded me of a practice I did when I first started. And I, I have a, an interesting mix here on this podcast, Meg, because I started in mindset and grief, as you know, in holistic health. My first iteration on the podcast was called Grief, Guts, and Green Smoothies. And so it was very different. And so it had that mostly women who are really listening around improving their health, their mindset, healing their hearts. And then as I moved into entrepreneurial journey, as you know, so much of our stories, it then shapes our entrepreneurial journey. But it was very challenging. I didn't really set out to build what I built. And I think that can be common. But I was so insecure, I deleted my first few posts on social media. Yeah, I would put it up and then take it down. That was too much. And I would envision like this person's sister's cousin's friend is talking about it, you know, just these wild stories. But what I started, and if this helps any listener who can relate, was a hype folder. And so anytime I would get a DM or text or something, someone saying, hey, this helped me in my life, particularly when I was talking around grief, which was so vulnerable and so uncomfortable, uh, I just put it in this little folder. And then on those days where I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't want to record the pod, I didn't want to do it, I'd pull that out and be like, okay, this is making a difference. And so I'm glad that you were able to pause in that with the gift you got from somebody reaching out yesterday. And maybe anyone listening, maybe this is your cue to make a hype folder. Maybe it's your cue to tell somebody the impact they've made in your life on social media or in a text, because we're so quick to take time to complain Uh, and we're less frequent about giving the, uh, the gift of reflecting back what somebody's provided us. So a little detour there. I do a lot of detours. However, your book Heartprint, when I heard you speak about it, it was like, ah, I never heard it articulated that way. Can you explain the concept of heartprint and how somebody can begin to figure out what their heartprint might be?

Hmm, I'd love to. So we start with the fact that we're all humans and you and I open this podcast by recognizing that we're in a meat suit. We are in a suit made of meat and we are down on this planet and we are trying to figure it out and we're growing and evolving. So we start with the idea that we are humans. Now the next idea that I need to connect us to is something I call our wise woman or our good man. And it is the idea that within all of us, there is inner wisdom. And when we build the relationship with our human self towards our wise woman, we can access the inner wisdom that guides us. Like, I'm not sure we should go that direction. Or I feel like you did a really good job here. Or that sounds really hard. It sounds like you're having a really hard day. Let me give you a hug. Like that inner wisdom that lives in us all of us have, and most of us have varying levels of access. So all of you will be all like, I know what that is, I don't see her very often, or I know what that is, I see her most days, or I know what that is, I see her every day. That's really cool. So it is this inner wisdom. Now, in order for you to be able to translate your heart print, we need you to be connected to your wise woman. Because she is the conduit. So when we're thinking about a heart print, a heart print is the unique fingerprint blueprint of who you really are. So if we imagine that you're a seed and you are going to grow into a full expression of self, no two seeds are alike. So if we make you and me identical triplets, okay, so there's three of us now, mythical. I was like, who's the third? I know, it's mythical. So we are identical triplets, my love. And in that triplet experience, we share the same DNA 'cause we're identical. We are growing up in the same home, we're going to the same schools, and we have access to the same culture and the same context. And all three of us are going to be incredibly, entirely different. And we will have similarities as all the humans do. And our seed will bloom into different plants or bushes or flowers or whatever metaphor serves you best than the other one. Even though we share so much that is the same. And so it is for every human. Now, when you get to be 65 and older, Erik Erikson, a famous psychosocial researcher, says you spend 65, the age of 65 years onwards, looking back at your life and you say, did I do a good job? That's what you work on for the last section of your life. Did I do a good job? Am I happy with my contribution? Now the gap that humans have is that when you're in a human suit, and you're not accessing your wise woman, you are living in a human condition where it is much easier to be distressed, angry, upset, hurt. It is much easier to forget that life can be good. It is much easier to flip or fall into blame or defensiveness, criticism, contempt, stonewalling. Denying, blaming, justifying. It is much easier to do those things. Our wise woman is a type of physiology that allows us to be in head and mind coherence. And in that coherence, we are able to access and translate our heart print, which is unique to us. No one else can do it. Sometimes our parents and loved ones can see parts of us, but we are the main conduit to our heart print. So what we're really looking to do is to cultivate our wise woman, good man bond with ourselves so that we can feel into and translate what we're here to do so that our internal life matches our external world so that when we're lovely and old and we look back, we say, "I lived a life that belonged to me. I'm proud of my legacy. I did it. I had my human, I had my ups and downs. I didn't always get it right." and I lived as congruently as I could. That's the best that I got. I— that's my life. I can resolve that I did good. And that's why heartprint is so important, because all of us deserve to live a life that matches us authentically, and all of us can take action immediately to live like that. And when we do, we just feel better. That congruence allows us to have access to contentment, to satisfaction, to knowing what the next right thing is, and to be able to take steps towards our goals. And our goals match our heartprint. I mean, how beautiful is that?

That is so beautiful. I mean, a number of things I was pulling out from there as you were speaking. One is that heartprint is that soul's purpose, almost. I'm hearing like your, like your goals, your legacy, what it is that you are authentically and uniquely designed to, to do while you're here. And looking back, and, um, I just want to pause. I, I've worked with people around the idea of regret quite often, as I'm sure you have. Uh, oftentimes if somebody's hearing this and they're thinking, well, I'm not, I don't know, or I'm not there yet, or I have regrets, like I love how you said you can change it in any moment, in any one decision, because if you stay in that rearview mirror and that looking back and that any of that, like, well, I didn't do this the way I wanted to, like, no, no, no, it's a new moment, right? It's a new day. You just continue building direction. So I really, I appreciated how you pointed out that it doesn't matter where you are on this path, right, of humanness, at any moment you can just start to reconnect to that. And I want, I want to ask you how you might start to do that. But it's something that came for me. I was laughing and I was like, well, you know, I'm 42 years old. Uh, in some ways you feel like you have so much time left, in some ways you feel like time is, you know, evaporating. Um, and other times I look back and I see, you know, uh, 20-somethings like crushing it and doing these things, and I'm like, I was, I was not doing that when I was in my 20s, right? And like, I think just, you just gotta, you just gotta laugh and just like trust it is your own heart print, it is your own journey, uh, and But then I also get excited when I think about like 0 to 20, none of us know what we're doing. Like we're just doing exactly what we're told to do for the most part, right? And then for me, 20 to 40 was like I was knocked down, smashed, you know what I mean? And I was like the rebuilding. And I'm like, oh, now it's this. Now I got like 40 to 60 to go figure out because you said 60 to 65. And I'm like, all right, so now I'm in that. What am I doing? What's my contribution? What's my legacy? That's so interesting to kind of break it down that way. If somebody doesn't feel like they're clear on their heartprint, how would you suggest, where would they start?

Hmm, I think we start with something really simple. We start with, do you have access to your wise woman or your good man? And in that question lies a whole lot of complicated pieces of the puzzle that is also quite simple, as all complicated things can be. So when I say, are you able to access your wise woman? What I'm really asking you is not 100% of the time, because we do not do perfectionism here because that is not real. We are looking for 80%, just fair warning, friends. How often are you able to access that heart, mind, spirit coherence where you're downregulated? You could still be in flow and flying. But your physiology is stable and you are able to be in a space of what some might call flow. And you are able to be able to connect with self and attune. What do I need? Where am I? What does this mean to me? What is my next right thing? How do I feel about it? What's important to me here? What's my outcome? That is what it looks like in your wise woman. And you're in conversation with that wise part of yourself. And you're able to see your thinking and your feelings, and those parts of you are not dominating because those dominant parts are more of your human self. And our human self is so flawed, and there's almost no way to get around it. We're not trying to not be a flawed human because the reality is there's no such thing of a perfect human. We are this incredible mix of strengths and development areas. And we're ever evolving and ever moving and ever in new contexts that require us to keep growing. And so really what we're circling is, do I have access to my inner wisdom? Can I relate to and connect with my inner wise woman? And can the two of us create a life that really matches us? That is our first main step, because she is the one that accesses and translates the blueprint and says, maybe we'll go this way. It feels like what's important to you is that we have this outcome. What's our first right step towards that?

That's beautiful. And I love that it's just broken down because it can be very overwhelming of like, well, what's my life purpose? You know, you know, what am I supposed to do? Like, I think about that all the time. And like, am I fulfilling leading legacy? Am I— what am I supposed to do? Are the lessons I'm supposed to learn. It's like, okay, what is the next thing, right? What is the next thing? So thank you for speaking, um, for speaking into that. Now, your work primarily is, as you shared, uh, is working with women who are in crisis in their relationship. What do you see as, uh, and I think it's all related, right, the individual and the self and the heart print, but now as we're going outside of ourselves into relationship What patterns or blockages do you see? And I'd be curious to know if you see similar blockages in an individual accessing their heart print and a couple accessing their highest elevation as a couple, right? But I'm curious as to know, and maybe, maybe they're separate or maybe they're similar, what blockages do you see in someone accessing their heart print and/or the highest level of the relationship?

Yeah, it's a beautiful question. And, you know, we choose our loved ones and our loved ones choose us mainly because we're meant to grow together. We're meant to evolve together. And sometimes that relationship lasts a, you know, a reason, a season, or a lifetime. We never quite know. And however long it lasts, doesn't make it any less or more valuable. Does that make sense?

100%.

So when I'm thinking about, yeah, when I'm thinking about a relationship, I'm thinking about 3 circles. And let's make it you and me, Melissa. So there's me and then there's you, and then we have a shared circle that we're in charge of together. That's our relationship. And I am 100% responsible for my 50% contribution to our relationship. And you are 100% responsible for your 50% contribution to our relationship. And then those other circles that belong just to me and just to you, that's my life's work. That's my heartprint. That's my wise woman. That's my essence. That's my job. And sometimes I might ask you to help me by meeting you in the middle of our circle. Does that make sense? And sometimes you might ask me to help you by coming to the middle of our circle. What I find the most tricky for us as humans is we are flawed, and so we come into any relationship— except maybe if we're a baby, right? Babies come in pretty fresh and clean and pure. They haven't had access to the world just yet. That's why we are like, oh my gosh, you know, it's So easy to love a baby, right? The human experience though doesn't allow for that to last. We get hurt, we have pain, we go through confusion, and we have questions then that we need to answer for ourselves, like a quest. And that is a bit of a part of our blueprint and why we're here. So our heart print, and also we're feeling into our heart print to see where we want to grow to. And in the setting of the goal of growing into that person, we must become a version of ourselves that can access that, which means we're gonna start growing through things that are challenging. So we take that human container, that's my circle and your circle, and you are growing and asking your own questions and healing your own pain. And I'm asking my questions and healing my pain and being, both of us are inherently flawed. And then we want to build a life together where we get to learn how to receive influence from each other, learn how to trust each other, learn how to stay by each other when life is tough, learn all of those things. And we come with our own baggage, our own suitcases of pain. And so it is just a very tricky thing to be a human in a relationship. And is it possible? To have a successful one? Sure. And ultimately, in order to be successful, you're going to have a lot of unsuccess, a lot of distress, a lot of questions you can't answer, a lot of things that go wrong, a lot of bumps in the rug, a lot of stones in the shoe. Because we come from these two circles. I am imperfect, you are imperfect, and we are trying to make a life together and there's going to be things that I mess up and you mess up and then I blame you for messing up and then you're like, hey lady, remember that thing that you messed up? And it's just like very easy to be in that human space of getting stuck in those downward spirals, in those very real pain points. And that is part of our journey of life that we're able to figure that out and have some resolution. In terms of growing into someone that can live a life with mastery in relationship with self and mastery in relationship with some others, maybe not all the others. That's probably too perfectionistic.

Right. Yes, I love how you keep reinforcing the humanness and we have flaws and that's okay. You know, we hear flaws and we think bad, right? Good or bad. I remember for myself, eliminating the words good or bad was a huge part of my own kind of development journey. Like, it doesn't have to be good or bad, you know. It doesn't have to be right or wrong, you know. And, and of course there are going to be places in which that may fit, but we can be so quick that grief— for example, for me, this was a part of it— grief was bad because it was pain and it was uncomfortable and you're sad and you're not supposed to be sad and you're not supposed to be uncomfortable. And then I realized like, well, this actually isn't bad. It doesn't have to be bad. It can be uncomfortable. It can be unpleasant. It could be not my first choice of my experience right now, but I don't need to make it bad. I don't need to make it wrong. I just have to like let it be and feel it and work with it. And I think we are so quick to make wrong imperfection. We're so quick to make wrong discomfort, uncomfortable feelings, unpleasant feelings. And like, truthfully, it's all part of the experience. And we wouldn't experience joy on such a high level if we didn't experience pain. Or discomfort in the other way. I mean, I believe that I, I experienced more joy than I probably ever knew possible, even though I was a happy person, because my willingness to go to the depths of my pain and like just be in that. And then you have so much more gratitude for the joy on the other side and you're like, this, this is great. You know, like, this is so good. Life is wonderful. And I, I just wanna encourage anybody listening because, you know, whether it's in your business, whether it's in your relationship, whether it's in your personal life, taking the pressure off of it being good or bad, right or wrong, and allowing yourself to just be in the experience of what it is. To your point, maybe in that relationship it's those bumps. It— they're just going to be there. And instead of making it wrong, can we just lean into it, learn from it, and grow from it?

You know, I could not agree more. And what you're describing, that human experience of dichotomy, right? Right or wrong, in or out. Left or right, yes or no. That type of thinking is a second tier of thinking. It's called concrete thinking. And the type of thinking that you're describing where you're like, let's not put it in categories, let's let it breathe, let's let it be more complicated and nuanced, that's called abstract reasoning. And the thing about concrete thinking is when we're under pressure in the human experience, when things hurt us, when we do not understand, so we're in confusion and pain, when we are carrying those suitcases of pain, abstract reasoning is almost impossible to do until you've processed that pain and confusion. So that pain needs to be alchemized where you're taking the depth of what it is you're carrying and transmuting it so that it's processed, it's organized, it's meaningful, and it allows you to have some post-traumatic growth. That's when it's much easier to be able to say, oh, I'm in pain today, I know what to do with it. I know how to organize that within myself. I have a framework for it. Because you'll still be tempted to go into good or bad, right or wrong, yes or no, in or out when you're triggered. And then if you have done the work, you can say, oh, I'm in that human space where I'm really triggered and I've dropped into all or nothing thinking, black or white thinking, concrete thinking. Aha, I know where I am. Okay, I need to like do a self-hug. I need to be like, where's my wise woman? I need some kindness. I need something comforting. I need it now. And then when I've reset, I'm not making myself wrong. I then will remember how I look at grief, how I look at pain, how I look at confusion is that it's this complicated experience that is an 'and.' It is painful and it allows me to learn. It is painful and it honors someone I love. It is painful and I learned this thing. And there is some relief in that. And do you know who's leading that process? Your beautiful wise woman who's able to translate that heart print of yours that wants to grow and bloom into the next iteration. So I love that example.

Yeah, I have another question, but I want to close the loop on a couple things you just said that I think are so important and reinforce to, you know, whoever may be listening, um, or sharing this episode, is that, uh, these, these skill sets and, and these, uh, concepts and these ways of thinking and ways of operating apply beyond just self or relationship. They apply to your business, they apply to your relationship with with yourself. Of course, it really applies everywhere. I always say entrepreneurship is just humanship. It's just humanship. One, how are we just relating as humans, right? And two, you want to grow that next level in business, you got to grow at the next level as a human. And, and that's just how it— and, and so this will impact how you lead, how you react or don't react, how you show up for your team, how you show up for your community, how you show up for your mission. And so this is just so widely applicable. I don't want anyone to overlook that. But you mentioned two things. One, one of my favorite words is 'and,' right? It doesn't have to be one or the other, this or that. Oh, that was an absolute game changer, you guys. If you take away one little nugget, where can you use that word? It doesn't have to be, you know, progressive or uncomfortable. It can be progressive and uncomfortable. Yeah, it could be a number of things. And two, something I often think of myself as doing, and I— for me, I'm curious if you've done this. I visualize myself watching myself. So when I can feel myself doing that thing where I'm like, oh, I'm on— this is no bueno, this is not the best Melissa, right? I almost just like zoom out and watch myself like a cartoon. Like, here I am in this like human meat suit running around, and like, okay, what is happening to her? Okay, she's hurt, or she feels insecure, or she's scared, right? Or she's feeling this from the past and now she's doing this. And like, I almost watch it as if it's like a I don't know, a TV show or cartoon or something. And that allows me to process it in a way where I don't get so lost in it. Now I can't get there right away. Oftentimes for me it's writing or journaling as if I'm watching myself. But I don't know if there's actually a technique around that. But for me, I just always talk about witnessing, witnessing.

Oh, I love witnessing as a word. And I would add to that that what you're describing is the 10,000-foot view. So you've got a tangle in the human form, right? If you want to partner with your wise woman, we go up 10,000 feet and we look down and we say, oh, that looks a bit tricky. That looks confusing. You know, no wonder you're feeling very human right now. Anyone in that context for the first or second or 12th time that hasn't resolved it would be feeling that distress. Got it. Okay, so that 10,000-foot view is so helpful because it's changing your perspective. In the human experience, we look at things, and when it's hard, it is like very present and very close, and it is life and death. And that is just our brain trying to keep us safe. And so what do we do? Well, we say, I don't want to feel this threat, I don't want this dissonance. I'm a good person and this experience doesn't make me feel like a good person. I want to get rid of the feeling of that. I'm make it your problem. So Melissa, you did this to me. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't feel like this. Or I'll give it to myself. Meg, if you weren't so... you wouldn't be in this... and look at you, you're doing it again... And neither of those approaches actually resolve anything. They're both what we would call an away move. A toward move is to do the 10,000-foot view and meet yourself with witnessing and validation. And say, "Oh honey, this is a hard moment. Let's do some processing because we gotta figure this out and you are doing a really good job. And also this is a confusing time. I wonder what we might do to look after you, to solve it, to figure out what the gaps are and to figure out what the outcome is that you'd be comfortable or happy with." And that type of meta thinking is the type of inner wisdom our wise woman has. And then she translates your values, your heartprint, so that you are moving towards the answer that resonates more deeply with how you see yourself and what you're here to do. So that's what we call a towards move. You're able to move towards the life and outcome you actually want instead of away from by coping with the distress of the immediate human situation.

Hmm. I love that. Just the, the towards or the away and how quick we can be to look at someone and say, well, you made me feel this way, or you did this. Or to your point, self-talk. Well, you suck so much. You're doing this, you're doing this, you did this again. Look at you doing this again. And neither one is productive as our away moves. And I do think, you know, You know, really understanding compassionately when we do that, we're seeking to escape the discomfort and the pain in that moment. And it's like, I used to coach it like a, like I would, uh, I would say it was like having a hot potato, right? That trigger, that uncomfortable moment comes up and it's like you're holding that hot potato and we're so quickly, we just wanna throw it, right? You do this, right? Or you suck again, right? Or whatever it may be. And it's like, can we actually like just sit there and just like, This is so uncomfortable. I don't like it, but I'm gonna like sit here and let it cool off. I know one of the power, one of the things that I, I did at This Helps Listener, and I'm sure you coach on and, and practice similar things with the people you support, was just the power of the pause. Hmm. I always would tell myself, you never regret waiting to respond, Melissa. You never regret waiting to cool off. You never regret this. And Uh, that was something in really learning to train myself to pause, because so often when we don't do that pause and that zoom out and that witnessing, we actually create more damage than the actual storm itself. And now we go into damage control and then storm cleanup instead of just storm cleanup. Now we're also in damage control from the mess that we then created afterwards because we didn't zoom out. And so what powerful way to simplify it into the away or the towards.

Yes. Yeah. And the bit that you just brought in is the other piece of this puzzle, which is the choice point. So all of us will get to a moment where we have a choice point. Am I responding in my wise woman or my good man, or am I responding in my human? And we have a choice before we do the thing. And so what you're saying is slow it down. And I would agree. Slow it down. That though, we don't want to try and make you wrong if you can only do that 80% of the time, because 80% is good enough. You're allowed to be a human. You're allowed to not be able to get it right all the time. We do our best, and as long as we reflect, we learn, we take responsibility, and we grow, that's good enough. It's good enough.

I'm so glad that you keep reminding me and everybody listening of that, because in fact, I think the pressure to not be human and the pressure to be 100% creates more, uh, ripple effect and damage than just allowing that human experience. You know, it can be, uh, it can revolt, you know, it can go in other ways.

So yeah, well, let's also connect it to something that you also said, because you were like, I've got to learn how to tolerate the distress of that hot potato. Yeah, that is very hard for a human You're going to need your wise woman to help you with that. You're going to need that because your human is like, danger, threat, get it off me, make it like, and that is reasonable. That is that reptilian part of that beautiful brain of yours trying to keep you alive. Only the threat is psychological, not a lion on the savanna. And so we don't want to hold the distress of that because we might die. That's what our brain worries about. So it is just doing its job, which maybe doesn't match 2026, right? Because we're not at threat of lions and tigers and bears 99.9% of the time. Our threats are psychological. So how do we build the tolerance for the distress of being human and hold that hot potato? That is what we've got to learn the muscle to build.

Mm, so powerful. Meg, I know we're almost, you know, at our time here, and I want to let everyone know where they can find you. I feel like we could go on for part 2 and 3 and 4 and 5, but before we, before we let the listener know where they can find you, where they can get the book, just in all of your work, what's one thing that you wish more people, um, were able to access or maybe understand, or you want to share with people that might prevent them from being in that crisis situation in relationships, right? Oftentimes when women come to you, they're in crisis mode already. What's something that you think, uh, just one thing, whatever feels the most, you know, alive or present for you right now— we'll trust, uh, that you wish that more people could implement or integrate that might prevent that crisis moment?

I wish for all the humans to build this relationship with their good man, their wise woman. I wish for them to, to be known and understood and not alone and cared for by an internal voice that is kind and trustworthy. Because when we go within and we're met with kindness and leadership and a metaphorical arm around ourselves, it is much easier to cope with the human suits that we're in. And so if that is the one thing you take from today, Melissa and I, we have really knocked it out of the park because we are inviting you to connect with your wise woman, your good man, and in that connection to start to strengthen it. So, you know, it takes 100 hours to make a friend. How many hours have you spent cultivating your internal friendship with yourself? Probably not 100.

I love that. I didn't know that. 100 hours to make a friend.

I love that. Like, what a great relationship, you know?

A good friend.

Yeah.

Yes, of course.

A good friend. And we want a good friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not like the people I board a plane, we're like best friends after, you know? Never see them again. All right, Meg, thank you so much. I don't think you just knocked it out of the park. I think you hit a grand Lam, thank you for the value, the wisdom, the grace, um, and just like the pure love that you have for humanity, you know, and for like really the, the sacredness of humanity and our human experiences. So remind the listeners where they can find you and where they can find your book. We will link everything in the show notes, but if they're watching or listening, they get to hear your voice in sharing that.

Uh, thank you so much. You can find me @MegTuiOfficial on all of the major socials. And you can listen to Wisdom Stripes where I'm talking with people about eldership and how they have walked through fire and what they've distilled in terms of their lived, learned wisdom. And I'm very glad to have Melissa on there as a guest coming up. She'll be on our show. So that's really exciting. So if you're looking for real life examples or ways in which to say, what does it look like to be in your wise woman or your good man? Wisdom Stripes is full of the variety of people who have access to that hard-earned wisdom. And therefore they have that congruence between themselves, their wise woman or good man, and their heart print. And that is sometimes really nice because you can see what it looks like in someone else and then test that for yourself. Because remember, it's gonna take time to build this and that is really normal. So you can find me on Wisdom Stripes and you can find me @MegTuiOfficial everywhere else. And I have had the best time. Thank you for having me today, Melissa.

Thank you so much, Meg. We appreciate it. Everyone check out, we'll check, we'll link everything below. Go find it, grab yourself a copy of the book. And Meg, thank you so much. We'll see you soon.

We'll see you later, alligator.