Welcome to the Radiant Soul Sisters Podcast!
Episode #23
Today my guest is Emily Johnson, Human Design Analyst & Coach
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If you want to read the transcript, check it out below:
Susan
If you have ever wondered how to live your life intentionally, while being an amazing caregiver, whether that is as a critical care nurse, or caring for aging parents with dementia, you will be able to glean some golden nuggets from my guest today, Emily Johnson. Emily and I connected in our build your life resume community and we have a lot in common. We both are studying human design. Emily is an endurance athlete, whereas I just enjoy physical challenges to push my body a little bit further and see what I can do. And we both are loving on a parent with advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Wow, intentionally taking care of ourselves, mind, body and soul. Emily, I am so glad you’re here today.
Emily
Thanks, Susan. It’s so great to be here and it’s an honor to speak on your podcast.
Susan
Thank you. Thank you so much, Emily, as you know, I love connecting with people and getting to know people and learning about things that have helped to shape them into the person that they are today. And with that, will you give our listeners a little glimpse into your childhood or growing up and share one of your favorite memories?
Emily
Oh gosh, sure. My childhood was very spirited. I was a wild little young girl who often found joy just running around in nature through the woods. But my favorite favorite memory was running completely stark naked through our sprinkler in the middle of summer on Cape Cod where I was raised.
Susan
Oh, you know, as adults, I don’t think we get to run around naked but as a child, it’s so freeing, right?
Emily
Yes. Yeah. To be able to have that joy is beautiful.
Susan
Yes, yes. And I can just imagine what it must have been like growing up in Cape Cod in those summer days and I can just see that happening. I can see the scenario with my granddaughters now. You know, on our farm running around in the water. Well, Emily, you have been a critical care nurse. And you are taking care of your parents who are aging and have dementia. Your mother who’s further along in the stages. You also are a wife and a mom and as I mentioned an endurance athlete, but you’re an entrepreneur as well. And I know you have had your own business. What are some of the lessons or a really big lesson that you have learned about from being an entrepreneur?
Emily
My biggest lesson was in forgiveness around forgiveness. I really had to lean into learning to forgive myself when I made mistakes and learning how to forgive others as well. But most of all, forgiveness.
Susan
Exactly. And you know, forgiveness is huge. I actually have goosebumps, because I am really great at forgiving others. It’s hard sometimes to forgive yourself. And I think that’s where we find a lot of times we get stuck or we can’t get past that forgiving of ourselves. Right?
Emily
Right. I mean being a woman in business, we tend to be type A right and we are super critical of ourselves. But that really can get you stuck, just like you said.
Susan
Yes, exactly. And today, what I really want to talk about we’re going to move into talking about what we do to really make our soul shine and to keep us at peace and finding joy in our life as we are doing all the things as well as taking care of our our parents because I don’t know about for you but for me when my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it was like the grief process began. And it continues and every time I go to see him, l I get to hold his hand and he smiles at me. But the only word he can say is yes. That grief comes up right. So there are two things. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what are you doing as you were dealing with this as well.
Emily
Yeah, you know, I just want to acknowledge the grief that you spoke about. It’s ambiguous grief. The person is still here, but their personality and behaviors is different. Gone. And that is one of I think the hardest forms of grief. I mean, as a former critical care nurse, and organ donation coordinator, I feel like I have been around a lot of end of life, but when it’s your own parent, it becomes extremely difficult and then you can get really sucked into this rabbit hole of caregiving, right? And then you wake up and you’re pretty empty and you’re not taking care of yourself. So I think for me, I’m human just like everyone else. So there’s been a lot of trial and error, and there’s been a lot of mistakes and there’s been a huge learning curve to this because there’s no book. There’s no dummies guide for how to take care of your parents when they have dementia. Doesn’t matter what your background is, professionally. But personally after much trial and error, the biggest thing for me was really learning to lean in to loving myself first. Because if we’re not able to truly love ourselves internally, how can we externally put out and shine light and hold space and care for others?
Susan
Well once again, I’ve got another one of those goosebump moments because you hear that people think it’s cliche. You gotta love yourself first before you can love others. But it’s not cliche. It is the absolute truth. You know, so what are some of those things that you are doing that keeps you going and keeps your radiant soul shining?
Emily
Yeah, so learning that first of all, the love needs to be internal first and then building a toolbox I talk about this all the time with yoga students or clients. We all have a toolbox yet we can so often forget we have one. So filling up your toolbox is going to look different between us all because we’re all so unique. We’re all N of one, we all have different human designs. Yes, but for me, I mean, I’m a manifesting generator in the human design world. So I’ve got my hands in a lot of things and over the years, the things that have come to me I’ve attracted things that I’ve needed. Which is a mindfulness practice, a gratitude practice, a movement practice. So I was always a runner, but there are times when I need to move slowly and slow down, yet still move my body because we store grief in our tissues, our issues are in our tissues, our cells download all of our feelings and thoughts. So yoga has been extremely transformational for me. I’ve practiced it for 10 years now and owned a yoga studio in the past.
Spirituality has been really, really big for me. I think if you had asked me 10 years ago, if there was something greater out there, I would have said no. But the death of my brother really changed my life there. And just filling the toolbox every day and pulling from it. How can I nurture myself physically today? How can I nurture myself emotionally, mentally, spiritually, just picking really simple things. If it’s a hard and heavy day, if it’s a not so hard and heavy day then I might go for a longer run, but really connecting the mind and the body together is extremely important. Because we can get so caught up in our mind with our thoughts and our mind is here. The purpose of our mind is to ask ourselves questions, not not get answers, the answers are in our body. So when we are caregiving or taking care of those elderly parents or it’s really asking your body like what do I need today?
Susan
So here’s another connection that I didn’t even know we had. I owned a yoga studio as well.Yes, I say she caught COVID. I can have a maximum of about 16 students in the studio. And when we had to shut down in North Carolina, in my area when we were reopening the mayor told me I could have five people in the space and it just wasn’t going to work.
Emily
So that’s exactly what happened to me. I ended up keeping the yoga studio going but we could only have a maximum of five people. But I just sold the studio this year to my manager.
Susan
There you go. But, you know, we were talking a little bit before we started the show about our human designs and you are a manifesting generator and you are able to keep a lot on your plate. I have tried living as a manifesting generator for many years, but I’m really a projector and for those of you who don’t understand human design, that means I need a lot of rest. And I too am a runner, but I found it was my yoga mat where like you said slow movement in getting into my body and my breath and being able to let go that made a huge difference in I feel like on days when it’s when it’s a hard day. You know when I’ve seen dad, or I’ve gotten a call about the next step in his progression. If I can get on that mat and be still and come back into myself then I’m able to deal with it, not push it off. Deal with the sadness or deal with the grief and then I’m able to move forward. Do you find that for yourself?
Emily
Absolutely. I mean this morning I went to class and last night I was at class really just you know we’re moving from Massachusetts to North Carolina. I’ve got two parents, one on hospice in memory care, the other one going into assisted living. You know my mother and my wife. My older son is healing from a devastating autoimmune disorder that causes swelling in his brain so I often lose my ground and having my yoga practice keeps me grounded. It gives me space and just like you said it brings you right back into your body so that you can ride the wave of the emotions. The other thing I wanted to say about how I take care of myself is boundaries, having really, really firm boundaries and knowing how to say no, and knowing what my values are, and implementing those boundaries and not emptying the tank too much.
Susan
You know, I read this actually this morning. I was reading something and it was talking about boundaries and boundaries are a real energy saver. You know, and once again, going back to my human design, I need those energy savers and I had never thought about boundaries in that way. But I believe the sooner people learn how to put boundaries and you nailed it around your values, right, what do you value and what is important for you in your life can really be an energy saver in you. When I think of you and as we’ve connected, I think you are such a great example of living your life intentionally. So have you created your core values or your core beliefs have you really internalized those and do others know them?
Emily
I love that question. Thank you because it brings up some opportunities for me. I feel very solid in my values and in our family does. My husband and I as partners too, but it’s a really great point about do others know what your values are. So for me, my values are to meet people with kindness and as much compassion as humanly possible. I’m very transparent and honest. My design really I’m very like to the point I will not really do surface conversation. I’m really not interested in talking about the weather.
Susan
Yeah, you know, my children are much older than yours. My youngest is 31. My oldest is 36. So I have six grandchildren. And that, as mother of adult children and grandchildren, has been a very challenging place for me to set boundaries. You know, setting those boundaries of when I get to be grandma versus when I am going to be working or when I’m going to be doing travel or taking care of myself or adventures. So I’ve had to learn those boundaries, but I love that you have talked about that.
So Emily, knowing you’re a manifesting generator. I can now understand how you have so many things on your plate and listeners, I don’t know if you picked up on it. You know, she’s a wife. She’s a mom. She’s a daughter caregiving for parents, and she’s moving from up north to North Carolina, and it’s the holidays and she has school aged children. What do you do to keep some work-life harmony? And you know I like to think of harmony as your life is this beautiful symphony, it’s just creating a gorgeous musical symphony. But sometimes it’s out of tune or out of whack, right? You’re having to play one instrument harder than the other. Yeah, but then that’s only for a measure. You come back and then you’ve got that beautiful music again. Yeah, so what are some things that you do when you feel like you’re out of harmony?
Emily
Coming back to the intention. So what are my intentions? What is happening right now that needs attention and what’s important and really learning how to weed out what’s important and what’s not. I don’t like the word priority, because priority means like, you know, it’s one thing you can only have one priority, you know, correct, but really taking the lessons of being an entrepreneur and even even my former background, being a critical care nurse, you have to learn how to pivot and change things up. You have to learn how to be fluid and move quickly and make decisions quickly and really getting clear on what’s important right now. Where are my feet right now? What do I need to be doing? Do I need to stop and ask my body? Do I need rest? Do I need to take a break and go out and do something and then being really gentle and graceful with yourself? Because you might have to pour more energy into mom or dad right now or your kids right now. And you know, your mind might be really loud back here and be like, “oh, I wish I could just go do the things or I don’t want to be doing this.” Just giving yourself some permission to have some grace and compassion for yourself to tent and trusting, trusting that everything is unfolding for you. Things are not happening to you, things are happening for you. The more you can get in alignment with that you know the hard stuff. It’s actually happening for you.
Susan
Absolutely you know I feel like we co create. You know we co create whether for me is with God right God the universe. For someone else it may be something completely different. But there is something much bigger than us and we are co creating. And oftentimes my children laugh at me because I’m like sometimes with my dad, like ask God. The other day, what lesson do I still need to learn?
Emily
I asked myself that last week. I’m like, what do I need to learn from this?
Susan
That’s really funny because I’m like, what do I need to learn because I look at this man that is so brilliant and has done some great things in his life and he’s just here, you know, so I did. I asked that question and I don’t know the answer to that. But I love what you said and reminded me as well as the listeners that you have to be able to give yourself grace. And I think it goes back to really the whole essence of this episode is that you have to live your life intentionally, make intentional choices. You need to know your beliefs and what is important to you. Not what is important to someone else but what is important to you and set your boundaries around those. And then you have to take care of yourself. First, mind, body and soul. The high level thing.
Emily
Yeah, you know when you were talking earlier about your energy boundaries being an energy saver, we have to remember that our body and our mind, everything is just energy. So if we can think about our life as energy, our body is energy, who we are as a person as energy. When you’re trying to you know, have harmony between work-life balance, approach it from that energy. You know, you might need to expend a little more energy upfront, to take care of something that really needs to be dealt with in the moment. But know that you’re gonna get that energy exchange back.
Susan
That’s right I’m gonna ask you one more question in just a minute. But before we get to that, I know that you were studying Human Design and you have some plans to take that a little bit further. Share with our listeners, what you’re going to be doing and how they can connect with you.
Emily
Sure. So I’m not completely prepared for that but people can follow me on Instagram @EmilyJohnsonRN. And I am starting to take a few clients for a human design foundational reading or some human design coaching. But I’m really excited about working on human design performance for women that are ready to begin again or begin anew because that’s really my area of expertise is starting over, beginning new things.
Susan
Nice and we will have how our listeners can connect with you in our show notes. The important thing to know listeners, if you’ve been intrigued or you want to learn how to live your life better, or you’re interested in human design, go ahead and start following Emily because as her programs progress, and she’s ready to launch them into the world, this is how we’ll know right now.
Emily
I love connecting with people. I absolutely love people. So please feel free to message!
Susan
And you know, I think that’s one of the beauties of our build your life resume community is that I have found and I’m willing to bet you will say the same thing in that community is a group of people that their real passion or it really brings joy in their life connecting with other people. Not on a surface level, what do you do, but on a heart level?
Emily
That’s so so so true. And that community has just been so life-giving for me and you and I can both attest to it. I mean being in person together. The last question is, you know, what do you do for work? It’s more about like, who are you? What are you up to? What do you work? What are you working on? What lights you up?
Susan
Right? And how can you challenge yourself to be a little better?
Emily
A little better.
Susan
What is it 1% a day?
Emily
1% a day.
Susan
Just 1% a day that’s all we have to do. Not much listeners, just 1% a day. So if this episode has you thinking about how to put yourself first, live intentionally and create a life that you love, you might want to connect with me on my socials at SusanCrewsCo.com That’s my website, SusanCrews.com or on my socials @SusanCrewsCo. So Emily, I have learned so much from you today and appreciate you being here. Before we go, I have one last question for you. If our listeners need to hear one more tip or one suggestion, what would be the last thing you would want to leave them with today?
Emily
Gratitude changes everything.
Susan
Ah yeah. Yes, it does. It changes everything. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that and you know, especially here at a time around Thanksgiving. It’s so important but it’s important to carry it throughout the year. And I know for any listener who is out there caring for your parent that has Alzheimer’s or dementia. Emily and I see you, we hear you, we feel you, and every time you see that parent or spouse I have some friends that have a spouse with early on. Look at them and find one thing that you are grateful for. And I will say every time Emily, I leave dad’s side I find something to remind myself and him that I’m grateful for that he has taught me or loved to be well or whatever. It’s not easy.
Emily
No Same here. But it was a beautiful opportunity to revisit memories.
Susan
Absolutely yeah. Yeah. Well thank you again. I hope with everything that you have going on that you have a wonderful holiday season and that you will get moved to North Carolina and start working on becoming another southern girl.
Emily
I cannot wait to let my Yankee accent drift away into an embrace.
Susan
Hey y’all that’s right. We hope you have enjoyed another episode of the Radiant Soul Sisters. So many thanks to my guest Emily Johnson. It has been a pleasure. Be sure and join us next time as we shine the light on another radiant soul sister on her path to living life with intention and creating a life she loves. Till then. I’m your host Susan Crews. And remember you can find all of our episodes, resources, and much more on my website at SusanCrewsco.com
