00:00:00 Rosemary

Being able to use Compassionate Inquiry^® to help people see, this is what’s stopping me from perceiving myself this way… It’s been a total game changer. There’s no other way to put it. And it’s such a gift and it helps so many people move into their authenticity. Whereas before it felt much safer. And it sounds of course very logical to say that now, it felt safer to keep their mask on. They were happier to keep their mask on than to show their true selves, even though their true selves, if they had put their authenticity out there, would have been hugely more appealing to their right-fit clients. 

This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry^®.

00:01:03 Kevin

So welcome to another edition of the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. I am here with both of my colleagues, both for different reasons. I’m here with Rosemary Davies-Janes, who we are going to chat to and learn a little bit more about. And helping me to do that or guiding me through that is J’aime, J’aime our co host and producer. So I want to welcome you both. Rosemary, let me welcome you first. How are you doing?

00:01:28 Rosemary

I’m doing really well, thank you, Kevin. I am excited to be having the guest experience for a change. I am very curious as to how it’s going to feel and where we’re going to go.

00:01:48 Kevin

I want to dive straight in. Is that okay, Rosemary, if I dive just straight in?

00:01:52 Rosemary

Absolutely.

00:01:52 Kevin

I’ve read an awful lot about you and there are some things that I’m really intrigued by. I just want to start by reading a little bit, just quoting a little bit, and please correct me if this is not right, but you are the founder of MIBOSO, Mind Body Soul, established in 1998, and a 27 year journey of helping people “find their fit.” That comes with a multitude of different aspects. 12 years in corporate marketing leadership. You’re trained in psychology, but we’ll talk about that a little bit later. Trauma informed, you’ve come through the Compassionate Inquiry® training, Integrative Somatic therapy training, Internal family systems training, a certified professional coach, energy healer and EFT master. This is something that really intrigued me. Rosemary, you serve two populations. Trauma therapy clients in your trauma work and heart centered professionals transforming their marketing, both united by the same core healing, reclaiming and integrating their authenticity. Tell me a little bit about that. So that seems, if we were to pick two sets of people that may never cross paths, we might think of trauma therapy clients, and people who are hoping to get their professional marketing strategy aligned. How does that cross? How does that work?

00:03:11 Rosemary

It’s a really good question, Kevin. Oftentimes there is quite a bit of overlap because I can take on therapeutic professionals, coaches, healing professionals in my therapeutic practice and it can come around to whatever’s been blocking their authenticity. There’s a through-line to it affecting them professionally. So they come to me… Gosh. I work with a lot of healers who have come to me as trauma clients who experienced deep grief, life altering grief, as children who are also working as a healing professional. For as long as I’ve been doing this work, I’ve been attracting helping and healing professionals. And interestingly, before I was trauma-informed, before I did the Compassionate Inquiry^® training or any of those other, like EFT was quite a few years ago, I think that was 2005 and energy healing was 1998. So it’s been a long journey. But I wasn’t able to support people back then as well as I can now because we would always hit blocks. I did start off in 2000 working as a coach, but after a couple of years of just general life coaching, it always kept coming back to marketing. It always ended up there. No matter who showed up or what they brought as a presenting issue or goal, it always ended up with marketing and… resistance became futile. So I shifted from general coaching to working with people on who they truly were. And there is a story behind that. Is this a good place to put that in?

00:04:49 Kevin

This is the very place to tell stories? Please.

00:04:54 Rosemary

When I was heading up the marketing department at Toys R Us^® Canada, actually, and later at Staples^®, I met quite a few characters, my colleagues. And what blew my mind was that who they were professionally was so not who they were as a human. I’m thinking there was one of the buyers at Toys R Us^®, her day job. Her job at Toys R Us was to meet with vendors, push them quite aggressively to get the very best prices, wholesale prices on goods to sell in stores. Who she was as a person, she was an artist, she was a crafter, she loved music. And it seemed… the dissonance seemed, I’m not sure what the right word is? Dazzling, puzzling. It was as if how could some, one person have such different aspects, you know, what connected the two? I saw it again at Staples^®. My direct marketing manager. He sat all day. He was a data bunny. He sat all day and crunched numbers. That’s what he did for work. Outside of that, it was dangerous to walk into his office because he was a natural comedian. He could say two words and move in a certain way and five minutes later, my ribs still hurt from laughing so much at whatever he did. He was a passionate mountain biker and outdoorsman. How can he trade off who he is for a paycheck doing work that is so not aligned with who he is as a person? So I guess I began, when I left the corporate world. I left with this idea that having done a lot of branding, both in my agency days and when I was in corporate, there’s a certain philosophy, a certain pattern there, where, when you uncover your essence, when you uncover what you do for other people, when you uncover who your right-fit audience is, that can all be iterated and packaged. That’s what we do for brands, although it’s artificially created there. So you’ve got a laundry detergent, it’s reverse engineered in that way. So if you’re with P&G or Reckitt Benckiser, one of those big organizations, you create a laundry detergent. We say we want it to serve this market. You do your research on that market. What do they like? What are their preferences, what’s important to them? And then you present this container of laundry detergent as if it fits all of their needs and desires. And it works really well. So I thought if I help people tap into their inner authenticity and express it externally, there will be complete alignment. There’s no invention required, there’s no hyperbole. It can be genuine, it can be real, the voice can be real. And for me, integrity, alignment with essence is all important. 

One of my favorite branding gurus described the Disney brand as everything people think or experience at a Disney theme park. It’s everything they think or experience when they’re watching a [Disney] movie, when they’re in a Disney hotel, when they are buying Disney products for their kids. It’s every customer experience, it’s every product experience, it’s the entirety, it’s the holistic aspect. And that’s what I took out into the world in the early 2000s when most people thought branding was about hot irons and cows, not Coke and Pepsi.

00:08:26 Kevin

Rosemary, thank you for that. There’s a couple of questions that are really jumping out for me straight away. Can I hold one of them and bring you back just a little bit? Because you said something really fascinating and cool there, I think. This idea that when working, you know, I asked you, how do those two groups of people cross trauma therapy clients and heart centered professionals transforming their marketing? And what I heard you say, I think was that with these heart centered professionals transforming their marketing, the blocks that would show up for them would be ‘trauma blocks.’ And I’m doing that in air quotes. That must be quite a realization for someone who is a heart centered professional coming to you to get their marketing aligned. And a number of hours later you’re talking about the trauma they experienced as a child. How does that wash for those people in that scenario?

00:09:13 Rosemary

I do give them a warning upfront, that my approach is very deep and I may ask many questions that might seem as if it’s none of my business. And I do get permission upfront for that. What’s been really interesting is the number of hoops I used to jump through trying to prove people were who they were, that since I’ve been introduced to and working with Compassionate Inquiry^®, I can go at in a much softer and far more effective way, that takes me far less time. So the way it used to be, I always disclosed up front that this is both a psychological and a marketing approach. And I told them I would be asking them to complete a number of psychological profiles. So, I would take them through Myers Briggs, I would take them through the DISC profile, I would take them through I think five different profiles, including the Enneagram. And the biggest burden of all was a 360 profile that I asked them to complete with 12 people. And I would crunch all this data down, in my brain and come out with some conclusions. And when they shared their conclusions with their people, that they used in their 360 testing, everyone agreed they were true, but they couldn’t accept it. I can’t be that good. It overwhelmed them to be able to see themselves the way other people saw them. With Compassionate Inquiry® we can go inside on a very gentle exploration .They’re able to see these blocks. I could never get them past that. I did my best to prove it to them. Oftentimes a lot of the people I worked with in this psychometric testing analysis, this massive data crunching process, they ended up going back to doing what they did before. They didn’t stick with the outline, with the branding package I created for them because it was uncomfortable. They didn’t know why it was uncomfortable, but it was uncomfortable. But when I use Compassionate Inquiry® to help people see this is what’s stopping me from perceiving myself this way. It’s been a total game changer. There’s no other way to put it. And it’s such a gift and it helps so many people move into their authenticity. Whereas before, it felt much safer – and it sounds of course very logical to say that now – it felt safer to keep their mask on. They were happier to keep their mask on than to show their true selves even though their true selves, if they put their authenticity out there, would have been hugely more appealing to their right-fit clients.

00:11:55 Kevin

It’s also much more painful to have our authenticity rejected or mocked or ridiculed, than it is to have a mask mocked or ridiculed. Rosemary, you’ve nearly linked then the second question I want to ask you talked about the buyer who was ruthless and then an artist by night, and the data cruncher who was a mountain biker on his days off. And you said something there, “to prove to people they were who they were.” And this might be a real Gabor question, but I’m really interested in you. And Gabor might say, “Why do you care?” Or, “What’s it got to do with you?” And I might ask that a little bit softer. “What’s driving you to help to prove to people they were who they were? Where’s that driver?”

00:12:43 Rosemary

Yeah. Well, that, unsurprisingly, goes back to my childhood, where who I was authentically, like my authentic inner child, is a wild spirit with a heart of gold. Like, she was an explorer, adventurer, curious, climbing trees just out there and always with the best intentions. However, she got contained and controlled and decided at one point, “Gosh, I am so tired of getting in trouble for being me. Maybe I’ll be someone else.” And as a creative person, I had lots of inspiration. I read a lot in the summers. We had eight weeks off school. I would love to spend my summers, as… I think this pattern started when I was around 10… I would go to the library each week, get out seven books, read a book a day, go back the next week to get another. So I had a mind full of stories and characters, and I thought, let’s try and be this character and see how well they do in my world. It was a very creative idea at the time, but what it led me to being through the unseen underside, was a chameleon people pleaser. It was something that I slipped into without realizing it because I’d been trying on Personas, discarding them, trying another one. Every time I did that, I think ,my authentic self got more and more buried.

00:14:08 Kevin

Rosemary, could I pause you?

00:14:09 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:14:10 Kevin

It’s really fascinating…. Maybe again, as Gabor would say, “Now we’re in the conversation.” Yeah. So trying on these different Personas, discarding and trying on another one. Where did you learn that there was something wrong with the original one?

00:14:24 Rosemary

I decided there must be. If I was getting in trouble so often, being shamed so often, being told in various ways that who I was was not okay. Yeah.

00:14:35 Kevin

How are you doing in this moment, Rosemary?

00:14:38 Rosemary

I’m feeling very sad for my younger self that they came from all directions. “Don’t be so sensitive. Don’t be so curious. That’s really creative. But this is not the time or place.” Just all aspects of me were not okay.

00:14:53 Kevin

Yeah. When I heard you use those words earlier, contained and restricted, I think you said. Yeah. I felt sad for you to be contained and restricted as a child who loved to climb trees and be mischievous and get into innocent trouble. Let’s call it that, and be told, “That’s not okay. You’re not okay. Don’t do that. This is not okay. This is not the time.” Yeah. No. No wonder a child would go looking for a Persona that might have them accepted.

00:15:20 Rosemary

And I think it comes back to what you said before, Kevin, about there being safety in having a mask rejected. Because some of these characters I tried on a little bit out of rebellion. There’s an English author. My parents were English. Enid Blyton.

00:15:37 Kevin

Sure.

00:15:38 Rosemary

And she wrote a series of books called, The Naughtiest Girl in the School. So I thought, I’m getting in trouble already. I’ll be Elizabeth, the naughtiest girl in the School, and see how that goes. And when Elizabeth got into trouble, it didn’t land the way it did when I got in trouble. So it was also protective, and it also led me to lose myself over time… And to come back to your earlier question, that’s why I have such a passion for helping people reclaim their inner authenticity and link it to their external expression. Because there’s nothing like coming home to yourself.

00:16:17 Kevin

Yeah. It’s a real gift. And I noticed, just as you say, that last part, your body just softened. Your eyes just softened. As you said, it’s a real gift to introduce people to themselves. And I actually think that’s probably the greatest strength of Compassionate Inquiry^®. I say this as humbly as I can, but probably one of the greatest compliments I have ever received is that someone said that my greatest attribute is my ability to love people back to themselves. And that’s a really beautiful thing. I’m not sure if it’s completely true, but I’ll take it. And it is a real gift that we get from Compassionate Inquiry^® in that the objective isn’t to create something of someone else that we want to see. It is a gift of loving them back to themselves, introducing them to themselves, and as you said, proving to people that they were who they were.

00:17:10 Rosemary

Yeah. Yeah. And it was heartbreaking in a way, because if anything was not complimentary, they could accept it without a problem. My old slogan for MIBOSO Authentic Personal Branding was ‘transforming genius into your brand of success.’ And whenever I hit on an amazing strength or a point of genius, oh, that can’t be me. I can’t claim that. That’s too much. There’s no way that’s who I am. But if something was. You’re a good organizer. You have a great way of putting the right thing in the right place. Okay, I could take that, but not. Not on the other spectrum.

00:17:47 Kevin

Why is that? Have we talked about that already, Rosemary? Maybe… Is it that idea of authenticity rejected is much more painful. Why does that happen, in your opinion? Why aren’t people able to say, when they hear the love that you have that shines out into the world is glorious. How can people not hear that?

00:18:03 Rosemary

I think it’s different with everybody. It brings up so much fear. And I think culturally, I was raised by English parents and lived in various English colonial settlements, if I can put it that way. I’ve lived in Canada, I’ve lived in Australia, I’ve lived in South Africa. And all of those cultures have some version of, don’t get too big for your boots or you’ll get chopped off at the knees. There’s sort of a don’t stand out. Don’t stand out in the crowd. It’s dangerous. The one that puts their head above the parapet gets their head shut off. Keep your head down. Keep yourself small.

00:18:39 Kevin

J’aime, you’re welcome to join this conversation at any point that you want.

00:18:42 J’aime

Yeah, thank you. Actually, I will. I love the direction this has been going in. I’m really enjoying just listening. But when you put that question to Rosemary in the beginning about these two different things that feel divergent and how do they converge and how do they cross? I was sitting over here thinking, it’s like the same person. And I say that as somebody who is a sensitive person, who has only ever seemed to care about, how do people heal and to bring that kind of heart that’s very tender into the marketplace. It’s awful. So when I was reading some of the ways that people have been praising Rosemary’s style of magnetic presence marketing, I just kept reading over and over again these core beliefs that felt very familiar. And one of the… One of the core beliefs that I’ve carried through my life is being unseen. So entering and making yourself seen is terrifying, and immediately really brings someone into their trauma zone. And here we are trying to advertise ourselves. I was wondering if you wanted to comment on that, and if that’s something that you see because you did say you have a lot of healers that you work with. And I thought you must attract a lot of people through your own authentic presence. These kinds of people must come to you, and maybe that’s another question for later.

00:20:10 Rosemary

It is very vulnerable to put yourself out as who you truly are, to share your authentic self. And I think the healing that needs to be done first is not cognitive. It’s somatic. It’s feeling into what it is to be aligned authentically. A lot of the people, when they come to me, they’re fed up of masking. Like my colleague who was the comedian/mountain biker. If he’d been a client, he would have come to me when he’s tired of being a data bunny, when he’s ready to give it a go on the comedy stage. “Okay, how do I put myself out there?” Not to say it would be easy. And of course, unintentionally, I picked one of the. What I imagine must be the scariest professions to put yourself out there as a comedian. And the inner call to authenticity has to equal or slightly outweigh the fear of being visible, the fear of exposure, the fear of potential rejection, because there will be rejection. When you’ve done the work, you know how to handle the rejection. It’s just someone else’s perception and you can let it slide off. 

00:21:22 J’aime

Yeah. And also maybe the other pain that has to be greater than not coming to the surface as who you are is the pain of faking it and being somebody who you’re not.

00:21:33 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:21:33 J’aime

And I think that was much easier to do 20, 30 years ago. That was more common. And what’s it like now to be emerging? Re-emerging singing the same song, but in a totally different river, a totally different kind of water that we’re all swimming in with trauma informed. Like, how is that?

00:21:52 Rosemary

Yeah, it’s… What’s interesting. What’s emerging today. I think that was always with us to a certain degree, but now it’s much more open. A lot of people come to me that do three, four, five different things, and they say, “I have passion for all these things. How does this make sense? I don’t want five websites. I don’t want five social media accounts to manage.” I will use a real example. 

One second. I’ve got some notes here. 

00:22:21 J’aime

If you’re listening right now and wishing that this platform could be available, for you to share with the world the unexpected ways that the compassionate inquiry approach is helping you bring more connection, healing and authenticity into your clients lives. We’ve got a really exciting offer for you, so stay with us and then we’ll be right back with the rest of Rosemary’s show.

00:22:43 Kevin

Your journey with Compassionate Inquiry matters. Your work in the world matters. If you have a story to share about bringing compassionate inquiry into the world, we’d like to amplify your voice. Spotlight episodes are full length Gifts of Trauma podcast interviews offered exclusively to CI community members. You’ll not only share your story with 55,000 healing professionals across all platforms, you’ll receive a pre interview strategy session plus three promotional video clips. We’re offering only 10 Spotlight episodes per year and production realities require a financial contribution. Follow the links in the show notes to access full details and express your interest.

00:23:31 Rosemary

One second, I’ve got some notes here. I was thinking this might come up. Here we go. Okay. A participant in our current Magnetic Presence Marketing pilot gave me permission to share her seven roles. She actually has seven different roles and seven different income streams. They are; trauma Informed coach for trauma, impacted families and parents. She’s an authentic communications coach. She’s an adoptee, birth family connection and reunion coach. She’s the program director of outreach, operations and fundraising for a nonprofit that supports vulnerable children, at risk youth, and child led households. She’s a human rights and social justice advocate and activist for oppressed, marginalized and disadvantaged people subjected to systemic inequities and institutional bias. She’s an ESL teacher who supports a global clientele. And she’s an off grid homesteader. While initially these roles may seem wildly divergent, when you look underneath the titles, and look at what it would take to do that work, you can see they’re all tightly connected by five traits which I call a person’s through-line. So those traits are activist, advocate, communicator, ethicist and healer. She’s all those things and also teaches and farms organic produce and eggs. If you’re wondering what an ethicist is, and it’s something I didn’t know till recently, it’s someone who studies or practices moral philosophy or ethical theory. Her professional roles all support her morals and ethics around wholeness or healing around. Human rights and social justice. So the final distillation of her through-line or her essence is a legal reform and social justice advocate. I’m really, really happy that these days. We’re willing to embrace all of ourselves. And present ourselves as the multiply gifted beings we are. I was speaking to someone the other day who’s a Dharma teacher and very, very highly educated psychologically, a yoga teacher… All kinds of training in Compassionate Inquiry® and somatic therapy …has worked with addiction and my goodness, what I do my best to convey to these multiply talented people is, when you bring all of these skills and gifts together. Like, what an incredible gift to your clients. I hate this phrase. They’re not getting a one trick pony. They’re getting someone who has explored all of these realms that are related, but perhaps from an internal perspective seem disjointed. Because that was one thing that so many clients who’ve shown up for me to work with them in a marketing perspective, it’s, “I don’t want to show up as scattered and yet I genuinely have all these different interests.” I think I may have veered away from your question a little bit, J’aime, so feel free to redirect.

00:26:35 J’aime
I like that direction also of helping people integrate all of those pieces of who they are. I think that’s another really beautiful way that people don’t leave some part of them behind in their process of loving themselves back to who they are, as Kevin was saying.

00:26:52 Kevin
Yeah, thanks J’aime.. Rosemary, again, there’s just something I want to touch on. As you were chatting there, I was thinking one of the questions that I hate to get asked when I’m out and about or socializing, whatever, is, what do you do? I’m like, “Oh, man, ask me a different question, because I’m not really sure what the answer to that is.” Of late. I’ve just landed on. I help people.

00:27:11 Rosemary

I think you already gave me the answer, Kevin. “You love people back to themselves.”

00:27:16  Kevin

Yeah, I think that’s true. I think that’s true. Although I would be really careful in which social scenes I say that in. Again, maybe that’s just highlighting Rosemary right there, that fear of authenticity. Because if I was to say that in certain places where I grew up and where I live, I wouldn’t even want to use the number of expletives, certainly on our podcast, that I would hear from the people around me. And maybe that isn’t true. I don’t know. But there’s something, as you were chatting as well, Rosemary, I was thinking, “I want the formula. So what do we do? What’s the formula?” And we’re going to talk about what you do and how you do it a little bit later. I really want to land on that. On Magnetic Presence Marketing. And another word that you used, a word that I read about you is multipotentialite. And I had to read that a couple of times to get my pronunciation right. And I was like, oh, a multipotentialite. That’s a cool word.

00:28:08 Rosemary

Yes, it’s a cool way of being.

00:28:11 Kevin

It’s a cool way of being, right?

00:28:13 Rosemary

Yeah. We had a great example on our podcast last spring. One of our guests, she was a physician and a psychedelic integrator. She was a musician. She was an entrepreneur. She had a business creating perfumes and candles. And it sounds very random, but she brings them all together in service of her client’s healing. And, you know, what more beautiful way to heal than a beautiful scented candle to support you going through, perhaps a meditation process you’ve learned in a psychedelic retreat, which she also leads, and some kind of integration, like… I think only to the people who offer the services that they seem so random, or the people who are the Multipotentialites. It’s… how can someone with all of these different interests make sense as a person? Maybe we’ve watched too many movies and too much tv, because characters are quite linear. You have the person who’s very organized, who’s the admin person for the business and everything about their life is neat and tidy. Real humans tend to be a lot messier than that. I used to always just say multiply gifted, multiply talented. But Multipotentialites really captures that in a word that’s kind of fun to say as well.

00:29:33 Kevin

And maybe there is something. I know recently we had a conversation talking about the state of the world. And maybe there is something really beautiful in that maybe that’s been allowed a little bit more of late to be a multipotentialite and to express yourself in a number of different ways and for that to be okay. And maybe gone are the days when people hunt for the job that they’re going to have at 19 right through until they’re 69. I think those days are… I think those days are long gone. Rosemary, Something else I’d like to return to as well, if that’s okay with you. The statement, ‘to live a mythic life.’ Tell me what it is. Tell me what it is like to live your mythic life.

00:30:10 Rosemary

I am fairly new to this. I was living a very conforming life previously. Maybe that’s not true, it just wasn’t continuously mythic, put it that way. It means to embrace your authenticity, embrace those nudges from the universe, the collective wisdom, and just run with them. It’s what has led me to be living on a mountaintop in Costa Rica, in a home I call ‘Heaven on Earth.’ That’s what led me to… without rational explanation available to anybody who asked me, to liquidate all of my possessions and leave Canada. It’s what led me before that ,to sell my beloved home of 22 years and jump into sequential house flips, which I was very interested in, and I’d always renovated homes I’d lived in, but I had never taken on a project of that scale: Buying a house, totally gutting it, and then putting it back together, which was a big lesson. I learned a lot. And it was so rewarding. Building things, you get a pile of stuff and you make something out of it. It’s so fulfilling. I’m an artist, but I’ve got a blatant builder inside me as well. So it just… It’s living on the edge. It’s scary and it feels right, and oftentimes you can’t tell people why you are doing what you are doing because there is no why. It’s just you’ve gut…. I just tell everybody my. “My heart led me here.” But we have to be able to listen to our heart. We need to be able to hear It.

00:31:42 Kevin

There’s something very freeing listening to that Rosemary. And maybe it’s because I live a similar lifestyle. You know, that idea of trying to be free and liberated and follow my heart. And maybe that’s why it sounds so very attractive to me. But my guess is that there… There are a lot of people doing a lot of things right now listening to this, thinking, I want to be like that. I want to do that. I want to go live in Costa Rica. I want to sell my house. I want to buy a house and flip it. And I want to be a multipotentialite and do these things. And maybe recognizing, Rosemary as well, that that idea of mask and false safety is not something that comes with being a multipotentialite and living across all these jobs and following your heart. There’s a courage in there as well, I would presume to living like that.

00:32:34 Rosemary

There is. And you’ve got to have some grit too, because, yes, I am living in a place I genuinely feel is Heaven on Earth. And it’s not perfect. Some people might not like having a dead cicada ending up next to their cooktop. That might gross them out. They might be scared by the night sounds. I’m not one of those, but

00:31:44 J’aime

Rosemary, would you get into your audio settings and just turn off your noise removal for a second so we can hear what it actually sounds like out there? Check it out. Yeah.

00:31:55 Kevin

Wow.

00:32:56 J’aime

That’s just another dimension of Rosemary’s like grit, Kevin, is that this is what it sounds like, and there’s no walls in this house. There really aren’t. It’s just It’s just moves through your whole body. So she’s sitting there in that, looking serene.

00:33:07 Kevin

Wow.

00:33:27 J’aime

It will go on for three months.

00:33:29 Rosemary

The cicada song. They serenade me all day and they go to sleep when it’s cloudy or they go to sleep at night, except when they turn into tiny kamikaze planes and fly at my outside light when it’s on and they scream. It’s like.”eeeeee’  And it’s really wild. And they’re big. I can hear them bouncing off the house. Yep.

00:33:52 J’aime
Yeah, I wanted the audience to know about that. Also, shout out to Zoom’s audio filters. Wow, they really work.

00:33:59 Rosemary
Yeah. I was scared of driving down here, because the roads… I’m not sure how to describe the roads. I took a picture of the road I drive up to get home. And my daughter said, mom, that’s not a road. That’s a hiking trail. So I drive up a road most people would think is a hiking trail to get to my place. And it was scary at first. I swore I would never do that. But after I’d been here for 18 months or so, the opportunity arose. It’s like, I am not going to let my fear of that drive stop me from living in this miraculous place. 

And when I was doing my first home house flip, there were some very challenging parts. A lot of the blue collar tradespeople I employed did not like to be directed by a woman. I had to get them to do things two, three times, and they wanted to be paid every time and that was not okay with me. I had a carpenter who was stealing two by fours, figured, oh, she’s a woman, she’s not going to know. Little did he know, I went to the house and I counted how many two by fours had been used versus how many I had purchased and found that indeed a lot were missing. So I had to fire him. And then I had to race around and find a new carpenter because until that part is done, you can’t move to the next part. Time is not on your side when you’re financing a total gut-remodel. So, yeah, courage and grit and a willingness to be adaptable. I think a lot of people, I think all-inclusive resorts are created for people who want a way to be the same as home. And when I go somewhere new, I want to experience it as it is for the locals. I’ve never been an all-inclusive person. I want to meet someone there. I want to go where the locals go. I want to explore what it’s like to be in their world.

00:35:47 Kevin

Rosemary, when you were telling that story, I was thinking to myself… Whoee! The normally mild mannered Rosemarie. I was just imagining you with a clipboard and a pencil, counting four by twos and realizing that there were 20 or 40 missing, and having this conversation with the carpenter. And I wouldn’t want to be the. I wouldn’t want to be the carpenter on the other side of that conversation. Whooh!.

00:36:12 Kevin

Hey, listen, Rosemary, there’s something that crops up in your story quite a lot. And I heard you talk about it before, and I’d like to land on it for a little bit and maybe a few other things. You were adopted? Yes, at birth.

00:36:25 Rosemary

I was adopted at three weeks old because my adoptive family was on holiday when I arrived.

00:36:31 Kevin

Okay.

00:36:32 Rosemary

So I went to a foster mother to wait for them to get back and claim me, which was three weeks later.

00:36:38 Kevin

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I appreciate your permission to talk to them and maybe we’ll cycle, cycle back to that. So I heard you just say your daughter, have you more than one daughter or just a daughter?

00:36:48 Rosemary

I have one biological daughter, but I have three stepchildren because my ex husband had children when he and I got together. So, yeah.

00:36:58 Kevin

Okay. So considering them, considering your daughter and your stepchildren, did you grow up with siblings or did you grow up alone?

00:37:05 Rosemary

I have one brother who was also adopted.

00:37:08 Kevin

Okay.

00:37:09 Rosemary

So, yeah, we were a very small family unit. My parents both emigrated from England, and when I was 4, our family was transferred to Australia, so it was a small family unit in Canada because all the extended family were back in England. And then we went to Australia, and once again, we were a small family unit, down under, with all of the family far away.

00:37:32 Kevin

Okay. And your adoptive parents, are they still alive?

00:37:36 Rosemary

No, they’ve both passed at this point.

00:37:38 Kevin

Okay. Really, what I’m getting at is I would love to invite you to consider some of the people who are closest to you in your life. So your daughter, your stepdaughters, your brother, maybe even thinking back to when your parents were alive, and maybe thinking of some friends, some people that know you. If I was to go around them and say to them, “Hey, I’m going to be interviewing Rosemary on the Gifts of Trauma podcast. Tell me some things about her.” What would they say about you?

00:38:04 Rosemary

My daughter is much more conservative than me.

00:38:07 Kevin

Okay.

00:38:07 Rosemary

My biological daughter, she would say, “Oh, she’s a wild one!”

00:37:00 Kevin

Okay.

00:38:12 Rosemary

“But harmless.” Yeah. My older stepdaughter, she’s on a similar path. I think she would be living my life were she not raising children. The one person you. I would…

00:38:25 Kevin

Hang on, hang on. You did. You didn’t tell me what she would say about you, though.

00:38:28 Rosemary

Oh, I didn’t. I didn’t. No. Okay. She would be saying, “She’s living the dream.”

00:38:33 Kevin

Okay.

00:38:34 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:38:34 Kevin

All right. Yeah. Okay.

00:38:35 Rosemary

The one person who knew me best was my godmother who lived to 101. She only passed away early 2023. And, yeah, she would say, “She’s incredible.” She was my one person who always heard, saw, and understood me. So she was my person. My brother, he’d probably say, “Nice life if you can get it.” And as far as my other stepdaughter and my stepson, I’m not sure what they would say, but I think it’s external optics. Must be nice. A lot of people, when they hear a piece of my story, it’s, as you said, I’d like to be living in Costa Rica, too. Well, it’s funny, a good colleague of mine moved from Indiana to Port Lucy in Florida, like maybe 15 years ago. And everyone who knew… who heard about her move, who she knew through work or through personal relationships, said, oh, you’re so lucky to live in Florida. And she’s like, there’s nothing lucky about this. This took a lot of planning. It took a lot of hard work. I had to sell my house. I had to uproot my kids. This was not luck. So I just share that because I’m getting a little bit of the same kind of feedback. This took a lot of blood, sweat and tears. A lot of sacrifice. Am I glad I made them? Absolutely. But I was not visited by the luck fairy and transported to this life.

00:40:01 Kevin

Is it Gary Player? I don’t watch a lot of golf, but his very famous sporting mantra is, yeah, “Isn’t it funny? The harder I practice, the luckier I get.” And I think that’s true. Rosemary, again, just reflecting. It’s not easy to live a life that sits outside ‘the normal’ – in air quotes again. Can you take that? When you know your Godmother was to say, referring back to what we talked about earlier, “She’s incredible” How does that land for you to hear someone say that about you?

00:40:30 Rosemary

When she said it, it just… It makes my heart go all gushy and warm. Because as you repeat that, I can see her, and her whole body reflected the authenticity of her words. Her eyes would be shining and her smile would be broad, and I could just feel the love emanating from her, which is a gift few people unleash as fully as she did. And maybe that’s the gift of living to 101.

00:40:59 Kevin

Yeah. Maybe it’s also the gift of living authentically, Rosemary, and wearing your heart, opening your heart, showing your heart, feeling your heart, sharing your heart. Did I say that already? Maybe that is the gift. And it sounds like what she got from telling you, you’re incredible, was a real sense in herself of sharing love. I was thinking earlier as well, when people say to you, oh, I must be lucky, or I’d love to be, I’d love to be living that life, maybe what you could say to them, I have a little package, and it’s called Magnetic Presence Marketing. And you could sign up for a course. And if that’s what you want to do, maybe we could help you do that.

00:41:38 J’aime

Yeah. Another reflection is when you spoke about your godmother, like, I felt her through you. It wasn’t even you, it was her. She conveyed that so truly that it reached a part of you and gave it back to us. And it makes me reflect on the qualities of Compassionate Inquiry^®, specifically mirroring and how that’s related to really helping someone see who they are. I think this is something that you’re really good at. I think that’s why I felt your godmother through you, Rosemary.

00:42:17 Kevin

Rosemary, would it be okay to name your godmother? What’s her name? Let’s say her name and just.

00:42:21 Rosemary

Sure. Her name was Nina.

00:42:24 Kevin

Nina, yeah. Yes. So let’s just hold a little space for the Ninas in the world, and particularly your Nina. That’s a special thing that she gave you.

00:42:33 Rosemary

It is. And she role modeled it her whole life because she was born in 1921, she was adult-ish during World War II, and she would tell stories about refusing to go into the underground when the air raid siren went off, she said, “I want to see who’s come to kill me.’  She would go out on the rooftops of the buildings when the doodlebugs were flying over London. And actually, it wasn’t the doodlebugs that dropped bombs, was it? It was the planes. Anyhow, she would go to the rooftops when they were under attack, armed with a dustbin lid, and yell at the pilots flying overhead. Her wild spirit connected with mine from day one.

00:43:14 Kevin

Thank you, Nina.

00:43:15 J’aime

It feels to me like, Rosemary. I almost called you Nina. You are that Nina with your clients. Does that land?

00:43:23 Rosemary

Yeah, absolutely.

00:43:24 J’aime

And there’s such a safety, I think, also in that sweet, attuned, loving wildness that Nina had, that I feel in you. And when I read the many reviews from your clients that have worked with you so far, I got that from them. Do you want to talk a little bit about the space you’re creating with your clients when they come to you? And something I read that they say is they felt like marketing was a dirty word, and to be in the marketplace because it felt so false. Someone like that coming to you… Talk about the space you’re creating when they land.

00:44:05 Rosemary

Yeah. Thank you. It’s really just about… I realize I might have sounded Canadian there. It’s about acceptance, welcome, open vulnerability, safety. The people I work with can bring things… A lot of times people tell me they share things they’ve never shared with another human before, things that might be deeply linked to shame or some early trauma that they haven’t yet named. I think from what people have mirrored back to me is, it’s because I bring my authenticity. I could be chatting to someone and I pause for a moment and it’s, “Oh, hang on a second. Colliding thought bubbles!” And I disclose to everyone I have a neurodiverse brain. And then sometimes when two ideas show up at once, it’s like twins trying to be born at the same time. They have to jockey for a minute until one lines up to go first. I could have ADHD moments. That’s what I’ve been told. Because I am unapologetically authentic myself. It gives everybody I work with permission to be unapologetically themselves as well. So, yeah, people can bring me anything and we’ll explore it. We’ll explore it however they want. We always end up in the body. And I applaud their courage. It takes a lot of guts to speak to a stranger about something you may have been carrying for decades and have been too ashamed, too locked in shame, to bring forth earlier in any other situation. It’s such an honor.

00:45:40 Kevin

And Rosemary, there’s something then, that we have to name and honor. And I think it’s with a lot of people that come through Compassionate Inquiry^®, some more than others, that takes doing the inner work first before you can hold that space for someone. And if you’re holding it falsely, it’ll stink. People will smell that and their nervous system or their body or their whatever it is, it just can’t go there. So maybe just honoring the fact that for you to do that, what that also says is that you’re trusted, you’ve done – and are doing – work in progress. You’ve done and are doing the work. Is that true? To say that of you?

00:46:22 Rosemary

Yeah, it is. And you just reminded me to go to a place briefly. I am so grateful for randomly encountering The Gifts of Trauma Movie in the fall of 2021. It was like my move to Costa Rica. I knew in my heart this changes everything. I pivoted my entire business. That was how the house flips came in. They generated the revenue I lost by stepping outside of my marketing business and doing the training. So I will be forever grateful for that because it was a missing link for me as well. I had done so much sort of cognitive analysis. Who am I? I had identified lots of aspects of myself, but it wasn’t until I watched that movie and followed that heart pull to Compassionate Inquiry^® training that so many more dots were connected and I was able to deepen significantly into my authentic self.

00:47:25 Kevin

The two things I want to say about that, Rosemary, are, yeah, it reflects that, that idea of stepping outside of that role that you were in, taking a 90 degree turn after watching a movie, again, that’s that idea. And I know I’ve done a couple of those, and I’ve had a couple of 90 degree turns as well. The thing I was doing should not have led to the thing that I’m doing. But yet there’s something that said, I’m making a 90 degree turn. So really honoring you in that and being able to just say, I’m making a 90 degree turn. I’ll come back to the other one. J’aime, have you something you wanted to add there?

00:47:58 J’aime

I keep hearing something that is eliciting the word magnetism. There were magnets in your life that have drawn you into certain things. And I’d like to hear. The audience would like to hear why you chose the terminology magnetic presence, marketing.

00:48:17 Rosemary

Yeah, it’s an interesting story. I was searching for a name, and after rejecting all of the previous names, I used to call it authentic personal branding that didn’t fit. But the reason for that name is really the person who inspired this whole program, which was Gabor Maté. It was modeled on his presence, his magnetism. And I did a bit of an analysis and led a focus group for a year, just testing out my hypothesis that when we share our vulnerability, when we share our humanity, our fallibility, the way Gabor does so often when he tells stories about himself, when he admits his humanity, it’s, boy, was I young and stupid two years ago when I was 80. It’s endearing. I also looked at how he presented his work, and it’s very invitational. He never says he’s the only one. He never says, I’m the guru. He says, this is an approach, there are many others feel into what’s right for you. This isn’t for everybody. And what was percolating through that analysis was, imagine a world where everybody offered their products, programs or services in that way. Here’s what I’m doing. I’m really excited about this. I’ve learned this, and this, I’ve learned it helps people get through that and the other thing, if it speaks to you, check it out. That’s what started this whole pivot detour, 90 degree turn. And we’ve just really modeled the whole magnetic presence marketing on those values that Gabor models so beautifully, so authentically. So we share our humanity, we share our vulnerability, and there’s no comparison. There’s no pressure, there’s no stress, there’s no manipulation. It’s just clean. And I think that’s why so many people in the pilot program, after entering with significant amounts of marketing stress and using terms like, “I know I have to market my business because I’m a solopreneur, I’m an independent practitioner, but every time I do something on social media. I feel like I want to take a shower afterwards. I feel dirty. I feel like I’ve just dirtied myself.” We’re 11 weeks in, moving into week 12 now of a 16 week pilot and people are feeling free to bring their authentic selves. They’re starting to see results, like far earlier than I ever expected. They are seeing increases in contacts from clients. They’re sometimes streamlining their practices. Some of them are making more money and we’re not even finished the pilot yet. So I took a leap of faith that if we modeled what Gabor demonstrates so beautifully, it would be well received. I think the world has had enough of being manipulated and traumatized by marketing because it really can create a lot of trauma. We’re being emotionally abused by a lot of marketing. It’s manipulative. We’re being told lies, we’re being tricked. Bait and switch. It’s like, not a nice experience. And I would absolutely love to eradicate that form of marketing from the planet. Just a small goal.

00:51:37 J’aime

I see you standing on a rooftop with the tin can cover, shouting down the marketing world and what you’re standing for, Rosemary. And I’m going to come back to magnet. When you say that the people you’re working with are experiencing really great results way sooner than you thought they would, I feel like, wow, the precious metal isn’t gold, it’s a magnet.

00:52:01 Rosemary

Yeah, absolutely. And you’re reminding me too, some of the 90 degree turns I took. House flipping is not a guaranteed income. I could have lost money, but I trusted that the right people would show up and appreciate what I had invested in those two properties. The first house, it took a little while. The second house, the right people showed up the first day it was open for viewings. So there’s definitely a connection between embracing our authenticity and our ability to become magnets. Yeah.

00:52:33 J’aime

Yeah, I really want to drive that home right before Kevin jumps in. That feels like the key message for the people listening that I just. I’m praying the world receives that they receive is that’s the magic sauce to be who they are. To double down on the gut connection. Yeah, that maybe was severed. And maybe we can say something about that too, because that sounds like another thing. You’re helping people restore which trauma takes away.

00:53:00 Rosemary

It is. There’s a practice we go through in magnetic presence. Marketing is like always, my participants are probably getting tired of hearing me repeat this. But if. Do a full navigation check. Check with your head brain, your heart brain, your gut brain, check with your five senses, check with your intuition, check with your alignment with your spiritual connection, whether that’s cosmological or collective or whatever it might be. But just go through the full navigation check. And as they’re reworking their marketing materials, it’s not landing right. Do the full check and sense into where it needs adjust.

00:53:37 Kevin

Rosemary, as I sit here listening to you chatting to Jim, I’m really getting a clear vision of why trauma work is important to entrepreneurs, people, solopreneurs. You call. You call them. Yeah, it’s a nice word that as well. I’m really getting a sense of how they’re connected because to do the check, check with your brain, check with your heart brain, check with your gut brain. When we’ve been traumatized, we’re disconnected from all of those things. So we can’t do that check. We don’t have that ability. There’s something in the way that our gut reactions have been taken, stolen, hidden for very good reason. And maybe this isn’t the time to go into the conversation as to why we are not in touch with our gut feelings when we’re traumatized. But it’s really insightful to hear you talk about doing those things. And you said something earlier, you said, that seems to be how it works. And I was going to jump in and say, Rosemary, it’s not that ‘it seems to be.’ That is exactly how it works. I’m thinking of the spiritual quote, ‘as within, so without, as above, so below’. When we do or are helped, like you’re helping people to do the work, then what’s going on, the inside will be mirrored in their external world. And that then is why, when I listen to you, that is why the business is magnetic. It’s coming to them because they’re doing the inner work at the same time. So it’s really fascinating to hear this link between doing our own trauma work, if you want to call it that?  And being able to be in the world how we want to be. And I just one more thing I want to. When we interviewed, certainly one of the most fun interviews that I’ve done in recent times with Jiuliano Innocente, and I said to Jiuliano, give me 12 words that you would say to the world. And he said, “Follow your heart and the universe will conspire to help.” And it sounds like that’s what you’re saying right now.

00:55:40 Rosemary

Absolutely, absolutely. He said it beautifully. I remember that quote. That is exactly what is going on.

00:55:48 J’aime
That’s it for now, everyone. Thank you for listening. Kevin, Rosemary, myself, we’re gonna take a longer pause, a one week pause, and we’ll be back next week with the other half of this conversation. We will sign off with this one final request from the queen bee herself, Sat Dharam Kaur.

00:56:09 Sat Dharam Kaur.
Dear listeners, thank you, each of you, for doing your inner work. On behalf of Kevin and the podcast team, he has a request to please subscribe to this podcast so more people can hear and benefit from bringing this beautiful podcast to life and creating the space for not only myself, but other speakers, for the words to be heard and for these thoughts, insights to contribute to this unfolding of whatever’s happening through us. It’s very beautiful. 

Rosemary:
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen on Apple, Spotify, all podcast platforms. Rate, review and share it with your clients, colleagues and family. Subscribe and you won’t miss an episode. 

Please note this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for personal therapy or a DIY formula for self therapy.