4: Marcy Cole - The Tapestry of Love: Growth, Healing, and the Journey to Self-Acceptance

00:00 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yeah, honey, I think we're good. I'm looking out on this beautiful tree and the sky and your face.

00:07 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It's good, so good I'm so glad to be here with you. It's actually a rainy day in Los Angeles, I'm all cozy, and it's the perfect day to talk about love, and that is what I associate with you the most. So I wanted to vote our time today To love and I want you to share your lessons and your journey in love, and I want to share with my community that they already know this and you probably already know this too from following my work, but I really believe that is the whole point is to learn how to give and receive love. I think love is why we're here. I think love is the reason we're still here, even with all of our discord, even with all of the violence and the terrible things that happen.

00:50

If love wasn't the biggest thing, if it wasn't the most important thing, we wouldn't still be here, and so, knowing that that's my framework, I could say I could make the argument everyone's life is about love. But when I think about you and your life and your work and Meeting you 17 years ago, that we were just laughing about, you know, knowing you all these years and tracking you, you really have devoted your personal and professional life to love. So I want to start with where that all started, the origin stories. What were your first lessons about love as a little girl? Did you learn that kind of approach to life from your family of origin, from your parents? Or is that something over time that you have delved into? And if so, I'm curious about what the pull was, what the tug to love was.

01:41 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Such a beautiful question. Well, first of all, let me just back up and say thank you to you, paige, because the feeling is mutual, and To have someone come to you and say I think your life's been about love and you emanate love, it's like that's pretty much the highest compliment ever, because the truth is, I agree with you that we are all made of love, even if it didn't seem that way or feel that way.

02:03

I do believe that we are and that, at the end of the day, I could not agree more that, at the end of this journey and this body, in this lifetime If we can say I loved well and was loved Beautifully, that's even if it's one person or one love or a lot, that's everything, and it's never too late to get there. And so that line which I love About like well, actually, it's sort of like when we veer off of that knowing what would love say yes, what would love say.

02:38

We don't even have to associate it to a person or what we heard, because a lot of people didn't hear it, but if we can imagine the energy and the frequency of love what would it say?

02:48 - Paige Nolan (Host)

What would it do? What would you do?

02:51 - Marcy Cole (Host)

So thank you so much Me too, to all of that? Yeah, it's my favorite topic how could it not be? And you're one of my favorite people, so I'm just thrilled to be with you as well.

03:03

in terms of your question about when did this access and for me personally come from? I mean, there's that whole Sort of talk about nature or nurture, and so if I think back to my own life experience when I was young, the nature part was that I was born, yes, very sensitive. So we found a cassette tape. Yes, now you know how old I am, cassette tape everybody Like oh my god.

03:32

I was probably in my 20s when I found this, you know, at my parents home, and I Played it and I was the baby of many, many years. So I came in when I had a sister that was 10, 12, and a brother that was 14, so I found this cassette when, where we were all interviewed, my father was playing and just saying okay, you know interviewing everyone and my 17 year old sister who was like Pretending like she was a DJ.

03:58

If it's like riffing on everybody and saying I'm going to college and I will be so happy to you know, leave my sister. This 15 year old sister. She's such an immature little brat. I remember this line so well and but I'll miss my little sister Marcy so much. No, okay, she's playing. Five minutes later I get on as a five-year-old and I say, because I don't know the difference between joking around and it being serious, so I was like I don't like it when my sister, this sister's, mean to this sister She'll fill up, yeah, and I remember hearing that going. Oh my god, like my sort of innate essence, as sort of a harm it you know, sensitive being and kind of harmonizer.

04:38

I just wanted everyone to love each other and when there was strife or when there was discord and people were fighting, I just didn't understand. I can totally relate to that from it. Yes, yes I have this closet.

04:52 - Paige Nolan (Host)

My listeners and people who have worked with me online know that this closet behind me is full of journals, because I Reference it a lot in my writing and if I'm online I'm often in this position and there's like a hundred journals in there from when I was a child and the earliest Evidence of just being so curious about love, so sensitive to People not getting along. I mean really young, like what you're describing. You know and wanting people to get along and feeling so Confused and perplexed why there's war. I mean like real big thoughts, real young. And, as a former teacher and just tuned into people like you are, you can see this in children. You know, when you work with children, you do see people who are, you know, specifically tuned in and empathic in that way.

05:44 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yes, I have a friend who has two Kids, and one kid had a hard time with them. They, so they were focusing a lot on like imagine what that would feel like and the golden rule. And the other kid She'd look at a kid crying and she, yeah, I mean she couldn't separate herself.

05:58

So they were working on the sort of the boundaries of having compassion but not internalizing it, and so, yeah, we do come in with a constitution and I so that's part of it, I think. And, and in terms of the nurture part, I was really blessed. Yeah, I just was. Again, I was the baby. I was sort of cradled in love and Sometimes I feel like I got the best piece of the pie because my parents had babies early.

06:23 - Paige Nolan (Host)

They were babies themselves.

06:24 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yeah, I mean and in those days they didn't have parent education and parent. So by the time I came around they were a bit older, a bit wiser, and so I Received a lot of a few. So expressions of love, there was a lot of tactile touch, there was a lot of words, there was a lot of play. My mom was very tactile, my father was very playful, so you know, and plus, I was very loved by my siblings, because I didn't have.

06:53

I didn't in those days I didn't. There wasn't like sibling rivalry stuff. I was the baby, so everybody was loving on the baby. So I really was really fortunate. And so when I turned 50 I had, oh page, I wish you were that world. But it was really great. But I was in LA and they were like, I think, 50 women I mean it was like and someone's like, how do you have this level of Connection with this many people? And I literally I said out loud something like 90% credit to my folks. Yes, I really. And so the people. I have to tell you I'm in such awe.

07:28

I'll wrap with this part of this question, which is that I'm in such awe of my clients and my friends and the people I know I've been able to cross paths with, that did not receive this kind of hands-on Holding, literally and figuratively, because when we talk about self-made humans, you know, and so when they didn't receive that sort of early download of Palpable expressed love.

07:55

I'm in such awe of it, I'm so inspired by it. And it just shows us, though, that we're sort of we're wired as humans were wired. We lose our way, because then fight or flight and sort of protection comes up when we get wounded. But we can always rewire, and return to that.

08:11 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I think about that so much with my parents because I I say to them in terms of reflecting about my own parenting now I have three teenagers in the home. I Feel really good about my ability to parent and my ability to show love and talk about love and teach love in my nuclear family. But when I think about what they did, because their models of love were not as strong as they modeled love for me. So my mom had a neglectful mom. My dad's dad was hard on him. They both had influences. My mom's father was loving and my dad's mother. So they had different Messages from the mom and the dad, my grandparents, but both of them are exponentially, I think, more skilled at communicating love and teaching love than was modeled to them.

09:02

And so I think in this part of my life, as I'm in the middle of my life and now they're older, that my dad's at 80 and my mom is 79, I'm so sure to communicate that to them. You know, like when they tell me I'm a good parent, I'm like I'll take it, thank you. Everybody loves to get validated for their parenting efforts because it's a full-time you know, relentless kind of position that you're in.

09:24

But then I say back to them but what they did on how much more loving they were, I think is remarkable. So I really relate to that. I have more and more compassion for people who did not have the loving caregivers that I had.

09:39 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yeah, that's right. And then, of course, if they choose to sort of stay awake to that and really directly put attention toward their own healing of that. And then, if they, you know, there's the healing process and then there's the awakening process, and the awakening takes you to a whole, not another level of appreciation when you did not receive it, which is not easy, but, boy, when people get there and they just simply accept what was and what is, and they realize that part of who I am today is part of the fabric and they're very mindful of what they wanna emulate and what they don't and how they wanna change it in their generational pattern.

10:16 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Right.

10:17 - Marcy Cole (Host)

That's epic. Oh my gosh.

10:20 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Did you know that you were going to be along this path of the healing arts, psychotherapy, helping people? Did you know that early on, because you were so naturally tuned into people's pain and love and empathizing?

10:33 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know that. It's not like I knew I'm gonna be a therapist or I'm gonna be in the mental health wellbeing field, but when you look back, it all makes sense, right, I had oh for sure, kids, friends coming to me and trusting me and my parents, literally I would.

10:53

My parents had a 74 epic love affair here at Love Affair but it went through its twists and turns and pretty much on my time, because they went through their stuff when I was 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and I would literally be 12 and take my mom in one room, talk to her, take my dad in the other room, talk to him, bring it together. And it wasn't until I was in my late 20s page that I was in my master's program. You had to do counseling with one of the adjunct whatever and I was, and she said do you know how inappropriate that was? But at the time I was like, well, I'm glad that you know it can be helpful, but the truth is it wasn't really. But many people in the help and healing field had history and just again, because it's part of our constitution, just being that out in the world from the time we're little and wanting people to feel better when they're hurting and wanting to.

11:46 - Paige Nolan (Host)

So when you were in your late 20s, was it an obvious choice to pursue that kind of graduate work, or did you have an aha moment?

11:53 - Marcy Cole (Host)

No, yeah, okay. So look, you know when those times in life where you're disrepresented with a person place opportunity and it's just an automatic.

12:04

I'm doing that. I literally didn't see it coming. I always had a pretty incredible career in television media sales in my 20s and I had a roommate in Chicago who came through like just to meet to see if we wanted to room together and I'm like, what are you up to? And she said I'm getting a two year degree and getting my master's in clinical social work. I'm like what's that? All I knew was like a PhD option and I wasn't interested in going back to school all those years. At that point I said what's that? And she goes oh yeah, this university, two years. And you know, then you do this done.

12:35

I was literally in my manager's office the next day and saying I really wanna go to school this and he said, okay, but I never thought that he I don't think he ever thought I would pursue it. And of course I did go back for a doctorate, but that's just because I loved what I was doing and studying and wanted to learn more. But yeah, you have those moments that when things are in alignment, when people places things, opportunities are in alignment, there's an automatic yes, right Even, and oftentimes we don't see it coming Absolutely.

13:04 - Paige Nolan (Host)

How did you move into that holistic space? Because when I first met you with First Tuesday Global years ago, that was something that you really opened my eyes to is this intersection of psychology and spirituality. So where I was coming from was more traditional psychology. You know, I thought, oh, if I became a therapist it would just be diagnosing and you know I had kind of a narrow view of that profession and but I was always interested in psychology and helping.

13:33

I just couldn't see where I could fit into it. And being a part of that group and having access to the speakers that you would bring in, and you were really standing with a flag, I felt like at that crossroads of psychology and spirituality in a way that I hadn't seen before.

13:52

And in a way that I feel like is now way more common to see. And so was there. Did that come from the conversations that you had with clients where you were starting to realize because traditionally psychotherapy isn't about love? It's hard to study love. You know, I think as we've gotten into positive psychology and understanding thriving and well-being, we're now talking about it, but 20, 30 years ago love wasn't really that, wasn't celebrated in the therapy world as something to study or quantify.

14:24 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yeah, first of all, it's so cool to hear you say this, because when we're busy being ourselves and we're just kind of doing what we do and naturally drawn to what we're drawn to and to share, we don't even know where I was landing for people. I didn't realize the events that I was producing and the people that were speaking at those events had an impact on your psychology at the time of going. Oh really, and that these were two, that all of this was being integrated. Look, I remember I went to Northwestern and freshman year. So I'm 17, because I went to college young 17. And I learned about do you know who? Leo Biscali is.

15:00 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I know the name, but I don't know the work.

15:03 - Marcy Cole (Host)

So Leo Biscali was a professor at the University of Southern California, teaching love 1A.

15:10 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Maybe that's why it's in the back of my mind name, because I was always tuned in to people who were having this conversation that you really started having.

15:19 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Well, so was I. So I'm like blown away by this man and I used to fantasize gosh, what if, from kindergarten on, children were taught about how to love, how to communicate, how to love themselves, how to have courageous conversations, all these kinds of things? What if kids were taught at that young age? And here's this man teaching in college and, by the way, of course, it had a wait list. So people might have been saying, I'm sending my kid to college and they're taking a class called Love 1A. The man made his mark. He was such a beautiful being and he wrote a book called Just Love, with the Classic and Other Books, and I would literally ring my friends in from the hallway going listen to this SBBFTV. I mean, listen to what he's talking about. So I was drawn to that kind of content.

16:05

Fast forward, when I was doing my training. I remember being at an agency and I didn't know what I was doing. I was just instinctively doing whatever. I wasn't trying to follow notes. And I went to and the supervisor was a lovely woman, but she was very rigid and stoic. And I'm telling her you have to tell her exactly what's happening in the room and what he said, she said and what you said and what happened. And she's like, how do you know this? And I'm like, know what? And she's like, well, how did you know? She thought I was going to be talking about some book or whatever. This goes back to Constitution, who we are and how we show up and express ourselves in the world.

16:47

And so I said I don't know, it's natural, I just did, and so it's natural, and that's when we know we're doing what we're meant to do.

16:57 - Paige Nolan (Host)

But then when I went back for a doctorate how long had you been in practice? I went back for a doctorate.

17:05 - Marcy Cole (Host)

I think that was how I know this. I think about boyfriends. Who is the boyfriend at the top? Who is the boyfriend at my?

17:12 - Paige Nolan (Host)

doctoral dissertation party, at least a memorable dissertation party, oh, 100%.

17:17 - Marcy Cole (Host)

OK, definitely, yeah, we'll get to that maybe. That's a whole retreat conversation. Ok, so I would say I was around 33.

17:33 - Paige Nolan (Host)

OK, so you had been in practice, which is an injury. You had enough touch points. I've been in practice for a few years?

17:39 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yeah, I did, but oh gosh, I will share this with you too. I'm just getting flashes as you're asking me this. When my first job out of my master's program was working at a community mental health clinic working with the chronically mentally ill is what they called them, and the criteria is that you had to have been psychiatric hospitalized at least one night. Well, guess what I learned so much about love on that during those years. I ended up making almost zero money being there for five years because it was such a rich experience. But these people page that were.

18:10

I remember one woman was referred to me. She said well, she won't be able to tolerate more than five minutes. She's paranoid, schizophrenic, with body dysmorphic disorder. She thinks she looks like a monster. All this kind of stuff. It's huge trauma. We worked together for four and a half years. That woman was in my office every week for 45 minutes and guess what? When I left, I was holding it together, but she was one person. When I said goodbye and I was tearful and she goes is it me? Is it me Like she thought it was something huge wrong? I was like no, I said I'm going to miss you. I so cherish our time together and she gives me this, like this card and this gift, and she walks down the hall and she looks back and I'm a man.

18:56

By this point, I am just drenched. I open the gift and it's. I forgot the musician's name. She's a French woman and it's a CD of love songs. Oh wow, beautiful.

19:08 - Paige Nolan (Host)

They're all love songs.

19:10 - Marcy Cole (Host)

OK, because that's what it was. We had that together.

19:13 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, and it's so healing. Yeah, it's so. It's what really ultimately heals anybody, anytime, for any reason. It's always love. It's just hard to talk about it. I think we're getting it better. I think we are moving towards getting more explicit about it and teaching it, but it's really an energy. I find that it's an energy and if you can come open-hearted, if people feel it, people heal from it and it's the most important thing.

19:45 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yes, for sure I mean, when you talk about energy. My first, when I was in my doctoral program, my first inclination was to do a dissertation topic on the experience of spirituality and mental health. Like they looked at me, like I had.

19:59 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Right, and, by the way, now you'd get approved, and that's all we want to study right now.

20:05 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Approved, it would be like, yeah, what's new Now? It's totally mainstream, exactly. So I changed my dissertation to the experience of never married women between the ages of 29 and 39 that desire marriage and children, which was a wonderful pursuit as well. But then I come to LA in 2005. And, yeah, I felt like everyone speaking my language is speaking my heart language really, and I felt very at home. I did in Chicago too, but LA was all another level and, of course, time and evolution. And then, yeah, this is now I mean the School of Spiritual Psychology in Santa Monica. I was like wait what.

20:41

I would have gone there instead of getting a PhD, I think, if I had. I known, so I don't even remember what the question was, but my online is yes.

20:48 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Well, we were talking about your clients, but now I'm interested because you come to LA in 2005,. You have your PhD, you've had this private practice. I want to understand about how you have felt love through community and building community, because that's when I met you. It was 2005. So you must have just started First Tuesday, global, or maybe 2006, because I had just been, I was new to LA and I felt a deep sense of love in that community and just the way that you would open up and make every speaker feel like the best thing ever, just very present. That's what I felt from you. Leading us is your presence and your intention and how authentic you are in starting and leading us in that conversation which, like to my point earlier, really impacted me. It impacted my career path. It impacted my just engagement with this topic that I love so much, because no one had been talking about it in the way that I felt like you were talking about it then so glad, paige, that's just beautiful.

21:52 - Marcy Cole (Host)

This is an example of when we love or when we have some even random act of kindness out there in the world. We don't know where it's going to land and how people are going to remember and how it's going to impact us. Our commitment to ourselves is just to show up as we are, and when we do your question about community, I didn't think of it, just like I didn't think of it. Oh, I'm going to create a community. That was never. It was not even again not even on my radar.

22:20

It was coming naturally. I just brought women together in Chicago in living rooms. My mother would say can you take $5 at the door? I feel like no, it's not about the money, it's just because I love to do it outside of my social life with good friends, outside of my office time with clients. I just thought it would be great. This is literally when the internet was starting to boom. So I was literally by hand sending emails. You sent me an email hey, does anyone know a plumber? I'm sending it out to the group. Is anyone know a plumber? Is it from Paige? It was that basic, it was that grassroots, organic.

22:54

So then when I moved to LA, someone who had been a part of it and Chicago said hey, can you start a first, you know first Tuesday here. And I was like, well, I don't know, I'll just I put out. When I moved, I'm like who knows fabulous people? In an email to a bunch of people, and three of my dearest friends in LA came from that friend of her friend, somebody who opened their doors and hearts to me and we became dear friends and I just, sophie, said okay, invite a friend. We have 20 women in a room. That's how it started in the valley in LA, friends house Fast forward.

23:25

I had to monetize everything because I didn't initially recognize my doctorate in the state of California, even though it was a credited institution. So I had to kind of so everyone's like listen, you really should monetize this. You're putting a lot of heart and time into it. So then we had a membership and then it morphed into big name speakers and influencers coming and wanting to have more visibility. So that's how it happened. Now, that said, sort of the idea of the archetype, that we all have archetypal things that run through us that are very integral and very visceral and very primal to our nature. One of mine is connector. It just is. There's so much I don't know how to do and I feel like they're speaking French and I'm like I feel like I'm in a foreign land Like Excel.

24:09

Right, yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh Spatial stuff.

24:14 - Paige Nolan (Host)

You and I are never going to partner on a project that requires Excel without a third person.

24:19 - Marcy Cole (Host)

That's right. Right, we might not be the ying to our yang, because we might be like yang and yang and ying and yang. Well, just add on to the team and fill in where we needed. But anyway, I just I came, so it just, I love it, I love. I don't think I love anything more than introducing something I love to someone else or someone I love to somebody else, and then they love each other and then it's expands, right?

24:41 - Paige Nolan (Host)

So have you leaned on that community through your own personal hard times and your personal hardships?

24:47 - Marcy Cole (Host)

That's a great question. I wasn't aware of that consciously, and then a couple of times. One was when I launched a nonprofit. I wanted children. I wasn't able to have children. There was this kind of silent grief that was going on and I was noticing it with clients and friends, and then I just, and then I was like, well, wow, there's this private pain going on for women who wanted children and destiny to not direct them in that direction, right, and then there's 153 million orphans in the world that need her, looking for love. And so I launched this nonprofit and when I announced it actually I announced it, I think you know.

25:26

Dr Sue Mortar it was the first time she came. I usually had 20 minute like breakout times where people can connect at the events, and this time I'm like you guys, I'm going to be taking up the space tonight on this one. It was about harvesting and manifesting in the fall and I showed this video and I was so nervous that like my community would feel and they all stood up and they were like, yes, we're with you. And I remember feeling so moved. And then the other time is when I decided to end my last marriage and we had this kind of like these really beautiful fireside chats where we would have like Sunday brunches on a quarterly basis and they were very intimate.

26:09

It was my favorite thing and I just showed up to one of them. I tried to go to all of them but someone else would host and I just kind of burst into tears. It was like I was going through the tunnel and I was emotional. I was like, well, this is where I'm at and this is where I'm going. I'm not worried about the future, but it's like dark night of the soul times and they were so they showed up for you.

26:29 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It was really beautiful. Yeah, for sure.

26:32 - Marcy Cole (Host)

And so, yes, I mean, listen, you cannot be a parent, that doesn't? I just heard a story of a parent that's going through a midlife stuff and the teenage girl is now coming of age they're both coming of age, but it's the first time in her life that her mother needs her. So what goes around comes around, and now she's holding space for her mom, who's been doing the same for her whole life, and I felt that way in community, for sure.

26:59 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It's so beautiful. What do you feel like that experience of the nonprofit connecting the children? Did that illuminate you even further about the universal love you and I have talked about? Love with a little L and then love with a capital L, this energy of love. To me, when you describe that and I was a part of that, I remember you announcing that and getting more involved in that it seems to me like an even elevated curiosity or expression or experience of love than just the boyfriends, just understanding what it's all about. Is that how you felt, like you engaged with it? Did it teach you love's wisdom in a different way?

27:44 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Well, I'll tell you. I mean, look, when I think about love, I think it's almost like the circular motion, all these different circles of this expression. Yeah, it's a great way to say it.

27:54 - Paige Nolan (Host)

There's so many different ways it expresses itself and it's not necessarily like a ladder, it's more. I like that you used a circle. Yes, that makes sense to me.

28:04 - Marcy Cole (Host)

And so I remember going to Peru and we connected with this group, home for orphan and abandoned kids. And oh, I'm driving my car and listening to the Spanish CDs, trying to learn this language I was so badly wanting. My girlfriend sends me a bunch of these. I get there and the first night I just it's gone, every Spanish word in my brain which I'm like, oh, please, can you translate this. Two weeks later I'm in love with these children and there's this love connection and it had nothing to do with language, nothing. It was all conveyed through eyes and expression and touch and intention. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, it was frustrating not being able to talk to them and go deeper in that way.

28:52

But honestly, yeah, it wasn't necessary for that bond to happen.

28:57

And those kids will always be in my heart honestly. And then listen. First Tuesday it might have been before, I don't know if it was we were doing this, it might have been before you you showed up, paige. So the community we had first Tuesday Circle of Giving where we had these homemakers. We find these families in the community and once a year we would do these massive homemakers that were just extraordinary and that was very humbling. I mean to this day. I was talking to Michael, my fiancee, michael Love, that's in my life now, and just the other night about how I wasn't great at keeping in touch with everyone.

29:35

It's just life has so much. But one of the moms is like you're my angel. I'm like you're my angel because I can't get over her. I cannot get over her with almost such little resources. The love this woman holds in her heart for her five kids, what she wasn't able to endure, takes my breath away really.

29:55 - Paige Nolan (Host)

So, as you're exploring that expression of love, what's happening in your romantic life at the time? Like, were you fulfilled by these pursuits or were you still feeling like? I don't know the timeline of if you were married at that time or if you were still single?

30:10 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Which one are we talking about?

30:12 - Paige Nolan (Host)

As you're talking about launching the nonprofit with Cmamas, yeah, and you're got a thriving community around you.

30:20 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Where does the romantic love fit?

30:22 - Paige Nolan (Host)

into. And the reason I'm asking is because there's always people in my community who are either going through a divorce or maybe haven't been married yet, that are really wrestling with this idea of having a personal experience of romantic love and that intimacy with one other partner versus accessing universal love. Because you know how, when you're searching for romantic love and someone says, well, just believe in love, love is everywhere, and you're like no, I really want a partner. You know you'll hear that from clients or conversant or friends, and so I'm wondering for you personally where, along this spectrum of fulfillment in terms of this expression that you talk about, that's broader and beyond borders and beyond language, but for you, romantically, that expression of love, when did that come about in your life and how have you experienced that part of your life?

31:17 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Oh, man, that's also a retreat Together. Let's do it, paige, listen. I did not have a life of the traditional trajectory that most people expect or are told to expect, or are told to follow or want in their heart, which is this teenage. And then here I knew I was a heterosexual being, so I was like, okay, I'm gonna get married to a boy and man, and then I'm gonna have kids, and then I'm gonna. And my life did not go that way. I had six love affairs, I would say, from the time it was like puppy love.

31:47 - Paige Nolan (Host)

But that was real too, I will say.

31:49 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Oh my gosh, pure, pure, the six loves before I met my love, Michael, and it's interesting when you talk about, first of all, your question for the women that are listening this whole idea of I want a partner and yes, I wanna always access universal, it's not either it's both, because the truth is, I really do believe most people, like what you were saying in the beginning of our discussion today, we wanna love and love and be loved, and one of the expressions of love just one is romantic love, and even people that are defended against it, deep down, all the layers.

32:27

Most people, I think, were wired to have intimacy emotional, physical, sexual. It just were wired that way and so there's a lot of loneliness going on, particularly now in the world. Yeah, it's gotten really more intense. Of course, it's always been there by the pandemic and then this, you know, I think people are feeling there at times, isolation, more than ever. So I will say that there's a thing in psychology called sublimation, where you transfer a pain point into something productive and positive. And my first husband, Henry I credit him for my PhD because I called it my intellectual distraction.

33:09

If we were happy and I was in my late 20s, early 30s, I would have been having babies and we would have been fixing up a sweet home and that would have been that. But I threw myself into a doctoral program and it's like I don't have time and that's why I didn't make the decision of that marriage for five years, as opposed to one year when it was super clear for me.

33:27

Henry and I are very dear friends in this day. So, but you know, back then I think, thank you, henry, for my PhD. And then in my Los Angeles days I wasn't able to get pregnant, so I had that going on. My marriage was a really sweet marriage with a beautiful man. We had real love between us, but it was not going in the direction I needed it to go to have a strong enough foundation for partnership for lifetime partnership.

33:57

And so that level of heartbreak, little by little, that was going on. When first Tuesday was blowing up and C-Mama was born, it was that was going on in the background, both of those things. So sublimation, we take some of that love that we want to experience and we just go. Okay, where can it be expressed?

34:21 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And again, I wasn't conscious of that, by the way, at the time. Do you think people ever can be conscious in the moment? Cause I find that too. I find my understanding is always well after the fact, and you've reflected, and for me it's journaling. You know really thinking and journaling writing is my, you know, way to understanding, because you see people in real time struggling for understanding. I do too. It's hard to as conscious as we want to believe we are, cause we've devoted our life to helping other people elevate their consciousness. I always wonder, like, could it have been any different? You know, or did you need you know? Is that possible? I don't even know If you would have understood how it all hung together, cause you're just doing it, you're just getting through the pain and you're just getting through the positive parts too.

35:09 - Marcy Cole (Host)

That's right. Sometimes we're just needing to get through it, to get over the bridge, and then to have hindsight and reflect a hindsight and say, wow, that's what I did. With part of that pain, I had to go direct and part of it got transferred in this other direction in order to make the most of my life and keep going. I will share this One of the moments that was very palpable for me and this is about I think I've never thought about it like this until this moment with you, but when I decided I needed to end basically those six romances, I basically ended each one, not because I didn't try, not because I bailed that's not who I am but because I just and it's heartbreaking- on the way down.

35:51

It's heartbreaking. You're like, oh and when I realized I needed to set myself free from my last marriage and move on, while staying connected to him. We're still very connected as well. When I was going through that dark night because, again, as something's breaking apart, we're grieving, we're grieving.

36:12

Sometimes people are devastated. We can't see our future yet, we can't see anything yet. It's black and then it's kind of just blank and then you're like, where am I going? I thought it was going this direction. Where am I? It's hard, it's scary, it's painful. The one when I was going through the but I was able to do it kind of in an accelerated way because I think of all the personal work, but I was in it for that period of time. The one thing, paige, that gave me palpable comfort you won't even believe was thinking about considering donating a kidney. Really.

36:50 - Paige Nolan (Host)

How did that? Even a friend of mine a friend of mine needed one.

36:53 - Marcy Cole (Host)

No, it was. I heard there was one man who had experienced it and he would always talk about it. And then there's this woman that came with me on the group tour to Peru, this lovely young woman, by the way, 30s.

37:06

And she decides to just donate a kidney. Wow, and that came through and I'm like I need to do that, I want to do that, and then I'm telling some people close my life, I'm going to donate a kidney. But the point is, it's the thought of giving part of my body to someone else who need, which is called love in a different form, was the only thing that gave me the strength when I was heartbroken over having to let go of a love over here.

37:37

I was like what if I'm just sharing that as a moment of time Now? So I just remember teaching me so much about the power of giving, but even the idea of giving which I didn't end up giving in that way, but just the idea of giving I received something. Even with just the idea. That's really powerful. It's so true.

37:58 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I have had that experience with anxiety, so I'll help my clients with anxiety.

38:02

I haven't had a lot of personal experience with depression, but I really do understand anxiety personally and I have had this experience for myself. But then I've also read about it that if you have anxiety in situations where you can help someone, for example on an airplane, if you are anxious because you're on the airplane, you feel trapped, which is part of my certain makeup of anxieties feeling trapped. I will look around the airplane and see who I can help, and I was doing that just naturally, before I read about it. And then I've read that it's a very popular way that people can then tap their own competence, because then you think, well, I have the power which? Anxiety is the opposite of feeling powerful. It's feeling powerless.

38:43

And I just think that's what you're saying too. It's like moving that point of focus to where can I give, when can I actively engage? Love.

38:52 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Give love. Yes, yes, it really helps, engages even a better word, it's a beautiful way to put it. It's like the Maya Angelou comment when she said, so beautifully, she has so many jewels, but when she said giving liberates the soul of the giver. And that's right. Giving is one of the languages of love and receiving is one of the languages of love. Right, it goes both ways. Sometimes, as women, we forget about the receiving piece. But, boy, when we get to that, then we're at a whole new level of understanding.

39:25 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I still have to work on that a lot. So when you choke, I'm sure people listening have to work on that a lot receiving. I think that's a whole. That's another podcast, just that.

39:33 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Well, yeah, but let me speak this out loud because I thought it was so beautiful. Another moment in time that I was struck. I was hearing Sonia Choket speak at a bookstore in Chicago many years ago and she was talking about the shock was in the body and the force shock was love, the capacity for us to love and be loved, for us to open our heart to give love and receive love and express love. And she said I'll never forget it. I was, because at that point I probably it was definitely not very balanced between what I was giving and what I was asking for open to receptive to receiving. And she said when you can receive what you give is when you really know what love is all about.

40:18 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It's beautiful.

40:19 - Marcy Cole (Host)

And I remember it hitting me like a two by four. I was like, oh, okay, when I remember, like I'm lighting it down, like okay, I have to remember that for life.

40:28

Because, it's true. When you and how many times do you know just somebody try to help us, we're like, no, we got it, I'm good, or we don't wanna let somebody know that we also have needs, and we also have dependency needs and we also have reliance needs and we also could use a helping hand oh boy, but when we allow our hearts. That's why, with clients, honestly Paige, and maybe you feel I'm sure you felt this way too with everyone that you've worked with I'm so also in awe and inspired all the time with the beauty of a vulnerable heart, which is really just an open heart. You know that, a capacity just to be open and say I am here to receive support and invest in myself.

41:12

I mean talk about elevated. That's big stuff, even when someone's suffering, that's.

41:19 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I have a file on my computer of what clients say, because I feel like everyone is so intelligent when they're in their heart space, when they're sharing, when they're centered and their intention is to share about their inner life, to feel better. They've shown up that way. They've decided to do that. It's so incredible what comes out of people's mouths Really.

41:43 - Marcy Cole (Host)

I love that you are doing that because, honestly, you can't imagine how many times I've thought, damn, if I wrote notes from the slide I've been in practice for 30 years there would be definitely a New York Times postseller, because it's part of the human experience. Everyone would be able to relate. I love that you're doing that and you've been doing that and you're so right you listen. If we sit back and listen and we're like whoa, back to the community mental health clinic when the stuff that would come out and I'd be like, okay, fine-lying between insanity and beyond wisdom.

42:16 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Wow, and I think this idea that we have to go out to get guidance. Now, you and I both work as guides, so I really do think there's a value in that and I love my profession and I'm so happy to be in this healing arts field. But there's so much wisdom within. Truly, we have our inner counselor, we have an inner wise one. You know that when we're centered and we are intentional and quiet and still about it, you do have the answers on the inside.

42:46

I think it's just sometimes we need support to reach for them and to feel safe enough and trusting enough to hear those words and say, okay, I'm actually gonna live by my own values, my own words. Because you know, I'm sure you've had this moment. I know I've had this moment where you wake up and you're like who's life am I living? Like what am I doing? Right now? I have those less and less as I get older and more conscious, but I certainly had those when I was younger. I wanna connect your sharing about receiving to Michael now your big love of your life.

43:19 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Do you?

43:19 - Paige Nolan (Host)

think that part of your fulfillment, and just the way that you feel so expanded in this current relationship, has to do with your ability to receive.

43:30 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Oh, 100% Like when women are approaching 40 and 50, I'm like congratulations you're in. For, ultimately, we all wanna feel free, right? We all wanna feel free to be who we are and be connected to the truth of who we are and to be comfortable in our skin, to trust that voice and those instincts and the intuition for that, to trust the inner guide that you're talking about. And I think that the older we get as I'm talking about women if we're paying attention and we're committed to our own personal growth, the more we get to the truth of who we are and the more we are not willing to betray ourselves anymore. And so, yes, we can look back and I can look back in my chapters with people and I could say I was very much Marcy. However, I think I held this part back. I don't think I was fully expressed here. I think I was either trying to protect that person or myself with sharing certain parts of me. When I had the space and I took a couple of years with I was like I'm not, I just need to get back in my own consciousness, juices, grounding.

44:38

But when I met Michael in that year of dating, I was so unattached to any one date being anything I say to women just show up and just have an experience, just be who you are and just be like and who are you. Just be real. You're not going to burn a bridge by being real. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and that's the only way you're going to find out who's truly aligned with your heart. So when Michael and these dating sites I met him at a dating site, you have this tiny paragraph of like 50 words to describe yourself, which is, by the way, great exercise. Everyone who's listening If you're going to put in terms of really attuning to the truth of who you are.

45:17

So I put it in our early discussions, just on the phone, because we lived in a different state. He said, wow, you really want a lot in a man. I said, yeah, I do. And he said, good, oh, wow, and I'm like okay, game's on, all right, I can talk to you again next week, tomorrow. Oh, cool, five minutes. So, yeah, it's a long answer to your 100%. I didn't hold anything back. And then there's just so much stuff that we either haven't really investigated within our own desires or vision, or that we have shame around or like or fear around. And I was like you know what? I'm just going to say what's on my mind and on my heart, and if he judges me or doesn't get it or doesn't want it, so be it. Do you think that?

46:04 - Paige Nolan (Host)

relationship. I mean, we can all tolerate a moment of just. Was that relationship with Michael the first time you feel like you had done that as wholeheartedly as you did with him, Like did you take more risks?

46:16 - Marcy Cole (Host)

So think about you know, we talk about the onions yes. Like I mean listen, all these people in my own life. They have six loves that I talked about they know who I am.

46:26

I was a complete imposter. I mean, they know who I am, the spirit of who I am, but I kept peeling more and more the layers of my own life experience within myself. I allowed them to reveal themselves to myself, to experience them in a new way, to embrace them and to integrate them. A lot of times we'll split off the good and bad, or the stuff that we're proud of or the stuff that we judge. You know we all do this, but the more I started, that's when I talk about holistic health, it is about having everything integrated right.

46:58

So the more I did that for myself, the more I was able to share with Michael and, by the way, it goes both ways because, like in year four, we had to confront some shadow stuff, like when we talk about shadow, we talk about that's when we're both off the pedestal, ladies and gentlemen, it's like okay, and I had to confront my own willingness and ability and desire to love all of him. So tricky Because of the, and we don't have to by the way.

47:31

But if we love someone that much we get to. It can be a little messy there for a while, but, boy, when we exhale from it and we then walk over that bridge together and we get to, we see the forest of the trees and we get to the other side is a much richer deeper. And trust.

47:49 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I had that experience in my marriage when my husband, boyd, his father died unexpectedly and that kind of took him to his knees and helped him to discover a whole new side of himself. And then it led to this whole career crisis, which is wonderful now because he's doing what he's meant to do and he has his own company and everything's fine. But in that period of time I was so reflective about this fact that I kept wanting Boyd to be emotionally available. That was my big line when we were newly married and younger. Well, you, just you need to be more open with me emotionally. And then to see his raw emotion and to really be confronted with a man's vulnerability, I was shocked at how scared that made me, how much I had bought into him being on a horse and going and slaying a dragon for me and taking care of me.

48:42

I mean, the whole thing was so shocking and thankfully we had a wonderful therapist at that time who guided us through all that but the amount of shame that I felt about my own things I had done to him, how to keep him in a little box, and even though I say I want the truth and I want a vulnerable man. It's like to really sit with the vulnerability in your partner and then we can get into culture and men and women and all that that we don't have time for. But to really sit with a man's vulnerability and what that means, it's really humbling and we're all guilty of it, whether you do it to your partner, whether they're same sex partners or whatever, fill in the blank.

49:25

But it takes courage to do that into what you said. It really took a lot of trust for each of us to break down what we had projected onto the other person and decide that we got to rebuild this thing. We got to frame it up in a different way.

49:41 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Yeah, I mean, look, parent-child love is just innately unconditional, right. Most of the time. That doesn't mean that people don't have to set boundaries with their children and their parents, sometimes when things are just not healthy enough to be able to stay in a ring in the way that everybody really wants to deep down. But when it comes to love, romantic love and friendship, there are requirements. Right, there's just requirements. But when you get to a level of you've gotten through most of the non-negotiable requirements and then it gets down to loving what is, as Byron Katie would say, and loving someone that much that you actually it does become unconditional. I mean, again, I saw my folks, the 74-year mayor, I mean they had tricky times midway right when I think for a minute there was a question, at least on one side. But wait, I mean they started off a foundational, trusting their instincts. They happened to have been right. They trusted their heart. They happened to have been right. Then they stayed in the ring.

50:47

They stayed in the room those last 25 years. They both passed in 94 and 97, they were thick as thieves. They had reached 100% unconditional love, no question. But here's the thing, back to your original thing. Not everyone's going to have that in this lifetime Not everyone's going to experience that, and the truth is. And, by the way, even when we do, one person's going to pass before the other and we still have to survive and hopefully still figure out a way to thrive.

51:18

And that's when it comes back to connection to our own heart and our own self-acknowledgement of the miracle that we really are each human and the connection to the divine, which is not connected to a personality or a timeline or a structure or anyone that we might live under the same roof. With right, it's to bring us to a place of still, comfort and assurance and feeling more full, even though there might be things that we still want on this earth plane.

51:55 - Paige Nolan (Host)

So at the end of the day, when we talk about love, that really is the source of all of it and it's where we begin and where we need to end as we let go of so much along the way Do you feel at this point in your life you can say I love myself with all that you've learned about love, with all that, the love that has been reflected back to you, of the love that you've been able to receive? Can you say that?

52:24 - Marcy Cole (Host)

I can say that and, as a human, I just want to normalize the fact that the good news is, yes, I can say that I have had some sort of visceral experiences. It takes visceral experience, by the way, love just aren't words right, like when you are in a loving relationship or friendship, or with family or friends or intimate relationship. You are experiencing that love in every cell of your body. I will say that I don't think we can talk ourselves into loving ourselves. However, I know that in my own life I had to go deep to have the experience of visceral, palpable love. I remember being in a meditation and a four-day silent meditation retreat. I didn't see this coming, but it was again that period of time where I ended the marriage and I was in this zone where I had space and I was very open and, oh boy, I went into a recognition of self-compassion because I've lived my life compassionate for others.

53:32 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Not all the time with everyone.

53:34 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Sure, I've lived my life but, oh my gosh, I was having a relationship with myself and talking to myself and seeing what I went through and being like, oh honey, I actually felt it and I came out of that going and I'm tears and I'm like, oh my God, I've never experienced that before in that way.

53:51

So I do feel like in order to get to a loving place with a real visceral loving place, we have to have some quiet time to connect, we have to have ritual, we have to be able to want it and give that time to ourselves to reach those that are in a knowing and connectivity with the truth of our heart.

54:14 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It's so true. Maybe we can end on that, because it feels practical to me that this big notion of self-love can feel so enormous. It can feel enormous and it can also feel slippery. What is it? It can feel like it gets too sentimental or too new. Age or two would ever fill in the blank. And I think, when you break it down to self-compassion, like you mentioned and I've had experiences of self-acceptance to me those practices they need time, they need space, they need stillness. It's very hard to accept your flaws and your mistakes and your humanity. On the fly. You make a mistake, or you say something, or you hurt someone's feelings, or you don't perform at your job, or you can't connect with your spouse, or you can't connect with your teenager, whatever it is. It's hard to just keep moving through your day and expect to recover from that. And I think what happens over time? There's so many moments like that you lose touch with yourself. So I'm like you pause.

55:22 - Marcy Cole (Host)

For me it's the pause, and hand on the heart and the deep breath and saying what would my friend say right now?

55:28 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Or if you have a connection with the divine or God or nature, like being in the presence of that energy, and saying I'm still lovable. Even with all this mistake, this flaw, this humiliating thing I did, I'm still lovable. So, I think that's a wonderful way to invite the people listening. That part of love is really moving at a slower pace.

55:51

to let love in, to be able to receive it, is a choice and I think choices move much more intentionally and slowly than instinct, and I think we're taught growing up oh, you'll have it, you're a princess, you'll be saved by the prince or the guy on the horse or whoever. And so it's pitched to us as this instinct. It's natural, but the reality of it's a choice and it's a day-to-day practice.

56:19 - Marcy Cole (Host)

That's right. It's a choice to pay attention to ourselves, like we are with everybody else.

56:24

And I love the fact that you brought up hands on the heart and breath because literally yesterday I had a private session with a mom who was being really hard on herself for losing her way with her daughter and we literally talked about and it wasn't like this was premeditated, it was off the cuff, but these are not things that haven't been talked about before, of course but it was literally like you just said, it was first having a physical, doing something physical with yourself, so it was hands on the heart, and then it was feet on the floor feeling the feet on the floor getting grounded.

56:57

And then it was a breath one breath, two breaths, three breaths into the belly and holding and releasing slowly on the out breath twice as long, which calms the nervous system pretty much immediately. And the last thing was a word or saying that we express our love through words so often with other people. How about back to ourselves? So hers was who was it taking a breath in? And it was like chill, chill, but not from a place of demand, but just an invitation, mine.

57:30

When I'm in the middle of the night, if I have a disturbing dream or something, I will say literally to myself and I say to everyone if you like this, it's yours too, or add to it or edit it or make it your own. I am loved, I am guided, I am protected, I am connected, I am loved, I am guided and I'm asleep.

57:51

I'm asleep in like a minute. So we all find our ways detouring from this acknowledgement of the beauty of who we are and the full acceptance of our human experience, which is full of mistakes, as Michael might say right and then learning from them and coming back in the fold.

58:12 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Oh, marcy, thank you so much for sharing with us. I'm going to add all the ways that people can find you in these notes, in the episode notes, and I just encourage people to check out Marcy's work, and I so appreciate how generous you are with your lessons and, as I said in the beginning, I just feel like you embody love. When I hear the word love, when I think of leaders of love, you are a person who comes to mind. So I appreciate you and I'm so grateful that our paths have crossed now in an even more significant way, because I have two kids who drive.

58:49 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Oh, my gosh, I know, paige, really. Thank you so much as well, honey, and remember that concept in staying in the zone of self-love, that when we see something in another, it reflects back the truth of who we are, because we couldn't recognize it in another if we didn't have it within our own consciousness and our own heart. So right back at you. Thank you for who you are and all that you bring to the world and everyone you touch, and I, specifically, have kept my tracking you too girl, I am tracking you too, and I look for I mean, this was such a rich conversation.

59:19

We could go on and on for a day because there's so much here but I love that you're talking about love and inviting me into the conversation and let it be, and let it continue on and on and on yes, no end to this conversation or this experience of life.

59:34 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I so appreciate you.

59:36 - Marcy Cole (Host)

Thank you so much All right. Bye-bye, thank you so much, thank you.