How Relationship Diversity Can Create More Fulfillment in Your Relationships
Show Notes
Who are you and what do YOU really want? Carrie’s mission is to spread the message about how relationship diversity can transform your relationships.
In this episode, you’ll learn about:
Discover why your past can hit your relationship's 'trigger points’
The mindset shifts needed to building your dream relationship
How remembering who you truly are instead of trying to “fix” something in yourself could be a better path forward
Talk therapy, somatic secrets, and unlocking energy healing - your recipe for transformation
The importance of self-care, personal growth, and questioning societal norms in building fulfilling relationships
International Best-Selling Author, Relationship Diversity Advocate and Podcast Creator, Carrie Jeroslow, teaches people the tools to relate consciously to themselves and others.
She is the host of Relationship Diversity Podcast, where she aims to explore, question, and celebrate all aspects of relationship structure diversity from soloamory to monogamy to polyamory, and everything in between. This is an inclusive space, giving people the permission to design their unique relationships from the knowledge and acceptance of their unique selves. She believes that when we learn and accept who we truly are, we are able to be more authentic in our relationships with others, bringing an unparalleled sense of joyfulness and fulfillment to our lives as a whole.
Noteworthy quotes from this episode:
"I think people judge their own journey and they think that if I'm not able to do it right now, when there is no right or wrong, if I'm not able to do it in that way, then something's wrong with me."
"Healing has the connotation that something's wrong and something needs to be fixed. Whereas remembering is a process of knowing that innately I am perfect and beautiful and I was born that way and there was all these things that happened in my journey that covered that up. So it's a process of allowing the clouds to clear, to see the sun."
"We are brainwashed to think that...my life happens to me and I don't have any part of this."
Connect with Carrie
Podcast: www.relationshipdiversitypodcast.com (Sign up to receive a free guide to exploring Relationship Diversity)
Website: www.carriejeroslow.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/carrie_jeroslow_author_coach/
Connect with Paige Bond
Instagram: @paigebondcoaching
Facebook: @paigebondcoaching
Website: www.paigebond.com
Paige Bond hosts the Stubborn Love podcast, is a Licensed Marriage Therapist, and is a Polyamory Relationship Coach. Her mission is to help people-pleasing millennials navigate non-monogamy so they can tame their jealousy and love with ease. Her own journey from feeling lonely, insecure, and jealous to feeling empowered and reassured is what fuels her passion to help other people-pleasers to conquer jealousy and embrace love.
Free Jealousy Workbook:
http://www.paigebond.com/calm-the-chaos-jealousy-workbook-download
Free People Pleasing Workbook:
https://www.paigebond.com/people-pleasing-workbook
Disclaimer: This podcast and communication through our email are not meant to serve as professional advice or therapy. If you are in need of mental health support, you are encouraged to connect with a licensed mental health professional to receive the support needed.
Mental Health Resources:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 for free, 24/7 crisis counseling.
Intro music by Coma-Media on pixabay.com
Transcript
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Welcome back to another episode of Stubborn Love. I am your host, Paige Bond. As always, we have a very special guest today and her name is Carrie JOLO. She's a best selling author internationally. She's got her own podcast talking about relationship diversity. And she'll talk a bit more about that today and is also a trained intuitive
reiki master healer. So I'm super excited to learn about Carrie because I was able to be on her podcast and now we're training. So this is going to be really exciting to dive into as she covers a lot of the topics that I like to dive into on my own stuff. So, Carrie, thank you so much for being here today as listeners are surely curious. Can you talk more about yourself and your story on like how you got to where you are today?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Thank you Paige for having me here. I'm so excited to be here. I loved you on my podcast and I'm always excited to continue awesome cool conversations. So like you said, my name is Kerry Jaris Low and I am a best selling author. I like to call myself a relationship diversity advocate. And my journey I think starts when I was 12 years old and I saw my parents go through a divorce and this was a really challenging time for me because I was really just forming my understandings of
relationships. And when I see my parents before the divorce were lo loving, seemingly they were always there, all my needs were met. And when it came out that my father had been having an affair, everything erupted and everything changed in my life. And I started to form these beliefs unconsciously about relationships and these unconscious beliefs were based in untrust and fear and that the guy will always cheat on me.
And this is how I began my young adult life into relationships. And I never really was, had boyfriends in high school or college when I got to New York City. I started to get into some of the non-physical ways of healing. I would call that astrology, energy healing, Reiki. And this was in the early nineties. So this was pretty early on. I couldn't do a Google search on these things.
I actually had to go to a bookstore and meet people and take classes in person, but it really started to open my mind to other ways of living life. And as I went through my healing work, I hooked up with a man called Matthew who was my first husband. And we had a really beautiful six year relationship, although it was more of a friendship than a romantic relationship. But that was exactly what I needed. At that time, we did end up getting divorced.
It was his choice. And that was where I realized that if I don't really look at the wounding from my parents' divorce, that I will create this experience over and over and over again, I went into a very deep three month healing, energetic healing process with modality called theta healing. And I came out three months later, completely having healed the relationship with my father and attracting very different men from that point on.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
OK, you have to expand on that kind of healing because I've never heard of that.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
What is theta healing theta healing is a modality that was developed by a woman named Diana Stibel when I worked with her she was in Idaho, she is now in Montana. And the way that this modality works is it works in the quantum field. So it doesn't work in the three dimensional field. The most powerful part about this healing is that the the practitioner goes into a theta brain wave.
And this is through a process that that Viana came up with that I can get there in about a millisecond once I've practiced it a lot. And then I connect with kind of the universal energy spirit, God, whatever you wanna call it and core a healing where I can actually observe shifts energetically in our belief system in our subconscious. And it sounds really out there if you've never experienced it, but I would finish these sessions coming out and my whole world would look different.
My father would say things to me that I had always wanted him to say to me and not knowing that I had just gone through this healing session. And so these are things that are, are inexplicable with words and with, you know, but, but like Joe Dispenza is, is starting to bring the study of neuroscience in to explain some of these things. So to, to demystify them.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Wow. So it sounds like that is a really in depth process getting to the, the, the root issues that we may have like in our unconscious to provide healing. So you, you know what, what happened after that after that experience for you.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Yes. So after that experience, like I said, the, the men that I attracted to me were very different. So the next relationship after my marriage, after my divorce was with a man who had had a lot of sexual wounding and had actually had affairs on his wife. But he was going through a divorce and he was going through this spiritual awakening where he was really coming to terms with a lot of his choices and behavior.
Now, if I had not gone through my own healing, and I would have heard that he had had affairs, I would have run so fast, right? And instead I empowered myself to say to him, this is what I don't want, I don't want lying. I don't want dishonesty. But what I do want is to explore a relationship with you and to also explore it in an open way where you can have other experiences and I can have other experiences.
But we're going to make the choice to be honest with each other. So this was around 2005. And that was an incredibly empowering experience for me. It's like I reclaimed my, the narrative of my life and we had other experiences with other people. We lived together when we were together for 18 months. He had a daughter who was 14 at the time. So I got to learn from the other perspective what my stepparents.
So my mom's husband and my dad's wife went through with me as a 14 year old, which was not pretty and not nice. I was just very angry and she was angry too is a great perspective. And so then after that, one of the people that I hooked up with was the man that I am now married to. And I realized when I met him, oh, this is, this is what I've been looking for.
And so we started going out together in 2005, were married in 2007, had Children. And just recently in the last three years, we have always talked about doing things in our own way about questioning all of our beliefs and choosing what is right for us in the moment of our relationship. And so we had talked about the possibility of having other people in our lives, but we had other priorities that happened in the first, you know, for 15 years, 14 years, which was businesses
and Children. But finally, in 2000, we came to the place of being ready to launch into this new dynamic in our relationship, which is where we've been for the past 3.5 years.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Wow. Really everything you're talking about gets me so excited because this is so ideal and so beautiful in the way that you went about this and how it sounds like, you know, you were coming from a nonjudgmental place, the partners, you were with were coming from a nonjudgmental place and really at the core of it, it just sounds like that what everybody wanted was for you to be your authentic
selves and love each other through that and create agreements with each other that allows for that kind of flexibility while still being core and important to each other.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Yes. So the way that you just said that it sounds so beautiful and it was so much clunkier than that. And I have to be real about it because, because the process with the first boyfriend was about owning my voice and it was not a light switch moment. It was a long and winding road of getting to know myself of embracing my worth of faltering back into just wanting that person to be happy of fear for, you know, speaking my truth.
It was just such a long and winding road. And I think that that's important to say and at the same time, the, the dedication that I have to my own growth and evolution, that is the thing that pulled me through every fear, every moment of it feeling just sucky. And even with my husband, now there are moments where we really have to question, is this what we feel or this is this what we've been taught to feel is this, you know, I, I am still dealing with always wanting everything to be clear
and easy and my partner to be happy. That was what I came out of the divorce with. That is some deep patterning that I am reprogramming within me. And although I do feel like I'm on the other side of it, there's still moments because I'm human and I'm still working on things. And so I like to tell people that because I think people ha judge their own journey and they think that if I'm not able to do it right now, when there is no right or wrong, if I'm not able to do it, like in that beautiful
way that you just said right now, then something's wrong with me. And I want to say that there is always a journey and we're on our own journey and to show compassion to self is so important.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
OK? Thank you so much because I'm feeling so much love in that response. And I really appreciate you clarifying for the audience and saying and being real saying, hey guys, it wasn't as easy as like page, just summed it up to be like that sounds really great.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate, Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
And it would be amazing if it would be as easy as that.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
I love how you talked about like it was really a journey of you embracing yourself, embracing your self worth and getting to know you and how to find your own truth, your own inner voice and, and especially the the just wanting the other person to be happy because I work with people pleasers who really put away their own needs to please everyone around them.
And so I would like to dive into maybe a little bit more of how you went about that journey of getting to know yourself and embracing your worth rather than putting yourself down. Like, what was that experience like? And what did you do to and and likely are still doing right? Because we're always a work in progress. So what is that journey been like?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
It has been an intense unfolding. So I like to talk about healing in terms of a memory process or remembering who I really am instead of fixing because healing has the connotation that something's wrong and something needs to be fixed. Whereas remembering is a process of knowing that innately I am perfect and beautiful and have and, and, and I was born that way and there was all these things that happened in my journey that covered that up, you know, so it's a process of like
allowing the clouds to clear, to see the sun. And I think that a part of it was definitely going to, I started with talk therapy and then went to somatic therapy, talk therapy kind of frustrated me because I felt like I, I wa I wasn't getting anything, you know, it's just like listening, which I was like, I have good friends that will listen to me.
But somatic therapy helped a little bit more because it was starting to move things in my body which I loved. But the energetic healing was the thing that made me question the core of who I am. Am I all of my experience or am I truly a, you know, a consciousness? And when I honed into that I am a consciousness and that I am here to have these experiences, to further understand it gets a little existential.
And so it, it was like I started this in 1993. OK. It's 2023 now I'm still learning. So, so it's a process but I think that it was always questioning. So keeping a curious mind to always question what I think what I've been told, that's one of it, reading a lot of books, putting myself in situations and with people that will help to open my mind that will help to give me in a loving, accepting way space to question and be curious. So that was a big part. The newest part which is I would say
seven years new is self care is committing to self care practice, which to me is not, I don't talk about self care as like massage pedicure. It can be that but self care to me is about connection to myself every day and creating space to ask myself what's going on. What am I dealing with? What am I triggered by, what am I questioning? And whether that's on my yoga mat or through meditation? Or through just a walk or through singing a song, whatever it is.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
But I go through that process, I'm so excited about everything you just said because as you were talking about, you know how there's this questioning process, like you're, you're essentially going through life, not taking reality for, for what it is or what the media tells you or what maybe your family or friends have told you, you're getting to create your own meaning.
And that sounds really, really powerful for you to essentially take a hold of your life. Yeah, you mentioned somatic therapy being like really what's the word like pivotal in your healing? And can you go into just like briefly talking a little bit more about what somatic therapy is and what that looks like just for listeners who might not be familiar.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
So I'm not super trained in somatic healing, but I will say that my experience of somatic therapy was getting in my body. And I feel that when we turn off senses from a space of safety, that is important where it's never, you know, it's, it's always just to keep us safe, right? We learn our different defense mechanisms to keep us safe. But when we do that, we shut off certain parts of our sensory experience and create.
Now I understand this to be create stuck energy and trapped energy in our body. And so my experience was in New York City in the early 19 nineties, I was given like pillows to hit and bats to like, you know, like that kind of somatic therapy, punching and just getting moving the energy in my body. I don't know if that's where somatic therapy is right now. But that's was the kind of thing that started to just move it from me and tracking to expanding and to releasing.
And I started to feel different parts of my body that I had turned off since the time I was 12 years old, that was my experience and just getting that energy moving again, started to open me up to different thought systems, different ways of looking at the world.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Yeah, I'm curious now, maybe what were some of those things that you realized that the, the parts of you that you had turned off for so long until you know, starting this journey? Like how did those reveal themselves to you? And what was it like to get back in touch with those parts of you?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Well, it's interesting because I just did, it just came out today an episode for my podcast, relationship diversity podcast all about intimacy. So I used to be the casting director and director for a show called Blue Man Group in New York City. And I talk about the first time that I saw that show and I was sitting in the audience and the Blue Men kind of break the fourth wall and they come into the audience now this character, I came to learn in my 12 years working with them was described
as a child and a wise sage without the ego. OK? So there was this beautiful openness and this blue man came out in the audience and looked right at me with the most loving accepting look, he looked into my eyes and I realized how shut off I had become because I was safer that way. I was scared for people to look at me, really see me. I was scared to look at myself.
And because I think I was so open as a child and I was so hurt and it was not a direct hurt. It is not like my parents were going to hurt me. It was just how I translated how it sat in my system, the experience. So I was closed off to any kind of deeper connection to any kind of. And even in my friendships, I didn't feel safe in my friendships. So the beliefs that I wasn't safe, that I'm not safe in my friendships, safe in my, any kind of relationship.
I had the belief that every man always broke up with me. In fact, the name of my book is why do they always break up with me? And it's about these, you know, having these beliefs that continually play itself out. So every man that I was with broke up with me up until my divorce, then I did that healing. Guess who initiated the transition or the breakout me, it was very different. Right? But because I had that belief so strongly it played out in my life.
I had the belief that I just needed to be what the guy wanted. And if I wasn't that, then I wasn't worthy or that they would leave me that I just needed to not speak my voice. I was terrified of conflict because the first conflict that I saw led to my parents' divorce, that was the very first conflict that I saw as a child. So any kind of yelling, any kind of conflict would mean the end of a relationship. So those are just a few.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Wow. So those run really deep. And again, I love how you talk about how these experiences we've had in our life infuse really in, into our body, into our soul, how we react, what we think or assume about a situation. And I'm kind of curious, would you characterize like having these thoughts and then assuming about a situation, would that be considered self sabotage?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Well, yes. Yes. But it's neurologically wired. So this is like what Joe Dispenza talks about? Ok, if any of your listeners have Gaia, the TV channel, he does this amazing series called Rewired and he talks about how our experience will wire our brains to expect and to see that. So even if and this is really true because I think about my first relationship, my first marriage.
And Matthew grew up in a family household where their parents argued but they stayed together but they argued. Well, I grew up in a household that they didn't argue. My parents didn't argue until they divorced. So he was, he would get upset about something and his voice would elevate and that was just how he processed. And that was not at all his rewiring of that's gonna lead to divorce.
But me, I would shrink. I would like shrink. And I, I had this memory of a fight that my parents had and I was in their bedroom and I shrunk into a corner literally in a corner screaming for them to stop. Well, that is what I felt every time I would get into an argument with Matthew, he was not in that place at all and he would be like, no, I'm with you.
We just need to have this discussion. So yes, that is what that is the idea of how this experience sat in my nervous system and in my brain neurology and I'm not a brain scientist. So I don't really know all of the specifics but go watch that show if you are based in science and you want to understand the science of it, I'm more into the metaphysical and into and, and if something feels true to my heart, I'm like I got it.
That feels true to my heart. But again, like someone could argue that, oh, well, you're just seeing it through your programming, which is probably true. And it also helps me serve my, it feels helps me to feel better in my life. So I gravitate towards that kind of thing.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
It sounds like being in these experiences and then later on being in a relationship and having something that relates back to putting yourself in that space of, oh my gosh, you know, this is what happened back then in the past and here was the aftermath or the outcome. I'm so afraid that this is going to happen again. That sounds like describing a triggered state like that, that's kind of what happens is that what you would say?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Yes, definitely. And I didn't have those words back in 2004. Those words were not hugely a part of, you know, the kind of healing vernacular, but I, I very, very definitely was triggered at that point. So a part of that healing process was about reprogramming. And again, this energetic modality, the healing really helped to reprogram it in a way that doesn't make sense or doesn't make like, I guess physical sense and then those triggers didn't.
So here's another thing is in the time where I was unhealed with my dad, I love him. Now, he is incredibly opinionated, always has been and he will, he would say something to me in just who he is and trigger the out of me. And I would, you know, react in that way. Well, once that subconscious reprogramming happened, he would say the same things, but it just didn't have an outlet to plug into.
It just wasn't there. I don't know how else to explain it. It just wasn't there. So I would kind of giggle about it and just say, oh, that's my dad and I would make a joke about it. And then the funny thing is, is he would laugh about it and he's like, well, you know, me, I just always have an opinion and we just laughed about it.
That was a very clear example to if you have the outlet, then you can be triggered with the certain plug that fits into that outlet. But you, you know, release that and rewire the electricity in your body, then that outlet is changed and the plug doesn't fit in anymore.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
I could use that for a lot of relationships in my life. This sounds really amazing at helping people come to a place of acceptance of like the other person and kind of giving like that validation for the other person. But knowing that again, you not necessarily have to agree with their opinion. You can still be your own person. And that doesn't create necessarily a disconnect between you two.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Yes. And I do want to say that it is also completely ok to do your healing without having the person in your life anymore. And that is really, really imperative to get across is just because I've had the healing. Now, I'm very thankful with my dad. We were able to have our relationship. It was important to him and it was important to us and there was no, I felt, I feel safe with my dad.
I don't feel unsafe, which I'm thankful for. And there are times with relationships that people are unsafe and that you can still do your healing work without that person there. And you can maybe come to an understanding. But just having this conversation with my 14 year old is that I feel that you can never judge a person because you don't walk in their shoes.
And if you walked in their shoes, you would understand why they do, why they do what they do, why they act, how they act. And that doesn't mean that we need to be around them, that we need to choose to be in their lives. But everything makes sense. Everything will make sense to me that was really important to understand and then learning about my dad and his childhood and how he grew up made a lot of sense as to how, why he did what he did and how he responded and how he is and why he is, how he is.
You know. So I think that that's important if you want to create a relationship with someone to maybe ask questions and stay curious to understand who that person is and why they make those decisions. And if that person can meet you in the space of saying, I want to do my own work too, then you have the potential to create a more fulfilling and more intimate relationship with that person.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate, Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
If they're in agreement to do their own work as well, this sounds so powerful.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Is this is this part of your eight week reprogramming process or? Yeah.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Yeah. So, so I work with people one on one and I only take 1 to 2 people at a time because it is very deep work. We are questioning every subconscious belief that you have and I use my intuitive skills to get deeper. And sometimes, and I'm just gonna put this out there. Sometimes I found that it has to do with past lives. If people even believe in that, if people don't believe in that, we don't go there.
But there's a lot of past life, I've had past life regressions that have helped me understand relationships, current relationships in my life and why I'm creating this kind of experience with this person. And I'm able in my intuitive training to do some past life readings and healings and going. And that's the one thing I love about the state of healing modality is that it goes into that kind of cultural genetic programming. Like you think of what we pick up from our parents,
parents, parents, parents, let's say we had a great, great, great grandfather who got screwed over in business and thinks all rich people are horrible people. They actually can pass that energetically down the genetic line. And so like these are, this is where we get out of the purely 3d time, you know, just time and you know, three dimension and we go into a little bit more of the five dimensional space.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
I feel like I'm in the matrix talking to you. Yeah.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
And you can go on my web, people can go on my website and read what people say because people are like, I, I don't know what you did and what we worked on, but I feel totally different and i it's not just me that had this crazy like, oh my God, everything's different. Other people have that most people, if they come and they show up and they are ready to do this work, most people will have pretty big shifts in eight weeks and that's why I like to do the eight weeks is because because a lot of
times, not a lot of times but sometimes people, they, they agree to this work and, and all of the fears and triggers come up. But that's good. That's good because that if it comes up, that means that it's ready to be released. But some people stop at that. So if we commit to it and it is, it is an investment. I charge $4000 for it because I want you to invest into yourself and into the shift. And if you do, I show up right along with you.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
I love this so much. And, you know, as a therapist, I've been trained in providing like ket immune assisted therapy, which is a psychedelic and it's so interesting how you talking about the results and where you go in this realm through this energetic healing is really a lot of what my clients experience being in a psychedelic experience. So I'm I'm loving hearing about like the parallels that I'm drawing between the two. It's so interesting.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Yes, it is. And it's about I think what psychedelics do is that they let go of that conscious mind that keeps us in this three dimensional space and allows, you know, the mind to open, to just open to other possibilities to other ways of seeing things. And when we are stuck in that this is physical and I'm physical and you're separate from me and I'm separate from you and you can hurt me and I can hurt
you. This is where we get stuck in victim mentality. And then also in that my life happens to me and I don't have any part of this. It just is happens to me and I can't change it.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
That is something I hear so common. Working with my therapy clients, working with my coaching clients that mentality almost like in a sense of, of like being a victim of the world of the reality around them happening to them.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate, Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
So it's so interesting how you brought that up yet.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
We are brainwashed to think that look at the news, look at, you know, all of the programming from movies TV. We are brainwashed to thinking that we're just here reacting, we're just reacting to everything. But there is so much more. Again, if we allow ourselves to be curious and to allow our minds to open.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Yes. You know, just to move along the process, you started this healing journey. You started diving into your own beliefs in reprogramming. What happened after that?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Well, I think that I started to live life on my terms. I started to understand what is important to me in my life. I remember in 2015, I got off of social media. It was like some like rare blue moon or something. I don't know. And I was just having this. How can I because I was a parent in 2015, I was a parent of a six year old and a two year old. And I had kids in what I call the age of Pinterest parenting, which is, which is going on Pinterest and looking at really cute sandwiches to make and
projects to do. And I love when people love to do that. And that is not me. And I felt like a lesser mom because I wasn't the mom who loved to do little projects with their little babies and kids who, you know, loved making cute sandwiches for their lunches. That was a really challenging time for me. So I decided in 2015 I got off of social media and I just started like, what, who am I as a parent?
And what I realized was that I'm not that and if I just sat in the, I am not that I felt like a horrible person. But what I had this aha moment where I decided that it was time to fill. If I was not that, then what am I? What do I love as a parent? Right? So what I loved was teaching my kids about manifesting. Yes, teaching my six year old about making a vision board, talking about their dreams, going on, walks with them dancing, singing, talking about acting like these were ways that I could
show up where it felt really good to me. I loved it and I loved being that kind of mom. And so I started loving being a parent where I started where I was like dreading being a parent in the, in the beginning because I just felt like I wasn't good enough. And so I decided to bring this to relationships, to intimate relationships. And this is where relationship diversity was born for me 10 years ago.
So relationship diversity, like who am I? How do I want to show up in my relationships and allowing that to shift and evolve and change and not get stuck into. This is what I'm doing now and this is what I will do forever. But like who am I? I am such a different person at 53 than I was at 43 such a different person. So who am I at 53? And how do I want to show up? Let me create and have the space to do that.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
I really love how it sounds like there's so much flexibility in this mindset. You don't have to be stuck in a box. You can be authentically you and it can ebb and flow. It doesn't have to necessarily stay the same we change as humans. So why can't our mindset change with us?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
How beautiful. Exactly. Yeah, because I think about for me, this is just for so my podcast is like I say, know who you are to know what you want because I like this equation. I am a unique person plus another unique person equals a unique relationship. So what one person says is the way to be in a relationship is not gonna work for me because I have a totally different past and I'm a totally different person.
And so if you can come together with your partner or partners to look at how you uniquely come together, that is by understanding what is important to you. What you know, what is like non negotiables, what do you need? What do you desire? What is a priority. And then you talk with your partner about that and then you come to find the unique places that you show up and allowing yourself to also be pushed and challenged maybe a little bit. And, you know, just to push boundaries, like with
my husband and I, we like, go to a certain place and find a homeostasis, right? And then we're like, go to another place and it's like, oh God, this just feels so wobbly. And then we find our homeostasis and then we kind of come together and we're like, ok, I think we're ready to move to the next level. What does that look like? And just always being in communication with yourself and with whoever else you're in relationship with.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
And that's what I loved about listening to the Relationship Diversity podcast is it spoke so much to the work that I do now with people about helping them find like their true path of what kind of relationship do they want? Because so often, like you've mentioned, we get put into this box.
We just realize that there are so many options if we just kind of have the right guide and there is no wrong answer necessarily. Can you tell a little bit more about the relationship diversity podcast? Kind of let listeners know what it's all about?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Yeah. This was such a, I, I felt called to do this for a long time before it actually launched but I'm about up to my year anniversary of starting and yay and what I wanted to do was to not only talk, so I talk about relationship diversity is all the diverse ways that we relate to one another. It looks at Solo Armory, which is this belief that or this, this choice that we want to experience a life with us as with ourselves as the priority.
So we've been told this is called the, you know, being single or choosing to be single. And there's a lot of stigma behind choosing this lifestyle. But a lot of people, what I want to do is just release all of the beliefs that that is a bad choice. It's a perfectly val, good choice if that is the best expression of your truth. So Solo Armory, monogamy, polyamory and everything in between and realizing that there is gold in between solo armory to monogamy to non monogamy.
And that if you give yourself the space to design your unique relationship that you can find fulfillment from opening up and saying like, what is really important to me. And so I explore all different kinds of structures, but then all the different kinds of ways that the structures can show up because all that gold in between, I also look at wounded versus healed or, you know, an expansive expression because I hear a lot of times people say, well, it didn't work because polyamory
just doesn't work. And what I like to say is that any structure will not work if it's coming from a wounded perspective. If you're not looking at your own stuff, if you're not doing your own healing work, monogamy won't work. Polyamory won't work. So solo armory won't work. And if you choose to come from a more true, you know, authentic expression of who you are and you're determined and resilient to find out what that is, that every relationship structure can be a success.
And I don't mean success, I like to clarify is success is not like how long it lasts. Success is. Did you feel fulfilled? Did you learn? Did you grow? And a successful relationship can be a week long, can be a one night stand as long as that was something that it taught you and you experienced, you know, was part of your evolutionary journey.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
Oh, I, I wanna give you so many high fives right now. Thank you because I think that's so essential to living to not be limited by how others define success. And I love how there's this flexibility. There's not like a certain timeline of a relationship needing to be had in order to be considered a success. If there's, you know, only a short amount of time, then that means it's a failure or because you're breaking up, that means it's a failure.
That's not necessarily true. Again, it, it goes back to you being of that mindset and shifting the perspective and really learning about your experience around you taking it in and using it as a strength rather than something that holds you down or that means you failed in some way. So beautiful.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Thank you. Definitely, these perspective shifts have helped me feel so much more empowered. So I like to say, you know, yes, I am a best selling author and relationship diversity advocate, but more than anything I do my own work. So when people come to me, they know that I have maybe not experienced the same thing that they have in terms of the circumstance.
But I have gone through the depths, you know, the black, the, the dark night of the soul, the, the terrifying feelings. I have gone through it and I have come out with new perspective shifts that hopefully can help the people that I work with and help the people that listen to the podcast.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
I love it, love it so much before we start wrapping up here. Is there anything else that you really want listeners to know as they may be going about their own journey of finding what they want out of relationships.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
I would encourage self compassion, self love and space to have that because this process is not for the faint at heart, it's not for someone who wants to coast through life and it will lead to such fulfillment because you're living life authentically and just who you from, who you truly are and truly want. And that takes compassion because there are moments where I'm don't love myself.
You know, whether it's, I say something to my partner that feels so icky. I can't believe I said that or I did something to upset my partner or a friend or my child. And that is really hard for me. I never want to upset someone. So I have to go through a lot of self compassion And I also am one that I don't love to be wrong. You know, I'm one of those kids.
I was like, I don't like to be wrong. And so when I am going through that process of just like holding my heart and saying that it's ok. And I would highly encourage self a self care practice. I have a program on my website called self-care Made Easy. And it's really about just coming up with a practical and maintainable daily self-care practice, which I've been doing yoga.
That was just what I chose as my self-care. I've been doing yoga for seven years every single day. I don't miss it. And it is my time to get on my mat and sometimes lay and cry or scream and sometimes just, just do a restorative yoga or just sit in child's bodes for three minutes. That's my minimum that I just do every day. But I teach people how to do that, that if we have that belief, like if I had that belief when I had that belief that I yoga had to be 30 minutes or an hour.
I never got to it, ever, ever, ever. And so when I took that pressure off, it was just like this is about me reconnecting to me and understanding and having that space for self compassion, self awareness, then everything kind of took off from there. So I make it really easy. And it's a super inexpensive program on my website.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate, Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
But self care, self compassion, self love, love it, love it so much.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
So where can people find you? Where are you at if they wanna connect with you or hear your podcast?
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Well, podcast is on every podcast streaming service that I know of Apple Spotify, Google podcasts. You can also go to relationship diversity podcast dot com or my name Kri Jaris slow dot com is gonna lead you to the same place and you can get a guide that I have, which is a free guide to explore relationship diversity, what it is, how it shows up the wounded expression versus the healed expression, what that
means and how, how to find the gold in between the structures. So you just go to relationship diversity podcast dot com, carry jlo dot com and you will be able to sign up for that.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
I love that. Thank you so much for this conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I always love having guests on the show and just having something to take away for me to put into my own practice, for me to also use in my professional world and helping other people. So I learned so much from this conversation. Thank you so so much.
Carrie Jeroslow, Relationship Diversity Advocate
Paige. Thank you so much.
Paige Bond, Relationship Coach
All right listeners, I will have all of Carrie's information in the show notes so you can check out the relationship diversity podcast or connect with her in any way. So feel free to check that out and tune in for next time.
