UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Hello friends. My name is Tami Simon and I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
I also want to take a moment and introduce you to the Sounds True Foundation, our nonprofit that creates equitable access to transformational tools and teachings. You can learn more at soundstruefoundation.org. And in advance, thank you for your support.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Shelah Marie. Shelah is an expert at bringing Black women together to help the celebrate themselves and expand their visions of who they are and what their lives can be. She’s the founder of the Curvy, Curly, Conscious movement and, since 2016, has been leading what she calls Unruly Retreats. And we’re going to learn more about what an Unruly Retreat is and what Shelah Marie’s philosophy of Unruly is all about. She has a master’s degree in performance studies from the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City and has developed a unique process of self-inquiry that combines her experience as an actor with her expertise in self-development. And I am proud, honored, to say that Shelah Marie is the author of a new book and the creator of a new audiobook called– you guessed it—Unruly: A Guide to Reclaiming Your True Self. Shelah, welcome.
Shelah Marie: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
TS: I want to begin with something that’s a little awkward and I’m going to put myself on the spot right here at the beginning and part of it has to do with what I feel the invitation is of your work, which is to keep it real, to make it real, to be so right here at the beginning
As I prepare for every interview, I read the book when we are going to be talking about a Sounds True publication. So here I am, I’m reading Unruly and I’m on page five or something. I’m in the introduction of the book and you think you know where I’m going here. And it says, okay, this book is a physical version of the Unruly Retreats that I lead. And I ask participants when they come to the retreats to answer these two questions. Do you identify as a Black woman, number one and number two, do you share the daily lived experience of a Black woman? Meaning when you go about your day, does the world see and treat you like a Black woman? And if the answer is no, then this Unruly Retreat is not the place for you. This Unruly Retreat is for people to answer who answer yes to both these questions.
And I had a moment and I thought, huh, what do I do at this point? Do I keep reading the book? How am I going to have my conversation with Shelah Marie? And then I thought, yes, I am going to read the book because I really want to understand what’s in it and I want to have this conversation with you, but I need to start here and have you help frame how a white woman like me can talk to you about Unruly and your Unruly Retreats in a way that’s as deeply respectful as I want to be.
SM: I’ll say this, I felt that that part needed to be in the book because my Unruly Retreat, I’ve done reality TV before, and the conversations about the Unruly Retreat were very controversial and a lot of people were saying, well, why can’t other women join? And I just felt that it was necessary to level set and say the in-person, physical Unruly Retreats will always be a safe space for Black women. However, I do think that through specificity you get to universality and there are just, when I was writing, I kept going back and forth like, okay, you picked up on the core question for me as a writer, well, I don’t want to write it. Do I just talk to Black women? Or what do I say? It’s for all women. And when I wrote for all women, it was so boring. It’s just basic. I’m trying to speak and I don’t know where my voice is. So for me, I had to speak through my specific experience, speak to my community that I have that in-depth, intimate experience with, and those insights that I pulled from there I feel like can apply to all women.
TS: And thank you for your comment about how specificity leads to universality. I really believe that. And I think it’s like going deep in your own experience. We find our common experience and I think you do that gorgeously the book. Why was it controversial that you wanted to have Unruly Retreats just for Black women? Why is that a controversial thing?
SM: Because the world feels entitled to Black spaces and Black bodies and Black labor and a Black emotional labor. And I didn’t think it was controversial. I had no idea that it would even be framed as such. So I’m biracial, so I have a mother, I have a sister, they’ve never asked to come to my retreat. It’s never even been a conversation in the same way that my dad or my brothers have never asked to come. They get it. So I was a little bit taken aback that this was a controversial thing. I didn’t know that popularly this would be a topic of such contention. And to me, I think that partly it’s just because of the framing of reality tv. They’re looking for drama, they’re looking for pain points and they know that race is a very hot topic. So I think they just ran with it.
But I don’t care. I feel like I was in a moment of trying to explain myself. I don’t anymore. I just think that the women who I speak to Black women because I feel like that’s the most authentic way I can speak, that is my voice. I also feel like there’s a need. I started my self-help journey when I was in 2016, and at the time I couldn’t find a meditation. A book at that time now is very different, but at that time a book that was written by someone that looked like me or maybe shared my experience. So a part of my journey has always been filling in a gap, filling in a need where I felt that it’s there. So to me, my supreme goal is to do what I’m here to do and what I’m here to do is to speak to women to help them be more true and authentic in their lives. And it just so happens that I speak specifically to Black women, but not only
TS: Tell me more about Curvy, Curly, Conscious and what brought you to that being a platform that you wanted to launch?
SM: All of this really happened organically. I won’t lie and say that I’m pinking the brain. I had this big master plan and I planned it all out and I had a five year plan, a 10 year plan. I didn’t. I was just following, that’s literally it. I was just following and I started saying, well, you know what? I’m really lonely. I was living in Brooklyn, New York at the time. I had all these roommates who I love dearly to this day, but I was lonely. I was lonely and I was just discovering mental health terms. I didn’t know about mental health terms. I didn’t know that I had anxiety at the time. I didn’t know I was suffering from depression at the time. And so I started learning and as I started learning what a lot of us do when millennials discovered social media, we start sharing. And I just started sharing my journey and I just started using the hashtag like hashtag curvy and curly because it started out with body acceptance and how I feel about my body. And it just grew from there. We produced one event with the name and kept it and it transitioned from online to one day in-person event and then to retreats now to where we are with the whole movement.
TS: Tell me this term Unruly, what that means to you.
SM: Yes, Unruly to me is embracing all of your inner diversity. I feel like I’m the perfect person to articulate this because I don’t fit neatly and a lot of us don’t. Again, we’re going to revisit that universality and specificity thing because I feel like as I’m saying this, people that listen will also have a similar Yep, they might be nodding their heads. A lot of us feel like we don’t fit in, A lot of us don’t fit in the boxes neatly. And I felt that I was the only Black person in my house, so I felt like I didn’t fit in racially and then I didn’t speak good enough Spanish to fit in with the Cuban side of my family. And then here I am, I have a training as an actress, but I’m not professionally acting. I’m writing a book, but I’m not probably the best, most prolific writer, I’m just following.
So to me, it is not that you have to be excellent at everything and at the same time not to disregard the parts of yourself that you think are not shiny or are not socially acceptable. And society will pressure women to flatten ourselves, to make ourselves palatable, to engage in respectability politics. And all I’m saying is I want women to be able to choose. And you can’t choose if you’re not honoring all of the inner diversity that’s within you. If you have these parts of yourself that are performing but you don’t know and they’re just coming on stage and you didn’t call them to come on and they’re the wrong cue, wrong lighting cue, it’s going to be a mess. So to me it is just about honoring, you know what, there’s parts of myself who are maybe selfish or self-indulgent or whatever the negative shadow side is, and that’s okay. I don’t have to reject her in order to be happy with myself. I can call her in, I can hold her dear to me and I can still move forward. She’s there, but she’s not in the driver’s seat necessarily if I don’t need her to be. And that’s
TS: What would you say were some of the sort of inner contradictions, if you will? We all have them and it’s like, well wait a second. Both these things seem to be true. They’re both happening. What were some of the inner contradictions you had to look at and go, oh, both these things are actually true in me
SM: Every day. Every day. I mean here I am, I’m in the self-development space, I’m in the wellness space. I’m married to a rapper who’s in hip hop. That right there is already like, wait, hold on, wait a second. If you stack me up against other rapper’s wives, I look different. You’re just like, what’s going on? Who is that? What is she? She’s weird. But then if you put me in the self-help space, they’re like, well, how does that make sense considering the legacy of hip hop and what that means to women? And so all the time I think I’m stacking up contradictions within myself like, oh, well can you be spiritual and still drink? Can you be spiritual and still twerk? Can I be spiritual and still say that I like rap music? All of these things are questions that I’m going through myself and I feel that I don’t want to engage in anything that makes me reject a part of myself. I don’t want that. There are all these parts, I can engage with them. We can go ahead and do the balance beam. We can go back and forth. And on a spiritual level, I’m always saying, okay, how can I evolve? What is there that is here that is no longer serving me? But I can’t do any of that if I first don’t claim it, if I don’t be honest about it. We’re all living contradictions. I just think the only difference within rurally women is we we’re just honest about it.
TS: One of the things I noticed is I can have an opinion about something and the next day I can actually completely argue something on the opposite side all the time. And my wife will say, wow, you’re like the wind. You made a complete. And I was like, yeah, the wind’s changed over here and now I see it this other way. And I’m curious about that because I think it’s something from the outside. People can be like, wow, this per, but for me it’s also like multiperspectival. I can see something. So I wonder when you think of where your root is in the midst of, because I also feel rooted at the same time, so it’s a hard thing to articulate like the wind, but I’m also rooted. Where do you find the root in the midst of being able to see things from a lot of different angles?
SM: I think finding the root comes after. It’s like the gift you get through self investigation. I think that maybe if I use the metaphor of a tree, that I’m a tree, and those opinions might be like the branches or the leaves, maybe some they’ll fall off, new ones will grow, but my whole tree doesn’t get uprooted and move to an entire different location. So for me, I had to get to know myself. And that came with a lot of unlearning, undoing. Why do I think certain things? Do I want to be married? Why for a long time I said I don’t. Why? If I don’t ever investigate that, how do I feel about patriarchy? How do I feel about capitalism? How do I feel about what I’m doing on a daily basis? Do I want to be a teacher? Do I not? All of these things require investigation, but at the core you’ll always have Shelah who wants to live true, who loves to be creative, who has a childlike spirit and energy. And so I just think when you investigate yourself, you can find the core that won’t change, but then you can also tweak maybe the leaves and how the branches show up or whatever. I really exhausted that metaphor. Sorry about that.
TS: That’s alright. I tried. I love trees. I’m up here in the Pacific Northwest. You can’t talk too much about trees as far as I’m concerned. But I am curious about something. I think this is a good example. You didn’t want to get married, but then you did get married and you can go online and see the photographs from your beautiful wedding with your rapper husband. And how did you accept and relate to the fact that you had changed your mind? You changed your mind.
SM: I had to reconcile with the fact of many things can be true at the same time. So what I was struggling with was on one hand, the messages that I was seeing at large in society, I feel that there’s so much that women have to sacrifice and give up in order to be in partnership with a man. And that’s still true to this day. I still feel that and there are things that I have to sacrifice, but at the same time, my reasons for not wanting to get married were not mine. They were messages that I had inherited from maybe women in my family from marriages that I viewed. And it was me trying to protect myself. I was saying, I don’t want to be in partnership with someone really meant I don’t want to be vulnerable. I don’t want someone to be able to hurt me.
I don’t want anyone to be able to cause me pain that I’ve experienced. And so when I started investigating that thought, I had just come out of a really abusive relationship and it was through that work that I discovered, oh, okay, it’s not that I don’t want to be married. It’s that I don’t want a certain type of marriage. I want a marriage where I’m still going to be able to have equity. I want a marriage where we’re going to be able to show up as partners and we’re also going to deconstruct things that no longer serve us. I don’t want to just come in here on some, you’re the woman, you do this, you’re the man, you do this. That’ll never work for me. And so I’ve been doing that my entire marriage. I mean to this day I’m still unlearning, undoing, renegotiating, remaking a contract with ourselves.
And I think that’s the journey. It’s not perfect, but for me, it has been so valuable to be able to see what’s possible. Because if I showed myself back then when I was saying, I don’t want to be married. I’m an independent woman and I still am trust that I’ll always be an independent woman, hello. But back then I was like, I’m hyper independent. No one can tell me what to do. Rah. Look at me, Aries. If I showed her my relationship now, she would be like, no way. There’s no way, Shelah. And so I’m very grateful for that. I’m very grateful that I do have a partner who’s willing to investigate hard things, have hard conversations, and really create an equitable dynamic as much as we can day by day
TS: You write, “Uunruly women do not cherry pick what we accept about ourselves.”
SM: Correct.
TS: And later in the book you talk about this notion of writing ourselves an acceptance letter, like the acceptance letter you got when you were accepted to the Tisch School of the Arts. And as someone who applied for various things in my life, I thought about that. I thought, wow, what would it be like if I wrote a letter like that to myself? So I think it’d be helpful just to share a bit how you came up with that as an exercise for people to do and if people wanted to try that on how they would do it.
SM: This is actually a perfect segue because where I got the inspiration for this idea to write yourself an acceptance letter was when I announced my engagement. I had never gotten more applause messages, letters. I had won the Olympics. Everybody in my family was finding me. People that I haven’t talked to all across social was viral everywhere. Oh my God, look at that. You won, you’re getting married. And I was like, wow. I feel like I’ve done a lot of things in my life. Like you said, I got into Tisch, I got a scholarship to Tisch that was not easy to do. I graduated and it was an academic program in the performance studies department. That was really hard. I did that. I kind of got a tiny baby applause. I’ve produced things with the United Nations abroad. I feel like I’ve done so many things and I’ve never been congratulated more than when I announced my engagement.
I was like, you know what? As a woman, it is so important for us to celebrate our wins and arrange fanfare for ourselves because the world might get around to it and they might not. What I discover is a lot of women will have these amazing achievements. I mean women that attend my retreats are high powered. They are raising families, they are starting nonprofits, businesses, ventures, et cetera. And sometimes they’ll feel like no one will clap for me, no one. They’re constantly in this waiting place of waiting for someone to say, good job, you did it. You’re enough. And so I was like, let’s cut that right now and let’s do it for ourselves. And so in the book I have you write a letter, the same kind of letter you would receive from an institution like a formal institution like Dear Shelah Marie, we are elated to inform you that you have been formally accepted.
You no longer need to reject any parts of yourself. I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but I’m paraphrasing, and you are now formally accepted. You are allowed to give yourself all the love, all the joy and all the care that you need. Congratulations. And it’s silly, but it’s a fun exercise when we do it at our retreats. Women are weeping every time When they read it out loud, they can barely get through it because that’s how little I feel that some women and especially Black women, get to hear good job. Wow. I’m so proud of you for doing that thing. And even if it’s something you don’t feel should be celebrated, I think it’s important to arrange it. Me, I am a very, I love ritual, I love celebrations and I can’t wait. I don’t know about you, Tami, but I can’t wait for the world to give me celebrations. I got to have it. And that’s what I mean, women, we got to have what we want. So if you’re not getting it, we need to conjure it up ourselves.
TS: Which brings me to taking a moment to celebrate the publication of Unruly. You made a video of yourself unpacking the box of books and it was a celebratory moment and it was like, let us take a moment what it takes to pour yourself in. And I know this from the authors that we work with. What it took for you, Shelah Marie, to come completely forward with your story as a person and not to hold back and to share what you know. So I want to take a moment here to celebrate you in the release of Unruly. Good work, girl. You really did it.
SM: Thank you. I am so honored. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
TS: One of the things you write about is your own healing journey, and you’ve mentioned it in our exchange about growing up as the only Black person in a white household. And I’m curious if you can speak more. First of all, how did that happen that you were the only Black person in a white household, how it impacted you and what discoveries you’ve made that have informed your unruliness through the journey you took?
SM: Yes. So my mother is Cuban, but she’s not Afro-Cuban. She’s white Cuban. And so she got with my dad, they made me and my sister, but then they divorced and my older sister moved with my dad. So there I was in the house with my mother who’s white passing, and she remarried a white man, my stepfather, and they had my sister who’s blonde hair, blue eyes. And so here I was with my biological sister who looks nothing like me and my mom who does look like me, but no one, everybody thought she was my nanny or something all the time they would ask. So we didn’t have a physical resemblance as a family. It was like, what’s going on here? It was always like, are you lost? So from a very young age, I used to envy people who had a homogenous family. When I would see people, families that you see and they just all look alike, like, wow, I can tell that’s your sister.
I can tell I envied that so much. I just wanted to be a part of a unit, be a part of a thing. So it caused me to have a very close relationship with identity and identity politics from a young age. I didn’t have the language, but I was always watching like, oh, okay, if I was at school, my school was very diverse. My mama was amazing. She knew from a really young age, okay, she lives really curious, she’s really smart. And she put me in a great school, thank her for that. So the school was really great. Had a lot of kids from everywhere. I was just watching like, alright, I see the Black kids wear these shoes. I see, okay, the Latino children, they wear these shoes. All right. So if I wear hair like this, it’s okay, but if I wear my hair, that’s not okay.
Alright. So I say this slang and then I get in the group, but I don’t say, alright, if I play Gwen Stefani, I have to do that in my room. Don’t tell them you listen to Gwen Stefani. And I love no doubt. So I was hiding all of my eccentricities and trying to fit in, but the fact that I couldn’t fit in neatly, that I couldn’t take that for granted that I just am a Black girl and I just fit in and I just know how to do my hair. I had to kind of teach myself all of these things. How do you do your hair for picture day? What do I do? I didn’t know about which lotions to use. All of those things gave me a very critical lens from a young age about identity politics. And it connected to me to performance. It also led me to acting because to me it was the same thing, the same way an actor gets on stage and they say lines and they have a costume and they have a blocking to me, very much correlated to everyday life. And to me, I just saw life as a performance from a very young age.
TS: This is really interesting to me. One of the questions I have about your work and your approach, you’re very committed to being truthful real and yet life as a performance at the same time. And I noticed I feel a tension in that for myself. And I’m wondering how you work that out. How are you genuine and performing at the same time?
SM: Well, there’s an assumption that the performance isn’t true there. A performing you can be performing true. It’s like Stanford. I think it’s Meisner who said the best acting is performing authentically in imaginary circumstances. So it’s that the impulses that are driving the performance are true. And the circumstances might change. I might decide to perform. I’m a performing a version of myself right now. I’m not going to perform this version of myself maybe after when I eat dinner with my family. That doesn’t mean that this is a lie, it’s just that I’m choosing which aspect of myself is coming to the stage. So when I say performance, I mean I want the performance to be true. Please understand that. But it is just that I want you to have the ability to augment that performance, to shift that performance so that it suits you so that you can move through life.
The ability for a woman to be diverse in the way she performs herself means that she can get into a lot of rooms that she can move through her career in a certain way that she knows how to show up for her family, show up for her friends, and we actually all do this naturally. Black women know it as code switching, but we all do it. We all do it. You bring your certain self here, your certain self there. And I think it’s just the knowing. All I’m saying is the knowing, the acknowledging, and that moment where you get to choose how you perform is the power. And that performance is always true, from my perspective, should always be true. It just can maybe look different. We’re dynamic.
TS: So I’m performing the very present, genuine heart-based, curious, benevolent oriented, trying to bring out good medicine for people, version of myself versus the more kind of relaxed, gosh, I’m hungry and I want to put on my ripped t-shirt version.
SM: Yes, Tami. And we love all those versions. We love ripped t-shirt, Tami, we love ’em all. But yes, you’ve mastered this. You don’t need to hear this for me. You have mastered this and I’m watching you and you are an embodiment of what I’m talking about. Right?
TS: I want to understand it though, in your language, in Unruly, you offer this notion of main character energy. And I was like, okay, I got to really understand this main character energy and how developing main character energy and you go so far as to say an ensemble of main characters, how this can help us.
SM: Yes. So I got this main character energy idea from my own personal work. I was doing therapy and I was doing parts work. And in parts work, you speak to different aspects or different parts of yourself. And so one time I was in a therapy session and she was like, which version of Shelah am I talking to? And I don’t know, what do you mean? This is before I knew about parts work. You’re just talking to me right now. And she gave me homework. And over the course of maybe four sessions I had to go back through from the time I was in utero to the present moment of all the versions of myself that ever existed within me, that every time a transition happened where I felt like I needed to change and be something different that spawned like a new version. So I had this nice familiarity with myself.
I would look at this list and I’d like, okay, that’s baby, it’s infant Shelah, that’s baby Shelah, that’s Shelah. And Tiffany was born, that’s Shelah after the divorce. That’s Shelah. So I had all of these characters within me. And so what I learned from my own work is that whenever you’re presenting, let’s start from the negative aspects. Whenever you have a moment where you’re showing up as something or some way that you don’t want to be damnit, I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have did that. I don’t know why I’m feeling shame about it. That’s a moment for you to pay attention to one of your ensemble members because she would not be on stage if she didn’t need something. And she’s only on there because she didn’t get the attention that she needed. And so in knowing that, let’s say for me, for example, I maybe had, let’s see, I want to give a real example.
Don’t want to use a fake example, okay. There’s a version of me who after I turned in my first manuscript, I was like, oh, this is terrible. I’m not the person to write a book. I’m going to call Sounds true. Tell him the whole thing’s off. Forget it. I’m not good to write this book. And that was a version of myself who was this perfectionist at school because I felt like at schools where I could perform normalcy is where I could be accepted, where people said, Hey, you’re so smart at home, my home life was very chaotic and unpredictable. And so that version was coming to the surface because she was nervous about the rejection, about putting my book out. So all she needed was a little assurance and compassion and to say, okay, I see you mainly to be seen, but if we don’t know these characters within ourself, if we don’t get familiar with our inner ensemble, we’ll never get to that sense of knowing. And then you can never choose. You just have a wayward ensemble of characters coming in and out and destroying sets and messing up everything as opposed to an ensemble that is directed seamlessly to create a spectacle. That makes sense. Answer Question.
TS: Yeah. As you’re talking, I’m thinking of a character, I hope it’s not a main character, but it’s clearly a supporting actor on the scene who if things go wrong, the first thing I do is think I’m going to blame X, Y, z. Me too. Sometimes I blame myself, but usually I start with other people and then I get to me too and me too. But I just go to blame like first thing and then I take a few moments and I’m like, oh, come on Tami, come on. Really? But how would using this main character, energy, respect, and approach to accepting this part of me, how would that help me in those moments?
SM: Well, that part of you was born from a need. So I would think about when and where was that version of Tami created and why? Because whatever that need is, maybe it’s a need for order, I’m not sure, or I don’t know, a
TS: Need to achieve, a need to achieve and achieve and just be successful and seriously not fail and be really good at stuff. And so if something falls apart in something I’m a part of, oh, you kidding me?
SM: That’s a good honorable need though. That’s a very honorable place for that version of yourself to be born from. So in trying to dismiss her, you dismiss that as well. For me, I would just say that that version, she wants to do the blaming thing, but what is she really after? Then she just wants you to do well. She just wants things to go well, hey Tami, that version, it’s okay. Things are going to go haywire, but it’s okay. We’re going to get back on track. We don’t need to find someone to blame to offset that feeling. Okay, we’re back. So it’s not that that needs to be dismissed. It’s not that she shouldn’t even be a main character. She’s also the main character that makes you probably driven, that makes you extremely successful and go places. So it’s not that we don’t want to have her as part of our crew, we just want her to come at the right queue, on the right queue.
TS: You have a sentence in this part of Unruly your mess is your power. And I circled that and I thought, wow, that’s usually not the way most of us relate to the messy parts of ourselves. So I wonder if you can share more about that and how you see that.
SM: Have you ever seen Eight Mile, the movie about Eminem’s life?
TS: No, I haven’t. But go ahead and tell me about it anyway,
SM: I’ll tell you. Okay, so there’s this scene and Eminem is like this white rapper and he’s in this cipher rapping with all of these Black rappers, and they’re already like, he knows what they’re going to say about him. They’re going to say, you’re white, you’re not from here. You can’t wrap your trailer park, you’re poor, whatever. They were going to say, your shoes are ugly. And so Eminem just came and the first thing he did was like, yeah, I’m white. Yeah, I live in a trailer park. Yeah, my clothes are messy. Yeah, my shoes. And now and then there was nothing else they could say he won, won the battle because there was nothing after he owned all of his mess, there was nothing that they could weaponize against him and all of their rebuttals after that fell flat. That’s kind of the essence of what I mean when I say owning your mess.
It’s that everybody sees it. We think we are hiding our mess, girl, we all see it. We know what time it is. We’re not that. Maybe people are smarter than we think. And so I think all of this energy we put into trying to hide it and trying to, oh, let me put it on here where all the Christmas stuff is, and hopefully the door doesn’t pop open when people come over. Instead of that I advocate, I’m not saying put it on a banner, go in Times Square and tell everybody no, but I’m just saying I’m advocating for you to own your mess internally so that it can’t be weaponized against you even by yourself.
TS: And to speak about this more vulnerably, I think you point to this when talking about our messes, our power, and you have this other quote that I just love, keep your seams visible. The beauty is in the stitching. And I thought to myself sometimes even among people that I think of as my close friends, I don’t want them to see some of my struggle. I’m embarrassed about it or ashamed about it or whatever you want. I want to lead with my glory and have them think highly of me. I don’t want them necessarily to see my struggle, and yet I know that if I don’t show them the seams, I won’t have the kind of connection and understanding that I want. So I think a lot of us go through this. So I wonder if you can share more about it. I think you’re very articulate on this point and it’s really encouraging and helpful.
SM: Yes, I got the keep your seems visible metaphor from one of the books. I had to read a ti actually, and she was talking about in digital medium, but I’m referring to seams like in stitching. And the impulse is to create two garments, or not two garments, but two pieces of cloth that come together and you can’t see where the seam is. We’re fighting really hard to make it and invisible seams, so they just come together. I’m arguing for the opposite that you can keep those seams visible. It’s okay to see the seams. I’m not saying again that you lead with the seams, you’re not wearing an entire outfit of seams. But what I’m saying is that the seams are actually the connective tissue between you and yourself and you and the world. And for women, it makes you extremely powerful when, because if we live in a world that didn’t weaponize women’s faults against them, I would not necessarily need to advocate for this. But we live in a world that will take and find any imperfections and weaknesses and really just hammer you down. So a remedy for that to me is to keep those seams visible and to wear them. And when the time comes where somebody points them out, they are a part of your beautiful garment and not something that brings shame or guilt or is that used to make you feel less than?
TS: One of the ways I’ve seen myself want to hide my seams has to do with any sharing of struggle in my marriage, as in how much couples put up this front of a hundred percent. And as you say, as if anybody believes it. But still this presentation we are performing to use that word that you introduced. And so it’s this interesting thing even as a couple, how you share the truth of the hard times you’re going through to connect genuinely with other people. And at the same time, you don’t want to air all your laundry. So anyway, I’m curious, especially how you view this. You seem to have a marriage from the outside. It sure looks like the two of you really love each other.
SM: Thank you. We do. We do. But we’re also human and we’re, so, I learned this the hard way through doing reality tv. And I decided, again, me, I lead with authenticity. That’s the only way I know how to be. I don’t have the energy. I also don’t have a good enough memory to perform anything that’s not true. I won’t remember. So I was like, all right, if I’m going to do reality tv, I’m not doing any storylines. I told the producers, I’m not engaging in any of that. This is only what is actually happening our lives, and I will lead with that. And I was going to lead with vulnerability and authenticity wrong. So I mean, yes, that’s a good impulse, but it was the right performance on the wrong stage. So I brought that to a reality show that is not in any way capable of having those depth of conversations.
And I talked about hard things in my marriage. I talked about how hard it is. It was at the time for my husband to navigate anxiety because from his background, his family, they don’t talk about that. That’s not girl, you better prey on it and figure it out. So he was like, what is all this mental health stuff? What’s going on? And I had just come off of my first miscarriage at the time. So it was a rough time. And I was very open about all of that because again, I thought, well, if I’m going to be on this platform, if I’m going to be amplified in this way, I don’t, I don’t serve women by coming up here and lying and trying to be something that I’m not. I really thought that me speaking openly about my struggles with anxiety or the struggles in my marriage would make people see me as maybe more human, invite women to have other conversations.
And it did. It also was a lot because social media can be ruthless, and it was a lot of hate at the time for people that didn’t have maybe the awareness to understand those types of conversations. But for me, it was a spiritual gift I learned. I decided that I would take, I was like, all right, well, I’m not going to lie. That’s exactly what I was going through at the time. We were going through a rough patch that is life. And I just decided that anything that I saw in myself from the show, from the editing, anything that I felt any shame about, any guilt about anything that I didn’t like, I was going to work on that either work on it and see how it could be a chance for me to evolve or see and or see how it could be a chance for me to love myself even more. And so from that, I’ve really grown so much as a person, as really, you know what, Tami, I don’t think I answered the question. Did I answer the question?
TS: I think you shared something very interesting that is tangentially connected to the question, but I, okay, lemme answer this question. Think it’s a tricky territory because it’s kind like, well, let me add something that I think’s connected. You mentioned that when you started the Curly, Conscious, Curvaceous movement–
SM: Curvy, Curly, Conscious.
TS: Yeah, I always get the Cs. I’m not usually dyslexic and then all of a sudden, I can’t remember something like that. All the Cs go in the wrong order. And yeah, that curly curvaceous thing you mentioned that part of it came from your own loneliness and reaching out to other women and in hearing your background and your early life, I could feel that loneliness as well. I have had a lot of loneliness in my life. I notice that if I don’t tell the truth about who I am and connect with people genuinely, there’s no way that loneliness is going to be addressed. And so I have this moment where I have a decision to make, do I stay kind of cut off and alone and keep my stitches turned inside so nobody can see it? Or am I willing in the right situation? And it sounds like reality TV is not the right situation, and I’m having this conversation with you right now in this way because of how much trust you bring, how much safety and softness and openness you bring to the conversation. So I feel like, oh, I can be myself. That’s what you bring to Unruly. I think that’s the invitation of the book. And I’m sure it’s the invitation in your retreats that people feel like, well, this is a place where my mess can be loved, accepted, and I can find the power in it. You bring that. So that’s I think what I’m pointing to. And I’m just curious how that works for you. I’ll say as an antidote to loneliness.
SM: Well, first I’ve become friends with myself. And I know that maybe sounds a little bit trite. I mean we hear that a lot now, but it is so true that in all of this work, I really became friends with myself. I realized that I came from a place where I didn’t really like myself. I didn’t really know if there was good things to know about me or about me. How could I really, it maybe touches on that marriage conversation too, because how could I be in partnership with someone when I’m really not in partnership with myself? I really don’t see the value in myself. So it really came from this lack of love, this loneliness. When I was little, I used to sit home at night and think, I feel like I was dropped off by a ship, a spaceship. I just was dropped off in the wrong place and I’m waiting for them to come get me.
And so a lot of us are waiting on someone else to come get us, someone else to cure our loneliness, whether it be through a marriage or through children or through whatever we fill in the blank with. And it never quite fills that gap because the love that we’re looking for in other people never compares to the love and the companionship that we can have with ourselves. And the more I learned that, the more that I was able to access that and express that with myself, the more that I got it from the world around me. And when the world around me doesn’t give it to me because it won’t always, I have somewhere to go to. I have a friend inside. It just sounds so cliche as I’m saying it, but it’s so true.
TS: No, but it’s actually so significant. How did you turn on, if you will, and then turn up that self-love channel inside of you? What was your key that unlocked that for you?
SM: I wanted to be out of the darkness again. It was really the catalyst for a lot of my growth was leaving that abusive relationship. And it just pinged in my mind, this dynamic is the same dynamic I have been experiencing since I was five. And I don’t want that. I believed that there was something better for me. And I was like, whatever it is, it takes for me to find that, I’ll find that. And it started with me finding it within myself, and I just decided that I was not going to let life beat me down. That there was just so much. What if I didn’t find someone? What if I didn’t meet someone? What if I don’t find the right friends? Then what? I’ll just be lonely. And that wasn’t an option for me. I was like, no. I wanted to find some sense of wholeness, some sense of peace.
I just wanted to be able to lay down at the end of the day and be okay with Shelah. And to me, that has been the best gift of my life. Because now, for example, I’m very excited about my book coming out. I’m very excited about all the things coming out. But I really enjoy the very mundane, the very quiet, the very simple things, me and myself, me painting or whatever. I do love doing arts and crafts that go nowhere. I just love doing them. And so that to me is how I’m able to do all of this other stuff. If I was doing this book and if I was doing all these things and I couldn’t come back to that, I don’t think it would be worth it.
TS: Okay. A couple more things I want to talk to you about Shelah. One is this notion deconstructing our crooked room. I’d never heard that metaphor before, that we all are living in a crooked room. And I found it tremendously illuminating. Can you unpack that, explain that to people?
SM: Yes. So I borrowed the crooked room metaphor from Melissa V. Harris-Perry. She wrote a book called Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. And she opened the book by referencing this field dependent study where they put subjects in a crooked room with a crooked chair, and they asked them to stand up straight, so to find their orientation in a space. And up to 30% of the participants reported, well, we’re standing crooked, but reported that they thought they were standing up straight because they were orienting themselves to the tilted images in the room. And that to me, when I read that, I was like, this is what it’s like being a Black woman. We’re born into this slanted room and constantly being told, why aren’t you staying up straight? Why aren’t you staying up straight? I’m like, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with our ability to stand up straight, our joints and knees and legs.
Everything’s working fine. We just are not on an even surface. And again, acknowledging that is all I’m asking for. I might not be able to change systemic racism in my lifetime, misogyny in my lifetime, but what we can do is acknowledge the room that we’re in and then we can figure out how we want to stand in it. But if we don’t ever acknowledge that the room is crooked, it always points back to an individual flaw, which I feel like is very dangerous and harmful. I think that some self-development doctrine right now does. It’s hyper individualistic. So you are the captain of your ship, you. That’s become things, and I agree, I do think thoughts become things, but if we move with the lie that our own personal vibrations are not affected by outside structures, I don’t think that’s true. That’s not truthful, and that’s not honest. And that’s not a way to really get to wholeness. So to me, it’s acknowledging, hey, yes, maybe you are anxious, maybe you are experiencing these things, but maybe not all of it is your fault. Maybe some of that is from this crooked room that we’re all in.
TS: So it sounds to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, but what you’re saying is that personal accountability, the accountability for what’s going on in that thinking thing, that noisemaker inside of our head and the quality of our heart and our groundedness, et cetera, that’s really important. But also simultaneously both. And recognizing the crooked room we’re in, that we can give that attention as well, and that we need to pay attention to both. Is that fair?
SM: Correct. And it gives space for compassion so we can go easy on ourself as we move through the journey.
TS: Alright, here’s the last thing I want to talk to. You’ve developed a practice called Serious Daydreaming. Can we do some serious daydreaming together? Tell us how we would do that.
SM: Yes, here we are. Okay, so if I were to serious daydream, I’m going to move my legs. If I was going to serious daydreaming, I would start by breath work. Do you want me to do the whole thing?
TS: Yeah, let’s do it. Can we do it?
SM: Yes, we can. So let’s do a box breath, which I’m sure many of your audience is familiar with, experts. So we’ll just breathe in for four, hold for four, release for four, hold for four. Okay. So first we can do a deep clearing breath in through the nose, out through the mouth.
Okay, so we’ll do three box breaths. So breathe in, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4, release, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4, breathe in, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4. Release, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4, breathe in. 2, 3, 4, 0, 2, 3, 4. Release, 2, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3, 4. Now resume, just breathing normally. So with serious daydreaming,
We’re going to connect with your alternative self. I’ll say your unlimited self. In the book, I say sister yourself, but if there’s any men listening or whoever your alternative self. So you’re going to isolate a problem or something that you can’t solve, something that you want. If it’s a problem you can’t solve or something you’re longing for, isolate whatever it is you want to daydream about.
And so we’re going to find ourselves standing in front of a door and on the other side of that door will be your unlimited self. And it’s you, but the version of you who has figured it out, whatever it is you’re struggling with, whatever it is you want, they got it. And so we’re just going to hang out and I’ll lead you through spending some time with them. So find yourself in front of that door. And on the count of three, we’re going to open the door and you’re going to be in the life
Of your unlimited self. 1, 2, 3. First thing I want you to do is pick up on where you are. This is yourself. Who has it all figured out? Everything you think that you don’t have, they have everything you think you don’t know. They know everything you think you don’t have figured out they do. Where are you? Take a moment to pick up on any details, sights, smells, sounds that your alternative self might be giving you.
And as you spend time with them and you walk around, you guys can journey. If you want to go into another room or maybe they want to show you something, see if there’s anything that they want to show you.
And as you spend more time with them, you realize that the only difference between you and them is their energy. It’s this vibration just coming off of them. And you want some of that too.
So if you choose, it’s up to you. You can stand facing your alternative self, toe to toe. And on the count of three, you both can take one step forward so that their energy can become yours and you can get all the solutions, the insights, the knowledge, the love, the healing, whatever you came for, you will get it immediately. One, if you choose, take a step forward on the count of 3, 1, 2, 3, feel this energy, this white light vibration imbuing into all the cells within your body. And you can take a step back and before you go, you can ask your alternative self one question. If you choose, ask them one question and allow them to answer you in one simple sentence. And with that, it’s time to go. For now, find yourself leading towards that door. You came through at the beginning of this meditation, and on the count of three, you’ll be back on the other side, back with sounds True. And Tami and Shelah Marie, 1, 2, 3. Take a deep breath through the nose and release.
And if there’s anything, what I would do now is I would write down anything, even if it didn’t make sense to me, I don’t get it right now. I would write down any feelings, colors, sight sounds, anything that your alternative self showed you, I would write it down. Fun fact, I actually did this to create my company and my marriage. I did the serious daydreaming and I saw them before they were in my life. It was really cool.
TS: It’s very sci-fi, that merging part, the energy of your future self. I liked that. I love it. I love getting weird. Unruly. Shelah Marie, as we conclude, what is your dream for the book? What is your dream for how it will impact people’s lives?
SM: My dream is that it finds the girl who was me in 2016 in my room feeling so down so low about myself. My dream is that it gets right in her hands and she opens the book and she discovers a deeper sense of love and appreciation and honor for who she is. That’s my dream.
TS: Shelah Marie, the author of the new book, Unruly: A Guide to Reclaiming Your True Self. Thank you so much for the love and clarity, inspiration and cosmic power you brought to our conversation. Thank you so much.
SM: Thank you so much for having me.
TS: And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the after-show Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundtrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.
