“Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayer-making, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between-worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype This episode surrounds we take inspiration from Clarissa Pinkola Estés' book, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Joined by Valentina Antollini and Sereena Abbassi we look into how our womanhood can be challenged, perceived and embodied through our identities and career paths. On this episode, we have Valentina and Sereena. Valentina is an artist, designer, and mentor for women. She graduated in architecture at Central St. Martins, worked as a software engineer and is now working full-time as a mentor and consultant for women leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs. Sereena Abbassi is committed to creating organisational transformation that is grounded in deep seat of belief that all our liberation are tied to each other. Her approach is both creative and strategic and done with lots of heart. Serena is an equity and inclusion practitioner, belonging researcher, holistic life coach, public speaker and writer, and was formerly the worldwide head of culture and inclusion.
This episode surrounds we take inspiration from Clarissa Pinkola Estés' book, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Joined by Valentina Antollini and Sereena Abbassi we look into how our womanhood can be challenged, perceived and embodied through our identities and career paths. On this episode, we have Valentina and Sereena. Valentina is an artist, designer, and mentor for women. She graduated in architecture at Central St. Martins, worked as a software engineer and is now working full-time as a mentor and consultant for women leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs. Sereena Abbassi is committed to creating organisational transformation that is grounded in deep seat of belief that all our liberation are tied to each other. Her approach is both creative and strategic and done with lots of heart. Serena is an equity and inclusion practitioner, belonging researcher, holistic life coach, public speaker and writer, and was formerly the worldwide head of culture and inclusion.
"When a woman asked for wealth in exchange of her work, she's breaking a cycle, one cycle of generational disempowerment of the feminine in her lineage." - Valentina Antollini
When a woman asked for wealth in exchange of her work, she's breaking a cycle, one cycle of generational disempowerment of the feminine in her lineage.
This episode is the women who run with the wolves. And with me today, we have Valentina and Serena. So Valentina is an artist, designer, and mentor for women. She graduated in architecture at Central St. Martins, worked as a software engineer and is now working full-time as a mentor and consultant for women leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs.
Valentina is also Korean and Italian. We also have Serena Avai and is committed to creating organizational transformation that is grounded in deep seat of belief that all our liberation are tied to each other. Her approach is both creative and strategic and done with lots of heart. Serena is an equity and inclusion practitioner, belonging researcher, holistic life coach, public speaker and writer, and was formerly the worldwide head of culture and inclusion.
At M Cchi Group, Serena is British, Persian, Iranian. And Jamaican and has lived and worked in the us, the Netherlands, Iran, and Spain. It's really great to have you both here. The episode quote that I'm gonna be using is actually from Clarissa Pinco, women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild Women Archetype, and I'm just gonna read it, that each woman.
Has potential access to Rio Aba Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayer, making, singing, drumming, active imagination, which requires an intense consciousness. A woman arrives in this world between worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye.
She arrives there by deeply creative acts through intentional solitude and by patterns of any of the arts. My first question to both of you is amiss the chaos of the world, which is very appropriate to today. What tools have enabled you to pause, reflect, and heal? Making music like my partner and I love to kind of like jam and that's really fun.
Yeah, I'm like a trained jazz singer and he's like multi-talented, so that's really fun. Being in my garden, you know, I spend so much time in my garden. I was kind of thinking the other day, if I had literally one day left on earth, what would I wanna do? And I do think it would be gardening. Yeah. And I, I just love gardening so much.
I like, I feel like I am my most, my most whole, when I'm in my garden tending to my plants and seeing my fruit and vegetables, bloom, blossom. It's just, yeah. It's gorgeous For me, the practice is, Art, like intuitive art and just playing, doing without purpose, which is a huge practice that I've had to do to heal my creative block after, you know, being part of institutions like Central St.
Martins and industrializing your creativity and going so high pace and applying so much electric charge to the practice of creative. That a lot of women are not able to create afterwards is, which is a really important chapter in this book as well. Women Who Run With the Wolves, where we forget to live respecting.
The cyclical nature of all things, the cyclical nature of our beings, of our bodies, and of nature. For me, especially for the past year, intuitive art, just like whatever flows, flows, has been the practice that has been the greatest mirror to check myself and to really connect to my current state that then cleanses me, or is kind of like my therapy practice to show up in every other aspect in my life.
Grounded. Do you also feel like you've been able to carve pockets of this space for other women as well? Completely. So the women that I work with are create a very ambitious, high performing women who desire to do more of their soul work. Desire to connect more with their intuition, to ground themselves in their authority, to up level their life from their intuition.
And what that looks like in practical terms is quit their jobs, go after the job that they want to start their soul led business, launch their online business, all these things that are power moves. All these, all these actions, right? Like my entire mantra, the core of my work is, When a woman steps in a position of leadership, she is breaking cycles of generational disempowerment of the feminine in her lineage.
This work, right? We're saying, I wanna step in my power. I wanna learn how to integrate my feminine. A woman comes to the declaration of, I wanna integrate my feminine. When from an intuitive knowing, it just verbalizes out of her when her mind, body begin to burn out from the speed of the hustle driven culture that we were trained to perform in.
And then close to breaking point, we verbalize, I know I have to integrate the feminine, but all these things, all these declarations that come from remembrance, these things require assistance. By another woman because it requires so much deconditioning, reprogramming of our nervous system, allowing ourselves to move forward from our soul again, which is why this book Re Women Who Run With the Wolves.
Has been my holy Bible. I've like made 12 women up to this point buy this book and read it. And the thing about this book is that this book will find you when you need it and when you're ready for it. Because I have screenshots of this. In like February, 2021, the first time that I read it, I was like, eh, no, I don't really get it.
You know, it's like when words are flying out of your head, you're not actually there. And then this year, right when I was going through my like mega journey of remembrance of my womanhood, which was. Following my friend on her field of work trip. We were went to Guatemala. We were in the jungle, then we went to the desert.
I went through this massive ego. Death was feeling so lost in myself. Found this book again. All my Kindle started. Started reading it. And when the book was in Guatemala, I was in Guatemala. When I was in El Paso, the book was talking about El Paso. So it's like spirits sent me this book as my map. To understand what it is that I was going through, which ended up being the greatest journey of remembrance to me becoming a woman, right?
It's the perfect book for the transition between teenager to woman. I think it's the perfect guy, but I highly recommend it. It will speak to your soul. It is staring at me on my shelf. I've got lots of books staring at me on my shelf. Um, yeah. But I'm, but yeah, I always just like, cuz I have so much, there's so many academic books that I have to read.
I, uh, always kind of put other things aside, but I just need, just do it, don't I? I'll read it. Definitely. I'll, I'll take it on holiday with me tomorrow when I go to, Yes, definitely. I think I just wanna speak volumes to you, Serena, and I think also you'll, I feel like the way in which you operate and the ways in which you dismantle a lot of the things in corporate spaces as well will definitely speak to you because it definitely rings true about this kind of like hustle culture that we've kind of been ingrained in that you've talked about Valentina, like we're so used to this hustle culture and we're so used to kind of like running this rap race.
And then when we kind of take ourself off, we are kind of in that space of vulnerability again. And we are always kind of thinking to ourselves like, oh my gosh, should I go back to the rat race? Should I, and if I, how do I operate in that space now? Because I feel like I've transitioned or I feel like I'm in a different growth sport.
But I think also just even I. Being in both of your presence, um, especially as I feel like you're both kind of like operating and taking the lead on so many different spaces, I feel like it's really empowering and I think that that really channels through in so many different aspects of this book. It's so interesting, isn't it?
You know, when we think of like rat races and hustle culture like. I think it's so difficult to divorce all of that with the capitalist societies in which we live. You know, cost of living has gone up. I'm not too sure how it is in Italy, Valentina, but in the UK it's a complete joke, you know, and we have very few, like nationalized, um, you know, for instance in France.
You know, their, their gas and electric is nationalized. Whereas in the uk you know, there is just no kind of, there's no, there's no kind of cap. It feels like almost, or the cap keeps getting moved and I, I, you know, on one hand I'm like, yes, let's exit the rat race. Let's not hustle. But then also I have to acknowledge my own privilege in that.
No, like that is literally not. An opportunity that's not even, you know, that's not even, that's just not gonna happen, um, for many, many people at this particular moment in time. I'm not saying indefinitely, um, because there's a real immediacy that needs to be addressed where actually, you know, like my partner, he's, he's an artist.
So we, like, we own our own property, but he then rents a studio. His studio ran, has gone up by 20% just like that with a week's notice. 20% because we have nothing, we don't have any regulations in this country. It's an interesting one, you know, it's like, like yes, exit hustle culture and the rat race. But also I just totally acknowledge that it is such a privilege to be able to, you know, I took three months off work, for instance.
It's a huge privilege in that, that I could do that so I could do more self-reflective work, you know, so I can be in my garden and ground for six hours a day if I wanted to, or longer. That's why one of the things I mentioned as well is like what shifts do, or what shifts or how does it feel to operate back into the rat race after a while after we've, we've transitioned because I think that reality does hit us.
I think the fact that we're heading into a recession is a natural reality, and. We need to think long term. We need to be able to really forecast, okay, what would that look like in the next year or so? What positions do I need to be in to make sure that I'm actually financially able, I'm safe, I'm feeling protected, and you know, we can talk about these things of protection and stuff like that because that does.
Have a lot to do with finance. That does have a lot to do with the communities that we're in. That does have to do with like the women that we're, we're in bubbles with. And I think by us being able to lean on each other, support each other, being commune with each other, it empowers us to think to ourselves, okay, we still have the power to create new possibilities.
We still have the power to change the way that we could look at certain things. And I think that's definitely changed for me recently where I'm still a business owner, but I'm still having to do hustle. I still have to, I'm still going through a hustle stage in my life, and I think something that is very ingrained in me is the hustle.
And I think that's because I'm very, I'm, I'm Nigerian and ni Nigerians are so used to hustling. Like our instinct is that we're gonna negotiate. Our instinct is that we're going to take on three more jobs than we really need, just to make sure that we have contingencies in place. And I think also, one of the things that my cousin said to me recently, which was really important, For how I look at my business now moving forward was Alicia, like, you need to be able to think about how you run a business, but also looking at ways in which you have someone dependent on you.
So if it's an elder or a child at any point, like how are you gonna be able to support at any stage? And not so that it becomes a burden, but just so that. You understand the collectivity or the connected force that we need to help each other with, and that made me think so much about myself and so much about how I navigate my business now, what strategies I need to be inputting, looking at the ways in which, okay, if anything happens to me, then unfortunately whoever's dependent on me is, is also kind of broke.
And so I need to kind of fixate myself or look at the ways in which I can strategize economic empowerment, but also really think about ways in which. It becomes more of a collective. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm looking at it from a, uh, from a strategy of co-dependency or looking at it as, oh, I'm independent, kind of thing.
But it's also just really being honest about where we're all at in society, in the stance of that frustration, in the stance of these like political wars that are going on, and also really thinking about ways in which we can free each other. Uh, Serena, one of the things that you've done quite often, way back when, I think you mentioned about.
Creating like your own sister circle or women's circle? Yeah. How has that been for you and like how, how did you even create that in the first place? We created it because Valentina, you were like talking about feminine energy, um, and. I personally felt like there was just a lot of masculine energy around me or outward energy.
I, I heard someone else kind of rephrase masculine as outward and feminine as inward, which I quite liked. Um, a bit more inclusive I suppose. And um, and I just, yeah, we created it based on that and. It's been incredible. It's like incredibly therapeutic and I think it was able to kind of cut through a lot of the noise as well.
Like even though we all collectively had this moment of stillness, I say collectively, for many people it wasn't very still. They were, you know, probably working more than they've ever worked during the pandemic, at least for many people. In my circles, my various circles, there was a huge amount of stillness, but I think there was also a huge amount of uncertainty and.
And also it just felt like masculinity as well for some reason. So yeah, that's kind of what the sister circle, that's how it came into being. What has inspired both of your practices? Well, for me, so I come from the arts, and then I studied architecture. From there, I went to work as a software engineer, and then November, 2020.
Right after receiving my fourth job in tech, cuz all I was doing when I was corporate was getting and quitting jobs for the sake of keeping myself challenged, but at the same time to to recreate containers for me to recreate the patterns that I had picked up in my architecture degree, which was work nonstop and pull all nighters and really spike up my nervous system all the time because that's what I had recognized to be.
Oh, I'm doing it right, like I am a high performer. I'm a, I'm a winner. I'm a champion. Right? When I received my fourth job in tech, I said, in complete apathy, feeling so empty, so unfulfilled in my room, being like, I cannot live another cycle of this game that I have created for myself, which is, okay, I'm gonna get this job, and then in three months I'm gonna start applying for a new job, and then I'm gonna increase my salary of like 10 K because I just.
To negotiate it better. I really began to ask myself, why am I even spending all my life training like a computer grad when what I want to be an artist? Like if I lived in a different era where the highest paid workers with the most abundant jobs were illustrators, then I would have a better lifestyle where I didn't have to code all day long despite me having gone in.
To tech out of personal interest and the aspect of creating and exploring computational thinking to really see the world that we live in. With the Dig Digital revolution, with literacy, with tech literacy. At the end of the day, I did not feel happy that another day had passed. And 10 hours were, had been in front of the computer and I was no longer okay with living my life, constructing my life from compromise, right?
Because I don't know how to make my own money. I have to do what I perceived to be the right thing in society cuz it was my perception. It was also highly fueled by whatever ads. Were being shown on my fees. And so in that moment I said, okay, I cannot live this cycle anymore. The only thing that is available for me is what I've always wanted for myself, which is do my own thing.
I want to live alive, especially cuz I was. Still 23. I was like, I'm only 23. Like how am I supposed to live life and just give up now, like I am now going to face what I intuitively know is the only available option for me now, which is learn how to make my own money. So I didn't send my application for, um, a grad research program that had been preparing the whole summer.
And in that moment I found my first coach online and I made a huge investment. I started my coaching business, put together the first offer, and I started teaching creatives how to code. Uh, made my first like five figures. I was like, oh my God. Wow. I, this is so cool. I made so much more than my monthly salary.
Quit my job, hired my life coach who was all about manifestation. Shamanism. Spiritual work became spiritual af my captions were like, I'm spiritual af now, but anyways, got super into like shamanic practices, like my in. I was so. Drawn to this work. Cueva job. Went to Portugal and from there joined my friend on her research trip for her masters, which was looking into climate change and migration.
We went to Guatemala and New Orleans, Texas, Malibu, and New York to fly back, and that ended up being the journey of my womanhood. That is the journey where I. Connected to what it really meant to be a woman, because the minute that I went to Portugal, it was my first environment change since all the life changes that I'd created for myself, which was putting myself in a position of leadership, taking radical ownership of my gifts, of my desires, and asking people for.
Wealth in exchange of my work, right? No longer, 35 an hour, but packages, multiple four figures and people were happily paying me, right? So that's what I had been doing. I had been doing for five months. That was the first time and the minute that that I changed environment, I internalized what I was doing and all the envied fears and thought beliefs and conditioning.
Came up and I cocooned back in my little corner. Self-sabotaged everything. Created scarcity. I basically was initiated into remembering and embracing my womanhood by having in front of me. That I didn't expect to have in front of me, which ended up being the greatest mirror for me to do the deep, deep, deep work.
So the reason why I only mentor women now, and I am so passionate about these things, and I talk about this work as when a woman puts herself in a position of leadership when a woman steps. In power when she moves forward activating her desires, when she does her soul work, when she honors her, cyclical being, when she asks for wealth in exchange of her work, she's breaking a cycle, one cycle of generational disempowerment of the feminine in her lineage.
Because in my journey, in my experience, all the fears that came up, all this, this deep urge of. Making myself hidden of making myself small. All the shame, all the guilt, all the fears. At one point you're gonna ask yourself, but where is all this shame coming from? Why do I have to decondition from this in the first place?
And when you ask yourself that question, you understand the systemic oppression of women and also of your. Lineage, I'm half Korean, that you have inherited and is still living in your body. That is dictating all your limitations, all your shoulds that if you are not aware of, are going to manifest in all aspects in your life.
Self-sabotaging you, not allowing you to move forward. Yeah, preach. Where do you feel like this kind of comes from in that sense of essentially that kind of oppression? Do you think it's 50% the way in which you were brought up, what you inherited, whether that be through observing what you were told or through literally your D n A, or do you think it was societal?
Like what's the ratio? I'm intrigued. I mean, all of everything that you just mentioned is interconnected, like it is a web. It begins by asking yourself, okay, well where have you learned this particular narrative? Right? So Mo, in most cases, it links back to. Like inner child trauma, right? Something like, whatever, how you saw, for example, how your mother modeled being a woman.
Because women learn to be women by looking at our mothers. Now we are women in the west. Okay? Women in the west. We have access to all sources of power to start our business, have unlimited wealth. If we know how to run the business, we can create conditions to create a lifestyle that. Equates power, that equates freedom, that supports whatever it is that we desire, right?
But when it comes time to embody the woman who unapologetically takes ownership of these things and embodies the woman who creates that lifestyle, there's deep, deep incongruence in the beginning, unless you do the work to keep going and become that woman because. We are still heavily raised and still live in society and families that are predominantly patriarchal.
So the patriarchy is favoring the father. If, if we grew up in a household that operated from power dynamics that favored the father, then we grew up looking at the mother. Always putting herself in a position of inferiority, and that is where we picked up patterns of giving, giving, giving, and never receiving.
That comes out in our business, right in the beginning, people pleasing, overworking, and then having a freeze when it comes time to asking for money or receiving money and normalizing. Not being stepped on, being taken advantage of. And this is the story of most women, which is what makes this so important.
Yeah. So the reason I ask is because I hear you and I agree with so much that you have to say. Um, but I then also just reflect on my own life. And that's why I was asking specifically for you rather than kind of more broadly in regards to society. Um, because I, you know, for me, I don't really feel like I have ever had to.
Obviously I understand much of what you've said and there have been elements of it that have definitely been very present in my life, such as a lack of boundaries, um, you know, given give giving. But I have to say the way that I was raised was to have. The utmost confidence all the time and that I could achieve anything.
And that came from both my parents. And so my, my, I don't know, my pers my perspective has just always been so different to kind of the, and maybe the typical women, if we're to say the majority of women do, um, feel very much and have been conditioned in the way that you've spoken about. But I just think.
The confidence in which your parents give you can cut through anything that society throws at you. That's my strong belief because that's my existence. Mm-hmm. Um, and my reality. So yeah, that's why I was really intrigued. How about you, Alicia? I think because I haven't necessarily always grown up with my mother, so I was put into all female school.
I actually got a lot of my empowerment from that school rather than necessarily my mom at the time. And I think that's just because at the time my mom was definitely like overworked, underpaid and she was just doing so much to, to make sure that I had a really good education. So I think my fire and my feistiness actually comes from definitely my mom still, but I also.
Observe how it is also very much entwined with. The school I went to and how they constantly told me that I was great all the time when I was actually really crap at many things. But it's just that empowerment of constantly being like, at Alicia, you can do it. And I think that allows me to really understand more about who I was at the time and my capacity.
My capacity to feel like someone was actually for me rather than constantly against me. And I think if you are in a space where, whether it's school or whether it's your lineage where you have. People that are constantly against you. Don't get me wrong, that I feel like there are times where with my mom personally, we do have a lot of rearrangements or a lot of disagreement and that's definitely something that we need to work out.
But that's also very much entwined with my culture and also the culture of my dad. So there's, there is definitely conflicts that I see there, and there is conflict sometimes in me in terms of being British and also being Nigerian. But I think I try. To look at the ways in which my mom has still carbed spaces for herself, still managed to do all the things she's done as a single mother, and then also facilitated me to go to a school where I was around women from different countries who were willing to empower themselves.
So yeah, I kind of felt like that was the empowerment and that allowed me to understand things more. But then I also think there is definitely. That burden and there is that vulnerability for women who don't have that support. And I think that's why, you know, coach support and all these different leadership tactics are really imp important and for, for women to actually see that it's okay to be feisty, it's okay to be confident, it's okay to be assertive.
It's okay to know exactly what it is that you want. It's okay to negotiate. So like working out a lot of things in myself, but I'm also like still trying to make sure that I. Touch base with women, still touch base with other people who have similarities and you know, you said that your mom was working all the time.
There's um, That's quite interesting in itself, I suppose, and I suppose maybe in some ways that speaks to your success. There was some research that was published a few years ago, and I always used to mention it when I was giving talks, whether it be keynote or panel events, and basically the research said that if you had a working mother growing up, if you had that as a representation, being a woman yourself, you outearn other women who didn't have the representation of the working mother.
Which I just think is, it makes so much sense, you know, like it makes so much sense when you kind of think about it. You know, if you can't see it, you are less likely to think that you can be that or become that. As you're speaking about that, it does make me think about, even when my mom says stuff to me nowadays, it's still kind of like, Alicia, you do need to get another job just in case this.
Happens not to affirm it. Not to affirm that negative is gonna happen, but just to be like, you need to make sure that you have other measures in place. You need to make sure that you have other income. And that allowed me to properly understand that like I can't be so quick to like, As you mentioned before, like be hidden.
Like I can't, I actually need to be out there. I need to actually put myself on and I have to be assertive. And I think it made me realize that it was more of a force than a just like, oh, I can just sit here and just be casual. I actually have to force myself to do that work, and that work is not always nice.
That work is not always great, but I'm willing to kind of like go through it and then reach my end of the tunnel and then whenever the time is right, move on to a new thing. Despite me having been raised with affirmations and also me proving to myself that I can do it in many challenges, I still held within me.
I still modeled in my patterns the way that my mother saw herself and the way that my mother behaved. Because you can, your mother can tell you like, you're amazing. You're amazing, you're amazing. But if she doesn't, Believe so herself. And if she doesn't love herself the way that you wanna love yourself, you are going to inherit what you're seeing in form of behavior.
And that's why for me, like all the shadow work, all the deconditioning is by cultural, because despite me being an Italian woman, Okay, international woman, but predominantly the Italian woman, Italian way of living. I actually had a lot of tendencies of being a scared Asian lady. You know, the scared Asian lady that whose parents lived through the Korean War and held within her so much scarcity and humility.
But in the form of. I am unworthy, like I will always put myself lost and I will always make myself as small and never a bother, which fueled what a lot of women do, which is saying, sorry, a million times. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Then you say what you have to say and then you say, sorry another time, and then the emails.
Hi, please, can you please do this? If not totally. Okay. Right? Like we're, we are about to receive that rejection, that rejection is inevitable and I'm just so sorry that I even dared to take a second or an inch of your time and space. No, and the concerning part, which is why we need more women who break through all this.
Bs, all this mountain of shame and guilt that we don't even know where it's coming from. We ha need more women to break through all of this so that the women who will come next, no longer. Feel their shame and go inwards and make it all about themselves and be like, wait, why can't I do it? Why am I so scared to be doing X, Y, Z?
And they understand that the source of their fear of whatever it is that they're feeling is bigger than them is a collective, is in the collective for most cases. What has this pandemic and its shock and turns and its lockdowns. What has it taught you? For me, it's like just reaffirm the fact that you need to have, um, a, uh, a diversity of income, of revenue, you know, diverse revenue streams.
I just think it's so, so important. I kind of always had that, but just seeing other people around me who haven't had that have to say by at large, most of my friends and family have been absolutely fine through this, so I don't wanna kind of, um, paint a picture where that's not the case. But from what I've seen around me, those that maybe are a little bit distant to me, the ones that have really struggled have only done one thing.
But obviously, you know, there are gonna be some industries where they're just gonna keep on booming, such as coaching, for instance. Like coaching is not going anywhere, it's just gonna intensify. And it feels like such like a new concept like compared to the US. Like, I used to live in America like many, many years ago, and like everyone was a coach there and, and it just feels like, you know, definitely over the past few years, maybe particularly over, over or since the pandemic started, that it's just accelerated 80% of coaches.
Started in the pandemic, like I was one of them. No way. But, but I'm also part of like, cuz there's different coaches. Like you can be a coach that works for a company or you can be like a solo entrepreneur coach. Yeah. Which is me. You can be in the high ticket coaching world, which is where I'm at. I mean it's amazing.
It's life changing really. Like allows you to take your power back, which is revolutionary considering. What women have done in this space because when, uh, you learn to do this work, uh, very in the masculine, like bro containers, it's one thing. But when you look at what the women are doing in this space, they are transforming the industry day after day, tapping into their feminine creative.
Soul flow. At the end of the day, it's about being who you are, living your life in authenticity, in power, being your authority, and making the most of structures and systems and tools that make you money, that allow you to have the lifestyle that you want. Really being like a witch using all these tools in her pot.
One of the things I've started really thinking about over the last couple months is really ways in which I can start looking at FinTech. Um, start looking at the ways where economic wealth for women is a big thing, like is a big problem at the moment. And, uh, there was a stat recently that I had to do for my course where it was basically highlighting that for pensions in the uk.
The, the average is supposed to be around like 200,000, but people are basically making, men are, um, they take home around 60,000 and then for women we take home 20,000. Wow. And that's because. At the same time, women make up majority of, um, part-time, time sectors or part-time industries, or part-time work.
And that really made me think more about savings. Like do we save, like how are we saving at the moment? What does it mean for us to be sustainable? What does it mean for us to kind of like, Help each other out if we're, if we're looking at it from the sense of economic empowerment and also if we're, we're becoming the business women that we want to be, how do we retain the income?
How do we attract the income? So that's been something that I've been thinking about. I hear you on that. Totally. I think, you know, to your point around, you know, women making up the vast majority of part-time workers, you know, feminist theorists have said for years until there's universal childcare, We're never gonna have parity of the sexes.
Not to say that's definitely women bearing children and bringing up children. That's most definitely not the sole reason for why we have an underrepresentation of women at senior leadership, for instance. There's, you know, there's far more going on there, such as sexism and other things as well.
Confidence, you know, it's, it's, it's a multitude of things. I completely hear you on that. And I think there are so many people, I think there are so many people, particularly if you are like first generation somewhere, that understanding of like financial planning, like how many people seek out a financial advisor or a financial planning advisor and yet understand like, you know, understanding how we grow our money, whether it be in stocks and shares.
But then it's like, for me there's this kind of like tension of like, Being quite anti-capitalist for the most part, even though I can honor that there are good things to capitalism to a degree, but also like just really just having a bit of an aversion to the idea of having to kind of buy in who capitalism to some sort of degree.
That's why balance is so needed and nuances needed. We need to be able to have these discussions. We need to be able to dip our toes into these spaces, but also, Really think about ways in which we carve it out for ourselves. Like it's very easy to look at some from a, a distance and kind of make assumptions, but as soon as you're entrenched in it, I think it's a different story.
And so being able to really think about, okay, actually what does it mean for certain demographics to have? Good capital. That to me is very incremental. It's very important for black mixed face brown women to make sure that they actually have economic like, but economic empowerment, like it's really important for us to be economically sustainable.
It's so, so important. And so just thinking about ways in which we move forward, we have to be thinking, okay, so. Yeah. Extras and streams of income. Okay, cool. Okay. But also we're heading towards a recession savings. Okay, great. Like what are the sacrifices that needs to be made, but also what are the, the dependencies?
What are the, you know, if I'm single, what does that mean? If I have a partner, what does that mean? Like, how are we able to really collectivize and help each other, but also, you know, help yourself at the same time? Okay. I'm gonna ask my last, last question. Who and what has inspired you in different seasons?
Fear and my mentors meaning fear. Well, first it's desire. Then it's your fear. I mean, for me, for me, it's my desire, my intuitive, knowing what I know I is the next step, and then the fear, the narrative of that fear, the source of that fear, and going through the journey. And then from there on whichever mentor I was in mentorship with and the magic or the specific codes that that mentor provided me for that specific season.
I have to say the youth, actually I do a lot of work with schools, um, speakers for schools to be in particular. And I get to speak to year sevens, year eight, year nine, so anyone between the age of 11 to like 13, um, but also older as well. And I think the way that they see the world. You know when you're a just young, I dunno, like you just see the world for like what it is.
There's this like crystal clarity. I just also just think like that generation, which I know has definitely been accelerated through tech, but they just, I don't know, they're just so on It. In a way that I definitely wasn't at 13 years old. Mm-hmm. Like they care so much more. You know, they've had parents that were probably hit by the F, you know, the recession that we had back in, you know, 2000, seventies thousand eight.
So the way they see everything and their tuition fees are so much more than, you know, when I went to university for the first time, like I'm gonna be 38 this year when I went to uni for the first time. My tuition fees were 1000 pounds a year. And then, um, I dropped uni and then I went back to uni and within a space of the year, it then went up to three, and then it went from three to nine when it went from labor to, to, um, conservative government in this country.
Yeah, it's, it's the youth. The youth inspire me and like ultimately, like, why am I doing any of the work that I do? It's to make the world like a kinder, more loving, more understood, harmonious, peaceful world, and you know, I'm not gonna live forever. And so it is ultimately for the younger generations, um, and they are the people that inspire me to keep on doing what I'm doing.
And like, I think like even like the idea of like wealth generation as well, like why are we generating wealth? Why do I even own a property? I own a property because I hope to ha one day have children. So like, I feel like everything that we do, everything that I do, It's for the youth. Mm. So, yeah, they're my inspiration cuz they're just, they're the best.
I'm just so inspired by outspoken women who just keep talking or keep pushing the agenda or keep creating in the middle of wars in the middle of hostilities because it empowers me so much and it makes me. Keep thinking and keep dreaming and keep innovating and wanted to do more. Because I think the work that I do is not really about myself, it's about helping other people, but I can only do that if I'm inspired by others, if that makes sense.
It's almost like a funnel where I have to be able to see the amazing work that other people are doing to also continue the work that I'm doing. Cause it's so encouraging. So yeah, just being able to see amazing women do their work and. You know, all the kind of journeys that they take, whether it's going through a muddy situation or you know, going up to their heights in their career or their heights in family or heights or whatever it is that they're doing.
I think that's, that's enabled me to go and be like, okay, it is possible. Um, and I think also, I'm one of those people where like I never thought like marriage was a, like a thing for me or like healthy relationships. Where it's to do of like, yeah, partners involved. I didn't ever think that was gonna be something that I'd be interested in.
So that's also developed, especially in the pandemic, that's also developed my understanding of where I wanna go to and like what I wanna do and like what I aspire to live. And have, so yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. I am launching a series on my podcast called In My Lineage, where I'm inviting women who started their and are building, they're soul led businesses, but these women are Asian American.
These women are Latina American, you know, and there's a lot of things that they had to heal that are very much rooted in. What they're carrying that they have inherited from their lineage with regards to their relationship to money, with regards to their relationship, to what is safety, what is on safety, what is the standard of very, very specific things like Alicia was saying.
I still perform with a lot of things that are very Nigerian, such as I have to have three jobs. It is my urge to negotiate. And it is just so fascinating how we hold all these patterns that are very much rooted in, for example, for me, I still in my body have to heal things that are from the Korean War.
Mm-hmm. And um, and it's just like how interesting that little me from Milan. Are here to dissolve this in this lifetime, so my daughters will not inherit it. Just coming from that. Is there anything for you, Savina, in terms of like your Iranian culture or your Jamaican culture? That maybe shows up as well in the way that you work, whether that's Yeah.
In actions or if that's in the flow of how you were Yeah, I think it's for sure, like, you know, one of my aunts was a, um, political refugee and she's like my second mom. You know, I spent a lot of time with her in Canada. We would go to Canada for three months of every year. She is, is still very political, can't, can't go back to Iran cuz she'd more than likely be executed like really, really in it.
So I think there's definitely having also like lived in Iran living, you know, the experience of living in an Islamic Republic. Has definitely shaped, I think, the way that I choose to live my life. Um, you know, the freedoms that I get to enjoy. And yeah, I think I as a result, live a much full life because of what I've been able to see.
Um, And also experience. And from my Jamaican side, you know, I spend a lot of time in my garden as I mentioned earlier, and I, it kind of crossed my mind like last week, like, do I spend so much time with the soil connecting to the soil? Because maybe I. It connects me to those ancestors that were enslaved.
You know, this was kind of like running through my mind, what, you know, um, and yeah, it's just, you know, our ancestors are very much present within us all the time. You know, I believe in intergenerational trauma, you know, very much what you've been talking about Valentina, about, you know, we are here to heal ourselves a hundred percent.
And, um, And I feel so grateful. Like, you know, I was brought up in a very violent household. My dad was incredibly violent, by the way. I love my dad's pieces and I forgive him for who he was at that moment in time or those moments in time, but, I already broken that cycle. You know, my, I've never been in a physically violent relationship.
Last relationship was definitely, there was a bit of an emotional violence there, but, but you know, physical violence and, you know, the last relationship ended quite quick. So there was a real kind of like, let's sever this sort of thing. My Jamaican nurse definitely shows up. Myness definitely shows up.
Well, thank you so much. Honestly, this has been such an amazing session. All the topics in this season touch back to Sewing Seeds of Exchange. If anything in this episode spoke to you at all, I always love hearing thoughts and expressions that can be birthed from single collective stories as I'm on this journey to learn, heal, and design from this space.
Please note that this is also a personal imitation, and not everything may be relative to you. Carving your own space is so central, whatever that may be. Remember to follow or subscribe to this podcast and you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at a For mek. Join my quarterly newsletter app, www do anisha moke.co.
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