Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
An Invitation to Real Self-Care
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Women often feel burnout from taking care of everyone around them before caring for themselves. The term self-care is trending, but how can we go about doing it? Therapist Jen Hershey joins me to share her perspective, including ideas around alignment and learning to listen to your inner authority. This conversation is an invitation to move through life with more trust, clarity and intention.
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So I'm a big proponent of working with the way you think, working with the way you feel, and then responding to that.
SPEAKER_03Hello everyone. Welcome to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharkey, your host. I'm delighted you joined me for this conversation with licensed therapist Jen Hershey. She's going to join me to talk about self-care and loving yourself. Those terms are thrown around a lot these days, but what does that really mean? What does it mean to learn to care for ourselves? And why does it matter? Jen is passionate about helping people navigate life's challenges while reconnecting with their inner wisdom. As the former host of the How We Get Through podcast and app, she spent years exploring mental health and healing through conversations with therapists and healers from around the world. In her private practice, she supports clients in moving through life's transitions with greater self-awareness and compassion, weaving together psychology, spirituality, and intuitive practices that help people reconnect with themselves and move through life with more trust, clarity, and intention. I hope this conversation helps you do just that. Reconnect with yourself and find more trust, clarity, and intention. Join me in welcoming Jen to the show. Jen, welcome to Permission for Pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me. It feels so good to be here.
SPEAKER_03I'm delighted to have you on the show and chat about good things. You and I got connected when I was on your podcast. And we had such a nourishing discussion. When I start thinking about who I'd like to have a conversation with, you came to mind.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. And I think again, our connection was very quick. And just being in your energy is also just there's so much love and comfort, and I think permission that you give for so many women.
SPEAKER_03So excited to be here with you. Thanks for that. Tell people a little bit about you and your work in the world.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist for the last, God, I don't know, 10, 12-ish years. And I think my iteration of what therapy is and mental health has continued to evolve and grow. And I feel like I'm just kind of integrating all of these parts, like somatic, spirituality, and really a holistic view of what the hell we're doing here and what growth means for all of us. And I had a podcast as well. That was the best thing ever. Yeah. And so that's what I do is I help people heal themselves.
SPEAKER_03You help people heal themselves. And you've been on your own healing journey, Jen. And I think we've both, you know, we've talked a bit together about our own personal learning how to care for ourselves, learning how to heal ourselves. And you're working with people to do this. And we all have our own paths, right? Absolutely. Mm-hmm. But there's a lot of talk about, I'm putting up quote self-care and loving ourselves. But I'd like to talk about this with you in like a little bit different reframe.
SPEAKER_00I've sat across from many people, women especially, that, and I was this way, I was like, ugh, self-love, self-care, whatever. I don't need it. Because I think it feels like such a foreign big concept that we have to immediately kind of reject something that we don't really understand. And so through my own work, I've been kind of like just, I don't know, gathering up these different kinds of concepts. And we kind of talked about what if self-care was re-mothering or re-caring for ourselves? And what would that look like? And I take like two concepts. So one is this spirituality piece, which is manifestation, which is all the rage in the last, I don't know, five, 10 plus years, right? Which is this idea that if you want something, you get really clear on it, and then you cultivate the feeling that as if you already have it. So that you're not separate from that thing, which then gets us in this feeling like, okay, I feel like I have that red car, or I feel like I have this relationship, or I feel like I have all this money. And that changes our vibration, our frequency, and it changes our belief of what's possible. So it's it is very powerful in some aspect, right? And then there's this other concept of inner child work, which is this therapy part, which I love and completely adore. And then this is where we talk to younger parts of ourselves. And when we get to talk to these younger parts, we get to ask how are they feeling? What was really happening? We get to give them space, we get to give them love, and then we get to reparent them as an adult today. So it got me thinking a little bit on this like timeline, right? If we are able to go back to our younger parts, what if a future part of us can re-mother us now? Hmm.
SPEAKER_03Tell me more.
SPEAKER_00Because I think a lot of women are burnt out and are giving and reparenting themselves, their children, everybody in their world, right? And sometimes we need someone to mother us.
SPEAKER_02Hmm.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. I see. So can we imagine what a future self, maybe five, 10 years from now, if she could come into that door? This could be a journal entry, this could be a visual visualization, this could be a meditation, whatever it is. If I'm imagining her coming into the room, how would she approach me? What would she say to me? What would she not say to me? Would she give me a hug? Would she make me some tea? Would she hold me? Would she let me cry? Right? How would she, she's the ultimate mother. She knows exactly what we're feeling, she knows exactly what we're needing. And so you take that, that feeling as you're really thinking about what she would do for you. And that's where that manifestation feeling comes from. And then we cultivate that feeling of what it feels like to re-mother ourselves, to parent ourselves in that moment, to get the ultimate care, the ultimate mothering from a future self that knows exactly what we need. Hmm.
SPEAKER_03For those who have a difficult mother relationship, perhaps, I feel like they could also word this differently or frame it out differently if that feels unsafe or daunting, perhaps, in the sense of can we even friend ourselves or you know, nurture ourselves. And or use a you can frame that out in a different way, if the mothering piece, I just come up against so many women who struggle with this relationship. And so that's a difficult term to use, but I think there's a lot of value in what you're talking about. And I went to a workshop maybe a year ago with another therapist that around this theme. And the women in the room, I mean, I I have goosebumps right now because it was very powerful. Whether they had a complicated relationship with their family or not, the idea of caring for themselves in this way, it like opened, it's like burst the dam in people. Uh I mean, really, there was so much emotion in the realm. And I wonder how many of us actually do this kind of nurturing of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00I think we're we've been maybe conditioned or maybe programmed in some way that we need someone else to do it for us. Right? And so that's the complicated relationship with my mother. I can't mother myself because I don't know what a good mother is, right? Then then that's the belief, right? And then our beliefs shape our reality. So even if I had a complicated relationship with my mother, this isn't my mother coming in. This is me. And ironically, I don't need her to mother me because I needed to mother me. And I needed to acknowledge what I needed in that moment because that that's it's what I knew, right? And I think this we talk about relationships as well. Like, well, I just wish he knew that I needed this, or when you talk about sex, I wish they knew, right? And it's, I think it kind of just takes away that empowerment of self, right? Like, it's not that we don't need people, right? We need relationships, they help us grow. But I think it's this idea that we need other people to heal ourselves, right? I think, I think people just mirror what we need to heal within ourselves.
SPEAKER_03Huh. And you know what I think? I think a lot of women get to midlife and start thinking, whatever this is is not working. I need to do something different. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Which is the like I use a lot of spiritual words, but like feels like the portal where it's like you're going through this tunnel and you are not looking back, and you're gonna be different when you come out the other side because you don't care about centering other people anymore. You start to re-center yourself, and then you recategorize your life in that way.
SPEAKER_03Well, we almost need to reprogram, you know, the mantra and training up in ourselves and our bodies and our heads about taking care of everyone else first. I mean, I don't know about you, but this has been a constant work for me. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I got a divorce last year, I mean, it was official last year, and even just that concept of doing that, I chose to recenter myself, which, you know, people will have comments about that, whatever, but that wasn't an easy decision, right? That because if I chose to stay in something that was not growing for me, and I chose to stay in it because of other people, what would that have done to me and the people around me? And I think that's the um, I think that's what we've been sold is like you will hurt people around you if you choose yourself. Right. And we, the truth is we will hurt people whether we choose ourselves or not. We hurt people, they hurt us, we repair, we may not repair. So it's not actually about hurting people, but it's about how do you love and care for yourself? Because when you love and care for yourself, you love and care for other people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. The Nagoski sisters wrote burnout, and they talk about the human giver syndrome, and they describe it in this way. And I'm quoting: if you were raised in a culture shaped by human giver syndrome, you were taught to prioritize being pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others above anything else. Above yourself, anything else, above anything else. And Clarissa Bestis calls it the nice, nice complexes. Yes. When you all hear that, listeners, like what do you does it resonate? I mean, it certainly does for me. Absolutely. And so, how do we reframe this idea of caring for ourselves in, you know, a different way?
SPEAKER_00I think we have to recognize that we have been in a polarization of self. So if you are not happy and putting other people before you, then you're bad and you will be unhappy, or you'll be un, you'll be unsavory, right? You're no good, right? But the truth is that we have good and bad in us. So it's almost like we had to kind of disconnect from the shadow feminine, the shadow side, this rage side, this like, I'm gonna kill you, or I'm hypersexual, or you know, anything that has to do with the dark feminine pieces, we're like, oh, society doesn't like that, or men don't like that. So we have to kind of pull this away. And this impacts men as well, right? But we're just focusing on women. So I think it's actually integrating both sides, right? So I can put people in front of me, and I can also put myself in front of other people. And there's gonna be times where I'm gonna do both. But the question that I will always ask myself is is this aligned with where I want to go? Is this aligned with who I am? And that is always that leading question. And then you're like, well, who am I? What do I want? Great. Ask yourself those questions. It will change every time, right? It's allowed to change, it's allowed to grow, it's allowed to evolve, but that is recentering yourself, is asking yourself the question is this aligned with me or not?
SPEAKER_03I do think that, you know, women have so often taken like a passive rather than an active role in their own mental, physical, spiritual, sexual wellness. And so you and I could probably think of lots of examples of running up against this as you do therapy, as I work with women. And it's a lot to fight that narrative we've been talking about. That's not, it is not easy, you know, to keep bucking up against that habit of prioritizing everyone else's needs, wishes, safety, comfort over our own. What are a couple things that you would encourage people to do to kind of get over that block? The one is the question you just posed, which was does this align for me, right? Is this true to who I am?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then what do you think the next step is?
SPEAKER_00I think again, it's about that integration. So it's not to be in constant fight of maybe the program, but it's like when you go up against this programming, what is this other half of you? Because part of that feels true, right? To the part of that feels good, of like, I do want to put my kids before me, right? And then it gets to a certain point where now we're burnt out and we have no life and no friends, and our kids are out of the house, and who am I, right? So, and that's an extreme example, but we can put our kids in front of us sometimes, right? And then on the other half, where do they need to take a back seat? And where do I need to put myself forward? Even in our relationships, right? And women become, I don't know if this is programming or our nature, but we we just tend to like whatever you want. I want to make you happy. We kind of like go with the flow, we mold to people very easily. Again, this isn't good or bad. It's neutral. It's just what we do, right? So, in the doing of it, when does it start to feel good? And when does it start to feel like you're losing yourself? And you're trying to always come back to a middle. So I'm a big proponent of like working with the way you think, working with the way you feel, and then responding to that versus not trying to think that way or not trying to feel that way, that feels impossible. And then that feels like that cutoff. That's not an integration. That's a well, I can't feel that way, or I can't think that way. No, no, no. When I think that way, what is true about that? And then on the other side, what is also true about this? So when I think that I can't put myself first, what is coming up for me? Am I feeling shame? Am I feeling scared? Am I feeling, am I feeling too much, right? And so how do I respond to that feeling of too much? How do I and that's that re-mothering reparenting? Like, is this too much? Or does this really align with with who I am and what I want?
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. And you talk a lot about claiming and finding your, I think you call it inner authority. I've heard you speak about this. And does that play in here into the conversation here of your trying to help people with these questions to identify their own inner authority?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, because all the questions, all the emotions, they're all information for us. And I think again, part of this other program is like, well, this is bad, this is a bad thought, this is a bad way you think. And it's like, well, I fuck, I think that way. So why am I thinking that way? How is that helping me? How is it not helping me? And how do I kind of bring that thought into a neutrality instead of it being good or bad? Which again, which is what they do with women. Are you good or are you bad? Are you a good mom or a bad mom? Are you a good wife or a bad bad wife? Be good on the streets, be bad in the sheets.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, it's just this constant one way or the other. So for you to say neutrality, that's a fascinating middle ground to try to, I don't know, take time to investigate what your inner authority says. I am constantly telling women to trust their gut. I'm constantly telling moms, you need to trust your gut. But I really think, at least in my, you know, generation, we were sort of trained out of trusting our gut.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. My kids are obviously younger than yours, and there's certain aspects where, you know, I mean, this is again an extreme example where we're like lying about Santa Claus and like, is Santa Claus real? Because they have an intuition that it's not, right? And so you're like, how much do I tell them? But there's certain places where I tell my daughter, I'm like, your intuition was right. We were hiding the Easter eggs there and we were distracting you here. Like, so I think that that piece of intuition is coming online with this next generation. And we are just trying to rediscover that it's almost like reconnecting the intuition, not necessarily find it. And I think that's another myth. We're like, where is it? Right. But the the again, going back to this manifestation and this like wholeness idea is like we already have it. We don't need to find it, we don't need to go searching for it. We're learning to reconnect with it. And it might be through our gut, it might be through our heart, it might be through through the first thought that we have, whatever that is, and whatever uniqueness that is for you, keep going with that. And that again is your alignment.
SPEAKER_03So learning how to reparent or mother or nurture ourselves and seeing self-care in that way, being able to sit with ourselves and ask the questions around alignment for ourselves, right? And then learning how to listen to our inner voice or our gut or intuition or whatever you want to call it. So those are three tools. Well, I think a lot of us don't do that because it's a lot of work.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean, it took me like getting midlife to go, wow, I have really got to sitting with myself. I mean, some too, like when I take it to the sexuality piece, it's the same idea of looking at the roots underneath pleasure and sexuality rather than just thinking it's all about the sex. You know, it's the same theme. Same, exact same thing. Of course, we'd like a little easier button, but that is not the way good, healthy life looks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think you would be bored. I think you you wouldn't be in this meat suit in this earth trying to experience all the craziness and all the joy in this life. You know? And sometimes I could talk very like philosophical. So I try to bring it into the practical. But the practicality of this, again, even in your work, is how do we love ourselves enough to find that neutrality that we will have beautiful thoughts about people and we will have jealous thoughts about people, and we will have wonderful thoughts about our body and terrible thoughts about our body. And it doesn't dictate whether we are good or bad. We just are. And the more neutrality we can hold within ourselves, the more we can kind of hold the good and the bad and keep expanding out of that instead of trying to be one or the other, which that's where we're messed up. That's where we like kind of again, if we cut off this bad part of ourselves, we see it in someone else. So I hate that. I hate that about them. But what they're reflecting to us is something inside of us. Sorry, I went on a tangent, but like, what if we had a better word?
SPEAKER_03This is like a therapy session, right? Well, and I I guess what I want to, I know you're comfortable with it. So I'm like, can we pivot this just for a moment to the pleasure beast?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Because I just think that so many women they don't feel the power, the inner authority to choose pleasure, to choose themselves.
SPEAKER_00I think it comes back to that recent. They recenter the man's pleasure. They center the man's pleasure. That's what's happening. So I'm not a good enough, whatever, or I don't want to have sex, and he always wants it, or how many times have we done it? Or the whole healing is what do I want? How do I want to get off? How do I want to experience my body tonight? How do I want to be touched? How do I want to connect? You do that, you're gonna have the best sex of your life whenever you want.
SPEAKER_03I do think that women often don't ask themselves the want questions. So it is so often about pleasing a partner or what they need or how I look or performing over feeling pleasure, or I do think that if women could focus on their own pleasure, it would heal the world. Well, I mean, it just doesn't happen. I mean, there is so much healing to that. And I think in a safe partnered relationship, I mean, we see, I just was reading a study, I can't quote it at the moment, but it was like what we find is that like men in heterole relationships, men really are aroused when a woman is experiencing pleasure, and women not so much.
SPEAKER_00Women aren't aroused if a man is experiencing pleasure, or there's something to this piece of I'm not even sure where I'm going with this.
SPEAKER_03I read the study and I was like, wait a minute, let me think about this. So if men are turned on by a woman's pleasure, why is that so? Versus a man's pleasure is not that's not the arousal piece for her.
SPEAKER_00Because women are the leaders. If you think about it, right? Like men always want to be with us. We decide when we want it or not. Just pull back everything for a second, like the way the world is. We are the leaders in spirituality, in feelings, in house, in home, of emotions, of the flow of life, of what we can picture our life to be. So they, I feel like in this might be very like male-female terms, but like they're here to build for us, for our happiness and for our pleasure. But the programming that we've had is actually the opposite. And that's why women aren't turned on by men, because they're we're not actually in our natural ways of being. Because the woman is the sexy, the woman is the softness, the woman is the flow, the man is the structure, he's the boundaries, he's the protection, right? So can she feel safe enough within herself and within him so that she can flow? She can have all the emotions she wants, she can have all the feelings, she can be as sexual as she wants, she can be as non-sexual as she wants, she can dream, she can do, she she's endless possibilities, right? And the men are the structures and they're kind of reacting and holding that for us. So to me, that actually makes a lot of sense because I think women want that structure and safety. That's a turn on. Can you hold the depths of me? Because that's hot.
SPEAKER_03Ah now that that's it. Because I think that a lot of women hold back because they're not sure. So then they aren't able to tap into, or they're not in a relationship where that's available to them or safe for them. And I just I think in the end that a lot of women don't focus on their own pleasure for pleasure's sake. And the more I'm in this work, Jen, the more I feel like when women do get to a place where they prioritize their sexual pleasure, the sky is the limit. I mean, it's mind-blowing. And yet it's it's not a no-brainer for a lot of us. I mean, it takes a lot of what we're talking about of coming, you know, to ourselves and asking ourselves questions around what we want, around what pleases us, or you know, and yet there's such juicy, beautiful, sparkly, yeah, yummy to be had if we could do if we could do that. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Which again, like women, even when we orgasm, we can keep going, right? When men orgasm, they're kind of depleted and they want to take a nap, right? Like we are endless, like we are the void. Like our literary uterus creates life. Like they're so vulnerability-wise, you tap that surface, then you want to go deeper, right? And then in your relationship, right? I need you to hold me because I'm about to go deeper emotionally. Can you do that? Right. And then I'm gonna go deeper and deeper and deeper because women, they can do that. And that's again why they are leaders, because they show them what is possible in the depths. So the question is for women out there who's listening, are you willing to be vulnerable with yourself to meet yourself at your own depths? Are you willing to be vulnerable and say, I'm scared, or I feel really sexy right now, or I have this fantasy that I want to try out, but I'm nervous of saying it. Like, you can't really have or be waiting for this man to kind of create these perfect situations for you, right? So test him. No, I don't want to say that, test him, but like go there, go there yourself. And this is what I did in in my own marriage. I went to the depths of me. I wanted someone to worship my body. I wanted to have this like insane, and I am very sexual in my own self. And you know, when you can get married, have kids, like all the freedom falls away, but things. But I had to, I went to the depths of myself, and then I took it to my relationship, and then I saw the disparity, and I was like, oh, I don't think that this can go, he can hold that depth in the way that I'm really searching for it right now, and maybe ever, right? But I love him, I appreciate him because he's shown me so much about myself, and he gave me room to do this work, and I will be forever grateful for him for that. And now, as I hold the depths of myself, that is what I'm looking for in a new relationship, which means I have to be vulnerable, which means I have to be honest, and I have to hold myself enough and have like, okay, this is my attachments being flared up right now. I love you so much. Now get the hell out. And how do I meet myself there? And that's the emotional world, right? And then when you have that emotional safety, then for me anyway, sex, I'm like, let's do this. I want you to do this to me. Let's try this, let's play here. We're sexting, we're doing other things, we're trying things because I have the safety that he can hold the depths of me to wherever I'm at. And then I'm gonna go deeper one day and see what happens, and then deeper and deeper. And you just kind of play with that, right? And so I think it's really important. Like, we can't wait for someone else to hold our depths, we get to do that work ourselves, and then we see if they can match that or be able to be somewhat on the same level, or you see potential growth there for them to match you on that level, to hold that emotional space for you because it's all emotional, because when you feel safe enough emotionally, then you feel free to play, to play.
SPEAKER_03Well, and to I think the other piece to that is to resist or break the cycle or the constant reliance on someone else, though, to make us feel pleasure, orgasms, desire, sexy, sexual that comes with ourselves first, which is what you're talking about. So I'm just framing it at a different language, and that is I mean, that is one of the big pieces to the puzzle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So if you're having bad sex, that is your invitation to explore your own body. That's all that is. It is an invitation for you to meet yourself where you're at and say, who are you? What do you like? What do you feel? What's heartbreaking for you? What do you love about yourself? And meet yourself there. When we look to our partner, I think like there's certain things that you can communicate. There's definitely certain skills, you know, we can talk about, but it's always gonna come from this invitation of you learning to find your own pleasure, and which is an act of self-love.
SPEAKER_03And we circle back.
SPEAKER_00We did it.
SPEAKER_01It is how you care for yourself.
SPEAKER_03Yes. I like this language around invitation, there's a warmth to that, open arm, you know, it makes me feel like you know, arms open to what could be, what's there and what could be.
SPEAKER_00And I think language is really important when we talk to ourselves.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_00So I use a lot of I use like cue. It's a cue, like emotion is a cue for you. Pause. What's happening, right? Or the emotion can be an invitation to something deeper.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I see. Oh, so I see. So if you you notice an emotion, that's your cue that's something something's going on. There's something to investigate, it's an invitation to look further.
SPEAKER_00Right. Which again goes back to my concept of we don't stop that emotion, we work with that emotion. So that emotion is a cue. Okay, so then what is this? What and then if you can neutralize it, neutralize it. But it's not bad or good, it's information for us. It's information on the invitation.
SPEAKER_03There we go. Well, you know, I mean, it this is all just coming full circle, this the whole conversation. So this is this is beautiful because it just comes all the way back to where we started, which is how can we invite ourselves in to looking at what we're feeling, looking at what we want, looking at what pleasure looks like for us, and getting to a neutral about it. And then we decide with our inner authority what action we want to take or not take.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes, exactly. And one more thing about that in language, right? It we talk about choices, like good or bad choices. And same thing, it's like it's not good or bad, it leads you on path A or it leads you on path B. Path A will have these experiences, path B will have these experiences. So when you again can neutralize it a little bit more, you're not into fight, flight, or freeze. And then your frontal cortex that is responsible for decisions can actually come online and then you can make a clear decision. So that is also really important again in this idea of neutrality and integrating the good and the bad into neutrality. So then you can make your choice from there.
SPEAKER_03I like that. I like that, Jen. And also just I like to always bring up is this a healthy or unhealthy? Is there unhealthy or healthy direction from this choice? Rather than good and bad. Yeah. Is this a healthy choice for me? Or is this gonna be an unhealthy choice for me?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Another reframe that could be used. Yes, I love it. That's right in the situation. I feel like you and I, you know, I we're at different phases in our lives, and yet I just see so many around us, the women you're with, the women I'm with, where we like we are worth these kinds of conversations. We are worth this invitation for ourselves. We are worth getting off the human giver syndrome track and taking care of ourselves. And like you said, what I I can't maybe it was around sex, but it's like, and the world would be a better place.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01If everybody was orgasming and having pleasure, the world would be a better place. Yes, I agree.
SPEAKER_03And then dialing that back, also just it does come back though to feeling our worthiness and that we can learn to develop that inner authority. I don't care what age or stage you're at. I really think we could do it at any place in our lives. You could start now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I believe everything comes at the right time of when you are ready to hear it, you know, because I have so many clients that are like, you know, have been with me for years and they're like, oh my God, I saw this TikTok and it said blah, blah, blah. And I was like, girl, in my head, I'm like, girl, I've been saying to you that for years. But but again, this information, we we get to slowly integrate it at our own pace. And so when we hear that and it resonates and you get the goosebumps, it just clicked. All that integration just aligned, and what a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_03That is a beautiful thing. Wow, thanks so much for being with me and for this conversation for the work you're doing in the world.
unknownThank you.
SPEAKER_03You're a beautiful soul.
SPEAKER_00You too. I love you. How can people find you, Jen? I have my counseling website, which is jenniferhersheycounseling.com. I think it's very long. So I'll link that in the show notes. And then I'm sparingly on Instagram on it's Jen Hershey. And yeah, so if you want to do, I also do coaching outside of California, if that's helpful for you too.
SPEAKER_03But I loved being with you. Thank you so much. Thanks again for being with me. And listeners, you know, this podcast is permission for pleasure, but we were kind of talking more about permission today in general. That permission to learn to care for ourselves, to remother ourselves, to love ourselves and learn to trust ourselves. I hope something here resonated for you to learn to give yourself more permission. And permission for pleasure.