Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Latham Thomas. Latham Thomas is a wellness and lifestyle maven, and founder of Mama Glow. Named one of Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100, she has been featured on The Dr. Oz Show, ABC News, Inside Edition, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal Magazine, and the New York Daily News. She’s the bestselling author of Mama Glow and the book Own Your Glow. With Sounds True, Latham Thomas has created a new audio learning program called Beditations: Guided Meditations and Rituals for Rest and Renewal, where she shows people how to reboot themselves with practices designed to help get grounded, present, and centered; sleep better; and recharge our physical, cognitive, and spiritual reserves.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Latham and I spoke about the societal factors that work as obstacles to our self-care. We also talked about how important it is to expand our capacity to receive support and also draw our boundaries when necessary, and Latham gave us some radical suggestions on how to do this. We also talked about how listening to internal messages takes courage, and in Latham’s words, “how the universe rewards courage.” We also talked about how all the places you’ve been taught to be afraid of, all the areas where people said you are too this or too that, too fill-in-the-blank, are actually where you’ll find what Latham calls “your glow power”—how this power lies in going into our darkness to find our light. Here’s my conversation with Latham Thomas:
Latham, you’re credited with leading a revolution in radical self-care and helping women reclaim their “queendom, ” and this is where I wanted to start our conversation, and we’ll begin with this first part, leading a revolution in radical self-care. Tell me what you mean by “radical self-care?”
Latham Thomas: Well, first of all, I wanted just to thank you for having me on—
TS: My pleasure.
LT: —and for even diving into a discussion like this. I think that everything in our modern culture turns us away from our bodies and away from this active listening to the intuition and understanding what our basic needs are, and I feel like most of the time, we’re sublimating those needs at the expense of our well-being. Self-care for me, and what I believe the purpose for it is, is not just to take really great baths that you can post on Instagram, but to actually check in on a moment-to-moment basis with yourself; to understand, “What’s the most important thing I can do right now for all that are involved?—like myself, my child, my work, whatever it is that you have on your plate, looking inward to see what it is that’s necessary so that you can act from a place of fullness, rather than a place where you’re lacking resources.
Most of where I see in our society, really with women, who I work with as a population, they’re constantly running and going and pushing, and this idea of hustling has become synonymous with success and with being cool or proactive. You’re completing tasks, or you’re getting things done, you’re checking things off your list, there’s all that. There’s a lot of movement, but not necessarily progress, and just because there’s movement doesn’t mean that there’s progress. I think that everyone is centered around doing too much, and so what I’m really asking people to do is reframe how we even look at success, reframe how we look at process as integral to the outcome or output of what we do, and be more intentional in how we move through life and how we engage with everything that we do so that everything’s not rushed; and also so that we feel excited and connected and deeply fulfilled as we do this work.
If you’re running yourself down, it really doesn’t matter what the outcome is, because a lot of people who are perceived as really successful are really unhappy or really tired or unfulfilled, because the only value they’re putting into their belief system is that which is connected to the output of what they do. I want us to move away from what we do and really focus on who we are and who we’re meant to become, and I think that’s deeply connected to taking care of yourself, really mothering yourself, and learning, what do you need to thrive?
Just like we do with children, or plants— we have houseplants that we take care of, that we water, right? And then our smartphones that we plug in to the wall because we see that they’re low on battery. But we’re not looking to see when we need to recharge, when we need to take time for ourselves. It doesn’t have to be just taking a bath at night; it’s throughout your day, really punctuating the day with opportunities for self-renewal. I think that’s really important for us to live through the lens of our best lives.
TS: Now you’ve said a lot, Latham, but what I want to dive into a bit more—you said that our society isn’t moving in the direction, if you will, of supporting, necessarily, our radical self-care. I’m curious to know more what’s happening in your view at a societal level that’s working against us; but also a second part here, what are the internal factors that keep women in particular from valuing and engaging in radical self-care? I’d love to know about both, the societal and the internal.
LT: Sure. I think that, on a societal level, our values are connected to anything that’s going to be—any monetary value that we can attach to something will determine its worth. So if we look at the things that women do that do not get—and men as well, that do not get adequate support or even acknowledgement, like child-rearing, which is largely women. Unless you’re a childcare worker or a domestic worker, you’re not getting—and even those people are not getting paid properly for what they do to raise the next generation. Women in the home or stay-at-home fathers do not get paid leave or even compensated for the work that they do to raise the next generation.
We look at people who do work that’s connected to taking care of people, whether it’s caretakers in homes or in schools or nursing homes, people who work with expectant new mothers, people who do body work and healing arts. Largely—I would say obviously there’s men who are in these fields as well, but the work is looked at as largely women-centric or female-centric work, taking care of other people, so it’s undervalued. So you often see people who do the most important work in the world who are struggling really to survive, because this work is undervalued by our society.
When we look at the type of work that is valued, it’s largely work that’s really focused on a lot of cognitive output and a lot of beta-brainwave focus, so it’s really about thinking and doing rather than being and intuiting. I think that because of where we place our values, that’s one reason why things are really askew, but another reason, I think, on a societal level, is because there’s been this really big push with the exposure of social media and a big trend towards entrepreneurship and leadership and this fascination with having your own [company], and people who don’t know where to place boundaries around when they’re on and when they’re off, and even people who are at the helms of companies really pushing this idea that working really hard—which we’ve seen for, I would say, decades—it’s been a mantra, working hard and for others, to build something.
But now I see people who want to work hard to build their own, but they still have this value system that they’ve inherited around working to the bone; not stopping, never stop, don’t give it up, keep going, keep going. When you have this as a mantra, it’s really hard to say, “Well, when do I pause?” because you’re not clocking out and going home. You’re bringing the laptop into the bedroom and you’re staying up late, and you’re putting the kids to bed and it’s—whatever it is that’s shaping the way that you live your life.
I think it’s hard for people to shut off, [and] for women in particular, because we’re inundated with so many things. We’re really the crux of community, and then usually the ones who have placed upon them the responsibility to take care of others, meet everyone’s needs in the family as well as their own nuclear family, and then they usually have some sort of connections within aspects of their community.
So there’s so many responsibilities and so many things that need to be fixed or figured out before a woman can put attention on herself, but instead I’m asking us to think differently, not just put everybody’s needs first and take care of your checklist. I’m asking for us to actually take care of ourselves first so that we can have the energy and the frame of mind to address what’s on a checklist, and meet everyone’s needs as well as the larger needs of our society and the world, in whatever ways that you show up in the world. It’s impossible without support, and it’s not done well if we don’t take care of ourselves. It’s like, “Yes, you can do it. Can you do it well? No.” You need really to devote time. And not just once a week, but when you feel like you know where your lulls are, you know when you’re at your best, you know when you feel depleted, and you can design your life around these periods where you know you have the ebb and flow, and create the right supports for yourself.
I’m just wanting us to think a little bit more radically about how we design our lives and not just going into a space that’s designed, especially like most workplaces, which are designed for men—for them to succeed, not really for us. We’re trying to find our way and acclimate to structures that uphold patriarchy, but also that we’re trying to assimilate so that we can also buy into what society has taught us is the dream. It’s really hard to pursue that whilst trying to also maintain internal well-being and spiritual footing as well as taking care of yourself. Those things seem in conflict based on the values that were set from early on in life.
TS: I’m with you, and I think you’ve really described the collective way that we’re going against the current when we commit to redefining success, valuing the process of our life, and taking care of ourselves. I think you’ve done a great job. I want to talk about the internal obstacles, because I do think [for] a lot of women, this is not a new idea. It’s not a new idea that I need to take care of myself and not white-knuckle it through and get to the point where I’m running on fumes and collapse. I get it, but I don’t do it. I don’t do it, I don’t change, and you talk at a certain point that we have to meet our inner saboteur and be willing to face this part of us that’s not doing the things we know we need to do. So what are those internal obstacles?
LT: I think a lot of them come down to how we value ourselves. There’s people who are fully confident—and I’m speaking also about myself, not just what I’ve seen, but we all struggle with something internal around where our limits lie, where our boundaries lie. There is a basic human need to be seen, to be heard, and to belong. Part of belonging is having people like you, and I think there’s this overwhelming need to be liked and not disappoint. So we start with that, and so when someone shows up and asks, “Oh, can you do this or that for me?” the automatic—someone who likes you or who loves you asks you to do something, you want to be of service, So that’s our initial response, is “Yes,” and then once we unpack what it is we were asked, the next feeling is confusion or upset or, “How am I going to get out of this, but we’ve made an agreement?” Then we feel resentment, because now we’re locked in to an agreement that we don’t know how to get out of.
I think that the internal conflicts lie with meeting this aspect of ourselves who really wants to say no, who wants to set boundaries but isn’t necessarily feeling equipped to be able to draw those boundaries, number one. I think another aspect is really—I feel like sometimes we’re in conflict with what’s possible for ourselves. I talk in the book about expanding your capacity to receive; many of us are really good at giving—we’re so great at pouring into other people, and helping with this project and that and, “Let me be on this committee and this board, and serve in this way, and do the bake sale.” Whatever it is, we’re very good, and then when it comes to someone asking us, “Well what do you need right now?” we draw a blank. It’s like when someone asks you, “What do you want for Christmas or your birthday?” and you’re like, “Oh my God, I don’t know.”
It’s like that, we don’t even know what to say; but we do know, but we’re afraid to even ask, because we’re programmed, “No, you can’t ask for help. God forbid, you can’t ask for help.” There’s this whole superheroine—which I believe is being shattered, and this idea of having to uphold this cape-like archetype of a superhero woman who’s tackling everything on her own. We’re dismantling that, but at the same time, we haven’t figured out really who’s emerging from that dismantling, and who are we putting on a pedestal? What’s the version of myself that I’m going to elevate, that’s going to no longer tolerate X, Y, and Z, that will no longer let this and this happen, and will now support only these types of relationships and this type of work and these types of asks, and this is how I want people to support me.
We haven’t really gotten there yet. We’ve figured out what we don’t like, but not figured out what we want to embrace. So I think that the internal conflicts are just these—there’s the way that society functions and how we have to live in it, and also our primal needs for wanting to belong and wanting to be useful and of service, but also wanting people to help us and not really knowing how to get people to actually do things in a way that’ll be helpful. I think we can, in the workplace, delegate. It’s part of what many of us have to do. But in the home or in your personal lives or friendship circles, are you asking enough of the people around you when you need to feel supported? I think that it’s really—being as committed as we are in so many aspects of our work lives, where we can really be—where we’re able to use a lot of these skills, and bringing them actually into our personal lives, where they really matter as well.
And then the other piece is boundaries. I think that we’re seeing an emergence of conversation and dialogue around where boundaries begin and where they end, transgression of boundaries and the various permutations of that, and where women stand, and also the power of the voice. I think that if we realize that there’s support when we speak up, if we realize that if we place a boundary and someone crosses it and we speak out and we’re supported in that, then we continue to feel comfortable to speak. But for so long we’ve been silenced, and so I think that there’s many facets to why we don’t do certain things, and most of it is because of lack of support—not a lot of models that we see of success around modeling these principles that I’m speaking about, and also no sense of safety.
If I decide I’m going to say no to this, who’s going to back me up? Or if I say, “I can’t do it right now,” am I going to be ostracized? All these things—and that can cross so many areas of a woman’s life. I think that all of those things can feel conflicting for someone who’s trying to navigate where to fit in and practices that’ll help them feel better about themselves. And it’s not just the things that we do, but it’s just how we move through life; like with the boundary piece, sleep, eating well, exercising, spending time with friends and family, spending time in nature. All of these things that may feel good for you, where are you placing them within the context of a dialogue that’s internal like we just spoke about, that has all of these other things that you might have to weigh in?
I think that that’s where it can be a challenge for women, but at the same time, I do believe that we have tools available to us to unpack where these things are sitting inside that keep us from making the larger commitment and sticking to it. I know that when we really want something, we’re really good at making sure it gets done or making sure that we get it. So it comes down to going underneath the “why,” not just—I think sometimes we’ll say, “Oh no, let’s say some affirmations and positive thinking.” It’s not just that. You have to go underneath—”Do I really believe I deserve to do this, that I deserve time for myself? Am I worthy of this?” It’s not just tell yourself you’re worthy. Where was your worthiness unearthed, and how do we restore that so that you know that you do belong here in this moment, and this is a sacred pathway for your empowerment and for your sustainability?
TS: I think you’re really touching on something very deep when you talk about a sense of knowing our own worth. When I think of receiving support—and as you were talking, I was thinking of people in my life and myself over the years, and I’ve watched [them and] it’s like, “Can that person receive? Can they receive love and support? No, no.” And that this is the obstacle to greater self-care. You have to be able to receive.
LT: Right, you do.
TS: And when you talked about if you don’t feel worthy enough, you’re going to have some kind of limit like, “I can’t receive any more support that this, any more pleasure, any more relaxation, any more—I’ve hit my threshold.” Let’s say someone’s in a situation like that, where they’re like, “Yes, I feel I can’t receive more because I do sense I don’t think I deserve it.” How can they—because we’re getting down into the root system, I think.
LT: Yes, yes, where our beliefs lie. I have several different types of meditative exercises that I like people to—that are with the body, but also with the mind, like written exercise and then internalizing through the body, to ask questions around the worthiness piece because I think that’s so important. And also I think that trying things that are uncomfortable, but that make sense for you in a time where you can practice it and get better at it as you go.
What I mean by that is I used to have a really hard time telling people no or just taking on way too much. One of the ways that I started to work on this was in the time that I knew I would feel most vulnerable, most depleted is when I would set the boundaries. I chose this period around my cycle, and so I’d map out the 5-7 days in red on the calendar, and in that time frame, I don’t care what came up, I would say no. So even if it was like, “Can I come over and borrow a cup of sugar?” Whatever it is, I would just say no, and that was really liberating.
It was very challenging at first, because a lot of the things that you want to do may fall in that window, and then you learn, “Wait a minute, I can design my life; I can choose to have this meeting when I’m ovulating, or I can have this meeting when I emerge from the ‘red tent, ‘ so to speak, not in the midst of when I’m bleeding and my body’s working really hard, and when I should be dreaming and resting and eating and hydrating, and not running around New York City trying to do everything that I would do while I’m on my cycle.”
I started to ritualize that practice of self-care and learning about boundaries, and I already sensed in myself—because I knew the first two days of my cycle are when I’m more tired just naturally, and so I just wanted to use [it] because it was easier to work was where my body was to practice this. Because it’s easier to say no if you feel no, but it’s harder to do if it’s 90 degrees and sunny and you’re on a beach it’s like, “Yes, let’s go do it,” you feel really [too] relaxed to say no; it’s harder to say no when everything feels like—you can’t foresee that you don’t want to do this thing when everything around you says yes.
But I framed that and what I found was it was profound, because number one, it taught a lot of people around me where I began and where I ended, and what that meant for what they could ask of me, what that meant for my expectations of them, and what that meant for how I felt about myself, and I didn’t make up excuses. At first I would make up a thing about why, and then I stopped and I was like, “You know what? No.” I’m like, “Thank you so much for thinking of me, but I’m going to pass,” or whatever it was. And people were like, “Oh,” and just kind of, “OK, cool.” They moved on. I was terrified thinking that people would dislike me or this or they would—and no, they just move on.
So you learn that it’s not really about you; what it is, is that if you’ve poised yourself to be this great leader who gets things done, who doesn’t say no and who would take on everything, then people will use you like that. They’ll use you because you’re teaching them how you want to be used. You’re teaching them how they should treat you through your own actions. People learned by my example how to treat me, so I had to do the work to reframe that narrative.
And then what I found, Tami, was as you do this, you can refine and refine and refine. So then it was like, “OK, well, now that I am showing people where my boundaries lie, let me now look at where else I sometimes feel stifled.” Then I found that when people would ask me for meetings or certain things that I’m like, “Oof, this doesn’t feel good,” and I would force myself to do certain things. Then I learned, “Here’s where I feel best: a phone call or to understand what’s being asked of me before I sit down in a meeting,” because I didn’t like feeling like I was being cornered or forced into some sort of discussion, because I’m walking into something without knowing really what everyone’s intention was. So I set up everything in the way that felt good for me first.
I think it really comes down to, even if you don’t feel like you deserve it, you know the things that make you feel most safe and most secure, and so why don’t you move from that place of, “What do I need to really thrive? I know that I really like information, so I know what I’m getting into if I’m going to say yes or no to something. I know that I need a calendar or …” Whatever the things are, figure out what you need so that as you start to map out for yourself this new system that you’re going to operate within that supports self-care, that you have everything you need.
Just like if we’re going to go running together, I’m going to have sneakers, I’m going to have my little leggings, I’m going to have a bottle of water, I’m going to have a stopwatch. I’m going to have the things that are necessary to do that type of activity. We need to have an inner checklist of what’s necessary for us to decide whether this request gets filtered through or whether this activity or this person or this whatever it is gets to fold in to your life. And once you’ve developed criteria, then it really becomes clear to you, “No, this does not fit at all.”
And the last thing I would say, which is a really simple barometer, is whether it tires you or inspires you. You can put things very easily into two categories, “Does this feel good and make me want to do back flips, and is it exciting, or does this make me need a cup of coffee, or do I feel just like, ‘Ugh, this is a drag’?” Everything falls in one or the other, so you can sense in your body if you feel excitement, and you can sense in your body if you feel anguish. So you have to also check in with the body, not just with the mind and do a list of pros and cons, but check in with the body in asking yourself questions and then feeling what comes up, feeling the—or once a request comes, feel the knot in your belly which is no, or feel the little butterflies flying in formation if it’s yes.
I think we have to use everything that’s available to us, but what we trust most, as people sharpen their intuition and get more comfortable with using it, I think a lot of these other practices can help us strengthen that pathway until we get to a place where we can really just trust the voice.
TS: Latham, I’d love for our listeners to know a bit more about your own personal journey to being the empowered queen that you are helping other women, in your words, “reclaim their queendom.” I know that you’re a birth doula, and people refer to you as “The Glow Maven,” helping women glow from the inside out. But tell me a little bit about your own journey and what you had to go through.
LT: I grew up in California and was exposed to a lot of life cycles. I grew up where we grew a lot of vegetables, a lot of flowering plants were just around us at all times; and I studied with this master herbalist at an early age, and so I was really fascinated with life cycles and plant systems, botany and things of that nature. That really shaped the rudiments of my childhood interests that would shape up later or show up later in my life. At the time too, when I was four, my mom was pregnant, my great aunt was pregnant, and then my mom’s sister-in-law, so my aunt, was pregnant—all at the same time, and I was watching how these women would navigate pregnancy, and as a four-year-old, it’s all very surreal and cool and fascinating as you’re watching this happen.
My mom was really keen on making sure that I understood the anatomy, and so she taught me everything about anatomy when I was really young, and so I knew everything about the body and how the baby was going to be born, and that would obviously show up later in life too. My cousin and I would stuff Cabbage Patch dolls under our shirts and deliver each other’s babies, and my mom reminded me of that, and I was like, “Oh yes, that’s probably where this all came from.” But fast forward, what I think imprinted me the most was those two experiences that I shared, of witnessing these women at their most powerful but also most vulnerable, and knowing that inside me, that there was something that felt a tether and connection to that process.
I went to an ashram when, let’s see, I was—I can’t remember how many years ago this is now, but a decade or so. I go to this ashram and it was going to be my birthday, and on the third day after my birthday, there was a Vedic astrologer who asked to have a reading with me. They did a birthday Pūjā ceremony where they did a blessing ,and there was a reading that was also to occur. So I go for the reading and in the reading, what was revealed were many numbers, which I wrote down, and also a few messages which I could make out in English. There was one that was very clear that I will never forget, and the man said to me, “You’re supposed to mother the mother,” and I was like, “Huh I’m kind of already doing that,” and I tried to explain to him what I did, and he was like, “Yes, but it’s deeper than what you’re doing, but this is what you’re supposed to be doing.”
And I had been told for years by people, “Oh I’d love for you to be my doula, you should be a doula,” and I was resistant to that. I was really resistant for many reasons, but I felt like I was going a really great job of hand-holding women during my prenatal yoga classes and through nutrition work and other ways, but I didn’t feel that I was supposed to be a doula. But I kept getting the call, and the call comes in many ways and in many forms. This one though, when it came, there wasn’t a resistance but there was still like a—I was listening, but I wasn’t jumping in. It was like I was aware but I wasn’t 100 percent there yet.
I remember coming home and I don’t remember filling out this application for a fellowship, but I did. I think I just channeled the answers. I don’t recall writing, I don’t recall. I know that I wrote it in handwriting, because this is back when there was no—people didn’t type their computer answers and fax—or not fax, but people faxed back then. They weren’t doing PDF email scans and things. I remember it was definitely a meticulous process, because when I saw the application afterwards, I knew it was my handwriting, but I didn’t even recall filling it out. so I checked my email one day—and again, this is back when people barely checked email, and I opened the email and I see this thing that says, “You’ve been accepted to this doula fellowship program,” and I was like, “Huh.” And I looked at the date, and the date corresponded to a date that he had given me in the reading.
And so I was like, “OK,” and I just took that moment and I took some deep breaths, and I felt in every area of my body tingling, and I just sat still with it and I said, “Yes.” I said, “OK, yes. OK, yes, yes. OK, I got it, yes. The answer’s yes.” And that’s all I said, and then I proceeded, and I was like, “I have to stay on mission because I’m being pulled in this direction for a reason, and I’m not going to ask any more questions. I’m going to obey, and I’m going to allow spirit to order my steps, and I’m going to trust that all that I’ve done leading up to this moment has prepared me for where I’m heading, and I’m just going to continue and trust.”
I think that it’s so hard to do that if you don’t feel confident in who you are, and if you don’t feel—and I don’t think I felt 100 percent confident in who I was necessarily, but I felt so strongly the call. I felt so strongly that I was being pulled in the direction for purpose that I answered. Sometimes these messages come to us and they come faintly, and they get louder and louder and they come through people or through signs, and there’s all kinds of omens; but listening is a gift, and when you listen and take action on your listening, you might open up. I believe what opens up for you is bigger than what you could have ever imagined, and for me, it was a huge lesson in trust and in faith, and our business transformed and boomed, and it was like—I’ve served hundreds of women and it’s been incredible, but only because I listened. I could have completely gone the other direction.
So I believe that part of owning your glow is tapping into that one part ancestral wisdom and ethereal energy that makes up the nexus of who you are, and also this spirit that weaves in and out of your life to also gently guide you when it’s time to step in and push you in a different direction. I think that that, for me, was critical in getting to where I am, and people ask like, “Oh, how did you do this, how did you do that?” I’m like, “I don’t think I did anything so much as I just allowed myself to become.” I didn’t force in a particular direction. I just took one foot in front of the other, and then I just was like, “Oh this is—OK, this is where I am.” It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t mapped out. I didn’t do this whole flowchart of where I’m going to be in five years. I think people get really caught up in those things when really, if you do all that with your head but not with your heart, and you don’t allow space for magic, you don’t know where you’re going to end up.
I think part of my journey has really been about surrender and softening and opening; and obviously, that’s such a huge through line because of the work that I do with women is about surrender and softening and opening, to give rise to new life. I think that those have been critical in my own personal journey, and being able to translate that into a way that is digestible for women who are really tightly wound and afraid and feel like they can’t do something, but need to hear it in a different way or need to have someone hold their hand or lay on hands and look them in the eye and let them know, “You don’t have to do it alone.” I think a huge piece of what our work is about is women not feeling like they have to do it alone, and allowing them to be witnessed as they transform along a journey.
TS: There’s one piece here, if you will. You talked about listening and then taking action, and how that was so important for you; and then you also previously talked about what it was like in terms of extreme self-care, marking out a five- to seven-day period in your calendar, and taking that risk that if you said no to people, that they’d still love you and the world wasn’t going to dissolve in front of you, that everything would be OK. It’s this taking the risk part that I want to underscore and have you comment on, because it’s one thing to listen—and I’m imagining the person who’s listening to our conversation right now, and they know there’s some boundary they need to draw or that there’s something they need to step into, some invitation that’s niggling at them, and they know it’s time to take action, but it’s going to be a risk if they take action, in some way. Talk some about that courage to take the risk you know you need to take.
LT: Yes. I believe that the universe rewards courage, so you’re not going to be met with—it might be packaged in a negative response if you place all of your eggs in the basket of the response or the emotional reaction of someone else. But if you place what you value on how you feel and what’s going to make you feel most fulfilled and most supported, when you say yes or no or when you delineate boundaries or when you—whatever it is that’s on your plate in this moment, when you do that thing, your scorecard for what’s valuable lies in your hands, not in the hands of the other person or the people or the entity. It’s not about what feels good for them, it’s about what feels good for you.
So you taking those steps, and even in the face of fear—it’s not about dissolving fear and getting over [it]. People really get caught up in, “Oh, I’ve got to get over this fear.” No, you just have to move with it and dance with it, and face it and see it and acknowledge that it’s in the room, but you also have to use the fear as fuel. Don’t let it stifle you. It’s never a good excuse to not do something because you’re afraid, and my son teaches me that.
I see that in children. They’re our greatest teachers. I think that becoming risk-friendly is an important aspect of our personal growth. It can permeate in every aspect of our lives to meet at the edge. The risks that you take are really at your growing edge, so when you’re at the edge of where you feel like your limits go, at the end of that cliff is risk, and jumping across is where risk and fear meet. And when you get to the other side, you overcome, and that fear that you had diminishes and diminishes and diminishes each time you go across a boundary or you go across a drawbridge, where you were holding on to a fear so tightly that it stifled your ability to make a decision that was congruent with where you were headed.
Every time that we make decisive action around what makes us afraid and towards what it is that we desire and what we know we deserve, that fear dissolves. It doesn’t go away, but it dissolves. And what you’ll find is the things that you felt terrified to do, when you look back as you maybe—how I do it, I document, I journal, I do reflections and so when I look back three, four, five years, ten years, I see things that I’m like, “Oh my God, I remember being terrified of that,” or “I remember not believing I could do that or have that or be that.” Whatever it was I was writing, now I can see where I am, and there’s a different—I’ve been initiated into a different set of challenges.
Really, I think that all the things that show up in our lives allow us an opportunity to grow. So whatever is nibbling at your heels and making you nervous or afraid or feel like you can’t take action, is placed there so that you can overcome it to get to the next stage, to get to the next level of your growth so that you can meet what’s supposed to be upon your journey, where you’re supposed to be headed next. But you’ve got to allow yourself to defeat it, to get past it. And so yes, I think we all know we should do certain things, but the fear sometimes is enough to get us to not do it.
That’s why I believe that a circle, a sister circle of support, whether it’s women or friends—it doesn’t have to be just women—who support you, who believe in you, who cheerlead for you, who can help cheer you on when you’re afraid to do something. You have a buddy that you can call right before you ask for that raise or right before you break up with that person or right before—whatever it is that you have to do, that you have someone who can listen to you that’s not judgmental. Or you have a really strong spiritual practice, or one that you’re at least developing, where there’s self-reflective time that you can turn inward and listen to those whispers that are becoming stronger, and orient yourself around what steps you want to take based on what reveals itself to you in your meditation or in your dreams or in your journaling.
Whatever it is that you’re doing, let all of these tools become like weapons of consciousness that help you to destruct and deconstruct these fears and these things that are standing in your way of taking risks, because risk is—we take risk every day. We wake up and we get out of the bed, and we’re thwarted with—if you really want to think about it, everything’s a risk that we do. Eating is a risk, breathing. Anything can happen, but we have faith that we’re going to wake up tomorrow. We just do. We have faith that we’re going to wake up. We have faith that the sun’s going to come up and that at night it’ll set. Why don’t we have faith that we can do this thing that, it seems impossible in this moment, but why don’t we have faith that we can do it?
I think that we have to put things in perspective, but we also have to activate the glow power, these superpowers that are inside of us, to work in our favor and start to move even when it’s a scary idea, still move towards taking steps, even if they’re baby steps, so that as we get more comfortable, the things that have been really challenging for us to do become easier as we little by little start to chip away at whatever it is that’s causing us that great fear.
TS: It’s interesting that you brought up our glow power. There’s a quote from your work that I quite like that I wrote down here, “All the places you’ve been taught to be afraid of are where you find your glow power.”
LT: Yes. Yes, I love that quote too, because I believe that it’s in the darkness, it’s in the places that are tucked away. When you’re young, you’re told, “Oh, don’t go here, don’t go down that street, don’t go in the attic, don’t …” All these places that you’re like, “Wait, why can’t I go there? What’s there? What’s in the dark that’s so scary?” When you’re little even, you’re scared to look under the bed or you’re scared of what’s in the closet when you go to sleep. There’s all these things that are associated with darkness, but also associated with aspects of our self that are tucked away, that we learn to hide, and a lot of our superpowers lie in the places that we tuck away.
Especially with women—I think that at an early age, we learn to disassociate with these parts of ourselves that people think are too much or too this, whatever—”It’s too ___” is what we tuck away. “Oh, you’re too loud, or you’re too bossy, or you’re too …” Whatever those things are, we make sure to compartmentalize, throw it in a box, store it away for nobody to find, and it’s actually in that “you’re too much” box, is inside of that box that you’ve tucked away is your power. There’s a lot of power in that aspect of yourself that is hard for people to see or hard for people to accept, and when we reclaim it, when we go back and, “Well, why is it that people said I was so bossy? Why is it that people said I was too loud? Why is it …” What made them uncomfortable are aspects of feminine power that are totally under-celebrated.
I think that when we look at where we’re shut off and what we’ve locked away, and start to go in the attic and open up all these boxes, and reveal what’s been getting dusty and cobwebby and stuck away, and actually let these aspects of ourselves out, we find that there are uniquely feminine and uniquely powerful attributes that we’ve been denied access to, and that we can use in our favor if we learn how to integrate them.
And also, when we explore these hidden areas of—even when we look at the female body for instance, every day we get messages that there’s something wrong with our bodies, “You’re too this” or “You’re too fat or “You’re too skinny, unsanitary …” all these things that we hear about our bodies. There’s commercials and products and services being sold to us because something’s wrong with us, is what we’re being told. Our bodies are basically an accident waiting to happen, they’re flawed. This is what we learn. So if that’s the message, what is the foundation for young girls and for women to feel empowered or feel even connected to their bodies when everything that we’re told outside is negative? In a place that we live now, in this time, loving yourself is already a radical act. Taking care of yourself, obviously, is one in a culture that we live in like this, but also having maps and visuals that model something different is also very powerful.
I think that we see that with Instagram for instance. You can find all of these—through social media, all of these beautiful images and messages that say the opposite of what we’ve been taught. I think that gives me a lot of hope that there are a lot of women forming communities around dismantling these messages and finding power, especially in these deep, dark places that we’ve been told to disassociate from, and that gives me hope.
TS: Latham, in your own life, where were you supposedly too fill-in-the-blank?
LT: I think that for me—I talk about it later in the book, but too dark or too—I come from an African American family, and there’s all different types of ranges of color in my family. My mom’s very fair-skinned and my sister was too. I was really brown, and I remember getting messages, even within my father’s side of the family, that I was too dark, or even in my community growing up, whether it was in the African American community or just being exposed to a larger community of people growing up in Oakland, where there was messages about beauty and beauty ideals that I didn’t fit into.
I remember growing up and my mom would try to find dolls for me that looked like me, and it was really hard in the ’80s to do that, and I remember not feeling beautiful and not thinking that I was beautiful. I don’t remember how young I was when I started thinking that, but I remember being young. And it’s not uncommon, as we know; so many young girls walk around thinking this. It wasn’t until I went to college for the first time—actually, I would come to New York and the East Coast with my father in the summertime, and I would see my cousins and all these people on the East Coast again, and that’s a completely different way of thinking that valued brown-skinned people. They had a different point of view.
When I moved to New York, that was the first time I ever realized that I was in a place where there wasn’t this, “This type of skin is better than that type of skin.” It was the first time, when I was 18, where people would say things like that I was beautiful, and I was like, “What?” I think that from a lens of beauty being an inside job, I think my mom, who did her very best to make sure that all of us felt loved and beautiful and embodied—she did her best, but I think that there were just things that slipped through. I was exposed to dialogue and messages and people and teasing and things like that.
I was a really great athlete, and I remember being not a tomboy, but just really great at sports, and so I think that sometimes when women or girls are really competitive and they make boys feel uncomfortable or men feel uncomfortable because they’re capable, and so I remember that as well. When I got into athletics, being a really great competitor, whether it was track and field or field hockey or soccer, I remember the dialogue around, “You think you’re too good, or you think you’re too …” And I was like, “I think you think I am, because that’s why you’re upset, but I can’t help that I’m really great at sports.” I remember being like, “Well, why do they on the one hand want you to be really good, but the other hand they don’t want you to be too good, because you make these people uncomfortable?” I remember that too, of having to vacillate and dance between these boundaries of making everyone else comfortable.
I think that that’s something that all women really face—all people really. But I think there’s this level of switching code as you’re moving through different settings, to make sure that you feel comfortable or that the people around you feel comfortable. I remember having to overcompensate for other people’s comfort a lot because of my, “Oh, I was good at this and this person’s upset,” that kind of thing. You end up having to, even emotionally—
TS: Hide your glow, hide your light.
LT: Hide your glow, exactly. You have to dim it. And then at the same time as dimming the lights, you have to figure out, who is it safe to show who you really are to? Who really can receive me? And so that’s a challenge, when you feel like you should just be able to be on, but you’ve got to cut out the lights every now and again. So that, I think, is something that a lot of women have to deal with, and especially young girls. It starts early, where they start overcompensating for their talents or their unique abilities, their intelligence, whatever it is, at the expense of others around them; and usually it’s for the comfort of boys in the classroom or other things like that.
I think at an early age I saw that stuff, and it takes time to unwind those things that occur and really see them for what they are, and use the lessons to reference when you’re in your adult life, and see yourself acting in ways that you know were imprinted when you were younger. At the point where we’re doing this work and we’re engaging in communities like yours, and listening to podcasts and reading books, at a certain point you’ve got to not just listen in and tune in, but now let’s really check our internal status and figure out how we can offload some of the stuff we’ve been carrying for too long, and how we can transform some of these patterns that we developed, because they’re not going to be of service at this stage of our life and where we’re headed.
I think that for me, that’s been a commitment to daily show up and unwind any of the things and unweave the things that may have slipped through the cracks. And [to] challenge myself on a regular basis, but also challenge the people around me—my community, the women I serve, and also be an example. I have a son, so I want to be an example to him also of how to love yourself and take care of yourself and really be strong with your boundaries and firm with your belief system and really defend what it is that you stand for. We have to feel like that’s our birthright because it is.
TS: Latham, our conversation’s coming to an end, but before we close, you made a new audio teaching program with Sounds True on what you call Beditations, and I thought to myself, “Oh great, I can meditate in bed. I’m definitely interested in Beditations. I love bed.” Tell our listeners just a little bit about Beditations.
LT: I’m so excited about Beditations. It’s an audio program that we designed to, on the A side, really help you to relax and restore yourself, and on the B side, really help you to sleep. I’ve worked with so many women and have seen how people have trouble sleeping or have trouble relaxing and really having restorative rest. This program is designed to help us get to explore some of the root causes as to why we’re not getting good sleep, but also have practical solutions to how we can do better, without judging ourselves, without having to have all the accoutrement and all the props and everything that you think that you need. You don’t need anything. You just need your bed. You just need a soft place to lie down, whether that’s the bed or the floor or a couch, wherever you feel most comfortable; and you just need to turn it on and show up for yourself. I think that’s most important.
There’s so many challenges for people who would like to start a meditation practice who feel like, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do it. I can’t be still, I can’t sit up, my hips are tight.” All of these things that I hear people say, and then when you say, “You don’t have to do anything but lie down,” there’s no resistance. Everyone can do that pretty much, even if they’re propped up, or even people who are ill can do this. You don’t have to be able-bodied to do this. I really wanted to democratize the experience for people so that it wasn’t one that met resistance. Right now, we’re super excited for it to come out, because I would love to see the reaction people have, wherever they are in life, how it supports them. I’m just so thrilled because I love Sounds True, and working with the team there has been amazing, and it’s going to be a sleepy time! [Laughs]
TS: Well, and certainly extreme self-care in terms of getting enough rest. It’s an obvious connection there, that we have to be well-rested if we’re going to feel well-resourced.
LT: That’s right.
TS: Latham, I have so enjoyed talking with you. What an inspiring, straightforward human you are. Thank you so much.
LT: Oh my God, Tami. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure, and thank you for these incredibly deep questions. I love question that go under the surface.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Latham Thomas. She is the author of the book Own Your Glow: A Soulful Guide to Luminous Living and Crowning the Queen Within, and a new audio program from Sounds True called Beditations. Thanks everyone for listening. SoundsTrue.com: many voices, one journey.
