#18 - A Village of a Woman

In this heartfelt episode, Chelsea Williams shares her personal journey of navigating hardships while achieving business success, underscoring the crucial role of supportive relationships. Chelsea discusses the transformative power of organizing a women's group, highlighting the importance of uplifting female relationships in our lives.

Listeners will be inspired by stories of breaking plates to symbolize releasing negativity and engaging in open conversations through a meaningful card game. Chelsea emphasizes the value of patience, humility, and forgiveness in cultivating strong female bonds and expresses hope in planting seeds for lasting, positive connections.

Episode highlights:

1. Chelsea's personal journey through personal challenges and business success.
2. The value of women's support groups in fostering healthy relationships.
3. Symbolic activities for releasing negativity and encouraging open dialogue.
4. The importance of nurturing meaningful and supportive relationships.
5. Encouragement for women to seek out and build strong, positive connections with one another.

Tune in to this empowering discussion and discover the strength found in a village of women. Start building your own supportive network today!

Always and Never About Money Episode Links:
Video Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyMasteryWithChelsea
Socials: https://linktr.ee/the_money_whisper
Money Mastery Website: www.moneymastery.work
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlwaysandNeverMoney/

Transcript

Hey, money whispers. Here we are. Welcome back to another episode of Always and Never About the Money And True to Form. It is super early in the morning on a Sunday, and I am in my messy bun, in my pajamas because this is when my juices get going. And today especially, I woke up very inspired. So let me just proceed this conversation by sharing with you that the last three weeks of my life have been some of the absolute hardest and simultaneously some of the absolute greatest. So at the same time that I was dealing with a personal situation, that was the hardest thing that I have ever gone through in my life.

Simultaneously, my business was doing amazing, amazing. And so it had been such a roller coaster of a few weeks for me. And I don't know about you and, and people deal with hard things differently, but for me, when something really difficult comes up in life, I go into a cave. That's what I call it. It's my cave. I, I isolate, I create distance between even some of my closest friends because when something happens in my life, I first want to consult myself before I accept influence. And strategically, because I don't solicit influence from many people in my life. But before I do solicit influence from the people that I do trust and value their opinion and feedback, I consult myself.

And you know, you might think, well, that's not healthy and you shouldn't do that. We're told not. It's not shoving down, it's isolating and it's sorting through and identifying my own thoughts and feelings about it. And so I'm not shutting down. I'm actually digging and I'm intentionally feeling because I do believe that when something happens, it demands that you deal with it, otherwise it never really leaves and you risk it coming up down the road again.

And so for me, when something happens, I retreat and I only come out of my cave when I have to. And you know, I'm aware of not staying there too long. And the friends in my life, you know, who know me well enough, know that this is how I move. And they know that their position and the way that they can show up for me as a friend is to first give me my space, and then when I am ready, that is when they, when, when I'm willing to listen to and accept influence and feedback and opinions and perspectives.

And so it was just a really difficult few weeks for me. And I had been planning for a while with another lady here in town to have a women's group. And coincidentally enough, the women's group was yesterday, which was Saturday.

And I'm coming off of this phase in my life where I have slipped into a mini depression and isolated myself. And I'm just coming out of it and I'm getting back out and I'm reconnecting with my friends. And this group comes up, and I'm gonna be completely honest, I woke up excited for the idea, but my physical and my mental just were like, I was like, I don't feel like doing this. Like if I had my choice, I would lay in bed all day and watch Netflix and clean my house and do some laundry and just like nest around my house. I love nesting in my house. And so, you know, I woke up feeling like, man, I would really love to just hang out in my house all day today, but I've got this women's group and I've committed to it and I know a lot of ladies that are gonna be there and I really value them in my circle and in my life.

And so it was one of those things where I know that once I get there, I'm gonna be really glad that I'm there and everything is gonna change. And so this women's group was amazing on a totally different level.

I met Shawe who had this idea quite a while ago, and she had brought it to me maybe not even a year ago, somewhere between six and nine months. She had brought me this idea of I want to get a group of women together just so that we could all express interest in supporting each other and having a group of women, because she had a story in her life where she knew that having your village women, having other women in their village is valuable. It's, you can't even measure the impact that it has. And so she had asked me to kind of co-host the group with her because of my experience in finance. And specifically, I, I love understanding women in finance and the nuances that are happening that we aren't even aware of, and filling those gaps because it is as simple as financial education that fills the gaps where women are just not getting the same treatment as men.

And so she knew this and she knew that. Well, what she didn't know actually is that I had the same vision as her. We had a lot of the same life experience come to find out, and we were both understanding the value of having the right women in your circle as a woman. And so we get to this group, and it's a smaller group because we wanted to be able to connect with each person and too many people. And you simply can't do that. And so there were about nine of us, and she came up with some really cool exercises and games for us to play just to kind of break the ice. Because you know, even in my discussions leading up to this women's group, some of the feedback that I heard was, oh no, you know, I, I don't wanna go to that.

And I just, I don't wanna make new friends and that's just not something that I'm interested in. And I have bad experiences with other women and that is all completely understandable.

And that came up while we were in the group. So the first thing, you know, we asked everybody is why are you here? Why did you come? You knew this was a women's group and that we were looking to more or less be supportive of other women. And so you have to have thought of something within yourself to come. And we wanted to start pulling that out of people, right? And we got feedback that you would, you know, kind of expect, A lot of women have never had a group of strong supportive women in their life and they see other people having this and they want it. And so it's something that they've never had, but they see and they hear about and they want it.

And when you want something, you have to go get it. We can't just sit back and wait for it to come to us. We have to be intentional about stepping outside of our box, outside of our comfort zone and doing new things with the risk of them not working, right? So that's scary. You know, other people have flat out had bad experiences with other women. And I think most of us ladies, we can relate on that, right? You know, growing up in, in grade school, middle school, high school, and even those of us with kids in high school now, it hasn't changed. Girls are cutthroat. They are ruthless and show no mercy. And we've experienced that most of us, right?

Where we just have had a really bad experience with another girl going behind her back, probably over a guy, and we're like, you know what? I'm not messing with girls anymore. I'm gonna be a guy's girl. I'm gonna surround myself with guy friends. We've all heard that, right? If it's not you listener, it's somebody that you know that, oh, I don't have girlfriends, I only have guy friends because girls are too much drama.

And you know, I get that too. I really do. I believe that it's healthy to have friends of the opposite gender. However, we need to understand as women what we can and cannot get from the opposite sex in a true friendship. Because there are boundaries and there are things that men will never relate to. And so it's my belief that women need women, and we may have to learn how to do that, ladies, but we should learn how to do that. And if you can find women in your life who wanna do the same thing, who are open to learning other people making mistakes and coming back together, right? Like a true relationship where we learn each other and we make mistakes and we offend each other, but that's not our intention, and we're open to forgiveness and we, you know, stand the test of time.

I saw something that said a true friendship is any friendship over seven years can't be broken. And well, I know that's not true for everybody. Just the idea that how many people in your life, how many friends, ladies, specifically, how many women friends in your life can you say that you've had for over seven years? Like that is the goal. And, and in order to be friends with somebody for that long, you have to have worked through some stuff, right? Like something has to have happened that could have been taken wrong, that you had to fix in your friendship, that you had to address and work through and apologize and do different and adjust so that you can hold onto that relationship.

So these are all the reasons why, you know, all of us women came together in this group and with the intention of just exposing ourselves to other women that may or may not become friends in our life. And I think that's another really important thing too. Not everybody is going to be the same friend. Not everybody is gonna be a close friend at all. And even of your close friends, you're not gonna feel comfortable doing everything or telling everything to every person, right? So it, the idea of that we were brought up with is that like us girls, we tell each other everything, right? And we keep each other up to date and we do everything together.

And if one person is singled out, we're not friends anymore. And it causes chaos. And like this is what we're used to, right? And a lot of us have been raising kids for the past 20 years, so we're getting out here and that's what we remember.

And so I share all of that with you because I know that if you're a woman and you're listening to this, you can relate to at least one of these situations. And if you're the woman listening to this and you don't have a lot of other women friends in your life, I encourage you to be brave and go find some. And, you know, friendships are so similar to relationships when we think about the idea of the honeymoon phase. So in relationship, the honeymoon phase is where we're overwhelmed with feelings and emotions. And it's like thiss, cloudy, blissful experience. We all know what the honeymoon phase is, right? Typically the honeymoon phase lasts about three to six months.

And when the honeymoon phase starts wearing off, that's when we're starting to get to some meat, right? That's when we're starting to see, okay, who was this person before we came into each other's lives and swept each other off, off our feet, right? Because we, we have to give people time, we have to see them in different situations. And if we allow the honeymoon phase to take us over, that can be really dangerous. And so the same thing applies to friendships. You know, the unhealthy attachment styles that exist in intimate relationships also exist in platonic friendships. That is a real thing. And so how we go about meeting new people, sharing our story, sharing things that we're comfortable sharing and when, and how long and how much space we put in between us and the people that we're, you know, looking to for friendships, all of those things matter.

I mean, that is a, that's a whole conversation to have, right? Because there is, there is a way to go out and expose yourself to hurt and denial, but only on like, manage the risk, right? Like in business, we take risks, but we've really learned how to manage those risks. And so in our personal lives with making new friends, that is a risk, but it's a risk that can be managed in a lot of different ways.

And so it's important that like we're patient, right? Because it takes time to get to know people and are we, you know, we may feel in a rushed, you know, you might feel rushed, but great relationships take time and experience. And so we did a few other things to kind of have fun with this group of women. We did karaoke. I love karaoke. If you're ever in Bloomington normal and you are out for a night of karaoke, do hit me up.

So that was so much fun.

We did another exercise where we were all given plates and markers and you know, we talked about how the beginning of the year, there's so much momentum and we set goals and we talk about what we wanna do for the year. And then halfway through the year you're like, oh shit, it's halfway through the year and I'm not where I want it to be. Or, this year has kicked my butt, or a number of different things that just weren't the original plan. And so we talked about how, look, we're in the middle of the year, the year may not be going how you want it to go, but we are going to let it go. We're gonna clean the slate.

We are going to release all of the negativity that happened the first half of this year. And so she had us write down or, you know, draw pictures that were symbolic to us of all of the people, places, situations, and things that we were going to

Release from the first half of this year going into the last half of this year.

And we broke them, we shattered them, was the idea of the plates. And so there's something very therapeutic about going through that because if you kind of given to, you know, the fact that we're taking dinner plates and right scribbling on them with markers, right? If you actually get into the idea of what are we actually trying to accomplish here and be thoughtful about it and let it be symbolic, that does a lot. And then there was my favorite game that qui set up for us where we all sat in a circle and there were cards face down on the floor.

And one by one, each woman would pick up a card and flip it over and it had a word on it.

And we had cards where we would say, I have, or I have never, so I can relate or I cannot relate, right? And that conversation, the, the conversations that we had while playing that game completely changed the energy of the group. Once the women were able to get comfortable and loosen up and have, you know, some fun interactions with each other, the level of humility that some of these women were willing to expose in this circle was inspiring. I mean, just in that circle we demonstrated that by having the right women around you, you can compound your growth, you can compound your progress, you can compound your thinking.

I mean, you just, two minds are always better than one. Three minds are always better than two. Like the power of having the right women in your life and knowing how to manage each relationship is a complete game changer, ladies. And I believe that we must learn how to embrace each other and how to be there for each other and how to entertain healthy relationships and how to not burn bridges if we're not meant to be friends. And that's okay breaking the idea that we grew up with around. It's hard to be friends with other girls and we can't trust each other is something that we need to do because there is so much power on the other side of that line of thinking.

And so to give you an idea, some of the words on the cards were words like single grief, love the card gossip came up. And so each time a card came up, we would all share our relationship with that word. And you can imagine some of the conversations that happened because they absolutely did happen. And some of them were uncomfortable and some people were really putting themselves out there.

And it was amazing just to have those conversations and share your experience and hear other perspectives and have women in your life that are willing to be there when and how you need them to be there as your friend.

And by returning that piece of the relationship and being there for other women, checking in on other women, celebrating their wins, supporting them through the hard things, not judging them, listening to them, not telling them what to do, being willing to get hurt or offended, and then also being willing to come to the table and figure out how to avoid it. Women supporting women is a truly powerful movement and it can make things happen. And so after yesterday, not really feeling like waking up and doing anything, but still looking forward to this and then getting there and experiencing all of these things and listening to all of these women was, I'm glad I got out of bed and did it.

And I knew I would be. And it has left me, and I'm sure the other women feeling a lot of hope. I know that some nuggets were planted, some seeds were planted, and that was the goal. And that's what we told them in the beginning. If nothing, we hope that you leave with proof and a little bit of hope that if and when in your life, this is something that you want to be more intentional about, you can do that. You deserve these relationships in your life. You are worthy of these relationships in your life. And so that was the goal of the group. And I know I love feeling that way, and I'm sure the other women did too.

So if you're listening to this and you have a group of friends in your life that you believe are the women that are part of your circle, I encourage you to, number one, be grateful. Not everybody has that, and that is truly powerful in your life. So nurture that. Do something even like we did. Get these women together twice a year, four times a year. Do the vision boards, talk about your goals, hold each other accountable, vent, dump all the things, let it go and build each other back up. And this is a very intentional thing that we do with the people in our life. Bringing them together with intention and with things like pushing you to reach things, places, and levels you've never reached and challenging you to do things that you wanna do, but you're just scared.

You need somebody to just give you that little push, somebody to show you grace. Like all of these things in this environment with multiple people will change your life. And so nurture those people in your life if you have them. And be incredibly intentional about

Leveraging those mutually beneficial relationships. If you're listening to this and you're like me not too long ago, where you're going through everything alone and you maybe have some women in your life that you talk to here and there, but it's not really as deep as you would like it to be and you really feel alone in life and you want this group of women around you, I want to challenge you right now. I wanna tell you right now, be brave.

Go out there, look for these women, start to create these relationships. Know that they take time and consistency and they are going to challenge you, but you can do it. Women like us are out there waiting to embrace you, waiting to show you and be a part of your village so that you don't have to go through life alone because you don't have to.