An Unstoppable Life with Amarita Rose

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:00:00

trigger warning, the Resilience Project provides an open space for people to share their personal experiences. Some content in this podcast may include topics that you may find difficult, the listeners discretion is advised.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:00:19

Hello friends, welcome to radical resilience, a weekly show where I Blair Kaplan Venables have inspirational conversations with people who have survived life's most challenging times. We all have the ability to be resilient and bounce forward from a difficult experience. And these conversations prove just that, get ready to dive into these life changing moments while strengthening your resilience muscle and getting raw and real.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:00:49

Welcome back to another episode of radical resilience. It's me, Blair Kaplan Venables, and today we are having a very interesting conversation. Amarita Rose. She's an author, life coach and career coach and her Anna wisdom worker, which I don't even know what that is, and I'm so excited to learn. She skillfully weaves her deep knowledge of esoteric mindful and spiritual practices, along with a background in education and clinical mental health into what she does. I would love to dive into we're going to talk about her story, we're gonna dive into the work she does. It's fascinating. And there's, you know, I have, like, I feel very lucky to be a host of this podcast, because it it brings me some very interesting, phenomenal people that I can introduce our community. And today, Amarita is going to share her story. And it's I don't know if it starts with when she was tossed out of high school at age 17. And had to find a place to work and live. Maybe it goes before it starts before that. But I want to welcome Amrita to the mic.

Amarita Rose: 00:01:52

Hi, hi, Blair. It's so good to be here. And thank you for that great introduction.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:01:58

I have so many questions like, like, tell us Okay, before we like dive into your story, like, tell us a bit about what you do.

Amarita Rose: 00:02:06

So I am, technically I'm a life and career coach. But I've been weaving Akashic energy work into everything I do, since I was an annoying, precocious third grader. So that's where a lot of the wisdom work comes in, which is this combination of all of the methodologies I've learned from somatic awareness, and nonviolent communication and mindfulness and, and those more teachable things, to energy work, intuitive work, what quantum physicists call string theory, and universal consciousness, and all of that gets pulled into what I do. So that's yeah, that's what wisdom work is. It's the use of everything.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:02:55

And like that, I've never heard that wisdom worker, like, it just, it's very fascinating to me, because I've dabbled, I'm dabbling in I'm having, I just survived a dark, dark night of the soul. And I'm having a spiritual awakening. And I'm doing a lot of learning. And I've just started diving into my Akashic records. And anyways, but yeah, I've never heard of wisdom worker. So I'm just I love this. This is amazing. I'm very into into what you do. But yeah, I would love to know more about your story. So why don't we talk about your story?

Amarita Rose: 00:03:25

Yeah. So so the reference you made to being asked to leave high school at 17. I want to the thing that started before that, which I think has a lot to do with personal resilience was when I was was how I got to high school, which was, I was a, my family was fairly poor. We were living in Philadelphia, my brother and I with my mom. And we were on food stamps. And I was always kind of the weird artists kid. So never quite fit in, living in the States, and got myself a scholarship to and I was sure that I was like, I am going to get myself a scholarship to a boarding school in Western Massachusetts. And everybody thought I was nuts. They're like, you live in Philly, you have no money. You're white. You This is not gonna happen. And I found out about a scholarship program and I applied. And I when the letter came and said, Here's where you got it. And it's a boarding school in Western Massachusetts. My mother dropped the letter. She's like, Oh, because evidently she handed it to me and said here and I read it and just said, you know, this is your accepted and this is where you're going. And I was like, Okay, great. She's like, wait,

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:04:44

what you knew, like you knew it was going to happen?

Amarita Rose: 00:04:47

Well, I knew Yeah, there was a I never had a sense that it wasn't going to be there. And that I could, I could make it happen. And I think that's really the core sense that we have when we talk about reason. Lance, is that it's, it's about being in horrible circumstances that you are really unsuited for, and finding a way to connect with your own strengths and grow and create the next thing that happens, not about letting life happen to you. So I think that's kind of my personal definition of resilience. And, yeah, so I went off to boarding school completely unprepared. Because again, I was the poor kid from Philly. So how old are you? So I was 13 when I went to high school. And, you know, it was interesting. You know, in retrospect, you can see a lot more, but one of the things I knew was, you know, I went there from living in Philadelphia, and having most of my friends not be white. And when I got there, they just all assumed that I was going to fit in just fine, because I wasn't a minority kid. And they didn't, you know, so they were like, Oh, you don't need any special help. You don't need any special support. And so that was very challenging for four years to be in a fairly affluent boarding school where, you know, I remember asking some, some girl, hey, what does your father do? And she said, Well, he runs a country club. And I said, What, but what does he do? Because I couldn't wrap my head around, you know, like, well, what does that mean? And she's like, well, what does your dad do? And I'm like, He's a painter. He teaches art classes. So I love that, though. Yeah. So then, so clearly, I wasn't really like I was, I was not being supported being there, because they just looked at me and saw this white girl. And that, you know, and they made a lot of assumptions about what that meant, none of which were true. So I got kicked out of high school, three months shy of graduating for absences, which I find quite ironic. And went home and told my dad, hey, this is the deal. And he was like, Well, what do you want to do next? And I said, Well, I guess I'm gonna get a job and find a place to live. And that's what I did. And, you know, it's interesting, you and I were talking before this about our relationships with our fathers, and how those have impacted our lives. And I think it was really interesting. You know, my father never yelled at me about this. You never there was no recrimination, it was just okay, well, here's where you are, what's the next action you want to take? And what do you want to create next in your life? And so I think that's a big part of where I got that sense of, I have a chance to change this, like, I can make some choices to make this different or to choose what I want to have happen next.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:07:53

So yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. So when you were, so you're kicked out of high school right before graduating, which is like, wow, you're just so close. I want to maybe talk about like your experience, from 13 to 17, ages 13 to 17. Like, what? Walk us through kind of what that was, like, being someone in like, basically a fish out of water, like you looked like everyone else. But you do not get raised by you know, you weren't raised in a similar community as the other students. What was that like? And how did you navigate

Amarita Rose: 00:08:27

it? It was It sucked. The short version. It was, you know, it was, it was a real shock, because I had grown up my parents. So my father taught painting at university. So I was raised around a lot of university students. And so going to this high school, it was a, it was in a beautiful, small, tiny, tiny town in western Mass. And it was really interesting, because it never dawned on me in the beginning, that they wouldn't see me that they would just see this outer shell. And so it took me a little while to figure out oh, yeah, they're not actually seeing who I am. One of the things I first tried to do was, I tried to get into the afro am Club, which because in these days that, you know, I don't think it would even be called that. But it was the, you know, it was all the Latin and black kids. And they had a club because that was the culture and they wanted to have a club that, you know, supported their culture. And I was like, Well, can I be part of that? Because these are all my friends. And they're like, No, we're not You're not allowed even the people in the club. The kids in the club are like yes letter and letter and and that people organizing it said no, you can't you can't be in it because clearly you're not a minority student. And I'm like, Well, I'm on food stamps does not count for anything. And so that was you know, that was one of the things I tried to do. You know, I did things like I sang in the choir because I've always loved Singing. And so that was where I started to build community was in choir and in the writing department and in the drama department. And those were places where I realized, okay, I can, I can find some of my people here and find some acceptance here, even, you know, outside of like, I don't have money, and I don't wear the right sneakers, and I don't have the right Levi's and all of that stuff. But it was really, it was a real shock. Yeah. And it took me a long time to to figure out how to build community, and how to find my friends in that. And I did, I found some really great friends a couple of whom I still have, but they're also the weird drama, you know, artsy kids.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:10:48

I love that though. Like the weirdest prevailed.

Amarita Rose: 00:10:51

They were Yeah, like all you know, all of us. neurodivergent artsy, all of that. And that was part of the other thing is I didn't know at that point of my life that I was on the autism scale. I didn't know. I just found that out last year. So that's been a whole like, wow, that explains a lot. We talk about that a bit. Yeah, yeah. I'm getting to talk about any of it.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:11:15

Yeah. I mean, I was gonna ask you a whole different question. But now that you brought that up, I just have to say, first of all, thank you for sharing all of that. I mean, I can't I couldn't imagine living on my own at 17 Oh, my gosh, I mean, I live on my almost live on my own now. Now I live with my cats and my husband. And it's hard. I'm just kidding. But, um, I, I spend a lot of time on social media, because like my profession, I'm a social media marketing expert. I've been doing, you know, publicity. I help people be thought leaders, but social media is a big part of what I do. I've been doing it for 15 plus years. And so I spend a lot of time on social media and tick tock is, is it's kind of like reaching a YouTube status in the way of people using it as search terms, like for searching. Like, I just took off my acrylic nails because I developed an allergy. And I was like, safe ways to remove acrylic nails. And I found all these different videos. And it took me two hours at like, 5am 5:30am. And but anyways, the reason I'm saying that is because like sometimes the algorithm like if they see you're looking at certain videos, that algorithm will start showing you more videos. And for some reason, I mean, I started and I started to end up on some like, I have undiagnosed ADHD, and I'm pretty sure I'm dyslexic. None of that's diagnosed, I also have depression and anxiety. But I was looking up something. So the algorithm started showing me a lot of videos about people who, with autism or ADHD, and so then I kind of started to learn a lot about it. And there's a lot of people like in their adult life just being diagnosed. And it's fascinating to me. And you know, my sister's a therapist. So I was like Alanna, like maybe like I'm on the spectrum, she's like, No, you're not on the spectrum. But you have ADHD. But I want to talk about your diagnosis, like how did that come to be and like, let's, let's dive into that, if you're open to it, oh,

Amarita Rose: 00:13:02

I am completely open to it. Because I think the more women who talk about it, the better. So a couple of things, you know, if for your listeners to is, you know, especially if you're female, it is almost impossible to get diagnosed even today. And it's because we don't show up the same way as boys show up on the spectrum, whether and it's and when I say on the spectrum, I'm also including neuro divergence, but particularly on the autism spectrum. So boys tend to show everything is outward, right? They have all of the physical traits that we've all been taught to look for. But what women do what girls do is because inherently, we are always trying to build community, and you see it in play to that we're always trying to connect, and boys are always trying to compete. So because we're trying to connect, we already are looking for, like, who's the Who's the person in the group who fits in the best, and we will mimic what they do. And we'll do it so young that we don't recognize we're doing it. So I'm I just turned 59. Last week, I was diagnosed. Thank you. I was just diagnosed last year, and it was like, Oh, my gosh, this makes so much sense. And the way I ended up getting fit, even figuring it out was I was on a coaching call with my business coach and our whole group. And one of the women showed up on the call and said, Wait, before we do anything, I just need to tell you guys, I was just diagnosed with autism. She was 55. She said, Oh my God, it explains so much. And all of us on the group went okay, can you tell us more? And she started saying, Well, this is why like, because I was always told that I was shy or I was outspoken or I was precocious or I was obnoxious or I was too sensitive to noise or too sensitive to clothing or too sensitive to other people's feelings or To like, too broad thinking, whatever, you know all of this list of things. And she said, and none of them ever felt right. But, but I showed, you know, but I was kind of shy, and I was kind of socially awkward, and I didn't quite get how I was supposed to show up for things. And as she's saying this, all of us on the call are going, Oh, my God, that's me. And it turns out that out of seven people on this call, five of us got diagnosed within the next year. Wow. And it's, I mean, it's huge. So they're, you know, one of the things for me finding out, it made a lot of sense of how I have seen the world and how I often feel, really out of place. And I think in part that's led to me being the kind of coach that I am, and the kind of teacher that I am, because I'm very empathetic when people aren't heard, or when, like, I'm the person in the group that if people are saying, Oh, that guy was so weird at that social thing, or, you know, he was really like doing this, that and the other and he was talking over everybody. And I'm the one who will say, Well, maybe he didn't quite get the social cues. And maybe he was trying to fit in, but he wasn't quite reading the group well enough. And can we cut him some slack for that? And, you know, that seems like a kind of obvious thing to say. But what I've learned too, is that being the person who says that, and being the person who is pointing out other people's lack of perspective, or broadness of thinking, can get really uncomfortable. And you don't get asked back to certain things. Yeah, and it's, it's really, you know, that's taken me a long time to like to understand, well, why, you know, like, we had such a good time on that high IQ, how come they didn't invite me back? And then to understand, oh, because I stuck up for that person when they were picking on him. Or I, you know, I offered a different viewpoint, that didn't agree with

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:17:06

the group. So it sounds like a similar, like, journey that high school is for you?

Amarita Rose: 00:17:11

Oh, yes, my whole life has been, you know, it's funny, because, I mean, it's just everything always repeats. And when we look at our lives, you know, they're the, it's the cycle just keeps happening in different ways until we see it. And then once we see it, we can change it. Or we can learn it so that we can make it useful. You know, it's also interesting. So I've suffered on and off from seasonal affective disorder, and some depression. And what I've also come to understand, and this is from, I'm going to steal a quote from Katherine Mae, who wrote the electricity of every living thing, which, if you're anywhere, neurodivergent, you should read the book. But what I've also learned is that, you know, being neurodivergent, ADHD, or dyslexic, or autism, or anything else that is considered neurodivergent. Part of why we tend to suffer from more depression. And more anxiety is because we are living in a world that wasn't created by us for us. Wow. So we're constantly come, I mean, imagine what we would like we would create a world where people were kinder and thoughtful and work together, where fluorescent lights did not exist.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:18:28

I hate fluorescent lights. Yes, I hate them. I have lamps and all my rooms, candles, right?

Amarita Rose: 00:18:34

And where, you know, like, the interesting part about being neurodivergent is and especially autistic, is, you know, when I walk into a room, and there's a lot of sound like discos, not my not really my thing, though. I love dancing. But we know when we walk into a room, and there's lots of sound and lots of people talking and flashing lights and things and people are asking questions, and there's a lot of input. And I'll, I'll get to the point within an hour, and I'm like, Okay, I have to go now. And I don't understand why other people are like, we don't understand, like, why are you so sensitive? Why are you making those faces? Why are you so uncomfortable? But what they also don't see is that I don't understand why neurotypical people aren't freaked out by that. Yeah, like, why are you guys not freaked out? That to me seems strange. Like there's so much input.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:19:24

You know, it's it's so interesting. Like, I don't know, like, if social media didn't exist, I mean, I wonder where like, where we would be with Diagnosis Diagnosis. So it's, is that the diagnoses? Yeah, diagnoses. And so when you went to your doctor, did you just make an appointment like saying, I think I have autism? Like Tell me Tell me about that? Because I'm actually like, trying to wrap my head around. How do I go to a doctor to get officially diagnosed with ADHD? Like, and it's different in Canada like you're in the States, but I would love to know like, how did you like after you that video? That video that video call? Oh, were you know, you're all like, oh, that sounds like me like, What did you do?

Amarita Rose: 00:20:04

Yeah, so it's actually pretty similar. No matter what country you live in, the first thing you do is you go online, and you find the online diagnostic tests for women. And there are several that are really good. And if anybody's listening, if you want to hit me up with an email and just ask me, I'll send you the links. There also, I also posted them, they're posted in, you can get to them through my website, so just let me know you need them. And I'll direct you to them. But essentially, it doesn't matter where you live, you go online, you find the diagnostic test for ADHD and for women with autism, because it is very different than the diagnostic for guys. And then you take those several times, and there are several of them. And then you take that information to your GP. And then you have to convince your GP that this is actually a thing. Or you do what you can, the other thing you can do, because here's the flip side, if you get officially diagnosed, in depending upon the country you live in, it can really mess with if you live in the States, it can mess with your insurance. If you live in the UK, it can mess with your health care in the national health care system. And so you may not want to be officially diagnosed because there may not be anything they can do for you if you're on Spectrum. However, if you're ADHD, there's a lot. So if you're ADHD, I highly suggest going talking to your GP because there are some medications that may be super helpful for certain people on if you're autistic and you're female, it's probably may be more effective to work with a therapist who is used to working with autism, rather than getting officially diagnosed because being officially diagnosed, most GPS don't even like I've had friends recently who said, I went to my GP, I showed them all of these diagnostics. And he said, Well, you can't possibly be autistic, you're female. And this happened this year. So Wow. Yeah, so a lot of us, especially those of us who are in our 40s and 50s. And just figuring this out, you know this that nothing, nothing was available when we were kids. And they really didn't think that girls ever got it. So the diagnostic tests that exist are mostly for 12 year old boys or under. And that's what most people know to look for. They don't and the other part of this is that as females living with autism, we mask so well. And we've done it for so long that we often don't know we're doing it. So the two diagnostics that I suggest to people and they're both free, they're both online, they take about 20 minutes. But both of them will also help you understand how much you're masking and how much so where you are on the spectrum, because it's a whole range, and also how much you're masking. And masking and mimicking are the two things that we tend to do. And we do it so early on, we don't know we're doing. But one of the things I know I do, and this is this is kind of a common one. One of the things I'll do is I'll walk into a room or a group, and I'll look for the person who looks to be the most popular. And I'll look at how they're standing, how they're talking, what they're saying what they're wearing, what's their tone of voice. And, and if I feel uncomfortable, I will mimic what they're doing. Oh, very intentionally. And to go back to the high school thing, because it is interesting that you said oh yeah, this is like, like high school. Yeah. When I got to high school, and I recognized, I wasn't like anybody there. I did the same thing less consciously. But I tried to wear the clothes the same way. Or I tried to find clothes that looked like, right. And I tried to I tried to mimic what I saw the popular kids were doing, which we all do in some respects. But this was far more conscious. In terms of like, the behavior and the speaking and the cadence and the classes, like every area of my life, not just to

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:24:08

wow, okay, I have so many questions. I mean, I have a couple more because we're gonna run out of time. So since your diagnosis, diagnosis, how have you How has your life changed, knowing that you are on the spectrum?

Amarita Rose: 00:24:26

I explained so much to me about how I have lived in the world and why I see the world the way I do. And it allowed me a huge math, just a huge amount of forgiveness for myself. Like I don't feel bad that I say, you know, thank you for inviting me to this huge party. It's been an hour I'm leaving now, but I've really enjoyed it. Where before I used to feel really stupid or really uncomfortable. Or like wow, why can't I pause? Why can't I stay for five hours so There's just been a lot of self forgiveness and grace, that it's allowed for me.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:25:06

I love that. That's beautiful. Yeah, I mean, like, I'm someone who, like I've been told, like, You're special. You're, you're an old soul. Like, wow, like, you're, you're creative. Like, you know, you're really unique. And, you know, I think like, with an official diagnosis, like there might be, I feel like with that will come, like a relief, like, because I know, I don't feel like everyone else. Like I, I'm often marching to the beat of my own drum, I'm doing my own thing, like, like, you know, I'm gonna be 38 And I, you know, I've been on a billboard in Times Square, and I work a lot and I innovate and I ideas just drop into my head, and I create businesses. And, you know, it's so interesting. And I think that has to do with the Dyslexic dyslexia and the ADHD, because I've always had to learn how to be creative. In the sense of like, when I'm writing, I'm a writer, but if I can't figure out how to spell a word, I'll just come up with a different word. You know, and like, that's, I was doing some research on people who have dyslexia and like, some very prolific people in their history. Do

Amarita Rose: 00:26:15

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And also the ADH. I mean, anyone who's neurodivergent, and I'm going to make it, I'm going to use that term for all of this. You know, there's a lot of us, a lot of entrepreneurs are neurodivergent. No wonder because we think differently, and see the world differently. And so I think it's, it's, you know, whether you get an official diagnosis, or you get an unofficial but fairly certain diagnosis. You know, there's, there's a sense of, like, it can be really empowering to know Oh, right. I'm not, I'm not weird, I just think differently than 50% of the population. Yeah. And, you know, because neurotypical is not neurotypical, it's 50% of the population. Yeah. And the rest of us just didn't get into power fast enough.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:27:09

Interesting. Oh, my gosh, I feel like I can talk to you for hours. You're fascinating. Okay. So if people are like, Whoa, I want to be in your world, how can they find you? Where can they find you?

Amarita Rose: 00:27:20

Yeah, so they can find me at an unstoppable life.com. That's my website, there's lots of resources. And if you're interested, you can pick up a copy of my new book, which is also very practical, called no plaid suits, how not to have a boring normal life. It's also available on Amazon. And it's written from the aspect of here are some practical things to have a great life. And they're fun, and they're very useful, because I'm all about the practical. And then on Instagram and Facebook, you can find me at an unstoppable life. And I love when people DM me and hit me up with comments and questions.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:28:00

Amazing. Well, I'm going to be hitting you up for sure on Instagram and your book. Sounds amazing. So one final question, what advice do you have for those of us in life who are just learning where neuro neuro divergent

Amarita Rose: 00:28:19

if you're just if you're curious to see, I would say, start to check out the online diagnostic tools because they're really good. But just allow yourself some grace. Because being neurodivergent also means that you have a totally different perspective on the world. And there's so much that we can bring to the world that is innovative and creative and disruptive in a really good way. And that is our superpower.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:28:47

Yes, I love that. I love that. Like our superpower. I think that's so important. Because I know that it's my superpower. And it's your superpower. So that's that's amazing. You're phenomenal. Thank you so much.

Amarita Rose: 00:29:04

Thank you Blair. It's been great talking to ya is off.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:29:07

This was so much fun. And thank you to everyone who joined us for this episode for welcoming us into your ears, your head, your life, your car, your walk wherever you are listening to this. We do this we drop an episode every Friday we're available on all the places that podcasts are available. You know, life gets really hard. Like we know this. I know this, you know our guests notice our listeners know this. Let us be the lighthouse for you in a storm. You know, we published our first book The Global Resilience Project in June it became an international bestseller. And if you have a story to tell, we have opened applications for the global Resilience Project book number two, we have limited spots available and your story will help other people heal. And in fact telling your story is part of your healing journey . So we invite you to go to the global resilience project.com Submit your story, dive into the stories that are already published there. Check out book number one and just know it is okay to not be okay. You're not having to walk this life alone. You have us. You have this community and you are resilient.