Creating a Self-Loving and Liberated Life with Sarah Sapora | The Mark Groves Podcast

you cannot address your body Liberation unless you address your greater Liberation which is why so many people and so many women end up going on diets because they assume if they lose weight it'll make them feel more desirable or get them a partner or it'll solve something but the truth is that if you have an emotional relationship to your body and food in some way that Band-Aid will never ever a work for you in the long run are actually really offer you a tool to deal with what you're dealing with welcome to another episode of The Mark Rose podcast today I am joined with Sarah sapora welcome hi another long time coming fist bump yeah we've been we've been Instagram friends for oh man six years are you gonna remember the first time we met where was the first time we met we were at Wanderlust in Palm Springs you but I kind of super fangirled you and I was like look I know you don't know me from a hole in the wall but I feel like I can be helpful to you in some way and yeah that was 2018 so like five or six years ago but we knew each other before that because we interacted on Instagram quite a bit we had been Instagram peeps before that yeah yes as all great friendships begin on Instagram it's like a Casablanca movie like in with black and white and like Bogey and on Instagram we began Play It Again Sam I I uh have been excited to speak with you because I know you birthed your book Soul archeology so congratulations I love the name of that thank you thank you I have been super excited to talk to you um so ready for like a real or real conversation that doesn't skim on the surface because neither one of us or skim on the surface kind of people and I love that and I'm in the middle of book Insanity I had my first little mini meltdown yesterday which I feel like it's totally cool I may have emotionally eaten some white Cheetos but I did it intentionally I knew I was doing it and I offered myself some accountability and compassion and then said it let's move forward so oh I love a good Cheeto I mean if you're gonna have one have the cheese ones you know I've never had a hot Cheeto you haven't no no they're good too I mean I haven't eaten a Cheeto in a long time if I do go to them I go to those cheese ones that are like at Whole Foods Mary something I think is the brand so here's the kicker and this has nothing to do with anything but I'm like the only human in the world who doesn't like cheese but I like a Cheeto it's very weird I think if there's like I have a friend who doesn't like melted cheese melted cheese is like my personal hell actually liquid nacho cheese like the kind of nacho cheese they go and like squish it like the pump related one yeah that's pumped cheese is my I actually look back now and don't worry we'll get to where we're going for you the listener but this is important because I can't believe I've eaten cheese that is essentially melted plastic like when I look back at and I'm sure for people listening we've all experienced this like the foods that I've eaten that thankfully my body had some ability to break down yeah and get out yeah I'm just like man I did not nourish myself you should try that now and see how it feels because it's not the same yeah like now I'm man I just started to I worked with a friend of mine who's a nutritionist and she was like you are under eating protein by so much like you need to massively increase your protein and since I did which is about two months ago completely changed my I don't have cravings anymore I'm actually eating for dessert 100 chocolate yeah when I had dug in with big things I learned was just how much protein a body really needs and just how little of it we get naturally is insane and they tell you to eat more of it and then you have to like find creative ways to add Greek yogurt into your life like all of a sudden you're making that's my morning yogurt yogurt dryer right half a scoop of protein powder you know a little yeah all right well this is all applicable to the subject at hand which is not just self-love but also how self-love and the journey that you take people on is about liberating themselves so let's get into that because I think one of the maybe uh there's misconceptions about the term self-love and there's often this thought that it's like bubble baths and candles and chocolate which hey it is but like can you maybe get into how you define it yeah thank you for sure um listen bubble baths and all that kind of of stuff are awesome but we've somehow equated self-love with treating yourself or splurging yourself or in many cases getting away with stuff we might normally get away with right and all of those things are okay but I truly don't believe that's what self-love is I believe that self-love is any thought that you think or anything that you do so any thought or any action that connects you closer to your ultimate you and your ultimate you is something very specific and it's a version of you that has nothing to do with your age your weight your boobs your money your boss babe status none of those things it's defined in my opinion by two things one your ability to be self-aware and radically honest with yourself at any given time so at any given time your ability to be able to drop in and to connect with yourself and like editorialize this is what I'm feeling exactly what I'm feeling about tell the truth yep thank you two the ability to be connected and committed to what you learn when you when you tell the truth self and following through so you can't lie to yourself you can't be willing to lie to yourself and you can't yourself that doesn't mean you can't be compassionate and you can't hold space for yourself but you can't yourself so the version of you that tells the truth and doesn't yourself that is your ultimate you and that can look like so many different things and it can be messy and beautiful and all those things but self-love is what serves that version of you so self-love is never going to be self-abandonment self-love is never going to be ignoring hard things self-love is oftentimes the most icky messy brutal hard stuff that we can possibly do or think in the present sense because in the long run it's what's going to move us forward the most it's the stuff that can bring you to your knees and the icky things that you don't want to talk about or think about but sometimes the most self-loving things that are the hardest to do are ultimately what is going to unlock us and liberate Us in the long run so I believe that at any point in time in my life if I feel like my head is up my ass or I don't know what I'm doing I sit around and I think about how is it that I really want to feel in my life and what is the most self-loving thing I can do for myself and therefore I stay committed to living a self-loving life and when I am living a self-loving life it means that I'm prioritizing self-love over self-abandonment that's it it means I am prioritizing serving myself with honesty lack of follow through over um over what's easy right doing what I know will serve me versus not and you're either living a self-loving life or you're not but at the core of that is what do I need right now to connect me and bring me closer to that ultimate you and it can be anything you do or anything you think what brought you to that because and I guess my curiosity is although I'm I think I know the answer because I know for me the answer have you always lived that way no no no I'm 44. and I didn't I I'm 44. yeah no that's we were like we're like an age birthday are you a Virgo you are aren't you I'm a Scorpio you're a Scorpio okay so I'm older than you so respect your elders young man yeah wisdom bomb right there um yeah so no no I self abandoned my entire life completely subconsciously no idea of all the ways that I was blocking myself and getting in the way yeah I know um getting in the way of living a self-loving life I I really didn't start to see that until I was like 36 37 and the thing that that made me figure it out or at least made me realize that maybe I'm doing something weird here was that I was in the same relationship again and again and again I I really wanted like intimacy and like love and I was you know mid-30s and everybody else was getting married and I was having and having kids and like I was doing none of those things I was like okay different man same cowboy boots and it would be really easy to blame all of that on them say it's their fault but at the end of the day I was the common thread in all of that so the first thing I had to step back and do was realize okay well what am I doing that is allowing all of these things to happen what what is the container which is a freaking word I hate like container you know but how am I showing up for relationships that this is what's happening and that was when I started to realize that and when I really figured it out was a couple of years later in 2019 when I walked away from a relationship with a man I now know like represented my biggest core wound and it was the most brutal thing ever but I also knew it was the most liberating thing I was ever gonna do and I would say how how hard is this and how lucky am I and I would sort of be all sarcastic like oh how lucky am I that I had to walk away from the one person I really love but then I would go no wait wait wait I'm I'm 39 40 years old I'm finally waking up to wait I am I am lucky and and maybe this is actually really good I mean it sucks it sucks a big one I'm sitting around crying and drinking Snapple and listening to Fleetwood Mac Silver Springs again and again and again on repeat but like maybe this is actually really beautiful and maybe instead of seeing this as being my destruction I can see it as being an opportunity for me to build something and that was when my real understanding of self-love started to shift because even in the middle of like you know we've all been through chaotic breakups with partners that like make us orgasm just by looking at us but are so unhealthy right we've all been in those toxic relationships that are so amazing that they suck every part of us and we can't imagine existing in a way where we're not mirrored by them right and and to to remove that feels like a collapsing of your skeletal structure right and then I realized I was okay like I was a hot mess there were days you know I'm not gonna say days but how many days did I do messy buns not wanting to you know leave the house and again that's actually pretty cool now though like messy buns to clean buttons yeah it wasn't cute though it wasn't like oh this is a cute messy bun it was like oh me maybe you should shower because like I just pulled myself together to get vertical it was like I just went to bed listening to my Spotify oh playlist and now I have to move on yeah um but that was when I figured it out that was when I realized that the most brutal things could be the most self-loving and instead of continually looking for the easiest choice which I think so many of us are just programming right now agreed um what is the most self-loving thing because the most self-loving thing is not always the easiest and that was when I really figured that out so I've I think I've gotten I've gotten that one under my skin for like three or four years and it has totally changed how I make every big decision in my life and I love it and sometimes people don't understand it and then I realize I'm 44 years old and my decisions don't have to make sense to everybody as long as they're self-loving for me if they serve me and you know I'm still a good decent human being and I'm you know acting accordingly then that's what's in service of me that's that's what I need that's self-love for me and self-love for me is going to be different than self-love for you Mike we're all going to have different versions of What self-love is so yeah that was around 2019. so I searched forever for a non-toxic deodorant stick and I'm not sure about you but my experience with them is once I Googled the ingredients I was like ah this is still got some stuff in it or if it wasn't toxic it just didn't work that good and don't get me wrong I'm all for letting the pheromones out but it was not the not the right kind of pheromones but I'm happy to say I finally found one that I love and it's from a company called primally Pure and they don't just make deodorant they have a whole line of non-toxic skin care products that are made with ingredients that you don't have to Google isn't that great they're made in America they're headquartered in Southern California and all the stuff is done by their skin care chefs who value freshness and Purity so I'm very excited to be partnering with primally pure and the company's founder Bethany is a mom of two and the wife of a farmer who truly cares about the Integrity of the ingredients they use and the products they create and for me as a new father this matters because I want to have the best cleanest possible product products for my baby Jasper that is so important to Kylie and I and this company has a whole baby line so if this sounds like something that's really important to you and you don't know exactly which products to use they do help you create a skincare routine with an awesome quiz that they do on their website and the best part is that primarilyapure offers a happiness guarantee and they'll give you your money back if you're not satisfied but I know you will be because Kylie and I absolutely love and trust their products so if this all sounds like something you want to check out and try primary pure has given you my listeners a special code to use when you order just go to primallypure.com today and use the code Mark Groves just my name and you get 15 off your order so that's primarily p-r-i-m-a-l-l-y-purepure.com and use the code Mark Robson checkout say 15 well I think at the Baseline of what you're saying is something I deeply resonate with which is when I was finally willing to tell myself the truth about who I was and how I was impacting other people and the truth of how I behave and the truth of what I chose not the everything's fine I can excuse my choices you know and and even find because I think when we're not in alignment with truth obviously we create anxiety we create I I think that's the source of addictions because at the Baseline of that is pain of misalignment and I remember one of the first times I really had that sort of come to Jesus conversation with myself was the first time I chose something that was really hard but was necessary and it was one of the first times I really saw that I could trust my inner voice my inner guide but the reason I say all that is because I remember one of the first things I said to myself was how did I get here like how did I get so disconnected from myself and the answer I had was you avoided every hard conversation and when I think about witnessing your journey too because I've been you know alongside uh your Instagram stories and posts uh and being able to just converse with you as you navigate this stuff I'm curious how has that Awakening of sorts to like realness how has that coincided with the journey that you've had with your body well for those people who don't know um I'm a plus-sized woman and I am a larger plus size women and I have been larger than I am now um but I am someone that has had an impulsive and emotional relationship to food which also not coincidentally has correlated with an impulsive and emotional relationship to sex and intimacy and false intimacy and also therefore an impulsive relationship to money and acquiring things and how I treat myself right so one of the most difficult things I ever did and it's going to sound so silly like it's going to sound really silly but like the come to Jesus Reckoning moment that I had when I finally saw all the that I have done when I was just trying to feel loved and and like actually putting that out on paper to myself I don't even have words for how hard that was but also words for how amazing it was to forgive myself and remove the shame that I didn't even know I was carrying for all of that for all of the things that I did all the people that I did whose names I remember don't remember all of the Burger King that I ate at three o'clock in the morning like all the different choices that I made when I was trying to feel more comfortable or less lonely or less abandoned or not think about myself all of those stuffs and things that I did I had to see all that like I had to have a reckoning and it wasn't easy it sucked it sucked and I cried and I remember I was on the phone one day with a friend of mine who was British and he called me and he said um Sarah have you thought to forgive yourself yet I was like I don't know what the you're talking about like I'm Jewish from New York I do anxiety I do like all this stuff and he's like no but if if you've had the courage to see all this then you know with his little accent you should forgive yourself for it that's that's okay too and so I did I wrote a letter I literally wrote a letter I wrote a letter to to my dad I wrote a letter to several ex-partners and boyfriends and I wrote a massive massive long letter to myself and the tears just streamed and I was like I forgive you for the time that you tried to sleep with men and manipulated them because they were being nice to you and you didn't know how to handle that and the only thing you knew was to have random sex like I forgive you for this to reward them yeah I forgive you for not treating your body better what I'm trying to say is that you cannot address your body liberation if you are someone that has an emotional relationship to food and and your weight you cannot address your body Liberation unless you address your greater liberation which is why so many people and so many women end up going on diets because they assume it'll be a Fast Fix they assume if they lose weight that it will make whatever hurts hurt less right it'll it'll it'll make them feel more desirable or get them a partner or it'll solve something right but the truth is that if you have an emotional relationship to your body and food in some way that Band-Aid will never ever ever a work for you in the long run are actually really offer you a tool to deal with what you're dealing with so I could not deconstruct the relationship that I had to food I could not deconstruct the relationship that I had to my body until I was able to see that other stuff and realize that I was not going to stop searching for tools if I didn't go to the source of what was hurting me does that does that make sense like yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense like the addiction to trying to find the solution as opposed to going right into the exactly the cure for the pains exactly and that's why it's so interesting you can anybody who's who not anybody I don't mean to speak with a glib generalization but so many people who have addictive behaviors like you everybody can find a tool to fix something temporarily right it's super sexy it's fun to buy a new planner it often feels good yeah it's and it's it's cool because it gives you to an immediate satisfaction of oh my god I've done something great right um but at the end of the day it's not about the tool it's about why we go to the tool and then figuring out how to have a better relationship with that tool does that make sense it does and I'm curious because when I think about resistance to change and I think about you know letting go of old habits or old identities I think one of the core and I'm curious your thoughts on this and your experience with this I I think a lot of the resistance to transformation is actually the familiarity of the thing even the identity you know it's like I don't know who I am without XYZ so I can't change because then I gotta let go of the power that I source and even if it's painful but it's power it's that could be oh oh I know yeah so I mean you know right like we we owe this is that is that familiarity even if it's dysfunctional can be comforting because we know it right we know what it's gonna it's we know how it plays out and it takes soft and arousing too that's the weird thing like you know when you're used to humping to deal with your I was just still humping yeah like you're still humping so like by your brain is like humping's the best and it's way better than thinking I suck or I make bad choices or I'm you know whatever belief I have about myself do you want to hear the funny thing that I always tell I mean it's not funny but it is it's funny because I make it funny but it's it's probably really not I tell people that there's probably so many pictures of my boobs on the internet that I could never run for president like that's I'm sorry I'm sorry but like I mean it is funny but it's also like the I get that like first off you wouldn't be I'm sure the first president there's for sure pictures I don't think of all these Adele Biden has a picture of his weiner on that Justin Trudeau definitely he has black face he that wasn't good yeah sorry to throw out your dirty laundry Justin not you you're fine you're right so hold on you got booby pics on the internet and you're you're saying like that was was that like one of the well you know I mean look look I spent a lot of my years using my body as currency to to like get attention it was the trade-off right and because I really really really really really really wanted a connection I really wanted to connect with somebody but I wasn't getting that but I realized that like there was a role that I could play like I could be the sassy flirty big girl that had big tits and big boobs and like that would work for me so I always used to say like I don't know who you are dude but if you like big chicks with a great ass and like a dirty sense of humor like I got you and and that's how I showed up like that was my first strike weapon and I desperately wanted to be taken seriously but I was showing up as that and until I like realized that if I keep showing the cost to that well I'm 44 and I've never been married and I don't have kids and I never thought that I would be here you know I mean the cost of that was some painful relationships a lot of self-abandonment and decades worth of time I think each time I did that although it really felt good I think I chipped away at who I was and I don't want to be like you know like I feel bad because I like your exploration of this is uh from a place of wisdom now so it's not like you're over sharing or weaponizing your vulnerability you're like this hurt and now I'm Savage yeah well I think you know look and also I I don't have any problem if you want to take dirty pictures and feel you know look I I I'm a king friendly person and I support all forms of sexual I think it's where it comes from it's the intention behind it are you using it as a coping mechanism or are you consciously showing up for that interaction is it a self-loving interaction or not is it self-love or not to show up the way you're showing and for me it was not when did you have that recognition of the uh person that you presented versus like the Sarah below that you know and and what you actually craved they saw within you once you were beyond the sort of because you did develop a superpower from that skill right like you're able to take painful things and bring levity to them because you've mastered a skill of humor and and so I often think like our survival strategies become our super Powers when they're not about distraction but about connection so yeah can you speak to like that like what was behind that and then when you recognized it yeah so it was probably the first time I figured it out in stages the first time it was like maybe 2015 and I realized that I was wearing the same outfit to all of my first dates regardless of where they were or who they were who they were with and like I was wearing like a super super body contrast like showing up like fat Carrie Underwood with like big hair and cowboy boots and I showed up bless my heart for a pancake breakfast at like eight o'clock on a Sunday morning looking like like that and I realized although it was fine it's good I did it it was great I looked hot but like I had armor I had armor and I realized that I was showing up in my armor and I realized that I was going on lots of First Dates where I did my schtick again and again and again but never any more dates than that and um I was in therapy and I was talking about that and we realized that that's I was armoring up to meet men and I named that version of me I named her brunhilda because she was a warrior and she put on her armor and she put on her breastplate and her freaking wagnerian horn I was a music major in college so I got that joke and that's how I showed up I showed up armored up I could not show up as me because I didn't know who I was all I knew was this shtick that I was really good at doing and I vividly remember the first date that I ever went on that I wasn't dressed up like that like I showed up in jeans and just like a basic shirt with my titties not hanging out and it was so scary but so awesome um so first was it started with the very surface level of the Soul archeology observation the very first level of Discovery was seeing that I was wearing the same thing on dates again and again and realizing that like I had to put my costume on that that's how I thought that if I was going to offer a man value that was the currency that I had to offer and then once I started to see that I stopped dating in general because I didn't I didn't I didn't know anything else and I wasn't ready to show up any other way it was too raw it was just too raw I was like I don't have an alternative I'm not ready for that but I know what's not working for me because I think so often in times when we're thinking about self-improvement we're chasing a solution and people say well just do what will make it better and do what it'll make you happy but how the are you supposed to do what will make you happy if you've never done it before and you have no idea then you're just spinning your wheels right so what I say is well you don't need to search for some magical solution just start where it hurts start with what's not working for you and if you just start there and follow the trail you'll go somewhere so if showing up like broomhilda with all of my assets on display and looking Fierce as for pancakes at eight o'clock in the morning and then sending dirty texts later wasn't getting me where I wanted to be well maybe I should just stop doing that and just see what happens right and in the space that that creates because when you stop a behavior if you don't have something if you don't have a coping mechanism place right it leaves a bunch of emptiness it leaves a bunch of holes if you learn to sit in that emptiness that you've created without filling it up with something else then eventually you'll learn something new and as long as you keep going down that direction you'll grow how do you stay in that how do you pause because I think the pause that you're speaking to is creation is death is possibility is grieve is right because that's the space between that's the like yeah it's the fall cocoon yeah um so you have to get re I hate this word too I hate it with a passion bring it yeah I hate the word surrender moist oh surrender what people hate the word moist moist it's like yeah everybody hates moist no surrender because it's one of those words that everybody knows they really want to do and think about totally yeah totally it's so romantic yeah surrender yeah it's like boundary you know like everyone wants a boundary but you want to know something you taught me a lot about boundaries you I learned a tremendous amount about boundaries from you I'm going to tell you a secret that you don't even know that's a good secret then well now you and everybody else in the first draft of my book that I wrote during my breakup in 2019 I quoted you oh what was the quote it was a quote about boundaries because I had never heard them or understood them and I had really related to your vulnerability in talking about personal relationships right because that's sort of how we have found a Common Thread we've both have been willing to talk about how we kind of showed up in personal relationships and what that did and I had never heard boundaries and and I'll find it for you but yeah you you young man taught me about boundary young man yeah I'm like four months no that felt good it felt good I felt younger yeah I so surrender let's go so the word surrender I agree with you it has like what's on the other side of it we know is delicious it's light it's freeing it's what is it you know like to do it to embody it is like a whole other yeah to do it if your body it is is unattractive and sticky and messy and gross so the way unless it's in like a bondage or something that's an entirely different podcast that's a different podcast schedule later Doms and submissives we've got you so the the visualization that I have around it because it's just one of those sort of nebulous words like surrender it's like Glenda on the good witch what are you actually telling me to do because right now when you call me to surrender I want to throat punch you right so I think about it as like in an action movie like maybe a Bruce Willis movie or Mission Impossible like Tom Cruise is hanging on a cliff right he's got his fingers on the cliff and he's dangling and there's a bad guy who's like kicking at his fingers right and and and he looks down and there's like gorgeous gorgeous water below but it's really far down but all he has to do is figure out how to fall and figure out how to get from the letting go to the to the water because once he's in the water he knows that he's Tom Cruise and he can do whatever he's going to do and he'll float like no matter what he will take a a roll of duct tape and Matchstick and make a boat like it'll be fine he just has to let go so surrendering is giving yourself permission to fall and get from the the fingers gripping to the oh I'm okay now like it's it's letting yourself fall so it's a skill how do you practice that skill how do you practice the skill of surrendering it has a ton to do with being willing to be messy sticky and uncomfortable and know you're okay with that and that's it and it doesn't look like anything it's not performative there's no one-size-fits-all solution it is how comfortable can you be with saying I'm a bit of a mess right now but I also know that I'm okay I also know my basic needs are met I am safe I'm healthy I am loved I am held I am good but I am a hot mess and that is okay because I will not always be a hot mess I know at some point in time I'll hit the bottom and I'll swim because I'm confident that I can swim it's how do you get from up there to there and that's what surrendering is willing to be an icky beautiful disgusting hot mess knowing full well that you can be icky and beautiful and sticky and hot messy and be completely okay at the exact same time yeah that's true holding that Paradox that messiness means Brokenness you know which it which it doesn't right like to be messy is to be human but because we've especially with social media Amplified this perfectionism that it's like you know we get this highlight reel of people's lives or we get performative vulnerability you know both exist where we we are like using vulnerability to be able to vulnerability porn that's what I call it yeah well what you were saying about like it's not performative I was thinking that's so interesting because even the irony of performative surrender would be that it's a complete lack of surrender of course right yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah so when I consider what you're saying and I think about surrendering on that level that is to me feels like that place of like uh no more like no I'm acknowledging where I am I'm done running from my pain or done running like I've hit the end of of the possibility of living with this mask any longer carrying this way like carrying what it does not need to be carried anymore and now I'm gonna look I'm gonna actually turn towards myself for the first time and be messy and let it all fall down it's being comfortable with saying it just is yeah yeah just being with the truth again is it just is it just is you know um I used to have a boyfriend the same boyfriend was this the 2019 okay yeah who's in my books super hot core wound guy yeah we call him George in my book that's not name but he's named after a George Strait straight straight I was about to say a George Strait worse it is yeah you know me it's got to be a George Strait song um say to me just ride the wave Sarah just let's just ride the wave of this relationship and I would want it to be like go yourself because that doesn't work for me like hey that's a cop-out and I don't like that but I don't that's not how I work like I need to shape it touch it strangle it it hold it like I need there no tell me and I'm like that's not surrender now granted that was a thing to say so it's a terrible example but the exact opposite is just a sort of a situational awareness and peace doesn't even mean you need to be happy about it it's just sort of like an editorial narrator going it just is it is it just is it just is that's it it's very like premature run Buddhist like I had I did a lot of that reading like because that idea of attachment Things Fall Apart yeah such a good book The Great listen you guys if you're listening if you are going through the first book that I recommend to anybody is When Things Fall Apart heart advice for difficult times it's like the greatest book for this but it teaches you again how to lean into the sharp points of your pain and how to realize that that you don't have to like it you don't have to love it you don't have to pretend that it's okay you just have to have a softer relationship to it that's what surrender is it's it's cooler loneliness versus hot loneliness it's it's yeah we you know that that that she writes it's it's just it just she's just yeah I like what you're saying this like entrance the willingness to be in that space and the for me it's been the recognition of the juiciness in the grief like the juiciness in the end the juiciness in uh the bottom like uh when I think about the breakup I have a Kai like so much of it brought me so much more alive to the absolute spectrum of emotion I actually was capable of feeling and was always there but I was shut off to you know using other techniques coping mechanisms self-abanding you know and and that being like the voice is like but hey and I'm like yeah you're pretty needy you know or whatever it is the whole idea of like people say would you rather not love it all than to have loved than lost and I I remember like before I had felt love when I was really really lonely that I would sit in my bed at night and I would just feel nothing I would just not feel I and I would say I I'd rather lose somebody because then at least I'd know I was alive at least I know I had the ability to bring you alive yeah at least I would know that I'm capable of a depth of love that is possible right and it's and yeah losing any person or thing you love is not easy and I'm not trying to be glib with that but yeah when you can when you can embrace the full spectrum of of colors in Black you can embrace the full spectrum of colors and light right you kind of need one in order to see the other you you need to know that both exist and then it makes everything More Alive in general so we saw archeology and the map of of doing it I like that in your subtitle is a totally doable because so many things aren't doable so I really like that and just for everybody watching here's what the book looks like just like that look at that super excited she's always excited I is the framework of Soul archeology basically the framework of what this sort of radical transformation that you've been through in the last four years absolutely because you're like this is a plan it's a map it's worked for me yeah listen Sisters Let's get on and brothers let's get on board let's let's crush it Soul archeology first off it's the idea that you can only see one layer at a time and when you actually start to wake up to the fact that something hurts you want to fix everything right away and you want to go right into the deep and that's great right you're trying really hard to escape what hurts you and reach for a tool which is usually to anesthetize and not think about what hurts you right but the truth is you can only dig one layer at a time it's like an archaeological dig site and the way I I think about it is this way right you you go to like in the book I I go like imagine I'm like fat Angelina Jolie or like Indiana Jones and I go up to an archaeological site and I see like like something in the dirt and so I start to brush the dirt off and then a boob reveals itself and then you brush that off and then a torso reveals itself and then you brush that off and then soon at some point in time you unearth the fertility statue unearthing yourself unearthing your ultimate you is done exactly like that you don't find it by reaching out for an external solution you find it by slowly unearthing the layers of what you can see when you can see it because I got to tell you the first piece of all of this for me one of the first pieces was one realizing that I was not having the relationships that I wanted to have with men and two um it took me 19 years to realize that a relationship that I had in college was probably sexually abusive by coercion and once I saw that it allowed me to unlock so the idea of soil archeology is you see what you see in the order that you can see it and here is my way to take your hand and guide you through seeing it because so much of self-help is based on big things that our strategies and not tactical but if you don't get tactical your self-help is worth it's just ideas that look pretty and make great memes I don't care about that what I care about is somebody who has never felt comfortable or safe making a change who feels stuck having enough beautiful courage to say this hurts me start where it hurts I am ready to say this hurts me okay great if you can do that you have got the next step if you can continually ask yourself what is hurting me right now and you can answer that question and you can take some action from that then you will unearth yourself and that's what the idea of Soul archeology is and that's what the map is about the map is about here's how to come to the table here's the order of that I thought about and let's get real about what self-love luftball looks like in actual reality because in actual reality self-love could mean like we were talking about earlier accepting all the really icky hard stuff that you've done when you subconsciously were hurting yourself well nobody wants to do that that's not fun nobody wants to have that moment where they say man I really hurt myself or I had a long-term affair with the married man what kind of person does that make me right like those things are not pretty and not fun but if you can be both accountable for them and compassionate for them then you can see them and move through them and if they have been coloring your movie in your mind then that's the only way you'll rewrite it so yeah soul archeology is based on the idea that you see what you see when you can see it and this is not a rush this is not a game it's just one layer of self-actualization at a time and at the end of the day there is no end there is no after because there is no before you are just a messy squiggle you are a scrunchie that goes on and on and on and on because until the day you are no longer breathing until you the day you do not wake up you are evolving and you are changing right the idea behind diet culture is that there is a before and a middle and an end we are broken we are working on it we are fixed and healed right that's that's Wellness culture in so many ways but the idea of Soul archeology and self-love is that there's no such thing we're just going to keep going around and around and around you're going to hit your core wounds again and again and again your is your so just start making peace with it and get better at navigating it so that way when you hit your it doesn't hurt you and control you as much as it did when you were younger right because we never stop there is no after there is no freaking magical happy ending where you know the book closes the chapter and then all of a sudden boom it's better right it's not like that you go on and on so every time you feel disconnected every time you feel like you've Fallen away from yourself every time go back to what self-love actually is and and say what is my ultimate you need right now and how do I serve that and that becomes your strategy it's a it's as I wrote a totally doable approach to creating a self-loving and liberated life yeah it's not easy but it's clear remember well what's easiest is anyways yep you know I what's interesting about the word easy is that it gives the illusion of painless but like when I finally realized that easy actually can mean the hardest path like do you know what I mean that the lightest in that leaving a relationship that doesn't serve you or having hard conversations in a relationship that is actually the direct path the evolution and it actually is the easier path the hard path is the one where you're full of and you build up tons of addictions because you'll just run from all your truth you can get harder on yourself to evolve you're like I'm gonna whether like there are no shortcuts there's some long Cuts though there's some long like I think about how many years it takes to wake up from a pattern and as you said if you're breathing you're gonna keep waking up from patterns and that's actually indicative of your Evolution not of your Brokenness it's not our fault per se because I mean I'm not going to get into a you know a big thing about systematic whatever but like the culture that we live in teaches us how does solution find and how to make easy fast choices and it's monetizable yeah you're totally right yeah you have whole Industries created just to try to sell you a shortcut right and we've not we've done that down to 15 seconds if you can't tell somebody what they need to learn Life in 15 seconds then you'll never be famous and you'll never be able to it's not crazy like we have lost the ability to critically think holy critical thinking is so sexy and so important I know this is a big issue sorry but I'm like I'm 100 with you like we have we are not modeling as a society the ability to do what you said self-love is which is tell the truth we're not telling the truth we're trying to avoid hurting people's feelings in order to have the most uh cohesive quote unquote relationship but it's all it's it's fake it's all fake altruism fake virtuosity you know it's all performative I'm like I want the raw realness truth of someone I don't give a who someone votes for or what they I want to know why you want to vote for someone I want to know the juiciness of the human need that you have yeah I agree with you the critical thing short attention spans have birthed a lot of challenges and you know we're both 44 although you are somewhat older and we have experienced and we are one of the last generations to know the world prior to technology and so we know the beauty of getting on your bike and riding to your friend's house or like saying that you're going to meet at the mall and having to you know like just the the adventure that was undocumented you know that the mystery of the adventure you know I don't have videos and pictures of every thing I did with friends when I was a kid you would just go and you'd build a bike jump or you do you know you do a lot of cool stuff I'll call you when I get home yeah yeah yeah so when you go to get a book deal or when you go to do work or ask anybody for money or whatever kind of business support they really want to know who are you talking to right and I'm a people pleaser so I want to talk to you everybody right but no what I realized the the core person that I feel that I can serve the best is a plus-sized woman who's old enough to remember life before the internet so somebody who remembers what it was like to to exist as a woman as a young person maybe as a plus-sized person at a time when what we were learning about our bodies was very specific and different than it is now right like how we what we see what has influenced it's just so different man and I look at Tick Tock and I and I know I should be on the tick of the talk but like I just I don't I don't have it in me and sometimes I get on there I don't either this is fall of Rome like I can see it happening in front of my face and I feel really bad and really old that I don't have the patience and I'm so sorry to any of you who love Tick Tock but like well it's the first platform that really went content forward so they present content ahead of who you follow and then Instagram followed their strategy which meant that I'm going to show you a video that keeps you on the platform longer rather than a video from someone you follow which is brilliant from an algorithmic exploitive point of view but I you know I agree with you I think there's we're in an interesting space and I was listening to the book Letting Go by David Hawkins recently and in it he talks about how like we get attached to this idea that times are bad or things are destructive or a thing the war is upon us and he's like those can be true but that's always true like there's always a moment life swings things change and when I think about that it's so easy to get caught up in the like constant Evolution that's going on especially in technology that part of me just wants to be like tap out like I'm just gonna get a farm some chickens yeah and go tell everybody that if I wasn't trying to do what I'm doing the first thing I would do is turn off my my social media and make it private and just walk away like I and I and there I've seen social media do many many many wonderful things but at the same point in time sometimes I wonder if it's a if it's a system and a tool that I just want to keep being a part of it just in so many ways it has not made my life better but in so many ways I'm very very lucky right I mean right you and I are having this conversation I'm able to do this simply because of social media right so I'm very grateful for that I'm very I'm so grateful of the women that I've been able to hug in person and have it Retreats and create spaces for them that's awesome but the currency of what you trade for that is so hard it's so hard it's a lot of Demands on the social on the nervous system yeah and I and I think about again I I know I sound so cliche but I think about what young people how it must be like to grow up with social media now and I don't know I don't know it makes me concerned and really I know I feel like we sound like the old people who used to talk to us yeah you know who are like one day you'll learn yeah you know like one day you'll see it's not about that have you seen fragrance yeah yeah I forget who's is Meryl Streep in that no it's it's uh Kathy Bates and Jeff candy well I've gotten to the stage where I'm now Tawanda and she goes face it girls I'm older and have more insurance it's a great moment who anybody never ever saw it's Kathy Bates and she's like been really mousy and taken advantage of her whole life and she she gets some courage and she decides to like stick up for herself and she goes to the supermarket and like the young hot girls zip in front of her car like in a little bug and they go face it lady we're we're younger and faster and she just the switch flips and she backs up and she just starts smashing their car and they come running out of the supermarket and she goes face it girls I'm older and have better insurance and she just runs away laughing and I feel like I've gotten I've gotten to that age and you know what it's okay it just it is it is right it's just it just is it's hilarious and ridiculous and it just is just it's the privilege of Aging you know that you finally start to realize some things and and develop awareness and I you know you were speaking to the cultural momentum of our times and I think what's interesting and and I think one of the the sources of what we're speaking of is that we are in a society that villainizes aging and devalues especially women as they age and so you know I'm of I have this belief that unconsciously if we reject aging we actually reject we can't take in the wisdom that is inherent with accepting our aging and can you open the door for this just now because you you mentioned the discrepancy and the difference in the journey within Society of Aging because there's a personal journey of aging and then there's sort of the reconciliation of Aging within the greater context of society I've started to have that conversation of the realization that as a woman my viability in Social eyes like I'm I'm losing it man we're I'm there like it's it's happening um and the slow morning process of feeling that viability slip away from you while also knowing that you have never been smarter and more self-aware and more confident and more powerful it's like it's like a pulling apart it's like stretching something right so on on one side of the stretcher you have Society telling you that every day I am less valuable my body is less valuable my boobs have more gravity and I got more wrinkles I and and more and more and more and more and more I walk into a room and I'm invisible which as a plus-sized woman you can be relatively invisible in general but then you add on top of it the fact that you're you're in your 40s like this is a real thing for women this is real this is one of those truths this is one of those really icky truths but how cruel is it that that happens when I have never felt more empowered and smarter and more at peace with who I am how how cruel is that and I have those thoughts sometimes when I'm when I'm trying to reconcile this you know like it's the same thing and again for forgive me guys if for getting very intimate as women hit their sexual peak and exploration and and men fall away from that like they pull they pull away it's a cosmic joke it's Cosmic joke it is and then you just go but it's not on me the joke is not on me it's not my joke it's not it's the human joke and in the book I talk about a time where I was looking at my boob one day and I had I had lost a bunch of weight by them like literally I had my boob in my hand and it was like wrinkly and I and I started to feel like really crappy about myself and I started to cry because I'm like Who's Gonna Wanna ever see this wrinkly boob like it looks like out of that Vincent Price whack House of Wax like I just look like and I just started to like feel like and then I realized Sarah millions and millions of women who have have existed on this planet have gotten saggy tits before you and not only that you're going to be gone and they're going to get saggy tits after you so what makes you think that this is about you this is The Human Experience so then rather being ashamed of it rather than saying yeah man this is it's all my fault that I'm aging it's all my fault that part of life feels like it's slipping away while another part is just coming into full View not about me it just is and you just it just goes back to the surrendering of that it just is you can do what you can right and now it would not be self-loving to deny the pain of that it would not be self-loving to cover up those feelings with with difficult stuff but it is self-loving to say okay if this is the reality how can I stay connected to myself and how can I serve myself okay well if the reality of Aging in a 44 year old body is that my muscle mass is going to start to be a problem then yeah yeah self-love for me means I need to be strength training like a every day I agree like get those squats in get those deadlifts self-love is not is not giving up self-love is meeting yourself where you're at I love that I love that that um because I think a lot of uh the work of Carl Jung and talking about like the alchemical process of taking and you know emerging David Hawkins book letting go right talks about like let the feeling be yeah just let it be and then and let it move through you but resisting it is what causes the pain and I think of what you're saying as the increase in your wisdom your viability your self-worth all these things at its maximum right like you're at maximum you're hit the top because you're telling the truth and you're with the truth and then at the same time you're feeling the grief of your value in the perception of how Society tends to Value women absolutely yeah and I think of that as this interesting sacred tension you know because it is sacred you're saying it's Collective and it is collective and so there's a grieve to how Society values women which on a lot of levels is is also uh evolutionary based and then is then also monetized and then media just extrapolates and and increases these perceptions that you and I have about men and women and value and all these things that we have to learn and it's up that it's not usually like I meet some young people today and I'm like way to go I don't know like they're like man my mom and dad brought me to Wayne Dyer I'm like that's insane I went to the Catholic church and it was not the same it was still teaching me my value is in obeying some old guy who's not who they tell you is white but he's not actually white but this like old guy in the sky skydaddy and it's and it's teaching me this hierarchy of systems and approval and I think about like what a cosmic joke it is that you figure out how to decouple your value from what they teach you your value is when um you were finally liberated and that is really the Journey of let's say mother made in Crone and like the Journey of men through into eldership as well that gosh if we can get to the place where we can take the pain we feel now of the awareness that we have that we then have this conversation that allows someone who's still in that tension that isn't willing to acknowledge it but also someone younger to be like holy my value isn't in that but I also need to Value myself and if I'm going to Value myself that means becoming the most Savage badass outspoken truth-telling blah blah and you can't tell truths outside of you till you tell truths inside of you right do you know what I mean does that make sense so yeah but do you think that that which you are talking about is something that has to come with age or does it come with either age or circumstance like you either probably both both right or or one or the other because I certainly know young people like I listen to Jewel uh the singer on Joe Rogan's podcast it was like a four hour episode I listened to the whole thing this chick was sober in her late teens was doing personal growth programs on her own that she was creating through her own Channel and I was like I wasn't thinking about that yeah I was thinking about Diddy's you know I was thinking about like sports I was thinking about hanging with friends I was thinking about drinking I was avoiding my pain which is exactly what Society is perfectly ushers you through and and so no I I think it comes with experience but it also comes with what you're inviting here which is the willingness to tell the truth about your experiences yeah I think that I mean look I'm not a therapist I don't have any fancy credentials all I have is a willingness to be honest about things with people and and a confidence that I know that I have a way of speaking to people that can be both vulnerable and painful but also tinged with hope right so that's the only thing I have that's that's it that's it um but if that brings somebody to the table to start asking their own questions then I have done my job that's the only part of this process that I have to do all I have to do is bring somebody to the table that's it well you got a lot of people at this table so um hey can I can I tell you a random joke because you were just do you do you it's not really a joke I don't even know that you're gonna think it's that funny but since we're talking about our youth do you know what one of my first real jobs was you don't know but I was the marketing girl for Chippendales no way I like the the like Australian no that's the Thunder from Down Under thank you very much of which I got kicked out of once your girl got kicked out of Thunder from Down underway oh were you getting a little tooth under here yeah I was on a secret Co-op mission for my job and I and I got a little I guess yeah that was what so you did marketing for Chippendales I studied Opera I did nothing with it I moved to Vegas natural segue to Chippendales totally totally connected um and I started working in PR and then that pulled me into Chippendales and I share that because when I when I say that um people go oh now you make so much more sense because I think one of the like because you can only show pieces of yourself on social media so many people don't realize that I have a filthy mind and sense of humor a very high word for Chippendales or whatever what would be the like sapphires or something what are the strip clubs in Vegas uh yeah it would be you could say like like what would be the dude version of that would be well maybe you worked for like one of the the female reviews maybe one of those uh those dumb lingerie football leagues you know have you seen those where they're like we play aggressive football in lingerie I'm like that's just impractical like somebody once asked me to be their jello wrestling partner does that count yeah I think so I have no have I ever wrestled in jello I might have no come on there's no way you have have you really yeah then this conversation is continuing offline because I need to restore it somebody asked me I was working I can't remember if I have is that a problem I can't remember well it's more so intriguing that it could have happened you're actually entertaining me in my brain I'm like have I or is it just from watching old school you know like I feel like I don't know like that's my boy blue uh you're my boy blue sorry you were saying though no no no no I I was I don't remember where the story was going but I was working on convention once with with some Chippendales it was a bridal convention and somebody came up to me and asked me if I wanted to Jello wrestle and the guy I was with was like you should do it and I was like well what color Jello are we talking about because that's the concern that was my concern if it was orange or blue I don't think it would look good for my skin complexion um no but I I appreciate this podcast because I I have showed up so fully as myself that it I'm not gonna say it will be shocking to some people but I appreciate that it's able to be really just a conversation and not a formal interview because I think that makes for the best the best stuff and the best invitation for people to know that we're all human and flawed and messy and you know all those fun things well listen there's no uh better person to guide us than a person who's walked something and then just drawn the map and you know for all the people who are listening who feel a connection to you your work I mean you bring levity to life and in my opinion uh levity is actually important because it allows us to surrender and soften into the truths of Our Lives because what are we going to do if we can't laugh at the at the things we've done you know yeah I'm not even sure if I've Gela wrestled but if I have yeah that was amazing at some point in time I'm not okay this is I'm not saying that you and I should jello yeah needs to be some sort of conjoined Retreat where an optional where there's jello wrestling they're like what is this a weird uh sexually innuendo Retreat um okay so this book saw archaeology thank you for walking us through sort of the premises of it and and your path that has led you to writing it uh where can people find more of you where can people find the book the book is everywhere books are sold everywhere everywhere not everywhere because I'm not that cool but uh you know Amazon Barnes Noble Target you can find it all on my website sarasapora.com um or go straight to Amazon and just search for my name there's only one of me and you'll see that big Goofy smiling face popping through the the book cover going hey I got you knuckle bump fist bump we got this we're doing Sarah such a pleasure I've had so much fun in this conversation I'm just I'm really grateful you've made room for me thank you so much Mark oh my God it's so easy you're such an easy choice so I appreciate you thank thank you I will talk to you soon and thank you everybody for listening I appreciate your time foreign [Music]

Channel: Mark Groves

Views: 734

Keywords: relationship tips, relationships, dating advice, dating, relationship, relationship advice, dating advice for men, dating advice for women, how to move on, break ups, breakup, heartbreak, love, communication, guys, women, How to date, love advice, dating coach, relationship advice for women, dating tips, relationship problems, fling, relationship coach, breakup advice, tinder, bumble, hinge, tinder tips, online dating, online dating tips, dating app, tinder messages, mark groves

Id: bFHiPd0P-Wg

Length: 67min 24sec (4044 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023