VBB 335: Tori Jenae On Turning Pain Into Power!

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast: inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather.

Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:19]:

Pinch yourself if this sounds familiar. You are very good at what you do for a living, but somehow you still feel unfulfilled. Or maybe you're making very good money but feel disappointed that you're not making a difference. If any of these hit home, you will want to meet our guest, transformational psychology coach, confidence and relationship mentor, and creator of the reclamation method, Tori Jenae. Welcome, Tori, to Virgin. Beauty. Bitch.

Tori Jenae [00:00:51]:

Oh, thank you so much. So honored to be here.

Christopher [00:00:54]:

Ah, we are honored to have you. Thank you for doing this. Now, Tori, if someone had told you this, that one day you will be heading your own transformational group coaching program, it's going to be built around your own traumatic life experiences, and you're going to be doing all this while living in Beverly Hills, California, you might have said what?

Tori Jenae [00:01:16]:

I would have said there is no way that is possible for someone from where I came from. I'm definitely a self-made woman, and I grew up in a lot of struggle. Both my parents struggled with addiction, and obviously, we struggled financially at times, really badly. So, I had to make some radically different choices in life and put myself through university. I left home at 17. I helped take care of my little brother.

Tori Jenae [00:01:44]:

There are so many things that made me who I am and made me walk through that fire of transformation. And then over the last 26 years, I've just picked up as many tools as I can, not only use to heal myself, but to help other women and some men I work with as well, to really heal and transform and turn our deepest pain into our purpose and our wounds into our wisdom. And just, you know, I really believe that no matter where you come from, no matter what's happened to you, you can make a different choice.

Christopher [00:02:14]:

So, going back to the start of this, you once had the typical 9 to 5 job.

Tori Jenae [00:02:21]:

I sure did.

Christopher [00:02:22]:

You were doing, you were doing well. You were a success. So, what made you jump off that cliff?

Tori Jenae [00:02:30]:

Yeah, that's such a good question. So, after university, I did want to become a therapist, but in the United States, we have to do a lot of training. So it's six years of university plus 3,000 hours of training, which is very low pay, and because of where I came from, I just didn't have that opportunity to do that early on. So when I came out of university, I was like, okay, I need to get a job. What can I do that's related to psychology? So I went into human resources, and I was very good at it. By the time I was 30, I was an HR manager for a 7,000-person company. I had tons of direct reports. I was, you know, the quote-unquote success.

Tori Jenae [00:03:05]:

I literally had the house, the husband, the car, the job, all of it. And I was miserable, and I did not understand what was happening. And that was really kind of part of my spiritual awakening of recognizing, like, wow, I'm not living my purpose. Like, even though I've checked all the boxes I'm supposed to check as a woman, this is not making me happy; it's not fulfilling me. And I think we're all a little bit different in what our soul came here to experience and fulfill. But for me, like, that purpose was so deep and so necessary. And my sister had addiction issues as well. And so she suddenly overdosed, and she passed away.

Tori Jenae [00:03:41]:

That was actually one of the catalysts that, like, my sister didn't even make it till the age of 40. And so that really woke me up because I was terrified to leave that six-figure job, all, you know, the golden handcuffs, as we say here in the US. And I was so scared to make it. But when she left this planet. I was like, life is short. I cannot waste any more time. And that's when I took the leap, and I left. I remember, like, literally praying, like saying, I promise God, like, I will leave this job. I'm not really super religious, but I'm spiritual. But I remember telling the universe, like, I hear you, I get the message. I know I'm not happy.

Tori Jenae [00:04:16]:

And that sent me on like, I've kind of, I was kind of on a path of finding more meaning and purpose. But my sister's passing was really the big catalyst, I think.

Heather [00:04:26]:

I mean it sounds really reminiscent of what I've read about your story. And first of all, just really, really sorry to hear about your sister. That sounds incredibly challenging, and really, what you've done with it to help others is remarkable. Would you mind sharing with our listeners how that moment and that choice that you decided to make led you to combine Western psychology and Eastern wisdom into your practice?

Tori Jenae [00:04:58]:

Oh my God, that's such a good question. Yeah, so I moved to Japan when I was about 19, and I studied Buddhism, so that really made a lot of sense to me. But then I was also at university studying Western psychology. And what I found through my own journey was that I had a lot of trauma myself. And, you know, that's the tip of the iceberg and my story of the last 11 years of how much loss I experienced. But I really found that in order to heal, we have to heal the mind and the body. And so that required me to do, like, I started doing yoga when I was about 21. I learned all these psychological theories.

Tori Jenae [00:05:31]:

I'd learned Buddhism; how do I change my mindset? Because psychology will tell you really what's going on with you, it gives you self-awareness. How do I understand myself? What's happened to me in my past doesn't really tell you how you're supposed to think. How are we, like, what is a new framework? If we're not in a victim mindset, how are we in an empowered mindset? How do we really let go? How do we stop caring about what people think of us? You know, these are all like life's bigger questions. And so I found that, like, as I went along my path, I was equally studying Eastern philosophy and Western psychology. And then I found, like, they really need each other because they're two halves of a whole. I can do the healing with the psychology and the understanding and the depth work, but I need that connection to myself, to truth, and a new framework for how to think, how to, like I said, like, who am I really? What do I really think? What are my old patterns, programs, and processes? And how do I step into authenticity and release all the things that don't work for me? That's where I really found Eastern wisdom, spirituality, and yoga. I've studied Kabbalah.

Tori Jenae [00:06:38]:

Like, I've been down every road because I wanted to find the deepest answers, and I wanted to be able to work with people from every walk of the world. Like, I have clients in LA, New York, London, and Dubai. So I work with people who are Christian, Muslim, like, you name it. But, like, we really connect them into, like, the core of who they are and stripping away all of that stuff to allow the real soul to speak, the mind to heal, and the body to release it all and integrate it. Because our goal is really to bring heaven to earth. Like our own version of heaven to earth.

Christopher [00:07:11]:

That's fascinating to Heather and I. I mean, the show is built on the premise of feminine, masculine, yin, and yang. And throughout the planet, we seem to want to separate these things. And you find it just in your own practice. There are two different energies that you have to bring together yourself. Like, they didn't teach you both of these things together?

Tori Jenae [00:07:38]:

No, they're always.

Christopher [00:07:39]:

What is up with that? Why do we do that?

Tori Jenae [00:07:43]:

I think the mind loves to have things in clean boxes. Like, we're very uncomfortable as humans with the unknown, with the gray, and we really want to keep things clean and separate, you know. It's like we want to know, like, okay, this is Western psychology, and this is science, and this is spirituality. And I really think they're all the same thing. You know, we're all drops from the same ocean. We're all connected in some way, and the masculine and the feminine exist in all of us. And I get really discouraged sometimes when people talk about, like, I can only be one or the other.

Tori Jenae [00:08:13]:

But it's like masculine is the action, the doing, the leading, the giving. Women can do that too. It doesn't matter your physical body. Feminine is receiving, its creation, its intuition, you know. We all need those energies at different times in our lives. And yes, we can lead with one energy or the other, but without that integration of all the parts of ourselves, our masculine and our feminine, we, you know, I can sit here and completely sit in my feminine, get all these great intuitive ideas, but if I don't have some of that masculine energy to take action on those ideas, I'm not going to change the world with that.

Heather [00:08:51]:

I think even in how you've framed your practice, with some of our listeners may be unfamiliar with energy psychology, which I think really is that pairing of what you've just discussed there. Can you kind of unpack a little bit more about what that entails, you know, given what you had said around, you know, the Western being, understanding your patterns, understanding your traumas and your background, and then the Eastern wisdom being, you know, setting a new framework? Can you kind of walk them through a little bit about what that is with working with you?

Tori Jenae [00:09:30]:

Yes, I'll try to make it super real-life so it's easy to understand. So, ultimately, our psychology is all of our past, our programs, our childhood, that kind of stuff. So we look at that through a psychological lens so that you really understand yourself. If you're struggling in a relationship, let's say maybe you have an anxious attachment style. So, dating someone and you get really amped up, and you worry about if they texted you or not. And, you know, you're just like, in this complete spin, and you don't know why, and you're so frustrated, and you think, what's wrong with me? And then we look at it, and we say, oh, you've got, you know, this is what happened with your mom and your dad, and this is your attachment style, and this is what your fears are. So now I understand it from a psychological lens.

Tori Jenae [00:10:09]:

That's great. But what a lot of people experience is they go to years of therapy, and their body, their visceral response when someone does not text them, or they do not feel loved, or they feel that person pulling away, is so strong that they can't outthink it. So that's where we have to drop into the body and do the energy work to integrate it because I've got to heal the nervous system and the body. The most powerful book on trauma, which I'd already kind of learned but didn't have words for early in life, was called The Body Keeps the Score. And it's Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. He's like the number one person in the world on trauma. And he really talked about that. The mind can process the trauma, but if you don't heal the body at some level, it will repeat because it gets encoded in our nervous system and our safety system.

Tori Jenae [00:10:42]:

So, me being in it, like, if I have a lot of trauma, particularly in women, it can show up as perfectionism, impostor syndrome, anxious attachment style, and control. You know, all these things that, like, we just think are normal or part of being normal. And they are, but they can also have roots in that healing, that trauma. So I really work to help someone understand it psychologically, but drop it physically into the body. So energy psychology actually allows us to get into that state, so we think about it. So, like, let's just use the hypothetical because most people have dated, like you're in a relationship, and someone really triggers you. Like, we get that trigger in the body, and then we use acupressure points, chakra clearing, like lots of different energy things to start grounding that mental work into the body, so that when that happens.

Tori Jenae [00:11:36]:

When you get that trigger, we all, we all have that visceral feeling of like, when we're triggered or we're upset, that starts to calm down. And maybe what used to spin you out for three weeks, now it spins you out for three days, and then you get down to three hours. So that's really how it works in a very, like, practical way. Hopefully, I have answered your question.

Heather [00:11:53]:

Yeah, I appreciate the specifics, like, you know, how you get there. But then also either the acupuncture or another one. I do use, like, somatic movements in any of your practice, and can you let our listeners know a little bit about what that's like if you do use that type of practice?

Tori Jenae [00:12:12]:

Yeah, so I love somatic healing, which is really like just using the body. So soma means the body. Vedic, the Vedic yogic wisdom has a lot about the soma, about whether that's what yoga does, which is to help move the body. So, yeah, we use the same acupressure. Basically, it's acupoint, like pressure. So we're tapping on the body. We use the chakras. But it's really like this ability to give yourself exposure to the negative thing and then unwind your nervous system from the reaction.

Tori Jenae [00:12:42]:

So it's like, think of it as mild exposure therapy. It'd be like if someone is afraid of spiders, and then I have them, you know, looking at a spider while doing this tapping. So in that way, their nervous system starts to realize, like, oh, the spiders over there. I'm still safe. And so with energy psychology, particularly, it's actually approved by the American Psychological Association. It helps us heal trauma beliefs. And there's another aspect that's really powerful, which a lot of times we have objections to healing, and we don't. We're not aware of that because we're.

Tori Jenae [00:13:13]:

They're subconscious drivers. Meaning we're not like, it's like, think of the iceberg. What we're aware of is the top of it above the water. And then we have this huge iceberg under the water, which is what we call our subconscious mind, that runs about, most people say, about 90% of our behavior is driven by what's underneath the water, that lower part of the iceberg. So the work that I'm doing is getting into the body to get into reprogramming what's underneath, like, as simple as weight loss.

Tori Jenae [00:13:38]:

A lot of us don't recognize that there's a part of us that will want to lose weight, and there's a part of us that will not want to lose weight. And particularly with women who've had trauma, sometimes weight equals safety. If I'm not attractive to the opposite sex or to whoever may have abused me, I'm safe. And so, I actually have to heal those subconscious drivers as well. Or maybe you had a critical mother who always said negative things about your body, and there's a little girl inside the body who wants to be accepted for not being thin. And so we have to work with her to help her get on board with dropping the weight because it's like, it's called the justice objection.

Tori Jenae [00:14:17]:

Like, my mom didn't love me when I wasn't super skinny. I was just working with a client this week, and so I'm going to gain weight, and hopefully, she'll; if I can get her to accept me in this form, then I know I'm really loved. And a lot of people don't know that that's actually like a deeper need that's not being met.

Christopher [00:14:34]:

We're so complicated.

Tori Jenae [00:14:39]:

We're so complex. Yeah, I know it's hard to put all in these words, but I really look under. I kind of joke with my clients. I'm highly intuitive. I can read patterns very quickly. I've been doing this, you know, I've been studying people for, like I said, 26 years. I use something called surrogate muscle testing. So I'm not going to even ask you to know it.

Tori Jenae [00:14:57]:

I'm going to go through tons of questions, and I'm going to muscle test. I'm going to see, okay, this is subconsciously true for you. Now we know we need to clear this out because it's a roadblock in the way of your healing.

Heather [00:15:08]:

So when you say muscle test, are you asking them where certain triggers show up for them? So it's like, what does a muscle test mean?

Tori Jenae [00:15:15]:

So, muscle test, if you were in person, I could actually show you. It'd be really cool. But, like, I can have you hold out your arm, and if you're lying and I press on your arm, it'll be weak. If it's true, it will be strong. And I use two fingers. And I've done this with very, very large, muscular men. And it's very funny. They cannot hold their arm up if they're lying.

Tori Jenae [00:15:32]:

I used to do it with my friend's kids. Like, if they said they didn't hit their sister, I'd be like, put up your arm. They're like, no, no, no.

Tori Jenae [00:15:40]:

So the body is energetically strong. We can do it with supplements. We can do it with subconscious beliefs. We can do it with all kinds of things. Like, the arm will be very strong because, like I said, it's just two fingers. If it's not true, it can be a little. It's a little bouncy. And so I do that because I've been doing this online for, gosh, since 2018.

Tori Jenae [00:15:59]:

So I do that for the client. I asked permission to test their energy, and then I started doing the energy work with them. So it's just, it's a much faster way because I can't see everyone in person unless they're obviously here in LA. And I've had like massive results with that because people love to say, like, my most common feedback from energy psychology, and there are people around the world who do it, of course, is it's like years of therapy in one session because we move. It's like we're not just getting into your head, we're getting into your nervous system, your soma, your body, your react, your act, your reactionary space.

Heather [00:16:33]:

Well, I really like how you've broken it down. Even things that seem, I don't know, surface level, you have a goal, like, let's say it's weight loss. And really, what's underneath that frame of where you want your mindset to be? There are so many layers of programming underneath, why you want that goal, or what's subconsciously holding you back from that goal. So, I really love how you've unpacked that. It's so resonant to so many elements of life. So very, very cool. I kind of want to go into the flip side of maybe an area of growth that people are looking to understand their patterns better, and ask you a little bit about the guide that you've authored, around seven steps to Manifesting Abundance. Would you mind walking us through some of those core principles and kind of what made you bring that to life?

Tori Jenae [00:17:31]:

Oh, gosh, yeah. So, I have the seven steps to Abundance, and then I also have the Confidence Code. So they're kind of blocks to confidence, like the psychological blocks. And for the abundance, it was really because I grew up in a state of lack and not enough. And I really think our society is programmed in this fear that there's not enough money, there's not enough resources, there's not enough to go around. I'm not enough. Like, it's so like. Brene Brown's work talks a lot about this within vulnerability as well.

Tori Jenae [00:17:59]:

And I'd read like hundreds of manifesting and Money mindset books. So I kind of took that much to like really reprogram myself because even when I was like 31 years old, making six figures, I still felt like I never had enough. And I would subconsciously find ways to get rid of my money. I would give it to people, I would spend it, I would manifest random bills because I actually didn't feel my nervous system. My body did not feel comfortable having money. And so a lot of women, particularly, don't recognize that we are new to having money. In the United States, a woman could not have her own bank account without a male co-signer until the 1970s.

Tori Jenae [00:18:41]:

That means that my mom, because I was born in 78, could not have her own bank account until right before I was born. So women have only really had the opportunity to have credit cards in the United States and in London, because I've looked this up in the UK till the 80s, we couldn't have our own money. So it's really helping women reprogram at a deep level. And men have stuff around money too, of course, but I just see this like, longer term, almost traumatic, I guess, generational trauma that's been passed down to us. It used to be a thing in the UK, too, as the grandmother would give you enough money to escape your husband if he was abusive, and you were supposed to hide the money. I can't remember what it was called, but they would give you a kind of little stipend, like you hide this honey. And if he's really, really bad and you need to get away, you take this, and you run.

Tori Jenae [00:19:33]:

And so to think about that, the mindset that even our mothers didn't maybe have their own money or their. Or I remember my grandmother would make a little bit of money from baking and making cakes and stuff. And then she'd have to give it to my grandfather because he was the one who handled all the money. And when he passed, everybody had to help her pay the bills because she didn't even know how. Like, I'm one generation removed from that.

Tori Jenae [00:20:02]:

So, I really broke down the best tips and tools to help someone start reprogramming and re-relating to money, because we have a relationship to money. And what's fascinating. I've also found that psychologically, it's whatever our attachment style is, whether it's avoidant, anxious, secure, etc. That also gets attached to money. So some people avoid it, some people feel anxious around it, some people will be secure with it, but we all have money stuff. One of my mentors actually said that she felt that people had more issues with money than they actually have with sex.

Christopher [00:20:32]:

And money doesn't talk back?

Tori Jenae [00:20:34]:

No, we just project all of our stuff onto it. So yeah, it's kind of an ebook. It's like 30 pages long. So I wish I could give some really big tools, but I'll give three tips that will help your listener to just start unpacking their money stuff. First and foremost, write down at the top of a paper, " money is, and answer that as many times as you can. Let the good, bad, and the ugly just do a brain dump. And you'll start to see, like, what? Like, it'll say, like, money is power, money is good, money is evil. You know, we'll start to see, like, what do we really think when it comes to money?.

Tori Jenae [00:21:05]:

And then another exercise I would have clients do is, what were the things that were always said to you about money growing up? Because that will tell you a lot about how your belief systems were created. Like money doesn't grow on trees. What do you think I'm made of money? We can't afford that. We don't have that kind of money. Just because your friends have it doesn't mean you can have it. So those core things that our parents say, that are really just trying to manage us and tell us what they can and can't afford, start to come into our belief system. Because you know, we have to remember that, like, as children, someone tells us that Santa Claus is real and the big fat guy is going to come down my chimney and give me stuff. And I'm like, yes, right. And so we forget that we get a lot of these messages at that time, and they get, like, planted seeds in the garden of our belief system. And so we have to go in and prune.

Tori Jenae [00:21:45]:

And then the last one I like to do is write down, like, how do I spend? How do I save, and how do I earn money and get really honest with myself? Like, am I good at saving? How do I feel about myself with saving? Am I stuck in this, like, never, and I never save enough, or I don't save at all? How do I earn money? Do I feel comfortable asking for money? Do I not want to charge for my services? Why not ask for a raise? Or am I very good in that place? Because I find that we all have to learn how to reprogram ourselves in each of those areas, earnings, spending, and saving. But take one at a time and choose one area of your life that you want to improve. And, like, if you're very uncomfortable spending money, I always make my clients spend a little bit. Like, nope. Every week, you have to spend something on yourself.

Tori Jenae [00:22:38]:

You've got $30,000 in the bank. You're, you know, you're squirreling away tons and tons of money, and you won't spend a dime. Like, go put a, you know, we're going to spend $25 on something small this week that you want. You're going to go have a different meal, or you're going to do something to start releasing, and then there's the opposite. If you can't save, you have zero dollars in your savings, like okay, every week you've got to put $20 away. You can't touch it because it's like we're reprogramming ourselves through new action. Hopefully, that answers your question.

Heather [00:23:05]:

That's perfect.

Tori Jenae [00:23:06]:

Yeah.

Heather [00:23:06]:

Thank you.

Christopher [00:23:07]:

I don't want to just single you out as a money coach. I mean, you do a lot of heavy lifting for women. Things like divorce, breakups, and personal loss. Like, you do a lot of heavy lifting with individuals.

Tori Jenae [00:23:23]:

Yes. A lot of trauma work. It can be heavy. But I think because I walk through so much on my own, I really have so much love and compassion for it, and I never have any, like, pity or, you know, because it's like, I know. It's like, wow, like, this is the thing that, you know, it can break you down, or it can break you open. And I think that's why, because I work with women who've gone through breakups and divorce and, like, I really want them to be empowered, and that's a big part of leaving a relationship. Like, even for myself, leaving my, you know, having that dual income, sharing expenses and all that kind of stuff, like when I left my marriage, my expenses doubled overnight.

Tori Jenae [00:23:59]:

So all the things that I learned myself, you know, within myself, like, I had to put into practice very quickly and rebuild a life for myself. 100 on my own. And that's a big fear for all of us. You know, money is survival, and it's an important thing. And I think a lot of us feel bad for wanting it, bad for needing it, bad for not having it. You know, there's so much, so much shame around it that I just want women, particularly, to feel really empowered, confident in themselves, confident, like, get relationships that they want and not have to choose based on finances. Like, I really feel like if you, as a woman, have your sovereign financial ability, you're never going to be in a job, a place, or a relationship that you don't want to be in because you have choices.

Christopher [00:24:44]:

Well said.

Heather [00:24:46]:

Well, just building on that and what Christopher highlighted earlier, you know, the heart of our show, you know, called the Virgin, the Beauty, and the Bitch.

Heather [00:24:58]:

These words have surface-level meanings. They also sometimes have shackles for women over time. Sometimes, it's shackles that they've broken free of, and we've really come to know these words in totally new ways because of what it means to different people over the span of their lives. But underneath the three words is a desire to reimagine the feminine. Not for what it was, not for what it is necessarily, but to break it open into what is a new or unlooked at aspect of it. So my question to you is, what does feminine mean to you, and how does that contribute to your work?

Tori Jenae [00:25:45]:

Yeah, I love that. Feminine to me means the power of creation. Our bodies literally create life. In the Kabbalah, they talk about this a lot like men are manifesters, but they need the feminine because we're the cup. We hold it like they can, they can, you know, they have their own form of creation, but women really make it happen. And so even when it comes back to money with the feminine, the World Bank likes to give microloans to women because they create jobs, they take care of children. Men typically in third-world countries will gamble it away.

Tori Jenae [00:26:26]:

And again, I'm not, I love men. I'm not bashing men at all ever. I have a brother, and you know, like all kinds of lovely men in my life, my ex-husband, even. We're still good friends, you know, so I have, I've been very blessed with some, met some wonderful men in my life for sure. But I definitely seems like women have the power of creation within us and we're so much more capable than I think we've known for so long. And I think we're starting to see that. I even quote the Dalai Lama as saying that the Western woman will be the one that saves the world. And it's just that we bring balance to a world that's been so imbalanced for so long.

Tori Jenae [00:27:05]:

And so that's what I'm excited to see. More women are going to university than ever before, and we are rising. And I think that's changing what it means to be a man. But I don't think it needs to be, I don't think men need to be less masculine. I'm not a big fan of all this stuff around men not being masculine. I love that masculinity. I love the man who opens the door for you and takes, you know, and, and like chivalry and all that stuff. I do not want it to die. I just feel like in order for women to rise, I think some people are thinking that men have to step down. And I don't think so.

Tori Jenae [00:27:34]:

I think it's asking men to show up more with a more emotional availability and women to show up with less Power imbalance, accepting their own power. Like, men are good with their power. They're not great with their vulnerability. And women are kind of the opposite. They can be great with their vulnerability, but they're not really great with their power. And even Harvard did long-term studies on this, about, like, how we are relationally.

Tori Jenae [00:27:59]:

A man typically doesn't want to get married until he feels like all of his ducks are in a row, and financially, he's able to provide and protect in that way. But women won't put any energy into that. They'll want a relationship. They'll want to get married right away. Like, even if they're, you know, working, like, as a checkout girl and they have no financial ability, they don't even know how to balance, you know, how to, like, open a checkbook. Not that we need checkbooks anymore, but it's just kind of a funny saying. So I kind of, I hope to see us balance that more, that men start to see that they can really be in their divine, masculine this, positive, masculine that that holds and protects and provides.

Tori Jenae [00:28:35]:

But a great partner in his life will lift up his success, and they can build that together. And that women can see that when they have their financial literacy, they feel confident, even if they don't have a lot of money. If they understand money, they have a good relationship with money, you know, they're not feeling like they're walking into just a relationship to save them. Because, unfortunately, a lot of people get taught that a man is a financial plan.

Christopher [00:28:58]:

Yeah, yeah. And men are conditioned to believe that that's what their purpose is.

Tori Jenae [00:29:04]:

Yeah. And what a limiting purpose to have. Like, I don't want any man that I'm with to feel like I'm with him because I need him to take care of me, you know, like, that wouldn't I, like, I want to be taken care of in certain ways, but I really believe in, like, this, like, positive. We each contribute in our own ways, and it can be whatever we want it to be. It doesn't have to be defined by traditional roles or responsibilities.

Christopher [00:29:31]:

This is very encouraging considering we were just talking about your mother and the beliefs and traditions she grew up with, and how she, you know, how she lived her life. And one generation apart, you, you're completely different from her and her beliefs and the things that she felt were critical to her survival. You are completely different. That's just one generation apart.

Tori Jenae [00:30:00]:

Yeah, I think about that a lot. Like, my dad came from Mexico. He was one of 11 children. He grew up, like, he was born on a dirt floor, you know, like a house was a dirt floor. Like really, really like deep poverty. Right. And he came to the US and joined the military and got a citizenship and all that kind of stuff. But I think about one generation away, I've completely changed that.

Tori Jenae [00:30:22]:

And then my mom struggled with addiction. She didn't come from much. And so men were a big way in which she survived. She had multiple husbands. Four, or five, because there was one before I was born. But, like, so she had, you know, men were kind of her plan. So. Yeah, and I saw my grandmother be kind of, you know, in a, in a relationship too, where she didn't have a lot of financial sovereignty. So I just made, like I said a lot of radical decisions of how do I take care of myself in a positive way and show up and, and at least have that financial literacy. And you know, obviously, I was in a marriage for a long time. I built a lot of financial stability within that as well. But even when I left, it was like, okay, I've got, I can do this on my own too. I have that confidence.

Christopher [00:31:03]:

I love that as a role model, as something for other women to aim at and aim for. I think that's miraculous. So I want to definitely acknowledge that as something that is inspiring for others.

Tori Jenae [00:31:23]:

Yeah. Well, thank you. And I really feel like, even if, you know, like, I work with women who want to be stay-at-home moms too. And so we talk about how they do that, how they work with, you know, like, I have a client who wants to, she has a big marketing job, but she wants to stay home with her kids for the next two years. So we're talking about whether her husband can do that financially. How do we put money aside for her, and how does, you know, how does she feel secure in doing that so that she can take that time for her children? Because that's also a beautiful investment. But she's doing it with a lot of like, consciousness, which is like, is beautiful.

Christopher [00:31:54]:

How do we connect people with you?

Tori Jenae [00:31:57]:

Oh, my website is the easiest. It's torijanea.com, so T-O-R-I-J-E-N-A-E.com, and then Tori Jana on Instagram, and I love questions. Got some freebies that I can send as well.

Heather [00:32:14]:

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It has truly been a joy to talk with you and just learn who you are and what you're doing. Your personal story, and how you broke free of those shackles, and you're really living what you practice. It's just beautiful to see.

Tori Jenae [00:32:31]:

Well, thank you so much, Heather. I appreciate you guys having me on.

Christopher [00:32:34]:

And you have been listening to the.

Heather [00:32:38]:

The Virgin, The Beauty and the Bitch.

Christopher [00:32:41]:

Find us, Like us, Share us. And if you really love your friends, invite them in. To become a partner in the VBB community, we invite you to find us @ virginbeautybitch.com. Like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and share us with people who are defiantly different, like you. Until next time, thanks for listening.