The Body Keeps the Silence: When Self-Abandonment Becomes Disease (w/ Dee Manuel Cloud)

What happens when a woman spends years swallowing her truth, suppressing her emotions, and carrying everyone else?

In this episode of Coochie Business® Podcast, Dr. Abigail sits down with Dee Manuel Cloud for a powerful, layered conversation about authenticity, trauma, stress, and the real cost of self-abandonment.

Dee shares how childhood wounds, people-pleasing, secrecy, and living out of alignment shaped her life and health. Together, she and Dr. Abigail explore the connection between suppressed emotion and disease, the role of chronic stress in Black women’s health, and what it means to stop abandoning yourself in the name of being “strong.”

This conversation moves through family history, breast cancer, intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, spirituality, communication, boundaries, and the healing power of telling the truth.

They also talk about:

• why stress is not just uncomfortable, but potentially deadly
• how authenticity can function like medicine
• why Black women must stop overperforming to their own detriment
• what it looks like to choose peace on purpose
• how pleasure, oxytocin, and self-expression may be part of the healing too

If you have ever felt unseen, unheard, overextended, or afraid to say what you really need, this episode is for you.

Resources mentioned in the episode

These are the cleanest ones to include.

Dee Manuel Cloud (www.deemanuelcloud.com)

• Complimentary POP (Peace on Purpose) Session booking link provided by Dee https://thriveonpurpose.as.me/POPSession 
• Social handle: @iamdeemanuelcloud on Instagram, where she describes herself as a two-time breast cancer survivor and empowerment coach. 

Books

• When the Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Maté — official book page describes it as an exploration of how disease can be the body’s way of saying no to what the mind cannot or will not acknowledge. https://drgabormate.com/book/when-the-body-says-no/ 
• The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins — official page frames it as a guide to stop managing other people’s opinions, drama, and expectations so you can focus on your own life. https://www.melrobbins.com/book/the-let-them-theory/ 
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• Center of the Clock teaching/video by Sean Smith https://youtu.be/XBS-S2RQuyQ?si=yzuCswDsPTWzpV6K 

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for personal medical care.

Transcript

Speaker 4 0:11

You are listening to the Coochie Business Podcast. Where coochie owners, lovers, and advocates come to get some literacy. That's coochie literacy. If you didn't know, I'm Dr. Abigail Naturopathic, doctor, midwife, coochie, coach, and curator of these conversations. I am peculiar on purpose for a purpose. And before we begin today, a grounding disclaimer. As per usual, this podcast is edutainment. It's not a substitute for individualized medical care or diagnosis. Or treatment. We are here to explore stories, language lived experience, and options, but your body deserves personalized guidance from a qualified practitioner who can assess your full picture. Now, today's conversation is about something many people have lived, women in particular, but not nearly enough people have named. What happens when self abandonment becomes a way of life? My guest, Dee Manuel Cloud is a two time breast cancer survivor whose work centers authenticity, communication, and helping black women reduce stress. Stop over performing. Stop disappearing inside everybody else's needs. In this episode, we talk about people pleasing. We talk about suppressed emotions, chronic stress, family wounds, intergenerational patterns, authenticity as medicine. And why? The body keeps score yes, but also keeps the silence. This conversation is layered, it's personal, it's liberating, and baby, we go there. So whatever you've been carrying too much, swallowing too much, or just starting to realize the cost of always being the strong one. This episode is for you, so whether you've been carrying too much, swallowing too much, or just starting to realize the cost of always being the strong one, this episode is for you. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2:48

Hi Dee. Thank you for joining me today. I'm so excited to talk to you. How are you? I'm so blessed, Dr. Abigail. Thank you so much for having me. I've already told you you're like my spirit animal, so I was really looking forward just to this conversation. So thank you for allowing me to be here and share with your audience. Well, tell me again, in what ways am I your spirit animal? What do we,

Speaker 3 3:12

you are my, first of all, your energy is just super amazing. It speaks before you even do. Right? And I don't know if you grew up like I did, like I was always told my energy was too much. You're just too much. Right? Um, and so I feel like we both have just like this dynamic. Personality, um, that speaks before we do. I believe that we both champion for black women. And I also believe that we get really excited when we are passionate about something and it just takes over our whole body, not just our mouth.

Speaker 3:59

That's the part I remember the excitement, like, let me mute myself when you not talking 'cause I will, that Nigerian in me will come out. We, I will talk. Oh. But thank you. That is an honor of the highest regard in my opinion because I just met you, I just met you a few weeks ago in a program that we're in together, but just met you in person one or two weeks ago. I'm still coming outta that coma. How did we meet? Oh my goodness. It was two weeks ago at, um, Lisa Nichols When My Soul Speaks Conference. However, I was already a Dr. Abigail fan because I saw you in a zoom room when we were doing the Nichols certified facilitator program. I'm a part of that program. And I just remembered your story and I remembered you sharing, and it was so vulnerable and so raw and so real, and it immediately resonated with my story. And I was just like, like, I never forgot you after that. And so it was an honor to be in the same room with you, let alone have the opportunity to be in conversation with you on this podcast. Like I just feel like. The star s aligned. The stars aligned. Indeed. I'm, my heart is racing here, so I'm like, what story did she hear? I don't know what you talking about. I really don't.

Speaker 3 5:32

Okay. It was the story. Um, you did a total truth letter to your mom.

Speaker 5:39

Talk about it.

Speaker 3 5:41

You did a total truth letter to your mom, and in the total truth letter, you go through all the emotions. Right? And I just remember you starting out with what you were angry about with regard to the information that you learned about your father and, and learning that he wasn't your biological father. And then what I remembered most is when you got to the love and appreciation part. Of the total truth letter to be able to learn that your mom kept that secret from you and didn't tell you until I believe she was about to transition. If I'm not mistaken, when you found out I might have that part wrong, but you ended with the love and appreciation for your mom, even amid the anger and came back to how you know that must have been difficult for her as well and appreciating her for the mom that she had been to you. And I get chills now just even talking about it because similarly, I was five years old when you know how you have children in the room and they don't think you, I don't know if they don't think if they, I don't know if my mom and my aunt didn't think that I could comprehend what they were saying, but I was five years old and I remember my aunt saying to my mom, you know, that's not DeeDee's biological father. And my mom's saying, yeah, I know. And they had this conversation with me sitting there like wasn't right. And so I remember then gonna my stepfather, who I thought was my biological father and he was crying and he was so upset that I now had this information. And when he tells the story much later in life, what he shared with me is that in my little 5-year-old wisdom, I said to him I don't care that you're not my real dad, you're the only dad I know and I love you at five. Right? And so yeah, I, I just, I connected with you, um, even though you didn't know who I was, 'cause we just met two weeks ago, but I'm like, I love her.

Speaker 8:15

Ooh, okay. That story. Got it. You know, we had a little pre-chat and I can't even remember what you told me, but I remember we were talking about someone else and I started tearing. I said, you know what, I'm bringing some tissues and I'm glad that I did because, okay. And I love that you shared that in particular because two days ago, actually marks six months since my dad died. My mom is still here, so that part of the story is that she thought she was like on her deathbed, so that was like her deathbed confession, and she told me mm-hmm. I was, mm-hmm. Four. I was almost 40 when she told me that. But what I love about what you shared is the words that you said to your dad at that time. I was able, those are one of the last things that I was able to say to my dad before he died, because that was maybe three or four something years before he died, and it was kind of a big deal. Yeah. And I wanted it to not be a big deal. My doctor brain was like, I just need the facts because here I am helping people get pregnant and talking about spiritual and emotional and ancestral stuff, and I don't even know my shit.

Speaker 3 9:34

Mm.

Speaker 9:36

Feel me?

Speaker 3 9:36

That's, that's deep. So that's deep. So I was like, okay, I'm not gonna get into this family dynamics. And I, I remember I was, I was at my best friend's wedding in Equatorial Guinea, west Africa. My dad was in Nigeria and I called him a few days before Christmas and I was like, daddy, remember that thing that happened a few years ago? 'cause we, after my mom told me that we didn't talk about it for three, four years. You just gonna drop this bomb and just not talk about it. Okay. And so I called my dad and I asked him, and I said to him, basically if you say yes, let's do a DNA test. 'cause I didn't actually know that's just what she said. And he was like, I wouldn't say that. And he's, she's saying, it is the truth. I'm, I don't want any parts of this. Let's just get the facts. Can we do a DNA test? And at that time when she told me I left Nigeria. Wiggled out of it. We never did it. So then I was like, Hey, can we do this DNA test? If you say yes, I'll be in Nigeria before this year is out. He said, yes. I was there on Christmas Day, like three or four days later, and we did that test, and I will never forget these words. It was January 8th or seventh, 2024

Speaker 2 10:55

mm.

Speaker 10:56

This was like two or three weeks before that total truth letter that you saw me do. This was raw. This was raw. It was fresh. Oh, when I found out the data, and I will never forget these two words. Paternity, excluded.

Speaker 2 11:18

Ugh.

Speaker 11:20

What that mean? What does that mean? Anyway. Before we did the swab. After I called him, after years of silence, after decades of bullshit, I was sitting in that office with my dad and I was like, oh wow, he don't know how I actually feel. And I said, Hey daddy, I need you to know if I never tell you, all of this is just, I just need to know from my brain. I don't care what the results are. And at that time, nobody could have ever told me that he was not my biological father. No one could have ever told him that he was not my daddy. And I said, I don't care what the results are, you are the only father I will and ever will know. Eight days later, I get the results. Paternity exclude, fuck are you talking about? Anyway, so I love, I I get it now, spirit animal. And that's our opening, that's our opening.

Speaker 3 12:24

I did go and find my biological father. That's probably a whole conversation for a whole nother day. But I did find him and yeah, all I can say is my daddy will forever be my daddy. He has transitioned now. And my stepdaddy will always be my daddy. That's my daddy.

Speaker 12:51

Ooh, all right.

Speaker 3 12:54

See how they do us? These, these mamas, they just be living they lives but you know what it did do for me though, Dr. Abigail is i was hell bent that not only would my children know who their father is, that they would have a relationship with their father. Like I was very intentional about that even during times where it made, I had to swallow my pride and swallow my ego and sacrifice myself and abandon myself for the sake of my children having that relationship that's deep. And a meaningful sacrifice for their sake. Yeah, and I would do it all over again. Like I wouldn't change anything because ultimately what was most important to me was them having the relationship. I have two children, a 35 -year-old son and a 26-year-old daughter. My 35 -year-old son was from a previous relationship, and then my daughter is from my first marriage. And in both of those cases, there was so many sacrifices I had to make to just make sure that the thing that was most important to me that I thought would benefit my kids the most was having that relationship with their dads. So I wouldn't change a thing, I would do it all over again. I would sacrifice myself again if it meant that they would get to have the relationships that they have with their dads.

Speaker 14:50

That's amazing. Again, an honorable sacrifice, and I appreciate you for that.

Speaker 3 14:56

It was outta trauma girl.

Speaker 14:59

Let's talk about that. It was out of trauma. What do you mean?

Speaker 3 15:03

The trauma of learning that my dad wasn't my dad, and then going all those years without knowing who my biological father was. And I found him at 27 years old. And I only went to go look for this man, because I was watching an episode of Oprah, and there was a woman on there who had gotten connected with her biological father for the first time, and I don't remember how old she was, but during that interview, she talked about knowing her medical history on her paternal side. And I thought, I never thought about that. And then she also said, I'm also out here dating. I don't wanna mess around and date my brother. And I was like, never thought about that. You know? So I went on the hunt to find him. He was a really kind man when I found him, because what I ended up doing, Dr. Abigail, is, this was years ago, so this is before internet. This is before cell phones. This is before all of those things, right? I just so happened to have a friend who worked at, um, I live in Houston, Harris County, Texas. He worked at the Harris County Appraisal District, which keeps records of all homeowners, right? So I had my biological father's name and that's all I had. So I asked her, can you tell me if you have any homeowner, if we have any homeowners in Houston with this name? She found three, right? And I literally sat down and wrote a handwritten letter to all three gentlemen. In the letter I said, I just wanna know who you are. I don't need anything from you. I don't want anything from you. I just wanna know who you are. And I explained about wanting to know if I had siblings wanting to know my medical history and the first phone, I left my phone number because that's all we had. And the first phone call I got the gentleman said I got your letter and I just wanted to let you know that it's not me. You sound like an amazing young lady. I hope you find him. And then the second call I got, he said, it's me. I wanna meet you. And me and my mom went to go meet him, and we met at a neutral place. We met at a restaurant a Denny's. And I remember when my mom and I walked in, he was sitting at a table with his wife and my mom looked at him and she said, that's him. And we had a conversation and we didn't stay in touch. Um, it because it's, it didn't. Remain important to me. I, I wanted the information that I wanted. Um, but I, I had a daddy, so I was good on that.

Speaker 18:24

So powerful. And even that extra bit of detail came from what you've decided to do because of your experience. You said it came mm-hmm. Trauma. It all came out of trauma.

Speaker 3 18:37

It all came outta trauma.

Speaker 18:38

I just wanna appreciate you for channeling trauma into something productive because it could easily have gone the other way. Intergenerational trauma, you know, in that ancestral pillar for the frameworks that I use in my work with people. And in the spiritual 'cause they're pillars and they're layers and they're different, but they all dance and play together, right? Absolutely. So when you think about the ancestral and the spiritual together, intergenerational trauma is kind of maybe a buzzword. I don't know how much people know about it, but from a medical perspective, we talk about family history, family history for this disease or that condition or this type of thing. But there's a family history. Well, so let me pivot to the spiritual aspect. Spiritual people kind of start thinking religious. Not talking about religion. Spiritual is real simple, light, dark, good, bad angels, demons. And everything is spiritual, really. And so when you kind of blend the spiritual and the ancestral, you've got angels and demons in the bloodline. They're impacting. And when we remove the emotion from it and just take it as simple fact. What are the good things that we wanna carry on? What are the negative things that we wanna stop? And knowing that we can alchemize, we can channel things and transform them into something else, even if we came from something gross. Right?

Speaker 3 20:29

That's so delicious. That's so yummy. Right. Because in the work that I do that was again, born out of the, I'm a two time breast cancer survivor. Right. And it was my nurse after, during that second diagnosis, when my nurse said to me, you really need to reduce the stress your life. And I had never connected stress to breast cancer. And so when she said that to me, I started researching. Right. And then I realized that there are so many diseases, autoimmune diseases, health related diseases, cancer, lupus, heart disease, all of these diseases and what they all have in common is stress. And so, to your point, to tie this back to what you were saying, what we don't realize we're doing because we'll say, oh, well my mom had breast cancer, or, oh, well my mom had lupus, right? Without recognizing or realizing that it's not the genes that are carrying the disease, it is the trauma that is carrying the disease. It is the spirit that is carrying the disease because they didn't stop. Or like you said, leave behind like, okay, I'm not carrying this forward with me. This stop children not knowing who their fathers are stops here with me. With my daughter, what I've learned from my breast cancer experience is we don't, people please. So I talk to her early about people pleasing. We don't suppress our emotions. And I tell her all the time, you can say whatever you need to say as long as you're respectful, but do not. And my mama used to say it, but I never connected it. She would say, don't hold onto things, it will kill you. I never connected it to literally killing you. But suppressed emotions, suppressed thoughts, suppressed desires all lead to sickness and disease in the body. And nobody is talking about that.

Speaker 23:03

Ooh, you said a word there. I'm gonna name two of 'em right quick: it's the spirit that's carrying the disease, not the genes. And that's so true. And even science has explained that in its own way with epigenetics. It's not the genes. You can override your genes with your thoughts, with your environment, with different things that you eat and do. You can change the expression of your genes. So we are not hardwired for nothing. It is actually the environment. Even if, okay, we are hardwired for things, but even when we are hardwired for things, it's the environment that reinforces or can override exactly that. That part right there, it is the environment that can enforce or override. And so I decided, to your point, to create an environment for my children that would override those generational, and you know, in the church they call it generational curses, to override those generational curses that we just passing down from generation to generation. Somebody has to be willing to go first. Somebody has to be willing to do their work. Somebody has to be willing to decide that I'm gonna alchemize this thing for the betterment of. My lineage, right? Like I don't want another person in my downline to experience the same traumas that I went through. Like at least let it be a different trauma. Someone has to be the repair of the breach. Like it says in Isaiah, right? Who's gonna repair that thing, alchemize it to something else. So yeah, that epigenetics thing. And then the other thing that you said is that suppressed emotion, suppressed thoughts, suppressed desires, they go somewhere. They don't just disappear, right. I am reading a book right now called When the Body Says No. And it is all about this very thing, how in the medical field so many doctors are wanting to separate the mind from the body, and they only wanna treat the body, or they only wanna treat the mind, but you have to connect the two, right? And so, what the doctor talks about in this book is it's important for doctors to get to know their client as a whole. How did you grow up? What were your traumas? What were things that you experienced growing up? What were your stressors? And the biggest thing that this book talks about is the stress that we have, especially for black women. We've normalized, right? We've decided that life has to be hard. Life is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be stressful without doing the necessary work to be able to handle like hard things are gonna happen. But if you do your work as Sean likes to call it your "center of the clock" work, then when those hard things come, you are better able to manage them without sacrificing your help. That's exactly it. Just for the listeners, I will link to that book in the show notes when the body says no.

Speaker 3 26:58

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 26:59

I thought you were gonna talk about this book, when the Body Keeps Score or the Body Keeps Score.

Speaker 3 27:04

Mm-hmm. That's another one.

Speaker 27:06

And I was gonna make a comment. While the Body Keeps Score and the body speaks, Right, says no, lets us know what's going on, the body keeps the silence too. So when we don't speak, and you talked about people pleasing and suppressing of emotions almost literally killing you. And how you talk about that in your way of not passing it along to the next generation and doing your work to repair that breach in your bloodline. The silence and the repressing has an impact and turns into disease. It turns into inflammation. It turns into stagnation. You said that it's not talked about widely in medicine. It's not. Well, because conventional medicines, like even if something goes wrong, we gotta fix for that. We can cut it out. Put a bandaid on it. Numb you out. Exactly. Versus preventing it from happening, which requires an understanding of how these other intangible things, like our thoughts. 'Cause our environment is our food, what we're putting into our bodies, what we're thinking, who we're surrounding ourselves, how we're feeling, what happened before us. All of that. And we're not, we believe yes. And we're not talking about it enough. So I'm so happy that we're having this conversation because it all goes to your point, Dr. Abigail. Something you said just now was so powerful. You said, um, that it goes somewhere and the silence goes somewhere and it turns into disease. And I heard, I don't remember who say it so beautifully, that disease is just in the body, okay?

Speaker 3 29:10

Right.

Speaker 29:13

Disease. Your body is not at ease. Something is not at harmony. And that lack of harmony, that lack of homeostasis, that lack of balance causes a rift. That rift, that misalignment shows up as inflammation. Almost every disease that shows up in the body has a core in inflammation. Yes. There's some low grade underlying thing that wasn't listened to because the body does speak to us. Then that little low grade thing turned into a rumble, into a roar to a raging fire.

Speaker 3 29:55

Right, right. And something else you said, um, the thing that wasn't listened to. Right. And when we had these diseases that show up in our body, by way I'll use myself as an example. I like to call that playing on the court. I'm play on the court. Right? Not on the bench. For me, with breast cancer, when the nurse said to me, you need to reduce the stress in your life, like I knew what my stressors were, I was just too afraid to do anything about them. And fear creates a whole nother set of circumstances, a whole nother set of problems. But one of the things you said is in Western medicine, what we do is we treat the symptoms. Like for me, let's get you into chemotherapy. Let's cut the cancer out. Let's do a double mastectomy. Nobody said, well, what's stressing you? Nobody said, well, what's going on emotionally? What's going on mentally? Nobody asked me any of those questions. But I thank God for that nurse who said, you need to reduce the stress in your life. That's when I realized that not only was stress, it wasn't just uncomfortable, it was deadly. And it literally took the threat. Of me losing my life to choose my life. Like, okay, I can't keep hiding, I can't keep carrying these secrets. I can't keep trying to keep everybody else happy. And so again, playing on the court, the secret I knew I was carrying was that I had married my then husband, knowing I wasn't in love, but, playing all into the conversation that we've been having today, listening to my elders tell me, oh, it's okay, you'll grow to love him. You want somebody who loves you more than you love him. He's gonna be a great father to your son. And all of those things were true. Nobody talked about who I needed to be in this marriage. Nobody talked about who I needed to develop and grow into, or what I needed to have in me to sustain that. But what I learned is it wasn't gonna be sustainable because I married him for the wrong reasons. I married him because he was safe, right after a really toxic and tumultuous relationship with my son's father. He was safe. And these women who are much older and supposedly wiser than me said, I will grow to love him. So I'm gonna just, I'm gonna wait this thing out. I'm gonna thug it out.

Speaker 2 32:46

And in the midst of that, fell in love with a woman while I was married to my then husband. And so I knew that I was hiding who I actually am. I knew that I was in this marriage for the wrong reason, but I didn't wanna disappoint anybody. So that goes to the people pleasing. I knew how much this man loved me. If I divorce him, I'm gonna break his heart. I'm gonna upset my mama, who was a Bible tot in scripture quoting Christian, I'm gonna upset his mama, who was the one who introduced us to begin with. I'm gonna upset my kids. Like what is it going to do to them? My best friend is in church almost every day. What is it gonna do to our relationship? So I was so worried about everybody else that I never stopped to check in with me about what I needed. Right. And it again, wasn't until that nurse who to this day I say was a Godsend, connected my breast cancer to the amount of stress I was under. Now, I don't know how the lady knew I was stressed. Right? Maybe she's just seen enough cases to know, because I definitely wasn't telling anybody about all the stuff that I was internalizing, but she woke me up, she turned the lights on for me. Thank you for sharing all of that and what you just shared, and the authenticity and realness and the way you show up reminds me of something that came through in your questionnaire where you basically were speaking about authenticity, almost like medicine. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 34:35

So. From your experience, in your opinion, what would you say actually changes in someone's life, in their health when they stop abandoning themselves? When they start becoming more authentic?

Speaker 3 34:56

Oh, like literally, everything else gets better because in my opinion, it truly is. Authenticity is about aligning with who you truly. And so it sets the scales straight, right? When you're being inauthentic, the scales are out of alignment. That's creating, and you talked about this earlier, not having that harmony, not having that balance. The scales are tipped when you're being inauthentic to who you are, right? And so when you start to show up as who you are and all of your flaws and all of your your perfectly imperfect self, and you own your own story. 'cause see, I truly believe that a lot of times we're so afraid of being ashamed, right? Like shame is, Brene Brown talks about it all the time. It's one of the biggest emotions people like to suppress, right? Because if I am authentic, if I let them know I'm flawed, if I show them my imperfections, are they gonna judge me? Are they gonna leave me? Are they gonna hurt me? Like what happens if I let them see my imperfections? But one of the things that I've learned on this journey of being my authentic self is that you have the pen. Right? Like, write your own story, own your own story flaws and all. Because one, not only is it gonna set you free, it's gonna set somebody else free. I remember speaking, Dr. Abigail, at a conference, a women's empowerment conference, and I shared my story about hiding my sexuality. And one woman came up to me and gave me her phone to speak to her teenage daughter who had been struggling with her sexuality thinking that there's something wrong with her, that she's gonna be condemned and all these things. And even though her mama was trying to love her through it, she couldn't accept herself, right? And so she just wanted me to share my story with her baby and, as I'm walking out of the door for the same conference, this woman comes up to me and she's in her seventies and she ends our conversation with, some of us are still hiding, and I thought to myself, I don't wanna be someone who is 70 something years old that's still trying to live my life for other people. I wanna live authentic to me. And when you are authentic to yourself, like literally Sean calls it the "center of the clock" work. When you work on you, one, you never lose when you work on yourself and two, everything else on the edge of the clock gets better. I am in the healthiest, happiest relationship I've ever been in with my wife. We're going on, we'll be married 13 years in August. Being my authentic self and accepting my flaws has allowed me to show up differently for my children and encourage them to accept their flaws. You don't have to be perfect for anybody, you just have to own your own story so that when somebody comes to you and they think they got some tea on you and they like, girl, I heard you blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I told, I I already told you that. Right? Or if they go to the next person, girl, did you know Dee left her husband for a woman? Oh girl. Yeah. She told everybody she wrote a book about it. Right? Like own your own story, because most of the things that we con ceal, we do it trying to avoid shame, but if you take people's power away and own your own story, there's no shame, right? Take your power back by being your authentic self.

Speaker 39:28

Say that! take your power back by being your authentic self. I just wanna make a little comment to the listeners. Who is this, Sean? What is this "center of the clock" work? I will link to it in the show notes, a video that he has on Center of the Clock work. It's been referenced here. Basically, when you do the work at the center of the clock, it radiates and ripples out to every arena of your life so think about the hands of the clock, the hour and the minute hands. They point to anywhere on the clock at any given time, but all of them come to the center. So if you focus your work, not on the individual numbers, on the circumference of the clock, but if you focus your work at the center, you will hit all of the numbers at the circumference of the clock.

Speaker 3 40:20

Explained beautifully,

Speaker 40:22

he explains it with more details in this video and I will link it in the show notes. Thank you for that conversation about authenticity. I don't wanna lose the opportunity for you to share again, more explicitly because you mentioned something earlier that I think will be really helpful for listeners. You didn't mention the POP session that you offer piece on purpose, but it's something that will help them. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and who it's for?

Speaker 3 40:51

Yes. So the work I do, I am primarily focusing on black women. Right? Even with that, talk about being authentic, I get a lot of, um, pushback from women of other ethnicities and they say, well, what you're doing can help all women. And I get that, right? I do know that. And I decided to focus on black women for the same reasons that I had to save my own life. Right? Black women are leading in all of these chronic illnesses. We are more likely 41% more likely to die from breast cancer than any other ethnicity. We're less likely to be diagnosed. We are more likely to die. We are leading in heart disease. We are leading in, depression. And all of this is according to the National Institute of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Center for Disease Control. So you can look it up. We're leading in all the things. And what all of these diseases have in common is stress. It is one of the factors found in every last one of these illnesses. And I know that we talked about this earlier, a lot of generational trauma that we need to heal as black women being, especially in the US We have we've been programmed that we have to work twice as hard to get half this far. So we're overperforming to our detriment. We are called aggressive, loud and combative when the truth is we're tired of feeling unseen. We're tired of feeling unheard, we're tired of feeling disrespected. And so the work that I do with black women, it's to help them healed those, the buzzword now is triggers, help you heal those triggers so that when you are in these situations, you can, one, not abandon yourself, you can speak your truth. Like I shared with my daughter, you get to say whatever you wanna say as long as you say it respectfully, right? You get to speak your truth. You get to ask for what you need. Black women have taught we don't ask for help because that makes us look weak, right? We're gonna unprogram all of that and we're going to get you into the state of flow. Where you can handle whatever life throws at you because you're doing your center of the clock work. We're going back to those the things that happen to the little 8-year-old you that shapes how you respond, how you react today. We are going to give you tools to communicate your needs, honestly, authentically and respectfully so that you feel seen, heard, and understood. Because anybody can just POP off, right? That's not where your power is. Your power is in staying true to yourself and communicating in a way that has you feel seen, heard, and understood. So that you're not overperforming, you're not taking on three times the workload of as than your white counterparts because you don't wanna be seen as lazy. You know you're not lazy and there is nothing wrong with speaking up for yourself and saying, not only can I not do all of this, 'cause we don't like to say we can't 'cause again, that's gonna make me look weak or incompetent or whatever. Not only do can I not do all this, I wanna. To put it simply, my work allows black women to take off the cape, stop being a savior for everybody else.

Speaker 44:59

Amen to that. Amen to that. Okay. So you have POP sessions, peace on purpose, so that you don't POP off on a person.

Speaker 3 45:10

Exactly. And you're offering listeners a complimentary POP session. A complimentary POP session, exactly. So I call it my peace on purpose. Session. I have a program called Gracefully Protecting Self, where you get to focus on you and what you need. Authentically, without abandoning yourself, without people pleasing, without overexplaining resting, without guilt. So the piece on purpose session, the POP session, is during that session, what's gonna happen is you get to come to me with the thing that's causing you the most stress or the trigger that you just can't get over. By way of example, mine used to be bitch, if somebody calls me a bitch, baby, we fighting!. Calling me outta my name was the quickest way to gimme the square. So we're gonna look at what your triggers are. What's the thing is, or maybe you're not using your voice. Maybe you're not standing up and asking for what you need, or maybe you don't. You're uncomfortable saying no. Whatever you believe the issue is, that's preventing you from having more peace, more joy, more resting without guilt. Bring that to the session, right? And it's just an honest conversation between you and I. Well, I'll give you tools and strategies on how to move forward. Now, what's gonna happen, uh, and I just wanna be 100% transparent. You're not gonna heal it in this session. Where you're going to gain in this session is the awareness, and you will learn the tools and strategies to heal it. However, it takes practice, right? It's like sitting down, reading a book on how to get the six pack, right? You now have awareness that I need to do crunches, I need to cut out sugar, I need to cut out alcohol. But then you gotta go and do it, right? And so at the end of our POP session, if it's a good fit for us to work together and you wanna go deeper to really have the peace you deserve, then we can look at what that looks like to work together. Love that. Love that. Where can people find you outside of the complimentary POP sessions, which we'll put in the description, where can people find you? I'm everywhere. I'm everywhere on all social media platforms I'm under. I am Dee Manuel Cloud. That is I a-M-D-E-E-M-A-N-U-E-L-C-L-O-U-D. Yes. All one. No, no. No periods, no commas. It's all together on all platforms.

Speaker 48:17

Perfect. And I will also include that in the show notes. So final question for you, Dee. If someone is listening right now and she spent most of her life caring for everyone and everything else, and is just now realizing, maybe even in this episode, but very recently realized that she may have abandoned herself along the way, what would you want her to know, advise her to do, to start? First of all, I would want her to know that there's no shame in it. There is no shame in putting everyone else's needs before yours. And just because that's the way you've always operated doesn't mean that you have to continue. We can all decide to get off the rollercoaster whenever we want. We can decide to redirect whenever we want. The challenge is always getting everybody else around you to realize that you've gotten off the rollercoaster. And being able to communicate to them in a way that has you feel, seen, heard, and understood that I'm not doing this to hurt you. I'm doing this to help me. And so what I would suggest that she do, book your complimentary. Session your piece on purpose session. Book your complimentary session. And, in the meantime, one of the books that I point a lot of ladies to, that I feel explains this even more thoroughly, is Mel Robbins Let them. What I love about that book is how she talks about we spend so much time trying to fix things outside of ourselves instead of focusing on the things that we can control, control the controllables. Even if that looks like, my. Okay, this is a really simple, um, example, but I, I hope it drives the point home. When my dad was alive, he was the dog whisperer and he would always feed the dogs. The dogs loved him, like they would just gravitate to him whenever he came over. And my dad would like snack and eat junk food all day long. Well, he thought whatever he eats, the dogs could eat and they would end up getting sick, and my wife would get so frustrated, like, we keep telling your daddy to not eat the dogs and he's not listening. Well, anybody who's tried to raise a parent knows that it's hard. You cannot get these senior citizens to do anything they don't wanna do. And so I'm like, what can we control in this situation? The dogs ain't gonna listen. Daddy ain't listening. So I tell you what, when daddy's eating, let's put the dogs away. When daddy's done eating we'll let the dogs back out. We spend so much time trying to control other things and other people instead of focusing on what we can control to bring us the peace that we deserve. That's so good. I love that example too. 'Cause we know focus on you, focus on yourself. But it's so easy to just gravitate towards focusing on everyone else, but getting those reframes and those opportunities to say, okay, can I control that? No. Okay. Can I control that? No. What can I and focus, literally focus on that. Which,

Speaker 3 52:19

what can I control? And the sooner that we learn and realize and accept that literally the only thing we have control over is us. Like even as parents speaking as a parent of two, we don't even have control over them little raggedy kids, we like to think we do sometimes their stress out because we think we can control them. Because we think I'm the parent. So if I tell you to do this, you better do it. But the reality is if they choose many beatings you give them, you don't care how many times you put them in time out. Like we literally have control over nobody but self. Even the ones that you push outta your vagina, get cut outta your tummy, though you don't have control over those little bitty humans either.

Speaker 53:22

That is correct. Well, thank you. Thank you for this conversation about authenticity, just being real and authentic yourself, and sharing with the people what they can do to have peace on purpose, even with Little Steps. We're gonna link to all of the resources, all the books, Brene Brown, the POP sessions, the Let Them Theory, Sean Smith's Center of the Clock work, all the things that were said here. We'll put them in the show notes so that you can dive a little bit deeper and of course, let you know how and where you can find Dee everywhere. Thank you, Dee, for being here. I appreciate you so much. No thank you Dr. Abigail. Listen, I feel like we gotta do this again because you and I had a very candid conversation about intimacy and this conversation started because nobody ever believes how old I am. Thank God. Right? Like even today at the gym, I was sharing with Dr. Abigail to all our listeners, I was sharing with Dr. Abigail that the young lady next to me in this fitness class could not believe that I'm 56 years old. I'm like, thank you, girl. But mm. I'm feeling in this class. But nonetheless, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Because the people can't see you. Okay. So let me, let me give my experience. I'm gonna be 45 tomorrow. Okay. And when I met Dee, thank you. When I met Dee two weeks ago, we were talking about something else. She was talking about hot flashes and I was like, okay, I mean, I guess, thinking at most, at most, we were age mates. Now I know Black don't crack. My grandmama lived to be 108. I get it. I'm gonna be 99, dropping it like it's hot with my grand babies. I'm okay with it. And still this chick said 56. Where? I told my colleague. She was having a whole conversation, kept it together for about a minute and a half and had to come out of character to say, I'm sorry, what did you say? Yeah, so I know y'all can't see Dee. Maybe when you click on the links in the bios, you be, you will, these are, these are present tense pictures. Dee don't look a day beyond 30, maybe 35. But she gonna put these 20 something year olds. Anyway, keep going. You were saying something. I just need the people to know what you're not saying 'cause they can't see your face. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Abigail. So here's the thing. We having this conversation and after we got over the. Wait, how old? The next question is always, what are you doing? Like how, what's your skincare routine? And I don't really have a skincare routine except, you know, I wash my face and I'm moisturized, but I believe the secret to be peace, right? Like minding your business, drinking your water, moving your body. It doesn't have to be in a gym. Just find something you enjoy doing, right? Whether that's rollerskating line dancing, Zumba, Pilates, but move your body. And orgasms. And every time I get to the orgasms part, people laugh. And I'm like, that's true. Like orgasms. There's something I remember reading and I need to get. Back up to snuff on what it was I read. But I just remember reading a long time ago that there's something that the body releases, some hormonal whatever, when you're having an orgasm that helps you maintain a youthful appearance. And that orgasm does not have to be with a partner. It can be with yourself or with a partner. And I tell all my girlfriends, keep you a little toy in the shower. Sometimes you just need to chop yourself out off before your shower just to release those hormones and keep it moving. Okay, so you heard it here. There's gonna be another conversation on intimacy because there's so much here. That hormone that she's talking about is oxytocin. That's the pleasure hormone. Mm-hmm. And we can definitely deep dive. On that it's the hormone of birth. It's the hormone of pregnancy. It's the hormone of not pregnancy, of birth. It's the hormone of bonding. It's the hormone of breastfeeding. It's the love hormone. It is the feminine principle. It is a powerful principle, actually. Mm. See we need to do this again because I got so much to say on that. So there's a lot there. And I mean, you heard the lady. You heard the lady. You heard the lady. So to be continued another conversation with Dee, and we'll be talking about pleasure, intimacy and how it aids in our youthfulness, and I dare say authenticity as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. I love how you keep tying it back to authenticity. 'cause that right there is the root, authenticity is the root and everything that grows from that flourishes. Absolutely. Especially as coochie owners, when we are authentic, especially as the nurturers that we are. First of all, we then are able to serve ourselves. And the more we can pour into ourselves authentically, the more we are naturally able to do what we naturally do. We just care for everyone else and the community. Yes. That's what oxytocin is. We'll talk about it 'cause there's science to all of this as well and how we are built. Anyway, don't get me back on the pulpit. We were coming down, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dee. I appreciate you so much. Oh my God, this has been amazing. Like you have just set my Friday on high. Like this has been such an amazing conversation, Dr. Abigail. Thank you so much. And you know what was really interesting is we were like, let's just see where it goes, right? And I think that it went exactly where it was supposed to go. I hope that, I pray that something that we've shared today really blesses someone listening and that you find the will within yourself to really start to focus on your needs, your desires, and then be able to speak those things to the people you love and have them receive it in a way that allows you to be authentic to self. Because again, once you do that, everything else flourishes. Absolutely. And there is liberation in conversations.

Speaker 3 1:00:29

Bars.

Speaker 1:00:31

Period. Conversations are liberatory. And that's what this platform, that's what this is about. Let's have conversations. Let's talk about it. It's everyone's business. Let's get away from the silence and bring things into the open. And so to your point about things touching and healing and really gifting me, was your opening comment about the spirit animal and of a story that I didn't even remember telling. I remember the story. Yeah. But I didn't know what you were referencing. Yeah. I didn't know it was part of another program that was just me in my head sharing within a program I was in. Mm. But look how amazing God is. There it is. The power of our stories, the power of the conversation. It brings connection. Absolutely. And so yeah, we'll connect again for sure. And thank you. Thank you, thank you a thousand times again for today. Absolutely. No, thank you. This has been amazing. Amazing. Until next time.

Speaker 5 1:01:36

Oh my goodness. What a conversation. I hope something in this episode helped you name something that your body might have been trying to say for a long time, whether that was through stress or exhaustion. Grief, resentment, people pleasing or silence, or the quiet ache of just knowing that you've been carrying too much for too long. A huge thank you to Emanuel Cloud for her honesty, her wisdom, and her willingness to tell the truth out loud If this conversation resonated with you. Here's your next step. Don't just nod at it. Do something with it. What can you do? You can follow the podcast. You can leave a review so other people can find it. You can send this episode to your group chat, your sister circle, your auntie therapist, coach, whoever needs this conversation that you might know has been overperforming, overgiving, overexplaining. Or just slowly disappearing inside of everyone else's needs. In the show notes and in the episode description, you'll find these links including her complimentary pop session. That's peace on purpose. Along with the books and the resources that we mentioned in this conversation. So go deeper, follow the thread. Let this episode become a doorway, not just the moment. Until next time, stay curious, stay honest and remember, there's liberation in conversations.