Verimour Speaks

Repurposed content from the relationship segment of the Honestly Dawn podcast. Ahmed and I talk about the trend I was seeing in angst ridden individuals who were posting questions on Reddit and Quora about how to get their exs back. We consider the question from both personal experience as well as practicality.

https://medium.com/@verimour/how-to-see-yourself-as-sexy-21ec1c66957a

For as long as I can remember I’ve had what a friend once referred to as “White Woman’s Syndrome”. It’s that inability to step outside our heads and see ourselves in the senuous and sexy way others do. Because of that we are not comfortable in our bodies, so we don’t swing our hips or flaunt our gorgeous selves in the way of the women we idolize as beautiful.

Part of the reason is our culture and “learning” early on in life that sex is bad, therefore being sexy is bad. “Good girls don’t act like that and the more heinous and insidious, even if unspoken, “she was asking for it”. Part of it comes from not being taught how to handle the attention that arises from being confident, owning our bodies and our sexuality. Additionally, we build up insecurities over the years through repeating to ourselves perceived slights from others or unfair and biased self-criticisms.

When I got divorced 2.5 years ago I was like a caged animal unleashed. I had felt captive for so long I didn’t know who I was (sexually speaking), what I liked, and what I was or wasn’t willing to do. I knew that many people, men and women alike had referred to me as beautiful or sexy, but since I didn’t really see myself that way, I had to figure out what sexy was.

One of the first things I did was make a friend take me to a real live strip club. Now, without a doubt there are highend places that feature the amazing creatures television teaches us is the norm. However, this was not one of those. The women there each had their own form of beauty with or without perfect bodies. But what they all had in spades was the ability to make the most of their assets and be unapologetic about flaunting them. The freedom with which they moved their bodies to the music was otherworldly. While they were certainly cognizant of the men at the edge of the stage looking to hand them money, most of them seemed lost in the music and enjoyment of their movement. It was mesmerizing. The closest I’d ever come to that was mentally tapping into a great workout (which for me meant very heavy weight and total limb trembling exhaustion). But what I was seeing was foreign to me and I wanted to know more...

A lot has changed in the 23 years since I wrote the paper highlighted in this episode. While I still have challenges, their nature and degree are very different. 

For many years I was like the rest of the world rushing my life from weekend to weekend always trying to savor those precious final Sunday night or holiday hours and dreading the sound of the alarm that signaled a new work week. Even then I remember commenting on the irony of it and how unfortunate it all was given how delicate our existence can be. And when I found myself out of work it got even worse instead of better. I suddenly began to hate every day instead of just Mondays. I saw myself as without purpose and lacking value or worth.

For a long time I did everything I could think of to mold myself into something the corporate world wanted. I got certified in PowerPoint, studied change and project management. I changed my resume with every submission in an attempt to highlight whatever skill that particular company was looking for. It didn’t work. I became so desperate to show I could do it all I would oversell myself. Each rejection just drove me further into despair. I began to envy every minimum wage job earner I came across simply because they were drawing a check.

Then one day I began looking inward at my heart. I asked myself “What are your true gifts and what is it that you are passionate about?” Not only was the answer easy, it was one that others had been saying to me for years. I am a people pleaser. Yes, definitely in all the negative connotation ways that has of sometimes being easily taken advantage of, but also in the amazing ways of making total strangers smile with compliments and giving random hugs and getting the response “you don’t know how I needed that”. Yes dear, actually I do because I needed it too. But it was more than that. I love to hear people’s stories and I am inspired all the time by the resilience of human nature and encouraged by the strength I see in those who don’t even recognize it. My heart is also too often crushed by those I meet who have so much to offer, but have been beaten down by life and don’t know how to fight back.

So I began with getting my personal trainer certification and then lent myself to the path as it appeared and soon thereafter got my life coach certification as well as many others. Soon Mind and Body Coaching was born. Now every Monday is a gift because it means the rest of the world is back at work and I can again go out there and interact with them and have the opportunity to change lives. Every Monday is sort of like a New Years day in that it feels like a new beginning and a fresh start. So holidays excepted I get 52 fresh starts a year.

It’s natural that we all experience sort of a reverse bell curve effect with any goal. However, if you start the week miserable where can you go from there? Maybe it’s time to look at your life differently. Don’t wait for a catastrophic event like a job loss, divorce or death to open your eyes to the possibilities. Start figuring out your path, heart and true bliss right now before you have rushed weekend to weekend your entire life away.

Repurposed content from the Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn podcasts. Dr. Wang tells of growing up in communist China where no one was allowed to move from one city to another without the governments permission and how his mind and world view shifted completely upon coming to the US.

Repurposed content from the Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn podcasts. Hear Boris tell of his second near death experience where he wakes from a coma to learn he wasn't even supposed to live, much less walk again. And hear what seem like a surprising revelation about his attitude regarding the entire experience.

Repurposed content from the Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn podcasts. Boris is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. Having survived not one, but two cataclysmic life events, he now uses what he learned to change lives himself. 

In this first part, hear him tell of tripping over dead bodies at the age of 6 after being separated from his family while fleeing to safety. And of spending years in refugee camps where his young mind continued to be faced with the stark realities of that life.  

This interview was recorded Christmas Day 2015 in Austin, Texas. When I say the meaning of Christmas here, I'm referring to the most basic human traits of love, compassion and pain both physical and emotional. 

I know that many people still experience a great deal of anger toward the Muslim community. My aim isn't to comment or pass judgment on either side of that equation. What you will hear in this discussion is the story of a young man, through no fault of his own, forced to leave the only home he'd ever known. For the safety of his family, he found it necessary to seek refuge in a country that is very often unwelcoming and even hostile. 

What I hope is that you listen to this interview not through the lens of religion or politics but instead through a lens of humanity. Allow yourself to hear all the ways this young man is just like you and me. He loves, he hurts, he questions and he grows from learning. Hear how he has come to embrace and love his new home despite the sometimes hurtful and confusing way he experiences it.

Repurposed content from the Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn podcasts. Kerry is a prolific writer and speaks very candidly about her addictions to sex and alcohol. She has written several other books including:

Lush: A Memoir

Dirty Little Secrets

The Truth of Memoir

Easy

It's an age old cliche the shake our heads moments when we look at the opposite sex and wonder how we can both be the same species. Could it be simpler than we let ourselves believe? A repurposed interview from Honestly Dawn, Ahmed and Dawn explore the possibility that maybe it doesn't have to be so difficult.

Imagine your two teenage daughters living on the streets where you can't find them and can only imagine their fate. In this repurposed interview from the Honestly Dawn podcast, author Debra Gwartney talks about the mixed bag of fear, guilt, anger and hurt. 

Repurposed content from Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn, I wasn't sure what to say when Ahmed asked me to talk about this subject, but you can believe I came up with something. Enlightening conversation as always.

Repurposed content from Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn, my friend Thomas talks about growing up in a very dysfunctional home where drugs and alcohol were the norm and what it took to go from drug addict and dealer to respected businessman.

Repurposed from Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn, Hector and I share our similar but somewhat different views on the difference between "just do it" and "of course, what else would I do?".

More repurposed content from the Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn podcast days. Venn-Brown talks very candidly about growing up gay in an ultra religious Australian family and the inordinate lengths he went to trying to get God to "fix" him, before tragedy helped him find a place of acceptance with his life and his church.

As women are we doing all we can to ensure our wants and needs are met in the bedroom? Do we have any culpability at all in our dissatisfaction or should our partners come to the game fully informed and prepared? 

Anyone who knows me well can tell you I have a very dim view of our current social media environment.  And my distaste for it has grown exponentially since this episode was recorded in 2016. That year alone, nearly 45,000 Americans took their own lives and there is more than enough anecdotal if not outright causal examples of the role the social media played in those deaths. While this in an interesting conversation, look forward to an updated version in the near future. 

Additional reused content from the Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn podcast days. Hear Hector and I talk about words, how we use them, the power they give and the power they take away. Hear him tell how language is handled in his home of small children and what ground rules keep things running smoothly in an enormously hectic but loving household.

Repurposed content from the Honestly Speaking/Honestly Dawn Podcasts. 

The words we use especially in the way of labeling ourselves or others can have an incredibly powerful, long lasting and too often extremely detrimental impact on our lives. 

In this episode Hector and I attempt to make a semantic distinction between the labels of Confidence, Vanity and Narcissism. As always these conversations were fun to record, enjoyable to relisten to and hopefully helpful or at least entertaining to our listeners.

This interview is a couple years old, but the information is still relevant and interesting as Gary gives us insight into the troubled minds behind  some of our country's most memorable events. Gary was the lead negotiator at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He also took an advisory roll in the making of the recent mini series recounting that event.

Additional content reused from the Honestly Dawn podcast. Communication between partners is so often a large source of frustration. In this episode Ahmed and I consider whether knowing what your partner is thinking would help or hinder your private time.

Anyone who listened to episode 3 knows how much I love Katie. In an effort to not let some great previous content go to waste, I'm doing minor edits and relaunching select episodes from the honestly dawn/honestly speaking podcast. Please forgive any bleed across shows in production and try to focus on the main content itself. As always Katie is a terrific joy and pleasure to work with. 

My usual launch schedule has been shot to hell recently, but this is a topic I didn't want to pass on and today was a good day to at least open the door to the discussion. What follows is the text version of the blog post I share while recording.

 Confessions of closet non-racist - Originally written July 2016

When I was in elementary and middle school I lived in Indianapolis,  Indiana. During the years that spanned Kindergarten through 6th grade I  only remember one black student. There may have been others, but they  didn’t live in my neighborhood and I didn’t interact with them. After my  parents divorced I moved to Florida and briefly attended the very small  private school associated with my grandparents church. There were no  black students there either. About the time I was starting high school  my grandparents bought a farm in the rural areas of Tallahassee. The  middle school bus that picked up my brother drove toward town and the  more affluent neighborhoods. The bus that transported me headed the  other direction toward the poorer mostly black community.

There were only three white students on my bus. I was the first  picked up and so had the longest ride every day. Next was my best friend  who lived in the middle of that small community and whose mother owned a  store where most all the residents had credit accounts. The last girl  was a very cute, quiet student who got on as the last pick up of the  route only a few blocks from the school.

Because I was on the bus the longest I had the most opportunity to  get to know the other passengers. If you were to meet me today you would  likely have a difficult time pegging me as timid, or shrinking. But  even now confrontation is not my first line of defense and one that  raises my blood pressure. However, back then was a different story. A  few of the guys I rode the bus with took a shine to me and would often  make verbal advances and plead their case for why I should hang out with  them. That alone was uncomfortable for me. But the really difficult  part was that their attention made me a further target for the girls.

On one day in particular I sat in complete terror during the bulk of  the trip while one of the girls continued to flick pennies at the back  of my head. As my first significant exposure to members of the  African-American race this was not a positive experience for me. As I  got older I found myself attracted to black men on more than one  occasion. However, while there had never been any discussion about it  I’m sure I would never have taken one of them home to my family or even  have been seen regularly in public with them. I couldn’t have explained  it I just somehow knew it wasn’t acceptable and not a battle I had the  strength to wage.

When I joined the Marine Corps in my mid 20’s there was an admin  clerk who worked in my office. She was white, but only dated black men.  The other Marines in my shop referred to her as a mudshark. The  significant difference with this young woman was that her entire  personae changed when her love interests were around. Suddenly her  actions and speech changed completely and she became very “ghetto” an  act that disappeared when she was among her primarily white coworkers.

As an unrelenting observer of human behavior always in search of  answers about my motivation and that of others I’ve long been bothered  by a strange tendency I see in our conversations. How many times a day  do we hear someone tell a story and point out the ethnicity of the  parties involved even when that fact has no relevance to the story at  all? It said to me that despite what we tell ourselves or want to  believe, most of us still see skin color in a very distinct and

For many of us, the recent hectic and often disheartening holiday season, had us wondering if humans are unrecoverable as a species. However, today I offer you candid conversation between two dreamers who not only believe there is hope, but each have a plan for how to help.

Introducing Sam Tarell, CEO of Hoop Brothers and unabashed big thinker.

For more information on Sam you can follow him @samtarell on most social channels. You can also listen to his interview with Tony McGehee on the Emerging Entrepreneurs Podcast as well as my interview of Tony in Episode 7 of Verimour Speaks.

https://anchor.fm/verimourspeaks/episodes/Episode-7---Tony-McGehee---Host-of-Emerging-Entrepreneur-Podcast-e2ianu

https://webplayer.whooshkaa.com/episode/249300?theme=light

Shorter than 10 minutes, this episode introduces Tuesday's guest, allows me a little personal introspection and describes some upcoming format changes.

The holidays can be at the same time both exhilarating and infuriating. All the extra activity and pressure can bring out the best and worst in us. In a traditionally short Saturday episode, I share my insight while giving you a small preview into Tuesday's emotional topic and interview.

heroharbor.org/get-it

verimour.com/get-it

After my divorce in 2015, I did what seemed to me the time management savvy thing and took to dating apps. It didn't take long to realize what an awful mess that world is. Personal and intimate relationships have arguably the highest requirement for honest communication and these apps were promoting anything but. And that's not even taking into consideration the very real physical and financial danger risk. I knew there was a better way. Verimour is my solution to that problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAC_(company) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NHDdsJEQsWh9E4uNsh35EU83QUyN8USFp0ddmmCButk/edit?usp=sharing

In the pilot episode of the Verimour Speaks Podcast, your host, Dawn Keegan, provides a brief introduction to our content, philosophy and a short list of upcoming guests including authors:

Katie McKenna - How to Get Run Over By a Truck

Gary Noesner - Stalling for Time

Tim Lefins - Flying Colors

Debra Gwartney - Live Through This

Kerry Cohen - Loose Girl 

https://verimour.com 

https://twitter.com/Verimour 

https://www.facebook.com/verimourapp/ 

https://heroharbor.org 

https://twitter.com/HeroHarbor