This week we meet Emily Soccorsy, our last amazing co-host! Emily demonstrates how she lives life emotion-first; she shares deeply personal stories, and the invaluable lessons she’s learned from grief and perseverance.

Emily also shares with us her wisdom around the power of emotions & why our beliefs shape our business. 

We’ll learn how telling stories has shaped her varied career, and how being driven can be more about patient persistence than non-stop grinding. Don’t miss this beautiful deep dive with our final co-host!

Join us as we discuss: 

• 23:50 The unconscious standards we set for ourselves, and why success won’t help us understand them.
• 29:43 How the sharing of embodied sensations can help us find our people.
• 31:15 The important roles of failure and forgetting in personal growth.
• 35:11 Breaking down the false distinctions between the values in our personal and business lives.

Resources mentioned in the show:

• Parker J. Palmer - “What is a Divided Life?” (video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCvIZpMo8aY 
• The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18144590-the-alchemist 
• Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, by Elizabeth Lesser https://www.elizabethlesser.org/broken-open 
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamont https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/97395/bird-by-bird-by-anne-lamott/ 
• The Chief Inspector Gamache series, by Louise Penny https://www.gamacheseries.com/ 
• Podcasts by researcher and storyteller Brené Brown https://brenebrown.com/podcasts/ 
• Podcast “Everything Happens with Kate Bowler” https://katebowler.com/podcasts/
• Podcast “Design Matters with Debbie Millman” https://www.designmattersmedia.com/ 

Learn more about Sonya & Emily: 

—> Sonya Stattmann is the host & creator of Reclaiming Ourselves™. She is a TEDx & corporate speaker and has been working with leaders around personal development for the last 22 years. She teaches workshops & offers small group programs around emotional intelligence, transformational & embodied leadership, and energy management. You can find more about her here:

Website: https://www.sonyastattmann.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonyastattmann/

—> Emily Soccorsy [So-KOR-SEE], co-host of Reclaiming Ourselves, believes branding is how people experience what you believe. As owner and CEO of Root + River, a brand strategy team, Emily uses her talents to help leaders uncover the foundations of their brand: message, audience, differentiators, and overall brand strategy. She’s also an author, speaker, poet, artist, and mom of two daughters (and a 130-pound Great Pyrenees named Archie) and partner to her husband of over 20 years. You can find more about her here:

Website: https://rootandriver.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilysoccorsy/ 

What you can do next:

1. For more episodes, opportunities and information on the hosts, visit http://reclaimingourselvespodcast.com/
2. Love the podcast? Get episodes delivered to your inbox with articles related to the topics we talk about. You can sign up at http://reclaimingourselvespodcast.com/
3. Need a little weekly magic? Sign up for Worthy Love Notes & weekly affirmations here https://www.sonyastattmann.com/self-worth-affirmations-2/  

Thank you for being you. We are so honored to have you as a listener!

Helping someone to connect to their emotions

or to reconnect to themselves.

There's nothing more important than that, right?

Like, and the seeds that we plan in all the different ways, they're so powerful.

Right.

And I think sometimes what we've been taught and particularly

women, you know, we think we have to make such a huge impact.

We have to affect the millions.

We have to like reach everybody, but it, the power is in the seats, right?

The power.

In the little ways that we touch people, where they have more self

awareness, they have more connection it's even in our vibration and presence.

Like when we have awareness and we enter into someone's vibrational

field, they feel more awareness like it's this, there's so much

profoundness in the way we're able to touch people in such simple ways.

Yes.

powerful.

Yeah.

It's it's like how you behave in a conversation or one of

my favorite things to do.

I learned this from a friend of mine who, who said it to me and I was

like, oh my gosh, I'm using that.

is if you have a friend who's kind of getting down on themselves or being

critical of themselves, even in just like in an offhand comment, I try to

say, don't talk about my friend that way.

I had, it said to me, it brought me up short and I was like, wow.

Okay.

If you know there is something deep inside of you

that is yearning to be seen, to be known and to have expression.

If there's something you need to reclaim and remember; maybe it's your

power or your purpose, your gifts.

This is the podcast for you.

Welcome to reclaiming ourselves.

I'm your host, Sonya Stattmann and I'm honored to have three amazing

co-hosts Laura Shook-Guzman Belinda Haan And Emily Soccorsy here with me

on this journey to self discovery every week, we're gonna help you unravel

and remember what it means to reclaim yourself to own who you are to recognize

your innate worth and greatness.

Now, this podcast is a deep dive into self-development healing and empowerment.

So hold on.

Here we go.

Just a quick note.

Before we dive into today's episode, these initial episodes

are introduction episodes.

One of the reasons I chose to have co-hosts instead of guests, was

to give you the opportunity to get to know us and to spend the topic

episodes talking about the topics.

So today's special episode is a deep dive into one of the co-hosts stories.

It's gonna give you context for why we are here and what we

have to contribute this season.

Enjoy getting to know us.

Thank you for listening.

And if you wanna learn more, be sure to visit reclaimingourselvespodcast.com

Hey, welcome back to reclaiming ourselves.

I'm so excited today because I get to introduce one of our co-hosts

Emily, and I think that you are gonna love her as much as I do, and I'm

really excited for her to share her story and just more about her self.

And so, hi, Emily.

Welcome.

Hi, Sonia.

I'm so happy to be here with.

I'm so happy to be here as well with you.

So I thought I always kind of, with these introduction episodes, like to start with

the basics, cuz everyone kind of wants to know, you know, that basic information.

Where do you live?

Do you have a kid, a partner?

You know, tell us a little bit about where you are right now.

Yeah, sure.

So I live in Scottsdale, Arizona.

So in the Phoenix area and yes, I have a partner of 20 years.

We just hit our 20th anniversary.

I think we've been together for 24 years.

He was telling me the other day and I don't do I'm.

Don't do great with sequential, like years and like pointing fingers at what year it

was, but he assured me that's what it was.

And then I have, we have two daughters together and they're 19 and 15, so

it's a very female dominated household.

However, my husband is.

I have a beautiful blend of masculine and feminine, and we have

a lot of sports on all the time.

So I think it kind of balances the energy pretty well.

And he is outnumbered sometimes, but we try to make him feel comfortable.

It's the same in our household.

I totally get that.

That's so beautiful.

And man teenagers, right?

Two teens.

Yeah.

It's very, you know, it's nice on this side of.

Uh, On this side of it, what I found that was the most challenging of the

teen years was like 11 and a half to.

so that's holding that held true with the first, the second feels

like, you know, she's, she's on the down slide of like the challenge.

But still, I think once they get a little bit more freedom in terms of driver's

license, where we live, that's when she can go out and drive, that really seemed

to change the dynamic a little bit.

So if you're in that space, if one of our listeners is in that

space, like it, it will get better.

I feel you deep breaths.

I know how it feels to be like the dumbest person in the world, according

and the most embarrassing human being according to your children.

So I feel you

Parenting is so hard.

I'm sure we'll talk about that lot on those podcasts, but you know, it

is like it's the hardest job in the world, the most rewarding, but the

it is.

I completely agree and teaches you the most about yourself in my.

It absolutely does.

Like hard lessons.

Yeah.

really hard lessons.

Well, and then while we're here, why don't we talk a little bit about,

you know, your work, maybe, maybe your background, how you kind of

came to be where you are today?

I think that's such a great start to kind of dive into what

you've been doing all these

Sure.

Yeah, sure.

So I'll bookmark where I am today.

So today I'm the co-founder and CEO of root and river, and

we're a brand strategy team.

So I lead that team and provide brand strategy messaging languaging, but

really we dive into the soul of a brand and brands are really how other

people experience, what you believe.

And so we help dig into what we call the soil of soul and extract

all the goodness and then refine it into beautiful evocative language.

So that's where I sit today in my career.

I'm 45 and I've started my career initially as an English teacher in Japan.

And that was my first job after college.

And that only lasted a year

we can we can go into that.

it?

No, I didn't.

I struggled.

It was a challenging year.

It was a growthful year.

It was a richer, but it was not necessarily fun.

It was really challenging, but I learned so much.

So that's why I started my career.

And then I came back to the states.

When I returned to the states, I was a journal.

I became a journalist and I was a journalist for eight and a half years.

And love that.

So I started as a cover reporter covering education and then worked

my way all the way up to a publisher of a group of community, weekly

newspapers here in the Phoenix area.

And then in between that I've done everything.

Everything has always been language and kind of strategy related.

So I've done PR I've done ghost writing, I've done social media

strategy and management and every kind of form of content.

I've.

Put my fingers on and in.

And I really feel like I've been a writer my whole life

just in different iterations.

I love that.

And you know, what's so great about podcasting too.

Is it in, in a way translates that, right?

Like we're

able to express ourselves, you know, in the same way that we express our writing.

Cuz I feel like I've been a writer.

Most of my.

Well we're able to do that in a little bit of a different way, but it's,

it's still a, a similar expression.

Yeah, it's all about telling stories.

And I often say like when I was a journalist, I really learned everything.

Like the, I feel like that was the formation of my career and my my work.

My vocation or vocation was to learn how to listen, ask good questions, look at

a story from all different parts, and then hold that incredible responsibility

of telling somebody else's story.

For them.

And that was pretty formative um, terrifying at moments.

And, you know, I had often had people, you know, yelling at me as the editor for this

story or that story that they didn't like.

But I really, that I, I felt like that that timeframe really give me,

gave me kind of all the tools that he needed to, to do what I am today and

served me well at various points in my.

Yes.

And you know, that's actually one of the reasons why I'm so excited to have

you on this podcast, because I feel like you really are so good at asking

good questions, pulling on threads.

Offering different perspectives.

And I think it's gonna be so rich for the podcast to have your voice and your

perspective, cuz you just have you're so wise, but you also pull out these very

honest and real answers and questions.

So I'm really looking forward to, to all that, that offers a season.

Yeah, thank you.

I love any opportunity to ask that provoking questions

and engage conversation.

So I'm glad to have the opportunity,

Yeah, I love that.

So tell me a little bit more about you.

Like, if you were to describe yourself, what are some of maybe

this two to three adjectives that you might use to describe yourself?

Or, you know, how would you kind of share with the audience

who you fundamentally are?

Hmm, such a great question.

I think the first adjective and I I've written about this in the past that

it was not meant positively when it was first applied to me was emotional

Mmm.

It is a positive word to me and I'm working.

Giving it a positive connotation in the broader discussion, but I'm definitely,

I live life the way I describe it.

I live life emotions first.

Some people might describe that as an empath, but I, I see

it a little bit differently.

I definitely empathize deeply with people, but I live life.

My first impression is always emotional and then in, in intuitive.

And so.

As a friend told me the other day, as I was sitting in her car crying about

something she turned to me and said, wow, you can access your emotions so readily.

And she was really like that.

I'm in awe of that because I have to work so hard to even figure out how I feel.

And so Yeah, so emotional is definitely one of those words

I would use to describe myself.

Creative would be another, as long as I can remember being alive.

I have always created worlds and stories and paper dolls when I was a

kid, but not just paper dolls, but.

Paper dolls that lived in a town and that had these intersecting

storylines and it was very in depth.

I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was younger.

I became like a self-taught artist, so that would definitely be another word.

And I think that third word I would use, I think it goes to

something around being very driven.

Or my name, my daughter's doing a project at school about what her name means.

And she's really mad because her name means a leader of the elves.

And she's like, , that's really terrible.

I love that I wanna be leader of the ELs.

No, I was like, I think that's awesome.

I think it's actually ruler of the elves, but she refuses to use that language.

It's one or the other she doesn't want to use So we were

talking about what our names mean recently, and mine means indust.

And I, as, as long as I can remember, I've been very diligent

and industrious and sort of driven.

I'm not gonna win the race as far as speed, but I will

doggedly pursue something.

And so that's my, my form of being driven.

And I think that's important, you know, when it comes to reclaiming

ourselves and the labels that other people put on us, you know, some of

these, I definitely feel these three adjectives describe me, but they've also.

Ascribed to me.

And being driven can mean one thing, but for I've learned that for me,

it means that persistent, steady pursuit of something, it doesn't

mean, you know, grind all night.

I'll, you know, that's not what I mean.

It's like no, a lock in, and then it make progress, steadily something.

Absolutely.

And I think, you know, often reclaiming ourselves is about like relabeling

or, re owning, reclaiming the labels, even that other people have put on us

to define them in our own ways to look at how they, you know, kind of match

who we are or don't match who we are.

Like, I think, you know, it's an interesting part of the

journey to kind of look at.

What really does fit us.

And how would we describe, I mean, I do so often when I'm

teaching or talking, I'm looking at definitions, what is the definition?

How would I describe the definition versus maybe how the dictionary

does or how someone else labels it?

And I love how you kind of shared that these are three things that you've

reclaimed, you know, and these are kind of your definitions of those things.

And, you know, I love them.

They're all.

Oh, thank you.

I think, I think it's really true.

And I think that takes a lot of time and knowing yourself and because

I hated being called emotional that was definitely in my family.

It was not, it wasn't mean, but it was like, that's something Emily

that, you know, you need to correct.

That's what I heard.

That's the way I heard it.

And it took me a very long time to really realize that that was a

power of mine and ability of mine.

Yeah, well, and you know, I think that's very

welcomed here on this podcast.

Like all, all of us, all of the co-hosts, we're all very emotional beings.

I think we really resonate with that level of expression and power and.

And I think it's where we're going as a world too.

I mean, I know I'm teaching so much more about emotional intelligence, even in

corporates and, you know, people are starting to recognize that we do have

to understand our emotions and we do have to connect to them to find joy and

define connection and collaboration.

I mean, all of the things we want in our lives.

Connected to that.

And I think a lot of people have not accessed that power

Hmm.

inside themselves.

And just like you were talking about with your friend, it's, you

know, it's difficult to access.

So it really is a gift to be able to, to access that

It is.

It is.

And I agree with you.

I think the world is moving that way and there's, there's so much to learn.

We're all emotional beings.

And so it's sad that it's been relegated to something less

important and mainstream Western culture in particular, I think, but.

And we've sort of been told that we can only be angry and like outrage,

especially right now, there's like this over flooding of outrage and

anger and, you know, indignation.

And so those are just a few of the many, many emotions that

we're all actually feeling or not feeling, trying to avoid feeling.

So the more we can become.

More conversant in, in the language of emotion, the better we'll be able

to be just at acknowledging them and ourselves and other, other people.

I completely agree.

Okay.

So I wanna talk a little bit about maybe your journey, right.

You know, not just your work journey, which we've kind

of briefly touched on, but.

You know, your life journey, you know, one of the things about kind

of this journey to reclaim ourselves.

And I think, you know, we're all gonna be talking about our

experience with this topic, right?

Not just share what we've learned from people that we've worked with

and what we've learned in our careers, but also like our own journeys.

You know, what would you say is maybe two or three kind of pivotal moments in

your life that, you know, moments where you reclaimed yourself, you remembered

who you were, maybe that really shifted your relationship with yourself, you

know, what were those moments and, and what did, what did they feel like?

Because sometimes I think when we're talking about this topic of

reclaiming ourselves, We people are asking, but what does that feel like?

Right.

What does it feel like to reclaim ourselves?

How can I notice when that happens?

What, what were some of your experiences?

And since, you know, I've been invited into this space and

this idea of reclaiming ourselves, I've really been thinking a lot

about my own journey in, in that.

And I think the moments that come to mind, I found this little red thread,

as I like to say through them, their moments of breaking down dissolution.

as well as revelation.

They're like the same moment.

So I think part of reclaiming ourselves is not, it's not just like the, oh, I get it.

That's who I'm supposed to be and where I'm supposed to go.

It's a.

Burning away.

It's a death.

It's a grief.

It's a bottom of the well looking up moment.

So one of those moments for me, we already sort of touched on it a little

bit, was coming back from Japan after I had gone abroad and I was dis kind

of destroyed by the experience for a lot of for a lot of different reasons.

it shook me to my core and I lost hold of myself.

And I came back in my memory, like kind of a shell, kind of a broken shell.

I was meant to stay actually for 12 months.

I stayed for 10 because I had to get home for my mental health.

I had to leave.

And.

At that moment, I didn't know what I was going to do.

I didn't know I was gonna be an end up in journalism.

I had a communication degree, which meant I could do anything and also meant

like, I have no idea what I'm gonna do.

I have, yeah, in my mind, I had failed.

I had studied abroad in college and so I thought this would be

like another like awesome moment.

And like, I'd figure out so many things and it felt like I had

just failed and at the same time.

So that was sort of the sinking, the rising was this sense that became more

clear once my kind of diligence and a lot of love and support from my family and my

partner at the time who we were dating.

this rising sense that I could reinvent myself, but not reinvent.

That's the incorrect word that I could pull myself back together and take

on a new challenge and not, I think part of the reason why I went to Japan

was like, I had something to prove.

Right.

Sort of laying back into this idea that maybe my next move didn't

have to be proving anything.

It could just be being in that a cushion of, of love, surrounded

by family and friends and doing intuitively what felt right.

I had no reason to get my first journalism job.

Like I said, I didn't have a degree in it.

I hadn't worked for the school newspaper at, at university.

Basically when I got the interview, I like created a newsletter about my family

and that would cuz they said bring clips.

And I was like, I have no clips.

So I invented something and I, I like brought like at a lot of Moxi

I brought it to the interview and.

I love it.

I was like, okay, here we go.

And I got hired.

And my first day on the job, I got an assignment to cover this, this,

I think it was the city council meeting or school board meeting.

And I went to the veteran reporter in the newsroom and I was like,

Hey, Brian so just a quick question.

Could you give me just like a very high level sketch of like, how to do this job?

oh

Because I had literally no idea what I was doing.

And he looked at me like, who the heck is this?

And I can't believe this cuz he was like a hearted journalist and

then I saw his, he had pity on me.

And so thank you to Brian.

But that, so I just, I don't know.

There's this moment of like I knew I could do it.

Something inside of me was like, I know I can do.

And I don't know at all how I'm gonna do it, but I feel

like this is the right path.

So I think there's a reconnection to intuition in that moment.

So that's one of them.

Do you feel like in Japan it was just like being

in a completely new environment?

Or what do you think that really caused that sort of disconnection

to yourself in the first place?

What would you

mm-hmm

thread of that?

well, I think I was disconnected from the get

go um, graduated from college.

It was just, I don't know, it was very disorienting.

I'm a lot.

I'm a really good student.

and I love the structure and I was suddenly for the first time in

my life without that scaffolding.

So I think that was part of it.

And then I knew nothing.

About Japanese culture.

I knew no Japanese language.

I was so naive, dumb, full of hubris.

And so even though they had a really great training program, I was also

placed in a city four hours north of Tokyo by the Shinhan by the bullet

trade in a very rural mountain town.

And.

Placed in teachers housing.

So I had a pit toilet, so I didn't have a flushing toilet.

There was no central heat, and this is on a parallel with like Washington DC.

So the weather was cold snowy.

And I was team teaching in this high school with Japanese men, teachers of

English, and I was sort of a novelty and.

I was ex in some cases, in most cases, expected to walk

behind those teachers as men.

interesting.

the culture was so different.

I was unprepared for it.

I was a 22 year old PIP squeak with going from like big city to this role space.

And my family was going through some challenges at.

I had just started dating my husband a month before I left.

So it was sort of a perfect storm.

And ultimately it was like, I was, I was also in a fishbowl, so I was the town

celebrity being a guy, Jen, a foreigner.

And so when I went to the grocery store, people would follow me around

to see what I would put in my basket.

And at first it's funny.

And then you're like back off, I had a stalker when I was there.

Like it was , there was a lot, it was a lot.

And I just.

. Yeah, I just slowly, the only thing that I had was my writing and

credit to my amazing mother-in-law.

She used to tape . She used to tape episodes of touched by an angel and

on a VHS and mail them to me, cuz I couldn't even watch Japanese television.

So I had a VHS and I had touched by an angel and I had

my writing and that's how I.

And I had some, I did have some friends there, but I think it just kind of

broke down my old comfort support systems in all the ways and broke down

my context and I just kind of eroded.

look, and I love the way you kind of pulled this

first pivotal moment, or, you know, as an example, because I think, you

know, what you said earlier really resonated with me this idea that.

When we're trying to prove ourselves when there's like this proving ourselves.

And we finally let go of that.

I think that is such an important piece of reclaiming ourselves because in, and

I love your perspective on this, but because one of the things I've really

seen in this process, right, as we're reclaiming ourselves, as we're, we're

understanding who we are, you know, the.

Greatness of our innate self.

It, it really requires us to let go of trying to prove things to others.

It requires us to let go of what others think, what others want.

And, and so what was, do you agree with that kind of

statement that that was part of

the process?

Yeah, definitely.

I think.

I'm a person who sets pretty high standards for myself.

I, and I see that as the same thing.

It's like in the last several years, as I feel like I've made more progress towards

reclaiming myself as sort of letting go of those, not letting go understanding

the unconscious standards, the standards, again, ascribed to me by society.

And.

Releasing the idea of I have to do this, or I have to fulfill this role.

it's so challenging because I think for much of my life so far, I've had kind

of blinders onto what those even were.

So.

I think you just need to be broken down.

Like, I don't think you can.

I don't think you learn those through success and ease, and you learn about

the falseness of them by like running up against them and having them

shatter or, or standing on top of them.

Cuz you made it and having the ground fall.

Beneath you.

I mean, other pivotal moments have been when I've had great success and I'm

like, but it doesn't have meaning for me.

And I thought I was following this path that I would have meaning, and that's

almost just as disconcerting, but I think it goes to, you know, pushing away from

what you have to prove or what you have to live up to, or the standards that you set.

Because somewhere along the line, that's what was ingrained

as desirable or fulfilling or.

Required of you as a, as a woman or as a, as a person in

the 21st, 20th, 21st century.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

I so agree.

And so what was maybe one of those other pivotal moments that

you can share with us that helped you to kind of reclaim yourself?

And I do agree that there there's usually a breakdown or a burning or

like something that happens before we embrace that power and that

ownership of reclaiming ourselves.

Well, thanks for saying that because like note to

listeners, , that's another sad story.

Yeah,

yeah, for me it Al it just kind of always is.

So I lost my mom 10 years ago, 11 years ago now to pancreatic cancer.

And I often say like, , the moment my mom died, a new version of me was born.

so in the moment that she died I was with her, we were very close.

She was like my best friend.

I felt an energetic shift in me and our connection

Mm,

and I felt sort of a download of creative energy.

and at the same time I was devastated, literally devastated.

She was 62 years old, young and healthy, healthy her whole life,

not an ill person at all in any way.

So it was extremely jarring.

The center of our family of a very big family.

And I also had this and I don't look back cuz you never want it to happen.

But I do recall that time.

I had this clarity.

Like I remember a friend driving me home from my parents' house and just

looking around knowing, you know, seeing everything that was happening and knowing

that, that none of it was significant that what was significant was, was simply love.

And it was just this crystal clarity.

And I often meditate back to that knowing.

when I feel myself getting caught up in comparison in the rat race.

in presentation or promotion.

I, I kind of go back to that and I just go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I feel it in my body, you asked earlier, like, I think this was

a great question you asked, like, how do you know, how do we know

when we are reclaiming ourselves?

How do we even know if we're in that process?

And I, I do feel like you've, you have a shifted perception.

Visually almost.

And in my body, I just feel like my cells coming together and tingling a little bit.

Like there's a sense of vibrational.

And I think when it's a messier moment too, I think we feel.

Fragments of ourselves, but they're close by.

I don't know I'm getting really, but I, I think it's important and that's a

really important discussion to have with people is like, how will I sense this?

I think those are three ways.

I would sense that.

So that was a moment where sort of a, a reclaiming of myself process began in

the moment when my mom died and then has continued since then, but certainly was

a very acute in the first several years.

And the process of grief is always an interesting revealer.

it really is.

I mean, my, my mom passed away about five years ago.

Mm.

I can relate to, you know, everyone's

journey is of course different.

yeah, just navigating your own definition when that happens, navigating, you know,

life, without them navigating the grief.

Like it is a, it's very, very interesting journey.

And I really love how you talked about the feeling in your body, because I think,

you know, When we reclaim ourselves, it is an embodied feeling, right.

It's it's not something in our head.

And so like sometimes I think people think they've reclaimed a piece of themselves,

but then they go back, you know, and, and they're like, oh, it didn't really.

Changed.

Nothing really changed, but I feel like when you, when you have that embodied

experience, even if you go back into default or bad habits, there's always that

reference point and you're able to go back to it and feel it in a whole bodied way.

I love that.

I think that's a great tip Sonya.

I think I do that.

That's what I said in meditation.

I kind of bring myself back to that moment.

We are beings who we are hardwired to bookmark visuals and bookmark sensations.

And when we express those sensations, even if it's within our own realm,

like in meditation or journaling, Those come back to us and they live again.

And we begin to sync up our energy with other people who can experience that.

And this isn't, this isn't mystical, this is science, right?

So our brains begin to sync up with one another.

When we're sharing Sensu details of the sites, the sounds, the

smells the way my body felt, where I was, what was around me.

So I think that those are important.

Talismans or grounding tools for us as we, as we go get off course,

which we, which we do every day.

Yes, we get off course.

We go on course.

And you know, that's something we're definitely gonna talk about

in this podcast is like that forgetting and remembering, right.

We don't get to a place where we're like, we're reclaimed task done.

, you know, it's like we, yeah.

We reclaim a part of ourselves and we forget who we are again.

And then we, oh, no, wait, here I am.

And then we forget who we are again.

And, and it's kind of that lifelong journey and giving ourselves.

Acceptance to be there

And the learning happens because of the forgetting

and we've been so like, trained to be like, oh, I just screwed that up.

Right.

And to be so punitive with ourselves and so critical.

But if we don't have the forgetting, then we can't.

Go to the next stage of practice.

Like we cannot progress, you know, I gotta hit my head a hundred times

trying to figure out how to do Crow before I can achieve that pose in yoga.

Like it's, without that pain, without that imbalance, we can't

ever really touch the progress.

Yes.

It's that skill building right too.

It's like that, that ability to work at something and then.

Lose it or, and then, but gain a little bit more confidence, right?

Like it's like this process of skill boarding.

And I think we don't allow that enough for ourselves and our

personal growth and our, know,

no,

of who we are.

no.

I have another little mantra that a friend and I kind of remind each

other of, but small steps every day.

Small steps.

And just thinking about today, I, I did the Google search, you know, I filled

out a form and that's a small step and, or I persisted through the day and I

didn't do didly squat towards that goal, but I got myself whole through the day.

That's okay.

Small steps every day.

Yes.

A hundred

Mm-hmm

that.

All right.

So I wanna take a little turn, so, you know, it's, so it's so

beautiful us getting access to your history and your personal journey.

So thank you for sharing all of that with us.

I wanna dig a little bit into your work.

I mean, we talked a little bit about your career and where you are today

and you know, for anyone who doesn't know root and river, it's a very.

Different and powerful branding company.

Like what you all do is really kind of essentially, like you said,

pull out that soul of a business.

And, and I have used that and experienced that, and it's really,

really beautiful and powerful.

But I wanna tap a little bit into.

If you were to describe your life's work or at least a thread of that.

Right.

Cause I think we're always kind of developing our life's work, but if you

were to kind of describe maybe a thread of that, what, what would you say is

kind of a thread of your life's work?

Yeah, so I can, after let's see, I think

it was about 20 15, 20 16.

I was sort of going through this crisis of identity.

One of many I'm sure I'll have . And I called my dad and I said, you

know, what do you know about B what do you know to be true about me?

You've known me my whole life.

And he repeated something to me that he'd said before, but it had never

quite hit in the same way, which was You translate emotion into words

better than anyone I've ever met.

And it just kind of snapped or clicked into place for me as like,

yes, like that's what I'm here to do.

So, you know, and your question, I feel like that is my life's work.

And that has been the driving force in every iteration, in

my professional career, as well as you know, outside of that.

But I, I feel that I'm doing that essentially in one way or another.

Another purpose that I have in life is this idea of trying

to inspire through my own.

Efforts and failures inspire undivided living because I feel that we have

really, we have this tendency as, as human beings and certainly human

beings who are living kind of apart from the land in all these little

compartments, we divide ourselves up.

Parker Palmer writes about this divided life and, I have not been great at this

, but I feel that this is something that I wanna get better at and I wanna inspire.

And I think we do this in our work at rutin river is to remove the

division between you know, Sony, the business woman and Sony, the

human being like it's, it's all one.

And the same, we can come from the same place we can ground into the same truth.

And we can share that in a lot of different, a lot of different

modalities, a lot of different ways.

And so I'm a ambassador of that idea is to, I think it,

it gives such relief to people.

When, and it helps to break down pretense when you can say, yeah,

your business, your business beliefs or core values are the same as your

personal beliefs or core values.

So let's get into it.

You don't have to hold them at arms length.

And just the same as when I'm writing.

So I write a, a newsletter, just a personal newsletter called

thought cookie once a month.

And when I'm writing that I'm really trying to tap into, you know, what

are the divisions that I'm feeling within myself that I'm wrestling with?

What are the emotions that are rising and, and how do I see that reflected in the

culture around me or in friends around me?

And how can we create space?

How can we be graceful with ourselves in healing, those divisions?

Because I think on the other side of that is this tremendous capacity to

live wholeheartedly, whole mindedly.

And to decrease divisions.

If we are divided against ourselves, there's no way we can connect with

other people who are different than us.

And that's really, you know, the heart of it for me.

So kind of smash those two things together and, and I think

that's what I'm here to do.

I love that.

So beautiful.

I mean, I can really resonate with the, you know, translating emotions and I

think that's such a gift, like to be able to language emotion, to be able

to help people feel through words, you know, it's just such a profound

experience and something so needed in the world, cuz our brains want to like

understand in words, but our bodies want to understand in emotions and energy.

And so being able to kind of combine those as like a bridge, right.

A bridge to, truth

mm-hmm.

we, who we are.

And I love the, the undivided cuz that's wholeness, right?

When we're, when we're no longer divided we're whole and we're able

to connect in such a more profound way to ourselves and to our mission

and to who we are and to others.

Um, you know, it's not either, or it's.

correct.

Yeah.

And it, it makes us able to see ourselves and other people and reduces

our tendency to other, which is.

The beginning of dehumanization and division and genocide.

And I don't mean to be to exaggerate there, but I truly believe that you wanna,

if you wanna deal with violence, you have to look at the inner life and how we talk

to ourselves and how we look at ourselves.

And the pain that exists in inside of people is really what leads to

horrific acts of, of violence and harm.

And so I feel that I can maybe affect that in some small way.

Very small way by by know, encouraging people.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Touching someone helping someone to connect to their

emotions or to reconnect to themselves.

There's nothing more important than that, right?

Like, and the seeds that we plan in all the different ways, they're so powerful.

Right.

And I think sometimes what we've been taught and particularly women,

I think, you know, we think we have to make such a huge impact.

We have to affect the millions.

We have to like reach everybody, but it, the power is in the seats, right?

The power.

In the little ways that we touch people, where they have more self

awareness, they have more connection it's even in our vibration and presence.

Like when we have awareness and we enter into someone's vibrational

field, they feel more awareness like it's this, there's so much

profoundness in the way we're able to touch people in such simple ways.

Yes.

powerful.

Yeah.

It's it's like how you behave in a conversation or one of

my favorite things to do.

I learned this from a friend of mine who, who said it to me and I was

like, oh my gosh, I'm using that.

is if you have a friend who's kind of getting down on themselves or being

critical of themselves, even in just like in an offhand comment, I try to

say, don't talk about my friend that way.

I had, it said to me, it brought me up short and I was like, wow.

Okay.

Or teaching, you know, Jason and I have been very intentional about trying to

teach our daughters that it's okay.

Whatever emotion you're having is okay.

Right.

It's accepted.

It's welcomed.

And my oldest daughter's at college now and she was relaying

something about a friend who was going through a difficult time.

And she told me without, you know, thinking you know, I just told

her it's okay to have that emotion and all your emotions are okay.

And I was like,

success

Like,

right?

I know.

but in that, for that person in that moment, yeah, that little, that's a

little thing that I hopefully help.

In part to her, I reminded her of her own wisdom of

that consistently enough that she shared it with somebody else.

And then maybe that shifted something for them.

And then who knows what the ripple effect from that can be.

But those are the little minute things that we can do every day to

try to shift, to create larger shifts.

I.

I think so too.

And I love that one in particular, like, you know, so much of sometimes what I talk

about with emotional intelligence is just that piece of just accepting emotions,

just accepting all of our emotions.

Like not only raises our emotional intelligence, but allows us to be,

have more empathy towards others, more connection towards others,

more relationship with ourself.

Like there's just so much that, just that one tiny thing does if we were teaching

it in schools, if we were teaching it everywhere, I think we'd be up in a much

Oh, I fully agree with that.

I could go off on

a, on a a soliloquy.

Okay, good about, you know, who cares about like organic chemistry?

Well, I guess doctors do, but who cares about like algebra two when we need to

be teaching people how to acknowledge and talk about their feelings?

Like if we don't do that, what can we achieve from a yeah.

Anyway,

yeah.

A hundred percent.

All right.

So tell us a little bit about what you wanna talk about this season and why,

so we, you know, just give it, we're gonna give a little bit of teasers to

maybe what our episodes will look like.

The topics you kind of wanna bring to the surface, cuz I think it's,

it's kind of fun to do that and gives everybody a little bit of a sneak pick.

Yeah, you bet.

Well, we already touched on some of the themes that we're gonna kind of bring out

in my episodes, but I really want to talk about The way that we divide ourselves

up and the way that we get sucked into that it's something I call the muchness.

Like our world is full of demands.

Like we get.

4,000 to 6,000 demands for attention and immediate action every single day.

And that, that number was several years ago.

Right?

So it's, it's way past that from the moment we roll over and pick

up our phone on our bedside table, we are in response mode and.

Because of those demands, we are divided beings.

Like we divide ourselves up.

So the muchness exists.

It's like clouds all around us.

We don't always know it's there.

We, it exerts pressure on us that we're not necessarily always Cognizant of,

so I wanna talk about that and I wanna break that down and I wanna look at

ways that we can become aware of, of how that, that pressure affects us and

why it leads to anxiety and burnout and feelings of inadequacy and comparison.

At least those are all things that leads to in me.

and then how can we do small things again, it's rooting into those small things.

Combat or to place ourselves outside of the muchness to step aside and

away and put it at arm's length for those moments when, for our lives.

So we can, Recla reclaim our lives and not get sucked into it.

So that's one thing we'll be diving into.

I love that.

I can't wait.

That sounds

really exciting.

Anything else you wanna share that we might be diving?

Yeah.

I mean, I really, you know, I'm all about the messiness and you may pick

that up from our discussion here.

Like I.

I I had too, like things that the polished and perfect and

perfect perfection doesn't exist.

It's just kind of a, another measure of punishment on ourselves.

So I really wanna get into just generally like the messy middles

and, and how mess can be awesome and how to recognize it right.

And how to not get down on our.

And so I think that's another thread as we kind of come through this season

that we'll be talking about and how to really language that, how to put

words around what we're experiencing, because in language is the, is, is

the thing that we can do once we convert those emotions into language.

There's freedom on the other side of that.

And so I think that's owning our stories, as you said earlier, defining

what we mean by, by terms and.

That sounds like a word nerd, like just saying that, but the power, the

energetic power of doing that is huge.

And so I wanna explore that with you and with, with everybody else

involved and, and with our listeners.

Yeah, I love that.

And you know, messiness is such a part of the reclaiming ourselves process.

Like if we can't embrace that, we don't get to the other side of it.

Right.

Like, cuz we're so busy trying to avoid the messiness.

That, you know, we actually never get to the truth of reclaiming who we are.

And so I think that's a, a, a very important topic and and something

I'm super excited to dive in.

I just can't wait to dive into all of it.

Like we're gonna have such amazing conversations.

So thank you for being here and thank you for sharing with us, your story.

And I wanna kind of, you know, wrap up this, this episode with

a couple of rapid fire questions.

So,

you know, Well, let's do it.

Okay.

So tell us your favorite books.

I'm glad you put an S on that because there are so many

yeah,

The Alchemist is, is at the top of the list.

Broken open would be another one bird by bird by Anne Lamont.

I also love a series of mystery books written by Louis penny that have a.

Very charismatic, central figure.

And so I love, I love reading.

I read constantly, so I have many books and I reread the

great Gatsby every few years.

And it, it is a beautiful piece of, of writing.

Yeah.

I love that.

I can't wait to like, take all these books and go find them

if I haven't read them yet.

Yes.

okay.

So favorite music or podcasts?

So either one, like what do you love listening?

Oh, that's great.

So I love, I'm very eclectic music taste currently.

Right now I'm really into Ruby Bridgers, but I've been on a

Chris Stapleton kick as well.

I love Lizzo.

I love her.

I love everything that she's about.

My daughters are obsessed with Harry styles.

So I've gotten into Harry styles, but the classics as well.

My favorite band is indigo girls.

Who I kind of grew up with.

But I love music and podcasts, just like this podcast, anything that's

like a, an, a compelling conversation.

So I love Brene.

I love all her podcasts.

Um, I'm currently binging on a podcast by Kate bowler.

It's called everything matters.

So that's been really interesting and I love design matters too by Debbie Millman.

So just a few

it.

Perfect.

Okay.

Some of your favorite TV shows.

I, I think my favorite TV show of all time that I

get the most obsessed with was lost.

So I'm a huge lost nerd and loved ER, when I was growing up.

But I also like I don't know if you've, if our listeners have listened or

watched work in moms on Netflix, but it's a Canadian show and there are

about five seasons and it's as a.

White middle class mom, just working, raising kids, they just nail it.

But the, the characters are messy and real and awesome.

And you guys should go watch it.

Okay.

I love it.

How about favorite foods?

I love anything like farm to table.

So little like I'm a little, we're a little bit of foodies around here.

mm-hmm

But anything that's come, you know, from a local garden

and been thoughtfully prepared.

That's sort of my favorite thing to eat, but we love food.

I love to bake.

I'm a baker.

So I like to bake as well.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

I wish I was there.

I get some of your baked goods.

Yeah.

all right.

And last question.

Favorite indulgence.

My favorite indulgence is time to myself.

Yeah.

to read just like a stack of books next to

a super comfy could be couch.

Could be bathtub, maybe some dark chocolate.

Mm.

Decadence.

Yeah.

Sounds.

Perfect.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for being in here.

Anything that you wanna add as we wrap up this episode to our listeners?

Now I definitely want to know that we have

you in mind as listeners.

And so we invite you back into these conversations and we'd love to hear what

was evoked for you if you disagreed great.

, for all of us involved in.

It's like the opportunity to find residents, but also be intrigued and

be curious and be drawn in through maybe things that we disagree on.

So that's okay.

That's all welcome.

And I'm, I'm just so grateful to engage those conversations with

you and the other amazing women.

Aw, me too.

All right.

Well thank you, Emily.

And thank you listeners.

And we will see you next week.

Hey, it's Emily.

I hope something from our conversation today inspired you.

And if you find yourself curious about my work about intrinsic branding or about

Root and river, I invite you to head over to rootandriver.com where you can sign up

for our newsletter, or you can read some of our free content hope to see there.