Feminine Success with Taylor Carr
If you want to get real fulfillment out of your online business…
…you first need to define what success looks like to you.
You may be looking to have a greater impact and share your knowledge. 💭
Perhaps you want to create a healthier work and life balance. 👏
Or maybe it’s all about supporting your bottom line and building on your financial goals. 💰
Whatever your vision of success looks like, using your feminine energy to pursue it with love and compassion can make the journey that much more aligned with you.
Discover what feminine success is and how it influences your side hustle in the latest podcast episode with guest Taylor Carr.
CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!
Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to episode 159 of Empathy Rising. I'm excited to introduce you to a new friend today. Taylor Carr is the host of The Activated Woman podcast and runs a lot of different programs that are focusing on feminine energy and some of the wound stuff that I've been bringing to the table lately.
It's just really fun to get to know somebody who is both ambitious, and coming at ambition and success and achievement from a more feminist lens. Talking about how we can decondition ourselves, de-colonize ourselves, all of the D's, and start to redefine success on our own terms and how it serves us as women.
I hope that this episode is insightful for you and opens your eyes to some new things. Let's jump on into my interview with Taylor.
Marissa (M): Hey, Risers. I am here with a new friend named Taylor, who I have gotten to know since the beginning of this year. She has an incredible outlook. She has incredible energy. Whenever I spend time with her—only online, we haven't met in person—maybe someday, but I feel two things.
I feel cleansed. I feel… I don't know if that's the right word, but I feel invigorated. That's probably a better way to say it. I feel invigorated when I hang out with Taylor, and also very calm when I hang out with Taylor. I hope some of that comes through for you guys today. Taylor, if you want to do more of a formal intro, who you are, what you do kind of thing, then we'll start talking about your work.
Taylor (T): Absolutely Marissa. Thank you. That was such a cute intro. Hi everybody. My name is Taylor Carr. I am a clinical hypnotherapist and women's healing arts teacher. I focus all of my coaching on what I call the "feminine model of success".
My work is deeply rooted in essentially ditching the masculine models of success that lead to burnout and not feeling well in women and just leaning into a more spiritual holistic model of what success actually means for a woman.
We have this patriarchal view of success being the big house and all the money and the "Go, go, go. I'm not worthy of anything unless I am accomplishing something all the time". It is one of the leading causes of the mental health epidemic that we're facing in our country, in our world. I think the feminine model of success is the solution to that.
M: How is it the solution?
T: It's coming into wholeness with everything that you are, everything that you have been, everything that you've always wanted to be, or everything you were always meant to be.
It's more than just, "okay. I created success. I have the job, I have the boyfriend or the husband. I have the kids, I have the picket fence. I have the money, I have the Tesla", whatever, that's not it. It's knowing your body, knowing yourself, knowing your heart, it's about having epic, legendary relationships.
It's about having an incredible relationship with wealth and money in the way that you want it. It's about understanding your feminine cycles and moving in the direction of your own energy. It's about feeling really fucking good and being unapologetic about it.
M: There's that power I was talking about. You just inspire the crap out of me every time you talk. One thing that I want to talk a little bit about is this dichotomy around ambition because I would go so far as to say you are an ambitious woman.
We met earlier this year during a boot camp for Be On TV. Go and get media, go out and get noticed, and that kind of stuff. How do we reconcile ambition with feminine success? It doesn't mean we don't want things and it doesn't mean we're not trying to achieve, but maybe not achieving in the patriarchal sense.
T: That's such a great question because we're still in a time where women are fighting for our rights and we're in this feminist movement. We want to make sure that we're being seen as individuals who can accomplish something.
I think that's where a lot of us get angry. That's why people get angry about this feminine messaging online. As you said, it doesn't mean that we're not ambitious. It just means that we're ambitious in a way that works for us.
What I really like about that is that there is no cap on the dream. When I think about the patriarchal system, it's like a ladder system; if I do this correctly for this many years, then I get this raise and this bump, and then I move up the ladder, and hopefully in 10, 15 years I'll make six figures.
I think in the feminine model of success, it's like, but what if I want to make six figures now? What if I want to do it this year? How does my energy, my flow, my everything - the word that comes through is my 'muse', nature as the feminine, how that supports me in collapsing time around what I want.
If I want to rest for a month, I'm going to do it. If I want to work my ass off the next month, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it in a way that is aligned. For me personally, that feels sexy because that's an energy. That's a life force energy that propels me forward.
M: So much of what I'm working on, not only with my current Side Hustle students in my therapist business, but in the Rooted business that I'm launching alongside is this deconditioning.
For some of us, we need to make six figures just because where we live is so expensive. But for others, do you really need a 2,500-square-foot house or is that what you've been told you need and conditioned to believe that you need?
What if you actually want a two-bedroom, little tiny cottage out of town that is maybe a thousand square feet. If that's what you really want, do you actually need to be making $200,000 a year?
Deconstructing all of that and looking at what we've been conditioned to want, what we've been conditioned to believe is success and achievement, defining that for ourselves, then we can reverse engineer the exact dollar amount we need. Then we can reverse engineer, "do I need to be working full time, even?" All of this starts to crumble when we get in there and start looking at it.
T: Ah, it's so beautiful. This is something that I had to face recently because I always had this vision of my life. I've had the same perfect day visualization that I always do in my manifestation practices for years. Last year I had the guy and I had the income and I had all the things. We had the cat and the friends and the life. We were going out to like $200, $300 dinners on rooftops twice a week, and I'm like, "I've got it. I've got it. I've got it".
This year, it all dismantled and it all crumbled in front of me. As we're recording this episode, we're in this full moon, eclipse Scorpio energy, and it's been such beautiful, intense energy.
Last night, I sat with myself and "Okay, who have I become? Because it's not the same girl that I was even a year ago or six years ago?" I'm now sitting in my two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse, four miles from Venice beach and when my partner lived here, it felt small. Now I'm sitting in here "this is a palace, this is a frickin palace, and it's big".
I had this whole idea. I wanted this modern home with this and the staircase and I'm thinking about that now, and I'm like, "Is that what Taylor actually wants? Or is that just what Vogue magazine told me was really sexy?"
I had so many clients Voxer me crying yesterday, "I just feel like my business is here and then I'm here and I want to be this, but then I'm this" and I was like, "This moon energy that you're feeling is the opportunity to blend and marry the duality of you so that you don't have to be so separated. Instead, you just become into oneness, into divine wholeness with everything that you are, and then we create from there".
M: I love that you mentioned that. In 2019, I went to a retreat led by a friend of mine named Megan Hale, and another really good friend of mine, Lee McDonough was there. My listeners are familiar with both of them.
At that retreat, her brand used to be Wild & Holy—with a big ampersand. She gave us these little ampersands. When I'm in my office it's always in, like, the little back corner, you can see what she gave us, but at the retreat, there was a big one and we were supposed to write our biggest takeaway from the event.
Mine was, "It's both/and, not either/or". What you just said reminded me of that duality. We can be more than one thing. That straight, narrow, singular path, I would say that's the masculine definition of success.
You've mentioned this "climbing-the-ladder". There's one road, there's one path. What I'm hearing from you is there are multiple paths. There are multiple opportunities and it doesn't only have to be one at a time. It could be multiple at a time.
T: The feminine was always meant to be multi-dimensional and we just are completely led by a system that's linear and it doesn't work for us. That's why I love speaking to your community right now because I know therapists and high-performing professional women. I was one of them, I worked in the fashion industry and I was an actress, and I was so linear and like "success does not equal anything until I'm 'here'".
Then I remember I had the role in the Woody Allen film and I was playing across from Kristen Stewart. I was in another film working with Reese Witherspoon and I was working in fashion, and I was like, "Why does this feel like I haven't reached any level of success at all?" I remember last year I hit my first $10,000 month in my business and I was like, "why is this not enough?"
It's because there will never be enough of anything. We live in a chronic, ‘never enoughness’ society. You will never be enough of anything until you decide you're enough.
M: Until you decide you're enough now, and I think it's also when you can reframe that enoughness from coming within because whenever we're looking for that external validation, whenever we're looking for enough money outside of us, or enough recognition outside of us it's never going to fill what we needed to fill.
T: It also dismantles your happiness. I mentioned my relationship coming to a pause and end this year, we don't really know, and there's a lot of energy around it of "never enoughness". Where I sit in a world of "this is enough and anything else is extra and bonus and amazing". We will always strive for more because we are those people, but right here, right now, this is enough.
He was coming from a space very much of, "I don't know what it is, but nothing is ever enough ever, ever, ever, and I need to go prove myself to be enough". That's an energy that as a reflector, (I'm a reflector in human design) I just can't live in that energy because it constantly is impacting me and all women - we're sensitive.
When we live in environments that constantly show us, "you're never enough. What you do is never enough. Keep striving, keep pushing". We're just living in an unhealthy environment that feeds a slavery system that women were never meant to be a part of.
M: 100%. When we start to redefine success and reclaim success for ourselves, what can that look like? How would that be observable as different from embodying a masculine definition of success?
T: So much just flooded into my head and I want to make it concise, but I'm going to start it off with a little bit of a story. When I was in my early twenties, I was 21 and I just moved to LA to follow my dream as an actress. I was working two serving jobs and I was diagnosed with an incurable pain disease in my bladder. It's called interstitial cystitis.
It feels like a chronic UTI with no bacteria. You can't treat it and you just live that way. Because of that, I got pelvic floor dysfunction. My whole vagina closed off, and then my bladder was in pain and it was just so excruciating.
Sometimes I would urinate myself because I couldn't get home in time. It was embarrassing. I was 21. I was trying to be beautiful. I wanted a date, and I want to have fun, and I want to do all these things and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't drink.I couldn't even eat anything other than like… I was a raw vegan, but like only lettuce, essentially, and green juices, I couldn't have anything and no caffeine, no coffee, no chocolate.
I remember going to the doctor and going through these treatments and they were shoving things inside me every week. They're like, "oh, treatments, aren't working, we can put you on this medication, but you might lose your hair and there's no real evidence that it'll help." It was like, "What? That's not a solution".
I remember I took to YouTube and I was like, "Hi YouTube. I am Taylor. I have this thing, I'm going to heal myself or die trying, and I'm going to take you guys along with me on this journey", and so I stopped going to treatments. I started going to pelvic floor physical therapy instead for a year.
I changed my diet, changed my mindset. One of the things that I do fully believe was the most helpful on this journey to success (because healing was success to me) was realizing how much pain was in my feminine lineage.
How much I didn't know about my body, how much I didn't know about my mother or her mother or my lineage, how much I didn't know about the trauma living in my body from growing up in an abusive household where I lost a parent because of addiction.
I had no idea women carry their trauma often in their womb and learning about this...I often joke that I healed myself by shaking my ass under the full moon in front of a mirror with the candlelight. I stared at myself in the mirror and I took my clothes off and I put a mirror in front of me and was like "We're going into ritual" and I was not spiritual. I was like, "We're just going to see what happens"
M: Was it intuitive? Did it just kind of come to you?
T: It was intuitive. I think part of it was my clean diet at the time, it was only vegetables and they were raw. So I think that my mind, my pineal gland, and everything was open to receive the intuition.
I wasn't so blocked. I have chills in my body thinking about it because it took me three months to find legit, real relief. A whole year later I was completely healed and it's been nine years, 10 years. I've been healed ever since. I just continue to dig deeper into my body, into my womb, into my cervix, into unlocking all these different places where we hold pleasure and pain and going "Okay, which one am I?"
That story kind of leads into, what does success look like for women? Well, for me at that time, it was healing. Now, as I grow and evolve and change, every few years we're just different people. It's constantly going in and going "What feels good, what propels me forward and what is just an idea of what feels good?"
You know that woman when she walks into a room because she lights up the space. She is what my friend calls me, he says, "you are the epicenter of every room that you walk into" because I don't need to be anything or anyone other than me.
I'm very, very happy whether there's money in my bank account or not, whether there's a man on my arm or not. I will talk to every person in the room. If they let me, I will share my life story. I will get them to open up. I will get free drinks for everyone just by being. It's because I'm whole in myself, even in moments of grief and pain, which I am going through right now, I am still heart open, womb open, mind open.
I am ready to give and receive in divine union with every being on this planet because everything is me. Everything is me, every person in a bar, every person in a restaurant. It is just a reflection of me showing me back to me. Why wouldn't I show up with love? To me, I see that woman, that's success.
M: There's a couple of words that I picked out from what you were saying, this openness, radiance, those are kind of what stood out to me as opposed to, if you're achieving that masculine success, I imagine you're probably closed into open. You're probably rigid instead of soft.
T: That's the word right there. It's rigid. It's the woman or the man sitting in—I'm using the bar as an example. I don't know why, but it's just going to be the bar. That's the person sitting at the bar that's like, "Don't fucking talk to me", and that's okay because we have had to develop a sense of safety because the world did not do that for us.
I've been that woman. Occasionally I am that woman when there are people who are like, "she's so open" and I'm like, "oh, now I got too close". That feels like success to me too, being so aware of your body and your energy that I know when to close, but one of the things I remember, is I have this program called
Ignite. I run it at the beginning of every year. We just finished a round. It's love and relationships and masculine and feminine dynamics. One of the questions that always comes up is "How am I supposed to walk down the street feeling radiant when I'm not safe?"
Fantastic question, because there is truth in us not being safe. There is also truth that we create our own reality at every single moment on such a deep level, that it's deeper than what we read in a manifestation book. Every thought, every feeling, is writing the chapters of our lives. If I am safe within me first, if I am so safe within me, I walk through the world like I am safe, no one will mess with me, then more often than not, you just are.
That doesn't mean that there are not bad people who can come in and affect you. I'm on a tightrope with this conversation, but it just comes down to, create the safety first so that you are so safe that being magnetic and being yourself is just a byproduct of that.
M: We have to acknowledge that there are places, times, and situations that are dangerous for women. We have to acknowledge that. Your podcast is called the activated woman, and I was recently on it and this is what I was trying to get at with this "activated".
What it says to me is somebody who knows themselves so well, and they aren't shut off to the world. They are open to the world. They're turned on, they are activated. That's what I'm picking up from you in the sense of creating an internal sense of safety, creating an internal sense of self-reliance.
One other thing that you mentioned that I thought was fabulous, it wasn't this morning, it was yesterday morning.
I usually do a morning ritual, some days I just don't get to it. Yesterday morning, I drew a card and I'm blanking on which card it was, but there is a line in the description that said, "walk like a woman loved" and it was so powerful for me because another time in my life, it would have been "walk like a woman who is loved externally by a man" that's how I would have read that. Instead, I read it (and this was a sign of my own healing and my own growth) as "walk as a woman who's loved by herself" and it made me emotional.
When I imagine walking as a woman who's loved, it's a woman whose head is high, whose heart is open, whose lower chakra power centres are open, and that's almost what you were describing in your own words. It's cool that people can come at similar imagery or similar feelings from different angles.
T: Oh, my gosh, "walk like a woman loved", I want that tattooed on my forehead. I want it everywhere in my house. Yeah, you're so right. I remember I heard this manifestation teacher say this once and I thought it was really cute, she was like, "I have this affirmation that helped me get successful, and it's, 'I look in the mirror every morning and I say, everyone loves me, everyone freaking loves me'" and I loved it.
It is true that when we start on this journey, we have this feeling that we're going to be judged or shamed or whatever. Obviously, everyone loving you comes from you loving you. Everything is me. If I'm talking about external, it's still internal. I definitely feel that way. You feel the difference between walking into a space like, "nobody loves me" versus "everybody loves me" and that starts with me and you feel that person, so deeply.
M: I want to use that as a mantra. Everybody loves me and it starts with me. That's really cool. We've conceptualized feminine success, and how it's different. It feels different. It is perceived differently.
You can notice it differently when somebody is in a feminine version of success. How does this translate to leadership? How do we take this sense of success and then lead in the world from that place?
T: I don't know why, but everything that you're saying and asking me is giving me full-body goosebumps. I think because this conversation is timely in the world. I think that women are rising into leadership right now and there's duality in this too.
Obviously, we blend the masculine and feminine. It's important to blend them in a sacred way for you, understanding that masculine success still is good. I just want to say that really quick and masculine leadership still can be good when it comes from love and divinity.
Feminine leadership, first and foremost, starts with the self-led woman, the woman who gets herself up in the morning, who does the things that she needs to do for herself who forces herself to shake her ass under the full moon in the mirror if she needs to do it. It's the woman who shows up for herself.
In the way that she wished a lover would show up for her. It's the woman who leads with empathy and compassion. It's what I call the lioness. It's ferocious and loving at the same time. It's the way that I can talk to my team, in a way that's like, "I love you so much" - that's the energy of it, "Here's what's not working. Here's what is working". I don't need to be fearful because I am rooted in love at all times and everyone knows it.
I lead myself and I lead others with love, empathy, and compassion. Those are the main three pillars. There are more pillars that I talk about in my programs, but empathy, love, and compassion for myself and the way that trickles into the world. At this time in my life, I've been activated to a new level of leadership because of the grief that I'm going through because of how deeply I've been cracked open this year.
2022 has just been a year of absolute loss for me, and still having to lead myself out of bed every day and show up because my mission and my message are bigger and more important. Feeling how important it is in the world that women are speaking this way right now, it's unlike anything that I could possibly describe other than the "and".
The "I am grieving and I am powerful. I am feeling it all and I am not bypassing the feelings I'm feeling or the feelings of the world right now, and I'm still gonna rise". I have this visual in my head, even with the Roe V Wade, which we talked about on my podcast. I have this visual in my head and it's energetic completely, but I think the women are awake now.
It's like, "Okay, boys, we're going to go ahead and take the toy guns out of your hands. You've lost your privileges and we're taking over now". As long as we stick to that energetic feeling, it will create a ripple effect in the world. Again, rooted in love, compassion, and empathy.
I'm not mad at men. I'm not mad at the masculine. I don't need more war or anger. I don't need to go throw my arrows at anyone. I don't need to shame anyone for being right or left. I don't need to shame anyone for being vax or anti-vax, that is so surface level. What I'm talking about is the truth and the truth is we're done with. We're pulling this in, women are taken over.
The most important thing about women taking over and understanding feminine leadership is that we don't have to lead like a man. We lead like women. A really great example is looking at the Amazonian warriors and how they lead and how they run a matriarchy, and that right there, I think we're ready.
M: You said a word a while ago when we first started talking about being an individual. What comes up for me when you're talking about feminine leadership with empathy and compassion is this collectivism. Doing for the good of all, instead of for the good of one person.
It doesn't mean that you don't shine and you don't have value as an individual as well. With the intention - I keep coming back to that word, with the intention of everything being for the good of all people.
T: There's a couple of expressions that come through when my business gets real woo-woo and spiritual and one of them is you are the universe expressing itself through a three-dimensional filter. That means that you are limitless. If you put limits on yourself, you're saying the universe is not capable of anything because you are the universe. That's one of the things.
Then the other one is, for the good of all involved. I remember I had a mentor years ago and she taught me this "for the good of all involved" and her prayer was "I'm open to what is highest and best good for me and for all involved". She was hoping it was going to be making a million dollars and she ended up having a baby instead at 40 years old.
She was like, "was not expecting that, did not see that coming, and didn't even know it was in there till 20 weeks until the second trimester. But it was for the good of all involved because that little boy is incredible". Well, that's someone who's going to make an impact in the world by being a man raised by women, by me, by her, I'm with her constantly.
I don't know what the good involved looks like, but I'm super open to whatever that means and I'm going to keep being the woman and embodying the woman who brings that energy.
M: I love that. Going into the energetics and going into the woo space, there are some people whose energy is going to bring out maybe "I'm a warrior" kind of feeling in me, and then there's someone else's energy who's gonna bring out a mother-quality in me and someone else's energy is going to bring out a lover quality in me.
Being able to identify what healing or what energy I need to be in, and in identifying the person who can help with that particular type of healing, I think that's really cool.
T: Yeah, hire healers. You know, I think it's easy to overlook healers because we're still so conditioned to want the masculine step-by-step. I find myself doing this too. I can hire this healer or I could hire this money mindset coach. I'm going to go for the masculine option, which is money mindset. That feels tangible. I kind of get it. It's mindset, but I get it.
A healer, it's a completely feminine, surrendered, trusting process. Honestly, feelers should be charging a lot of money for the work that they do and they're still being overlooked but there is nothing like deeply, deeply healing, the stuff that's holding you back.
M: It's funny you mentioned that because as my audience is therapists, there are different modalities in therapy. There are sematic modalities, which are much more body and embodiment type approaches, and then there's a solution-focused brief therapy, which is like, "we're going to do six sessions and in each session, we're going to do this and that, and this and that".
Often when I'm teaching my students to come up with their first coaching programs or their first group programs or memberships or whatever, we do lean into that linear like step one, step two, because that's what tends to sell. When it's your first program, you want to bring revenue in and then you can start to learn to experiment and play around with maybe not-so-linear programs.
What I'm hearing from you too, is that we play not only like intrinsic value, but monetary value on that step-by-step versus maybe some of the more cyclical or emotional-based types of offers.
T: We need money. We need money to survive and money feels really good. For me, I'm the most sensual, seductive, and orgasmic in my body when I'm financially secure and safe. With that said, I've been collecting some data for a while now that's fascinating because I am in this spiritual woman entrepreneur field. I find that the step-by-step process is what sells well to people who are not millionaires and people who are not billionaires because we need it.
Now, millionaires and billionaires, the people who we want to embody, the people who we want to reach, that type of success, they're the ones hiring astrologers and healers. I just find that fascinating, because if you want to reach that level, let's talk about embodiment and manifestation real quick.
If you want to be that person, you got to be that person now. It's like, be the person who hires the healer and get there faster. You don't need to wait 10 years to become the person who hires healers. Hire the healer now. It is bold for me in my business.
I will create loose outlines for my programs, but I'm completely feminine and spirit-led. I sit in union with myself before a call and I'm like, "what needs to come through?" Then I follow the energy and it creates fantastic results because if I go into my client who is suffering from, let's say sexual trauma and she wants to work through some of that with me and I go and I'm like, "mm, but I was hoping money mindset today because that's part of this curriculum" it's not truly in service.
That is the power of the feminine is "I can feel you, tap into you. I can see what needs to be cleared and healed and I have my steps for that too". Obviously, I'm a hypnotherapist and I have my tools, but it's both.
M: It seems like it might be insignificant, but I've seen this in myself because when I was first starting my business, all I listened to were other business podcasts, really trying to get those tangible nitty-gritty details of, "How do I do this? How does this work? What has to happen next?" and all of that.
I think it was probably five years into my business where the revenue is at a great level, sustainable long-term established audience, and established offer, I stopped listening to business podcasts and I started listening to more spiritual podcasts. The subject matter was different, but it still was very heady and it still was me taking in information.
I was still learning, but it was a different category of information I was learning. I would say in the last seven, eight months, I've been listening to music again. Everybody listens to music. That seems insignificant, but listening to music to learn something. I'm not in my head when I'm listening to music. I'm in my body a hundred percent when I'm listening to music.
I'm on the treadmill and I'm listening to music. I'm stretching at the gym and I'm listening to music. I'm not trying to consume more information and it wasn't a gradual shift. It was just one day, I was like, "oh, I'm going to listen to this podcast instead" and then it just became almost an overnight shift, but it wasn't something that was conscious, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
It wasn't like "Today, I feel like I've listened to enough business information and I've consumed what I need. I'm going to switch my media today". It just happened. Then when I switched from podcasts in general to music, I decided that day, but it wasn't like I had thought about it or premeditated or pre-planned it, it was only looking back that I saw this movement.
It makes total sense because I am in a place where I feel secure and I don't need to stuff my head with more knowledge, I can just 'be' now and trust that I know how to run a business and I know how to make money. I know how to do all these things. I don't need to prove that to myself again and again and again.
T: I've totally been the podcast addict myself. End of 2020, and early 2021 I was working at my fashion job. I had to go back to work because my first year in business, 2020, wasn't great. Which is the first year. It's fine. My whole eight-hour shift was business podcasts again and again and again.
It becomes an addiction, but it's like an addiction to not being enough because you're like, "I need more, I need more, I need more". Then you just feel bad about yourself all the time and you're overwhelmed.
Then you start moving in the direction of other people's wisdom and advice instead of your own, like me trying to be a business coach, because I was stuffing my head with business coaches, like, "oh, I'm not even listening to myself here", shutting it down is like the best thing you can do for yourself.
M: You get the skills that you need. It gives you that security. It gives you that foundation and then be able to springboard or I don't know what I'm trying to say, but what's coming to my mind is Maslow. You get the foundational needs met, the informational needs met, and then you can go and play a little bit.
Then there will come another time where maybe you're going to the next level, and then you need to get more information. But instead of always being in that one-track mind of "I've got to learn more and do more and consume more", maybe there are seasons where you're consuming and learning, and then other seasons where you're at a different place and not necessarily having to be stuffing your head.
T: Totally, and that's healthy too. It's whatever your process is. This process was so meant for you. For some reason, the visual that came through it was; you know when you're a little kid and you're talented at everything, you can do anything you want to do and you put your mind to it and then you choose the one thing for me, it was acting.
I was so good and so talented. Then I started acting lessons and then I was sharpening my tool and sharpening my tool. That's when I learned "this is the scale and this is where you're not good enough, and this is how other people are" and then you start to lose that natural ability to bring magic to the world.
You have to then go through all of this undoing of all the things you just learned while still keeping the tools so that you can come back to your magic. What if we just don't lose our magic in the process? How about that? I don't know how, but how about that?
M: It's funny you mentioned that, that's exactly what happened to me with singing. I was a singer when I was little, had a talent for it or an affinity for it, and entered vocal training. That's where I feel like I lost any of that spark. Now my five-year-old, (my seven-year-old likes to sing) but my five-year-old, she's like me where she's already matching pitch. She already has a talent.
I hear her singing. She was like, "I'm drawing on the paper with the marker". She's just singing random shit, not actually singing songs. I'm like, "you are a beautiful singer." I just praise her every time I can. I want her to retain that magic instead of hearing "Oh, well you were a little flat there, honey".
T: This is what happened to me. Honestly, every time I opened my mouth to sing to my family, it was like flat, off-pitch that I learned all these things about "okay, I guess I'm not good enough to keep going forward. I guess I'm going to give this up and I'm just gonna go over here. I'm really better at this..."
M: Keeping that childlike magic without it being criticized away or without having to fit some kind of mold, I think helps us bring everything full circle, is the definition of success. It breaks this patriarchal mold. I like how you've mentioned too, that masculine isn't what's bad. It's the patriarchal system. It's the convoluted version of the masculine. That's not so great.
T: It goes so deep, and once you start to see it and uncover it you can't unsee it. At first, you start to notice the masculine and feminine is there in everything. There's the sun and the moon and the sand and the sea, and like, oh my gosh, and the water and the this. It's fun and playful.
Then you start to kind of dig into systems and systems of oppression and you see how everything is a system. Little stop signs mean 'stop here' in this three-dimensional reality, and that's good. I think I mentioned this with you before, but, it means we stop so that we're safe and that's a good system. Except for, that's not a universal law. That's something that we decided.
Then you start to realize that our entire society is just collectively deciding together and choosing to agree upon systems. The moment that a woman is so radical comes forward and is like, "Hey, I think these other things" we still see it as "Burn the witch", and we have different ways to burn the witch now.
It's not always burning her at a stake. It could be canceling her on social media for saying something as simple as "I have questions about the medical industry. I have questions about what's going into my body. I have questions about organic versus GMO." Even the media is making fun of this type of person. We see the spiritual hippie vegan or whatever, and I'm not a vegan, but, we see them portrayed in films like a loser, like a crazy person.
It's starting to shift a little bit. We have more conscious language happening now. But even then there's so much judgement and so much shame around a woman who suddenly thinks with her body and thinks with her pussy and thinks with her womb and has questions.
I think the more women that listen to podcasts like yours, podcasts like mine, who come into our programs and they decide to de-condition themselves and build a new reality that's based on what success means for them, we will start to dissolve the judgement, dissolve the shame, dissolve the collective need to be separated at this time when it's just not necessary. More than anything we should be coming together.
M: That's really powerful. That's how we're going to end it. You just tied a really pretty bow around that. Where should people follow up with you? If they want to learn more about feminine success, feminine leadership, embodying some of that sensuality, and all the things that we've talked about today?
T: I have a website it's upgradewithtaylor.com. I'm very active on social media, on Instagram. I'm @tayfemme and just DM me, let me know you came from this podcast. Let's have a conversation.
I run multiple programs throughout the year. My signature program is the Manifest Like A Woman Academy, which is all about the holistic feminine models of success and manifestation. I host private masterminds about quantum leadership, and I have my private one-to-one mentoring called The Activated Woman Experience, which is like VIP, private.
It's really about coming back into your body, coming back into wholeness with who you are, who you were always meant to be. It's about activating the next-level version of yourself. For the good and the best of all.
M: We'll have all those links in the show notes for people to follow along with you, both on social and to check out your website. Taylor, thank you so much for your time today. These conversations always blow my mind.
You're somebody that I would just want to always be in your space because you're just so inspiring and not only inspirational but aspirational for me. I just always appreciate it when we hang out.
T: Thank you so much. Well, come on over. I have an extra room.
M: I'm taking a trip. All right. I'll talk with you soon. Bye.
That is just so fun to play around in these different realms, play around in different arenas that you might hear me interview somebody in and how Taylor's language is flowy and flowery. I think it's so beautiful and also really inspiring to be around a woman who's just kind of done so much reclamation.
You can tell that Taylor is somebody who has done her healing work and has not only done that through her clinical work but also through her coaching work for herself and her clients. It's really cool.
As you are navigating this path toward building your side hustle, what this episode can help us do or help us examine is, success on whose terms?
What is your motivation for building your side hustle? What is your motivation for stepping beyond the therapy room? Are you stuck in this patriarchal cycle or/and are you redefining this term for yourself, reclaiming this term for yourself? How does success, look on your terms and from your feminist perspective?
That's what I'll leave you with today. I have all of Taylor's links in the show notes below. If you are interested in her work, you can certainly check her out. I will be back next week and I hope you stay tuned and keep on rising.
