Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is with special guest Joffre McClung, who is the author of two self-love and healing books.

Candice Wu 0:06

In this episode, we talked about our inner orphans, how to use our emotions as a navigational system to connect with our higher self to heal and to love ourselves. What is self-love and how to play?

Candice Wu 0:22

Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, embodied healing and self-love.

Candice Wu 0:36

My name is Candice Wu, and I’m a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Candice Wu 1:01

Welcome back, everyone. It’s great to have you today and to welcome the special guest Joffre McClung.

Candice Wu 1:07

She used to be an actress, and she is the author of a couple of healing self-love books. One is called, The Heart of the Matter. And the other is called How Learning to Say Goodbye Taught Me How to Live.

Candice Wu 1:19

It was really fun to talk to her in this episode, where she talks about her experiences with people in her life that have had cancer, and how people in her life have mirrored her need for self-love, or showed her different parts of herself that she needed to learn in herself or to heal up in herself.

Candice Wu 1:39

She began her career as a theater actress and producer, having spent most of her adult life in New York City, where she acted and produced several Off-Broadway productions. And she was an avid student of spiritual literature and techniques since the early 80s. Because, she wanted to learn and grow herself.

Candice Wu 1:58

She taught herself filmmaking and formed, Sweet Moon Pictures production company in the 1990s. And then wrote, produced, and directed two independent films with spiritual themes and overtones. Those are called, Out of the Blue and Best Wishes.

Candice Wu 2:13

Before moving back to Texas to care for her dying mother, she worked as a senior producer and director for a media broadcast production company in New York City for over 15 years.

Candice Wu 2:23

You’ll hear in this episode about how her life took many different turns. And she landed here in her passion through writing books, talks, and creating videos to support people in loving themselves and taking the journey to empower themselves. So without further ado, here is Joffre.

Candice Wu 2:46

Okay, welcome, Joffre.

Joffre McClung 2:48

Hey!

Candice Wu 2:49

Hey, it’s so good to have you.

Joffre McClung 2:51

It’s great to be with you.

Candice Wu 2:53

I’m pumped to talk about all things, self-love.

Joffre McClung 2:58

Well, I can certainly talk about self-love for hours, so we’re in good shape.

Candice Wu 3:02

Yes. So you’ve written a couple of books. It sounds like you’re also on another, about self-love, and really digging into how to do that.

Joffre McClung 3:14

Oh, certainly. I’m actually redoing the second book, doing a new edition, so to speak, putting myself a bit more into the book.

Candice Wu 3:23

Oh, that’s fabulous.

Joffre McClung 3:25

So it’s kind of a new edition, a new book kind of?

Candice Wu 3:29

And is that for the Heart of the Matter?

Joffre McClung 3:31

Yes, it is. Which is, you know, a workbook and guide. And it gives you the meditations and the questions, ask yourself, of course, we have some dialogue in it. And I talked about different people I’ve helped along the way. But I kind of kept myself sort of generally out of it, except meditation-wise. I would say what I did in meditation. But now I’m going to go back, I’m going to put myself back intuitive of what happened in my life, why I started something, what triggered me, just, you know, give them my story. So they understand that I, too, came from a place of lack of self-love. So it’s sort of a new book. And yet, it’s really a new edition.

Candice Wu 4:06

Yeah, and I really love that, because that’s what I feel from you that you went on this journey for yourself. And that’s what these pieces, these books are pieces of the product of that, but that you really have gone through it. And it’s in your bones, it’s in your blood. Is that right?

Joffre McClung 4:24

Oh, you got that completely, perfectly!

Joffre McClung 4:27

It’s in my blood, it’s in my bones. It’s in my soul, for sure.

Candice Wu 4:30

Yeah! Well, tell me more.

Candice Wu 4:32

But first, I want to read this little piece of what you’ve written on your website about the Heart of the Matter, and maybe it’s in your book as well, I’m wondering if that connects up with what you’re saying about how you’re bringing more pieces of yourself, your story.

Candice Wu 4:46

So here’s the quote, “We’re meant to be whole. And that means healing and integrating those orphaned parts of ourselves. Believe it or not, every wound holds a forgotten gem just waiting to be rediscovered. And wounds are not only filled with unhealed pain, but also shrouds your ability to dream and create, to feel joy and excitement, to have faith and trust, to live with passion and compassion, and most importantly, to love and receive, to receive love.”

Candice Wu 5:17

I just, every part of my being agrees with that.

Joffre McClung 5:21

Oh, I’m so glad! Because it agrees with me too. Speaking from my experience —

Candice Wu 5:27

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 5:28

It, really, it came — I almost wrote that without me knowing I wrote it, to be honest with you. Sometimes I’ll sit down to write something. And it’ll just start to flow. And that is sort of one of those things that flowed out of me, because that’s what I was going through, the healing my inner orphans.

Joffre McClung 5:44

Because we all have different parts of ourselves that we’ve forgotten or shoved aside, or refused to look at, frankly, that we’re still carrying along with us in our adulthood, that are making decisions for us that we’re unaware of.

Joffre McClung 5:56

So I was in the midst of doing that, cleaning up, I would say finishing my orphan work. And when I was writing the book, I was thinking about my orphan and how I really wanted people to have the courage to look at their own orphan. And that when I wrote that, I was sort of looking back at what I had done. And realizing those orphans, the power, and the gifts, those orphans hold of ours, we go for a dream, but you’re going for a dream with maybe 15% of yourself, because the rest is shoved away kept safe with your orphan that you don’t want to, you know, deal with or your disowned. So that really came from my own experience, I have to say.

Candice Wu 6:31

That’s it. So I resonate with that. And, as you were saying that I was just thinking about the orphan parts of ourselves that are still acting. It’s like they insist on being seen. They insist on it. And our deeper self knows that we need that part. As you’re saying we have only “x” percentage of ourselves moving forward. And all these parts we’re trying to shove away that are being orphaned or disown. But there’s a deeper part of us that wants to bring it forward.

Joffre McClung 7:04

And they definitely speak up.

Candice Wu 7:06

Yeah. So tell me about that.

Joffre McClung 7:09

They want to be heard. They really, you can shut them down. You can ignore them for years, people ignore them for years, although they’re still making decisions from that place.

Candice Wu 7:17

For a long time.

Joffre McClung 7:18

Oh, yeah, for many lifetimes, but they ignore them. But the thing is that they are going to start to shout because they want to be heard. They want to be part of the whole, and you keep disowning them making them separate of the whole. So they’re going to shout, and they’re going to get louder, and louder, until you do something about it, either through drink or drugs, or you’re going to heal them, frankly, you have a choice. I, of course, decided to heal them.

Candice Wu 7:43

Yeah. And you know, it’s such an interesting thing, because they get louder and louder. And as I started to realize that, let me know how you experienced this. As I started to realize, wow, wait, I’ve hit rock bottom here. And that’s when I learned that or started to look at that, or out I had to get to this place, this pain, in this big way, to actually look at that thing that I knew was there.

Candice Wu 8:07

And so it’s like, I’m learning. Okay, why don’t I just do that before it gets to be like a catastrophe?

Joffre McClung 8:13

Because we have to learn that way in the beginning. I think every one of us who’s on this journey, just started with a dark night of the soul kind of feeling whether it’s a big one or a little one, is because something went wrong in our lives. And it didn’t work anymore, and something hurt us. And so it makes us stop. And then we look at what we’ve been shoving down.

Joffre McClung 8:30

So I don’t think you’re wrong in that. I think as we get wiser, hopefully, we look at things before they hit us in the face, and yell at us and stop us, you know, in our tracks. But I think that’s typical. That’s kind of how human beings, we feel like we can ignore it because it won’t bother us until it shouting. And then as we get hopefully, as we grow, we get wiser. And then we start to do the homework before it’s in our face.

Joffre McClung 8:55

You know, I’m there where I do it before it’s in my face doesn’t mean I’ll get a whisper. But I’ll get a little whisper. But I follow that whisper now. I don’t want it to get loud.

Candice Wu 9:04

I’m right with you. And at the same time there, my experience of the loudness if it gets to that point, feels different. Like, I don’t resist it as much. I understand it a little better. I can be with myself through it and have compassion that, that happened or what had built up for me to get to that place.

Candice Wu 9:27

But yeah, I would love to hear Joffre about one of those dark nights of the soul for you or some orphaned part of you that you’ve looked at.

Joffre McClung 9:38

Oh, I have so many I could talk about. It’s like which one do I pick?

Joffre McClung 9:43

Well, the first dark night of the soul probably is the most important dark night of the soul because this woke me up, that I needed changing and I needed to look at reality slightly differently.

Joffre McClung 9:53

And that dark night tends to happen later in life, for me it happened around 29. And that’s when I left a relationship with an ex I had and he was a wonderful man, but I left it because I knew it wasn’t right for me after nine years.

Joffre McClung 10:05

And I went dark, because suddenly I was back in my studio apartment, back in Manhattan in New York and living back in my studio after I left a beautiful brownstone, lived a lovely life with him. I was back in my little brownstone, doing my schlocky work, still doing audition work, but doing you know, schlocky work to pay the bills.

Joffre McClung 10:23

And I had a dark night because I thought this isn’t what I thought my life would be like when I was turning 30. And I suddenly realized, everything I believed was true, that I followed the rules, I went to acting school, I did my auditions, I fell in love. I did everything you’re supposed to do to have a good life. And here I was with my life falling apart, that really hit me over the head.

Joffre McClung 10:46

And then I started reading everything, every personal growth book I could read, every metaphysical book I could read, in fact, back then, this is how old I am. Back then, the metaphysical books and the spiritual books were in the occult section.

Joffre McClung 11:00

I’m not kidding, it was in the mid-early 80s, mid–80s. Really, they didn’t have a spiritual group or new age group, or whatever they call it now. Now, they just call it spiritual.

Joffre McClung 11:09

They didn’t have that. They had a kind of come in a put together within the occult groups, you had the witches over here, and then you had a few spiritual books over here.

Joffre McClung 11:17

So, I started reading spiritual books and that’s when I started to understand that we create our own reality with what we believe. That opened me up. Because I knew how I was living was no longer working. And I realized I was carrying beliefs. And then I began to do some of the work. So that was my first dark night of the soul was really, in, I’d say 29 years old, almost 30, where everything was falling apart, it woke me up to the fact that we actually do create our own reality through what we believe. And I obviously had a whole lot of negative beliefs that were ruling my life at that time.

Candice Wu 11:51

Yeah, what did you see in yourself at that time, as far as the beliefs that it sounds like they played out in your life in that way, and brought you to that place of seeing there?

Joffre McClung 12:02

Well, I had shoved them down, in all honesty.

Joffre McClung 12:06

I was doing my auditioning in New York, I was doing producing Off-Broadway plays also being in them, as well as producing them. I begin to make a few little short films. So I was, you know, doing what I loved, but not to the extent that I wanted to do it.

Joffre McClung 12:19

And that dark night, I realized underneath all the, I guess, you’d call it “bravado”, although I wasn’t particularly loud about it. But saying, “Yes, I can get this job, I’ll book this job, I’ll get this commercial, I’ll get this, you know, acting job.”

Joffre McClung 12:34

Underneath that was a feeling that I will never get that. Because underneath that, was a feeling of lack of self-love, that had come from childhood, things in my early childhood that I had made a decision that something was not quite right with me, so to speak.

Joffre McClung 12:48

Because I had certain family members who were extremely jealous and angry at me. And I took the blame for it. So I shoved all that down. But that was still ruling my life. Even though I was having the bravado saying, “I’m going to this audition, I’m going to book and -” but underneath with that feeling that I can’t have what I want. There’s something not quite right with me because I obviously piss people off and make them jealous and angry at me. So there was that level.

Joffre McClung 13:17

And there was also a level underneath that, a negative belief that I can’t have what I want. Because if I do have what I want, it’s going to make someone jealous of me and angry at me and hurt me.

Joffre McClung 13:27

So there were layers —

Candice Wu 13:28

That’s dangerous.

Joffre McClung 13:29

Oh, yeah, it was dangerous to have what I want. So there were layers. And I didn’t know all that even in the beginning. When I first started reading the books, it was just sort of opening my mind to the beliefs and how we create our own reality. That work came a bit later. But that was, I was well aware that, that was in there. I was trying to heal it in different ways. Not quite doing a great job at it. But I was well aware that, that stuff was in there. And I wanted it out of my head, frankly. And then I realized it was also in my heart. And that heart needed to be healed.

Candice Wu 14:01

Absolutely, can’t forget about the heart, because it’s holding all that pain.

Joffre McClung 14:05

Oh, definitely holds that pain. You can do all the affirmations you want. You can do all the techniques you want. But if you’re not healing the wound that’s in the heart, I think I call it in the book, “mental masturbation”, because you’re really kind of playing with your mind, which is important. You want to change your mind. But if you’re not healing, the heart is carrying the wound. You’re double lifting, so to speak.

Candice Wu 14:28

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 14:28

And you really need to go to the root of the heart, get your heart in sync, then your mind can follow. I know that’s kind of sounds weird to people. But that’s how it worked for me in all honesty.

Candice Wu 14:38

That’s what this whole entire show is about, being embodied.

Candice Wu 14:42

Being in your body and feeling through what’s here and healing those wounds. And I like what you said about double lifting, because we’re often, I think it’s a couple of things, you know, so many of us have learned to use our mind to get through something and survive something, because feeling it was too dangerous or hard or scary at the time or overwhelming.

Joffre McClung 15:06

Well, or we were too young.

Candice Wu 15:07

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 15:08

We didn’t know what to do with what we were feeling. So we kept shoving it down, or, I call it shelving it. I just shelve it. Deal with it later. And you know, you realize the years have gone by and you’ve been shelving everything.

Candice Wu 15:19

And then you’re so good at it.

Joffre McClung 15:21

Very good at it.

Joffre McClung 15:23

And actually, it does serve a purpose. Because there are times you do need to shelve something that you need when you get home. I can work, I can shelve something. And then when I get home, I can go to meditation and look at it and heal it.

Joffre McClung 15:33

So I mean, in that sense, it’s a good thing. But when we’re little, we shelved it because we don’t know what to do with it. And we also, when we’re younger, we take everything is our fault. Everything is our fault, doesn’t matter what it is, even though mentally I may have known this person is angry and jealous. And that’s them, not me. In my heart, I still believed it was me. Because there are negative beliefs that get built around what you keep experiencing.

Joffre McClung 15:59

So another negative belief it came out of that was some, you know, something was wrong with me, because otherwise, I wouldn’t have this person in my family that was so angry at me. You see how that negative belief gets played out, even though it had nothing to do with me. In all honesty, it was her issue, not mine. But I obviously agreed to play with it when it came down here.

Joffre McClung 16:19

Obviously, it needed to teach me what self-trust and self-love. So I’m grateful to this energy I was brought into. I don’t ever want to do it again, frankly. I hope I’ve learned the lesson. But I’m grateful for their lesson and the Nemesis and for what she taught me. Because it did guide me to find myself loving. I’m very firm in it now. It took me a while. But I’m very firm in it now.

Candice Wu 16:43

Yeah, I can hear that.

Candice Wu 16:45

So when you teach people through the meditations and other practices, how to heal the wound of their hearts. What do you offer? What do you suggest?

Joffre McClung 17:00

The way I started is I introduced them to their tools first, because I want them to know they can do this for themselves. I’m going to introduce them to the things, but they’re going to have to do the heavy lifting themselves. They’re going to have to go within and look within themselves.

Joffre McClung 17:13

So I introduced them to their tools, their imagination, because you’re going to use your imagination to dialogue with those inner orphans. I can’t tell you how many times I dealt dialogue with my inner orphan and learn something through that dialoguing.

Candice Wu 17:26

Oh, I did it this morning.

Joffre McClung 17:28

Exactly. You see, you obviously know what you’re doing. But you know, lot of people don’t use their imagination, except for worry. They’re good at thinking the worst-case scenario for work, for money or the relationship.

Candice Wu 17:40

Good point.

Candice Wu 17:41

You see people often using their imagination for worry, in a worrying way.

Joffre McClung 17:45

Yeah. As adults.

Joffre McClung 17:47

To daydream out the window, see if we used it well, when we were young, and then we grow up and we use it wrongly. We start using it for worrying.

Candice Wu 17:56

I see that. Worrying and creating the worst possible scenarios.

Joffre McClung 18:01

And what will I do if that does happen? That’s what we spend our imagination on.

Joffre McClung 18:06

So I introduced them to their imagination. I introduced them to their safe space, I let them use your imagination to meet their higher selves, to create this loving space, to add images to, kind of wake that part of their brain up again.

Joffre McClung 18:19

So they realize, “Oh, I do have an imagination and it can be loving to me, it doesn’t have to be the worst-case scenario.”

Joffre McClung 18:25

So I introduced them to their imagination, to their higher self, which is just the part of you that still knows it’s one with the divine and carries with it all the knowledge and power of that love, which we all have.

Joffre McClung 18:39

Some people call it their innate one. Some people call it their intuition. I don’t really care the name you call it, we all have one. But it’s the one that sees 360 degrees around, sees the forest and the trees at the same time. It’s your wise one, so to speak. And you can tune into that part of yourself in meditation, which I know you do. I have no doubt, to aid you in your journey. So I introduced them to that.

Joffre McClung 19:04

And then I introduced them to their third tool, their emotions. People are so afraid of emotions. And the thing is your emotions are part of your navigational system to move through this world. But we shove so many emotions away because we’re afraid of anger, or rage, or hurt, or fear, whatever it might be that we don’t get the lessons from those emotions.

Joffre McClung 19:26

Those emotions try to talk to us and tell us something. So I introduce them to their emotions, that can take some time, sometimes, depending.

Joffre McClung 19:34

Men take longer than women, interestingly enough, they’re fine with anger. But getting to the hurt underneath the anger takes them a little bit, you know, longer time. Women are a little more adaptive going to the hurt underneath the anger.

Joffre McClung 19:46

So I introduced them to their tools, that takes a little time. And then we go into talking about what self-love is. Because we can talk about self-love. But until you define it for somebody, it just sounds sort of “whoo, whoo ish,” so to speak.

Joffre McClung 20:01

I want self-love the way I define self-love, for me. And I help them get it is that it’s the part of you that knows in your heart, because I’ve got to include the heart, that you are lovable, loving, and loved.

Joffre McClung 20:17

And then we go and we break that down further. What does lovable mean? It means you’re worthy of love, you exist — therefore, in the universe’s eyes, you are worthy of love, doesn’t matter if another person ever gives it to you, you know you are worthy of love.

Joffre McClung 20:34

Loving means that you know you are given a loving heart that is your natural state of being. You have a naturally loving heart. And how you express that loving heart is more than good enough. And loved simply means that you matter and are valued by the universe, not for what you do, not for what you will do, but because you are you. You don’t have to earn it, you don’t have to prove it. You don’t have to do anything. You simply are loved because you exist. And you are — you matter.

Joffre McClung 21:14

So we go through that and then we get to the orphans. What you and I have talked about. Because, as you well know, the orphans are key, because they will shout you down.

Candice Wu 21:27

And for good reason. You know, there’s that, as you said, this whole load of energy that’s waiting for you there and all the goodness that is like a treasure box waiting to be discovered within what we’ve closed down. But at the same time, there’s pain, there’s fear, and other emotions that are harder.

Joffre McClung 21:49

Oh, yeah. And the thing is, there is great treasure with the orphan because they hold so much of your dream, so much of your joy, so much of your power. You need it back, frankly, we’re supposed to be all that we can be. And if you’re keeping parts of yourself away, you can’t be all that you can be.

Joffre McClung 22:04

So then, I introduce them to their orphans. And each person is different. Certain orphans take longer to bring out. I had several. Now they’re all sort of the same. But I saw different images for different when I was working on different beliefs from that orphan.

Joffre McClung 22:19

Someone be hiding in a cave. The first one I met was hiding in a cave, unwashed, dirty, matted, filthy, did not want anything to do with me. Did not want to look at me. Didn’t want anything to do with me.

Joffre McClung 22:31

So it took time just to gain trust from that orphan. Then I would — after I worked with that one for a bit, I met another version of the orphan and this one was shouting me out. It called me into the woods and it shouted me down. It yelled at me, shouted at me, screamed at me, had a tantrum. It’s the one I needed to have a tantrum. Yeah.

Candice Wu 22:50

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 22:51

So I let it have a tantrum. And I listened. And I said, “That’s just horrible. I’m so sorry.” And I just listened.

Joffre McClung 22:57

So you meet your orphan. And you listen in the beginning. Sometimes if they won’t talk to you to say I’m here, going to sit here and be with you, you may do that several times. And then they may start to say something to you, or do something, or have an image for you, whatever. However your brain works, people, images, some people it’s words, you’ll know when it’s real.

Joffre McClung 23:18

And then you’ll begin to listen to them and say I want to hear what you have to say. And they’ll start to tell you, either shouting at you or one which has crawled into my lap, just crawled in my lap and boohooed. So I just held it, let it boohoo, because it needed to boohoo and be loved.

Joffre McClung 23:34

Another one needed to have a tantrum, another one needed to ignore me. So you deal with each orphan and really come from the same place. But you deal with each orphan as they need to be dealt with. It’s their time. And it teaches you how to have compassion for the different parts of yourself. Because you’re learning how to have compassion for yourself. Does that make any sense?

Candice Wu 23:56

Oh, completely? Yeah, that’s what I’m practicing almost every day at this point. You know, what I find is that there are ways that these parts of me want a certain kind of loving or acknowledgment, and being with, that usually is just what I didn’t get before. And the hardest part about that is that it sometimes, I didn’t know what was needed. But as the ball got rolling with some support from other people, my healer, many healers along the way, it just started to get easier and easier. And now, it’s like second nature. But how did you find that place for you? How did you know what was needed? How did you know how to give it to yourself?

Joffre McClung 24:46

Well, like you, I had a lot of teachers and healers and helpers along the way that would show up and give me information. So I mean, I certainly didn’t do this on my own. A lot of helpers and healers and a lot of books also. And I sort of put it all together. Because I would do one thing and it wouldn’t get me that far — or would get me so far. And then it would stop. And then I would get information from someone else. And I would add that to it. So I sort of did layers.

Joffre McClung 25:10

And then I began to say, “You know what, I can do this.” I know — because being an actor helped a lot. Because I am able to dialogue a lot easier than people who aren’t used to dialoguing. Because I would practice line. So obviously practicing lines, it’s like talking to your orphan.

Candice Wu 25:25

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 25:26

So in that sense, it came a little easier if you’re in the performing arts and somebody who’s not. And there are times I didn’t know the answer either. And those are good times. Meaning, that means you’re going to leap when you get it. When they’re tough, and you can’t seem to get the answer, and you keep hitting the same wall, that’s a good sign that you’re getting ready to leap, or you wouldn’t be hitting that wall to begin with.

Joffre McClung 25:47

That’s the way I started to see it happen. When I’d hit that wall, and I kept going back to, let’s say, a particular orphan and kept getting sort of semi answers, but not the full answer, and not knowing what I needed to give them in return to bring them back to wholeness, it would be so frustrating. And so I go deeper with them. And I would listen a little deeper, and then I would find a new level. And eventually, I began to get hit of what it was they were needing for me. And it was my higher self who really helped me the most.

Joffre McClung 26:16

“I am key. I’m working with my higher self.” Like I said, I had a healer, I had people that channel that I worked with. And a lot of good guides and teachers. But really it was my higher self.

Joffre McClung 26:28

In the meditation, I always have everyone bring their higher self into the meditation, when we’re working with anything, frankly. But definitely when you’re working with your orphan, so that you feel like they’re holding your hand as you’re holding your orphan’s hand.

Joffre McClung 26:42

So as you’re talking to your orphan, your higher self can be talking to you. So my higher self would be the one because I would be boohooing with my orphan over whatever they need to do that because you’re feeling what they’re boohooing, you’re feeling it as well. So I would feel that and then when they were done, I would turn my higher self booing in her arms. And then I would get information from her —

Candice Wu 27:04

Beautiful.

Joffre McClung 27:04

That I had not gotten earlier. So really, it was the higher self-work that really came from a channel that I had worked with, who said you’ve got a higher self that’s dying to work with you, keep working with her.

Joffre McClung 27:15

So I kept working with my higher self. And I got that really strong. And so when I started this orphan work, she was right there with me.

Joffre McClung 27:22

Some nights, I turned her and said, “I don’t know what to say to them. Because I believe everything they’re saying.”

Joffre McClung 27:27

I would literally, I feel their pain, that what they felt when they were young. And I say, “I’m sorry, but I believe what they’re saying,”

Candice Wu 27:33

Right! I’m right there. This is me right now.

Joffre McClung 27:37

It was horrible, they didn’t deserve that, I can’t help them.

Joffre McClung 27:41

And I would turn to her, what do I say? And she would give me one sentence, one word, whatever it was, was enough to calm me down. And I’d be able to offer that word to the orphan and calm them down, and then I could start the work again.

Candice Wu 27:53

Beautiful.

Joffre McClung 27:54

So that’s the best example.

Joffre McClung 27:55

So higher self, I think, is key in doing any inner work, whether it’s self-love work or creation work, because I use her for creation work as well. But your higher self is key. And again, it comes from images or words it doesn’t, it’s not going to be big dialogues. My higher self doesn’t give me a huge, you know, paragraphs of wording. But she gives me an image or a word or a look or something that says it all.

Candice Wu 28:19

Beautiful.

Joffre McClung 28:20

And I can roll with that. So really, a higher self, I’d have to say was my biggest helper, and also my teachers.

Candice Wu 28:27

What a lovely reminder.

Joffre McClung 28:28

Yeah.

Candice Wu 28:28

It’s such a good reminder of everything is within. And I do experience that.

Joffre McClung 28:34

It really is. And you need your teachers and you need your books, and your seminars and your lectures or whatever it is, because we need to be around other people who are doing what we’re doing. So that’s a good thing. And you’re always going to have the help you need. But just like you said, “Everything you really do need is already inside of you. And part of the journey is figuring out that you can find it inside of you.” And sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes it’s tough. But that’s okay. Because you start to trust that you’re going to find it and you do. And like you said, “It does get easier and easier.” at least I found that way too.

Candice Wu 29:07

Yeah, I have to. And sometimes it’s gone up and down. But then, at some point, it started to get like more smooth sailing in a way. But I’m wondering, Joffre, what frustrations or challenges or struggles have you had lately?

Joffre McClung 29:26

Well, lately, I would say the biggest struggle is I have a family member who has liver cancer. So outwardly, I’m dealing with cancer again, which I dealt with eight years of everybody around me dying.

Joffre McClung 29:39

I’m not saying that to be funny, but it was true. My mother got cancer, my best friend, like my soul sister, got cancer, my aunt and uncle died. It’s like that, eight years was literally everybody dying around me. And of course, my job in New York City all kind of left and I moved to Texas, and then I had a three-year break, and in those three years, I wrote the two books.

Joffre McClung 29:58

And I thought, “Okay, this is a new path. This is not a path I had planned on, frankly. I always thought I’d be more performing. But this is still creative. Writing is creative.”

Joffre McClung 30:08

So I thought, “Okay, this is a good thing.”

Joffre McClung 30:10

And then all of a sudden, in January, I got the word that a family member had liver cancer. And I — that sort of took me by surprise. I thought I was kind of done with the “C” word so to speak.

Joffre McClung 30:23

Outwardly, that sort of threw me but in a weird way. Because this person is also the person who mirrored for me, my need for self-love, through her jealousy and anger is sort of in a weird way, I don’t know how to say this, except to say, it’s also a bit liberating.

Joffre McClung 30:41

I know that sounds odd to people. But when that person leaves the planet, because I will at some point, leave the planet. I truly will be free. I’m free now in all honesty, but I will literally truly be free from all ties, so to speak.

Joffre McClung 31:02

So really we’ll begin a new life for me. So, I’m sort of going back and forth kind of struggling with it. And yet owning that that’s what I’m feeling, so I shouldn’t disown, that’s what I’m feeling.

Candice Wu 31:12

It’s what you’re feeling.

Joffre McClung 31:14

So that’s what I’m feeling Candice.

Candice Wu 31:16

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And do you mind me asking if that person is currently still mirroring that need?

Joffre McClung 31:26

Oh, yeah, she did that recently.

Candice Wu 31:27

Right. Like in the same way as before she did.

Joffre McClung 31:30

She has not healed a thing, to be honest. I don’t think this lifetime. I think she had her opportunities when she was younger, but it’s not going to happen. She mirrored it a couple of weeks back out of the blue, the jealous rage came at me, sort of caught me a little off guard because I wasn’t expecting it. And when I hung up, I said this kind of got on me.

Joffre McClung 31:51

So I did a quick meditation and reminded myself who this person is. Because it was so shocking. She had not done that in quite a while. Because when my mother was ill, I would not have it. Because my mother also received some of the jealousy.

Joffre McClung 32:07

So it sort of caught me off guard. So I did a quick meditation, got it off me and reminded myself who this was. And that what she said does not mean it’s true. Because anybody who deals with people who are angry or jealous, they tend to bring in other people to their conversation.

Joffre McClung 32:24

Well, I’m not just the one saying it, everybody saying it. That tends to be how they work. They like to add people to their blame of you.

Candice Wu 32:33

To back it up.

Joffre McClung 32:34

Exactly. And it’s you know, you can see that out in politics. Now, we get into politics. But you see how people bring that up? Well, they said, you know, people say, when I hear that, I think “aha” you’re saying it, no one else is saying that. You’re saying it.

Candice Wu 32:46

Right. It’s easy to fall in that trap. But you’re saying you know better?

Joffre McClung 32:50

Yeah, I do but it caught me off guard and for a moment, — oh, my God, people are saying this about me. And then I thought, first of all, these people, I don’t know them, so who cares.

Joffre McClung 33:00

And then I thought, wait a minute, I know how this energy, this bully energy works. They always bring in other people to back them up, even though they’re actually lying.

Joffre McClung 33:10

So I had to remind myself of that fact. And so I was able to forgive it. And then I said, “You know what, she’s not going to get it this life.”

Joffre McClung 33:18

I got the lesson I needed from her. So I blessed her in that sense. But her energy still has it. She still has that angry energy. We’re still talking. I’m still friendly with her. I’m going to go see her next week. I do love her. In that sense. I do not perfectly want to be around her very much. But I do love her. And I do wish her well. And I have put out my order for my next life. She’s on her own in her next life.

Joffre McClung 33:47

She’s gonna have to work on jealousy again, and I’m not working on jealousy again.

Candice Wu 33:50

Right. Like, you don’t want to be paired again, is that what you’re saying?

Joffre McClung 33:54

No, exactly. I don’t mind if we passed in the hall or something’s fine. But as far as being family members, I think I’ll skip it the next slide until she gets this jealousy thing over with.

Candice Wu 34:04

Put your order in. Yeah.

Joffre McClung 34:06

Because I’m done with it. I got my list. And I’ve learned it and I don’t need it now.

Candice Wu 34:12

Sounds like you’ve had a lifetime of learning that.

Joffre McClung 34:15

Yeah, it was intense, I have to say.

Joffre McClung 34:16

We all have something within our families, or in our childhood or friends, or teachers or something, that if you came here to wake up, you’re going to have something that happens to you.

Candice Wu 34:17

Absolutely.

Joffre McClung 34:21

Something that’s not so pretty, that’s going to get you and bring you down so that you can build yourself back up, in some form or fashion. Mine happened to be from sort of that anger, jealousy, bully energy, other people, it’s something else. Mine happened to be that, and I learned my lesson. But —

Candice Wu 34:44

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 34:44

So that’s sort of what I’m dealing with now, that it’s okay to kind of be okay, that it’s — I’m going to be free from it.

Candice Wu 34:52

Wow.

Joffre McClung 34:53

And still, bless her, you know, and still wish her well. But I will be free from it fairly shortly, I would presume.

Candice Wu 35:01

Yeah. No, I think you’re touching on something about how you can see the reality of your life, like how you can see the experiences that are happening to, there’s a relational component, there’s the care that you have for her, there’s also the other feelings that you may have.

Candice Wu 35:19

And there’s this other level of what it means to you, and what this person has represented for you and shown you. And they don’t always sound relational, like that portion doesn’t always sound relational, as you’re saying, like, it’s a little bit hard to say this, but this is, I’ll be free of —

Joffre McClung 35:39

Well, yeah —

Candice Wu 35:39

Makes complete sense on that level.

Joffre McClung 35:41

Well, it’s true. And the thing is, what’s funny is the reason I can sort of see her separate from me, you know, I can see and bless her for what she taught me is because again, in one meditation I went into, I did a meditation to understand how this person is in so much pain. Because somebody who comes from a bully or jealous or angry place, is carrying a lot of pain, even though we may not want them around us and they’ve heard us horribly, we have to intellectually know they’ve got a lot of pain to act that way.

Joffre McClung 36:09

So I went into meditation so I could better understand where she’s coming from. So I could find forgiveness for her.

Joffre McClung 36:16

I was, you know, finishing up that little matrix for myself. And I went to meditation, and I saw her as a five-year-old and what she must have felt, and how she felt so unseen and heard, unlovable. And I got to the fact she felt so unloved. And once I felt that, I was able to understand why she was so full of anger and jealousy. So I was able to forgive her for how she behaved towards me. I still don’t want it around me, I still have my boundaries. But I can understand her pain that she’s carrying.

Joffre McClung 36:49

And also that, I agreed to do this because I needed to learn to take my power back from bullies, and jealousy, and angry people. Because obviously, that was the thing I needed to work on. So there’s sort of layers in there.

Joffre McClung 37:01

But I mean, when you can go into meditation and figure out what that person, why they’re being so hateful to you and understand what kind of pain they have, it does gives you some release.

Joffre McClung 37:11

And then to realize when they do that, because I do believe in many lifetimes — I know other people may not, but I happen to — that I realized she’s going to have another chance to get it, and that’s fine, because I told her and thanked her for showing me what I needed to get. And I did a whole thing on that, thanking her.

Joffre McClung 37:27

I didn’t do it to her face, because that she would not take it well. But I thanked her for showing me what I needed to learn about self-love and that I got it. So even though she may not have succeeded at jealousy and bullying, she did succeed in teaching me what I needed to learn. So she did do that well. So I did a whole thank you meditation on that. And thank her.

Candice Wu 37:48

She gave you such a beautiful opportunity. And painful one, but beautiful.

Joffre McClung 37:53

Painful. It was ugly, to be honest with you. I don’t wish it on anybody.

Candice Wu 37:58

Yeah. And at the same time, it sounds worth it. Would you say?

Joffre McClung 38:02

Well, again, if we look at life, he’s here to teach us something, and we’re here to learn and grow, then you got to figure out there’s something here that’s good. It’s got to be something good in this bullying and jealousy, anger. So I dealt with that. And I learned self-love. So it was a good thing.

Candice Wu 38:15

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 38:16

I don’t wish it on anyone. But again, that’s how we learn, isn’t it? Down here.

Candice Wu 38:20

Yeah. So I’m curious, as a writer, and as an actress as well, what’s the title of the current chapter of your life?

Joffre McClung 38:31

That’s a good question. What’s the title of this chapter of my life?

Joffre McClung 38:37

“Begin again.”

Joffre McClung 38:40

I just got that Begin Again. Because I feel like this is a brand new life. I’ve let go of my old life. It was a good life. I did it. I did it well, but I’ve let it go, who I was, what I wanted to do, sort of the dreams of youth and Middle Ages sort of let that go. And said, “Okay, what’s this again? I’ve done my healing. I’ve done my orphan work, what is I want to do?” And now I’m doing all this spiritual writing.

Joffre McClung 39:06

So it’s sort of begin again, and it’s sort of a brand new life with new fulfilling ideas, new dreams, new hopes, kind of like starting over again, frankly. I actually have one affirmation, I do is: “I’m now in the best years of my life, and all my remaining years are my best years.” So I sort of feel like this is my new beginning. Beginning again. Yeah. I would say definitely that.

Candice Wu 39:31

That’s really exciting.

Joffre McClung 39:32

Because we do get many chances to begin again, frankly. I mean, that, anybody thinks that when you’re in your 20s, you think you’re going to live one kind of life certain time, certain kind of framing, by 30, I have this. By 40, I have this. By 50, I have this.

Joffre McClung 39:45

Well, I’ve got news for you, if you’re going to live a full life, you might as well throw that away. Because it’s not going to live up to that. It’s going to go to the right, to the left, up and down. It’s going to go all over the place as it should. And hopefully — I’m on my third life, frankly.

Joffre McClung 39:59

They call it third act, but really to third law. I have my 20s and 30s. I hit my 30s and 40s. And I had my 50s and 60s to look at.

Joffre McClung 40:07

So it’s like, we know, okay, I’m doing a whole new life. I may have another one after this. I don’t know. Can’t look forward —

Joffre McClung 40:15

Right now, I’ve got my third act going, so to speak.

Candice Wu 40:18

Yeah. You know, I so relate to that. And I feel those words to begin again, and the refreshing space of not knowing and being so, it sounds like so joyful in that. So open about what’s coming. And it took me so long to get here. And I still come across these. They’re just fewer now and less big, I think. But the expectations, I didn’t realize were there, and then I bump up against it. I’m like, “Wait, what is that? What is that big disappointment?” or, “What is that I’m fighting for? But do I really want that anymore? Is that a past part of me?”

Candice Wu 40:58

Like lately, I’ve been wondering, do I really want children? Or, was that just something of the past, you know, my 16-year-old self that decided I wanted two kids? And what part of me still wants that? Do I really want to get married? All these things.

Joffre McClung 41:14

Oh, that’s good, you’re in a good place. That’s a good place you’re in.

Joffre McClung 41:17

Because those are the questions? No, I mean that seriously. I know. —

Joffre McClung 41:22

But that’s a good thing. Because you know, as women we’re raised for, even when we’re little and younger, we’re raised with certain things, putting our heads. We’re supposed to get married, supposed to have children, supposed to have this by 40s, supposed to have this by 50s. All these ideas — and I think it’s a good thing to stop and ask yourself: do I really want that?

Joffre McClung 41:38

I kind of knew weirdly enough that when I was younger, I remember announcing to my parents when I was in high school that I was never going to get married, and I had no intention get married. And if I did get married, I would never take their names.

Joffre McClung 41:50

For some reason that —

Candice Wu 41:51

A declaration.

Joffre McClung 41:52

I would not take their damn names, is what I shouted when I was in high school.

Joffre McClung 41:56

And what’s interesting enough is, I didn’t get married. Now, I did live with someone for nine years and had a loving relationship and then I moved on. But I kind of knew that in high school. Although, I still thought in my head, “Oh, I probably will get married. I’ll probably have kids, I’ll probably do what I’m supposed to do.”

Joffre McClung 42:12

But the truth of the matter is, I kind of knew I wasn’t going to live my life the way my mother had lived her life. Something in me told me I was going to do it slightly differently. And boy, did I do it differently.

Candice Wu 42:22

Sounds like it. Yeah.

Joffre McClung 42:24

That’s a good thing to ask yourself. Do you want children? Maybe do you want to adopt children? Maybe you want to foster kids?

Candice Wu 42:30

Right.

Joffre McClung 42:30

Maybe you want to have children that you’re helping therapeutically? Yeah, who knows?

Candice Wu 42:36

Someone asked me, do I want to be a grandmother?

Candice Wu 42:38

And I was like, “Yes.” And then I was like, “Wow, I really have a dilemma here.”

Candice Wu 42:44

Well, I’m not sure if I want kids, but I want to be a grandmother.

Joffre McClung 42:47

But you can be a grandmother to children without having to have kids, you can find a way. You may find through your therapeutic, you may find a group of kids that need some help. You may find kids who —

Candice Wu 42:59

This is so true.

Joffre McClung 43:00

Again, you want to be a grandparent without having to actually raise children, the universe can find a way. That, I do believe. So I think you do want children, you may not want to give birth to children.

Candice Wu 43:10

No, I do. I want that part. I have a really special place for birthing and for mothers and babies. And I think it’s the — and I used to be an art teacher and do a lot of therapy with kids and families, and so I think I just kind of got, “childrened” out. A part of me has. You know, just kind of burned out on that. But the years of like to the, I don’t know, 20 — not sure about.

Candice Wu 43:41

And you know, I have so many friends right now with young babies. And so I get the joy of going in and not leaving.

Joffre McClung 43:52

There’s nothing good about leaving the children once you’ve loved them and played with them, they’re really lovely about not having to go through that, and not having to go through teenage years.

Candice Wu 44:00

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 44:00

Here are some good things. I actually, again, it’s the thing about your beliefs like I know I’ve done children, many lifetimes. So it was like this lifetime, I took a break.

Joffre McClung 44:08

I knew I needed to do my inner work. Somehow, I didn’t know that but I knew it, even if that sounds odd. I thought it was all going to be about acting. But now I look, it’s all about what I’m doing now, my whole life has been filled to this moment, although I love acting. And I still love acting. But, and I’m actually using it when I teach classes in a weird way. I’m contorted in being a performer. So in a weird way, it all comes together.

Joffre McClung 44:30

But I think, what you said about leaving, having children and being able to leave them is not a bad thing, to be honest with you. But also you might be changing who you are, who you were when you’re 20 and who you are in your 30s is different, and who you’re in your 40s is different.

Joffre McClung 44:47

And your dreams do change. Like you were saying something about beginning again. That, that was a good phrase, but — and I look and I realized, when you’ve done your homework and you’ve healed, really healed your past, and healed your orphans, and you’re coming from rooted self-love, you do get a new life and your dreams do change.

Candice Wu 45:06

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 45:06

And so you may have new dreams that you may not have even considered. Now that you’ve been healing things and moving and more into your power, you may, those dreams may be completely different. And you’re going to leave room for that, going to leave room for it to be different.

Candice Wu 45:19

That’s absolutely what I’ve experienced in my life.

Candice Wu 45:23

And someone had asked me recently, like, when did you get involved with horses? And their perception was, I’ve been with horses forever. And I think that is true on some level. But in this lifetime, I only started being with horses one year ago, and that surprise this person a great deal. Because I’ve been really in it now. And that was the gem coming out of that moment was, we can change our life at any moment. We can shift something so big. And I do feel like, that is a big shift. Shifting my life to be around horses and be with them, it’s continuing to unfold.

Candice Wu 46:02

But I would have never known that 5 years ago, 10 years ago, especially, you know, when I was, I don’t know, 15, 20 years old, deciding, trying to decide what my life would be like. But I’ve definitely found what you’re saying, as well, that each step of healing, it’s more opening, and then more comes in. Things I didn’t even know would be ever involved in my life. So that’s really cool. You have that too.

Joffre McClung 46:30

Oh, yeah. And you don’t know — that’s part of growing older and getting wiser. And not just because I say older. And I have to be careful because I know older people who have no wisdom. So I’ve got to be careful with that.

Joffre McClung 46:40

There are people who get older who leave the planet and not learned anything. But if you stay awake and as you get older, you begin to realize that life does bring you new things when you’re ready for it and you’ve done the work for it.

Joffre McClung 46:52

You were ready for the horses. And what’s funny is you probably had many lifetimes with horses.

Candice Wu 46:57

I feel that, yeah. It’s coming back.

Joffre McClung 46:59

Probably had a deep connection with horses. And so you did whatever you needed to do, to be open now to receive those horses that you didn’t even dream of when you were 15 or 16. Or, when you were 20. That’s what the universe — Like I didn’t dream of writing books. I thought I’d be on Broadway doing my thing, and maybe doing some film work and living my life. And then my life took a 180-degree turn, and I had to do something to pull myself out of that second dark night which was when everybody was dying around me. And I decided, all right, what I’m going through and I wrote the first book which was helping my friend deal with Stage IV Breast cancer, that was a 180-degree turn. And I wrote that kind of angrily to be honest with you.

Candice Wu 47:45

Emotions as navigation. There you go.

Joffre McClung 47:47

Oh, Lord have mercy! I was like, “Higher self, you want me to write about what I’m going through?”

Joffre McClung 47:51

Oh my Lord! I just want to get back to what I was doing. And I thought, well, I’ll do it. It’ll get her quiet on my back.

Candice Wu 47:57

Get this out of the way, go back to what I was going to do.

Joffre McClung 48:00

I’ll write this darn book and I’ll now wake my inner self up. And I wrote the book and that kind of got my creative juices going.

Candice Wu 48:10

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 48:11

And then when I looked at it a few months later, I thought, Okay, well, I put the word out there that I’m spiritual. Everybody, you know, I had two groups, those who knew I was spiritual and those who knew me in my career. I kind of kept them separate. And I thought, well, the words out there now, they now know —

Candice Wu 48:12

You’re out.

Joffre McClung 48:15

That I’m a spiritual person.

Candice Wu 48:17

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 48:18

About, spiritual closet, so to speak. Now, when I looked at the first book, I thought, you know what, I gotta really say, how I got to self-love.

Joffre McClung 48:35

The first book talks about when we’re in self-love, but we don’t tell people how to get to self-love. So I wrote the second book. But all this is to the point. I didn’t plan on that. This was not part of my plan. And yet, when I look back at my life, I realized, of course, it was part of my plan.

Joffre McClung 48:50

In fact, I wrote a movie with my best friend who the first book was about, and we wrote a book together in the movie.

Candice Wu 48:56

How funny.

Joffre McClung 48:58

And she always wanted to be a teacher. She was a channel and she spiritually did all the spiritual stuff together. And we were also actors together. And she wanted to be this. She wanted to do what I’m doing. Now she passed on, and I can hear her laughing going, “Yeah, I want to do what you’re doing. You’re supposed to be doing what you’re doing.”

Candice Wu 49:15

This is like I’m already out.

Joffre McClung 49:17

Yeah, I’ll do that in the next life. And I thought how weird that I did a 180-degree turn. And I’m actually doing my best friend that I put in a movie, 10 years before I knew it. So the universe is funky.

Candice Wu 49:30

Well, we are funky, right?

Candice Wu 49:32

We like to leave ourselves clues and then forget about them, or like ignore them. And then we find them later. Like, wow, right!

Joffre McClung 49:39

It’s just weird. When I wrote that in this book, The second book, and I thought, “Man that first short film I made. Oh my god. I really did it.”

Candice Wu 49:51

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 49:51

And that was just a film about you know, making creating dreams. You know, it was a little film about creating dreams.

Joffre McClung 49:56

But the universe, you may have horses now, who knows what you’re going to have in five years.

Candice Wu 50:01

I have no clue.

Candice Wu 50:03

No clue, but I have some ideas. But then, what I know is that keeps changing so much that I just don’t put too much to them, except for the ones that are like right now, and coming up.

Joffre McClung 50:13

Living in the present. I told a friend recently, he was getting off the charted, so to speak, because he was thinking, “Oh, I’m getting older, what’s going to happen when I’m old, and I only have a place till -?”

Joffre McClung 50:22

He went way down the pike. And what he didn’t have and how horrible it can be when he’s old and didn’t have any money.

Joffre McClung 50:28

I said, “First of all, you got to stop going that far down the pike.”

Joffre McClung 50:31

There’s nothing you can do that far down the pike, you’re just putting something in your head, and getting yourself all excited about it. I said, “I’ve learned now that my life keeps taking these weird angles.”

Joffre McClung 50:41

I look about maybe three months ahead. And that’s about as far as I look, just to kind of know: this is where I’m going, this is kind of what I want to create. And I don’t look much further, because it keeps me calmer. I don’t sit there and think about what am I going to be doing five years from now? Because I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Candice Wu 50:58

Yeah, I am right where you are actually, that’s exactly where I am. And it’s funny because my dad has started to realize that about me and he is the planner. And that’s where my planner, the —

Joffre McClung 51:12

I’ve got a planner.

Candice Wu 51:13

Yeah, he plans everything. And once it’s all planned out, it comes from this, like, the desire for security and stability comes from him. And lately, he’s realized, “Yeah, I don’t plan more than about two months ahead anymore.” And he’s like, “Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Right. That is… that’s you.”

Joffre McClung 51:32

Well, that’s good news that he gets that.

Candice Wu 51:35

He gets it.

Joffre McClung 51:35

A lot of people would say, “No, you need to be planning now.”

Candice Wu 51:41

That’s what he used to say. And he’s like, “Are you sure? You know? Like, that’s not? I don’t think that’s gonna be okay.”

Candice Wu 51:46

“No, Dad, it’s okay.”

Joffre McClung 51:49

Say you taught him to see — you actually teaching him something. That’s the cool thing. —

Candice Wu 51:54

He’s seeing something different. Yeah.

Joffre McClung 51:56

Yeah. I mean saying that, “Hey, my way may work for me. But you know what, it doesn’t have to work for everyone.” So you’ve taught him something.

Candice Wu 52:02

Thank goodness!

Joffre McClung 52:02

That’s kind of cool.

Candice Wu 52:03

I mean, that’s — Yeah, that’s so intertwined with my lesson with him, because one of my lessons with him was to be in myself and trust myself and not allow his idea to be mine.

Joffre McClung 52:21

Got you!

Candice Wu 52:22

It, which was like, I experienced it as more imposed on me, in the past, out of his own care and fear.

Joffre McClung 52:29

Always out of love. I mean —

Candice Wu 52:30

Right, always, but so we’ve both come a long way.

Joffre McClung 52:35

Well, that’s pretty exciting.

Candice Wu 52:36

Yeah.

Candice Wu 52:38

So I’m going to switch gears. I recently had this dream that I lost this beloved water bottle.

Joffre McClung 52:49

Wow, okay. And you love this water bottle.

Candice Wu 52:51

On an airplane — I loved it so much. I just, I loved it so much. And I was devastated in the dream. And when I got home, after my flight, my mom said, “You know, you’re just probably better off without it. Just let it go. You’re better off without it.”

Candice Wu 53:09

And here I am in this dream, kind of like obsessing over how am I going to find the next water bottle, the better — Like, “No, this won’t do and that won’t do. I wanted that one.”

Candice Wu 53:19

And she’s like, “You’re probably better off.”

Candice Wu 53:22

And so that’s been sticking with me and I’m experiencing — getting rain.

Candice Wu 53:27

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 53:28

I love dreamwork. I love to dream.

Candice Wu 53:29

I was wondering, that’s leading to my question. I’m wondering, what have you dreamed lately that, in your night dreams?

Joffre McClung 53:37

Well, you know that your mother in that dream was your higher self most likely, you do know that?

Candice Wu 53:42

Yes. And it is my mother too. It’s both.

Joffre McClung 53:45

My mother — Yeah, exactly. My higher self when she first appeared to me, and she appeared at — looking like a beautiful version of my mother. Sort of in a half-dream state that I was doing. And then she sort of shifted out where I don’t have to see her anymore, just feel her. But yeah, that’s definitely your mother, except for your higher self saying you don’t need what you think you need. You’ve outgrown it, is what she’s really telling you.

Candice Wu 54:00

That’s right. It’s time to let go.

Joffre McClung 54:08

I used to do so much dream work. When I was started — I’ve always done dream work. Even when I was younger, I’d have dreams over and over again. And then when I started the spiritual work, I’d have really mega dreams. I call them epic dreams, one symbol after another symbol, after another symbol.

Joffre McClung 54:23

And I worked with them, you know, worked with them immensely. And all of a sudden, when my mother passed, my dream stopped. And I thought what is happening here? I’ve never not remembered my dreams. And they just stopped. And I was like, “Okay, this isn’t good.”

Joffre McClung 54:40

Because I mean, I had dreams where I had guides talk to me, my higher self talk to me. I would go to other planets. I would see symbols. I would talk to my — you know. I did a lot of homework in my dreams and my dreams just stopped.

Joffre McClung 54:51

And I remember dealing with a channel that I worked with, and she goes, “Well, you don’t need your dreams right now.”

Joffre McClung 54:58

You’re grieving, number one, and you’re doing your homework. I was doing, finishing up my homework on my orphans. I was grieving so I use the energy from my orphan work. And they went away for a while. And that was really scary for somebody — I don’t channel. I don’t do visions. I don’t see entities. I don’t do any of that stuff, but I did dreams. And I could really help people with their dreams.

Joffre McClung 55:18

So when I didn’t have my dreams, that was kind of scary. Well, I’m happy to say my dreams, they sort of come back not to the extent that they were for years. But now when they come back, there’s just a quick message. And then they drift off. Just a quick message.

Joffre McClung 55:34

I had one recently that was so cute. I was calling a kitty in. And kitties being that feminine energy, calling a kitty in, and with a kitty, was a little fox, like a baby fox. A red-faced little fox, red and white-faced, almost like a cartoon looking fox. And it was there saying hello to me. And it was so cute. And I said, “Well, all right, I guess you can come in too,” so I let it come in the house. And that was the end of the dream.

Joffre McClung 55:59

I was saying there’s so short now that used to be epic. And I thought, what in the world was that message?

Joffre McClung 56:05

So what’s this fox — other than I love animals, obviously. But I thought interesting. I thought well, the feminine is healthy. I’m letting — you know, taking care of the feminine energy. And I thought a fox is sort of like a — sort of, got that feminine energy. But it’s also got a wise energy to it. It’s got a smart energy to it. It’s got smart, wise, they — that negative is sly, but when you take the negative off and put the wise, smart, I thought okay, I must be — I’ve been asking to have my teacher awaken a bit more. Since I’m doing this, let’s awaken my inner teacher a bit more.

Joffre McClung 56:41

So I took that as a message that my inner teacher is awakening. That’s how I took the fox. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But that’s how I took it.

Candice Wu 56:48

Thank you for sharing your dream. And I also hear that begin again right here. And that this fox baby is with the kitty, which is so spiritual. And it’s this new birthing, new energy coming in. To begin again.

Joffre McClung 57:07

You’re totally right. That’s why it was a child fox. Not an old fox, but a newborn, ready to go little fox. And I thought, “Well, all right. You’re so cute, I will let you in the house. Which I’m grateful for now.

Joffre McClung 57:21

I used to have dreams when the image will scare me. I used to have a lot of snake dreams. And I was afraid of snakes. I didn’t like it. But I understood that information the snake was giving me and then eventually I began to hold the snakes in the dream, which I was really grateful for. So I was happy it was a fox and not a snake.

Candice Wu 57:38

Oh, and I have one more question for you. I love that. This is a different one. In your group of friends or in your friendships, what role do you play?

Joffre McClung 57:50

I would say caretaker/almost a little bit mentor in a weird way.

Joffre McClung 57:58

I’ve always been a caretaker, cancer and at nature. So I do take care of people, I like to put the dip up, put the chips, and put the drinks, you know. I take care of people to make sure they have what they need.

Joffre McClung 58:10

But I would say I’m also somebody, when somebody is in deep trouble, I tend to be the one they call. That’s why I say mentor. I don’t know the right word. Mature mentors the right word. But, when they’re in trauma and they have drama or trauma. I tend to be the one they call. So whatever that energy is, I tend to be that one because I stay calm.

Joffre McClung 58:33

I think having been raised around a bully. I’ve learned to stay calm in the midst of a lot of drama around me.

Candice Wu 58:39

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 58:40

So I can stay calm and help them so I’m hoping I help people. And also I’m pretty fun. I do remind people the most important energy is play.

Candice Wu 58:46

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 58:47

Big on play.

Candice Wu 58:47

I hear that in you.

Joffre McClung 58:49

Play is so important. I cannot tell you. If you can’t play, you need to look at why you can’t play because you need to add play to your life, people. It’s important.

Candice Wu 58:58

You need to have play in your life, people.

Joffre McClung 59:00

You do. You don’t have life for no reason but to play.

Candice Wu 59:04

How are you playing now?

Joffre McClung 59:06

I swim in the pool that we have in the backyard. I swim and I play in the pool. I play with animals, the kitties, I did actually have a fox a year ago. I talk the fox, I talked to the birds, to the squirrels, to the little possums, little raccoons. I dance, I put music on and dance — I love to dance so I dance.

Joffre McClung 59:29

I just like to play in it when my friends will put on music and dance and laugh. I just like to have a good time. I like to play such a euphoric energy and such a creative energy. And it’s the energy of how we create our realities, when we’re in a place of joy. So I’m trying to move them more into play. And so I can create from that place of joy versus creating to keep the pain away. I don’t need to do that anymore.

Candice Wu 59:52

Yeah. Right.

Joffre McClung 59:54

I need to play and create with joy.

Candice Wu 59:57

Now, I have one last question for you. And it connects with play and it connects with roles.

Candice Wu 1:00:03

As an actress, what roles did you play in the past, typically? And what would you do now? Or, what would you be interested in now?

Joffre McClung 1:00:13

In the past, I tended to play probably firm women, strong women. I was taller than most of the women in my class. My voice can go deeper so I play strong, firm women, which I was very comfortable with. I’m very good. You know — I like that a lot.

Joffre McClung 1:00:28

I would say now, I would add a bit more. I wouldn’t say humor but a bit more. Like, what’s the word? The word’s right there. I can’t find it. But it’s a bit more sass to it than I used to be allowed to have. Because I was always the firm one, the strong one. I always say a bit more sass. A bit more irreverent than I used to play, because I was, like I said, always the strong one, the firm one, domineering kind of woman, career woman usually cast as strong. That’s a bit sassier. I play a bit more sass, bit more fun, or irreverent.

Candice Wu 1:01:08

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 1:01:09

A bit more rebelish because that’s really what my spirit is even though out with —

Candice Wu 1:01:15

I can hear it in you.

Candice Wu 1:01:16

You definitely have “strong firm woman” in you. But this rebel, fire, sass, and fun like, it’s like busting out of you.

Joffre McClung 1:01:27

Oh good.

Candice Wu 1:01:28

Just in case you weren’t sure —

Joffre McClung 1:01:34

So I would say definitely, a rebellious, sassy kind of woman.

Candice Wu 1:01:37

A bit of swagger.

Joffre McClung 1:01:39

Oh, big swagger.

Candice Wu 1:01:40

A big swagger?

Candice Wu 1:01:42

A kind swagger, but a swagger.

Candice Wu 1:01:44

Yeah. A loving one.

Joffre McClung 1:01:47

You got it. A loving swagger.

Candice Wu 1:01:50

We’ve claimed it now loving swagger —

Joffre McClung 1:01:53

Swagger with a big laugh. Yes, that’s what I would —

Candice Wu 1:01:57

That’ll be your description on the podcast episode.

Joffre McClung 1:02:01

Okay, there you go.

Candice Wu 1:02:04

Well, thank you so much, Joffre! This is lovely. Is there anything else you want to share before we go?

Joffre McClung 1:02:10

Just if you’re interested in any of my books or if you happen to be in the Dallas Fort Worth area, I’m doing some classes. You can check it out on my website. Other than that, just keep doing your inner work. It makes a big difference, people.

Candice Wu 1:02:23

Absolutely. Thank you so much. And where can people find you Joffre?

Joffre McClung 1:02:28

You can find me at joffremclung.com. You can also just type in, itsallaboutselflove.com and it’ll take you right to my website.

Candice Wu 1:02:40

Wonderful!

Joffre McClung 1:02:42

Thank you so much for having me! You are such a doll, I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you.

Candice Wu 1:02:46

Oh my gosh, I enjoyed this so much. And you are so much fun. And you provide so much wisdom. Thank you so much, Joffre. And all of the links that you shared, everything you’re sharing here will also include on the show notes. The episode is at CandiceWu.com/joffre. So all of that’s there for you. So you don’t have to go digging around as well. And I’m just so grateful you were here today. Thank you.

Joffre McClung 1:03:11

Thank you and have a great day!

Candice Wu 1:03:14

I hope you are just as energized as I am through this conversation, through learning about Joffre, her life and what she’s teaching. So many of the themes and ideas she’s talking about are the themes of the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 1:03:29

So if you’re interested in more, check her out at itsallaboutselflove.com and be sure to check out her experiential that’s coming out later this week. She’s going to offer a meditation and healing experience to support you in loving yourself.

Candice Wu 1:03:45

Be sure to check out more interviews other healing experiences, learning about embodiment and self-love on the Embody Podcast at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Candice Wu 1:03:56

And you can stay informed about my workshops, retreats, experiences with horses and other podcast episodes through my newsletter, which goes out every two weeks. You can sign up at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:04:11

So just going off of the episode today, I leave you with the thoughts about where can you begin again in your life, or where is the new beginning and opening that’s already happening now.

Candice Wu 1:04:26

Thanks so much for joining us today and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction to Joffre’s Experience

Candice Wu 0:00

When you don’t take up the practice of loving all the parts of you, the orphaned parts of you, the parts that are hidden, tucked away or abandoned, may shout to wake you up. Fortunately, here, Joffre McClung shows us how to love our orphan self.

She guides you in a giant hug to your orphan self. You’ll connect with your higher and divine loving self to support you in being in a safe place while entering the cave of your orphaned self to heal any wounds, restore wholeness, love, and worthiness.

Hello, and welcome. You’re listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, Embodied Healing, and self-love.

My name is Candice Wu, and I’m a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Full Podcast

You’ll find a full podcast with Joffre McClung, a spiritual personal growth author, motivational speaker and common sense advocate in her episode at CandiceWu.com/joffre.

In that episode, she shows us self-love with sass, swagger, and a big laugh. She talks about her story of how she had done everything to have a good life and hit rock bottom at age 29. And about how you can embrace your nemesis to love yourself more deeply. So without further ado, here’s Joffre, with her experience of embracing your orphaned self.

Let’s Begin With Joffre

Joffre McClung 2:00

I’m going to be taking you on a meditation to your safe loving space.

We’re going to invite in your higher self and then we’re going to meet your orphaned one, the forgotten one, the one you may have shunned.

Close your eyes and let’s take three deep long breaths with long exhale out.

You continue taking long deep breaths, relaxing your body and clearing your mind of all thoughts.

And then I’m going to be counting you down some steps and when we reach level 10, you’ll be in your safe, loving space. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Relax every muscle in your body.

Seven. Eight. Going deeper.

Nine. Ten.

Safe Space

Now I want you to look around and see your safe space around you. Perhaps its nature or perhaps it’s a building or a temple. Wherever it is, it is your safe space where you can do anything. Be anything. Express anything with harm to none.

If you’re outdoors, are there trees? Is it the mountains or beach? Or even a cave, wherever you need it to be, it is your safe space.

If it’s the building, is it soft, smooth, or is it rough? Are there windows?

Notice what’s around your safe space. Perhaps there’s a bridge nearby or perhaps a waterfall. Perhaps a larger river making wonderful sounds near you.

What’s under your feet? Is it grass? Or perhaps it’s stone, or brick, or gravel.

What sort of light is in your safe space? Or light coming through the tops of the trees bouncing around on the ground. Perhaps there’s moonlight. Perhaps it’s bright sunshine. Perhaps there’s candles if you’re in a building, wherever you are, it’s your safe space where no harm can come to you and only loving nurturing.

Add Loving Images

Now I want you to start adding loving images to the safe space. Images that invoke a feeling of loving your heart.

If you’re outdoors, perhaps it’s a tree that branches reach down and embrace you in a giant hug. Letting you know that you’re cared for and that you are mattered.

Perhaps it’s letting light coming through the trees dancing around you. Perhaps it’s flowers popping up around your feet, lifting you gently off the ground. Perhaps you lay down on the ground and you feel it rising lower like a pregnant mother’s belly, letting you know that you’re cared for and that you’re safe.

Whatever image it is, allow it to give you a feeling of love.

Perhaps it’s a pet that licks your face or purrs against your legs.

Perhaps it’s wild animals rolling around or lying across you, gently loving you, caring for you.

Perhaps it’s light coming through the windows in your building, dancing around you. Gold, white, pink, blue, silver lights dancing all around you, letting you know that you’re cared for and you’re seen.

Make this your safe, loving space. Perhaps it’s angels. Whatever you need to feel loved and cared for, is coming into your safe space now.

Golden Orb and Divine Love

And then I want you to look off into the distance, and I want you to see a golden orb moving towards you.

It’s beautiful, golden orb and it’s getting closer and closer, and you’re actually feeling a bit excited by seeing this golden orb, knowing it’s a gift for you, that it’s for you.

And then all of a sudden, the golden orb is in front of you, as large as you are.

Now I want you to reach your hand into that golden orb and I want you to take another hand inside that orb.

I want you to gently pull that hand outward and out of the orb steps your higher self this divine part of yourself that has all the knowledge and power of the Divine Love.

This higher self that has your back, that love’s you unconditionally, just the way you are.

Perhaps you see a being in front of you or perhaps you just get a feeling of this higher self. Perhaps it’s a gentle breeze across your cheek, that when it touches your cheek, you feel love, even for just a second.

Perhaps it’s a pair of eyes that look deep into your eyes twinkling with delight and joy to be looking into your eyes.

Perhaps you feel a gentle hand on your back. Perhaps you feel arms wrapped around you giving you a warm, deep, loving hug.

However you need this higher self to present itself to you, allow them to do it in a manner that’s appropriate for you, that feels loving and safe to you.

And then I want you to allow these higher self to take your hand and to gently start to nudge you down the left path of your safe, loving space.

Now it’s a path that perhaps you’ve never gone down before or perhaps you have gone down this path, but your higher self is taking you down this path that is still part of your loving space but to a different area.

So follow your higher self down this path and notice what’s under your feet, perhaps it’s changed, perhaps it’s stones now or brick, or gravel.

Your higher self looks at you, gently squeezes your hand, letting you know, you’re going to be safe wherever they take you.

And you trust this, you keep following your higher self and you climb to the top of the hill.

Entering the Cave

And when you reach the top of the hill, you look down the other side of the hill and you notice the cave entrance.

And again, your higher self squeezes your hand letting you know you can do this, they have your back and that you will be safe and cared for. For this cave is where your orphan is living and it’s time to meet this orphan. This one that you have forgotten, or perhaps shunned, or perhaps safely put away so we will not be hurt anymore.

So your higher self leads you down the hill towards the entrance to this cave. And now you find yourself at the entrance of the cave.

Now I want you to take a moment and I want you to listen to what’s coming out at the cave.

Are there any sounds? Perhaps there’s crying coming out of the cave. Perhaps there’s shouting and screaming. Maybe there’s a gentle whimpering coming out of the cave. Or, perhaps there’s no sound at all there’s just an emptiness.

And now your higher self will guide you into the cave to meet the appropriate orphan that’s been waiting to meet you, that needs to meet you, that needs to be heard, to be listened to, being allowed to tell their story, share their pain, so that you can bring them back to wholeness through compassionate understanding, and love.

And there are many rooms in this cave and you notice all the different rooms. But your higher self has one particular room they’re taking you to.

Find Your Orphan

So you follow your higher self to this room. Now as you enter the room, maybe slightly dark, but you can still see around the room. And I want you to look around the room and find your orphan.

Perhaps it’s dirty and filthy and uncared for living in the cave, crawled into a corner staring at you. Perhaps it has its back to you. Refusing to notice you. Refusing to acknowledge you. Perhaps it’s standing in the middle of the room shouting at you. Having a tantrum, full of anger and rage at you. Perhaps it’s huddled in a little corner in a fetal position unable to move.

However you need to see this orphan, allow it to be the way it needs to be.

This is the first line of compassion, understanding you’re going to practice with this orphan is allowing it to be the way it needs to be.

So I want you to take a moment and introduce yourself to this orphan in a gentle, caring way.

Let it know that you are its future self and that you’ve lived. And that now you’re here to help it live. And to let go of the past and to be made whole again.

Let it know that it no longer needs to be in charge, that it now has you and your higher self

Let it know you’re sorry that you have forgotten it or shunned it, or tucked it away to be safe, that you just didn’t know better and that now you do.

Perhaps you can gently touch your orphan or perhaps you can’t. Perhaps an orphan runs and crawls into your lap. Perhaps the orphan refuses to look at you.

Whatever way the orphan needs to be, allow it to be and keep letting it know that you love it and you care for it, and you will be back as many times as you need to allow it to tell its story, to gain trust in you, to share its pain with you. So that you can help it to be made whole again and that you will be back.

Thank Your Orphaned and Higher Self

Thank it for allowing you to visit it and be with it. And again apologize for not having cared for before now, to offer some love to this orphan. And then allow your higher self to offer love to this orphan in the manner it needs to receive its love.

Perhaps it runs to your higher self and allows it to be hugged. Or, perhaps your higher self puts a globe around the orphan to let it know it’s protected and safe from harm. Perhaps your higher self, put angels all around it, to let it know it’s cared for and nurtured.

Allow your higher self to offer love to this orphan now.

Thank your higher self for its love. And once again, thank your orphan for allowing it to visit Remind it you will be back. And it’s safe until you return because it has been the love of your higher self.

To take your higher self’s hand, allow your higher self to help you leave the cave now, knowing your orphan is safe and cared for until you return.

So the higher self leads you back to your safe loving space now.

Receive Love

Now it’s time to allow your higher self to offer love to you in the manner that you need to receive a lot.

Perhaps it is a gentle hug or perhaps it’s a hand upon your heart, allowing your higher self to take the pain you may have picked up from your orphan out of your heart.

In whatever manner you need it, allow your higher self to offer you some love and nurturing now.

And then thank your higher self for their love and let them know you’ll be back to be with them again. So they can teach you what love should be like and what love should feel like that’s perfect for you.

And then thank yourself. Take a moment and thank yourself for taking the time to go with it and to do this work.

By being self-appreciative and having self-gratitude, helps you grow in your sense of self-love.

Transitioning

Now I’m going to be counting you out of your safe loving space, but know that you’re coming out of it with a lot more than what you came into it with and that stuff, that good stuff that the higher self put into you through their love, will be with you throughout the day.

Ten. Nine, Eight, Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Slowly open your eyes and know you began your orphan work and you will find your way back to self-love.

Have a joyful day.

Closing

Candice Wu 21:24

As you slowly make your way back to your space here today, the present moment, I hope you enjoyed this experiential with Joffre and be sure to check out her full episode at CandiceWu.com/joffre.

And feel free to connect with other healing experientials, guided meditations, and tools for self-love at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00
This episode is about love and beauty, particularly about our soul's desire to find love and know love, to know what love is and what it isn't, to sort out all the things that have been tangled up with loving, so that we can experience a true and pure form of love, attention, and witness in this life.

Candice Wu 0:25
Hello and welcome. You're listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, embodied healing, and self-love.

Candice Wu 0:39
My name is Candice Wu and I'm a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support, and having Co-Creative Conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Candice Wu 1:00
This episode is sponsored by the dream classes that I offer on Skillshare. These classes are something that arose from my love for dreaming. Whether I wake up from a dream, where I feel, I must remember this dream, wow, something happened here. Even if I don't understand it, or if I wake up and I feel like that was such a boring, mundane dream, I was just doing normal daily life stuff.

Candice Wu 1:30
Whether it's one or the other, I almost always experienced a very deep healing and connection with myself when I actually explore those dreams. When I go a little bit more into the experience of that dream, even if it's one tiny piece, then I feel like I've recovered another aspect of myself. I feel a new wisdom or a new energy that's alive in me that I can feel in my daily life. I can feel it right now, I can feel it in the next step I take. And this is what inspires the classes that I'm offering on Skillshare about dreaming. There are two classes right now, and the third one coming up very quickly. And these classes are about how to support your nervous system in your body, your physiology, and being able to better remember your dreams and to find more safety and grounding inside your being so that your dream worlds can flourish and really come alive, so that you can remember those things that you're dreaming, and glean that wisdom that I'm speaking about.

Candice Wu 2:41
When I find myself more activated, more like wired and the nervous system is a little bit out of balance or I feel ungrounded, or I feel distressed like things are building up or something happened a few days ago that I haven't really processed. If I'm not feeling grounded in myself, sometimes that affects my sleep, or it just affects my ability to remember what my dreams are. If it's affecting my sleep, I often feel that I can't get into a deep breath state where my dreams or my REM sleep is happening and my dreams are happening. And in other cases, I don't feel like writing my dreams down because I feel so exhausted.

Candice Wu 3:23
So, these exercises I've created and gathered up from all of my experiences, I put together in these Skillshare classes here. You can find those at CandiceWu.com/dreamclass1, or CandiceWu.com/dreamphysiology. If you click on the show notes, you can find the link that all connects you up with two free months of Skillshare premium membership where you can receive the classes for free and get access to all sorts of other tutorials and teachers as well.

Candice Wu 4:01
Hello, and welcome back to the Embody Podcast. It's wonderful to have you here. I have this lovely topic today about love. And I've been mulling this over four weeks. It's such a challenging topic, and yet it's also completely simple. This episode was inspired by a listener's question from two weeks ago, the episode about toxic ancestors. The question that she asked was, “Can you receive love and strength from ancestors or relatives still alive if they're mentally sick, toxic or unhealthy?” And our follow up question had to do with, “What if love is mixed up with abuse? What if we have learned that abuse comes with love?” And that really inspired this conversation that was already going on in me about love and what can be mixed up with love that begins to attract unhealthy relationships to each other and to ourselves in our daily life as an adult.

Candice Wu 5:09
And before we jump in, I just want to talk a little bit about beauty and awe. And for me lately, connecting with a sense of beauty, what I find beautiful and unveiling beauty, the awe in moments or music or the experience of something has just made me feel so in love. So in love with myself, so in love with the world around me. And it's those moments of beauty, of connection with beauty, that feels like it opens up a part of my own beauty, a part of my own inner, inner love for myself that is truly who I am. What I find beautiful and I'm reminded did of myself, I'm reminded of the love that I am the beauty that I am. And something that transcends the daily stuff of life and the things that can bug me down or trigger me even, but to recover a sense of myself through things that are beautiful.

Candice Wu 6:24
So, for me lately, it's been doing ballet, this teacher I have just reminds me, I guess she has the energy of finding beauty and every moment. She's a beautiful ballerina. And she always says, “This is yummy, make it yummy!” And I just love that because she does feel that the juicy, yumminess and every moment. And when she gives a look to the side, even with one small, arm movement that seems insignificant in ballet. She looks over and her eyelashes go up and her gaze turns and I just feel like, “Oh, I'm just in love with that, that movement.” And so, I'm adapting and adopting that into my life. So, ballet is truly bringing out this sense of beauty and letting my body move with that beauty and align with that awe is so fun. And I've loved listening to classical music. For some reason, I like just plugging in my headphones and having it only in my ears. And lately I've been listening on repeat to the song, I'm not gonna say this right? By Josu Gallastegui, and I'll put it in the show notes and link that for you, but it's called Plie (Larghetto), and it's just gorgeous. It's the song I warm up to in ballet in my classes, and I'm still not sick of it. It's been weeks, maybe months. But the last week it's been on high repeat.

Candice Wu 8:11
So, I'm also finding more and more presence, and allowing myself to notice in moments, just what is beautiful. And what is pleasurable, how I'm connecting with someone and where the joy is in that. And unveiling in each moment what's here already that's, that's just romantic and sensual and sweet.

Candice Wu 8:40
So with that, I guess it's a great way to start the topic about love. But I want to ask you, what is beautiful for you? what draws you in and brings you a sense of awe? What brings you to a sense of your own beauty and your own self, your own energy? Have there been any moments where you have felt that sense of beauty or sensuality or romance that's beyond just a romantic love experience, but one that really connects you to your whole being in your vulnerability, and a deeper experience of self?

Candice Wu 9:36
When I was really, really thick in my healing work, especially at the beginning, I would say about 10 years ago, I just couldn't really feel into a sense of beauty, I didn't feel safe enough. And I do realize that at this point, I'm feeling much more inner freedom and inner safety, much more ability, and capacity to handle almost any feelings that I experience and have worked through so much of my traumatic experiences that they feel. They don't feel like they're tugging me all the time and they actually daily don't feel like they're talking me at all in some ways. And it's taken just a lot of work to get here. But I wish I would have tuned into this sense of beauty. Before, through Somatic experiencing the work of Peter Levine and other trauma workers, tuning into pleasure and tuning into safety, belonging, sensuality or something that feels good, can truly help the healing process because it reminds you of your safety now. It reminds you of that sense of self and beauty that, that is you, that is part of you and is you. And so it can be I hope all of the painful feelings move along. I don't know if I would have been able to just do that on my own. And to tune into that either I would not quite be in the feeling or be able to hold the feeling for even more than like a second or something. And I think I was just much more drawn to the painful experiences because I knew I needed to heal them and I needed them to be different.

Candice Wu 11:29
So, just wanted to mention that because if you're experiencing a lot of heavy experiences right now, or you're working through your trauma, I encourage you to get support, number one, but also to tune into beauty and pleasurable moments so that your nervous system, your body, your soul can feel reminded of who you truly are, the love that's already inside of you. And the beauty that wants to be seen right now in the present moment, as a way to support the healing and to even advance and accelerate the healing.

Candice Wu 12:06
There are a few blog posts that I've written on pleasure and sensuality, and tuning into that, and I'll link those in the show notes. And now let's jump into the topic of love.

Candice Wu 12:22
It's no wonder that love is such a hard thing for people to describe. Because it's my belief that it has turned very complicated, we have been quite confused about what love is and what love isn't. There are plenty of people trying to describe love and parse it out into the different types of love. The Greeks did it with eight different kinds of love, which I'll talk about briefly later. We want to define it all the time, we want to know what it is we want to be able to feel it. We're not sure when we feel it and when we don't. We think we're feeling it, but are we really? And so this whole conversation is part of what I want to talk about today. And like I said, I've been mulling this over for quite some time. And I think that that's part of the reason I've been trying to sort out how I can put this into words, because can you really describe it in words? I think not quite. It's definitely an embodied experience.

Candice Wu 13:27
And so how do we bring a level of communication of around love to words, which is part of the first thing that's coming to mind right now is that love is a full experience in the whole body. It's not just words. And because it's an embodied experience, it can be clouded with all sorts of experiences that included trauma, or hurt or wounding or betrayal within our relationships, within the experience of our body, while we're in relation to another person, or community.

Candice Wu 14:08
But let's back it up for a moment. I do believe that we are all here to love. We're all here to learn how to love and learn what love is, and what it isn't. And we yearn for the experience of love. And for me, it is who we are. I also hesitate to fail that in a way because I can't presume for everybody that that's why they're here. And we again describe love completely differently. So, what is love? What do I mean by that, and I want to offer my opinions and my thoughts. But I want to create conversation and open up exploration for each other, for you, and to invite you to have this exploration with yourself, to find what it is for you, if you're interested in it. To look at it in the way that feels like it resonates with you.

Candice Wu 15:12
So what I found with myself and with working with my clients, as well as studying Family Constellations, and Somatic Experiencing, and other types of embodied healing and growth work, is that one way to describe love is that it's pure attention and witness. One that can sit with and be with what's exactly here and vulnerable and real in the moment. One that feels genuine and authentic, unmasked, and bare. One that's raw to the core and connected with the heart and the soul. This to me is love. It's where your attention is truly located, where it's directed. That is love.

Candice Wu 16:18
In family constellations, I often see and other facilitators discuss this as well, that where someone's attention is, is where the flow of love is going. And if you think about or imagine your entire family system behind you standing in order, with your parents behind you and other caretakers, if there were any others, your biological parents, if you have adoptive parents or other people. But if you have your parents, your grandparents and everyone standing behind you, your siblings if you have any next to you. And if everyone's standing in order, with their attention and their presence, their fullness towards you, and everyone behind them with their fullness, moving forward and directed forward.

Candice Wu 17:19
It's like a big triangle people behind you, then you might feel completely full of love, resource, strength, stability, rootedness and grounded grounding, coming through to you. The flow of love is just directly coming forward. And then that love can come through you into your life into who you love, into who loves you into what you love, and what loves you back. And it's when the direction of somebody's attention goes somewhere else, that a piece of ourselves is broken in a way or we want that direction of attention towards us, we need it. And so it's when someone's direction of attention behind us like our mother is facing somewhere because they need to pay attention there, there's something that happened there like a loss or hurt, that part of them is still with because it's not complete, then we feel that impact.

Candice Wu 18:29
And that's what's there for the mother, and that's what's there for the child. So, this example is just one, one experience, one image of where our attention goes is where the love is and where the love wants to be seen and recovered. And we can direct that towards the daily life of who we are. Where our attention goes is where our love is going.

Candice Wu 18:57
Yet still, with this conversation, I'm not quite sure defining what love is, but getting closer to this sense that love is attention. Because everything in this existence is here for us to experience, is here for us to love in terms of to be able to experience it, to be able to hold it within our expansive awareness. And the things that we are not able to hold our soul, the universe that comes through us, wants us to be able to, wants us to be able to look where there's pain, wants us to be able to look where there's joy, wants us to be able to expand so much we're able to feel all of it. And with all of it, with that ability to feel all of it, we actually gain freedom, freedom to choose where we place our attention, because when we avoid something that we don't want to experience, we're actually held hostage by that. We resist it and part of our energy, part of our attention, part of our love goes to avoid it, to resist it, to have nothing to do with it, it's like you're sticking your hand down and pushing it away. And you walk around trying to not look that way and trying to push this experience or emotion to the side, then not all of you is present for the things you are actually wanting to experience or consciously wanting to experience, rather.

Candice Wu 20:28
So, the deepest parts of who we are, want us to be able to experience everything. And that's a full, very full form of love at a spiritual level, at a human being level as well. So, on the podcast, we talk a lot about self-love, loving yourself, being able to be with yourself, and hold yourself with loving, with compassion, with understanding, and to fill up the places in you that have wanted something, have needed something with all that you've needed. And fill those places those wounds in you with love to pour love into the places of disconnection and where our hearts have been broken.

Candice Wu 21:19
And what I find as we do that is that our capacity to receive love in the present moment, to receive experiences where we feel loved, and to love other people, to feel true relationship with what's going on around us and within us. That grows bigger when we heal up those spaces in ourselves. When we heal the belief sets that we have about love, we sort out what love is and what isn't. So, if you just reflect on yourself, are you experiencing places where you continue to struggle or you attract relationships that feel wounding or hurtful, or you feel fear and constant anxiety about your safety or being judged?

Candice Wu 22:15
The experience of love, we learn that through relationship. When we first come into the being of this life, we have it through energy and touch, we're in the womb of our mother. We have it through sound, the sound of her voice, their voice or father's voice, other voices around us and the emotions that are felt around us, what is acceptable and what is not. And as we're born into a human body, we need touch to help us regulate and we need touch to be able to sense where our body is, where we are here, and to sense our safety, to be able to create the building blocks, to feeling in this experience of humaneness.

Candice Wu 23:06
And, so, that attention that's needed that direction of energy, that is the first experience of love, and touch. That is the first experience of love all within those first, and early years.

Candice Wu 23:23
And this all sounds ideal if we haven't had the kind of attention that's full from people who have a full capacity to be in the present moment with all that is within a human baby experience. All the tears all, this all the fear, all the laughter, and the giggles. Just this juicy, full, vulnerable and unhampered experience. If the adults in our lives weren't able to hold all of those things with love, hold all of those with witness and attention, then we start to feel like parts of us are unable to show up in this world. We also start to learn that in order to be loved, we need to do certain things or not do certain things, or we need to be certain ways or not be certain ways.

Candice Wu 24:16
Carl Rogers, a psychologist who works with unconditional love talks about conditions of worth. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. What conditions did you need to put on yourself or were put on you or what were perceived for you to feel worthy, for you to be loved, for you to belong? So, as you can see, we're not quite talking about romantic love here.

Candice Wu 24:48
I mentioned earlier that the Greeks separated love into eight different types of love. And some of those include an erotic love or familial love, a long-standing and enduring love, a playful love, agape of the love of the soul, which is unconditional, spiritual and bigger than ourselves. Also, love of family and child storge. I'm not naming them all right now. And I'll link an article from lonerwolf.com that I found that was quite interesting on this, that described these eight types of love.

Candice Wu 25:26
Some people also round it to four types of love. I'll also link an article that I saw about that. But I'm not going to go into these descriptors, because what I am really talking about here is that unconditional, spiritual, universal and cosmic kind of love that is simple, pure, and clean. That is the love of attention and witness.

Candice Wu 25:53
That is the ability to be present. And see someone, see yourself with what's truly there. And I can most closely relate that to agape is what I've, as far as what I've read and seen. That's not what I'm well versed in, but to speak of a universal love. That's where I'm coming from today.

Candice Wu 26:22
So, that kind of universal love can be applied to any experience. You can experience a sexual experience and just love how that feels. And as you can even feel how in speaking it has like a flatness to that dimension. But you can feel a deeper connection with the sensuality of it, with the person you're with or people you're with. You can feel a connection to your own body, and feel a very deep presence with what is happening and what you're experiencing in the moment. That's the kind of love that underlies our experiences.

Candice Wu 26:59
So, when I say I love sushi, I just love sushi, I love sushi. There's a different quality to how I'm saying that. And that it almost feels deeper and deeper and deeper each time, I changed levels. But there's an aspect of finding the true beauty in something, the deep presence, and some people call it mindfulness, the being with the experience with all the senses, that encompasses this beautiful, deep love. And yet the spiritual kind of love, the universal love transcends all of that. It holds everything.

Candice Wu 27:47
So, back to why it is that we've confused love. When we're young, we have learned that there are certain ways we needed to be in order to receive love, in order to have attention, in order to feel like we belong.

Candice Wu 28:05
And so, the question of, is the love that we're experiencing is what we're experiencing, out of need our freedom is a question that I like to hold with myself is love a free choice or is it not? Because our early experiences are often bound with fear or survival mode or need.

Candice Wu 28:24
An example of what I mean is that early on, I did not experience crying very much. And in fact, if you ask my mom, she'll tell this story about how my aunt, I lived with my aunt for about a month, my family lived with her. And she said I was such a good baby, I never cried. And when I think about that, I don't think that not crying was part of my personality. I have to ask myself, why? And when I hear stuff like that, I asked why, or what, what could have made that become necessary in order to receive love. And for me, it was incredibly necessary to be happy, and to not have uncomfortable feelings, and to not let it all hang out but to hold it all in, so that I could receive attention and love. I experienced early on that if I had feelings of anger, sadness, and grief, if they were even a little bit or too big, that I wouldn't receive any attention for that, I would perhaps get invalidated and dismissed, maybe even abandoned.

Candice Wu 29:41
So, some of those experiences, I imagine were perceived. And there were other experiences that I do know to be real for me, that if I had certain emotions, or if I let my caregivers know, I was not happy with him or I was angry or I was hurt, that I would be called selfish or I would not be given the kind of presence that I needed to be able to digest that feeling and to be able to move through it. So, I kept it in and not crying, smiling all the time. being helpful and hiding away was what I learned early on how to love.

Candice Wu 30:26
So, on a deep level, I was loving my family by keeping silent. And I learned that loving meant to always be happy. And loving meant to not speak up about what I felt if it had to do with the person that's in front of me but to pretend everything was okay. So, my sense of love and loving got all tangled up with ways of being that, were actually very different attractive to me, and then later grew up to attract relationships, that ultimately gave me the same experience. And where I felt like I needed to act the same way with and if I started to share how I felt, truly, if I was upset with a situation or something felt unpleasant, the other person would react really harshly. Because I had found a match with that, that drew in this experience again, I hadn't quite resolved what loving was. And so, I attracted other people that also believed that I should keep that inside. And I shouldn't share that and it was too uncomfortable to hear all these feelings.

Candice Wu 31:49
So, in the same way, love can mix with not having boundaries, or having walls in between you. Love can mix with food. And that food is the way to love people. But we don't really know how to be present with people.

Candice Wu 32:08
Love can mix with abuse, where you must accept abuse because this is the way we know how to love each other. This is the way we know how to give attention to one another. And we don't know other ways, or this is one of the ways. It can also be manipulation, where there's a twisting of truth or a coercing or control of another person in order to relate to them. And to keep them there. And this can be the way you know how to be with people. It can connect with dependency or codependency, where you need the other person and you find relationships where you need each other, where you depend on one another in ways that are actually ways that you can depend on yourself, but haven't learned yet or feel that this is the feeling that you have with love, that you are always going to take care of that person's emotions all the time. And you're going to be there every time they, they asked you to be in a very deeply merged way where you can't handle it by yourself. But then you also feel like this is how a loving relationship is, right?

Candice Wu 33:31
Or Loving can mix with concepts or ways of being around respect. For example, in my upbringing, being Chinese-American, I learned this Chinese traditional way of being of treating our elders with respect. I think it's a beautiful concept. It's a beautiful thing to do to honor your elders and to see their wisdom and to see their presence is important. However, this kind of “respect” in my family equated to always accepting how an elder treats you even if it's abusive, hurtful, or wounding. So, it meant you don't have boundaries for yourself, you don't tell them that you don't like what they've said or done. You don't tell them how you feel unless it feels happy, or appreciative, grateful, or loving, loving in terms of “I love what you said, thank you.” And so if you have any distasteful feeling or anger, hurt, discomfort or confusion, or a boundary like you didn't like it, you didn't want them to do X, Y or Z, you're meant to keep that to yourself. And it would be again selfish to share that. And so, loving meant to always stay silent and quiet if you had anything uncomfortable.

Candice Wu 35:05
Loving, in this case, meant you're responsible for the well being of your elders, you're responsible for rather their emotional happiness, and you were at fault for their discomfort, that they couldn't handle any discomfort. And this is the way to love elders to respect them in this way. So, loving can be mixed with how you behave and what you share and what you don't.

Candice Wu 35:38
Loving can be you, “Always listen to me and you always obey.” Even if it hurts you. Loving can mix up with not leaving a situation or not leaving a person and staying close and going against what you need. Maybe you need distance, and you need to be away in order to love. But that was threatening in some way. And it wasn't okay to take any distance or space, or as children, we often survive and endure a lot of experiences because we have to, we have to depend on our parents, are caretakers for safety. So, sometimes we can grow up and keep that same way of being, of not leaving a hard situation and enduring it, handling it, surviving it, because we can and because we did and we know that way of loving people, we just stick with them. Even if it's painful.

Candice Wu 36:44
Loving can mix up with doing what others want of you and keeping them happy being responsible for their happiness and not choosing what's truly for you and right for you.

Candice Wu 37:00
Love and sex get very tangled up. We often think that sex is one and the same as love. Some people experienced that and some people in monogamous relationships experience that. We fear that if we have sexual interactions or feelings or fantasies towards someone else besides the one that we love, then it doesn't, it then it means we don't love them at all. And that may not be true. It may be true, but it may not be true.

Candice Wu 37:32
Some people believe that if you have sex with me, you love me, or if you don't have sex with me, you don't love me.

Candice Wu 37:42
In polyamorous relationships and philosophies, there's the idea that we can love many people. This universal sense of love. If you love someone, you can also love another person, there's room for more. And that is not necessarily monogamous or polyamorous in its view, it's just a tendency that I see that in polyamorous relationships, there's a bit more openness about that. But you can see how with that example, that the idea that we can only love one person, there's only one true love.

Candice Wu 38:21
It's a very romantic idea. And it's also very archetypal, it runs a deep thread within many of us. And we're working that out. We're trying to figure out what, what it really is. Is that really true? If you love someone else, do you really also love me? Is that even possible? Can we love more than one person? And can it be a deep love?

Candice Wu 38:44
Love can tangle up also with money, and value and worth, and when we receive money through our family or when we don't or when we receive it from somebody that can feel like they love me a lot, or if someone isn't willing to spend money on you, you might question their love for you or they're like for you even. But especially through family lines, we expect that will receive money if they have it, if our family loves us, like inheritance, and gifts.

Candice Wu 39:28
And of course, everything I'm saying is not always true. And some of these may resonate with you and some may just seem totally ridiculous. But, I want to open up these ideas so that you can think about what has loving, mixed within your life, in your soul and in your being?

Candice Wu 39:48
There's also the sense that loving equals permanency, that if you truly love somebody, you are permanently there, and you never leave, you're there forever. And if it lasts forever, then it was true love. But that's so dismissive of the fact that you feel something right here and now. And what that is, is actually fear coming in, the fear that something may be gone later, or the fear that someone leaves or that you're left alone, the fear that something changes. So, that's not actually loving, that's trying to control something so that you don't have to feel the fear.

Candice Wu 40:30
So, this brings me to that idea, back to the idea of is it out of fear, or is it out of freedom? The early experiences of loving that we've had, that are a bit dysfunctional now that do causes suffering, can and are likely out of some survival mode, some fear, some need, that if we don't do this, then we might not receive what we need to feel safe, to feel love to feel belonging. And as adults, we're able to look back and not leave those as wounds in ourselves not leave this as the way things are, but to examine it, to feel through it, and to see where we needed to do certain things to protect ourselves when you were younger to have that kind of loving and attention. And now we don't need to do that anymore. We don't need our parents or caretakers for safety. We don't need to depend on those we used to depend on. And that means we don't need to use those same strategies that are intermingled with loving, that we have thought to be the way we have to love people, the way we should love people and the way we do love people. We can clear all that up, untangle at and experience a pure love now, a kind of love that's free that doesn't express out of, I need you, and I need you to love me back. But one of clear attention, presence, and witness. One of feeling the beauty, feeling the pain if the pain is there, the upset if upsets there, the joy of being with what is here and seeing the beauty in that. That is a deeper, universal or cosmic kind of love.

Candice Wu 42:33
So, if you've come to that question, what is love for yourself? How do I love? It's a beautiful thing, it's a great beginning an opening for you to see what, what is truly loving. What feels loving in you? And is it truly full? Or is it partially compromised? Is it a bit of fear? Is it a bit of grasping or grabbing onto something, which would signify fear? Or is it free? Is it open and able to move and end, and change and flow?

Candice Wu 43:13
So, we'll leave today's episode with some inquiry and exploration questions for you. And you can feel free to journal about these, you can pause the podcast and just stay with a question and meditate on it, or take it at your pace.

Candice Wu 43:31
As you journal about these, encourage you to go at your own pace, in terms of feeling into your responses, exploring and excavating what's there. Take your time to feel into the experience of these where a lot of stuff can be brought up. And I encourage you also to share this with someone you trust, someone that can support you through healing work, whether that's a therapist, healer, or a coach, someone who can be with you through these emotions. Where the transformation is, is not just in the thinking process of this in the clarity and understanding of it, but it's also in the body. We can't have one without the other and truly integrate a new way of being. We need to transform the emotions and the energy of it inside our whole body. And that's what allows us to actually experience something different, it actually allows us to experience love, not just have a mental concept of love in our mind. So, when I asked these questions and bring these questions out for you, with you here, be sure to feel into the body and let the body show you what it feels about these topics and these ideas.

Candice Wu 44:50
So, if you want to get a notepad, or journal or computer out to explore these questions, feel free to pause the podcast here. And if you're ready to do this with me, I will start with the first question. How did you have to act for love when you were young? What did you have to do in order to receive love?

Candice Wu 45:32
And I realized I'm not giving much time here. So, this is where I invite you to pause the podcast for as long as you need. Or if you're just touching in on these questions and letting them marinate and you feel free to go on with me here.

Candice Wu 45:48
Fill in the blank. In order to belong, I had to ____. And in order to be loved, I had to____.

Candice Wu 46:17
And this next one is also fill in the blank. To be loving to others means that I need to _____.

Candice Wu 46:38
And this next question regards loyalty. Because we often feel like we need to be loyal in order to love. And so those are connected. And in order to be loyal to those I love, it meant that I needed to ___.

Candice Wu 47:08
And the next question, where do you begin to be unloving to yourself? At what moments? Or in what moments to begin to be unloving to yourself?

Candice Wu 47:39
And the next question is, what would you do if you loved yourself right now?

Candice Wu 48:02
And the next question is, what ways of being do you want to shed that are mixed with love and loving? So in other words, what ideas around loving are you ready to shed? As an example, for me, I would shed the need to be silent in order to be loved, and loving, meaning that I have to be silent. So, what ways of being are you ready or wanting to shed around what it means to love?

Candice Wu 48:54
And right now, as you explore this, just take a couple of breaths. Notice any feelings that are coming up and notice any emotions or sensations in your body. Allow what's here, allow any images to appear or present themselves to you. You can also write those down for later exploration. And take this moment to ground and just see your surroundings and recognize you are here in your adult self right now.

Candice Wu 49:49
And just a few more questions that shift the gears a bit here. What is loving to you? What is an adult way to love, what is mature and free love?

Candice Wu 50:23
And don't worry if you have the answers or not. This is all exploration that is continued and evolves.

Candice Wu 50:39
The last question I have is, what is your capacity to receive love?

Candice Wu 50:57
And this question of what is your capacity to receive love is not an easy one to answer either. It's more just a sense of your own feeling of how much you're able to receive. And that just being a gauge for yourself of exploring, receiving love in a deeper way. Healing areas where you feel like you cannot receive or it's challenging to receive.

Candice Wu 51:28
Just feeling what your senses, can you open your palms up and out and receive love from the world? Or do you feel closed? Do you feel like your arms are crossed or the reaching out is stopped or blocked? Or what's coming to you? What is coming to you? What do you receive?

Candice Wu 52:04
And as we close this journaling and exploration section, take a moment and just let it all go and place your hands on your heart, if you feel comfortable, and take this moment to feel love and gratitude for yourself. The sense of warmth towards yourself of presence without judgment, of honoring exactly how you feel in this moment, being with yourself, being able to look at yourself inward, and accept, allow.

Candice Wu 53:03
And as you're ready to release your hands, keep a model wiggle if you want or stretch, stretch any part of your body or move if you want to. Just coming back to the moment.

Candice Wu 53:27
And I hope that you take all of these questions and your responses, your reactions with compassion and curiosity. As a reminder, this is all for exploration. There's no right or wrong here, and this whole podcast itself is meant to be taken with that same sort of exploration that we're all on this journey, to explore what is love and what isn't and to find what it is for ourselves and to be clearer and more free in ourselves to love, to love without fear or to love with fear, through fear.

Candice Wu 54:11
And with that, I am reminded of a Mary Oliver poem, the Mary Oliver poem that just made me fall in love with her work. It's called “The Summer Day”, and I'm going to read it to you now as we close.

Candice Wu 54:28
The summer day, who made the world, who made the swan and the black bear, who made the grasshopper, this grasshopper, I mean. The one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, was moving her jaws back and forth, instead of up and down, who's gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now, she lives her pale forms and thoroughly washes her face. Now, she snaps her wings open and floats away. I don't exactly know what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass, how to be idle and blessed how to stroll through the fields, which is what I've been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Candice Wu 55:54
So, with that, I encourage you to play with your exploration and find beauty for yourself. Find what love is for yourself.

Candice Wu 56:07
Thank you so much for joining me today. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you want to share them with me, feel free to reach out to me if you like to, you can email me find me at my website, CandiceWu.com and if you want to stay in touch with me through my newsletters, I send out self-love notes as well as all the updates on podcasts, events, retreats, and topics that I'm exploring, as well as updates on my travels and can sign up for that it CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 56:40
In the upcoming weeks, I hope to offer some experiences that will support you in receiving love, self-love, and embodying a feeling of love, sensing into beauty, forgiveness, and feeling what pure love is for you. So, tune in that coming up. And also, if you want to touch into the podcast that preceded this one about toxic ancestors and how to receive love and strength from ancestors that may be challenging or difficult to deal with, those who are dead and alive, you can find that episode at CandiceWu.com/EP61.

Candice Wu 57:28
Thanks so much for tuning in today and it's so great to have you here. I love hearing topics, questions, and feedback from my listener. So, that always inspires something new. And so if you have anything that's on your mind, anything that comes up as you're listening or things that are going on in your life, feel free to reach out and share them with me.

Candice Wu 57:52
Thank you, again, and I'll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.