Business Doula's Guide: From Clean Pain to Authentic Leadership

What if the path to your most authentic self requires letting go of who you used to be? Join the Lift One Self podcast as we welcome clarity coach and business strategist Dominiece Clifton for an intimate exploration of authentic transformation. Dominiece shares her journey through motherhood, entrepreneurship, and her role as a business doula, while unpacking the powerful concept of grieving your former self to embrace new possibilities.

We dive deep into somatic practices like yoga and breathwork, examining their crucial role in healing for Black and Brown communities. Through personal stories, Dominiece illustrates how integrating mental and physical healing creates profound self-connection and spiritual alignment.

Drawing from Resmaa Menakem's "My Grandmother's Hands," we explore choosing clean pain over dirty pain to break generational trauma cycles. Learn about practical tools for personal growth, including our Transformation University program for women entrepreneurs, combining strategic business guidance with somatic wisdom. This conversation bridges ancestral knowledge with modern business strategy, offering a holistic approach to personal and professional transformation.

Learn more about Dominiece Clifton here:
www.domrclifton.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Journey of Healing and Transition
• 11:31 Embracing Authentic Self Through Healing
• 19:46 Healing Through Somatic Practices
• 24:06 Healing Through Stillness and Somatic Practices
• 35:30 Healing Generational Trauma and Authenticity
• 50:26 Choosing Clean Pain Over Dirty Pain

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast, where we break mental health stigmas through conversations. I'm your host, nat Nat, and we dive into topics about trauma and how it impacts the nervous system. Yet we don't just leave you there. We share insights and tools of self-care, meditation and growth that help you be curious about your own biology. Your presence matters. Please like and subscribe to our podcast. Help our community grow. Let's get into this. Oh, and please remember to be kind to yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast. I'm your host, nat Nat, and as you can see in my background, I'm not in my usual spot. I'm actually in Barbados right now, so you might hear some crickets in the background or think the roosters are gone to bed, hopefully. Yet I am honored tonight because I scheduled with this guest several times Yet, with Natalie being in the hospital and transitioning, I had to cancel and reschedule with our guest and she was so gracious with me in her messages of telling me to take time and she rescheduled. And here we are today and I know this is going to be a very magical, a very healing and a very relatable conversation, because we were talking before we started recording and the safety and the depths and the vulnerability that we're able to share with each other. I'm very honored to start the year with this wonderful conversation. So, without any further ado, I want to welcome Dominique Clifton and could you introduce yourself to the audience and let them know a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 3: 1:53

Yeah, first off, thank you for having me. I feel so honored to be your first guest of 2025. And, just like you said, divine timing with the conversation. So now is when this conversation was supposed to happen. With the conversation, so now is when this conversation was supposed to happen. And it's interesting because you have gone through such a major transition with the loss of your friend, natalie, and I have also, just in the last few months, gone through transition in a different way, like I've been grieving parts of myself that I've needed to let go, to step into this version of myself, and so I feel like we've both been going through a lot of transition, which is going to make this a very different conversation than it would have been a few months ago. So, yeah, it worked out perfectly.

Speaker 3: 2:31

So, with that, I am Dominique Clifton and I feel like whenever people have us to introduce ourselves, we go into our titles and all of the things, and I won't leave with that today just because that's not where my energy is taking me things, and I won't leave with that today just because that's not where my energy is taking me. They're in my email signature. I have my name and then I have. I am human, I am worthy and I am enough, and I want to like open up and leave with that, because that just is on my heart right now, in this moment, and that is what feels more important than what I do in the title that I hold. And then, outside of being human, worthy and enough, I'm also a mama, which is something that I hold very high, because so much of who I am today is a result of these two beautiful beings that I got to birth.

Speaker 3: 3:13

So I have two girls, yara and Zuri. They're five and they're eight. I'm a daughter and there has been so much healing and grief involved in being a daughter and just mending that relationship, and so that feels important to uplift and my grandmother's energy, like I'm feeling her vibe today. She's an ancestor. She passed away almost 15 years ago now but she's still so much a part of my legacy and my journey, and so I am a granddaughter as well.

Speaker 3: 3:39

And then you know, outside of being a sister, a friend, a mentor, I am a support to other women. I have a fancy title, so I go by a clarity coach and a business strategist, but whenever I talk about my work I say that I think of myself as a business doula because I feel that birthing our dreams and the visions that spirit has entrusted to us is such a sacred process, and so it's more than just coming up with a business strategy. It's taking the thing that's on your heart or in your womb and it's allowing yourself to bring it to life. And that is a birthing process, and I get to guide people through that process, and so that's a little bit about me as we open up today's conversation, and I'm just really honored to be here today.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Thank you, and I'm just really honored to be here today. Thank you, we speak a lot of the same language, so we're not even going to have to guess certain things. I think we're going to support each other and, you know, draw out more depths and expansion and abundance in this conversation. Before we do, would you join me in a mindful moment so we can ground and open ourselves to this wonderful conversation?

Speaker 3: 4:50

I would love that so much yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:53

Thank you and for the listeners, as you always hear me with my safety spiel, if you're driving, don't close your eyes yet. You can follow the prompts and if it's getting too relaxing, just pause like fast forward to the conversation. Yet come back and do this mindful moment for yourself. You're deserving of it. So, down beneath, I'll ask you to get comfortable in your seating and, if it's safe to do so, you're going to gently close your eyes and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose. You're going to bring your awareness to watching your breath go in and out through your nose.

Speaker 2: 5:37

You're not going to try and control your breath.

Speaker 1: 5:40

You're just going to be aware of its rhythm, allowing it to guide you in your body.

Speaker 2: 5:47

There may be some sensations or feelings coming up. That's okay.

Speaker 1: 5:54

Let them surface. You're safe to feel. You're safe to let go. Surrender the need to control Release the need to resist and just be. Be with your breath, drop deeper into your body.

Speaker 2: 6:21

Now there may be some thoughts or memories that have popped up and that's okay. Gently bring your awareness back to your breath, creating space between the awareness and the thoughts and dropping deeper into your body, allowing yourself to just be. Again, more thoughts may have popped up.

Speaker 2: 6:53

Gently bring your awareness back to your breath beginning again, creating even more space between the awareness and the thoughts and dropping even deeper into your body, keeping your awareness on your breath, allowing yourself to just be Letting go of your breath Now, at your own time and at your own pace you're going to gently open your eyes while still staying with your breath.

Speaker 3: 7:52

Thank you, thank you, wow that was beautiful.

Speaker 2: 7:55

As you hold your heart, my question is how's your heart doing?

Speaker 3: 8:01

I'm feeling very grounded and centered. After that very short practice. I feel like like more engulfed in love than I was when I started, Like that's what I'm feeling in this moment.

Speaker 2: 8:12

Yeah, yeah, what was your? What is your grandmother's name?

Speaker 3: 8:18

Rebecca Rebecca Johnson.

Speaker 2: 8:21

I just want to invite Rebecca in the conversation, as I say that my nervous system is just tingling. So, yeah, I want to bring her in here and bring in Natalie and all the other ancestors that will empower this conversation and give us the courage to speak with power and honesty and truth where the mainstream can feel a little loud, where we need to even be louder and have courage to speak a truth that might not um have the proper platform. So um just want to invite them in here to empower this. So you mentioned in the conversation and allowed the listeners to know that you know you're in a transition right now, in a phase and some grieving. Are you willing to share what that is?

Speaker 3: 9:25

yeah, there have been times in my path. Well, let me let me step back. In December of 2024, I was feeling very angry and frustrated at the universe and coping with feeling like I had been in that space before. It was like deja vu. It was like I've been here December of 2022, so two years prior, I was in a very similar space of I'm an entrepreneur, full-time entrepreneur and there was a lot of fear around money and security and the things that come with being an entrepreneur sometimes, and when I was there in December of 2022, I panicked. I panicked, I was afraid this was for some context about where I was. Also, in 2022, I separated from my ex-husband in April of 22. And so I was like six months or so into a very new transition emotionally, but also financially, and like having to find my footing there. And so I got to a space where I had made a decision to make a really huge investment into a business coaching program, emptied out by my bank account, my savings, which I would not recommend for people to do. But I was like I'm going all in on my dream.

Speaker 3: 10:40

And then, once I realized that I had done that and like the aftermath of that decision set in and I'm like, oh my God, I have children that are depending on me, I have a mortgage. Like I don't have help. I started to panic and that panic and that stress just kept. It was like a snowball of, like it just grew every single day and like I could not think about anything else but my survival and I was trying to figure out how am I going to survive in this moment anything else but my survival. And I was trying to figure out how am I going to survive in this moment. And I went into like a survival mode and I was so stressed out that I literally sent myself into a very dark depression, so much so that I started having suicidal ideations and that's what I knew had gotten really bad and I needed to get some help. And then I, you know, got on antidepressant and had to go through a process of like digging myself out of this very dark hole that I had found myself in just because of so much fear and stress.

Speaker 3: 11:31

And so I was in a similar space financially at the end of this year and I had a choice, right. I had a choice that I and I remember feeling like damn, I've been here before, like this feels so familiar, right, and then I recognized that I was at a path and I had a choice of choosing to go down the same path that I chose the first time, when this, you know, was a situation I could stress and I could be overwhelmed and I could get lost in the worry and I could, you know, have my mental health be impacted by this. Or I could trust, I could trust myself, I could trust spirit, I could trust the process, I could trust that this was going to work out and that I was equipped enough to move through this. And I always say that sometimes in our lives we um other people might be able to relate to the feeling of feeling like they've been here somewhere or I've been in this type of relationship. And I think that the universe gives us opportunities to learn lessons and it's like, until you learn this lesson, you kind of keep repeating similar experiences. And then you have a choice. It's like you can repeat the same thing you did the first time, or you can choose differently.

Speaker 3: 12:40

And I recognize that I was at a lesson and what was required of me, my grieving process, was stepping out of an older version of myself and allowing myself to ascend to where I was being called to ascend to energetically and not feeling the fear of that and self-sabotaging.

Speaker 3: 12:57

So there was a mental and spiritual grieving process and death that had to take place just in the transition from the end of 2024 and stepping into this year, and there was a lot that went into, you know, thinking about what it was going to look like for me to come out of that process.

Speaker 3: 13:13

But I chose the path of trust and literally in just the last couple of weeks, I can't even begin to tell you how my life has started to shift and transform as a result of making that decision to trust and not stress and worry. And so I've just been in a space of gratitude for allowing myself to release right this older version of myself that was afraid, that was fearful of stepping into what I've been called to, and now giving myself permission to step fully into that space and like to take up the space and to occupy space in the world in that way. And so it's not easy, like there were so many emotions that went into that process, um, but I'm really, really grateful to be on the other side of that and feeling like I finally learned a lesson that I was supposed to you know that, that I needed to learn to, to move forward.

Speaker 4: 14:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:01

Thank you for sharing that vulnerability, because you dropped some very personal things. That shows that you have trust in yourself, because to share that kind of vulnerability in a world that would criticize or judge, you're good with yourself. You understand what it is to be human. You understand what it is to not separate from self and we're, you know, diving in more into self. You know, I in the world where I know in your language, it's like I grew and I'm going into a new version.

Speaker 2: 14:37

For me, what I'm learning from myself, it's that I'm removing the layers that have disconnected me from my authentic self because I was so afraid to be me yes, yeah and taking the framing yeah, yeah because I barely in there, that little part, didn't know how to be, because the experiences and the doubting and the physical pain and all these different experiences, it's like I've always been here. I just have been afraid to shine in my full light.

Speaker 3: 15:16

Yeah that is exactly it, like I'm beaming with a smile because I'm like that perfectly describes the space that I feel, like I'm in now. I was just telling my, my mentor and my business coach. She's like how are you feeling? And I'm like I am feeling like the most authentic version of myself than I have felt in all of my adult life, especially in the entrepreneurship. Because I think for so many of us, we show up how we think the world wants us to be right, like we show up as this version of ourselves that we believe that you know the world wants to see.

Speaker 3: 15:48

And I was always this very like, polished, buttoned up, put together, calculated, controlling, you know, over planning version of myself.

Speaker 3: 15:57

And I was so afraid to trust myself and to just let go of the control just a bit.

Speaker 3: 16:02

If I was doing anything meeting, podcast recording I was always preparing for it, I had to do my research, I had to do all the things to show up and be ready, and in that process, when we operate in the world that way, it's like there's a lack of trust in ourselves, but there is also a lack of trust in spirit, because what came to me was, if you are so calculated and planned, then you don't leave room for me to show up in that space, right, like if I had shown up here with all the answers to the questions or just in anything that I do.

Speaker 3: 16:35

It's like I'm not leaving the door open for spirit to flow through me, which is what this is right To receive, what I'm supposed to receive, and so it was really hard for me to trust that I was enough and that I could show up in a space and just be enough and my answers would be enough and what I had to offer would be enough. But in doing that, I feel like such a more authentic version of myself and I'm not worried about am I saying the right thing? I'm worried about, I am thinking about am I honoring myself and am I allowing myself to be a vessel now, as opposed to am I saying the right thing?

Speaker 2: 17:07

Yeah, as I said, we're going to mirror each other. Actually, that, um, and I think you know, when you're in survival mode, the thing, especially if you're in survival mode because you've been harmed, you learn very quickly. You're in a better position to give to people all the time. So, to actually surrender, to receive you don't think you're worthy of receiving. I haven't gotten there yet. And so the work is surrendering those defense mechanisms to allow to receive what's already within you the worthiness, not just intellectually thinking I'm worthy, but it's embodying it and feeling it.

Speaker 2: 17:54

When my clients, like, when they come to me and I'm like they'll ask me and I'm like, okay, but you know what you're doing right, and they, and they're like, mike, you're thinking it, are you feeling it? They're like I know you're going to say that. And then, as soon as it just opens up, because you know we are so conditioned not to feel our authentic emotions and when we were young, so if we expressed sadness or we expressed anger, we were told to be something other than that expressed anger, we were told to be something other than that, not given the space to understand what is going on with this energy and what's the messaging it's trying to explain. Yet because of the caretakers, our parents, the adults, they didn't have the language and the emotional intelligence to feel their own. It started disrupting their stuff that they were holding down.

Speaker 2: 18:42

So it was like be something other, because I don't have the space to feel my own emotions, and so that's why there's no blame game in this. It's having an understanding of you didn't even have the capacity for yourself. You weren't even understanding of what you were doing towards yourself, so how would you know what you're projecting to somebody else? You mentioned that you practice your somatic practitioner. Can you explain to the listeners what that is and what you offer and how you got to that understanding? Because not everybody understands what somatic is.

Speaker 3: 19:23

Yeah, thank you for this question. So the word somatic at the root of the word somatic is the word soma, which in Greek is body, and so somatic practices are body-centered practices, practices that focus on allowing your body to release the stress, the trauma, the spiritual wounds that it's holding. And oftentimes in our society, when we think about healing we think about, when we think about mental and emotional healing, we think about talk therapy, right, and so we're in the age where everyone is going to therapy, and I like to say that talk therapy alone is not enough, because when you start to understand the body, you start to understand that the body is actually where the stress and trauma is stored. And so it's great to go to therapy and to talk about the things that happened to you in the past and to understand and unpack those things. But you're just unpacking them, you're just gaining a deeper understanding of what's happening. Unless you do things to allow your body to release that, your body is still holding it. I wrote a book called Hold Space to Heal, and in the book I talk about it's seven somatic practices that you use to release, reconnect and remember, and essentially what that means holding space to heal is just giving your body the time to do what it knows to do.

Speaker 3: 20:40

The problem is that so many of us are busy. We're moving, we're doing that. We don't slow down for our bodies to do the things that they are naturally and intuitively wanting to do. When we are moving, and fast and busy, our nervous system is in a state of a stress response or a survival response. We're operating from fight, flight, freeze. We're going from one thing to the next, never giving ourselves a moment to rest or to breathe. We opened up with breath work. We never give ourselves those moments, and so we're always aroused. Our nervous system is always aroused, and what somatic practices allow is that they turn on and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest mode, and that helps the body to one begin to calm down from that stress response state and then, once your body calms down and the nervous system feels safe, you can now start releasing the stress that you're holding and releasing the trauma that you're holding. And there are many paths that you can take when it comes to somatic practices. So I am a certified yoga instructor meditation, breath work, and I also I have my bowls over here, I'm a sound bath healer, and so those are the modalities that I have connected to for healing and releasing. Although I'm certified in yoga, I really connect with sound and breath, and so those are usually the ways that I love to guide people, and also for myself, when I hold space for myself or others.

Speaker 3: 22:04

And you asked me how I got to this point, or you know what. What was, I guess, my introduction to somatic practices? It was honestly accidental. I started doing yoga during COVID, just as a way to release the stress that I was feeling because of all the things that was happening in COVID, and I started to see like, oh, this is helping my mental health right. Like I was just kind of doing it as a physical movement thing, trying to mix it in with the gym, stretching, but I started to see that I was starting to feel calmer and starting to just have a greater capacity, and so I decided that I wanted to become a yoga teacher to help other people. Like that was my intention when I started. I want to offer this to other people, and at the time, my introduction to yoga came from a YouTuber, a Black YouTuber. Her name is Ariana Elizabeth, and I felt so inspired by her. I'm like I don't see a lot of Black yogis, right, like even in 2020, I still wasn't seeing a lot of them, and so a part of why I stepped into that role is because I feel like representation is so important when it comes to the wellness industry, and I was like I want to be able to offer this as a service to everyone, but especially Black and Brown folks that need to heal and don't necessarily have the knowledge around what it means to truly heal, and so that was my. That was me starting just kind of out of space, of feeling called to it and being obedient. The thing about yoga teacher training that no one tells you before you start is the amount of healing that is going to come with that process for you, right, and I've had this conversation with so many yoga teachers where it's like, oh my God, if I had known what I was signing up for when I said yes to that training, I don't know if I would have did it, because what happens is you are immersed in somatic practices for weeks or months or however long your program is, and so I did two yoga teacher trainings back to back.

Speaker 3: 23:51

I did a 200 hour, and I would not recommend this for people. I used to be very ambitious. And then I did a 300 hour right after and this was around the time of COVID yeah, I know, it was around the time of COVID. So I did this within like a six or seven month span back to back. So that was like six or seven months of just being deeply immersed in meditation and breath work and restorative yoga and yoga nidra.

Speaker 3: 24:23

I came out of that. I would sit to do my assignments, I would be on the computer and having my instructor guide me and I would just be having all of this stuff from my childhood come up that I had suppressed and just forgotten about, and I would just be lying back in a restorative yoga position and tears would be flowing from my eyes for memories that I had forgotten about. And that was when I recognized how powerful it was to just be still. I had always been someone who was doing figuring out what do I need to do to fix myself and heal and all the things, and I was like, oh, when I'm still, my body just has a moment to breathe now and it does what it needs to do. And I'll close out with saying that, just in the act of allowing myself to feel first, right To feel, because I had disconnected from my body for a long time.

Speaker 3: 25:04

I didn't feel, so there was a process of reconnecting through my body that was happening with these somatic practices. There was a process of sitting with those emotions, like feeling them right, like remembering how it felt and then releasing it right. We feel like we have to stay stuck in stuff, and what somatic practices offer is the release. You don't have to stay stuck in your pain and the things that happen. Yes, they happen. You can acknowledge it, you can feel it, you can go through whatever that grieving process looks like for you, but you also get to release it, and so that's a really long way of saying that allowing the body, holding space for the body to heal is one of the most amazing things that we can offer ourselves, and I just want to spread the word to people that, while it is great to go to talk therapy, it's a both and, where you also have to be doing things to allow your body to heal.

Speaker 2: 25:58

To piggyback on what you're saying. Talk therapy, people unpack. What they don't realize is they put the stuff right back into the luggage and then they unpack again and then they put it back into the luggage and they're wondering. And I'm like, oh, you're doing movement, but what the movement is is you're rocking in a rocking chair. Yeah, you feel like you're doing a whole bunch of stuff but you're not getting anywhere because you're not feeling. And that is one of the things that you know mainstream and talk and CBD and all these kinds of different things.

Speaker 2: 26:34

It has its place, yet it doesn't have depth of regulating that nervous system, trying to go in the head when you have to be in the body. As I said, I'm in Barbados. I came here to integrate the grief. I understand. You know reality is the as is.

Speaker 2: 26:53

Yet our mind doesn't like change. Our mind doesn't like the separation of another body, not being here anymore. The nervous system isn't communicating with another nervous system in the way that it needs to Now. It's spirit to spirit. So the mind will play memories to try to get you to be in the past.

Speaker 2: 27:20

Yet, like you said, you have a choice to be in the present, right now. And what are you going to create with that? Yet these emotions still have to be felt, not the toxic positivity of I'm just going to be happy all the time and go, go, go and it's like that's going to catch up with you eventually, like the body. Body keeps count, it gets stored, and sadness, anger, the frustration, the fear, they all have its place. You don't have to get stuck in it, and the reason why a lot of us will get stuck in it is because we're rejecting feeling, the depths of it. We won't let it pass, pass through. They're in a habit of cutting it off and pushing it down, and then the rumination and the thoughts and these different things that we use to cope to try to avoid that vulnerability and that sense of helplessness, mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: 28:19

I'm feeling my grandmother is saying tell my story, and so I'm going to just share a little bit about her story. So so much of the work that I do in the wellness industry is really in her legacy relationship that we could have. I was a caretaker for her as a child and like helping my mom, but she was sick most of my life. I didn't get to experience this version of my grandmother that I hear other people talk about. When she was 50 years old, she had a brain aneurysm and that was the start of just a spiral of, you know, negative health consequences or negative health issues and diseases and illnesses and ailments. And when I was growing up I was just like, oh, my grandma's old, like that. That was what I thought as a child. She's old and this is what you know old age looks like. And even as I got older and they would talk about her story and say she had a brain aneurysm at 50, I was like, oh, 50 is old. And then now, as this 30 something year old version of myself, I'm like 50 is like your prime, like you are, like you know, michelle Obama loves being in her 50s. So it's just like life is like just getting good and just as life is supposed to be getting good, my grandmother has this brain aneurysm. She had multiple strokes, she had high cholesterol, she had diabetes I mean, it's like you name it, she had it. When I go to the doctor's office and I like do the medical history on my maternal side, I'm checking all the boxes because she literally her body held onto so many things, and what I learned in her passing, when I started asking questions to understand her life better, is that she had so much unresolved stress and trauma that had started at two years old when she lost her biological mother and she lived her entire life never addressing any of that. She had a really hard life. She and this was back before therapy was a thing and before people had access to healing, and so people would just move through the world in the way that they knew, like everyone was trying to survive, and so people were not knowing about somatic practices or even having access to talk therapy, and so people would just move through.

Speaker 3: 30:24

So my grandmother grew up in that time. So she lost her mom at two years old. She was raised by a mix of you know, dad and family and kind of, in the thirties and forties, everyone just kind of pitched in. She, she was raped in high school and got pregnant and her child got taken away from her. So there was the trauma of losing your first child and having to move through life in that way divorce, just like all these things, right. And so finally, at 50 years old, her body, after holding years and decades of trauma, literally just started shutting down and like responding to all that it had been taking and carrying.

Speaker 3: 31:01

And so this just isn't about the emotional toll that trauma and stress and grief can have on us. It's also about the physical impacts and the ways that that also can manifest physically in our bodies. And I mean sometimes, like we can be dealing with unresolved grief, stress, all of these things, and we're having physical things happening and we're not connecting the dots on the fact that whatever is happening for me right now is actually related to my unresolved grief or is actually related to this trauma, these emotions that I refuse to like allow myself to be with. And so this just isn't a mental health thing, right, like this is a life or death thing for many of us. And so I just felt compelled and led to share that like it gets real, it gets very real.

Speaker 2: 31:51

Unfortunately, a lot of the medical system isn't connecting trauma. They are a little bit now, yet they'll not ask like all of a sudden you're going to the doctors, I'm having headaches all the time or I'm having stomach issues, not asking well, what does your personal life look like? What does your relationship, the stress look like? And a lot of people don't even know what stress is. They don't understand that it's releasing cortisol and too much cortisol creates inflammation and starts impacting the other systems in your body and then they start shutting down and that's where the disease starts happening. They're not putting that to and they're just thinking stress is something outside that. It's not a chemical release that goes on, and some of them don't realize that there's psychological stress.

Speaker 2: 32:36

There's so much invisible tasks that we have in our mind that we don't even know how to just say pause and stop. Why? Because your nervous system is dysregulated and it's in survival mode. So if you're not in tune with your body and being able to, as you said, be still, the body is not able to release all of the steam and pressure and everything else, and then it starts to come up. It's very vulnerable and pressure and everything else, and then it starts to come up. It's very vulnerable and, as I said, the word helplessness that is a very stinky, uncomfortable place to be in. Yet you can allow it to coexist in your everyday. You're no longer rejecting it. Your body can just naturally give you the signals and you can learn to recognize your impulsivity, recognize when your emotions are starting to be activated, because you're able to do a type of matrix and slowing down things yeah, yeah but it takes practice and everybody wants the microwave solution when I wrote the book.

Speaker 3: 33:43

Um, I split my book into three sections release, reconnect and remember. And for me that was what my healing journey has been like. And so now I mean I'm always kind of moving through phases, but I would say now I'm in the remembering phase and I love what you said earlier about it's not like a new version of ourselves, it's about like releasing the late, removing the layers and just remembering and being an authentic selves, and that felt and resonated with me so deeply. So the releasing is what we've been talking about these somatic practices and allowing yourself to feel and to be in the stuff that doesn't always feel good Like that's the thing. It doesn't feel good to sit with the emotions and to feel right the things, but it is so necessary with the emotions and to feel right the things, but it is so necessary. So there's the releasing and then, after you start to allow yourself to go through that releasing process, there's reconnecting, and reconnecting looks like many different things.

Speaker 3: 34:33

For me, reconnecting was reconnecting with my body because at a young age, because of my own trauma you know, unresolved childhood trauma and all the stories and baggage that I was carrying I disconnected and I was emotionally eating and I would just not honor my body and just stuff myself and, you know, not feel good. But I was so disconnected. And that shows up for us in different ways it can be overeating, it can be drinking, it can be, you know, substance use, it can be sex, it can be a lot of different things that we use to cope with numbing ourselves. And so a part of the process of healing is allowing yourself to reconnect with your body and to feel those emotions and to feel the way that your body begins to communicate to you and let you know when it's not okay. And then there's also reconnecting with spirit, right, like that's a part of the reconnection process, because oftentimes, when we have experienced stress and trauma and all of these things grief, right, we're disconnected from source, right, our source, and so there's that reconnection process. And then I also see it as a reconnecting with our intuitive selves, right, that intuitive voice that, as children, we're very connected to. And then we go throughout the world and we lose that guidance and direction throughout the world and we lose that guidance and direction. And so it's that part. And then, once you've released and reconnect, now you're in the remembering phase. Now you are where you talked about earlier, where you are allowing yourself to be this authentic version of yourself. You're uncovering and remembering those versions of yourselves. That's how I see healing, that's how I view healing, and somatic practices are such a helpful part of that process.

Speaker 3: 36:17

And I realized, as we were talking, I didn't define. I kind of defined but I didn't get like what does it actually mean to hold space to heal and what does that look like? So there's many ways that you can doidra. There's meditation or, excuse me, there's restorative yoga, there's yin yoga, there's going for a walk, there's going for a jog, there's going swimming, there's doing Zumba, there's dancing.

Speaker 3: 36:33

There is all of these opportunities for you to do whatever resonates and feels good in your body. And when you do that, the goal is to make sure that it feels good in your body, because that level of safety is also what helps to disarm your nervous system. And so this isn't about, like going to the gym and hitting the gym hard if that's not your thing. Like, if it's your thing, great, but if it's not your thing, find the thing that makes you feel good and do that thing, and just in the process of the walk or, you know, the yoga, you will start to find that you know things start to come up and then you're able to release and kind of move through the healing process.

Speaker 2: 37:06

Yeah, I think people don't realize sometimes they're going to the gym and they're creating more of a survival mode and their nervous system is in high alert and they're producing more cortisol and they're wondering well, why I am not getting the rest of the? And it's like because you're not allowing yourself to be, you're trying to run away from the deep feeling of vulnerability and you really have to understand physically what your body's doing and there's so many mixed messages in the world and I love how you're giving different definitions for people. When I say to my clients because I know exercise can be have a lot of aversion for people there's this other task that I have to get into. I'm like just dance, just dance. Run some music If it has to be slow music, if it has to be high, intense, just let your body find its way to express and let it be the way it needs to be.

Speaker 2: 38:00

Your mind's going to might say it's corny or I didn't know.

Speaker 2: 38:03

You're going to release that part and just step in to allow yourself to move in whatever way the expression needs to be, and at one point you might just come into a big ball of puddles of tears and crying and emoting, because the body finally feels safe to express, because the analytical mind isn't shoving everything down, it's actually open so that the body can just give its its expression.

Speaker 2: 38:33

Or, like you said, the nature walks and all that. It's finding the way that your body needs to communicate. Let me I just because I understand the mind, like even coming here, my mind tried to stop me so many ways of not coming to Barbados and I had to meet those barricades and the fear that was coming up. I even had a panic attack in the lobby and it was like, oh, and if I didn't have the tools I know that could have had me spiral in such a way, and I'm thankful for experiencing that, because then that lets me to relate to people that are in those situations constantly and I can relate to it and understand like, oh, that doesn't feel good, Yet it's. There's not this one size fits all. It's really being a mad scientist with yourself and finding out what is it that you need. Stop looking for the permission outside of yourself. Begin to recognize you are the one and the owner of your story and give yourself the permission.

Speaker 1: 39:42

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 39:44

I love that so much because we give so much of our power away, right, we give so much of our authority away to other people. When you think about the traditional healing system in our let's just say, the Western world, when you're sick, you go to a doctor and like, don't get me wrong. Right, there's a place for all of these things. I'm not one of those people that's like, don't go to the doctor, like, yeah, there are times, but sometimes there are things that we can do ourselves and we just automatically go to this person. And so it is what you said about permission. Or when you're dealing with something emotionally, again, there are times I've been through therapy, I've been on an antidepressant, so I know that there's a time and place for that. But there have also been moments in my life where I've had to learn to resource myself and work through that process myself.

Speaker 3: 40:27

And I think for so many of us, we get used to seeking answers externally and not doing the work, of just allowing ourselves to be still and say, like you. I think you said what do I need? Right, like, how often do you just sit and ask that question and see what comes up? And so I've learned and I try to encourage my friends to do this too. Like when we're going through things, when they're going through things, sometimes your first inclination is to reach out and call someone and like cry or vent or whatever thing. I'm like girl, resource yourself, like take some deep breaths, you know what I mean. Like you got this, like I will give you some of these things. But there's also the ability to care for ourselves, and I think so many of us have to get back to that right, like those ancestral um, you know, uh callings and things that are natural for us, that we've gotten away from in breath work and meditation, like these are those sorts of practices.

Speaker 2: 41:23

To empower ourselves and to again come back to, like you said, trust. We're more told that we're not good enough, we're not there yet, and to doubt ourselves. So when the doubt comes in, of course you're going to seek on the outside, because that's what you've been conditioned to do, and to trust yourself. And also, trust doesn't mean you're always going to have the right answers. It's trust that when I make mistakes I'm still safe, it's not going to feel good yet. That's what learning is about. But that takes a depth of confidence, of work with yourself and, again, that being in your worth. As you said, when you were doing your healing and you had the trauma from your personal life, have you recognized that some of your grandmother and your mother's trauma was housed in your body.

Speaker 3: 42:22

Oh, my goodness, wow, that is such a great question. I have done so much energetic release, generational energetic releasing. Some of it has been on my own, some of it has been through like plant medicine. That's another, you know, healing alternative that I've been open to trying. Some of it has just been through like energy, energy releasing. But so much of my journey has been my journey but also the generational trauma that I've been holding. I didn't I mentioned like childhood trauma but I didn't get much into it. I was.

Speaker 3: 42:59

My conception story for me was very traumatic for a long time. There was also, in addition to the trauma of it, there was the shame and the guilt that came with my story. I've never met my biological father and so my mom essentially got impregnated by this older man at 16 years old and there was her trauma of that conception story that got passed on to me because she was going through that grieving process and her own shame and guilt as she was carrying me, and so I literally was birthed into the world just with so much shame and guilt, right Like from being in the womb. And when I look at my mom's story and how you know, her life unfolded with all of the trauma that was happening with my grandmother. There was just so much trauma, like there was just so, and my grandmother lost her mother at two right. So even with that and the way that my grandmother was raised and then the way that she then raised my mom and then the way that my mom raised me, there was a loss of, like a motherly presence with my grandmother. So there was a lot that she missed out on, that she could not then give to my mom that then my mom was not able to give to me and I didn't understand that for a long time. So there was a lot of resentment and anger, not just because of the conception story but because of how I was raised by my mom.

Speaker 3: 44:16

And of course, now, looking back, having gone through my own healing journey, having found forgiveness and you know we're mending our relationship and also having become a parent, I realized, wow, like she did the best that she could, my grandmother did the best that she could. But, to answer your question, there has been so much generational healing, specifically on my maternal grandmother's side, that has had that has had to happen for me to be here and be this version of myself so much. It wasn't just, it wasn't just for me, and I didn't know that. Even you know, like things were coming up that were not just for me. Energy was being released, that was not just for me. Shame was being released, that was not just my shame, yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:57

Um, I cause. Some people are aware of this and some aren't, so that's why I was like she knows about it. Because if you're feeling the channeling of your grandmother and able to tell her story, you're energetically charged, because nervous systems create nervous systems, and so emotions are energy and they get stored in it, and if they haven't been released so that there's a full connection, it just gets passed down into the nervous systems. So there's some of that charges in your daughter's nervous systems and so when they come up, you now have the tools to be able to hold space. Are you going to do it perfectly? No, you're human, we. There is no perfection. It's always a learning. That's why it's a constant thing.

Speaker 2: 45:44

There's no arrival space in this and that's why you need radical compassion and grace for yourself, because what you know and sometimes it doesn't meet with your actions it's like later on you look and you're like how could I have done that when I intellectually knew yet the body? You know this is the whole process. Yet, recognizing how much is stored, people think it only comes from their story. Yet there's stuff that they're not able to relate to because it's it's so dense of the generational stuff and a lot of them maybe might be afraid to tap into that because the world will tell you it's woo-woo and it's in your head and that doesn't exist. But more and more I'm seeing the dialogue that, yeah, this is what we're healing and creating the space that it can pass through. So I'm going to bring you into a reflective question. I'm going to bring you into a reflective question. I'm going to ask you to go back to your 18 year old self and you have three words to tell your 18 year old self to bring you to the journey of right now.

Speaker 3: 47:08

What would those three words be? I mean, it's, it's so simple. I feel like it's so simple, but it's the thing that I wish I had known and the thing that I needed to hear so much when I was younger. It's you are enough. It's you are enough. It's you are enough. Because I'd spent most of my childhood feeling like I wasn't enough and I wasn't worthy because of my past. And then I tried to prove my worthiness and enoughness by overworking and like being this version of myself in the world, and I would always still, no matter how hard I worked or how much I achieved, I would still have the voice in my head to remind me that I wasn't enough. And so that 18 year old version of myself, who just like felt like she needed to prove her worth and like she needed to find her worth in you know, men and boys and all the things like I would just go back and hold her hand and hug her and tell her that she's enough.

Speaker 2: 47:55

I'm very honored to be in your space. Thank you you've done significant work to swim upstream, yet recognize that you're not needing to swim upstream, that you can be carried.

Speaker 3: 48:17

Wow, oh my gosh, I have to share something with you.

Speaker 3: 48:23

When I first stepped into entrepreneurship five years ago, I stepped into entrepreneurship as a nutrition and wellness coach, and it was such a hard experience. It was so hard. It was like I was fighting every day in this business, and when I talk to people about it, I always say it felt like every day I was swimming upstream every single day. That's what it felt like, and to be at this space in my life and not just my business, but in my life where it's like, it's easeful, like it just flowing more. It's like I had to release the control that I thought that I needed to hold onto because of all that I couldn't control in my life in the past. And it is exactly what you said. It's like now. I feel like I'm being carried because I allowed myself to trust, and so those words, the wording choice that you use, just resonates so deeply with my soul, because it feels good to not be in that place anymore of swimming upstream every day as a result of, like, the unresolved grief and trauma that I was holding.

Speaker 2: 49:18

Yeah, cause, hearing what you know your mother's story, your grandmother's story and the disconnect of nurturing and the ache that you had for yourself for it and hearing you know the deep work of doing the yoga training and the meditation to allow that space for your body to release, allow that space for your body to release, people don't realize the warrior work that that took for you and some of the mind fuck, some of the conflict, the confusion, almost probably feeling like you're bipolar sometimes because there's so many different emotions and states of mind and levels of depth and dimensions that you're going into. So I really want to thank you for doing this work and shining your light.

Speaker 1: 50:16

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 50:18

Like really shining that light. Yeah, it's very profound, Very, very profound. I want to ask you is there something that you would want to leave the listeners?

Speaker 3: 50:29

I read a book a couple of years ago called my Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Minicombe. That book like there's like a top five books that changed my life and that's probably in my top five. That also helped me to understand the body a lot better and the mending and the healing of the body process. So I would recommend that book for everyone. But in the book he talks about, as adults we have the choice to choose between clean pain and dirty pain. And dirty pain is the process of going around and not wanting to face, and dirty pain for so many of us Black, white, all the races in the world and dirty pain for so many of us Black, white, all the races in the world is our process of not facing what has happened in our past and allowing ourselves to talk about it and to feel it and to move through it. Right, it's pretending that it didn't happen and people aren't still being impacted by those things. Like it's very messy when we choose to avoid doing the work.

Speaker 3: 51:19

And then he talks about clean pain, which is harder because it requires you to go through and to have the conversations and to hold space to heal and to feel and to go through that process.

Speaker 3: 51:29

So it feels messy and icky when you're in it, and I can say that the last seven of my years has been a lot of clean pain. It's been a lot of sitting in the shit right that I did not want to sit in, but I knew it was necessary to get through, and I'm so grateful that I chose that path versus the dirty path of suppression and ignoring, and so I just want to offer that right. There's always going to be pain. That's just a part of the human experience. But as humans, as spiritual beings having a human experience, we get to choose the type of pain that we want to experience. Is it going to be dirty pain, where you ignore the things and continue to perpetuate the trauma generationally, or are you going to choose clean pain, go through it and make a choice that this doesn't have to be my story, right, like I can overcome and heal and release this thing?

Speaker 2: 52:15

I'm receiving a lot from this conversation, so thank you. Now I know the listeners are like, OK, where can I find this lady? So could you let the listeners know where they can find you and what you have to offer?

Speaker 3: 52:29

Yeah, so my website is my main place of contact and building community. My website is domrcliftoncom, so D-O-M-R-C-L-I-F-T-O-Ncom, and I want to offer up on my website that if you go under the free resources tab, there are similar to what you started with there's free guided meditations and free breathwork sessions. As a somatic practitioner, it was really important for me to offer that. So they range in, you know duration, from five to 10 minutes and they are for, like, just the reset or to pause. You know all those sorts of things that we struggle with, and so I just want to offer that because that feels important for the conversation that we had today.

Speaker 3: 53:12

Those are some somatic practices and then, just outside of that, we talked a lot today about healing and you know the conversation was centered around wellness and somatic practices and caring for ourselves, and that is such an important part of who I am.

Speaker 3: 53:28

But I am also a I started saying that I was a business coach or business doula and I guide women through the process of starting businesses, but I bring all the parts of myself into that process and so, yes, we talk about business strategy and having clarity around your business and your vision, but we are also doing somatic practices, like I am also doing somatic practices, like I am also guiding women through restoring their nervous systems, because life is a lot and entrepreneurship is a lot, and trying to exist in this world is a lot, and so I get to merge all the things that we talked about into this conversation with business, because it's a both and right, like you can't do anything in life if you don't care for yourself, and so, from my lens, it's a both and right, like you can't do anything in life if you don't care for yourself.

Speaker 3: 54:06

And so, from my lens, it's just entrepreneurship. But even if you work a nine to five right Like that is important to make sure that you're caring for yourself. And so I just wanna say that my there's more information about my coaching program, transformation University, on my website, and it's for women entrepreneurs and nonprofit founders who either want to start or grow their visions.

Speaker 2: 54:28

Would you be willing to come back again later on? As we said, you know, when we first started, we were going to speak about something else, yet because of where we are right now, we changed the whole topic and we were led by intuition. We allowed ourselves to be vessels in this conversation and just allow spirit to speak through. You know, hold that space and speak more about how you are empowering women and what that looks like and what that can feel like for women out there, so that they can hear and feel something and see that there are resources out there and that somebody can assist them with that.

Speaker 2: 55:18

Because, you know, a lot of people think success is only to look a certain way, where it's like success is success is only to look a certain way, where it's like you define what that looks like. So I am very honored uh, I being in this presence. I'm very honored that I got to start 2025 with such an empowering conversation and bringing this out to the masses Like it's been such a delight, and I want to thank you for doing the alchemy of taking those impurities and turning them into gold and not just keeping it for yourself. You're sharing it with others, so I really want to thank you for that.

Speaker 3: 56:03

Thank you so much for having me. I feel like just like a warm hug from you, as you just said all of that and I also just want to. We called in our ancestors and invited in Natalie and my grandmother. I just want to lift up all of the loving energy that was present for this conversation and, of course, just thank you to spirit and the universe for being present. So it was an honor to be in conversation with you today. It truly was. This was such a beautiful conversation.

Speaker 4: 56:34

Thank you. Please remember to be kind to yourself. Hey, you made it all the way here. I appreciate you and your time. If you found value in this conversation, please share it out. If there was somebody that popped into your mind, take action and share it out with them. It possibly may not be them that will benefit. It's that they know somebody that will benefit from listening to this conversation. So please take action and share out the podcast. You can find us on social media on Facebook, instagram and TikTok under Lift One Self, and if you want to inquire about the work that I do and the services that I provide to people, come over on my website, come into a discovery, call liftoneselfcom.

Speaker 1: 57:18

Until next time, please remember to be kind and gentle with yourself. You matter.