Speaker 1: 0:00

Next up on Soul Level, human.

Speaker 2: 0:02

One of my first big girl clients was Charlie Pride. He was like the big first black male country singer. He was so sweet.

Speaker 1: 0:09

He was an old man.

Speaker 2: 0:10

At this point I was like 19, 20. And I was hanging everything up and keep in mind, he could have been a pro baseball player and decided he wanted to do country music instead, when, like this, was still segregated and then excelled in it. And I'm nervous. It's my first big girl job. It's being filmed, I'm getting paid for my first day, right? So I'm hanging everything up and I hear in the background Virgo and I turn around and I go yes, and it's him. Most people think, oh, white girls with my haircut are into astrology and that's about it. And he was like, yeah, first week of September. And I was like how did you know? He goes oh, you're talking like a Virgo vibe about you, I'm a Pisces. And he starts breaking this stuff down and I was like so people already thought like it was weird, you're a baseball player and weird that you're a country singer, and now, like you're an astrologer. I never look at someone and make an assumption about them. Now.

Speaker 1: 0:57

You mentioned how it was a deliberate choice to start hiding, and then it was a deliberate choice to start being seen, and that is such an interesting place to be because, even with style, you can either feel constrained by it or it could be the keys to your freedom.

Speaker 2: 1:13

I loved this client so much and she kind of disappeared for about six months and I emailed her a couple of times just making sure you're okay, like this isn't like you. Did I do anything wrong? And I didn't hear back from her and then she resurfaced and said I've been diagnosed with cancer. It is terminal. I will be going to do death with dignity. Will you help me pick out my outfit? And I was like you have to disassociate, you need to just get through this for her. The only time that fully registered with me was when I hung up the call and I was like see you on the other side, happy trails. And she was like thanks. And I got the email that she passed peacefully and she wore the outfit. And, um, when I hung up the call, I was like you don't have time to cry right now because you have seven more people that need you. So once you've styled someone for their ghost outfit, nothing really bugs you anymore.

Speaker 1: 2:06

You didn't come here to play safe. You came to remember your power and build what comes next. I'm Sylvia Beatriz, psychic medium and intuition coach, and this is Soul Level Human, the podcast for truth tellers, cycle breakers and soul led revolutionaries. You didn't come here to bypass the chaos. You came here to lead through it. After last week's intense deep dive into shadow work, today's episode is a bit of a palette cleanser, but make no mistake, it still packs a punch. If you've ever been told to stay away from politics, religion, body image or race, you already know Soul Level Human is a space where we run straight towards the taboo instead of running away.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Today I'm joined by Peyton Dale, a Nashville-based rock and roll body neutral stylist who styled everyone, from music legends to postpartum moms to dominatrixes. Peyton calls herself a soul stylist and if you've ever been in class with me, you already know style is one of the first entry points I teach when it comes to tuning into your own intuition and reconnecting to and reclaiming your own energy. When you're getting to know your own clear yes, clear no, and what that feels like, sounds like, looks like for you. Sometimes the quickest way kind of a backdoor hack to access that is through what you put on your body. Peyton has found a way to turn her own intuitive understanding of humans into her life's work on set, on tour and now with an expansive virtual community of clients who want to feel like themselves again, or maybe for the first time.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Her work is fashion, yeah, but it's also deep healing. And listen, I'll be real. Some of her takes activated my human a little bit. Her activism might not look like mine, but I also know that her vibration, her presence, is doing work in rooms that I wouldn't necessarily have access to or even feel safe in, and you know what that matters. So if you've ever felt like your body had to earn visibility or acceptance, or you're done dressing like you're in spiritual witness protection, this episode is your invitation to take up space and be fully seen and felt on a soul level. Let's get into it. Peyton Dale, thank you for coming on the show. I'm so happy to have you.

Speaker 2: 4:38

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 4:39

I've been around the block with stylists and fashion and all of these things, but not everybody comes at it with such intention and I love that about you, the fact that you have soul styling. First of all, I was like, oh, she's my people, click, follow. So let's start off with telling me a little bit about your approach to styling and what soul styling is. How long do we have? We can hang out for a week. I'll clear my schedule.

Speaker 2: 5:09

I had this conversation actually with my hairstylist recently, my hairstylist Sadie. She and I are both very woo woo folks and we kind of talked about how. This is a conversation I have with my hairstylist previous her who unfortunately moved away and, like a lot of the people that I have in my life that I like to use for my own personal services in beauty and fashion, you get one of two people. You either get healers who have learned to heal themselves with their modality or you have mean girls who they want to be the center of attention. So there's that stereotype of the mean girl hairstylist for a reason, and you know, a lot of my clients are very emotionally sensitive my musician clients that I work with in real life. And there's a couple people in Nashville that get thrown around a lot and they're like I'm really good at picking up on them.

Speaker 2: 6:12

And stylists kind of approach things in like a here's my aesthetic, here's how I want you to look, or they go about it from fixing something where there's something on you that I perceive is wrong. Therefore, I'm going to help you cover it up. And a lot of mainstream style advice is like it is disembodied it's you're an apple, you're a pear Right Refrigerator and it's like here's how to fix your awful ugly shoulders and it's like here's how to make your butt look smaller, and it's. I just I never liked that. I'm 14 years in recovery from eating disorders, so I'm also coming at it from. I healed my relationship with my body through style, so I basically walk every single person, virtually and in my real life, through that discovery of like, figuring out their style and embodying their truest highest self, and clothes are just part of that. So that's how I kind of approach everything.

Speaker 1: 7:01

I love that so much. I'm an intuition coach and actually I use style as one of my ins. I teach that from the beginning. Intuition is our first language. It's literally a clear yes and a clear no and as we go we color in the gray in between. And so much of our upbringing and society and all the brainwashing we go through, we get deprogrammed out of that like no, you need to dim your light and you need to be smaller and you need to fit inside this box and just go sit on Santa's lap. You don't like it, you're, you know you're being unreasonable, you know. So all of these ways that we get kind of, I don't know gaslit into thinking that our intuition is wrong, when actually we're spot on the whole time, and with fashion specifically.

Speaker 1: 7:44

I have two kids, for example, and from the beginning I've always just given them the space to be themselves, even if it's not, like you know, the norm, like my son, for example. He's five years old and he went through a phase, like a good year and a half long, where he likes to put shorts on top of pants. Okay, king, go ahead. Baby, let's go If he loved. He used to call it pants are long, sleeve shorts. Pants are long sleeve shorts, he's not wrong. And so I'm like, yeah, go for it, that's awesome, but there's so many families that would have been like, oh no, that's, that's weird, don't do that Because I don't have children.

Speaker 2: 8:22

But my grandmother passed away in September of last year and with that, you know, kind of comes the cleaning out of the stuff and my mom found all of the these home movies from, you know, pre me being born, all the way to like, maybe, puberty, so that like awkward 10, 11, 12. And it is amazing how much of my attitude about fashion and music and everything is kind of cemented. And it's funny because I'm watching these home movies back and it's like I wanted to wear my hair on rollers all the time. I wanted to wear my dress up, I wanted to wear my mom's heels there's so many videos I'm not speaking yet, but I'm determined to walk at my mom's heels. My birthday gifts are all like fashion centric hey, you got me the dress I wanted, but what about the shoes?

Speaker 1: 9:07

I can't have my daughter would love you. She's 10.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Yeah, I used to draw pictures of dresses on like napkins or like kids menus or stuff like that. So it's really, if you let your kids kind of explore that it probably works out in their favor.

Speaker 1: 9:23

Mm, hmm, 100%. I mean, that's a narrative that I've seen across the board, like it's always there. The little clues are always there.

Speaker 2: 9:32

There's this kid that I'm following on Instagram right now and I don't normally follow children, but he's like an 18 month old drummer and they've been kind of like I've seen him.

Speaker 1: 9:40

I'm like that kid's gonna be so good when he's old enough and it's not like an outside in approach, where they're like you must, you know, learn drumming. It's like no, he just has it.

Speaker 2: 9:50

Yeah, and I come from my mom is very glamorous. Still to this day it's very glamorous and my mom is and was a singer. And you know, when I was younger I really wanted that like the normal mom, you know, the one that like baked and stayed home and like did things. And now I'm like God, y'all moms are boring. Yeah, my mom's like, she's living her best life. So it was always around me. My mom kind of buck the system and you know she wore things that wouldn't have been considered like a mom shouldn't wear back then and still to this day it's really helped me in my ability. We have very polar opposite styles but just seeing her kind of live herself very authentically and very like you know this is who I am, take it or leave, it was really helpful to get.

Speaker 1: 10:38

That's huge. Most of us don't get that, and if we do get that, we might get a version of like okay, well, this is me and this is who you're going to be too Like, since it's that strong. It was fun. That's awesome. You mentioned that you had an eating disorder. Would you mind talking about that a little bit?

Speaker 2: 10:55

So from I was all I'm five, nine and my mom's five, three, and all the women in my family were very petite and tiny and I think I just got all the like Amazonian genes and I just sucked everything up, so I spent a lot of my time comparing myself to the people around me, and it was also the late nineties, early 2000s.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Like you didn't stand a chance there.

Speaker 2: 11:17

As a person's fat, and she's a size four and you know Nicole Richie's fat, she's the fat friend. It was now looking back on it through my lens. It's like, oh, every single person in the world, the ideal body type was these that represent 2% of the population, and women were just. I guess we're screwed. But I didn't know that. I just thought, oh, there's something inherently wrong with me. I was also going through a lot of stuff personally from the age of. It started at nine and it was from nine to 20. So that's when that whole thing was, and it was a cycle of binging and purging anorexia, starvation, diets, slim fast, weight watchers, but like in a really unhealthy way, and you know just a lot of. There was not a time where my weight wasn't the forefront of my mind.

Speaker 2: 12:05

It was the number one thing that I thought of all day, and throw in puberty, acne, braces, glasses and unibrow and being called Chewbacca in school, my looks were always the first thing that I thought of when I got up in the morning. When I went to bed at night, I would pray for the fat to melt off of me in my sleep, like there's so much. That was ingrained societally because I grew up in the South, so you know it was very traditional in a lot of instances, like women are only as good as they are pretty, because if you're pretty you'll get the good husband that will pay your bills and that's the only way to survive and we don't know any different. And like everything was very look centric and so I kind of just gave up until I was about 14 or 15. And I was like, well, I'm just, I'm not going to wash my hair, I'm not going to wear makeup, I'm just going to wear an oversized hoodie and throw my hair up in a bun and wear my glasses and just survive. So I see in other people, when I look at them, when it was a choice, that what they're doing and when they're just surviving, yeah. So I started exploring my style right around 14, 15, 16.

Speaker 2: 13:09

In secret, I used to tell people that I was like a closet fashion girl because I would go to school in my suburban high school in the South and dress to hide and put on the 4X hoodie and just keep it under wraps. And then this was the era of my space, dating myself and I got into fashion Tumblr and I started like going in and recreating all the outfits I saw on fashion Tumblr. I loved like the sixties Tumblr blogs and I would like learn to do the makeup and I would do all these things and I would find the clothes and I would hide them in the back of my closet and I had online friends that knew that I liked this stuff, but I didn't have friends in real life. It was like Hannah Montana with like a double life, and I did that for two years until someone from school found my MySpace. What was that feeling? We were like what?

Speaker 1: 13:53

are you doing?

Speaker 2: 13:53

And I was like oh, I'm actually really interested in 60s and 70s fashion and I just didn't think it would go over really well here and they were like but you have a lot of friends on MySpace. Because here and they were like, but you have a lot of friends on MySpace Cause. Remember that was back when like follow and it's funny I still have one of those girls from MySpace is still like a really close friend oh.

Speaker 1: 14:11

I love that so much.

Speaker 2: 14:12

Becky has been my friend since I was 14. Love you, becky. We met on a Beatles MySpace group. Oh, I love that. It was like you're so cool, like you're so cool. So I had all these friends that existed on the internet, which I think translates a little bit into like how I function now as someone on TikTok. I came out of the fashion closet on my 16th birthday and I wore exactly what I wanted to wear to school and when you live in the suburb that I grew up and we all know each other, your parents had together, like I'm some people and it's like a third generation family friendship where I'm like I'm pretty sure this is arranged. So people knew me for a very long time as a certain way. And then on my 16th birthday I rolled up in a vintage mini dress and knee high boots and I had the haircut and I like didn't wear it pulled back and I did the makeup and I went to school and I got dress code.

Speaker 1: 15:04

Well, that's just rude to get it from the adults. That's mean.

Speaker 2: 15:16

My high school principal, ms Worsham. She said that I had the record of most dress code violations in my high school for like a decade. And she's like your skirt's too short, we can see too many things, and blah, blah, blah. So she sent me home and I was like it felt better to show up as myself and to get sent home for it than it did to hide.

Speaker 1: 15:31

Could you have held that, though, without the two years of secret experimentation? No, not at all.

Speaker 2: 15:36

That's why I think that those teenage years are so formative to our development as to what we like, what we don't like, to our development as to what we like, what we don't like. You're getting peer reviewed stuff immediately. Then you decide how important is, how important is your peers and their thoughts about you in the grand scheme of your style. Some people it's really important. Some people it's not even in their hierarchy of needs. You know it's really important.

Speaker 2: 16:01

And the other thing too is we're not really working unless it's later on in high school. So you don't have to follow a work dress code. You can kind of experiment with what you like and what you don't like and you know it's everything from that to what kind of friends you want and what is your work ethic like and what are some of your hopes and dreams. Your style was just a part of that for me. So from my junior year through my senior year I just fully owned it and embodied it and I had hits and I had misses and I was like I would rather be made fun of for what I am because I know I've got real friends out there, support system at home, versus show up and just hide every day yeah and um so petty.

Speaker 2: 16:39

It's not very like you know love and light of me, but the spirituality is so much more than that.

Speaker 1: 16:43

First of all, I try to live my life and not be a dick, and I try to go into it everyone not very like you know love and light of me, but the spirituality is so much more than that.

Speaker 2: 16:50

First of all, I try to live my life and not be a dick and I try to go into it. Everyone deserves love and everyone evolves and blah, blah, blah. But 16 year old me got a nice jab back at them. It was one of I think it was either my 10 or my 15 year reunion. Facebook popped up and someone that was a massive bully to me started the group. I was gonna be fine, tell everyone what you're doing now. And I go hey, remember how you all made fun of me in high school for what I was wearing that concert you went to, I dressed that person and I styled the picture your merch that you're wearing right now. So vindicationication it was good, it was my like remember that.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Yeah, I fully support like relishing in those moments because they don't come often and when they do I feel like that's the universe, just like landing a little bit of yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:34

I um, I've been fortunate for karma to give me a front row many times, so here's karma.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Cheers Karma. What a journey, man, but what a way to take back your power, because even in the decision to be in the hiding, like the intentional hiding what a powerful choice.

Speaker 2: 17:52

It was, and that time period of my life specifically like 14 and on, parents divorced, you know biological parents divorced, rough divorce. Dad remarried you know the tried and true, evil stepmom, and then my mom got cancer. Oh, no, and there's something that she's great. Now she's 20 years in remission, but there is something about seeing your mom bald and sick and not knowing if she's going to make it. That does something to you where you're like oh, I only get to do this once, so I make the most of it.

Speaker 1: 18:25

And.

Speaker 2: 18:25

I'm too. It made me put a lot of things that I probably should on the back burner, like homework.

Speaker 2: 18:31

But I mean in the grand scheme of things, I was like I'm going to audition for everything, I'm going to learn to play the drums, I'm going to be myself and it's going to be great. And there's just something about that Having your mom be in not quite a near-death experience, but seeing the person that's supposed to take care of you be weak and vulnerable. It rearranges everything and it made me really feel comfortable taking the risk. I did feel bad because she was going through chemo. When I got sent home I was like sorry, all that.

Speaker 1: 19:03

I'm sent home from school 20 years in remission and she still kind of lives her life that way and I try to do the same thing. Yeah, that's really incredible. I feel like so many people get the opportunity or the invitation to see life from that lens like, okay, here's, here's what this whole thing is really about, here's what this whole thing could be. Are here's what this whole thing could be? Are you going to take it and that's really cool that you did and then you're paying it forward in so many ways? Now, that's so incredible. Um, you mentioned on your tick tock that you started first creating content in COVID. Uh huh, talk to me about the public service that that was.

Speaker 2: 20:15

So full disclosure. Covid the first. So I'm married to a full-time musician. Parents are in the music business, All my friends are in the music business. I'm based in Nashville and the way that my industry tends to work from like the musician styling side of things is I'll get I'll start getting texts right around March of all of my musician clients. Hey, we're doing this photo shoot this day, this music video this day, and then I'm juggling all them and their creative teams and like all this stuff. So I had my year. Like six months was already planned out in March of 2020.

Speaker 2: 20:50

Then we're about being in Nashville. March 1st we had a tornado come through and destroy half of Nashville.

Speaker 1: 20:55

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 20:57

Most of East Nashville was destroyed and that's where a lot of the creatives live. So a lot of recording studios and photography places and like homes and small businesses and venues flattened. My friend's store flattened, never opened back up. The community was already hurting in a creative spec like way. It's not like they blew up all the you know, didn't blow up all the tourist stuff, but like it blew up where real people like live and work I'm not saying that we should blow up tourists, but like it's just a different experience so a lot of the smaller people that make nashville great is were hurt by it.

Speaker 2: 21:30

So, um, I actually had to fly to LA to do this photo shoot because the photography studio got blown away in the tornado and we like had to do something and we needed a deadline. And the photographer's like I've got this place out here. So I'm in LA and I get all like my phone starts going off and it's always people saying like oh, we're going to be locked down for two weeks and I'm like so this is mid March, byarch by now mid.

Speaker 2: 21:51

Yeah, this is March. I think it was March, it was. It was pre. We shut down on the 14th. I must have been like the 12th and I'm like deadlines are not going to wait for me. The music business does not wait for anybody like. I was raised by a musician who was raised by a manager.

Speaker 1: 22:07

We just don't do that right, we work on holidays, you make it happen, like whatever.

Speaker 2: 22:13

So was like there's no way they can shut down after the entire like half the city's gone. So imagine my surprise when I get home and my husband was here and he just kind of looked like he had seen a ghost and he was like I just lost the entire tour that I was going to do. And it wasn't even like oh, we're pushing the tour back two weeks, there's no way that we can make up the income with the two weeks lost. And like that's how tours work. And we're like, oh, that was going to be a big tour. And he's like, yeah, but because it was going overseas, like so we're going OK, what are we going to do without that money? And then let's figure it out. And then in the I remember I got home like that afternoon and in two hours.

Speaker 2: 22:59

we had lost our entire income for the year, oh my God. So I was like, oh what?

Speaker 1: 23:03

are we going to do?

Speaker 2: 23:05

Yeah, and you know my stepdad is elderly. No one knew what was going on at that point, you know. So I did the whole like sit in your pajamas and watch tiger King and just go. I don't know what we're going to do. Like we're going to, we are going to max out our credit cards. We're going to, like, lose our savings. Like what can we do? Cause no one knew what the future of the entertainment industry looked like. And that's all I was doing at the time.

Speaker 2: 23:30

And there was someone in my life at the time who's no longer in my life, which is interesting who said why don't you join TikTok? And I go what do you mean? Like that dancing app? Or like all the teenagers and crafters. She's like no, people are like they're doing helpful content over there, people are loving it and they're all sitting at home right now. So I was like, okay, well, maybe I can do something outside myself and it will keep me busy, and I also love online communities, so kind of perfect.

Speaker 2: 23:58

So I didn't know what I was doing and I started showing up and I just reminded people every single day if you woke up today, put on real pants, because it's going to be helpful, it's going to keep your mental health sane. It's going to keep you like, moving and grooving. And people will then be like, well, I don't like pants. And then I'm thinking, oh, why don't you like pants? Oh, tell me more. I style people all day long, like, let me help you.

Speaker 2: 24:17

So I started helping people find clothes. They would write to me hey, where do I find this? Oh, here's my favorite thing. Blah, blah, blah. And then someone goes do you do this one-on-one? And I had done it previously for musicians and like a marketing branding standpoint. And I realized like, oh, I could take the same approach and use it on regular people. Yeah, a couple of things. Oh, instead of like, where all your tour dates, let's look at you know, climate and that kind of thing. What does a normal week look like in your life? Let me build you an outfit for every part of it. It's the same thing, cause musicians are just regular people with weird jobs. Yup, so I started doing it and you know, I started off with 10 clients that were doing it, and now it's been five years of me offering soul styling as an option for people and I've got clients on every single continent except Antarctica. So far, yeah so far. But it's been really amazing because I've got clients that have been with me for the five years where we just keep it up and like these are my friends now and we talk almost every day, and that turned into a patreon where, like, I have a group chat of people that I talk to every single day.

Speaker 2: 25:22

It's going back to me feeling really comfortable in online communities because I feel like the same way that people say oh, you feel comfortable hiding behind a screen, like doing hate comments. It's the same thing, too, with love. It's easier to give love to someone that you're not going to see on a regular basis, or it's easier to give love to someone that you know is going through it and you don't necessarily know all their background. Like it's just so much easier for me to sit here and like I'm never lonely because I've got 200,000 friends here you know, 80 people in my group chat. Like I'm always solving someone's problem. I always feel useful to people. And it blew up like it got me in the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail on Yahoo. Like the New York Times mentioned me in something and I was like this is insane, because I just think was thinking about how depressed I was. I'm never going to work again. And now I'm working all the time.

Speaker 1: 26:20

Yeah, your audience just got bigger. I mean, you were in one category and now all of a sudden it's literally everybody.

Speaker 2: 26:24

A lot of people are like, well, you dress celebrities and it's stupid for me to, you know, need to have someone to help me get dressed. I'm like, okay, cool, that's good enough for insert. Whoever here it's good. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:34

Yeah, really cool. I just love because looking back, you can always see oh well, that makes sense, like everything makes sense 2020. Right, looking back, but when you're in it you're just like the fuck, 2020 changed me in so many ways.

Speaker 2: 26:49

Like I, I dived a lot deeper into, like my spiritual gifts and my spiritual journey, and I knew that I always I knew that I was weird. Yes, and because of TikTok, I started getting all these things like, hey, do you think you're neurodivergent? And I'm like, no, everyone does that, isn't that normal?

Speaker 2: 27:08

It turns out called out because of that, I feel like I'm really good with pattern recognition. I feel like I'm really good with pattern recognition. I feel like I'm really good with being able to empathize with people and being able to kind of like help people fit in a little bit more. I think it also might be why I'm pretty good at building community, because I know what it feels like to be othered and I learned that I was neurodivergent. I knew that I was spiritual but I got really into transitive meditation and my journaling and my Oracle cards. It was always in there. I just came out of the closet with it. I was really cool. So I've always had some connection to like a higher power that just wasn't aside from Jesus Christ. Superstar Like that never really resonated with me that much. I tell people that I feel the same way about Jesus. I do the grateful dad Like the message is great.

Speaker 2: 27:53

The fans turn me off a little bit.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Um. I love that.

Speaker 2: 28:00

I love the vibe but the fans really really. Yeah, totally. But you know, I work in Nashville so I I'm dealing with people on a regular basis who don't think like me, who don't. It's not and people just assume that like, oh, you're in Tennessee, so everyone must be a Christian redneck and they almost feel no. My client roster of like my people in person 18 to literally 85, I just all different political backgrounds and religious beliefs and like upbringings and approaches on spirituality and when you are open to it you learn how everyone sees the world. It's always different and I just kind of like absorb all of that and it makes me feel like I just think people are so interesting that I'm glad that my job allows me to see that.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Yeah, it's like you get the opportunity to fall in love with people one on one when you're able to see them in such an intimate atmosphere. I mean, you're literally helping them find things to put on their naked body, helping them feel comfortable and safe in that experience, because you're holding the container intentionally in that way.

Speaker 2: 29:07

It's funny I was. I was talking to one of my in person girls and the first fitting I ever did with her she was like I'm really struggling with my body image and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, girl, I've had an eating disorder, I've got stretch marks. I got you. And then she was trying on a pair of jeans and I go, oh, I think you might like the ones I have on better. And I took my jeans off and handed them to her and she looked at me like I had three heads. I was like you're underwear. And she goes yeah, but isn't that weird for you? I go no, no, she goes you do fit better. I'm like I know that's my job, yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:38

Welcome. I love that, peyton. You're my people. I'm so happy to find you on here. That's so cool. Okay, where do I want to go with this next? Let's go into how spirituality has always been a through line, but you didn't have quite the space or the intentionality behind it until COVID.

Speaker 2: 29:59

I think because I finally had the time to be still with myself. The other thing too is like in Christianity a lot of times I see there tends to be an overcorrection of like the raised vacation Bible school, the details, some of those songs still slap. I'll stand by it. Vacation Bible school to staunch atheist that pendulum swings really easy and I kind of fell into that like staunch atheism during high school, middle school and high school and I would always kind of swing back around to like this doesn't feel right, but also what I'm being told doesn't feel right and I was like, well, I guess if I'm not a Christian I must be an atheist.

Speaker 2: 30:41

So when I turned 18, this I have no idea why they didn't realize I was a neurodivergent. Sooner, when I turned 15, I was like I'm going to read every religious text and see which one works for me the most. None of these do. What am I doing? What's happening? If these are the options, I don't resonate with any of them. So I went to temples. I went to, I went so many places and I was like maybe I'll find it here, maybe I'll find the kingdom of God here or whatever that is to you, and but I've always had a really good intuition and my mom my mom's basically a psychic, but my mom, told me I'm going to marry my husband.

Speaker 2: 31:20

My mom told my sister she was going to marry her husband. My mom told me how almost every single friendship I ever had would end and why, before it did, she told me about jobs that I was going to get like she's very in tune and I always had that. But I would, you know, oh, it's stupid, that's dumb. So, oh, I think that friend isn't really your friend. Oh, that's dumb. Of course they're your friend. So right around 2020, 21, that is when I started listening to myself and I would write it down. I was like am I going?

Speaker 1: 31:58

I'm not going to gaslight myself. So that was wild. We just had an entire fire alarm here Cause, uh, my candle was going a little crazy, but uh, we're alive, we're good, life is good. Yeah, anywho, the hell were we talking about?

Speaker 2: 32:04

Uh, covid, and how my spirituality changed on that.

Speaker 1: 32:08

Yes, please continue.

Speaker 2: 32:09

Um, I got onto witch talk, which I think that a lot of people did. I was like man, they're like you got diagnosed with ADHD, you must be a witch. And I was like, oh, this is interesting, let me just keep scrolling through that and a lot of it didn't resonate with me and like a lot of it did. But I was like, oh, the things that I have been doing my whole life. There's already a name for it. So the like setting your intention at the first of every month, um, I have a gratitude bowl, I have a gratitude journal, I light candles when I want something. I'm not like, I wasn't like carving sigils and like doing salt rings around them. I have collected rocks since I was two. Um, that obviously like moved into crystals. It's actually really funny.

Speaker 2: 32:59

Um, my grandfather, who was this like big Southern dude, uh, who was a manager for a bunch of country artists back in the seventies. So picture, like polyester, pinky ring, like yeah, the whole thing, and and I would collect these rocks as like two and three, two and three years old and I would say, oh, this is my new baby and I would carry the rock around with me. And he had a big truck. And one day my grandmother got into the truck and started cleaning out his car and he goes don't do that, those are Peyton's babies. So I just went to see where he and my grandmother were buried and I left him a crystal.

Speaker 1: 33:35

Oh.

Speaker 2: 33:36

I love that. So I've been, I've been doing it, I've been doing these things that people on witch talk were like oh, this is a ritual, not knowing it my entire life. So, um, you know, I want to let go of things. I'll write them down, set them on fire, Like I didn't realize this was what it was called and I still don't necessarily resonate with the term. Like I don't like to put labels on like pagan or Wiccan or like any of this stuff. I've been told that I'm just spiritually very spongy.

Speaker 2: 34:06

I want to have online friends, who is like a medium, like you're very spiritually spongy, like people can pick up on that, like, oh, should I like close my spiritual sponge holes. Like what should I be doing here?

Speaker 1: 34:18

What did you land on?

Speaker 2: 34:19

Basically, she's like some people just are more sensitive to it, they're more in tune with it, they pick up on it. But it's funny because I've had moments where I'm like I really feel like not at ease with this person. I'm like I really feel like not at ease with this person. What does that mean? And then I was like, oh, you're crazy. And it turns out it was just like, whatever frequency I was on, they were not on and it was creating Just not a match.

Speaker 2: 34:41

Yeah, so it's just, it's been there constantly and it wasn't until right around then that I started going, oh, like I could actually tune into this and actually use it to my advantage. So now I can use it not using it like I'm not a psychic, I'm not going to win the lottery, but it's like, oh, I can feel what people are feeling. I can look and see where someone's at on their journey and see how I would like for them to progress and if they want to come with me, that's really cool. And I can help people facilitate what that looks like and meet them where they're at. So that's what I do is I always tell people I'm not here to judge, I'm here to facilitate. So if you want to go out and you want to wear something really crazy and I feel like it's genuine to you and it connects to you, I'll be like, all right, I'll make you like angel wings and I'll make you these things if it's situationally appropriate and I feel like you know it works for whatever we're doing.

Speaker 2: 35:33

And the other thing, too, is like I tell people all the time like I'm here to dress your meat suit. Yeah, like it's not that deep but it is so I've used it. I just feel more integrated these days with it. I don't really have a name for it, I just feel more integrated and I feel like every single person on earth is a spiritual being having a human experience. And the ones that fight it are the ones that I struggle with the most, where it's like do you realize that we're on a rock floating through space? Yes, let's zoom out a little bit. Zoom out. Yeah, I think that goes back from the, the stuff from childhood, like once you've seen certain things, you can't unsee them.

Speaker 1: 36:17

Yeah, and since then I've been like oh no, it's not that serious, like you're thinking about this too much. That's so interesting that you say, oh no, it's not that serious and also, in the same breath, well, actually it is like it's so interesting to hold those complete opposite ideas at the same time, because, yeah, both are true.

Speaker 2: 36:31

Well, I was actually talking to my Pilates teacher this morning about this and we were talking about, like you know, I helped her get dressed for her wedding, like I helped her pick out clothes and I do all these things, and we were talking about I spoke at this retreat recently and there were I think there were six women there and one of them just wasn't having it, and I think that I'm like a pretty, I think that I'm pretty open and I think that I'm pretty easy to talk to and I am, for the most part, nonjudgmental, discerning but not judgmental. And this woman was like well, I just feel like I'm above the entire fashion industry because I think that it is a multi-billion dollar industry built on insecurities and blah, blah, blah. And I felt like that moment in the devil wears Prada, where Meryl Streep tells Anne Hathaway that no one is above it, because it's us.

Speaker 2: 37:20

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah and the sweater, just picked up that lovely blue sweater, but in reality it's billions of dollars, it's all these jobs. And so I was talking to my teacher about it and I was like yeah, and I had to tell her like okay, you're wearing a linen set. Someone had to grow it, harvest it, process it, so you've got all those people's energies on it. And then someone had to make a pattern, someone has to design it, and then that was a small business that you bought it from, that fed that woman's family Like you're, no one's a mean friend unless you're a nudist. So it's the only form of art really legally have to operate with. Well, that's interesting. You know, you don't have to buy art. You don't have like visual art. You don't have to listen to music if you're like really boring, you don't have to watch movies. You don't have to paint your walls, you don't have to do any of that, but you have to wear clothes or you get arrested.

Speaker 1: 38:08

That is so true.

Speaker 2: 38:09

I think that a lot of people feel annoyed by that. They feel like it's someone telling them what to do and how to function and how to be, but also you have to interact with it, so why not make the most of it? I love that when people are like well, I think it's dumb, like okay, we can still see you, so do you want?

Speaker 1: 38:27

to look cool or do you want to look lame? Well, that is so interesting that you're saying that, actually, because you mentioned how it was a deliberate choice to start hiding and then it was a deliberate choice to start being seen. And that is such an interesting place to be because, even with style, it's like you can either feel constrained by it or it could be the keys to your freedom.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Yeah, I tell my clients it's choosing your heart. So a lot of people come to to me and they're like, well, it's just easier to wear sweatpants all day long because everyone else wears sweatpants and I go. But do you feel comfortable in your sweatpants? I joke that most of us walk around in society, at least in America, looking like we're members of heaven's gate. Why is everyone in black athleisure set all the time? Did you drink the Kool-Aid? I mean, that's a different cult, but still yes.

Speaker 2: 39:14

And it's in us as like animals to blend into our surroundings so we don't get called out too much because our brain registers being called out. I'm like, oh, who does she think she is? She's so dressed up as like being chased by a wildebeest Same fight or flight. So it was harder for me at that moment to stop being myself than it was to continue hiding. But it depends. Like some people might not be able to choose, like choose what they want to wear. They might be in a situation where they have a work uniform or they're religious things around it or it's not safe for them to express themselves. So it's I say they're morally neutral. You just have to pick which one you want.

Speaker 1: 39:51

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:53

Rather walk out of the house feeling like myself and I'm not going out of my way to make people uncomfortable. Everything I wear is situationally appropriate, like my butt cheeks aren't out, but it's like. This is how I want to feel and if it makes you uncomfortable, if it stirs something up in you, maybe let's examine that. So people that go why are you so dressed up? I'm like why aren't you? What's a special occasion? It's a day that ends in Y. Yeah, you know like life's a special occasion. It's our years isn't, but mine is.

Speaker 2: 40:22

So it brings out your style as a mirror to the outside world, what they're doing and what they're not doing. And it's interesting because I feel like, like, for instance, when the Met Gala happened, everyone has their own opinion on like who they liked and what they don't like. And when you look at critiques of something like that and you have kind of a different connection to people and to the world, you'll see that they're looking at it through their own lens. So someone will be like oh my God, sabrina Carpenter did such like, she wore such a good outfit. And you're like no, you're just a super fan of her. It wasn't on theme. And it's like oh, so and so looked awful Like oh, I just saw on your page that you have like five hate videos about this guy. It's funny because you start looking at how other people view you through how they view themselves and then celebrities. It's really funny.

Speaker 1: 41:08

Yeah, I mean, style is just the one category that you're examining in that moment. I mean, everything is a mirror, exactly right.

Speaker 2: 41:15

Every single thing in life your relationships, your clothes, what you like, what you don't like. It's all a mirror and it's all something you can learn from. And it's like I tell people this all the time that if you really have an objection to something and it's not resonating with you, fantastic. But if you feel the need to go out of your way and cut something down that is situationally appropriate for somebody else and makes them feel really good, I'm not going to cut sporty spice down for wearing athleisure literally in her name, but, like the woman that I know has really good taste and really enjoys fashion, I'm going to be like what are we doing? What are we doing? We can do better.

Speaker 1: 42:05

Yeah, exactly Exactly. Let's go into the full woo. Have you had any moments where you're like having dreams or having like premonitions or a gut feeling about something and you didn't listen to it or you did anything like that? Spooky things, whatever.

Speaker 2: 42:16

I don't know if I can talk about this one. Let me think if I could. There's one that recently sit with it, it's all good. There's one that recently just happened and, uh, I don't know if I want to go into full detail about it. Fair, I'm trying to think of how to go about it in a way that is going to be fair and kind to everyone involved. I make a point on social media to not get political at all. I call it the Dolly Parton approach. That's how she handles things. She lets her actions speak for herself. I'm also like very old school music business family. The fact that I'm doing this podcast is going to be like Ooh money, religion, politics yeah, I was raised that way.

Speaker 2: 42:58

I don't know how my parents vote. I also know like I don't and I don't know how my grandparents voted and we, we keep it like that, like these are and these are my parents. So it's just ingrained in me to not do that. And I feel like when something happens, everyone feels the pressure to talk about it. I don't want to know what Jojo Siwa thinks about like war, you know? Like dance, like you're really good at dancing, and selling hair bows like great for you.

Speaker 2: 43:26

Um, so I had a client who, uh, I wanted to love on her so bad. I was with her for years and years and she was deeply in like the trenches of her eating disorder. And when I see someone in pain, I want to love on them and I want to take care of them, but she just wouldn't let me in, wouldn't let me in, and I'm like, okay, you're not there yet, you're not there yet. And when I see people on either side of the spectrum turn every single thing that they're posting about into politics, and angry politics, like, like, truly angry, where it's like multiple Instagram stories a day, where you just kind of start skipping over them, cause you're like, clearly, when I see people like that on either end I go there's something in you that you're not addressing and you feel better, like pushing it outward.

Speaker 2: 44:14

Felt like me when Wicked came out. It's all I could talk about. I was real excited but I was like, oh, people are bored, we need to move on. So this person really pressured me, really pressured me to. She was like I don't want to have someone on my team that is not publicly speaking out about Palestine and Israel and I was like girl, I love you. I'm a hillbilly from Tennessee, I feel government, I feel geography, you don't want me commenting on anything like that Also, just not what I've ever done, ever.

Speaker 2: 44:47

And I said I love you, I support you doing whatever you're going to do. And she was like, okay, but I don't feel safe with you on my team anymore because I wouldn't post publicly. And I was like I hear you, I understand that's your journey and this is mine. And we ended up working together again. And you know, like I mentioned, I'm in Nashville, so I'm surrounded by all these people who don't think like me or who worship differently or vote differently or whatever like me, or who think you worship differently or vote differently or whatever. And, um, she, I styled someone for an opry you know the grand ole opry, like the coolest thing in country music ever, it's 100 years old and found out there was an artist who was notoriously right wing, that was a guest of somebody there, and fired me because she thought we were chumming it up.

Speaker 2: 45:31

And she, she was like I can't believe that you would hang out with someone like this. I'm like I really wasn't, I'm just in the same room. But I realized that like there had been and for the four, almost five years there had been like I just couldn't get in. I just couldn't get in and, like I said, I've got clients from all different walks of life and I've been able to get in there and I come at things from everyone is, you know, going through life through their own lens, and she just wouldn't, wouldn't have it. And I think that, ultimately, if you ever have read the Courage to Be Disliked, which is like one of my favorite books of all time.

Speaker 2: 46:07

She really got as much attention from complaining about her body than she did actually working on her body image and I gave her all the tools and I gave her all the podcasts and I like cut the tags out of all of her clothes and she would complain more about her body and like publicly, like, publicly, like, oh, I'm so fat here. Well, I look fat in this music video. My stylist put me in this and made me look like it was just no accountability for herself or her choices or actions and like wanting to pop potato her feelings on it.

Speaker 1: 46:33

Totally yeah, that's what I call it too.

Speaker 2: 46:36

And I was like when that happened, I felt relief. I was like it's been five years of me just trying to love on her and it was like I couldn't do it anymore because I always felt like I was dragging someone uphill. And the fact is like when I work with someone, I ask them about their style boundaries all the time. What do you feel comfortable showing? What do you not feel comfortable showing? Um, I won't leave the house in leggings if I'm not working out. Um, you know, like there's so many things that I have and I always respect their boundaries.

Speaker 2: 47:05

I don't have to necessarily agree with them the fact that I had been modeling this behavior to her for years and years and she just wasn't having it. I was like, oh, you never were. My people got it understood. Yeah, you'll see a lot of stylists that only work with someone of, like, a certain political background. They're only work with someone out of a certain religious background, and my, that's just not how I like to operate. Everyone is going through life through their own lens and I think everyone needs to be loved on, regardless of if I agree with you or not.

Speaker 1: 47:38

I think it takes a really special kind of person to be able to hold that yeah kind of person to be able to hold that yeah, because not everybody has like the bandwidth or the emotional safety or physical safety, even you know, to be able to go into spaces like that and be able to hold that. And I think you, knowing that and operating in integrity with that and measuring, you know, case by case basis, what you're exactly able to offer to any given situation. I think you could do so much good there.

Speaker 2: 48:13

It's so funny because I tell people when they're like well, could you ever style me? And I looked at my, my booking for one day and I like all my soul study virtual clients. I had a dominatrix, I had a priest. I had someone who was a Mormon. That were the garments. And I had a dominatrix, I had a priest.

Speaker 1: 48:25

I had someone who was a Mormon that wore the garments.

Speaker 2: 48:27

And I had a politician. I still don't know which side of the aisle she was on, but she just had three kids and was postpartum and none of her clothes fit her. Oh great, let me help you, let me love on you, let me figure out how this needs to go. And none of those women they all knew about each other. They all friends and it's like my connection to those women goes way deeper than you know what.

Speaker 2: 48:50

I learned a lot from a lot of them about different people and their backgrounds and I think by working with so many different types of people musicians and my and my virtual clients it's given me so much more empathy for other humans because I can see, like how every single person kind of their villain origin story and how they got there, and I just go oh well, we're just. We're just having two different experiences, but I can definitely help you with the style part of it, because there's so many things that are like we all have someone that's the voice in our head. We all have someone that has made us not feel very good. We all are measuring ourselves to the beauty standard that we all have collectively, which is completely unattainable, and then we're all struggling with clothes post COVID. I can help everybody, let me and I'm here to judge someone's morality, I'm here to just get them dressed. That's on them. They have to look at themselves in the mirror at night on them.

Speaker 1: 49:45

They have to look at themselves in the mirror at night. That's true. That is true, yeah. So with everything that you know about so many different kinds of people and everything that you have to get through on a daily basis, if you're holding that space for everybody, where does that leave you?

Speaker 2: 50:02

It's interesting because there are certain clients that I love and that when I'm interacting with them, I feel like they're feeding me as much as I'm feeding them, and I can do an 18 hour day on set, or I can do like a 12 hour day of like back-to-back zooms and I'm like where are we going? Let's go out, let's do this, let's do that. And there are some people that can completely deplete me of all my energy, and I've noticed it's the ones like that person, where it's like I'm giving you everything, like come on, let's do it. And it's like it'll be a client that's like I have a closet clean out process. Well, I don't want to do it. You hire me?

Speaker 1: 50:42

Yeah, help me help you.

Speaker 2: 50:44

Yeah, I can't. I'm like I can't slap it into you, Like I'm so sorry I can't hold you down and force you to do your job. There's that was an expression that I am trying to get better about not using, as I wish I could hold people down and do their job, but it's usually. It's very fulfilling, and I think I've had my worst day at work and it was someone else's like really worst day.

Speaker 2: 51:10

And I've told the story a couple of times, but I styled someone for their last day on earth. Tell me this one, please. Yeah, I'm not going to name her name in case her family doesn't want me out, but I worked with this woman for about. She had a package for about three years with me, so we started in 2020 and this was 2023. Um, and normally I have two versions of the soul standing package kind of like three sessions and that goes through the whole process and then I have unlimited, and those people work with me on an unlimited basis throughout a year so they can book as many sessions as they want, and a lot of my people will book me once a week and we'll plan out their outfits for the week and I've already stocked their closet. So it's pretty easy and it doesn't always take the full hour and I loved this client so much.

Speaker 2: 51:44

We would sit and chat after. You know it would take us 20 minutes to do a wardrobe and I'm like, how was that date? What's going on here? Blah, blah, blah. And she kind of disappeared for about six months and I checked, I emailed her a couple of times. I'm like just making sure you're okay, like this isn't like you. Did I do anything wrong and I didn't hear back from her. And and then she resurfaced and said I've been diagnosed with cancer. It is terminal. I will be going to do death with dignity. Will you help me pick out my outfit?

Speaker 2: 52:11

And this was like a 10 am Wednesday. She was my first call, a day I had no, oh my gosh, I was raw dogging this. And I was like you have to disassociate. You cannot, you cannot slip into your body right now. You need to just get through this for her. And I was like yep, how do you want to feel? What do you feel the most comfortable in? What's your playlist going to be Like? And she was still like mentally of sound mind when she did this and I was like my favorite color is this and you look really good in those. Oh, you never got this back from a tailor. Guess it's too late now.

Speaker 2: 52:42

Now, like I was trying to just be normal for her. I've noticed with people, I've got clients that are going through chemo, I've got clients that are, you know, dealing with a lot of stuff. Just be normal. So the only time that fully registered with me was when I hung up the call and I was like see you on the other side, happy trails, and she was like thanks, and I got the email that she passed peacefully and she wore the outfit and, um, when I hung up the call, I was like you don't have time to cry right now because you have seven more people that need you.

Speaker 2: 53:17

So, um, I got through the day and then I was like I feel like I've been hit by a truck and I cause I was. I'm able, I'm really good at compartmentalizing when it comes to work Like my whole world can be on fire and I'm still here present at work and I, finally, I just like sat in the tub. I just stared at the wall for like an hour and then I was like well, you got to do it again tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 53:43

So once you've styled someone for their ghost outfit, nothing really bugs you anymore.

Speaker 1: 53:49

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 53:50

And I think because I've had the privilege of being either in the room with people or like so close to people as they were on their way out that that's why I don't look at people like, oh, this person thinks this, therefore they're awful. It's kind of like it's not that serious. Once you're watching someone go, you're like, oh, it doesn't really matter what they thought or what they felt. That was different than mine. That's still a person. It's still a human. They still have people that love them. They still have they need dignity and they need to feel good about themselves, regardless of if I think they should or not.

Speaker 2: 54:21

There was one of my favorite actors of all time. This is something that sticks with me when people like how can you work with people that you don't agree with? And he was doing this interview and he had just like signed up for another role of like playing a bad guy and the interviewer was like well, how does it feel to always play the villain? And he said verbatim I'm not playing the villain, I'm just playing someone who wants something, and they're going about it in a different way than you would.

Speaker 1: 54:46

Bingo.

Speaker 2: 54:47

And that's how I've started looking at all people, especially the ones that I work with. I don't have to agree with anything that you're saying, thinking you're doing, but I'm going to get you dressed. You're just going about life a different way than I am, so maybe that's crazy, but I haven't gotten in a lot of fights with people on the internet lately, so I think that takes up a lot of people's time and energy.

Speaker 1: 55:08

Yeah, truly, and it doesn't actually have like an effect in the collective. You know like you're not actually taking steps to change the situation, You're just spinning your wheels and being angry.

Speaker 2: 55:18

Exactly, and it's like when people say why don't you get angry about this? And I go what good is that going to do?

Speaker 1: 55:23

That's not very productive, like if you're feeling angry then you process the anger and let it move through, but like to, on purpose, go out and seek the anger. I don't know that that's the most productive either.

Speaker 2: 55:34

No, and I think I was talking to another client of mine who's a neuroscientist and a psychologist and she was like the same thing that the people that fight on the internet, we're all dopamine deprived right now. And she's like and the way that we get it in, like getting that adrenaline jolt, is through things like arguing with people online, because it puts us in that fight or flight and then it also puts us in that like, oh, we must be right, and it's like that. It's basically the equivalent of like teenage boys playing video games at war and like they're right. Um, their dopamine receptors like look at what we're doing, we, the city, and it's like they're really just sitting on their ass. Right, it's the same thing. It's like it's not helpful, it's not kind, it's not anything that I want to put out in the world. I will argue with people over the new sex in the city reboot and that's about it.

Speaker 1: 56:21

Fair enough, you know fair enough. Um, you mentioned getting the call and then having to go in and do seven other calls and then feeling like the truck that hit you right. So, as an energetically sensitive person just operating in the world, that's a lot, as it is right. It sounds like you feel like you're just going and you're good.

Speaker 2: 56:42

I think, because I've gotten to the point where this is something that has been I've been tuning into it since like 2021. I had a really bad friend breakup in about 2021. And I was like, oh, you spent all this time just ignoring these red flags because you wanted to see the best in people. I take every single person that I meet at face value, and like face value to me is also like energy. How do I feel around you? Do I feel safe around you? And it's so funny because the closest friends that I have, the ones that I talk to every single day, I felt right with immediately, like oh, we're good. And the people that I don't feel that way around and I kind of like talk myself into, they're the ones that cause problems later on. So, with all of my virtual clients because most of them come to me through TikTok, they've already kind of met me in a weird way for lack of a better word.

Speaker 2: 57:30

They know what they're getting into. They know I'm kind of a tell it like it is, but I'll do it with love. They feel safe with me. So by them coming to me through my content, they already kind of know what they're getting into. That it's a match. Already it's a match. Yeah, there's been very few times where I'm like, oh, this is not going to work and that's because people approach me as like a like a fix it, like a quick solution, and I'm just not. Because it took you however many years to get into the style route, it's going to take us some time to get out of it.

Speaker 1: 58:06

I can expedite the process, but it's still not going to be. You know, here's your magic pill For sure. And then you said that you got into the bathtub at the end of the day and that seemed to help. Do you have practices at the end of the day that you Usually not.

Speaker 2: 58:14

I'm a morning person like a morning person, so I've been. I try to journal every single day. I have two decks I have a tarot deck and then I have a Mary Magdalene Oracle deck, because she's my girl. She's great she. Just you know, she got really bad branding.

Speaker 1: 58:30

She really did Well on purpose.

Speaker 2: 58:32

Well, I've always felt it's funny because I've always felt drawn to Mary Magdalene, since I saw Jesus Christ Superstar as a child. Like she's important.

Speaker 1: 58:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 58:43

And I was, fortunate enough, I had an aunt who, uh God, I loved her so much. She started her own church and, like not a culty way, like and then we should be more like Jesus way and she was a Christian book reviewer. But she was the coolest person I've ever met in my life. She started this really cool thing that is still going to this day. She's been gone. A couple of weeks ago it's been 10 years. She's been gone. I was in the room with her when she passed.

Speaker 2: 59:07

Um, she started this thing called uh at the time it was called the Christian women's job core and my aunt had a ton of money so like it's more money than God and started this organization where she would find single moms that didn't either get their GED or didn't go to college and would pay for them to do those things, babysit their children while they were doing it and would like help them get apartments. And, like she bought women cars and like, to this day, people come up to me like you're Dawn's niece, like she did. You know these cool things. Um started her own church. Only read the red letter parts of it of the Bible. It was so cool, um, but I told, I told her.

Speaker 2: 59:47

I was like, why don't we ever learn about mary magdalene? She was a bible scholar and she goes oh, the church didn't want you to. And she gave me the gospel of mary and, uh, like magdalene awakened and she was like they might be too wordy for you now, but you're gonna want these later. And I was like, oh, mary's really cool. So I have my mary or Oracle deck and my tarot deck and I pull from those every single day. I do transcendental meditation. I'm a rep I don't know rep but like an ambassador to them. I joke that I got into it because the Beatles did it and it was the last piece of memorabilia I didn't have with like a mantra.

Speaker 2: 1:00:19

I think that's fair, I think I committed to the bit too hard Now. I think I committed to the bit too hard Now I'm an ambassador, but I do, I journal, I do that. The big thing is like I kind of just, I kind of go through life with the law of assumption where it's like everything's going to work out, everything's going to be perfect, everything's going to be the way that it should be, and I can't get attached to the outcome. So COVID taught me that. And COVID was the last time that I clung to something so tight and so hard that it hurt Like I was like clinging to things so hard that my palms felt like they were bleeding.

Speaker 1: 1:00:57

And then when I let go all these things came to me.

Speaker 2: 1:00:58

I couldn't be open to receive these blessings until I finally was like you got to let it go. So now, anytime that something happens and I'm like that's not what I want it to happen, I just go plot twist yeah, there's gonna come in and like that client that I, that fired me, I got another client the next day. Like it's. It's one of those things that I just I'm not married to the outcome of hardly anything anymore, and I just kind of take every day for what it is.

Speaker 1: 1:01:23

It sounds like you're basically living the four agreements in real time.

Speaker 2: 1:01:26

I try to, and the not taking anything personally. One is the hardest.

Speaker 1: 1:01:29

That's the biggest one.

Speaker 2: 1:01:31

It's really hard for me. And the other thing is, like I was, I was very fortunate. I have a lot of really great neurodivergent women in my life and my best friend is neurotypical who was like girl. I don't know how you didn't know.

Speaker 1: 1:01:43

But um well, if it's the air you're, you're breathing in every day, like, how are you supposed to know?

Speaker 2: 1:01:49

She was like I was. I was talking to one of my other neurodivergent friends and we were at this like barbecue over Memorial day and she was like, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I go, oh, so he has narcissistic personality disorder. And she goes exactly Like we're very good about seeing things for what they are and being able to be around other people that view that as like, oh, that's hilarious and it's not like you're not judgmental and it's not like in a bad way, you're just it's really out of recognition. That's been really fun to kind of explore that and to like tap into and be around people that celebrate it, because now people be like can I get a vibe check on this?

Speaker 1: 1:02:24

yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like the smell test in Ratatouille Like yeah. What's what's the deal?

Speaker 2: 1:02:33

Yeah, Is this person crazy? Maybe Could be.

Speaker 1: 1:02:36

Could be Little nutty. That's so interesting. If you are open to it, I would like to go into, like the race, the race and color ethnicity conversation of our meat suits. How would you, from a spiritual perspective higher up, why or how or what are the lessons that you're sitting with in a white costume in this version of life that we're all living in right now? That's really interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:03:10

I have never thought about it. Yeah, I also, because TikTok is great. So a great example of this is I'm never going to be like I don't see color, because obviously that's stupid and everyone but I've noticed that in clients, people feel more comfortable with people that look like them.

Speaker 2: 1:03:32

So I had an instance where I had a client who this was probably this was like right at COVID, so 2020, and he wanted to do this. Uh, this album cycle, like you know, album cycles like your album cover, your social media, like all this stuff, of all these black icons and music, and it was all like 60s and 70s, which I was down, and it took me a little bit longer, as I was being pitched for it, to prove myself. When, in my mind, I'm like Marvin Gaye, I could do it all day long. Which era do you want? Which blah, blah, blah do you want?

Speaker 2: 1:04:10

And I was like, oh, it's because I don't look like him and his team is like this girl's the color of mayonnaise, what is she going to know about that? And I was like, oh, okay, so I need to make sure that every single person feels comfortable with me, and there are some people that I've had to work a little bit harder to prove myself to. I also I grew up in a way where, like, a lot of people hear country music and they hear Nashville and they automatically go racism. But if you're in the trenches of it. It's not something that occurs every day Like. One of my first big girl clients was Charlie Pride, who was like the big you know first black male country singer that was all these things.

Speaker 2: 1:04:45

So, my mind growing up, I'm like, oh Charlie, pride is a country star, everyone that's black can be a country star. And I, just because I grew up in such a weird situation and now, like we have Mickey Guyton and Beyonce and all this stuff, I was like it never occurred to me that someone else would think otherwise to me, that someone else would think otherwise. I wasn't that way, so it wasn't, until it's kind of like. It's kind of like how really good men had a hard time believing that the Me Too movement happened.

Speaker 1: 1:05:14

Oh yeah, just because they've never seen it Exactly, it's never been part of their experience.

Speaker 2: 1:05:17

You don't see something it's hard to see, that like it's hard to understand it exists. So I kind of had to look at how, how people were experiencing the world through people that are not like me.

Speaker 1: 1:05:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:05:31

Because I've never been like oh well, that person is a redhead, they must you know like really like potatoes because they must be Irish, like. I just don't think like that. So it was. It was kind of like a oh, people are assholes and you have to figure out the history of the assholery Right.

Speaker 1: 1:05:48

The context that created the current situation.

Speaker 2: 1:05:50

Exactly, and I love a deep dive, but that was not a fun one.

Speaker 2: 1:05:55

I ended up getting the job and working for that artist for several years. I don't think he's doing much of anything now, but I was like nope, I've been to Stax. Here's my entire record collection. Here's the playlist I made for the day. Like I have the credentials I promised you don't let my pasty ass.

Speaker 2: 1:06:14

I have a deep appreciation for this. I never want to say like I don't see color because I I just don't look at people through those lenses of like oh, I'm putting people into boxes and I realized that the world does so. I had to adjust people's expectations based on what they've experienced. Cause, like you know, if you're, if you are a dog and you get hit so many times when someone goes and like hands you a treat, you're going to be like.

Speaker 2: 1:06:42

So I had I go into my, my circumstance or my situations with my clients who are, who look different than me, with that perspective of like I'm going to have to work twice as hard to prove to you that I know what I'm talking about but I also care and that I've done my research. Like I've got artists that only want to wear black owned brands. I have a whole like Google doc of the pros and the cons of every single brand. I've got clients that only want to wear Indian brand. They want clients that want to wear these things. No, it's honestly made me it's. It's expanded my education on a lot of stuff, which is really cool and it's a gift.

Speaker 1: 1:07:14

That's awesome, so you're basically taking it as an opportunity to learn more.

Speaker 2: 1:07:19

Yeah, it's just funny too, because I was like I remember being like, but Charlie Pride's a country singer, like why is everyone freaking out about Beyonce? Like this has been a thing for a long time and he's super nice and he was also into astrology. Like it's funny because that was like those um, you know those time life box sets where it's like for nine payments of $99.99. Yes, he probably was my first client. He was so sweet. He was an old man at this point and I was like 19, 20.

Speaker 2: 1:07:46

And I was hanging everything up and like, keep in mind, he could have been a pro baseball player and decided he wanted to do country music instead, where, like this was still segregated and then excelled in it. And then I'm like I'm nervous, it's my first big girl job, it's being filmed, I'm getting paid like my first day, right. So I'm hanging everything up and I hear in the background Virgo and I turn around and I go, yes, and it's him. So like which most people think oh, white girls with my haircut are into astrology and that's about it. And he was like, yeah, first week of September. And I was like how did you know?

Speaker 1: 1:08:28

He goes oh, you're talking like a Virgo vibe about you.

Speaker 2: 1:08:29

Oh, that's so funny. I'm a Pisces and he starts breaking this stuff down and I was like so people already thought like it was weird You're a baseball player and weird that you're a country singer, and now like you're an astrologer. I never look at someone and make an assumption about them now.

Speaker 1: 1:08:43

I love that. That was your entry into that entire world Like what a perfect experience to have.

Speaker 2: 1:08:50

It set the tone. One of my girls that I work for she's very liberal, like super liberal and her whole team's gay and like she's an angel and she's really sweet. But people assume, because she looks and talks a certain way, that she must not be. And you just can't do that. You can't take people for like, oh, that's my prejudice that I have against people and that's, you know, like it's just not, it's not how my brain works, because my brain was like blown when I was 20 years old. And this guy is like oh, you're a Virgo and I used to be a baseball player and now I'm a country star. You're like what? It's funny because I always end up with people at parties. My mom always jokes like I find the dog at the party, but it's always like the person that has the most random side quests and I'm like yeah, I want to talk to you.

Speaker 1: 1:09:36

Yeah, totally, totally, yeah Long story short.

Speaker 2: 1:09:41

I'm not saying I'm a saint by any means at all, but it's like I didn't realize that other people don't approach human beings that way.

Speaker 1: 1:09:50

I had to learn.

Speaker 2: 1:09:52

It's like I feel like the really good boyfriend after the bad boyfriend.

Speaker 1: 1:09:56

Oh yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:09:58

That's what it feels like. So, yeah, yeah, that's. And when I work with clients, I ask them their hierarchy of needs. Like that's one of the biggest things. Like do you want sustainable? Do you want natural fibers, Do you want blah, blah, blah? And someone's like I really would only like black owned brands. I'm like great, I got them all right here.

Speaker 1: 1:10:13

Like that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:10:17

It's almost like close me to pineapple. I'm like.

Speaker 1: 1:10:26

I got two brands for you. I hope that works. Yeah, that's so good. It's almost like you have such a connection to like the soul side of things that it's like you have to intentionally educate yourself about how to operate in the human world. Like, let me figure out what this human situation means, yeah, and how to navigate it with you.

Speaker 2: 1:10:42

It's odd. Odd because working in music as long as my whole family has, because my grandfather moved everyone here in the sixties you, a lot of people think that it's only dealing with the famous person. It's dealing with the famous person that's your client, and the hairstyles and the makeup arts and the manager. The manager is going to come from a different background than everybody else. Then you've got the, the ecosystem of a stage and the crew that goes in that stage, because a lot of stagehands are they'll still hire a lot of felons for stagehands those people you've got all the crew people that.

Speaker 2: 1:11:18

You've got the lighting specialist, the uh, the audio. You've got the stage manager. You've got the people that work in sessions. You are surrounded constantly by people who did not grow up like you, who do not think like you, who do not vote like you, who have a completely different hierarchy of needs. And going back to that, like I'm not the villain, I'm just doing things differently in a way that you would. And when you're around that, as opposed to like I work in a bank, I work in the law firm, I work in all these things you get a view like, oh, this is like a very small scale of what the world actually is like.

Speaker 1: 1:11:48

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:11:49

As opposed to your little bubble, your little echo chamber. So it's really a blessing to be able to work in the industry that I do and to work behind the scenes, because you'll have people in a band that are all completely different human beings and it's like, oh cool, now I just get to see that not getting out of that like internet bubble that everyone thinks like I do and everyone approaches the world the way I do, and that's cool. And now I can. I can talk to anybody this is me, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:12:15

Yeah, it's kind of a superpower in a way, just to be able to like connect with anybody really quickly too, because if you're in a high pressure situation, you're spending a lot of time with these people in a very just concentrated situation.

Speaker 2: 1:12:28

I'm not going to name names, but I did wardrobe like a local wardrobe gig, which is different than touring with someone, and local wardrobe is harder to me than touring because you only get that one day to make an impression and to make that person feel good before they go to somebody else. So I was doing wardrobe for an artist who is a Mormon. They go to somebody else. So I was doing wardrobe for an artist who is a Mormon and I was like this was before. I ended up on like modesty, tiktok on style and I ended up with a bunch of Mormon clients that wear the garments and then I would also do them, always in the same day as my dominatrix, which cracked me up, so funny. But so anyway, I was like I don't know anything about Mormonism, let me do some research and make sure I don't offend this person accidentally. I'm going to be in their underwear all day long. So I just kind of was like looking things up and I was like, oh, didn't know that, didn't know that, that's good to know.

Speaker 2: 1:13:13

Moving forward, I'm going to. I'm not going to change who I am as a person, but I'm going to modify myself in certain ways because this client is going to be in their underwear or their garment. I need to make them feel good. So when that artist came back through town they asked for me again. And that happens a lot where it's like I don't know what my client retention rate regardless of if it's touring or music videos or photo shoots, it's pretty high. So I think it's because I just meet everyone where they're at and I help them be the best version of themselves that day and I give them whatever. There's one version of me, but I kind of filter it to what they need, because I'm not really here to be the star of the show, right. I'm here to support that person, right. So learned a lot, tried to not swear that day. It was kind of hard.

Speaker 1: 1:14:03

Yeah, I was going to say, like what does that look like in practice? Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, and I you know, you just want to make sure that you I'm really good at reading a room.

Speaker 2: 1:14:16

That's important. That's a superpower in itself. It is. That's very my. I'm really good at reading a room. I'm really good at figuring out who's comfortable, who's uncomfortable. Um, I can try to make conversation with almost anybody if they're willing to like go back to back with me, and I just think people are so interesting. They really are. They're really interesting, yeah. Yeah, I mean, people look at it like, oh well, she must not have her own thoughts or feelings or beliefs or opinions. I'm like I do.

Speaker 2: 1:14:36

I just don't think that I'm better than you and the fact that my life experience is going to be the same as yours and the same as yours and I don't hold my opinion higher than yours, because I'm not living in your meat suit, so, in that, all sorts of style like I'm not going to put you in what I'm wearing because what I'm wearing is not going to be suitable for you yeah, for sure like that's a cop-out, like okay, cool. Well, what are you gonna do? Do you want me to be an asshole? Because I can. I could be a lot meaner.

Speaker 1: 1:15:03

I'm not gonna yeah, yeah, you could. You have 20 minutes to like strike up a, like a real good connection with somebody, and you could make so many assumptions about somebody's entire life just based on those 20 minutes that you have. But it wouldn't really serve you, would it?

Speaker 2: 1:15:20

No, that's so interesting. I just don't. People are like, oh well, if I wear this or people are going to think that I go. I've never once looked back at an interaction when I had with someone that was fleeting and been like, well, that could have gone better for outfit was better. About people like that, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:15:37

Yeah, um, one of the last questions I want to ask you is the idea of judging people like don't judge a book by it, by its cover, right? And also, in the same sentence, your entire job is to give people options for their cover that will communicate volumes, right? How do you dance between those two realities?

Speaker 2: 1:15:59

Well, from a branding and marketing perspective, when it comes to musicians, I need to make people look like they sound, and the way that I do that is I will take, you know, like, let's say, a an artist favorite band is the Beatles and Bob Dylan. So I'm not going to take a Bob Dylan costume and then put it on somebody and be like here you go, or like a Sgt Pepper costume, like here you go. So what I'll do is I'll borrow things that feel familiar, so I might take the silhouette of, like this suit that the Beatles wore and put like something Bob Dylan wore and then copy paste the pattern onto it. And I kind of do the same thing with people. So like when you meet me and I tell you like oh, I really liked the Beatles or the stones or whatever it makes sense, and when you kind of get an overall preview for what you're getting into but I try not to give everything away I tell people don't dress like you're a bumper sticker. Yeah, I just think, like my first car in school, I like had all these bumper stickers and bands I liked and my thoughts and my feelings and opinions all over the back of my car. No one needed that. It's just an overall vibe. When I tell people what I do for a living, they go oh, that makes sense. Right, that's all I need. So, um, I don't think that, like a lot of times people will say things to me like oh, I really like these two polar opposite style icons. How do I show up as both these people?

Speaker 2: 1:17:11

We have been kind of programmed, especially now in like TikTok world, to go into cores and aesthetics and you feel like you have to change your entire personality and you have to make everything for that particular thing. Oh, it's whimsic off summer. Oh it's Italian girl summer. Oh it's mob girl winter. Like I have to change everything about myself. But in reality we borrow elements from a lot of different things that we like. So I tell people I just need a taste. I don't need the full record, I need to know preview what I'm getting into. Um, so, like, if you were to show up wearing all white robes, I'd be like you're a Kundalini yoga teacher or a cult leader or both. Cool, yeah, like great. Or wearing all black, like you might have a hot topic card, like in your wallet. But if you might, if you're not cool, it's just I try to make it seem like you're getting a preview of what they're doing.

Speaker 1: 1:17:57

I love that. So it's basically you could either wear a costume wearing the bumper sticker right or you can actually play with the expression of all the different pieces and how they all meld together. And it's basically how I talk about intuition, too, because I say that everybody speaks. Intuition it's a language, but every single individual has a very unique dialect that they speak, which is a combination of all their different strong senses in that category. So, yeah, that's so cool.

Speaker 2: 1:18:27

Yeah, the cover is important, but it's not the full story.

Speaker 1: 1:18:30

And it could never be. No, could never. I love that. What a perfect way to end this Yay.

Speaker 2: 1:18:36

Thank you so much, I so appreciate you for coming on today, and I'm glad that your house isn't on fire. Holla Frickin' Louia.

Speaker 1: 1:18:47

I'm like LA in a fire alarm. I'm like no, I know I was thinking the exact same thing. I was like not again.

Speaker 2: 1:18:50

Universe is like we're not putting this podcast out.

Speaker 1: 1:18:55

We're, yeah. Thank you so much for hanging out and going in deep with me, cause I know it's not always a safe space for everyone to go into, and I much appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 1:19:04

Well, I will talk to you soon.

Speaker 1: 1:19:06

Okay, bye. Thank you for listening to Soul Level Human. If this episode moved something in you, share it. Text it to a friend, post to your stories. The Soul Level Revolution spreads one brave human at a time and your voice makes a difference. So until next time at a time and your voice makes a difference. So until next time, remember to slow down, tune in, trust your guidance and keep having the audacity to choose the highest timeline. When you show up fully, you give others permission to do the same. Make this the timeline where you show up.