Finding Alignment and the Ability to Return to Yourself Again and Again

Valerie Friedlander 0:00
Hello, my friends and welcome to another episode of Mindset, Unlimited: Mindset tips, tools and inspiration for women in a time of change. I’m your host. Valerie Friedlander, ICF, certified coach, sociologist, intersectional feminist artist, mom and nerd. Today we are talking about finding alignment and returning to yourself again and again. And that and again is important, because so often we think if we did it right, then things will just work. And alignment is a process. It’s dynamic. It’s not static. Yet, too often we are using things like the idea of alignment in this world, where we have sound bites, about sound bites on sound bites, we throw words around a lot, and then we end up using these really helpful ideas as a way to beat ourselves up. So I want to make sure that you can harness the power of the idea of alignment, and be able to engage it with intentionality in a way that feels supportive for you, just like going to the chiropractor and having your spine aligned. It’s not something that stays in alignment, because our muscles are used to firing in certain ways, and it tends to pull our back out, and we need to go back to the chiropractor. It also helps if you have the ability to work with someone who understands how muscles work and the somatic fitness dynamic to help release those muscles so that they’re not always pulling but these are the kinds of patterns like we hold patterns in our bodies, our brains like patterns. And so when we’re entering a period of change, and we’re in a period of societal change, a lot of times, people are coming to me when they are wanting to create change in their life and they’re worried that they’re going to disrupt the things that are important to them. They’re going to make a change that is meaningful, but then it’s going to cause sacrifice in other areas that they don’t want to cause sacrifice in all of those things can create tension and change also just naturally has tension, and so those muscles that are used to firing when there’s tension fire and pull us off course, instead of helping us lean into the opportunities and plant the seeds of those opportunities of change and alignment is a big part of what helps us engage so that we can move and build those muscles that we want, that help us create and build what we are looking for in our own life, as well as in the world. So I wanted to make sure we dug into that word, and I knew that I wanted to talk to my friend Kim Romaine about this, because she like, I use this a lot in her business. It’s in her business title as well. And I then also heard her talking about it with her podcast partner Louise Neal on their empowered and embodied show recently in the episode, finding your center in the midst of chaos. And I was just solidified that like Kim was the person to talk to. So let me introduce her. Kim guides purpose driven leaders and visionary teams to bridge strategy and soul so their work, well being and impact can align with greater ease. Her work is part strategy, part soul and full on alchemy. She’s not here to fix you because there’s nothing to fix. Instead, she helps you clear the noise, honor your energy and create impact without betraying your body or your values in the process, she walks beside you while you remember who you are beneath the burnout and the Bs. As co host of the empowered and embodied show and the founder of the rising visionaries, Kim curates spaces for deep and honest conversations about what it really takes to lead, live and create from a space of alignment with more ease, more clarity and a whole lot more self trust. So you can probably see why Kim and I are so aligned, and she is the perfect person to talk about alignment with. So some of what we’re talking about in this episode include how to tell the difference between belonging and fitting in in your body, what alignment really feels like and why it’s not fixed, or about getting it right, or being perfect, understanding resilience in a way that is supportive and not about the way it’s been weaponized in our society, about like, “Oh, you’re so strong.” As well as reclaiming your power to choose even in those hard moments. I know you’re going to love this episode. I’m thrilled to share it with you. So now, without further ado, let’s get started.

Valerie Friedlander 5:30
Welcome Kim. I’m so excited to have you on Mindset Unlimited.

Kim Romain 5:35
So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Valerie Friedlander 5:37
Absolutely for those who have not listened, I was on Kim’s show recently. I’m going to have a link to that in the show notes as well. So I we always have amazing conversations.So you’re you’re going to love this one. I know already, Kim, would you share just a little bit about you before we get started?

Kim Romain 5:57
Absolutely happy to it is my least favorite question to answer, tell me about yourself. I so that’s that’s starting off with who I am. I am a recovering attorney. I’m a recovering nonprofit executive who has leaned into we’re going to call it spirituality, because I don’t really know what term else to use there who’s leaned into spirituality into more matriarchal, indigenous ways of being to lead not only my business but other socially focused organizations, both for profit and non profit, forward and that comes from a place of deeply understanding and deconditioning ourselves from everything that we have brought with us into this life and learned during this life that is not serving our future evolution. So that’s like the tiny little snippet of who I am. I’m also a mom and a wife, and I love both of those roles as well as the work that I’m doing in the world. And yeah, that’s me.

Valerie Friedlander 7:06
Yeah. So one thing that listeners will probably notice is that Kim and I, we’re not the same person, but we have walked very similar paths, and so I think that’s one of the reasons why we get along so well.

Kim Romain 7:20
Absolutely.

Valerie Friedlander 7:21
So to that, I’m curious to hear your reflection on the next question I always ask, which is, what is a limit that you took for granted that you have since unlearned?

Kim Romain 7:36
Yeah, this is a big one, because there I feel like there are a lot, there are a lot, there has been a lot of unlearning in my life. And I think the the one that’s on my heart right now that I kind of want to speak to comes from a place of ancestral knowing or ancestral connections. And my family is on my dad’s side. He was an only child, very small family from the Midwest. My mom is from this very large, very boisterous family, also from the Midwest, but originally from Russia and so, lots of stuff going on in that family, and then very quiet on the other side, when I think of family, I think of my mom’s side of the family, and I always struggled with, where do I fit in? Where do I belong in this big, vast group of boisterous, beautiful human beings? And I never really felt like, Mister my dad’s family, his mom died when I was seven, and his dad passed before I was born, so I didn’t really have a lot of other people to kind of go, oh, I belong here. And the limitation that I felt in that was I didn’t fit. I didn’t grow up. There were two central hubs of where this family grew up. Part of it was in the Midwest. Part of it was in California. We lived in Massachusetts. So every time I would come in, I was coming in. I wasn’t part of and when I moved to Chicagoland area, I was there for 21 years before we recently moved out. I had this expectation that I was going to be part of, and after 21 years, I still felt that limitation of being outside. And so what I had to unlearn was that this idea that just because we’re born into this ancestral, generational, vast lineage, we don’t always feel like we’re part of it, and that’s nothing about the individuals that are within that lineage. Lovely, beautiful, wonderful humans that I just never felt a part of. And so what’s sitting on my heart as you ask that question is, Where did, where did the unlearning come in? The unlearning came in that I am complete, even if I’m not a part of something that I thought I was always just naturally a part of

Valerie Friedlander 10:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that totally makes sense. I’ve been connected with a lot of people that go with chosen family, and that’s where they find belonging, and so I think that’s a really important part of our understanding that we can connect and we can find belonging, and it doesn’t have to be places that we think we are supposed to or should that just because we don’t fit into those places doesn’t mean that we don’t belong somewhere, that we don’t fit somewhere, that we’re not connected somewhere.

Kim Romain 10:58
Yeah, it’s been really hard. So like I said, I moved out of so I was there for 21 years, and I moved out, not just out of the Chicagoland area. We moved out of the country to although many people don’t think of it as another country it is. We moved to Canada. We moved to Quebec. And I felt really lost at first, because I didn’t have family that I could lean on here, and it was through that unbundling of saying, but what did I really get from being with family? There was I getting what I needed, and sometimes I did, sure, but in that 21 years that I was there, it was something very different than what I expected, because I was limiting the idea of belonging.

Valerie Friedlander 11:46
Hmm, would you say a little bit more about that?

Kim Romain 11:49
Yeah. So again, growing up hearing family first, right? Like it’s like we’re in this together. We have this, like, clan it. It’s a sense of where do you belong, right? It’s that. It’s the knowing where you belong and being told where you belong, and actually feeling and embodying belonging are two very different things, and so I had to unbundle that concept for myself, because there was a sense of belonging being in Chicago, in close with my family, and yet there was also a disconnect, where I never totally felt like I did belong. And when I removed myself, and I had this longing for belonging, I recognized that I wasn’t seeking them. I wasn’t seeking the family. I wasn’t seeking that unit. When I was looking for belonging, it was finding belonging, first within myself and then from under conduits, other connections in my life.

Kim Romain 13:03
Yeah, it’s interesting a couple I guess it was last season I had a conversation with Amena Chaudhry where we talked about the difference between fitting in and belonging, and how so much of our society is pushing towards fitting in like we really don’t understand belonging. Truly, we have a basic need for it. Connection is like a basic component of our our biology is connecting with others, and it’s become distorted in our society into fitting in.

Kim Romain 13:38
Yeah.

Valerie Friedlander 13:39
And in some places like that, we, you know, our family of origin, that can also very much become a place of fitting in. I often think of it in terms of like or social connections. And like growing up and being in school and I was bullied, so I learned that you had to fit in to be safe, and like trying to fill that need of belonging, but it becomes this space of, I don’t necessarily know, like, if you’re so young when this is happening and and the pressures are just kind of all around you, of fitting in, how do you know what belonging actually is versus what fitting in is? And I think that goes to like, questions of like, what is authenticity, but also to what I reached out to you, because I was like, I think you’re the person to talk about, because we both use the idea of alignment. It’s in our our chosen job title of alignment, and I as a word nerd, think that we often use words like alignment without really understanding what they are. And I think the idea of alignment really comes to that deep embodied knowing of belonging. Like, how do you create alignment? Is that deep? Embodied sense of belonging. And I’m pointing, I’m I’m pointing to, like my my chest, like this heart area. And I think that’s probably just a space that I experience. It actually probably a little bit lower of like that solar plexus, and I recognize it a little bit more when I I feel the lack of it. And that goes into like, attachment stuff. I’m I’m in a training right now that you and I have talked about, because you’ve taken similar trainings around somatic attachments and somatic work, and that’s where I feel that gap, when I’ve stepped outside of my own boundaries to try and connect with someone else, and felt a void right, which I experienced is like this, is that if I belonged, I wouldn’t need to break my own boundaries, or, like, my own sense of self. I’m using boundary in the way that they’re using it, which is not the way that a lot of people use it. So I need to be cognizant of that.

Kim Romain 15:59
Yeah, that energetic boundary,

Valerie Friedlander 16:00
The energetic boundary of my myself, my self possession. I step out of my own self possession into that enmeshment, you know, breaking my own self to reach someone else. And when that void is there, I feel that here in my solar plexus and like a sucking wound, like a like black hole sort of feeling. So that’s how I recognize the not like the the absence of or the within myself. So I would love to know, like when you talk about alignment, what does that mean to you?

Kim Romain 16:36
So I want to step back just for a second, because there some of the words that you used in there, I think are important to go forward with this concept. Is fitting in is survival, right? So if we really think about fitting in a survival, we’re going to experience fitting in in our bodies as though it is survival, right? Where can I be safest?

Valerie Friedlander 17:02
Yeah.

Kim Romain 17:04
Maybe I’m not fully seen, maybe I don’t even know who I really am, but how do I make sure I’m safe? Belonging comes from being. I think there’s no mistake there that belonging and being start with the be, yeah, and, and that comes back to this place of alignment. Because we, when we’re being, we are aligned. We can’t, we can’t be in a space… This is going to be a little little esoteric for a moment, but when we are being, we can’t be misaligned when we’re truly being, because there’s no aspect of doing. And I’m not saying we should experience our entire life from a place of beingness, but is from that place of beingness that we understand what is truly aligned. And it is completely internal. It is not affected by the external and that beingness, that alignment, is what creates that conduit that connect, that opportunity for connection, where belonging can begin to exist. So even belonging starts with being, starts with becoming aligned.

Valerie Friedlander 18:41
Mmmm

Kim Romain 18:43
Right? And so when I think of what is alignment, what does it mean to be aligned? To me, it means to be in in connection with what our deepest knowing is, and that is from a physiological, from an emotional, from a psychological, from a somatic, and from a spiritual level. So we’re actually experiencing all those levels together, and we’re saying, I can breathe, right? So that’s where I start from with that sense of alignment. This is, so it’s not, it’s not the one of the things, like, All right, everybody, let’s get aligned now. It’s, it’s something much bigger than that.

Valerie Friedlander 19:36
Yeah, well, so, I mean, so often we approach these things from a cognitive standpoint.

Kim Romain 19:41
Yeah.

Valerie Friedlander 19:41
And, I mean, this is a podcast where we’re pretty in the cognitive right now. And I think that’s such a important distinction talking with coaches. There’s that whole conversation of like, we’re not human doings. We’re human beings. This is one of the things that I get it reason I say we use words and we don’t always understand them, and I don’t even just mean I think there’s a cognitive understanding of them, but then there’s also the multi layered understanding of them, and when we keep them in the cognitive understanding only, we’re not going to be in alignment, because it’s top heavy. It’s not even in, like, a full understanding. And so we say that a human being versus human doing, it’s like, well, what does that even mean? Like…

Kim Romain 20:35
Well, it’s why we can’t experience, we really can’t experience transformation. And again, another buzzword. We can’t experience what true transformation means if we’re living in the sound bites, and that’s what we’re being spoon fed out there in the world, are just sound bites, and then we’re supposed to make sense of it when we don’t actually know what it means.

Valerie Friedlander 21:01
Yeah, yeah. And I do think you know, because we’re so cognitive, it helps to have that understanding kind of come through, but then we need to bring it down, like, how do we bring it down into our bodies. And I love, as you were talking about that being part of it, what comes to mind for me is the pause, that pause and connection like alignment is in that connection, as you said, and then engaging doings like we think of, how do I do the doings in alignment? And it’s like, well, actually, before I even say anything about it, I’m curious what your thoughts are on that if we’re being and we’re not doing, like, how do we carry alignment into our doing? Like, what does that look like as we engage this deeply unethical society and like, the spaces in which we really can’t function full like, we have to function in the society that has all of these things. What does it look like to stay aligned?

Kim Romain 22:06
How do I stay aligned when I have to pay my bills kind of thing?

Valerie Friedlander 22:08
Yeah, let’s go with that.

Kim Romain 22:12
So it’s again, we’re not we’re not sitting on a mountaintop somewhere. We are actively in our lives, and that does mean that we fall out of alignment all the time. And the goal is not to maintain perfect alignment. I take, I take a lot of examples out of from yoga, from my own yoga practice, which I am, like, people say Yogi to me when I go to a yoga class and I’m like, Please don’t call me that, because I am the furthest thing from it. But I enjoy a good yoga practice. I fall all the time. I fall out of poses. I am challenged to do certain poses. Anything with balance has always challenged me. Do I get better? Sure, but I right. I’m not a flexi, bendy balance kind of gal, and to stay in alignment is not like the the goal of a good yoga practice is not to be in perfect alignment the entire time, is to use alignment as a return point. And so how we do the things, how we, you know, pay our bills, and still live in alignment, is by using alignment as the return point. And I think that’s what gets lost all the time in this again, in the sound bites, right? We’re told to live this certain way, but we’re not. It’s not explained that to integrate that into our lives means to use that as a centering point, as a return point, because, of course, we’re going to live our lives and and deal with the shenanigans of the world, and we have somewhere to return to, yeah, but we have to start with having that place to return to, and then continue to grow that place to return to, because that’s not a static thing.

Valerie Friedlander 24:14
Yes, yes, absolutely. And, and it’s something that we are conditioned to disconnect from,

Kim Romain 24:21
Yeah.

Valerie Friedlander 24:22
And we’re much more manipulatable when we aren’t connected to that. And taking the space to connect to that is something that’s really pushed out from us, the urgency, the rushing, the you know, again, back to the sound bites of like, no, not hustle culture. Like, we need to step out of hustle culture. What does that mean? What does that look like when there’s so much pressure and there’s so many things that feel like, feel like, and do often need urgent response. And I, I think about like, what does that pause that that space of decision? Knowing and knowing that there’s going to be safety, whatever the decision is, I might decide to stand on one leg and then I fall over, but I also know that I can get back up and I can do I can either. I can do it again. I could stand on both legs. I can sit on the floor like I have choice within that of what feels aligned when I’m connected to that space, like, what, what movement, what position feels like? It’s what I need to be.

Kim Romain 25:34
Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s understanding the choice within it. And then again, there’s a sound bite, right? It’s like, and I’m, I am 100% guilty of this one, because I say it all the time, you are always in choice, yeah. Now I follow that up with, I try to follow that up with, what does that actually mean? It does mean that you can choose to pay your mortgage or not. You can choose that. You can choose to pay your electricity bill or not. You can choose to to punish. I hate that word, right? Admonish. Whatever you can make those choices. What are the outcomes? We have free will, and we give it away freely all the time by not thinking that we have choices, but by just saying you’re in choice and not having a landing zone of alignment, right? Let’s bring in. We can talk about values. We can talk like all those other aspects that help us bolster our alignment, because that’s really what our values do, our values and beliefs, I believe, bolster when we’re aligned. If we don’t have that to begin with, then it makes it really, really hard to choose, and it doesn’t diminish the fact that you still have choice. But I don’t think we have that conversation. We just say, right, you’re always in choice.

Valerie Friedlander 27:08
Yeah. Well, so often we’re.. even our autopilot is choice, like what we what we always do, the little decisions that we make are still choices, and if they aren’t, if they don’t feel supportive, if they feel off, that’s when we get to go back to that spot and explore. Like, what is that? What is the feeling of offness? Right? Like, what is the feeling of a no, what does a no feel like? What does a yes feel like? And I mean, then that’s pretty like, that’s even more simple than really the whole thing is, but like to notice, like to notice what the body says. Like, what is your body saying, what is that? And so often I think, well, I observe that people discount that, oh, I’m just sabotaging myself. And this is something that really irks me, is that, oh, I’m just sabotaging myself. I’m getting in my own way because I’m not doing these things or whatever, and it’s like, but is that what that is? I mean, maybe it could be, but it could also be that there’s something there that’s calling for your attention, yeah, that needs care, even if it’s not like, Oh, I’m not going to choose the thing that this is telling me to choose. But there’s a reason it’s there telling me to choose it, so rather than just be like, shut up, right?

Kim Romain 28:49
That’s that admonishment that I was talking about.

Valerie Friedlander 28:51
Yeah, exactly. Rather than just, you know, admonishing it to say, hey, what do you what’s going on? Why are you yelling? Right now, what do you need that you’re yelling about this with whatever words you learned to use to call for my attention, which may or may not be the meaning behind the words. Like little kids, you know, they use certain words, and that’s not what they mean, but it’s the words they know to use. It’s the words they have access to.

Kim Romain 29:21
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that place, I think you know, as you were sharing that I think of how often we’re like, well, just push through. Well, pushing through means that you’re turning off an acknowledgement that you have a lot of systems telling you you’re done, maybe for the moment, maybe for longer than the moment. Who knows, explore that. But this is again, we’re living in alignment. Doesn’t mean we are always in alignment. It means we recognize it, because it’s true. You know, I’ll give an example. Yesterday I was working on. Project for a client, and internet went out, was out for two hours. That was the window I was going to work on this project for my client. And power came back on. I started working on it, and I said, Okay, I’m going to give myself a smaller window, but I’ll do it so that I can then do the other things that I had planned for the day. I got to a point in that smaller window where I was like, I’m gonna just push through. I and I heard myself with those words, and I checked in and I said, what else needs attention in this moment, and why is it important to quote unquote, push through? That was me returning to alignment. I did, quote, unquote, push through. I did finish the project. I actually went further in the project than I expected, but it was in that moment that felt aligned, even though it was challenging. Right? And so I got to the end of it, and I went, Oh, that was okay. Yeah, I feel good about that choice, even though I’m physically mentally exhausted at this point, because that was lot more than I was expecting.

Valerie Friedlander 31:09
Yeah, and then there’s that, the next piece of checking back in and getting into alignment again. And I love that. It also makes me think of the other word that we throw around, that I wanted to talk about, because it relates to this concept as well, of the idea of resiliency.

Kim Romain 31:31
Oooh the R word.

Valerie Friedlander 31:32
Uh huh. Uh huh. And it’s come up, it actually the most well, it comes up all the time, but one of the things that pinged for me was in some of the work that I do with the school, there’s an equity framework, and one of the words, it’s got several words in this framework, and one of them is resiliency, and they reused, in the definition it they reused resiliency to describe resiliency. And I was like, huh, that that always like highlights for me, that there’s there’s some, there’s an understanding that is missing. And you know, with equity, it says, acknowledge that this work can be difficult and requires resiliency. Okay, but what does that mean? So I asked, well, do I know what resiliency means? I use the word a lot like, do I understand it? And per the Merriam Webster online dictionary, resiliency is the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation, caused especially by compressive stress, and to an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. I’ve had several conversations about how resiliency gets weaponized. Oh, yeah. And I think that particularly pertains to systems and when we’re talking about systemic harm and what resiliency is. And I think it’s important to understand what resiliency is also from a like a person. So this is what I said to you when I sent you a Vox, and I was like, I want to have a conversation about this. And it was that, because of a deeply unethical society, we learn to function a compressed state. So when we think of resiliency, one, there’s often the pressure to be resilient when you are constantly being compressed. And instead of like organizations and systems and stuff, saying, maybe you shouldn’t have to be resilient, maybe we need to create the space where resiliency isn’t necessary, but instead it’s like, we’re going to help you be more resilient to our oppression. Like, what is that? That’s so that’s one way, but then the other way is to say, Okay, we need within this, like, equity framework and stuff, like, we’re talking about a school system. And while I believe in public schools, my kids go to public school. I support public schools. I also recognize that there’s some major flaws that need to be addressed. I think that’s true of lots of things, and it’s part of a system. And to say we need to be resilient suggests what I see often is when the uncomfortable spaces get engaged, we go a little bit and then we snap back to the problematic ways that we function. So that’s the system being resilient, but in its continuation of the compression that individuals experience, so we tend to snap back to what’s familiar, which feels like being resilient, when really it’s just a return to the compressive stress that we don’t actually know any different from. Yeah, so I’m curious, what are your thoughts on resiliency and in its relationship to alignment?

Kim Romain 35:02
So little bit of backstory here. I worked in disaster recovery as a disaster recovery consultant for a while, and in disaster recovery, resiliency is the capacity to bounce back after a challenge, right after a crisis and bounce back, very much as you were talking about right, to find ourselves again after that place of compression, we need to have this is how I and I’ll get into what resiliency is in a second. But this is the clear connection to alignment. For me, we have to have somewhere to go back to. And if we don’t, then we are misaligned. If we are in alignment, we do have somewhere to go back to. And whether that’s beingness within our individuality, right, within our own selves, or if it is beingness, right, that centeredness within our organization or within our community or within our school, right, that’s a shared place of alignment. How do we find those places? How do we get to those places? So that’s the bounce back component of it. Where are we bouncing back to? We have to know what that is. We have to know where it is, and we have to know how to get there. Resiliency. To me, I actually stopped using the word for a while. I was like, this dirty word, you can say the F bomb all day. To me, don’t say resiliency. Don’t say that word, because it had been so weaponized, and it continues to be so weaponized. And in particular communities, it’s like, it’s, it’s thrown out there as this backhanded com compliment of, you’re so resilient. No, I don’t I like I was not brought into this world to be resilient. I’ve softened on that stance a little bit on my don’t say the R word to me, because what I do understand a little bit more now is the importance that resiliency, true resiliency, plays in our lives when we have those external forces that are continually compressing us, we can’t within that have a place to bounce back to not from that compression. Our resiliency comes from our own alignment and what we allow to affect ourselves outside of that? So I’ve only lived one this one way of being right as a white woman in this world. So I will fully own. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a different, oppressed body. So again, there is some privilege in what I’m saying, and I recognize it. In that in the conversations, in the learning that I have undergone, there is an element of disowning, disavowing, removing this external pressure from our vernacular around what resiliency entails. So it’s not about being resilient about what’s coming at me, compressing me from society. I’m resilient in my own life, in my own choices, in my own alignment, and that has nothing to do with the quote, unquote resiliency that I have in my oppressed state.

Valerie Friedlander 38:49
Yeah. Could you give an example of that? Because I know, I’m sure that people are listening like, Oh yeah, yeah. But like,

Kim Romain 38:55
What is what the hell does that even mean?

Valerie Friedlander 38:57
Yeah. What does that mean?

Kim Romain 38:58
Yeah. So an example of that would be this place where I’m going to go back to when I was practicing law, because talk about being in the system, right? So I felt very compressed by being in the system. I had judges tell me not to show up in their courtroom because I wasn’t, quote, unquote, dressed appropriately because I was not in a skirt, I was in pants. Oppressive system telling me how I was supposed to show up for me to be, the definition of what they’re telling us resiliency is would mean that I would be okay. I would come to a place of acceptance with their definition of alignment, I align with them, therefore I am resilient. Instead, my resiliency came back to say to my boss, I am not going into that courtroom again. Here’s my caseload. You find me enough. Their caseload because I refused to work with that judge. That was one way that I dealt with it. I stood up for myself. The other way that I dealt with it was I did go into there with another pantsuit, and I took the brunt of it. My concern was that my clients were going to take the brunt of it, which is why I continued to advocate for myself in my own resiliency, to say I will not partake in that part of the system. We will get right. We’ll change courtrooms if we need to, if we can. And that within the system is hard enough in and of itself, right? You have to give reason. You have to show bias, and I didn’t have any other than he didn’t like me, and that’s not enough. So that type of resiliency is I’m not going to conform to their version of what an aligned state is. I have my own aligned state, and I will return to that. So I will return to my own state, stasis of resiliency, not theirs.

Valerie Friedlander 41:11
Yeah, and that’s that self container. Like I have a sense of my self container, which can involve, as you mentioned, like knowing cognitively, like what your values are and what’s important to you and what you prioritize related to those values. But it’s also that sense of self. The being space. To be able to tap into that and have room for yourself to take up space.

Kim Romain 41:39
Yeah. And that’s really hard to do. Right? It’s to have that place of… you were talking about boundary right to where that energetic boundary is, to understand yourself, how you can bolster that, through your values, through your beliefs, through right, all those aspects, and then from there to energy. Energetically allow that to create space for yourself where you know where the boundary is. So right, in the courtroom, example, my boundary was not going to allow me to cross that threshold, because crossing that threshold would mean that I was going against something that was within my alignment. Now, if I didn’t have a choice, which I didn’t one day, which is why I showed back up, and I was like, Sure, I’m going to show back up, but I’m still staying within my boundary. I’m saying this is a really beautiful pantsuit, and I feel very comfortable and confident in it, and I’m not going to wear a skirt, because you think that I’m, you know, identifying as a woman, so I should show my legs, because that’s disgusting.

Valerie Friedlander 42:48
Yeah, and that, that’s that idea of, you know, a boundary system, not just, you know, a rigid so often we talk about, like, these rigid boundaries of, I just don’t do this, and that is another aspect of how we fall out of alignment with ourselves. Is because of the rigidity to it. It, it has it has adaptability to the moment, because of that connection. So that importance of returning to yourself and checking in realigning, and then making those choices, and then returning to yourself so that, you know, okay, I am staying in alignment, and I can come back to that always, that’s always there, and we need other people to support that. Because that’s also how we we understand ourselves in relation to the world, is through other people and having those supportive spaces and those supportive people who can help us do that work. Because I, when I say about this work, often, is that this is your this is your sacred work, and you’re not meant to do it by yourself.

Kim Romain 44:02
Yeah.

Valerie Friedlander 44:03
So with that in mind, where can people find you?

Kim Romain 44:07
I love that. So my website is, is a good place if you want to kind of read a little bit more about me and see some of the things that I’m doing the world I tend to play on LinkedIn and a little bit over on Substack as well. And you mentioned the podcast that you were on The Empowered and Embodied Show where you can check out myself and my co host as well.

Valerie Friedlander 44:31
Fabulous. All right, so I always wrap up with two questions. One is, what does it mean to you to be unlimited? As we talk about boundaries…

Kim Romain 44:40
Exactly, well, and it’s interesting, right? Because it’s, to me, a boundary is a bubble. It’s not a wall. And a boundary comes from love, and so it is permeable, it is flexible, it is malleable. And to me that it is also unlimited, because when we come from that, of what a boundary looks like is we get to expand it as wide as we want to, and that’s not to keep people out, that’s to allow people in, that’s to allow energies in. And to me, that is the essence of being unlimited. It’s being able to completely open yourself up in from a place of energetic alignment, right? Physiological, spiritual, like all of it is there. So you can continue to open and allow people to come into the bubble and leave out of the bubble when their time is done, because that’s important as well.

Valerie Friedlander 45:38
Yeah, and when you want to access that unlimited feeling, what song do you listen to?

Kim Romain 45:44
I listen to worthy by India Ari. I love that song. Love it. Love it. Can I say a second one?

Valerie Friedlander 45:50
Yeah, you could say a second one.

Kim Romain 45:52
Okay. I love Lily Allen and her song. Fuck you. Okay, if you just need just a little bit of a bubble gum pop with a I don’t need any. Anybody in this world because I’m in my own alignment. That is a great song to tap into as well.

Valerie Friedlander 46:09
Love it, love it. And so those will be on the playlist, the unlimited playlist. So check that out. Kim, thank you so much for joining me. It has been a real pleasure.

Kim Romain 46:23
Thank you so much.

Valerie Friedlander 46:25
Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you being here. And if you enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much to me if you would share it, share about it on social, share it with a friend, give it a rating, ideally, five stars on your preferred listening platform, and you can even leave a comment and let me know your thoughts. All of those things are so helpful in order for me to be seen by more people who are looking for this kind of content. So thank you in advance for all you do. I have an episode coming up that I am currently working on, that I would love your input on. So if you have thoughts about AI and AI’s use in therapy and coaching, particularly how people are starting to use AI for therapy and coaching, I would love to hear from you. You can send me a direct message through my email. I also have a form so you can submit anonymously and send me your thoughts, your experiences. Have you used AI for that kind of support? I would love to hear from you, and if you have questions about it, please let me know that too I’m happy to engage them. Or if you have questions about something entirely different, or a topic that you’d like me to engage, that form is also a way that you can submit those too, so that is linked in the show notes, and I will talk to you all next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai