Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. If you have ever felt overwhelmed by the messiness of relationships at home, in your marriage, with your friendships, or even with yourself, first of all, you are not alone. But today I am chatting with my dear friend and my accountability partner, Judy, who is an incredible psychotherapist. She is an executive relational coach and y'all she plans some pretty bad ass retreats and she speaks on all things relationships. In this episode, we are going to dive into her AIR method, which is all about awareness, intentionality, and risks of growth.

Erica: All of which is designed to help you break through anxiety, toxic patterns, and find harmony in all of your relationships. Y'all we talk about why having a marriage come to an end is not a failure and why treating yourself with the dignity, love, and respect you deserve is your key to happiness. You were listening to the glass ceiling and sticky floor podcast. Y'all this is the podcast that will empower you to shatter limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities so that you can live your best life. I'm Erica Rooney and I'm on a mission to bring more women into positions of power and keep them there.

Erica: I'm obsessed with all things growth and abundance, and I'm here to talk you through the tried and true secrets to get you to level up your career and your life. We talk about the hard stuff here, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear, and burnout. So pull up a seat, pop in an earbud, and let's dive in.

Erica: Judy, I am so thrilled to have you on the podcast today. For everyone listening, y'all, this is my good friend. She is my accountability buddy. We meet every single week. We have at least a one hour conversation, and we get stuff done.

Erica: So I am so excited. Judy, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Judy: I am doing great. And, Erica, it's such an honor for me to be here because we have had these weekly conversations for, I think, coming up on a year. But I'm so ex I'm very honored that I'm one of your podcast guests.

Erica: Well, I love this. I think it's gonna be a little bit different and unique because we do know each other so well because it has been a year. But for all of my listeners, Judy, who are you? What do you do? Tell me all the things.

Judy: Well, I my name is Judy, and I am the author of Beyond Messy Relationships and Relationships with Purpose. I'm all about relationships. I am an executive relational coach for women, ambitious women, because we all have messiness that we go through. So by day, I'm a psychotherapist. I've been in private practice specializing in relationships for many years.

Judy: And at this point in my life, I do a lot of retreat facilitating, and I love providing transformational experiences for ambitious women. I speak, and I love being on stage. And going from being in private practice and seeing that transformation behind the closed doors of my counseling office for many years, I am out now on stages, and I love to help people change their perspective and even have one takeaway that they can do immediately in order to have harmonious relationships and to have a different perspective. It's I'm all about living your most vibrantly authentic self. And you and I, Erica, we know we're, like, in a different generation.

Judy: Right? So I'm I'm like your mom's age. And so my story is a bit different, but it's just beautiful to be able to live the most vibrantly authentic piece of yourself at this stage. And so, anyway yeah.

Erica: I love it. I do. And, I mean, one thing that I think is so key to touch on is, like, relationships is such a big thing, right, because we all have them, whether you are in one, like a marriage relationship, a partnership, but you have friendships, you have people you work with, you have your family, all of these people. And I know, Judy, that you have a very special method that you teach with your private clients, you teach on stage, all over the place, and it's all about your air method. Can we talk about that a little bit?

Judy: I'm so glad you brought this up because it is so natural. In our fast paced society, we get so caught up with doing, doing, doing that we forget or we don't we get disconnected from our soul, from our being. And, really, what we need, all of us, is air, breathing in air. We need that for our to live. So what I've done is I've created an acronym of deep breathing deep air, and the acronym for air is awareness, intentionality, and risks of growth.

Judy: I can explain that further. But the reality is when you take deep breaths of air from your diaphragm and you slowly breathe out, it actually slows down the nervous system. So many times when we get into anxiety and we're living in the future, we're not we're missing our present lives. We're missing the present moment. We're missing out, or we ruminate about the past.

Judy: So breathing the deep air is something that, number one, very practical, slows down the nervous system, but, also, it's something easy to remember because our whole life journey here is to be more aware. And if you're you know, whatever stage of life you're you're listening to this right now, if you're say if you're a young mom or you're a corporate executive, you're gonna have a different perspective when you're 60 versus when you're 30. You're gonna become a whole lot more aware. And so this is a life journey of us becoming more aware, but then being intentional because you cannot change anything that you are not aware of. So raising that awareness is huge.

Judy: And then the risks of growth, which I'm thinking all of your listeners here, all of us as human beings, we've taken risks, but we just haven't we haven't put the puzzle together that, oh, this is an acronym for air, breathing air. Let's slow down. Let's live our lives in the present moment.

Erica: Well, speaking from personal experience, I know that this is something that you use with all of your people and when we're talking about relationships, but it's also something that you can really use when you're thinking about the relationship with yourself because I'm going through a big massive shift right now. And as you were speaking through each letter of that acronym, I was like, no. All of that applies to me as an individual as well. So do you use it with individuals as they're moving through these massive transformational shifts?

Judy: Absolutely. It really the AIR acronym is I don't I don't like to use the word formula, but in a way, it's like it is a formula for growth if we tune into it. But we all have living entities. Whether you are in a marital relationship, that is a living entity. Two people in that relationship makes a living a living entity.

Judy: So, yes, for sure, Corporations, but definitely individuals. It starts with the individual. Part of my method in my counseling with couples over the years and with individuals and also using this on stages with audiences is that, it's the space between us and another person. Like, if we have relationship messes, Erica, going on right now, stress, who doesn't? Come on.

Judy: Everybody does. Right? And some of us live in it for a long time, and that's our normal. Or we came from it, from our family of origins, and we think it's our normal. But it really wears and tears on the body, affects your mental health, emotional well-being.

Judy: It will shorten your life if you stay in it. And do not take these deep breaths of air. But all I'm saying is that this is a growth. It's it's that space between, but so many people don't realize the reason that they're the mess is worse or that they're in the mess is because they are actually co creating the mess unaware. And that's something that's very important to understand because, neuroscience, we have a whole lot more information now about the brain than we did before.

Judy: I know that there's some, research that says by the time you're 35 years old, that, like, 95, 96, 7% of the things your thoughts you think that can track this, by the way, are old thoughts Because of epigenetics and things that have been passed down from one generation to another, from many years past before you were ever born, you were you have these automatic thoughts. And then in our childhood development, when our brains are not even online until we're in our mid twenties, these things just take on automatic, automatic ways. Right? It's kinda like going into I don't know if you like to hike, Erica. I think you do.

Judy: But, anyway, I like to go out and hike in the woods. And you know how that there's some well worn pathways, and there's also some, trailblazers. And you know exactly where to go. And imagine gazillions and gazillions of neural pathways that are like a virgin woods or like, like, you know, the pathways that are clear. Those clear pathways are the things that have been passed down unaware or automatic.

Judy: We're thinking those old thoughts over and over and over again, and they get reinforced then we believe they're true. So in order to change, or even to, you know, tap into the capacity of what you are capable of, it's like you're having to create some new pathways in virgin woods, take a 100 hikers behind you and machete and create new pathways, but it takes a while. I mean, that's why we have to, you know, work on daily updates of the program in our if we were to use a different analogy like the computer, but I'm using the analogy of the hiking woods right now.

Erica: Yeah. So I love the analogy of the hiking woods because number one, I just went hiking in the mountains this weekend, but I think it's so we always default to the path of least resistance, which is that path that has been clear, which is sometimes our limiting beliefs, the things that, you know, we have learned through childhood or that we have seen, all of those things. And so it takes a lot of work to have to, with all the machetes, all of the weeds, and whatnot to get that next path. Like, we're talking decades sometimes. But you said something earlier about how we can cocreate the mess, but we are often unaware of it.

Erica: And I will say fully that I know that is me. I know I've done it in the past. Sometimes I do it intentionally. Sometimes I am completely unaware. So my question for you is how can we become more aware when we are cocreating that mess?

Judy: Yeah. Good question, Erica. The first thing to do is to slow down. Take a deep breath. Even notice the breath going in the nose, breath going out of the mouth.

Judy: Slow down. And that's what breathing does for you. Secondly, you can stop the game. I think of it as a ping pong game. You got the accusation.

Judy: You got the, the defensiveness. And it's like a ping pong game, boom, back and forth. But if you can just put your paddle down and just say, The third thing that you can do when you have time to reflect, and it does take slowing down. You just gotta slow down and take some time to reflect. What have I been saying that is inviting this very thing that I don't want?

Judy: And that really can help move the needle, at least beginning to be more aware.

Erica: Oh, I love that because it's so easy to point blame at the other person and say it's not me. But when you really slow down and think about it, like, you elicited that response somehow. Of course, unless they are just coming at you and attacking you, you are having a back and forth conversation, and whatever you just said elicited a response, a feeling, which then elicited their reaction, whatever that is. So I love all of that. I think the time to reflect is probably one of the most important pieces overall because we are going to do that throughout our lives.

Erica: Right? It's just ingrained in us. We react. But if we can train ourselves to slow down, to stop and say, we'll think about that for a moment. So I absolutely love that.

Erica: Now, Judy, what I know and love about you is you have a very unique background as a psychotherapist. Right? And you've written two books that are amazing and probably unlike anything I've read by a psychotherapist, and I've read a ton about from different psychotherapists because I love neuroscience. But tell me a little bit about your personal life, your background, and what led to Beyond Messy Relationships and Relationships with Purpose.

Judy: Oh, great question because it certainly was a passion project. Actually, both of them were passion projects. When I think of having written these books, I think of actually the books wrote me. So my story is, in a nutshell, I've always been a relationship person. I've come from a family of four kids, and that goes back generations.

Judy: We come we come from fam you know, multiples of four. I've got four kids. My first marriage, having had four children, I tell people I didn't used to be a psychotherapist, but my first career was raising four kids, actually homeschooling four kids in a very troubled marriage, messy marriage. After thirty years, that marriage did end. And then I remarried, my ballroom dance partner.

Judy: We were true, boy, felt like true friends. We had wonderful chemistry on the floor. Only thing is he had, bipolar severe bipolar disorder, but I was drawn to him because he really took care of himself. Me being in mental health field yeah, that's I got my degree and all of that and became a therapist. So I was I in my first marriage, I was trying not to die.

Judy: I didn't diagnose people. This side is kinda like, oh, yeah. We got we had some issues there. Second husband, the catalyst for me to write my book, beyond messy relationships, was his break with reality. And that break with reality, it's psychosis, and you are out of tune.

Judy: And I could go into some details, but he almost died in a car accident in between two hospitalizations. So that's my story. I couldn't like not do anything with that. And it was a very scary thing going back to my, the air. I was more aware, like I had a whole lot of what you call imposter syndrome.

Judy: I know you deal with that, Erica. Here I was a mental health therapist, and I did not see this from a distance. I thought it was, like a spiritual awakening or something. So there was a lot of that, you know, this put together therapist. Right?

Judy: And then I have this horrible, messy thing going on in my personal life. And what I've found to be very true, a lot of us women, ambitious women, especially in helping professions of some sort, have a lot of this. So I'm glad that you deal with this for sure, imposter syndrome. So I knew that, in order for me to really process, of course, I got my own therapy, But writing my book is how, like, you know, therapists who write books write about the intense and dramatic stories of their clients, but I wrote my own intense and dramatic story. But I show up as a therapist at the beginning.

Judy: Back to the AIR acronym, which I didn't finish that thought earlier, It was it raised my awareness to write the book. The book wrote me. I had to be intentional. I got a coach, a writing coach. I had beta readers.

Judy: I did all those intentional things to get this book out in the world. It was something I couldn't not write. And then the risk of growth was putting it out there. And I know even after it was published, I thought, oh my gosh. My clients are gonna read this and they're gonna say, and why are we seeing her as our therapist?

Judy: That was hugely scary for me. Well, my life has not been the same. And, to make a long story short, my first husband or second husband, recovered to the point of becoming my biggest cheerleader in writing it. We had the, we had a book launch in Chattanooga. That's where I'm from, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and on stage giving me flowers.

Judy: And then this was September 2019. And then, of course, we all know the story of COVID starting 2020 and a lot of other stressors. And so the ending of the book, the epilogue of the book, is now different if you were to read it. So, anyway, the journey continues. I would love to stand here and say, oh, I had this trauma in my life and I overcame it.

Judy: I overcame this imposter syndrome associated with that. But the reality is there's more to the story. And in my generation, people remember Paul Harvey saying that.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book.

Erica: It's your roadmap to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, No one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Erica: Well, what I will see and I talk with a lot of women and they all ask me, you know, do we ever get over these sticky floors? Right? The imposter syndrome, the fear of what other people will think. And my gut says, it actually kinda says two things. Right?

Erica: It says, yes. You can because of those pathways that we've talked about. Mhmm. But, again, that could take decades. Right?

Erica: Initially, my reaction is no because new level, new devil. Right? Like, as soon or just life happens and something gets thrown at you. And I was just talking with a coach today, and I was saying, you know, I feel like I have a really great mindset. Like, I feel like I'm very positive, but I have a lot of confidence in myself.

Erica: And then she said, do you have the confidence to charge $40,000 for a six month executive coaching package? And I said, no. And she's like, new level, new devil. You know? So it's the same way with what you're talking about.

Erica: It's like there's there's never this clean ending of like and then we're all free of these things and these limiting beliefs because no matter what happens, like life is still going on and things we haven't experienced are still coming our way, which I mean, not to toot your horn, but I'm a big believer in therapy and everybody needs a therapist, especially in the good times so that you can harness the tools they teach you and you are better Absolutely. In the bad times.

Judy: Yes. Yes.

Erica: I'll get off my therapy soapbox there. But what I what I wanna say for you, because you're my friend, but also for anyone listening, is, like, those stories, right, of failed marriages and messy relationships, like, that is what makes you so qualified to be the author, the psychotherapist that you are, and the speaker that you are. Right? Because you have lived through those experiences.

Judy: I do wanna oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I wanna go ahead.

Erica: No. No. You go. Well, I

Judy: you know what? I should have brought something to write on because there's something that you said I wanna address. Because this is something that also I have grown through, and I wanna change it in this culture because there's so many people who have really worked hard at their marriages, tried to have this family, having these babies. I grew up in an era where okay. Like, very, like, this wife's supposed to be submissive.

Judy: I wasn't this corporate person. Right? And I wasn't like, my brain wasn't even going in that direction. But my success was to be happily married and have this wonderful flowing relationship. Well, after thirty years, that just didn't happen.

Judy: That marriage came to an ending. And I know there's a lot of women who are thinking of their marriages as failed. And I wanna tell you that is not the truth. The truth is well, how I believe it according to Judy. I don't wanna come across as the truth here.

Judy: But what I believe It's

Erica: your episode. Let's do it. What's the truth?

Judy: What I believe that AIR has taught me is that I have had two successful marriages, Erica. I had to deal with, okay. I'm a twice divorced relationship therapist. Like, who's gonna come to me for therapy? Blah.

Judy: That simply is not true because I've had two successful marriages. Having a marriage that ends does not mean that it was a failed marriage. Having a long term marriage, if you've been married fifty, sixty years, does not mean that's a successful marriage because there's so many people that are and I'm saying they are under horrible stress, living in toxic situations. They are dying early. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about this.

Judy: But I my own growth, Erica, I've gotta say this. So first of all, I'm going to give a term instead of twice divorced instead I'm I've just identified myself as an uncoupled woman. Yes. I'm an uncoupled, and we're all growing, but our language makes a difference. And I'm going to not use the D word, even though the D word has to do with all that legal stuff.

Judy: And, you know, even the word like X's, I don't like even using the word, oh, my X this or X that, because that is, that's, it's harsh language. And so if we were to reframe that, and I always refer to my former husbands as former husbands. That's exactly what they are, former husbands. And it took and I'm at the stage in my life where it took both of those former husbands and those forty years of marriage in order to get to where I am to awaken me in my awareness. And another thing, I know I'm going I've got so much here because relationships are mirrors to your soul.

Judy: If you don't learn from that quote unquote failed marriage, which I'm not calling a failed marriage, I'm calling it a marriage that came to a natural completion. That doesn't mean death. Right? Or it just needed to come to a completion. And that language makes a difference.

Judy: So what can you learn from it? If you're going to live Groundhog Day over and over and over, which is what our brains will do if we don't become more aware, we're gonna go into those neural pathways that we've always known and that we have not questioned. That's where the problem is. Okay? So we need to be aware.

Judy: We need to be intentional to do something different, and we need to take risks of growth. And, yes, it was a huge risk to divorce after thirty years. Huge. Very heartbreaking. It was huge to divorce, another human being who was in the midst was not well, and he was out of tune with reality.

Judy: That was that was not a fun ride. It was traumatic. But what I now determined is like, it takes, it takes a risk of growth. And that's what drives me today. I'm living at a different level.

Judy: So I've got to tell you something. I got my haircut yesterday and I was telling in the wonderful how our, stylists are the first people to know stuff. Right? But I was telling her, I said, you know what? I used to really, I used to really be jealous or envy people that had been married forty, fifty, sixty years or forty years or twenty years or whatever.

Judy: I mean, I did reach forty years of marital experiences, but, I used to be jealous. But I no longer am because you know what? I wouldn't want that. I had to come to a point where my future and what I had planned my life to be, it was not going to be that. I will not know what it's like to have history with one other human being from my early twenties as a newly new bride to having babies to where I'm at right now.

Judy: It's just not gonna happen. But you know what? Life is so much bigger than that. I wouldn't wanna go backwards.

Erica: Yeah. Well and that's okay. Right? Like, I think we are so conditioned to think that it's not okay, but it is. And I love that you called all of that out, and I love that you are saying that these are successful marriages that have a natural completion because it does take away some of that abrasiveness that we feel like, that we have been conditioned to believe that these are bad things.

Erica: Right. And, you know, sometimes you have to leave behind jobs, friendships, marriages in order to grow. Right? And, like, we need to start looking at it like that. And one thing I will say, and I think why all of what you're doing is so important is it is very hard for ambitious driven women to say this marriage is over

Judy: Mhmm.

Erica: Because that it feels like a failure to many of us. Right? Like, I remember when Dan and I were going through some struggles and we got a marriage counselor and we were able to work through it, but I remember sitting there and thinking like, holy shit, like, I'm gonna fail at this. And, like, that's why I was it wasn't focused on, like, how can I repair this and how can we be better for each other? It was me failing, which is not the right mindset to have when you're working on fixing a marriage.

Judy: Well, let me I have something a life lesson I've learned, Erica, because, yes. And I think this applies to a lot of ambitious women. We are overly responsible for others.

Erica: Yes.

Judy: And a life lesson that I have learned and am still learning, I'm telling you, at different levels is that you cannot do for another human being what only they can do for themselves. You cannot, you can't think another person's thoughts. You can't, breathe that other person's air. But, what is important is and I guess, like, all that to kinda put it in a little funnel here. You it takes two to be married.

Judy: Stan Tacken, who's was one of my podcast guests in my podcast called Better Relationships, Better Life, he says that, yeah, like, if you're working on your marriage, it's like the sound of one hand clapping. It takes two.

Erica: I love that. That's a great visual, you know? Like, that is a great visual. Oh my gosh. I love it.

Erica: And not

Judy: to say that you don't feed into, like, I do so it's almost a paradox because I do believe that women have the power to change what I call the relationship dance. Because, again, I met my husband or my second my former husband through ballroom dancing. So everything is like an analogy of dance. Our emotions are designed to move into flow. Our lives are designed to move and flow.

Judy: We're not meant to be stuck. And, so it's like we have a part in that. Right? And a lot of times I know that there's people out there that say, yes, they change themselves as ambitious women in troubled relationships, but they're not so much working on their relationship as they are working on their own awareness, their intentions, and their risks of growth. And then that sometimes that does inspire the other one to come alongside and to partner, and sometimes it doesn't.

Erica: And sometimes you grow apart. My mom always used to say, like, two people are always growing, and you were either growing together or you were growing apart. Right? Whether that's one person, the other, or both.

Judy: Which brings me to another thing I think your, listeners need to know. When you are in a difficult, messy, even traumatic relationship and you have this outside persona, you're dealing with all this, you know, imposter syndrome. We isolate. I'm telling you. We will show our nice, wonderful, beautiful side of ourselves, but we are shamed to share with others.

Judy: So I that is why it is very important to get a therapist, but even more important than that is to get in community with people that you can grow with. And that's what so going back to, yes, you're gonna either go this way or you're gonna go that way, parallel or apart. But also I've heard it said, I'm sure you have too, that you are most like the five people that you hang out with the most. And so to make sure that if you are in a very difficult marriage and you're trying to do all this yourself, don't do that. Get with other women, other people, other supportive people, whether that's group therapy.

Judy: I totally believe in doing groups, and I'm getting further and further away from the one on one because it isolates people. And we need to be de isolated. Even with a therapist, you can be isolated. So having even a, a support system. And that's why I'm so passionate, Erica, about taking, I'm taking some women to, South America.

Judy: I'm going to Ecuador and we're doing, it's an exclusive dream retreat. Because when you get out of your space, out of your normal way of thinking, remember those neural pathways we're busting through. You go to another country, you have the guidance of a therapist or someone else is equipped to do this, you're taking yourself out of there and into a different culture. You're resetting everything. You're resetting your mindset.

Judy: You're resetting your nervous system. You are like the atmosphere is such where you can really tune in and be aware a whole lot easier, I should say, than in your daily grind of life. That's why I'm so passionate about that. And I plan on rinsing and repeating this about maybe three two, three, four times a year by if I'm lucky, but that's what I that's why I'm more not so much, psychotherapist in a private practice. I'm definitely not that kind of a therapist anymore.

Judy: I'm, very innovative, but I love the outdoor experiences, the opening up the senses. And because, you know, we have this perfectionism stuff going on. We have we have to, you know, achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. But for our own mental and emotional and relational well-being, is so very vital to get away from all of that.

Erica: I've got two questions with for you, Judy, before we wrap up. And the first one is if people wanna find out about your next retreat, if people want to figure out what you're doing, how they can get your book, all of those things, where can people find you?

Judy: They can find me at judycounselor.com. Okay. Those are why the last name's changed so many times. Okay. So judycounselor.com, or you could go, start there.

Judy: Anyway, there would be a list. And, I am also offering, like, one day immersive retreats. Like, the one that we're doing in Ecuador is gonna be seven days. So I know a lot of people, they can't take that time away, but I'm also doing one day immersive retreats. And so we're doing the next one is gonna be in October where we're doing, it's called gut grounding and relationship retreat, and it's a one day immersive for ambitious women.

Judy: So, yes, look me up there. And, I am on YouTube. Judy Herman relationships, is my handle for that. You can find me on LinkedIn, Judy, not to be confused with the Judith Herman that writes on, trauma. And, you can find my book wherever books are sold, especially the relationships, Beyond Messy Relationships.

Judy: And then the other one is on Amazon. So there you have it.

Erica: I love it. And I've got Beyond Messy Relationships. It grabs you from the jump. I'll tell you that. So if you're ever interested in reading it and you're like, I don't know.

Erica: Let me just tell you. It grabs you from the jump. And then, Judy, my final question. This is the one this is always my favorite question. But if you could go back to the Judy who, in the book, is going through it.

Erica: Right? She has finally decided I'm gonna give this marriage thing another go and finds herself in the thick of it. What piece of advice would you give that Judy today?

Judy: That's an excellent question. I would say to that, Judy, you are so worthy of dignity, love, and respect. You've got what it takes. Don't mess with don't let anybody treat you otherwise because you are a beautiful soul. Your life is worthy.

Erica: I love that. And I think that's so important, and it's such a great reminder for everybody listening because we do all struggle with our worth. And I know sometimes we think, I don't think that. I don't think I struggle with my worth. But when you allow people to treat you certain ways, when you stay in marriages that are not successful and you're just hanging out because you don't wanna quote fail at it, you're not giving yourself the dignity, the love, and respect that you deserve.

Erica: So, Judy, I thought that was beautiful. I loved it. I'm so excited. After almost a year, we have finally made this happen. We've gotten each other on the podcast.

Erica: It was so fun. Thank you so much.

Judy: Oh, thanks so much, and keep up the great work because you're an amazing woman, Erica. I know.

Erica: No. Y'all thank you so much for listening today. Judy, I mean, she has just given us such practical and insightful tools to improve our relationships, starting with the ones that we have with ourselves, which is arguably the most important one. Now for everyone listening, I hope that you feel inspired to breathe in some air into your life and make intentional shifts. Also, don't forget grab Judy's incredible book, Beyond Messy Relationships.

Erica: You can find them wherever books are sold. And if you are ready to immerse yourself in deep growth, check out her upcoming retreat. She is always, always, always planning something. So thank you again for tuning into the glass ceiling and sticky floor podcast. Y'all the book is on pre order.

Erica: You can pre order it on Amazon. You can buy it wherever books are sold, but I am so excited. It is out there in the world. It takes a lot of these stories from the podcast and it consolidates it into this really actionable book that you can use to help you shatter the ceilings that you have placed on your own life. So, as I say every time, thank you for listening and together, let us stop putting ceilings on what we think is possible.

Erica: I'll see you next time.