Episode 188: What It Means To Live Deliberately | Jasmine Carey | Writer & Editor-in-Chief of LiT Magazine
From growing up on a dirt road in Vermont to dancing in NYC with Prince, Jasmine Carey has always followed her curiosity. Jasmine crafted a life around freedom, creativity, and self-expression. A writer and teacher as well as editor of LiT Magazine, Jasmine talks about what it means to live deliberately, why storytelling bridges divides, and how we all benefit from honoring what lights us up. We get into her Quaker upbringing, her name change, and the memoir she never planned to write. It's a conversation about reverence, rebellion, and choosing joy, especially when the world tells you not to.
“Sharing our stories is the way we’re going to bridge our current gaps.
The great divide is a lot of smoke and mirrors. ”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
00:00 Being powerful means redistributing power
01:20 Meet Jasmine Carey
03:00 Why she writes and teaches unconventionally
05:10 What’s broken in the way we teach kids
07:00 Shaping the world through stories
09:20 Jasmine’s law-of-attraction fantasy series for kids
11:10 Her perspective on bridging societal divides
13:00 What it was like growing up Quaker and adopted
16:15 The story behind her name change
19:00 Meeting and partying with Prince
23:00 Looking back on her many “lives”
25:00 Why freedom, not goals, has been her true compass
27:20 The role of fun in building a meaningful life
30:10 Powerful women who shaped her
33:00 What Vermont and NYC each taught her
36:30 The stories she’s writing now
38:00 What she’s looking for next
39:00 Where to find Jasmine online
Being powerful to me means that I am Robin hooding it, and not that I'm robbing anything, but just that I'm making sure that I'm part of making things more equitable and that, i'm really thinking about the folks who may have been forgotten along the way or haven't the system hasn't been caring for.
That's Jasmine Carey, and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Hey guys. I am Kara Ducky, a business coach and entrepreneur on a mission to help you live your most extraordinary life. By showing you anything is possible. People who have mastered freedom, ease, and success, who are living their best and most ridiculous lives, and who are making the biggest impact, are people you often haven't heard of until now.
Throughout time, humans have been in search of the secret to life. What is our purpose? Where should we be focusing our energy? What truly matters? What if our only goal was to be of service to others and have as much. Fun as possible. That's what today's guest, Jasmine Carey has been exploring as a lifelong writer, dancer, and freedom seeker, and at a deeper level through her new memoir and young adult novel series from growing up in Vermont to dancing in New York City with Prince, we cover a.
In this episode, you are not gonna wanna miss this.
Welcome to the Powerful Ladies Podcast. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Let's jump right in by telling everyone your name, where you are in the world, and what you're up to. My name is
Jasmine Carey. I am looking out the window at Palm Trees. I live in Venice, in Los Angeles, California, although I grew up on the East Coast and I am currently, I'm a writer and a teacher, and so I am exploring both of those and currently unconventional ways for
me.
What areas do you write about or teach about?
So I am really interested in neural pathways and the ways that our brains develop and the ways that we, from childhood to adults shut some things down that I think we should leave open. And so I, for many years, taught creative writing and a lot of.
Experiential learning, youth development, holistic practices, how as a young person to really empower yourself.
And then moved into really just the last five years, teaching adults as well. I teach meditation, I teach mindfulness. And again, as much as possible just to. Spark creativity in people spark sovereignty in children and adults and have people see that we're supposed to be having a really good time on this planet.
How did that message get deleted as we have evolved as humans?
Great question. I think it is very much culturally taught out of us. I'm a, I've been a teacher for many, I've been a, I first started teaching in 1991, and so I've had a long arc of watching our educational system.
Watching our children and how they're being impacted and how the world is shifting. And our education system is not doing much to catch up. And so I think that, again, we really teach it out of them. I don't even. I don't like to make my children raise their hands. I don't like, I, I believe we do some wing clipping, which we would do much better to be teaching them how to fly.
And ourselves.
Yeah. No, I, I recorded a podcast earlier today 'cause I usually record a bunch back to back and we had this great conversation about how. Like, where did we as humanity lose this idea that we can create whatever we want? That anything really is possible. And we talk a lot about in the, in this country currently, about how we're divided either divided politically or by race or by gender.
And there's a shift happening towards the big divide of who has and who doesn't have, especially with home ownership. But we're missing that piece of. Who knows you can create anything and who doesn't think you can. And I, and if we, I think if we really looked at all the different demographics and where are people aligned or not aligned, that question would actually reveal a lot about how people feel about.
Society today. Society.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm writing the two things the three main things that I'm working on. So I'm Editor four Magazine, which is a global magazine right now in Spanish and English, and planning on expanding into multiple languages, which also has the.
Interesting layers of when you translate, of course you're not translating verbatim, you're translating philosophically. And so how do our cultures overlap? What do we share and what do we do differently? And it's an entrepreneurial magazine. I. Absolutely love it. It's much, I imagine like this platform really dedicated to giving voices to the voice list.
Making sure that we are really widening who we, whose voices we hear, whose stories we get to hear. And then I'm also pretty deep into a. A fictional fantasy based, but growth mindset young adult series. And I, it's based on Abraham Hicks. I'm it's based on the law of attraction.
But it's really made into like fantasy for children in a way that I think that they. Will totally get, they already living it. It's just really cementing it for them. And then I'm finally working on my memoir, so I have three huge writing projects going on simultaneously, but to me, they all speak to, sharing stories and how much stories are the ways that we're going to bridge these gaps.
I know for me, when sometimes I meet people with. Different opinions than me, different lifestyles, just something that I need to reach harder to understand. When I hear it told in a narrative way about their story, then it really comes to light for me. And so I'm interested in being a catalyst for that happening as much as possible.
I think the great divide is. A lot of smoke and mirrors, and a lot of its intentional tactical division. I don't believe it actually exists as much person to person.
No. I, traveling the world and having clients in all different places and talking to people on this show from all over the place, there's so much alignment.
And whenever I hear someone who says something that I've, I'm like, wait, what? If someone's like, why do Black Lives Matter? I'm like, time out. Hold on. What did you say? And then I'm like, how did you get there? This is so interesting to me because I totally disagree and I'm so curious how you are so far from where I am.
Absolutely. 'cause I don't believe there is actually that gap. So what was the one thing that moved you over there? Because I just wanna understand how you got to that perspective, even if I don't agree with it because. Wow. Like, how'd that happen?
Exactly. And then also we can deconstruct it.
I'm adopted. I was adopted by white people as an infant. I'm mixed race. I grew up Quaker in Vermont, so I grew up with all white people. Yeah. And I've had a lifetime of navigating conversations. Understanding a lot of perspectives I get to peripherally be in almost any situation.
I'm not necessarily an insider, but I can go anywhere and therefore I feel like Robinhood to then come back with just messages and be like, I promise you. Everybody wants the same things. I, yeah. I promise you, we all want our children safe. We all wanna be loved, just all the same things.
Yeah. Yeah, I, I agree that the more that I don't mind, not only do I not mind, I grew up, I lived in New York City for many years, so I love when we stick our feet in our mouth. It's like a horrible thing. You're like, that's how we get to the next stage of understanding each other. So I'm all about. What can be challenging dialogue, but I believe that's what moves us forward.
I imagine that there's a lot of people listening who have no idea what a Quaker is, so maybe we just tell them what it, what do Quakers believe in and what are Quakers exactly.
I've explained it and lie at a dollar every time I explain Quaker is it's a very old religion in this country. It's Christian in basis, but it's also not at all dogmatic about, frankly, anything other than very simple tenets. Leave anyone and any situation, at least as good as you found it, if not better. It's they're called Quakers because their worship is meditative and so they typically sit in concentric circles.
It's also just supposed to. Be the concept of the collective and then you meditate. Some meetings have queries, but very few. Yeah. Mostly it's just a silent meditation. You're called Quakers because. If you're sitting in silence and a message comes to you and you don't know if it's something that you need to get out as catharsis, if it's something you don't know what, who needs to hear it, but it's literally like your soul is quaking to share.
Then you stand out of the silence and you share. And so again, it's a pretty, it's a it's a relatively simple religion. It's very. It doesn't recruit nobody. Again, people dunno the about them, but they're everywhere. Everywhere I've ever lived. I lived deep in Brooklyn. My mom was like, I'm gonna find a Quaker meeting.
Sure enough she did. And they, their pacifists. They believed they were the first religion to one of the main religions to facilitate the Underground Railroad to first embrace same-sex marriage. They're very inclusive, although demographically they're. Pretty homogenous these days.
But yeah they're quite lovely. Very, even more than live and let live, they really want us all as much as possible, extending a hand to each other. And seeing the world as a global community. A lot of potlucks.
Yeah. No, growing up on the East Coast, I'm like, Benjamin Franklin was a Quaker and Pennsylvania was founded on Quaker values and like I know these things from East coast youth history.
Exactly, and we also always had Quakers meeting, especially in the car. And like the whole phrase, Quakers meeting has begun. No more laughter, no more fun. If you show your teeth or tongue, you'll pay a forfeit. And like we have to just sit there and that was the thing. As a kid, we would say it. I have no idea who taught us to that, but I still use it with my nephews.
I'm at Quakers meeting. Go think about that right now.
We are pretty, I feel like they have a little bit of a reputation for being a little stricter than at least my experience. I grew up in a very, my adoptive parents are hippies. A Quaker meeting was fun and lively. Yeah. Again it's definitely about.
Quiet and stillness. But yes, I could wear what I wanted, I wasn't the things that I feel like a lot of people associate with Quaker as dogma.
It wasn't like that in my experience. No.
I personally relate as like a chew boo, like a Christian Buddhist, which I'm stealing from 10% happier when he's I'm a ju boo.
And I'm like, oh, that's great. I'm stealing that. That's good. And so often, as you mentioned, quakerism is so close to that because it does pull in these really, we are one universal, like the power of that silence. Absolutely. And having that pause in a day holy smokes, like we know how important meditation is today, neurologically and scientifically.
And that's starting to emanate out. But to just be in a community where you honor a pause. I think that's life changing from what standard western approach to life is.
Absolutely agreed. I have a, again, I was adopted as an infant, so I'm an interesting study in nature versus nurture, especially because I had very unusual nurture situation and so one that.
It's pretty easy to see some correlative effects that probably wouldn't have happened had I grown up in the city and not on a dirt road with Quakers. But I definitely know that it, it has a grounding to it that I believe has served me in. Incredibly well throughout my life, and that I believe would serve everyone.
Not that I think that Quaker is the message for everyone at all, but just the ability to make sure that you have some silent grounding in your life.
Yeah. And to be comfortable being silent around others. Absolutely.
Yes.
Exactly. It's like sometimes it just needs to be like no. Just quiet.
Just quiet right now. Thank you. Exactly.
We all feel the space so much. Me too. I have bone mouth, but yeah, it's good to remember that silence has a lot of answers as well.
Yes. So we look back at 8-year-old, you. What did she wanna be? What did she think she'd be doing today and how close to that, or in contrast to that, are you today?
Love the question.
I am.
I feel like she's with me all the time. I. Kind of always I was I believe I'm fortunate in that I always knew what I wanted to do. I feel like I wanted four things. I wanted to write. I was already a writer. I wrote copiously even before I started school. Dream journals, poetry, everything.
I still, my mother was wonderful and kept. Copious amounts of it. I always worked with children as soon as I was bigger than somebody else, I was taking care of them. I wanted to be a dancer. I always wanted to be a dancer. And then I was really addicted to freedom, and again, hippie.
Curating that in us. We, ran in the forest all day. I i'm a brother, and we just had a lot of freedom as well as the philosophy in our home was very much about freedom. It was the seventies. And yeah, I think my name was actually Heidi. I, my parents name be Heidi. I changed it when I was 22.
So little Heidi, I think we're pretty, I think we're pretty close. She was adventurous. She really wanted to get out and see the world and was a motor. We'd already lived in Europe for years. I knew multiple languages. I knew, I wanted to make sure to see lots of different kinds of people and yeah, I would say I'd say she's probably sitting right here, yeah. I never felt very, yeah, I never felt very far away from her. And I think also much. Exacerbated, exemplified by being able to be with children forever. I'm 53 and people, my people's reception of me is nothing like that energy. My own is nothing like that. And so I feel pretty connected to eight old.
And what made you change your name?
I actually only changed, planned to change my parents divorced when I was very little. Very estranged relationship with my father. I didn't like his last name. We're not biologically related. So by the time, by, by the time I was getting high school, I was.
Casually using my mother's last name, which was my middle name. And then right after college I skipped my college graduation in Vermont to pack and move to New York City. And I was like, I don't, this is the perfect time to change it. This is the perfect time. I'm starting a new life. I went to court in my little small hometown.
You have to, go before a judge and. On the spot. I was like, you know what, I'm gonna change my first name too. And I thought of Jasmine over the years as a possible name for a child of mine. But I was like, I dunno, maybe I'll never have a daughter. I'm gonna take it on the spot. I changed it. I just moved it over.
Heidi became my middle name. Carrie became my last name. I dropped the last one. I added Jasmine. And everybody switched pretty. Quickly. My grandmother held out for a long time. But it was a pretty easy transition and again, because I was, I moved to New York City and I knew one person, so yeah.
I feel very Jasmine and Heidi. I like both.
Yes, I definitely, you occur to me this initial meeting is way more Jasmine than Heidi. Yeah.
I like both
little Heidi's
funny
too.
She used to wear later ho.
I have a Darnal at home, oh, you were nice. Me too. We
lived in Europe when I was little, so Yes.
Yep. Yep. I had you had to, I lived in Germany. If you didn't have a journal, what were you supposed to do? What were you even
doing?
Yeah. Plus, if you're gonna get one, get the real one, like it's amazing. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I actually saw a woman in New York. I was in New York two weekends ago wearing the leader hose and sweater.
And I could tell that I'm like, that is a boys' youth sweater she's wearing, there's no way that would be a regular size, but that's definitely the sweater that goes with leader hose and like, where did she get that? In New York City. Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah. She home
in Germany.
Yeah. Yeah. It was great.
But coming back to you and what it means to be powerful to you. I'm really curious what people think of the words powerful and ladies as separate words. What do those words mean when they're combined or next to each other?
Powerful to me is that
I feel like if I were up against something and I had to give my most, what I believe, what I feel like powerful stands for most to me in my life is the ability to use. The many privileges I've been given to stand for others, honestly, I feel like. I don't know. I, it's amazing to me. I complain about things sometimes too, but we're just so privileged in this country and we're, I don't know, every day I wake up that I'm just boggled by all the things available to us and all of the, just everything that we're granted every second, all day by this miraculous world, especially in this particular country.
And so being powerful to me means that I. Kind of Robin hooding it. And not that I'm robbing anything, but just that I'm making sure that I'm part of making things more equitable and that i'm really thinking about the folks who may have been forgotten along the way or haven't, the system hasn't been caring for.
I care so deeply that I know. I know it's just part of my DNA, I know it's part of my makeup. Sometimes in my life, I've tried to get away from a life of service. I always return, and and with it, with ladies, I. Women, female power is just so incredible from everything.
I don't have children. I never had children. Most of the women in my life have, and that alone is are you kidding me? Like we bring every single human walking around. A woman grew. That's just that alone is incredible. And to me, we're like. The organ of the heart that so many of our physical organs have a particular physical function, amazing.
And keep us alive and all of that. The heart has this function that is of the utmost importance, but then also has all these nuances and emotions and all these feelings, and so that's what being a woman feels like to me. It feels holy moly, we're the central functioning of everything, but then all these emotions.
Those unbelievable superpowers that we have too. So I believe in the solidarity of women that as women come together, that moving mountains doesn't even begin to speak to what can be done when women really. Create coalitions together. And so yeah powerful ladies is my gem and I know that.
I care deeply about teaching both genders and I believe that there's great value in teaching them together. I've also, many times over the years, had some programs specifically for girls and young women for the ways that we can speak to each other and. Propel each other and support each other and really make incredible things happen that, sometimes we're better at them.
Yeah, I totally get that. The battle with powerful ladies as a company and as a podcast and everything else that we do has been that. I have so many amazing men in my life whose stories I also wanna tell. So finally I was like, fuck it. They can come on too. Like they'll just be special gentlemen, guests.
It's okay. Exactly. Friends, my male friends are the ones that keep reminding me like I, that hey, we know that you love us equally, and women need this. Women need this. And everything that's happening right now in Iran alone is like just the most present reminder of. The privilege that we do have here, even with the struggles that women have in the US or in North America, it's nothing compared to what so many other women are facing minute by minute.
Absolutely.
You were referred by Anna, the magical Anna on the powerful ladies team who's given us some of the best guests we've had, and she said that we cannot step over the fact that you've had many lives that are very interesting and that you have partied with Prince. And we need to share that with everyone.
I know it's funny, I just. I always, I'm a huge journaler. I write copiously, I have since I was 10. And I have had many stories and I moved to New York City in 1991 and I 22 and just really cute, fresh out the box, off the boat. And I think back to it now, I'm frankly trying to tap hugely into it because I was such.
An unbelievable scripter and deliberate creator. I wrote when I was 14, 15 years old, maybe like 1983 in Vermont, my little bedroom. I like listened to Prince dance in the mirror, all sweaty, wrote in my journal, I still have it. I'm gonna meet Prince someday. I'm gonna dance for him. He's gonna love me. Blah, blah, blah.
The whole thing cut to, I was like. 16 years later, but still I met him. Everything that I'd written came true and then way surpassed it. And so to me, I tell the story a lot. It's funny also fighting by memoir. There's a lot of famous people that, there's a lot of, like my girlfriend who convinced me to do it, who's just finished her own has. She's going through the legal team about how many names you have to change about all this stuff. And I was like, oh my God, I can't even think about, I'm happy. I'm so sad that Prince has passed, but i'm happy that maybe I'll get to tell the story because, but it was really, I wrote that, this, that, that particular time we met.
We spent like a day and a half. It was two different nights. He sang Happy Birthday to me. I'll tell you this story if you want. Yeah, please. And also when it ended, it was so ridiculous that I was like, oh, we're gonna see each other again. It's gonna be like the third chapter of the story. And then he passed away on my birthday.
So it was really a, yeah. How does this story succinctly go? We were dancers, we were very spoiled. We were out all the time. Beautiful things. We, blah, blah. We, I went to a club that I usually went to. My best friend was already there. She was in VIP and there's like extra VIP set up with Prince right there.
And so she's come on, let's dance. So like mania and and very shortly get taken across the velvet rope. It was like four days before my 31st birthday. We sit with him, we talk with him. He's crazy. He's pretty. He's a little reserved. He doesn't seem super comfortable. Just in a club scene.
We, he says he is leaving pretty quickly. He takes my friend's number calls his person calls us like 20 minutes later and says, I want you and the birthday girl to come to the Palace Hotel. That's. You know where Michael Jackson stays. Madonna stays and everybody stays. And so take a cab there. So excited.
We get let up the back. Secret superhero, celebrity elevator. Get up to the, get to his place, have to sign an NDA immediately upon entry. It's just him. We sign NDAs and we're, I'm like, oh God. And and she, and then he is just his person leaves the three of us. And he was like the kindest.
T Human. He doesn't, he didn't drink, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't do anything. He w was, I'd never been starstruck. I'd met many celebrities at that point, and I was like, it was so hard to, I don't know if you ever saw Jamie Fox's comedy Bit about him, but really a very surreal.
Human. You were oh, you seem a little different than the rest of us. Yeah. And he kept, he, he served us breakfast, we stayed for hours. He, we played tic-tac-toe. He sang Happy Birthday to me. He was just absolutely lovely. He invited us to a party the next night. This little dated, but his party was with Q-Tip and Brandy and so amazing.
I would love to go to that party. Sure. The next night we got to the party, we'd invited other friends. We were all spoiled princesses. He wasn't there yet. The party wasn't that great. They had like VIP all for us, but none of us cared. I don't even like champagne, whatever. We were all starting to complain, like, where is he?
He invited us and he didn't even come. And then he showed up with a small entourage, not even big. And my friend, who is still one of my best friends, I call her my sister whose ego like could, couldn't have fit in the Chrysler building at the time. And she she, he, so he came and sat across the club from us.
It wasn't big. And she's we're gonna count to 10. So she counts to 10. And then she's everybody gets your stuff because he hadn't come to us. And so we go ing by him. And this is literally, I don't regret much in my life, but why didn't I just bail out of the line of ducks and stay like I don't watch.
Yeah. And so he gives me the look on his way by what I was like, ugh. And we leave, his person calls us and says, Hey, was somebody rude to you? What happened? He wants, he wasn't even Prince at the time, he was. Whatever that s Schoolly symbol was, and he was like, he wants to know if you're okay.
Is there anything he can do that's so nice? And my friend was like. You tell him, I dunno who he thinks he's to make us wait. Whatever the guy's are you being serious? Are, is this a joke? This is, she's no, you can tell him blah, blah, blah. And then we all went out to eat and everybody calmed down and she's did we just dis Prince?
And I'm like, we so hardcore. He invited, we were as guests, we were in vip. We like stormed out. So then also I thought it was gonna be, I was like, we're for sure gonna run into him again, because he's gonna remember us. He's gonna be like, oh, you two, the absolute most ridiculous little narcissist I ever ran across in my life, but then he passed on my
birthday, so it never happened. Oh, but you have an amazing experience and an amazing story.
It's terrible though. I play it with two truths and a lie with kids sometimes, but kids today don't eat, they're like, what Prince? And I'm like, no, not, they're like a prince aware.
And I'm like, no. Prints like, and they're like, who cares? It's not print. And I was like, it's more important than that. It was the
prince. What else do you need? It doesn't go when you look at all your lives that you've had, is there a tenant that you have had through life of intentionally choosing these different lives?
Have you been chasing like, oh, if it's fun, or if it's this, like how have you been creating your extraordinary life thus far?
I love the question. I, a couple years ago, spoke to a psychic and she, I said, I dunno, everybody's everybody's so goal oriented and everybody talks goal and all this.
And like sometimes the word goal, to be perfectly honest. Makes me flinch a little, yeah. And like our the kind of the way that we push drive in this country isn't very resonant with me. And so I was like, but am I doing it wrong? I know there's things. I know there's things I could be doing better to serve the world.
I know I could be stepping up to some of my skills and talents more. I know all these things. And do I really need to vastly change my perspective on like goal setting and such? And she said, Jasmine, your goal has always been freedom. That has always been your goal. If you look back at the thread of all of it now, that's the thread.
And if you look at it from that vantage point, you've always done a really good job of creating it. And I mentioned to somebody the other day, another dating it thing two can, Sam, do you remember? Two can Sam, I think it was Oh yeah. And you follow your nose, you just, and I'm currently for maybe the last five years, obsessed with Abraham Hicks and understanding deliberate creation more.
But I think I was always. Really good at it. And I think having hippie parents was helpful because I was taught to really think outside the box. And I was taught to not just take what I saw and eat it because that's what was available.
So I'd say that I just really always and fun def definitely some of the biggest crumbs on the trail.
I've always been like, Jasmine, does that suit your. I can't do things. I can't do jobs, I can't have relationships. I can't do things unless they're deeply resonant with me for very long at all. Yeah. I'm amazed by people who can, and I'm so grateful for those people who can really grind like that.
I'm not really built. Like that. And I would love to infuse others also the rebelliousness to get away from it. So yeah. I would say I'm a big freedom seeker. I'm, again, grateful to be in a country and a place where my freedom is in many ways protected and upheld.
And yeah, I feel like if I wasn't living up to what that can afford me. I don't love that word, but yeah. Yep. Then I'd be doing a disservice, yeah. I always wanna ring as much as possible out of this thing. That's what a great playground we're in.
Absolutely. It's when I'm coaching people and they're trying to figure out what's next, I always have to ask them, did you write down fun? Which one's the most fun?
Absolutely.
And I can be very logical about choices and what we're doing and how we get there. I'm good at creating the roadmaps for myself and others, but I also know that I can't choose something if it doesn't feel right.
It doesn't matter what the logic says. Here's the path to make a million dollars. And I'm like, that looks horrible. I'm going over here. Exactly. It's, there's so much more to life than. Can I pay the bills? Am I doing, the right thing? And Anna's been like, we've been working on what, how to talk about the coaching.
I do because that word rebellious keeps coming up. It doesn't necessarily fit, I think, with who I am and the vibe that we're giving, but there's a lot of fuck it in my coaching approach of, why are we doing that? That sounds real dumb and not fun. I don't even wanna make a plan for that goal.
Ew.
Yeah I'm a wordsmith too, and I think about, I sometimes use the word ient in relation to. Myself, but honestly I, if I truly broke it down, if I truly had the time to really with someone, have a conversation of what about what I meant, I think it's reverence. Yeah. I think it's reverence for what matters.
I think it's reverence for honoring that our souls wanna have fun. I think it's reverence for saying, fuck it to a bunch of the rules that are arbitrary and here to. Be obstacles, not actually openings, yeah I believe we're reverent when we're I think so many adults. I, again, I've gotten it.
I don't always speak the most professionally. I know it. There are lots of things about the way I present myself that people would be like, oh, you should, shift that to be a little bit more this. And I'm like I feel like a lot of you have really forgotten what we're here for. Yeah. Yeah. Really here to have a good time and enjoy each other.
And break bread together. And dance together and bring up the children well and yeah. Fun is really central.
And there's been so often when we think we have to show up, we're not showing up for ourselves to be more confident. We're showing up so people will actually listen to us and you're like, that is on the long list of things that we do as human adults.
That is, it's on the list of waste of our time, space. I'm all for. Having a discussion about letting five-year-olds run things because they got it and they don't have all the bullshit that we have.
Exactly. Absolutely. Or fight for a day.
Yeah. Because they're just scared. Yeah. They're just scared enough to like not fuck things up.
Like they're just, yeah. No, but I would like to see what, at least what decor changes they would make in the White House.
Exactly. Love unicorns and,
How much have powerful women influenced your life? You've mentioned your mother, you've mentioned this. Best friend. That's, I think I'm very intrigued about now.
Like how have those women and other women guided you and supported you along your path?
I feel very led by powerful women. I had three pretty negative father figures in my life growing up. I definitely had a lot more positive mentorship from women. And my mother is, she's an just unbelievable badass.
She adopted me at 23. Who does that? Let alone it was 1969, she's white. She adopted a child of color and did so intentionally. She is a documentarian. She's written movies. She's worked for the un. She travels around the world every year. She. She's my biggest example of like how to absolutely forge a path where there has not been one before.
But you just feel the knocking in your soul and you're like, she's been gonna Mongolia for 23 years. Who does that? So I had her for sure. And then just a lot of, all of my. Friends are strong women. I'm surrounded by incredible networks of women who, and even ones who aren't just caretaking families, but are really caretaking the world in different ways.
They're doulas, they're journalists, they're doctors, they're, a variety of holistic positions that are supporting the collective. And even within Quakers, I was home this summer and I went to Quaker meeting and there's all these sweet, 70 something, 80 something. We even visited on the mountain with my mom's friend who's 97, still totally with it, talking about politics and so yeah, I was fortunate to have a lot of examples of.
Liberal, a lot of very, a pretty progressive white liberal women, but again, a lot of education, a huge books always everywhere that I was, and a lot of allyship, I felt very fortunate. The male thing, father figure has been something to fill in for me for sure.
But in terms of with female role models. I feel like I've had a plethora my whole life.
Yeah. How did, growing up in Vermont and then spending a lot of time in New York City, how did those two locations imprint themselves on you, and what do you wish you could give other people that those locations gave you?
It's actually how my memoir just started. When I was home this summer, I got asked to write a piece for our hometown paper and and I could write about anything I wanted and I wrote about being a bridge I wrote about. Because for me, I. Literally almost love them equally. I couldn't live in Vermont.
But in terms of the visceral ways that it makes me feel I love being in the country. I love being barefoot. I love every season. I love pigs. Eating outta my hand. I'm a country girl. I grew up on a dirt road with no tv. I'm a country girl. I'm also such a city girl. I love, I can't get enough of the streets.
I literally I love city life. I love diversity. I love it being as dynamic as it is. I love everything about it. Interestingly, my biological parents, my mother grew up in Vermont. My father was from New York City, and so I don't know if it's embedded in my DNA but that was even when I wrote my piece about was just having, when I talked to people when I'm home, especially this summer, like people, I ran into more people than usual and people asked where I lived and, oh.
Absolute horrified. When I say LA they're like, oh, did you lose a be? I'm like, and also in New York City for years when I would go home. It's just very, such an unpalatable, just the whole idea of it. And and for city people from the city too, I think they're like, what?
That one horse boring 10, and yeah, there's such beautiful things in both and there's such, I think there's lessons within each that you can't get in the other place. And so I would love to have folks just. Not that I think that anybody would necessarily do the exploration in the way that I did of both.
But to just be open that, and especially as. Overlap or happening. And in my small town it was really interesting to notice because of there are many moves prompted by the pandemic. That wouldn't have happened otherwise, and so it's changing the landscape of the demographics, people who wouldn't necessarily come.
And so for me it would just be nice for people just. See, be able to like really see the value in both and hopefully like me be able to get some of both, looking at stars at night with fireflies outside without a locked door in sight. What an experience. And also being in a packed stadium with every kind of person with a collective experience in a city.
Also one, yeah, I'd like people to open their minds.
I keep forgetting that my friends in California have never experienced two things that grew up there, fireflies and a snow day. Yeah. I'm like the, I don't know how to tell a child story without those two pieces. What? What were you doing when I was doing that?
And it really is the same way as it is for people there about here, I had a girlfriend here in Los Angeles who grew up in Texas, who went to Vermont for the first time this summer, and she wrote me from it and she was like. What is this? And I was like, I know. And she's like this every, it's hard to even put into.
And I was like, I know. So I stumbled because I know you're like syrup and green grass. It doesn't do it justice, but yeah,
it does. It. I love that your mother loves Mongolia. It's one of the coolest places I have been to.
Oh, she would love that you've been Yeah. She's written I'll send you the info.
She's done three documentaries. She wrote a book. She married a Mongolian man. My third, second stepfather was Mongolian. Yeah, she believed she was Mongolian in a past life.
Ooh. She's this cute little
white Quaker lady
with the wrath of kahan in her. Yeah,
absolutely. Yeah. No our home now is transformed at home.
It almost looks like the inside of a yurt. There's all Yeah. She's so funny.
Yeah, no, I got to take the Trans Siberian railroad in and then had a driver and two friends and we literally just say to other people's yurts across the country for 10 days.
Oh my
God. It was pretty amazing. When we look at how 2022 is going and building into, and starting to create things for 2023, what are you looking forward to excited about?
What does this next chapter look like for you?
I'm nothing but excited. I am, my memoir is so fun. I had no plans to do it again. It really was just born, I started it eight days ago. I have 15,000 words in, so Wow. I write really quickly. It'll also be fun to then go back over my journals.
Like I plan to, of course pepper actual things from my journals in. And so that's a fun project and one that my message in it is also still to have people see how much of a dichotomy exists within all of us, and to hopefully move past some judgements, like if you learn a certain thing about a person and then it colors.
The whole when you see them and be like, oh my gosh we're not 3D. We're like a thousand d. So that's exciting. Both as cathartic for myself as well as pretty excited and a lot of good stories. And then I'm really excited about the. Young adult series. I'm proud of it. I think it's timely.
I think our young people, I know our young people need it. I want them, I taught on Zoom for a fair amount during the pandemic and. Especially during our early scary parts, I would wanna be nothing. I always wanna be nothing but encouraging for our young people, but then it felt extra important.
Yeah. And so I would talk to 'em about how they're gonna be these new little superheroes, they had this situation and they're gonna know things and do things differently than some of us before. And so I started the series in the height of the pandemic and. Just had dancing in my mind. All these little people who I want them, I wanna build their resilience.
I believe they need it more than ever. And also, I love that I chose protagonists who are typically not the star. There's disabled children and children of color and there's and so I wanted to be kids who don't usually get the kind of main character hero position. And I'm really excited about the magazine.
I'm excited about what we're putting out. I'm excited about all the networking connections that we're creating. I saw amazing movie. If you wanna leave this in for everybody. Muley, M-U-L-L-Y. It's father to the fatherless. It's the story of this man in Kenya who threw a long series of events. At the end of it, he literally, during one of the largest droughts in their history.
Found water and basically created his own ecosystem and then all these ways to support children on the streets and such. But I, that's the way I think about it's just doing what I can to create how, however much of a metaphorical ecosystem as I can. Yeah, act with other people's tree roots and just make us just be as much as I can, a piece of the puzzle that's helping move things forward for everyone.
I feel lighter.
And to feel more connected and to throw off a lot of the trappings that are both dividing us from each other and from the way we're really supposed to be riding this ride. Yeah.
We ask everyone on The Powerful Ladies Podcast, where you put yourself on the Powerful Ladies scale.
If zero is average everyday human, and 10 is most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today and where would you put yourself on average?
Okay, I give myself an eight today. I give myself, I don't give myself higher because I want to, I'll give myself higher when I'm producing more, when I actually have books on the shelves, when I have things, when I have programs out there.
Right now, I feel like I'm in a good period, but a behind the scenes period. It's something where I'm. Producing that much that's actually has output. And so when I get back to an output stage, I'll give myself higher. But right now I'll give myself an eight. And overall in my life, I think I still, I don't think I really ever come in under an eight.
I've always been remarkably brave and just I'm very willing to jump without a net and I always was. Yeah. Solid
eight.
Then we also wanna give you time to share with everyone where they can follow you, find you connect with you, cheer you on. So where's all the places they can do that? Okay.
My Instagram, which is mostly just me spilling my edges all out everywhere. If you look at my Instagram, you. I believe you'll get a pretty good picture of what I like.
And that's Hanuka, J-A-S-M-I-N-U-C-A. And then my website is the right next step. So the right next step, W-R-I-T-E. And the magazine is Lit Magazine, it's LIT. It stands for Leaders in Transformation. You can find 'em all online, of course. Anything else? Yeah, those would be the three places. I'll plug the other stuff when it's more, more coming to fruition.
Love it. Please tag us so we can share it and promote it when it's ready. Okay, I'll, and then we've also been asking everyone this year, this is a really big and powerful and resourceful heart leg group. So what do you need? What do you want? What? What can someone help you solve or find?
I love it.
The thing that I write in my dream journal, the thing that I want currently more than anything is a publisher. I want a publisher. I look into self-publishing and I, during the process of writing both the pieces that I'm writing, I, I. Forever considering whether to self-publish or have a publisher.
I believe that I would prefer to have a really aligned publisher. Yeah. Hay House would be my favorite. I'm not typically what they do, but I also know that I think it would be a nice. I think it would be an amazing and timely addition for them to branch out into children's literature and usually their self-help in a different kind of way.
But I think by bringing in children's literature, we wouldn't do it in the same way as we would with adults. And so I would love Hay House but really just a publisher that I feel aligned with and that I'm willing to put my two babies in their hands. Yeah.
I would also recommend looking at Chelsea Green Publishing.
Okay. If you've heard of them. And then I also have a client who's an independent publisher who's amazing. So I'm happy to do an intro there too. Okay. That would be wonderful. And everyone else listening who, send 'em your way. It's been such a pleasure to meet you today and to share your energy and your zest for life.
And just be clear. Focus you have about being a contribution and doing it with as much fun and happiness as possible. So thank you for everything that you do and who you are, and. Yeah, just for sharing your story with us today. Thank you so much too.
I'm very much enjoyed,
powerful. Ladies,
all the links to connect with Jasmine on our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and please leave us a rating and review. They're so useful in helping us find new, amazing listeners like you. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me, please visit kara duffy.com or find me on Instagram at Kara Duffy.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Instagram: @jasminuca
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
