It's A Tits Out Summer: Honoring Your Inner Teen

Hey, Feelers! 

WE’VE MADE IT TO 50 EPISODES! We are so beyond grateful for our community of like-minded feelers and are inspired to continue because of you.

In this week’s EA meeting, we are chatting all things inner teen, what having a tits out summer is all about, Y2K and Early 2000s Nostalgia and Resurgences, and of course all things pop culture all through the lens of being a highly sensitive or empathic person.

We hope you enjoy this episode and please share with us if you answered any of the prompts for yourself below:

• What did your inner teenager need but didn’t get? How can you support your inner teen now?
• What choices were made for you by others that went against what you wanted to do? In what ways are you showing up for yourself today?
• What are 3 life lessons you learned later in life that you wished your inner teen knew?

Shout out to anyone who plays an instrument, especially if you're COULOU.

Chapters

• 0:00 Hello from Crystina and Danie
• 0:34 What's In Your Cup!?
• 6:23 Temecula Happy Girl Club Events and Empaths React on Youtube
• 8:34 Tits Out Summer: Embracing Nostalgia
• 20:23 What it Was Like to Be a Teen During Y2K
• 30:33 Life Before Makeup Tutorials & 2000s Fashion Trends
• 36:57 Inner Teen Identity and Navigating Big Changes
• 46:28 Bring Back Teen Angst and My Chemical Romance
• 50:57 Jersey Shore, Laguna Beach, The Hills, and Y2K MTV Reality Classics
• 53:03 Advice to Our Inner Teen Selves and Journal Prompts

Transcript

Danielle Lamadrid: 0:01

Welcome to Empaths Anonymous, a space for dreamers, healers, and feelers. Navigating the fine line between putting yourself first and holding space for others. If you struggle with balancing your needs while still supporting your tribe, then you're in the right place. Welcome to the support group.

Crystina Rowntree: 0:21

Hello and welcome back to Empaths Anonymous. I'm Crystina. I'm Danie. And today we have decided that we are having a tits out summer. What is a tits out Summer? Why are we deciding to have that? We're going to get into that, but first, what is in your cup today, sister, I have. Chamberlain matcha. Hell yeah. It's a strawberry matcha. I whisked the shit out of it. Yeah. And you couldn't, you wouldn't be able to tell because it's still chunky and lumpy, um, with a little bit of almond milk. Very interesting. The flavor's great. It's just like, I think I need one of those frother things. Yeah. Um, it's good in my emotional cup, in my metaphorical cup of life. I, this is gonna speak to my tits out summer. But I'm fresh, I'm free, I'm floaty. Hmm. and I've been enjoying sleeping in reasonably. I'm trying to get better. I've been enjoying just taking time for myself and spending time with me. getting a lot of stuff checked off the list that have been there for umpteen years and it feels good to just like let it. Leave my brain. Mm-hmm. If you understand mental load, you understand that. Right. Um, but that's, it's good. I've been, definitely enjoying the me time and I've been feeling this energy of like, reevaluation. Okay. I've been feeling a little bit, like, the version of me that I am now is like, I don't know, I, I feel like I cocooned for a long time. I feel like I'm breaking. Mm-hmm. The shell's cracking a little. That's how I'm feeling. A little bit. You're getting ready to come out? Yeah, I am getting ready to come out Still. Pride come. You can come out if you want to and I absolutely would. I do pray to be gay. But yeah, that's really it. What is in your cup, sister? So today I have the kin matcha Tini. It's a mocktail, so it's not actually a, uh, martini mixed with the Hiyo. I believe it's like, um, a functional beverage. Mm-hmm. Strawberry guava. Smells delicious. So we both are kind of on like a strawberry matcha kind of vibe. Yeah. Hers is just like a milky, like traditional latte. And mine's more of like a tonic. Yeah. With like a fizzy. A fizzy fizzy drink. Fizzy. A fizzy, be fizzy, lifting, ding drinks, and went into the, and you stole the fizzy lifting drinks. Oh, I love charlie and the chocolate factory kind of speaks to what we're gonna talk about, the nostalgia of it all. But in my emotional cup, honestly, I am kind of in a similar lane where like recently I kind of had a check-in with myself. Mm-hmm. And a, I mean, I'm always having mental crash outs, I guess like welcome to having OCD, but I had a day where I just like went to the beach, on a Sunday and I am cool to say this 'cause it's my podcast and I can say it if I want to. I took some mushroom capsules and I put it out there. To my guides, the universe, my ancestors, like, give me the experience from these mushroom capsules that I am meant to have today. Mm. And it really did just crack my motherfucking brain open and in a great way. And just kind of like showed me what the things that I'm like holding so tightly to, and even just the ways that I am abandoning myself in ways that I promise that I wouldn't. And so, kind of similarly to you, and in the theme of the, of this. Episode I am really prioritizing. Myself this summer, getting back to prioritizing myself and not doing the empath thing. That if you listen to one of our first, our early episodes with Nisrine Maktabi mm-hmm. That empath thing where you just like keep codependently attaching to things because you need to feel important or needed or busy. Mm. You know? And using that as a way to avoid other things. So I'm really going on this journey and I've been mulling over sharing it on like TikTok and maybe doing like a series of really just getting myself out of the rut. That I felt myself starting to slip into and reprioritizing my physical health. I've been going to like Zumba a lot more and just moving my body more, going back to my walks, even though it's hot as balls now, so it's kind of hard to do a walk unless you get up at like 6:00 AM to do it, revisiting like some of my tools. 'cause I think that like we develop tools and we find the tools for us, right. So that when we get into stressful spots, when we get into, uh, times when our mental health is slipping Mm. We can revisit the tools. But I haven't been revisiting my tools. Mm. I've been scrolling on my phone, I've been playing games on my phone and avoiding everything. Hmm. So reprioritizing escapism. Exactly, exactly. And yeah, I'm just like, I'm kind of wanting to have a fun, fancy free summer, but I'm also like being real with myself that I just probably need to have like a focus on myself and like get back to a good routine. Summer. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, health wise, mental health wise, building my business, things like that. There's just like so much I need to get done. And so I'm like, how do I balance the fun and the fancy freeness and kind of like take some of that load and weight off of my shoulders so that I can still enjoy my life more because I think I was getting in this. Um, almost victim mentality of like, God, I just have to work so fucking hard all the time. Like, when can I fucking enjoy my life? And I'm like, well, you have to like put the moment, you have to build those moments in. Right. So this week, specifically when we're recording this, when you're listening to this, this would've been last week, but this week specifically, I'm just, I'm not taking like a full vacation week. Like I'm still like working some days, but I'm taking Thursday off. Happy of Juneteenth everybody. Exactly. Taking Thursday off, we're doing fun things. Thursday, I'm seeing a Instagram friend that I've made on Friday and we are going to a fun event on Saturday. Mm-hmm. So yeah, just prioritizing me and my happiness. Yeah, that's good. It kind of speaks to why we decided to start Happy Girl. If you listen to the past couple of episodes. We, have started an ambassadorship with Happy Girl Club and so our first event, at a local winery here went so well and we loved it so much. Shout out Akash, shout out. Um, and we just love the girlies who showed up so much. Yeah. So the girlies that traveled the farthest were both from Escondido, Oceanside, like North County, San Diego area. Mm-hmm. And we're so grateful. Yeah. And yeah, it was really fun. And we have. Another event planned for this upcoming Saturday, June 28th. It's gonna be very chill vibes. We're doing a very early morning hike, which if you know me and Crystina, we're not early morning and girlies, but we are going to do early because it's gonna be hot as tits outside. So, um, a really fun, fun speaking of t speaking of tits and a really fun walk and, a little guided meditation, just like a recentering, a grounding. And then some, summer sips at a local coffee shop. That we adore. So yes, we are going to have all that information in the show notes. Please go follow Happy Girl Club and Happy Girl Club's founder Emily Sanchez. And again, all that will be linked in the show notes. And on top of that, like we mentioned. a couple episodes ago we did also launch a new YouTube series called Empaths React. And by the time that you're listening to this, we have two love island reactions up. So head over and have a listen and join in on the conversation 'cause we're having some good ones. Definitely. Yeah. We just wanted to take an opportunity to start to dive into some of the things that. We enjoy and that do make us happy. and pop culture's always it, I mean, I'm gonna get into that kind of more later in this episode of like, that's part of like honoring my inner adolescence. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, if there's anything that you guys want us to react to, things that you think have a correlation to mental health, emotional health, or being an empath or highly sensitive person, please let us know. We'd love to react to it. And you might see it on our channel. Yeah. But you gotta go subscribe over there. To make sure that you're getting that content and you're notified when we post new things. Absolutely anything. Music, movies, TV shows. Yeah. All the things. All the things, all the things pop culture related. But yeah, let's get into, what the hell is tits out summer? Like, what are these bitches talking about? Exactly. Yeah. I think that. Just to break it down for you guys, break it down. There's all these different, I think that each summer, the last three, four, or five, there's always been a theme. So it's like there was hot girl summer, then there was Healed girl, summer Soft Girl, summer and so on and so forth. And so when we sat down and we were like really thinking about what we were gonna talk about in this episode, we just started unloading like what we really wanted our summer to feel like. Mm-hmm. And what the vibes out there currently in. Society and culture are feeling like, and it's just really feeling like that callback to that like nineties, early two thousands, Y2K, like just before there were all before social media, before there were all just this like shit. Right. It just like when life just felt a lot more simpler. Mm-hmm. More carefree. Mm-hmm. And so I think that we're kind of returning to that tits out really just speaks to. You know, living fully wild and out. And I feel like, to me it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff. Mm. Right. And you're just like ready to go and your arms are out and you're just like, universe. If you send a gust of wind and push me off. Cool. Yeah. And I'll fall and I'll see what you got for me. Yeah. 'cause I can swim, bitch. Exactly. Jack, I'm flying. Jack, Jack, bitch. Why didn't you share the door? Yeah, that's always a topic of conversation. For 30 years we've been talking about why she didn't share the goddamn door. He froze to death. Her fingers froze to his frozen fingers. Can you imagine how traumatic that would be? Like freezing to a person who's dead? Yeah. No thanks. Oof. No thanks. That's why she had to live to a hundred to live with the guilt. Yeah, I don't want, that was her karma. We don't have to get into the Jack and Roses, but Jack, I'm flying. But yeah, for me, we had this concept of tits out summer, back in like very, very early March when we were like planning out our summer and like the feeling that we wanted it to evoke and, you know, what the time would bring to both of us as friends and individually on our own journeys. And so to me, tits out was just like, I am finally in this place where I have the time to live as my. Like full and authentic self, even though I'm still growing into her, and I will always like, it's a constant growth into your full self. Um, I'm not saying by any means I'm like reaching ascension or I'm like on this like whoop de woo spiritual journey. I think all of us are, and we don't have to make it. I don't have to make it such a thing. We don't have to make it a thing that makes it sound pretentious, right? Because we're all always on it, whether you're gonna acknowledge it or not. Like we're always growing into different versions of ourselves. Yeah. And so now that I have the time to actually explore what those things mean to me, it's going on dates by myself. It's stepping into like my creativity a little bit more, where. As an inner teen and even as a child, I told myself I wasn't a creative person. Mm. And that's a big lie that we all tell ourselves. Mm-hmm. Because we're all creative. So if you're sat there and you're listening and you're watching and you think, I'm not creative, like I don't know how to draw, or I dunno how to color, like, I dunno how to paint. It's not just that like creativity. That's artistry. Yes. That's art. Right. There's a difference between art. Being artistic and being creative. And I also got that confused when I was younger. Yeah. And I never had anyone to like explain the difference to me. So I just chalked it up to like, oh, I'm just not a creative person. It's a lie that a lot of us tell ourselves. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that's kind of what it feels like to me. Yeah. So let's explore some themes that are just like popping up in In the ether. Yeah. Of like why we feel almost that everybody's on this same wave of like, okay, we're going back to like when things felt fun and free. So first of all, there's just a lot of like. Feel good nostalgic content coming out. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. We have Freaky Freakier Friday coming out next month, right? Mm-hmm. Um, a lot of like, return back to like romance drama shows mm-hmm. Type of things, and I can't think of what that one is called. The one that we wanna react to forever. Right. Forever is coming out, isn't it? Judy Bloom. Is it a Judy? I think it's based on like a book. Wait, was it developed from that? I think so. Pretty sure. I'm today's years old. Oh, I think it's based off of like a book. Oh, yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I read that somewhere, right? Yeah, pretty sure. Right? It's like the, the pop music has been popping. Mm-hmm. And. A lot of times we see, and I was actually, um, listening to somebody who like specializes in recession psychology and they were just talking about even buying trends right now. Like there's a reason why labubus, which even though I don't really get it, I'm not gonna go out and buy a labubu. But there's a reason why they're becoming so wildly popular and it's because it's indicative of a recession approaching because brands know that when money is tight. That when there's a lot of things happening in the world in our country and people are scared, they save their money, they don't wanna spend money, or they just don't have money. Right. Right. So marketing to us, these expensive things like bags and jewelry and designer items. Mm-hmm. We're not gonna buy them. Right. But I can buy. A $20, $25 little fluffy, squishy floof that brings me joy. Yeah. So it's like that return back to like almost those childhood items. Mm-hmm. And people are like, well why are all these adults like buying all these squishmallows and buying labubus and all these things? It's like, it's just 'cause it makes us feel good. It's comfort in a time where we're a little bit stressed and we're all scared as fuck. Stressy depresses. Yeah. Yeah. For reals. Yeah. Also, In movies. Um, I'm selfishly excited for this because it has like three of my biggest crushes. Mm-hmm. Um, caught stealing is coming out. It's really reminding me of like pulp fiction era, like young. Brad Pitt, I was a Bradley Cooper. I'm like, that's not correct. Young Brad Pitt style type of, those like action comedy movies mm-hmm. Are coming back. I love me some Austin Butler, you guys know, since Hannah Montana. I loved that man. And Zoe Kravitz, I feel like that's one of my quiet, crushes. Oh my God, I love Zoe Kravitz. I'll watch anything that she is in. How can you not? And of course, bad Bunny. So we're excited about like more movies like that coming back into the realm. Mm-hmm. And then of course. If you are into astrology, you know that with cancer, being in Jupiter, we are moving into a very loved up summer, whereas most of the time we see cuffing season. Being in the winter, in the fall, winter. Mm-hmm. Now we're seeing it totally months in the summertime. And you're just like even seeing it with like, I feel like we're coming back to in the nineties when we would love like Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Mm-hmm. Like, and seeing them all being in relationships and falling, in love with their relationships. Mm-hmm. Kind of like those America's darlings type of like mm-hmm. Tropes. Like we're seeing that a lot with like Kylie and Timotheé and Billie, and. Nat who just officially announced their relationship. Mm-hmm. But you know, it's kind of feeling like that again. Mm-hmm. That just like, it's just fun to follow pop culture and like Yeah. Exploring and maybe even a little bit of escaping into things that just make you feel good again. Right. It's kind of just, it's like a whimsy, woo. It's feeling whimsical. And that probably speaks to our outlet and our way of being able to like express those things because we have so much of the burden on our shoulders. And so we're not speaking from a place of privilege where you can just like ignore everything that's happening. Right. But we are choosing these things because everything around us otherwise is so heavy. Right? Right. I mean, if we're gonna talk about. How the summer is going. I mean, No Kings Day was a historical day in the United States of America. Yeah, I think the biggest protest to ever occur in the United States and like we're all alive for that. So I mean, we are. As a collective. It's took a moment for that. Yes. Period. We are all experiencing, like this come togetherness Pluto in Aquarius Astrologies. It's like the revolution is now and so, right. We're tired. Right. You know, so we're gonna dive into and melt into these things that are comfort, feel good stuff. It's why people right, are having these conversations around comfort shows. Movies and pop culture in general as a whole. Right. The resurgence of a lot of reality TV popping up again. That was another thing that this, um, recession specialist was talking about. You know, you're heading into a recession when like there's a lot of reality shows coming out mm-hmm. All at the same time. Mm-hmm. Like I think Netflix is releasing a new dating show. Alex Cooper's working on a dating show. Obviously Love Island is out right now. Bachelor in Paradise is starting like. Because it's very easy to consume television and it's low budget to make right. Something started Autoplaying. Finally, something good started Autoplaying after I finished a recent episode of Love Island. I think it was after Sun, and it's called Destination X And girl, it's so good. It's giving me fear factor with the yucky bugs and um, this kind of like scavenger hunty like little moment and like survivor in a little way. Yeah. Like it's, it's a competition reality show. Right. And I feel like it's been a long time since. We've had a really good one like that. Right. And the concept is fantastic. And I think that just the way that it's produced is really, really good. And I love the host and I just love the sound of his voice. I have no idea what his name is. I guess he was on Walking Dead before. Yeah. Um, but it's so good and I didn't think, like when something auto plays, you're like, ugh, whatever, peacock thinks for nothing. But this is actually good. I like was sat for at least two episodes and I was like, I will revisit that later. Yeah. So, I don't know, I don't know how many of you were like. Avid, avid survivor watchers, like my family was sat in the living room. Same thing with like American Idol. Mm-hmm. When those things were really big, like we're talking about. Being able to like come together Right. And enjoy these things. Yeah. I feel like we, obviously COVID had a lot to do with it, but so did the internet and social media pre COVID. We all kind of like stepped into like our pods. Right. You know, we just went all individual. We were just like, I'm gonna do my own thing. I'm gonna do my own thing. I'm gonna do my own thing. Disengaged, disengaged, disengage. Yeah. Yeah. And we're not like coming together. Right. And now that's what the summer is feeling like. Yeah. Is like we have to do something as a group. Yeah. As humanity, right? Yes. In a political sense and just in a culture sense, right? Where it seems like we're all watching the same things while collectively we're all seeing horrifying things happening on our screens and just the narratives that are coming out of that. And it just feels like a lot is being called to justice. Right now we're seeing, obviously I don't like talking about this, but like the diddler of it all and you know, Tory Lanez and Chris Brown and all of these things are just popping up and it just feels like the earth, the universe, and mother nature, I don't even know, it's just hitting a reset button on humanity. Yeah. And it's like, let's get all of this evil energy out and let's just bring back. Bring in some new fresh energy. Yeah, we, it needs to be fresh. Absolutely. And so a lot of the time, like. When we are talking about our inner selves. Mm-hmm. Right? And how we got to this point in our adulthood. A lot of the time the work is surrounding your inner child. Like, what did your inner child love? Or like what did that person, what did that little person have to do to feel safe? And oftentimes, both as it's actually happening, and then when you try to remember your past inner teen kind of just gets. Forgotten a little bit. Yeah. It's like teenagers are a lot of the time told, like this whole "you're to be seen and not heard" type of thing because Right. You're kind of stepping into your power. You're getting to know yourself a little bit better. Yeah. You are understanding your individuality and so you start to form opinions as one would. Right. And a lot of the time, like those are challenging, some of the status quo or you know, it's a. A little bit more of just like, I'm curious about this or I'm confused about this. And if you don't have, healthy adults in your corner who can kind of help you navigate those parts of an adolescent life, then you are left to do that on your own. Or you're told to be quiet and just focus on the things that matter, which a lot of the time for teenagers, it's like school. Right? Figure out what college you're gonna go to. Right? Right. Like, figure out your adult life. Like why are you being a teenager right now? That's, that's the dichotomy I was just gonna speak to. 'cause it's like at the same time, teenagers are pressured to, well behave like adults. Stop being a child. Decide what you wanna do for your future, but then also. Be quiet, don't challenge me. Right? Yeah, you're right. And you're not an adult and you can't make your own decision. It's like, okay, well then what? Then what am I supposed to do? And then who am I? Yeah. Yeah. How do I, how do I navigate my life? How do I figure these things out? Right? If I am told two different things, I'm being pulled in two separate directions. Mm-hmm. Um, it's why I so love the age group that I work with. 'cause you can see the brain, oh my God, the way you can see the brain, the brain braining, brain braining in those. Years, I'm talking like all the way from 10 or our youngest sixth grader to like 14, our oldest eighth grader, prime, prime years for the brain. Mm-hmm. And so being that as it is the way that we pay attention to our inner child and we give them attention, the inner teen also needs. If not the same, more Right. Attention because we were a little bit more conscious. Yeah. We're almost like beat over the head the last few years of like inner child, inner child, inner child work. And I'm like, yes, I get that. And it's, it's very, very important. Mm-hmm. And I've learned so much about myself, but it's like now I'm like almost ready to graduate. Yeah. I'm ready to like look out into it things into, yeah. Preteens. Right. Exactly. Preteens. It's so interesting the cycle. Mm-hmm. Of. Your life. Yeah. You're born, you go through what you go through, and as you grow older, from child to teenager into young adult and so on and so forth, you're focused on like, how do I become this great grownup? How do I become this great person and this great friend? Then you get to adulthood and you're like, I have to revisit. Right? And you're like, I actually really liked who I was at 16. Yeah. Right, right. I liked the friend that I, that I was. Mm-hmm. I liked the friends that I made. I liked the decisions that I made. Maybe not all of 'em. Right. Such is life. I liked the things I was passionate about. Mm-hmm. And the things that I like, thought were fun. Right. And so, I suppose. To break it down, the difference between inner child and inner teen is that the inner teen is able to both comprehend what has occurred in their childhood and what is also happening currently. However, the goal for both is to be heard, seen, understood, and loved. But now that the teen. Is a little bit older and more capable. They are able to conceptualize and verbalize what those feelings were slash are and how they were suppressed as children to create a safe environment so the child is able to make certain decisions, whether that be suppressing certain things to not remember them. Remember the body keeps the score. So it's like we may not remember it, but the body does. And then you grow into your teen years and you start to feel a little bit like triggered by certain things or activated by certain things, and then you remember why, right? Because you had that memory from a child and you're like, oh, so this happened because of this, right? Or this happened because of this person in my life. So the conceptualization. Starts there. Right. And then such as how it is in our healing journey. Yep. 'cause you go to therapy, you look inside yourself, whatever modality you are using. Mm-hmm. Whether it's therapy or other things, I guess. Mm-hmm. Um, to self-reflect, I guess on your, your self and your past and your patterns and trauma. You are constantly looking back, looking back, connecting the dots, connecting the dots. And it's the same way in your inner teen. But I think that your inner teen almost has this rebellion about it. Mm-hmm. Right? Absolutely. Like you don't, I'm not gonna be who the world says I should be, right. Or wants me to be or wants me to be. Mm-hmm. And it's like, I would love to like for all of us to revisit that feeling. Mm-hmm. Because to me it was so liberating and exciting as a young person to be like, oh. I can have my own voice. I can have my thoughts and opinions. I can have my own dream for myself. But I think at the time it's like I lacked the tools to do anything about those things. Right. And so it just came out as this like angsty, yeah, I hate the world. Don't tell me what to do. Right. Type of attitude. Yeah. 'cause that, that part of our inner team that wanted to challenge those ideologies, which is. Fine. They were never nurtured. Mm-hmm. Um, and that could be by anyone. Even if they were nurtured by someone in your corner, there was always someone to like negate it. You know, whether it be like a grumpy teacher or some or an adult who just always said that they knew better than you and they made sure that you knew that. Or was it threatened by the fact that you were more of a. Expansive thinker. Mm-hmm. They're like, oh no, you're not allowed to do this. Not yet. Right. Like, you can't compare to me. You can't challenge me because you know, I have years on you. Right. And so I think that. It's important to decipher the difference and acknowledge that the inner team does need that attention. And so with that being said mm-hmm. We are gonna dive into what teenage Danie and what teenage Crystina were doing in the early two thousands. Fucking some shit up. Absolutely. So I guess as. Like for the both of us. Our teen years were from, take a deep breath, we're from the years of 2004 to about 2009, 2010. Then we started our, you know, young adulthood if you will. Right. We graduated high school in 2010. Yes. So we are still technically on the younger end of the millennial generation, but are very much millennials. Mm-hmm. Um, and so. I wrote down a couple of things that our teen years kind of consisted of. So if any of these like, resonate with you or they make you smile, or they like, make you feel that like warm, fuzzy, nostalgic feeling, um, leave us a comment. Um, wherever you're listening, and if you're watching on YouTube, leave us a comment on YouTube. Yeah. Um, so this was a mostly internet free childhood until we were about. Teens. Teens. Yeah. I mean, we were like outside every day. Mm-hmm. It was a no. I mean, it was no phones for me until about 13 and that was already when I was in the seventh grade. Yeah. And I think I was the same seventh grade. I know kindergartners right now with a cell phone. Right. It's wild. And so, by the time everything kind of caught on, MySpace was the one. So our teens were, it was the one, not the two. Yeah. We were being, we were self-taught HTML coders. Absolutely. Building out our MySpace profiles. Not understanding. That we were literally writing code. Exactly. And the wars that were started. Yeah. Over your top eight. I don't think anybody who wasn't around for that time will ever understand the drama. When you saw it was drama that somebody who was supposed to be your best friend. Took you off their top eight. I had a friend one time replace me on her top eight with this little boy she was talking to. I'm like, you have me fucked up. A replacement is crazy. A replacement. Replacement is wild. Oh gosh. It was. It was like there would be tears or would be on goof, like full on girl fights like you guys don't understand because MySpace only allowed you to have eight. Yeah. You could do less. Yeah. I remember at one point I only had four. Yeah, because I'm like. Nobody else deserves it. Yeah. Kind of thing. I think, fuck everyone else. But the max you could put in there was eight. Right. And it was kind of like a way to see like, ooh, who, who's like hooking up with who? Who's talking to who. It was a literal ranking. Yeah. Of who, who was the most important person in your life at that time? And for me, like throughout my middle school years, you know, your friend groups changed so much. Hmm. Um, but I remember specifically like having. Multiple best friends at the time, and so I would log on every day bitch and switch the, the, the ranking around so that nobody felt left out. Oh, so you were like, you were like anxious about it. Almost. Fucking, no kidding. Yeah. Yes, I was anxious about it. It was almost like I had to give someone the number one spot every day so that not, so not one of my best friends would be left out that they were not the one, two, or the three. Right. Which is wild when you really think about it. Ranking your friendships is crazy. Yeah. Um, for me personally, it was doing bad makeup on myself because YouTube beauty gurus were not a thing. No. The beauty community was not a thing. I don't think YouTube was real until 2006. And, and it was mostly like prank videos or just like random people doing random shit and parodies and parodies. It was a lot of sketch comedy. Yeah. Like those were the good old days of YouTube. Yeah. And so. It's like if I'm wearing a blue shirt, I'm wearing blue cover girl eyeshadow in a, the singlets, if you remember a singlet, a cover girl singlet. I had like 10 of those, right? And every single different color because they had to match the shirt that I was wearing that day. That's very you. And it would be very smudgy and like my eyeliner would be bad. And I have like black eye boogers because I didn't know how to do my makeup because I was 13 and because also like. You weren't using blending brushes at that time. You were using the little foamy thingy that comes with it, the applicator to just, just, uh, swipe across the lid. And you're like, honestly, that's, it's, that's it. We weren't doing our eyebrows. No. For what? We weren't lining our lips. We weren't contouring. No. You know what I had from my lips? Lip smacker. Clear gloss. Hell yeah. And it ate down. What are, what were those little things? They were rollers and they had like little flowers and things in them. That was lip gloss. Yeah. I loved those. Yeah, those were good too. They smell like cherry. Mm-hmm. You got, there were different types. There were even like floral ones, which I hated. The floral ones. Yeah. You would get them at like the checkout stand. Yes. At like different clothing stores. Yes. At the Dollar or the Dollar Store. Shout out to fricking Rave Girl if you know, you know, um, I was, I can never afford Abercrombie yeah right can never afford Hollister. Yeah, but there was a store in my mall that was called Papaya. And let me tell you, I wanted to shop in that store so bad, but the clothes in there were a little bit more like for the younger adult girlies. Right. And so a lot of the clothes were like revealing. Yeah. So my mother was like, they were like clubbing outfit to like, yeah. My mother was like, absolutely not. We're not going in there. Right. Um, and I just wanted to shop in there so bad. And I, I appreciate her for protecting my. Childhood self. Right. My little teen self. I remember like I loved a Charlotte Rousse moment. Oh yeah. I loved, okay, you guys, PacSun today has nothing on PacSun like 15, 20 years ago, I loved PacSun. Mm-hmm. I, so I grew up not having a lot of money, but my grandma, every. End of summer, beginning of fall would take me school shopping. And I'm like, I don't, we're going to Pac Sun and that's it. End of story. I'm getting some corduroy bell bottoms. Mm-hmm. I'm getting some low rise corduroy bell bottoms. I'm getting a billabong sweatshirt and I'm getting a fox little tight crop top. Oh yeah. Let's, I mean, if we wanna get into the brands, the brands were a huge thing. Like if you didn't have a brand name on your shirt, you were a loser. Yeah. There was no such thing as like plain minimalistic when we in No, it was in neutrals. Yeah. It was like, are you wearing a bright pink fox shirt to school or are you not? Exactly. And did I know what that was? Or lime green? Yeah. It was, yeah, definitely the bright colors. The bright, the neons. The turquoises, yeah. It got really hot and heavy there for a second. The patterns, like the chevron patterns and stuff. Oof. Oof bad. Absolutely. Uh, I don't know if anyone remembers gaucho pants. Yeah. Gouch my eyes out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They were horrible. Thank God I never had a pair of those. And if you did, I'm sorry. Um. For us. It was like, boy, bands on boy bands on boy bands. I've always been a boy band girl. Literally. My first concert was nsync. I feel like if you listen to the podcast, you know this. Right? Um, and. It's God, we're both Lance girls bitch. And I mean, it's been since 2007, I wanna say, since I've been a Jonas Brothers fan. Yeah, that's a long time to be a fan. Yeah. Like Mandy was like blowing up on radio Disney and I'm like, who the fuck is this? Right. Hold on. If they play that news video one more time, they really, it was really getting pushed so hard. Yeah. Do you remember Kingsley from YouTube? Yes. And he blew up because there was a Jonas Brothers concert in his. City. I think he was like living in Detroit or something. Really? Uh, somewhere in Michigan at the time. And he was like, I couldn't go nowhere because all these Jonas Brothers fans are everywhere. And I just remember that was the thing that blew him up being mad at the Jonas Brothers fans because it was a pan. It was pandemonium. You guys. Yeah. You didn't live through it. You won't understand. You had to have been there for the height. I mean, we're talking about running after vehicles. Yeah. I mean, trampling in the streets like you would've thought like. Something serious had gone down and it was the brothers were in town. Um, for me personally, and it didn't happen often because my mom was kind of a scaredy cat, still is to this day. But on Friday afternoons evening time, like you came home from school and you like freshened up a little bit and you spritzed on your love spell from Victoria's, Victoria's Secret, Victoria Secret. And you got in that car and you got dropped off at the mall Absolutely. On a Friday evening. And it wasn't, you weren't there to do shit. But just get dropped off and walk around. Or stand around exactly and look for anybody else and hope. And hope that your crush showed up too. And when they didn't, you were like, what a waste of my time. Yeah. See, I didn't really have that experience because where I grew up was very rural and there wasn't a mall around. The closest mall was like 30, 45 minutes away. So we didn't hang out at the mall. We hung at like our local ice cream shop. Okay. Or roller skating rink, or honestly, most of the time it was just each other's houses, which that's what my mom didn't like. Yeah, because she was like, you little hussies, you and your friends, the little hussies are inviting boys over. And I was like, okay, why is that bad? Why can't I be friends with Eric? And Eduardo crystal's corner, crystal's corner. Yeah. But Crystal, but we didn't, we, we had to find, we had to be more creative in the Midwest. 'cause we didn't have malls like that where we could just like, it was five, 10 minutes away, we could just go walk around the mall. It was the whole thing. So you had to get somebody to take you to the mall. And they're like, well, I'm not gonna drop you off at the mall for two hours and then turn around and come back 45 minutes. Right. I'm gonna have to like wait around for you. Exactly. And no. It just wasn't, it just wasn't it? Um, yeah, that, that's really it for me. Then it kind of gets into like my little personal things about, you know, that just the feeling of being like at the beach all day or the pool all day and it's like, oh, the salts of the air, you know, your skin feels like crispy from the sun and then you go out and you get ice cream from somewhere. Or like, even better, the ice cream truck rolls around. Oh, abs. Yeah. And the jingle. Mm-hmm. And you load it up on them. Yes. As far as like what went down in the early 00s, that was it Like little Danie though, teenage Danie. It was kind of this feeling of like wanting a carefree summer while still balancing like this constant like questioning of myself in a way. It was like, who am I? What is this all for? You know, you start to get really existential with it. Yes. You start to come into consciousness. You're like, what is this? Humans who, where, why? And like, you know, the, you start to have questions about like the origins of everything. Mm-hmm. And so, 'cause especially if you don't. Grow up with a religious background, which like I dabbled in Catholicism for like a hot second when I was younger, but I was too little to understand what that was. And then for a long time we didn't go to church and for the time that we were not in church we're like prime time adolescent years for me. And so I had a lot of questions about existence. Yeah. You know? And if you're just told that it's that it's God and it's a very specific God. Or a very specific entity, then you're almost like made to feel like you can't question any further or like you're not allowed to have questions about it because that's just the answer and that's the answer you have to accept. Hmm. Um, so for me it was a lot of like questioning my true self. A lot of struggles within my friendships, feeling like I was always putting forth all this extra effort. Fast forward to adult Danie, and here we fucking are. Um, and not, and feeling like it wasn't reciprocated. Um, again, just with like my identity, feeling like I had to be the good girl or like the good person and not necessarily because I wanted to, which of course is always a part of you that like wants to be good, but almost having this like pressure on your shoulders from other people around you, whether it be family members or others that kind of. Reinforce this idea that you have to be good. Right? So that it was kind of a struggle, and it just makes sense now that that version of me grows up into being like this anxious adult who always has to take care of and solve other people's problems. And I'm on the back burner. Yeah. Or that's my full circle, but yeah. Yeah. All in all a good time. It was, it just I, for anyone who won't be able to experience that because they grew up or they were born, like after the year 2000, I, it makes me sad that you weren't really around to really. Witness it. But, um, my teens were really like my try everything era. Mm-hmm. And I think that for me now, reflecting back, it was just a desperate need to fit in. And so I had to find my thing. Right. Right. Of course. And I just needed to fit in with my friends and the kids at my school. So just to paint a picture, I grew up most of my. Adolescence in Wisconsin, basically from about first grade, through my sophomore year of high school. And, but even within that, I kind of bounced around towns a lot. So I was in the same area. I would guess say you could say like the same county but not the same town. And so I switched schools a lot. and I also like kind of bounced back and forth between, homeschooling and going to public school. So I lived in one town for a little bit, went to, an elementary school for a few years got pulled out 'cause my mom got really sick and was homeschooled. Then we moved to a different town because we, like my parents, bought a house. And so I started going to a middle school there because there they started middle school in fifth grade, bro. What? Fifth grade? It was fifth through eighth grade. That's crazy. It is crazy. Fifth graders with eighth graders. I already feel some type of way about sixth graders with eighth graders. Right. Wow. Yeah. That's horrible. Yeah, so I started going to middle school there, lived there for two years and we moved to a different town because we moved into my family's farm when I was in seventh grade. And in that town, middle school was only seventh and eighth grade. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But all that to say, I lived in very rural areas, even within this area. And I always went to the same church, growing up. So I had the same friends in that regard. Like my best friends growing up, I knew from kindergarten because we all went to the same church and like. Always went to that church. Mm-hmm. Like, no, like people didn't really like go to different churches or move around, like Right. You went to one church and you went there probably your entire childhood. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So in that way I think that I was really lucky that I had this same group of friends all growing up. But as far as when it came to school, because I was in such a rural area, I was often one of the only black kids. Or honestly people of color in general. Mm-hmm. I remember in one of my middle schools, it was like me, another girl and a Hispanic boy named Eduardo, you know, and he was my first boyfriend. shoutout Eduardo. There must have been, there must've been something that it was like, of course, well, since, I mean obviously since she was a baby, she was just love a Latin man. I. It is what it is. Honestly, since day ones, honestly. And the embarrassing thing is we literally met in band class. That's not embarrassing. And yes, shout out to band. No marching band is legit. Marching band is cool. Regular band is cool too. Okay. It's more of just like the instrument that I was forced to play. So my first, choice was percussion. Mm-hmm. 'cause I am, I've always loved a drummer, you know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Like, I liked it. They were like, no, we have too many of those. I was like, okay, well how about the flute? 'cause that's girly and feminine. And they were like, no, we have too many of those. My dad was like, well, I have a trumpet at home. She could play the trumpet. my band teacher was like, yeah, we need more trumpeters. And I'm like, that's so, I don't wanna be an 11, 12-year-old girl playing the fucking trumpet. Come on. Trumpets are cool, bro. They weren't you guys. I'm weren't weren. We're literally rebranding kids who play any instrument. I don't care if you play the fucking triangle or the chimes. Okay, we're rebranding it. You are cool. If there's any kid out there listening. You're cool. There is a guy, you don't think any kids are listening to our podcast? If you come across as whatever, if you were a kid who played an instrument, there is a man on YouTube and we are going to link him in the show notes. And he plays the most beautiful trumpet I've ever heard in my whole life. And he like has it on a loop and then like he plays some ambient music behind it. And I swear this got me going. I. Love this man. And he like is, I don't know, in nature all the time. Okay. That's cool. He'll like sit at the edge of a dock. Yeah. Sitting on the dock with a bay. I really, I'm glad that it's bringing you joy. It is. Yeah, if you play the trumpet, good on you. Yeah. So all this to say, I, I'm going down many tracks. I was, because there weren't very many people who looked like me in the area that I grew up in, I was often ostracized. I was bullied a lot. There were a lot of mean girls that would just like make comments, about me and I just like. Because of that, it fueled this need to like always fit in or like to always like have my thing, right? Mm-hmm. So I tried everything. I tried volleyball. I fucking sucked at volleyball. I tried basketball also sucked. I tried track and field. I hate running, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like I really, but it's like I just needed. But how else would you know that? But I needed to like, be like it, it was like this. And back then, and I've heard that now, it's a lot different in schools. Like they're, it was kind of like mean girls. It's like they're the popular kids and it's like, I just wanted so badly to be popular. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? So it's like I was trying all these things and I was seeing all of my friends at that age, like started to get, Attention from boys. Mm. And I remember in the seventh grade, my first, my friend who was the first to lose her virginity, and it was just like, I was like, wait, what? Wait, what? We're doing that and we're doing that now you actually have a boy who like wants to have sex with you. 'cause I was very awkward, ugly duckling. Like, I'm stuck on seventh grade, bitch, seventh grade. I'm not gonna air her out. But she like, I honestly hope she's doing well. But yeah. Not because she had sex earlier. I just like, she, she has a fond memory of a friend for me. Yeah, of course. So I hope that she's doing well in life. But yeah, so then it just kind of created this deep seated insecurity from a very young age. 'cause not only was I different than everybody and I. Was the only person of color even in my family. Right. Right. Then to then go into school and be in my town, and I'm really one of the only people, kids on my one hand who was a person of color. Right. It just always felt like I was not being seen. Mm-hmm And so it just created this deep insecurity from a very young age where I almost got comfortable not being seen. Because the act of being seen was like, well, oh, you're different. Oh, why is your hair frizzy? Oh, why are you like this? Why is your skin so brown? You know? Mm-hmm. Um, and so, which is like crazy, but that's, that's what it was. Y'all like, like when you're not, when you're not taught to like love others, or you're like, you don't see that in your life. Or your, your parents don't teach you that. There are other people that live on this earth that don't look like you. That is what the reaction is. Yeah. And a lot of the time it's hostile. Right. So I. Really like, I wouldn't say that I was like depressed at that point, but I really got into the angsty emo like pop punk music. I loved my chemical romance. I had a fat head of Gerard Way on my wall. I love that. I was also the time of fathead, you know what I'm saying? Oh my God. I forgot about fatheads. My cousin. Shout out David, if you're listening. 'cause he does listen sometimes. Burned me. My first death cab for cutie. Oh damn. Talk about burning CDs. I was up in that bitch as soon as I learned that I could. I could do that. I was on Limewire. Oh, absolutely. Then Verizon sent, sent a letter via snail mail to my mother, like, you cease and desist. Yeah, you continue to download illegal music. We were Stop your internet. Yeah. And I was like, who's doing that? Yeah. My dad was like, you have to stop doing that. They're gonna arrest me. I'm like, no's gonna fucking arrest you. See, I would've believed that, right? Yeah. I, I, well, I was terrified and so then it, it forced me to use my hard earned money. Because I got a job at 14. Wow. It was very low key. My friend's dad was a director at summer camp. Mm-hmm. And during the winters and falls it would turn into like a resort center. Yeah. So I was like doing dishes and cleaning and like Yeah. Simple shit. Right, right. But I made my own money and so I was having to spend my own money on iTunes. Oof. Do you remember those days? Guys had to Dollar song, you had to buy a dollar a song. Then when they, that's expensive now. And then when they switched to a 1 99, there was outrage. Yeah. Right? Yep. Yeah. But to get a, so yeah, I really, kind of got into that space where I just like really thought that I was emo I would like, straighten my hair every day and do like the extreme, like side bang. Mm-hmm. Um, and I wear bows in my hair and like. rawr. Like I was that girl. I was the hot topic wannabe. I was a wannabe hot topic girl because it's like inside. I was still just like a very sweet, deep feeling girl. Yeah, yeah. But on the outside I wanted people to see me as like hard. Right. And so I would like listen to that kind of music. Yeah. Mayday Parade and. All time low and my chemical romance. 'cause like I wanted to be perceived a certain way. Right. And I also think that now I'm looking back, I'm like, I think I want people to just leave me the fuck alone. Like, oh, don't talk to her, don't fuck with her kind of thing. Yeah. She's scary. Yeah. Yeah. It was almost like I'm, I'm looking this way for a reason because I want to appear. Scary. Right? Or I want you to be afraid of me so you don't say anything to me. Right. So you leave me alone. Yeah. Yeah. So that is something we're leaving in adolescence because I don't wanna go back there, but some of the things I do wanna revisit is I was very interested in fashion. When I was younger. I had a book and I would cut out, pictures of, you know, celebrities wearing outfits. And I had a brand name, it was called Crown 'cause it's my first. Initial with the first four letters of my last name. I get it. And my models were Vanessa Hudgens and um, Blake Lively. And who's the girl that played Blair? I forget her name in real life. Leighton Meester Um, Leighton. Yeah. Yeah. And those were my style icons. Those are good models. Yeah. And so I would cut out pictures of them and I would put different outfits over them and like kind of like scrapbook style and I was like, I'm gonna do like a fashion show, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I was very into fashion and so that's something I would love to revisit. It was just like. Style because I think ever since 2020, just like being in your house, war, working from home more. Oh yeah. It's like sweatpants and yoga pants all the time. Right. Comfort. Right. Another thing, that I really loved as an adolescent too was like. Makeup. Mm-hmm. And like makeup as an art. So like doing like special effects looks or doing like festival looks and all these different types of things, which, I mean, festivals weren't really a thing back then, but you know what I mean? Yeah. Like fun, kooky, like again, I was trying to be a hot topic girl. Yeah. You know? Mm-hmm. I was doing the crazy eyeliner and then neon eyeshadow. And we love that. Exactly. It was all about exploration. Like we didn't have the tutorials, you know, it was all about figuring it out for yourself. Right. And if you looked busted, no one was gonna tell you. 'cause nobody knew the difference. Yeah, exactly. We could get on YouTube and be like, this is how it supposed to look. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, that's really it for me. Sorry, it got a little dark there guys. It's so dark. I know. I'm making, I'm making a funny out of it. But yeah, basically, Those were my, my outlets was music. Mm-hmm. And makeup and fashion and self-expression. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I saw you wrote on here always a reality tv. Girly. Always. So I just wanna shout out the hills. That was my shit for me. I was sat Laguna Beach. It was for me, Stephen. Love which gonna beach, which, speaking of, he's also having his moment on traitors. 'cause he's gonna be on traitors. Yes. Which I'm so excited. We mean full circle. It's a lot of, it's a lot of full circle circling, right. Jersey Shore Cabs Are Here!. Can we just take a moment, you guys? I wish that everybody could go back and be in that time and watch Jersey Shore for the first. The first time. Time. Yeah. I, first of all, I'm very short and I was kind of sassy, um, and had big hair and I would straighten my hair all the time and like kind of flip it up like that. Not to the poof level of snooky, but I was called snooky in high school because I was a little meatball and I, every, whatever day it was on, I think it was on Friday night. Me and my best friend, we would go to 7 Eleven, we would get, hot Cheetos. Mm-hmm. And we would get pickle slices and we would get big gulps of Mountain Dew. Oh my God. And we would go home and we would watch Jersey Shore. Oh my God. That's good. And it was just, it started, it started so young. My love of reality tv. Yeah. I love Jersey Shore. That was like the prime of MTV, like obviously. Yeah. They were not music television anymore. No. But the reality that they were putting out like real world. Come on. Yeah. Like it was too good. And I know a lot of the nineties babies who like actually grew up watching, real World in the nineties are gonna like, chime in. Please do. Please do, please. Do you guys know Karamo from Queer Eye was on real world? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And it was when he was World Austin. I have no idea, but it was when he was fake straight. Yep. Oh, that's crazy. I guess I can't say fake straight, but like in the closet, he figuring out his queer identity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because fake straight. This bitch said he was fake straight. Okay. There's a term for that. It's called in the closet because when you go back and watch clips you could tell like, you know. Oh, you could tell. Yeah. But yeah, that's pretty much. It. We did wanna leave you guys with a couple of prompts. Like you can answer it to yourself in your actual journal if you have one, or if you are feeling vulnerable enough to share. We are all deep feelers on this podcast and all the things that you say here will never be judged by us. So some of these prompts will also be included in the show notes for reference. But I'll say them here if you're listening. What did your inner teenager need but did not get? And how can you support them? Now is the first prompt. Second prompt is what choices were made for you by others? That could be anybody that went against what you wanted to do, and in what ways are you showing up for yourself today? And then lastly, what are three life lessons you learned later in life that you wished your inner teen knew? Hmm. Those are good ones. They are really good ones and I didn't answer them for myself. And I feel like right prior to recording, I should have, but I will answer at least one and I guess I could be brave and I'll put it in a YouTube comment. Okay. Yeah. I'll start it off. I'll, I'm gonna start a cha. It's a chain reaction name. That song, I don't know, that's Disney. Demi Lovato. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that, and that's a whole phenomenon we didn't even get, I know. We didn't even get to the DCOMs. That could be a whole different episode. DCOMs is not, yeah. DCOMs Disney Channel original movies. Yeah. Yes. And just that whole era of like mm-hmm. Miley, Selena, Demi, the Jonas Brothers. Yep. When all those people were on Disney. Yeah. And like that, that was their heyday. Yeah. We could honestly do an entire nostalgia episode on that. We could, yeah. Even pre like is that something you guys want on Empaths React? 'cause we could definitely do that, right? Because even pre them, Hillary Duff, Raven, Christy Carlson Romano, yep. Shia LaBeouf when he was, when he was Lewis. Right. Kyla. Kyla Pratt. There's not enough love out there for Kyla Pratt. Kyla Pratt shouts out to Kyla Pratt. There isn't. That's, she's an og For real. She is an og. For real. For real. Okay. Well with that we are gonna wrap up. Yeah. I guess my closing thought was that if I did have a message to my younger adolescent self mm-hmm. It's that you can't use your outer. Your appearance. I was so focused on appearance on what I was wearing and the brand. Oh, of course. And my hair and my makeup. Mm-hmm. And do boys like me, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm. Performing to the male gaze. Right. The outer is not more important than the inner. Mm-hmm. And the inner was always there. Right. You know? Yeah. Its almost like, and if I would've just let that shine more, I might've had an easier time. Mm-hmm. But I think I was so protective of it because I was so sensitive and people were hurting my feelings. I'm like, how do I just stop being bullied? But yes. Yeah, I guess that's my last and final message is that you can't use your outer to mask The inner and beauty really does shine from the inside out, out, out, and so it is. We will see you next time back here on the green velvet couch. Bye guys.