Reclaiming Power: A Journey of Resilience and Reinvention with Sophie Deslauriers

KATHLEEN: Welcome everyone to the journey of an awakening spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host.

KATHLEEN: The purpose of the show is to help you realize you are not alone, you are in control of your life. It does not matter what your lot in life is or where you came from. We have all felt pain, suffering, hurt, abandonment, loneliness, hopelessness, et cetera. The show helps you to take those dark moments and turn them around to create a whole new you.

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KATHLEEN: Let's begin. Today I have Sophie Deslauriers. I hope I pronounced it correctly. She comes from humble beginnings and has accomplished the unexpected in her life. She has thrived through some of life's major challenges, bankruptcy, divorce after 18 years, cancer and having a baby in the pandemic. She is known for her expertise in sales and leadership.

KATHLEEN: Previously, she mentored and coached executives and sales teams at some of North America's largest corporations. Now she has expanded her practice to support individuals, entrepreneurs and executives to reclaim their power with a focus on young people. She believes that your history does not define your destiny, that you can change your stars.

KATHLEEN: Her mission is to support you and the next generation to decondition you from systematic conditioning and empower your independent thinking, personal power, emotional intelligence, business, acumen and sales skills so you show up confidently in life and build the life you really want with more choice, health, wealth and love. Welcome, Sophie.

SOPHIE: Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

KATHLEEN: I'm excited to have you here as well. I did a little bit more looking into your website about who you are a little bit more and watched your video I really find what you're doing is very empowering, but we know that's not where you started from. I would love for you to share with our audience what your journey to becoming an awakening spirit has been for you.

SOPHIE: I started from very humble beginnings. My parents divorced when I was about two years old.

SOPHIE: I lived with my mom mostly. I didn't have much of a father figure around when I was younger.

SOPHIE: My mom was in a pretty serious electrocution accident when I was about 10 years old, which rendered her unable to walk. She went from a wheelchair to crutches to canes. What happened was that she was taking a picture and her feet were wrapped around a metal ground stool.

SOPHIE: Unfortunately, there was no ground back in the day, they used to plug in the cameras for flash and there was no ground in the electrical box in the outlet box. It grounded on her feet because her feet were bare over the metal stool. What happened was is her feet blew up 10-15 times the regular size. They were so swollen.

SOPHIE: She had to get customized cast boots to wear for shoes because her feet wouldn't fit in regular shoes. That was a pretty traumatic experience when I was younger, I put myself through university. I was an OS a child since fast forward in my life. I got married fairly young. I was about 23 years old when I got married. I was married for 18 years.

SOPHIE: At about the age of 42. After an 18 year marriage, we decided to consciously uncouple. We were on different paths in life. It really does happen when people say you grow apart.

SOPHIE: Like I used to hear that when I was younger and didn't really understand, but now I do having gone through it and that was a pretty big heartbreak for me to go through a divorce. After 18 years. This same year, I was going through the divorce. I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

SOPHIE: At the time I had lived a pretty big life.

SOPHIE: My ex-husband and I built a thriving business. We built a real estate portfolio. Basically, we came from nothing and we built it all up over the 18 year marriage, which is one of our successes.

SOPHIE: I never experienced the role of being a mother. When I had these desires at the age of 37, that good old biological clock is a real thing. Again, it wasn't something I really understood until Tik Tok. Tik Tok was happening. It means time's running out.

SOPHIE: When I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had already had the desire and the decision to have a child.

SOPHIE: Now this complicated things for me, the doctors wanted me to do 25 radiation treatments and two years of tamoxifen. At the age of 42 pretty much I was considered a geriatric mom, not because of my own age, but when you think about the eggs, the age of your eggs, they really don't live much longer than that.

SOPHIE: I think it's an unrealistic expectation to think a woman's eggs are still great at the age of 50. Right? At the age of 42 it makes sense. I would be considered a geriatric. I took quite offense to that in the beginning, but when I started to do the calculation, it's like eggs in ovaries, kind of like I was going to say that kind of dog, they multiply in years. It's not really a human year.

SOPHIE: They sat me down, it was a very serious conversation and they were, Sophie, I had stage one breast cancer in my right breast and they were able to take it out with a lumpectomy, I have breast implants.

SOPHIE: When they did the initial biopsy, it came back inconclusive and they actually had to do the lumpectomy and send it off for testing for us to know whether or not it was cancer. One of the great things about that is I live by the model that I cut cancer out before I even knew I had it. I really pay attention to energy. Now.

SOPHIE: What feels good and what doesn't feel good and if anything just doesn't feel good for me, I just pretty much stay away from that is one of the lessons I learned. But going back to the story, I really wanted to be a mother and the the doctors were very set on me, having treatment to keep me safe.

SOPHIE: I didn't really understand why it was pushed on me to do 25 radiation treatments when it was only going to reduce its chances of cancer coming back by 15%. The doctor was, we recommend treatment to keep you safe and I wasn't a candidate for chemotherapy. Thank goodness.

SOPHIE: The doctor did tell me that some people do chemotherapy for a 1% benefit that the cancer doesn't come back. Because I was considered a younger woman at the time, most women live into their eighties, there was a lot of time for the cancer to come back. They wanted me to do treatment.

SOPHIE: I refused treatment to get pregnant. The conversation was, well, what's it going to be like to be a pregnant woman if the cancer comes back because pregnancy was a risk for the cancer to recur because I had an estrogen, dominant cancer. Pregnancy increases your estrogen.

SOPHIE: I had to sit with that and I came to the conclusion from myself that it was easy. It was I could live with failure, had failed several times in my life. But regret like that's a different feeling and I couldn't live with the regret of not trying. I had already experienced a big life.

SOPHIE: I used to drive around in Lamborghinis. I had a house in Miami, used to wear red bottoms. I ate at all Fancy restaurants like I had that kind of life and it was very unfulfilling for me.

SOPHIE: At this point in my life, I was making some very serious choices so that I could have a different future for myself. The only way I didn't really know myself was how I would be as a mother. I felt like that would be my most compelling growth opportunity.

SOPHIE: I went for it. My partner and I. After my divorce, my partner and I were blessed with, I got pregnant eight months after my life lumpectomy, we did it natural. I did go to a fertility clinic because of my age. The great thing about that is there. The technology at the fertility clinic far surpasses that of the regular doctor's office. I was under excellent care.

SOPHIE: Unfortunately I got pregnant in the pandemic, but the great thing about that was there were no lineups, so I didn't really have to wait too long in the doctor's office. The obstetrician or the gynecologist, the gentleman at the fertility clinic. I'm not exactly sure what his distinction is in terms of doctors.

SOPHIE: He basically told me that at the end of the week, all the doctors sit at the round table and they talk about all the pregnancies and how everyone's doing. I was having a miracle baby. No one at the table could understand based on my age, they sort of went through how I was having such a flawless pregnancy. I was so blessed today. We have a three year old baby boy.

SOPHIE: I really come from the thought process that there is opportunity inside of crisis and I feel like I went through three plus one heartbreaks. I had the heartbreak of the divorce. It's whether or not you choose to consciously uncouple or not after 18 years, that's going to create some sort of void.

SOPHIE: There's a part of you that you got to let go and there's a heartbreak with that cancer was a heartbreak for me. I felt like I disappointed myself and my body, maybe God was doing me wrong. The universe was doing me wrong. I had to walk away from a thriving business because of the divorce that created a big void for me and the pandemic I think was a heartbreak for everybody. I went through all of that at the same time.

SOPHIE: Today I have a desire to support individuals through heartbreak as well. Because of the way I went through those three massive heartbreaks at once, I feel like I have some mastery over it and because I was able to thrive through it and be healthy enough to get pregnant at the age of, I was 43 when I got pregnant.

SOPHIE: At that age after that type of health crisis, I feel like I can help people connect the dots and make sense of some of the things that don't make sense and help them heal through some of the more challenging things to heal through. It's part of the body of work that I do now.

KATHLEEN: What an amazing story that's a lot, that's a lot, it's a lot.

KATHLEEN: Everybody has a lot from starting the interviewing process on the show and talking to people prior to coming on the show. I'm just blown away by the obstacles that people have gone through, including myself. How many years did I think that I was the only one out there suffering?

KATHLEEN: Most of us probably thought that because of the way our society is that we're supposed to keep everything inside. I like to go back to the childhood because there's so much and we'll do that after we take a break. But I'm gonna finish this thought first.

KATHLEEN: The whole point is, when we take that is we're still formed, things happen and I'm sure your mother's electrocution had a lot to do with maybe where you are today because it built something inside of you. Instead of taking it as a victim, you used it as some sort of an empowering tool. I want to go further into the tools that you used when we come back from break to be where you are today.

KATHLEEN: What were the steps that you took to get where you are from the time of your mother's electrocution? I know that was traumatic on very many levels for you and what you did to get yourself through college and then to have that amazing thriving business.

KATHLEEN: That of course, didn't bring as much fulfillment and joy and happiness that we think money is going to do. Then the tragedies that come again to get you where you are because, you're radiant as far as I see you, you're a very glowing radiant happy woman. What were those steps coming from that past?

SOPHIE: I went to university. I was an Os a child.

SOPHIE: I opened a college Pro painting franchise that didn't necessarily go so well for me, unfortunately. I stripped my way through university to pay off that loan. When you do a college pro painting franchise, you start with a $10,000 debt. To tell you the story is they thought I was an articulate young lady who would do well with very wealthy people.

SOPHIE: I think this is like 20 years ago, basically back then still now stereotyping the man around the house, they gave me a territory which was old, old wealth, which is four story Victorian homes and I was petrified of heights. You can imagine this little girl who and what they didn't know about me is I was intimidated by people with money because I didn't come from money.

SOPHIE: Yet they put me into a territory with people who were very affluent because of the way that I communicate. It wasn't a match actually for me. I was terrified of heights. When the man of the house had asked me to climb a ladder to go see if the soffit needed to be painted.

SOPHIE: It was like that was a conundrum for me because I was petrified to do that. I did get smart and hire myself a professional painter and he had a team and he bid the job to me and then I would Upsell it that tended to, that worked, but I didn't make enough money to go back to school for the next semester. I was in semesters.

SOPHIE: What I saw was my only option was to start stripping. So I did. I think I had maybe 18 months left of school. I ended up paying off my OS EP loan in like a year, paid my way through school.

SOPHIE: Then from there, I started a program called Landmark Education. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. It's a global personal development program. That started at about the age of 23 years old.

SOPHIE: That really went to work on my Mindset, my leadership, my ability to take responsibility for myself, my communication skills, my belief systems. I was inside that work for seven years, I became a volunteer inside of that work. I started to lead that work.

SOPHIE: That really helped me reframe and reshape how I viewed myself and how I viewed the past and created the foundation for everything that I did. From that point forward, from there, I started doing this very similar work, but inside the realm of relationship, like the dynamic of woman and man, a romantic relationship.

SOPHIE: Then from there, that was called the Sterling Institute Of Relationship by Justin Sterling, which is out of New York, which is very interesting because he segregates the genders, the sexes, sorry.

SOPHIE: If you're in a room of all women led by a man and specifically designed to help you see how you are, how you operate inside of a romantic relationship. Interesting enough because I didn't necessarily have my father on so much. It really started to show me the gap of how I didn't necessarily know how to relate to a man because I didn't have my father around.

SOPHIE: That whole premise, not the whole premise, but one of his messages is the divorce rate is masculine women and feminizing boys because the mother is taking on both roles and the female child, the girl child is not learning how to interact and get intimacy and be in a relationship with a man and that the boy is not learning what a male role looks like.

SOPHIE: It's diluting how my generation forward is actually viewing themselves as a man or a woman inside of a relationship, which was really interesting work for me to do. A lot of growth happened there. Then I went on to get certified as a coach.

SOPHIE: That's how I married sales and coaching and leadership because I was already a very strong sales person. It was a natural thing for me. I was a really great listener asking questions. What I did well was I used to ask for the sale, which I found later on in life was that's the big thing that most people don't do.

SOPHIE: I know it was natural for me. I did all this work. Do you want to buy? It was basically do you want to buy? This is as simple as it comes down to.

SOPHIE: From there, I started traveling across North America, training executives in sales and leadership. I work with very large organizations. Like here in Canada, it would be like the big banks like Bank Of Montreal C I BC TD Bank in the States. I work with Blackrock ishares us Cellular.

SOPHIE: Very large organizations in the sales vertical of the organization and with the sales teams, I taught them how to conduct this consultative sales meeting. I taught them communication, negotiating and presenting skills.

SOPHIE: I taught them closing skills and then the leaders I would work with to teach them how to be more coach like so they could empower their teams rather than tell them what to do, the concept is, it doesn't matter how great your strategy is, if you can't get the team to align and execute and strategy means nothing.

SOPHIE: The company that gets a team to align and execute, this is a company that tends to do the best because they have the manpower behind it. From there, I did that for several years and then I took a break around 37 years old. I was really burnt out from working in the corporate world. I was one of very few women often in the class. I was about 10 years younger than the men in the room.

SOPHIE: I got a little bit burnt out that a type personality that driving personality, that sales personality. I was in it for the love of human performance and the company is in it for the love of the ROI and it's not really aligned. I tried to make that work for as long as I could, but then I energetically, it was too much for me. My contract ended and I took some time off.

SOPHIE: I actually had a pretty bad breakdown with my physical health at that point was an early indication of what was to come for me. Woke up one day and couldn't walk. I was badly burnt out from flying everywhere, not really having enough time to sit down, go to the washroom, drink water, eat properly, the stress of that type of high flashy corporate position, it takes a toll.

SOPHIE: I took some time off and during that time is when I really started to notice what was going on in my personal life. That's when we started to make those types of decisions in terms of my marriage. Along that in this gap, this time frame when I wasn't really working, I started to build out a real estate portfolio. I started to get more savvy with that.

SOPHIE: I aligned with a partner and we built, I built out with her partnership, I think we had 10 houses at one point in time. Then through the divorce, I sold the houses and then I flipped it and turned it over into buildings. Now I personally own with some partners four buildings. That's basically how I got to here. Yeah.

KATHLEEN: When you were in that first development course, that talked about your Mindset. What came up for you during that process of realizing where you came from, where you were, you had to do something, especially if you were overcoming your fear of heights. You're talking to people that had money. What went on in your head for you and what did you do to help overcome that aspect of yourself?

SOPHIE: Yeah. I did the leadership program after I did the painting franchise.

SOPHIE: Some of them, this is 20 years ago. Some of the main concepts that stick with me today is radical responsibility. It's about whatever's happening in your life. You're at the source of it and you're not at the effect of it because as soon as you become at the effect of you're the victim of you lose your power, then you can no longer create.

SOPHIE: It's about regardless of what's happening. It's how can I take responsibility for what, how I've created this situation to happen without blaming or becoming defensive? OK, where do I need to take responsibility? What do I need to communicate?

SOPHIE: How do I restore my integrity? What do I need to put in that I can make the shifts that I need to make so that I can get my life back on track to the way that I want it to go. For me, that concept fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life because I'm constantly looking at OK, how am I the cause?

SOPHIE: How am I the source rather than what most people do is you're the cause you're the source, I'm a victim and I choose not to as much as I can consciously see for myself, I'm still human. There's still stuff in my blind spot to get my thumbs up as much as I can consciously see for myself.

SOPHIE: I still take a look at what I'm doing in my life and how I'm operating, how I'm behaving my impact, my energy, my thought process and my communication. It's, how do I, how did I cause this and what do I need to clean up? What do I need to take responsibility for? Then how do I move it forward?

SOPHIE: I do take a lot of several communication courses with them. It's about how do you communicate in a way that's generating and creating something rather than blaming, defensing, stonewalling, withholding, withdrawing all the toxic forms of communication.

KATHLEEN: That's powerful. That's very powerful because that's the one thing most people don't do is take responsibility. It's everyone else's fault and not yours. I found that as soon as I decided that yes, I did create my life the way it is. Even though it may have sucked at the time, well, I created it. I don't like to change it.

KATHLEEN: Your choices. I know. Right. It's that simple. Either you do something different or it's what it is if I don't like where I am today. Well, there was a thought process that pulled me to where I am today. If I don't like where this result is, well, then change your mind to doing something else.

KATHLEEN: I'm always weaving into manipulating myself. Not necessarily, that's not the right word. I'm redesigning my thoughts because everything is coming from my thoughts. Reprogramming. Yep.

KATHLEEN: There was a lot because I've been transcribing a lot of my shows and I'm doing the one today about Mindset. I'm being reminded of all sorts of things that how some of my Mindset evolved were events that happened in my life or happened to other people that triggered me that I was unaware of. We were living in a lot of darkness way back then, in the eighties and nineties and seventies, we were living in darkness compared to where we are today.

KATHLEEN: Learning that about yourself took time.

SOPHIE: It wasn't as accessible as it is now, for sure. It seems like it's a common theme.

KATHLEEN: Yeah, exactly. All I kept saying is I did what I could do. I did what I could do. There were no tools out there like meditating. How do you meditate? I don't know, figure it out, close your eyes and go home or whatever.

KATHLEEN: That was it. Whatever happened in those meditations, what I got out of those meditations is how I moved into the next level. I was learning. There wasn't a Bob Proctor or Mary Morrissey or a Mark Victor Hansen. I met all of those people 20 years down the road.

KATHLEEN: This is what I was going through at my young age. I think it's a gift. Regardless, you have better tools because I was helping to lead the field for this kind of light to come into the planet to help people in the next generations. That life gets easier for them crazier because of technology.

KATHLEEN: But it's getting easier because the awareness is there and that's what I think is a gift. Well, we're gonna take a quick break and then I'm going to, I wanna go in and talk about what you're doing today and I would love to know how you're taking what you've learned and how you're helping your child with it. Oh, ok.

KATHLEEN: We are talking with Sophie. We are going to go ask her a few things as far as what she's doing today. I would love to know more about the course that you took about relationships and how, that's showing up with your son and with your new partner.

SOPHIE: One of the things I learned when I took that course called the relationship in the Sterling Institute Of Relationship by Justin Sterling. I'm not sure if he's still running it. It's 20 years ago now.

SOPHIE: I learned so many things. One of the things I've learned is it was easy for me to emasculate a man.

SOPHIE: I didn't really understand the impact that had on the man on me, on the relationship and I had to work hard, it was hard work for me. It was a power play. I feel like that's a power thing when a woman does that, when she wants to really dismiss and disempower a man, it's a power.

SOPHIE: She wants to take something. He's not doing something for her in some way, he's not showing up for her. Rather, I'll use myself. This is how it was for me. Rather than communicate my needs because that's actually not something that we're conditioned to do. We're conditioned not to do that. Rather than communicate my needs, communicate my boundaries, communicate and uphold my nonnegotiable.

SOPHIE: To share my feelings. I go into a shutdown mode and withhold and then I do something to completely disempower and demasculate. That doesn't work in a relationship and that kills relationship. Therefore you don't experience joy, you don't experience love, you don't experience emotional connection, all the things that we really want.

SOPHIE: It's sad because I didn't know it then, but I can see it now, especially in the work that I do, the way that men and women are socially conditioned is designed to keep us separate. It's not designed to have unity and love. That's not how it is.

SOPHIE: The way the gender roles are created, the way that the messaging for women is to not rock the boat. Be a good girl. All of that and the way men are conditioned, the toxic masculinity to not cry, don't show vulnerability, it doesn't work in intimate relationship and it doesn't work and create an emotional connection for the man or the woman.

SOPHIE: Yet that's what we're told to do all our lives throughout society. For me, I can see it so clearly now, it's so sad. It shows up very differently in the relationship that I have now because I chose a very different partner. What my partner now is 18 years younger than I am. So his conditioning is completely different.

SOPHIE: I feel like that generation has come in more evolved than a man my own age. They have to do less work because they are already more in touch with their vulnerable side and their feelings and not all of them. I can't say all of them. But what I've noticed and for myself who wants that. That was a match for me.

SOPHIE: How it shows up with my son specifically is I try to be as patient. We both try to be as patient as possible. I have this whole concept with the terrible twos. I don't really think it is terrible twos, twos were not terrible for me. I think it's that the parents don't know how to identify what the child's needs.

SOPHIE: The child doesn't know how to communicate what the child needs. Rather than the parent take responsibility and be, I'm not figuring that out. I'd rather blame my child that he's a rotten child. That makes me feel like I'm still a good parent. That dynamic, that energetic dynamic is not something that a lot of parents are taking on and we take that on.

SOPHIE: We try to constantly be, what do you need? What do you need? What do you need? How do we fulfill that need for you? How do we empower you to have as much independent choice as possible? Do you want to wear pants or joggers? Give him as much choice as possible. So he feels like he has some control over his life because if you really think about it, it's not easy to be a kid.

SOPHIE: You can't speak, you can't communicate your needs, you can't communicate your frustrations, your angers, you don't get what you want, you get told what to do all the time. Based on the learnings that I took at a very young age, but in my twenties, I try to bring that around and be, ok, so how am I responsible for what's going on right now with me and my son?

SOPHIE: How can I try to identify his need to make sure his need is getting met and how do I communicate in a way where he feels heard? Now that he's three, he can communicate a little better. But I did not experience terrible twos. We had hard, hard moments, but I would not say that was a terrible time. No.

KATHLEEN: The kids are two they're full of energy. I think that's what most people have issues with is this kid is a bouncing ball of energy that's bouncing off the walls, going up and down, having fun playing, learning tremendous amount because it has movement. It's touching and everything's in its mouth and it's feeling everything.

KATHLEEN: To me that's what a two year old is. They're exploring their world because they have movement. They're not in a cage in their crib anymore. Or a play pen. If they have movement, let's go explore. Let's go find the pots and pans and clang them and see what that does.

SOPHIE: Yeah. Well, what you're pointing to for me is about boundaries. That's not something I learned until after my marriage and boundaries I think are the crux of life almost, there have been so many different ways and so what you're communicating to me is when a child is going to explore, we did not childproof our house.

SOPHIE: The only thing we had one chair that we put some rubber balls on because it was really pointy, but we did not. We were very consistent with what was ok and not ok. That was about boundaries. I feel like so many people, adult people don't know their own boundaries, don't know what boundaries are, don't know how to communicate them, uphold them and force them.

SOPHIE: They're scared and they sit inside of people pleasing, they're scared of rejection, abandonment. These are all their childhood wounds, they're scared to not be loved. So they wobble, which is something I did a lot was wobble on my boundaries and it makes your life unworkable.

SOPHIE: I feel like with children routine and structure and boundaries is really good because it creates predictability, which is good for the ego mind, which is something for them. It creates certainty, makes them feel safe, they know what they can and cannot do. I think that's what makes the relationship between parents and children easier.

KATHLEEN: I agree with that. I totally agree with that. People don't have boundaries. How are they teaching their children boundaries? That's why we have the problems we have with the younger generation is they have no boundaries. Mom and dad didn't know what to do with them.

KATHLEEN: They put their hands up and it was you can have whatever you want. Now we have an out of control, younger generation that's going to learn the hard way because it's not going to just happen to them. It's not going to be magical or the world is going to say it's ok. We'll let you pass on this, that's not gonna happen.

KATHLEEN: Life doesn't work that way. Life beats you up pretty badly. If you got an attitude that life is gonna come back at you one way or another, either through people that you don't know or people you do know, but it will come back.

KATHLEEN: I commend you for teaching your child boundaries because what a beautiful gift to give your child that he knows he's being brought up healthy with boundaries, wholesome. He'll know how to conform, so to speak to society, but not where he's stifled or constrained because I think we are.

SOPHIE: Yeah, he communicates his boundaries. He's like mommy, not rush me, not rush me. Mommy slow. I tend to be the fast one of the family between my partner and him. I'm the one who operates a little bit more in that energy. They're a little bit more patient and operate from a bit of a different frequency than I do. But he's starting to communicate his boundaries already.

KATHLEEN: Wow, that's really good. That's good.

KATHLEEN: I've been put in check. I know my place now.

SOPHIE: It's also really important to acknowledge when you're wrong. Sometimes he'd be, mommy, close your mouth, not talk with mouthful mommy. I'm, thank you so much for reminding me. I think it's important to really reinforce what you're teaching. Then when they bring it back, it's not to have the ego and the power struggle come in.

KATHLEEN: Oh I love it. I absolutely love it. Tell me how are you working with women on this because you're doing this beautiful job at home. You're saying you're bringing it, you're trying to help women become more empowered. How are you presenting that to your clients?

SOPHIE: I help women with it. I call it the reinvention process. I feel like that's what I did for myself. That's what a lot of women who specifically are going through heartbreak are experiencing and heartbreak can show up in so many different ways, right? It was a health crisis for me. It happened to be a romantic love crisis for me could be the pandemic, it could be death, any type of grief.

SOPHIE: I help them understand that the way that we've been conditioned and the fears that we naturally have as human beings. The relationship that we have with ourselves is actually making us sick. For example, if you are not communicating your boundaries, like I did not, that was one of my big mistakes in my marriage.

SOPHIE: It's me abandoning myself and that's going to create feelings of insecurity, poor self esteem, doubt.

SOPHIE: Those negative types of feelings, they start to create anxiety in the body. The more anxiety there is in the body, the more inflammation there is in the body that inflammation is actually the source of a lot of different diseases.

SOPHIE: Cancer being one of them, irritable bowel syndrome, endometriosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, all of that, it starts from inflammation and inflammation is directly correlated to the negative emotions you feel in your body.

SOPHIE: If you're wobbling on your boundaries and you're feeling disrespected and then your sense of self, the way you perceive yourself is, I had a poor sense of self because I felt unworthy because I blamed everyone else.

SOPHIE: This is an area I wasn't taking responsibility in my relationship. I thought that if people loved me, they would respect that I wouldn't have to uphold it or even communicate it and that people are not mind readers.

SOPHIE: I feel like women, don't have that knowing because of the way we're conditioned. It's like we're conditioned not to know that. Unfortunately that's the way they have power and control over us and it keeps us suppressed or oppressed, whatever the word is, it keeps us down.

SOPHIE: For me, I've come to this point, since the last time you and I have spoke is to really start to own that.

SOPHIE: I feel my purpose and why I went through that much heartbreak and why I did get cancer and why I was blessed to be able to thrive through that whole situation is because my purpose now is to bring that message to women and to help them see and identify for themselves that if they continue to live inside of guilt and obligation and not do something that's for example, communicate uphold and enforce their boundaries.

SOPHIE: It is inevitable, in my opinion, they will get sick in some way. That's how it will manifest. I don't want that. I don't want other women to wake up the way I did and be diagnosed with breast cancer and be like crap.

SOPHIE: I consciously knew I was selling out on myself. Every time I wobbled on my boundaries, I was selling out on myself. I knew that I thought I was ok to be treated that way and take it so that I could be loved or people please.

SOPHIE: If I knew I was going to get cancer because of that behavior, I may have made some very different choices for myself out of a place of being empowered rather than a place of feeling guilty or like I'm taking too much now.

KATHLEEN: That makes sense because what I picked up at the same time when you were talking is I wrote the books, Dancing Souls. I talked about women.

KATHLEEN: No, it's not your fault. This is a great conversation we're having and the time is moving very, very quickly.

KATHLEEN: I think that women, also a part of what happens to them, when we're oppressing ourselves, we lose our sensuality. We forget that we don't have that. A lot of women are really suffering from is sensuality because they forgot how to be a woman. We are busy demasculating or being the man when we need to be the woman and our roles aren't defined.

KATHLEEN: I'm thinking with all of what you're saying, that's gonna bring that feminine aspect back. Our world desperately needs to have the feminine energy thriving instead of us being the men and the men, being the women. We don't want that. I don't want that.

KATHLEEN: I want a man in my life. You got to have one, but I had to learn to define me and bring that sensual side of me and not be what my mother taught me to be as you can't trust a man. If you want it done, you do it yourself because men are worthless. I had to change all of that Mindset because that's not the truth of it.

SOPHIE: All men are the same. They're not right.

KATHLEEN: I know that women want to feel sensual, they want to look sexy, they wanna feel sexy, they want to have that partnership. I think we've lost our way so much that we don't know how to get back there.

KATHLEEN: What a gift that you're bringing women to find that about them. That's gonna expand into something bigger and broader and more of who they are.

SOPHIE: Just to recap, you were talking about how it's bringing us back to our feminine energy and being empowered and back to our sensuality. A lot of women are struggling with not having that part of them be alive.

SOPHIE: I feel like that all comes down to a sense of self. The core of your sense of self, of being able to build your self-esteem, build your self-respect, build your self-love, build your self-confidence.

SOPHIE: It really does come down to your communication of communicating upholding and enforcing your boundaries because that is what is going to protect your sense your peace. It's also going to show yourself that when you hold a boundary, you make a promise to yourself and you uphold it, that's going to expand your confidence.

SOPHIE: Then when you get to a point where your sense of self is so strong, that's hot, that's what's hot and that's what burns, gets that fire going, and that's what gets that Kundalini energy going, which is the energy of sexuality and sexuality.

SOPHIE: It's not from my own experience. I can't speak from everyone else, but it wasn't in a great place to try to engage in some sort of intimate activity when I don't feel so great about myself, when I'm coming at it from a disempowered place.

SOPHIE: Then there's this other dynamic that's, is that how I'm getting power like that? That's an old currency for women. Sex is an old currency for women. Let's not go, we don't have to go there anymore.

SOPHIE: If I can help a woman move from having sex, be her currency to her sense of self being her currency and sex is something she gets to experience as a pleasure. That's a completely different way of operating. I would love to support women through that. I have and I do but add more, more of that, love it.

KATHLEEN: What is one piece of advice that you would offer our audience to help them move into a different direction to achieve their dream?

SOPHIE: One piece of advice.

SOPHIE: Listen to your intuition and use your voice to speak your truth and have the courage to do that.

KATHLEEN: Love it.

KATHLEEN: Tell our audience how they can get a hold of you.

SOPHIE: The best way to reach me is through my Instagram page. It's at, at the Sophie De Laurier. So Thesop hie deslaur I er s or you can email me directly at S as in Sam, D as in David at Sophie Talks. Com. That's soph I eta lks.com.

KATHLEEN: Thank you so much. For being here, Sophie.

KATHLEEN: I really appreciate our time together and we could go down so many different channels of what you've learned and where you're going with your life. Bless your heart for all the work that you're doing and you're bringing up a generation that's gonna be way better than the both of our generations are by teaching them some boundaries and how to speak up for himself and give them that confidence and teach him how to be a man.

KATHLEEN: If nothing else, he's gonna be a man. That'll be fabulous.

SOPHIE: Thank you so much.

KATHLEEN: You're welcome.