“Conversations from my Duvet”

This one is more lengthy than the others. This is because we are taking a little break before we head into an evolved version of Conversations.

Season 2, if you will, is on it’s way.

I spend for first few minutes explaining what’s happening.

The content of this episode though, is one which you will have experience of 100%. I recount my experience of my period, which I call bleed these days, my first sexual encounter and pouring my diluted blood onto our plants in the garden as ceremony.

I welcome your thoughts, as always and look forward to welcoming you into the next part of the journey as it comes.

Please leave me a review or tap on the stars if you are on Apple Podcasts. This really helps other people find the podcast and is the most wonderful way you can endorse it.

Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you to Sophie Hargraves, @the_rebel_mother whose Made in Womb documentary and exhibition is of invaluable value. We bleed. Together. We live. We grow. We thrive.

The final one for June.

Skirting around the concept of who we are, amongst other things. You’ll ask yourself who you are and who you are doing stuff for several times in your life, and that’s totally ok. We change, so I think it’s natural to have these moments of reassessing how we play out our lives.

This is particularly prevalent when you have your own business (new or otherwise) and you see yourself as the brand, the unique quality people ‘choose’ YOU for.

I share how inspired I am by the women who share their inner truth, their art, and how it is so rare for people to do this, to show who they really are to the world.

I see this inner truth work as THE way to finding your authentic, unique path and that’s the way I want to operate. I want to speak from my heart and I want to feel.

Within all these considerations, there is mention of my mind struggles in terms of whether I will return to the police or not - what it means financially, professionally, emotionally? These are honest deliberations around a vocation I chose to go into in 2003 and how I can’t go back if I don’t feel 100% committed because otherwise, I’m doing the public a massive disservice.

At the time of journaling these 2018 conversations, Mark and I found ourselves speaking and opening up about money more that we ever had. As a subject, money is huge and all of us have a story around what it is to have or not have it.

Any of you had to make big career leaving decisions that impacted your life hugely on lots of levels? I’d love to hear from you.

This one is for you if you are running your own gig and having doubts as to how to market yourself, how to set goals. 

You may not get the exact answer you are searching for, but you get a real, authentic, true account of a talented woman (just like you are), who has got the option of taking the ‘easy’ road of going back in to the police for a regular wage and paid holidays, who instead has chosen to see what it can be like to go your own way. 

It’s not easy.  For every person you follow with their own business, for every thought that they are doing SO much better than you, I ask, how do you know? 

This is me, back in 2018, being honest, scared and ashamed about the lack of clients and the lack of money.

When you look ahead and have a vision board, or goals – do you actually think about each one and going into WHY that specific goal is important to YOU?  Is it something you feel so deeply that you feel lighter at the prospect and it sounds true to you, or is it a goal that you hear thousands of other ‘entrepreneurs’ spout and therefore you think that you ‘should’ also have… Yes, that’s what this episode is about.  Getting real and authentic in your business, with goals which are as unique as you are. 

I share my personal ones with you from a couple of years ago (not a lot of people do this, and this is where I believe the power of this podcast to be.  Truth, that we tend to conceal behind the perfect social media photo #lovinglife)  What is remarkable though, is that lots of these have now come to fruition.  Evidence based truth.   

Get in touch with comments and as ever, please leave me a review, and/or rating on apple podcasts so that this podcast can reach more women like you.  You are amazing.

There are days you feel like a complete imposter. Time to own up. Time also to look at why you are involved in what you are involved in. Where does it come from? What’s the real block? For me, it’s going back to the old story of “all looks no substance”, believing I’m a bit thick behind it all. This journal entry flips the script. From feeling unqualified to teach pregnancy yoga to laying down on paper and relaying exactly why my own experiences of pregnancy have brought me to this precise moment. Thank you for tuning in. Please leave me a review or a rating if you enjoyed this. This is me with my cap in my hand. Lots of love, Sophie x

At its heart, this episode boils down to exploring our willingness to deep dive into ourselves to explore our uniqueness. The episode covers themes around personal accountability, and how we are much, much more than our ‘qualifications’. We have become complacent and reliant solely on the piece of paper in order to determine someone’s worthiness or indeed, as a way to generalise someone’s skills. (PS: not saying I’d go to a surgeon who has only an NVQ in papier mâché...) I’m talking about digging back in to our creative reserves to dust off the gold that makes US unique and individually special. This topic invariably leads onto the competition we feel with other women. Where does this come from? Who has taught us this? Are there times you feel more or less confident around other women? Have you questioned why? We are all so capable and full of all the skills to blow ourselves away with our awesomeness. That’s the world I want to live in.

This one is another ‘get your Natural High on’ episode. I talk about having gone to a daytime alcohol free rave and having had the time of my life. I talk about how much I value my time and my space to allow for my creativity to thrive. The irony does not escape me - the moment when those words were captured, back in 2018, could never have predicted a 2020 where the kids wouldn’t be in nursery/school and when I would once again be exploring how much SPACE means to me. For my mental health. This is a really positive podcast, and it’s emphasis is on you saving yourself first and foremost. A message we hear but that goes in one ear and out of the other. Enjoy and leave me a review with your thoughts - they mean everything, I appreciate every single one. Thank you, Sophie xxx

What does it mean to be home? How do you make yourself feel at home? Join me during another intimate moment, caught while the world is seemingly asleep, during a moment when it seemed the blue sky was there and in evidence for that only moment alone. Can we take just one moment and just be... without making it complicated and full of intention or expectation? This episode is the equivalent to laying on the perfect sandy beach - the waves are lapping, your thirst is quenched. You are a goddess.

Welcome back and thank you for sharing this space and experience of life back in 2018. Welcome back to this moment in June when as a family, we had driven to France to see my family. All its resonant parallels. We can confuse ourselves so easily. Make mountains out of molehills, so the saying goes. I realise that I found a way to cut right through it - by spending some time with a pen and some paper. Using my senses to bring me to the moment. What do I hear, see, smell and taste and simply - what am I grateful for. Right here, right now - what do I have available to me, within me, to lift a cloud out of the way? Lots of love to you all, Sophie xxx

Big theme. Asking for help. Asking for guidance. Of your friends, of the universe around you and more importantly, of yourself. There’s a massively key message from universal source here that comes right at the end... whatever your calling in life, whatever you want to talk about and change, know that it’s not for you to change people, it’s for YOU to live your life according to YOUR BELIEFS so that you are the embodiment of change. And to trust that this alone, those vibes will do their thing in their magical way. You do you. So much love to you, Sophie xxx

Have you ever felt lost? Trying to find your way home? Then wondered what home is? Where that is? Is it out of you? Inside of you? While we are here, who is that person at home? The work of questioning the inner you and dismantling the bullshit is a constant showing up for yourself. It’s not something which happens in a week - it’s a whole lifetime. What I see is that it can feel ‘easy’ and satisfying to feel ‘at home with oneself’ during a yoga lesson, or having a bath or enjoying a glass of wine but.... that feeling of surety, pleasure, satisfaction: HOW ANCHORED ARE YOU IN IT? How long have you practiced getting to know YOU and being YOU so that you stand up for yourself and speak YOUR language wherever you are? A way to test this is to immerse yourself back into a family meal - you know, like a Christmas gathering. That’s it - drop that bomb and see how long it takes for you to move out of yourself, away from your centre. Just a question. A consideration. And a note on the practice of rest and Yoga Nidra as the ultimate way to come home to yourself. Lots of love, Sophie xxx thank you for being here xxx