Jeanine Staples on Generating our Personal Liberation Projects

Every now and again, if you are lucky enough, you get to connect with people whose words are SO powerful- they just knock the wind right out of you. Jeanine Staples, my friends, is one of those people. She stunned the world (and me) with her TED Talk, “How To Die Peacefully”, when she challenged the notion that humans are born, they live and then they die. No- Jeanine believes we are born and then we die a thousand tiny deaths. She claims, we can only learn to live, when we learn to die those deaths peacefully. Oh, I KNOW;  and this is just what I learned before our conversation. Dr. Jeanine Staples is the Associate Professor of Literacy and Language, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. She is the founder of “The Supreme Love Project” , a movement which seeks to embolden marginalized people to heal their souls and liberate themselves. Not to mention, she is a genius, a soul excavator, a humanist and an all around “Be Your OWN Hero”, kind of Wonder Woman. I am beyond thrilled and honored to share this conversation with you. I just know that these words will touch you in a way that could literally shift the way you live your life, today- if you let them. So, grab a notebook for this one, sit down, and get ready to let it all sink in to your soma (how Jeanine refers to our bodies). This one’s a game changer. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN: How our to heal our soul terrors and begin our own Personal Liberation Project Why seeking external affirmation can only lead to suffering What it means to “Go Deeper” The truth about our conditioned fear of experiencing pain How to teach our children to understand their body and their pain How your unconscious beliefs about money hold you back from being free What it means to own your womanhood What your “lover identity” is How to begin to stand up for social injustices and become a voice for for the voiceless THINGS I ASK: How did you heal your emotional break and move forward? What are the side effects of a life commitment to suffering and avoidance of pain? Why are we so afraid of experiencing pain? How do we meet our children right where they are to support them on their journey? How does this work help bring in more abundance and wealth? How do we start exploring and rebuilding our womanhood? How do we, as white privileged woman who have businesses, who want to say something, who want to stand up, begin? What do we do? SOUL SHIFTING QUOTES: “My generation of terror was so complete and so huge, I didn’t have that ability to bide my time and create a status quo. I had to break.” “I was at what I thought was my bottom. And the voice of God, the Holy Spirit said… “Go deeper.” “There’s so many of us who run from pain. It’s suffering that we need to cease, not pain. Suffering is this long term uninterrupted source of despair without hope. That’s what we need to move away from. But pain, pain is actually what we need to generate bigger emotional muscle. To grow the capacity to go deeper.” “Let your child get attuned to their body. Because their bodies are instruments for their emotionality.” “Our salvation and our liberation project would not exist, unless there was something we were in bondage to. And that bondage is your pain. Best to become really enamored with it.” “You can only be satiated from the inside out.” “Do I feel real? Or do I feel like I am wearing labels and descriptions that had been given to me.” “I had to really do the work of saying, I am not the woman I want to be. I am not the woman I say I am. And I want to be congruent. I want to BE that person, and not perform that person. “Your interior life is the precedent to any other exterior attachment or endeavor that you want to take part of.”